Returning
Welcome back to Inner Compass
For those of you who have subscribed to this newsletter since the beginning, thanks for being here. I am emerging from what I guess could be called writers block, and arriving at a place where I feel interested and ready to get back on this page. This pause has been a time for me to reflect on what this newsletter is, and what I want it to be. After writing together for over a year, Shandra has settled her writing into her own page, Everything Belongs. As with all changes, this transition has opened up the possibility for me to adjust or transform my the Inner Compass substack. And yet, the opportunity for change doesn’t always arrive with the clarity about what to change.
So I’ve paused, and in this pause have found room to consider what I’m offering. This post is in large part a practice for myself to summarize what I’m doing here, and also to invite you into more direct relationship with the writing. My intention going forward is to offer monthly reflections, and invite you into commenting and reflecting on your own experience.
What is this newsletter?
Primarily, this is a space for looking beneath the surface.
I enjoy writing about familiar ideas - purpose, resilience, burnout, balance — not as concepts to optimize, but as lived experiences to understand. I’m interested in writing about what sits underneath words and concepts we hear and use so commonly, and to honor our experiences of them in real life.
I intend for my essays to be reflections on inner life in the world as it is: complicated, demanding, and sometimes frightening, but also beautiful and amazing. They are also essays on the world that could be. My writing is shaped by the roles and identities in my life — physician, well-being researcher and leader, coach, woman, parent, reader, gardener. I also write to explore how the perspectives from these roles collide, inform, and challenge one another.
As a lifelong avid reader, I also write to bring forth what is speaking to me through books, essays, and research. I invite these voices in not to arrive at definitive answers, but to deepen the questions I am asking. Asking questions is one of the things I do best. My intention is to create spaces where experience, observation, and reflection meet, and where ideas are allowed to stay unfinished. To avoid a rush toward certainty or conviction, but instead staying open to curiosity and possibility.
You won’t find specific advice here, or clear steps to follow. This isn’t a place for fixing, optimizing, or self-improvement. I may offer frameworks or things to try, but always with a gentle invitation to be guided by your own Inner Compass. Most often, I linger with questions. I look closely at the ideas we lean on, and I wonder what’s underneath them — in our bodies, our stories, and our choices.
My hope is that this writing invites deeper self-knowledge and understanding. I do this not to help you become someone else, but so that you can listen more honestly to who you already are.
If you’re looking for something to do, this may not be the right place.
If you’re willing to slow down, read thoughtfully, and sit with complexity, you’re very welcome here.
— Sarah