Woodland Serenity LLC

10/22/2025

Tend the Garden of Your Own Heart

Don’t wait for others
to make you happy.

No one can fill
the spaces meant
for your own light.

Happiness isn’t a gift
handed to you,
it’s something you build
quietly within,
moment by moment.

It’s the peace that comes
when you stop chasing approval,
the warmth that rises
when you choose gratitude
over longing.

Let go
of waiting,
or wishing for someone else
to make you happy.

Others may add to your light,
but they cannot create it for you.

This is your work,
your sacred, lifelong task,
to tend
the garden
of your own heart.

~ 'Tend the Garden of Your Own Heart' by Spirit of a Hippie

✍️ Mary Anne Byrne

~ Art by Annacozysoul

10/18/2025

The Quiet Triumphs

Be proud of the steps you took that no one ever saw,
the ones made in silence,
without recognition or reassurance.
Be proud of the nights you lay awake,
talking yourself out of giving up,
of the mornings you rose
when it would have been easier to curl up and disappear
beneath the weight of your own exhaustion.

No one saw you steady yourself
against the quiet ache,
or how you learned to carry it
with a fierce, fragile kind of grace.

Be proud of the small, unremarkable moments
that shaped you,
the promise you made to yourself to keep going,
the choice to forgive someone who never asked,
the courage to show up
to a life that didn’t look the way you thought it would.

Growth doesn’t always announce itself
in loud or obvious ways,
sometimes it’s just a soft exhale,
a single brave breath.

So hold your head high,
not because the world applauds you,
but because you know what it took to stand here.
Every unseen battle,
every invisible step forward,
every time you chose to heal instead of harden,
those are your quiet triumphs,
and they matter
more than anyone will ever know.

~ 'The Quiet Triumphs' by Spirit of a Hippie

✍️ Mary Anne Byrne

10/12/2025

No one prepares you for the silence that children leave behind when they grow up...
Not the silence of an empty house,
but the silence that creeps into your heart...
when they no longer ask you what to do,
when they no longer seek your advice,
when they begin to live... without you.

And you smile, of course.
Because that's what you wanted: to see them fly.
But inside... something breaks.

Because being a mother of adult children is something else.
It's biting back your words when you see they're wrong.
It's swallowing the urge to call when they don't answer.
It's learning to love without invading.

It's looking from afar, with your hands still
and your heart trembling.

Sometimes they tell you things... but often they don't.
And you pretend it doesn't hurt.
But it does hurt.
It hurts not to be part of everything like before.
It hurts to see that they no longer need you... at least not like before.

And yet, there you are.
Putting out their favorite food when they come over.
Arranging their childhood photos.
Praying for them every night, as if that were enough to protect them from the world.

Because deep down, a mother never stops caring.
She only learns to do it from the shadows.
From a corner.
From a prayer.

And that's a form of love that no one sees...
but that sustains everything.

Moral:
Being the mother of an adult child means accepting that you are no longer the center of their life... but continuing to love them as if you were. Because there are loves that don't fade; they only learn to wait in silence.

✍️Mayrasak

10/10/2025

09/05/2025

We are thankful for all our clients, we are celebrating our third year here in Elcho!

I give thanks to all who
accompanied me on my path.
Those who stayed throughout
the storms, and those who
lit the way through the darkest
nights.
I also keep a place in my heart
for those who joined me for
only a small part of the journey.
I hope you found your way.
We are all just :
'walking each other home'
throughout the sunshine
and storms ..

C.E. Coombes 🌞

08/05/2025

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ~ George Eliot