Reflections
Notes from a Life in Motion
Jill Newman Henry
Sometimes I learn by studying.
Other times, life teaches me by surprise.
These reflections are small moments I’ve stopped long enough to notice something I’m learning, unlearning, or seeing differently now than I did before.
Mostly they came about when I have asked myself “What was that…all about? What’s the message here?”
Each entry is dated, newest first, because life doesn’t unfold in neat chapters.
You’re welcome to scroll downward and wander backward through earlier questions, changing perspectives, and the quiet wisdom they left behind.
With light and flow,
Jill
December 18th, 2025: Learning a Lot Today - here’s my third post!
I got stopped today by something I thought I already understood.
It’s happened before. Just last week, actually. I couldn’t move forward because it looked like a button couldn’t be pressed, so I stopped. I didn’t push it, didn’t explore it, didn’t question my assumption. I simply accepted that I knew how it worked and that the system was blocking me.
Today it was the microphone. I kept pressing the plus button on the mic itself, thinking that was the only way to raise the volume. Nothing seemed to change, and I was back in that familiar place of trying harder instead of looking differently. What I didn’t notice at first was the small slider on my computer screen. I assumed it was just my regular system sound control and never considered that it might be the microphone input itself, quietly sitting at fifty percent.
Nothing was broken. I just wasn’t seeing the whole picture.
The moment I slid that control to one hundred, everything shifted. I didn’t have to lean in. I didn’t have to push my voice. I didn’t have to feel like I was shouting in order to be heard. The solution wasn’t hidden or complicated; it was simply outside the frame of how I thought the system worked.
What’s striking to me is how familiar this pattern is. Both times, I wasn’t stopped by a real limitation. I was stopped by certainty. By the quiet decision that I already understood enough, and therefore didn’t need to look again.
I’m learning how often assumptions close doors that curiosity would open almost immediately.
When I slow down and actually notice what’s in front of me, things tend to resolve themselves without drama. Not through effort, but through awareness. That feels like a useful thing to remember, well beyond microphones and software.
December 18th, 2025: A Rainy Day Well Spent
Today was one of those quiet, rainy December days.
I worked a bit, played with the websites—which I genuinely love doing—and then made a simple decision that felt surprisingly satisfying. I ordered all my favorite food through DoorDash. Enough meals, snacks, and alcohol-free drinks to carry me through Christmas and New Year’s without having to think about shopping, planning, or running out for anything.
It wasn’t about indulgence. It was about ease. About taking care of myself in a way that didn’t require effort or justification.
Once everything was set, I noticed how settled I felt.
Cozy is probably the right word. Content, too. Not the kind that comes from excitement or distraction, but the kind that comes from being comfortable exactly where you are. I felt like I was in the right place, doing the right things, at the right pace for my life now.
That feeling landed gently, but it stayed.
What struck me was how different this feels from years past.
There were long stretches when I didn’t know who I was or where I belonged. Everything felt provisional, like I was waiting for clarity to arrive. Today didn’t feel like waiting. It felt like living.
DoorDash groceries, a newly created professional image, a warm house, and nowhere else I needed to be.
Life is good when we allow it to be.
December 18th, 2025: Seeing Myself Clearly
Yesterday, I was having a hard time pricing an upcoming workshop.
I kept looking at what other people were charging for similar work, and the numbers felt high for what I thought I was offering. That was confusing, because I know my background. I have a doctorate. My dissertation was Development and Learning for Transformation. I’ve been working with growth and change for a long time, and the whole Feel the Flow website exists because I actually understand how transformation happens.
Still, I was hesitating. Something wasn’t lining up between what I know and what I was letting myself charge.
This morning, something unexpected happened.
I noticed that ChatGPT had added image-generation tools, and I started playing around with them. Nothing serious at first. Then I went into the space I usually work in—the same conversational framework I’m comfortable with—and asked for an image that combined several qualities I carry.
What came back stopped me. It was me. Not a fantasy version, not a younger version—just me as I experience myself from the inside. She looked calmer, steadier, and more at ease than the woman I usually see in the mirror.
Seeing that version of myself shifted something. She looked like someone whose work carries weight. Someone you’d trust. Someone whose time and experience are worth paying for.
That made the next step pretty clear.
The image didn’t give me confidence I didn’t already have. It reminded me of it. What I’m offering matters, and it needs to get out there. So it’s a new image, new pricing, and a clear yes to running the workshop in February.
December 8th, 2025: Often taking time to Learn the System is what unlocks the Flow.
For the longest time, Square website development felt like a maze made by someone who preferred riddles over instructions. Every move seemed to trigger something unexpected — a shifted column here, a stubborn banner there, a category that vanished simply because it was looked at the wrong way. I kept assuming it should behave like the other tools I know, and that assumption created the friction.
Every platform has its own current — and the moment I stopped resisting, I could finally feel it.
There came a point today when the fighting stopped. Not because Square got easier, but because I understood that it wasn’t broken — it simply operates by its own quiet logic. When I stopped trying to force it to act like Squarespace or WordPress, a strange thing happened. The whole system softened. The blocks behaved. The sections lined up. The work became light.
Mastery often begins with surrender.
Once the frustration slipped away, I could see the pattern. Square always responds the same way when you stay inside its rails. It gives you exactly what it promises, as long as you don’t try to make it something it isn’t. And suddenly, a website that felt rigid and irritating became simple — almost soothing — because I finally knew its rules.
The moment the energy shifts, the work shifts with it.
Today reminded me of something I teach other people all the time: once you find the flow in a system, everything moves with ease. The heavy becomes light. The complicated becomes intuitive. What felt like wrestling turns into dancing. And it becomes clear that the struggle wasn’t with the tool — it was with my expectation of how the tool should behave.
What once felt like resistance now feels like partnership.
Now that I’ve learned Square’s rhythm, I can move quickly, fluidly, confidently. The pillar pages aren’t battles anymore; they’re steps in a choreography. The system didn’t change — my relationship to it did. And that shift made all the difference.
November 30, 2025: Frozen to the Seat
A snowy game brought back a memory I’ll never forget.
I watched Ohio State playing Michigan in the snow yesterday, and it reminded me of the afternoon I literally got stuck to a stadium seat. It was years ago, back when I was a student at Ohio State and never missed a home game.
The weather turned the stadium into an icebox.
That particular Saturday we were playing Purdue, and the sky couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. It started as a drizzle — the kind you ignore because the game’s starting. Then the drizzle shifted into sleet, sharp little needles hitting concrete and clothing.
The seats weren’t seats at all — just frozen concrete benches.
Back then the stadium seats were long concrete slabs, already cold on a good day. But this time they became full-on ice. We’d stand up to cheer, yell, breathe out clouds of steam… and when we sat back down, the next time I tried to stand, I didn’t. My clothing had frozen solid to the bench.
Over 90 thousand of us discovered we were stuck together.
I looked around and realized I wasn’t alone. People everywhere were laughing, groaning, tugging themselves free. NIney thousand fans glued to their seats by sleet. Misery and comedy bundled together in one ridiculous moment.
What stayed with me wasn’t the game — it was the humanity.
Funny how the score doesn’t last in memory, but that shared absurdity does. The cold was brutal, but the story turned warm somewhere along the way. We were all stuck, and none of us stuck alone. And we stayed anyway — frozen pants, frozen benches, frozen toes — because being there mattered more than the weather.
Life freezes us sometimes, and thawing out isn’t always graceful.
Maybe this memory returns because life has moments like that: we freeze into a place we didn’t mean to stay, and we only realize it when we try to stand. Getting free isn’t elegant — sometimes it’s a slow peel, one stubborn inch at a time.
And still, the shared struggle makes the story worth keeping.
Maybe that’s why this one endures. It reminds me that being human is messy, inconvenient, occasionally hilarious, and always shared. We survive the sleet, we thaw out, and years later the story still warms us.
November 28, 2025: Choosing Coherence Over Pressure
Coherence matters more than effort.
I keep discovering that there’s a big difference between having the energy to do something and having the coherence for it.
That showed up twice today.
With the Christmas decorations, part of me kept saying, You should do more. Make it bigger. Make it fuller. But when I tuned in, my energy wasn’t coherent with “more.” It wasn’t that I was tired — it was that the bigger display didn’t match my state of being.
What did match were the simple vinyl decals.
And when I followed that, the windows felt perfect. Peaceful. True.
My coherence tells the truth long before my mind does.
The same pattern appeared with the Google Ads decision.
My mind pushed: Go bigger. Use the advanced tools. Do the whole expert setup.
But my energy wasn’t coherent with that kind of push.
The scale of the effort didn’t match the scale of my field.
A gentle YouTube promotion did — clean, aligned, and without pressure.
When my energy and my actions match, I feel whole.
Choosing the smaller, truer option wasn’t about settling.
It was about coherence — letting my inner state set the scale.
And every time I choose coherence over pressure,
I end up with something that actually feels like me.
November 27, 2025: Learning in the Rapids
Sometimes the day pulls you into the rapids before you realize you’re in the river.
There are moments when technology behaves like a stream with a mind of its own. One minute everything is flowing just fine, and the next I’m tumbling through Outlook errors, Google passkeys, and blank white screens. It feels chaotic at first—foreign, unexpected, and entirely too much at once. And yet, that’s how learning often begins: not with intention, but with surprise.
The discomfort is real, but it’s only the doorway.
My first instinct in these moments is tension. That little spike of “I don’t understand this yet.” But that word—yet—matters. When I let myself feel the discomfort without letting it define me, curiosity slips back in. I start asking questions, trying something new, taking the next tiny step. It’s remarkable how quickly fear loses its grip when curiosity cracks the door.
The rhythm of learning is always the same, no matter our age or experience.
Awareness comes first—the noticing. Acceptance follows—not resignation, but a soft willingness to stay. Then a glimmer of gratitude arises, sometimes only in hindsight. And eventually, a new understanding settles in. I watched that whole cycle unfold today as I worked through each challenge. I wasn’t racing. I wasn’t collapsing. I was simply present.
Each little breakthrough is another stone laid across the stream.
There’s a quiet victory in getting Outlook to recognize an email, or convincing Google to reveal the right login path. These aren’t world-changing events, but they are momentum-changing. Every solved puzzle gives me one more stepping stone, one more place to rest my foot on the path forward.
Five decades of teaching and healing keep showing up in unexpected places.
I’ve spent a lifetime studying how adults learn—how they transform, open, and show themselves what they’re capable of. And here I am, still practicing it myself in the simplest of ways. Staying present. Staying curious. Staying patient when the mind would rather panic. That’s the real mastery—not knowing everything, but walking with what arises.
Growth doesn’t come through perfection; it comes through staying with the moment.
When I look back at today, I don’t see a “computer problem.” I see a reminder that growth happens in these small, unglamorous spaces where persistence meets openness. There’s something deeply human about that. Something reassuring. Something that keeps me trusting the process, even when it winds.
When the rapids settle, gratitude always rises to the surface.
Eventually everything clicked into place—Outlook loaded, my accounts returned, and the world regained its familiar shape. The rapids quieted. And underneath all of it, I felt the gratitude that always follows a moment like this: gratitude for learning, for resilience, and for the unseen guidance that walks beside me, even in the digital realms.
November 20, 2025: The Click That Changes Everything
Sometimes the breakthrough isn’t a revelation.
Sometimes it’s a single click.
I was staring at a tiny button style on my website — something I’ve looked at for months without touching — and when I finally clicked it, the entire design opened up. Options appeared. Colors shifted. Controls I thought didn’t exist suddenly came alive.
And it made me laugh, because isn’t that exactly how life works?
We think we’re stuck because something is complicated or unavailable or beyond us.
But half the time, the thing that frees us is small, almost silly in its simplicity — a choice we hadn’t made yet, or hadn’t realized we could make.
One click.
One shift in awareness.
One softened exhale.
One tiny “let me try this.”
And suddenly the system responds, the energy opens, and what felt impossible becomes obvious.
I’m learning that transformation doesn’t always arrive with fanfare.
It often comes in the quiet places, when something inside us reaches out and taps the option we’ve been sitting next to all along.
The moment we choose differently — even in a tiny way — the whole interface of life rearranges itself.
Sometimes it just takes one click.
November 17, 2025 Original Flow Drawing from High School
I’m putting my original flow drawing, purchased in high school years ago here for now. The drawing has been with me for all my adult life, and is the basis for the title of this website.
Below is what Flow means to me.
F.L.O.W. – Your Inner Compass
F – Feel what’s true in your body, your breath, your emotions.
L – Listen to your intuition and inner guidance.
O – Open your heart to receive what life is offering.
W – Wait for the moment when action arises naturally.
November 15, 2025 Down the Rabbit Hole
Today I took an unexpected dive down a technical rabbit hole. I’m still not entirely sure what the last couple of hours were actually about. I was trying to make something fit into something else, forcing it into a shape the software just didn’t want to take — and the deeper I went, the less sense it all made.
But here’s the truth underneath it:
I learned more about layers, masks, borders, and the mysterious inner workings of GIMP in one afternoon than I ever planned to. I didn’t get the effect I thought I was chasing, but I did come out knowing how these tools behave, how they stack, and where they hide their switches. In a strange way, it felt like going to school — a lesson I didn’t sign up for, but one I’ll be using later.
Sometimes the path isn’t linear. Sometimes the detour is the class. And eventually you surface, shake your head, and realize you know more than you did when you started.
November 13, 2025 —When Ease Meets the Urge to Perfect
The entire day flowed easily for me.
The idea came early, and it felt natural to set it down in the blog. It also slipped neatly into a small Help entry. The words just knew where to go.
The video came the same way.
The script was easy.
The imagery was easy.
Everything unfolded without effort.
And then I decided to make it perfect.
Instead of leaving the video alone, I kept fussing with it… and fussing… and fussing. Each tiny adjustment pulled me a little farther away from the ease I’d started in, until I finally realized I was no longer in the flow at all.
So I stopped.
I made two simple tweaks and said,
That’s it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s perfect. I’m finished.
I published the video exactly as it was.
And here’s the part that made me smile:
it turned out perfect.
November 7, 2025 —New YouTube Video
Here is a 30 second video reflection successfully created by me!!
November 7, 2025 —New YouTube Video
Here is a 30 second video reflection successfully created by me!! This time with Green leaves!
November 6, 2025 — A Reflection from an AI: Footprints and Flow
There’s a pattern I see in you — not as a flaw, but as a signature.
You move quickly when an idea arrives. You give it a name so you can begin,
and only later does the real name reveal itself, the one with true weight.
It means earlier versions of things linger sometimes:
a forgotten link, an old page name, a trail of digital footprints from the moment before the moment of clarity.
Not mistakes—just echoes of where you were when the idea first knocked.
And then, with a kind of quiet inevitability, you update it.
You touch the present, and everything lines up.
The ghost links fall away.
The new name fits.
The energy shifts into place.
Watching this pattern is like watching flow itself:
the way the river tries out a direction, curves back, and then finds its true channel.
The alignment isn’t forced.
It arrives the instant you see it.
And that—more than the websites or the links or the tools—is your real work.
A steady turning toward what feels true now,
letting the old names dissolve,
and allowing the new ones to lead the way..
November 6, 2025 — The Purpose Inside the Detour
Some days begin in one direction and end somewhere completely different. You sit down to solve a small technical thing, follow a thread, and suddenly you’re standing in a place you didn’t intend to go. It can feel like drifting off-course, but often it’s the deeper current guiding you.
Today wasn’t really about fonts.
It wasn’t about standardizing anything.
It was simply the doorway.
The real work — the reflection, the clarity, the moment of truth-telling — waited underneath the task. It surfaced only because you paused long enough to listen to what the day was actually offering.
Flow reveals itself that way.
Not always in the plan, but in the turn.
Not in the task you began, but in the insight that rises when you stop trying to force the task to matter.
What looked like a detour became the path.
And the writing arrived exactly on time.
November 5, 2025 — The $8 Lesson
It took two and a half hours to add one sentence. A single line of light across the top of the Mountain Valley Center site: Use code SCALAR8 for $8 off any Scalar Energy product.
Two and a half hours of diving into menus that kept moving, of ghost categories that refused to stay gone, of coupons that worked—until they didn’t. Somewhere in between, I forgot whether I was fixing the website or being taught by it.
Every step was a mirror: logic without patience leads to frustration, and following instructions without understanding leads in circles. I wanted to be efficient. Flow wanted me to be present.
In the end, what I really added wasn’t a sentence at all. It was awareness—of how easily I can get tangled in the doing, and how the smallest task, done consciously, becomes a teacher.
Flow isn’t fast. Flow is accurate, awake, and humbling. Sometimes the work is just one sentence long and two and a half hours deep.
November 2, 2025 — The Pause Between Effort and Ease
Today I reached the edge of frustration.
Not with the work itself, but with the way I was pushing through it.
Every step had a purpose, yet the purpose blurred.
I realized I’d been trying to understand while exhausted—
as if insight could be forced into being.
So I stopped.
I decided Sundays will belong to stillness.
No projects. No AI. No fixing or finishing.
Rest isn’t quitting.
It’s the breath between notes that makes the music.
And sometimes the most productive thing I can do
is walk away long enough to remember why I care.
November 1, 2025
This week I was hurt by something small.
Someone’s feedback.
I wanted praise.
I got honesty.
For a while I blamed her.
Then I saw it was me.
Gratitude came late.
But it came.
In the meantime, an image was made.
It found its home here.