While Everyone Else is Away

It is spring break, and my news feeds are filled with sunsets, beaches, amusement park rides, and dinners that stretch long into warm evenings. There is an ease in those images, a sense of stepping away from everything for a little while, and I can feel the pull of that. The idea of warmth, of rest, of being somewhere beautiful and different for a few days is undeniably appealing.

But here at home, something else is happening. We are deep in the season of Spring—not as a place you go, but as something you move through. A season of Becoming Aware. And as much as part of me would enjoy being somewhere warm and quiet, I have found myself in conversations over the last few days that I would not have missed for anything.

Because this kind of work meets you where you actually are. Not on vacation. Not removed from your life. But right in the middle of it.

In our workshops, we have been spending a lot of time exploring awareness—not just as an idea, but as something that shows up in real, tangible ways. We have talked about the moment awareness begins, how subtle it can be at first, and how easy it is to miss if you are not paying attention. We have talked about the stories we live inside of and the roles we have learned to play over time, often without ever realizing that we had a choice in the matter.

We have also spent time dismantling the idea of “should.” The expectations that come from other people, from society, and eventually from ourselves. The way those expectations become internalized so deeply that they start to feel like truth. Alongside that, we have named the voice that so many of us carry—the one that tells us we are not good enough, not disciplined enough, not capable enough. It does not need to be loud to be powerful. It just needs to be consistent.

Over time, those thoughts and expectations become automatic. They shape how we see ourselves, how we interpret our experiences, and how we move through the world. We stop questioning them, not because they are true, but because they are familiar.

When we are in the workshop space, it becomes a little easier to see these patterns. There is room to reflect, to recognize moments from our own lives, and to begin connecting dots that may have felt unrelated before. Awareness starts to emerge in those moments—not fully formed, but enough to shift something.

And then, inevitably, real life enters the conversation.

Yesterday, we were talking about daily habits. One of the women asked, “How do you break a habit of sleeping too much?” When I asked her to tell me more, she explained that she was not talking about herself, but about someone else in the group who also lived with her.

So I asked a simple question. “Why do you think he sleeps too much?”

Her answer was immediate. “Because the house mom says that he has to stop sleeping so much.”

And just like that, the framework was set. The behavior had been labeled, the conclusion had been drawn, and the expectation was already in place.

I shifted my attention to him and asked, “Do you think you sleep too much?”

He said no.

I asked if he felt it was harming him in any way, or if he had spoken to a doctor about it. Again, no. When I asked if he even wanted to stop sleeping more, he hesitated and then said, “No… not really.”

He shared that others believed he was isolating himself and that sleeping too much must be a sign of that. When I asked him directly if he felt that was true, he said no again.

That answer mattered, because it created a pause. It opened up space to consider that what we were seeing might not mean what we thought it did.

I reflected back to him what I had observed over time. That I did not see someone who was isolating. I saw someone engaged in conversations, someone who helped others, someone who was aware of his support system and used it consistently. The story being told about him did not align with what I had actually seen.

From there, the questions shifted.

I asked if there were times during the day when he did not feel the urge to sleep. He said yes—when he was watching his favorite programs in the evening. I asked what he would be doing during the day if he were not sleeping, and his answer was simple. “There’s really nothing for me to do.”

That was the moment everything started to change.

What had been labeled as a problem of discipline or behavior started to reveal something else entirely. There was no engagement. No sense of purpose or direction during the day. No reason to stay awake.

As we kept talking, he began to identify things he might enjoy, things he had not yet tried, things that could make his days feel different. And then, after sitting with it for a moment, he said, “I think I sleep because I’m bored.”

It was such a simple statement, but it shifted the entire conversation. What had been treated as something that needed to be corrected was actually something that needed to be understood.

What stood out to me even more than that realization was what happened around it. We had spent weeks talking about awareness, about not labeling or assuming, about being careful not to place people into expectations shaped by “should.” And yet, as soon as we were faced with a real situation, we did exactly that.

We made a decision about him based on what we thought he should be doing. We interpreted his behavior through a lens that had nothing to do with his actual experience. We assigned meaning without asking the deeper question.

And that is how automatic this is. It is not intentional. It is not malicious. It is simply what we have learned to do.

But that wasn’t where the conversation ended.

After we talked with him, I intentionally brought the conversation back to her. I asked her to set aside what she thought he should be doing and instead reflect on her own experience. Not someone else’s habits. Not someone else’s behavior. Hers.

That shift mattered. Because that is where awareness becomes personal.

That is when she shared that she had been struggling with her own sleep. That she wasn’t waking up during the night, but she also wasn’t feeling rested when she woke up in the morning. As we explored her routine, she described going to bed early and talking through everything that was troubling her right before falling asleep. At first, she believed that this helped her—that it allowed her to release what she was holding onto.

But as we stayed with it a little longer, something began to change.

Maybe it wasn’t helping her rest. Maybe it was keeping everything active.

We talked through what she could try instead. Not to avoid those conversations, but to move them earlier in the day when she had the time and space to process them more fully. And then at night, to create a different kind of environment—one that felt lighter, calmer, more supportive of rest.

By the time she left that day, both of them had something to take with them. Not a rule. Not a correction. But an awareness, and something they were willing to try. We agreed that they would pay attention to what happened and come back the next day ready to share.

And I remember feeling strongly that we needed to return to it. Because something important had happened in that moment. We had moved from talking about awareness as a concept into actually living it. Into practicing it in real time, in a way that was personal and tangible.

That is where the work really begins.

This morning, we came back to it.

I asked the group what stayed with them after they left, and whether anything had shifted. The woman who initially brought up his sleeping patterns continued reflecting on her own experience. She shared what she had tried and what she had noticed.

She had talked through the things that were troubling her earlier in the afternoon. Then, when she and her roommate went to bed, they shifted their focus. They talked about the good things from their day—the projects they were working on, the wildlife they had seen, their plans for the garden, the signs that spring was beginning to show itself again.

She did not ignore what she was feeling. She simply gave it a different place in her day.

When she woke up, she felt different. She had more energy. She followed through on her exercises in the morning instead of waiting until later. And as she reflected on that experience, she noticed something else she hadn’t connected before. The exercises were strengthening her legs, but they were also making her knees ache, and that discomfort may have been contributing to her restlessness at night.

It was an unexpected awareness, the kind that only shows up when you take the time to pay attention.

Another participant shared how much the daily reflections had been helping her notice things she had never paid attention to before. That simply taking the time to reflect was changing what she was able to see.

I asked him how his evening had gone.

He said he spent more time interacting with his roommates. Nothing extraordinary, but meaningful. They played a game, spent time together, and even had a fashion show that sounded like it brought a lot of laughter into the room.

And without trying to force anything, without focusing on what he should do, something shifted.

He didn’t nap all afternoon.

“I found something I enjoyed,” he said, “and I didn’t want to sleep.”

As we wrapped up, I brought the conversation back to where it started. This is what awareness looks like in practice. It is not something you understand once and carry with you perfectly. It is something you return to, again and again, in the middle of your actual life.

We can recognize patterns in a workshop setting, but the real work is learning how to notice them when they show up outside of it. The way we think, the assumptions we make, the judgments we form—these things are often so automatic that we do not even realize they are happening.

Awareness requires practice. It requires a willingness to pause, to question, to look a little deeper than what is immediately visible. And it requires patience, because these patterns have been built over time. There will be moments when we fall back into them. That is part of the process, not a failure of it.

And so I come back to Spring.

To this season of Becoming Aware. To the courage it takes to see yourself clearly and to be willing to question what you have always accepted as true.

Yes, the warmth and the escape of a vacation sound incredible right now. But there is something equally powerful about what is happening here. There is growth in these conversations, in these small shifts, in the moments where someone sees something differently and begins to change from that place.

I see it outside as well. In the garden and the greenhouse I have been starting. In the soil beginning to soften, in the first signs of green pushing through, in the quiet but steady return of life after a long winter. Being out there, connected to that process, makes everything feel a little clearer, a little more grounded.

This season is not just something I am teaching. It is something I am living.

Becoming Aware is showing up everywhere—in how I think, how I notice, how I respond. It is in the conversations, in the reflections, in the willingness to keep looking a little deeper.

And even on the mornings when I wake up to snow again, there is a sense of knowing that it will not last forever. That the warmth is coming. That growth is already happening, even if it is not fully visible yet.

And when it arrives, it feels that much more meaningful because of everything that came before it.

Just like this work. Just like this season.

No matter where you are reading this from—whether you are sitting on a beach somewhere warm, watching the sun dip below the horizon, or waking up to another cold morning here in the North Country—I hope you take a moment to reflect on your own internal landscape. It takes courage to do that. To pause long enough to notice what is happening beneath the surface, to question what feels automatic, and to be willing to see yourself clearly. Wherever you are, whatever your surroundings look like, there is always something unfolding within you as well. My hope is that you allow yourself to be present in all of it—not just the vacations and the moments that feel easy, but also the ordinary days, the routines, even the ones that feel a little monotonous. Because those moments hold something too. And if you are willing to meet them with curiosity, with honesty, and with a little bit of courage, there is always something there to learn.

Becoming, always returning,

Carrie

Carrie Woodcock

Founder, Total Transformation

NBC-HWC Health Coach

ACE Personal Trainer, & Behavior Change Specialist

PN Level 1 Nutrition Coach

Mental Well-Being Certified Fitness Professional