Hi Alessa
No need to apologize the idea behind stories was to let people see what they will in them so me saying I ‘missed the mark’ kind of undermined that. Of course I didn’t notice till I clicked post, I assume because the ‘universe’ thinks that funny. I wish they brought back the window to edit. Still all good.

I think, from my own experience and observations, that its near imposable not to project our fears and hopes into virtual world conversations where the only tool we have is language. As you note if such is the case, trust is important if not the key.

I hated book reports even though, or maybe because, I really struggled saying what I wanted to say. Primary because I can’t spell to save my life, which meant I limited myself to the words I would use, and even then, would lose all the points for grammar and spelling so I would always only just pass. Of course I took that a meaning I was stupid because that’s what we do when where young and don’t know better.

Today we have all these wonderful tool but even then one has to be careful. Ai will tell you what you want to hear. I use it to check my grammar and flow and then argue with it when it starts changing what I’m trying to saying and you can learn quite a bit doing that.

You wont be surprised to learn that I have filled notebooks with quotes from books I read, then spend years linking ideas from different sources. Now I can revisit those thoughts, test the connections, and really explore them. But I still need to be careful using these tools.

Hi Alessa

I’m not sure I’d say I “stuck with it” though I wonder if its a choice. Often, I’ve wished I could stop what feels like an endless quest to answer the first question every child asks: why? Lately, though, I’ve been exploring how to balance that search by moving from the head and into the heart. Learning to rest in the rhythm of head and heart has softened, and sometimes even quieted, my restless mind.

I agree that using AI as a therapist is problematic, something AI itself will confirm.. or maybe it just told me what I wanted to hear because of how I asked the question. 😊

What many people don’t realize is how much the way you ask a question and the prompt you use shapes the response. Even framing the interaction as a safe space versus a brave space can significantly influence the tone and depth of the conversation. In my view, anyone using AI for meaningful dialogue should at least understand the basics of prompt design.

In my work, I’ve been exploring how AI applications are tested, and it’s clear that traditional deterministic methods aren’t enough. Everything is so dynamic. Testing for bias, in particular, is one of the hardest challenges because fairness is context dependent and culturally nuanced. I would imagen that anyone doing that work needs to be aware of their own biases and perhaps even engage in deeper self-reflection such as shadow work. Ironically, at a time when bias and diversity training is being questioned, we may need that very training to use AI responsibly as the support tool it could be.

Used wisely, AI has the potential to broaden our perspectives; used unwisely, it risks trapping us in our bubbles.

This quote from Fredrik Backman – My Friends – stood out to me as a kind of mirror polishing cloth.

It’s hard to tell a story, any story, but it’s almost impossible if it’s your own. You always start at the wrong end, always say too much or too little, always miss the most important parts…

Stories are complicated, memories are merciless, our brains only store a few moments from the best days of our lives, but we remember every second of the worst….

It’s twenty-five years ago, “Ted says, as if he’s trying to convince himself that it’s nothing to cry over.
Louisa sobs furiously: Not for me! I wasn’t there! For me, it’s happening NOW! – Fredrik Backman – My Friends

There are moments when I feel like Louisa, when the past isn’t past, and the story being told is still unfolding inside me. The line between then and now blurs, and I find myself stumbling over it.

To be candid, this dissonance creates a kind of anxiety I can’t seem to shake. I wonder if I’m not seeing clearly, if my way of relating to the world is somehow flawed. It’s difficult to hold my space when the dominant rhythms around me feel so different…

This Monday, I find myself wondering if others feel this way? That the telling of our stories and the way we tell them might be a mistake? It’s so easy to doubt when we feel out of step with the world… that we are flawed somehow, or simply different…

I wasn’t sure if I was going to share the story of ‘Layla’s Descent’ as it came not from theory or belief, but from experience.

Layla’s descent does not promise healing, clarity, or light. It offers no steps, no guarantees. It is not a path to follow, but perhaps a rhythm to feel… if and when it comes. Some may read this and feel nothing. Some may descend and find only silence. That possibility breaks my heart because I know what it is to wait in the dark and not be met.

A part of me wonders if it might be seen as wishful thinking, magical language dressed in metaphor. But I also know this: truth and myth often walk together. And sometimes, what seems like wishful thinking is simply a language for what cannot be said any other way.

So, I offer this story as a lantern. It may not light your way. But perhaps, in a quiet moment, it will remind you that someone else has walked through the dark, and found something waiting not to fix them, but to meet them, and that as only a beginning.

Layla’s Descent

Before Layla began seeking, she trusted life deeply, but her trust was not rooted in herself. It was founded on others. Others who perhaps intentionally but more often unintentionally left a wound not easily named. At the time, she didn’t understand it as betrayal born of the pain not her own. Instead, she assumed the fault was hers: a quiet, lingering shame that she was not enough.

It wasn’t just the hurt that lingered, but the way it unraveled her sense of safety, her ability to believe in the goodness of closeness.

Her family and community had offered teachings: Forgive quickly. Trust again, have Faith. Pain is a lesson… But these words, though well-meaning, felt like stones pressed into her hands when she needed balm.

In those early years, Layla felt like a sparrow trapped in a silo, fluttering toward every crack that let in light, only to find the light too narrow to escape through.

Layla did not choose the descent. It chose her.

The betrayal had shattered something fundamental, not just her trust, but her sense of belonging. The teachings she had inherited from her family and community, once warm and guiding, now felt like distant stars, beautiful, but unreachable.

Still, she tried to hold onto them. She repeated their phrases like prayers. But they no longer fit. They were garments sewn for someone else.

And so, she fell. Not gracefully. Not willingly. But at least honestly.

The silo was not a metaphor then; it was her world. A place of cold walls and dim light. She was the sparrow, fluttering toward every crack, every sliver of brightness. But the light was cruel in its insufficiency. It showed her what might be but never offered a way through.

In time, she began to resent the light. It felt like mockery.

And that was when the descent truly began.

She stopped seeking escape. She let herself feel the despair not as failure, but as reality. She sat in the silence, in the ache, in the rawness of being alone. She did not try to rise. She did not try to heal.

She simply stayed.

What felt like years passed but who can measure such things when falling in the dark…

Yet in that staying, something shifted. The silo did not break open. It dissolved.

Not all at once, but slowly as she began to see that its walls were made of language and measurements, labels inherited but never claimed. Expectations. Roles. Definitions of strength and goodness that had never been hers.

She did not rise from the silo. She walked out of it, not by climbing upward, but inward.

There, in the soil of her own heart, she found a rhythm. Not of light only, but of light and her own dark beauty.

And that was the day she came upon Zahir, whom she watched from a distance…

The story above began long ago in silence, in sorrow, in the slow unraveling of what was once trusted and failed to bring connection. And yet, I know this story is not mine alone. I see Layla’s descent, her silence, her rhythm echo in others, often quietly, often unseen.

Most of us I suspect, at some point, for some reason, find ourselves in the silo, clinging to scraps of light, hoping they will be enough. That they might make us enough… We flutter toward cracks, mistaking glimpses for freedom. We inherit teachings, wear them like garments, and wonder why they don’t fit.

Many remain in the silo, not out of weakness, but because the scraps of light are all they’ve known. This truth breaks my heart, not in judgment, but in recognition. From that heartbreak, compassion arises, the only “word” that fits. Sometimes, it comes like a hush from within, so deep it feels like prayer, perhaps what prayer is meant to be…

The descent unfortunately cannot be taught. It can only be lived as it begins not with answers, but with ache. Layla learned to walk inward, and in doing so, she found something not given but grown, a foundation of trust and resilience within…

So, if Layla story finds you at a time of descent, may she accompany you as a friend… of dark beauty.

Hi silvery blue (such a great handle)

I very much relate to the sorrow of seeing someone like Layla, a sparrow in a silo, and the longing to help, and knowing you can’t.

I’ve come to see Layla not just as a person, but as an anima figure in the Jungian sense. She represents the descent, the inner journey, the confrontation with darkness that we must face alone. She also represents the return from such a descent.

I see ‘Layla’s Descent’ as a mirror of the Dark Night of the Soul, a spiritual and psychological passage where light disappears, and one must walk through shadow to find transformation. I don’t view it as a punishment, but a passage. And while it’s painful to witness, I’ve come to believe that these descents are deeply personal that can’t be bypassed, or rescued from, without risking the integrity of the transformation.

I’m reminded of the story of the butterfly: someone sees it struggling to emerge from its cocoon and, wanting to help, gently opens it. But the butterfly, having skipped the struggle, lacks the strength to fly. The effort was necessary. The pain a part of the becoming.

So, when I see Layla, or anyone in that descent, I feel the ache, but I also try to hold space to be present. To trust that the descent is not the end, but the beginning. That the soil of suffering may yet yield something beautiful, silvery blue. And maybe, just maybe, the presence of a butterfly above the silo is enough, not to lift the sparrow, but to remind her that flight is possible.

I’m working on a Layla story to show that in her way she learns how to fly.

I will be unplugging for a while, plan too anyway.

Here is a story to which I aim…

Layla’s Return

Layla returned to the village as the sun dipped below the hills, casting long shadows that seemed to bow before her. She walked the familiar paths, greeted familiar faces, but something had changed, not in the world, but in her.

She no longer moved with urgency. Her steps were deliberate, her gaze soft. She listened more than she spoke, and when she did speak, her words felt like water, clear, necessary, and nourishing.

Some noticed.

The baker, who had once seen her rush past each morning, paused and asked, “You seem… lighter.”

Layla smiled. “I’m not carrying as much.”

The teacher, who had known her as restless and searching, asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Layla looked at the sky. “I stopped looking. And it found me.”

Some were unsettled.

“She’s changed,” whispered the merchant. “She used to be so driven.”

“She’s lost her fire,” said another.

But the old woman who sat by the well each day simply nodded. “No,” she said. “She’s found the flame that doesn’t burn.”

Layla did not try to explain. She knew that the stillness she had touched could not be described, only lived. She tended her garden, shared her bread, and sat often in silence. And in that silence, others began to feel something stir, something ancient, something still.

She was no longer seeking. She was no longer becoming. She was a mirror. And in her presence, others began to see themselves.