Sumiloff Academy

I used to think support meant someone standing beside you and telling you that everything you do is right. I don’t believe that anymore. Real support isn’t someone who simply keeps you comfortable. It’s someone who is willing to see you clearly, even in the moments when you are drifting away from yourself.

It’s the person who notices the tiny compromises. The little negotiations. The moments when fear starts making decisions instead of purpose. The moments when the life you are building slowly starts looking less and less like you.

I am incredibly lucky that I have that in Peter. As a purpose coach, he spends his life helping people return to themselves, and apparently living with him means I don’t get an exemption from that work. He doesn’t let me build a life that almost looks like me.

He doesn’t let me abandon my own path just because another one might be easier, safer or more acceptable to others. Sometimes he believes in my dreams before I’m brave enough to fully stand in them myself. Sometimes he challenges me when I’m making myself smaller without even noticing.

And that is love. Not someone who rescues you from the hard parts of becoming who you are, but someone who sits beside you while you remember your own strength.

Because the people who truly love us don’t need us to stay comfortable. They want us to become whole.

💛 Merja
Closing the Loop Podcast
https://substack.com/

Quiet Morning

Dear Reader,

I sit with my journal, awake before the Sun.
Putting ink on page in what the morning calls quiet.
The heat just cycled off, the washer splashes and shifts, Sheryl Crow plays just loud enough to muffle the dog distractions outside that might disrupt my pondering…Do I have a thought I value?

Dear Wise Future Self,

What’s on my mind? Coffee is the echo.
I’m directionless.
What do I do with this?

When my mind wants it over, what do we write about…
when it’s dark?

What’s on my mind that I can’t solidify on the page?

What is the thought we don’t want to face,
the words we hope others never hear?

The washer jigs—and shimmies—off-balance.

There was panicking and dancing across the floor,
Dog—barking, growling.
Restraint.
Lost focus.

I return to myself: sadness, regret, frustration, anxiety.

Breathe
Notice
Choose

Do I give negativity a voice or a better script?
“Do what needs doing?”*
Put pen to paper and write your way.
Let the ink mark your purpose.

Who are we when the washer is off-balance?

-Clyde

Journaler’s Call to Wellness:
You’ve read my mind, now what’s on yours? Find your journaling journey with the below prompt: what could your Wise Future Self tell you in your journal?

As you notice what “off-balance” means, how do you bring the load you spin back into harmony?

If this resonates with you, sign up here for the 4 People Within book club with me: https://forms.gle/KdVvwQbYf4sVHV7j6.

Citations and Inspirations:

A Handbook for Constructive Living*
Reynolds, David K. A Handbook for Constructive Living. University of Hawai'i Press, 1995.

I used to think I lost my Olympic dream, but I simply wasn’t ready to carry the weight of it yet. The last 15 years weren’t a distraction from the path. They were the years I needed to grow strong enough to walk it. Closing the Loop Episode 0 ❤️
https://substack.com/

I’ve been thinking a lot about why we sometimes let go of dreams we once cared about deeply. We often assume it means we changed our minds, failed, lost motivation, or discovered that the dream was never truly meant for us. Sometimes that may be true, but I don’t think it explains every dream we leave behind.

When Vesper was injured and my Olympic pathway ended, I thought I was letting go because the opportunity had disappeared. In reality, I think there was a much deeper process happening underneath. I had spent years developing the skills, discipline and work ethic needed to chase the dream, but I had not yet developed the internal strength required to carry the disappointment, uncertainty and emotional weight that came with it.

Big dreams ask big things of us. They challenge our identity, expose our insecurities and require us to keep growing long after the initial inspiration has passed. Sometimes the work is not about chasing harder. Sometimes the work is about developing stronger roots so we can hold the life we are trying to create.

Looking back now, I don’t see the last fifteen years as time away from the dream. I see those years as the time I needed to mature, heal, learn and become strong enough to return to it with more wisdom, softness and resilience.

Maybe we don’t always lose our dreams. Maybe sometimes life gives us the opportunity to fortify ourselves until we are ready to carry them.

I explore this more in Episode 0 of Closing the Loop.
https://substack.com/

Photo: Vesper and I at Dublin Horse Show in 2007

Spring into Self

Dear Wise Future Self, may some readers find this as guidance in the fog.

This spring, in my Journaling course, I explored the history of journaling and its role in wellness, education, coaching, and reflective practice. I encountered journaling not merely as self-expression, but as a practical and accessible discipline of attention — one capable of offering Naikan’s “gratitude, grace, and self-reflection” without requiring rigid doctrine or certainty.

Again and again, I returned to the idea that writing helps us think.

Writing allows us to expand ideas, beliefs, and dreams into tangible artifacts. Thought becomes thing. The page becomes a place where we can examine ourselves, revise ourselves, and sometimes rewrite the ways we move through the world.

This semester forced me to wrestle with how to keep learning and moving forward through mental fog and emotional dysregulation. I often found myself trying to study, write, and work while my mind and emotional static I shorthand as “chaos brain.” Yet the practices and readings from this term gave me tools for navigating those states with more intention.

As David K. Reynolds writes in Constructive Living:

“Do what needs doing.”

That sentence echoes in my mind.

I began noticing that journaling was not only helping me express emotions, but helping me act in alignment with my values even when clarity or motivation were inconsistent. The notebook became less a place to “figure myself out” and more a place to orient myself toward purposeful action.

Much of this term also revolved around questions.

Jon Kabat-Zinn shares Buckminster Fuller’s famous reflection:

“What is it on this planet that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?”

That question lingered in the background of nearly every assignment, journal entry, and reflective exercise I completed this spring.

Increasingly, I think my answer lies in journaling, self-expression, reflective learning, and the mechanisms of change. I’ve spent years using writing to survive, this term helped me begin reframing that survival, as expertise developed through necessity and practice.

We also explored the Japanese reflective practice of Naikan through three deceptively simple questions:

- What have I received?
- What have I given?
- What troubles have I caused?

Those questions carried weight. They invited reflection not only on gratitude, but also responsibility, guilt, grief, interdependence, and compassion. At times they felt burdensome. At other times they felt grounding. Often they were both simultaneously.

Another strong influence this semester was William Zinsser’s Writing to Learn. Zinsser repeatedly argues that writing reveals how we think, and that learning to write clearly is inseparable from learning to think clearly. His work challenged me to move beyond foggy abstraction and toward more intentional, concise language.

Writing, in that sense, becomes more than communication. It becomes “citizenship” — participation in the shared work of making ideas clearer, more humane, and more useful.

Two texts especially stayed with me after the term ended.

Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper renewed my fascination with journals, notebooks, marginalia, and personal writing. It reminded me that the ordinary notebook is one of humanity’s great cognitive inventions — a simple technology that has shaped history, science, philosophy, art, self-understanding, and my own life. Allen describes this relationship as part of the “extended mind,” the way thought expands beyond the brain and onto the page.

At the same time, the “Transformational Journaling” practices, presented by Monk and Maisel, introduced me to new exercises, prompts, and approaches used by therapists, educators, coaches, and reflective practitioners. Together, these works expanded my sense of what journaling can do.

This spring reminded me that writing is not simply recording thought.

It is a way of shaping attention, clarifying values, weathering inner storms, and moving deliberately through uncertainty.

Thought becomes thing.

And page after page, thought becomes direction.

-Clyde

Journaler’s Call to Wellness:
You’ve taken a few steps alongside my mind, now what’s on yours? Find your journaling journey with the below prompt: what could your Wise Future Self tell you in your journal?
Spring drifts to summer:
What did I notice about myself in this season of my life? What feels alive in me as I change seasons?

If this resonates with you, join me for an upcoming 4 People Within Book Club.

Citations and Inspirations:
Writing to Learn
Zinsser, William. Writing to Learn. Harper Perennial, 1988.

Transformational Journaling for Coaches, Therapists, and Clients
Monk, Lynda, and Eric Maisel, editors. Transformational Journaling for Coaches, Therapists, and Clients: A Complete Guide to the Benefits of Personal Writing. Routledge, 2021.

Wherever You Go, There You Are
Kabat-Zinn, Jon. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. 30th Anniversary ed., Hachette Books, 2023.

The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper
Allen, Roland. The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. Biblioasis, 2023.

A Handbook for Constructive Living
Reynolds, David K. A Handbook for Constructive Living. University of Hawai'i Press, 1995.

Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection
Krech, Gregg. Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection. Anniversary ed., Stone Bridge Press, 2002.

What dream still won't leave you alone?
Join me on this inspiring journey. You got this.
https://substack.com/

Purpose, passion, projects…
Dear Reader,
I’ve been journaling off and on since around the turn of the century. I picked it up to help deal with the onset of severe mental health challenges, the resulting hospitalization, and a long recovery. This blog is an attempt to share journaling and self-care wisdom I’ve gathered over this journey. Seeking to understand the mechanisms of change and trying to express them as found poetry from a sometimes chaotic mind.
We all suffer, but we don’t have to struggle alone or silently.
The journaling to the “Wise Future Self” is rooted in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy’s wise self, and grew into writing to Conner’s “The Voice.” Writing to someone wiser than my present self, but recognizing my own autonomy and responsibility.

-Clyde

Dear Wise Future Self,

Kudos—you made it far enough into the future to reflect. How’s the view?

We, the multiple “mes,” look to you, who has seen the results of our choices, for wisdom.

May we hone ourselves, our actions, into the kind of person who served you well.

May we craft something meaningful for you to experience—and find joy in.

We’re planting seeds, as blog posts, not knowing what will grow.
A seed—a thing, a process, a system.
We turn it over to future versions of ourselves.

We ask:
Can we commit?
Do I want you to inherit this thing?
We gift it to you; it’s yours.

Is it a present you cherish?
Will you be grateful for my choices when growth is hard?

This thing I’ve planted for you to maintain
To care for
and to love?

The echo I hear is… will we do our daily watering through the growth season
—without knowing its length?
Will it matter?

Will I care for this as long as it’s alive,
And not harm it,
through negligence?

Seed planted.
Welcome to the experiment.

Journaler’s Call to Wellness:
You’ve taken a few steps alongside my mind, now what’s on yours? Find your journaling journey with the below prompt: what could your Wise Future Self tell you in your journal?
What “seed of purpose” could you plant in the next day? What could it become if tended?

If this resonates with you, sign up here for the 4 People Within book club: https://forms.gle/KdVvwQbYf4sVHV7j6

Citations and Inspirations:

Conner, Janet. Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within. Red Wheel/Weiser, 2008.

4 People Within Book Club Registration June/July 2026 Join us at our 6-week online book club to explore - and integrate - the four people who live within us. The class options are are as follows: For Equestrians with Merja Sunday 31st 7pm Sydney/ 10am CET/ 5am Eastern/ 2am Pacific For Expats with Silke starting Sunday June 7th 4pm CET/ 10am Eastern/ 7a...

Loving one‘s body is such a hard thing to do, isn‘t it? Especially as women, we are told early in life that we need to look a certain way to be acceptable to be attractive - otherwise we won’t find a man. As far as survival goes that has been good advice for generations. For the longest time, women were seen as an adjunct of men, an accessory of sorts, and of course that accessory has to be beautiful. For the longest time, women needed men to survive -mainly because legally women couldn’t open bank accounts, couldn’t work, couldn’t own a house without their husband’s permission. So that advice of our ancestors - to be as attractive as possible to men - was good advice for survival.
But here’s the thing, it’s not good advice anymore. As women we’re still being taught to be aesthetically pleasing instead of focusing on what we are capable of and what our bodies are capable of. And boy, does that change things when you focus on yourself and your relationship to your body. When you start telling your body that you accept it, that you approve of it, that you love it. When you start taking care of it through nutrition and exercise. When you realize that the pain you feel in your back and your neck are actually your body’s signals to slow down, to relax, to play instead of carrying the whole world on your shoulders. When you get into relationship with your body and with yourself, you learn to focus on yourself, on your own needs and wants and motivations, you learn about your goals and what you want to do with your life instead of focusing on what you need to look like and who you need to be you to please others. And that, my friends, is a game changer.

Come join me for free at the next 4 People Within e-book club and I’ll help you find the best way to focus on yourself. We’ll meet once a week on Sundays, for six weeks total, starting Sunday, June 7th at 4 PM CET.
Sign up here: https://forms.gle/KdVvwQbYf4sVHV7j6
~Silke