About the Held & Seen
Reflection Journal
What Is It?
Held & Seen is a guided reflection tool.
It takes you gently from the surface of something that you experienced in your life —> to what you felt —> to what your body held —> to the deeper story running underneath —> and finally to a place of quiet invitation where you can form meaning going forward. You can use it several times throughout the course of a day, or maybe just a few times a week. It’s up to you!
At each step, you can ask for a “light” which will offer you some additional guidance to contemplate based on what you’ve entered about your feelings and experience. It is a human guided AI tool designed to reflect back what you've shared with warmth and care, and not to tell you what to think or what God is saying, but to help you hear your own inner knowing connected with the divine more clearly. This light has been molded to offer inspiration and additional thought using a carefully created philosophy. You can read more about what’s behind the philosophy below.
It is accessed through a web site that you subscribe to and set up your user name and password.
The Foundation
This tool has been in development for quite some time! What a joy to create it!
When I began working more with AI in my computer software work, I realized how wonderful it might be to create an AI application that brings together many human development and healing philosophies. I was working on my Masters in counseling when I came to understand that I was drawn more toward the spiritual, and changed to a Masters in Divinity program that focuses on Spiritual Formation.
The building of the Held & Seen application has been such a wonderful journey of bringing various elements together to gently walk a human being through steps toward greater understanding of their own story.
- Julie
Held & Seen draws on several streams of wisdom held together:
Christian contemplative tradition — the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the Ignatian Examen, the practice of bringing the whole self before God without performance or polish.
The psychology of the inner life — particularly Eugene Gendlin's Focusing (the felt sense), Internal Family Systems, Positive Psychology, Narrative Therapy, and Somatic Experiencing. These frameworks describe, in different language, what the contemplative tradition has long known: that healing begins with honest awareness.
Story — Held & Seen is built on the conviction that every person's smaller stories belongs inside a larger one, which is the love story between them and God.
Who Its For
The tool is for anyone who wants to slow down and bring what is real to them into the light. It’s for those with deep roots in faith and those still finding their way, those formed by the church and those who have been hurt by it and are still reaching for God.
The insights offered within the application will never profess to know what God is saying to you. That mystery belongs to you and God alone. What it will do is listen carefully to your words, your particular story, and reflect them back with care. Sometimes it will ask a question. Then it steps back and leaves space.
It is not therapy or a substitute for spiritual direction, pastoral care, or human community. It is a helpful tool!
Our Stories
The thoughts running beneath our feelings are the stories we live inside. They shape what we believe about ourselves, about others, and about life and God. Much of the time they operate invisibly — driving us without our awareness. The work of this tool is to surface those thoughts gently, bring them into consciousness, and help you make meaning.
Ready to explore? Click here to go the Held & Seen application landing page.