Prefer to read or listen?

You can now experience the reflection in whichever format works best for you.

📖 Read the full blog post below if you’d like to take your time and reflect at your own pace.

🎥 Prefer to listen? Watch the YouTube version, where I share this week’s reflections in a more conversational format.

Whether you choose to read, watch, or both, I hope this first Saguaro Sunday encourages you to slow down, reflect, and think about your own week.

Part 1. Welcome or Welcome Back to Saguaro Sunday

Saguaro Sunday is our weekly opportunity to slow down. It’s a chance to practice gratitude, celebrate what went well, acknowledge where we can grow, and reflect on what we learned. It’s also a time to look ahead and ask ourselves: 

What do I want to learn this week? How do I want to bloom a little more?

My hope is that as you read, you’ll also reflect on your own week. You can open up your Notes app on your phone, or better yet, open up a physical notebook/journal!

If you’re comfortable, I’d also love for you to share your reflections in the comments so we can continue learning from one another!

Part 2: This Week’s Gratitude

As always, I am grateful for my family, job, home, health, and Coco.

This week, I am feeling especially grateful for my coworkers. Over the years, I’ve worked in environments where it felt like people were simply trying to get through the day. That experience has made me appreciate even more the people I work with now who genuinely care about improving our workplace and supporting one another.

This week, I had several conversations with coworkers who were open to new ideas and willing to think creatively about how we can make things better. I also appreciated leaders who take the time to explain the why behind their decisions. It reminded me that transparency builds trust. Even when we don’t always agree or have all the answers, understanding the reasoning behind a decision helps us feel respected and included in the process.

This week’s conversations at work left me feeling hopeful. Change in the workplace can take time, especially with building culture. But I am hopeful that, little by little, change can happen through people who are willing to listen, share ideas, and keep working toward something better together.

Part 3: This Week’s Bloom: Media Literacy, Source Criticism, the CRAAP Test, and Online Discourse

This week, I have been having to really practice some of the skills that I used to teach my English 12 students whenever we reached the unit on writing research papers. Because I’m trying to build an online community, I’ve been engaging a lot more in the comment sections of other creators’ videos. 

I started following a creator who gave some amazing social commentary about racism and colorism. However, I quickly realized that while he is very socially conscious and has a good grasp on history and the systems that contribute to ongoing issues with racism/colorism, he is maybe not so well-versed in other areas and is prone to conspiratorial thinking. 

He posted a string of videos that seemed to be solely based on his opinions. He did not provide sources to back up those opinions. He argued that “they” meaning, who? The government? The media? Basically, that those in power who don’t have our best interest in mind invented the recent cyclosporiasis outbreak because they don’t want us eating fruits and vegetables. 

Then, he posted a video about how the sun is not the enemy and that we need to ignore those who say it is. Honestly, right away this sounded like a strawman argument. Who is out there villanizing the sun? Nobody, as far as I know. People just advise that we take precautions when being out in the sun. Wear sunscreen and avoid tanning. I agreed with part of what he said, that sunlight is good for us, because of course it is! We need vitamin D and it’s so beneficial for our mental health. However, he also said that for thousands of years people didn’t use sunscreen and they didn’t need it, and that skin cancer is recent, and he attributed these issues more to how we eat and take care of our bodies internally than to sun exposure itself. 

Currently, this creator has over 400k followers, the video has over 15k views, and over 1k likes. 

I made a comment on this post asking if he could share the research on this and warned against spreading misinformation, especially when it relates to people’s health. 

A handful of people liked my comment, but some disagreed with me questioning him. One replied, “in science you make the results you want, you just need to show the parcial result and hide the part nobody knows exist, it seams you don’t know how science works.” 

Another mentioned a certain Dr. Sebi, a man who practiced medicine without a license. According to this commenter, this herbalist was killed by the government because of his teachings on natural healing. 

I added a couple more comments to the thread responding to some of their arguments. To one who said that the video creator did not say anything illogical and that what he said was common sense, I replied: 

“Common sense is a good starting point, but it isn’t a substitute for scientific evidence, especially when giving health advice. That’s why I’m asking for research rather than just opinions. If someone is encouraging people to skip sunscreen, I’d want to see strong evidence supporting that recommendation. Currently, the arguments appear to rely on the ‘appeal to nature fallacy.’ assuming that because something is natural, it must therefore be safe or better.

I’m not saying we should avoid the sun at all costs. We need sunlight for vitamin D, our circadian rhythms, and our mental well-being. But we also shouldn’t ignore decades of research showing that excessive UV exposure increases the risk of skin damage and skin cancer.

If we dismiss scientific evidence whenever it conflicts with our intuition, all we’re left with are unsubstantiated opinions. That’s why I’m asking for credible, science-backed sources.”

Another commenter said, “You don’t need scientist to tell you about thw works of God.” To this, my reply was this:

“I think it’s healthy to question mainstream ideas. I do it too. But I also think it’s important to be just as skeptical of claims that push back against the mainstream. As someone who believes in God, I don’t see faith and reason as opposites. I believe God gave us minds capable of logic, curiosity, and discernment.

Philosophy and science aren’t enemies. They’ve always been connected. Philosophy helps us ask good questions and think clearly, while science helps us test those ideas against reality. We need both. Let’s stay curious. Ask for evidence. Change your mind when the evidence changes. And let’s be careful not to become so anti-establishment that we lose a shared commitment to truth and evidence altogether.”

I ultimately decided to stop following the creator. Not because I disagreed with him on every issue, but because I no longer felt confident relying on him as a source of information across so many different topics.

Another idea he frequently promotes is that we shouldn’t care what other people think of us. I think there’s wisdom in not letting the fear of others’ opinions keep us from living authentically. At the same time, I think there’s an important distinction between not being controlled by others’ opinions and becoming unwilling to consider thoughtful criticism. If we stop caring altogether, we risk closing ourselves off to opportunities for learning and growth.

None of this is meant as a critique of him as a person. Rather, it’s an invitation to examine ideas critically, including my own. People deserve dignity, but ideas should always be open to discussion, questioning, and revision.

Did I waste my time commenting and correcting others in the comment section of his video? Maybe. But this led me to thinking of just how bad our media literacy crisis is when we aren’t speaking the same language and when we are approaching things from completely different frameworks. 

When people start to veer toward conspiratorial thinking, where do they draw the line? Who can they trust? Apparently, they can trust a random creator, but they can’t trust scientists? How can we agree on anything if we believe that everyone has a hidden agenda?

Again, I am not arguing for people to trust indiscriminately. I am asking for us to remain curious and skeptical. I think both are possible, and I think verifying information that comes from questionable sources is especially important.

In my Thoughtful Tuesday’s video, I mentioned using the CRAAP test to verify information when doing research, so I just want to make a case for that once again. 

The CRAAP test encourages us to ask five simple questions whenever we encounter a claim:

• Currency – Is this information up to date?
• Relevance – Does it actually answer the question I’m trying to answer?
• Authority – Who is making this claim? What are their qualifications? Are they speaking within their area of expertise?
• Accuracy – What evidence is provided? Can the information be verified by other credible sources?
• Purpose – Why was this created? Is the goal to inform, persuade, entertain, sell something, or provoke an emotional reaction?

These questions help us slow down and think more critically before accepting or sharing information. Even sources that are generally trustworthy can make mistakes, and sometimes less conventional sources can raise interesting questions worth investigating. The point isn’t to dismiss ideas simply because they’re unfamiliar or to accept them simply because they align with what we already believe. The point is to examine them carefully.

I think one of the greatest challenges of living in the information age is that we no longer struggle with having too little information. We struggle with having too much and not always having the tools to process it. Every day we are asked to decide who and what deserves our attention and our trust. That’s a huge responsibility.

I don’t want Blooming Saguaro to be a place where people simply accept what I say, either. In fact, I hope you’ll question me too. Ask where I got my information. Read the sources. Look for other perspectives. If I misunderstand something, I hope someone will respectfully point it out so that I can learn.

Curiosity without skepticism can make us gullible. Skepticism without curiosity can make us cynical. I think wisdom lives somewhere in the middle.

So this week, before sharing an article, reposting a video, or accepting a claim because it feels right, pause for a moment. Ask a few questions. Follow the evidence where it leads, even if it challenges your assumptions. In a world overflowing with information, learning how to think critically may be one of the most valuable skills we can develop.

Part 4: This Week’s Wonder – Rapid-fire Edition! 

Here’s a list of things I’ve learned or been thinking about this week. Sources to most will be linked in my Resources Library!:

• How to support someone you love with schizophrenia or a serious mental health condition. Recovery Oriented Cognitive Therapy offers a powerful approach: help them reconnect with confidence, purpose, and positive core beliefs through genuine curiosity and connection. For example, if the person loves playing video games, you might ask them to explain a game to you or teach you. Basically, helping others feel confident.
• July is Disability Pride Month. I learned of Judy Heumann, who was known as the “Mother of the Disability Rights Movement.” I listened to a recording of her discussing the landmark legal case that paved the way for the disability rights movement: Heumann v. Board of Education of the City of New York. She had been denied a teaching license. She became the first wheelchair user to teach in New York City
• With the recent rain in Phoenix, I learned what hydrology is and of moisture recycling
• From a man who is part of the Nakoda nation, I learned of the difficulties some people who live in the reservations face with getting adequate dental care. I also learned why some nations refer to animals as their family.
• Blanket toss as a sport
• What can lead to teens avoiding their parents and what parents can do to help
• That you can make clothing out of seaweed?!
• A study shows that our ACs can make the air outside hotter
• How to make a system to collect rainwater to later use to water a garden
• How to know if you should call for help when you come across a homeless person who is on the floor
• Housing first method to help with homelessness
• How heat in an area of a city is correlated with poverty
• A tip on how to stop rumination, which a lot of the time is a negative way of coping with anxiety. Basically, allowing ourselves to feel the anxiety. Sit with the discomfort and not spiral into trying to fix the feeling by replaying old conversations etc.
• Why people often gravitate toward religion when they “hit rock bottom”
• Starting to learn about Internal family systems (IFS) therapy. About “parts” and how we can get to understand the “Self”

Part 5: Next Week’s Growth 

A list of things I want to focus on this week:

• Same as last week…I need to keep maintaining my habits with sleep, doing my morning pages actually in the morning before looking at my phone or work computer, doing yoga before I start my day, and get back to reading daily. Some of these habits I haven’t been doing super perfectly, and I feel the difference.
• I did not do any weight lifting this week.
• I will continue practicing heel with Coco.
• Again, I didn’t practice the piano this week. I think the issue is that it is no longer a priority with so many other projects that I have going on. I might need to reconsider if I do want to keep trying this.
• I didn’t watch Suspiria! I ended up rewatching Emma (2020) with my sister, who had never seen it. I wanted something familiar this weekend.
• I want to start creating free worksheets to share on my website. 

Now it’s your turn!

🌵What are you grateful for this week?

🌵 What did you learn?

🌵 What’s something you’ve been wondering about lately?

🌵 How do you want to bloom a little more this week?

🌵 Question of the Week: What’s one question that helps you decide if information is trustworthy?

I’d genuinely love to hear your reflections. Thank you again for spending part of your Sunday (or whatever day it is when you’re reading this) with me.

I’ll see you tomorrow for Motivation Monday over on my socials!

Until then…

Learn a bit each day. Bloom a little more. 🌵