What Begins in the Dark
The Spring Equinox. My 47th Birthday. Earth Day. These events have all happened within the past 5 weeks. And it’s got me thinking….thinking about seeds. Not the tidy kind in packets (though I do love a new seed packet) but the ones I buried in seed trays weeks ago, ones I placed into soil, into darkness that I couldn’t fully see or control, trusting something I cannot yet name. I am thinking about darkness—not as absence, but as source. The place where green begins before it has a color, where life rehearses itself before it becomes visible. And I am thinking about what it means to begin. And to begin again. This feels especially close right now. My birthday has just passed, and another year has folded into me quietly. I don’t feel different in any dramatic way, but I do feel… in process. Still becoming. Still shedding what I no longer need. Still learning what it means to be alive in this peculiar season of time. Practice as rememberingWhen I step onto my yoga mat, I am always practicing impermanence.Every breath is a beginning. Every exhale is a letting go. And every time I come to savasana—corpse pose—I am practicing the truth I often resist; that I will not stay the same, that I cannot hold on, that even this body is always in transition. Savasana is not an ending. It is a rehearsal for surrender, the ultimate letting go. A reminder that I can lie down and be held by something larger than effort.Like the garden soil, it asks nothing of me except trust, which is no small ask. The intelligence of what is unseenJan Richardson writes in Blessing the Seed: “this blessing will require you to do some work…”The work is not only planting, stepping onto the mat, rising each morning. It is release. It is trusting what happens after we are no longer in charge of the outcome.I think about that every time I water the garden now. I think about it when nothing has yet broken through the surface. When the dirt looks unchanged and I am tempted to believe nothing is happening.But I know better—from yoga, from seasons, from years of living in a body.Stillness is not emptiness.Dormancy is not failure.Savasana is not nothing…….. Earth, body, and becomingEarth Day sits close to my birthday this year, and I feel the overlap in my bones. Both are reminders that I am part of something cyclical and larger than my individual story.The earth composts without apology. It breaks things down so they can return in new form. My body does this too, in quieter ways—cell by cell, breath by breath, year by year.Nothing stays fixed.Not gardens.Not seasons.Not me. What rises anywayRichardson promises: “this blessing will rise green and whole and new.”I hold onto that when I can’t yet see what is forming. When my garden looks like dirt and waiting. When my life feels more like surrender than clarity.Because I have learned this—on my mat, in soil, in another year of living:Something is always at work beneath what I can see.And my only real practice is to let it be.To plant what I cannot yet understand.To rest in what feels like nothing.To return again and again to beginning.And to trust that what is already in motion will, in its own time, rise.
A Season for Telling the Truth
This time of year comes wrapped in a familiar script: be merry, be grateful, be present. Shine brighter, gather closer, smile wider. But it rarely asks us to be honest. And honestly? Maybe that’s the one invitation we most need. (Because if I’m being real, I’d be perfectly content on the couch in my comfy jammies with a bowl of ice cream, skipping the small talk entirely.) Beneath the glitter, gatherings, and pressure to “make it magical,” there’s often a quieter reality—one filled with shifting identities, old sorrows, new priorities, and truths we’ve been gently avoiding: the traditions that no longer feel meaningful, the rituals that have lost their spark, the people we so desperately miss, the energy we no longer have, the conversations that feel too tender to bring to the table. So what if this season wasn’t about performance at all? What if it was about truth-telling? What would happen if we said: This tradition doesn’t feel like mine anymore.I need more rest than celebration this year.I’m grieving someone who isn’t here.I’m craving conversations that matter—about life, death, change, meaning. These are the kinds of truths that surface naturally at the end of life—what we want, what we fear, how we hope to be remembered. But we don’t have to wait until the final chapters to speak honestly. In fact, we shouldn’t. Each new day is a chance to inch closer to the life you crave. When we name our needs, our griefs, our limits, and our values, we create room for deeper connection. We gift the people who love us an opportunity to know us deeply and fully. And we give ourselves permission to live in alignment with who we really are—not who the season says we should be. So as the world speeds up, I hope you slow down long enough to check in with yourself: What needs to be said?Which traditions and rituals still feel meaningful—and which are ready to be retired?Where could rest replace obligation? Where are you shrinking or stretching to make others comfortable?What honest conversation would bring you closer to answering the question, “What must I do to be at peace with myself, so that I can live well and die wise?” If you’re tired of pretending that everything is all holly-jolly and wish to acknowledge the hurts, the longings, the loneliness and regrets, know that you are not alone, you are not crazy, you are not selfish. Wherever you find yourself this holiday season, I’m wishing you peace, joy and some good old-fashioned truth-telling. This season, may honesty be the gift you give yourself. You are worth it!