“Once those protectors trust that it is safe to separate,

the Self will spontaneously emerge,

and the parts can be enlisted in the healing process.”

~~ Bessel van der Kolk

Greetings to all my precious people!!

Last week, we began the practice of returning—the simple, profound act of noticing when you’ve left yourself and choosing to come back. To your breath. To your body. To this moment.

Many of you wrote to share what you noticed. The restlessness at first. The wandering mind. The urge to check your phone, to DO something, to be anywhere but HERE.

And then—sometimes in the third or fourth day—a softening. A settling. A recognition: “Oh. I’m here. I’m safe. I can rest here.”

This is not small. This is the beginning of sanctuary.

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“’Finding yourself’ is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. ‘Finding yourself’ is actually returning to yourself, an unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were

before the world got its hands on you.”

~~ Emily McDowell

Greetings to all my precious people!!

Welcome to 2026. Welcome to January. Welcome to the space between what was and what will be.

We are still in deep winter—the Water season, the time of maximum stillness before the first stirrings of spring. And our culture is screaming at you to DO something: Set goals. Make resolutions. Transform yourself. Hustle harder. Be NEW.

But your soul knows better.

Your soul knows that you don’t need to FIND yourself, as Emily McDowell reminds us. You’re not lost. You never were.

You were buried. Under decades of conditioning, expectations, performance, trying to be who you thought you should be.

And for the past several months—through autumn’s clearing and winter’s remembering—you’ve been doing the sacred work of excavation. Of returning. Of coming home to who you were before the world got its hands on you.

This is not small work. This is the work.

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