“The inner, what is it:
if not intensified sky hurled through with birds
and deep with the winds of homecoming.”
~~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Today, November 13, Mercury and Venus both turn direct, an alignment that rarely happens. After weeks of review, revisiting, and looking back, the energy begins to move forward again.
If last week was about gathering the year, this week is about carrying it home.
But before we rush forward, I want to ask you something.
Are you the woman holding up the world?
The one who remembers every birthday, anticipates everyone’s needs, and keeps all the plates spinning, especially now, as the holidays start to gather speed?
Just because you can carry it all, does that mean it’s all yours to carry?
And here’s what I want to say, with conviction and clarity, because I hear it in my treatment room every single day:
We don’t need more stuff.
Not another class. Not another meditation app, morning routine, or self-improvement plan to check off the list. So many of the women I sit with are already doing everything. They’re tired, and the answer is not one more thing to do.
What we need is to come home. To the body we’re living in, right now, today.
I know “embodiment” can sound like a word for people with hours to spend on a yoga mat. It is not what I mean. Embodiment is the most basic thing there is. You already have a body. Embodiment simply means being in it: feeling your feet on the floor while you stir the soup, noticing your breath on the difficult phone call, sensing your own yes and no before you answer someone else.
Rilke describes the inner life as something vast and alive, full of sky and birds and wind. That’s what’s waiting inside you. Not an empty room you need to fill, but a whole landscape you’ve been too busy to visit.
The challenge, of course, is the outside noise: the news, the notifications, the opinions, the holiday rush that’s already starting. The louder it gets, the harder it is to stay in our own current. That’s why there is no “one-time fix.” Instead, it’s a practice of returning, again and again, like the cadence of Nature, with the certainty of the changing seasons.
We don’t need more. We need less, and we need to be home in ourselves while still living our daily lives.
The Tao Te Ching says it beautifully (ch. 48, in James Legge’s 1891 translation):
He who devotes himself to learning seeks from day to day to increase his knowledge; he who devotes himself to the Tao seeks from day to day to diminish his doing.
The path home is not about adding. It’s about setting things down.
What Winter knows
In Chinese Medicine, Winter belongs to the Water element and the Kidneys. The Kidneys store our Jing, our essence, the deep reserve we draw on for a lifetime. It’s like a well. We can draw from it, but in winter it asks to be refilled.
The ancient Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor’s Classic) gives simple advice for this season: go to bed early, rise with the sun, keep warm, and hold your energy close rather than scattering it. Winter is not the season to push. It’s the season to conserve.
The woman holding up the world is spending from that well every day, often without noticing how low it’s gotten. Water’s emotion is fear, and much of our over-carrying comes from fear: of letting someone down, of things falling apart if we stop.
But water also teaches us something else. It doesn’t force. It yields, finds the low places, and still wears down stone. Strength doesn’t always look like holding on.
A practice for this week: Is This Mine to Carry?
The next time you hear yourself say “I have to,” pause and ask:
- Do I truly have to?
- Is this mine to carry?
- Or is this an old rule I’ve never thought to question?
You don’t have to put anything down today. Just get curious about what you’re holding. Before we can release something, we have to recognize that we’re carrying it.
And when you catch yourself carrying, come back to your body for ten seconds: feet on the floor, a hand on your low back over the Kidneys, one slow breath.
Nothing is broken
If you’re tired, stretched thin, if you feel like something’s missing, I want you to hear this: nothing is broken. You may simply be carrying more than is yours, for longer than anyone should.
The Anam Cara Circle is coming in 2027
Many of you have written to me about the Circle, and I’ve listened. I’m opening it in the new year, with more dates and more time to plan around your lives.
If you’d like to be the first to know, reply to this email with the word FEELING. I’ll personally make sure you hear about it first.
Until next week, set one thing down. I’m right here beside you.
