We answer "how are you?" with the highlight or the hopeful glimmer. We skip straight to excitement about what's next.

But that space between, where you actually want to say "This year made me question everything I thought was real," or "I don't know what I'm doing this fall," or even just "It's a lot "— that's where connection lives.

If you're peering into a new season wondering why it doesn't feel the way it's supposed to, you're not broken. You're just honest.

Do you remember being little, handed a blank page and a box of crayons, and asked to draw something you had to summon entirely from your mind? A purple-spotted dragon that breathed fire and ice. A rainbow-striped Liger (Lion + Tiger) that confounded its enemies with its pure strangeness. A toy for Santa's wishlist that hadn't been invented yet. The page didn't care whether you believed in dragons. It just asked you to imagine one.

Prayer is like that.

You wake up one morning and the sky has already changed. The diagnosis is in your hand. The relationship has ended. The job is gone. The doctor looks up from her laptop with that particular expression that means she is not asking — and says two words: It's time.

You didn't choose the moment. The moment chose you.

What I've noticed, after years of walking with people through disorienting seasons, is that most of us have a default move when life-changing decisions arrive uninvited.

Wonder is not a luxury. Wonder is a navigational tool. When you can't see the path or the next right step in front of you, wonder helps us remember that the path exists. When was the last time you had a jaw-dropping experience of wonder?

A calm pond doesn't look like much is happening, but the stillness is the work. The presence is restorative. The wandering is the way. 

I didn't know then that I was learning how to soothe, how to rest, how to let my mind wander. All of those are spiritual skills for navigating shaky ground. Skills I would need and use for the rest of my life! 

Honoring our dignity as human beings sometimes means letting what no longer fits slip through our fingers and into a bin at the nearest thrift store.

You don't have to hold onto every version of yourself to honor where you've been.

I didn't need a ceremony to let it go--didn't have to burn it or bury it or write a letter to my younger self. I just needed a Tuesday morning and a Goodwill drop-off.

Honoring our dignity as human beings sometimes means letting what no longer fits slip through our fingers and into a bin at the nearest thrift store.

You don't have to hold onto every version of yourself to honor where you've been.

I didn't need a ceremony to let it go--didn't have to burn it or bury it or write a letter to my younger self. I just needed a Tuesday morning and a Goodwill drop-off.

The present moment feels awfully knotted. The ground beneath us feels shaky, and when I don't know the way forward, I look back.

This week, something surfaced for me. A vision I've been carrying and slowly finding words for. I finally said it out loud and put words to page. It surprised me with how whole it sounded when it landed.

I'm calling it the common wealth of compassionate soul care.

Two words, not one. Common wealth is a kind that belongs to all of us, that can't be quantified by a salary or a price tag. A movement, not a program. A way of showing up to your ordinary life — your job, your family, and all the hard and beautiful demands of being human — with a shared lens that changes how you see everything you're already doing.

Goo season is not a place to set up camp. It is not the truth about who you are, but it tells the truth about what's being shed. The formlessness is purposeful. The imaginal cells are already present, already carrying the blueprint of what comes next. They just can't be seen yet from inside the dissolution.

You need people who can hold the chrysalis.

Not to rush you out of it. Not to explain it away. Not to remind you of all the reasons you should be further along by now. You need people who can sit with you in the goo and say: I know. I see you. This is not the end of the story.

External chaos + internal chaos = exhausting.

Here's what I keep returning to when everything feels like too much:

Chaos isn't the problem. Chaos is the PROCESS.

Every creation story I've ever read starts the same way: formless void, watery chaos, darkness.

And then: breath. Movement. Light. Order emerging from disorder.

Chaos precedes new order.

The mess is part of the making.

Your life falling apart might not be collapse. It might be reconstruction.

The question isn't "How do I stop the chaos?"

The question is: "What wants to emerge from this?"

In medicine, there’s a simple oath that precedes all the complexity: Do no harm.
It doesn’t mean “do nothing.”
It doesn’t mean “preserve every system.”

It means that even in moments of urgency and intervention, harm is not treated as acceptable collateral damage.

I wonder what it would mean to treat do no harm as a wayfinding principle for our communities right now; not a rule or a purity test, but a compass. Something we return to when visibility is low and emotions are running hot.

When we look back at old photographs, we rarely linger on what embarrassed us at the time. We don’t fixate on the awkwardness of our overbite, the way our jeans pinched us weird,  or the missteps. Instead, we see past the imperfections and recognize the heart that was present all along.