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I’m standing on the edge of the cliff overlooking the tiny mountain town I now call home.

The river cascading down below, with snow-capped mountains kissing the skyline, I stand for one moment of pause, breathing oxygen in and out of my lungs.

I can feel my body sinking deeper into the earth and the roots of my legs supporting me. I feel gratitude gracing me with its presence for once in the span of three long and brutal months, now growing and swelling like the Grinch’s heart inside my chest. I want to say a prayer, think something of meaningful quality, offer my sacred offering to this earth, to the earth of me for still being here.

The long-winded prayer doesn’t come. A shorter one breezes into my heart like the wind and rests as an offering in my hands:

“Thank you.”

I breathe in the fresh air around me deeply and consciously one last time and continue my journey down the mountain back toward my new home.

Over these last few years, many of us have been searching for our sense of home, our place, and sense of belonging in this ever-changing landscape and world. Many, like myself, have felt for some time now like they don’t belong in the systems and structures this world is built upon. Maybe, you also feel like your sense of home and place of belonging is a lot simpler than you ever believed it needed to be prior to these last few years.

With all the global changes at play, we may have been wondering where we belong now. Where is our sense of home these days? Do we belong in this city or that one? Do we even belong in the city at all?

Surely not, my own soul says. Following the subtle knowing and nudges of this desire, I relocated myself to the serenity of nature’s medicinal mountains and healing forests just a few months ago. I’m still finding my roots, maybe for the first time ever in my life. These roots aren’t a physical home though. They are my body. My roots that I hope to remember in my own being and take that safety with me wherever I go.

This human incarnation is nowhere near a breeze. Especially these last few years. This last year has pushed and prodded at the usual sore and battered wounds not yet fully healed. The healing journey becomes so often one more giant burden on the growing list of where we haven’t yet “finished” or conquered.

This last year has been a year of great strides toward growth and evolution, all in the churning pot of chaos and uncertainty. Many of us have continued to be pushed to the brink of our own truth. To hell and back. To the pits of darkness just below Earth’s surface, maybe deeper.

For many months, I’ve been traversing hell’s edges, one of perhaps my own making but of life’s choosing as well.

I’ve wanted to throw in the f*cking towel too many times to count. I’ve wanted to exit the f*ck out of this world. I’ve wanted to bid this life of suffering farewell.

The details of my story are maybe not as important as the shared feeling many may also have been experiencing.

Whether through illness, dis-ease, loss of health and vitality, or a felt feeling of disharmony within and around us, it has been one thick forest we’ve been trudging through. We no longer want to carry on our worn out shoulders the heavy weight of our past. Maybe, it’s not even our past and history we are carrying.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s the weight of all the lives that have come before us. All of our own prior selves live included in that. The unfelt joy. The unexpressed grief. The unacknowledged anger. The unembodied wisdom. The unexpressed pain, sorrow, and suffering.

Perhaps, we picked it up along the way because we thought it was our duty to hold onto for dear life. That we could be the one to transmute and alchemize the pain back into medicine. And, lord knows, we have done that. We have been doing that.

Can we just take one moment and acknowledge ourselves for the bravery and courage that has taken? To face the unfaceable. To traverse death’s edge and keep choosing life, day in and day out.

To keep going. That is the only thing asked of us these days.

When the weight of what has not yet healed bears down on us, may we know that that is all we must do. And, to take all the time and space we need to feel any and all emotions that come up, to rest as much as we need to, and to surrender any and all expectations of the self-constructed timeline of healing.

To take the needed moments as they come, when joy unexpectedly kisses our lips and laughter soothes our bellies. They may be rare or fleeting, but they are the needed medicine when they do come. May we not fear allowing the good in when it arrives and keep opening our clenched hands to surrender the deadened decay.

These times of transformation and often great challenge are here for us. Here to help us let go of the resistance we carry to love. Love and resistance are simultaneously interwoven, after all. As we release the resistance to what is, more love can enter. Maybe, not right at once. Maybe, it oozes in like honey, slowly and meticulously finding the nooks and crannies where it has been withheld.

Allow that sweet nectar of your own love held in the marrow of your bones to fill you up any time you feel without it.

Yes, just keep going. But, also, rest, pause, resource within, find and remember sacred ground within your own bones and beneath your feet. The love is never anywhere we aren’t. It’s always here, even in the resistance to what is alive and what is needing to be laid to rest in humble offering. Make yourself the only offering you need. An offering of gratitude for your time here on this earth at this potent time of transformation.

With your hand laid gently and reverently upon your heart, say these words silently or out loud:

“Thank you. Thank you for being here.

I love you, I love you, I love you…even now in this moment and on into the next moment, I’ll be loving you.”

~

My mountain view: