Remember you are whole.

Take a deep breath and feel your feet. Plant yourself firmly on the ground and take another breath.

Listen to the miracle of your breathing as life dances in and out with every inhale and exhale.

Make noise.

Shake your hands and your head.

Re-center on your breath.

Do it again…

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My family and I are far away from home right now, We traveled to Maui last week to celebrate my solar return and continue to wake up to monitor the pandemic sweeping much of the world. We’re now currently shifting gears from vacationing  to (short-term) living on island instead of returning home to Michigan. Weighing each risk, it’s important we make the best and most informed decision we can; even if that seems to be a rapidly moving target.

As I sit here quietly, I feel a lot of things…resistance, anger, frustration, loss…some part of me somehow knew that this was going to happen and her loud voice is saying “I told you so” over and over again.

And at the same time, I’m safely nestled at a home of a friends, watching the sun set with beauty – as it always does. I hear the cry of birds yet unknown to me and see the clouds dancing on the peaks of the neighboring island of Molokai… The hibiscus flowers drink in the last of the sun as I take those deep breaths and welcome in the end of another day here in this majestic place.

I don’t know when we’ll get home…I don’t know how to manage the life I’ve been living from afar. I simply don’t know much. But I won’t travel with my 9 month old, I won’t risk exposure when I don’t have to… and though I really would rather be home in a familiar land with familiar sounds and access to all my familiar plant allies, I am trying so desperately to surrender to what is… and Maui has a great way of reminding me of the awesome power available when I do just that.

We are all being required to shift gears, to slow down, to sit still, to get quiet. It’s a time of deep reflection, a time to sit in meditation or prayer, to tend to our bodies and our relationships, to witness the living Earth around us, to come home to ourselves. This is a spiritual kind of awakening, a spiritual moment of unfurling that begs us to get back to basics and remember who we are without all the noise – even as the noise of the world seems to be getting louder.

How it is that I’m here on this island is curious to me. This moment is Great Mystery hard at work, and I’m humbled beyond words to be alive and witnessing it. We are being directed to honor and respect our elders, to listen to our bodies closely, to care for ourselves and our homes with compassion and gentleness, to reconnect with what matters most. And while there is a deep stress plaguing some of us in shifting gears, there is most certainly a larger gift available in the slowness upon us. As we take this time seriously, our lives and how we spend our days comes home to us and we can truly start living again from that sense of centeredness. But only if we let ourselves be humbled. Only if we let go of the fear of all that must come undone and allow it to move beyond us with gratitude. Most certainly things will not be the same, and if we take this opportunity to tune in and reground, perhaps we won’t want them to.

This is hard. It will only get harder…at least before it gets better. So my friends, surrender. Be humbled by the power of our interconnectedness and live with that knowing right at the surface of your mind. If we can do that, we have an entire world to gain…and if we can’t…we’re already lost.

Much love and deep ease.