There is a garden inside you.
A garden that has been waiting all night.
Roots deep in the dark soil.
Seeds holding their breath.
The earth,
Patient,
Still.
And now the sun rises,
But you,
You wake with yesterday still clinging to your skin.
The unfinished tasks,
The unsaid words,
The weight of who you were supposed to be by now.
You open your eyes and already the mind begins its inventory.
What needs to be done?
What went wrong?
What you forgot to fix?
What I need to do?
And so you carry the old day into the new,
As if the garden could bloom while still holding last season's frost.
You've learned to wake this way,
To greet the morning not with wonder,
But with the heaviness of all you think you owe.
The sun doesn't ask permission to rise.
The earth doesn't apologize for starting again.
But you,
You hesitate at the threshold of this new day,
Afraid.
Afraid that if you let go of yesterday,
Some part of you,
Something in you will be lost.
Something you can't afford to forget.
And yet,
What if the garden doesn't need you to remember?
What if it only asks you to arrive,
To be present?
The soil has already turned over in the night.
The roots have already drunk from the dark and the seeds have already begun pressing towards the sun.
And what's left is for you to step into the garden and allow the morning to find you.
So,
Allow your eyes to close.
Let your breath become the first light breaking over the dawn.
Inhale,
And the sun rises in your chest.
And exhale,
Yesterday falls away like dew.
Feel your body here.
Not the body that carries tasks and timelines,
But the body that breathes without being told.
The body that has survived every night and woken to each new dawn,
To each new day,
To each new chance,
To new potential.
Meet your heart with your hand now and feel the pulse there.
Steady,
Faithful,
New.
This is the garden.
This is the ground.
Stand barefoot on the soil now.
The earth cool beneath your feet.
The air smells of rain and plants and all the green grows.
With every breath you feel the roots beneath you,
Not holding you down,
But holding you steady,
Grounding you.
Not in yesterday,
Not in tomorrow,
But here,
Today,
In this moment,
Now,
In this body,
In this breath.
The garden doesn't ask for perfection.
The garden doesn't ask of you what it wouldn't ask of itself.
The garden doesn't require you to have it all figured out.
It only asks you to show up,
To let your feet touch the ground,
To let the light find your face,
And so you do.
You let the old day fall away like leaves.
You let the new day rise like sap.
And in this moment,
In this moment,
You are not behind.
You are not late.
You are exactly where the morning finds you.
And that is enough.
You are enough.
The garden will ask you to return many times today.
When the noise gets loud,
When the tasks pile high,
When you forget this moment,
When you forget the dawn,
When you forget that you are more than what you produce,
You can always come back here.
Back to the soil.
Back to the breath.
Back to the quiet.
Every moment is a morning.
Every breath a fresh start.
You need not carry yesterday into today,
And you need not solve tomorrow before it arrives.
You only need to stand here,
Barefoot,
Rooted,
Grounded,
And let the light find you.
Allow one more breath in and feel the ground beneath you.
Allow the sun to find your face.
And when you open your eyes,
Carry with you this.
The garden is you.
The ground is you.
You are the earth.
We are the morning that begins again and again and again.
It's everything.
