That's a great asking.
She pulls you up to her face.
A rough-tongued wind,
A wild knowing.
She tousles your hair.
And looks you down to the bone.
Mountain-bodied,
Eyes of silted rivers,
Limbs like widow weeds.
Thick,
Tidal lashes,
Blinking salts.
She smells of iron and rain,
Of bark split open in the summer heat.
She does not ask you to be different.
She does not ask you to feel otherwise.
She does not require a brighter mood or a steadier hand.
She does not ask you.
To be less so.
More sugar.
Right now,
The deep slow ache of the human mind,
Threads of experience,
Drifting like lucid kelp in the forlorn shallows of fear and longing,
Yet,
She does not flinch.
Your thoughts scatter,
So do the silverfish beneath the pier.
Your grief harrows,
So does the rainwater through the clay.
Your legs tremble.
So do the leaves,
Beloved.
So do the leaves.
She only asks the weight of you to sit exactly where it is placed.
All of it permitted,
All of it entering the great moor of this moment's seamless slipstream.
Why do you go and ask of yourself?
What she never would.
There are moments when the whole body says no.
No to loss,
No to the ache of not knowing.
This is not a failure.
It is but protection.
The nervous system trying to keep us safe.
But pause for a moment.
And notice something quietly remarkable.
This moment is already here.
It doesn't need our acceptance in order to exist.
Acceptance is not something we give to reality.
It is the nature of reality itself.
The present moment is already allowing everything that appears within it.
The tightening in the chest,
The racing mind.
The birdsong outside the window,
The distant grief,
The warmth of sunlight on your skin.
Can you notice that awareness or life?
Or now.
Is itself not resisting any of it.
The resistance belongs to thought.
To the body's ancient instinct to defend.
Awareness simply includes.
As that is seen,
The field begins to widen.
Alongside fear,
There is also breath.
Alongside sorrow,
There is also birdsong.
Alongside uncertainty,
There is also the quiet miracle of this living body breathing without asking permission.
Nothing has changed and yet everything feels different.
This is not because suffering has disappeared.
It is because we are no longer trying to stand outside reality.
And argue with it.
The invitation is not to like what is happening.
It is simply to stop carrying.
The impossible burden of demanding.
Let this moment be other than it is.
From here.
Something softer emerges.
Not passivity,
Not defeat.
But a quiet resilience born from belonging.
Completely.
To this moment.
