not doing it alone

I spent the morning wrapped in a comforter, nestled into a window seat in Fort Bragg, looking out at a garden that felt more like a prayer than a landscape. Mist in the air, birds dipping into the stone bath, moss filtering the light, trees bowing gently in the breeze—it all felt so alive. So loved.

Everywhere I looked, the earth whispered, You belong.

There’s a large hanging bell outside, like the kind I rang each morning at Spirit Rock. I didn’t ring it, but the memory resonated anyway—a quiet call to remember: freedom isn’t something we earn by fixing ourselves. It’s something we uncover by being exactly who we are.

Alok said, “Don’t ask how you can help—ask how you can be more free.” That stayed with me. Especially here, where everything is unapologetically itself. The crooked pine. The old man’s beard moss. The funky mushrooms. The redwood fairy rings, standing in ceremony like a natural cathedral.

And yet—amid all this beauty—I struggled to include myself in it.

My heavy body. My aching back. The self-critical thoughts that move in like fog: If I just looked different… maybe I’d finally feel loved. But why is it so hard to believe that love is already here? That this body, this breath, this moment is already worthy?

The birds don’t question if they’re enough. The moss doesn’t judge itself. The redwoods don’t ask permission to grow tall.

As I wandered slowly through this sacred garden of altars—bonsai trees, crystals, Buddhas, water, & light—I wept. I felt small, alone, inept to create anything this beautiful. Then I heard: “You don’t do it alone.”

And again: “You are not doing it alone.”

The lemon tree, the blueberries, the snap peas, the tiny blue flowers in the grass, the reclining Earth Mother in the moss—all said: This is how you’re meant to feel. Seen. Held. Alive.

Even with grief & longing—for partnership, to share unseen parts of myself—I’m not alone.

I sway with the trees.
I fly with the wind.
I am embedded in the great mycelial web holding us all.

My work is this:
To keep becoming.
To love myself even more—
Even here. Even now.
Especially now.