My husband asked me what I wanted for the holidays. I said I wanted solitude.

So I took 48 hours alone in Oceanside. It was cold and rainy and breathtaking. The ocean was wild, gray, and alive. It was the first time I’d had true solitude since my son was born.

I walked the beach every morning. Every step felt delicious. I was able to meditate without my son crawling into my lap fifteen minutes in. I reread my journal from the past year, something I almost never give myself the time to do. It moved me more than I expected. There was a passage where I was writing as the Divine Mother to myself, reminding me that my longing for solitude lives right alongside my love for my husband, my son, and community. Both are true. Neither cancels the other.

On my drive to the ocean, a song I love came on, but this time it cracked me open. “Currency Called Time” by Jah Lil carries a simple truth. Time is the only currency that never returns. What I want is time. To walk slowly. To tend the garden. To really be here while I can.

Time feels so fast lately. My parents have aged so much. I am in my mid forties. My son is almost eight. How did this happen? The song invited a kind of somatic surrender to the fragility of it all. The beauty. The knife edge of impermanence. And instead of hardening, something in me softened as I reached the beach.

While I was in Oceanside, I also spent quiet time with hundreds of pages of tenderness research. Out of that spaciousness, I’ve begun to surface what I’m now calling Tenderness Truths, the foundations of this next phase of work. Here's what feels most alive to share now:

For me, growing tenderness requires some kind of support. In a full and complicated life, it’s easy to lose touch. A few practices have helped me return home again and again, and lately I’ve felt drawn back to them.

Years ago, my husband gave me Julia Cameron's The Artist’s Way. Morning pages. Weekly artist dates, which in my current life context may be brief, sometimes no more than an hour, a small pocket of time with my creative self. Walking for guidance. Writing for guidance.

I come to these practices not to produce or perfect anything, but to listen. To notice what softens. To stay a little more honest with myself.

And it is through that listening, imperfect and ongoing, that some clarity has been emerging about where my energy is being asked to go this season.

It is in that spirit that I share a few invitations I am holding with care.