Like Snow
On quiet work in a collapsing world.
Dear friend,
How do we let old dreams die?
This is a question I have been holding lately as this year has felt like tidal waves of change and transitions.
As we teeter on the precipice of a collapse, it feels like watching a bad movie or a nightmare, one we didn’t choose and one we can’t quite awake from. Where every day the news grows more dystopian, and slowly we’re realizing that the dreams we once held simply don’t fit in this reality; like a round peg in a dumpster-fire-shaped hole. Letting go of the ideas the heart has held is its own form of grief. The illusions we once clung to about how this world works, and what we might live into or experience, are falling away.
In this chasm, if we are brave enough to make our way toward it, there is as all-consuming darkness that shelters an unexpected opportunity: to listen more closely for the guidance of the heart, to meet a presence where we can attune and learn, more wildly, how to greet each moment as it arrives.
The 9 of wands card keeps coming into my consciousness. We are tired, exhausted, scraped so thin but we are closer than we realize. We continue to take steps in the darkness on our meandering paths because despite it all, we are alive.
It is earth-shattering to understand that it’s time for our dreams, and maybe our very selves, to take new shapes. We may not be able to follow the footsteps of our parents or grandparents. Here in the west, especially in the United States, the certainties of ideas, goals, dreams we grew up with seem to be crumbling like sand through a clenched fist.
I am standing in my shop on a blustery late November day. Life feels so remarkably different than it did this time last year, if I’m honest, even two months ago. A gust of cold blew through the door as a friend, the owner of a local deli, hand-delivered my lunch. Snowflakes drift outside the shop window as a plow moseys down main street. couples huddle arm-in-arm as they walk the road, small lanterns of warmth against the cold.
Life looks entirely different than it did last year. I’m still trying to settle into new rhythms, but I’m holding no expectations for what my days should look like. This, I think, is the work of our winter, this season of transforming our hearts.
LIKE SNOW
Suppose we did our work
Like the snow, quietly, quietly,
Leaving nothing out.
—Wendell Berry
So much of my own work has been under the surface the last nine months. A thorough turning and twisting, a wringing-out, like washing clothes by hand until the knuckles ache.
Community has become central to my living these days. Opening myself to the care and connection of others has required a new level of vulnerability and communication. To receive care means letting people in, to our desires, our needs, and our deficits. These tender places can be hard to even admit to ourselves. But unlike the scarcity peddled by capitalism, community has shown me where true abundance lives.
Over the last few months, I’ve literally opened my doors, sharing space with others. A place we have come together to save seeds, breathe deeply, learn new skills, and create a place where honesty and complexity are not only allowed but welcomed. I had few expectations for this new adventure of opening my shop, Hawthorn, and yet in its becoming, it has evolved into the third space I needed while serving this community and filling an analog niche.
And so, friend, how do we embrace the unraveling? How do we let old dreams die so new, embodied living can take shape?
Perhaps it begins with a continual shedding that unlocks access to joy. With a turning toward the places we’d rather avoid and with embracing, gently and persistently, to confront our muddled mess within.
With you in this wintering,
Alyson