There are times when it feels as though nothing is holding, when even the things you thought you could rely on begin to shift, and you are left wondering what, if anything, is still reliable under your feet.
Not just in your own life, either, but in the world itself.
The news keeps coming, one story layered on top of the next, until it begins to feel less like information and more like a steady background pressure you are meant to absorb and carry. Systems you once trusted now reveal their fragility. Relationships wobble under the weight of change and differing opinions. Bodies shift in ways you did not ask for or expect. And a future that once felt reasonably predictable now feels uncertain.
Questions arise that refuse to go away:
How do I meet this?
What am I supposed to do?
How can I carry this much grief?
The women I speak to do not ask these questions casually, or from a place of avoidance. They are thoughtful, intelligent, deeply reflective women who have already done so much inner work. They have read the books, followed the teachers, taken the courses, gone on the retreats, understood the concepts, often to a degree that would look impressive from the outside, and they have done so sincerely, with real devotion and a genuine desire to live with integrity and love.
Many have spent decades in the personal development and spiritual arenas, practising and learning, quietly holding the belief, because it was encouraged and reinforced, that there was some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, containing unbroken peace and joy, and that if they were diligent enough, devoted enough, someday they would find it.
And yet, when things begin to unravel in real time, when life presses in rather than staying theoretical, when the questions are no longer philosophical but immediate and embodied, none of that accumulated wisdom seems to offer much guidance about how to be with the moment that is actually happening.
So they do what they have always been taught to do.
They look outward again, reaching for another book, another voice, another explanation, another framework that promises clarity or direction or a breakthrough. Sometimes it helps for a while, offering a brief sense of orientation, that familiar feeling of moving towards an answer.
And then life shifts again, as it always does, and it begins to feel like failing.
But, the truth is they are not failing. It is simply that something subtle and essential is being missed.
When everything feels unstable, the nervous system wants speed. It wants action, information, certainty, something solid to grab hold of. The impulse is to move faster, to fix, to decide, to understand, to do something, anything, that might restore a sense of solid ground.
But clarity rarely arrives that way. More often, more information simply adds another layer of noise to the incessant mind chatter, another demand placed on a system that is already close to overwhelm.
What is missing is not more knowledge.
It is space.
Space for the body to settle enough to feel itself again, rather than bracing against what might come next.
Space for the nervous system to come out of alarm, even briefly.
Space for the mind to stop scrambling for answers long enough for something quieter and more trustworthy to make itself known.
Most of us were never taught how to stop without collapsing, how to pause without giving up, how to listen without immediately trying to extract an answer or a plan. So stopping can feel dangerous, as though everything will fall apart if we do not keep moving, managing, holding it all together.
And yet, when we slow down, even just a little, when we come back into the body, into breath, into sensation, into the ordinary, unremarkable texture of being here, a different kind of knowing begins to surface.
It is not dramatic or impressive or loud. It does not arrive with instructions or guarantees. It does not shout or promise certainty, and it does not tell you how the rest of your life will unfold.
What it does is tell the truth of this moment.
And from that truth, a next step often becomes quietly obvious.
Not for the rest of your life.
Just for today.
This is not about becoming more spiritual, more evolved, or finally getting it right. It is about remembering that you are never cut off from your own innate intelligence, even now, even here, even when things feel unresolved and messy.
Joy and peace exist, as well as grief and fear.
Stillness exists, even in the midst of chaos.
Wisdom exists, even when you feel unsure.
The world may feel as though it is falling apart. But something in you is not. Cannot.
You do not have to go searching for it. Sometimes all that is required is a pause that lasts long enough for you to hear the still, small voice that has been speaking all along, underneath the noise.
There is a poem by Derek Walcott that I return to again and again when life feels fragmented, when the outer world feels loud and demanding and incoherent, and I can feel myself, almost without noticing, drifting away from my own centre.
You may know it.
It begins with an instruction so gentle it almost slips past the mind.
“The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door…”
What has always moved me about this poem is that nothing dramatic happens. There is no breakthrough moment, no fixing, no triumph. There is simply a return.
A turning toward the self not as a project to be improved, but as a presence to be welcomed. Not as something to work on, but as someone to come home to.
Walcott does not ask us to become wiser or better or more evolved. He invites us to stop abandoning ourselves and our everyday lives, to sit, to eat, to listen, and to take down the old love letters we have written to ourselves over the years, the ones we placed carefully on the shelf, the ones we sensed were true but were not ready, or not willing, to live by at the time.
In my own life, those letters are my journals. Pages filled with quiet knowing, with instincts and longings and gentle warnings I did not yet trust enough to follow. Calls from inner wisdom that I acknowledged, recorded, and then set aside, again and again.
The invitation in the poem is not to become someone new, but to finally turn toward what has been calling all along, and to begin, quietly, to love and live the life that is already here.
And I have come to see that this is what so many of us are starving for, not another explanation, not another framework, but a moment where the inner noise settles just enough for something real to be felt.
In my work, I do not try to interpret poems like this or explain them. I know that they already know how to do what they are meant to do. I simply create the conditions for you to turn back toward yourself and listen.
Because when that meeting happens, even briefly, something shifts. Not because you have learned something new, but because you have touched something essential in yourself.
Beyond this point, I want to offer you a direct experience of this, a simple, guided practice, the kind you could do sitting in a coffee shop, or in your kitchen, or sitting up in bed, with your headphones in and your journal at your side.
It is a practice for a day like today, when life feels uncertain and answers feel far away.
It is a way to slow down long enough to feel where you already are, and to turn toward your own inner wisdom, the quiet intelligence that has been here all along, waiting not to be improved or overridden, but listened to.
