Sitting with the Storm
It’s been almost a year since I wrote about sitting in the pause — that moment of quiet when we know a storm is coming but it has not yet landed.
Then, already, I said:
…the road ahead will call on us all to look in the mirror — to see the places where our own fears and failures and shortcomings have dimmed our light, or where we have allowed complacency to override conviction.
What we permit persists. And yet, we are also along for the ride.
Since then, nearly every foundation I had built my life on got rattled and has fallen away. I know many people experiencing similar upheavals right now — beloved places, roles, relationships, and systems that made up the ground beneath our feet suddenly unstable. And yet, in the falling apart, there is also a strange kind of freedom and a different kind of possibility.
When the KOAN method came out two years ago, I wrote about embracing uncertainty as a catalyst for creativity. Then, the Universe asked how serious I was and brought life-upending uncertainty to my door.
Over these last many months of weathering storm after storm, the principles I wrote about then have been my star map. Helping me sit in the uncertainty, be with the storm. Meet each moment as it comes and dance with it.
Last month, I had one day in Paris on my way from one somewhere to another. It rained the whole time I was in town, so I put on my red shoes, opened up my pink umbrella and went for a walk in the rain. It wasn’t what I had planned, but it was full of unexpected magic anyways.
Here’s a poem inspired by this time we’re all weathering for anyone out there in the midst of their own storm. We are all just walking each other home, and the more in-it-together we remember we are, the more likely we are to build a world we want to belong to.
Sitting with the Storm
October 2025
When the roar of the storm reaches our own front door
After all the bracing and hoping in the calm before
—
Perfect plans seem preposterous
As this… Beloved
That bound us so seductively
Is now quite obviously
Not ours to have, hold, keep
And isn’t our keeper, either
—
Instead, in that desperate delightful
Moment of annhilating surrender
We realize just how tired we are of trying
To win at a losing game
And fall to our knees laughing
At the now-in-plain-sight irony
—
Finding a sort of sweet relief
When the quiet part gets said out loud
—
Eyes wide open, the patterns
Crystallize and we can’t unsee, ever
So, instead, we cock our heads and wonder
Where the winds might take us now
As the chaos we were kept in falls away
And the light of day calls us curiously forward
—
Can we let that wonder blossom…?!
Blown off course as we seem to be,
From our intended heading
And finding ourselves just where we’ve landed
Amazed that the roundabout journey, sure enough,
Has brought us right… here
—
Where we find a growing hope knowing
That at long last the quiet part got said out loud
—
From this new altitude
We see that every detour and derailment
Has filled our hands and hearts with gold
Getting us ready for just this moment
When all the parts that made no sense
Suddenly, obviously, do
—
And that better yet, every plot twist
Was spinning threads of connection
That only harmonic happenstance
Could have woven —
Forming the very fabric of the
Only safety net that has ever held us
—
Side by side we feel bolder
When the quiet part is said out loud
—
Together we remember better
How to be the best of who we are
How shining our light makes each other braver
No sparkle needed
Just steady staying
Becoming the beacon that beckons
—
So here we sit each alone and together
In the center of a swirl that seems
To be just ours and also everywhere
Remembering that every right and wrong turn
Has led exactly here
And I am not alone; none of us are.
—
Now, here we are side-by-side in a storm that’s revealing
Age-old wounds, ripe for healing
