There’s something sacred about this stretch-marked season. Autumn doesn’t apologize for what must fall. It knows the tremble is what makes release possible—and release is what makes room for new life. In a world heavy with grief, rage, and near-constant saturation, this letter meets you where you are: aching, uncertain, brave. It honors the tremble in your nervous system and the courage still breathing in your body.

We are living in a time where political violence is sharpening and public grief is swelling—but the deeper crisis might be this: we don’t know how to regulate anymore. We don’t know how to soften into connection across difference. We’ve mistaken rage for power and isolation for protection. And somewhere along the way, we stopped offering one another the sacred possibility of co-regulation—of feeling and healing in proximity. This week reminded me: no matter how loud the headlines get, healing begins when we can breathe in rhythm again—when we dare to hold someone we disagree with, not to convert them, but to care for the humanity inside them. That’s the breath we’ve been holding. That’s the one we need to release.

Sometimes our feelings are really, really big. We look for ways to contain them yet emotional suffocation is real too. So we look for spaces big enough to allow our feelings to move without restraint or restriction. The water and the evergreens are those places for me.