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.

You don’t have to let go all at once. Even when the world tells you to leap, to break open, to “trust the process”—you get to take your time. But eventually, the part of you that’s been gripping will tire. And when it does, I hope you remember this: not all falling is breaking. Some of it is becoming. This letter is for the one who’s still holding on.

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.

There’s a particular ache that comes from holding back a desire so long you start to call it a flaw. We learn to tuck our longing behind our teeth, to dress it in discipline and drape it in gratitude. But desire is not a weakness—it’s a flame, a compass, a heartbeat. Wanting more doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you alive…

For years you believed that being needed was the same as being loved. That carrying the weight, keeping the light, holding steady through the storm was proof of your worth. But your body knows the truth: love is not earned. Love is given & received. And you are ready for the kind that stays.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from thinking so much we forget we have a body. We calculate, anticipate, intellectualize—and somewhere in the maze of analysis, the voice of our body grows quiet. But we are not broken for this. We are practiced. And there’s another way. Our body holds the map our mind has been searching for. And the next step isn’t more thinking—it’s noticing. One sensation, one breath, one heartbeat at a time.