learning forest time.
what i thought was over is becoming soil + staying with myself.
the women who can sit with death without rushing to decorate it
are the women who can midwife what comes next.
today the fear underneath showed itself.
not loudly.
more like a low hanging fog we had over christmas.
we had fog advisory warnings but i was off from work and tucked inside.
i had time if i chose to gaze into the fog. to pull its mystery in like magic.
i couldn’t see anything more than 10 feet in front of me.
what Mystery asked of me was to notice..feel..and stay with myself.
what if i run out of runway?
what if what’s left of my life gets spent managing survival instead of
living my actual calling?
i didn’t try to solve the thoughts.
or understand and make meaning of them.
instead
i let them sit next to me.
like my dog ben does.
then
moss girl showed up.
she found me or i found her.
doesn’t matter.
but i couldn’t take my eyes off her.
i saw myself and my curiosity began to give shape to what has been happening
within me. even before i have language.
she doesn’t rush me.
she doesn’t ask for a plan.
it’s as if she pats her hand on the ground next to her.
we sit side by side held in this “fog”
i sense something ancient seated under my breastbone
my hand touches the hmmm…vibration maybe?
i’m not sprinting anymore!
and
i’m rooting?!
yes, these feel experientially true.
my nervous system is learning forest time.
this makes me smile.
i like learning and living forest time!
it’s counter culture. rebellious.
slow. honest. unavoidable.
the green feels like the new story.
growing on the old one.
what i thought was over
is becoming soil
not shame.
then i remember a group of women calling ourselves dirt girls!
maybe a dirt girl is
a woman stepping out of the trees
remembering she has a throat.
at some point today this sentence came to me and i didn’t try to improve it.
the women who can sit with death without rushing to decorate it
are the women who can midwife what comes next.
i don’t know yet if that’s about aging or faith
or marriage or america or my own life.
maybe all of it.
i just know it felt true in my body, not airy fairy.
this stokes the fire in my belly.
so i am pulling it in
because somehow i sense moving forward into 2026
will be a frontline of women who’ve looked death in the eye
and stayed.
so i let it stay and sit, too.
later, i caught myself looking up.
not asking
just listening
not ear listening only.
listening with my body.
that’s when i felt it —
my voice coming back.
p.s.
i’ve been quiet here.
not because nothing was happening
more because everything was.
some changes don’t announce themselves.
they work underground.
they change the soil before anything green appears.
this is my small (yes) step
i’m writing again
from a truer place.
keep couraging
-tiff