Painting the Next Tableau

A Meditation On Grief, Growth, and Openness to a Year of Change

Note to Readers:

This is a reflective piece, written at the turning of a year marked by loss, transition, and readiness. I’m sharing it not because my story is unique, but because many of us are entering this year holding grief in one hand and possibility in the other. If you’re carrying something heavy—or standing at a threshold yourself—I hope you’ll find companionship and encouragement here.

I began 2025 with a heart both heavy and warm. Surrounded by the company of dearly loved ones, yet facing a year I knew would be painful, invoking unwanted changes both politically and personally. Losses and crises awaited with uncertain timelines as we walked with our found-family toward cancer’s cruel conclusion. As we so often and so futilely do, I longed to pause time and hold on to what was behind.

The details of these truths were painted into the tableau week by week, month by month, taking on shape and color with beauty and darkness and anguish both anticipated and yet leaving me gasping for breath.

Perhaps you know this feeling—the way life reveals itself slowly, even when you already sense what is coming.

At the cusp of a new year, I look back with bittersweet remembrance to the tenderness of lost connections, savoring the truth of love that cannot be unwritten, tending to the wounds left in their absence with a softening that shows a strength I did not anticipate. I am grateful to find I have grown in ways that I never wanted to have to grow, as new losses triggered old wounds and created opportunity for new layers of healing.

I share this not as a triumph narrative, but as an acknowledgment of something many of us experience: growth that arrives uninvited, disguised as survival.

And with both gratitude and sorrow, I am deeply ready to leave last year and paint the next tableau.

Photo by Madison Oren on Unsplash

I share this because I know many of us don’t choose growth—we survive into it.

The next will be a year of change. Of different losses, different transitions. I am coaching my heart to see the opportunity in change, the potential for adventure in new directions, the space for new connections, while allowing myself to feel the grief of stages passing. To reject the spiritual or emotional bypassing that seeks rainbows without acknowledging the rain.

I began 2025 with a guiding word to inspire me: expand. I challenged myself to counter the belief that I must remain small, the belief held by the part of me that retreats whenever I experience success. The part that was taught it’s my place to be quiet, unoffensive, small; to live in others’ shadows and dream of enough but never more. The part that my subversive Black Sheep spirit always fought – yet that fought back against me.

I suspect many of us carry some version of this inheritance—an internal voice shaped by family, patriarchy, or culture—that urges contraction when expansion feels risky.

I set my intention to expand not only my influence as a writer, but to expand my heart, my capacity to hold love and pain and hope.

I can only thank you, my dear readers, who have joined me and stayed with me, and even more so those of you who like and comment and share (the magic fairy dust), for helping me breathe into the first expression of the idea of expansion. May I be worthy, and my words always honoring of your time, trust, and connection. Your presence here is not incidental—it is part of what makes this work possible.

In 2025, I lost one of the most important relationships of my life, as I anticipated I would – and experienced more losses I half-knew would come, but whose inevitability I had not yet accepted. I continued to love even as I walked steadily toward that painful end. In that pain, and in that love, I knew expansion.

The compounded losses of this year brought me some of the deepest pain I have known in many years, triggered the trauma of early wounds, and thus also created space for new layers of healing, of tending and speaking loving kindness to my panicked inner child, and through this of expanding my capacity to hold pain, to understand those who hurt me, and to embrace radical compassion.

This was not healing as redemption—it was healing as practice.

This was not a roadmap I wanted to follow, but I am grateful for the ways in which the word expand met me over the past year.

In this new year, I face change: My only child choosing a college and graduating high school. An uncertain future in a country debating stripping my citizenship. Decisions about following the path I began but paused with my next book or flexing in a new direction. These are not abstract uncertainties; they are living, embodied thresholds. This year, may I

Bend

Like a willow branch

Or a bulrush reed

With yogic practice known intrinsically by the fibers of my body

Without resistance, without embrace

Come what may

Come what will

May I bend

May the bending bring joy between moments of sighing release

May I bend

So I don’t break

Come what may.

- and -

May I be Open, chin up and eyes wide to opportunity amidst change. Open to the things my soul wants to resist, to curl up around and clench against in resistance. Open to finding the possibilities in change. Open to adventure.

May I be open when invitations come my way, embracing new experiences and encounters with curiosity.

May my writing find the right degree of openness and authenticity to meaningfully connect, balanced with grounding and insight to help.

In that spirit, I’m beginning a new offering this year.

New Feature: Guided Meditations

This year, I’m offering a new feature exclusively for paid subscribers: original guided meditations, recorded in my own voice, to complement the themes I explore here and deepen their impact—from head to heart.

If you missed it, December included a loving-kindness meditation. Below, I’m sharing today’s complementary offering: A Meditation for the New Year: Opening to What’s Possible.

If you’d like access to more of these meditations, you’re welcome to upgrade to a paid subscription. And if cost is a barrier, please don’t hesitate to reach out—I’m happy to make sure you’re included. If meditations aren’t your thing, that’s okay too. I’m so grateful to have you here, and all of my written content (with the exception of select archives) will remain free.

A Meditation for the New Year: Opening to What’s Possible

(If you’ve been reading, but want audio for the meditation only, begin listening at 7:25.)

Take a moment to arrive.

If it feels comfortable, allow your eyes to close.
Or soften your gaze, letting it rest somewhere neutral.

Begin by noticing your breath—
not changing it, not guiding it,
just noticing that it’s already here.

Feel the inhale as it enters the body.
Feel the exhale as it releases.

Let your attention settle into the places where your body meets the ground—
your feet, your legs, your seat, your back.
Notice the simple fact of being supported.

There is nothing you need to fix right now.
Nothing you need to figure out.
Just this moment, and your presence within it.

---

Letting the Past Soften

As you continue to breathe, imagine the year that has just passed
as something you no longer need to carry in your hands.

Not erased.
Not denied.
Just gently set down.

Whatever it contained—
joy or difficulty, clarity or confusion—
allow it to be complete.

You might silently say to yourself:
That chapter has ended.

Notice if your body responds
when you give yourself permission
to let the past year be finished.

---

Standing at the Threshold

Now, imagine yourself standing at a wide, open threshold.

Behind you is what has been.
In front of you is what has not yet taken shape.

You don’t need to see the details ahead.
You don’t need a plan.

Just notice the quality of openness in front of you—
space, possibility, movement.

Feel your breath here,
letting each inhale gently open the chest,
and each exhale soften any unnecessary tension.

Change does not require force.
Opportunity does not require certainty.

They begin with willingness.

---

Opening to What Is Emerging

Bring your attention to the center of your chest.

Imagine this area as a doorway—
one that can soften, widen, and open.

With each inhale, allow a sense of spaciousness here.
With each exhale, let go of gripping or bracing.

You might silently repeat:
I am open to what is emerging.

If fear or uncertainty appears,
see if you can make room for it
rather than push it away.

You might say quietly:
You can come too.

Openness doesn’t mean fear disappears.
It simply means fear doesn’t have to lead.

---

Setting an Inner Orientation

Instead of a goal or resolution,
let an inner orientation take shape.

Perhaps it sounds like:
I choose openness.
or
I trust my ability to adapt.
or
I meet change with presence.

Choose one phrase,
or allow one to arise naturally.

Let it settle—not in the mind,
but in the body.

---

Returning

Begin to notice the space around you again—
the sounds, the temperature,
the weight of your body.

Feel the steadiness beneath you
and the openness within you
existing at the same time.

Take one slow, full breath.

And when you’re ready,
gently open your eyes.

You can carry this openness with you—
not as something fragile,
but as something resilient.

The year ahead does not need you to be certain.
It only asks that you show up.

Reflect

This piece is less about what the year will bring, and more about how we meet it.

What word encapsulates an intention you hold for the New Year? What do you need in order to navigate what lies ahead? What do you desire on this fresh page? Where do you wish to grow?

Drop a word below, or a note regarding any areas where I might support you in your growth through a topical mental health essay this year.

Bits and Pieces

A recent article I was interviewed for on Signs You are Too Critical of Your Partner – and What to Do Instead: https://parade.com/living/signs-you-are-too-critical-of-partner-according-to-psychologists

Something I’m celebrating: My story, Maple to Chapparal, was selected as a “Best of 2025” story by Across the Margin: https://acrossthemargin.com/best-of-across-the-margin-2025/

Coming Soon: How to sustain momentum on New Year’s resolutions!

A delightful way to provide one-time support!