In the last moments before entering a week-long silent retreat, I opened a tender email from a patient:

“I can’t handle this.”

She’s had a difficult fertility journey and had just received news that brought deep worry. Before turning off my phone, I reached out to a trusted Full Circle Perinatal Care colleague to help her find support and gently reminded her of the grounding tools we’ve practiced together.

On retreat, I found myself reflecting on what steadies me through painful emotions:
the heartache of grief,
the sting of rejection and not belonging,
the ache of feeling somehow broken.

Perhaps your heart has known these tender places too.

What supported me as these feelings surfaced was the quiet medicine of nature—the many, many shades of green. Moss blanketing the forest floor, trees draped in old man’s beard, ferns taller than me (and I’m 6’2!). Allowing myself to regulate with nature softened the edges and created space for thoughts and emotions to move through.

Another support was continually widening my view beyond just my inner reflections—listening to the wind in the trees, watching them sway, breathing in the smell of rain. Broadening the view brings perspective, and with it, a sense of healing and resilience. The circumstances don’t change, but our capacity to be with them does.

May we each find moments that widen the view and bring a gentler way of holding what feels most tender.