Rising Rooted

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Before you read, a pause.

Before you take in another set of words about the state of the world, I want to invite you to stop for just a moment.

Feel where your body is making contact right now—your feet on the floor, your seat on the chair, your back against whatever is holding you.

Gently scan three places:

• Your physical body — what sensations are here?
• Your emotional body — what mood, feeling, or weather is present?
• Your mental body — what kind of thoughts are looping, rushing, or lingering?

No fixing. No judging. Just noticing.

If it feels right, take one unforced breath.

That’s enough.

The ache we’re carrying

When I sit with the state of the world right now, what I feel isn’t just fear or anger—though those are absolutely there. What I touch most often is something deeper and harder to name: a grief-soaked love. A kind of aching tenderness for the world itself.

I grieve for the environment being pushed aside yet again in the scramble for political safety. I grieve for people living under the weight of violence and uncertainty—Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo. I grieve for the people of the United States, living inside a political reality that feels increasingly hostile and destabilizing. And, if I’m honest, I grieve for all of us feeling the intensity of living next door to a very large bully, wondering how much that threat will shape our own lives here in Canada.

There is anger, too—at systems that feel cruel, extractive, and reckless. And beneath that anger, a deep sense of powerlessness that can feel unbearable if we stay with it for too long.

I see this ache every day in my therapy room. People are showing up dissociated, exhausted, numb—but underneath that numbness is a constant hum of uncertainty. A sense that something fundamental has shifted. That the illusion of safety we once lived under has cracked, and we can’t unsee it.

And no—this isn’t because something is wrong with you.

This is what happens when you are paying attention.

Mindfulness is not being zen

I want to name something clearly: to be mindful is not to be calm, detached, or above it all.

Mindfulness, as I understand it, asks us to stay in relationship with the present moment—not to transcend it. And the present moment right now includes grief, anger, fear, love, and moral responsibility, all tangled together.

There’s a version of spirituality that promises peace by pulling you away from what’s happening. I don’t find that helpful in times like these. Real faith—real hope—doesn’t remove us from the world. It asks us to stay rooted in it.

What I see instead is a kind of spiritual exhaustion. People trying to manage the overwhelm by tightening control over the few areas where they feel powerful: productivity, self-optimization, endless scrolling, constant “doing.” We rush from one thing to the next because slowing down might mean feeling the grief we don’t know how to hold alone.

But the answer to this moment isn’t panic. And it isn’t disengagement.

It’s presence. And presence is hard work.

Baba Yaga and the impossible task

There’s a story about Baba Yaga—the wild, winter crone of Slavic folklore—that keeps returning to me lately.

A young girl is sent into the forest to Baba Yaga’s hut, a place of danger and uncertainty. Instead of offering wisdom or rescue, Baba Yaga gives her a series of tasks that feel absurdly small and impossibly tedious: sorting grains, cleaning, tending the mundane details of daily life.

These tasks are not distractions from the “real” work.

They are the initiation.

By attending carefully to what is right in front of her, the girl earns the light she needs to return home. Not because she conquered the forest—but because she learned how to move through it without abandoning herself.

Winter often asks this of us.

Not grand gestures. Not total clarity.

But devotion to the small, ordinary acts that build capacity over time.

January wisdom: strategic conserving

January is not a time for urgency, no matter what the news cycle tells us.

Here in Ontario, the snow is deep. The cold is sharp. The landscape looks barren—but beneath the frozen ground, life is conserving energy, not disappearing.

This is not the season for knowing exactly what to do next. It’s the season for listening. For experimenting quietly. For tending the soil rather than demanding growth.

Winter protects us from urgency by slowing us down—if we let it.

And right now, slowness is not avoidance.

It is preparation.

What helps when the world feels like too much?

I want to offer a few small practices—not as solutions, but as companions.

1. Touch down into beauty when it appears.

When a moment of calm, connection, or beauty finds you—let yourself stay with it for an extra breath. You deserve that nourishment. This is how endurance is built.

2. Create sacred pauses.

One of my own anchors is this: every time I walk through a doorway, I stop and take one breath. Ten seconds. That’s it. These tiny pauses stitch presence back into the day.

3. Return to love—simply.

When I feel scattered or overwhelmed, I quietly repeat the word love and see where I can feel even the smallest trace of it in my body. I hold that sensation for one breath. That’s the practice. Nothing more.

None of this is about staying regulated all the time. It’s about touching down into moments of steadiness, again and again, so we can keep going without burning out.

4. Balance what you let in.

If you’re consuming a lot of news, social media, or films that leave you feeling ramped up, anxious, or braced—try consciously balancing that input with something that nourishes or empowers you.

That might look like returning to books you love, listening to philosophers or thinkers who remind you why humanity is worth caring about, or choosing stories that show everyday people standing up to oppressive systems. Many World War II films, for example, don’t glorify power—they remind us that resistance often comes from ordinary people who refused to live against their values.

This isn’t about avoiding reality. It’s about not letting fear become the only voice shaping your inner world.

An eco-somatic ritual for this season

One evening this week, light a candle.

Sit somewhere comfortable—wrapped in a blanket, tea nearby, looking out a window if you can.

Ask yourself this question and let it echo over several days:

“What is my true capacity in this season—and what helps it grow?”

Don’t rush the answer.

You might write. You might pull tarot. You might move your body, stare at the snow, or simply sit with the flame. Let the question work on you slowly, the way winter works on the land.

This isn’t about doing more.

It’s about tending what makes you able.

You are not broken for feeling this

If you’ve been feeling anxious, depressed, angry, or numb lately, please hear this: these are not personal failures. They are human responses to collective conditions.

We can’t keep suffering in silence, turning our pain inward as self-blame. This is shared grief. And grief needs witnesses.

Community matters more than ever right now—even if we’re still figuring out what that looks like.

An invitation

I’m beginning to imagine new kinds of online group spaces—spaces that honour grief, capacity, slowness, and collective care, without the usual pressure to “fix” or optimize.

If that idea stirs something in you, I would genuinely love to hear:

• What kind of group space would feel nourishing right now?
• What would help you feel less alone in this season?

You’re welcome to leave a comment or reach out by email.

We are all sorting grains in the dark together.

And that work matters more than we’ve been taught to believe.

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If this spoke to something in you, there are a few paths you can follow from here:

Each door leads somewhere different. It is my hope that all of them lead back to you.

<3 Rachel