am i the willow or is there a willow in me?

what do the willows know?

I sat beside a willow today. Its branches swayed with the wind, not resisting, not holding on too tightly—just moving with what came. There is a stillness in that motion, a quiet acceptance that connected to a part of me that i have been carrying for so long.

The willow doesn’t fight the seasons. It lets its leaves fall, lets itself be stripped bare, knowing that this, too, is life. Standing there, it feels no shame in its bareness, no desperation to hold on to what it once had.

It simply stands, rooted, present, alive.

And in that, I see myself.

Pain has a way of pulling you into its grip, doesn’t it? It demands your attention, invades your space, and tries to convince you that it will be here forever. I know this intimately. The past days, weeks, even years have felt like seasons where the leaves of my comfort and ease have fallen, one by one. I have learned what it means to live with bare branches.

But like the willow, I have also learned something else: the roots hold.

Pain is loud, it is relentless, and it seeks to strip you of everything. But beneath the surface, there is always something steady—a part of you that does not waver. In the quiet moments, I feel it. I see it in the small, unexpected joys: sunlight warming my skin after days of rain, the rhythm of a routine I’ve shaped for myself, a warm cup of coffee shared in conversations.

And I see it in creation.

There is something about bareness, about being stripped of everything you thought you needed, that gives way to a clarity you can’t access otherwise. i want to repeat

There is something about bareness, about being stripped of everything you thought you needed, that gives way to a clarity you can’t access otherwise.

In these moments, I have found that creation begins—not out of abundance but out of presence. The emptiness makes space for something new, for energies that feel raw and honest, like the first sprout breaking through soil after winter.

These moments don’t erase the pain, but they live alongside it, like the sun shining through the willow’s thinning leaves.

The willow teaches me that to live is not to avoid the ache, but to be with it. To sway when the wind comes, to let the rain soak through you, and to trust that even in your most vulnerable state, you are still whole.

It is not easy. I won’t pretend that it is. There are days when the weight of it all feels unbearable, when I look in the mirror and don’t recognize the person staring back. I feel the ache in every corner of my body, and I wonder how much more I can endure. But then I remember: the willow does not resist its bareness. It does not mourn the leaves it has lost. It simply stands, knowing that winter will come, and so will spring.

And so I stand too.

I wonder if you have ever felt this way—stripped bare by life’s storms, unsure of what remains. Perhaps you have been asked to carry more than you thought you could. Perhaps you have bent so far you feared you might break.

But here is what the willow shows me: there is strength in standing still. There is wisdom in trusting that even in your emptiness, something inside you is growing. Your roots are holding.

And from this stillness, something new emerges—creation, connection, life. The stories you tell yourself, the art you pour into being, the quiet spaces where your soul breathes and you are one with the infinite. These are your leaves, returning in their own time and space.

You don’t need to fight the seasons. Let them come, let them take, let them change you. And when the time is right, you will bloom—not out of defiance, but because it is who you are.

I think about this as I sit beneath the willow today. It sways with the wind, casts its shadows on the water, and lets the sunlight touch every part of it. It doesn’t hold back from living fully, even as it knows the seasons ahead will take from it.

And I wonder—what do you see in the willow?

Maybe it is a part of yourself you have forgotten. Or maybe it’s a reminder of what you already know but needed to feel again.

Whatever it is, I hope you find your roots. And I hope you stand tall, bare or blooming, knowing that to endure is to live.

Am i the willow or is there a willow in me?

am i in tenerife or is tenerife in me?

This is the time of year when the sun belongs to the south of Europe.

Tenerife—where the weather holds no loyalty, shifting between rain, sun, cool winds, hot winds. Sometimes you feel both at once, the warmth of the sun pressing against your skin while the wind wraps around you with a chill. A contradiction that makes complete sense.

Perfect, for me.

So I stayed out all day, whenever the sun decided to show itself. Holding onto it, knowing it wouldn’t last.

Oh, dear Tenerife,

May you always be honored the way every traveler honors you.

You are wild—

Beautifully wild,

Untamed,

Beautifully, wildly resilient.

Because you created yourself from the ashes.

Literally.

Volcanic soil beneath you, fire-born, yet you breathe life into everything.

You do not just withstand destruction; you embrace it, you learn from it, and then—

You begin again.

Walking through the remnants of prehistoric forests in Anaga, I felt the weight of something ancient. Trees that once stretched across all of Southern Europe, now standing here, whispering their stories to the mist.

Moss-covered trunks, ferns that curled like secrets, mist weaving its way through everything, turning the path into something more than just a walk.

Every sense awake, but moving in its own rhythm.

The silence wasn’t just heard; it was felt.

The quiet carried weight. It lived in the branches, in the fallen leaves, in the air itself.

Soft sounds—birds, insects, the wind shifting through the trees, the occasional drop of water sliding off a leaf. The kind of sounds that don’t demand attention, but are felt in the body, recognized by something deeper than hearing.

Light playing through the trees, filtering through branches in ways that made time feel fluid.

This was, this is, this will always be.

The texture of logs, rough yet softened by time.

They have withstood everything—storms, fires, wind, change.

They have adapted, learned to hold both the past and the present, already knowing what the future will ask of them.

The air smelled like untouched earth, damp and fresh. It didn’t just enter the lungs; it opened something. Like a gateway, like a memory, like a feeling that doesn’t need words.

Anaga was not just a place.

It was a presence.

And then, the lava rock formations—raw, porous, broken yet whole.

Shaped by fire, carved by ocean waves, softened by time but never tamed.

Where lava meets the sea, the sun plays with the water, and suddenly, the waves take on a color that exists nowhere else.

Succulents—growing from the cracks of volcanic stone, roots holding onto places that should not sustain them. Yet they grow, they thrive. A reminder that life will always find a way, even in the most impossible places.

The mountains—standing still, holding the island together like an embrace.

Tall, unmoving, steady in their existence.

Dramatic cliffs plunging into the Atlantic.

Deep ravines cutting through the land like stories carved over millions of years.

Rock formations shaped by time, by heat, by destruction, by rebirth.

Tenerife’s native pine, standing as proof of survival.

Its bark thick enough to withstand fire.

Its needles pulling moisture from the clouds, feeding the land, giving back, always giving back.

Resilient. A lesson in stillness and strength.

The waves—wild, restless, alive.

The wind moving through them, the light playing along their crests.

Foam forming, dissolving, forming again, like a rhythm that existed before us and will continue long after.

The waves reached for me before I reached for them.

Salty, cool—alive.

The ocean moving through my fingers, slipping between the spaces, wrapping around my skin, pulling away only to return.

Light scattered across the water, glistening, shifting—like a quiet conversation between the sun and the sea.

The foam, delicate yet relentless, dissolving and forming again, never truly gone.

For a moment, I stood still.

I am here, I am alive, that I am part of all of this.

Bare feet pressing into the black volcanic sand, hand in the water, the weight of the world dissolving in the tide.

an offering.

an acceptance.

an exchange of energies

Am I in Tenerife?

Or is Tenerife in me?

And then, my beautiful partner for life

Hands steady on the wheel.

Music filling the car, not just as sound but as feeling.

And when the song touches something deep within him, he sings—not because he thinks to, but because it moves through him.

A voice flowing freely, carried by the road, by the moment, by something beyond words.

And I sit beside him, watching the light shift on the road ahead, feeling the wind tangle in my hair, knowing that some places don’t just exist in memory.

Some places live inside you.

am i unlearning to learn or learning to unlearn?

What do you see

when you walk through the streets?

Do you notice the old couple,

holding hands, quietly moving forward—

consumed by the experience of the performance they just witnessed?

What stories do you consume?

What stories do you become?

I walk these streets,

breathing in the fresh air,

letting the crispness of the weather settle into my skin.

I show up for myself—

even when the weight of a difficult disability pulls at me.

I follow my own pace.

I watch.

The energy of kids playing football,

their voices rising as they argue passionately,

each eager to share what they know.

The coconut tree sways,

playing hide and seek with the sun.

I feel the warmth it gives.

This is my weather.

I could watch this all day.

And so, I continue walking.

I notice how the light dances with the old lamp posts

on streets whose names I don’t need to know.

No map is necessary when I walk with awareness.

I love having found my way of just going with the flow of the present moment

A vintage bookstore calls to me,

the scent of old paper lingering—

I breathe in just enough before slipping out,

careful not to awaken the migraine that is quietly asleep today.

And suddenly that made me more aware of the pain that begins to stir in my shoulders.

Abhigna, be aware of how much you must push yourself.

So, I slow down.

I walk in silence for a while,

I experience my breath grounding me.

The Gothic Quarter feels like a place that doesn’t need to explain itself.

The stone walls rise up around me, uneven and chipped, like they’ve stopped caring about being perfect. The ground is uneven, but my steps adjust without thinking.

It’s quiet but not silent. A kind of quiet that feels full. Like the walls are holding onto every conversation, every footstep, every moment that’s passed through here.

Light barely touches some corners. It spills in only where it wants to, catching on rusted balconies and tangled wires. I don’t feel the need to follow any path. The streets curve and narrow, opening when they feel like it. I let them decide.

There’s no performance here. No need to look for something beautiful. It’s all here in its own way—worn, real, breathing.

I keep walking. Not searching. Just moving through it.

And somehow, it feels like the city is moving through me too.

And then—

a woman dancing in her balcony window.

Unapologetic.

Present.

Giving everything to the way her body moves.

I reach for my phone,

drawn to capture this moment.

As I walk on, the image of her stays with me.

Pause.

Later, sitting here at this café, words flowing through my fingers,

I remember the book—Kinfolk—I skimmed through yesterday.

Reading between the lines, I wondered:

How do I already know this without ever reading it?

How do I already live this way?

Slow living in the past year has taught me to find calm in every corner of myself.

I move through immense pain, yes,

but also through deep seeing.

And maybe—just maybe—what I see

comes from knowing carried over from lifetimes before.

My breath holds that knowing.

That is the mystery I seek—

to understand what my breath remembers,

how it might be consuming something

that all the next lifetimes will know.

So, I unlearn what today demands I know

and instead, consume what the present gently offers.

Each layer of existence unfolds,

and with it, the gift of speaking with more clarity, writing more honestly.

To find a calm pace in life—

this is what resonates.

This is what Kinfolk calls travel.

A journey inward,

to discover what life offers

when I allow myself to simply flow—

becoming both the story I consume

and the story I become.

Am I Unlearning to learn Or learning to unlearn?