Setting Intentions: Rootedness

Hi, friends. Long time no see :)

I’m sure a more holistic update will come to me (and all of you) eventually, but for now let’s just admit that 2025 was… a lot. We can leave it at that for now.

Instead, I’d like to share a little bit about the reading habit (obsession?) that pretty much got me through the past 365 days. It started as an escape, really - a way to leave behind the realities of our broken world, and to delve into stories so unlike our truth that I could almost believe I was in them. Over time, the reading shifted - toward writers and stories that are closer to our reality, sometimes offering commentary on it directly. In the current moment, I’m reading to learn. I’m reading to be challenged. On more challenging days, I’m reading to be held.

I’ve read in all manner of places in the past year: airports, Lyfts, coffee shop lines in dozens of states. But my favorite place has been in the living room of my apartment in St. Paul. This room is what made me fall in love with the unit and decide on the spot that I would rent it. Two full walls are windowed, and in the morning and the evening, the light comes streaming in, as if to say, “here I am.”

The past year has made me question all manner of things I hadn’t paid much mind to before. I worried and wondered whether I should leave my job - whether I was good enough for it, whether I even wanted it. I worried about loved ones near and far. I worried about the state of our world more broadly. I’ve wondered what it’s all for. I hadn’t experienced this level of faithlessness before. In November, I finally admitted to myself that I’d been depressed in a way I have witnessed in people I love, but had never before experienced myself.

Each morning I’ve been in my St. Paul apartment, then, I’ve retreated into books. I’ve gathered myself and my coffee, and I’ve read before I started my work day. It’s been my way of taking time for myself before I have to deal with everything else. And each morning, at some point, the sun pokes out from the tops of the houses, through the trees, and shines on me. Sometimes gently, but often boldly. Streaming in, a reminder that even in the hardest times, there is light.

from April, when all I had in the apartment was my mattress :)

It sounds simple, perhaps, but these are the moments I have felt closest to the sacred this year. Not looking for the light, really - instead, letting it come in its own time. These moments are almost small epiphanies: a moment in which I suddenly think, “there you are.”

I’m not making many promises to myself for 2026. The past year reminded me just how much isn’t up to me. But you can be sure I’ll be reading in the mornings, ready to greet the sun when it’s ready.

Until next time, friends.

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P.S. The other thing that’s brought me back to myself in the past year has been music (nothing new here :)). If you’d like to listen to what I’m listening to as I search for greater rootedness this January, feel free to click here!