THE DEEP DIVE

The deepest roots are the ones I grow within myself.

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It’s been nearly five years — from diagnosis to this place.
Five years of becoming.
Five years of surrender.
Five years of learning that hard things don’t just happen to us — they shape us.
Stretch us…call forth something more honest and whole.

Some people come through the fire and grow bitter — rigid, tight around the edges.
Others — by grace, or grief, or some mystery deeper than words — use all of it to birth a spirit more pliable than before.

The hard moment doesn’t just disrupt us — it dares us to to peel away the layers, invites us to listen and lean in.

We take the deep dive — away from the shallowness to what lies within.
Into shadow. Into silence. Into the long and tender unbecoming that allows us to reinvent, blessing what is lovely, releasing what no longer serves.

In this space I am not merely going deeper — I am becoming deeper.

This time, I’ve been away from home long enough to be set adrift, my mind becoming a little chaos — not loud, not frantic — just a soft unraveling.
I forget what day it is, what suitcase my pills are in, what creative work my hands are made for. And I look for moments to come back to myself. Small and soft opportunities to ground.

Last night, I liberated two pillows from the lobby.
Not stealing them — exactly — but relocating them to my room.
Feather-stuffed moors for a spirit untethered. A way of saying, This space is mine, for now.

Creating home where I am is my trademark—it’s not only about connecting with everything that surrounds me, but with the space within. It’s a refusal to accept that temporary equals superficial—both the disposition of people and place.  

I didn’t think anyone would notice.
But this morning — as I entered into a sweet conversation with a bellman I’d met the day before — I felt the confession bubbling up in me like a child.
“That was you?” he mused.
“I was fluffing the sofas this morning and wondered where two of them had gone!”

Astounding he had noticed. In the sea of swirling suitcases and marble floors — he hadn’t missed a thing.

Noticing…and being noticed. The act of making home right where you are. It’s both unexpected and breathtaking to find ourselves in unfamiliar territory and choosing to settle in, gently, intentionally, soul-first.

The deep dive isn’t always the big moment.
It doesn’t always look like drama, diagnosis, or loss.
Sometimes it looks like a quiet conversation in a busy hotel lobby.
Sometimes it feels like a silent surrender: Remember who you are.

It’s not the unraveling that defines us — it’s the journey back to self.
The quiet anchoring. The listening that leads to becoming…again and again until we learn what is meant.

Wherever we go, we are invited:
To dive deeper.
To lean closer.
To live more honestly.

Even here.
Even now.
Even this.

NOTES:

It may not surprise you but I rearranged my hotel room—adding feather-stuffed pillows [from the lobby] and seafoam-colored throws, the lamp moved closer to the bedside, the chair and ottoman shifted to the opposite corner to take full advantage of the view.

This is my way of steadying, my way of making what is temporary my own. There is nothing incidental about the passing of time, nothing unimportant about the places we are.

It’s the noticing that makes us “part of,” the willingness to offer ourselves as essential to the scene. This is the deep dive of existence, believing that “transitionary” has potential to be “transcendent” if we determine to make it that way.