fog, tea, morning light
It’s quiet here today. The trees are almost bare, their branches tracing the slow exhale of the season. I lit cedar this morning, poured hot tea into my favorite chipped mug, and felt the old familiar ache, the kind that says something is asking to be remembered.
Maybe you know that ache too.
The one that hums under your daily life in the grocery line, between tasks, while folding laundry. It’s the ache that says, I’ve forgotten something sacred.
For generations, women were the weavers of that sacred remembering. We knew the medicines of the earth, the language of our bodies, the songs that called our spirits home. But somewhere along the way, we were taught to doubt it all, to outsource wisdom, to silence instinct, to move faster than our hearts could keep up.
This season feels like an invitation to slow down and rethread ourselves back into our bodies, back into community, back into the great web of life that holds us.
some ways I’m practicing this rethreading:
— Tend the altars. Not just the visible ones with candles, salt bowls, or wildflowers, but the living altars that exist in the spaces where your life gathers: your morning breath, the warm light on your kitchen counter, the clutter on your desk, the ache in your chest that hasn’t spoken yet.
Every place you touch regularly is an altar of relationship. When you wipe the table slowly, breathe before answering a message, or acknowledge a heaviness in your heart, you are tending the unseen. Care is a form of prayer. Reverence is a way of living, not just ritualizing.
— Practice small remembering. We are rarely asked to remember everything at once, only to remember in small, honest moments. Say your own name softly when you wake up, as if calling your spirit gently back into your body. When you make tea, greet your ancestors, even if you don’t know their names, with a simple thank you for my life. Let the way you tie your shoes, open the curtains, or gather your hair become tiny ceremonies that stitch you back into yourself. These small remembrances accumulate. They re-thread you.
— Choose reverence over rush. Notice the exact moment you abandon yourself to urgency when you eat standing up, scroll past your own intuition, or interrupt your breath. Rushing is a spell; reverence is the antidote. Pause before closing the door and feel the world outside waiting to greet you. Eat slowly enough to taste what’s feeding you. Let someone finish their sentence, especially when their voice quivers with truth. Reverence is not grand or performative; it’s a decision to treat life like it matters.
— Grieve as devotion. Grief is not the opposite of love; it is love stretched beyond what the heart knows how to hold. Let the tears that rise for your own life, for the world’s suffering, for what was lost or never fully given, be honored instead of hidden. Don’t rush the sorrow; it’s one of the few teachers that doesn’t lie. When you sit with your grief, you are sitting with the depth of your care. Let your mourning be a devotion to what you value. Let it carve you more open, not closed.
— Gather. Women weren’t meant to heal alone. Gather in circle, even if only two of you. Share soup. Share stories. Share silence. Let your voice shake if it needs to; the shaking is just truth asking to be felt. Community doesn’t erase suffering, but it softens the edges. Allow yourself the medicine of being seen, especially in the places you thought made you unlovable. This is how we remember ourselves: together.
— Let love be practical. Love is not just the big mystical moments; it’s also the smallest, most ordinary gestures. Pay the compliment you’re thinking instead of swallowing it. Offer help without assuming it won’t matter. Light a candle for someone struggling, even if they’ll never know. Tell your friend she matters. Hold the door. Softly whisper “I’m proud of you” to yourself. This is what love looks like in motion, grounded, simple, human, real.
I’m remembering that the work of healing isn’t about becoming something new; it’s about returning.
Returning to the wisdom that’s already humming in your bones.
Returning to the weave that never forgot you.
Thank you for being part of this remembering.
May your week be slow, kind, and filled with small moments of reverence.
Deepest Munay,
Joaquina 🦋
Woven Threads of Wisdom
❤️ If this letter stirred something in you, forward it to a woman you love. We rise by remembering together.
