Between Grief and Devotion

There have been two paths existing simultaneously in me for a while now.

One is the path of liminal space.
Of watching the old version of myself decay.
Of sitting with grief — personal, collective, planetary.
Of feeling the quiet exhaustion that comes from being aware of what is happening in the world.

The more I’ve come to understand my nervous system — its deeper role in my existence, the things that shaped it, the things that disrupt it, the things that help regulate it — the more I’ve noticed how often it rests in a low-level place of discomfort.

Not over-stimulated.
Not in crisis.
But not fully steady either.
Not quite grounded enough to make daily decisions from a sovereign, settled place.

This path is powerful. It alchemises. It deepens.
But it is heavy.

The other path feels different.

It is slower — but slow by choice.
It is where Love and Joy seem to rest more easily.
It looks like noticing beauty in ordinary things. Curating a home with care. Watching light move across a wall. Stepping outside and really seeing what is growing.

It doesn’t ignore what is happening across the globe.
It doesn’t deny grief.

But it offers another way of relating.

Hope.
Faith.
Attention.

This is a path of devotion.

A remembering that the smallest acts matter.
That showing up daily — whether to prayer, to running, to land, to plant — slowly returns us to ourselves.

For me, devotion looks like tending the garden.
Learning the ancestral land I live upon.
Developing right relationship and reciprocity with human and more-than-human beings.

It looks like choosing where to place my attention.

For a long time, I have been most familiar with the shadow path. It has shaped me. It has given me depth. It has made me capable of sitting with grief — my own and others’.

But living there most of the time has also exhausted me.
It has isolated me.
It has kept my nervous system hovering in that low, uncomfortable hum.

I don’t believe one path is better than the other.
I don’t believe we are meant to abandon grief for beauty, or beauty for grief.

But I am noticing where I have been living.
And I am noticing what my body is asking for now.

More steadiness.
More devotion.
More deliberate, loving attention.

Not as avoidance.
Not as bypass.
But as balance.

Perhaps the question isn’t which path we are on.
Perhaps it is simply — where is my attention resting? And is it nourishing me?

For now, I am choosing to tend what steadies me.
To deepen relationship with land and plant.
To practise small, ordinary acts of devotion.

And to trust that both paths will still be there when they are needed.