Leaving the Seed in the Dark

There is a kind of violence in constantly checking for growth.

For years, I lived like someone who keeps pulling a seed from the soil to see if it has grown roots yet.

What an aggressive way to keep checking for progress.

And yet, that’s exactly what I’ve done.

I’ve spent so much of my life searching outside myself for meaning. Hunting for some grand, elusive purpose. As though my worth were hidden somewhere in the distance, waiting for me to be clever enough, healed enough, or deserving enough to find it.

I thought if I kept working on myself, learning, growing, and becoming, eventually I’d arrive.

Somewhere.

I’m not entirely sure where I thought I was going. But I was certain there was somewhere I was supposed to be.

And now, at forty-something, entering perimenopause, buying a house after working in the same place for nearly twenty-one years, and watching multiple chapters of my life come to a close, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve been going about it wrong all along.

Maybe my purpose isn’t something I need to find.

Maybe my purpose is simply to be.

The Space Between the Tower and the Star

In Tarot, the Tower is the card of collapse. The structures we’ve built, the things we’ve believed would hold us, come tumbling down. Sometimes without warning. Sometimes despite our desperate attempts to keep them standing.

I’ve had my share of Towers. A divorce. A lost job. Several unexpected moves. Relationships that began with so much hope and ended in heartbreak. One after another. There were years when it seemed that every time I managed to get my feet beneath me, something else came along to knock me down.

And then came the healing. The long, sometimes lonely process of putting myself back together. Learning to recognize patterns. Understanding why I made certain choices, why I stayed when I should have left, why I kept reaching for things that couldn’t hold me.

I’ve done so much work on myself. And I don’t regret any of it.

But at some point, I think I started treating healing like another thing I needed to accomplish. Another destination. Another version of myself I was supposed to become.

Somewhere along the way, healing had become another way of telling myself I wasn’t quite enough yet.

I would begin to feel hopeful, as though something new was finally opening up, and then a door would close. A romantic interest would disappear without explanation. An idea I was excited about would lose its momentum. A new passion would flicker and fade. And I’d find myself wondering what I was doing wrong.

Was there another lesson I needed to learn?

Something I hadn’t healed?

Was there some part of myself I still needed to examine?

Why did it seem that every time I was ready to move forward, I was asked to wait?

Wait. Wait. Wait.

I’ve spent so much time in the space between the Tower and the Star.

The Tower has already fallen. I’ve walked through the wreckage. I’ve gathered the pieces I wanted to keep and left behind those I no longer needed. And yet, I keep waiting for the Star. Waiting for the moment when everything finally makes sense. When the doors open. When love arrives. When the work I’ve done on myself produces something tangible I can point to and say,

See? It was all worth it.

But what if that’s just another way of pulling up the seed?

What if I’ve been so busy looking for evidence that I’m growing that I haven’t allowed myself to enjoy the life I’m already living?

The Woman Beneath the Star

Last weekend, I attended an event with a rather unusual invitation: Come as an archetype.

I chose the Star. Not simply as a costume, but as something I wanted to claim for myself.

In Tarot, the Star follows the Tower. After the collapse comes hope. After the destruction comes the possibility of something new. I’ve always loved that—the idea that after everything falls apart, there is still light.

And perhaps that’s why I chose her.

At one in the morning, I left the event and began walking down a quiet, empty road, dressed as the Star. I’m sure I was quite a sight—a woman walking alone in the middle of the night, dressed like a celestial being, with very little traffic and not another pedestrian in sight.

A car slowed beside me. A young man leaned out and asked if I was alright. I assured him I was, and he continued on his way.

A little farther down the road, I passed a closed gas station. The parking lot was empty except for a coyote standing beneath the solitary light of a streetlamp. He stopped me in my tracks.

We looked at one another. And for a moment, the world seemed to slow.

I don’t know how long we stood there. Probably only a few seconds. But there was something about the way he looked at me that made the encounter feel much longer—as though he were asking me a question:

Are you okay?

The same question the young man had asked just moments before.

I’ve been thinking about those two encounters ever since. A young man and a wild creature, both stopping to acknowledge a woman walking alone in the dark. One spoke. The other simply watched.

I don’t know what the coyote was thinking. Perhaps he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. But I love looking for signs and symbols, confirmations, the little moments when the ordinary world seems to become extraordinary. Dressed as the Star, standing beneath a streetlight face-to-face with a coyote… of course I wondered what it meant. I still do.

But I keep coming back to the question: Are you okay?

And the truth is, I was. I am.

Even though I don’t know what’s coming next. Even though some of what I’ve wanted hasn’t materialized. Even though I’ve had to let go of people, possibilities, and versions of my future I once believed were meant for me.

I was walking down that road feeling more than okay, and yet completely unmoored. Maybe because I’m no longer attached to the life I thought I was supposed to have, and I haven’t quite figured out what the next one looks like.

For so long, I believed I needed to know. And for one brief moment, I didn’t.

I was simply there. A woman dressed as the Star, standing in the dark, looking into a coyote’s eyes.

And that was… enough.

Leaving the Maiden Behind

I’ve been thinking a lot about the transition from Maiden to Wise Woman.

We live in a world obsessed with youth. With beginnings. With possibility. With the idea that our best years are ahead of us, if we work hard enough to reach them. There’s always something more to achieve. Something to improve. Another version of ourselves to become.

And I’ve participated in that pursuit for most of my life. I’ve wanted to be better. Healthier. Wiser. More successful. More desirable. More healed. I’ve wanted to understand myself so thoroughly that I could somehow prevent the next heartbreak, the next disappointment, the next Tower from falling.

But life doesn’t work that way.

And I’m beginning to wonder whether the Wise Woman understands something the Maiden doesn’t yet know.

That life isn’t a series of accomplishments we collect until we’ve finally earned the right to be happy. That wisdom doesn’t mean we stop making mistakes. That healing doesn’t guarantee we’ll never hurt again.

And that becoming isn’t something we have to keep doing in order to be worthy.

Perhaps the Wise Woman is simply a woman who has lived long enough to understand that she doesn’t need to keep proving herself.

I don’t think I’m leaving behind the Maiden’s curiosity, her hope, or her desire for adventure. I still want all those things. I still want love. I still want to create. I still want to experience things I haven’t even imagined yet.

But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life believing that I’m somehow incomplete until they arrive.

There’s a difference between wanting more from life and believing the life you have isn’t enough.

Putting Down Roots

There’s something rather beautiful about buying a house at this particular moment in my life.

After so many years of moving through change, uncertainty, and rebuilding, I’m putting down roots. Actual roots. A place to call my own. A place to tend. To grow things. To make beautiful. To simply live.

And that’s what I’m learning to do within myself, too.

For so long, I believed I had to engineer my life—imagine every step before taking it, know where I was going and what I needed to do to get there. When things didn’t work out, I’d go searching for the reason.

What was the lesson? What did I miss? What was the Universe trying to tell me?

I still love the idea that the Universe speaks to us.

I love the divine, articulative spiral of life. The way experiences seem to circle back, revealing something we couldn’t see the first time around. I love the possibility that a coyote standing beneath a streetlight might carry a message meant just for me.

I don’t want to lose that part of myself.

But I am beginning to recognize that constantly searching for signs and confirmations can become another way of asking the Universe for permission. Permission to trust myself. Permission to move forward. Permission to believe I’m on the right path.

And I don’t need permission anymore.

I can notice the signs without needing to decipher them. I can appreciate the mystery without requiring an answer, and I can trust that the seed is growing even when I can’t see what’s happening beneath the soil.

Roots grow in the dark. Without applause. Without recognition. Without anyone standing over them, checking to see whether they’re doing what they’re supposed to do.

And eventually, something breaks through the surface. Not because someone kept digging it up to check, but because it was given the time and space to grow.

I’ve spent enough time digging up the seed to look for roots. I’m ready to leave the seed alone.

I Am the Star

I don’t know what comes next.

I don’t know whether love is waiting around the corner, whether some new creative endeavor will take hold, or whether the life unfolding before me will look anything like the one I’ve imagined. I actually don’t even know what to imagine at this point in life.

And for the first time, I’m beginning to feel okay with that.

Not because I’ve stopped wanting. Not because I’ve given up. But because I’m tired of treating every disappointment as evidence that I haven’t quite arrived. I’m tired of looking at closed doors and wondering what they say about my worth. I’m tired of waiting to become someone who is finally ready to receive the life she wants.

I’ve been ready all along.

The Star doesn’t appear when we’ve finished healing.

She’s been there the entire time, even when we couldn’t see her.

I’ve spent days thinking about that encounter. Looking for the symbolism. Searching for the meaning.

Now I wonder whether the meaning is much simpler than I first imagined.

I was okay.

I didn’t need to know where the road was taking me to continue walking.

I didn’t need the coyote to deliver a message.

For one brief, beautiful moment, I wasn’t searching for the Star in the sky.

I was the Star.

And it’s time I let myself shine without constantly checking to see whether anyone notices.

The seed is in the ground.

The roots are growing.

And I am learning to leave them alone.

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ❤︎