The Eastern seaboard is blanketed in an early snow. California is burning. It looks foggy outside, that hazy, sentimental kind of mist usually reserved for Christmas morning. The sunsets have been spectacular. You could almost be forgiven for thinking the apocalypse is beautiful.

It feels like I’ve come—not full circle, but full circuit. Not an intersection or a repeat of where I was, but a full revolution along the spiral path. A year ago, California was burning and my marriage was falling apart. Now, California is burning and I am beginning to put myself back together.

In October, I went to a women’s weekend retreat. What I heard wasn’t new to me, for the most part, but I was receptive in a way I hadn’t been before. It was magical. The way pieces of my life clicked into perspective. The clear lines that connected my thoughts to my emotions to my actions. The fault lines in my relationship with myself and with others.

I saw, and I shifted. Am shifting. Am becoming more myself than I have been in a very long time.

I am allowing, encouraging myself to treat this life like a practice. To fail spectacularly. To feel what I feel and need what I need. To be in my body. To be kind to myself.

To be kind to myself.