In a recent Nourishing Movement class, as I bobbled the shift from one movement to the next, these words bubbled out, “The transitions are the tricky parts.” Transition truth, that. In movement and otherwise.

Right now, we are all in the midst of a massive transition: feeling our way, choosing what to do and not do, what to keep and what to let go.

Over the years, I’ve written often about my personal, often jangly, transitions. For the next few weeks, I’ll revisit some pieces I’ve written to see what they might have to offer all of us for this big, sticky, tricky, communal one.

This week, I’m frankly feeling tired and needing to let go of some of the things I’m doing. So I’m offering a poem and a, well, I guess the second offering is a poem, too.

What might you let go of to make more space for yourself?

Alive. On some level being alive can seem like a bare minimum, a baseline. When nothing else is working, I can think, well, at least I'm alive. Instead of seeing it as a given, I want to see aliveness as an enormous miracle, as the whole point.

Some time ago, my husband Frank told me about a philosophical piece he’d read that suggested that the goal of life is aliveness. I remember talking about it and agreeing. Aliveness is where it’s at.

When I read the piece by Sean D. Kelly called Waking Up to the Gift of Aliveness in the New York Times Opinion section, I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it.

In our practice this week, we continue to play with the theme for May, No Time to Rush and in particular, allowing things to unfold in the time they take…whatever that is.

This is not easy if you are a worrier like me.

I’ve been a worrier as long as I can remember. My sweet mom used to give me strands of smooth worry beads to carry in my pocket to help ease the thread of anxious thoughts. Once she gave me a broad flat smooth stone with a divot in the center for my thumb. I rubbed it so hard, I broke it in half.