the return
I spent September getting quiet. Really quiet.
After a season of tremendous loss and grief, I went to Maui knowing I needed space. I wasn't entirely sure what I needed the space for. I wasn't looking for answers, and I certainly wasn't trying to hurry myself through grief. I just knew I needed less noise.
So I gave myself the gift of space. I scrolled less and read more. I took long walks. I made things. I ate nourishing food. I watched the light change. I listened to the ocean. I let my days have empty spaces in them.
And sometimes, those empty spaces were deeply uncomfortable. There were moments when I wanted desperately to fill them. Pick up my phone. Find something to watch. Scroll. Consume. Distract myself. Do something with the quiet.
Because we have become very good at filling the spaces of our lives. There is always another podcast to listen to. Another show to watch. Another expert telling us how to heal, grow, manifest, improve, regulate, optimize, or become a better version of ourselves. And somewhere along the way, I wonder if we've forgotten how to simply be with ourselves.
So sometimes, in Maui, I sat in the restlessness. I let the space remain empty. And slowly, something began to happen. I could hear myself again. Not dramatically. There wasn't a lightning bolt or some grand revelation on the beach. It was quieter than that. A remembering. A returning. A sense of coming back to my own center after months of being tossed around by circumstances I could not control.
And now that I'm home, I can see something I couldn't quite see while I was there:
Maui was a bridge.
A bridge between one season and another. I want to be careful with those words because I am not suggesting that my season of grief is over. Grief doesn't work that way. There are losses I am still carrying and moments when sorrow arrives without warning.
But I'm beginning to understand that I don't need any of that to disappear before something new can begin.
We can be grieving and becoming at the same time. We can miss what was and still feel curious about what might be. We can carry sorrow and notice beauty. We can be tender and hopeful. We can let something end while allowing something else to quietly begin.
Lately, alongside the grief, I've begun to notice a rustling. Something new. Something gentle. And, dare I say it, something more alive.
Maybe it's no coincidence that I'm feeling this as fall begins. The leaves are starting to let go. The light is changing. Nature is reminding me that transition doesn't always arrive with fanfare. Sometimes it looks like a slow release. A turning inward. A quiet preparation for whatever comes next.
I think Maui gave me the space to notice my own transition. Not because I went there and figured everything out. But because, for once, I stopped trying to. And this has me thinking about something much bigger.
So much of modern wellness culture seems built around the idea that the human experience is a problem to solve. We optimize our mornings. Track our sleep. Hack our habits. Manage our nervous systems. Raise our vibrations. Work on our mindset. Try to become happier, calmer, healthier, more evolved versions of ourselves. And while many of these practices can be useful, I wonder what happens when the pursuit of becoming better keeps us from actually being here.
What if our lives aren't problems to solve? What if the point isn't to perfect the experience of being human? What if the point is to experience it? Fully. Completely. Available to all of it. The grief and the joy. The uncertainty and the awe. The heartbreak and the belly laughs. The endings and the beginnings.
Maybe the invitation isn't to engineer a life in which we only experience the emotions we prefer. Maybe the invitation is to become more available to life itself.
And I think this is where I'm finding my way back to Radical Joy. Or perhaps I'm not finding my way back at all. Perhaps I'm finding my way deeper.
Because Radical Joy was never supposed to mean relentless happiness. It isn't about bypassing pain or plastering positivity over the hard parts of being human. Radical Joy, at its heart, is about aliveness. It's about being here for your life. Noticing it. Participating in it. Letting it touch you. Making room for beauty. Creativity. Nature. Ritual. Pleasure. Rest. Friendship. Community. Wonder. Putting flowers on the table simply because they're beautiful. Walking outside and noticing the air on your skin. Making something with your hands. Turning on the music. Calling someone you love. Watching the leaves fall. Letting an ordinary moment become sacred because you were present enough to notice it.
These aren't ways of escaping the difficult parts of life. They are ways of staying connected to life while the difficult parts are happening. Maybe that's what I understand differently now.
Joy is not the opposite of grief. Joy is one of the ways we remain in relationship with life.
And perhaps Radical Joy is less about trying to feel joyful and more about cultivating the conditions that allow us to be fully alive. To create enough space that we can hear ourselves. To become quiet enough to notice what is stirring. To trust ourselves enough not to immediately fill every uncomfortable space. To let ourselves be changed by what we've lived through without demanding that we know immediately who we are becoming.
To become available to whatever is trying to emerge.
Had I filled every quiet moment in Maui—had I scrolled and consumed and distracted and searched endlessly for answers—I don't know that I would be sitting here today with this clarity. I didn't manufacture what came next. I made room for it. There is a difference. And maybe that is where this new season begins. Not with a five-step plan. Not with a dramatic reinvention. Not with becoming a shinier, more optimized version of myself.
But with space. With listening. With allowing. With a willingness to be surprised by my own life.
I'm home now. Fall is arriving. The leaves are beginning to loosen their grip. And somewhere inside me, something is stirring too. I don't know exactly where it's leading yet. For once, I don't think I need to. I just want to be here for it. Fully. Completely. Available.
