Terra Incognita
Alchemy, Attention, and Turning Toward the Light
Written in the days between the longest night and the turning of the year.
Winter Solstice has always felt less like an ending and more like a crucible. A place and time when the darkness of the longest night lingers just long enough to change us. It’s been three years since my father’s death and nearly two years since the house fire that claimed all our belongings. I have remained largely silent during this time, listening more than speaking, unsure of what could be said without diminishing the complexity of grief, change, and uncertainty —realities so many of us are quietly carrying. But this morning, sunbeams pulled my heart towards connection.
Inspired by Suleika Jaoud’s The Book of Alchemy, I committed to one hundred days of returning to my own Take a Moment practice, letting the journal prompts and shared wisdom serve as a container that helped turn fear toward curiosity and keep me close to what was quietly transforming. This practice has sharpened my awareness of how much suffering exists beyond my own life and amplified my sense of urgency around the need for community care and presence right now. We are, in so many ways, living in terra incognita together.
Like many other humans, I am a meaning making machine seeking to form predictions and explanations out of patterns and rhythms as a reflex of survival. I think it is a way of regulation for me, a way to create order out of chaos. Over time, “Taking a Moment” has become more than a wellness habit. It has become an anchor that tethers me to steadiness where I can notice the subtle truths and name the cruel facts of life and the beautiful facts of life that somehow seem to endlessly coexist. It’s with brave attention that I return to Rilke’s Living the Questions, holding these tensions through intentional pauses of stillness that make space to remember, stay curious and open, and pay closer attention —especially to love.
Since completing my 100 day project, I now understand alchemy to be carried as a trusted companion to help us resist the urge to transform suffering into something shiny or resolved, but to lure us to stay present with what has been broken long enough for a deeper essence to emerge. My experience revealed that nothing suddenly resolves, but with pocketsful of patience I kept returning to the questions and finding my way back, again and again, to what felt most essential in each moment. It slowly became a ritual of making a small clearing, a place to pause, to notice, and to stay present without needing a map. Over time, this practice became less about discipline and more about ritual to make daily space for longing, curiosity, and creative attention without needing to know where they might lead. The steadiness of returning each day offered just enough structure, while leaving room for surprise and improvisation. In that way, Take a Moment became something that quietly held me during a season of profound distress. It was the same anchor I invite others to return to when outcomes were unclear, and when simply staying present with what was unfolding was enough.
Our attention, I’m learning, can discover enchantment as a form of resistance. Together, we can harness what is life-giving, not bypassing what is hard, but meeting what is unfolding with compassionate presence. I wish to believe in our shared capacity to hold one another in this work and to create wide open avenues for threads of light to reach even the darkest places. I’m continuing to shape what comes next, with invitations to restore, reflect and navigate this unmapped terrain together. Slowly, intentionally, alongside one another —as co-conspirators for love.
Companions on the Path
Lately, a few simple companions have been walking with me:
Music gathered into a small Spotify playlist, moving like a slow walk through a winter forest, with pauses and clearings along the way
Daily moments with a Sacred Threads oracle card
Journaling alongside The Book of Alchemy
The living poetry of unhurried time among the trees themselves
As the year turns, I’m grateful for what has accompanied me here, and curious about what will continue to unfold.
With care,
Pam
