You Already Know

A few reminders for the road home

Hello there, friend.

I want to talk to you today — as someone still learning, still walking the same path you are walking. Some days I move gracefully. Some days I trip over myself. But I keep moving, and so do you. That is the practice.

Here is what I have found to be true. Hard, sometimes. But true.

The mess is a sign you showed up.

Sometimes life feels like a kitchen after a big dinner. There are pots everywhere, the counter is sticky, and you are standing there wondering where to begin. That is normal. That is human. The mistake we make is thinking the mess means something is wrong with us.

It means you cooked. You showed up. You lived. The cleanup is just the next step — the natural continuation of a life fully used.

“The saint was a sinner who kept going toward the light.”

So keep going. Even through the mess. Especially through the mess.

Your body is trying to tell you something. Listen.

Right now, as you are reading this, take one slow breath. Just a quiet, honest breath — for you alone. Feel where you are holding tension. Your shoulders. Your jaw. Your stomach. That tightness is information. It is your body being faithful to you.

Your body is the most faithful messenger you have. It tells the truth. It holds what you have yet to say out loud. Start there. Put a hand on your chest and ask, gently: what do I need right now?

Nine times out of ten, you already know the answer.

You are already ready. You just have to begin.

There is a version of you waiting on the other side of enough preparation, enough healing, enough certainty — and that version will wait forever. That version is a story we tell ourselves to stay comfortable where we are.

Readiness is what grows inside you because you started. You act and are prepared by the doing. The beginning is the preparation.

“God will provide the food, but He will not cook the dinner.”

Get up. Start the rice. The rest will follow.

Comparison is a thief. Come back to your own life.

You picked up your phone this morning. You saw someone’s success, someone’s body, someone’s beautifully lit breakfast. And for a moment — maybe longer — you felt less. That is what comparison does. It takes everything you are and asks you to measure it against someone else’s highlight reel.

Here is the truth: you are in a conversation with your own becoming. That is the only conversation that matters. Your colleague, your old friend, your past self — they are all on their own path. And so are you.

Put the phone down. Come back to your life. It is waiting for you, right here.

Forgiveness is something you do entirely for yourself.

Some of you are carrying a weight that has long since served its purpose. An old wound, an old grudge, an old version of a story you keep telling yourself. And the telling is costing you more than the original hurt ever did.

Forgiveness is the quiet decision you make, alone, to put down the stone you have been carrying. It is an act of grace toward yourself. You are worthy of the freedom on the other side of it. The other person can remain exactly where they are.

Lay it down, friend. You have carried it long enough.

Joy is the whole point.

Somewhere along the way, many of us got the idea that seriousness was a virtue. That struggle was proof of depth. That if we were laughing or dancing or eating something delicious with people we loved, we were avoiding the real work.

That is backwards. Joy is the real work. It is the destination and the path at once. When you laugh until your stomach hurts, when you watch the light change over water, when you hold someone you love and feel your whole body soften — that is the sacred. You are already inside it.

Let yourself feel good. You are allowed.

Take the one step you can see. That is enough.

Right now, the only thing you need to do is this: take the next small step. The one step visible from where you are standing. The staircase will reveal itself. The journey will unfold.

The path shows itself as you walk it. That is the nature of the thing. Trust that. Move anyway. The clarity will come.

I believe in you, friend. Completely and sincerely. I believe that inside you, right now, there is something whole. Something patient and luminous and steady — something that has remained intact through everything you have been through.

You get to come back to it freely. You just have to be willing to remember.

You already know the way home.

With love, always.