There is a ten-year-old giant Monstera deliciosa in my kitchen unfurling its leaves, unrolling each spear like a ceremonious scroll.

Each new leaf begins tightly wrapped within itself, hidden inside a green spear that looks almost too small to contain what is coming. And yet inside that narrow shape already exists the full design, with every split, every curve, every opening waiting in folded form.

Then one morning, almost without announcement, it begins.

The leaf loosens.

Slow-moving and green-breathing, it starts reaching outward into the blue-open world. At first it hangs there, limp and vulnerable for a while, soft and uncertain, before gradually darkening, strengthening, turning toward the sun-warmed window.

I have become strangely emotional watching this happen.

Perhaps because humans are not so different.

We also spend long periods folded inward.

We carry entire selves inside us long before they become visible to the world. We walk around containing unopened things:

a grief not yet spoken,
a courage not yet required,
a creativity not yet trusted,
a version of ourselves waiting quietly beneath the surface.

And when growth finally comes, it rarely arrives dramatically.

It comes slowly.
Leaf by leaf.
Choice by choice.
Conversation by conversation.

The Monstera does not force her leaves open before they are ready. She does not compare her unfolding to the plant beside her. She simply responds to water, food, and light.

There is wisdom in that.

Especially now, in a culture obsessed with immediacy, performance, and visible transformation. We are encouraged to bloom publicly, rapidly, convincingly. To become something before we have fully formed.

But some things cannot be rushed without tearing.

Tenderness like this requires protection. The leaf emerges from the stem folded inward for a reason. It is not weakness. It is design.

Even the holes in the massive leaves, the beautiful openings called fenestrations, are not flaws. They have a purpose. In the wild rainforest, they allow wind and rain to pass through without destroying the plant. Did you know that in the wild this plant also produces an edible fruit said to taste sweet, like a blend of pineapple and banana?

What appears delicate is actually adaptation.

Survival.

Intelligence.

Humans carry these kinds of openings too.

The losses that changed us.
The heartbreaks that softened us.
The years that hollowed out space for empathy, wisdom, compassion.

We spend so much of life trying to hide our openings when perhaps they are part of what allows us to survive the storm.

I am in my third act of life but I am still full of things waiting to unfurl.

I can feel them beneath the surface sometimes, pressing gently against my edges, like new ways of seeing, new ways of loving, new versions of myself not yet fully formed.

At my age, people speak as though becoming is over. As though we arrive at the last act and are somehow supposed to be fixed and finished.

But I do not feel finished.

I feel root-deep and beginning again.

I feel parts of myself still reaching toward the light, still loosening, still learning how to open.

Lately I have been thinking that maturity may simply be this:

becoming less afraid of our unfolding.

Trusting that what is meant for us isn’t that far reaching as it already exists somewhere inside us, folded carefully beneath the surface, waiting for the right season of light.

And perhaps the real work of a life, and of writing, especially poetry, is not becoming someone else entirely, but slowly learning how to unfurl into who we already are.

When I am searching for answers and meaning in my life, I always find it in nature. This is a poem I wrote last year about unfurling wildness.

Listen here:

The Dahlias Don't Ask 


The dahlias don’t ask.

They arrive resplendent,
unfurling into wind,
spinning symmetry
into bloom.

Nothing here is measured.

It grows by instinct,
by memory,
by some old whisper
in the soil.

This is where I come
when I need reminding.

Even in disorder,
design.

And I, too,
a wild thing,
unpruned.


-mary ann burrows 

My Blessing For You:

May you trust your unfolding.

May what is folded within you loosen gently toward the light.

May your openings become places where wisdom enters and love passes through.

And may you remember that becoming does not end simply because the years move forward.

Some souls are still unfurling right to the very end.

---

With love,

Mary Ann

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Sardines were a favourite of my grandfather.

I remember looking up at him standing at the kitchen counter, peeling back the tin—that soft metallic pull—releasing the odour of those little fish, salty, a little sharp, ocean-deep, into the room.

He would scoop the sardines onto a dry piece of toast. No butter. No garnish. No apology. He would devour them.

Just simple. Just enough.

There was something steady about the way he did it. The same motion. The same meal. A certainty.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. It was just something smelly that my grandfather ate.

But lately I’ve noticed something else.

Sardines are trending.

Yes, the tiny fish in the can have come back around.

They’re everywhere again—touted as the latest superfood. Experts talk about omega-3s, selenium, heart health, and brain health. NBC has reported that sardines have even been called “skincare in a can,” with promises of glowing skin, weight loss, and longevity. There’s the Sardine Diet, fashion trends featuring sardine-printed dresses, beaded sardine bags, and fish-themed jewelry. YouTube videos, articles, recipes—even entire communities built around things like “tinned-fish date nights.”

The tins themselves have been rebranded with enticing, artistic packaging, all in an effort to cash in on the craze. As one recent Business Insider article put it, “Sardines have been rebranded as a sexy, convenient superfood with premium packaging and a price to match.”

It’s interesting how we rename things, because back in the late 1960s, my grandfather didn’t eat sardines for any of those reasons.

My grandfather was born in 1895. He lived through the Depression as a working adult, in his mid-30s to mid-40s—right in the years when a person is building a life, supporting a family, and making things stretch. He most likely didn’t eat sardines because they were sexy. He ate them because they were easy, inexpensive, and dependable in a time that wasn’t.

I recently saw a Canadian grocery ad from the 1960s showing Brunswick sardines at four tins for 19 cents. The tin in the photo cost $5.29.

Sardines were easy. They didn’t require a can opener, they kept well in the cupboard, and they filled him up.

A small tin of fish.

A piece of dry toast.

Enough.

And now, all these years later, we circle back—with our language and our labels—and someone, somewhere, saw a marketing opportunity in sardines and called it a secret. A solution. A miracle food.

But maybe it was never a secret.

Maybe it was just survival—practical, plain, unadorned.

A tin opened at the kitchen table, no story needed, no explanation offered.

Just something that worked, long before we learned how to talk about it.

And maybe there’s something in that worth remembering.

Our grandfathers and grandmothers lived simply and ate what worked—what lasted, what nourished, what got them through.

They didn’t need a story to justify it.
They didn’t need a vibrant, sexy label to trust it.

And somehow, they knew a thing or two without ever being told.

Not everything that nourishes us needs to be optimized or explained.

Some things were already doing their job long before we learned how to praise them.

A Blessing for You

May you never overlook the ordinary ways your life is already being nourished. May you trust what is simple and enough.

With love,

Mary Ann

Sources

• American Heart Association — Fish and Omega-3 Fatty Acids

• Business Insider Fish Wife Article Business Insider

• NBC News Article “Skincare in a Can” NBC Article

• Schaltegger, Megan. (2024). What Is the Sardine Diet? Delish. Sardine Diet

Photo credit; Mary Ann Burrows 2026

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So,

I’ve been working with my hands again.

There’s something about it—

the slowing down,

the decision to see

and keep going

with what’s in front of me.

I didn’t set out to make anything meaningful.

Just something to hold.

And then this came.

I made a heart

with my hands.

Not the kind that beats

on its own—

but the kind we carry.

The heart that has known

love,

loss,

disappointment,

wonder.

The heart that has been broken,

repaired,

reshaped—

and still leans

toward connection.

I used:

Tinfoil.

Clay.

Recycled bits.

Japanese paper.

Old sheet music.

Pieces that had already

lived another life.

I didn’t plan it.

I just kept adding—

a fragment here,

a colour there,

a little paint,

something torn,

something kept.

I listened.

And somewhere along the way

it started to come alive.

Like this is what we do.

We take what remains

and try to make something

that can still be held.

Not new.

Not untouched.

But ours.

Hearts,

each with their own history,

re-made from what was left.

Forever changed

by love and loss

and loving again.

Still full

of endless possibility.

With love,

Mary Ann

And the beat goes on….

More soon from

The Tending Hearts Project.

A Blessing For You

May you trust your hands

to make something beautiful

from what remains.

May you keep going

with what is in front of you,

and call it enough.

If this found you,

you’re welcome to stay.

Share it with someone

who might need it.

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And if you’d like to walk alongside me,

you can follow here.

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I noticed something the other day.
Not in a grand or celebratory way,
not marked by anything you could point to.

Just a noticing.
And for some reason, it felt like something to share.

I have posted eighty-five articles here on Substack since I began a little over a year ago. Eighty-five times I have sat down, or stood in the kitchen, or pulled over somewhere on a rainy day, or opened a notebook, and followed something small and insistent asking to be heard.

Not everything was clear. Not everything was strong. Some pieces arrived whole. Some had to be gently coaxed into the light. Some felt like offerings. Some felt like questions. Some gathered momentum.

Some barely moved at all.

And still, I placed them.

It’s easy to look at the numbers. Views. Opens. Subscriptions, Shares, Follows. To measure what lands, what spreads, what quietly disappears.

But that isn’t what stayed with me.

What stayed with me was the returning. The decision, again and again, to make a place for something true even when it was imperfect, even when it was unfinished, even I was unsure because it was tender, even when I did not know if it would be received at all.

Because most of what we live does not arrive as something polished.

It arrives as a flicker. A feeling. A line we almost miss.

And the work, I am learning, is simply this:

To notice it and not turn away. To trust that what is small is not insignificant. To trust that what is honest carries its own weight. To keep placing something living into the world without needing to know what it will become.

Not how to be seen. But how to stay. Not how to reach outward. But how to deepen inward. Not how to measure the light, but how to keep lighting it.

And so, in my own small way, I marked it.

With a poem.

Thank you for being here my friend.

with love,

Mary Ann

Seeds


I said, 

here.
this.

Not because it was polished.
Not because a thousand eyes
would fall upon it
like hungry birds on seed.
But because something in me
kept tapping the glass,
kept rustling the hedge,
kept saying look,
look at this strange and beautiful, breakable thing.

A one-legged robin
still busy with morning.
A lost ring.
A slow drive down Zero Ave.
A sea with its old blue appetite.
A woman refusing
the dimmer switch.

And grief,
lord, grief,
arriving in all its outfits:
ocean one day,
ash the next,
then some bright thing
I almost did not recognize as light
until it warmed my hands.

Some pieces were lifted high.
Some barely made it past the porch.
Some went out into the world
like a jar of raspberry jam left on a neighbour’s step,
a gift without a name,
without brass bands,
without anyone saying yes, yes, you’ve got this.

Still
I set them down.

Like stones to mark a trail.
Like poppy seeds flung
into the maybe of spring.
Like breadcrumbs, almost,
left for the self I used to be—
the one standing in the rain,
collecting evidence
of a life well lived.

And now, looking back,
what undoes me
is the devotion.

The coming back.

The faithful, unruly gesture
of making a place for wonder
in a world forever asking
to see the proof.

Eighty-five times
I opened my hands.

Eighty-five times
I let something living leave me.

Eighty-five times
I said yes
to the small luminous thing—
the feather, the ache, the shimmer,
the almost-song lifting.

And maybe that is the work.

Not to stand above the light
counting.

Not to measure its worth
by what it returns.

But to keep striking the match.
To cup the flame in both hands
as you would a small wild bird.
To shelter it when the wind rises.
To find the words.
And to pass it on.


-Mary Ann Burrows

A Blessing For You.

May you keep returning
to the small, insistent voice within you.
The one that does not rush,
the one that asks only to be heard.

May you trust what arrives,
even when it feels unfinished,
even when it feels uncertain.

May you make space for it anyway.

If you’ve been here for one piece or many

thank you.

And if you’re making something of your own, quietly, imperfectly, without knowing who will see it please…share it.

and keep going.

Photo taken by me a few years ago on my farm in the summer when my bee apiary was in full bloom. Right now I am getting ready to plant my spring seeds. Looking forward to all the flowers. (BTW Happy First Day of Spring)

For more of my work please visit my website at WEBSITE . If this piece touched you, please consider subscribing or sharing my work with someone who may need a gentle encouragement to keep writing.

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Others roll their eyes the moment you mention it because they think it’s pure woo woo.

I understand both reactions.

To be honest, I’m a little woo woo at heart.

I mean, think about it. I spend a lot of my life at the edge of transitions, life, death, grief, beginnings, endings. I sit with invisible things people don’t always know how to name. My writing is full of metaphor, pattern, and meaning. If I pretended I wasn’t drawn to mystery, I’d be lying.

But I also believe not all woo is created equally.

I enjoy using tarot myself, but not as a way to predict my future. I’m not looking for answers about what will happen next.

I use it more the way a child might keep a stone in their pocket.

Something small. Something tactile. Something that helps you stay awake to the world. Something that gently shifts your perspective.

Carl Jung didn’t dismiss symbols as “woo.” He took them seriously. As Jung put it, tarot cards are “psychological images, symbols with which one plays, as the unconscious seems to play with its contents.”

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés carries that thread too. In her Mother Night work, she mentions using tarot during her PhD studies, asking fellow classmates what the symbols meant to them. It helped them discover what they were feeling and thinking.

I love that. Not prophecy, but conversation. Not certainty, but a starting place.

And I’ve also seen the other side of it.

Years ago I worked alongside a professional intuitive for a while, and I saw firsthand how easy it is for people to get trapped into believing that spiritual leaders and cards are certainty. I understand the longing people have for that. I also understand the importance of boundaries when using any kind of divination tool.

But that’s not what I’m here for.

For me, tarot cards are a doorway into image and thought. The cards are one way to begin writing when the mind is tired of its own predictable paths.

That’s how tarot feels in my hands. Less fortune telling, more story listening. A small set of archetypal images that helps me enter the deeper current where creativity lives and poems begin to grow.

A card offers a scene. A figure walking. A hand holding a wand. A wheel turning. A woman standing inside a wreath of stars. The mind immediately begins asking questions. I wonder what is happening here. I wonder what this moment holds. I wonder where this story goes next.

I pull a spread almost every day, usually asking, What do I need to know today. And it rarely disappoints. Not because the cards are “right,” but because they guide me inward. They bring me back to what’s actually happening beneath the noise. They help me in my work, in my relationships, and in my own posture toward the day. They help me see life more clearly.

Today I pulled this spread.

The World, the Ace of Wands, and the Knight of Wands

It felt like a simple answer to the question I’d been holding about creativity. As I shuffled the cards I asked, What part does the tarot play in creativity?

• The World card reminded me that the real material is already here: the life I’ve lived, the seasons I’ve survived, the losses I’ve carried, the beauty I keep returning to.

• The Ace of Wands was the spark. The first bright flicker of an image, an idea, a sentence that wants to be born.

• The Knight of Wands was movement — the courage to follow that spark, to write it down, to risk momentum. In that sense, tarot isn’t the author of anything. It’s the match. I’m the one who has to carry the flame.

This spread answered me in a clear creative sequence: wholeness and lived material, then spark, then the courage to move and make something with it.

After this three card spread, I pulled one final clarifier card, asking how tarot specifically helps me with my creativity

I pulled the Three of Pentacles.

The Three of Pentacles is the card of craft, collaboration, and building something meaningful.

Let’s sit and look at the image together.

(card shown is from a deck that was created In the Rider–Waite–Smith tradition (1909), with artwork by Giulia F. Massaglia.)

A craftsman stands on a bench, mid explanation. He is not performing, not selling, simply showing the work as it is. His hands know the material. His body is in it. He is elevated just enough to be seen, but it doesn’t feel like hierarchy. It feels like a collaborative practice.

Below him, two figures hold the plans. They are not there to judge him. They are there to understand. They study the design, then look up at the maker, and you can almost feel the quiet questions moving between them. How did you do that? Why that choice? What are you building toward?

What I love most is the tone of the scene: curiosity without cynicism. Respect without worship.

That is what the relationship between my creativity and tarot feels like. A joint effort. The meeting point between vision and skill, between idea and execution. The blueprint matters, but so does the lived knowledge in the craftsman’s hands. And the work itself, the thing being made, is treated as worthy of attention.

That is what tarot can feel like in the creative process. Not a verdict or a command, but a respectful conversation with the work in progress. An image placed on the table that invites you to look again and build with care.

This card says, to me, that my relationship with tarot is not mystical prophecy. It is craft being refined through dialogue.

And that is exactly how I use tarot. Not as authority, but as a collaborator in my creative process.

The Three of Pentacles suggests to me that tarot helps in three specific ways.

1. It gives me structure for reflection.
Just as the architect in the card holds a blueprint, tarot offers a symbolic framework that helps me look at my inner life from different angles.

2. It invites conversation with the unconscious.
I bring the lived experience. The card brings the symbol. Creativity happens in the meeting place between the two.

3. It supports the craft of writing.
The Three of Pentacles is a work card. It reminds me that creativity is not just inspiration. It is the steady building of something over time.

In other words, tarot is not the architect of my work.

I am.

I like that. It reminds me that I am the source of my writing. My lived experiences, the birth of my children, the death of my son, my relationships, my upbringing, my jobs, my education, my garden, my beekeeping, my flowers, my granddaughter, the support I offer others, and the recent death of my father, are the raw materials.

These are the stones.

And I am the craftsman, slowly chiseling the doorway they form.

Tarot simply helps me step back for a moment, look again at the plans, and return to the work with clearer eyes.

Tarot sits on my side table like a thoughtful collaborator, and that fits beautifully with the way I write and paint and live my life.

For me, tarot is not prophecy, and it is not certainty.

Tarot is simply a starting place for the work.

End Note: If you’re curious, try pulling a single card and asking yourself a simple question: What is this image asking me to notice? Then write for ten minutes, not to be right, just to be awake.

References: —Carl Jung (1933 lecture), quoted in Open Culture

Images from the Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck (1909), illustrated by Giulia F. Massaglia

A few others I’ve written that you might enjoy

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I’ve found myself waiting for her in the mornings. The chubby, soft brown-breasted robin that visits the stone wall outside my window. She first showed up last spring with a beak full of worms, and this week she has returned carrying pieces of straw.

How do I know it’s the same robin?

She only has one leg.

I thought to myself how holy it is that despite her missing leg, she shows up every single day.

I wondered what happened to her, but it doesn’t seem to bother her.

Her return had me thinking about my own life. About the many seasons when I was struggling and still had to show up.

The times I barely had enough money to pay the rent and buy shoes for my daughter, and I showed up anyway.

The times I’ve fallen to my knees after a long stretch of holding someone else through a hard time, barely holding it together myself, and still I kept going.

Somehow, strength arrived. Not the shiny kind. The kind that endures.

I wrote a poem for this robin, and also for the part in myself that kept finding strength in some of the hardest times of my life.

The One-Legged Robin

Bless the one-legged robin,
who returns each morning
 to the stone wall,
 as if the world
 had not wounded her.

She carries straw in her beak
 like offerings,
 pale threads
 for a home.

The wind lifts the feathers
 along her bent wing,
 and still
 she steadies herself.

Not for us.
Not for beauty.
Not for praise.

For the small insistence
 of living.

For the work that must be done
 whether the sky is kind
 or not.

Because there will be mouths.
Because there will be hunger.
Because there will be
 warmth to make
 out of what the day gives.

She does not explain.
She does not stop
 to ask why.

She gathers
 and gathers.

Oh, to love
 without reward.
To build
 with what you can carry.
To return
 to the ordinary
 until it shines
 with holiness.

And still,
 she comes.



— Mary Ann Burrows

A Blessing For You

May something small visit you this morning.
A bird on a wall.
A ray of light across the table.
A moment that asks nothing of you
except your noticing.

May you remember
that showing up is enough.

And if the world has wounded you,
may you still gather.
Worms for the hungry.
Straw for the nest.
May you begin again, and again.

With love,

Mary Ann

(Photo credit: me taken in Spring 2025)

Please visit my site at Mary Ann Burrows for more poetry & stories.

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Thank you for reading slowly.

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I have a secret addiction to pens and paper.

I have been buying pens for years. Every holiday I go on, I am not looking up restaurants or designer clothing shops. Nope. I’m scouring Google Maps for pen and paper stores.

The truth is that I am on a lifelong quest for the perfect pen and piece of paper.

I am always searching for a pen that feels good in my hand, with ink that flows like butter. I am also always on the hunt for paper that feels like skin. Soft, forgiving, receptive. Paper that doesn’t resist me. Paper that understands pressure. Paper that doesn’t blot, doesn’t bleed. Paper that simply holds my words.

There is something about uncapping a pen. Yes, that small, decisive click is music to my ears. It feels like permission. The starting gun. A beginning. A doorway. There is something about how paper feels when I rub it between my fingers. Texture. Resistance. A surface that meets me back and says, “Trust me. I can hold it.”

Screens are efficient.
Paper is intimate.

On paper, I don’t have to be impressive.
On paper, I don’t have to be efficient.
On paper, I don’t have to be agreeable.

On paper, I can be unfinished.
On paper, I can be contradictory.
On paper, I can change my mind mid-sentence and nobody corrects me.

On paper, I can write the ugliest first draft and keep going anyway.
On paper, I can tell the truth without packaging it.
On paper, I can say the tender things out loud.

On paper, I don’t have to explain myself.
On paper, I don’t have to prove anything.
On paper, I can simply be human.

Just ink.
Just breath.
Just the slight drag of nib against fiber.


mb

On second thought, maybe it isn’t an addiction. Maybe it’s devotion.

Today I bought myself what I think just may be the best notebook I’ve held in my hands. Of course it was made in Japan, with paper that is the perfect weight and feel. I want to tell you all about it.

The Right Paper Changes the Sentence

If you are someone who writes by hand, and you know your writing changes when your body is involved, then you already understand how much paper matters.

The drag of the pen.
The resistance or glide.
The way ink settles instead of skidding across the surface.

On the wrong paper, you rush.
On the right paper, you stay.

And that’s why paper matters. For me, it shifts the nervous system of a sentence.

So yes. I bought myself a MIDORI MD Notebook.

It’s made in Japan, of course. The paper inside, MD PAPER, was first developed in the 1960s and refined over decades specifically for writing comfort. Not printing. Not spectacle. Writing.

How paper is made matters. This paper has softness without being slick. I read that Midori’s MD PAPER starts with hardwood pulp, which they say gives the paper a softer feel than conifer pulp. The pulp is broken down in water, then worked until the fibers are just right for writing. They even pay attention to the water itself, because water changes how the sheet forms and how ink behaves once it hits the page. From there, the paper is made into sheets and finished with one purpose in mind: writing comfort.

The weight of paper matters to me too. The Midori MD notebook paper weight is about 80 g/m², and it’s a great weight for a fountain pen. Even with my medium nib and a wet ink like Shin-ryoku, I had only minimal ghosting. It hit the sweet spot for me: light and responsive, but still strong enough to hold the ink cleanly without turning the page into a blur.

And the construction matters. This notebook is thread-stitched, not just glued, so it opens completely flat to a full 180 degrees. I love that. The whole page is available to you. No pressing down the spine. No writing on an angle into a tight gutter, like your words have to squeeze through a doorway.

The Midori notebook is minimal by design. No glossy coating. No loud branding. No instructions or motivational slogans trying to improve you.

Just paper.
Thread.
Space.

They also makes tiny calendar sticker notes you can add to the page, small dated squares that feel like a quiet little gift. Completely unnecessary. Completely delightful. (of course I bought one too)

The store clerk also mentioned that the company has also hosted occasional workshops at their facility in Japan. Can you imagine? The thought of being in the place where these tools begin feels like a kind of pilgrimage, and it’s on my bucket list for sure.

This notebook feels like something made by people who understand that writing is physical. That the hand, the wrist, the breath, the feel, the pace, all of it matters.

So tonight I filled a few pages of my new, beautiful notebook with words. I wrote about my day, simple and sweet, nothing more. I used my old favourite white LAMY pen, filled with dark green Shin-ryoku ink, a gift from my son.

On this paper, the green settles into itself. It darkens at the edges. It pools slightly where I pause. It looks alive and I love it.

The notebook does not hurry me.
The ink does not hurry me.
It just flows like honey.

Sometimes the right paper is not about stationery.

Sometimes it is about giving yourself an invitation that says:

Write. Stay. Take your time.

With love,
Mary Ann

If you’d like to read more, my work is at maryannburrows.com.
Thank you for being here, reading this. Thank you for being here, reading this. If you feel called, share this with someone who loves words, or fountain pens and good paper. Subscribe to stay close. Keep on writing. Take your time.

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Works Cited (MLA)

MIDORI Co., Ltd. A History of MIDORI. MIDORI Co., Ltd., accessed 23 Feb. 2026.

MD Paper Products (Designphil Inc.). MD Notebook. MD Paper Products, accessed 23 Feb. 2026.

MD Paper Products (Designphil Inc.). Commitment to Craft: Paper. MD Paper Products, accessed 23 Feb. 2026.

Stylo. MD Paper – Midori Product Description. Stylo.ca, accessed 23 Feb. 2026.

Fire Horse Says:

I am not here to be enough in the way the world defines it.
I am not a ledger. I am not a brand. I am not my résumé.

I am a living, breathing thing,
my truth pulsing through my veins.
I have carried fire my whole life.
Not to burn the world down,
but to light it up.

So this year I choose
the power of steadiness,
the power of saying what’s true,
the power of becoming simpler, and therefore harder to move.

I live gently but honestly,
tending beauty like a humble altar.
Devotion without drama.
Ritual without spectacle.
Sacred, but not showy.
Telling the story because silence is complicity.
Witnessing others because that is holy work.

And if you hear hooves,
that’s me.

And if my fire makes waves—
good.


Happy Year of the Fire Horse.


Mary Ann 

A Blessing for You

May this Horse year carry you into true momentum.
May courage meet you in small, ordinary moments.
May independence feel like breath with room to choose.
May your creativity return with heat and joy.
May fire bring intensity, clarity, and a steady refusal to shrink.

May you take up your space, without apology.

With love,
Mary Ann

Thank you for being here.
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Photo Credit: Bristol Photography

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I’ve been thinking a lot about personal mythology lately, not the stories we tell publicly, but the ones we live on the inside.

Our personal mythology is the meaning map we build from what we inherited, what happened to us, and the stories we tell ourselves about love, worthiness, safety, and belonging.

Our personal mythology matters because knowing our story helps us tell the truth about our life with tenderness and compassion, and then, hopefully, live differently.

I recently sat down and did a reading for myself with a deck of tarot cards (the Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck). I’ve worked with tarot for over thirty years. They’ve been a partner to my creativity and writing, opening doors as a language of reflection, used as a companion through thresholds, and as a way of paying attention.

Tarot cards have offered inspiration and guidance not by telling me what will happen, but by helping me notice what is already asking to be seen.

I used the cards to name the story underneath my life. And that story is not just mine.

We all carry myths.

They live in the body as much as the mind.

They teach us what to guard, what to divide, what to endure.

This morning I pulled three cards from my tarot deck and laid them out in a Past, Present, Future spread. I sat with a simple question:

What happens when the old story stops holding?

This is what happened.

Past. Two of Cups reversed: a fracture in connection, either with someone else or within myself, where something once mutual became misaligned, and I learned to guard my heart.

Present. Two of Swords reversed: the blindfold is slipping. The stalemate can’t hold. I’m done balancing contradictions just to keep the peace, and I’m finally letting one clear truth in.

Future. The Sun: a return to the essential me, unarmored, honest, and lit from the inside. Not a perfect life, but a clean one. Warmth, clarity, and the courage to be seen.

What this sequence is teaching me:

I can’t unknow what I know anymore. The crossed swords start to fall away. My careful internal filing system of this goes here, that stays over there, don’t look too closely, stops working.

Past: Two of Cups reversed

This is where the break began. A sacred bond turned sideways. Trust cracked. Connection misaligned.

This is where I learned to guard my heart instead of offering it.

That fracture became a chapter in my personal mythology, teaching me that connection was safest at a distance.

Present: Two of Swords reversed

Clarity arrives like bad weather. The blindfold is coming off.

This is the dark truth moving in. The reality of what I see once I stop looking away.

It asks for one brave thing: stop negotiating with what is.

Stop calling numbness peace.

Stop calling avoidance balance.

This card doesn’t demand certainty.

It simply asks for honesty.

The unraveling shows me I’m done living behind a blindfold.

I need to take a look at my life: my relationships, my loyalties, and who gets access to me.

Future: The Sun

This is what becomes possible on the other side of honesty.

What happens when I stop making a home in others, a home in indecision, and start making a home in myself.

Not a perfect life, but a clean one. Warmth, clarity, and the courage to be seen.

So, what do I do next?

My next move is simple and not easy.

Tell the truth.

Choose what is real.

Choose what brings me joy.

Hold the line.

My declaration for 2026:

I will not live half lit.

I will not negotiate with what I know.

I will not keep myself small to help others feel comfortable.

I will tell the truth, with tenderness

and if the cost of entry is my self-respect, I will leave.

I will close the door,

and keep walking toward the Sun.

Love,

Mary Ann

A Blessing For You

May you learn the difference between peace and numbness,

and choose the one that lets you breathe.

And when a door asks you to become less and shrink,

may you have the courage to close it.

May you turn and walk toward the light

that has always known your name.

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More poetry + prose at maryannburrows.com.

I’ve learned something small on purpose, not a credential, not a reinvention, not a productivity trick, just a simple skill: how to fold a paper crane.

I didn’t expect it to matter as much as it did, but it turns out the hands are a refuge when life is loud. They ask the brain to slow down, to follow steps, to forgive mistakes, to begin again, and the heart seems to follow.

There is something medicinal about touching the world instead of scrolling past it, about making one careful crease and then another, about discovering that attention is its own kind of love.

Origami has been folded in Japan for centuries, paper passed between generations not only as decoration but as devotion: cranes for weddings, cranes for remembrance, and a thousand cranes for hope and healing, proof that a simple action repeated with care can become a prayer.

I’ve always been drawn to Japan, to the idea of travelling there one day, and lately that curiosity has felt even more alive. My friend recently returned from a month in Japan and told me how mindfulness shows up as a posture toward daily life, in how you eat, how you walk, how you greet one another, how care is shared so children are raised inside a larger circle, the community noticing and stepping in without fanfare. I think we forget this sometimes, that meaning doesn’t need a spotlight. Sometimes it arrives as a square of paper on the table and the decision to try.

The crane teaches what my year has been teaching me too: you can’t rush what’s tender, you can’t skip the steps that shape you, you have to stay through the awkward folds and the almost right moments, and when the wings finally lift you realize something has shifted in you as well, your breathing, your patience, your willingness to be a beginner.

These little paper cranes have been good for my brain because they demand presence, good for my heart because they invite gentleness, good for my mind because they remind me that learning doesn’t have to be loud to be transformative.

This year I didn’t chase mastery so much as I practiced care, and in my hands, again and again, a small bird learned how to fly.

with love,

Mary Ann

A blessing for you,

May something small steady you today—one breath, one fold, one simple act of care. May your hands become a refuge when life gets loud, and may the practice of beginning again soften your mind and strengthen your heart.

This practice and the photo arrived through a small, beautiful book called A Paper Crane a Day: A Year of Mindful Folding—three hundred and sixty-five sheets bound together with an invitation rather than a demand.

If you enjoyed reading this, please tap the heart ♥️, share it with someone who might need a small steadying moment, and subscribe for more writing like this. You can also find me at Mary Ann Burrows

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Every Wednesday and every Sunday at 7 p.m., when the night has faded into its darker self, the world in front of where I am staying changes its mind.

It’s the same street. The same ocean. The same condos and the same little holes people live in along the seawall. The same headlines waiting on everyone’s phones like a clenched fist.

And then, right on time, they come.

Bicycles first. Not just bicycles, but bicycles dressed up like a dare. Strings of lights. People of all ages with glowing wheels. Costumes that make no practical sense: green aliens, dancing bears, and whatever else a person can invent when they decide they’d rather be ridiculous than numb.

They ride in a line, then a wave, then a loose, laughing swarm, and it’s impossible not to look up.

People spill out onto balconies and front steps. Lawn chairs appear like props in a play we all secretly agreed to attend. Someone hoots. Someone hollers back. Someone whistles, then does that loud, happy yell that sounds like a kid who forgot they were supposed to be grown up. (Usually me.)

Every Sunday and Wednesday evening, we’ve been given permission.

Permission to make a spectacle out of nothing.

Permission to admire something fun.

Permission to smile and holler, way to go!

We don’t talk enough about how rare that is now.

Most of the time, the world asks us to be protective, to choose a side. To be afraid and efficient. Productive. Correct. Measured. To turn ourselves into good little machines that absorb bad news with a straight face and still remember to schedule the dentist, answer emails, and keep the laundry moving.

But twice a week, a group of strangers rides by and says: nope, not tonight.

Tonight we’re going to show up and decorate our bikes like we’re eight years old and fearless.

Tonight we’re going to wear an alien on our back in public. People will get up from their couch, come out onto their balconies, and clap for us. They will hoot and holler, and it will make people happy.

Tonight we’re going to become a moving constellation—just long enough to remind everyone there are still humans out there, under the stress and the fear and the news and the scrolling.

I didn’t realize how much I needed this twice-a-week alien parade until I began to anticipate it.

By 6:45, I start listening for the first hint of it: a distant cheer, the honking of horns, the boom of the familiar music they play, the whistles, a laugh that carries. My body registers it before my brain does, calling me to get up, go outside, and participate. To stand and watch and cheer and clap.

It has become a ritual.

Not a religious one. Not an organized one. Nobody’s handing out flyers. Nobody’s making a speech or standing up for a cause. There’s no agenda beyond the simplest one: show up, glow a little, move together through the dark.

And the people watching—the people, like me, who come outside and clap and wave and shout encouragement at strangers—they’re participating too. We’re all part of it. Riders and watchers. Ocean and street. The anonymous and the known.

It’s easy to think community has to be formal to count. Potlucks and meetings and committees. But I’m starting to believe community can be improvised—created in small, recurring moments we all agree to show up for.

Sometimes it’s just a pattern that repeats.

Sometimes it’s a shared expectation that something bright will pass through.

Sometimes it’s the relief of realizing you are not the only one who can’t hold the whole world in your hands.

There’s something tender about the effort, too.

They don’t have to do any of it. They could stay inside. They could keep their lights in a drawer and their costumes as an idea they never bother to become. But they choose the extra step: the tape, the batteries, the planning, the ridiculousness.

And the watching crowd chooses an extra step too: leaving the couch, stepping outside, making noise, lifting a hand to wave at strangers and mean it.

I think that’s what moves me. The effort. Not the perfection of it, not the coordination, not whether the costumes make sense. Just the decision to bring something to the street that isn’t another complaint or another warning or another weary shrug.

For a few minutes, the air changes.

People laugh. People clap. People call out compliments to a person dressed like a glowing bear wielding a pretend foil. People forget, briefly, to protect themselves with coolness.

And then it passes.

The bikes disappear down the road, lights bobbing farther and farther away until it looks like the ocean borrowed a handful of stars and let them roll along the edge of town.

Everyone folds their chairs and goes back inside. Balcony doors slide shut. The street returns to itself.

But something stays.

Not a solution. Not a cure. Just a small proof.

Proof that joy can still be made.

Proof that strangers can still agree on something harmless and good.

Proof that not everything has to be heavy to be real.

I don’t want to talk about the world tonight. I don’t want to rehearse what’s broken.

I want to talk about this: a ridiculous parade that happens twice a week, right on schedule, at 7 p.m. when the night has faded and most people are settling in. I want to talk about how, in a time when so many people feel alone, a line of lit-up bicycles can become a kind of belonging.

And I want to remember this the next time I feel myself hardening.

Somewhere out there, someone is taping lights to a bicycle.

Someone is digging an alien costume out of a closet.

Someone is choosing to be visible, ridiculous, alive.

And at 7 p.m., we’ll meet each other again.

Not to fix the world.

Just to keep our hearts & hands open.

Notes:

The Hawaii Electric Light Parade is a free, weekly, family-friendly event featuring brightly lit bikes, scooters, and skateboards cruising South Kihei Road in Maui Hawaii Anyone can participate.

My blessing for you:

May you find your way to the small, free joys.

May the road feel safe beneath you,

and the night feel kind.

May you glow, not to impress anyone,

but to remind your own heart

that light is allowed.

with love

Mary Ann

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There are endings we’re able to recognize.

A romance. A marriage. A job. A move. A death.

And then there’s an ending no one quite knows how to hold, because it doesn’t come with a ceremony or a script.

This post is about the loss of a friendship. The kind of loss that hurts. The kind that leaves cracks in the story of your life, and often follows you into your dreams for years. It’s also about the slow, honest work of letting those cracks become part of the story, filled not with denial, but with gold.

When Friends Break Up

Breaking up with a friend is a loss that we rarely have language for, even though it can break a heart wide open. There is a popular saying, attributed to a few different people, that “friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.” I’m talking about the lifetime kind. The kind of friendship that becomes a landmark, imprinted on your soul. I’m talking about losing your bestie. The friend you’ve had for decades. Your ride or die. The Thelma to your Louise. The Gayle to your Oprah. The person you assumed would be there at the end of your life and vice-versa.

Sometimes, the unthinkable happens. Even best friends break up.

Some friendships have a history so thick it becomes a second language. These are the friends who live in your calendar, woven into your routine and your nervous system. They’re not just in your life. They’re part of how you move through it.

And there’s a truth many of us don’t say out loud:

Sometimes a friendship can hold an intimacy that surprises us. Not because one love is better than another, but because it’s different. A friend like this knows the unedited version of you, the tender parts, the private language. She’s the midnight person. The one who comes when you call. The one on speed dial. This kind of friendship is the safe place, where you can be goofy, imperfect, and fully yourself, and be loved anyway.

When a friendship like that ends, it can feel devastating. It hurts. It can feel like a death, except they’re still alive. You see them everywhere. You miss them in the ordinary places. But bigger than that, you miss who you were in that bond. You miss the ordinary certainty of them.

There is a particular pain in losing a living person.
They’re still out there.
And you’re the one left holding the absence.

There’s no funeral for this type of loss. There’s no script, no collective permission to grieve. People sometimes treat it like a misunderstanding that can be solved with one more conversation, one more coffee, one more talk it out. But some endings aren’t misunderstandings. Sometimes trust shatters.

When trust is shattered, the relationship becomes unsafe in a way that’s hard to explain. You can’t relax into it anymore. You can’t tell the truth without calculating the cost. You can’t show up the same way without wondering if you’re being held, or being lied to.

This is the moment people try to override themselves.

“We’ve been friends for decades. We should be able to get past this.”

But longevity is not proof of safety. And history does not entitle someone to future access. People change. Things shift. And a soul always knows when something is complete.

So when it’s time you walk away.

The hard part is that leaving isn’t always clean and easy. It doesn’t erase the love. It doesn’t erase the laughter. It doesn’t erase what was real. It simply means you are no longer willing to abandon yourself to keep the connection alive.

So you grieve it like it mattered, because it did. You don’t minimize it because it wasn’t romantic. You don’t rush yourself to be over it. You let it be a real loss.

And you make a vow, the kind you keep in your body:

I will not trade my peace for proximity.

I will not keep trying to mend what no longer opens into trust.

I will not stay in a relationship where I do not feel held.

And then you bless what you once had and move on.

Bless This Friendship

Bless the golden friendship we shared,
not because it didn’t matter, but because it did.
Bless what was true.
Bless what carried me.
Bless the love we shared and what we taught one another.
I release what I can’t hold safely anymore.

Let this be that.

Kintsugi

In Japan, there’s an art called kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with lacquer mixed with gold. The fractures aren’t hidden. They’re traced. Honored. The break becomes part of the story.

Let this be that. Not erased, but integrated.

If this is your story too, I hope you’ll trust that the cracks in your story won’t define you. Know this …What you pour into them will.

Love,

Mary Ann

My Blessing for You

May what ended return to you as wisdom.

May what cracked be filled with gold.

May you be protected from what drains you.

May you always be drawn toward what is clean and truthful.

May you trust what is steady, what is kind, your intuition.

May you move forward without hatred, without longing for what no longer exists.

And may you know that the love you gave was not wasted.

Thank you for stopping by and reading, for showing up time and time again, for witnessing. I value you and I’m grateful for your time. If this piece moved you, may it meet you where you are, and may it offer you something steady.

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Sources:

Kintsugi source: Sakura Co, “The Art of Kintsugi Pottery: Japan’s Golden Repair.” Kintsugi

Photo Credit : Photo by Matt Perkins Unsplash

Another trip around the sun for me today, and birthdays always feel like a threshold. Not a spotlight moment, not a performance—more like a stillness turning inward, the way the earth shifts without asking anyone to notice.

This year, I can feel myself peeling back another layer. I’m stepping back from the urge to explain, to overshare, to offer the whole story as proof of belonging.

I’m entering a new version of myself (as I have hundreds of times over the years) and this time it is not by becoming more, but by becoming truer—more selective, more rooted, more private in the places that matter.

Maybe it’s part of aging. I’m not sure. What I do know for certain is that I’m deeply grateful I’m still here on earth. Still healthy, still able, still smiling. So many people don’t get to celebrate another birthday.

There’s a tenderness that comes with that kind of gratitude—a reverence for ordinary days, for simple things—and a growing desire to live the life I have left with more intention, more honesty, and a little less noise.

And if this isn’t where you are yet, that’s okay. Just know: there’s a freedom on the other side of it.

Happy Birthday (to me)


Each year the sun returns, and so do I,
less eager to push forward,
more ready to step back
and step inward.

This is the year I return my story to myself.
Not dramatically.
Not angrily.
Just the way water stops apologizing for its depth.

I can feel it already.
A new instinct.
A truer boundary.
A deeper yes.
A deeper no.

I’m less interested
in being understood by everyone,
more interested
in being true.

This isn’t the year of performing wellness.
Or proving anything.
It’s a year of refinement.

Discernment.
Emotional sobriety
that doesn’t feel cold.
It feels clean,
like rinsing what doesn’t belong.

My solar return rises in Scorpio
and something in me stops negotiating.

Scorpio doesn’t ask permission.
It steps away.
It does not explain the space it needs.
It just knows.
It’s time.

Keep what is sacred.
Release what is performative.
Return to what is real.

What’s mine stays mine.
What’s sacred stays protected.

And Capricorn, my home,
doesn’t daydream without making a plan.
It asks the questions that change a life:

What is sustainable?
What will still matter next January?
What am I done carrying?

This is a year for structure.
Putting things where they belong.
Not as punishment.
As devotion.

The sacredness of paying attention.
The dignity of the next right thing.

And there’s a message in the everyday,
in communication, in connection,
in the threads that weave a life.

Writing.
Sharing.
Sending the message.
Having the conversation.
Making the call.
Getting honest.
Getting clear.

Not only beauty.
But the structures that can hold it.
Not only words.
But the living of them.

And my Cancer Moon arrives
like water.

Heart.
Warmth.
Salt air.
Like breath.

Salt on skin.
Bare feet on sand.
My hands, cupping my granddaughter’s face.
Kisses on cheeks.

The ocean,
a horizon that asks nothing of me.

A reminder:
I am not only made of responsibility and riverbed.
I am also made of tenderness.
I am also made of wonder.

My moon says:
stay true.
stay soft.
go outside.
feed what feeds you.
follow what feels safe and real.

So this year holds two truths at once:
I want depth.
And I want freedom.
I want to build what lasts.
And I want to stay alive inside it.

I think that’s the work.

Devotion without depletion.
Love without overextending.
Generosity without abandoning myself.

This is the year I choose what is real.
Not what looks good.
Not what gets applause.
Not what keeps the peace.

Keep what is sacred.
Release what is performative.
Return to what is real.

And if I keep choosing the real thing,
the year will meet me there.

Like a tide that keeps its promises.
Like the wind that keeps showing up.
Like rock worn holy by the sea.

(Happy Birthday to me)





Love,
Mary Ann

If you’re still here, thank you.

Thank you for choosing the real thing with me.

Thank you for being the kind of reader who doesn’t need perfection—just presence.

Just honesty. Just a life, unfolding.

My Blessing For You.

May you trust the pull toward what feels alive.
May you release what you’re doing for approval.
May you keep choosing the real thing,
and let that be enough.

If you enjoy my writing please subscribe, follow share or like. Thank you

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Here’s a short story about catching air and how joy used to be free, loud, and slightly illegal.

Lovers Leap — Catching Air

When I was born, my mother strapped me into the backseat of our panelled station wagon. LOL, no, she didn’t. She laid me in a padded oval basket right on the vinyl, beside my 15-month-old brother, while my three-year-old sister sat up front, all of us unbuckled, loose-limbed, and trusting the world to hold.

Imagine that.

This was a perfectly reasonable safety plan in the early 60s. There weren’t seatbelts the way we think of them now; in a lot of cars, they weren’t even standard, never mind required, until the late 60s.

Our family vacations weren’t glamorous. They weren’t airplanes to Disneyland or Maui. They were driving, hours of it, six of us packed into a long, bright wagon like sardines, windows half-cranked, the air thick with sun and snack crumbs, and the radio scratchy but doing its best.

I remember going to Denman Island once. We stayed in a cozy cabin, rustic, but still a getaway, free, of course, offered to us by a local doctor. Travelling anywhere by ferry felt like a real vacation. In a wash of ocean air, everything felt temporarily possible.

Denman Island was quiet: trips to the beach with buckets, sand, roasting marshmallows on a driftwood fire and swatting mosquitoes. But the most exciting part of every day was a spot called Lovers Leap.

Our family definition of fun was my father, grinning in his own way, pushing the old car faster than he should as the hill rose up in front of us. Four little bodies in the back, his four littles, laughing and screaming and bracing for what we knew was coming.

The bump.

The leap.

The shriek.

The thrill.

The moment the car went light and we were airborne, flying. That split-second of weightlessness where our stomachs floated and our hair lifted and we felt like we’d been granted a miracle.

We’d laugh so hard we couldn’t breathe: “Again! Again! Please, Dad!”

And of course, we’d go again. And again.

Why did we jolt out of our seats? Because the world wasn’t padded yet. Because our parents didn’t have the kind of fear that comes from headlines and statistics. Because childhood was built out of trust, trust in the driver, trust in the road, trust that life will keep holding.

Then: the landing. Tires kissing pavement again, the whole car shuddering back into gravity. We’d shriek, then dissolve into giggles, and my father would pretend he hadn’t been aiming for that exact response.

It’s strange to look back now.

How much of our joy was motion.

How much of our happiness was free.

How much of our togetherness was simply being in the same moving container headed somewhere, nowhere, anywhere.

Together we watched the world slide by, believing speed, laughter, and those moments of flight could keep a family stitched to itself.

My Blessing for You

May you find, even now, a small moment of weightlessness:

a ferry crossing, a hill you didn’t expect, a memory that lifts your heart before it lands.

If you enjoyed this story (and the way I write), I’d love it if you shared it with someone who might feel it too, subscribe, or visit me at maryannburrows.com.

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Fifteen months after my father died, he is still leaving me little breadcrumbs.

Today, I found one tucked inside the front cover flap of his old UBC songbook, dated October 23, 1950.

He would have been 19 years old. He signed his name and the date in that unmistakable young-man handwriting, half confidence, half hope, and underneath he wrote:

Tuum est

(It is up to you)

Latin. Simple. A university motto, yes. But also something else entirely when you imagine him saying it to himself.

It is yours.

Your life. Your choices. Your becoming.

No one is coming to carry it for you.

I picture him sitting in a library corner, the world opening and pressing in at the same time. He wouldn’t have known a soul. Imagine traveling from Saskatoon to Vancouver by train back then to go to university. He was alone, stepping into a life he hadn’t lived yet.

Not yet the father I knew.

Not yet the man who would become a football coach, a well-loved teacher, a husband and father of four, and later a vice principal determined to make a difference. Not yet the grandfather and great-grandfather, the board member, the steady and valued presence in his community, someone who helped shape the lives of hundreds of students.

On October 23, 1950, he was just a boy, really, writing a sentence like a hand on his own shoulder.

I can’t stop thinking about how many of us are still trying to learn what he wrote down so early.

How many of us wait.

Wait for someone to find us.

Wait for someone to discover us.

Wait for permission, for certainty, for a sign that we’re “ready.”

Wait for a hand to reach in and pull us into the life we secretly want.

But his pencil line says something braver.

That this life stuff, this responsibility, is heavy, yes.

And still, taking ownership of our path is a kind of freedom.

Tuum est.

It is up to you.

It’s yours.

thank you, dad.

with love,

Mary Ann

My Blessing for You

May you stop waiting to be chosen.

May you choose yourself with steady courage.

May what is yours find you in your own hands.

If this post moved you, and you feel called to, please share it with someone who might need it.

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Foggy mornings have a way of making everything feel a little muffled—like the world turned the volume down.

The world felt grey so I threw on my long wool pink coat and stopped at that not-quite-regular coffee shop about 40 minutes away from my house and ordered my Americano.

The barista looked up and said, “Your name is Rory?”

No—Mary. Almost. (At coffee shops, I’m always Mary—not Mary Ann. A double name is a tangle at a busy counter, and I like my coffee without the extra explaining.)

And somehow that “almost” made me smile more than if he’d nailed it, because it meant he’d tried to hold me in his memory. I smiled.

I didn’t tell him he was wrong.

I said, “You know what? You’ve got the essence. The tone is right. It’s close enough.” He smiled.

As he made my coffee, he must have reached for my name again, because when he handed it over he said, “Here you go, Mary.”

That small moment made my day.

A name can matter in certain places—medicine, paperwork, the moments where being correctly identified is a kind of dignity. But in a coffee shop, in the fog, on an ordinary cold winter morning, it’s the gesture that lands: the little flash of I know you. I’m glad you’re here. You weren’t invisible to me.

I remembered you.

So maybe the truest thing isn’t, “It’s important that people remember our names.”

It’s this: it’s healing when someone makes the smallest effort to remember our presence—our essence—our smile.

It’s dim and cold out there today, but I wore my pink coat anyhow—because it’s warm, and because it’s not black, and because sometimes you get to be the bright thing in the fog.

My Blessing for You

May you be remembered with warmth.

May someone make the effort to see you.

May someone reach for your name and, even if they miss it, still find you.

May you be greeted with warmth on ordinary mornings.

May you wear the bright thing in the fog.

With love,

Mary Ann

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Dear Ones,

I’m not setting goals for 2026.
I’m not choosing a word.
I’m not making resolutions.
I’m not mapping out a version of myself I’m meant to become.

What I’m doing instead is making a vow.

Not an aspirational one.
Not a productivity promise.
Not a reinvention.

A placement.

After a year that asked so much—emotionally, spiritually, relationally—I can feel something different arriving.
Not urgency.
Not ambition.

Clarity.

2026 doesn’t feel like a year for expansion.
It feels like a year for arranging what already exists into a life that fits.

Why buy a new outfit,
when I have a closet full of great clothes
that already fit me well?

What I’m naming isn’t restraint.
It’s discernment.

An inner confidence that comes with age—
the sense that enough is already here,
and the work now is arrangement,
not the endless pursuit of more.

I am no longer mistaking addition for growth.
I am tending what I already love.
I am choosing coherence over excess.
I am shaping my days around what fits—
my body, my values, my actual life.

I am wearing what already knows me.

So this is the vow I’m carrying forward.

My Vow for 2026

I vow to place my life where it fits
instead of forcing it to expand.

I will choose fewer things
and tend them well.

I will stop explaining what I know to be true
and let my days speak for me.

I will write from the body,
not the clock—
pen and paper first,
the keyboard later.

From listening, not urgency.
From devotion, not visibility.

I will give my attention back to people
before devices,
to conversation before consumption.

I will spend more time in rooms with other people—
in dimly lit cafés,
at un-rushed tables,
remembering how to speak to strangers.

I will travel in ways that don’t ask me to hurry,
spend less than I’m told I should,
and let movement be shaped by curiosity, not proof.

I will keep some beauty unshared—
not out of fear,
but out of reverence.

I will honour my limits
as signs of wisdom,
not failure.

I will allow work to be shaped by breath,
by season,
by care.

I will stay long enough
to be changed by what I’ve chosen.

I will know I am in the right place
by the way my body softens,
and nothing inside me needs to hurry.

And when doubt returns—as it will—
I will remember:

this is not a year for proving,
but for placing myself rightly,
feeling peace,
and remaining there.

I’m sharing this not as instruction, but as an offering.
A reminder that not every year asks us to become more.

Some years ask us to belong more fully to the life we already have.

If you’re standing on the edge of 2026 feeling resistant to goals, timelines, or reinvention—maybe a vow is enough.

Not a promise to do more.
A promise to stay.

My Blessing For You

May 2026 meet you gently.
May you feel no pressure to become
what you already are.

May you choose what is true
and let the rest fall away without guilt.
May your days be shaped by breath,
by season,
by what actually sustains you.

May you stay long enough
to feel at home in your own life.
May you feel peace there,
and may that be enough.

with love,

Mary Ann

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I didn’t know a tree could calm my nervous system until I stood beside this one.

It didn’t ask for attention.

It wasn’t reaching, blooming, or showing off.

It simply was one of the most interesting trees I have ever met.

Wide-bodied. Grounded. Astonishing.

The Queensland bottle tree stands like a vessel.
It begins wide and grounded (nearly twenty feet at the base) then rises and narrows toward its fifty-foot height. Its swollen trunk is not indulgence but intention. This tree shapes itself as a deliberate act of survival, a living reservoir formed by foresight rather than excess.

Every curve holds what was gathered in times of abundance, stored patiently for seasons when rain is scarce and restraint becomes wisdom. Where other trees stretch outward and up, this one gathers inward. It keeps what it needs for the long dry spells, trusting that the future will ask something of it and knowing it will be ready.

There is something deeply comforting about a tree that plans for hardship without drama.

This is not the kind of resilience we usually celebrate. It isn’t flashy or forceful. It doesn’t muscle through. It holds. It prepares. It endures. It’s smart.

Standing beside it, I felt an unexpected easing. I understood this tree not through intellect but through the body, the way you recognize a truth you’ve been living toward without language.

And perhaps that’s the quiet invitation it offers us: not to prove, not to perform, but to learn what is worth keeping. To gather carefully. To trust our own capacity to endure the dry seasons without hardening. To become, over time, a place that can hold what matters and let the rest fall away.

I realized then that I have lived, in a way, like the Queensland bottle tree. I have gathered inward when the world expected me to reach. I have learned to widen my base instead of stretching for height. There were seasons when I stored strength quietly conserving energy, words, and care for times when they would be needed most. Seasons of wintering, when I gathered in, became still, and wrote deeply into myself.

What may have looked like restraint was often foresight. What may have looked like stillness was strategy.

Between life’s ups and downs, I continued to educate myself, to feed my body good food, to move and strengthen it all in quiet preparation for whatever the next big something might be. The death of a loved one. A world crisis. A reckoning I could not yet name but somehow knew would arrive.

This tree’s instinct for self-preservation reminded me that resilience doesn’t have to mean hardening or holding the line at all costs. It doesn’t always look like endurance. Sometimes resilience is quieter than that, more deliberate, more intelligent. Sometimes resilience is preservation for what comes next.

Sometimes resilience means becoming a container rather than a wall. Learning what to hold close and what to let pass through. Learning to conserve your strength instead of spending it on every demand, every wind, every season that insists you prove yourself.

Learning that rest is not retreat but strategy. That stillness can be active. That there is wisdom in pausing, in storing what sustains you, in trusting that you will rise again when the conditions are right. Without fear. Without apology. Without rushing the natural rhythm of becoming.

In a culture obsessed with growth that looks like striving, this tree offers another blueprint. One rooted in foresight rather than urgency. Inward strength rather than outward performance. Survival shaped into something undeniably beautiful.

The bottle tree doesn’t rush the seasons.

It trusts them.

And in doing so, it teaches us something essential.

That it’s possible to live gently and still be prepared. That endurance can be spacious. That holding can be an act of wisdom.

And we can do this too.

We can stop rushing the seasons of our own lives. Stop demanding bloom when the soil is cold.

Stop calling rest a failure.

The Bottle Tree


We can learn
to trust the timing we’re in,
even when it feels
sparse
or unspectacular.

We can prepare
without panic.
Gather what nourishes us
and store it carefully.

Let go
of what drains us.
Choose spaciousness
over strain.

My Blessing for You Look to the trees. They are our greatest teachers. Endure without urgency. Be rooted without becoming rigid. Grow toward light. Rest without fear. May you find yourself in the forest— in bark and branch, in stillness and sway— and remember you are allowed to live gently and still be whole.

With Love,

Mary Ann

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Photo: December 2025, Adelaide, Australia