Ritualize the Moment

My go-to tool for creating meaning

I don’t want to say that all good art comes from pain. But it kinda does.

Even if it comes from love, that love at one point or another likely grew from an overcoming and accepting of anger, sadness, or turmoil.

I always find I turn to the blank page in the micro moments of my day when certainty wavers, anticipation of the future grows, or discomfort creeps in.

Not because I don’t want to write about love. I love love. And joy. And that feeling of euphoria when you wake up in soft sheets, shades open to a desktop-worthy view of nature, smell of coffee from the kitchen and maybe even someone that feels like home beside you.

I’m a dreamer. In a way that I would never dare to change.

I love that we can dream moments that have been before, moments that will be one day, or even re-imagine the supposed lost old dream so that we may hold its lessons in a brighter light. We can resource joyful moments to invoke joy in the now, even when it’s more difficult to find.

But the writers that speak to my soul speak to my inner critic. They speak to my existential doubts. The speak to who I yearn to become even in the darkness. They speak to what I still cannot see, and to the longing that drives desires I haven’t even fully come to believe I deserve.

Writing, like any other art form is a language in and of itself.

It begs to find ways to say “I love you” in new tones, shades, and descriptions.

It pushes to find ways to say “I miss you” without sounding cliche… or desperate.

It inspires to find ways to say “What’s this whole life thing about?” sincerely enough that another may raise their hand, fluent in your resonance, and say “I see you… and I also have no fucking clue… but I see you.”

And so I’m writing today as the writer I need to hear, maybe more than the writer I need to be.

I woke up this morning with these sticky feelings of stuck-ness. Actually, they’ve been lingering for a few days now.

First, in a stream of baby waves brushing up against the shore and this morning in more of a tidal wave type of sensation.

Which seems ironic because there are more shifts happening in my life now than ever before… why now would I feel stuck?

I’ll go ahead and answer my own question. Because asking the question was all I needed to find my answer (as it often is). Movement and progress always require risk. Shifting always means grieving and releasing. And while for me that’s happening in all the major ways right now like a total life rebirth (not to be too dramatic but also it’s true!)— it’s happening for all of us at some level all the time every day. Even just the movement of shedding an old opinion. An eyelash that falls. A death of the old for birth of the new.

This was the year of the snake after all… sometimes we shed slow, and sometimes like rapid fire it all comes off.

AM.

Sitting in a garage converted into a coffee shop, I sought out something new.

There are days when the usual coffee spot feels like home, other times it feels like a hamster wheel of groundhog day. I opted for new.

I love people watching. People are one of the most healing distractions and solaces of comfort. All these stories and thoughts and narratives living through different eyes and minds. My overwhelm is no less meaningful, but placed in healthy perspective.

I don’t want my tidal wave to become a hurricane. But I do sense that as the weights feel heavier, so do the sinking feelings.

So I turn to my breath.

Feeling it stuck at the halfway point in my chest where it can’t really fill up to the top or empty out fully at the bottom.

Which feels incredibly symbolic.

Although if you know me, you know I can find symbolism pretty much anywhere in anything. Not just in a “oh it’s a new moon in Sagittarius that’s why I can’t get ahold of my Jackson Pollock emotions kind of way” (although it is a new moon, happy last moon of of 2025 my friends)… but applying meaning in small ways has always been a tool that allows me to treasure the transitions.

To treasure anything and everything.

So here I am, not breathing into the depths of the surrender at the bottom of the breath or the abundance at the top of it. I’m fighting to reach the complete emptying of my old life and scared of never reaching fullness in the new one. Stuck somewhere in the middle.

And in this momentary suffering I pause again to ask myself how I can ritualize this moment.

How can I give meaning to the supposed meaningless?

How can I create a long enough pause to make an ordinary moment feel sacred?

Creating ritual is something I’ve done for as long as I can remember. I moved around as a kid and I always craved ways to say goodbye. To close loops. I always identified with spirituality as giving something enough attention that you actually experience its essence rather than bypassing it. Even before I identified as ‘spiritual’ at all, my spirit was.

Many of us rely on calendar holidays and traditions or perhaps our morning routines as our forces of grounding. But what if the concept of a ritual was not bound by how frequently it was repeated but rather by the strength in the intention of creating ceremony around a particular moment in time?

I’ve found myself doing this in more ways that you can imagine…

• Burying a time capsule when leaving a particular place

• Writing a goodbye love letter and throwing it into the ocean

• Lighting a candle in honor of someone I’m missing

• Touching the statue on my meditation altar before each sit

• Closing my eyes in my most favorite blissful moments and taking a mental “screenshot” of the smells, the sounds, and the views

• Organizing my yoga props in a particular manner

• Going around a table at a birthday dinner and having everyone say something they love about the birthday person

… just to name a few.

I’m the friend who will make a toast just for the act of bringing awareness to being together. Who will stop in the middle of an intense conversation to say “but wait, look at the big dipper!” Not to avoid, but to appreciate. That the experience is not limited to what our mind is grasping. There’s always so much more.

I believe we can make every moment sacred and it doesn’t make the others less sacred. We don’t need to preserve ritualization for funerals and weddings.

It’s like somehow along the way we stopped making time for meaning.

PM.

I’ve written this in two sits. Once, this morning.

Now, the evening.

The day continued to be a tidal wave. In all the ways that make me want to shrink and hide. When it rains it freaking pours.

So I’ve decided the only way to embrace this discomfort is to celebrate it as something sacred.

One of the things I most cherished from living in Bali was watching the nonstop daily rituals. Setting flowers and incense all around the outside of a home as an offering. Utilizing mantras as blessings for something as major as a karmic holiday or as minor as renting a new scooter. The small acts served as markers of the moments and also ways of inviting the divine to participate in the now.

Ritual feels like one of the things our modern society has lost and most desperately needs. Even writing can be a ritual if held with the intention of recognizing it for more than just a hobby, a means to make a living or a way to word vomit onto the internet. (speaking to myself first & foremost)… it’s a way to connect. to devote. to contribute. And when done as such, it doesn’t matter who sees it or reads it. Who agrees or doesn’t. It inevitably carries the vibration of a greater force.

Tonight, honoring discomfort, unknown and pain, I grabbed my journal, lit some candles and passed on plans to be in ritual rather than distraction. To make a toast to the pain through action and dedication.

A friend asked me: “what does your fear need?”

I quickly reminded myself pain and fear often need that which we all do… simply to be held, heard and loved.

The dreamer in me knows that one day, these pains will be moments I speak about in interviews and stories. The days that made me stronger.

The child in me knows that we’re already wiser than we ever realized we’d be.

The yogi in me knows the pain stems from unbelievable amounts of love and consciousness waiting to be revealed and awakened.

The writer in me knows I’m living the feelings that live beneath the stories… the ones that make art the gift it is.

So, if there’s anything that arises for you in the next few days that could benefit from more attention, perhaps you use it as a chance to ritualize the moment. Nobody else needs to know that you’re doing it. It may not look like anything more than a thought. And it may not even change how the moment feels.

But it will mark the moment, mark the breath. And in a world of movement, what a gift to pause and find the meaning.

p.s. Small & simple reminder that you are doing great. And that all darkness is there to reveal light waiting on the other side. Or perhaps light that you just cannot yet see.

caught in a rainbow this week <3