The Becoming
The in-between
There is a space I have come to recognize as home.
Not a place, exactly. Not a season.
But the quiet in-between where something is ending and something else has not yet begun.
I feel it on the bus between New York City and New Paltz.
Somewhere along the ride, without trying, I soften.
The doing mind quiets.
The body exhales.
And then, almost inevitably, the tears come.
Not from sadness alone.
But from something wider… a release, a remembering, a return.
I used to think I loved seasons.
But what I love most is not the season itself: it’s the turning.
That first subtle shift from winter into spring.
The almost-imperceptible swelling of life.
The way something begins before you can name it.
The way the world moves without asking for permission.
I feel that same movement in my garden.
Nothing there is fixed.
Everything in the garden is in conversation: with light, with time, with unseen rhythms beneath the soil. I tend it, yes. But mostly, I witness it becoming.
The practice
This week, I felt it in a different way.
We trapped and brought several of the outdoor cats to be fixed.
For two days, we didn’t feed them so the traps would work.
They came and waited, again and again. They looked for us.
And everything in me wanted to break and feed them.
But I didn’t.
I held that space… the tension between instinct and intention, between immediate comfort and long-term care.
And then, suddenly, it worked.
One by one, they went in.
Brownie. Porgie. Lion’s Mane.
There was relief, yes.
But also something deeper: a quiet recognition of the arc we had just moved through. Stress. Holding. Trust. Release.
The Becoming.
Two days later, they will return.
And everything will look the same.
But it won’t be.
They will move differently.
Rest differently.
Live with a little more ease in their bodies.
And I will feel it too.
This week also marks one year since Eden passed.
My sweet black cat.
My companion.
I miss him in a way that hasn’t lessened, but has changed.
The grief is no longer sharp. It moves now. It breathes.
Sometimes it comes on the bus, quietly, as tears.
Sometimes in the garden, in stillness.
Sometimes in the way I care for these other lives now.
I used to think love ended when someone was gone.
But now I see it differently.
Love becomes.
It moves into other forms.
Other gestures.
Other lives.
It doesn’t disappear.
It continues.
And maybe that’s why I love the in-between so much.
Because that’s where nothing is lost: only transformed.
I’m not chasing stability anymore.
I’m learning to live in the movement.
To trust the unfolding.
To rest, even here.
In The Becoming.
Love becomes.
In memoriam - Eden.