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Love, Juliet is a free weekly-ish journal + literary craft column. Learn more here. Help keep my writing accessible to all — A Practice of Reciprocity — If my words, stories, and teachings have nourished you, this is a way to nourish the work back so it can continue.

yesterday

you were a flower

in my garden.

today

I am pulling the dead roots

to make room for something new.

— pavana reddy

Saturday morning I woke up to the sound of geese flying over my home on their way back from migration — one of those signs that Spring is around the corner, in two weeks, actually. I don’t think my smile could have gotten any bigger as I stretched my limbs and literally rolled out of bed to catch their sight from my window. One line formation into two separated triangles and back — impressive.

For many Indigenous peoples, spring is the true new year — when the earth herself signals that it is time to begin again. The geese returning. The foxes emerging from their dens. The first warm day that pulls you outside to greet the sun. The January 1st new year is a colonial construct. It asks us to set intentions and sprint into action in the dead of winter, when the earth is still resting. It is a calendar disconnected from season, from land, from body, and Spirit. And so many of us have internalized that pressure —the sense that we should already know all the things, ready to decide, already be moving, while everything in nature is telling us to wait a bit longer.

These next two to three weeks are a sacred threshold. Not a time to have everything figured out, but a time to begin slowly moving, observing, and clearing — spiritually, energetically, and physically.

Across many traditions, physical clearing and spiritual/energetic clearing are the same practice. In many Indigenous teachings, the home and the land are not separate from the self — they are a reflection of it. When we clear a space, we are not simply organizing; we are signaling to divinity, and to ourselves, that we are ready to receive something new, to let go of what is no longer in alignment. In Chinese practice, the movement of objects releases stagnant qi — the life force that pools in cluttered spaces, slowing what is trying to align with us. In many African and diasporic traditions, sweeping is a sacred ritual, moving out what no longer serves and opening pathways for blessings to enter. Even in the European folk tradition, spring cleaning is ceremonial, tied to the turning of the year. The message is consistent and ancestral: what we hold onto physically, we hold onto energetically.

I found myself outside watching the world as it shifted. The day was warm enough to ditch the coats, the snow had pulled back from the garden beds, and the birds were singing with joy. I caught sight of a fox moving through the melting snow and the bears out searching for food. A murder of crows alerted of predators above — I looked up to see hawks and turkey vultures, curious about what the melting world had to offer them.

I wasn’t out there to make decisions. I wasn’t ready for that, and the land wasn’t either. I was out there to observe — to walk slowly, to look at what winter had left behind, and to begin to feel what might need to change. I cleared some of the garden beds, moved debris, broke up what had gone stagnant. I smoked weed while I looked for signs of Spring, feeling the earth waking under my feet and all around me.

It’s a peculiar time when Spring comes in early to greet winter. They dance in the days leading up to the last frost — it’s when we check the weather daily just to know what to wear (will it be a coat, a sweater, or a tee shirt day). I used to hate this in-between stretch, but I’ve grown to understand that it gives me a starting point…when to wake my sleepy bones and begin shifting the energy in my home and within.

I take note of what worked and what didn’t — in the garden and in life. Relationships, projects, work, everything. What I may want to clear, and what I might want to make space for. The struggles, lessons, and wisdom from the year before, in preparation for when I am ready to sow the seeds and set intentions. I call this the pre-Spring reflection practice—not forcing clarity, but creating the conditions for it.

Pulling the Dead Roots

It’s important in these times — dark times — that we feel into what is truly calling us. To me, dark times can also reflect the birthing of something. We are moving through the death of what once was and the creating of what will be. We are in this in-between space where new ways of being are being cultivated and alchemized, slowly coming into fruition. Like roots emerging and grasping the earth, creating a foundation for the world we want to manifest.

The garden teaches this literally. A dead root left in the soil does not just sit there, It can block drainage, harbor disease, and crowd out what is trying to emerge. The same is true in us. Many of us have been changed by the reality of the world we live in. Many of us have been moved to unplug from social media, create community in person, spend more time with family, friends, loved ones — to slow down, think about our time and energy differently, think about our own roles in what is wrong in society—and pivot, shift, all while unlearning, healing, processing. It’s a lot, friends. A LOT.

So my medicine for you today is sharing my perspective on how we move forward and doing so without overwhelm. This is not a call to create some fancy vision board or to try to figure out life for the year ahead while living in a reality where our day-to-day lives are run by the next breaking news. It’s all uncertain, weary, and uninspired.

And yet… what we do not consciously release does not simply disappear. It shapes what can and cannot grow. So maybe there is one thing you want to release, one thing you know you should. Let that be what you work through —not ten other things on top of it. Maybe your intentions moving forward are simply to have more space in your life to be around those you love. The relationships, communities, and places (nature is also relational) that fill our hearts, nourish us, and remind us of the joy and magic that still persists in the face of hardship.

Listening and feeling into.

The mind will argue for why you should keep going, push through, and sometimes asks for you to stay in your comfort zone. It’s a skilled attorney for the status quo because that is how it’s been trained, but the body doesn’t lie.

Here is a simple practice for the next two to three weeks.

Sit somewhere quiet. Take a few slow breaths until you feel grounded.
Bring one thing to mind. A project, a commitment, a relationship, a pattern that you may have been feeling or thinking it’s time to say “see ya never”…
Hold it in your awareness and ask: How does my body respond right now?
Notice what happens before you have time to think. Does your chest tighten? Does something in you go numb or does it bring feelings of anxiety, overwhlem, worry? Observe how this presence that is taking up space in you and in your life feels and what it does to your body.

Now think of something that genuinely calls you — not what should, what actually is calling you (yes even if it’s baking and you never baked a cupcake in your life…or you did but it wasn’t “perfect”). Notice the difference. How does this feel in your body? What emotions does it bring up?

A few questions to sit with gently over these weeks, to return to the way you’d check on a garden:

~What am I still tending out of obligation, or the sunk cost of time already given?

~What felt aligned a year ago that no longer fits who I’m becoming or where life is taking me?

~What would I feel quietly relieved to release — if I gave myself permission?

That last one tends to crack things open for me, if you are honest with it, it will shift everything.

A seed that becomes a tree cannot stay a seed. The commitment and decisions you made two years ago was made by a different version of you — one with different capacity, different needs, different wisdom, a different lived experince perhaps. You have grown, evolved, and are just a different person now/ or you just simply want different things, a new start, new passions. Some things were meant to carry you to this point. Give yourself permission to acknowledge what has shifted. You don’t need to know what comes next in order to release what has run its course.

Pay attention to what keeps returning to your thoughts uninvited. Set intentions loosely, leaving room for spaciouness (divine work/alignments). Let your intention be a direction, not a destination, and especially not an expectation.

Hold it the way you’d hold a seed before you know which bed it belongs in. And remember that the geese don’t decide the formation before they take flight. They begin moving, trusting their inner compass, and the shape reveals itself.

Love, Juliet

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ᥫ᭡Pulling the dead roots: On clearing space for what is truly calling you.

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