🌱 Seedlings No. 1: A Tending Practice

How do we tend to ourselves? What does tending look like when we are tired but still here?

How do we do the work of remembrance when a forced famine—the most brutal expression of severance—is still unfolding?

Lately I’ve been revising language—bios, titles, old stories. Not to create something new, but to remember what’s already beneath the surface. Integration (of stories, lessons, pain, grief, that rock of a knot you are carrying in your shoulder), to me, is not reinvention. It is saying: yes, that too—and choosing what to carry with more awareness, care, and intention.

I’ve been moving through a slow season of rewording, remembering, and re-rooting. Dusting off bios and CVs. Editing gently. Updating language that once represented and held me and now needs space to evolve. As I wrap edits on my children’s picture book author page (more soon), I’ve been thinking of this work not as a rebrand—but as a kind of integration.

Integration doesn’t ask us to erase or overwrite.
It invites us into deeper harmony with the full range of what we carry.
Not by changing it—but by transforming our relationship to it.

So I’m beginning something small here. A soft practice: 🌱 Seedlings.

Short posts with a list—offered as a glimpse into my own practice, and an invitation for you to take in with your morning chai or coffee, or whatever helps you pause long enough to feel your breath.

How do I tend to myself these days? What does tending look like when I am tired, but still here?

🌱 Sometimes, when I feel stuck: lying on the floor, eyes closed, sunlight warming my face.

🌱 Rituals: how I brush my teeth, make my chai or moka pot coffee, then sit with my journal and the quiet.

🌱 When the urge to isolate grows stronger, I pour into my roots—my people—and say hi, or send a podcast to a loved one as a reminder that we are not alone.

🌱 Movement. Every. Single. Day.
And I will always say this as a reminder to myself: water doesn’t flow through a closed tap. Walk, dance, wiggle, shake, stretch, breathe and let your breath undo what feels achy and jagged.

What’s helping you tend to yourself, even just a little?

With love,

Uma