Between the Snake and the Horse

I went quiet because I was learning how to stay.

There was a time when writing poured straight out of my life force. It moved me, carried me, and fuelled me.

Lately, I have been rooting instead. Letting my feet find the earth. Letting my nervous system soften enough to stop reaching for the sky every time something feels uncertain.

It feels like my fire has gone out, not because I am disconnected, but because I no longer live inside chaos.

For so long, my passion was fuelled by friction, by intensity, by reacting to the external world and the lives of others. That kind of fire was raw, unedited, and loud.

Now I am grounded. My body no longer wants to run. I am not living inside other people’s nervous systems anymore. And in the quiet, the fire feels different, almost absent.

There are moments where the stillness unnerves me. Where I wait for the familiar surge, the urgency, the pull, the need to move, and it does not come. Instead there is breath. A slower pulse. A sense of being held rather than driven.

And so I find myself wondering how to cultivate fire without chaos.

If chaos was the teacher, what comes next. How does passion move through a calm body. How does fire live in stillness without burning everything down.

This is what I have been sitting with and meditating on. Not searching for answers, but learning to trust that a steadier flame still burns.

With the Year of the Snake nearly complete, there is still a shedding underway. And beyond it, a fire waiting. Not to consume, but to carry us forward into what is ready to be born.

It is here that I can feel the embers beginning to reignite as we move toward the new year.