This week has been so…March. Gray, rain, mist, storms, mud. Trees are budding. Grass is turning green. Each day, the bird song grows.
As usual, I come to this moment in early March with a ton of unposted photos of winter ducks and a frozen lake that I want to get into the world. I have stories I haven’t gotten to tell you yet!
AND. I start feeling the desire to move on to what’s happening now, even if it’s not very photogenic. I want to tell you about the cedar waxwings playing in the trees, the singing frogs, and the mating red-shouldered hawks I’ve watched flying under the clouds all week.
I don’t want to abandon the beauty that just was, yet my body is singing a new rhythm. I don’t want to rush ahead, to live in an instantaneous world that doesn’t take time to savor the good.
There is a weaving that has to happen - weaving what was into what is, weaving the song of winter into the song of spring. Energies transforming, transmuting, becoming a new song with a new rhythm built of what has been.
Within myself, there is a weaving that has to happen, too. Weaving the person I was into the person I am, even as I step into the person I am becoming.
Our culture speaks a lot of “letting go” and “moving on” but very little of what happens to what already was. We speak as if that which was just disappears, yet we know that energy cannot be destroyed. It can only change form. When I look at our ever-growing inability to manage our collective waste, I can see we are missing something.
Every experience I have shapes who I am in the next moment. Every thought I think, every sensation and emotion I feel, every story I read, every song I sing, is woven into the fabric of me.
I wonder what happens to the stories that go untold? Do they sit in my energy field, waiting to be acknowledged like the thousands of photos and videos that never make it past my “to be posted” folders on my phone?
In case you’re curious, there are currently about 13,000 photos that have made it through processing, into the queue, but haven’t been posted - and that only goes back about 4 years. I have no idea how many additional photos are in my files!
I could “free up space” by mass-deleting, but I haven’t because I know there are a few I wouldn’t want to lose, and I don’t know where they are. Why? I can’t tell you. I rarely go back to them, but it happens occasionally.
With my photos, I take the time as they come in to whittle them down to only the ones I want to keep. That 13,000 was once 130,000 or more. More than 90% of the photos I take go directly into the recycle bin.
That triage of photos requires me to at least glance at the photos. To acknowledge their presence before they are recycled. To remember their stories and let them go with grace.
What of all the energies, stories, and experiences that come into my energy field? My energy field - my physical and electric body - looks a lot like an online storage system, only I can’t add capacity whenever I want, and I can’t release the files stored there unless I can find them.
I wonder how many untold stories are sitting in my energy system waiting to be moved into the world? The good stories, the beautiful stories, the ones that have been buried under all the other stuff I haven’t acknowledged and recycled.
I don’t triage my experiences and thoughts the way I do my photos. I largely push away what I don’t want to feel - but push it away to where? Like the photos, these energies that come in need to be acknowledged in order to be recycled through the system.
Nearly all of my photos are moments of excitement and joy. I can’t say the same for much of what invades my energy through media, social media, and just living in our culture.
I imagine those unacknowledged energies, especially the ones I try not to feel, look a lot like the trash that’s piling up in our landfills. Over time, that energy is likely to become compressed, stagnant, and heavy. I see this reflected in my physical body.
My quest in 2026 is to transmute as much of this energy as my body system, physical and energetic, can. To free up energy for the new, to keep the things that bring me joy, and to allow all of myself to be lighter and move more freely. To become more of a fire horse, one who is able to help others transmute the energies of the world as well.
I’ve learned that the thing that transforms energy, frees it up, and allows it to be recycled, is love. Transforming the energies within me requires me to truly look at them with love, to release them with honest gratitude, and to love myself back into wholeness.
I know, it sounds quite airy-fairy, but I’ve tried every other way. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to fix myself, to mold myself into something I think I should be. I own a library full of self-help books. I’ve spent enough time on that path to know it doesn’t work. I can’t fix myself into wholeness. Unity can only come from forming a loving relationship.
I’ve moved a lot in my life - I’ve transformed. I know I can do it again. I know that each time I move and have to pack up my extended energy system (the contents of my home), I ask if each item is something I really want to carry forward. Does it fit in the world I’m moving into? Now, when I go through periods of clearing space in my home and in myself, I ask the same question.
Perhaps I’ll write more about the process and the tools I’m using as we move through the year. For now, I challenge you to look around your energy system and ask, “Is there something here that I don’t want to carry forward into tomorrow?” When you find it, can you thank it with sincere gratitude? Can you love it before you try to release it? Can you see it for all that it is?
This practice is challenging - and it’s worth it.
PS - If you’re bemoaning the time change here in the US and you need a way to be grateful for it, you can feel gratitude on my behalf. Without the time change, my practice would be very difficult to meld into my paying job in both summer and winter! (And don’t forget to change your clocks.)
Wonderful photos. Thought you might be interested in this https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/bird-watching-brain-9.7108469 a recent study that shows that birdwatching is very good for the brain (and helps prevent cognitive decline with aging!) Who knew- not to mention how much enjoyment it gives and you share with us here.
Every one of those thousands of yet-to-be-published photographs has already become part of your story. Every time you lift the camera—even when you did not get the chance to raise your arms to the moment— each one is an experience—each one, now a part of your very soul. Can we leave behind that which prevents us from opening our wings and taking flight? I am not quite sure if we can ‘unload’ or erase the past, but we certainly can learn to soar above it. We learn resilience and the ability to thrive from loving our bird friends. “I sing the body electric.”(Walt Whitman)—I sing the chorus with the Yellow-rumped warbler. And now she, too, becomes a part of my own story.