For most of this lifetime, I struggled to receive.

Love.
Blessings.
Gifts wrapped in paper and gifts wrapped in moments.
Soft words.
Open arms.
Even the simple grace of a door held open.

Receiving made my body bristle. My skin would prickle, my chest would tighten, and something ancient inside me would try to flee. It was as if my nervous system didn’t recognize being met as safe. I felt the energy before I felt the meaning — and the energy felt like too much.

When I was a child, my father would hold me, and my entire being would relax. My little body knew it didn’t have to hold itself up in those moments. I can still remember pretending to fall asleep just so he would carry me to bed—just so I could stay in that feeling a little longer.

That longing to be held has lived inside me for as long as I’ve known myself.

She opened the door just as I stepped up the porch, both hands balancing a hot lasagna. I slipped off my shoes and crossed the threshold—my first time inside their home after countless driveway conversations.

“You better be careful,” he said, grinning.

Careful? Of what? My mind darted in a dozen directions—dogs, cats, the rug?

I was available to the wisdom that they brought- each time my eyes gently landed on them, I watched their evolution, I watched the natural unfolding of the roses and how beautiful it was so just allow the unfolding and to cherish every phase of the unfolding because each phase brought its own expression of beauty. I understood that I was no different than the rose, I am unfolding naturally and each phase of me unfolding carries different forms of beauty, no one more beautiful than the other, simply different.

Just before waking, I drifted in that hazy space between dreaming and daylight, a gentle fantasy unfolding in my mind. It was a soft, delicious way to meet the morning—warm, slow, and alive.

As my eyes blinked open and the edges of the fantasy began to dissolve, one detail lingered: he was talking to me. In nearly every fantasy I have, there are always words—connection, conversation, presence. I paused, let the moment stretch, and listened inward.

I slipped off my robe and stepped into the warm water of the hot tub. Curling into the corner, I drew my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.

Emotion rose through me like a slow, inevitable wave. A warm tear slid down my cheek as a quiet whimper escaped—straight from my heart.

I miss being touched, I thought, as another small sound broke from my body.

I walked through the kitchen, and I could feel his eyes on me. I kept moving, but his gaze followed me with a level of intensity I wasn’t used to from him. When I finally looked up, our eyes met.

“Mom, I love your sweater,” he said, smiling.

I’ve had a channel to spirit—source, the universe, God—for as long as I can remember. It’s always been one of the things that makes me uniquely me. For much of my life, though, I tried to deny that part of myself, afraid that people wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t accept me.

“Your evolution is a wonder to behold,” she texted me.

Her message lit up my phone, and the energy behind it hit me like a freight train.

I wrote her back, and as my fingers moved across the screen, my mind finally started to articulate what my heart, body, and soul had already known.

Yesterday morning, before the Thanksgiving chaos kicked in, my dad and I went for a walk. There was a quietness in the air that I didn’t realize I’d been craving. The roads were silent, the woods were silent—the whole world felt still, and I needed that stillness more than I knew.