A Quieter Declaration

A birthday reflection on surrender, tenderness, and the slow work of coming back to what matters.

It’s been quite a year. I’m sitting here this morning with Bear, who turns twelve this year, feeling mostly quiet and grateful. Maybe a little tender. Maybe a little disoriented in that strange birthday way, when you find yourself looking back and looking ahead at the same time, trying to take in the year you just lived and the one you are about to enter.

Another year around the sun. Being born on the 4th of July has always made this day feel a little symbolic. Some years it has felt louder. Fireworks, celebration, declarations, all of it. This year feels different. If there is a declaration, it is a quieter one. A declaration to keep reorienting. To keep coming back to what matters. To take better care of myself. To take better care of the little one inside. To continue softening the stance I have had toward myself for so much of my life, and to keep listening for a kinder voice within.

I was told this is the year of The Hanged Man for me, and honestly, it fits. A year to pause. To surrender a little more. To loosen my grip. To stop trying to force the next answer, and to see what becomes available when I am willing to meet life from a different angle. That is not always easy for me. There is still a part of me that wants to figure it out, move it along, make sense of it, get to the next place. But maybe this year is asking for something softer. More trust. More patience. More willingness to let life reveal itself without needing to wrestle it into clarity too soon.

There is so much noise in the world right now. So much chaos. So much urgency. I do not want that to harden me. I do not want it to make me less kind, less open, or less emotionally generous. I want to keep tending the inner life, not as a way of turning away from the world, but as a way of showing up with a little more steadiness and a little more love. I keep learning that how we meet ourselves has everything to do with how we meet the people we love, and how we move through the world.

So maybe that is the practice this year. To be more patient with the places still learning. To stay close to what is tender. To keep softening. To keep listening. To keep finding my way back to love, especially in the places where the old voice still wants to tighten, judge, or turn away.

And to everyone who has been part of this journey, walking beside me, reading along, witnessing, reflecting, loving, challenging, or simply staying connected in your own quiet way, thank you. I cannot tell you how much that has meant. For those of you following and subscribing on Substack, thank you too. It means more than you know.

Here’s to another year of softening, surrendering, listening, loving, and continuing to become.

From the heart,

Shasheen

📷 This is 56, July 4th, 2026, Santa Fe, NM.

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