The Heron at Low Tide

Hmm, two in one day? Yes well I was inspired..

This evening, as the tide pulled back its skirts and left the shoreline bare, I found myself pausing with my husband. We had taken a short walk along the beach—quiet, just as my body language had asked for. It should have been enough to steady me. Yet my thoughts had already begun their familiar descent, spiraling, circling, ready to carry me into that dark and restless place I know so well.

And then, there it was.

A Great Blue Heron, poised upon a rock in the thinning tide.

We both noticed it at once, though we said nothing. Instead, we stood in silence, letting the moment lengthen, our gaze held by this creature of stillness and patience. The heron did not move, and neither did we.

In its presence, I felt something soften inside me. A pause: precisely the pause I needed. Not the abrupt stop of force, but the kind of pause that unfurls gently, like a hand unclenching.

This time of year always stirs the spiral in me. I can never seem to escape it. Grief swells beneath the surface, steady and quiet until it lashes out in rage or rebellion. Yet this season feels different. The sadness is here, yes, but it does not have the same teeth of depression it once carried. It feels more like a steady undertow, soft and insistent, wrapping itself around me but not pulling me under.

Perhaps that is the medicine of the heron,

to remind me that stillness does not mean the absence of heaviness,

but the willingness to sit with it, poised upon the rocks,

watching the tide come and go.

Tonight, the heron gave me that gift:

the grace of a pause.

The reminder that I do not always need to fix the spiral,

or run from it,

or let it consume me.

I can simply notice.

I can simply breathe.

I can simply be.

🌀

As we turned from the heron and made our way back toward home, my eyes fell on the stones scattered across the beach. So many of them bore a rusty bloom, as if iron itself had risen to the surface, staining the rocks with the colors of blood and earth.

I couldn’t help but wonder…

was this the mark of drought, or the quiet evidence that the Great Mother is shifting once again? Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.

Still, I felt the message rise: that change leaves its trace upon the body of the earth, just as grief and time leave their trace upon us. The stones do not resist the iron; they hold it. The tide does not resist its pull; it surrenders.

And maybe that is all I am being asked to do this season.

To hold what rises.

To surrender to what shifts.

To trust that even in the spiral, stillness is possible.

The Mother is shifting, and like her, so am I—gently, on purpose.

xoxo Flower