The Garden Gate

On sacred territory and cultivating in the dark

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The last few months have been full of questions. This morning, they were strangely quiet.

I’m at peace.

It took me a long time to be able to write that sentence without qualifying it, softening it, or making a joke right after it. Thirty years of practice. Retreats on four continents. A meditation cushion that has outlasted every version of me that thought peace was something you earn at the end, like a tiara.

It isn’t. It’s something you cultivate, slowly, in the dark, without applause. And then one day you notice it’s just there. Weirdly quiet. Rooted. Yours.

Here’s what it looks like, now that I’m on this side.

The more at peace I become, the less chaos I can hold. Not tolerate. Hold. My hands are simply full now. They’re holding finer and more precious things than what I used to carry. So when noise arrives, drama, urgency, the old familiar swirl, there simply isn’t room.

I’ve stopped explaining myself. Not out of pride, and not because I’ve run out of words. I have plenty of words; ask anyone. I stopped because I finally understood that being misunderstood is survivable. For most of my life I treated it like an emergency, something to be corrected immediately, or else… what? Now I let it be. Some people will read me wrong, and I’ve made peace with being a skimmed book.

I’ve stopped showing up in places that disturb my calm. This one took the longest, because I was raised, like most women of my generation, to believe that attendance is love. It isn’t. Attendance is attendance. Love can be a note or a call. And some days, my silence is a form of love. I show up fully where I can arrive whole, and I’ve learned to be gentle with myself in the places I can’t.

I choose silence over proving my point. Not every point needs a defense attorney. Most of them, it turns out, just need a witness, and I can be that for myself. I learned this from my daughter. One of the biggest lessons of my life was the day she said ” Mom, I don’t need you to fix this, I just need you to listen.” Almost stopped my heart. There is a particular sweetness in letting a conversation end unresolved and sleeping anyway.

I choose distance over forced connection, and I’ve stopped calling that coldness. It’s honesty. My energy has become sacred territory to me, not in a precious way, in a practical one. And not everyone is meant to cross that ground. That’s not a wall. It’s a garden gate, and I decide when it swings open, and it does still swing open, wide, for the right souls, at the right time.

I’ve had a very long life of running, giving, acting, apologizing, showing up as someone else to please someone else. I’m tired. Maybe this is what it took for me to reclaim my peace.

None of this is arrogance. It’s alignment. It’s what happens when the inside and the outside of a life finally match.

And here is the part I most want to remember, the part I would whisper back to the woman I was at thirty-five, drafting her midnight explanations, attending everything, holding everyone’s weather:

Protecting my peace was never about shutting the world out. The world is still all the way in; I love it more now, not less. It’s about keeping my inner rooms clear enough to hear my own soul. Because the soul talks quietly. It doesn’t yell over drama. It doesn’t compete with noise. It waits. Patient. It knows where I am. I now know where to find it. It’s in the peace and quiet.

Some days the gates are open, some days they are closed.

Today they are closed.

I’m in the garden.

I’ll open them again when I’m ready.

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