Sometimes, when you’ve been off radar for a bit, there can be a temptation to show all you’ve been up to, accomplished, and done. But then you come upon a Mary Oliver quotation, stuck to the back of a red Toyota outside the Kettle Cove Creamery, and you remember that what you’re most proud of is not doing.

In this in-between time, many of us find ourselves, as Octavia Raheem tells us, in the pause between “what is ‘no longer’ and what is ‘not yet.’” How do we summon the courage to stay in the pause? How do we meet ourselves with kindness in the midst of paradox?

The truth is that for many of us, those to do lists ramp up right when the din of our actual discomfort gets too loud to bear. Instead of slowing down to notice what’s really happening – loneliness, exhaustion, overwhelm – we put window dressing on the tender spots, gloss them over with busy-ness. It’s comically bad timing: Just when we’re feeling less than together, we wag our fingers at ourselves to get it together.

Ruminating on grief and celebration in the loss of a sweet pup: “Animals can do the same for us; their touch and constancy melting us into who we were to begin with. Until we are irrevocably marked by love.”

A million internet tests will tell you if you are extroverted or introverted, but for me the designation is fluid and comes back to this: What nourishes you most of all, at this very moment?

Early spring feels like the season for these stark questions. It offers a kind of invitation to burn the bracken in the early bonfire, to set out the seed trays, empty the shelves. The act of tending to what is here – even when it’s muck-covered and colorless – sends out a kind of secret faith that growth is coming. Despite the evidence, despite the pace.