Sawa-Sawa — Ending Well and the Seeds That Follow

There’s a moment, just after an ending, that no one really prepares you for.

It’s not the heartbreak itself. Not the chaos of the unraveling. It’s the quiet afterward.

The room once filled with shared plans is now just space.

The calendar once bursting with deadlines is suddenly… blank.

And there you are, heart still beating, breath still rising, but untethered.

That’s where I am, love. Right now.

In the in-between.

The sacred, uncomfortable, miraculous middle.

This past year of my life has been about causing the miraculous — not just hoping for it. Not waiting for something outside me to grant it. But choosing, in each moment, to live as though the miraculous was my birthright.

But here’s the thing about miracles: they often begin in endings.

And not the clean kind. The messy, aching, no-clear-villain kind.

The kind where something beautiful ran its course.

Where something real needed to die so something truer could live.

The Culture of Moving On

We live in a world obsessed with forward.

Forward motion. Forward planning. Forward momentum.

Grieve, but not too long.

Feel, but stay productive.

Let go, but bounce back quickly.

But I’ve learned — and am still learning — that real beginnings require real endings.

Not the kind where we say, “I’m fine,” while we hold our breath.

The kind where we sit in the ashes long enough to gather the gold.

We can’t start the next chapter if we’re still mid-sentence in the last.

Sawa-Sawa

— Finding Peace with the Turning

In Swahili, there’s a phrase: sawa-sawa.

It means “It is well.” Or “It is in balance.”

But it’s more than that.

It’s an energetic return to harmony.

It’s what happens when we stop resisting what is — not because it doesn’t hurt, but because we trust its place in the greater story.

To reach sawa-sawa is to breathe again.

To no longer fight the ending.

To make peace not just with what happened, but with who we were in it — the parts that grew, the parts that hurt, the parts we now choose to release.

I’ve come to see that endings are less about walking away… and more about turning toward ourselves.

Turning toward truth.

Toward what is asking to be born.

The Seed Is Hope —

Mbegu ni Matumaini

There’s another piece of wisdom I hold close right now.

Mbegu ni matumaini — “the seed is hope.”

Even now, in the space left behind, something is beginning.

Even in grief, life is already organizing the next miracle.

We can’t always see it — not with our eyes.

But our soul knows.

Mbegu ni matumaini teaches us that hope isn’t a fantasy. It’s a seed.

A real, living thing.

Planted in the dark.

Watered by our tears.

Rooted in our willingness to let go of what was… so we can hold what’s next with open hands.

It reminds me that what looks like an end might also be the very soil where something sacred begins to grow.

Practices of Completion and Planting

If you’re in an ending right now, love, here’s what I’m practicing — slowly, imperfectly:

• Ritual: I write letters I’ll never send. I speak aloud to what I’ve lost. I burn things when I’m ready. I bury others when they’re ready to become earth again.

• Gratitude + Truth: I don’t sugarcoat. I honour what worked, what didn’t, and what I’m choosing to carry forward.

• Space: I give myself room. To be unproductive. To cry. To dance in the middle of my kitchen. To trust that rest is forward motion.

• Tending, not forcing: I don’t need to know what’s next. I need to tend my soil. Nourish my spirit. Rest my roots.

You Are the Garden

So if you are standing in an ending —

if something precious has closed, shifted, slipped away —

know this:

There is nothing wrong with you for needing time.

You don’t need to rush.

You don’t need to know what’s next.

You don’t need to be okay yet.

You are not broken.

You are becoming.

You are the space between seasons.

The pause between heartbeats.

The soil turning itself inside out to make room for new roots.

You are the garden.

And even now — especially now.

It is well.

Sawa-sawa.