I remembered this week that it’s been over 5 years since I started meditating!

Meditation was something that intrigued me long before I made it a habit, but I couldnever carve out the time or summon the patience to make it happen. Until one day, I just decided it was time. And today, meditation is one of my non-negotiable daily practices.

Meditation sounds fancy (or at least, it sounded super fancy to me before I was doing it). But it’s not. It’s simple and ordinary and grounding and frustrating. It often feels like a waste of time.

My approach to meditation has changed a lot in the past 5 years, along with my reasons for doing it, but overall, this is what it gives me: an experience of my own humanness.

That experience is sometimes transcendent, sometimes boring, sometimes painful – but it’s always real, and it’s always grounding.

Because nothing gets me in touch with my raw, empty humanity as much as sitting in silence trying to settle my energy and get grounded in my body.

Looking at it now, meditation is really just a practice of pausing, noticing, experiencing, and checking in with myself (and learning not to be afraid of what I’ll find there).

And the reason I keep doing it, the reason it’s been so worthwhile, is because it deepens my capacity to be with emptiness, discomfort, and uncertainty – and helps me see and remember the truth of about myself: that I have a body, a mind, and wild collection of emotions, that I’m immensely powerful and creative; that I’m going to die (and that’s okay), and that there’s more to the nothingness and emptiness than we think.

So I’m celebrating 5 years of devotion to this practice that works for me! And I wish everyone success in finding, maintaining, and deepening into practices that give you life, joy, and goodness.