There’s an ancient language we were born fluent in — the language of the body, the subtle currents beneath words, the quiet knowing that pulses beneath the noise of the world. But somewhere along the way, life teaches us to stop listening.

We all encounter moments when we feel trapped at the threshold of something new—when a powerful force stands between where we are and where we want to go. But what if, instead of fighting to move past it, we turned toward what is standing between where we are and where we are going? What if we held curiosity?

I wouldn’t have known to call it grief. It wasn’t death, a funeral or a loss that the world would acknowledge. But something had died in me all the same. My original innocence was lost, it went into exile, and something else took its place—a sharp tracker, an observer, someone who could see the lay of the land who learned to anticipate what might be coming before it arrived.