The world around me tumbles and crashes, the instinct I’ve been able to rely on for anticipating shifts is quiet. I can go back decades tracing the echoes of my complaints that I don’t have a skill. I’ve ached for an output capable of measurement. The voice in my ear has been relentless and unforgiving for so long. How strange that in this immersion into a life that is impenetrable for intuition, I am unexpectedly confident in my gift.
I’ve known things on a cellular level about relationships. My way through has been knowing things were going to happen with people before they occurred. I have given my heart and gut a steady voice, and they have never let me down. Sequestered at home with no boundaries or schedule for what I do, my signals are shorting out. Mom, wife, business owner, partner, tutor, cook, neighbor, daughter, sister, self. My extroversion has flipped, and I resist interaction beyond our home. I thought the boundaries of before were a struggle, lessons, schedules, assignments, deadlines, this watercolor reproduction of life is disorienting.

Yet I miss nothing from before. Maybe this is a death cycle, composting who and how I was before. I remember a professor introducing me to the word fecundity. Fecund. It has an almost profane sound about it. Spiteful, a bit of, “Oh yeah? Try me.” I love it. I never imagined that it could be about the spirit, but in these hours, that are days but feel like months, and sometimes more, there is a fecundity swelling. Amid loss and catastrophe, I feel the pangs of starting.