Language of devotion

Writing is a means of survival. I’m not sure where I’d be without this regathering of self, my words spilling out upon solitude. An overthinker, I retreat into my mind and allow my confusions, thoughts, feelings to exist and pass. I often feel compelled to write them down, my words merely a fraction of whatever I’m trying to express. I seek wholeness, totality, understanding. All those things come at the cost of being known, yet even that is not a guarantee, given our fractured world.

You must first know and love yourself, and if you don’t know how, you must learn. As with anything, beginning is the hardest part. Then comes routine, the enjoyment and discipline, satisfaction and contentment upon growth. It’s a slow moving, winding process, sometimes cyclical and spiraling, but any step is movement towards.

What is loving, trusting, and choosing yourself? It looks different for every person but we all have the same needs, food, water, and shelter. Being well nourished, active, and emotionally aware are some ways self love looks. We learn our sense of worth from our parents and peers. Your mother, typically, is the first one to love and tend to you.

She is consistent, present, safe, nourishing, she grew you in her body and takes care of you until you can fend for yourself. Through amniotic fluid, the first sounds you hear are hers, her voice and words, bodily noises. She gives her body to you, morphing, aching, soul splitting as you’re born— that is a mother’s love. Sacrificial, life-changing, enduring, she costs herself to birth you.

That sentiment seeps into every other form of a woman’s love. Is love guaranteeing the happiness and well being of those you love, even at the expense of yourself? Is love staying, even when you are miserable and in denial? Does love leave you drained, with night terrors, with an ability to breathe only when you are out of their space?

I am young but I’ve seen and met many different kinds of women, mostly by working in restaurants in an area predominantly consisting of retirees. Older women are by far the most interesting and I love the ones in my life dearly. There are certain affections that can only be found in the hearts of older ladies. Their resilience, humour, strength, and self are unmatched. Their long, full lives offer strong personalities and countless stories. I’m grateful for my elders and the lessons they instill, their careful words are brilliant guidance.

Love is infinite, all encompassing, difficult to define, but there are notions we can all agree on. Devotion is a language of love, possibly the most universal. Choice and consistency are crucial, devotion is both.  It’s knowing for no reason and trusting that in every moment, using it to build and further your dreams. It is stepping without seeing, falling without knowing if someone is there to catch you, believing that there is always more.

Hope and love are synonymous, along with light shining between leaves, komorebi, and burnt bark after fire kisses each trunk. For months, they stay charred and black, orange needles and tan fronds contrast new green, isn’t that devotion? To experience brief, collective moments of change yet the consequences are visible, crucial, cannot be ignored or disappear. To stand together, uniquely, in necessity, in communion and worship of that which we are born of and nourishes us. Watching seasons pass on the same land gave me a deeper understanding of devotion.

When we come back to ourselves, each other, the land, there’s an undeniable shift, we move slowly, rhythmically, in cycles. We catch the sunrise and watch sunsets and bask in the glow of a full moon. We gaze at the sky, at clouds and shooting stars, each other, in admiration and awe, and catch glimpses of ourselves in every passing person. To choose love for humanity and this planet requires devotion, intention, effort. It also requires infinite patience, understanding, and change.

My “bar flies” are three older women, Annette, Sandy, and Kay. They come in every Tuesday and Saturday. I’m very grateful for where I work and how it keeps introducing me to so many wonderful people. Each is unique in her own way and through them, I see various ways women have had to forge their paths. In 2026, women are societally considered “equal” (definitely not treated as such but) with the ability to vote, equal pay, freedom to do whatever they choose. Eighty years ago, the world was completely different. Coming out of WW2, people were tough, emotionally unavailable, and they still believed in the future and promise of “America.”

Annette is in her early 70s, she’s a black woman, highly intelligent, organized, and wonderful, a libra, and much taller in spirit than physicality. She never married or had children, but she’s had various creatures that she loves very, very much. Raised in a small town outside of Chicago with a brother five years older, she’s always had herself and valued that. Her big brain took her to phenomenal places and she’s lived in a few different cities, she created space for herself and many after her. She claims to not be the nurturing/care type, but is more than willing to organize and provide necessary support. Annette inspires me to follow and pursue my dreams and aspirations, to live meaningfully, to not take anyone’s shit, and to always, always show up for myself and do what I need to do. The devotion to herself is deeply profound, she lives her life as she pleases, and I’m blessed to have her as a role model.

Sandy is in her early 80’s, a white woman, she was born in Miami, moved to upstate NY for college, went back to Miami, then she came to Sarasota. She has two children, an ex-husband (who’s maga), and has had many animals. Working multiple jobs while her children were young, she eventually found her place in real estate, where she still works as a realtor. Sandy is a leo, has positive things to say about everybody, encourages politeness and courtesy, and cut her hair short at 40 because “that’s just what you do.” She loves her family and they’re all very close, she frequently drives down to Miami, and the grandkids fly from out of state to come home. Her devotion to her family is beautiful, somehow transcending political differences, she has kept silent to keep peace at times. That strength is not one I know, she inspires me to be kinder and wider in my capacity to give and receive.

Kay, also a white woman in her early 80s, is a pisces and was born in Sarasota, but has lived all over the world (Phillipines, China, Germany). She had her first and only child very young, his father useless, then a few years later, married a man she found beautiful and loved. She often mentions how women threw themselves at him in front of her, how their efforts would succeed at times, and the glorious, lavish, social lives they led overseas and on the East coast, how she loved him and loved driving him crazy. She told me recently she had night terrors for the time they were together, ending when he died. After his death, she was free, no longer caring for or catering to anybody. Some would consider her a bitch, she’s been nothing but pleasant to me but I realize I’m special lol, and she acknowledges that often she is angry and wrathful. A lifetime of being unable to express your feelings or pursue what you want for yourself will do that to you. She shows me the cost of marriage and loving someone, of choosing and devoting your life to them. It is such a beautiful thing but the loss of self is real, and commonplace in previous times. She inspires me to educate myself, speak what’s on my mind, and devote my energy into what fulfills and nourishes me.

I bring them up because they have all lived very different lives and reveal different things. I greatly value their input and presence! Each has lived her life according to her love and devotions, and she is now the physical embodiment of them. They are my little angels and bless me with their presence! I look at them and see who I want to be, who’s waiting for and guides me (one of the voices in my head), and their unrelenting, timeless beauty. Wrinkles and grey hair and melodic laughs, I hope I grow as old as them. I hope I follow my devotions and inspire those younger than me.

There is no greater teacher of devotion than water (along with Earth and all her elements.) The lifeforce of this planet, birthed from a salty womb, sustained by clear fluid, we are 70% water and so is everything else. Composed of liquid H₂O, we express its properties (eternal, conscious, omniscient, free-flowing.) Water constantly shifts, steam to ice to streams, yet it remembers who it is, who and where it’s been, what is around.

The foundation of Florida, ancient seabeds, rich in phosphorus and fossils, is proof of water’s love, its timeless devotion. Millions of years later, we stand on these holey lands, alive and nourished because they gave and established themselves here. Shifting sands and sunken sea creatures solidified, stacking and layering. Even now, water shapes and holds them. Limestone is carved and eaten away by the steady flow of a spring or the slight slope of a blackwater river. Rains downpour and the scrub is satiated, until dry season.

Every ecosystem is proof of sustained devotion, highly evolved plants and critters comprise their home. They are living love letters. A slow, steady, certain love, one that takes generations and years to understand and see. Our human lives and brains, tiny, can barely comprehend their patience and dedication. They persist and grow, trusting the ground beneath them to stay and water to flow, for generations, until they resemble and are inextricably linked with one another.

I’ve watched the prairie, in deluge and drought, after flames and mowing and long periods of growth/no clearing. The lily pads never left the pond, blooming according to the moon. Liatris appears every fall without hesitation (with proper clearance) and Carolina redroot rises in late winter in wet spots and ditches. They are never asked, maybe called for, yet they grow and appear, waking from dormancy and their hidden roots to bloom and commune with the Sun and Rains, and nourish the ground from which they reside. They know their places, take their times, and give each other necessary space. The love is palpable, I can place my hand on the soil and feel its livelihood, kneel and kiss the ground to feel it kiss me back.

On that pine prairie, I learned another lesson in devotion, one in the form of ten cats. This one is pretty self explanatory hahaha. But in tending them, day in and day out, I found myself and this unconditional, limitless love. In that responsibility, I accessed strength and dedication I didn’t know I contained. Regardless of if I wanted to clean the litter boxes or go to the cat store or get out of bed and feed them, I had to. They depended on and trusted me to take care of them, so I had to. Yes, it was an enormous and possibly excessive responsibility, but in the beginning, I wasn’t alone in managing them. I was alone in tending all ten the last year of having them, but again, it instilled responsibility in me. I love them so I was there. I want to see them happy and healthy so I did everything I could to guarantee that, regardless of how I felt or who else was there.

I’ve known that I’m a caretaker and protector, a role gifted to me early in life that I’ve held tightly onto. My sister is almost two years younger than me, from the moment she was born, she became my responsibility. Things have changed but she will always, always be my priority and who I devote my time and focus to. That bond is unparalleled and has shaped me into who I am. My family dynamics were emotional, unstable, conflicting, which led to unclear boundaries and gaping wounds that weren’t properly cleaned and able to begin healing until a couple years ago. I’ve watched her become the most beautiful person and while we all have room to grow, I’m immensely proud of who she is and where she stands. I choose her in this life, I’ve chosen her in many others, and I firmly believe we will reincarnate again, together.

Devotion transcends spacetime, imaginary boundaries, simple minds. Devotion is truly the fabric and language of love, endurance, presence. Sustained by worship and consistency, we create trust and partnerships. I am not me without those I love, even if they are absent. I still go to them in absence, in the spot of my mind where they are preserved and entombed. On that prairie, I learned various lessons of attachment and love. Clinging and gripping, in fear of loss, only suffocates and hinders. Love is all encompassing, a campfire and blazing wildfire, a thunderstorm and the humidity following.

The soil holds and supports each plant, invasive or native, dead or sprouting, huge or tiny. A slash pine starts as a seed in a pinecone, released by flames, implanting itself into sand. From there, it lives in a small, grassy stage, after a few years, the trunk hardens and reaches towards the sky. Every season, the trunk widens and stretches and after around twenty-five years, it splits, and the canopy opens. In a functioning ecosystem, fires chars resilient, patchy bark every one to three years. Air, fire, water, earth, and wood (life) oscillate and thrive together, creating interdependent systems and eternal partnerships. Most cultures recognize and value this dependency, especially those polytheistic.

When we watch ecosystems change, elements transform, we bear witness to simple truths. I still stand, even changed. I am still me and you are still you, this connection persists, even if it looks different. We find peace in difficult transitions of loss and decay. We return and persist because there is no other choice, to give up is unthinkable. The soil is protection, holding roots and seeds, wind carries messages and flames, water douses and provides the foundation for every form of life on this planet. We look at various environments and see, even in their physical differences, we all need the same things. There’s no real separation between you and me besides our thin skins. And yes, they bruise, wound, infect easily, but they heal and scar and scab. After harm, healing must happen, after rupture comes repair.

Devotion is the ultimate exchange. Communion and reciprocity are the foundation for meaningful relationships. To believe in yourself and your power and act accordingly is devotion. To guide and inspire those you love by your doings is devotion. Every drop in a river matters, each grain of sand on the beach. There is no true individual or self, we maintain a collective, either fragmented and confused or whole and aware. Put yourself out there and stay there. Freedom comes from responsibility. You have an obligation to yourself and those you love. You owe me, us, yourself. You owe this planet for the life you live. May that reminder guide your actions as you tread carefully. Step with intention, with choice. Choose love and presence. Have a great day thank u for reading :+)