An apple tree doesn’t spend its days trying to manifest apples.

It doesn’t visualize fruit.

It doesn’t repeat affirmations.

It doesn’t strive to become something it isn’t.

It simply grows deeper roots.

It receives the sun.

It drinks the rain.

It bends with the wind.

It responds to the changing seasons.

It becomes more fully what it already is.

And then, in time, apples appear.

The fruit isn’t something the tree forces or wills into existence.

It is the natural expression of a tree rooted in its own nature.

Lately, I’ve found myself returning to this image again and again.

For much of my life, I believed growth meant becoming more.

More accomplished.

More healed.

More intuitive.

More successful.

More…

Today, growth feels very different to me.

The more I release the effort of becoming anything other than what I am, the more space I find. I relax. I soften. I take the self-imposed pressure off my own shoulders. I drop the burden of becoming. And in that space, I find more room for the essence that has always been there.

The hardened outer layers of protection—the need to matter, to make a difference, to be special—begin to soften.

As those layers fall away, something quieter emerges.

Not a better version of myself.

A truer one.

An embodied soul who simply is.

Trusting the Unfolding

After returning from Brazil a few weeks ago, I found myself moving through the world differently.

On that trip, I was blessed to witness and receive sincere generosity, beauty, kindness, love, abundance, and protection. Something inside me settled. My nervous system felt calmer. My heart felt more open. My light felt brighter.

I wasn’t trying to be more magnetic or more present. I simply felt more myself.

Last Friday, after returning home from additional travels, my husband and I walked down Main Street in our hometown to meet friends at the Park City Arts Festival.

We had no agenda beyond enjoying a summer evening together. What unfolded surprised and delighted me.

We ran into old friends we hadn’t seen in years. The OGs of Park City seemed to come out of the woodwork. Former players I had coached decades ago. Neighbors. Parents. Acquaintances from different seasons of life.

Twice, complete strangers walked up, introduced themselves, and told me they had been quietly following my work online. They thanked me for sharing what I share and encouraged me to keep going.

One woman I coached over thirty years ago looked me in the eye and told me how much our time together had shaped her life.

Driving home that evening, I reflected on what had happened.

None of those moments had been planned. None of them had been manufactured. They simply arrived.

It made me wonder if our role isn’t to make life happen quite as much as we’ve been taught.

Perhaps our role is to participate more consciously in the life that is already unfolding.

To become so deeply ourselves that life can finally dance with us in harmonic rhythm.

Life is living through us.

Perhaps what changes isn’t life itself. Perhaps what changes is how we relate to life when we stop trying so hard.

When we stop hiding behind striving.

When we stop proving.

When we stop performing.

When we stop believing we must earn our worth in order to matter.

Like the apple tree, maybe the invitation is simply to become deeply rooted in our own nature.

To allow the fruit to arrive in its own season, perhaps not in the way we imagined it would ripen.

These days, I’m less interested in controlling life and more interested in meeting it. I get excited to see who enters my field. I feel amazed when something seemingly ordinary catches my attention with awe and wonder. And I trust that my soul may recognize the path long before my thinking mind understands it.

The miracles I once believed needed to be extraordinary experiences to count are becoming wonderfully ordinary.

A meaningful conversation.

An unexpected encounter.

A timely invitation.

A stranger who somehow feels familiar.

Ordinary people.

Ordinary moments.

Moments that, through appreciation, become miracles themselves.

Maybe miracles aren’t rare events after all.

Maybe they are quietly surrounding us all the time.

When perception clears, the ordinary begins to shimmer.

I don’t know exactly where intention ends, and surrender begins. I don’t know how mystery unfolds.

What surprises me the most is how comfortable I have become not knowing.

That said, what I do know is this.

The more I let go of striving…

The more I trust the unfolding…

The more deeply rooted I become in who I truly am…and the less I care what others think of me,

the more life seems to meet me with quiet, beautiful, yummy surprises.

Maybe that has been the invitation all along:

To remember who we are beneath everything we’ve added.

To become so deeply ourselves…

That life can meet us in the unfolding of who we were always designed to be.

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If this reflection resonated, you may also enjoy We All Carry Medicine For Each Other or learn more about my Soul Readings.