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This is typically what goes to our paid subscribers, but I am sending the reflection portion for the week to everyone. 💛
Persistence isn’t always loud. In fact, it is often the quiet, steady courage that keeps holding on when no one is watching.
When I look at the faintest touch of gold in our North Florida leaves that are perennially late to the autumn party, I’m reminded persistence may not look like what we think it does.
There’s a story we’ve been told about persistence. It’s woven into the “Protestant work ethic” and pulling ourselves up by our proverbial bootstraps.
It’s ingrained in the stories we tell ourselves about hard work, earning a right to be worthy, and the dangers of idle hands.
We are told that persistence looks like grit and grind. Crush that 4 am morning routine, and don’t you dare stop when you are tired. You push through no matter what.
But you know where I don’t see that story being told?
The natural world.
The lessons written on the leaves that are turning from amber to rust. The truths carried in treetops whose branches know how to let go and rest so they can return to new life.
To persist is to trust that what’s buried will bloom again. It is to keep showing up to our own becoming.
There is a quiet defiance in slowing down. It’s a way of saying, I belong to the rhythms of earth and her seasons, not the rhythms of algorithms and my screens.
Persistence doesn’t always look like motion. It is also finding strength in stillness.
Rest doesn’t lessen our ability to persist; it is the very thing that sustains it.
And in a culture that glorifies productivity, constant output, and creative “hustle,” choosing rest is an act of resistance.
Rest resists the story that worth is earned through exhaustion. It stands against the myth that momentum equals meaning and the idea that slowing down means falling behind.
In other words, rest isn’t what interrupts persistence. It’s what makes it possible.
You are worthy of care and of resting until you are ready to rise.
All my love, Michele
Now, for our prompts this week! And we have a special chat these next few weeks for Wondertober where you can share your art!
