En celebración del Mes Internacional de la Mujer, nos unimos a las voces de todas las Mujeres en la música Latina que están haciendo una diferencia con su mensaje. Abrimos esta celebración con Ana Rocha, Directora de SESAC Latina.
Finishing 2025 and beginning 2026 with sunshine filtered through tall trees, broken into trembling strings of gold. In that wavering light endings grow gentle: days folding themselves away, moments thinning, becoming memory even as they are lived. And walking forward, under that canopy of green and gold, I sense a quiet continuity, the years flowing into one another as a river does, unchanged and yet forever new.
Each year I hold space for this rite: a table full of chosen family and the calendar’s insistence that we account for the 365 days gone by, musing on the essence of our gratitude.
2025 carried a particular heaviness. Not the sharp, clean break of a personal catastrophe, but a subtle weight accumulating like dust in a room… only noticeble when the afternoon light slants through the blinds.
In years like this there is an economy to gratefulness, a record in which small blessings register against the lasting unease.
In taking this interior inventory, I find my heart expanding solely for the most authentic connections. The scale is only tipped towards beauty by the people who continue to offer me shelter. Not as an act of charity, not despite my particular flaws, but with recognition of them. They are the ones who do not perform optimism nor rush to tidy the scene. They stay. When the music stops, in the chaos, in the long silences, in the awkward and tedious passages where consistency falters. They stay.
They have seen the private failures, the contradictions, the unedited side of life. Unwavering, they refuse the expected narrative of perfection and they stay.
In their firm presence, there is a profound generosity, a choice to offer a curious, open heart where others would offer instruction or judgment. They offer the greatest gift: the presumption of my good intent.
And they stay.
Those are family.
They make life bearable.
They are love.
As I curate these yearly rituals, the traditional recipes, the lighting of the candles, the domestic choreography, I give form to these feelings that otherwise might dissolve. In this act of creation, I find it: a moment of clarity, a mindful thankfulness. It’s a fleeting understanding of myself as a thread in a larger fabric, held in place by the relentless, undeniable and superior reality of love. With a softening heart I sureender, indebted, to its power.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
This is the story I tell myself.
And I, too, stay.
At Esalen. Sitting on a weathered bench, overlooking the bends of this stretch of the California coastline turning and counter-turning to infinity. The fog, a close companion of these hills, rolls in and out. Just a moment ago it hung thick, smothering that little section of the Highway 1 you can see high up past the hot spring baths. Now it’s parting, allowing the sun to peek through a thinned-out veil of mist.
With my eyes drawn to the baths I catch a glimpse of a slender and beautiful silhouette showering. Perhaps moments before it was soaking in the sulfur waters flowing from the earth’s very entrails and filling the tubs. What a magical place! Last night I was there, feeling a soft breeze in my face and shoulders with the rest of my skin warmed by those waters, eyes wide open in awe of the cosmic glory above.
The days here are gentle. Reading with a view of the ocean. Sitting in silence and stillness in the meditation hut, allowing myself to notice the stream outside cascading towards the sea. Eating ripe, sweet plums and peaches tasting of summer and bliss. Basking in the late afternoon sun and spotting the ocasional otter skimming across the waters below. Taking in teachings that speak of the ultimate value of our attention, often scattered in a world that pulls us in countless directions, urging us to multitask amidst an overwhelming flood of stimuli. Connecting with strangers who are here for all the same reasons, breathing, being present, learning kindness to ourselves.
Perfect days. Being whole seems possible in a place like this, where the universe converges into a singular pulse, and I feel it all, deep, simple and true.
A great picture of us humans in this universe… fleeting lines in a long exposure photograph of the spectacular core of our galaxy, dense with stars, nebulae and dust clouds.
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With Chronos’ sharp edges governing our days, linear, finite, unforgiving, we go through life with a sense of urgency, racing through a blur of faces, events, and aspirations. The reward seemingly always the next destination or the next achievement.
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In stark contrast with this hurry, the universe appears unbothered, operating under the fluidity of Kairos, with its divine sense of time that allows it to bend, stretch and slow down as everything unfolds in its own rightness.
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In this dichotomy between the relentless march of Chronos and the serene embrace of Kairos, we might discover that our true essence as humans emerges not from the frantic pursuit of time but rather from the moments we allow ourselves to simply be, still, carefully listening to find echoes of our own eternity.
