Loving the World as It Is

Each year I set an intention for the coming year. I do this on my birthday (in October) rather than at the turn of the year. I consider who I am and who I am becoming, and mostly what I have already been working with (aka practice) as I set my new intention.

At the heart of my 2024 intention was a deceptively simple yet profoundly nuanced commitment: “Loving the world as it is.” Not as I wish it to be, not as I imagined it once was or fear it may become—but this world and life, here and now, as it is.

In October of 2023 I was about to launch The Grievery, I was living in an apartment I could no longer afford on my own, I didn’t have any other form of income, meanwhile my savings were dwindling, and I knew I would never return to the career, though lucrative and financially rewarding, I once had. The looming 2024 U.S. election cycle, worsening economic conditions, and compounding climate disasters added to my sense of uncertainty. So, I raised the stakes. I decided to move in with my mother.

How’s that for a practice?

My intention—loving life as it is—was an invitation into acceptance and a practice of deep, ongoing surrender. It was not about passivity or resignation but about recognizing life’s fullness: its beauty and its brokenness, its joy and its sorrow, its clarity and its murkiness.

Loving the world as it is has, in many ways, become part an integral part of my practice.

Making Room for Life’s Paradoxes

To me, loving the world means honoring its impermanence. It means holding space for grief—the many losses, endings, and the things that will never be—and allowing them to shape me, not shatter me. It means tending to life’s depth and honoring its thresholds, particularly the ones where sorrow invites me deeper into presence.

Yet loving the world also means rooting in beauty—seeing how even within pain, there are moments of grace. My return to the Berkshires (where my mother lives) also meant a return to an abundance of greenery with breathless mountainscapes where sunlight stretches for miles. And so, I’ve turned to small pleasures and simple wonders as companions along the way:

• The shifting light of a day’s end.
• The calm of a forest walk or the feel of earth underfoot.
• A shared smile. A quiet morning. A deep breath.

These aren’t distractions from the world as it is—they are part of it. They are reminders that beauty can be a balm and a bridge when everything else feels too heavy to hold.

I’ve also realized how easy it is to over-identify with the weight of the world. This practice has required fine attunement to the tipping point when those sorrows become too heavy, and the quest for answers becomes endless and unhelpful unless we also anchor ourselves in beauty, light, joy, love, peace, and connection. Balancing my underworld with awe has been essential—pausing for simple pleasures, breathing into joy, and remembering that light exists not in spite of the shadow but alongside it.

Welcoming Home All Parts of Myself

This intention has also been an invitation to “love life as it is” within me, too. Walking this path requires the courage to face the full spectrum of who and how I am:

• Where was I meeting resistance within myself?
• What unresolved elements lead me to repeat patterns like wishful thinking?
• What estranged parts of myself, once rejected, are seeking belonging?
• How can I approach all these parts with patience for what is emerging?

To love the world as it is, I’ve had to practice welcoming home parts of myself, making peace with my longing for things to be different, and recognizing that contentment is not the same as wholeness or completion. In fact, I don’t even believe that either of those is possible (but that’s another post). This practice means being without a need for anything to be other than it is right now—holding every part of me and you with compassion, understanding, and grace.

This road of return is not always linear and can often feel lonely. Sometimes, it takes a wise and warm other to hold up a light and say, “I see you. I recognize you. I honor your gifts.” For so long, people saw pieces of me before I could hold them as truth. Learning to receive that recognition—and to offer it to myself—has been a quiet but powerful part of this journey.

Ongoing Practice of Surrender

Loving life as it is also means knowing when something is enough and when it's time to stop resisting the end. From minor completions to what feels like imminent collapse, endings can be an invitation and an initiation into enoughness. This year also marked my career transition from corporate to communal work. A shift in perspective led to a shift in my role—now as a grief worker and death doula, walking alongside those navigating life’s thresholds. I see death not only as an honor to guide others through, but also as a profound teacher, offering the deepest wisdom about how to be in and between worlds, especially when answers aren’t readily available.

Here, we are asked to surrender—to release what was and open ourselves to what may be. Death is a sacred transition that teaches us how to let go of the world as we know it and connect to something beyond ourselves.

Loving Life as an Invitation to Presence

To love the world as it is means engaging deeply with life—not holding it at a distance. It means showing up for grief and joy, for the knowns and unknowns, for others and for myself. It means making peace with the tension between life’s beauty and its brokenness, my expectations and the reality of what’s unfolding, and allowing that tension to mold me.

This year has been a practice. A practice of peace. A practice of presence. A practice of loving deeply and fully, even when the world, and I, feel hard to love.

This intention has reminded me that life is full of paradoxes, which requires a practice of staying present and open, even when I don’t know how. Along this path, I have found refuge in beauty, meaning in pain, budding friendships, repair and belonging in the spaces punctuated by not yet.

Ultimately, I’ve discovered that loving the world as it is—loving life as it is—is what makes life worth living. And when we allow ourselves to be suspended in not knowing long enough, when we let go of trying to manipulate the outcome, when we stop trying to make things happen, something will shift.