I had to take today off. My body told me no more. My spirit told me no more. The last few weeks have been a lot, and I can’t keep pretending I’m fine when I’m not.

I expected last week’s Mario Kart vibes would crescendo with the full blood moon on the 7th, a harvest moon, heavy and red, the kind of sky that makes you stop and stare. In witchy traditions, a blood moon symbolizes endings and release, but also transformation. It’s meant to crack things open so we can let go of what no longer serves us. And maybe that’s true, maybe it was working on me too, because everything since then has felt like unraveling.

Two days later came the 9/9 portal, a date seen as an energetic gateway. The number 9 is tied to completion and karmic cycles, and on 9/9 it doubles in intensity. Some people call it a chance to reset, to let go, to step into alignment with something higher. And whether or not you believe in it, I felt it. Something shifted deep in my bones, like a door opening that I wasn’t ready to walk through.

And then the world itself just kept breaking open: a viral public assassination and a school shooting on the 10th. September 11th layered with its own history of both collective and personal grief, plus universities on lockdown from threats and, Jesus Christ, another horrific shooting at the Naval Academy.

I don’t know how to hold all of it.
I don’t know why terrible things keep happening.
I don’t know why it feels like everything is speeding up, unraveling faster than we can catch our breath.

I don’t know how to stop my heart from aching for answers.
I don’t know why silence feels louder than any explanation could.
I don’t know how to live with the questions that have no neat column, no reason why.

So today, I am letting myself stop. I am giving myself permission to crawl into a hole, to protect my energy, to say: I don’t know, and I actually can’t right now.

Because if I keep pouring myself out when I’m empty, there will be nothing left.
I don’t know if people are showing up.
I don’t know if love is enough to hold the seams together.

Maybe that’s all I can offer today: I don’t know how to explain the world.
I don’t know how to carry it.
I don’t know where to find the hope I’ve lost.

But I do know this: it’s okay to set it down for a day. It’s okay to admit to not knowing. It’s okay to protect the small flame inside when the winds outside feel too strong.

If you’re heavy too, I don’t know how to fix it.
I don’t know what tomorrow will look like.
But I do know we don’t have to carry the weight alone. We don’t have to make sense of it to sit beside each other in the dark. Maybe that’s all we can do: keep breathing through the mess together, even when none of it makes sense.

So tonight, weary and uncertain, I will still light a candle with intention and let sage curl its smoke toward the sky. And when the light from the flame trembles, small, imperfect, flickering, I don’t know where it will travel. I don’t know who it might reach. But I want to believe the smoke drifts and the glow carries, touching places I cannot name, maybe even hearts I will never know.

And if it reaches you, may it remind you of this: I don’t know what tomorrow brings. I don’t know how the world will mend. But I do know that even in the unraveling, there are still threads of love, still whispers of light, still offerings we can send into the night.