Preparing for a Season Loneliness
Ending a Hot Girl Sabbatical, Returning to the States, and the Reclamation of the Water
The season of rest and spaciousness that rewired me has done its job.
And now, I’m preparing for something I hadn’t expected: loneliness.
My financial freedom—living without the pressure of income—is slowing down. The Black Lady Accountant in my brain keeps vigilant watch on receivables and minimum balances. I am my safety net. Frolicking past the trick-off phase of this 6-month chapter no longer feels realistic or responsible.
My transformation is shifting gears. My practice feels more grounded than it has in months. Signing on new clients, discovering new boundaries, and exchanging with community has reminded me what I’m capable of outside of a traditional 9–5.
So while my sabbatical is ending, something deeper is beginning. But I’m still dreading what comes next.
I head back to the States for five long weeks. Outside of a small, cherished corner of my life, I’m dreading it.
This year, my bestie gets married. I feel a level-up happening in our friendship—getting to be more honest, more vulnerable, more loving with my sister and my longest, dearest friend. Even with the drama and pomp associated with a close friend’s wedding, I’m genuinely looking forward to how I can show up and celebrate her in this season of her life.
Beautifully, two moments with her will punctuate my return. Outside of that are five forever weeks in a place that feels out of alignment with the life I’m building.
As the first week passed, I felt the onset of depression—a perfect blend of shame, loneliness, grief, anger, and hopelessness. In the tension between expectations and desires, my energy has dwindled. It’s been a struggle to eat and hydrate regularly—let alone move my body, exchange meaningfully with others, or tend to my creative and spiritual practices.
I’m haunted by the hurt and grief I experienced in my childhood home: the loss of close family members, the quiet struggle with my queerness and sexual identity, and the deep loneliness I thought I had shed alongside the limiting beliefs of seasons past.
I had imagined that the ways I’ve grown—evolved into a fuller, more authentic version of myself—would be enough to outshine any ghost still haunting these hallways and streets. But many of my relationships remain strained or silent. The number of friends and family who can hold my truth with care is dwindling into a thick silence that’s hard to breathe in. It feels like dodging the projections, expectations, and shadow selves people still cast onto me.
And that’s to say nothing of the political, economic, and cultural weight of being Black and queer in the U.S. right now. The background noise is loud. The loneliness is layered.
Defiance feels like a privilege in a place where silence is inherited and safety is often traded for conformity.
Community, when it demands your quiet, becomes a cost you’re not always willing—or able—to pay.
I know some seasons feel more lonely than others. I know we often outgrow places that once felt like home. And even knowing that solitude has purpose, it’s been hard to stay grounded and keep the momentum needed to transition from sabbatical into something sustainable.
So I’ve been preparing.
Reframing loneliness as solitude has allowed me to fortify. Deciding, through prayer and meditation, that there’s something important for me to experience in these 5 weeks has anchored me toward gratitude and intention. In the urgency to feel anything besides loneliness, we create. we reach out. we experiment. we slow down enough to craft rituals that keep us sane in ways that busy, abundant seasons cannot.
Solitude can transform silence into a sacred resource for clarity and remembering.
In my preparation, I’ve been remembering the water.
I started swimming lessons in 2022—not for sport or fitness, but to align with a new kind of life. One where I could finally enjoy the hotel pools and vacation beaches that, for most of my life, only knew my body up to the waist.
Grief and winter paused the lessons for a while, but I never stopped saying aloud:
I want to swim.
Since then, that vision has expanded. I’m not just dreaming of poolside comfort—I’m manifesting an everyday life with water. I don’t just want to float. I want to live in relationship with water. To let it heal me. Speak to me. Hold me in a way that honors my lineage and my love.
This year, I got to glimpse that life in the beauty and simplicity of Salvador, Brasil.
Shared with me through love and partnership, I experienced South America for the first time through Salvador: the Blackest per capita city outside the African continent. Vibrant, sea-washed buildings line the sloping streets of one of the most magical places I’ve ever been. Nearly always filled with people who are smiling, singing, dancing—if not swimming. It’s like Wakanda and Atlantis had a village of babies raised by mer-people, musicians, and magicians. The city is full of spirit. Full of symbolism. Full of celebration. Bahia let me know a new way of living is possible. I’m forever grateful to my partner for sharing the magic and healing of this city.
One of my most sacred memories took place at a terreiro—a house of Candomblé worship—where I witnessed my first Orisha ceremony. A sweet soul I met on my first day invited us. We stood outside in the balmy night, watching intently through the window as the community worshipped and celebrated the Orishas.
The Orishas—embodied, adorned in regular people turned into gods—emerged one by one from a hidden room and danced around the room. They then began to move toward the door where my partner had knowingly set us up. I barely understood the ritual, but I knew I was witnessing something divine. The energy surged. It was beyond the tenderness of prayer. Above the warmth of a loving hug. It was electric—a turning up of all my senses and synapses.
Then Oxóssi, the Orisha of the house, came to the doorway I shared and placed his sacrament on my forehead. I froze. Something in me cracked open—rooted in gratitude and a fearful knowing.
I carried that moment with me for the rest of my time in Salvador, holding close the ways I was being refueled and restored. Much like the omniscient June humidity—the joy, the spirit, the water found me.
And I remembered:
I’ve been here before.
This feeling has always known me.
As a child, I’d visit my grandmother and uncle along the Roanoke River. We would wade and play and wash away whatever Sunday sins had surfaced. I remember being both terrified and comforted by the water. My uncle crossed the rocks with ease, my tiny feet in tow.
At 11, I was baptized in a Baptist Church—knowing more of people pleasing and compulsory identity than religious faith. I hoped that commitment to church and faith might deepen my belonging with my mom and my family. The water was a mirror of both comfort and fear. Being submerged, I felt truly new—even as the stains of puberty began to shape my body and mind.
Later, in my teenage defiance, I’d spend hot afternoons sprawled on the rocks of the James River. We’d dodge snakes and curious creatures, finding sanctuary and joy in the rapids. Even there, we were visible—Black teenagers exposed to the rebuke of anyone knighted by privilege.
Road trips took us along the muddy Atlantic to camp along gritty conservative shores of Virginia Beach. Covered up just enough to be decent and still feel the warmth of the water and sun on our skin. Just enough until I could one day reach Miami. And eventually, Mexico.
My first trip outside the country was to Cancún to celebrate my best friend’s graduation. I jumped—without knowing how to swim—into a deep, dark cenote. Braver than even my boldest friend. And in the waves of the Gulf, she and I captured one of our most joy-filled moments. Another joy-bound memory with the water.
This history with water has offered me refuge and affirmation.
The water is my guide. My memory. My medicine.
So as I prepare for a season of loneliness, uncertainty, and grief—I’m letting the water lead me. I’m drawing on the rituals I teach and the ones I return to myself.
Whether in the rain or at the James River rapids, I lean into my love of the water as grounding, as reflection, as a portal into the lessons I most need to learn.
Before heading home, I worked through my own Rooted Reset—focused on Stillness and Loving Kindness from the SOLO Method, which my clients have come to love.
I didn’t force a solution.
I made space to feel everything—panic, resistance, fear.
I let my values rise to the surface. I asked myself:
How do I want to feel?
What will sustain me when the world around me feels misaligned?
If you, too, are preparing for a season of loneliness, here is what I offer:
🕊 Start with Stillness.
Let yourself be quiet. Not numbed out. Not distracted. Just still.
Let the pace of your life match the beat of your breath.
💗 Practice Loving Kindness.
Be gentle with your fear. Tender with your resistance.
Kind to the version of you that doesn’t have it all figured out.
Light a candle. Take a bath. Leave yourself a love note.
🌿 Return to your roots.
Who were you before the world told you who to be?
What still holds you?
What waters you?
This is the essence of the Rooted Reset—a tender tune-up for your spirit and strategy. Anchored in the SOLO Method, it’s designed to re-center you and help you reclaim your power and purpose.
Whether you’re moving through a place that no longer fits, sitting in the ache of transition, or bracing for a season of uncertainty—I hope you remember this:
You are not broken.
You are becoming.
You are not alone.
You are in sacred company—with yourself, with your guides, with the water.
And when you’re ready to walk this path with support, I’m here.
You don’t have to carry it all alone.
