May at the Whidbey Institute:I used to...

There is something about May.
The way the light lingers a little longer. The way the forest begins to hum with a quiet, insistent aliveness. On these 106 acres, you can feel it—emergence not as an idea, but as something happening all around us.

And perhaps… within us, too.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the phrase: I used to…
How many of us carry a version of that?
A litany of who we were, what we loved, how we moved through the world. Have you ever found yourself saying…?

I used to paint.
I used to sing.
I used to dance.
I used to play the piano, the guitar, the violin…
I used to write poetry, or stories, or songs.
I used to take long walks, read novels, garden.
I used to have slow mornings.
I used to feel more like myself.

Some of these “used to’s” feel like a soft ache—something we miss, something still quietly waiting for us. In Welsh, the word is hiraeth: an ache, a longing for something ineffable, a kind of homesickness for the soul.

And then there are the other ones.

I used to not accept myself.
I used to have no boundaries.
I used to stay too long in places that didn’t feel safe.
I used to work too much, sleep too little.
I used to forget to care for myself.

These are the “used to’s” we may be ready to release—not with judgment, but with gratitude for what they taught us, and a willingness to set them down.

May invites both.

A gentle letting go.
A quiet, warm remembering.

Here at the Whidbey Institute, as the land wakes up around us, we are reminded that nothing is ever truly static. Growth is not linear. Renewal doesn’t demand perfection. It simply asks us to notice… and to choose.

So perhaps this month offers a small invitation:

What are you ready to let go of?
What would you like to welcome back?
What are your “used to’s”… and what might they become again?

You might find, as we often do here, that what feels lost is not gone—
just waiting for a little light, a little space, and a bit of sunshine to begin again.