Hi, it's Alison,
I've never done this before, but I am officially dedicating this newsletter to one of the most extraordinary and adorable people I know, a very beloved three-year-old (soon to be four-year-old) friend. I've been the self-proclaimed president of her fan club since I visited her at the hospital the day after she was born. She thankfully made it through an epic surgery two Thursdays ago, and it was a joyous relief to celebrate with her and her extraordinary mom in the hospital playroom a few days afterward! In the spirit of compassion/karuna/rachamim, may she be blessed with healing of body, mind, heart, and spirit as her treatment journey continues—and may all children everywhere experience well-being, love, and access to the resources they need to thrive.
This is all to say that as the 2026 halfway point nears (what is time?!), I kept putting off writing this missive, because it's been a chock-full period of 10,000 joys, 10,000 sorrows, and everything in between. I know many of you can relate, based on what you've shared in recent classes and one-on-ones—and yet you keep committing, and recommitting, to navigating the messiness of human ebbs, flows, joys, and lows. Thank you so much for your courage!
In the midst of it all, the list of possibilities for what to explore here kept getting longer and longer. As the mind often does, mine ran off in so many different directions: the depth of my love for Pride Month (especially with a Knicks win woven in!); the wisdom Juneteenth offers about the importance of sankofa, as it's said in Twi—looking back in order to move forward with wisdom; and the list goes on.
But then a conversation with one of you led me down a totally different rabbit hole.
If there's one thing I keep re-learning since I took my first meditation class in 2007, it's that when the mind is secreting thought after thought, idea after idea, a short pause can go a very long way. So let's take a moment together, buoyed by a memorable recent experience of a Two Wings Mindfulness community member who graciously gave me her permission to share it here.
Here's the story: Last month, I offered the popular mindfulness acronym STOP: Stop, Take a breath, Observe what's here with compassion, and Proceed with greater presence.
When I met with one of you for our monthly session, you shared about something that had unfolded differently than you'd expected. You'd noticed a strong feeling of overwhelm visiting, starting to nudge you outside of your window of tolerance, and your next step felt clear: this was exactly the moment to STOP. Except once you got past S, you suddenly realized that you couldn't remember what the rest of the acronym stood for!
But that didn't deter you. You recalled the essence of the practice: to pause and orient towards awareness, an attempt to inhabit the sacred space between stimulus and response. So rather than giving up or berating yourself for forgetting what came next, all that quiet practice of meeting yourself with compassion bore fruit and you opted to get creative. T became "Temperature check"—you took your own emotional temperature. O became "Offer"—you offered care to the feeling of overwhelm itself. And then you decided P wasn't necessary because it turned out that care itself was what this emotion had been yearning for: the overwhelmed part needed a soft landing to simply be for a bit.
Which brings us to an opportunity for a Create-Your-Own-Pause (CYOP) practice. What is one word or phrase—a gentle reminder that life is being lived right here, right now, and is inviting you to pay caring attention—that you'd benefit from pausing and inwardly whispering to yourself? It might be "Aware," or "Gentle," or "Feet on the ground," or "Here I am, breathing in, breathing out." No need to overthink it. Just inquiring inwardly: What do I need to hear? And offering yourself that, inwardly whispering it, for the next minute.
This is one simple example of creating just enough space for wisdom to reveal itself. As I've witnessed in my interactions with so many of you, it turns out we often know what we need when we slow down and listen, whether that's to rest, keep going, change directions, reach out for support, trust the process (cliche as it may sound!), or something else entirely.
And sometimes, inner wisdom arises more serendipitously, like what transpired last week when I walked down the sidewalk in front of my new apartment building, lost in thought, and for whatever reason happened to look down, only to discover that my name, perfectly spelled, had been carved into the concrete: A-L-I-S-O-N. The trance of mind I'd just been swirling in disappeared, and I was back, solid, present, surrounded by the sounds of New York, acutely aware of and humbled by the mystery of life's unfolding.
The reminder I'd needed had been "hidden in plain sight," as R' Zvika Krieger offers. Something shifted, subtle yet significant.
May each of us pause long enough to notice—with curiosity, kindness, and, whenever possible, awe—the wisdom that is waiting to reveal itself when causes and conditions allow.
