Not Yet
whoa nelly... year of the fire horse is right
“Not yet.”
Two words that I keep hearing from my three-year-old niece.
It’s time to leave the playground.
Not yet.
It’s time for a bath.
Not yet.
It’s time to get out of the bath.
Not yet.
Explaining that no, I don’t have a husband, I am not married.
“Not yet” she says.
Two words that are frustrating. Two words that make me smile.
And I realize she’s put words to what I have felt for the last few months.
At first, it was something telling me to be patient. I couldn’t think or Tetris my way through problems, plans, or the future all the time. Frustrating. Sometimes, like over the last few months with like, everything, I just had to be patient, surrender control because force wasn’t getting me anywhere. I had done as much as I could, and I needed to let things play out in their own time. The whispers said, “patience.” Stop trying to keep the plates balanced and spinning, you can’t keep bending over backwards to dot countless “i’s” and cross too many “t’s.” You’ve got to take the healing eldest daughter’s unofficial mantra more seriously, “let go and let god,” for the foreseeable future.
So, I gave in to this patience and cooled my fiery spirit enough to see more clearly. And now, I am guided with a gentle but firm, “not yet.” Now that I have softened a bit and am open to guidance, it shows me the way and so far, it says “not yet.”
Walking around the festival at George Floyd Square on Memorial Day, the 6th anniversary of his murder. I’m alone, with nowhere else to be, no one else I need to tend to or abide by. I consider leaving after I’ve seen everything.
Not yet.
I find a seat right across from the spot where he was murdered. I sit in a row of Black elders, trying to stay cool and hydrated in the heat, bobbing heads to music. I stare at the spot, in a trance. It’s the spot that created a ripple in the world, the city, my own life. I let the tears well up. And I feel my cracked heart mend a little bit more as Brass Solidarity performs, as Black folks walk by - gathered on a day of remembrance, pouring joy and resistance into this space and moment. I feel a little bit better. Because I paused, I rested, and I let myself just stop and take it all in. Unrushed. Perfectly content, letting the magic of the moment rearrange the fibers of my being once again. It took me 6 years to sit there and let it in. I’ve been to the Square many times but could never get away fast enough. I worked just 2 blocks away for 4 of those years and all it seemed to do was crush me. But this Memorial Day, I was stronger, softer, more willing. I stopped and I listened. Don’t go, not yet. Just be here. Let yourself be. Here. And it healed me just a little bit more to feel the grief more and the joy more and let them dance me into the future as a better person.
“Not yet” comes to me all the time these days. It asks me to trust the natural pace and timing of things and to find ease from that trust.
Sitting with my grandma who has needed more support lately, as she eats her dinner that I just heated up. Making sure she eats, talking about what she needs, catching her up on the family updates, sitting in silence and just being a presence.
Sitting with my nephew, who I’ve somehow never spent one on one time with, he buzzes with excitement that he gets to sleepover, and we get to watch all the new Spiderman movies.
Sitting with my mom after a day of yardwork before she treks back to be with my stepdad going through radiation. Checking in about our own care and wellness, while we care for others in heavy situations.
Not yet.
Not yet.
Not yet.
This year has provided a lot of heaviness, and it has lived up to its Chinese zodiac, the fire horse, so far. Full steam ahead. I have been called to pause, settle, expand moments into slow motion so that it doesn’t all become a blur. I’ve asked myself repeatedly, “where are you running off to?” Making me pause long enough to remember the consequences if it becomes habit to move like blazing fire. The pause reminds me there are real relationships to be engaged in, there is nothing to force or push ahead but just let life unfold, there is my health and wellbeing at stake if I don’t. Continually battling the heaviness head on and trying to “keep up,” feels necessary for survival but in the end, it makes for a weak mind, body and spirit. I feel cracks fill with goodness despite the heaviness and I feel knots of tension and impatience untangle when I can release the agenda, the timeline, the expectations, and take a step back as I’m able.
I came into the year having had a delightfully peaceful 2025 (I mean, amidst global chaos of course), chop wood, carry water, respite, aliveness, finding myself in the jungle. I came into this year feeling freer from colonizer bondage and wondering how the next chapter of my life would look. I came into this year at peace with a crumbling paradigm and ready to keep building something different. I came into this year knowing that I was back at the bottom of the mountain after conquering something I’d been striving for my whole life (simply put, detachment from colonizer conditioning and finding self-worth), and I find myself a beginner again.
I didn’t know anything about this year, other than how I was coming into it. I didn’t have a strong sense of what was on the horizon, so I tried to implement something. I tried to know (hah), I tried to be wise (hah), I tried to plan (hah), I tried to maintain control (ha.ha.ha.). I spooked myself by admitting my dreams (hello, millennial midlife crisis… nothing will make you freak out and seize control more than embracing that you, as a single millennial, do actually still want to have kids and own a house in the midst of whatever the fuck is going on right now in the world and stumbling through those last bits of “old mom” and accumulated wealth capitalist conditioned bullshit induced insecurities and doubts). Ultimately, “not yet” has ruled. Overwriting colonizer conditioning on new levels, guiding me to trust my instinct, intuition, and natural timing and conspiring - my own path. Something is forcefully taking my grip off the wheel and shoving me into the passenger seat. And the last mountain I climbed, would advise me to shut up and go with it. There is something to be learned here in these moments, sit my ass down and sit back. I’m a spooky good manifester and a not-so-great receiver of what I’ve manifested. I asked to know, I asked to be shown. I’ve said what I wanted (not just the kids and house by the way). And this is the answer, this is it happening. I know I have to trust it. Now is not the time for me to be the driver, to force any plans or agenda. It’s not the time to freak out about needing to have babies by a certain age or try to think my way through how the hell I’m ever going to own a home. Now is the time for me to practice the route forward with a new navigation system, with something more powerful guiding the way and trusting that if I follow, it’ll get me there… in its own way and time. This is all part of the new paradigm I have asked to be a part of building. Another manifestation coming to life.
I’ve written so many drafts over the last few months that I haven’t published … not yet. For me, it hasn’t felt like the time for a loud voice or analysis, to be “in charge,” put things in a container, make things fit, make sense of things or use logic to work through life. I thought I needed to speak up and prove what I had learned over the last few years and make a big show about it. But over and over, I have found cosmic duct tape over my mouth. Not yet. It’s been the time for me to listen, to trust the dark, relying solely on the energetics of the moment and be guided by what feels right or wrong, not a plan or logic. And the funny thing is, being intuitively guided, comes very naturally to me, it always has. Some fear or conditioning just got me out of sorts for a minute there. But so far, every time I’ve listened to “not yet,” more of me has settled, things have worked out with more ease, I have found more peace, and I have felt more raw, vulnerable…me, human which is what I’m supposed to be. The only reason I find myself publishing this now I think, is because I feel something else starting to push in. A new lesson to make space for. It feels like time to release this note to the world now that it has marinated in my life for a while and wait for what comes next.
