Before I knew how to name the ache, I knew how to listen to it.
It started, as many things do, with silence. Not the peaceful kind you plan for, but the kind that settles in when everything else has fallen away - the kind that stings at first. I had walked out of a world I no longer fit inside. A world of fluorescent lights and tight schedules and soft "I'm fine" lies. I left it in search of something I couldn't quite explain. The only thing I knew for sure was this: I wanted to feel whole again. I wanted to feel me again - not the version of me who knew how to smile politely through the fatigue, but the one who remembered things. Like the smell of lemon balm on my fingers. Or how my grandmother used to steep chamomile tea not for sleep, but for comfort. Or how touch, when it's slow and sacred, can feel like a prayer. The land was the first to speak to me....