This poem, titled "Hurricane," is an example, as all true poetry tends to be, of exploring an element of life with such clarity and finding cause to look inward. If we're mindful and willing, what happens around us can be a catalyst for self-understanding. We learn that we see in the world what we carry in our hearts.

I originally wrote this Himalayan salt lamp meditation for my third book, Sleep Rituals. Not only is a salt lamp a helpful focal point for meditation, its warm glow encourages the brain to switch into "night mode.” Let's combine the elements of ritual and sensory delight for some well-deserved peace of mind tonight.

By giving meaning to hardship through words, you can structure a life around your values, your strengths, and your intentions. You get to choose how you show up. I created these affirmations to help us fully inhabit ourselves and our more difficult experiences, so we can tell a story of strength and perseverance.

This standalone verse you might've seen circling the internet: I have not heard your voice in years, but my heart has conversations with you every day. I call it Heart Conversations, an ode to the intimate dialogue that carries on after someone we love dies. I thought it time to revisit this poem and that conversation.

Together, it's easier to make space for grief and for the love and joy that it stems from, which is the same love it inevitably returns to, if we allow that spaciousness. May these quotes about grief comfort you, validate what you feel, and bring a little more light to the holidays. You belong in the light, too.

These November affirmations are my tribute to a time of sacred intent and a token of my growing fondness for the journey that links all things. These affirmations are small decisions to carry on with the meaningful and often demanding work you feel called to do. To stay true to the process. To trust in what we love.

This is a prayer for peace for all of us who've known the power of grief and the balm of friendship, who've been touched by the hands of despair but who still choose life. Wherever you are now -- wherever you've been and wherever you're going next -- may you open your heart to the freedom that's still available to you, whatever it is you decide that freedom means for you.

The older I get, the more I feel that home is the place where your heart goes to rest. When you grieve the loss of someone you love, it can be hard to find that sense of home – because that someone you love was, in a way, your home. This grief poem is about rediscovering that sense of home again, right where you stand.