how to help
on returning to the well
This space is for us. Welcome to your weekly Portal. I’m glad you’re here.
THE THRESHOLD
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from giving without stopping to receive. From pouring out continuously into the people we love and the causes that matter without ever pausing to sink back down into ourselves and refill.
Most of us, especially women, have been taught that this is what care looks like. That to tend to ourselves first is somehow a failure of generosity or even selfishness. It’s taken a lifetime of unlearning, and learning the hard way, but I have come to know the opposite is true. The most sustainable, genuine, and truly useful thing we can offer the world is not our depletion but our fullness. Instead of a cup running dry, we resource ourselves to become a spring that keeps rising.
This week’s poem is a practice guide for that. I invite you to read it slowly and let it find the places in you that are running low.
THE POEM
HOW TO HELP from Reunion Songs When waters in you rush up to quench a thirsty world, wait take a moment to sink deep down into your well, cup your hand to your heart, drink let your beat and breath find and fill you first. Only then surge from source to surface so that when you can do nothing you have at least saved yourself. Look at you now, a cup and a spring, rising and falling, flowing freely not flooding. Filling cups, never running dry.
THE PRACTICE
The poem asks you to do one thing before you give, to sink down into your well. This week’s practice is a daily two-minute pause before you pour out into the world.
Before you begin your day, place one hand on your heart. Take three slow breaths. Ask yourself honestly: am I offering from fullness or from depletion right now?
Try to just gently notice what rises without fixing or judging. This is the beginning of the return to the well.
If you feel like writing, follow your noticing or the prompt that feels most true right now and write from it for five minutes without stopping:
“What my well needs right now is …”
“When I am truly full, I can offer …”
“The place in me that is running dry is …”
THE THREAD
This week, before you give, continue to pause. One breath is all it takes to sink down before you surge. Put on your own oxygen mask and save yourself, then save the world.
Yours in radical hope … Amanda
P.S. If you’d like a regular practice of guided meditation to accompany this work, The Clearing meditations are available monthly. A gentle, consistent practice of returning to yourself.
You are receiving this because you chose to. Thank you. If this moved something in you, would you be willing to share it? Together we can create a more just and loving world.
A beautiful, important reminder. Thank you, Amanda. 💛