Last week I asked you a question: what experience in your life is still waiting to become wisdom?

Some of you replied. A first heartbreak. A parent's illness. A version of yourself you left behind without saying goodbye. Thank you for trusting me with that.

This week, I want to walk you through what usually happens after the ending itself. Not the rupture. What comes after it, if you let it move through you instead of around you.

In The Strawberry Wisdom, three Strawberries from the fifties chapter sit next to each other for a reason.

Grief.
Forgiveness.
Solitude.
They are one movement, not three separate lessons.

Grief is not the opposite of love. Grief is the depth of love. I learned this the hard way, after my last separation, when I could not walk past a closed bedroom door for ten days without gritting my teeth. What got me through was not grand gestures. It was breath, nature, and the slow, unglamorous choice to sit with what I felt instead of outrunning it.

Forgiveness is not something you grant to someone who hurt you. Forgiveness is something you release from yourself. For five years I carried a small, hard object in the middle of my chest, unfinished business with a man who had become a stranger. What moved it was a Hawaiian practice called Ho'oponopono, four phrases, said quietly, as many times as it takes. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

Solitude is not the absence of other people. Solitude is the presence of yourself. For three months after my second husband left, I could not sit in a room without the television on. I thought I needed the noise. What I actually needed was to stop avoiding the conversation I had been having with myself for years.

Grief teaches you what you lost. Forgiveness teaches you what you were still carrying. Solitude teaches you who was waiting underneath both.

I am sharing the full practice for each one this week, on Instagram and TikTok: the lung breath for grief, the four phrases for forgiveness, twenty minutes of silence for solitude. Follow along there if you want the practices in full.

Behind the pages this week, I finished auditing Chapter 1 against the standard the fifties chapter has already reached, and I started drafting the six modules of the first course, Harvest Your Life Wisdom. Slowly, the root is getting stronger.

So today, I would love to ask you one question: which one of the three are you standing in right now, grief, forgiveness, or solitude?

You can reply with one sentence, one memory, or simply keep the question with you today.

With warmth,

Babette
Founder of The Strawberry Wisdom