Stewards of Cycles

Stewards of Cycles

During my recovery from surgery, a cherry blossom tree kept appearing in my meditations.

At first, it was growing inside my heart and I saw myself sitting beneath it.

Then, others began to gather around it. We interlaced hands in a circle, forming something living and connected around the trunk.

And then yesterday morning, something shifted.

I became the tree.

I was the trunk.
I was the roots.

And the people who were gathering didn’t circle me anymore. They began to extend from me. They became the branches and the petals, reaching wide and far.

What struck me most was this:

I wasn’t heavy.

I wasn’t holding anyone up.

I was simply rooted.

The branches extended naturally.

The image wouldn’t leave me, so I followed it.

Cherry blossoms have always held meaning for me. Growing up in the DC area, we visited them every year near my birthday.

It was seasonal. Ritualized.

You had to be there while they bloomed. Miss the window, and you would wait another year.

There is something sacred about that.

In Japan, cherry blossoms — sakura — symbolize impermanence.

There is a tradition called hanami, where people gather beneath the blossoms not to accomplish anything, but simply to witness them together.

You simply sit beneath the canopy and picnic with friends.

And when the petals begin to fall — sometimes in what’s called a blossom “snowstorm” — there is no panic.

There is awe.

The falling is part of the beauty.

Release without collapse.

That idea has been echoing within me....

Because in many old paradigms of leadership — and in many of the global systems we are watching right now — endings are equated with collapse. When something shifts, it must be dramatic. When structures change, they crumble loudly. There is chaos. There is fear. There is urgency.

We are witnessing it across political systems, institutions, and social frameworks that feel as though they are collapsing under our own feet.

And yet, the cherry blossom offers another way of seeing.

When it releases its petals, it is not in crisis.
It is completing a season.

The tree remains.

The roots deepen.

What if some of what we are witnessing is not only collapse — but completion?
What if release does not have to equal panic?
What if something deeper remains, ready to grow differently?

I have hope that we can remember this.

In 1912, Japan gifted cherry blossom trees to Washington, DC — a gesture of friendship between nations. The first shipment failed and had to be destroyed due to disease. And still, the gift was sent again.

Connection did not collapse.

It rooted deeper.

Even through a World War, beauty did not disappear.

It found another way to grow.

As I reflected on all of this, another layer surfaced.

Retreats are blossoms.

They are like dance performances. You train. You gather. You step into the moment. And no two performances are ever the same. You cannot recreate them. You cannot archive the exact energy of what occurred.

You have to be there.

That is what makes them sacred.

But as a dancer knows, the performance is not the whole story.

After the curtain falls, the dancer goes home. Returns to class. Conditions the body. Tends the craft. Repeats the rhythm. Strengthens the foundation.

There is a humming beneath the visible moment.

There is discipline beneath the beauty.

There is root beneath the blossom.

This is embodied leadership.

The retreat may be the bloom — the visible, luminous gathering.

But the leader must also be the grove.

At Feather Leaf Inn in St. Croix, we will gather beneath a Heritage Grove canopy and an ancient kapok tree — a tree that in many traditions is seen as a kind of world tree, an axis between earth and sky.

It stands.

It witnesses.

It remains.

We may return there again and again over the years. The groups will change. The conversations will evolve. The world will shift.

The tree will still be there.

And what I am beginning to understand is this:

We are not meant to live in perpetual bloom.

We are meant to steward cycles.

To gather fully in the season of blossom.
To release gracefully when petals fall.
To return to our roots.
To deepen our rhythm.
To stand steady while branches extend naturally.

We are part of something larger than this moment.

The dancer in me will always love the fleeting beauty — the performance that can only happen once.

And the steward in me is tending the forest that holds it.

This is the leadership I feel us stepping into.

Not collapse disguised as transformation.
Not chaos mistaken for progress.
But rooted, cyclical, embodied presence.

Bloom.
Release.
Return.
Deepen.

And trust that what remains is strong enough to grow again.

I hope you will join me there.

With grace,

Are you interested in stepping into your own Embodied Leadership with like-minded leaders? Join us for our upcoming Embodied Leader Mastermind Retreat in St Croix, US Virgin Islands in April.

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