Clearing the Inner Landscape
This morning the world was bright with new snow, the kind that hushes everything beneath it. The smaller lakes nearby have already frozen solid, their surfaces dulled to a soft winter blue, but Lake Michigan is still moving—restless, not yet ready to become the great white field it sometimes turns into. It hasn’t frozen over in the last couple of years, which I secretly love, but this winter feels different. Heavy cold has settled in early, and we’re all wondering if this might be the year the big lake goes still. Imagine an entire ocean frozen over as far as you can see.
It made me wonder what in my own life might be asking to be cleared so something truer can find its way in.
In the first days of winter, I often feel the tug to begin again—this year feels different. Beginning looks less like striving and more like honoring space. 2025 reshaped so many parts of me: routines rearranged themselves, priorities shifted on the fly, we renovated the house, moved me out of my downtown studio, and somehow every single part of how I work evolved. I didn’t really take in how much changed until everything else around me fell quiet enough to show me. Clearing physical clutter mirrors clearing mental clutter for me. Stepping out of my old studio altered my whole creative process. Reminding me again that my art practice doesn’t begin with paint, but with stillness and space.
Clearing the inner landscape, I’m learning, is not self-improvement. It is preparation. Before beauty can find us, we make room for it—sometimes reluctantly, sometimes with relief. I started small: organizing studio shelves, organizing the garage, saying no to commitments that felt heavy in my hands, letting go of old ways of working. Each small release has revealed a surprising tenderness, as if the soul softens when it’s no longer crowded.
Maybe you, too, are entering this year with the sense that something has shifted, even if you can’t name it yet. Perhaps parts of your life feel too full, or too loud, or simply mismatched with who you’re becoming. We all move through seasons when we must clear the ground before planting anything new—seasons when the letting go is the first brave act. This is not emptiness for its own sake; it’s a widening. A making-ready. A gentle trust that what leaves creates room for what is meant to arrive.
What part of your inner landscape is asking for space so something new can grow?
May this early January offer you the courage to release what no longer fits and the grace to welcome what’s on its way.
