The Redwoods Knew Before I Did

I didn’t expect to cry.

But I pulled off the road, somewhere quiet beneath the redwoods, and it all came up. Not grief. Not drama. Just a kind of cellular undoing. Like my body finally believed me, I was really doing it. I was really leaving.

The trees didn’t say much. They didn’t need to. They held me in the same way they always had. But this time it felt different. They weren’t just bearing witness, they were giving me permission. I could feel it in my body. The somatic burps, the tug, the sense of something old dissolving right through my bones.

There’s something sacred about being seen by something older than you. The redwoods didn’t ask for proof or a plan. They just watched me go.

That moment marked a threshold I didn’t know I was waiting for. I left the old structure not because it fell apart, but because I had grown beyond it. And the forest knew. The ache was no longer needed. The way forward had already begun.

This isn’t a goodbye. This is a recognition. A registration. A ripple.
The forest and I both felt it land.