I have met you three times.

The first time, you arrived like dawn – soft, golden, unassuming. You did not need words; your presence alone felt like a promise. You touched the quiet corners of me I had never thought to visit, and suddenly everything shimmered with meaning – the hum of rain, the warmth of morning light, the stillness between heartbeats. You made life feel intimate, almost personal, as though the universe had leaned closer just to whisper my name. I didn’t yet know that this was you, life itself, offering its first embrace.

The second time, you came as fire. Fierce. Unforgiving. You stripped away everything I thought was certain: the plans, the masks, the small stories I told myself to stay safe. I fought you. I begged you to be gentle. But you burned with purpose. You dismantled me so I could see what was real beneath the ash. The pain was sharp, but it was honest, it showed me that love is not always kind, but it is always true. You taught me that destruction, too, can be an act of grace.

The third time, you came as stillness. No grand entrance. No light. Only peace, vast and quiet. You did not ask me to chase or understand, you simply were. And in that stillness, I recognized you in everything: in the laughter that healed me, in the silence that held me, in the breath that kept me alive through it all. You had never left. You were the dawn and the fire and the calm that followed. You were the journey itself.

Perhaps the soul’s path is nothing more than these three meetings; awakening, undoing, and return. Each one a different dialect of love. Each one necessary. And perhaps the greatest mercy of it all is learning that the same force that breaks us is the one that makes us whole.

Love,

Ana 💋

Author’s Note

Though this may read like a love letter, it is, at its heart, a reflection on life itself; the tender, relentless, and sacred way it meets us.

The “you” is not a person, but existence: first as wonder, then as fire, and finally as peace. Each encounter is a dialogue between the self and the world, between what we think we are and what life knows us to be.

I wrote this piece as a reminder that every season, the gentle, the burning, the still, is life’s way of loving us into wholeness. To meet life, again and again, with an open heart, is perhaps the truest form of devotion.