LIVING | five months in, an update on living with untamed

When you choose a word, it feels like you know what you're signing up for.

You read the definition. You feel the pull. You think — yes, that's it. That's what I'm working on. And you are right. You are working on it.
But the word knows more than you do.

This is the part no one tells you about word work. You will think you understand what you've chosen. You will think you have found the edges of it. And then, quietly, the word will take you somewhere deeper. Somewhere you didn't know you needed to go. Somewhere that has been waiting for you all along.

That is why word work doesn't have a specified end date. There is no calendar moment when you have finished. No graduation. No check mark. The word is a door, and behind it are more doors, and behind those are more.

Sometimes you will release a word, believing you have reached as far as you can go with it. And maybe you have — for now. But words have a way of coming back. At a different time. Through a different angle. With a different ask. There are no hard and fast rules here. This is a journey only you are on, on a timeline only you are living. I know this because I am living it right now.

I chose untamed at the beginning of this year thinking I understood it.
People pleasing.
Sensuality.
I thought I found the shape of it. I hadn't.

This month, untamed has taken me somewhere I did not expect. It has taken me into rest. Not the performative kind. Not the "I took a bath and called it self-care" kind. The real kind. The kind that asks you to stop producing long enough to remember you are not a machine.

I have been sitting with a prompt from Wilde House Paper on restoration. She wrote:
"Productivity guilt can be loud, convincing you that slowing down is irresponsible or that your worth is tied to how much you get done. But rest asks you to listen beneath that noise. To trust that what your body is asking for — stillness, movement, quiet, solitude, connection — is not just valid, but necessary. The restoration you're craving may not look productive, but it will return you to yourself in ways your mind may not yet understand."

I read that and something in me exhaled.
Because the guilt isn't only internal. It's also about what I think others see when I slow down. The worry that I am disappointing someone. That I am not performing at the level expected of me.

The burnout I have been carrying is bone deep. I mean that literally. I feel it in my body. I feel it aging me.

Untamed is now asking me to shed that. The rushing. The anxiety around time. The constant negotiation with my own "shoulds." I started journaling for the first time in my life. I am in therapy. Both have cracked something open, and I am seeing how far down this goes.

Rest, I am learning, is not only sleep. It is moving slowly. Stretching. Being fully present playing with my kids instead of mentally composing the next task. Or walking my dog and letting him take his time finding the perfect spot, not rushing him because I have somewhere to be.

What if what we call a waste of time became the "shoulds"?
What if the slowing down, the stretching, the wildflowers, the long walks — what if those were the whole point?

I don't have a tidy answer. I am in the middle of this.

But here is what I know: the word you choose will not be finished with you when you think it is. It will go deeper. It will find the places in you that still need light. And if you let it — truly let it — it will take you somewhere you could not have found on your own.

That is the practice. Not a month. Not a year. A practice. Your word is waiting to show you more. The only question is whether you are ready to let it.