What has this year built in you? Wander through your inner house

THIS year has asked something of all of us.

- JANE LINLEY-THOMAS

More than a sequence of months, it may have felt like a building site, a place of dust, scaffolding, breakthroughs and quiet moments where truth arrived like a whisper.For many of us, it has been a year of unlearning and rebuilding, shedding, a tender (at times) process of learning to trust the ground beneath our feet again.

We often imagine courage as loud or certain, something that announces itself with confidence. But what this year taught me is that courage is usually far quieter.

It sounds like the breath you finally release after holding it for far too long. It looks like choosing yourself even when you're shaking.

It feels less like walking away and more like walking towards something you know matters.

In trying to make sense of this year, in this episode of The House of Motherly, I found myself returning to a metaphor that helped me understand my own inner landscape — the idea of a house filled with different rooms.