Introducing Sunday Tending

A weekly ritual for tending the growing grove within

Earlier this week, I mentioned the aspens in my backyard — a few new trees coming up near the established ones, and how the longer I looked, the more I remembered that aspens aren’t really singular trees. An aspen grove is often a community unto itself: individual trunks above ground, connected through a shared root system beneath the surface.

I’ve been sitting with that image ever since — the established trees, the new shoots, the quiet expansion, the way a grove grows itself when there is enough light, enough nourishment, enough room. That is what I have been trying to grow here, too. Not an audience. Not a platform. Not a place where people come to be told what to do. A grove — a loosely connected community of people strong enough to stand on their own, but wise enough to know they may not want to stand alone.

Because something different happens when we grow near one another. We deepen. We strengthen. We remember that our lives may look separate above the surface, but underneath, many of us are carrying the same questions.

Who am I beneath the roles?

What have I been overriding?

What is still growing in me?

What part of myself is asking for light?

What would change if I stopped treating myself like a problem to solve and started tending myself like something living?

That is the heart of what I am beginning here. I am calling this community The Aspen Tenders, and each week, we will practice Sunday Tending — a weekly ritual for tending the growing grove within.

Sunday Tending is not a challenge in the usual sense. There will be no streaks to keep, no public declarations required, no pressure to share more than you want to share, no need to perform vulnerability, polish your insight, or turn your inner life into content. This is quieter than that.

Each Sunday morning, before the week begins asking for more of you, I will send one reflection — one question, one pause, one small practice of self-trust you can carry into the week. Some weeks, it may ask you to notice what you have been overriding — a decision, a boundary, a grief, a desire, a truth, or a part of yourself you have been managing instead of listening to.

You can keep the practice entirely private — write one sentence in your journal, let the question sit with you while you drink your coffee, or read it and do nothing visible at all. Or, if you want to be part of the visible grove, leave one sentence in the comments beginning with:

This week, I am tending…

That is all — no explanation required, no perfect answer, no need to sound wise. Just one honest sentence.

This week, I am tending my need for quiet.

This week, I am tending the decision I have been outsourcing.

This week, I am tending the part of me that is tired of proving.

This week, I am tending the life beneath the role.

That sentence is the ritual — a way of saying: I am here, I am listening, I am willing to tend what is alive in me.

Like the aspens in my yard, we are not trying to force growth. We are paying attention to where life is already emerging, noticing where the roots have held, making room for new shoots when light and nourishment exist. We are letting the grove become what it is becoming.

The deeper I go in this work, the more I believe we do not need to become entirely new people in order to live differently. We need to recognize what has been growing within us all along — shaped by responsibility, grief, ambition, motherhood, leadership, disappointment, love, pressure, and time — and stop treating ourselves like problems to solve. We can start tending ourselves like living things instead.

So this is the invitation.

If you have been reading quietly, you are welcome here.

If you are in a season of change and do not have language for it yet, you are welcome here.

If you lead, hold, mother, decide, manage, carry, create, or guide more than most people see, you are welcome here.

If you are tired of abandoning yourself in the name of being capable, you are welcome here.

If something in you is still growing, even after everything that has shaped you, you are welcome here.

We begin this Sunday.

Come quietly.

Bring only yourself.

And when you are ready, leave one sentence:

This week, I am tending…