TEND

Thanks for landing here.

Some relationships leave traces that are difficult to name.

This poem and tea arose through my witnessing of the many forms of tending woven throughout life.

In my own act of tending—which looked more like a quiet struggle for emotional survival—

old stories began to surface.

Not only my own but my sister's, and my mother's,

and perhaps the stories of countless tenders who came before us.

If you are here,

I'm sensing that you, too,

may have carried more than you realized.

You have tended.

You have been tended.

May this poem offer a moment of reconciliation with the tender place within.

May it widen your eyes and soften your heat to the sacredness of tending in all its forms.

The plants who gathered for this blend.

Japanese version