Hello, Dear Sojourner!
September is here, ushering in the beginning of my favorite season: fall. The days shift toward sweater weather (yes, I am one of those), evenings stretch a little longer, and life takes on a rhythm that invites both comfort and reflection. It is also the start of harvest season, that sacred rhythm where what has been sown in faith begins to reveal its fruit.
This month also carries a deeply personal resonance. September marks twenty-one years since I left Puerto Rico and stepped into California to begin a new chapter of my life. My entire move consisted of two suitcases: a large one filled with books and a small one filled with summer clothes (you read that right, summer clothes in September).
As I took my seat on the plane, I carried both pain and joy. That paradox became my compass, teaching me that alignment with truth often feels like both loss and gain at once. The tears of leaving family and the heaviness of uprooting from all I knew coexisted with the certainty that I was answering a call I could no longer postpone.
In hindsight, I see that moment as an act of engagement. The stages of readiness had already unfolded. First came the stirring—the restless whisper that life as it was could no longer contain me. Then recognition—the acknowledgment that change had become necessary. Readiness followed, aligning heart, courage, and timing for the leap. Transformation deepened in engagement—boarding that plane, stepping into uncertainty, and embodying the life I had chosen.
In the years that followed, engagement revealed itself not as a single dramatic act but as thousands of small choices: navigating a new culture, building relationships from the ground up, and honoring homesickness while continuing to move forward. Engagement became the practice of showing up for the life I had chosen, day after day.
This is why September speaks to me as a symbol of harvest. Engagement is the embodiment of harvest—the living out of choices sown in clarity, nurtured with commitment, and brought to fruition through courageous action. It reflects the art of inhabiting the life that has already begun to unfold.
You are being invited to embody, through daily choices, the life that already calls for your presence. Immerse yourself fully in this moment.
With warmth and in engagement,
