Here I am.
I haven’t sent (news)letters in a while, even though I did occasionally write — short inspired notes typed on my phone in moments when a particular reflection captured my imagination. There were also a few half-finished updates left in my Substack drafts. When I went through them all today, trying to catch a thread that was still alive and pulsating, I found many speaking to me strongly, describing moments and thoughts I still feel connected to.
Moreover, they were connected to each other — something I could only see now, looking back. Truly, the magic of January: the threshold month named after two-faced Janus.
So for this update, I’m sharing a few excerpts from the past year — fragments that, together, trace a thread I didn’t know was being woven.
June 2025, Tuscany, Italy
Water tumbles down stone steps and sends waves to the riverbank. I sit at the top of the waterfall, watching the tiny wiggling creases on the surface of the river.
Water tumbles down stone steps and sends waves to the riverbank. I sit at the top of the waterfall, watching the tiny wiggling creases on the surface of the river.
River. She’s right here, any day I show up. Flowing, flowing, flowing. How long has she been flowing here? The river doesn’t share my human understanding of time. Flowing, flowing, flowing. That’s what the river does. I’ve been sick in bed, excited about the future, worried if I’ve done enough — and none of that matters to her. The river is right here, flowing, flowing, flowing…
Rivers. In recent weeks I’ve swum in them, sat on their banks, sung songs about rivers and found my thoughts floating back to them, exploring rivers as metaphors. Beautiful guiding force…
“And I feel like the Queen of Water. I feel like water that transforms from a flowing river to a tranquil lake to a powerful waterfall to a freshwater spring to a meandering creek to a salty sea to raindrops gentle on your face to hard, stinging hail to frost on a mountaintop, and back to a river again.”
— Maria Virginia Farinango
November 2025, Tuscany, Italy
It’s a dark and starry night. The moon has not shown its waning face yet, even though the sun rolled behind the hills four hours ago. With honest yearning, I fill my lungs with crisp, pure air. There is such depth to it, as if it does not shrink in the cold but expands, in all directions and dimensions.
It also smells like winter — fresh and sweet with a light aftertaste of burning wood.
I count the six stairs as I descend them in pitch blackness and return my eyes to the sky. I spot Orion and smile: the fact that it is now visible in the early evening hours is a clear sign that wintertime is here.
___
Living in the countryside this year brought me so much closer to the ebb and flow of nature. There is less buffer, fewer layers. As if I am — almost — skin to skin with the world around me.
Not just intellectually knowing which moon phase it is but experiencing it: the new moon nights here are very, very dark, while on a clear full moon night the land is flooded with light.
Seeing not only the seasonal changes of the wild lands around me but also the changes in the community's life here. From running out of local olive oil mid-summer to the abundance of not only oil but chestnuts, wine, and occasions to get together at local festivals.
17th of December, on a flight to Russia
I am coming to the conclusion that, as the cliché goes, home is not a place but a feeling. A feeling of knowing, a sense of familiarity.
Familiar surroundings on the walk home from the bus station. Your favourite mug for your morning beverage. That cosy sweater you like to wear. The familiarity of someone’s presence: quirky habits, facial expressions, the sound of their laughter. Inside jokes with your friend and references that make sense only to you two — a treasure trove of mutual knowing cultivated over decades of relating.
I also notice a sense of cultural familiarity that I can only truly experience back in my homeland.
I might be a human between or even beyond cultures and borders at this point, but there is no taking away that tug on my heartstrings when I hear a traditional Russian song or when I see a forest of fir trees wrapped in cloaks of snow: puffy, shimmering in the sunlight.
I try, and I can hardly find words to conjure up that sense of familiarity that is not just mine — it’s the kind of familiarity that traces back to epochs long forgotten, to a time well before I was born.
In Slavic tradition, it is said that while our Spirit and Soul are of divine or heavenly origin, our bodies are formed by our earthly, blood-related ancestry. Our “Earth suits” are the amalgamation of our familial heritage (as genetics would agree), while our Spirit and Soul are not connected to a specific family, nation, culture, or even planet.
That perception speaks to my somatic experience of homeland familiarity, which goes beyond childhood memories and is found in the marrow of my bones.
Somatic familiarity.
The chassis touched the ground and I cried. Fellow passengers applauded the pilots — when I was younger I found this custom silly and refused to participate. I was too well-travelled for this. In the end, planes land thousands of times per day; it’s less of a miracle than driving a car without getting into an accident. Yet today I find the clapping endearing: one more confirmation that we did touch down in Russia.
Mid-December 2025, Siberia, Russia
After years of researching and following the Wheel of the Year, honouring seasonal changes, there is still so much to learn and grow into. I strayed from the active practice, focusing more on the practicalities of life and a new project. Yet life moves as an upward spiral, and so do I. Linearity can last only so long until the thread that ties me to the bigger world overstretches — and so I bounce back to the circumference of my path.
There is a time to wait and a time to act. For me, it is time to listen.
End of December 2025, my hometown, Russia
A couple of people swept by, too occupied with their own lives to wonder why I was standing still in the middle of a sidewalk. My eyes stung a little as I watched snowflakes gracefully waltz in the warm light of a lamp post. Such a simple, mundane scene was a portal: I stood there and could not tell if I was seven or seventeen or on the cusp of turning thirty. For a moment, I might have been eighty, too.
While my feet started to move away from the portal, my mind was still in between times — here and there, nowhere and everywhere. My eyes caught my reflection in the windows of a small bakery. Nostalgic, I walked in and asked for one of my childhood favourite pastries with sweet cottage cheese.
On the remaining walk home, I thought about my younger self who grew up in this town, and how that pastry I just got was a portal, too. A portal connecting me with another version of myself and a time long ago. Tenderness rose from the depths of my core and lodged as a lump in my throat.
Blood is thicker than water.
I learnt that phrase from a wise woman just over a week ago. Its usual connotation is about the importance of family ties above any other. For me, however, it speaks to that somatic familiarity I mentioned above — the one that exists beyond words, forms, and symbols. A knowing that you experience, not think your way into.
I thought about that expression while arranging the excerpts from my notes for this letter to you. We began with a little ode to water, and the reflections thickened until they turned into the red liquid that carries memories of a lineage, strung together like beads on a thread.
Flowing back into the same pool we all came from.
May we feel the knowing.
With love,
Nika
Glad you’re back