Welcome to Issue #015 of Sojourn. Each week, I share two original essays to help you slow down, reconnect, and rebuild with intention (hence ‘sojourn’), in a private community that uses travel as a path to reinvention.
THE POWER OF STOPPING
We’re told reinvention means motion—new jobs, new cities, new roles. But the truth? Reinvention doesn’t start by speeding ahead.
It starts in the pause.
The quiet before change.
The silence where clarity forms.
The breath that tells you you’re ready.
WHAT CHANGED FOR ME
On one trip, I found myself in a small corner of a hotel balcony in Healdsburg, CA. Nothing remarkable—just a chair and morning light. But it became the place I finally opened my journal again after months of avoidance.
Later, at home back from a wellness retreat, an unused office turned into my yoga space. Just twenty minutes each morning reshaped my days—and, slowly, a new identity.
Neither moment was planned. Both began with pause.
WHY PAUSES MATTER
We think of pauses as empty. But they’re full of direction.
They aren’t interruptions to life. They’re the defining lines that give it shape.
Tea before bed that wraps a day.
A first-light walk that reframes the day.
Silence between tasks that resets presence.
The pause isn’t absence—it’s where reinvention gets its form.
HOW THIS APPLIES TO STARTING OVER
When life feels uncertain, the urge is to fix, move, fill. But reinvention doesn’t happen in the noise, it begins in the stillness we often resist.
It happens when you stop long enough to ask: What do I need right now?
Because the pause is where clarity lives. And clarity is what gives the next step its meaning.
PROMPTS
Try these this week:
Where can I protect my five minutes of pause?
How could I carry that pause into the rest of my week?
What ritual would make that pause restorative—tea, breath, light, silence?
THE SHIFT
Pauses don’t delay reinvention. They actually create it.
They give your body, your heart, and your mind a chance to align before you move forward.
Because the biggest transformations don’t always start with a leap.
They start with a stop.
~Ana