22: What’s Holding Me This Fall

Written By Denisa Nica

What is holding you these days?

Every season, I like to stop and notice the things that are bringing life, steadiness, delight, or simply making the days a little better.

In this episode of Walking Anyway, I’m making my fall list—and inviting you to make one of your own.

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  • I’m Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You’re listening to episode 22.

    This is a podcast about living faithfully in uncertain seasons when life feels unclear and nothing is quite settling yet.  If you’re not quite sure how to move through this in a way that feels steady and true, you’re in the right place to keep walking anyway. Each week I offer a reflection and a gentle way to help you live faithfully, one ordinary step at a time.

    I’m an author and spiritual director, and the founder of The Table— an online contemplative community shaped by a weekly rhythm, where women practice this kind of faithful living together, at their own pace, in the middle of their real lives and faith. I live in Spain, where life moves a little slower, and that has changed the way I pay attention, and the way I live inside my own life.

    It’s time for another What’s Holding Me episode.

    I did one of these earlier this year, and I think this might become a seasonal thing around here because I really love making this list.

    These are simply the things that are holding me right now. And I use the word holding pretty generously. Some of them matter quite a lot. Others are just making my days better. It all counts.

    I think that’s partly why I like making the list. It makes me stop long enough to notice what I’m actually enjoying, returning to, relying on, or finding life in these days.

    Also, these episodes tend to be a little less scripted than usual. I have my list in front of me, I have some notes, and we’ll see where we go.

    Listen in. MUSIC

    Okay, I’ve got my list in front of me.

    Some of these I’ve been thinking about for a while, and a few surprised me when I started writing them down.

    So let’s see where we go.

    First on my list: my autumn Spotify playlist.

    I have playlists for seasons. I don’t know if you do this, but there are songs that simply sound like autumn to me. And sometime around the end of August, I start wanting them again.

    The slight problem is that I live in southern Spain, and southern Spain is not particularly interested in autumn. Even now, it’s still quite warm. We’re still swimming in the sea, eat outside and take long walks on the beach. But my Spotify playlist says autumn, so I’m going with it.

    I put it on when I’m working or cooking or sometimes just around the house, and it changes the feeling of the day for me. So yes. The autumn playlist is back. And if you want to listen along, I’ll put the whole playlist in the show notes for you.

    Okay, another thing that is making my life considerably better right now—and this is much less interesting—is going to bed early. Actually early.

    I have discovered, again, the extremely inconvenient truth that I am a much nicer person when I sleep.

    I know this, I’ve known this for years. And somehow every few months I rediscover it as if sleep research has only just been released.

    Like I said, summer stretches long here. It stays light late. We eat later. People stay out later - even in October. And lately I’ve been craving an earlier ending to the day. There’s something very satisfying about deciding, Okay. That’s enough. Whatever I thought I was going to do at 10:30 at night can almost certainly wait until tomorrow. I’m going to bed.

    So sleep is holding me this fall.

    And so are people. In-person people. Remember those?

    I know we’ve been talking about the importance of being with people in person since 2020, so this is hardly a groundbreaking discovery. But I’m still grateful for them.

    A lot of my life happens online. My work happens online. And many of the people I love most live in other countries.

    I’m enormously grateful that we can be together that way.But I’m also noticing again just how good it is to be with people in person.

    My friend Roxana and I walk together pretty regularly. And then some weekends, Daniel and I have these long breakfasts with two couples who have become really dear friends here.

    And our Belgian neighbours are basically family, we see each other almost every day. There’s always somebody checking in, stopping by, asking what we’re doing, whether we’re home, It’s all very ordinary.

    We’re just in and out of each other’s lives.

    And I think this feels especially precious because a few years ago we left so much that was familiar and moved across continents. We had to build a life here from the beginning in so many ways.

    And now there are people nearby who know the ordinary details of our days, and we’re part of the ordinary details of theirs.

    This fall I also got to spend a few days in Italy with our friends from Canada. There was something really lovely about having that kind of time together again—not just catching up, but travelling somewhere and sharing a few ordinary days together.

    When I was making this list, I realized just how much all of this is holding me right now.

    And yes, all these years after 2020, I’m still very grateful for the gift of being together in person.

    Okay, this next one I almost don’t want to tell you about because once I say it here, it feels like I’ve made some sort of public commitment.

    I’m trying not to eat sugar. And—I regret to inform you—I feel better. I was really hoping the conclusion of this would be that sugar is essential to human flourishing.

    So far, the evidence is not supporting my hypothesis.

    My energy is more consistent. I feel better. So I’m carrying on. We’ll see how long I last.

    And perhaps slightly inconveniently after telling you I’m not eating sugar, the next thing on my list is cookbooks.

    My old Donna Hay cookbooks.

    During our trip to Romania in August, I was going through some of the last boxes we had shipped from Canada. Our life is still a little geographically confused like that. We live in Spain, there are still boxes from Canada in Romania, and every once in a while I open one and find something I’d completely forgotten was there.

    This time, it was my old Donna Hay cookbooks.

    I hadn’t seen them in a long time, so I brought a few back to Spain with me, and lately I’ve been cooking from them again—meals I haven’t made in years.I was a young mom when I was cooking some of these recipes. My daughter was a child, not the 23-year-old woman she is now. It was an earlier season of our marriage. We were living on the Pacific West Coast.

    Different kitchen. Different rhythms. Different version of our family.

    And it’s funny how food does that. I’ll open one of these cookbooks and see a recipe and think, Oh, I remember this. Sometimes my hands almost remember it before I do. And now I’m making some of those same meals in my kitchen in Spain.

    I really love that.

    Not everything from an earlier version of our life needs to stay there. And also—Donna Hay recipes hold up. I’ve been having so much fun cooking from them again.

    Okay, from something that has followed me from Canada to Spain to something very Spanish: Valle Salvaje.

    Daniel and I have been watching this Spanish telenovela almost every weeknight. It’s a period drama set around Madrid in the 1700s, which is part of why I like it.

    The costumes are beautiful, the interiors—the furniture, the houses, all of that eighteenth-century décor—I love looking at it.

    And we call watching it our Spanish lesson. Which makes the whole enterprise sound much more virtuous than it actually is, but, we do have a system. We watch in Spanish and put the subtitles on in Spanish too. So we’re hearing the words and reading them at exactly the same time. And it genuinely helps.

    You start recognizing phrases. You see the words while you’re hearing the pronunciation. Sometimes one of us will catch something and say, “Oh! That’s what they said.”

    So yes, we’re learning Spanish. We are also watching a telenovela.

    And the acting is actually quite good. The budget is…perhaps not Netflix’s largest. And the script sometimes takes us places we did not need to go. There are moments when Daniel and I just look at each other. Really?

    And yet, there we are again the following night. Dinner finished. Spanish subtitles on. Back to Valley Salvage to find out what completely avoidable disaster has happened now.

    We love it.

    So yes, I guess an eighteenth-century Spanish telenovela is holding me this fall.

    Next: cardigans.

    That’s it. That’s the next thing. After months of heat, there comes this first evening when the air is just cool enough to put something over your shoulders. And I wore a cardigan again. It made me ridiculously happy.

    No deeper meaning, I’m just very happy to have cardigans back.

    Now, something requiring slightly more intellectual effort than putting on a cardigan: Augustine.

    I’m reading Augustine’s Confessions, one page a day. And honestly, the one-page-a-day part may be as important to me right now as Augustine.

    Because there is a version of me who decides she’s going to read Augustine and immediately turns it into a project.

    How many chapters? How many weeks? When will I finish?

    Instead, I’m reading one page.I actually don’t have time for more even if I wanted to.

    That’s all. Even when I’m tempted to keep reading, I really try to stop. And I’m genuinely enjoying it. I’m not trying to get through Augustine, I’m letting Augustine take a very long time. A sentence gets to stay with me, an idea gets to follow me into the rest of my day, it’s like its own daily practice.

    At some point I will finish Confessions.

    We don’t need to know when. For now, Augustine and I are doing one page at a time.

    Another thing I’m returning to slowly is the Welcoming Prayer.

    Do you know this prayer?

    It’s a contemplative prayer practice associated particularly with Thomas Keating and Mary Mrozowski, and I’ve been returning to it lately when I notice something happening inside me that I would much rather not be happening.

    Anxiety, frustration, fear, anger, that tightening feeling when I really want something to go differently than it’s going.

    My instinct is usually to get to work on it. Why am I feeling this? What does this mean? What should I do? How can I make it better? The Welcoming Prayer starts somewhere else entirely. It asks me first to notice what I’m experiencing. Where am I feeling this in my body? Can I stay here for a minute instead of immediately trying to make it go away?

    I find that surprisingly difficult.

    But there’s something about simply saying, Okay. This is what is here right now, and becoming present to it with God. I’ve been returning to that a lot lately.

    Okay, another thing I’ve returned to now that fall is here, is the sea.

    The sea is holding me again. And again is probably the important word. We live near the Mediterranean. Which is every bit as lovely as it sounds.

    Except that in July and August, everyone else would also like to be near the Mediterranean. The beaches, the roads are all packed. Parking becomes an extreme sport, and it’s hot.Really hot. And so somewhere in the middle of summer, I stop going as often.

    Then September comes, people start going home, the beaches begin to empty, the heat softens, and I get the sea back.

    I know. It’s not mine, but that’s how it feels. Like I’m reclaiming it. I’m walking beside it again. I’m swimming in it. I’m sitting near it. Sometimes I’m just looking at it.

    And I don’t know that I have a particularly profound explanation for why the sea does what it does to me. I just know I feel different beside it. I just breathe differently.

    So the sea is back in my ordinary life, and I’m very happy about that.

    And the next thing on my list of what’s holding me this fall is something I’ve been practicing for a while now: relinquishing.

    I’ve been noticing how quickly I can move from caring about something to gripping it. Things I want, people I love, things I’m praying about. Outcomes I would really like to go a certain way. And so I’ve been practicing giving them back to God.

    Sometimes I actually pray with my hands open and say: God, this is what I want. This is what I’m worried about. And I’m giving it back to you.

    And then, of course, I take it back. Sometimes remarkably quickly. So I open my hands and give it back again.

    I think that’s the practice for me right now. Not getting particularly good at relinquishing. Just noticing when I’ve started gripping again. And opening my hands.

    Okay, the next one is much more tangible: old photographs.

    Remember those boxes in Romania where I found the Donna Hay cookbooks? Well, the cookbooks weren’t the only thing I brought home.

    I was also looking through some old family photo albums and chose a handful of photographs to bring back with me. Nothing professional or particularly special. Just these small photographs that have been in our albums for years.

    I bought some pretty little frames for them, and now they’re sitting on my desk.There’s one of my grandparents with me when I was a baby. One of Mara when she graduated from high school. One of me when I was little. There’s a photograph I took of my grandmother a few years before she died, in 2010. And then there’s one of my grandmother when she was sixteen. I love that one.

    I don’t know exactly why I suddenly wanted these photographs around me. They’ve been there for years. But right now, I like looking up from my computer and seeing these people.

    My grandmother at sixteen. My daughter at the end of high school. Me at five. My grandparents holding me before I knew myself.

    They’re just sitting there now, in these pretty little frames, on my desk in Spain.

    I don’t know. There’s something about looking up and seeing them there that makes me feel grounded somehow. Like I have a little bit of where I come from sitting right there on my desk.

    And since we’re already at my desk, I have one last thing sitting there that is very much holding me right now. My Full Focus Planner.

    This one is a complete splurge. I ordered them while Daniel was in Canada earlier this year and had them shipped, and he brought them back with him. At least I saved on shipping. Which is important because these planners are expensive. And I didn’t buy one. I bought four. They make one for each quarter, and I decided that if I was going to commit, I was going to commit for the year. I also got this beautiful cream linen cover, which makes the whole thing just lovely. And I love it.

    Since coming back to work this September, it’s been incredibly helpful.

    There’s quite a lot happening with my work right now, and after the slower rhythm of summer, I’m finding that I really need somewhere to decide what actually gets my attention day to day and week to week. That’s what the planner is doing for me. I sit down with it at the beginning of the day, week, month and at the startof each quarter and work out what matters, and I’m staying pretty close to it. I’m more focused and likely to get pulled in twelve different directions. I really like having the structure.

    Could I accomplish this with a notebook that costs six euros Almost certainly. Do I want to? Apparently not. So: wildly expensive cream linen planner. Holding me this fall.

    And I think that’s my list. At least for now. It’s funny looking at it all together. But that’s what I like about doing these episodes. They make me notice my actual life. And maybe you could pay attention to yours too.

    Sometime this week, take ten minutes, open a page in your journal or the notes app on your phone, and make your own list. Don’t overthink it. Just write down what comes to mind.

    What’s been bringing you life? What do you keep returning to? What has quietly been helping you through this particular season? You might be surprised by what makes the list.

    What’s been surprisingly good lately?

    What do you keep reaching for?

    Who are you glad to see?

    What are you enjoying simply because you enjoy it?

    What small thing is making your days better?

    And what is helping you stay with God in the middle of the life you actually have?

    What is holding you these days?

    Thanks for listening to episode 22 of Walking Anyway.

    I hope this practice of noticing what’s holding me in this season, helps you notice what’s holding you, too. Maybe something on my list reminded you of something in your own life—but surely your list looks completely different.

    And if you enjoyed spending this time together today, I’d love to have you back here next week. You can follow Walking Anyway wherever you listen, and then you won’t have to remember to come looking for the next episode. It will just show up for you.

    And if this little podcast has been good company to you, would you take a minute to leave a rating or a few words in a review? It really does help other people find their way here, and I’m always so grateful when you do.

    And maybe, as you were listening today, someone came to mind.

    If they did, send this episode to them. You don’t need to make it a whole thing. You can just say, “I thought of you when I heard this.” I love when we can do that for each other. Sometimes that’s enough.

    As always, you can find me at denisaonica.com., on Substack at denisaonica.substack.com or on Instagram at denisa.o.nica. I’d love to see you there.

    As you step back into your day, notice what stayed with you, and let that be enough for today. Just like light moving through a room— you don’t need to see everything at once to keep living faithfully here.

    I’ll leave with the Welcoming Prayer.

    Welcome, welcome, welcome. I welcome everything that comes to me today, because I know it is for my healing. I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions. let go of my desire tor power and control. I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure. I let go of my desire for survival and security let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself. I’m open to the love and presence of God and God's action within.

    Amen.

    Thanks for listening, I'll be here with you next time.

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21: What’s Growing Here?