Guest Post: Sitting with Sunsets by Michelle Dowd

Michelle Dowd

is a contributor to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, TIME magazine, Alpinist, The LA Review of Books, LA Parent Mag, and other national publications. She was raised on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest where she learned to navigate by the stars and forage for edible plants. Her memoir, Forager: Field Notes on Surviving a Family Cult, showcases her life growing up on an isolated mountain in California as part of an apocalyptic cult, and how she found her way out of poverty and illness by drawing on the gifts of the wilderness.

Subscribe: mdowd@substack.com

---

During the months my mother lay dying, I started chasing sunsets, the way I used to chase waterfalls. At the first sign of the waning light, I would bolt out of the house to catch the color, reaching for radiance like an athlete striving for a win. 

Later, as I was cleaning up my mother’s body, and then later, her belongings, and even later, while I sat with my father in his grief, helping him move into a senior residence, devoid of her remnants, I had less compulsion for color. In those gray days, I would force myself to go out in the evenings for a moment of air, and I would look for my mother’s favorite birds, hoping to recognize her spirit in one of them. But all I could see was the dying light. 

So I made a ritual of that. I made a ritual of going out to watch the dying of the light. I didn’t know what I wanted, or who I wanted to spend time with, so I just showed up, in all my beautiful mess, and connected with what the sinking sun had to offer.  

Connecting to nature connected me to myself. Sitting with sunset after sunset, evening upon evening, taught me to recognize the wonder of transformation, and showed me the road to recovery. 

In time, this practice taught me that I didn’t need to chase at all. When I showed up faithfully, allowing whatever else that came along to show up too, I let it all be, as it was. Eventually, I found that whatever showed up was enough, and I began to accept whatever form it took, and learned to love it.