Now bring to mind one thing you have grown this month—not something you achieved, but something you became. It might be a capacity for patience. A willingness to ask for help. A moment of genuine presence with someone you love. Whatever it is, let it live in your awareness without judgment or analysis. Simply feel its presence in you, the way you might feel the warmth of sun on your skin.

Ram Dass knew this coherence long before the instruments could measure it. He taught us that "we're all just walking each other home"—naming the very truth the science confirms: the bloom that grew in you did not grow by your will alone. It grew in resonance with the beings who loved you, through the struggles that cracked you open, through the very soil of your life. Your gratitude is not pride in an accomplishment. It is recognition of a gift. To steward what you have grown is an act of love—you tend it not to possess it, but to honor the grace that grew it through you.

Rumi wrote, "The wound is the place where the Light enters you." As you sit with your hand on your heart, acknowledge the difficult soils that fed this month's growth. The doubts, the falling apart, the moments when you were small. These were not obstacles to your blooming. They were the very conditions that made it possible.

With each exhale, whisper a simple word—thank you. Not to anyone in particular. Simply releasing gratitude into the world that held you. Do this for one more minute, letting the word become a rhythm, a prayer, a seal.

When you are ready, open your eyes slowly. The bloom you have carried this month does not vanish when May arrives. It becomes the root from which what you grow next will draw its nourishment.

Today, I carry one thing I have become this month with me, and I tend it not as something I own, but as something I have been blessed to steward.

This practice takes 5 minutes. Do it before checking your phone.