Soft Morning · Invisible Safety

This morning the farm feels… softer.
The ground has that deep, soaked give under my feet after real rain.
The birds are loud again.
Even the light seems to have unclenched a little.

Down by the field, the guinea fowl are already out, scattered in their loose constellation of grey and white — those sudden, brilliant blue heads threading through the sage greens. The dogs romp around me in their usual chaotic game of tag, full of ideas and half-started chases, weaving a wide circle through the wet grass.

They could barrel straight into the flock.
They don’t.

There’s no fence.
No tape or wire or physical edge to keep anyone in or out.
Just something in their bodies that knows: the wild things are not for chasing.

The birds don’t panic anymore.
They sidestep us, fuss a little if there are babies or a nest tucked close by, then carry on with the quiet work of being alive.

Somewhere between the mud and the birds and the not-chasing dogs, I realise my body feels the way they look.

For weeks my nervous system has been braced for impact — for the next appointment, the next bad night, the next piece of news. Even when things were technically “fine,” some inner part of me was still standing at the gate, watching for the break in the pattern.

Today, for the first time in a while, something in me trusts what we’ve put in place.
The hard days have passed, for now.
The things I put down to hold us — the decisions, the boundaries, the words I finally said — have actually held.

I can feel it in the way my shoulders drop.
In the way my breath goes all the way down.
In the way my mind isn’t scanning so frantically for what might go wrong next.

Safety, it turns out, doesn’t arrive with a trumpet blast.
It arrives like this:
in small, ordinary proofs that what you set in place is real.

The dogs remember what they’ve learned.
The birds stay where they are, busy with their own lives.

And somewhere inside, your own small, skittish self decides it’s safe enough to stop watching the edge all the time — and start living again.