Something beautiful happens when you step outside after too many hours at a screen.

Not because you planned it. Not because an app reminded you to get your steps in. Just because something in your body said: enough screens, I need air.

And for one minute, maybe two, everything got quiet. The noise in your head settled. You felt the ground under your feet. You noticed the light, or the smell of something green, or the sound of rain on a roof. And something in you exhaled that you didn't even know you were holding.

That feeling? That's not a wellness trend.

That's Pertiwi. And she's been here your whole life, waiting for exactly that moment.

Pertiwi is the Javanese name for the living earth. Not the planet, not the environment, not a cause to champion. A mother. The ground that fed our grandmothers. The soil that holds our stories. The earth that gives and gives and gives, quietly, every season, without asking for anything back except that we pay attention.

Our grandmothers didn't need Earth Day for this. They were already in conversation with her. They planted when she was ready. They rested when she needed to rest. They cooked from what the season offered. They knew, without being taught, that they were part of something larger than themselves, and that part of them was beautiful, not burdensome.

That knowing never left you.

It's in the exhale when you step outside. The pause at the window when it rains. The way something handmade feels heavier and realer than everything else you own, and you don't quite know why, but you know it matters.

That's Pertiwi, reminding you. She's been there the whole time.

This month, we've been so moved watching women lean into that feeling.

 

 

Maria Mutiara, sitting across from her mother and asking the questions she'd never let herself ask out loud, and finding the answers were more beautiful than she imagined.

 

© Rolex/Sébastien Agnetti

Our Ibus — Ibu Kasmini and so many others, spending their lives reading the earth the way you'd read the face of someone you deeply love.

 

Dr. Sylvia Earle, who has spent more than 7,000 hours inside the ocean, Pertiwi in her deepest, most ancient form, wearing the Pertiwi Kebaya. At 90, she is still listening. Still curious. Still joyfully, stubbornly in relationship with the earth. Still going.

Different worlds. The same joy. The same knowing.

And here is the thing we want you to hear today:

You have it too. You've always had it.

You don't need to be an oceanographer. You don't need to go to the village or start a foundation or change everything about your life.

You just need to feel what you already feel, and trust it.

That exhale when you step outside is enough. The moment you pause because something is beautiful. The light, a leaf, the colour of cloth that came from the earth, that is enough. The fact that you are here, reading this, caring about any of this at all, that is enough.

Caring for the earth is not a burden. It is a homecoming. And the door was never locked.

All women are born as Pertiwi warriors. Not because we fight, but because we remember. And when we remember together, something shifts. In us. In the people around us. In the earth herself.

Kita berasal dari Pertiwi. Kita akan kembali ke Pertiwi. Kita rawat Pertiwi, Ibu kita.

We come from her. We return to her. In between, we have the chance to care for her.

Here's to you, the woman who still feels it, even when the world tells her to move faster. We see you. We make things for you. And we are so glad you're here.

Selamat Hari Pertiwi.

 

With love,

Denica and the SukkhaCitta team