allow yourself to, too
Edition no. 14 · november 2, 2026
Well, I think we can all agree that the weather this week was a little magical. Late October seemed to have arrived in costume, masquerading as some gentler part of the year. I certainly wasn't going to tell it to change.
I've always loved Halloween. There's something wonderful about the way an ordinary evening becomes an occasion for imagination. A broom, usually confined to corners and dust, is suddenly capable of flight. Someone who would ordinarily avoid drawing attention to themselves might spend the evening dressed as a gigantic blow up dinosaur or Dorothy. Though, I will say, far too many creepy clowns this year for my taste.
And no one finds any of it particularly strange.
A costume doesn't always conceal. Sometimes it offers just enough freedom to express something that's been there all along.
That thought found its way into my yoga classes this week.
I asked everyone to write down what yoga means to them in one to four words. Each person wrote their words twice, keeping one copy and placing the other into a basket. Then everyone received someone else's words to try on during practice.
Not to exchange their experience for another person's, but to see what a different perspective might reveal about their own.
My words were "allow yourself to, too."
It's a sentence I've deliberately left unfinished.
Some days, it means allowing myself to rest. Other days, it means taking up a little more space or getting completely swept up in something joyful without stopping to wonder whether I've earned it.
The too is what matters most. I've noticed how easily I can recognize what another person deserves to experience, while sometimes being more hesitant to offer myself the same freedom.
Halloween felt like a fitting time to consider that. There's something worth borrowing from the willingness to dress up, play along, and enjoy being part of it all.
Maybe even after the costumes have been put away.
The practice
Find someone willing to play along and ask them to describe what yoga means to them in a few words. Or choose another experience you both share, whether that's movement, creativity, or simply what makes a day feel good.
Write down your own answer, too.
Spend a little time with both. Notice where they overlap and where they seem to be speaking entirely different languages.
You don't need to agree with someone else's words to find something interesting in them.
And if there's something in their understanding that you'd like to experience yourself, see what it feels like to make a little room for it.
The Soundtrack
Season Of The Witch
Lana Del Ray
Bad Moon Rising (Zombie Version)
Thea Gilmore
Witches Circle
Italian Witches Circle
The Poem
Take, too
The wrapper cackles like a witch
when you open it over the sink
with the kitchen lights still off.
The neighbors have hung
their ghosts from the trees,
whose bare branches scratch
at the dark upstairs windows.
Jack-o'-lanterns grin along their steps,
and you have left your porch light off again.
But you have been in costume for years.
The one who is fine, thank you.
The woman who laughs a beat late,
after she's checked that it's safe to.
You sewed them yourself by lamplight
and they fit so well
no one thinks to ask who's underneath.
In Salem they searched the women's skin
for some small mark of the devil,
a mole, a freckle, anything
that could be held up as proof.
I want to ask who you think is coming
up the road with the torches.
Whose hand is holding the lantern,
whose handwriting fills the list,
and why your name comes first.
A shriek from the street
breaks into laughter.
Across the road, a dinosaur
in his sister's pink boots
roars at every lit window.
The little witch beside him
keeps asking him to do it again,
laughing so hard her pointed hat
slips down over her eyes.
She straightens it with both hands,
then lifts her chin to keep it there.
At the next house, she forgets
to say trick or treat.
She steps into the porch light,
freckles and all,
and tells the woman, I'm a witch,
as though the word were a crown
and not a charge.
A good witch? the woman asks.
Sometimes, she says.
The woman tips the bowl toward her.
The little witch takes her time
choosing exactly what she wants.
If you came to your own door like that,
holding out the bag, hoping,
what would you give her?
THE THROUGHLINE
I've been thinking about the little witch's answer.
Sometimes.
She doesn't try to convince the woman that she's good all the time. She doesn't seem particularly concerned about whether her answer is the right one.
She just stands there in her crooked hat, pleased to be a witch, and takes her time choosing her candy.
Meanwhile, the woman in the poem has spent years making costumes that fit so well nobody questions them. Not even herself.
I suppose that's what interests me about Halloween this year. The possibility that dressing up might reveal something about the parts of ourselves that are usually kept out of sight.
And that sometimes the person most reluctant to let us join in is the one looking back from the mirror.
SOMETHING TO CARRY INTO YOUR WEEK
As November begins, perhaps there's a little Halloween spirit worth keeping around.
Is there something you've been watching someone else enjoy, quietly wishing you could join in?
What would happen if you did?
Smile & sigh. Yay.
Let’s make a good day of it,
Bevin
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