The Work Won’t Rust—If You Oil It
You have spent years building something real—a body of work, a practice, a trust that people have learned to reach for. And now you are terrified that one absence, one moment when you could not tend the thing, has begun to rot it. That the depth you built is already corroding, and you do not know how to polish it back, or whether it is too late. You are afraid that what took you years to season is going to rust through entirely because you were not vigilant enough, or because you stepped away at exactly the wrong moment.
This is not a character flaw. This is what happens when you are the kind of person who holds other people, and you have finally, exhaustedly, had to set the work down. The fear makes sense. But the seasoning was never as fragile as you think it is—and the maintenance, while real, is not as punishing as you are imagining right now.
The Stripped Pot
A cast iron pot that has been seasoned for years sits on the rack—its surface blackened and smooth from use, built up in layers of oil and heat and the thousand small meals it has held. It is beautiful in the way only a tool becomes beautiful: not decorated, but shaped by purpose. And then it is scrubbed. Stripped bare. Left to dry unwatched. The raw iron is exposed, pale and hungry, and within hours the moisture finds the edges where the seasoning is thinnest, and the rust blooms there—rust that spreads faster than the seasoning was ever laid down.
But that pot is not a fragile thing. It is the most durable object in the kitchen. What is fragile is not the iron itself—it is the relationship between the iron and the oil, the constant, humble tending that keeps oxidation at bay. The pot was never indestructible. It was always a practice.
You are that pot. The seasoning you have built—the trust, the clarity, the depth that people have come to rely on—that is real and it is strong. But it is not a possession. It was never a permanent condition that, once achieved, stays achieved. It is a practice. And the moment you stop practicing it is the moment the corrosion can begin.
Why does your work feel so fragile when you find clarissa pinkola estes poems—or anything else—that reminds you of the depth you meant to keep building?
Because you are measuring yourself against an ideal of constant creation, constant visibility, constant output—and you have internalized the belief that any gap in that output means the work is deteriorating. When you read Estes’ poems, or see another teacher’s steady stream of words, or remember the pace you were holding before exhaustion forced you to stop, you feel the rust beginning. But the rust is not in the work. It is in your belief that the work can survive without you tending it daily.
Here is what is actually true: the seasoning does not require you to be perfect. It requires you to come back. A pot that has been neglected can be re-seasoned in a single afternoon. The corrosion at the edges can be scrubbed away. The practice does not demand that you never rest or never step back—it demands that you know, in your bones, that the work is worth returning to. That you will return to it. Not because you are obligated, but because the thing itself matters enough to tend.
Your absence did not destroy the work. Your readiness to believe it did—that is the real risk. The people who have found depth in what you have offered are not waiting for you to be unbroken or perpetually visible. They are waiting for you to know that you are worth the effort of your own care, and that tending yourself is part of tending the work.
Returning to the practice, with oil and cloth.
The first thing is to stop measuring the rust against the seasoning. You cannot polish the pot back to where it was by working harder—you can only re-season it by showing up, again, with the tools that actually work. That means you need real support while you do this, not in spite of doing it. A good therapist, trusted people around you who can hold what you are carrying—these are not weaknesses or distractions from the spiritual work. They are part of it. The tool cannot season itself. Neither can you.
Second: begin so small that it feels almost absurd. Not a grand return. Not a recommitment ceremony. Just one small act of tending. Write one thing. Sit for five minutes with the work that matters to you. Light a candle. Read something that reminds you why the depth mattered in the first place. The hand reaches for the cloth and the oil—not because the pot demands it, but because the hand remembers what it is like to hold something that works.
And finally, understand that this is not a return to perfection. This is a return to practice. The seasoning will build again, layer by layer, over time and use—but only if you stop waiting to feel ready and start showing up imperfect, tired, uncertain, and real. The people who have been shaped by your work do not need you to be unbroken. They need you to be human enough to know that the work itself requires tending, that you require tending, and that both of those things are worth the effort.
| What runs through your mind | What’s actually true |
|---|---|
| One gap in my output and everyone will forget what I built. | The depth you created is not stored in constant visibility—it is stored in the people who received it. One absence does not erase that. |
| I have to come back at the same level I was before, or it was all wasted. | Re-seasoning does not require returning to the old pace. It requires returning at all. Small, imperfect, real. |
| If I cannot tend this perfectly, I should not tend it at all. | A pot tended imperfectly is infinitely more valuable than a pot left to rust because you were waiting to be good enough. |
| The other teachers never stop. They hold it all. | The teachers you admire either have support you cannot see, or they are carrying an unsustainable pace. Neither is the standard for your own survival. |
A little help, while you’re here
- Pick one small thing from your work that matters to you—not the grandest project, not the thing that will impress people—and spend twenty minutes with it today. No outcome required. Just your hands and the work.
- Write down the names of three people who have told you your work changed something for them. Read them aloud. You are not starting from zero.
- Find one real person—a therapist, a trusted friend, a community—and tell them you need support while you rebuild. Not later. This week.
The seasoning returns.
A seasoned pot does not need to be perfect to be alive. It needs to be used. It needs to be oiled. It needs to be tended by hands that have learned its shape, that know how it heats, that come back to it again and again because the work itself—the cooking, the holding, the nourishment—is worth more than any idea of permanence or flawlessness. The rust at the edges can be scrubbed away. The blackness can be restored. But not all at once, and not alone.
You are seasoning again. Not the old seasoning—that was a version of you that belonged to a different moment. This seasoning will be built by a person who knows what rest is. Who knows what it costs to hold others. Who knows that the work is not a possession but a practice, and that practice means you show up, again and again, imperfect and tired and real, and you oil the pot anyway. You tend it anyway. You remember why it matters anyway.
The pot is still here. Your hands still remember how to hold it. And the seasoning—the real, earned, honest seasoning built by a person who has lived enough to know the cost—that is what makes the tool worth keeping. That is what makes it worth returning to. Not the performance of depth. The depth itself, tended by someone brave enough to be human while she tends it.