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Thea Marie Art

...through the prism of my senses I create
  • Thea Marie Art - Welcome
  • About
  • Through Bright Eyes - Book 1
  • Blog - An Artists Life
  • The Enchanted Cabinet
  • Journey Uphill - A Bike Ride to Remember
  • Current Works
  • Past Works
  • Step-by-Step
  • Volunteer Work
  • Commissions
  • Photography
  • Studies
  • Contact
  • Copyright

When Mountains Won't Move - “You’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above.” – Bruce Springsteen, Tunnel of Love

August 14, 2025

That line can hit harder than you expect.

At first, you might take it as a challenge — one of those gritty, no-excuses truths. If you can’t change it, then suck it up and move on. But the more you sit with it, the more you realise — that’s not what it means. Not really.

Because some things in life aren’t about willpower. They’re not about working harder, digging deeper, or being stronger. Sometimes, no matter how much heart you pour into something, how many prayers, rituals, spells, or sleepless nights you give it… you still can’t rise above it.

Some mountains don’t move.
Some people don’t change.
Some wounds don’t fully heal.
And some truths remain, no matter how much you wish they wouldn’t.

That’s where acceptance comes in — not as surrender, not as weakness, but as a different kind of strength.

Letting go of the fight doesn’t mean giving up. It means choosing to live anyway. It means shifting from How do I fix this? to How do I carry this in a way that doesn’t break me.

We grow up on stories about conquering. Slaying the dragon. Climbing the mountain. Winning the battle. But what happens when the mountain isn’t something you can conquer? What happens when the dragon is chronic pain, heartbreak, or grief that lingers like winter frost that never fully melts?

I’ve spent most of my life running — maybe you know the feeling. Pretending you can fix things. Reaching the hard seasons and thinking you can somehow reshape them into something positive — and getting damn good at it.

I call it the fine art of turning shit piles into gold.

But here’s the truth: it’s exhausting.

Maybe you’ve done it too — pushing forward no matter how you feel and calling it “acceptance.” But it’s not. That’s denial. And for years, I was in it… deep.

Looking back, I see now that maybe it was what I needed at the time — survival magic. My own version of lighting a candle in the darkness just to keep walking. But all that buried grief and pain? It stacks up. It waits. And one day, the pressure builds until something erupts — like Beltane fire breaking through winter’s grip.

That was me this past December — on the edge, ready to blow.

But then something happened. Call it the grace of God, the love of Selene, the blessing of Morrigan, or the grounding of Gaia — something shifted. Maybe I’d had enough. Maybe I was tired of pretending to be strong. Maybe I didn’t give a flying f**k anymore.

Whatever it was, I stopped running forward and turned back. Back into time. Back through the spiral, like the turning of the Wheel of the Year. I began peeling away the layers I’d built to survive and looked at every “gold pile” with older, wiser eyes.

Have you ever done that — gone back, not to erase the pain, but to finally make peace with it?

Because here’s what I learned: burying your grief, loss, and hurt never makes them disappear. You carry them anyway — so you might as well learn to carry them with grace.

Acceptance is tricky. We think it means closing the door and never looking back. But real acceptance? It’s knowing it will walk beside you for the rest of your life — through every season.

It’s the Earth beneath your feet — steady and grounding, holding both your roots and your burdens.
It’s the Air that whispers perspective into the places you thought were silent.
It’s the Fire that transforms your pain into fuel, not ashes.
It’s the Water that teaches you to flow around the rocks you cannot move.

And like the Sabbats, it comes in cycles. Sometimes we’re in the Yule-dark, holding our pain close for warmth. Sometimes we’re in the Litha-light, able to see it from a place of strength. Both are part of the same wheel.

True acceptance is standing at the crossroads — your cloak of experience wrapped around you — and saying: Yep. I see you. I can’t change you — but I honour the part you’ve played in shaping me.

Because in the end, living with what you can’t rise above isn’t about defeat. It’s about walking beside it without letting it swallow you. It’s about weaving the pain into your story without letting it become the whole book.

Acceptance doesn’t make the mountain smaller, but it makes the climb gentler. And maybe that’s the quiet victory no one talks about — not conquering the impossible, but finding the courage to keep living fully, in harmony with the weight you carry.

A Blessing for the Unmovable Mountain

May the sun warm you when the shadows feel long.
May the moon remind you that even in darkness, light returns.
May the earth steady your steps and hold your weight without judgment.
May the wind carry away what you no longer need to bear.

And may you walk with courage — not because the road is easy,
but because you’ve learned you can travel it anyway.

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Walking a Pagan Path

“In the mystical land of spirituality, every soul dances to it’s own unique melody.

When it comes to creativity, there are no rules; just a colourful mashup of everyones’s individual eccentric viewpoints

No roadmap exists for this unpredictable journey we call life - it’s a wild and whimsical adventure from beginning to end!” ~ TMA


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