(April. 23, 2025)

A Season Has Ended.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to reach the end of a season.

Not just because the weather is changing, but because the ground I’ve been standing on —artistically, emotionally, spiritually—is shifting in ways I didn’t ask for and can’t control.

I had a conversation with an artist friend last week who runs a large arts festival, and both of us are sitting in that familiar tension: making work we believe in, doing it for people we care about, and watching the conditions around us grow colder, less supportive, more uncertain.

So this message is coming from me, but also from many of us.

Because in America, it’s not just that funding is changing.
Yes, funders and donors are consolidating, shifting priorities, or walking away altogether. But the deeper ache is this: the eye of the local and national community feels like it’s turned elsewhere (with good reason in some cases).

People aren't showing up the way they used to.
Not in the same numbers.
Not with the same energy.

And that silence is louder than any budget cut.

Everyone’s “reassessing.”

And the message, whether spoken or implied, is becoming clearer:
This thing you love, this work you’ve spent your life doing?
It’s not where we’re putting our energy anymore.

And that hits hard.
Because for many of us, making art isn’t a side gig. It isn’t a hobby.
It’s how we show up in the world.
It’s how we help people process grief, joy, change.
It’s our contribution. Our offering.

So what happens when the systems and people around us no longer make space for that offering?
What happens when the passion we bring is met with politeness, but not partnership?

It starts to feel like being in a relationship where your partner technically shows up.
They’re there. They say they care.
They put food on the table.
They tell you they love you.
But what they give is the bare minimum.

Not out of malice, but maybe because they’re overwhelmed.
Or distracted.
Or afraid.
Or because their love, somewhere along the way, got comfortable being conditional.

You try to talk about your needs.
You explain how much you’re carrying.
You pour your heart into the relationship, show up day after day.

But the response you get isn’t deep investment…it’s just enough to keep you there.

They say they care.
But their actions, patterns, silence, and limits tell a different story.

And so you start to ask yourself…

What if they really can’t love me the way I need to be loved?
What if I’ve built a life with a partner who doesn’t have the capacity to grow with me?

It’s not toxic. It’s not abusive.
It’s just… no longer serving either of us.

While heartbreaking, sometimes its not one’s fault.

That’s what this season feels like for many of us as artists with the world around us. With the communities we’ve spent years showing up for, performing for, creating for.

What if the partner, or the place, we’ve built our life with no longer has the capacity to love us back in the way we’ve loved them?

And what do you do when you realize the person, or the community, you’ve invested in can’t meet you in the middle anymore?

Do you fight harder?
Do you love them into capacity, even if it breaks you?
Or do you let go, not in bitterness, but in deep, painful love?

This is the mourning process no one talks about.
The grief that comes when a season closes, not because it failed, but because it can’t go any further.

And maybe the hardest part is accepting that.

Accepting that what you’ve been giving might not be wrong—but it also might not be right anymore. Accepting that your value hasn’t changed—but the space you’re trying to give it in no longer has room.

And that’s a hard truth. Because if you’re like me, you’ve been hoping.

Hoping that if you just worked harder, made it better, reached more people, it would turn around. That the support would grow to match the effort.

But maybe… it won’t.
Maybe they just don’t have the capacity.
Maybe this season of pouring into this relationship is over.

And if that’s true… then what now?

What do you do when you feel a season closing?

Do you fight for it?
Or do you let it go?

That’s the hardest part.
Because artists—we’re trained to be resilient.
To push through. To find a way.
We’re used to being underfunded, underestimated, and overworked.
We carry our passion like armor.

We tell ourselves, They may not get it now, but if I just hold on, if I just push harder, the tide will turn.

But what if it doesn’t?

What if the season you’re in is asking not for a harder push but for a softer surrender?

Being an artist often feels like being in a long-term relationship with your community. You show up with offerings—of story, beauty, insight, care—and hope they’ll be received. Supported. Held.

And when that doesn’t happen, not only do you start questioning the relationship…you start questioning yourself.

But here’s the shift:

Maybe letting go isn’t giving up. Maybe letting go is an act of honoring the truth of where you are—and where the world is, too.

Maybe the call isn’t to stop creating. But to stop expecting the same people, the same systems, the same platforms to receive it the way we’d hoped.

Maybe it’s time to fight in a different direction.
To move our energy toward the places that do make room.
To preserve our spirit instead of performing our survival.

Letting go doesn’t mean you didn’t love it. It just means you’re ready to stop trying to bloom in soil that can no longer feeds you.

So if you’re in a similar season… I see you.
If you’re mourning the loss of something that used to hold you, I’m mourning too.

And maybe, if we sit in this honesty long enough, we’ll find the courage not just to grieve. But to imagine again.

Not from scarcity.
Not from desperation.
But from the deep, quiet knowing that our value was never dependent on being chosen.

We were always enough.
We still are.

And maybe, just maybe, the next season isn’t just whispering my name. It’s calling me in into purpose.

I just have to be still enough to hear it.

Dom