Good morning, Dear Reader,
Today, the daily gratitude mediation from Alex Elle (
) gave the following prompt:“Look around you and list everything that’s beautiful. Where does gratitude show up.”
I decided to turn it into a series of vignettes. There is so much I have to be grateful for and so much beauty around. Enjoy!
Sunlight Playtime
In the mornings, there is this light outside of my bedroom window. It is breathtaking how the sun’s early rays plays on fences and front yards and stop signs. It plays when no one is looking or paying attention. The joy in how it skips and simmers like hope fills lungs with air.
The sunlight is a five year old girl with pigtails. Complete with scabby knees and her favorite dress soiled from tree climbing and running wild. What is happier than that?
There is a beauty to the start of the day that just mesmerizes a person just long enough to go tree climbing and ride bikes until the street lights come on.
The Beauty of Growing Old
There is beauty to growing old that I am appreciating more each day.
Mom is growing older. The calendar doesn’t say it but her bones do. She has the bones of an old woman and she has had them for a while. This is what cancer has taken from her, the minerals in her bones.
At the end of next month she will stop taking her cancer meds. This part is finally over. Her last mammogram is clean. Her oncologist, her favorite of her team of doctors, is moving to Dallas. After January she will have one six month update left, and then it’s yearly visits. Five years since the diagnosis and surgery have taken a toll and we are near the end. In tarot, this would be represented by The World card, the end of a cycle. This means the person has gone through the pain and the glory of a path they embarked on where they knew nothing.
She is not the only one who grew older. I did too. My sister did too. The calendar does not tell us this, our lungs do. The way we hold our breath at every doctor’s appointment and mammogram. The way we listen to how she is feeling. The way her gray hair is silver and how slow she walks now.
Isn’t it funny how, when we are younger we run into the unknown like The Fool and then, when wisdom has cloaked us, we slow down to appreciate what we have taken for granted?
Beautiful Words, Beautiful Healing
If I could live in a library, I would gladly dismiss myself from the world and curl up with books as one would a lover.
Life is not books. Unfortunately. However, when life and love broke me this year, a large part of my mending came from pages stuffed between two covers.
There is wisdom in words and stories that pluck you out of yourself long enough for wounds to heal. There are stories that belong in the museum of your brain, displayed in a permanent collection, as a reminder that you, human being on this planet, are not alone. These feelings, these thoughts are part of being human. You are not the first nor the last. You are the next. The right now. The moment. This is your ball to take to the end zone.
Every word, sentence, page is a guide and as you follow this path, something happens. There is less pain. There is less heartbreak. You are less alone. And for the first time in this stink bug of a season, you are grounded. You feel present. Like magic, you too, now, right now, have something to add to the tapestry of humanity.
Then you take the ball to the end zone. Touchdown. This way of healing? This too is beauty.
Coffee Lover
Damn, I love coffee.
Everything about it from the smell to picking the right coffee mug is just the definition of self care.
Today, I am a Community Coffee Cafe Special girlie with Hazelnut cream frothed to the GODS with my new frother and a sprinkle of cinnamon for good luck and prosperity. All this goodness is nestled into a cute Christmas mug with a happy bear on it.
I do that now, sprinkle cinnamon in my coffee. When I wake up I say to myself, “You’re going to have an amazing day.” I watch the words that come out of my mouth and pay attention to how they feel in my body. For example, gossiping feels like a punch in the shoulders and being shaken to my senses. If I answer a question I don’t know the answer to but I act like I do, I shiver like the room was dunked into an iceberg. When I give out praise or show people how important and valuable they are to me, the chest feels like the sun is about to burst out.
Words have always been important to me but this year, I have realized how they are more than just pretty things, they are building blocks. How they are strung together, their purpose, how they are received is how reality is created.
How you love someone, how they love you, the love you create together — words, both said and unsaid.
So here are my words, my building blocks to my next reality: I love loving on people I love. I love being loved by people who love me and see me. I hope to live the rest of my lifetime by the warmth of the love that is created by these relationships — friendship, family, friends who are family, and romantic. May we all know enough strife to never take this love for granted.
But for right now, this coffee in the Christmas bear mug will do. Damn, I love me some coffee.
Nature Poems Are Hard
I tried really hard to write a nature poem. It’s harder than you think.
My friend Jasminne mentioned this one time and I totally believed her. Totally. But I didn’t know how hard until I went to write one.
And when I finally did, I found beauty in endings. By far, this is my favorite ending to one of my poems:
“There is something after the rain,
called petrichor. The smell
of fresh earth after a quenched thirst
when it’s had just enough,
learned just enough,
to renew not by ending,
but by process.
My love, the lesson:
How beautiful the mundane
when the ending is unknown. “
Hello again! I will have an announcement very soon (within the next 24-48 hours) about something really cool. Expect to hear from me soon!