The world is FULL.

A mantra I’ve embraced this year and repeat to my son all the time, “The world is full of magic, medicine and miracles. Every day is a new adventure.”

Its been a rough few weeks….months? I’ll be frank, its been a real rough year. For a lot of people, not just me. But the last few weeks really threatened to kick the shit outta me. I lost sight of my mantra. It happens. Things pile up, layer upon layer until you’re staring at a mountain that seems insurmountable and suddenly months of tiredness, years of tiredness, all hit at once and you want to draw all the shades and hide. The world is just too much. I know there are a few million or more people who can probably relate to this feeling right now. What is going on in the world right now feels like way too much to hold. Despite the current social and political climate, this is familiar terrain for me come mid-December. Wanting to hide out, feeling overwhelmed. And the amount of self care I feel like I need to cope seems impossible for the life of a working, single parent.

But here is the miracle, here is the magic: for anyone in a dark place right now, it only takes a tiny crack of light. When it feels like the mountain is sitting on your chest, a knock on your door can turn everything around. When you feel like you’ve fallen for the last time and you’ll never rise again, it may just be that someone else’s call for help that pulls you out of the fog and into the big bright world again. Or maybe a good homemade meal, a walk, a long hot shower. Just for today or just for the next hour. These are miracles. Maybe they don’t change the circumstance. Maybe they can’t bring order to the chaos still swirling inside you or in the world at large, but maybe – they can help us to keep breathing through it all.

I have come to realize that the real miracle is the abundance I have in friends around me who can point me back to light and remind me to keep looking for the magic, the medicine and the miracles. Earlier this month I got to visit with a long-but-not-so-lost kindred friend who I am so indescribably grateful to share this lifetime with. We have known and watched one another grow for over twenty years. We are not the same girls we used to be but somewhere and in some ways, we still are. It’s weird. And though our paths have winded away from each other as we’ve gotten older, life has brought us back together at a time when we find ourselves in very similar processes. And this gift of being seen, really seen by another person and to be able to speak and hear the truth we see in one another, this is deep medicine for the soul. It is a profound gift.

Then this weekend I was visited by another (new-found but not so new) soul sister. I am elated to see how paths have intertwined. We picnicked on the beach, went in search of a mysterious hidden labyrinth high on the cliffs above the waves, we ate the best chocolate I’ve ever had in my life, found some magical crystals. And we talked and talked and talked. Time passed differently. Everything felt symbolic, every word meaningful and synchronicity abounded. My friend – she brings magic wherever she goes. And this weekend she brought it to me. 

I have another dear sweet friend who fights courageously every single day through pain and depression to keep breathing, to keep believing that things won’t always be this way. She fights for her life, she fights to find the purpose in her struggle and I watch her and wish desperately that I could take her suffering away. But she inspires me every single opportunity I get to spend time with her, even on her worst days. She is a MIRACLE.

Another crack of light: my sister-in-law who sat with me on my bedroom floor when I was miserable and overwhelmed and helped me make phone calls and create a plan for getting through this last week when all I felt like I could do was lie on the carpet. And yet another friend who sits me at her kitchen table and makes me coffee and breakfast on a hard morning. Yet another friend who brings me herbal oils to help with pain. And more – my neighbors who bring over food every time they have extra of anything and have no idea that it always arrives at the exact moment that the fridge is empty. Small miracles that are big. Small miracles that suddenly make things more bearable. Small miracles that at the very moment they arrive feel like they save your life.

I am moved to tears by the wealth I have in the people that surround me.

The little Acorn Scout asks “What is a miracle?” I tell him it is an amazing and unexpected gift that changes everything. So whenever something happy happens, he says, “Is it a miracle, mama?” And I laugh and say yes, yes! It is a gift. It is a miracle. Miracles abound. If we have the eyes to see. Seeing is what changes everything. 

The warm sunshine in the middle of a cold December. A friend’s buoyant recovery after a difficult surgery. A gift of firewood found on our porch. Mending a miscommunication with a heartfelt apology. A steaming cup of turmeric chai with honey. Holding my friend’s sweet newborn baby. The right song at exactly the right moment. Cherished new and old friends. Two nearly pain-free days in a row. A card in the mail from a friend I haven’t heard from in too long. An extra long, real hug from someone that doesn’t understand all of it exactly but knows he doesn’t need to. Another morning waking up to beauty of the morning fog in the redwood treetops…

treasures around every bend.

Whatever you focus on is what you’ll find. Keep looking, I tell my son (and myself). Keep watching and you’ll see… the world is full.

Collage by me.