What if you could open a moment?

A lag in sharing this e-Journal since my last post sent a flurry of emails, “are you okay?” Yes, I’ve simply been focusing energy on a new virtual, 4-week workshop called, The Joy Experiment. I’m excited to be working with a small group of individuals in opening themselves to more well-being, a renewed sense of purpose and connection, and ideally, joy, as they live forward from the loss of someone they love.

Free Book: With the 3rd anniversary of the publication of Grieving Us: A Field Guide for Living With Loss Without Losing Yourself, I’m again making the Kindle e-book version free on Amazon for 5 days. I’m humbled by the connections with thousands of people dealing with heartbreak around the world who’ve found solace within the pages. The e-book will be free on Amazon, Friday, March 15-Tuesday, March 19, 2024.

March 3, 2024 | Sunday

Sitting under an eve as rain rushes down, heavy, sleet-y, mixed with hail, the coldness feels fresh and clean in this dark before dawn. I breathe it in deeply, wondering how the lungs sort out the O₂ from the H₂O, the oxygen from the water. 

Suddenly it seems something, other than rain, has fallen … on me. A tickling atop my left hand, movement at the corner of my right eye. Flicking on the flashlight, my lap is full of granddaddy long-legs. At my temple, their hair-like legs hang-on to my hair. 

I turn the light upward, ah, there, an enormous cluster of these leggy arachnids are clinging to a beam directly over my head as they pulse, vibrating en masse. A group of them has dripped into my lap, the way water building into itself forms a dangling tear that swells until the weight brings it down.

The beauty of being a little farther along in life is an attitude of calm. Once I would have jumped up and shaken myself madly, shrieking, “spiders!” 

Now I whisper, “Hello, spindly friends,”  knowing, species-wise, they are not spiders at all, plus I’m way too comfortable to move, though it might be lovely to dance in the rain with these odd beings, so many legs to keep up with.

No, along with the calm, comes curiosity. As I turn the light back to my lap, I see two types of tiny pearls, shimmering. Bits of white hail among the round, orange bodies. There’s so little difference between a melting pearl of water and the pearl that enlivens each collection of 8 legs, and also, so much difference.

Grandaddy long-legs are more like you and me than true spiders. Just two eyes instead of a spider’s 6 or 8, they’re not silk-makers, and they seem to need each other.

About to sip tea, inhaling a rush of cinnamon scent, I pull back the cup from my lips to flash some light into it. No legs, no pearls, safe. Sometimes it takes so little to feel less alone.

March 4-8, 2024

Time-crunched, but needing to be rooted in the natural world and to write, let me capture at least one moment in one line each day. A writer doesn’t choose to write, she must write, though sometimes the page stays blank.

Monday

Three days in a row, the snail that first appeared on Christmas Day, her luminous white head with its fine, knobby horns, reminds me what it means to be brave, to stretch out of your spiraled shell, to realize your life leaves a path through the rain whether you mean to, or not.

Tuesday

A spider has spun artwork out of rain, water riding the most delicate threads, then the sun sliding between clouds aims it’s light through the web, the spider in the center, a prism, several tiny rainbows flash, then disappear. Who says there’s no magic hidden the web of every day?

Wednesday

Trees still dripping after days of rain, I look up through a redwood among a fairy ring of redwoods, and for a moment, it becomes a hemlock at the edge of the Lewis River in Washington two days after a flood, branches well above my head are full of mud, clotted with a scrap of clothing, knot of drowned feathers, dripping grey-green strings of lichen, one pink ribbon flapping—my mind, timeless, in two trees at once.

Thursday

Submerged in the pond are thirteen red-legged frog egg sacs, globs of clear jelly, thousands of tadpoles swelling within, but it’s the voice of one tree frog who speaks to you in the middle of the night, the first spring arrival, croaking Quicker, Quicker, Quicker, impatient, meant to sing in the company of others, his longing, loud.

Friday

This morning, slicing strawberries, a stain spreading into the cutting board, Hello, little juice-flower, then rinsing raspberries, one renegade rolling away, unwilling to be found—and now, coming in the door from a sunny day, rays streaming in, too, I see small red seedy prints on the hardwood floor, as if a scarlet beast on tiny feet has been pacing the kitchen, then looking at the bottom of my shoe, Ah there you are, I mean, were.

March 10, 2024 | Sunday

As I write, the voices of two very different women, two separate conversations on the same day, echo within. One, a client; the other, someone needing a bit of support. Unasked, each said, stunningly, these words to me: “You make moments open up for people.”

So unexpected, the phrase so uncommon, I’d written it down afterward each time. Of all the things someone might say about me in passing or behind my back, as a compliment or plain observation, I’d never imagined those words.  

Still, opening up moments is the simplest way to live deeply, body and spirit in sync and awake. It’s about intention and attention. Leaning into every sense, letting the outer world blend with the inner one.

I want that for me. I want that for you … letting the dazzling defuse the difficult or despairing.

When people are grieving loss or trauma or any one of the million disappointments that give texture to this life, when they feel broken and as if they may not wish to go on, I tell them, what I tell myself. 

You are here because you have more to be and to do. You are a necessary way that the universe or God (you decide which) is expressing something that the world needs. Life happens through you, and whatever that is, it can only happen through you. So, don’t forget you matter.

I’ve long given up trying to figure out my purpose. Who really knows what we’re each meant for? Better to live on purpose, act with purpose, knowing the rest will work itself out.

An old poem pops to mind, written in a remote inlet after exploring Chichagof Island, Alaska. Breathing in the musty smell of muskeg (a Cree word referring to the peat bogs common in the far north), my every sense was alert to the huge brown bears out of sight but nearby. Listening to the sucking sound my boots made with each soggy step and taking in the subtle, pastel colors of rushes and sedges, I noticed a gnat-sized insect stuck in a puddle made by deer tracks. 

How many years ago was that?

Flipping through my first book, Mosslight, looking for that poem, I want to spend time in that moment again. 

Here it is (note that a ‘shy maiden’ is the common name for a petite Tongass wildflower, the blossom of which is bent toward the ground):

Simple

Deer tracks fill with rain
and shiver. Some tiny insect flails
and spins, as if a divided hoof
creates new, Great Lakes
in black mud. High-up spruce needles
could be stars, a nearby deer fern
another universe, the bent face of a ‘shy maiden’
one far-away angel wondering
what to do.

Who says you’re not some part of god?
When you lift the fleck from it’s crescent puddle
and put it on the soft shore of
Sphagnum moss and watch it
skitter away, who says there is
no gratitude? Isn’t the world larger
because you are in it? This could be what
your life was meant to do, this one gesture.
It could really be that simple

One of the reasons you need others is to help you understand why you matter.

One of the reasons you feel so lost when someone you love dies or leaves or changes—or you change, letting go of a behavior, habit, or substance that hurts you but connected you to someone else—is because your people are your mirror.

An old practice taught by many personal growth writers and life coaches is to write your obituary as a way of clarifying who you want to be, the values you hold, and what will matter most to you in the end. 

In reality, we almost never write our own obituary. It’s our others, grieving us, who write the story of our life.

In one, ordinary, breathing day, two women unknowingly gave me all I need for a perfect, tiny obituary: She made moments open up for people.