Those big, beautiful redwoods
and other life saving miracles of 2022
It’s been a few years since I was as sick as I am right now. Covid got me again, who’s to say where. Maybe that yoga class I took, maybe that bar I visited the day after Christmas, the multicolored lights still hung and clinging to the last of the holiday cheer. Or maybe it was the late night grocery store run where I saw a sparrow in the cereal aisle. Wherever it was, here it is.
This year has been so exhausting and challenging for me. It started with one of the most painful breakups I’ve ever experienced and is ending with severe infection. I feel like I’ve been in some sort of incubator all year. So many questions. So much risk. So much magic and awe and frustration. There was a week in August where I saw five rainbows, three of them doubles. I couldn’t believe it. At some point I had to force myself to remember to just zoom out and see that every time my grief really brought me to my knees this year, nature was there to catch me. She was my lifesaving force this year, and my most precious relationship.
I spent all of January feeling like a black hole. My heart was in need of deep repair and for the first time in years, I didn’t know how to tend to myself. I am a problem solver by traumatized nature, which has its benefits but can be a real and honest hindrance when it comes to my own emotions because I tend to fast track myself toward rationalizing or compartmentalizing them rather than just sitting in them. The breakup I went through pushed me to a point where I was left with no choice but to ask for help, which I’m no good at doing most of the time. I called one of my nearest and dearest, my childhood best friend, Taylor, and said point blank, “I think I’m dying.” I had no other way to describe how I felt. I didn’t feel like I had options or solutions, I was so saturated with grief. She simply said, “Can you take off work next week? I’m flying you out here to be with me.”
I flew to stay with her in Forestville, CA for a week and it saved my life.
Those big, beautiful redwoods, her aliveness, her magic, a small acid tab, tarot, sobbing on the couch, and surrendering to her tenderness and care all brought me to a place I simply could not have found on my own. I had to allow someone to care for me for once. I had to open myself to a level of intimacy that I don’t think I’d ever really experienced outside of my own mother’s love. I had spent my whole life pushing and holding and being a rock and a voice of reason rather than the flowing, feeling, freely loving person I’ve always been but never felt safe enough to actually be. Taylor brought me to water and gently laid me in it. She helped me to feel it and commune with it. She helped me to receive. She helped me to realize that I had been reserving a piece of myself my entire life for one unknown person instead of opening up and allowing myself to share my overflowing, unconditional love with all of the people and things I was already in relationship with. I could suddenly see, with so much fullness, that my life was beautiful, and I didn’t have to do anything or fix any piece of myself in order to have the deep and resounding love that I so desperately desired.
I spent this entire year integrating the intimacy that Taylor so generously showed me. It has changed everything. I get as lonely as the next person, but I am longer willing to date for the sake of dating. I want someone to add to the magic and medicine I’ve cultivated here, not complete it. That’s my new rule of thumb with allowing someone into my space: either they meet me here in balance and honesty and intention, or they’re not it. It took me a long time to find myself here and I won’t abandon it for anything. If anything I am still a little overprotective of my peace, and I look forward to the invitations of the coming year that will strengthen and threaten this place that I’m guarding so fiercely. Sometimes we have to swing the pendulum very hard in the opposite direction of where we’ve been in order to find our happy middle.
When I look at what that trip to California set in motion, I can see the foundation of love under everything that’s come to pass this year. Despite beginning and ending on difficult notes, I can see the magic in motion. My houseplants started thriving after years of struggling to keep them alive. My intuition intensified. I stopped questioning my own intelligence and authority. I started going to therapy again. I developed my favorite little habit of complimenting strangers as much as I can. I stopped seeing my body as something to apologize for and began seeking real bodily autonomy and safety. I started holding my friends’ hands again after years of avoiding physical touch. My relationship with my sweet Cowboy went from good to incredible as I engaged in more intentional communication with him, and now we’re bonded on a level that I only ever dreamed of.
What a gift it is to love, and to be loved. What a gift to know that love is always just outside our window, its leaves brushing against the house or its light shining in to briefly wake us at 3am. What a gift to remember that it has always been here and always will be.
May your 2023 be the proof you need that your heart’s desires are very real and always within reach, in some mysterious way, shape, or form. May you recognize yourself as your own never ending well of hope, love, and power. May you see yourself clearly. There is nothing to fix. There is only love, and it is right here, right now.
Til next time. Love you.