This year, I had promised myself, this year would be different. I wouldn’t keep looking over my shoulder as I waded through my beloved Cape Cod Bay. I wouldn’t feel like I was waiting for a bus as I sat on the shore and watched the tide spin out.
I’ve been to this beach every day for more than a week, but I’m still having trouble arriving. But finally, the moment or, should I say, the magic finds me. I remember. I connect back with that elemental spiritual practice that centers me when I’m hundreds of miles from the ocean, when I’m trying to get work done at my desk or trying to keep from snapping at the kids over breakfast.
The Ritual of Remembering
Sending roots deep into the belly of the earth, through the wet sand beneath my feet and down to the bedrock that anchors this fierce and fragile peninsula, I trust that this land will hold the fierce and fragile me. I was born of this place. It knows me.
Reaching arms up into the limitless blue sky, through those fast-moving fair weather clouds and all those layers of protective atmosphere that hides the intensity of the stars, I trust that I glow with an invisible intensity of my own. I am made of stardust too. It illuminates me.
Steady earth and fiery star. Flowing water and swirling air. I come back to myself when I spool beyond my frenzied thoughts and my too-tight skin. I find myself when I step out of being so tragically, infernally, obsessively ME.
This is a truth I’ve heard in a hundred thousand ways. I know you have too. But how do you stay in this expansive place beyond the bounds of ego, mind, and form? What do I do right now?
Write.
Writing Holds the Realization
Scraping the bottom of my sand-filled backpack I find a scrap of paper and a long-neglected pen.
It’s been ages since the world disappeared and I heard the voice of my own public writer whispering in my ear. For well over six months I have been filling my journal and cranking out copy and chatting away on a podcast, but I haven’t had the focus or the drive to produce an article I’m proud of.
Six months. Eight months. Back to sometime before the election and the launch of the Practice of Being Seen.
It took more than a week to arrive here, to get the ocean to remember me, to truly taste the salt in the wind and feel my veins thrum with the tides. I forgive myself. It has taken much, much longer to find my way back to the page.
I’m back to myself. It’s unexpected. It’s time.
There are new stories to tell, stories I have been hoarding and neglecting and allowing to wither away while I was busy striving and coping and growing and losing myself and slowly getting found again. I invite you to travel with me and write with me.
I promise words and magic. I promise to dive deep into the elements it takes to remember the stories that hide within.
Begin here with the Magic Words Guide and discover the words that will help you tell the stories that matter.