Meteors: Round and Round We Go.

Two years ago, I wrote a newsletter on transitions and the Perseid Meteor Shower. I remember that night. We had just driven home from Laguna Beach, a weekend with the kids, an on-custody weekend - wow, to think of travel in such a carefree way, swimming freely at a pool with strangers and food everywhere feels foreign. I remember coming home after dropping the kids at their dad’s and pouring a nice glass of wine and looking up to find shooting star after shooting star and thinking about the transition from Summer to Fall, the transition of my own life and the feeling of both largeness and smallness that comes when you pause and look up at the big, dark sky.

Last night, two years later, I bundled my boys in sweatshirts, beanies and laid out blankets and pillows and starred together endlessly into the deep sky. I felt lucky that this Perseid Meteor Shower happened to fall on my custodial night and I could share my love of the stars and the sky and the mysticism in the sky with my boys. I held my two boys close, closer than I have in a while and I felt whole, complete...dare I say happy.

Two years have passed. I keep thinking about how quickly two years have gone by and yet how slow time has felt and how eager I have been feeling to wake up and not feel the burden of this time. Two years. Gone. Two years ago I was navigating custody schedules, trying to make peace with the route my life had routed. I was trying to be in love while also mourning the loss of the time I did not get to have with my kids. I was in this odd place, lost and found, both at the same time.

Now, I am in another transition, another starry sky of sorts, with meteors passing me by. I am 40 now. I feel different. I am no longer managing custody schedules, but man, the sadness does still come and go, and perhaps only people who live with these arrangements can truly know that kind of pain, the sudden silence that comes when your kids are no longer home. I am still in love, deeper in love, harder in love. And I am keenly aware of my own existence, my time, the clicking of the minutes that pass.

Last night when we were snuggled so tightly together, I told my kids that I would always be with them and as I looked up at the stars I knew that no matter what - we are part of the stars, this universe, this land, this sea - all of it. And then they watched stars shoot across the sky, Jones staying up later and more enthralled with space and this idea of the unknown. Jake tucked so cozily under my arm asleep after seeing just one.

There is this magical place we can be in all the time if we choose to be. It is quiet and whole and it feels kind and generous. The problem is most of the time I don’t live here. I live in anxiety and stress and feelings of not enough and wanting. I know, we all do this. Wouldn’t it be nice to spend more time in the quiet, wholeness and less in the chaotic frenzy?

This Fall as the store will most likely reopen, as we go to the polls, as we transition from living in a pandemic to still living in a pandemic, I am hoping the store becomes a place where you can be in that same place where I was looking up at the stars - where you can for a moment feel whole, complete and dare I say...happy. The store will also resume the Ever Curious series, in conversations with women who I am admiring. This is what I wake up excited about, what I hunger for - is to learn more about what I am curious about.

I have taken a giant step back -I have pulled the store apart and given great thought to what is coming in. We have spent hours carefully curating each item, practicing saying no to what no longer fits our feelings, moods and visions and saying yes to what feels right and alive.

All of us deserve a moment of this kind of peace, of this kind of safety, or this kind of knowing that even as we go round and round and another year or two passes, another Perseid Meteor Shower, we can let go of what was and step entirely into what is.

I hope you take some time to look at the work we are doing - for me I know now that this is true creative work and I am so proud of my tiny team that is working like elves round the clock to make it magical and special.

 

With love and shooting stars, two years later,

Jen