i was walking with the pup this morning when my foot slipped on the ice. down i fell, plop, splat, thud, onto my back on the snow-and-ice-covered road.

as i picked myself up and brushed myself off, there was a brief instant when i was no longer the me who identifies with her physical body. instead, i was the me who encompasses that me. i watched my body brush itself off, and i felt this incredible wave of love rush through me.

the thought that ran through my mind was this: why should my stumbles be any less worthy of love?

i thought of my little nephew learning to walk and how very much i love him. not because he stumbles. not in spite of his stumbles. i love him because he’s lars and he wouldn’t be the same without all of his moments.

i thought of atlas and how i don’t tell him that he’s a bad dog. i say, “i am furious at you.” i say, “i don’t like what you’re doing.” i say, “i don’t like you very much right now.” but i tell him, and i hope he knows, that i also love him. not because of those moments. not in spite of those moments. i love him – more than the sun and the moon and all the fish in the sea – because he’s atlas and he is who he is because of all of his moments.

i’ve been practicing self-love for years now.

sometimes i wonder how i got here, and whether i have learned something that can be of service to others, because the place i came from was so full of loathing and the place i am in is so full of love.

but i don’t know how i got here. i can’t pinpoint one practice or one book or one insight.

all i can see is that it was a collection of moments.

moments when i behaved with love and kindness: toward myself, toward another; moments when i didn’t.

moments when i liked the reasons i behaved with love and kindness; moments when i didn’t.

moments when i could forgive myself for the reasons i didn’t behave with love and kindness; moments when i couldn’t.

moments when i made different (more aligned) choices; moments when i didn’t.

after each moment, whether i realized it or not, i picked myself up, dusted myself off, and moved into the next moment.

i did that today.

i’ll do it again tomorrow.

and i do know that i wouldn’t be the same me without every single one of my moments.

{This post is part of the Unencumbered Sharing Circle, a gathering of honest first-hand stories about self-loathing, self-love, and the journey between the two. Read more stories, and share your own, right here.}

atlas says:

“i have been waiting and waiting and waiting. if you won’t come out of the snow, i will come in after you, but i will not like it.”

“arrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooo! the snow is too deep and i am too tired. i am done with this nonsense.”

“i am king of the world!”

“i seem to have turned myself sideways. this hill is more confusing than i thought. i think i will be done now.”

“hey there. i have been waiting and waiting and waiting so i’m just checking up on you.”

“good. you’re still there. you will have to get out on your own. i am going away now.”

(yes, atlas is still alive and well. it’s been so cold lately that he is in full-on hibernation mode. as he told you already, he is very sensible.)

a while ago, i started a gratitude practice.

i sit on my bed and look around the room and really look at everything i have. i don’t know how or why, but it often turns into an experience of wonder.

i have a bed! i have a pillow! i have a comfortable bed and pillow! i love my bed and pillow! i have $2! i love my $2! i have a purple and green striped wool blanket! the blanket is soft! i love my blanket! i have socks on my feet! i have more socks to wear when these are dirty! i love my socks!

when you’re a child, it seems easier to connect with your sense of wonder.

i suppose it’s because everything really is fresh and new.

i flip a switch and there is light! i flip a switch and the light disappears! the telephone makes a noise! the waves splash me and i am wet! the dog is soft and hard all at once! i touch your cheek and it squishes!

every once in a while, i can look at something and see it clearly.

all of my past experiences fall away.

i see the thing as it is, as it truly is, and i am filled with wonder.

when i can’t, when my sense of wonder fades, i have stories.

anything is possible in stories.

everything is possible in stories.

i like stories that expand my sense of what is possible.

the more i learn about the universe, the more i think that anything is possible.

the more i learn about the universe, the more i think that the most extraordinary things in stories pale in comparison to the wonder that exists here and now.

one morning, in meditation, the beginning of a tiny story came to me.

this particular story is about a mermaid named mariana who lives in the deepest part of the ocean.

her hair is the color of squid ink: the color of the sky at night, the color of the murky water that is her home.

her hair is also home to millions of tiny bioluminescent organisms. when she swims through the ocean, her hair fans out around her in a halo made of light.

i write and tell the stories i love to read.

they spill out when i am connected to my sense of childlike wonder.

i don’t know if there are mermaids or unicorns or dragons under our feet or puppies that sit down to tea with a family of rabbits or trees that fall in love.

but they delight me, they enchant me, they remind me that nothing is as it seems.

and then i lift up my wonder-filled eyes from the story and shine them on the world around me.

can you think of anything better than that?

(need the link to the story club? here ’tis. it’s currently half-off, because i am sticking my tongue out at the winter blues.)

maybe
you have a tiny voice
in your head,
a voice that whispers,
you are all alone;
no
one
cares;
you don’t matter;
there’s no way out;
the situation is hopeless.

maybe
the voice grows
and grows and grows
until
it seems like all there is.

i wish
i could tell you
how to silence that voice.

i
don’t
know
how.

what i can tell you is this:

when the voice is so loud
that it brings me to my knees,
when the voice is so loud
that i can’t pretend
to be strong
or try
to be strong
or be
strong
anymore,
when the voice is so loud
that i think it will finally break me,
i have
no choice
but to let it flow free,
until i am empty,
until there is nothing left in me.

in the emptiness, i finally find peace.

and haven’t we
all
felt despair?

and hasn’t
it brought us
to our knees?

and haven’t we
gotten up again
and done
what
needed to be
done?

here is what i have learned about despair.

it comes in like the tide.
there might not be solid ground to stand on.
there might be a steep cliff in your way.

it’s easy to believe that it will never end,
the waters will never recede,
you will be trapped there forever.

but then, the tide goes out again.
you find a small treasure
left
by the sea
on the sand:
driftwood,
a piece of seaweed,
a seashell,
a smooth stone.

then there is this:

maybe –
when it seems overwhelming, when it seems like despair will break us –
we are connected to
everyone
who has ever felt despair,
everyone
who is feeling despair,
everyone
who will ever feel despair,
and somehow,
somewhere,
their hearts are holding us gently until it is over.

this past weekend, i decided to write a list of 101 things to do this winter, to make my winter easier and more delightful.

(i mentioned this to my mother and she said, “but winter’s half over!” so, if you’re feeling blue about winter, there’s a fun perspective for you.)

i was a good ways into the list when i realized that everything fell into one of a handful of topics and i could just write that list.

so i did.

i am enjoying my list so much that i am sharing it here, in case you need it too.

An antidote to the winter blues.

1. Go outside.

This is not the going outside that gets you from one place to another, like from the house to the car or from the car to a store. This is the going outside where you bundle up and go outside simply to go outside.

If it helps, promise yourself that if you’re miserable, you can go back inside, even if it’s only been five minutes. (It’s important to keep that promise. You want to be able to trust yourself.)

When you go outside to go outside, you dress specifically for the weather, and I can tell you from experience that it makes a world of difference.

2. Move your body.

Go snowshoeing or ice skating. (You love both.) Go sledding. (You haven’t gone in years and it will remind you of your childhood.) Shovel. (It satisfies your inner perfectionist.)

Go cross-country skiing and decide whether or not you enjoy it. Play broomball or boot hockey. Make use of the skijoring harness and teach Atlas to pull a sled.

If you don’t want to go outside, move your body in another way: stretch, dance, practice yoga, do jumping jacks.

3. Take Vitamin D.

You need it. Especially in the winter. And you know it helps.

4. Find the light.

Whenever the sun comes out, take a moment to soak it in. If you can, go outside. If you can’t, or just don’t want to, sit or stand in a patch of sunlight and bask in it.

Light candles. There is something so warm and inviting and magical about candles in the darkness. You can light them in the morning while you meditate or in the evening before bed.

(If you want a wonderful way to end your day, here is one: yin yoga while wrapped in a fleece blanket by candle light.)

5. Find the warmth.

Drink tea or chai lattes or hot cocoa.

(If you want a wonderful daily ritual, here is one: boil water in the tea kettle for a mid-morning or mid-afternoon cup of lemon honey tea. You can’t hurry the tea kettle, so it is a good reminder to slow down and be present.)

Wrap yourself in a blanket while you’re reading or writing or meditating.

Wear your slippers.

Take the occasional bath or sauna. The bath warms your core (this is useful before bedtime). The sauna gives you a rare winter moment of “I am so hot that I must pour ice-cold water on myself! I am also so hot that I don’t want to put clothes on!”

6. Find pleasure indoors.

Play Yahtzee with your mom. Try to beat Helen at Boggle. Build a puzzle.

Watch some of your favorite movies: Bringing Up Baby (hilarity!) or The Triplets of Belleville (that dog and that music!) or Pride & Prejudice (Mr. Darcy!). Watch a movie you’ve been wanting to see (maybe something with Colin Firth or Johnny Depp).

Read some of your favorite childhood books: The Secret Garden, Little House In the Big Woods, or Laddie. Read a new book, maybe Outlander.

Learn to knit (again) and finish that scarf. Learn some phrases in Italian. Find the constellations Ursa Major and Canis Major.

Spend time in the kitchen: make soup or stew; learn to make bread; make cinnamon rolls.

Write letters.

Have long rich conversations with friends.

7. Play.

Go outside and blow bubbles when the temperature is below zero and see if they freeze. Catch a snowflake on your tongue. Make a snow angel.

Tromp through the deep snow in impractical footwear. Roll down a hill. Pack a thermos of hot cocoa and sandwiches in a backpack and snowshoe into the woods for a winter picnic.

Stick your tongue out at the weather and then curl up on the couch. Build a fort out of blankets. Finger paint.

8. Last, but definitely not least, treat yo’self.

Paint your toenails a rich lush color.

Take yourself to your favorite coffee shop or cafe.

Buy fresh flowers. You don’t need an entire bouquet; one (preferably non-white) flower can make a world of difference. When the petals fall, you can place them in a bowl of water.

Apply as needed.

May your winter be delightful!

{this adventure comes to you by way of a blue jay named fred.}

today, i tried to land on a cloud.

my mother told me about clouds, but the world is so white and i was flying so fast that i really thought the cloud was a snowbank.

fortunately, i caught myself as i tumbled through the white mist.

right now, i am sitting in a lilac bush. i am going to have a snack and collect myself before i go home and tell my mother about my adventure.

(as i was tumbling through the cloud, i found myself wishing that i was tumbling down a snowbank. doesn’t that sound fun? let’s try it sometime.)

your friend, fred

won’t you come along on my favorite snowshoe hike? it’s not far away; it’s a little ways down the road.

i keep trying to find the right words to describe its enchantment and magic, and i keep coming up short, so i think i will just let my pictures speak for me.

whenever i go snowshoeing, i get a song from a children’s christmas book stuck in my head: “snowshoe rabbits in the snow, off to grandma’s house we go”. (it snows on christmas eve so the little rabbits use snowshoes to get to their grandma’s house for christmas.)

the other day, on a snowshoe hike with my dad, i learned that there are indeed snowshoe rabbits! apparently you can recognize their tracks because their long hind legs fall in front of their short front legs when they land.

the last time i was on this particular trail, it was covered with snow and what seemed like a hundred million rabbit tracks.

for most of my life, i was allergic to cats.

one christmas morning, a cat came into my parents’ cat-free house as a christmas present for my youngest sister. i didn’t see the cat arrive, but i knew as soon as it was there; within seconds of its arrival, i couldn’t breathe.

cats and not-breathing were familiar.

when i started practicing reiki, my cat allergy began to heal.

eventually, with only one exception, one house, it had vanished.

when i moved back to michigan, atlas and i moved in with my parents.

my sister is here. so is her cat.

the last time i visited my parents, i brought steroids, just in case, but i never needed to use them. as a result, i was excited about the prospect of living with a cat for atlas’s sake and i wasn’t worried about my breathing at all.

the day after i arrived, my breath left me.

i was devastated. i thought i had healed my cat allergy, and it felt like i was right back where i started.

i was also worried. i was going to live here for a while, and now i couldn’t breathe in the house.

atlas and i slept in a tent in the backyard for more than a month.

i spent most of every night coughing until i thought my lungs would burst.

when the cold rains came, we moved inside, into a cat-free room. i spent most of those nights coughing too.

i remember going to the beach one day to take pictures. the pictures made it seem idyllic. it was. but the thing that the pictures didn’t say was that my lung capacity was so limited that i was at the beach because it was all i could do. i couldn’t even walk up the tiny hill that led from the beach to the parking lot without wheezing.

slowly, slowly, my breath came back.

now, most days, i don’t cough too often and i don’t breathe too shallowly.

i was wondering how to circle you in tenderness when this story came to me.

i think this is why:

most of the time, i really was ok with an iron band across my chest, with wheezing, with not being able to catch my breath.

healing had taught me – and meditation reminded me – presence, and acceptance, and how to relax instead of panic.

but i realized that the rest of the time, when i wasn’t ok, the problem wasn’t so much that i wanted my breathing to come back as it was that i wanted to know why.

why.

i think that if i know why, i can change something.

i think that if i know why, it will make something easier to bear.

(why can’t i breathe? why did they leave? why isn’t this working? why did i fail?)

but we often don’t know why (at least for certain), or can’t know why, or maybe there isn’t even a why at all.

i remember the moment other than in deep stillness when i felt the most relief.

i had left the dinner table because i couldn’t breathe and i thought that my sister could tell i couldn’t breathe and i was worried that she would feel bad because it was her cat and i didn’t want her to feel bad so i went upstairs and i sat on the bed and i cried.

my mom came upstairs to check on me and i told her that i was just so frustrated that i couldn’t breathe and i cried.

i sat on that bed and i felt all of the frustration and the fear and the sadness and i cried.

when i was done, i went downstairs and ate the rest of my dinner.

maybe that’s what we need most of all.

to let it out, to let it flow, to be witness/ed.

to be with the frustration and the sadness and the pain and the longing and the loneliness and the grief with all of the love and tenderness and compassion we can muster.

and when we can’t, to be with that too, with as much love and tenderness and compassion as we can muster.

today, i went for a walk in the sunshine, to find wonder and magic with my camera.

instead, i got caught up in my thoughts. probably because i wanted to walk down the long and winding road, and atlas wanted to walk around the neighborhood.

atlas won.

while i was walking along, lost in thought, a flock of birds flew overhead.

the sight of their white breasts against the blue sky jolted me out of my head and into the present moment. they landed on a power line nearby, so i stood still and waited, hoping they’d fly away – in my direction – and i’d have a chance to capture the image of white on blue with my camera.

while i waited, one of the birds turned sideways, and i realized it was a blue jay.

i love blue birds, including blue jays. they remind me of happiness. there was a pair of blue birds and a pair of stellar jays that visited me daily in oregon. i’ve been calling them in here. it took a while, but the other day, a blue jay visited my parents’ bird feeder.

well, they were all blue jays.

10 of them, to be exact.

(i know it looks like there are 9 birds in the picture, but the fifth bird is actually two birds, one in front of the other.)

i was filled with wonder.

it reminded me that sometimes, we need someone (or something).

to take us out of our head and into the moment.

to point us toward wonder and magic.

i want to point you toward wonder and magic.

won’t you join me for hope floats in winter?

let’s find the wonder + blessing + magic in the coldest and darkest of seasons.

“Dance when you’re broken open.
Dance when you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her, like a wave that crests into foam at the very top, Begins.
Maybe you don’t hear that tambourine, or the tree leaves clapping time.
Close the ears on your head, that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes.
There are other things to see, and hear. Music. Dance.
A brilliant city inside your soul!”

~ Rumi

if you have photoshop and are in the mood to play,

here are the instructions to create your very own circles.

i should warn you, it’s quite addicting.