Hope, Love, and a little bit of Magic.

Writing is a weird thing, well for me it is anyway. It starts as a kernel, almost a tingling in the pit of my stomach, if I ignore it, it will go away, if I sit there and foster it, it will turn into words, then words will turn into paragraphs and then eventually a blog post.  Sometimes that tingling starts when I’m aimlessly driving, or sometimes it happens when I am flipping through Instagram and Facebook. That little kernel is so fragile, like building a fire in a wet forest with only two sticks. If I get even the little bit distracted, it is gone in a tiny puff of white smoke. There are so many days I feel like I’ve written down every last word in my brain and with this new self-imposed deadline of a new post every Friday, I feel like I’m crouched on the forest floor in the pouring down rain, rubbing two sticks together in a pile of wet leaves.  Nothing happens. Some days those sticks start a fire instantly, and before I know it I have three blog posts, other days I’m sitting in the middle of the forest screaming “writing is hard!”

Today is one of those screaming, “writing is hard” days. It shouldn’t be hard; I have the house to myself, John Mayer on shuffle, my coffee cup next to me, all the things that usually spell success for me. But it is like pushing a rope today, so I jumped over to Instagram and started flipping through pictures of people who have more followers than me, prettier feeds than mine, and are, seemingly, successful at blogging when I saw it, a poem by Becca Lee and it touched me so deeply I was amazed.  I’m not usually a poetry person, but this poem touched me in ways I can’t explain, I just kept reading it over and over, and I reposted it to ALL my social media accounts. I just couldn’t get it out of my head.

“we are never beyond the magic of hope” that line, those words, just danced on my tongue. Hope is always out there, right next to magic. If we give up on hope, magic, and love, what happens to us? I know I end up in a downward spiral of thoughts like, “I’m not good enough,” “I’m too fat,” “no one will ever read my words,” “someone is going to figure out I’m a fake.” We are all filled with love, hope and a little bit of magic, but I know I sometimes forget. In a world consumed with 24-hour news networks and social media, it’s easy to lose track of the good in the world.

I am one of the lucky ones, I have love, a love that I am sure some days I don’t deserve, but I’m fortunate. I’m not walking into an empty house at the end of a work day to no one, not even a cat, but I have in the past. I put all my love into a married man’s basket and often came up empty and alone at the end of the day. But those empty and lonely nights, along with a little help from my friend, Grey Goose, helped me realize I was worthy of someone loving me, an “all in” kind of love. I am lucky enough that I didn’t give up hope and the universe dropped that man right into my lap.  I never really gave up hope for love, and surprisingly my heart did continue to beat.

I don’t have all the answers, except that we can’t give up on hope, magic, or love.  It’s all around us if we look, there’s love in the infectious laugh of a grandchild. There’s magic in a sunny day after days of cold and grey. There’s hope in the smile from a stranger.

Just whatever you do, do not give up on love, it’s out there, I promise.