Do you believe in magic?

What is magic?

At some point in our childhood, we are taught that magic does not exist. 

“It isn’t real.“

“It’s make-believe.”

“It’s just in the movies.”

At some point, the wonder and hope and dreaming is squashed out of us.

Or at least that’s the way it feels sometimes.

But I am an adult who chooses to believe in magic.

To embrace it, to create it, to make it a part of my everyday.

How do I reconcile that?

What does that mean?

To believe in magic.

For me it’s not movie magic, but I think that makes it more real.

It’s the dance of fireflies at dusk.

Setting out to go thrift shopping and finding just the thing you were hoping for.

Getting lost in a good book.

Setting goals and looking back after a year to know that you achieved them.

The smell of Christmas time.

The sound of a baby giggling.

Seeing a doe and fawn in the woods while hiking.  Standing still, hushed, to stare back at them.

Sharing your heart and soul with people who truly get you.

The crisp, cool feel of sheets on a freshly made bed.

Listening to your intuition.

Looking yourself in the eye in the mirror and speaking your truth.

A sunset turned gold and pink and orange and violet.

The melt-in-your mouth sensation of your favorite food.

Hearing your toddler express thoughts with new words.

Sitting in silence with your own thoughts.

Dancing without a care.

Looking up at the night sky.

Healing old wounds.

It’s all magic to me.

The little wonders, the physical sensations of living on this earth in this body, the power of writing down your intentions or speaking them into existence.  

Magic is what we create.

It is what we choose.

Magic is making the decision to be intentional in our lives.

To live on purpose.

To soak it all in.

To be present.

To be alive.

I have found magic in being alone.

I have found magic in being with good friends.

I have found powerful magic in being a mother.

It’s always there, waiting for us to reach out and claim it.

I choose to live my life magically.

Join me here if that sounds fun.

‘Normal’

Today’s post is brought to you by a very special guest-writer. My youngest sister, Lois Thomason, shares her motherhood experience. Lois has a very poetic writing style, but her experience is deeply sorrowful. I will issue a trigger warning, as this post addresses stillbirth and the grief that comes with it. If you are not in a healthy space to read that kind of content, please don’t scroll past the photo.

I chose to pair this post with the particular photo below because I believe there is still so much to learn about pregnancy and post-partum. Look at how much has changed in the last 50 years. My hope is that by shedding light on the losses that still occur, that we can focus our resources on learning what causes these terrible tragedies. Maybe our children will look back in 50 years and remark at how far we have come.

This is Lois’ story, as she chose to tell it:

I don’t remember the first time I heard my baby’s heartbeat. I know for a lot of mothers, this is a pivotal, earthshaking moment. For me, it would become just one in many of a series as I entered the longest year of my life.

Multiple hospitalizations familiarized me with the routine. The cold gel and the scratchy bands holding hard plastic monitors in place, the staticky whoosh of the fetal heart.

All of that to say, when the nurse placed the monitor on my stomach, and the seconds counted away silently, I knew it wasn’t normal. That I was going to spend the rest of my life with a new “normal” that I never asked for or even dreamed of. A normal where my son will never grow to be more than a painted plate in a china cabinet, an album of photos that I force myself to look at, every now and again. A normal where my memories of him are tainted by the purple on his face; the red slash of a mouth that couldn’t, wouldn’t ever, draw breath; the way his skin was already beginning to tear.

I don’t remember the first time I heard my baby’s heartbeat; I didn’t realize when I was hearing it for the last. Instead of pattering feet, I have ink-prints on a ceramic saucer, an urn full of ashes that I can’t quite talk myself into retrieving from the morgue. And still the world moves forward, and I with it; flowing on like a river – every day a little further from a time when “normal” meant something just a little different.