Go on.

July 9th 2025

I’ve been getting this mental comic strip for a week now of thousands of people climbing a mountain.

The ones with pebbles in their shoes complain incessantly with each step, but never stop to shake the pebbles out, they just accumulate more and complain to anyone who will listen.

Then there are the people with boulders on their backs, quietly concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other while keeping their balance, and when they find a tree stump or an empty bench along the trail to sit and put down their heavy burden for a moment they smile and say,

“Thank you God.”

None of us get through life without pain but the way we experience it and what we make of it means everything.

Pain will split us in two and skin us alive just as it’s meant to.

In Steel Magnolias when Trudy says,

“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.”

This is why.

For one, Dolly knows all things.

And two, it’s a little glimpse of the infinite. Of our true nature, of Spirit, of God, of our unshakable power and connection to love in even the darkest moments.

Surrendering to pain calls joy to the surface.

We realize we’re made of more than we believed.

And this is why your enjoyment and delight in the simplest of things is far more powerful than you’ve been led to believe.

In fact, it’s so quietly revolutionary, people often witness it in the wild and see it as suspect.

The truth is — being content for seemingly no reason can make people uncomfortable even if they don’t know exactly why.

Let them figure it out.

Go about your day delighting in every little thing you possibly can.

A fresh cup of coffee.

A neighbor’s dog you love to see cheerfully strutting down the sidewalk every morning.

A stranger singing along to a song you love at the traffic light.

The crows cawing back and forth to one another on an overcast morning.

A friend sneaking away at work to text you something funny that just happened to them.

Warm eye contact and sincere greetings when you walk into a local shop.

Pastries.

Ice cold beer after a long day.

Falling in love with a new show, book, artist, recipe, pet, human etc…

The hushed thrill you feel when finding a new book at the library.

Inside jokes with people you love that you can’t stop giggling about for hours.

Literally as I’m writing this… I haven’t seen a single deer out here since Christmas and one just walked through the treeline and I got SO excited.

I was so happy to see her stroll through the treeline especially right at that moment 😊 Authors photo.

So the bad news is…as Empaths, Guides and carriers of wisdom, we don’t miss a damn thing.

And yes, this is undoubtedly unavoidably painful and isolating at times.

But the good news is…

We don’t miss a damn thing.

We’re just as able to spot the incredible in the simplest moments and feel the support of the universe when everyone around us is numbing out or paralyzed by fear.

We are well acclimated to carrying pain ourselves already.

The hard part is letting others around us feel their own so they can also feel joy again.

Now is the time to give ourselves permission to embody and carry even more joy and love and gratitude even as the world cries that all hope is lost.

Recently I reread a book I loved in school, The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom.

Authors Photo

Rarely if ever did I read an assigned book in school but anything that had to do with WWII or Japan specifically… honey I was obsessed.

I devoured that book, bought it at the book fair, then had my mom take me to the library so I could check out the VHS on the weekends.

It’s a first hand account of two sisters who end up at some of the worst camps in operation at that time.

The last building they stayed in was over capacity by thousands and infested with fleas and lice.

Throughout the hell they lived through day after day were constant miracles.

Fleas that kept the guards away and allowed them to read the Bible aloud to one another at night. Rows and rows of women translating hope for one another from Dutch to German to French.

Medicine that they smuggled in and dispersed to the other women for weeks when it should have run out after only a few days.

There’s a line one of the sisters says while still in the camps that always stuck with me-

“We must go everywhere. We must tell people that no pit is so deep that He is not deeper still. They will believe us because we were here.”

So if you needed a reminder today while there’s plenty’a dooms day messages and screaming people begging for your energy and attention…

Your delighting in small things is vital.

Your ability to find gratitude in rest is powerful.

Your willingness to remain happy and hopeful and playful is courageous.

Don’t let people screaming about pebbles in their shoes critique how you carry boulders and scale mountains.

I love you! Thank you for reading 💕