Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Place of Peace


Occasionally the universe (however one may define universe!) provides a gift and reminds us to live in the moment. On a particularly horrible day I experienced a tap on the shoulder that literally brought me front and center to the present. My 19 year old daughter was in a psychiatric unit of a trauma 1 hospital in Seattle, newly diagnosed with bipolar disorder, preparing for a series of ECT treatments. It was Mother's Day. She is a musician and had just played and sang "Blackbird" for me as my gift when she suddenly crashed again, back down into her depression and asked us to leave. I was about as low as I had been over the last 6 months of hell. My husband talked me into taking a walk through an old growth forest arboretum. It was an absolutely beautiful day and suddenly I had this feeling of smallness in an ancient world. I was simply in the moment of that beautiful place, a tiny speck on our earth's curve. I relaxed, I let out and took in a breath of air. I was in that moment, at peace.

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