When Ellie Roscher and I started throwing ideas around about a co-written book over ten years ago, I had a seemingly stable corporate health coaching job and Obama was president. My daughter was four years old, in her first weeks of preschool. Black Lives Matter was a brand new phrase and Donald Trump had not yet entered the political scene. People gathered freely. Masks weren’t part of one’s regular wardrobe. I didn’t spend much time considering whether or not health care was affordable, and our home insurance policy renewal letters didn’t make my eyes bug out in astonishment.
I got one of those Facebook memory pop ups today, that our author copies of 12TinyThings arrived on my doorstep. It happened to be the four year anniversary of my last day at that corporate job after being laid off—December of 2016 found me unemployed with no interviews lined up. A deep-seated ugliness was being uncovered in a quest to ‘make America great again.’ Figuring out what to do about health insurance felt like a nightmare even as my own privilege became more apparent by the day. I had doubts about my capacity to write a book about intentional living— I felt like a hot mess. Intentional living? Who had time for such things when finding a new job and affordable health insurance was on the to do list?
But as it turns out, focusing on one tiny, intentional practice at a time was the antidote during a period of deep uncertainty and chaos. Tiny things got me through. They buoyed me enough to keep doing the work that needed to be done to navigate that time of uncertainty.
I found another job eventually, and though health insurance remained a proverbial thorn in my side, it was no longer a daily battle. Yet there we were in 2020, still deep in societal uncertainty and change as pandemics to wildfires to racism raged around us. Now, another five years has passed and…. we are still deep in societal uncertainty and change as [add your chosen issue here] rage around us.
And what do you know— those tiny things are still keeping me going, despite everything. Some days, barely. But that’s the beauty of tiny things—you can pick them up even when you’re down, and they lift you up enough to tilt you toward active hope.
When my daughter, who in 2020 was in third grade, reached in to pull out a copy from the box of books, it was a little like coming full circle. Much remained a mess, to be sure. Now five years later, my daughter is in 8th grade and we’re into another printing of 12 Tiny Things (Now available in Turkish, too!). Ellie1 and I have both published a few more books. Yet there have been so many tiny moments of good to uncover along the way, so many tiny, intentional practices to cultivate, so many reasons to continue the work of rooting all the way down and looking all the way up. So many reasons to celebrate life, despite everything.
Despite everything
When despair for the world
grows, creeping its way in,
sending shoots of anxiety snaking
everywhere, turn to where
flowers grow instead, insistent
on brilliantly blooming bright,
bursts of sunlight shining
expectant faces turned toward sky,
them tending you
while you tend them.
Take what is heavy
from your shoulders
and rest for a time
in the beauty
that remains.
As Kathleen Dean Moore writes, “Like Leonard Cohen, singing of loss and love, make clear the beauty of what we stand to lose or what we have already destroyed. Celebrate the microscopic sea-angels. Celebrate the children who live in the cold doorways and shanty camps. Celebrate the swamp at the end of the road. Leave no doubt of the magnitude of their value and the enormity of the crime, to let them pass away unnoticed. These are elegies, these are praise songs, these are love stories.”
Today I am celebrating mornings that sparkle in the cold, old cats lurking under tables looking for crumbs, freezing walks to the woodshed, children singing with their whole bodies, thick books on cluttered tables, and people who tell hard truths in order to uncover the beauty that lays beyond.
How about you? What are you celebrating? What keeps you afloat when times get tough?
And if you missed it….here’s my offering to this year’s Calendar of Light:
Merry Christmas Heidi.
Thank you again for your beautiful offering from the Calendar of Light!