Have you finally figured out what beauty is for?
The herald of change is sometimes gentle. A slow shifting of light. A subtle loosening. A soft-but-steadfast pull toward what wants to emerge next. Sometimes, though, change comes fast. A crash. A sudden death. A metaphorical rug pulled from beneath our feet.
I can honestly say that what I have experienced these last several months has been a beautiful combination of both. Because I can be present in the sudden shift, I can follow surprise with grace. I can feel deeply a loss that is as sad to me as it is tender. This time in my life equates to a stretching, full of beauty, grief, release, and calm. My consciousness of this time of change has helped me listen to and accept the ways my soul wants to move.
My beloved dad died in August. I am grieving that he is not here in this world with me anymore, but this is not a grief of collapse, it is a grief of presence. I feel him, free now, still connected, still companioning me in the subtle ways soul knows. His passing, like the passing of all those that I have loved so deeply in this life, has illuminated more to me about why we are here, how we evolve, and what becomes possible when we greet change with awareness. Just as death is movement from one way of being to another, so too, I argue, is grief.
As many of you know, for the last two years I stepped fully into the role of Chief Marketing Officer at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. It was a remarkable time. It was full, demanding, inspiring, connecting. I poured my heart and, at times, my wellbeing, into that work and I was changed by it. But growth doesn’t always ask us to stay. Sometimes it empowers us to move.
It’s time for me to return fully to my own work, the work that I deeply love. For the years that I was committed to the museum I have also continued my practice, but only in the margins, only on weekends. No longer. My transpersonal therapy and energy healing are the truest expressions of my working self, and I’m grateful to once again be giving my practice, and you, my full attention.
I’ve manifested this movement in the physical world, too. I’ve moved my practice out of my home and into a bright, beautiful office downtown, overlooking the Spokane River. This space feels like an exhale. It is open, warm, sunlit, and welcoming. When I walk in, I feel at home. This place that I have created says: Come as you are. You are safe.
Today, I reread a poem I love by Mary Oliver, “Swan.” In it she captures that moment when beauty becomes guide, when something moves across our awareness so unmistakably that it changes us. She asks, “And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?”
When we feel empowered, when we are no longer afraid, change is not something we brace against, it’s something we ride upon with our wings outstretched.
So here I am, moving—gently, consciously, gratefully—into my next. My practice is now fully open again. If you feel called to reconnect, to explore, to release, or to step into your own emerging season, I’m here. In a new space, in a new movement, I’m here.
I’ll leave you with Oliver’s words, because they carry the reminder I’m holding close: that beauty, awareness, and courage are gorgeous invitations to shift, rise, and change our lives.
Swan
by Mary Oliver
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –an armful of white blossoms,
a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
a shrill dark music, like the rain pelting the trees like a waterfall
knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet
like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?