Where do I want to start with this one? I think, maybe by settling into my body first. I tend to find my way best when I take time to connect with quiet. I’ve been getting little inspiration bursts lately which tells me I need to sit down and write but it’s just tough to find a solid time with work and full weekends and an everpiling list of chores to complete. At least that’s what I tell myself.
What’s inspiring me lately? Mostly some weird animal encounters I’d like to document so I can remember them. Admittedly, I’ve been a little hyper focused on signs involving animals. I love that we live in the woods and that we get to experience so much wildlife. It can be a little nerve wracking at times. I almost punched a hawk, mid-air, over the summer when it flew from behind the house in Miles’ direction in our front yard. I remember wondering if that natural “mama-bear” defense mechanism had been encoded in my DNA after he was born. Question answered.
Hawks are one of the many kinds of animals that frequent our yard on the regular. They hang around looking for squirrels and other small prey. We see deer and (my favorite) raccoons. There are also pheasants who run away from the nearby shooting range and find themselves making their strange metallic sounding calls in our yard. It can be hard to listen to some of the sounds of nature, particularly after dark. Animals scream sometimes before they die by another's needs. Then there’s community celebration if the ‘needing party’ is a pack of coyotes. It’s terrifying and incredible all at the same time.
I don’t just see an animal and assume that it is a divine sign. However, with a certain set of events surrounding an animal sighting, or if I experience a strange internal shift in the presence of a non-domesticated animal, then yeah. You bet your ass I see it as a sign. At this point, with all of the experiences I’ve personally had, I feel it would be sacrilege to deny the feeling I get and the effect these experiences have had on my life and overall well-being. I also recognize that this isn’t for everyone and that’s ok. I want to be here and share for the people who have weird shit happen to them so we can connect because I wholeheartedly believe it’s for a greater purpose.
So, hawks and owls. One of my close friends once sent our group chat a picture of what she thought was an owl staring at her from outside a window while she was studying for exams at the library. When she sent the photo I unkindly jabbed her for thinking an owl was out and about at the library in broad daylight. She’s a good sport, though. So we laughed pretty hard at the absurdity of thinking that you’d be able to catch a glimpse of an owl…ever…let alone in broad daylight. Turns out, it was a hawk.
I have an uneasy relationship with hawks. The morning my dad died, one was apparently looking through my brother’s window before he got the call. He told us the story shortly afterward and I think I began to associate the hawk with bad news from that point forward. Whenever I’d see one, I always assume I was going to get a call with some unfortunate information. It was kind of true, too. I might have been looking for it, though.
Owls have always been my “thing”. Like ten years ago I would buy shirts, shoes, and trinkets with owls on them because I just liked them a lot. I began to get all owl related things for Christmas gifts and birthday presents which I loved, but I also didn’t want to be the weird owl lady so I scaled back the obsession. When we moved out to the woods and we’d sleep with the windows open we’d hear them extremely close by and you would have thought a celebrity was paying us a bedtime visit. That’s how excited I was. We never saw one, though. Until a few weeks ago.
Miles is so outrageously smart. Miles is our son, by the way, and his thing (not sure if he knows it or agrees) is raccoons. His bedroom is full of them. Not real ones, (one can dream) just a bunch of toys and stuffed animals and a framed photo or two. He can list off nocturnal animals and will proudly tell you that that means “animals who come out at night!” The end of summer this year, we realized that he was always either asleep or on his way to sleep after the sun had gone down and never got to see the stars or the moon so we let him stay up while we had a fire and roasted marshmallows. Just as the trees were shifting into silhouette, we heard the familiar hooting that stopped us all in our tracks. We were graced by an actual, real-life owl sighting and it legitimately took my breath away. We couldn’t really see it in detail but it perched in the tree branch for a few moments in shadow before silently taking off into the twilight of the evening.
Justin (my husband) and I will get into small back and forths sometimes because I tend to look for meaning in these types of instances and can easily get lost in them. Or maybe I become wrapped up in a potential message. He’s not wrong. I also don’t think that my tendency of leaning into these instances and fully appreciating them for their natural magic is wrong either. Last week, Miles saw a woodpecker in a tree in the yard and he walked by the window from inside and nonchalantly said “Oh, that’s a woodpecker”. I was very surprised that he was able to identify the small bird so specifically and I felt a weird tingling sensation in my body the moment he said it. It’s not like you could hear it pecking at the tree, either. Justin says they’re in the yard a lot. I’ve only seen them clearly in sight, once or twice. The likelihood of a two year old being able to note the red markings on a bird and instantly recall it as a woodpecker…c’mon. Again, he’s a very smart kid so I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, but, I don’t necessarily know that I would have categorized this feeling as “shock”. It was just something I… put a pin in.
We were in bed that night and I decided to look up the significance and symbolism surrounding the woodpecker. For fun. I was reading in bed and Justin asked what I was reading about and I didn’t want to tell him because I didn’t feel like getting into a back and forth before sleep. I paused for too long in an attempt to craft a non-lie answer and he probed further. So I had to tell him. Big sighs and a long talk later we came to the conclusion that no, I’m not hurting anyone by looking for meaning in these ways. He just doesn’t understand it.
The very next night, we had put Miles down and I went to go take a shower while Justin cleaned up downstairs and took out the trash. I was soaping up and he came into the bathroom, opened the shower door with the weirdest look on his face that scared me, quite frankly. I asked if everything was ok and he replied, “Yes” shakily but explained that he just experienced the weirdest thing. He had just put the trash in the bins and turned back to go into the house when a large white barn-owl flew over his shoulder with a smaller bird in its grip. It made no sound as it flew. It landed on the lower part of our yard and just stared at Justin as he stared back in shock. The smaller bird in its claws was a hawk. He walked back into the house backwards …and…. slowly… and in awe. He said he audibly told the owl, “You’re beautiful”.
When I got out of the shower, we went out to see if it was still there, although I was less than excited to see the poor hawk. The owl was, in fact, there. It had moved into the lower part of a small tree near the trash cans and we kept our distance so as not to spook her. The hawk was not visible to us at this point and I was grateful. Justin snapped a few pics. If I could have gotten a selfie with this magical creature, I absolutely would have. I felt a puzzle piece shift into place that night. I’m not sure if it’s because I finally, REALLY saw an owl, or if it was because of Justin’s excitement. But. I felt a connection to something absolutely beautiful and I will hold onto this memory forever.
But wait! There’s more! I had fallen asleep on the couch and Justin stayed up to put a Power Wheels Jeep together for Miles to wake up to. I think I woke up to Justin excitedly saying the words, “The saga continues!” Which is a fun way to enter back into consciousness. While bringing the boxes out to the trash, he saw the owl again but heard odd rustling in the ferns and brambles below. He stayed back for a moment because it was getting closer and he thought it was maybe the hawk struggling which almost made me cry. Then he said, “The biggest, fattest raccoon that I have ever seen in my life jumped out of the brush and ran off with what I think was the dead hawk in its mouth!”. The owl sat there and seemed as perplexed as Justin.
Ok. So. Here’s where I’m very proud of myself. I have not looked into the potential spiritual or symbolic, meanings behind this occurrence. Believe you me! I could have a fricken field day with this one! Instead, I just hold onto it lightly and let the memory light me up from the inside. I think I’ve been feeling a bit lost lately which is likely why I continuously look for signs as guidance. Over the summer I, with some awesome support, found incredible release of some stuck feelings and limiting beliefs I’d been holding onto. It felt incredible. I moved lightly throughout the days and didn’t get as rattled by little things. I was also not working and had a lot more freedom to stop and notice when difficult feelings would arise, let them just be in the least restrictive or harmful way (to accept them), and then focus on feeling a happier or next best feeling emotion. That seemed to be the key for me. To have the space and time to make those small, mindful changes. To take small moments to feel the light.
And then school started again. Education requires an impossible level of multitasking for a general education teacher. Layer that with the additional responsibilities of a special education caseload and the emotionally taxing reality of working relentlessly to help struggling students by differentiating content to meet individual needs. Then throw the boulder on your back of working in a behavioral school with middle schoolers who are as big as or bigger than you and lack the faculties to appropriately manage big emotions and cope when faced with challenge, either due to significant and heartbreaking trauma or lack of social emotional support in the most formative part of adolescence. Somehow you need to figure out a way to plan for engaging content, regularly be in communication with families, document each and every correspondence like a courtroom stenographer to keep record in case a parent or guardian decides they want/need to sue the school, plan for meetings, write full, Individualized plans for kids and keep track of the most insane paperwork trail you can imagine because… you could be sued at any moment. If I walked you through a day in the life of a teacher you would be both disgusted and amazed at the amount of work they are expected to complete each day… and do.
A student came up to my desk while I was on my prep period the other day and asked with a smirk on his face if this was my dream job. I thought for a moment because I wanted to respond honestly. They have made comments before about how teachers don’t make any money. I was too tired, and I said “It used to be” with a kind of defeated smile. He didn’t seem to know what to do with the information and just walked back to his seat. I think he was hoping I would exclaim “ABSOLUTELY!”, either so that he would secretly know I wanted to be there or to crack a joke on teaching being, well, a joke. I do want to be there. Just not with how teaching …is.
What I wish I said then was that it is my dream to teach and to help. That would have been the most thoughtful response. And please, don’t get me wrong here, I know that there are other professions that are HARD in very intense ways, I just didn’t sign up for those positions. I signed up to work with kids who need it most, which I knew would be difficult but it would be worth it because I could focus on their needs. I assumed I’d be able to find a balance and be able to leave work at work. It’s just not possible with the demands on teachers today.
So why did I accept this position then? Well, I didn’t choose it. The education world has kicked me around a few different paths I didn’t intend to be on. I work in a district that pink slips all new-to-district teachers for the first few years and basically places you in different schools based on your credentials until you have the bidding rights to get a better job. The school I was placed in this year seems to love me and they’ve made it clear they’re praying I stay. I probably will because they need the help and I do like my boss.
I could just get a different job and stop complaining! Leaving mid-year is shit, though. I don’t want to do that to kids. I went into this school-year with an open mind and I am learning that teaching in a school is simply not where I want to be. This is not what I signed up for. Had I known what it would be like, I would NEVER have said yes to working in a school. In every building I have worked in, every person in leadership who I have encountered has said something along the lines of, “I do not know who would ever want to go into teaching now”. Every one. That’s a big problem.
So, I wait for summer and the time to be able to process everything. What is great, though, is that I found this outlet for myself. Writing, for me, is an incredible tool for getting things out, sorting through the mess in my mind, and feeling like I’m creating something that might be helpful to someone. Something small. This allows me to accept things as they are, feel the weight fully, and release. It feels good.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how I came to journaling in this way and how when I started, I was in a lot of pain. I can get in my head about whether or not I’m doing the right thing for others who might be reading. I wonder if there might be something I say or have said that could have been unintentionally harmful to some degree. Sometimes I hold back from writing with this thought in mind. Out of fear.
I’ll give an example. I feel guilt for my blog in which I retell the story of helping a person asking for money in a line of cars at a fast food restaurant. I ordered him food and when I handed it to him he asked me to go to the ATM to get him 20 dollars. When I said I couldn’t he yelled at me. I felt quite defeated. I later saw the same man on a different day while crying in the passenger seat of Justin’s truck because I had just found out I was miscarrying. He knocked on the window and I made Justin roll it down so I could take my turn at yelling into the void, screaming profanities, letting him remember my face and then telling him, “You’re not gettin any fucking money!!”
I felt triumphant at the time I wrote that post. I felt relief in the moment unloading my pain right back onto him, similar to how he likely did to me. I feel guilt in retrospect.I perpetuated a non-helpful cycle and it sits with me now.
Sometimes I think about stopping writing because I just don’t know if I’m going about it in the right way. I get nervous I’m coming across a certain way or that it seems like I’m complaining or whining. Sure I’ve been through some shit, but so have a lot of other people and they aren’t telling anyone who will listen! What do I want? A pat on the back? Am I just trying to bring other people down? Well, no. Absolutely not. I’m trying to show people how to reach within the depths of themselves and know that they have everything they need to find even just a little light in the darkness.
I’m past feeling bad about writing now. Even if I may have said or done something less than helpful, I know my biggest intention here is to be helpful. I am not perfect, nor am I expected to be. I’m just trying to be the best version of myself and to model for others that you can, in even the smallest ways, be helpful and find joy in doing so.
It starts with self-compassion. This is a concept that felt selfish to me for a while. I’m learning that when you prioritize feeling good with a lean towards service, that is the sweet spot. And you can do so in small, manageable ways. Like thinking about someone, or something you love. Even just a pleasant memory. It can cause shifts inside you that can help you to find the light faster.
Recently, Justin, Miles and I went to Boston on a school night, which was stressful because I have a very specific routine that helps me prepare for the following day and makes me feel like I have some semblance of control entering into chaos in the morning. I was happy to shake things up though and seeing Miles stare wide-eyed at the tall buildings and dance while riding on Justin’s shoulders lit me right up. Passing people asking for change or anything to help always stings though. I have a difficult time, internally, just walking by. I always play mental gymnastics afterwards wishing I had had the forethought to carry cash so I could give something. Can we also stop to acknowledge something for a moment? The amount of people on the street, in need to this degree…it’s a big problem.
I was showering today and wishing the weekend was longer as I usually do. I decided to greet and fully acknowledge that feeling of stress. I remembered from the summer to try and think a better feeling. The memory of Miles dancing on Justin's shoulders while walking in Boston popped into my mind and I smiled. I thought about going again, maybe tomorrow, and then the thought of encountering people in need followed. I thought about taking out cash to give. Then I did the thing where I thought of all the reasons I shouldn’t. That man in the drive through crossed my mind, as did a bit of anger. Then I thought about what I wished I could have done instead of yelling at him that day. I could have wished him well. I also could have ignored him. I could have given him money and still told him to get lost. Or, I could have given him what he wanted, and written to you all in that original post about how I made a healthy and productive choice to also wish him well, even after being berated. He clearly needed something more positive.
Then I got an idea. And here’s the thing. Maybe it’s stupid to think about this as much as I am. Maybe this idea will be interpreted as a distastefully sanctimonious, potentially dangerous, grandiose gesture of white-knighting. Maybe my intention is more directed towards self-compassion, though. My hope is that it will help me to feel better. Maybe that’s what is needed most in the world. For people to feel better so that they can move through their days with a lighter and more optimistic spirit and affect others positively through their way of being. Is that a terrible thing?
I thought about taking it one step further (I’m sure some people reading are saying “Ut-Oh, danger afoot”…hear me out). In an attempt to potentially reach more people (meaning anyone who receives this dollar as it's passed on; merchants, people at the bank, maybe a kid putting it in a piggybank... I wanted to add a note to the dollar on a sticky label. The note would read, “I hope whoever reads this takes time to think about their favorite memory and can smile, even if just for a moment”. When originally given, the dollar would be folded to conceal the label as not to make a show of the gesture. A little to "Disney movie?"
Point is If more people had more opportunities to stop and feel good throughout the day, maybe there would be less reactivity from a negative place. When the idea is repeated back it can come across a certain way and that fact isn’t lost on me. It’s a dollar. What good is a dollar today for someone in need? Will the note be taken the wrong way by someone who might not be in a place to experience a pleasant memory?
I won't be doing this, out of fear. What I will do is keep trying to provide light and not get discouraged because every aspect of life isn’t exactly how I thought it would be. I want to keep going with the flow and learn new ways to accept the way things are, continue to work towards a brighter future for Miles, little-by-little, and to find as much joy as possible in the process. When you feel and share joy, you attract joy. I’m working hard to trust the process. To trust life. To trust myself.
I think about all these animals at night and how the sounds of the dark illuminate truth. There’s good in the darkest places and bad in the (seemingly) lightest. Sometimes I forget this simple truth. Everyone is operating from their lived experiences. We all want to experience joy and happiness to the greatest extent possible. The more we can do that for ourselves and for others, the better off the world will be. It’s not good vs. bad, darkness vs. light, this way or that way. It’s both.
For what it’s worth, here’s what a random website says the message a woodpecker brings if witnessed in the fall:
“Now is not the time to hide your light under a bushel. Although it can make us feel vulnerable to be seen, and at times being seen can more than FEEL vulnerable, sometimes the reason or goal is worth the risk. It is only by showing our true light and genuine authenticity (while using discernment) that others will see this and get the message. This spiritual messenger could be saying to you, “this leads to a new open doorway for connection”. It could be the harbinger of the next step on your path being shown to you. You may even find yourself down the line being an inspiring teacher, advocate, or guide for others.
Now. I hope you take the time to think about your favorite memory and smile. Even if just for a moment.
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