Nothing is opossum-ble

... finding love and remembering now.

Pssst. I’m going to mention a few things in this post that will make SO much more sense to you if you’ve read this post and this post first… without the context, this won’t be nearly as enjoyable to read!

Dear Kula Diaries,

Today I’m going to tell you about a few things that have happened recently… and a few things that happened not so recently… and, maybe, if I tell the stories just right — they will all come together in the end.

I have eluded to some chaos that unfolded last year — and, I do believe and know that the source of the chaos was me. Why do I think that? Well, if I’m being completely honest, I allowed myself to slip away from some of my normal habits. I didn’t do it on purpose… I just got a little, well, lazy. It’s easy to skip meditation… and it’s easy to skip a gratitude practice. It’s very easy to slip into the thinking mind and to focus on the things that we don’t want. Sometimes it feels like if we don’t try to fix what’s wrong… that it’ll get worse. Unfortunately, it’s in the very act of pushing against what we don’t want… that we unintentionally enhance the cluster. Well, apparently, I’m really good at that… and I created a cluster of epic proportions that… in a roundabout way… led to my husband and I purchasing security cameras for our home. We didn’t have anything specific that we were worried about… but, it felt better to have them.

As I reflected on the things that had happened, and as I began the process of pulling myself out of the hole into which I had precariously and unconsciously ventured… the process felt familiar. It felt familiar, because I had done it before. Many years ago, as a railroad police officer, I had been in a similar hole… and it was not a pleasant place to be. I looked around at the world, and I did not see things that I liked — even though there were so many things that I could have appreciated. But, from my blurry lens, I was simply unable to see them. The culmination of this chaos was a near death experience that rapidly sling-shotted me into a deep place of gratitude for my life. I started a daily practice that included things like gratitude, meditation, appreciation, and giving. The momentum of my practice started small, but gradually… I was able to see the goodness that I had forgotten was there.

During the first few months of the ‘shakedown’ this past year, I also began to see and feel the shift in my energy, and I was delighted to re-open my eyes to the infinite goodness that was always around me. I am lucky enough to live in one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever been — my home is in the middle of the woods and I hike every single day… and yet, for months, my hikes had been consumed by my clunky steps as I walked up and down the hill in the morning… unable to witness a sunrise, because I was feeling so angry about, ‘what was happening’. Truth be told, I had no idea what was actually happening — because the nightmare that I was living in was entirely created in my mind. Had things happened? Yes, they had. But were they currently happening on my walk at 4:30 AM? No, they were not. Who was causing my pain and suffering in those moments? Unintentionally, I was: I was obsessively and endlessly overthinking and worrying about things that were not helpful — and I was driving myself deeper and deeper into a place that I did not want to be. I knew that I could turn the ship around, and so, from a place of accepting where I was: I reached for the feeling of love.

In the midst of my upward climb, our security camera went off one night and my husband and I were surprised to see a cream-colored flash moving across the camera. “It’s the cat I saw a few weeks ago!”, I exclaimed gleefully. I had seen a mysterious cream-colored cat hanging around our neighborhood — but I had no idea that it was still in the area. The next night, we left some food out for the cat and I turned the volume on my cell phone up while I was sleeping. Around midnight, the alarm on my phone went off, and groggily, I opened the security camera app and rolled over to show my husband, “Look… it’s here!”, I said, as I gently cradled the digital cat in the palm of my hand, “I’m naming him Sprinkles.”

Eventually, Sprinkles was renamed Jasper. Why Jasper? Well, Jasper is the name of our doorbell camera (you’ll have to ask my husband about that). Jasper is a very shy, seemingly feral kitty who also appears to be neutered and vaccinated. We can tell that his ear has been clipped (i.e. the tip of the ear has been surgically removed), which is the universal sign that the cat was part of a ‘TVNR’ program — Trap, Vaccinate, Neuter and Release. This is a program designed to curb feral cat colonies, while also avoiding euthanizing excessive amounts of cats. Cats that are rescued from stray cat colonies are often adopted (if they are determined to be friendly) — which is how we ended up with our beautiful cat, Esa!

Jasper does not appear to be one of those ‘friendly’ cats… instead, he/they appears to be a very skittish and fearful cat… and also a very hungry cat. We started feeding Jasper during the coldest part of the winter — and we even bought him a hutch with a heating pad in it (which he never used). Every single day… like clockwork… he arrives at our house to chomp down on his nightly meal. And every single day… like clockwork… Aaron and I sit down and watch Jasper on our security camera. He doesn’t do much other than eat… but there is something so relaxing about seeing him and just knowing that he is out there.

About a month or two ago, we noticed a new visitor to our porch: an opossum. This opossum was also (apparently) very hungry, and ravenously and sloppily devoured every single morsel of food on Jasper’s eating platform. We tried to scare the opossum away, but every time we went outside, it would freeze (which is it’s natural defense mechanism) and not leave the porch. The opossum doesn’t come as frequently as Jasper, but we also didn’t want to habituate a wild animal to cat food — so we tried our best to mitigate the food situation and prevent the opossum from becoming too regular.

As our porch dynamic progressed — my own inner dynamic was also changing… each day, I’d put cat food out on the porch and then excitedly wake up the next morning to see which critters had visited to eat during the night. At one point, I told Aaron, “We never would have seen Jasper or pMidnight (the opposum) if the whole chaos of last year hadn’t happened… because we never would have seen Jasper on the security camera.” Suddenly… it seemed… like maybe things really were lining up in a special way. I had no idea how Jasper or pMidnight could be a part of this strange web of life, but I felt that they were.

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I’m interrupting this regularly scheduled broadcast, to remind readers of The Kula Diaries, that all of the critters except for pets in my neighborhood have names that start with the letter ‘P’. Therefore, pMidnight… has a silent p. I just wanted to clarify that important point. if you need a refresher, you can use this chart of the animals that live in my very wooded neighborhood for reference:

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A few weeks into pMidnight’s visits, I was very inspired to learn more about the opossum who was visiting our house… and I spent an entire evening researching opossums and creating an opossum playlist for our Dance Experiment:

Over the last few weeks, I’ve written about a lot of things — and I’ve included some ideas that some might regard as ‘strange’ or ‘woo’ or ‘whatever’. Believe me — I would have rolled my eyes at myself about a decade ago too. But, the reason that I’ve been writing about these things is because most people do not realize that we are always creating our own reality at all times — and that what we focus on really does matter. When I was focused on all of the things that were ‘wrong’ in my life — it mattered. The stories we tell ourselves… the things that we say… the things that we obsess about… the complaining we do… the uplifting we do… it all matters. Now, I don’t say that to suggest that you need to run around and start sucking your thoughts back in — it’s not like that. We are meant to experience the rainbow of thoughts and emotions in this world — and that includes all of them — ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are just labels we’ve given things, because we don’t necessarily have the ability to see the big picture. We’re often not able to see that something much more important is going on… especially in moments when things don’t seem to make sense.

My chaos didn’t seem to make much sense last year — but I did trust it. I trusted that I could take the bounce from it, and that the clarity that I’d find on the other side of the bounce would be worth it. I just couldn’t have imagined that it would end up with my heart being cracked open by the opportunity to hold a real-life opossum… merely 2 weeks after I danced to an entire playlist about opossums.

But, that’s what happened.

A neighborhood friend had been helping my husband and I with a few projects at our house, and his friend ended up coming over to help. I was randomly talking about pMidnight, our ‘adopted’ opossum, when my neighbor casually remarked, “Oh, one of my friends has an opossum!”

I shook my head in disbelief, “Wait, you mean, as a pet?”.

My neighbor laughed back, “Yep, it was rescued! She’ll have it here tomorrow.”

And so, the next day when I got home from work, I excitedly hopped out of my car to go find my neighbor’s friend … who proceeded to gently extract Curry, the rescued opossum from a small satchel. Apparently, Curry was found as a severely injured baby opossum. It’s believed that he could have been taken from his mother by a bird of prey. The only animal shelters in the area said that they would euthanize the opossum, so my neighbor’s amazingly kind friend found a vet willing to treat him, and she decided to adopt him. As it turns out, opossums are not only amicable… but they are downright lovable, gentle and kind. Gingerly, I took Curry into my arms and he immediately nuzzled up to my neck — at which point I experienced a moment of absolute, sheer terror in which I envisioned him dramatically severing my jugular vein with one chomp of his intimidating fangs. Sensing my hesitancy, Curry nuzzled more aggressively as if to say, There’s nothing to fear. I relaxed. I could feel Curry relax. And suddenly, I started to laugh at the impossibility of it all: the cluster eff of the century (thanks to me)… the doorbell camera… the discovery of Jasper Sprinkles the cat… the opportunistic opossum eating Jasper’s food… my unbridled enthusiasm for learning about opossums… the opossum dance playlist… and now, here I was, holding a literal actual honest-to-goodness opossum in my arms. What were the chances?

I don’t know what happened when I held that little opossum, but it melted my heart in an unexpected way — and for so many reasons. In some way, the opossum felt like the culmination of an energy flow that was about so much more than the opossum. It felt like a tiny piece of proof that I had, indeed, climbed my way out of the hole that I had jumped into. I had closed myself off to the flow of love for a long time — and I had forgotten how much magic was… truly… everywhere. I wasted a lot of time noticing what I didn’t like about people, instead of noticing how much there was to love about them. Maybe, just maybe, the opossum was teaching me that not everybody is out to chomp your throat … maybe, just maybe… the teeth that I really needed to be worried about were mine.

The day after I held the opossum, I felt like I was floating on a cloud. Honestly, I was not expecting to feel such a buoyant feeling of love from holding an opossum. I woke up that morning, and Aaron and I had planned to go on our first BURRITO RIDE of the year. In case you aren’t familiar with our burrito rides, you can read this post and it will explain a lot more of the context. I was really excited to go on a burrito ride for two reasons:

1. I would get to write my first burrito label of the season, which is one of my favorite things to do.

2. I love burritos and motorcycles.

With great excitement, I asked Aaron to venture out to our garage to grab the frozen mega burrito shells from our freezer, and I was surprised when I peered out the window and saw him returning… empty-handed.

“There aren’t any burrito shells,” he sadly reported.

“What!?”, I exclaimed, in utter horror, “I ordered a case of 72 of them by accident last year — they can’t all be gone!”

Aaron went back out to the garage on a second, completely pointless reconnaissance mission to look for the burritos — as if he could have possibly missed a package of gigantic extra large burrito shells the first time. The news was the same: There were no burrito shells.

I felt a little bit deflated — I had really been looking forward to having a burrito lunch. And… yet, my mind instantly thought of Curry the opossum. Was it possible that maybe something else was going on here? Was it possible that I was being led to something better?

If I’m being honest, there are no bad options for lunch or a motorcycle ride — so I didn’t sulk or wallow in my burrito-less disappointment. Instead, I decided that we’d opt for Option B: ride our motorcycles to 5B’s Bakery for lunch — a gluten free bakery near Concrete, WA that has been one of my favorite spots in the world for many years. I put away all of the unused burrito veggies, and put on my motorcycle gear. I hopped onto the bike and… suddenly… it was just me, and the wind and the road — with nowhere to go, but right now.

5B’s Bakery!

Now is a place you can visit, if you know it exists — but not many people visit it very often, because we are always someplace else. We are always mulling over what we think should have happened… or wishing that something different could happen. You don’t need a motorcycle or hiking boots or anything special to find a place called now — because, truly, it’s the only place that ever is. It’s a place of no time and no anything — other than pure love. Maybe that’s what I felt when I held the opossum that day — because maybe creatures are able to find that feeling a little bit more easily than we humans can. Maybe, if they are special enough creatures, they can sense when we need it and they choose to loan their ‘now’ to us for just a little while… so that we can sense the good that they feel in that moment, right along with them. No past. No future. Just right now.

We had a beautiful ride to 5Bs, and when we got there, we hopped off the bikes — hungry and ready for our favorite sandwich (a panini). I walked in, and was immediately embraced by the owner, who I’ve known for years — she’s a Search and Rescue Incident Commander and she’s a huge fan of Kula Cloth. “I brought your Kula Cloth to our National Meeting”, she reported, “And I want to sell some bee-themed Kulas here at the bakery!”. We hatched a plan for the bee Kulas, and then I walked over to the counter to order our lunch. I was greeted by a cheerful human, wearing a vibrant purple shirt and I immediately noticed her necklace: AMETHYST. A large, polished chunk of amethyst was dangling from a chain around her neck. My heart started pounding as I saw it — and tried not to stare at it too awkwardly.

I smiled inside and felt a sense of deep love welling up in my heart — I hoped that she couldn’t see the misty glaze on my eyes… because, WHY ON EARTH WOULD A COMPLETE STRANGER GET EMOTIONAL ABOUT AN AMETHYST NECKLACE?

I wanted to tell her this: I’ve been on this strange journey that started a long time ago, and it had nothing to do with anything that I thought it had to do with. I thought it had to do with starting a business and being successful, but I was really wrong about that. It had to do with remembering something much more important. As time has passed, I’ve seen glimpses of this truth — sometimes I’m better at seeing it than others. Sometimes I feel so much love that I think my heart can burst, but other times, I notice things that I don’t want — and I spend time focused on things that don’t feel good to me. Sometimes, I look at others, and I find fault in them — forgetting that they are human beings too, just like me, who only want to be loved. Like hiking a meandering trail, I’ve wandered up and down these hills and valleys… finding my way, in the best way that I knew how. A few times, I’ve gotten lost — and I forgot where I was. I stood in the path of love, and couldn’t see it looking back at me — the forest of my mind was a dark place, where I felt very alone. And yet, I always found my way back — because, even if its distant, I can always make out the light. I stumble towards it, and as it gets closer and closer, it’s easier to make out the shapes of what really matters. It’s easier to look beyond the things that I think I see… to the things that are really there. Suddenly, my view expands to include not just the ground beneath my feet — but the vastness of all of it. And, when I find that place, I remember again. I’m welcomed home. I start writing and I start sharing stories. There was this time that I wrote a story about how when you focus on things in an easy way, you find them. I wrote about a few things specifically: a pineapple, a smiley face, a shooting star, a lightning bolt, a peace sign, an octopus… and amethyst. And do you know what’s strange? I saw all of them within a few days… except for the amethyst. I told myself then, “It’s coming… just wait. It’s going to be the best one of them all… and you’ll know it when you see it.” And, so I did. Every single day, I thought about it gently — knowing that it would arrive… and that when it did, I’d feel the love of knowing that, in some odd way that I can’t explain without sounding completely nuts, that it was for me. And so, as strange as it sounds — I held this opossum, and I felt the type of love that every person should feel lucky enough to experience. I held that little opossum — with its strong beam — and I loved the world so much… that the amethyst simply had to appear. And it did — when I was least expecting it. I had made other plans for today, but I ended up here instead — and now I know it wasn’t an accident. So, here I am. Ordering a chicken, bacon panini … getting misty-eyed about a purple necklace… and wondering one thing: How can it possibly get better than this?

I wanted to tell her all of those things, but I didn’t.

“I love your necklace,” I said awkwardly.

“Oh, it’s amethyst,” she replied, “It’s my birthstone… and my favorite stone. I love it.”

“Me too,” I said, “I really love it too.”

I listened to something this week that really stuck with me — I’m paraphrasing this, but the speaker essentially was saying that your NOW has the exact same potential for goodness as the NOW that you think will be better at some point in the future. We incorrectly think that it’s going to be better once things are different, but we’re wrong. The potential for the expression and experience of infinite abundance lives in one place and one place only — and it’s in this moment. And this one. And this one. It isn’t in some far off place once things change — because things won’t change if you can’t find the feeling of it now. I used to think this wasn’t fair — because how could I be happy if I didn’t have the things that I thought would make me happy? But all of the chasing in the entire world never got me any closer — in fact, it pushed me further away from what I wanted, which was something that I was able to feel in my heart — if I knew to look for it there. Once you realize this — you understand that right now is the source of all of your power… all of your abundance… all of your love. It’s all right here, available to each of us in any moment — and the only thing that ever keeps any of us from seeing it… is us.

It’s easy to dismiss things like an opossum or an amethyst necklace as ‘coincidences’ — but I don’t choose to see them like that — because they don’t feel like that to me, and I can only describe how I felt when I held that opossum and what it was like to see that amethyst necklace… when I was probably the only person in the world to whom it would have meant anything at all. I choose to see the miracle, because I believe that I can create anything… and because I believe that you can too. I’m willing to write about things that my decade-ago-self would have deemed ridiculous, because I want everybody to be able to feel the magic of watching something unfold in a way that makes you feel as worthy, deserving and as loved as you are. If something like seeing an amethyst necklace on a stranger can give you a feeling of love and appreciation for life — anything can. When you look deeply at all that life is giving us in this moment — right now — you will see things that you didn’t even notice were there.

Kula Delivery at the best bakery in all of WA!

A few days ago, we went back to 5B’s Bakery again… but this time, we brought the bee Kulas that I designed. We ate another panini … and rode our motorcycles on a sunny day … and Jasper and pMidnight both came to visit last night. As I watched them both, I felt a deep sense of peace — I can trust what’s coming. I can trust myself. I don’t know exactly what will happen next in life, but I’m starting to see that I don’t really need to anymore. I can find everything right now, if I know where to look.

Friends — thank you all for being here each week and for listening to my tales of creepy cats… and smiley faces… and opossums and amethyst. I never know where the trail will lead, but I do know that the view from where I’m standing is beautiful — and I hope yours is too. I’m sending you all so much love today, and all days.