A Purple Wave 💜

I’m back! Hopefully you’ve missed these posts since the last one at the end of June. I took the summer – and well into this fall – to chill, refresh, and stay tuned in and present to intense recent life experiences and all of their joys, sorrows, stresses and excitements – taking in all that life has been offering and trying to maintain a semblance of grace in the chaos. Thanks to so many for encouraging me back!

It’s timely, considering the inspiration and theme of my blog, that the urge to return should happen now, and yet I would never have expected it. You see, yesterday was the five year anniversary of my beloved and precious son Adam’s passing, and who would imagine that a muse could percolate in the leadup to such a devastating milestone. The five year mark, much like any anniversary or poignant event he’s missed, has been a threatening lurking presence, and moreso. A half a decade later, as my memories blur and fewer reach out or seem to remember or realize, the distance feels a bit sickeningly vast. Blah.

Fortunately, within the dark moments of these past weeks, I’ve been distracted – no graced – with light and love in the presence of my family and dear friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. In their comforting, warm, fun, and often silly presence, I realized the blessing in my growing awareness that darkness and light can co-exist, and further, that even the slightest effort to focus on what’s bright can make it more pronounced, and in turn, feed Hope. In one instance, I was on a zoom with a close colleague and opened up about not being in the best place these weeks, and how this darkness fed internal doubts about my intellectual and professional capacities, even an overall anything good about me at all. With her dry wit, she diminished it altogether, and without realizing it I’m sure, strengthened me. Later on, when confronted again with those feelings, I used her approach on myself, “Hey. We’ve done this script before. How about for now we just put the head down and work, we can revisit this new internal failure discovery and see how it feels on November 13th…” I moved forward and focused… 

Even Adam showed up to break up the clouds one morning this past week, when, after having woken up sad, sitting in the kitchen with my coffee, I heavy-heartedly picked up my phone to distract myself. I scrolled left to the screen with the news, widgets, and a daily changing picture, and was greeted with the adorable young Adam shot accompanying today’s blog. I couldn’t help but smile. I’d always cherished those “Oh my gosh, this is going to be so great!!!” and “I love you so much I could eat you!” expressions – his bursting love and happy energy. On the spot, I changed my phone background to let his good humor accompany me. And wow, did it ever. It was as if I was swept up in a wave, off of my own two feet. Every time I picked up the phone, or the screen lit up with a text, I smiled – even chuckled out loud a few times – in joy and appreciation. I was even overtaken by that same sense of excitement for something coming that the picture exudes – thrilled by his contagious expectant and exuberant energy. Weirdly, that same night, I started getting alerts of hits and likes on my blog posts from months ago (I hadn’t gotten such an alert since July), and not just one, or even one person, numerous alerts kept coming over the next days, affirming, and lighting up my inspiration. All in the midst of the heavy dark clouds of the week…

This personal experience occurred within a separate but comparable angst ridden context, the midterm elections. Even among my supportive posse of friends of different allegiances who surrounded me, friends on the red wave and those fearing a blue armageddon, there was a commonality in the anxious energy. Whether the fear of impending doom, or concern that the momentum might not pan out, similar dark clouds, and everywhere. Late in the afternoon on election day, I was finishing up my last zoom meeting when the conversation moved to the election results which would shortly be forthcoming. As I hung up, I couldn’t help but notice the complementarity of the descending end-of-day-light-savings darkness with the vibe I’d noticed all day… 

I was in the dark, still sitting at my desk, which happens to be Adam’s old desk, when the phone lit up. I smiled again at the picture, wondering what he could be so happy and thrilled about, and in a mischievously Adam way, thought to myself, “How strange, that no matter what happens tonight, whoever wins or loses, tomorrow morning, over the same coffee they had today, same hot showers, same everything other than the win or lose numbers blaring out from the TV… Half of the country will be happy, and the other half despondent, all predicated on the channels and feeds selected as the lens to their world… How funny would it be if there was a blackout – we never found out.…a TV and social media blackout but the lights, hot water, and coffee machines kept working… I cracked myself up, spinning the scenario, picturing the confusion, adding more absurd detail…

Despite Adam’s now heavenly mischief powers, there was no black out … but interestingly, perhaps even more miraculously, the news the next day did not align with the feared worst case scenarios – for either side! And whether your new day was either not quite as good or not quite as devastating, it could have been so much worse…In some ways, if you’re at all open to compromise (which I realize is a struggle for most in these politically ideological times) you might even call it a win/win. Who would’ve thought the universe could pull that off?

… Or, for that matter, that you’d be reading my blog right now?

Here it is, November 13th, and things aren’t as bad as I feared either. I’m actually feeling pretty accomplished, and even excited for whatever is coming. In fact, it’s all pretty great… The gift of a simple picture, offered by the Loving Universe, that I only had to agree to receive and appreciate (which was so easy!)… and then be swept up in that loving wave, A Purple Adamsworld wave! I’m going to keep that picture on my phone for a while…

I think the whole world needs that picture … near their TV’s before they flip on the news, on the dashboards of cars, desks at work, or right next to the pictures of teenage children… on billboards all over every city … Yes! Everywhere! … And don’t we all need to be swept up in that wave? (Interesting that Adam’s color is the one that brings together red and blue)… A Purple Wave of peace, joy, and benevolence, with the assurance that everything is going to be ok – no better – it’s going to be so great! …. #Adamsworld

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