This is the way I move through the world.

A practice of paying attention.

A promise to myself to see.

This is something I have carried for as long as I can remember, a way of finding beauty, gratitude, and meaning in the smallest corners of my day. It is how I return to myself. It is the open gate to fully living.

My mind travels countless highways: memory, worry, planning, the endless what-ifs. Even in conversation, my thoughts can scatter between tasks, responsibilities, expectations I carry from others and from myself.

Attention is something I choose.

It begins in small moments.

At night, when I sit down to write, the first cricket’s song becomes a signal. I pause. I listen. I let it fill me until the noise quiets. Suddenly the moon is my companion and my love song for life flows through my pen.

In the early morning at home, there is the weight of Bandit pressed against me, Willow’s gentle breathing on the floor. Their steady presence gathers the scattered pieces of me back home.

When I step outside, a gust of wind makes the trees dance, and I am fully here. All of a sudden the world before me comes alive, and I come alive too, present with the movement of leaves, the flight of birds, the slow drifting of clouds across the sky. In these moments, there is no separation. Only belonging.

During the busiest days at work, something unexpected can break through everything else: the song of a bird outside, a feather on the path, like a gentle tap on the shoulder reminding me of the beauty that persists. Or the quiet recognition of another’s struggle, the love and pain visible in someone’s eyes. These moments bring silence to the noise and open my heart to see both the ache and the beauty, and to offer whatever ease I can.

Outside, in nature, time loosens its hold. I pay attention for hours, camera in hand, gathering evidence of my own return to wholeness.

When the mind quiets and the heart is present, the ordinary reveals itself.

Beauty emerges.

Wonder shines.

What is always there becomes sacred when I choose to see it.

These words are my way of remembering.

A space to hold the moments that bring me back.

A practice of paying attention.

A walk with wonder.

~~⟡~~

Oh, let me tell you about attention.
Let me show you how the ordinary becomes sacred.
How wonder waits in the corners of your day.
These words are just paper airplanes, carrying what I’ve seen into your sky.
May you find your own flight, your own quiet, your own wonder.

~~⟡~~

This is one of the first moments I want to offer. A small door into the practice of paying attention. A way the ordinary became sacred for me.

~~⟡~~

The Wild Garden

I do not come to the quiet night
to tame it.
I come as I am,
bare-footed in thought,
palms open,
ready to be found
by whatever moves in the quiet.

Some nights
the moon walks with me,
a slow companion
slipping silver into my bones.

Some nights
the winds tear across the yard,
wild as horses,
painting the dark with colors
only my skin can feel.

Some nights
the thunder rumbles through my chest,
telling me I belong
to storms as much as to stillness.

And some nights,
a curtain breathes
against a window screen,
leaf patterns rising and falling,
reminding me
that the whole house
has a heartbeat
I can borrow for a while.

I do not wait for any one miracle.
I stand in the wild garden of the quiet
and let the night choose
what I am meant to find.
I promise only this:
I will be here,
soft enough,
empty enough,
to become whatever the darkness
wants to give me.

~~⟡~~

This is my walk with wonder. Thank you for walking a little of it with me.