Anami Grace | Made Up Life

So, there we were. My oldest had driven us to dinner in the car he and his mom had worked together for him to buy last year. She helped him with his down payment and I had helped him look over his loan documents so that we would know he’d gotten a good deal.

And then she went back into her little world, and now my kid has a really wonderful second car that he’s taken excellent care of.

But he needed to stop at the store because he’d lost a bet over nutterbutters at work.

It was pouring rain and we drove up to a woman with the hood popped on her Honda CRV.

My kid, being exactly the human he is. Said: I’m going to help her mom.

I was on the fence about going into the store. It had been a wonderfully difficult day and I was exhausted and ready to be home. But his impossible sweetness of knowing how many times strangers have shown up for us better than our own family inspired him to hold space for another human in distress when she needed it.

So, he hopped out of the car and his sister and I were right behind him.

Because it turns out that when you do extraordinarily difficult things together as a family, you are a fierce pack of love just waiting to show up for your community.

She could not have known what it cost us to show up for her, but the miracle was not lost on the three of us.

It’s funny because being a geriatric millennial means that sometimes my age is ambiguous and I imagine that people do not assume that my *almost* 20-year-old kid is MY child.

But nevertheless, he is amiable and puts on his most helpful grin. He asks: Do you need help?

And she grins back at him and says that help is on the way in the form of a friend bringing jumper cables.

My kids go into the store and I linger in the rain with this divinely appointed moment of humanity showing up imperfectly for each other in a time of need.

Sarah, and Anami Grace. Together in the rain talking about how it is so beautiful to have people show up for you when you need them.

It turns out that she works for a non-profit that was a huge help when I was a case manager at the insurance company that shall not be named.

I leave her with a warm hug, and follow my kids into the store.

By the time we are out of the store Sarah’s friends have shown up with the jumper cables and my kid moves his car to face hers and gets to work connecting the cables as I meet the friend and her partner.

And then, we all go our separate ways into the dark cold rainy evening that will be exactly ours.

This morning as I decided to put on the clothes I wanted, and cried about how proud I am of myself, of my children, and of the life we’ve created together, I realized that true wealth is putting so much good out into the world, that it shows up for you in impossible ways when you need it the most.

True wealth is having a community of people who will show up for you imperfectly because they’ve shown up for themselves imperfectly a whole bunch of times.

True beauty is feeling wonderful about what you do for yourself and the world every day.

True love is making sure that you feel love in the way you feel it best. Every day.

True peace is knowing that no matter what happens that you have the skills, capacity, and the knowledge to move and hold yourself through whatever happens in your world.

True joy is finding the exact intersection of magic and love that you connect to, in an impossible world.

It’s finding the treasure of the adventure of who you are in a world where you’ve been taught that is wrong or bad.

And community is finding the way through the collapse of everything so that everyone has what they need: emotionally, physically, spiritually, creatively, with as much imperfect love as possible.

Which is the true wealth we’ve been disconnected from our entire lives.

Go forth, become wealthy in yourself so the world can become wealthy in the exact intersection of magic and love that only you can hold.

Show it off liberally to everyone you meet. For what is invisible becomes so incredibly obvious and contagious that nothing else matters in the light of the kindness and compassion you’ve moved through your impossible human experience.

Let’s get in here and love you imperfectly together. A lot of times until you believe it for yourself.

Your homework assignment, should you choose to accept it is to find out what you love to do, see, feel, enjoy, and report back. Okay?

Anyway, love and light to you all. Take care! Bye!