where do you find beauty?

Today…right where you are…look around…what is beautiful? Where do you find the image that pings your heart, reminds you of your humanity, lights a fire in your belly? For me, it’s waking up next to my husband of 15 years. It’s the ritual of making coffee for him and drinking it together in bed. It’s watching my dogs cuddle, one big + one tiny, as I am in my office typing away. It’s the morning dew on my veggie garden. It’s the new sprouts of the seeds I planted a week or two ago. It’s reading a poem full of vulnerability and clarity. It’s how beauty and chaos can exist in the same space at the same time. It’s seeing the faces of my friends I long to hug and hold. It’s witnessing the growth the children around us have had during this pandemic. All of these things will stop me in my tracks for a moment every day. I consider myself lucky to have the time to notice and the inclination to look for more. There was a long period of my life that I couldn’t look at the beauty. I would see it, but it hurt to look at it. It was too much. I was too sensitive. Turns out, it is too much and I am incredibly sensitive…but that is part of the gift of being alive. Honestly, I will never trade it.