Moments

A few weeks ago, I happened to glance down and noticed a wallet on the ground outside my office building.

A moment.

I pick it up, Google the name on the ID, and send an email to the woman who lost it.

This only takes me a moment.

She meets me outside my office the next day, telling me it had fallen out of her pocket when she was walking her dog.

A moment of mishap.

She presses a $10 bill into my hand, insisting she wants to buy me a latté for returning her wallet. The next day on my way to work, I stop at my preferred coffee shop to buy a latté. My favorite barista is working and after I place my embarrassingly expensive drink order (a triple shot oat milk vanilla iced latté, if you must know) she winks and says she is only charging me for a drip.

A moment of indulgence.

I arrive at daycare, peek through the window where my son is working on a puzzle, and recall a version of Maya Angelou’s words: Your face should light up when your child enters a room. When I walk inside, I kneel down to his level and he runs towards me at full force, yelling “Mama!” and throwing his arms around my neck.

A moment of delight.

I pull into our driveway at the end of the day and as I am retrieving my son from his carseat, my gaze is drawn upward and I watch with mouth agape as a bright blaze briefly flashes across the sky. If I had not looked up just then, I would have missed it. I have seen shooting stars a couple times in my life, but this was brighter, fiery. It was a meteor.

A moment of awe.

It’s the mad dash where dinner and bathtime and stories and bedtime happen, my husband and I both tired from the day. My tone is quipped when I speak to him.

A moment of impatience.

I apologize, acknowledging said tone. He accepts. We practice assuming the generous intent of one another. It’s a daily practice. Can we start over? Can I have another chance to respond to you differently? I soften, we soften towards each other.

A moment reclaimed.

I don’t know exactly where you find yourself on the cusp of a new year, in that strange liminal space, but if you’re like most people, the past year was a mixed bag: joys & sorrows, moments you’re proud of and moments that make you cringe.

How do we proceed? Moment by moment.

Often a new client will ask me a version of: How did I get here? They want help making sense of their story, their childhood, the divorce, when the drinking went from casual to problematic, how they ended up in this relationship or in a job or a life that feels stifling.

We weave back and forth, through past and present, following what I call the “Golden Thread” as we work together to better understand where they’ve been, where they are, and getting curious about where they want to go.

A professor of mine was describing the work of therapy and said, “We’re not trying for 180 degree shifts here. If you are charting a boat or a plane and you’re a few degrees off, you are going to wind up in a completely different place. One or two degree shifts.”

A moment or two. A different decision than you made yesterday or five minutes ago. Asking for help. Making a genuine apology (which, by the way, does not sound like “I’m sorry I made you feel that way”- more like “I was wrong”). Turning towards your partner instead of away. Speaking to yourself with compassion instead of condemnation. Fumbling forward, together, into the next moment.