I am glimmers girl!

Long before it had this name – I have tended to look on the bright side of life. Mostly, because my parents always made challenges feel like adventures. And then, as I grew up, I learned for myself that within the broken world there is so much goodness.

One client of mine had a caricature drawn up of me when a project we collaborated on ended. It was of an alien spaceship in the background – with death, destruction, and drought all around. And in the middle was me – I had stepped off the spaceship – with a huge smile on my face, and the speech bubble said, “Wow, this place is just oozing with potential!”

Of course, that often comes with some denial; in today’s terms we may call it ‘toxic positivity’. I have also learned what happens when you don’t face the pain and loss and grief of life’s imperfection. But that is a story for another day.

Glimmers have got me through many valleys before. They shine in the darkness like little lights of hope. I am not afraid of the dark. I actually enjoy the dark. There are so many treasures there. One cannot see much … but I like it. I often sit outside in the darkness, breathing in the night air. Sometimes leaping out of bed in the middle of the night to see if my nocturnal Western Leopard Toad family are swimming in their little pond.

But last year – was another kind of valley. Another kind of darkness. One I had not embraced before. I could not see. It was like a fog settled over me. A cancer diagnosis sent me into tunnels where I did not know what was around the next corner. It was the toughest journey of my life.

Today, three weeks of being declared ‘cancer free’ and I am looking around, a bit dazed, more tearful than during the entire 10 months of treatment. I am facing the trauma, the toughness of the year.

But yesterday, I thought – what of the glimmers. Where did you see little lights of hope in that tunnel of healing?

And a cold winters’ night comes to mind. I am in bed, all snuggy-bug in my warm pajamas, ready to turn off my light. I am ten days away from the latest chemo infusion, emerging from the chemo fog that stifled and wrapped around me like a wet blanket.

I check my phone one last time before going to sleep …

“Hey Aunty Linda – are you keen to go and see if we can find some bioluminescence on the beach?”

It is my nephew, Chad. He is house sitting in the area.

I leap up.

“For sure!”

And I quickly get into some warm clothes.

He fetches me and we set off for the beach to find the blue magic we had both seen on Facebook.

There was no blue magic blur shining along the shoreline. We searched and hoped. Stomping on the sand to see if the glow would surprise us.

The image of me prancing around on the beach under the winter night sky, searching for the bioluminescence with my fabulous nephew makes me smile today. And I don’t mind that we did not see the magic we had hoped for that night. The attempt is the joy.

And then I remember – we saw one.

One tiny piece of blue light. Shining in the darkness.

One little piece of blue magic.

And I smile. Tears well up.

There are glimmers. Little lights of hope within a very tough season. I just need to remember them.

And I will – one by one.