What Happens When A Life Falls Apart – A Story About Magic

You may be at the lowest point of your life right now.  You may be having trouble getting out of bed.  You may have so much fear about the future and have no idea how you’re going to make ends meet or put food on the table.  You may be so strung out by your kids and worried that you’re going to scar them for life.  Maybe a friend or a family member has died, and you’re wrecked with grief.  Maybe you fantasize about having a different life where you travel the world and have no responsibilities … and then feel overcome with guilt and completely deflated when the dream is over and you wonder if you can stomach having such a normal life.

Here’s what I know about hitting bottom, it’s where you are made.

Remember, diamonds are just rocks under pressure.

A story:

A few years ago I had a 2 ½ year old and a 1 year old.  My 2 year old was biting me 20 times a day and waking up 6 times a night. I only saw my husband on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and the rest of the time he was working at the hospital, making less money than our nanny.

In November, my nanny had a string of medical issues that kept her from working for us until January. I’d wake up to blood curdling screams at 5:30 in the morning (Jonathan was already at work), I’d spend the whole day with my kids alone (besides my oldest going to part time nursery school), getting bitten, protecting the little one from being bitten and managing many meltdowns a day. I put them to sleep at 7, and then worked until 10pm trying to make enough money to support our family of 4, save for our move to Massachusetts, pay my 6 employees and our sick nanny. Then Jonathan would get home around 8:30, we’d inevitably get into a huge fight, I’d work some more and then crash, only to be woken up a few hours later by an inconsolable toddler.

The pressure I felt to be everything to everyone was excruciating.

Our nanny came back for 3 weeks in January.  I hustled as much as I could and managed to have a very successful month financially, but I barely saw my kids.  Then in February, we got hit with the flu (even though everyone except me got the flu shot).  First my oldest got it and threw up 5-7 times a day.  He would be up all night, only sleeping for 1 hour stretches. Then after 4 days my daughter got it, then Jonathan, then our nanny … then Marshall got it again.  I got an average of 2 hours of sleep a night for 2 weeks.

The day before my nanny was supposed to come back after we were all sick, she told me she got another job and was leaving.

I went into a full rage attack.  Jonathan had to take the kids out of the house because I’d gone wild.  I wanted out.  It was too much pressure.  Too much responsibility. I felt abandoned and isolated.  I was suffocating.

The next day we got a call that my oldest was being asked to leave his preschool because he was biting too many kids, and then I walked outside to get my kids in the car for an outing, and the doors were flung open, there were cigarette butts all over the dashboard and it was obvious that a homeless person had slept in our car the night before.

I just started laughing. It was just all so hilariously bad.

What’s interesting is that in late November, just a few days after my nanny left for the first time, and things started falling apart, I found my dream home on the internet.  I went to see it in December when I was east for the holidays, and then put it on the back burner because of everything that was going down in my family life, not to mention it’s hard to make money to buy a house when you’re also a full time Mom.

So now I’m standing on the sidewalk, laugh-crying with my two littles begging (ok, screaming bloody murder and kicking over flower pots on the front step) to go to the beach while I was thinking about how I was going to clean the cigarettes and trash out of my car with 2 toddlers alerting the whole neighborhood that I was a terrible mother.

I just gave up. I put my head to sky and said out loud like a crazy person “What the fuck do you want?!”

I heard in that moment, I am all you have.

It felt like it was a message from the Goddess that she was the only thing I had to depend on and I had to fully open the phone lines to her (Goddess is my word for the all consuming source, creator, divinity, all knowing).

So I just said, “What do I do now?”

And in that exact moment, Jonathan walked down the sidewalk.  It was the first time I saw him in the daylight during the week in years.  He had asked for the day off to surprise me after we heard about Marshall’s nursery school.  He took the car to the detailer and then came back and scooped up the kids for the day.

I went inside, sat at my altar and cried for hours. I asked, “What do I do now?”

I heard pull some cards.

I got my tarot deck and instantly started thinking about the house.  I asked my guides if we should buy the house.   I pulled 3 cards and they were all Major Arcana, the most auspicious and positive cards in the Tarot.  It was a very clear message to go for it.

All I could think about was the house, how perfect it was, but also how impossible pulling it off was going to be in our current situation.

We only had half the down payment saved, I had no time to make extra money with no nanny, and I was so down and anxious I could barely get out of bed in the morning.

So I got on my knees, and prayed out loud to the Goddess.

“I want this house, but I can’t make it happen.  If this is what you want for me, if this is what you  want for women … for this to be a place to gather women, to ground the Sacred Feminine, I promise, will show up in my fullest self when I arrive, but right now, I’m so exhausted I can barely function.  I need you to do this for me.”

I knew that the only way this extremely unlikely task of buying a house (which is more like a retreat center) we couldn’t afford was going to happen, was by magic.

So everyday I got up at 5am and prayed and meditated. In the depths of my meditations I was being shown visions of what my work would be going forward and how everything I’ve gone through has trained me for this next chapter.  I worked during nap time and my housekeeper watched my kids here and there while I looked for a short term nanny.

In April I realized that the bill I owed the government for taxes was the exact amount we needed to close the gap on our down payment, so I kept the money and paid interest instead.  Jonathan’s dream job had originally hired someone else who could start immediately, but came back and said they would rather wait 6 months for Jonathan to start, and they offered to pay for our relocation costs.

The air took on a new quality, synchronicities started happening everywhere.  We were sent two amazing nannies who each were with us for a month.  They both helped to heal our family on a deep level.  I learned to lean on my friends more, Jonathan and I were finally feeling like a team after being in weekly therapy for 6 months, and I worked with 3 spiritual teachers to prepare me for my next chapter.

Spring was starting after a hard winter.

“What do I do now?” I asked.

Enjoy the ride, let the magic carry you.

We bought the house. We spent the summer together as a family on our new land.  I hosted a retreat that covered our mortgage for the first year.  I got pregnant with the most joyful, playful soul who turns 2 in a few weeks.  My oldest settled as I did and we healed many wounds.

Looking back, it was that dark 6 months that shaped the rest of my life.  It’s when I discovered my destiny, uncovered my truth, felt my deep connection with source and realized that magic is real.

If you are experiencing your version of this now, which may be much worse or very different than my experience, I need you to know that there is an energy you can lean on which will lead you to making diamonds out of this life.

This energy, I call MAGIC.

I believe that it is the only thing that will get you through AND finding this connection with source may be THE reason this is happening.

Moonday Prompt:

Drop to your knees

And ask

“What do I do now?”

It is the simplest, most profound thing we can do in moments like these.

Love,

Sarah

P.S. If you want more tools for opening up the phone lines to Source and Magic, I highly encourage you to sign up for my Sacred Start Guide, it’s free.  You can download it here.