For the first time in over a decade, I was not with my family on Thanksgiving day. Instead, I was walking in San Francisco for hours in the crisp fall sunshine, up and over hills with a dear friend I have known forever. Brigette and I acted like tourists, wandering along the Embarcadero, pit-stopping to use the bathroom at fancy hotels, taking selfies at the wharf. She would be embarrassed for me to tell you that we even stopped for lunch at Pier 39, right smack in the middle of the crazy hubbub of tourist attractions. I loved every minute of it – the creamy caesar salad we shared, the buskers painted silver pretending they were statues, the families speaking every possible language around us.

As we walked through North Beach and over Nob hill we found a secret door. It led to an even more secret staircase and we wondered aloud what it would be like to live in the tree house apartments that lined the steep metal stairs just beyond it. We imagined that the door was a portal, like a threshold to a new world. We imagined that there were two-headed dogs that we had to fight our way past + that on the other side of that door life would never be the same.

We eventually made our way to my very first apartment in San Francisco on Taylor Street. The one I found in 1997 – the year I started working with SARK and met Brigette. I told her the story of the channeler in Santa Barbara who taught me my first lesson in manifesting. A magical time in my life. (Audio coming for that story)

Our last stop was Grace Cathedral where there is a gorgeous labyrinth. As I looped round and round the maze, I kept noticing an apartment building across the street. It occurred to me that my godparents lived in that building for 20 years – just a half block from my very first apartment on Taylor Street. Although I would only meet them years after I had moved, it seems we were destined to know each other. They were always close by. They were always in my orbit.

As I walked to their house near Union Square for Thanksgiving dinner, I saw something so clearly – that there is an invisible web of goodness. That there is a way that the Universe is conspiring on our behalf, that there are a million invisible threads that we can’t see but are there just the same. Sometimes, only years later do we see how everything connects, how it was all going to work out, how our lives are somehow always nudging us toward healing + wholeness.

I know this all sounds a little, something. It’s hard to find the right words.

But as I walked, I gathered up a kind of faith. Even though things are falling apart right now, I know that that web of goodness is there. I know in my bones that there is an invisible net weaving its way through my life, sending me just the right people + experiences. Loving me from afar.

There are moments when I feel like I can see it. Or at least feel its there. Maybe especially in the midst of things falling apart do I feel its presence. I feel more gratitude these days than usual. And not because of the holidays, but because I am awake to the love around me.

This is new.
And it’s possible there is nothing better.