The Process of Magic

I never imagined that magic had a process, it seems like it should just show up and be that miraculous, exciting thing that I need in a moment. In doing the 40 Day cycles for seven years without interruption, I’ve discovered a few things about magic and one of them is that magic has a process in my life and also that I am the magic.

A story from my life will illustrate what I mean by this.

Sometimes I have issues finishing things. I get excited, get it started, and then walk away. That’s what happened with the downloadable booklet for 40 Days of Slowing Down. I actually did most of the work on it in 2023 when working for a company that needed me to learn how to do graphic art and they wanted me to use a free online program. I did the best I could and while I was practicing, I thought—I bet I can use this to make a 40 Days booklet. It was titled 40 Days of Slowing Down well before I realized that {slow} would be my word for the year, the seventeenth year of choosing a word of the year.

I had worked on the booklet a little bit, but mostly forgotten it was actually almost complete. 2023 was hard on me. I was septic three times that year, was hospitalized as many times, had surgery, a six-week PICC line and wound vac, I left that job when we moved from Vermont to New York, started a new life and a new job, nose-dived into a deep, deep depression, started therapy (and equine therapy) for the first time in my life, and tried to claw my way out from the bottom of that mucky barrel. I just didn’t have the bandwidth to publish, I didn’t have the energy to even think about it.

I kinda felt like I was coming back home to myself in October of 2024 and everything looked like it was going to be on the up and up…until the election results came in. My husband works for the National Park Service and that combined with some other things that put my family at risk sent me off the depression cliff. For the first time in my fifty-two years, I couldn’t find a single thread of hope to cling to. For a solid month, I tried and failed. So I asked for meds and my provider agreed that it was imperative.

I’m divulging this because those who know me, know one of my superpowers is to find the beauty and hope in the shittiest of situations, and I just simply couldn’t. I couldn’t and I didn’t know what to do with that. So, I loved myself enough to ask for help after all of the tools in my mental health toolbox failed me.

The meds are working.

I feel like my best and favorite self again, thankfully. (as I breathe a huge sigh of relief.) Something in me wanted to be in community with my 40 Days friends, maybe because I spent most of the year alone, by choice, but I wanted to enter slowly. So I tossed out the idea of a 40 Days of Slowing Down cycle and wanted it to be here on Substack. So I dug out the booklet and realized I had very little to do to make it available. Like less than a couple hours of work—and it was ready!

And that is why I’m able to be here, leading this cycle.

Over the holidays, I was visioning for 2025. I received a new deck of oracle cards written by a friend and mentor and I decided to pull one card for each month of 2025 and write the main message of the card on a piece of paper, with space to fill in how the card gave me a lens for the months. I got to October 2025 and that card was Bear and it told me to rest. November was Butterfly and December? Turtle…Slow Down.

2025 will be a second year of {slow.} It’s in the cards. ;)

All of the magic I’m experiencing in this story IS part of my process. By doing the things I naturally do, the magic shows up…because I am the magic.

And you are the magic.

And this is how we come together to make our lives the magical experiences we want to be in.

Sure, sometimes serendipitous things happen to propel us to new heights. What I’ve found, though, is most often it is the little things, the daily things I choose to do that reach critical mass and hand me the most magical experiences.

I think it is magic that the oracle cards showed me that I need to slow down even more. I think it is magic that I worked on something in 2023 that is going to usher us into 2025. I think it is magic that people want to join me in this 40 Days of Slowing Down. I think I’m magic and I think you’re magic.

And we’re going to make magic together for 40 days <3