When we walk hand-in-hand by the beach path, she stops when we get to the five trees at the end and whispers, “listen.” You see, she notices things most others do not, and she’s here in part to teach and show the world what they are missing. At dusk, all the songbirds come back to roost and provide nature’s soundtrack for each evening’s sunset. I resist at first, because I like to keep the momentum of movement; but she insists. I pause, breathe, and listen; and I’m always glad I did. The cacophony of joy the birds communicate to one another sounds like heartfelt greetings at a family reunion. It’s the music of being welcomed, wanted, included, and celebrated; and she has a sensitivity to what she sees in nature that has not always been reflected in her own life.
As we stroll back, she stops to take pictures of beautiful flowers, cloud filled skies above, and kneels down to the ground to capture fresh emerald, green moss from cracks in the sidewalk, which inspires the hope of resilience and the belief that anything is possible. She appreciates nature in a way most others are too busy to notice.
A surprise breeze makes the wind chimes sing. She turns to me with the brightest smiling eyes I’ve ever seen, and my heart grows 10 times bigger. She maintains this same wondrous joy when we waltz through museums taking in art; the whole world is a place of awe to her. She delights in life like no one I’ve ever known, and it moves me to delight in life in the same ways.
While Valentine’s Day tends to only focus on romantic love, there are many types of love to celebrate: platonic, parental, and puppy love (and by that, I mean the love of actual puppies and the dogs they grow into, who teach us how to love unconditionally). The only love that’s real is unconditional love, which is most often found between parents and children. My daughter’s love is so pure and a mirror for the way I too express love that it has healed me and increased my agape love, my love for humanity.
Love is the only thing that’s guaranteed to multiply the more you give it away!
The End of Childhood
A few days ago, while I was walking the beach path alone, my daughter phoned me. We spoke for an hour and a half, but it only felt like a few minutes because her awareness was so present. It was a philosophical conversation based on self-realization. She said, “I’ve been so caught up in getting through high school and taking college courses while trying to survive the threat of Covid, that I didn’t realize just how much I was growing up and changing from ages 14-18. There’s a lot of cultural pressure attached to adulthood and turning 18. It’s similar to the way I felt before I turned 13, scared of growing and changing and maybe becoming that rebellious teen on TV I never wanted to be. This time though, I’m not afraid of becoming someone I’m not. I’m just nervous of the change of becoming an adult and what others will expect of me. I don’t want to be someone different; I like who I am and the life I live. It hit me today that this is my last year of technically being a child, and I want to savor every moment before being rushed into adulthood.”
To Borrow from Britney, She Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman
Floating through life as thrill bubbles of bliss, she talks at length with excited anticipation about her dreams, speaks passionately about her moral beliefs, shares beautiful passages from George Elliot novels, and adventurous tales of Grace O’Malley (the first known female pirate). She whistles around the house as she washes dishes and sings Sea Shanties in the shower with happy abandon. She dances in the rain and works quietly for hours alone in a miniature world of stop motion filmmaking. At the close of the day, she joyfully shares her drawings or poems, or performs power ballads at the end of my bed with such sincerity that my eyes fill with tears that I am blessed to know and love this child of mine.
When we were on the phone, I told her she had excellent insights and that I supported her journey. As is our practice, we choose to move through life with as much presence as possible. Fears from the past and worries about the future can pull us out of alignment, which is why our focus on presence is called a practice, not perfection. My husband likes to recall a memory of our daughter during the first 15 months of her life. We were both gazing at her, thinking about the words of other parents who upon seeing a baby can’t help but share, “It goes by so fast,” when our one-year-old daughter suddenly said, “Enjoy the baby.” We both looked at each other as if to say, “Did you just hear what I heard?” It was one of many signs that our sweet child is a wise old soul.
The Beginning of Adulthood
At age 13, our daughter wrote a script entitled, “A Home for Christmas,” a Christmas special about helping the homeless. She began teaching herself stop motion filmmaking and doing fundraiser campaigns for a Los Angeles based resource center for those who are houseless. At age 15, she graduated from high school Summa Cum Laude, as a dual-enrollment student with 11 college courses under her belt. With an interest in both the arts and business finance, she took a gap year and was headed into a California university finance program when it was canceled 10 days before its start date. At age 17, she launched The Unity Project, with SoulJourners, a creative collaboration, featuring music, the written word, performance art, and stop motion filmmaking to inspire unity through art and education— with a special emphasis on community engagement to end homelessness.
Merging activism with her passion for the arts and her desire to explore Europe, she applied to various artist-in-residence programs, and was accepted into five, including her dream residency, Château d'Orquevaux in France, “considered one of the top 10 most beautiful artist residences in the word and subsequently, a highly sought after experience.” Her combined residencies will take her to Italy, France, Ireland, Sweden, and Finland, over the course of three months. Finland has found sustainable solutions to homelessness, so she intends to learn from their “housing first” model and gather information on how other European cultures provide for members of their communities who are without homes and incorporate this information into The Unity Project.
She has teamed up with BetterWorld to raise money for travel expenses, shipping equipment, and the cost of each residency. If you’d like to support this remarkable and talented young woman on her quest to use art to create unity, please check out The Unity Project.
Sage Justice is an author, activist, and performing artist. If you found value from this essay, please subscribe to SageJustice.Substack.com for just $5 a month, or a yearly subscription is $45, where you can check out, “Weighty Issues: Making Peace with Our Changing Bodies” (January 2024) and “Lightworkers: Who Are They? Why Should We Care? Could You Be a Lightworker? (November 2023) or if you’re interested in creating a life you don’t need a vacation from and the topic of loving with a boundless heart while maintaining boundaries so as to not be a doormat, please consider purchasing a copy of Sage Words FREEDOM Book One as a holiday gift.
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#BetterWorld #ArtistInResidency #Châteaud’Orquevaux #France #Italy #France #Ireland #Finland #Sweden #SoulJourners #SageJustice #GracieJustice #GeoffGrace #SageWordsFreedomBookOne #TheUnity #love #UnconditionalLove #EndHomelessness