In the midst of disasters surrounding us, including the highest priority fire in the U.S., I find evidence of hope, new life, abundance, and creative life force energy continuing to emerge – and these are the images I want to share today in effort to evoke hope for whom ever may find this post.

Perhaps I see or find these things because I choose to, but once again it speaks to perspective, which can mitigate or completely shift our experience, AND the power of our focus, thoughts, and feelings. I find this to be essential to my well being, especially in more challenging times, and so I make it a priority to redirect things when I immediately detect something feeling off.

Although our air is hazardous here and the smoke continues to create eerie veils across the landscape before me, my garden tells another story of the circle of life continuing and not giving up, despite what hovers in the air. I still find solace in tending it under the red glowing Sun.

The whole side yard is filled with tiny blooming wildflowers and clover, while my lamb’s ear plants and netted berry bushes are happily thriving alongside them.

My 20 plant nannies are doing an amazing job at replenishing and nurturing my potted, container, and Garden Tower plants with the hydration they need during these dry and ashy days, which also decreases my watering time and helped with things while we were away.

I am seeing renewal of plants I thought were gone for the season, new sprouts and buds, abundant herbal harvests for Astrid to enjoy, the most tomatoes I’ve yet had, my very first bell pepper maturing, veggie blossoms, and exciting new babies from some of my experimental plants like cucumber, okra, and pumpkins.

I’m also seeing an abundance of pollinators continuing to enjoy the sweetness I planted for them.

I’ve even been able to enjoy steeping a mug of echinacea, mint, and pineapple sage from the garden to add to my well being and centering rituals since returning home. 

I maintain a healthy level of awareness alongside refocusing, as I know that what we put energy into will grow. That’s why my amount of time spent in the refocusing and peaceful centering is higher because I can immediately feel the difference if I spend too much time in constant monitoring, listening to, or thinking about what’s around me or being put out there in information overload.

I just heard a fantastic spot by bestselling author, research scientist, and host of the #1 Health Podcast in the U.S. (The Model Health Show), Shawn Stevenson, that underscored the theme I’ve just written about – shifting focus being essential to well being.

His piece shared the science behind how chronic fear, internal conflict, excessive stress, and anxiety have a direct effect on our biochemistry, immune system, and overall well being – in other words, they become compromised when constantly in a heightened state. In fact, as he shared, the CDC itself has published a brand new study done on over 540 thousand patients revealing the biggest risk factors for death from the current virus we’re dealing with. The #1 factor is obesity, but the #2 factor (and perhaps most interesting or surprising for some to learn) is anxiety and fear-related disorders. You can research this (and the other factors) for yourself, like I did, as it’s public records. He went on to say that this isn’t being focused on because media uses fear stories to keep us reliant on the news networks, although the knowledge has always existed that our thoughts control our biology.

I’m not one to focus on this subject because I think it’s getting enough focus as it is, but because this factor affects our well being in its entirety and isn’t just isolated to being a factor for just this current challenge we’re facing, I felt it’s worth mentioning here. This isn’t new information, but it brings to light something that is relevant to current events and concerns with tangible evidence, if in fact we didn’t put a lot of emphasis before on it when things didn’t feel as crucial to do that for, or it seemed perhaps more of a theory. Plus, I do know that if this kind of information was brought to the surface more, we’d all feel less vulnerable with a fuller understanding and tools to be empowered and have hope.

The bottom line is, rather than remain powerless and vulnerable to things outside of ourselves, talking about and focusing on ways to empower ourselves from the inside out, and refocus energy, are fundamentally necessary for our well being. Also finding things that bring us joy, ways to express our passions and creative energy, and simple self care rituals and mindfulness, can hugely benefit our lives and health. Focusing on kindness, the hopeful stories, seeing and creating beauty, finding inspirational muses, or sharing inspiration with others, looking to nature for answers and reminders, and living more from our heart centers can refocus and instantly change our biochemistry – therefore also making us more energetically aligned with things we do want to see or manifest.

Our thoughts and feelings are powerful in regulating our immune responses and powerful in creating the changes we want to experience.

I could sense when I first arrived home, the heavy anxiety of the area weighing on me and trying to pull me into that energy stream. Without my own realization of this, nor having ways to refocus energy and shift my perspective, I could easily have been pulled into the swirling disempowerment and compromise my well being or even ability to reason and function when my acute awareness and faculties are even more necessary right now.

My garden, my creative projects, my best friend Astrid, and having future goals I’m working toward – all help me to reframe things and as a result, also help me to be a clearer energy conduit to send support to the situations at hand and to join with others for creating a stronger collective bridge to journey toward empowerment.

They also help me to be stronger and healthier, on all levels, from the inside out.

My heart goes out to everyone – souls in human and animal bodies, and all realms of Nature.

The collective is going through so much these days.

Let us join our hearts in the common denominator of love and help each other to see the way through things by maintaining our own level of peaceful centering and empowered reframing, while finding the hopeful inspirations that are seeded all around us to discover.

And if someone around you is having challenge in seeing or finding that, be an example of the light for them.