Lost and Found
Losing wallets and minds, finding what matters, and conversations with the dead
Note: Happy Mother’s Peace Day for those celebrating! I wrote about that in yesterday’s post about Reclaiming Mother’s Peace Day.
Dear beloved Enchantable readers,
I lived so many lives this past week, it is hard to know which one to write to you about. But I will start by sharing:
I lost my wallet.
I lost my mind. A few times.
My wallet was found, and so were a lot of other things.
I found some clarity about stress - what was causing it, what wasn’t worth it.
I found how supported I am, the infinite web of relations taking care of me. there for me when I am freefalling.
It is funny how something inconvenient can shed so much light, how in losing one thing we can find so much else.
I started losing my mind last Friday, when my phone randomly stopped charging. A minor inconvenience, but it felt like it sent me to the edge - and like something that normally wouldn’t. I realized that I am always holding a lot, and balancing it well, but that I am one minor inconvenience, accident, or emergency from not being OK. It was an alarm, and I heard it, but it didn’t feel like there was much I could do about it, only to have the awareness of how I was feeling.
As a full-time working solo parent, doing a simple extra errand like going to the phone shop can be very trying. I have to figure out how and when I am going to do it - will I be able to squeeze it in during work hours, or will I have to drag an angry small child with me? How far is it? Can I walk or do I need to take a taxi? Just figuring out the logistics is taxing, let alone making it happen.
Monday was very busy, with people throwing extra things on my already full plate at work. I needed to pick up my new glasses after work, and pick up a birthday cake for a colleague, and was trying to leave early enough to go without Daphne, but I couldn’t. I left work in a hurry, with two errands left to run. When I got to the optician’s, I realized I didn’t have my wallet. The last time I remembered using it (key word: remembered - more on that below) was at the campus cafeteria. I hope I left it on my desk, I thought.
(The funny thing here is that I had felt like I had left the wallet in the cafeteria earlier in the day. I hadn’t. But in hindsight, there was an intuitive premonition about this whole situation).
That night, I couldn’t sleep. The next day, I got to work and it wasn’t there.
I was officially over the edge now, way beyond it, spiraling in freefall: searching and worrying and figuring out how I would replace things (it gets a lot more complicated when you have cards from two countries, a diplomatic ID card, etc., figuring it all out in Spanish too, of course.). My dear friend gave me a ride home so I could go to the bank and try to figure things out (the bank was not helpful and wouldn’t let me withdraw money even with my passport; it turned out I would need to see a lawyer to start the process of replacing my diplomatic ID, which I would need to get a new bank card). Then of course there are the US cards and documents which would be infinitely more difficult to replace from afar. And on and on.
At home, as I sat making calls to the bank and a lawyer, I remembered the book I had just finished, Take Back the Magic by Perdita Finn, which talks about asking for support from the dead.
I asked for help, from my mom and my friend Gene.
A few hours later, it was received. Around 3 pm I received a call from the university that someone in Ciudad Colon - bless his soul - had found the wallet and was holding it for me. I found out later my colleagues had been chanting prayers and calling upon saints and angels.
Help is available, and sometimes we just need to ask for it.
I had just finished reading Perdita Finn’s beautiful and transformative book, Take Back the Magic: Conversations With the Unseen World. It has had me thinking a lot about ancestors in a very expansive sense, and our allies and guides from beyond who we can call upon for support.
I have a very specific example of how this happened to me one day a few months ago.
Last August, I was invited to teach a peace education course in Cali, Colombia. An amazing professional opportunity, and I really wanted to say yes. But my immediate thought was: how can I make this happen? I am a solo parent and didn’t even have a babysitter at the time.
The afternoon I received the invitation, I was thinking about this, and I thought about how if my mom were still alive, she would hop on a plane and come stay with Daphne (age 5) so I could go. Out loud, I said to my mom, “Hey mom! I know you would help if you could. If there is anything you can do from the other side, I would really appreciate it!” And I asked for her help to find caregivers for Daphne so I could make this trip happen.
As I walked to school to pick Daphne up, I racked my brain for options. A friend had told me about a nanny service that I had never used before and was probably expensive. I had a little under two months until the trip, so I knew that whoever I found, I would need to get them woven into the household soon and get Daphne comfortable with them so that she wasn’t scared the whole time I was gone.
When I got to school, the head teacher answered the door. It was a Friday afternoon, and she usually wasn’t there on Friday afternoons, but she happened to be that day. I had the urgent thought to ask her. “I received this teaching opportunity, and I am wondering if you know anyone who does nannying work who might be able to stay with Daphne.”
She said sure, she knew some nannies, and it was kind of expensive, and after she went through some options and possibilities, she said, “Well, we could just watch her here!”
Not sure I understood correctly, and a little baffled with disbelief, I repeated, “You could watch her?!”
“Sure!” She replied. “We already watch her nine hours a day at school. She could just sleep with us. We could have sleepovers at the school and make it special and fun. It is only for a few nights.”
My heart lept with joy and relief. I could say yes to this opportunity, and not worry about Daphne while I was gone. She would be well taken care of, and I could go do my thing.
Thanks, Mom! I said on the way home.
It really felt like she came through. Through this experience, I realized she liked being spoken to out loud, which, for those who know my mom wouldn’t be surprising. She loved to talk and it is not surprising that she likes being spoken out loud to.
So when the wallet went missing, this felt like a great time to ask for some help again. I really, really, really needed some help.
I called specifically on Mom and my friend Gene (figuring she could use a little help, too). They came through, in a big way, and even a timely way, within hours of being called upon - though my guess is they were already on it.
So many things were revealed in the process of the wallet being lost. So many things were found.
I found, very quickly, what was important and what was trivial in my life. It clarified that there was a personal situation (that I can’t go into) that was causing me a lot of stress, and needed to be dealt with swiftly, seriously, and directly. The wallet was minor, but in the process of being thrown off the edge, I realized why I was on edge to begin with. The wallet situation just clarified that, brought it all into focus, and forced me to confront it.
It also clarified a work situation that was causing me stress that was actually very trivial and gave me a chance to stand up for myself and assert some boundaries in a situation where I don’t usually feel like I have a lot of power.
I found how supported I am, in this realm and in realms beyond what I can know, comprehend, and fathom. I had multiple people willing to loan me money. Colleagues at UPEACE were all looking to see if it was on campus somewhere. Rides and emails and phone calls and connections. The support was vast and I felt it very tangibly.
I found how helpless it can feel when I lose something, but how much help is around me when I do.
I was reminded of core life lessons for always: Trust. Surrender. What is yours cannot be lost and will find its way back to you. Trust. Surrender.
“Lo que los manos no toman, la tierra lo devuelve,” my friend Laura told me, quoting her mother. She was one of the colleagues who had been praying to various saints on my behalf, and also alerted the campus community. That which hands do not take, the earth returns.
Help isn’t always available, though, and I don’t want to make it seem like we can just pray our way through these utterly dysfunctional systems. One thing I found this experience highlighted for me was how, if someone with as much education and support and privilege as I have can have so much trouble navigating these bureaucracies, how can someone without that support and privilege navigate them? To get my ID card replaced, I was going to need to see a lawyer - which costs money, which I couldn’t access without my ID card. What if I didn’t have people to loan me money? I literally wouldn’t be able to do it. And you can see so quickly how a minor inconvenience of losing a wallet could send someone into an irretrievably bad place, can send someone off the edge with no way to return.
When you receive a blessing, you pay it back as much as you can.
That night, when I got home with my wallet in hand, I made a donation to one of the fundraisers in Gaza I have been donating to for a colleague from Ecoversities Alliance. We ordered dinner delivery to celebrate, and I left an extra bountiful tip for the driver. I made some offerings in the forest. I am trying to pay it back a thousandfold, knowing that these are reciprocal relationships wanting abundance to flow through. I will try to do things to honor my mom and Gene and show my appreciation to them, and all the saints and angels my friends prayed to.
What had happened to the wallet, you might be wondering? I had packed up my bag in a rush at work. I remember putting my wallet on top of my sweaty clothes - or at least I thought I had, with the intention of not having to rummage through my bag while running errands. I took the bus and picked Daphne up at school, walking 150 meters from the bus stop to the kinder. We got a ride with friends to the plaza where the optician’s is located. The part I forgot, in my hurry and rush and with buying my colleague’s birthday cake on my mind: Daphne and I walked past a toy vending machine, the kind you put 50 cents (in this case, 200 colones) in and receive a plastic egg with the mystery toy. I had quickly whipped out my wallet and given her two coins. I had done this quickly without thinking about it. When I put it back, it fell out. It was found outside the dry cleaner’s, by the shop owner, not 20 meters from where I first noticed it missing in the optician’s. The owner said it had been sitting there for a while but he was busy and didn’t realize it was a wallet. When he got opened it, he remembered seeing me and my daughter outside at the machine. He saw my ID card and called the university, and that is how he found me, and how my wallet was returned the next day.
I found glimmers of humanity, of kindness, of generosity, a reminder that there are virtuous, honorable people in the world who are willing to go out of their way to do the right thing.
Maybe we are always in various states of being lost and found, losing ourselves and finding ourselves again and again.
Breathing in, I am lost.
Breathing out, I am found.
Breathing in, my mind wanders, my mind is lost.
Breathing out, I come back, I am found.
Breathing in, aware of the visible and invisible webs of support surrounding me and holding me,
Breathing out, knowing they are there.
Knowing you are there.
With love and care,
Stephanie