I recently found out this is a Fragile Papershell, not a Giant Floater as I’d previously thought.
It’s the second mussel shell of its kind that I’ve found in the area that I frequent on Lake Michigan; the first being back in December.
I’ve scoured and spent exorbitant amounts of time on the beaches of the east side of Lake Michigan over the last 35 years ranging from the Chicago area up through Mackinaw City at the tip top of the lower peninsula of Michigan. I’ve never, to my knowledge anyway, come across shells any bigger than the small invasive Zebra mussels that litter the beaches. This was an exciting day.
I quit my job in January in search of magic. I wanted to find evidence that the reality I have dreamed of since I was a kid was possible. That decision came easily after I found one of these shells the first time in December. Thirty five years into this experiment and I’m still discovering things I couldn’t have dreamed of, imagined, or had for all intents and purposes, forgotten.
Trust what you can’t see. Magic is real.
Stumbling upon this second shell this month opened a door to a version of me I’ve held at a distance. The version of me who was the kid spending hours everyday in the rock quarry behind her house. The kid who went birding with her dad and walked the local college campuses identifying trees. The version of me who made magic potions out of rain puddles, dead leaves, grass, and sticks. The kid whose friend group expanded beyond the human kind, who found community with the trees, plants, and animals all around her. The kid who rode her bike from the time she finished breakfast until the streetlights came on only because her mom said that’s when she had to be done, which for a kid in the summer allows for many hours of daylight to delight in all the dirt and nature she could literally get her hands on.
The kid who dropped out of college because she was convinced she was smarter than all of her professors because they knew about Algebra but she knew about what it was like to watch the satellites skim across the night sky. She knew the feeling of finding a frog in the backyard or what it was to watch a a robin sing from its perch in the tree. I had no use for Algebra. I learned everything I needed to know, everything that mattered to me, outside.
I stuffed her away for a long time. My life became more about reaching milestones and trying on different skins as a wife, home owner, business owner, practitioner, etc, focusing more on creating an identity that made me feels safe and worthy, like I mattered in the world. I chased purpose and money and clients and success because I didn’t know what it would mean about me, who I’d be, if I didn’t.
I’ve abandoned a lot of those identities. The things that made me feel safe as an adult, over time, began to feel limiting. Suffocating. Like I was constantly trying to be something or someone I’m not. In the three months that I’ve not been working I’ve deconstructed a lot of the identity I’ve built around my self. I fully admitted to my self I don’t want to be a practitioner anymore. I’ve had a lot of hard conversations with people I love because I’ve had to learn to relate to them in a new way. Not because I’m a new person, but because I’m more Jenny than I’ve ever been. And I’ll continue to be more Jenny as time goes on, and to be in flow with that evolving relationship with my self feels more safe and deeply satisfying than creating a false identity to fit in to the status quo ever did.
Because of what finding this shell brought up in me, I’ve set up my spring and summer so that I will essentially be outside from sun up to sun down and also be able to pay my bills. I will be working with the earth and learning organic sustainable farming and volunteering for the North Country Trail Association. I’ll be going to the beach multiple times a week. Going on adventures. Writing. And reveling in the feeling that I’m even closer to my dream of living up north.
I’ll also remain optimistically open to ever changing flow of my life and welcome any changes that may come about, because that is the nature of being human; change is the only constant. Especially lately.
There is so much space for me in my own life, which is a new sensation for me. I feel expansive, and equally full of love as I feel loved. It has taken lots of grieving and space and stillness and leaning on loved ones, all things I previously was never good at. But I am feeling more frequently all of the ways I’ve ever wanted to feel; all of the ways I thought money or a career or some sort of “status” would make me feel. Turns out I just need to consult with the child version of Jenny a little more, and just be more like her.
Our teachers come in many forms, often when we least expect it. I’ve had amazing teachers and guides, human and plant and animal and beyond alike. These may just look like shells but they have been integral in reconnecting to some of the truest but most repressed parts of me. I’m so grateful to be reminded that the earth and the natural world are not separate from us at all. That in turning our gaze outward we are reminded that we have everything we need inward. That the desires that live in our hearts are what lighthouses are to a weary sailor. They’re always guiding us home. Always.
Every time I look at this picture, beyond the wrinkles and stories that live in them, all I see is little Jenny. And it’s just funny that to me it seems that all along becoming an adult is really about just becoming more like a kid.
See you out there.