The Fire Opal Lesson
A winter reflection on love, lineage and lessons gently laid down.
It is the day after Christmas. I name that deliberately — not out of nostalgia, but out of reverence for what this moment carries. Christ consciousness, to me, has never been about doctrine or division, but about remembrance: the quiet knowing of light embodied, lived, and chosen again and again in ordinary moments.
My house is in full Christmas mode. The only strands of lights on the faux tree that seem to be working are the ones I added: purple (my favorite color) and a string of Menorah’s (gotta represent). The air is faintly scented by ginger and citrus—molasses cookies I baked with a whisper of orange zest—a banana bread cooling on the counter, and homemade udon soup simmering softly as if it knows it is only here to comfort, not to perform.
Barely past my own grief from having lost my sweet unicorn dolphin dog, Lucy, a week ago, now two of the three other creatures in this home (my “muggle men” as I affectionately call them) are sick.
Their bodies are doing what bodies do when they finally feel safe enough: releasing. Loudly. Physically. Inelegantly. Somatically. And I am here — tending, offering tea, setting out supplements, listening, observing — without giving up my own health, vitality, or joy. That part feels new. Sacred. Earned.
This is what sovereignty looks like in real life. Not retreat. Not rescue. Presence without compromise.
In spurts between doling out soup and doses of various holistic remedies, I’ve been listening to a YouTube audiobook on Logos — a text that feels like a distilled mirror of the last two and a half years of my life. And today—one line stopped me mid-breath:
“The Universe faithfully writes out the script you narrate in your thoughts. What you speak within shapes what manifests without.”
I’ve shared this with nearly everyone I love.
Including a brilliant woman — a former head researcher at GlaxoSmithKline, who turned to the “dark side” becoming a kick-ass cannabis medicine maven formulator—with an MBA. Today, we were catching up and chatting about all of the people we know and love (including ourselves) who are walking the line of inner reckoning with labels, diagnoses, and stories spoken over the body rather than with it. Words created from external systems long touted as “reality.” Parkinson’s. Alzheimer’s. Cancer. Diabetes. Long-COVID. Words that reference containers and perspectives—and carry a sentence that lands like verdicts—if we let them.
She and I agreed while we reminded ourselves, and each other: do not speak anything into your body that you do not wish to experience.
I shared with her what I’ve been putting into practice in this—my current constellation of relationship with a couple of my loved ones. She asked me simply, “So what was the lesson for you?”
I answered without hesitation.
I no longer need to teach anyone, anything.
She paused. “That’s a big one.”
It is.
It means I can let my brother be my brother.
I can let the man I love be exactly where he is — not where I know he could be.
I can let my children find their own wisdom without commentary, correction, or energetic scaffolding.
Love does not require instruction.
Presence does not require proof.
And growth — true growth — cannot be outsourced.
If a partner wishes to walk beside me into a new timeline, it will be because he remembers who he is on his own. Not because I handed him a syllabus (or even an excellent audiobook). The sad truth is I would deeply love to share this with him but do not, simply to avoid additional eye rolls and entering a mutually acquiesced ache that we simply do not speak the same language on these subjects—at all.
Which means, I do not share a big part of what makes me, me. But there it is—the trick about relationships and acceptance. Because we are all accountable for our own growth. And if not, the Universe — which is exceedingly efficient — will softly, lovingly, remove what no longer resonates.
This realization landed alongside a Christmas gift.
A really sweet puzzle.
Five hundred and thirteen pieces.
A number long associated with change, self-leadership, and creative expansion — and, if you’re inclined toward such things, a gentle confirmation that the path ahead is opening exactly as it should.
Plus, on a more mundane 3D level, as the eldest of five biological siblings, I am the only one who followed in our late Mama’s footsteps and actually enjoys doing puzzles once in a blue moon.
The image on this customized and lovingly offered gift is a photo from our very first date — Mother’s Day, May 14, 2022. He knew I’d love it and not just because this year he actually planned something in advance, but because the picture itself is so special. In it, he looks tender. Almost shy. The way a boy might look at the prettiest girl on the playground, unsure how to speak to her because he senses she exists on a slightly different plane.
That look appeared in many of our earliest photos.
Then, somewhere along the way, it faded — replaced by defensiveness, by scarcity language, by a refusal to feel deeply because feeling would require healing. But I stopped saying anything like that now too, frankly because the response I would often get is not an energy I ever again wish to encounter. And respectfully—I have relinquished to him the responsibility to change his perception or widen his consideration a long time ago.
Even on Christmas Eve eve, when he said to me, with familiar frustrated edge, “You’re always saying ‘things are shifting.’ You’ve been saying that since I met you.”
I didn’t argue.
Because if you’re unwilling to consider there is more to this world than “what is” it’s very hard to notice movement, much less entire paradigm shifts.
And yet — everything has shifted.
Children grew.
Homes changed.
Careers rerouted.
Bodies spoke.
I know with certainty, the woman who arrived in this little house in Greensboro, North Carolina two and a half years ago is not the same woman writing this post-Christmas substack piece. And more profoundly still… the truth I feel he does detect, even if unable yet to speak of it.
This house is done with me.
And Lucy leaving first? Just made it more obvious.
But I still hope—and would love—when it is time (and it’s coming soon, now) I want him to do what he and I had planned—when that shy man met a hopeful girl now forever memorialized in 513 separate pieces resting on the coffee table softly lit by echoes of purple and menorah lights on the tree.
I hope we can move on—together. That, however, is only one potential reality, of many.
Because then there is the ring.
A fire opal set in vintage silver, framed by tiny diamonds that catch the light differently with every movement.
My brother gave it to me.
He said, “It’s really from both of us,” meaning the man I love — because they share a bond forged in work, survival, and mutual recognition.
But the ring is from my brother.
Period.
It honors our shared childhood, the long separation, the lives we lived apart, and the moment we found each other again as whole adults.
It is only semi-sardonically sweet that it fits my wedding finger perfectly.
But I wear it on my right hand because it did not come from my boyfriend—and truthfully—I feel I am not in the place to have one on my left hand, even if it had.
Fire opal is said to hold creativity, truth, and life force.
I love it because it refracts light differently every moment — never static, never repeating, always now.
That is how I experience myself.
Not as promise.
Not as potential.
But as presence.
This is what this Christmas season has taught me. Not “I am the way…” that’s a mistranslation anyway. What he said is “I AM IS the way.”
Isn’t that just as viable and essential? Christ as an inner light. A remembrance.
Like this ring. Glowing. An essence that captures and shines in any environment.
Caretaking without self-erasure.
Love without instruction.
Beauty without symbolism that asks something of the future.
I can bake cookies.
I can serve soup.
I can sit by the other Christmas tree in this family, at my boyfriend’s ex-wife’s house (because yes, I am that cool of a girlfriend and she’s pretty awesome anyway) listening to them layer old stories and offer my perspective lightly, when invited.
And then I can come home, write, listen to frequencies, tend my body, and smile as life unfolds around me.
This is my soft sovereignty era.
Quiet.
Mighty.
Complete.
Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. And this year, I will buy myself a beautiful ring—and maybe even wear it on my left hand. We shall see. For now, I am here. I have love all around me. And most importantly, I have learned to more deeply love the brilliance, passion and fire within myself. And that is worth celebrating.