Contentment

A few weeks ago, I touched on the question "is this it?" and your responses told me it resonated deeply. That piece kept working on me, asking for more. So tonight, with fall arriving—this season of letting go and turning inward—I'm going deeper.

This is about contentment. The real kind. The kind that holds both joy and sorrow. The kind that finds magic in Monday mornings and meaning in mundane moments.

If you've been asking yourself "is this it?"—wondering if this is all there is—I want to offer you something. Not answers, but a soft place to land.

Here are ten principles of contentment I've learned through loss, love, and learning to notice what's already here.

This Is It

Have you ever thought in life... is this it? Felt disappointment at a finish line or goal you'd worked so hard to reach?

What did you notice this morning? Were there other beautiful souls around you, or were you too rushed getting here? When was the last time you truly tasted your coffee instead of just drinking it? When was the last time you really noticed a waiter or barista - really see them? Did anyone hold a door open for you? Did you hold the door open for someone else?

Maybe you're sitting here thinking about your endless to-do list, the bills waiting at home, the relationships that need tending. Perhaps you've been moving so fast through your days that you can't remember what you had for lunch yesterday. Or you're wondering when life became so much about managing and so little about living.

That ache of reaching a milestone and thinking "now what?" - wondering if you've missed something important while you were busy being busy.

And if you're asking "is this it?" - decades into your life, wondering if this is all there is - I want to tell you something.

Absolutely, this is it.

This is crescent moons peeking through the dark sky. This is the giggles of the two-year-old next door. This is our dog who greets us every morning - every time we return - with a wagging tail, eager to hear about our day. This is opening the door for a stranger whose hands are full. This is the chance to sleep under a blanket of stars.

This is watching kind people do kind things. This is understanding the exhaustion of another human and having empathy and offering help. This is knowing that there is great sorrow and great joy, sometimes within a span of 24 hours.

This is loving people who leave and not loving people quite as much who stay. This is remembering that we have more than we realize. This is, for many of us, the ability to move, to wiggle our toes and fingers.

This is seeing a stranger's wedding in the distance and wanting to give them advice for a moment, yet knowing it's their story to live. This is having enough life experience and situational wisdom that you don't make others wrong and you begin to realize your own shit.

This is second chances at love, third chances at love, and maybe even fourth chances at love. This is the awkwardness and small heartbreak of emptiness, and this is the privilege of learning what you want to bring into your life.

This is holding hands in simple moments. This is really noticing how the colors change in a loved one's eyes.

Yes, this is it. Living on a giant rock floating through space. This is sunrises and sunsets and that magical time in between - dawn and dusk. This is the wonder of growth and the seeming finality of death. This is tears and laughter, and everything in between.

So today, I want to offer you ten principles of contentment. Not as rules to follow, but as a soft place to land when life feels overwhelming, when you're asking "is this it?" and need to remember that yes - this is it, and it's actually more than enough.

Principle 1: Present Moment Awareness

Allowing what is right now

There's something radical about simply noticing. Noticing how the sunlight streams through your window at 2 PM. How your breath feels in this moment - shallow with anxiety or deep with relief. The weight of your body in the chair you're sitting in right now.

I learned this principle the hard way. When my stepmom was diagnosed with secondary cancer at 54, I spent so much time in the future - or wishing it was different. Almost telling myself like my father did, that she would make it when all the information told us otherwise. It wasn't until she passed that I realized how many present moments I'd missed while my mind was elsewhere.

Now I practice what I call "radical nowness" - even in grief, even in chaos, asking myself: what is actually happening right now? Usually, right now, I'm breathing. Right now, I'm safe. Right now, there's something to notice.

Principle 2: Loving Detachment

Letting people be as they are

This doesn't mean becoming a doormat or people-pleasing until you disappear or feel the weight of an elephant on your chest from not being true to you. It means releasing the exhausting job of trying to manage other people's emotions, choices, or growth. And really - it is NONE of our business.

I struggled with this deeply when people around me weren't meeting me where I was emotionally. After losing my dad - my best friend and confidant - to suicide just 11 months after my stepmom's passing, I was raw and needed people to show up in very specific ways. Ways I didn't understand but I was grasping. When they couldn't or didn't - and maybe I wasn't even clear about what I needed - I would get distant or make them wrong. I forgot they weren't mind readers. I forgot they had their own experiences, their own capacity, their own way of processing loss. My grief was very loud. But I needed to remember - so is friendship and connection.

Learning to let people be as they are while still honoring my own needs became an art form. It meant setting boundaries without building walls. It meant accepting that love comes in different languages, and not everyone speaks mine fluently.

Principle 3: Story Integration

Learning from our past without getting stuck there

Our stories shape us, but they don't have to define us. There's wisdom in our pain, lessons in our losses, but there's also a trap in making our past the only lens through which we see our future.

After losing both parents in less than a year, I could have easily made that story my identity. The woman who lost so much. Even thinking a life unfair. The daughter who couldn't save them. Instead, I chose to let it be part of my story - not the whole story. Their deaths taught me about the fragility of life, it also taught me compassion for others, and became a thread of understanding to others who have deep grief. I also became about saying important things while we can, about the way love transcends physical presence. But I couldn't live there forever.

Your past is information, not an indictment. Use it wisely, then keep walking albeit a bit softer in this world.

Principle 4: Forward Vision

Having meaningful goals without attachment to outcomes

Hope is a discipline. It's choosing to plant seeds even when you can't guarantee the harvest. It's having things to look forward to while holding them lightly.

In the depths of grief, I learned to notice things again. Small things at first - looking forward to morning coffee, to a friend's visit, to the way evening light hits the trees. Then bigger things - travel, new relationships, creative projects. But attachment to specific outcomes was not realistic, so I learned to hold my hopes like water - present and life-giving, but not grasped so tightly that they slip through my fingers.

Goals give us direction. Attachment to outcomes gives us suffering. The difference is everything.

Principle 5: Embracing Impermanence

Finding peace in constant change

Everything changes. The people we love leave - sometimes by choice, sometimes by death, sometimes by the natural evolution of relationships. The children we raise become adults with their own lives. Our bodies age. Our circumstances shift.

This used to terrify me. Now it comforts me. When my dad took his own life, I learned that even the deepest pain is impermanent. The emptiness that seemed endless began to make space for new kinds of joy. I was divorced just three years later. Two deaths, one divorce and two young boys to raise. The acute grief that felt like it would kill me softened into something I could carry. The emptiness that seemed endless began to make space for new kinds of joy.

Impermanence means that this difficult season won't last forever. It also means that this beautiful moment won't last forever. Both truths ask us to pay attention.

Principle 6: Cultivating Gratitude for the Ordinary

Seeing magic in mundane moments

Motherhood taught me this in the most unexpected way. I thought I would be a natural-born mother, an earth mama who took to parenting like a duck to water. Instead, I found it to be the best job I'd ever had and yet so awkward, like whiplash - everything changing just as I figured it out.

But in those ordinary moments - I learned to find the extraordinary hiding in plain sight. Looking back at those years in grief, I wasn't very present. But I was aware of it even then. I was aware I was missing things. In time though, it was small whispers of gratitude. Gratitude at a soccer game that grandparents were there. Not my boys' grandparents, but others. I would think to myself - hold on a little tighter in that next hug. I wasn't envious. I was grateful they were there and I had an acute sense my dad and stepmom were not. Other things I noticed - when others had wonder. My own children, as they had moments of "I did it momma," or riding a bike and telling me it felt like they were in charge of the wind. Or so much witnessing strangers' kind interactions in just about any place.

Grief taught me this too. When you lose big, if you are willing you start noticing everything else. Waking up with hearts that beat and lungs that breathe. The fact that we woke up at all. The privilege of wiggling our toes and fingers.

The magic was always there. Loss cleared away the clutter so I could see it.

Principle 7: Holding Both Joy and Sorrow

Making space for the full spectrum

One of the most surprising discoveries in grief was that joy didn't disappear - it just learned to coexist with sorrow. There were days when I would cry about my dad's death and then giggle with a friend about something silly. I felt guilty about this at first, like I was betraying my grief or being disrespectful to his memory.

But I learned that the heart is vast enough for contradictions. Great sorrow and great joy, sometimes within a span of 24 hours. Being a little heartbroken that our children grew up so fast and proud of who they became. Missing someone desperately and feeling grateful for the time we had.

Contentment isn't the absence of difficult emotions - it's the presence of spaciousness for all emotions.

Principle 8: Offering Compassion Over Judgment

Choosing empathy when witnessing struggle

When our new puppy woke me up too early (over and over) and I'm stumbling around in the dark, I have a choice. I can be irritated by the interruption, or I can step outside and discover a blanket of stars waiting for me.

When I see another parent losing their patience in the grocery store, I can judge their parenting or remember my own moments of overwhelm.

When someone can't show up for me the way I need them to, I can make them wrong or remember that everyone is carrying something I know nothing about. Or even consider I was not clear on what I needed.

Understanding the less than behaviour of another human and having empathy rather than judgment - this is how we create more softness in a world that can feel so sharp.

Principle 9: Finding Connection in Small Acts

Discovering intimacy in simple gestures

Some of my most profound experiences of connection have happened in the smallest moments. Opening the door for a stranger whose hands are full. Really noticing how the colors change in a loved one's eyes. Holding hands in simple moments.

After losing my dad, I was afraid I might not feel deeply connected to anyone again. But connection found me in unexpected places - in the kindness of strangers, in the way our dog seemed to sense my sadness, in the friend who texted just to say she was thinking of me.

We're wired for connection, and it's available in infinite small ways if we're paying attention.

Principle 10: Accepting Our Own Humanity

Embracing our imperfections

With enough years behind me, I don't make others wrong as quickly and have begun to recognize my own stories, patterns, self blame or other blame. It's understanding that I am not the exception to the human condition - but we are all beautifully, messily, perfectly part of it.

I used to think that growth meant becoming someone without problems. Now I know it means becoming someone who's comfortable with their problems, who can hold their contradictions with kindness.

I'm a person who lost both parents within a year and found joy anyway. Shortly after, I divorced a good guy but not my guy after 17 years of marriage. I'm a mother who thought parenting would be natural and discovered it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. And the best thing. I'm someone who believes in love and has been disappointed by it. I'm someone who finds stars in early morning darkness and meaning in ordinary moments.

All of it is true. All of it is allowed.

This Is It - The Return

So when life feels overwhelming, when you're drowning in the adulting and the appointments and the endless to-do lists, when you're wondering if decades into your life, this is all there is - remember:

This is crescent moons and morning greetings from dogs who love you. This is the privilege of reading these words, of moving through the world, of loving people even when they leave.

This is second chances and third chances and the awkward beauty of learning what you want to bring into your life.

This is living on a giant rock floating through space, witnessing sunrises and sunsets and that magical time in between.

Yes, this is it. And it's everything.

May you find in these principles not another list of things to perfect, but a soft place to land when the world feels too much. May you discover that contentment isn't the absence of struggle, but the presence of grace in the midst of it all.