“Beauty in the Chaos” — a reflection of the creative order hidden within life’s upheavals.
When life brings you to a full stop — and the nervous system, music, and wonder lead you home again
The Leak That Started it all….
The first sign came quietly—a puddle beneath the refrigerator, the faint scent of moisture, the slow lift of a warped floorboard.
A leak, I thought. Nothing more.
But soon, the rhythm of our home began to unravel. I found myself on the phone for hours—calling flooring companies, restoration specialists, and insurance agents—trying to get a straight answer, a clear estimate, or even a returned call. Every conversation seemed to end with another layer of uncertainty.
Then came the people—contractors, inspectors, adjusters—trapesing in and out of the house. The whole experience was unsettling: people talking numbers while I silently calculated the cost to our peace.
Our cozy nest—where Chris and I love nothing more than playing Bananagrams at night, each with a wiener dog curled in our laps—was suddenly filled with strangers and decisions.
It felt like the ground beneath me, both literal and emotional, had given way.
The Domino Effect
My optimistic self—always looking for silver linings—had an idea:
If the kitchen floor is being redone, maybe this is the time to replace the old carpet in the studio too.
That small decision had a domino effect.
Before long, our music studio—where Chris and I had just completed our Mining Inner Wisdom project—was emptied out.
Instruments, sound gear, and cables were moved into the garage for safekeeping. The overflow spilled into my home office, making it nearly impossible to reach my art materials and doodling space that usually help me decompress.
The guest bedroom became a holding zone for displaced CDs and albums.
Every room in the house seemed to be saying, make room for me too.
What began as a simple repair turned into a full-home reshuffling.
I kept telling myself it was progress, but inside I felt scattered—like my body was echoing the chaos around me.
The Text That Stopped My Heart
Then came the message.
My dearest friend from college had been in a terrible biking accident in Washington, D.C.
For hours, I didn’t know if she would live.
My heart pounded so loudly it echoed in my ears.
The air felt thin.
I sat frozen, phone in hand, as memories of our nearly five-decade friendship flashed—her laughter, her calm, gentle spirit, her fierce loyalty, the countless ways she’d believed in me, and I in her.
My nervous system swung between numbness and high alert—one moment hollow and still, the next jittery, like I’d downed ten cups of coffee. I couldn’t find the middle ground.
Days later, unsure what else to do, I sent her a picture of sunflowers from our garden and a simple message—just a few words of love, not expecting a reply.
When her name lit up my phone almost instantly, it felt like witnessing Lazarus rise.
She was alive, facing multiple surgeries and months of recovery, yet still herself—bright, witty, full of heart.
I stared at her words through tears. Gratitude and grief braided together in my chest.
The Night of the Thaw
Then, a few weeks later, under the full moon, lightning flashing across a wide New Mexico sky, something began to shift.
Paul McCartney took the stage, his guitar gleaming beneath the desert stars.
At 83, he sang with the same openhearted sincerity that once steadied a generation through its own upheaval.
When he began Blackbird, he told us he’d written it for the civil rights movement.
His voice carried through the warm night air like a benediction.
Hearing those familiar chords, something in me loosened.
The memory of those Beatles voices—songs that once gave comfort during times of collective unrest—washed through me.
Towards the end of the concert, when he began Let It Be, scores of us—already outside the amphitheater to beat the crowd—stopped mid-step.
A Native American teenage boy clung to the fence, then began to swing on it, opening his body toward the crowd. His eyes sparkled, his heart wide with joy as he lifted his arm to the sky and belted out the lyrics with everything in him.
A song written almost fifty years before his birth rose through his voice—raw, radiant, and alive.
My tears came in waves—grief, awe, relief. I couldn’t speak.
In that instant, it felt as if the whole night—past and present, sorrow and hope—had risen in one great wave of grace
My heart cracked open. The thaw had begun.
The Salt Cave Exhale
A week or so after the concert, I went to the salt cave in Santa Fe.
(There’s history there: in the 1840s, a Polish doctor named Feliks Boczkowski noticed that miners in the Wieliczka Salt Mine had unusually healthy lungs—an observation that led to the healing art of halotherapy.)
I went hoping to soothe a lingering virus. Instead, what softened was something deeper.
Inside that glowing pink chamber, surrounded by salt and silence, I felt my body exhale for the first time in months.
The hum of vigilance quieted. My breath deepened.
The pendulum of my nervous system found stillness.
The Agony and the Ecstasy
When life shocks us—whether through loss, illness, or something as mundane as a refrigerator leak—it rearranges everything.
The body tightens. The mind races. The heart forgets how to rest.
But the same body that braces also knows how to return to balance—through breath, beauty, music, stillness.
The studio floor gleams now, an unexpected gift from all that disruption.
What began as a kitchen repair turned into a full-home renewal—and, somehow, an inner one too.
I see now that every decision, every phone call, every stranger stepping through our doorway mirrored a deeper process of reordering within me.
These months have held both agony and ecstasy—the exhaustion of constant change, the ache of trauma and sorrow, and the surprising grace that keeps rising through it all.
Our daughter got engaged to the young man of her dreams (and ours for her), bringing waves of joy that remind me how beauty insists on finding its way in, even through the cracks.
He’s such a gem—he wanted to include us in the surprise and proposed to her right in our own backyard.
It was one of those moments that restores your faith in love itself.
And though the kitchen still isn’t repaired, at least the insurance company is finally working with us.
There’s movement, at last—slow, imperfect, but real.
Just like me.
And my dear friend, now home from the hospital, her body mending little by little,
her spirit coming back to life.
Just like me.
What I’ve Learned
As I sit here writing, I can feel another kind of healing taking place.
Putting words to all of this—the chaos, the fear, the thaw—has helped me forgive myself for how overwhelmed I’ve felt.
It’s softened the edges of frustration and reminded me that exhaustion isn’t weakness—it’s the body’s plea for gentleness.
Maybe that’s what these times keep teaching me: that healing doesn’t come from perfection, but from humility.
From allowing ourselves to be human, and beginning again with kindness.
So if your own nervous system has been stretched thin—if your body hums with tension or your heart feels tired—please receive this as a small offering from my heart to yours. A reminder that rest, breath, and beauty are not indulgences.
They’re how we come home again.
And if it appeals, pull out some Beatles music—let Blackbird or Let It Be wash over you—and remind yourself:
we made it through then, and we will again.
A Gentle Nervous System Reset
- Pause. Feel your feet on the ground.
- Breathe. In slowly, out longer. Let the exhale carry a little weight away.
- Notice. What happens when you stop trying to fix it all?
- Invite. A small dose of beauty—a song, a painting, a walk in late light.
- Remember. Your body knows the way home. It only asks for your kindness.
Maybe I’ll see you at the salt cave!
With love,
Carrie
