I want to tell you about two things that happened to me recently. By any objective measure, neither of them is remarkable. One involved a car. The other involved chewing gum.
And yet.
Here I am, writing about them, because sometimes the smallest things carry the largest messages, if you're paying attention.
The Earthquake Moment at the Car Park
I was standing at my car when the ground shifted. Not literally, but that particular internal shift that feels physical. Like the floor of your understanding drops an inch, and your whole nervous system has to recalibrate.
I'd had this experience before, years ago, in a completely different context, different city, different life, different version of me. And standing there, I felt the two moments sit alongside each other. A parallel. A rhyme.
Not déjà vu. Something more like... a reminder. The universe, tapping me on the shoulder.
You've been here before. You survived it before. Look how far you've come.
The Chewing Gum That Didn't Stick
A few days later, I stood in chewing gum, feeling as if I had been held back, stuck somehow, like the metaphorical gum. To my surprise, this time it didn't stick. I was no longer stuck, I was ready to let go. Cleanly.
Which, if you've ever spent thirty seconds trying to pull away from gum underfoot, you'll know, it isn't nothing.
And I laughed. Because in that moment, it felt like a sign. Like the universe confirming what I'd been slowly, carefully deciding to believe: that I was releasing something. Those things were beginning to move.
Was it actually a sign? Who knows. It was gum.
But here's the thing — it doesn't matter.
The Only Reality That Counts Is Yours
We talk a lot about 'objective reality' as if we all have equal access to it. But we don't. We each live in the reality filtered through our history, our nervous system, our particular cocktail of hope and heartbreak.
Which means the meaning you assign to something, to a song that comes on at exactly the right moment, to a conversation with a stranger, to a bird that lands on your windowsill, to a piece of gum that lets go cleanly, is yours. And it's real. And no one gets to tell you it isn't.
The framing that helps you move forward is the framing that serves you. Full stop.
You only live in your reality, not theirs. So live it, frame it, and be it in the way that helps you move forward.
Listening for the Messages
I think the universe communicates in whatever language you're open to. For some people, it's numbers, the repeated ones that feel like winks. For others, it's animals, or weather, or the way a conversation lands.
For me, lately, it's been moments of recognition. That feeling of: oh. Oh, I see what's happening here.
I don't think you have to believe in anything specific to experience this. You don't need a spiritual framework. You just need to be paying enough attention to notice when something resonates, and curious enough to ask why.
Stop Asking for Permission
This is the part I want to say clearly: the messages you're receiving, the ones that are encouraging you to change direction, to step into something new, to stop shrinking, they are real. They are for you. And you do not need to justify them to anyone.
You don't need the people who have benefited from your smallness to sign off on your expansion. You don't need the people who aren't in your corner to suddenly become there. You don't need to wait until everyone understands.
Stop asking for permission from people who don't have your best interests at heart.
Be who you were meant to be. Make your own dreams come true. Rise above the unsaid things that would have once held you back.
The gum let go. Let go with it.
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