You might recall that I just spent six weeks at Farm on the Beach 2020. What you might not know is that we had a bat in the house for the better part of a week. 

But it was a farm, and when you’re on a farm, you share your space with all sorts of living things.

When we got back home to Oakland, Londyn started mentioning “my raccoon”, and pulling my hand so I could come meet it. Sure enough, I went out to the back deck and saw a large number of little creepily humanlike paw prints all over the brand new white Pottery Barn slipcovers I’d put on the deck furniture right before we left. 

Then, just yesterday my little black pug Sumiko walked in the house barking like a madwoman at some little rodent-like thing that came right on in the house with her. 

After building a barricade to keep it in the room and calling every exterminator and friend I could think of, I pulled on a unitard and some combat boots, grabbed a broomstick, took a deep breath and thought: “Oh, who am I fooling? I’m not going in there.”

So I ran down all 40 of my stairs, thinking I’d knock on my next door neighbor Perry’s house. But before I even got to the curb, I saw a gleaming UPS truck turn onto my street… and I waved both arms wildly. He stopped, I ran over and asked him to come up to my house and help me evict this little creature. 

The driver, who was not heading to my house, by the way, kindly pulled over, got out, came all the way up my 40 stairs, let me brief him on the whereabouts of this thing and hand him the broom, walked through my room, out the slider, over to the still-open back door, moved the couch and discovered… a baby possum, playing dead. I’m pretty sure it was paralyzed with fear from Sumiko’s barking which, I assure you, is not a fearsome sight. Because: pug.

So he gently swept this thing out and cautioned me not to open those doors again for a while, as the little guy was still hanging around close to the house. I thanked him and he left to go deliver his route.

Somewhat bizarrely, this is the SECOND time I’ve had a possum in the house, two decades, cities and houses apart. 

I’ve just told you about a number of moments that I’ve branded, in my mind: “encounters con animales”. I’m not sure why; Spanglish just seems like the right language for this. 

In interpreting them or taking meaning from them, I tend to follow the advice of the author Laura Day, who suggests that we make everything be good luck. So I like to look up the ancient cultural and spiritual meanings of the various animals who make themselves very, very known to me, and sit for a moment with whether my Inner Intelligence wants to take anything away from the encounter that is particularly relevant to me in that moment. 

I have fun with it, and I don’t take it too seriously. So when a few friends suggested I inquire within as to whether there’s anything in my life or in my constitution that is currently “playing possum” (playing dead), I sat with that and journaled about it. I asked myself as I often do: “What wonderful thing is trying to come to me or through me by virtue of this experience?” And I actually did find some subjects and issues on which I’d like to be more proactive and assertive.

But that’s not actually what I came here to say. 

I came here to share that I was texting with a friend as this whole thing played out in real time, and when the UPS guy came through she texted back “I love you. That’s the most Tara resolution EVER.” 

And I sat with that for a minute. I reveled in it for a minute.

Because she’s right. And because that was not always true about me.

I’ve learned, over the years, that help is always on the way.

I’ve learned that assisting forces surround me.

I want you to learn, starting now, if you don’t already know it, that assisting forces surround you.

They’re all around you, but you can only see them through the lens of your worldview, your paradigm, your beliefs, your expectations.

Many, many people in this world desire to be good to you. Many circumstances in your life are lining up to help you, but if you don’t expect or ask for that help and goodness, you cannot receive it. And you can’t see it.

I used to see the world as a scary and scarce place, where you have to work your heart out to earn or to deserve or to be worthy of a good life. 

I used to second-guess whether I deserved help and I’m still working on knowing the full breadth of help that is available to me.

But the floodgates of universal assistance opened and started raining down on me when a few things happened.

I began to shift from being stingy with myself to being lavish with myself.

I shed the lies of my Inner Critic and started affirming this truth daily: that “I was born to be loved, cherished and adored.”

I started to study what love actually is — openness, warmth, appreciation, attention, affection, allowing — and started overruling the stinginess of my Inner Critic and extending all of these things to myself. 

I came to know the law of this Universe I teach my students, which we call pronoia: that everything in this Universe conspires to bless you. 

And, right at the same time as I began to travel the world extensively, I started declaring that “I am in love with everyone and everyone is in love with me.”

I started to see all the help that has come my way, past and present, and started wiring in my awareness of that, focusing my attention on that, reminding myself constantly that I’m not alone, and that the highest forces in this Universe are constantly trying to assist me. 

And this has been my experience of life, ever since then, everywhere I go in this world. 

People just give me things. They just do lovely things for me and say beautiful things to me. They’re wonderful to me. They show up for me. They show out in ways that benefit me. 

And I do the same. I don’t care if I know them. I delight in having little beautiful moments of sweetness with people I will never see again. 

And Londyn’s even better at all this than I am. She can walk into the post office and you can almost see visible sparks of electricity shoot out from her to connect with the other people in line. 

She knows no strangers, as my friend Rebecca says. 

But this way of being, where you can magnetize the UPS guy up to help you with a thing he has literally zero obligation to do… it does take these mindset shifts. That you are loved. That the world longs to be good to you. That people desire to help you. 

And that you need only walk around, BE your brilliant self, look and ask for what you need. 

That you need never, ever, ever worry about what someone might think or how they might look at you if you do ask for what you need. That if someone says no, that’s perfect: you just got closer to the help you need coming from someone else, from above, or from within. 

You can’t lose, Brilliant One.

I’ve come to think of these shifts as no more than spiritual, developmental milestones that you can learn and practice and reach over time, like learning how to walk or potty training. Might take longer than you want, but who cares? 

The depth psychologists — the ones who study the unconscious —  say that we all fall under the influence of family and cultural programming that doesn’t feel so good. So if that’s you, you’re doing human-ing juuuuuust right.

And the depth psychologists say that if you begin to see that this programming is just programming, and if you begin to break the stranglehold of your inner repressive parent by around middle age, you’re doing it juuuust right.

And the depth psychologists also say that if you spend the next 40 years re-membering your own glories and the glories of this Universe, then you’re really doing life juuuuuust right. 

So today, just wake up to this: That you were born to be loved, cherished and adored.

That there are assisting forces all around you.

That it’s your job to let them line up and light up before you.

And that it’s also your job to expect help to be on the way, and ask for that help and to receive it with grace when it shows up. 

Head up + heart out,

P.S.: I was taught that if you pray for rain, you bring an umbrella. When it comes to receiving help, if you don’t expect it, you will miss a lot of the help that’s all around you trying to get to you, on whatever subjects matter to you.

This is important, because if what you want to create is important or big, you can’t do it all on your own. 

So whatever you’re dreaming of or working on, whatever you desire to call into your life in this season, make sure you envision the help you need to. And ask for it. And expect to receive it. Bring an umbrella.

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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