Honoring Self

Be You

Another baby bluebird is stuck in the window of my outdoor stairwell. I sigh when I see her. I have been through this before. I know how it goes.

This time there is no mama bird outside, chirping and circling. No one calling her home. Just this small bluebird, alone, tucked into a corner that feels safe to her but will not keep her alive.

I get my long pole, the one I keep for exactly this situation, and try to coax her out. She flies back and forth between the two brick walls, but she keeps returning to the window, to the narrow ledge that offers false hope along with a place to perch.

My neighbor steps outside, looks at the scene, and decides he wants no part of it.

“She’ll leave during the night,” he says.

I have my doubts.

The next morning, I go straight outside to check.

She is still there.

By now I know she has gone too long without food or water. I can see it in her. She seems smaller somehow, as though she is losing the strength to keep trying.

I try the pole again.

Nothing works.

So I pray.

Somewhere in my mind, I hear a clock ticking. She needs to be on her way.

I set out a bowl of water, hoping the bright red bowl might catch her eye. It doesn’t. I go back inside and pray some more.

Then I come back out and simply sit on a step to be with her. No pole this time. No plan. Just my presence.

That’s when I think to pull out my phone and find a recording of a bluebird singing.

The change is immediate.

She comes alive.

Chirping. Flapping. Calling back.

Something in her recognizes the sound and answers it. She has been missing her peeps, and for a moment, she believes she has found them.

Her hope becomes contagious. I feel my own hope rising to meet hers.

After a few more gentle nudges with the pole, she lands on the railing, holding one wing tucked at an odd angle. My stomach drops, thinking it might be broken. I encourage her one last time.

She lifts off, and I watch the wing open fully. Not broken. Just tired. She flies down and out of the stairwell.

Relief washes over me.

I walk to my balcony to look for her. She has landed on the side of the building in the full morning sun. She looks exhausted, still holding herself small and tight.

I play the bluebird song again.

She answers immediately, wings fluttering, singing back to what she believes are her peeps.

Then she flies into a small tree just outside my balcony. She perches there for a moment, spreads her wings wide as if testing them one last time, and disappears around the corner.

Gone.

It wasn’t the water or the pole that saved her.

It was the sound of her own kind.

The hope of finding her peeps awakened something inside her that her weary body could no longer find on her own.

I returned to my coffee and the quiet of the morning. I kept turning over how quickly she came alive at the sound of a voice she recognized, even one she only believed was real.

That’s what stayed with me.

How quickly hope returns when we hear the sound of belonging. Someone who reminds us who we are when we’ve forgotten. A voice that says, without saying the words, You are not alone.

I made a difference to one small bluebird that morning.

And she made a difference to me.

She reminded me why I feel called to gather women together.

So many of us are not stuck because we lack intelligence, strength, or desire. We are simply weary. We’ve been trying to find our way alone for too long. We keep returning to places that feel familiar but cannot sustain us. We forget what it feels like to be with people who encourage us, reflect our worth back to us, and remind us that we already carry the wisdom we need.

That is the heart behind the day-long Heart-Filled Living retreat I’m offering on July 11.

Not a room filled with experts telling women what to do or who to become.

A circle of women connecting with self and each to support, remind and empower.

A place to pause, reflect, listen inward, and reconnect with the quiet voice that has been there all along.

Because sometimes all it takes is knowing someone understands you...to remember how to spread your wings again.

With HFL Love,

Beverly