This morning I woke up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at my aunt’s house. In no real hurry to get back to Arkansas, I spent a couple hours reading a book I bought this last Saturday, which, by the way, was the four-year anniversary of the first day I saw my therapist. Talk about a wild ride.

The book I read, The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo, is about an orphan boy who is searching for his long-lost sister, whom a fortune teller predicts he will find by following an elephant. Said elephant literally magically appears in the boy’s town when a stage magician tries to produce a bouquet of flowers and produces the elephant instead. (Everyone, including the magician, was amazed–except for the lady whom the elephant landed one when he apparated. To put it mildly, she had a very bad day.) I believe the book was intended for children or young adults, but I personally found it delightful.

Toward the end of the story (spoiler alert), there is talk about making the elephant disappear, sending it back to wherever it came from (probably Albuquerque), which the magician says he cannot do. However, the narrator of the story says, “If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done. There must be magic that could send the elephant home.”

This is something I’ve been chewing on today, something that speaks to my soul. So many things in my life historically and recently have felt like these giant, unsolvable problems, like elephants that show up in my living room and refuse to leave. (Hey, get your dirty feet off my coffee table!) As an example, four years ago I couldn’t see my way out of a bad (really bad) relationship. God, things were such a mess, I didn’t even realize what a mess they were. It was like I was drowning and didn’t know it. But stumbling across my kick-ass therapist, I lucked out. The universe threw me a lifeline.

Also, I don’t mind saying, it’s been a long journey to shore.

Sometimes when I tell people I’ve been in therapy for four years, I imagine them thinking, You must be really fucked up. Maybe they aren’t actually thinking that, but if they are, I honestly don’t believe I deal with issues that are all that different from anyone else’s. We all have relationship problems, family problems, work problems. We all have elephants. In my case, I know that a big reason I had relationship problems is BECAUSE I had other (childhood) issues that hadn’t been properly addressed. (For one, I’d never learned about boundaries and wouldn’t have known a boundary if it’d hit me in the face.) My point is–it’s taken some time, but my therapist and I have dealt with every all of my “elephants in the room.” With hard work, courage, and what my therapist calls “sitting in truth,” we’ve effectively made all my elephants disappear. At the very least, we’ve shrunk them down to a manageable size.

As I look back at the last year and this blog, it’s been a lot of ups and downs. Based on how I’m feeling this very moment (worn out and tired), it’s been A LOT of downs. Feeling well or normal has been a struggle, believing that I’ll be back on my feet physically and financially has been a struggle. But surely these are just elephants too, and surely all is never lost. For me, it’s important to hang on to this idea that no matter how bad your circumstances, they can and will turn around, to believe that if an elephant can show up in your life, it can also disappear, to believe that just as the universe is full of big problems, it is also full of big answers.

[Thanks again to my friend Frank for the High School Musical calendar. I hung it on my wall as soon as I got home today! Talk about daily inspiration.]