How I Hit The Reset Button On My Life

At long last, the cherry blossoms — my personal ambassadors of hope — have arrived. I have to admit the annual return of color to Washington, D.C., never gets old. “Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment,” astutely noted British novelist Ellis Peters.

The explosions of pink cotton candy randomly goosing the dreary brown landscape put a spring in my step, too. There’s something about this season that inspires my perennial rebirth. As the tulip and daffodil buds stretch toward the light, I feel that I also have the capacity to grow in new ways.

Not that I have a choice. I have unexpectedly gone from married with two cute kids and an exciting job to divorced, then widowed — if an ex can leave one widowed, which I argue they can when two kids are involved — and jobless.

The open-ended freedom is both exhilarating (I can do anything!) and daunting (Where do I start?). The balance depends on the day. The key to swinging it toward thrilling is filling my schedule with enriching activities before all my time gets nattered away with tasks, chores and obligations.

My daily schedule has several standing “meetings.” The first is with my spiritual mentors, Deepak and Oprah, for 20 minutes of meditation. The second is a three-hour block of uninterrupted writing. Frankly, some days it’s a waste of time. I move paragraphs around, making an incoherent mess of the previous day’s work. Other days it’s Big Magic — as Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert calls it — and the words just flow. Either way, it’s my job to get my butt in the chair and apply myself while my energy is fresh.

Most days I have a lunch date with nature. Both my dog and I can attest to the therapeutic value of “forest bathing,” the Japanese healing practice that that’s actually fancy talk for walking in the woods.

This season is especially inspiring. Eschewing the crowds of tourists at the Tidal Basin, we head to the hidden jewel of Kenwood, the Bethesda neighborhood where the streets are double-lined with over 1,200 pink and white Yoshino trees. As we stroll in the crisp, dappled sunlight, the street looks shot in lace.

I pay close attention not just to nature’s outrageous finery, but to the many walks of life who are out appreciating the ephemeral beauty while it lasts. The only cell phones in use are the ones taking photos. A runner halts midstride to help a couple immortalize the moment. A grandma shimmies out of her wheelchair and steadies herself on a tree trunk to be part of a family portrait. When the planet brings us its best, humanity, it seems, responds in kind.