I believe. I believe. I believe.

For my first column, I share a story of faith that truly keeps me up at night. It may strike you as coincidental or excessively woo woo, but it steers the course of my creative journey. I share because I vowed to show those sitting on a dream how I put one foot in front of the other.?

First, I must preface with a brief spiritual history. I was born a Nice Jewish Girl. Like many Millennial Jews, I grew up “culturally Jewish.” My family honored holidays with Jewish-themed meals, but there was no temple or God talk. At 9 years old, I dropped out of Hebrew School, reminding my mother that her own lack of bat mitzvah didn’t leave her with longing or regret.?

I don’t recall my thoughts venturing much to faith as a teenager or young adult. However, at 25, while sharing an office with a proud, young atheist, whom I will lovingly call King Jeff, I chose belief. Between media pitches, we debated the existence of God and the meaning of life. Ultimately, I decided it was more productive to believe, so I believed.

I grew to believe in signs, souls and a sense of purpose. The choice to believe felt like a choice to feel happy, finding strength in life’s challenges and direction when I felt lost. More recently, I came to understand this higher power as a creative guide.?

As famed author Julia Cameron puts it, this creative force will come to us “as the hunch, the inkling, the itch. It will come to us in many ways--but it will come.”

The Bird and The Dog

It was a high stakes summer weekend in August 2022. We hadn’t seen our friends in three pandemic years. They traveled from California to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts to spend a weekend together with all of our kids.?

On the day of the trip, I felt uneasy. The baby woke up with a rash. COVID? The doctor said go. Feeling the magnitude of the opportunity to be close after so much distance, I packed the Floofs into the car and loaded our bags through the open mudroom door to the open garage.

As I shut down the house to leave, I saw in my dining room–a little white dog. A good dog person, I approached this unknown animal with caution. He ignored my cheese offering, moving from the dining room to the living room, casually sniffing their surfaces.

I think my neighbors have a chihuahua. This must be their chihuahua. Across the street, I bolted.

“Is it white or black,” my neighbor questioned.

“White. Impossible,” she responded to my description. “We have a white and a black chihuahua, but the white chihuahua is 14 years old, blind and deaf and doesn’t leave the house.” Together we left to retrieve the geriatric explorer.

Before we could enter the house, a bright red cardinal blew past us. It flew into my office and then out, smashing into a window and dropping to its apparent death. My neighbor opened the door to my yard as if to set it free. The cardinal resurrected from the ground and flew out. We all went our separate ways.

I began my ride with a call to a dear friend who was sure to validate my feeling that I just witnessed a ghost. We knew the cardinal. We celebrated its arrival in my backyard whenever it chose to visit, declaring it her mother or my grandmother who passed. We believe. And we are not the only ones. For many moons and many people, the red cardinal is a sign that an angel is present. At the mention of the cardinal entering my home, my friend assured me the message was lucky–unless the bird flew into a window, then, it meant death.

I drove home and put the Floofs to bed, explaining “sometimes you have to trust your gut.”

That night, I returned to the scene of the woodland magic. As I entered my office, I noticed the bright red feathers scattered all over my new desk and chair. Three months into the most open and creative time in my life, the hunch came in feathery floof, protecting me from whatever would meet me on the road that night and guiding me to be bold at my writer's desk.?

From that night forward, I haven't been able to shut up about the bird and the dog. And the signs, they keep coming. Birds and dogs find me often in hit-me-over-the-head ways to guide my creative choices and enhance my resolve to inspire bravery in you. Flying from nature into rooms where I considered hosting my classes, I shifted focus to writing. A crow lunged at my windshield and landed on the roof of my car, reinforcing that shift in direction. When an image of an enormous duck with the caption, "just ducky," shared the page with my first published article, I felt the call to keep writing.

The birds guide my steps, while dogs stop me in my tracks. I must stop to chat with every dog in my path. I like them and they like me. We understand each other. Dogs are a source of comfort and connection, while birds are a source of fascination and fear that can cause me to change course.?

Eventually, I realized, like The Lady, the Floofs were always there. My Hebrew name translates to "Little Bird." I grew up in a room wallpapered in birds and flowers.

Birds and dogs appear in my drawings and photography since well before the night of the bird and the dog.

After that night, their imagery became more intentional. In? illustrations for my classes and books, there is always a bird and a dog drawn into my caricatures of anthropomorphic food.

They are there, reminding the viewer of the magic in this journey.

Today I share because I want to inspire you to take the first step in going after a dream. First, believe that you are on the path. Look at the recurring themes and patterns in your life. There are no accidents. Believe that your journey has purpose and that you too have the power to find your way. Believe in your ideas and that whatever setbacks and challenges that exist in your life are here to teach you, steer you and make room for a new dream you didn't know you could have. There are no mistakes.?

Without belief, I silence my intuition that guided me to this moment, here with you. Without belief, I am lost in a sea of ideas and what ifs, unable to make a bet on that hunch. Does that sound familiar? Today, I encourage you to look at your dreams and your conviction in your purpose. If you don’t believe today, I am here, believing for you. I believe. I believe. I believe.