On Manifestation

and a magical moonlit bath in a river in the North Carolina mountains

It was one of those perfect mid-summer evenings. The dusk borrowed the day for as long as it could and the sky streaked with the colors of time passed. We sat around a wooden table, with the screen doors open to the cool air and sounds of frogs and crickets singing in the nearby marsh. 

“Is it time for your river bath?” my mum curiously asked Hannah, a note of wry in her voice for this lifestyle that was so far from her Caribbean-convent-school upbringing. Hannah laughed with the floaty effortlessness she has always carried in her skin. Her wavy, lustrous hair bounced with her jovially. She held her toddler in her long-limbed arms as he sucked at her nipple. 

“Yeah!” she said with mirth in her voice. My curiosity was piqued.

My mum and I had arrived just a day or two ago, to spend a few sweet days with our oldest family friends in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. Hannah, Andrew, Beki and I grew up together. Our moms took turns carpooling us to and from school in Boca Raton, Florida, and we spent every Jewish holiday together. We had a similar way of approaching Judaism—a lighthearted softness to the prayers and our Sephardic backgrounds held much common ground for our joining families on the high holidays. I remember once, my mum and Karen were tasked with making the backdrop for a school play, and they spread out all the art supplies on the tile floor of the Wallace’s front foyer and got to work painting everything shades of green. We grew up with Hannah and Andrew’s Cuban grandmother Wheta, and Karen was like a second mom to us.

Karen always knew where to find the coolest doodads and trendy accessories. Once, Hannah showed up in a bejeweled Soffee headband, and my eyes went wide. “I need one!” I exclaimed. This happened often, and Karen would proceed to tell us the story dripping in salacious detail about where she discovered the item, and eventually would bring us there to acquire our own. We found these amazing tank tops that were just the right amount stretchy and comfortable for a wriggling pre-teen body, the best gel pens, and (when we were older and had our own apartments to clean) these great sponges from Sweden that were cute yet functional. 

When I was 11 and Beki was 9, we moved from Florida to Connecticut, and everything in our lives changed. We went from a vibrant, close knit, diverse community to a region that is quite introverted. It felt as though we literally went from a place personified by summer to a place marked by the coldness of winter.

I missed my group of Floridian friends dearly. Together we represented Taiwan, Sweden, England, Cuba, Venezuela, and Austria, and going to each-other’s houses was incredibly fun. I identified with the hodgepodge of cultures because I myself am made up of a hodgepodge of cultures, and growing up surrounded by immigrant parents felt cozy and just—right. We were all figuring it out, we were loud, we were proudly in our bodies, and we celebrated one another. We lived a really fun life.

When we moved, I wrote every one of my friends a hand-written letter. I found this cool printer paper with decorated edges and told them about how different it was up in Connecticut. How much I missed them. Maybe it was the fact that as a society we were in the height of Y2K, switching our lives over from analog to digital that resulted in many of those friendships fading away. Perhaps it was the fact that we were all growing into teenagers.

In an attempt to keep our longest standing relationship with the Wallaces intact, we established a tradition of going to Bear Mountain in North Carolina every winter to “ski”. The fact that we would drive south to ski was only a trick you could play on a family who didn’t ski. And we loved it. We’d all pile into a cabin, the parents would take turns cooking, and at night we’d all watch movies and play board games. 

As we grew older the winter trips faded away, but we continued to visit when we could. I had a filming job that took me to Charleston, and my mum decided to join me. So on the way home, we stopped in North Carolina. This trip was quieter—my sister and dad weren’t with us, and neither were Hannah’s siblings or father. I had just told a boy who had held on to my heart for nearly a decade that it would be best if we went our separate ways.

I had been moving through a daily meditation practice to cut cords with this old lover, and I invited my mum and Karen to join me. We rolled out yoga mats on the porch—maidens and matrons chanting together as I led us through the cord cutting meditation I was practicing. We were calling back our power in the divine feminine. We swept our hands over our arc lines that lie across the nipple points and ear lobes, sweeping our hands over the crown of our heads, repeating over and over. Our sounds melted into one powerful voice, backed by our ancestors and the gentle hum of the night bugs. We sat in silence and then Hannah and I made our way to the river.

We walked over spiny weeds and dewy soft grasses that we mushed flat by our bare feet. When we made it to the clearing, we undressed, dropping our clothes on the river rocks. We giggled giddily as our bare breasts and upper thighs were caressed by the full moonlight. The river bubbled and streamed and we waded in. Hannah was brave to crouch down, submerging her whole body into the shallow waters. I stood, letting the current repeatedly dance across my shins.

I looked at the moon and then said aloud, “I think my partner is on his way to me”. She looked at me and with a knowing smile said, “Yes. I think mine is too.” We stayed a while longer, in our rawest version of self, nude in the night air. Though we weren’t entirely silent, laughing and catching up on life, it was still a meditation. It was a moment of manifestation. I felt the potency of magic around us, and I know Hannah did too.

A few days later, my mum and I drove back to DC. I felt butterflies in my belly. We pulled over at a rest stop and words suddenly came to me. I wrote about this future moment, but the words formed on the page as though they had already happened. I was writing and celebrating the joy that this knowing brought me. It was a prayer. And a few months later, I met my now-partner with many of the things I had written that day in his essence.

I come back to this moment in the river often. I use it to remind myself of the power we harness within our bodies to call in what we really desire. It doesn’t take effort in the way we are most familiar with effort. It mostly takes trust. Just like the constant flow of the river that night under the full moon, when I trust that my truest path is unfolding for me and sit in that place of knowing, I can trust that the current will keep on moving in the direction of bliss that was built just for me. When we sit with joy in our bones, the most beautiful things are given space to flower.

Shabbat Shalom.