☀️ The Nicole Magnusson Newsletter

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📆 Daily Issue 89 | ⏱️ Read time: 3 min

Resurrecting Magic: Finding Purpose and Hope

I just finished Julia Fox’s memoir and I am left with one takeaway: everyone’s life is hard… but some people keep going and some people don’t.

At only 34 years old Julia has been to Hell and back, about 10,000 times. And she always picks herself back up.

She has had countless friends die. She was diagnosed with bipolar. She went to the hospital for drug overdoses more times than I can count, and yet she never stopped moving.

My biggest takeaway from this memoir is that you can grieve in motion. You can experience pain in motion.

Trauma, pain, and shame happen to all of us, but some people let it consume their lives and some people move forward with scars and bruises.

I’m realizing that no one lives a picture-perfect life. Everyone’s life is hard. Everyone’s life can feel like a nightmare. Everyone loses people close to them.

And yet they persevere. They sink their heels in. They keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Not me.

I stopped trying.

I stopped putting one foot in front of the other.

I stopped pursuing the hero’s journey or any kind of journey at all for that matter.

The pressure was meant to turn me into a diamond, but I let it turn me into a pile of dust.

I stopped hustling. I stopped trying. I let my setbacks define me and I let my successes fade into non-existence.

I don’t know the path forward. I used to always know the path forward… but lately, I’ve become so traumatized and lost that the next step alludes me.

And I let that stop me.

I let my lack of direction stop me from taking any steps at all.

But now I understand what I need to do. I need to take steps in the dark. I need to create a way where I don’t see a way. I need to find a way to keep my dreams alive while taking grounded steps in reality.

I realize now that I created a story that God gave up on me and I was out of options… when in reality I gave up on myself and refused to see the options in front of me because they were not glamorous.

I came across a quote the other day, “The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding”.

The truth is, I gave up on magic long ago. And it's hard to keep going without magic. I have nothing to strive for. I have no North Star. I have no reason.

But I am declaring in this moment, that I am going to believe in magic again. Against all the odds. Against my better judgment. Against all the evidence.

I am opening my heart back up to the world… with all its pain, injustice, beauty, and magic. I am opening my heart back up to God.

And I’m going to do my part. I’m going to do the hard, boring work I’ve been avoiding, to uncover the magic that God has waiting for me.

The magic never left, I just stopped believing in it.

Keep inspiring,

Nicole