Glimmers are the opposite of triggers.
They are small, almost imperceptible cues that tell the nervous system: you are safe. You are connected. You are still here. Where a trigger tightens the chest and narrows the world, a glimmer softens the edges. It steadies the breath. It lets a thin ribbon of light slip in.
They are rarely grand in scale. Most often, they are sensory. Fleeting. Easy to miss.
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This is beautiful.
I'm reminded of the way Ruth reframed imposter syndrome as wonder syndrome a few years ago, which I wrote about at the time. A "glimmer" is not only a valuable and useful word that I'd not come across before (I love it when that happens, like with entle), but it also reframes the world in a more-positive light.
I'm going to to start looking for and naming glimmers in my life as part of my general practice of gratitude. Cultivating a conscious awareness of our glimmers is probably harder than finding an awareness of our triggers - and even that's not always easy to narrow down specifically! - but it seems like such a worthwhile exercise.
The One and I is a delightful and long-running personal blog, by the way, if you're looking for somebody new to follow. It feels calming and personal and sweet and there's a healthy corpus of pictures of pets.
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