It Wasn’t Gone. Just Unreachable.
Blog 10: The quiet return of something you didn’t realize had slipped away.
When Wonder Slips Back In
Ever notice how the feeling of pure wonder doesn't announce its return? No celestial trumpets, no spiritual download confirming your enlightenment has arrived. Just the quiet spark inside an ordinary moment.
It happened to me while reading another writer's blog - her words weaving through nature, grounded and earthy, until suddenly she mentioned fairies. She didn’t use metaphor or childhood nostalgia - just named them as part of the land. It startled something awake in me.
I reread the passage, and was shocked by how it bypassed my analytical mind and landed somewhere deeper - much deeper. And that visceral feeling unlocked something inside me that had been holding its breath for months and months.
It finally exhaled.
It didn’t take me long to realize what had just happened. I wasn’t trying to analyze anything, dissect it, understand it or reach for meaning. I was simply enjoying it and I had touched a soul spark inside igniting the feeling of wonder.
The feeling was so foreign I almost didn't recognize it.
Wonder.
Not the manufactured kind that social media and wellness influencers package up in hyped up content. Not the transcendent variety that the spiritual community touts as a “benefit” of whatever they are selling. No… this is an experience of the quiet, ordinary miracle of noticing something beautiful in an ordinary way and letting it be exactly what it is.
What Healing Hid From Me
And it shook me to be honest. The tears welled up and then spilled down my cheeks - I had unlocked something. And, I realized I've spent so long in the underworld of healing that I'd forgotten what it feels like to simply see. Not through the lens of what needs fixing or what lesson I might learn, but through eyes that aren't constantly searching for what's broken.
Much like the voyage of Persephone - in the dawning of Spring. As she emerges from below, the light feels almost too bright. Colors are almost too vivid and beauty too raw after so much darkness.
The Dreamer They Tried to Bury
I was the “wounded” dreamer long before I understood what that meant. Raised in a family where dreams required profit margins to survive, where imagination was suspicious unless it generated income. "Lazy dreamer," they called that part of me that wandered through inner realms.
This isn't just my story - it's embedded in our collective nervous system as women. The subtle, consistent messaging that pleasure must be earned, that wonder is childish, that value lives exclusively in productivity.
And now, with Venus in retrograde, it’s like she’s whispering the questions I never thought to ask:
When did wonder start needing to be earned?
When did joy become conditional?
When did I stop trusting what I couldn’t monetize?
The Work That Made Wonder Wait
For a long time, I couldn’t feel any of it. Not because I didn’t want to - but because I was too busy surviving it all. Healing. Holding. Hustling. Doing the sacred work of becoming someone whole. And somewhere in that sacredness, I forgot how to notice softness. How to let delight in without demanding it prove itself useful. Wonder became a thing I’d “get to” once I’d finished all the inner work. But it doesn’t wait at the finish line. It waits on the edges. In the breath. In the beauty that doesn’t need to be earned.
Even our healing journeys become another workplace. Constantly processing, clearing, analyzing - never quite "evolved enough" to deserve simply being.
I've been lingering in the space between worlds. No longer defined by wounds, but not yet feeling that sense of a grounded magical essence. Caught in that strange territory after the healing obsession ends but before “whatever comes next” begins.
What happens when you're no longer occupied with fixing what's broken? When the story you've been living - of healing, becoming, transcending - begins to loosen its grip?
A Return That Doesn’t Have to Perform
You can read one line in a blog (like I did) and it sparks a soul remembrance of wonder….
You notice things. The way light catches dust particles. The way a raindrop creates a perfect radiating wave in a puddle. The perfect friction of pen against paper.
You remember things like this. Even if you didn’t know you forgot.
And with that flicker of wonder came something else…my unicorn companions, stirring like old friends returning. The three unicorns who appeared in my life over the years. Ruby with her gentle presence reminds me what peace feels like without achievement. Crystal holds emotional wisdom without demanding I extract lessons from it. And Piper, with her boundless energy, invites a playfulness I'd forgotten was possible.
They aren't spiritual bypasses or escapist fantasies. They're embodiments of frequencies I'd forgotten how to access without work, productivity, achievement and justification.
The interesting thing I take from this - you don't return to wonder through force. It finds you in moments of surrender when you stop trying so hard to be healed, whole, or enlightened. When you let go of the constant reaching for what's next.
We've become so habituated to productive purpose that simple delight feels almost dangerous. I catch myself constantly justifying curiosity:
"I'm exploring this because it might benefit my work." "I'm collecting beauty because it serves my healing." I’m told to get “curious” to reach that next level.”
Always the because. Always the purpose. Always the need to make wonder earn its keep.
What might happen if interest existed without justification or reason? If beauty moved you without requiring you to extract a lesson from it? If curiosity was just curiosity for curiosity sake? Not to lead to the “next thing.”
For women especially, this feels like unfamiliar territory. To experience pleasure without apology. To pursue curiosity without qualification. To value magic not for what it produces, but for how it feels in the body.
Grief and wonder aren't sequential chapters. They don't take turns. They've always existed together - I just couldn't feel the shimmer through the healing fog.
It’s not like I am charting a course toward some idealized future self anymore. Nope, I’m allowing myself to notice what really catches my attention, without demanding it become something important or have some monumental significance. And it is ahmmmazing to witness how not trying to control healing or force insights - but just allowing myself to experience these breakthrough moments - IS what is charting the course.
The Kind of Wonder That Finds You When You’re Not Looking
That kind of wonder was never gone. It was waiting for me to stop trying so desperately to earn it, analyze it, or put it to work. To simply receive it, like the old friend it's always been.
And in that quiet noticing…as Venus retrograde invites us to reconsider what we truly value, something subtle shifts:
A gentle breakthrough through an ordinary moment - not a huge knock me over spiritual clearing and not really even a gnormous turning point.
It’s the gentle recognition that beauty exists, without needing to be earned, named, or put to work. That’s what Venus is illuminating during this retrograde….not just what we value, but how we’ve forgotten how to experience value without measuring it.
In the spaces between healing and becoming, something quiet returns. Not with fanfare or revelation, but with the gentle persistence of spring after winter.
It doesn't ask to be understood.
It only asks to be felt.
Love,
Sherry
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About the Author
Sherry writes from the space between dimensions—where presence meets paradox, and mastery gives way to meaning. With a background in metaphysical work and energetic healing that spans decades, her voice carries the weight of lived wisdom—not as doctrine, but as invitation.
Her blog, It Exists (For Now), moves fluidly across themes of transformation, embodiment, remembrance, and the quiet revelations of everyday life. This is not writing to teach, fix, or convert. It’s a space to feel, question, soften, and come home to what’s already here.
Whether she’s naming what’s unraveling beneath the surface or tracing the shimmer of wonder returning, her words are less about offering answers—and more about walking with you through the liminal.
I loved this! I still find myself fighting off that little voice that tells me creating my art for pleasure is self-indulgent. But the truth is, when I’m in my childlike wonder, making art, noticing the beauty in nature, and doing things simply for the joy of it, I’m a happier, healthier, overall better human being than when I’m not. And the world can definitely use more of that. Thanks for this lovely read!
I felt this wonder walking into downtown's concrete jungle and see a sprout of a plant grow through a crack in the concrete, especially with a little flower blooming in it.