An Unusual Sign of Healing: You Start Seeing Shapes in the Clouds Again

I have an unusual sign of healing that I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about.

You start seeing shapes in the clouds again.

Let me explain.

I grew up in the pre-cell phone era, when boredom often required a little imagination.

My best friend and I lived near a train station, and we would climb onto these giant cement structures, lie back—sometimes upside down—and stare at the sky.

For hours.

We'd find animals in the clouds.

Faces of people we knew.

Objects.

Entire scenes.

One of us would point something out and the other would squint until suddenly she could see it too.

We'd laugh and talk and let our imaginations run wild.

There was nowhere else we needed to be.

Nothing we needed to accomplish.

We weren't documenting it.

We weren't posting it.

We weren't even calling it "being present."

We were just there.

And then I grew up.

Like so many of us do.

I went to school. Started my career. Climbed the proverbial corporate ladder within a hospital system.

Life became fuller.

More responsibilities.

More goals.

More achievement.

More doing.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped looking at the clouds.

Of course, I didn't notice that I'd stopped.

Who notices something like that?

There wasn't a day when I consciously decided, I'm too busy to look for elephants in the sky anymore.

I simply became an adult who had places to be and things to accomplish.

My attention moved from wonder to productivity.

From imagination to responsibility.

From What's that cloud shaped like? to What's next on my list?

And for a long time, I thought that was simply what growing up looked like.

Then something began to change.

My own healing journey eventually brought me into practices that asked me to slow down.

Meditation.
Breathwork.
Yoga.
Stillness.
Somatic work.
Connecting with my body.

Embracing more of the yin and feminine energy I had spent so much of my life overriding in favor of doing, achieving and pushing.

And slowly, I started noticing things again.

The way the sun felt on my skin.

The sound of birds in the morning.

The scenery on a drive I had taken a hundred times.

The feeling in my body before my mind had a chance to explain it.

And...

the shapes in the clouds.

I remember realizing one day that I was looking up again.

Really looking.

And there they were.

Animals.
Faces.
Shapes.

Just like when I was a little girl.

It made me smile.

But it also made me realize something much bigger.

Maybe healing isn't always about what disappears.

We tend to think of healing in terms of what we get rid of.

Less anxiety.
Less stress.
Less people pleasing.
Less perfectionism.
Less reactivity.
Less pain.

And yes, healing can absolutely look like those things.

But I think healing can also be measured by what comes back.

Curiosity.
Playfulness.
Imagination.
Wonder.
Presence.
Joy.

The ability to experience an ordinary moment without needing it to be productive.

Maybe one of the signs that we're healing is that we finally have enough space inside ourselves to notice the world again.

When was the last time you looked up?

I work with so many high performers who are incredibly good at moving through life.

Accomplishing.
Planning.
Solving.
Taking care of people.
Thinking about what's next.

And sometimes the work isn't about becoming better at any of those things.

It's about remembering how to be here.

To notice.
To play.
To wonder.
To experience your life instead of constantly managing it.

So here's my invitation for you this week:

Look up.
Put your phone away for a minute.
Watch the clouds move.
See if you can find something.

And if your grown-up brain immediately tells you that you have better things to do...

maybe stay there for another minute.

Because perhaps the ability to find a dog, a dragon, or someone's face floating across the sky isn't silly at all.

Maybe it's a sign that you're finally present enough to see it.

And maybe that's its own kind of healing.