Glimmer

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

Today is bright, sunny, and summer warm. The breeze is gentle as breath, all my windows are thrown open to welcome it in, and the hectic activity of the past weeks has been paused so the girls and I can play in the sun. My mother always called weeks like this in mid-fall, “Indian Summer,” referring to the last warm stretch of weather when the early settlers knew to expect the final raids by the people whose lands they had stolen before colonizer and indigenous alike hunkered down for the winter. This is not a name I am comfortable with anymore, so I’m going to rename it “Goddess Days.” The earth seems to throw her arms wide on days like these, breathing in and basking in the last blaze of summer sunshine, and I follow her example. Eyes closed, face bathed in light, hair teased by a caressing wind. I need this. Amid the business and the internal upheaval and reordering of the season, I need this. Moments like these remind me of why I do what I do, of what makes me an earth child. Moments like these remind me that I am more than what I do, and that remembering matters. Moments like these are glimmers.

Glimmers, I have learned, are the opposite of triggers. I only just heard the term for the first time a month or so ago, but it’s been making the rounds of social consciousness for five years now, and steadily growing in popularity.

Coined by Deb Dana, a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in complex trauma, in her 2018 book "The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy," "glimmers" refers to small moments when our biology is in a place of connection or regulation, which cues our nervous system to feel safe or calm.

"We're not talking great, big, expansive experiences of joy or safety or connection," she says. "These are micro moments that begin to shape our system in very gentle ways."¹