Make Room At The Table

On breakdowns, strangers, and loosening our grip.

This past week was a hard one.

The waves kept pummelling me, and before I could break the surface to catch a breath, I was tossed under again. Our car broke down. The mechanic overcharged us. My partnership felt more like a trigger war. And my daughter—sensing the tension thickening the air—screamed “mama” at me every chance she got, often without reason. I was not at my best: not in the home, not as a mother, not with myself.

Just when I thought the air was finally lifting, I dressed for a solo day in town, laptop in hand, determined to salvage my sanity. I turned the key. Nothing. The engine lights blinked, but it wouldn’t start. The post-shower humidity rose like a hot flash until I was sweating in the driver’s seat—angry, defeated, told by circumstance to go back and sit in my shitty situation a while longer.

A few hours later, barefoot and back in my oversized t-shirt, I heard the low rumble of a truck. By some small miracle, it turned into our driveway just as I ran out waving.

“Can you give me a boost?”

The male driver looked at his passenger with a furrowed brow, then mumbled something about the car’s computer and his boss’s rules. Excuses. I believed him—and didn’t. Either way, I thought, well, fuck off then.

It wasn’t until the next morning, with four diapers left and no corn for the ducks or the horse, that a truck of miners rolled by. I shouted down to them from the balcony, and within minutes a crew of men were under my hood, cables clipped, engine roaring back to life. I wasted no time getting to town before the universe changed its mind.

I spent most of the morning bitching to my girlfriends, cataloguing all the ways I felt hard done by.

Some days, I can’t see a way through the muck. I feel like the gulp of air will never come, and I’ll drown under the weight of my responsibilities, choices, and failures.

By midday, when I sat down at the only outdoor table of a ceramics café run by the Tuitense pre-Hispanic potter Lili Solorio, I realized I’d left my phone at my friend’s place. Dammit. I’d already ordered chilaquiles con huevo and a pineapple juice, connected to the plaza Wi-Fi, and was in no mood to turn back. So I decided to accept my phoneless fate, resisting the urge to post a cute Instagram story that masked my foul mood.

A few minutes later, a tall, white-haired American wandered by my makeshift home office into the dim café looking for a seat. I nearly buried myself in my screen—better to stay focused than waste energy on small talk. But then another voice rose inside me:

You’re sitting at the best table with a mountain view. Invite him to join you.

“You can sit here if you’d like,” I called out.

Without hesitation, he smiled and accepted. We quickly moved some furniture around, I made space on the table, and we exchanged names and backstories. Then, almost seamlessly, we drifted into deeper waters—esoteric Christianity, ayahuasca, Trump. I found myself reaching into the archives of my life to tell this near-stranger about the spiritual teachers who have shaped me, my years of drinking plant medicine, and my most recent initiation on the path of motherhood. I felt the embers of a former self—or perhaps my most essential self—light up.

Outside, the sky turned a deep purple, and rain began to fall. We stayed until the drops grew too heavy to ignore. Inside Lili’s wildly colourful gallery, Jeff and I talked another hour until the storm finally broke. Although we didn’t agree on everything, it felt good to navigate complex topics with a real human being instead of arguing with strangers online. Before we parted, I wandered through the gallery, tracing the smooth curves of handmade bowls and plates until I found a small ceramic shard with a hole in it—something I could turn into a necklace. Another local restaurant owner, a regular at El Rincón de Lili, complimented my Spanish, and I smiled big. This beautiful place is where I live. When I finally stepped back into the fresh street, hopping over puddles in my sandals, my heart felt full with the echo of those encounters.

It wasn’t the conversation itself that struck me, but the quiet that surrounded it—the absence of the gadget that might have kept me elsewhere. In all the breakdowns of the week, I’d forgotten how benevolent the universe can be when we allow space for its small interventions. When we loosen our grip on control, mystery slips in through the cracks—sometimes as a stranger, sometimes as a storm, sometimes as a simple seat at the table.

Ritual & Reflection

Journalling Prompts for Further Exploration

• Who has shown up for you at exactly the right time — and how did that encounter shift your week or worldview?

• When was the last time a breakdown turned into a breakthrough for you?

• What does it mean, to you, to “make room at the table”?

• In what ways does discomfort guide you back to connection?

• How do you recognize the benevolence of the universe in your own daily chaos?

Sacred Assignments | Invitations for Deeper Embodiment

This week is simple. Leave your phone at home on your next outing and see what happens!