The word restoration came to me in late July when I was thinking about themes for our September cleanup. It was early in the morning, I was driving up to Orange County, passing my favorite view of the whole coast of Ensenada. I was thinking about the plans they have to expand the port and how devastating those changes would be, how many are fighting against them, and how much it all could impact the ocean, the community, and the character of this place I love.

That had me thinking about the state of our world, about how often change happens to benefit those in power, even when the cost is so significant for most and in the middle of that spiral, this word restoration just landed in my mind. I didn’t really know what it had to do with anything it just stuck.I kept sitting with it and Imagining what kind of activity or reflection might come out of it. I had no idea that a few weeks later, on August 16th, after weeks of being shut out, I woke up to find all of the social media had been restored. Honestly, it felt like another piece of confirmation that this was a theme worth exploring.

When I first think of restoration, I usually picture something being returned to its original state. The more I sit with it, the more I realize restoration often takes us somewhere different than where we started.

When the accounts had been restored they looked exactly the same as before, I wasn’t though…
I had a deeper appreciation for connection, for the people and community it allows me to reach and at the same time, I carry a new hesitancy to trust a platform that can disappear overnight. So maybe restoration isn’t just about going back. Maybe it’s about moving forward with a deeper awareness, holding both the loss and the renewal together.

As we move into September, I want to invite you to consider where you might be in your own process of restoration. What’s being rebuilt in you? What’s returning in a way that’s the same but also… not the same at all? What are you learning to see with new eyes?