⚡ Guided Meditation in Story Form ⚡

This is not only a story, it is also a guided meditation. It is written to help bring calm, self-compassion, and relief. Let the words carry you. Imagine yourself in this space with me. Notice how your body feels as you read.

Reading time: about 6–7 minutes

I did not know it had a name when I was little. I only knew that when life got loud or scary, I could slip into another place inside myself. A place I built with my imagination. By the time I was twenty, I had already lost twenty people I loved, including my own mother. That kind of grief does not leave a child untouched. I had to grow up fast, shoulder responsibilities that were never meant for me, and carry fears I did not know how to put down.

What saved me was something simple and quiet: visual meditation.

As a girl I did not call it that, but I would close my eyes and take myself away. I would give my body a break from fear, give my nervous system a place to land. I would hear the wind in the grass, or the piano tuner down the road bending strange notes, or the low rumble of an old truck, and I would let those sounds become a doorway. I taught myself how to regulate, how to survive. That practice is still with me today, not as a crutch, but as a gift.

I want to share it with you now. Maybe you will find a safe porch of your own the way I did. Let us try it together.

When I close my eyes, I can still see it. My aunt’s house perched on the top of a hillside, one of the fortunate ones. Not every home sat that high, but hers did, with a view that stretched in all directions. Rolling hills tumbled out around us, and the Rocky Mountains stood tall in the distance like a painted backdrop. From her yard, you could watch the sun sweep across the land, morning to evening, nothing blocking its path. That place was not just land. It was a world that held every piece of me.

The voices of cousins carried across the distance like song, high and skipping, sometimes fading into the wind, sometimes bubbling so close I wanted to run toward them. The grass whispered in low tones, bending with the breeze, while bees hummed and fence posts creaked as though even the wood was alive. That yard was my stage, my canvas, my sanctuary.

I was the girl who loved her dresses, ribbons tied just so, fabric that swayed when I spun in the sun. Fashion was joy to me even then. But I was also the girl who would drop straight to the ground, pressing my palms into the cool mud to make pies with my cousins. The hem of my dress streaked, my knees dirt stained, but it did not matter. Looking pretty and getting messy were not opposites. They were both me. They still are. I loved being that mix. The fashionista in the field, the rough and tough girl with dirt under her fingernails, smiling wide as mud pies dried in the sun.

Sometimes the quiet stretched, wide and endless. Then a sound would cut through, and everything inside me lit up. I remember the first low rumble of a truck long before I could see it. My head would lift, my whole body alert with excitement.

Other vehicles came down those roads too. Cars passed now and then, and a van might appear, carrying a family or a load of supplies. Tractors rolled by, slow and steady, engines coughing and wheels chewing up the dirt. I noticed them, of course, but they did not stir me the same way.

When it was a truck, everything changed. I would drop what I was doing, even if mud pies were half shaped in my hands. The trucks came in all kinds, old Chevys with their square bodies, Fords with wide grilles, even grain trucks and dog trucks rattling down the road. Each had its own voice. Some growled low, some purred smoother, some clanked with loose parts as if they were carrying secrets. I loved them all. I watched the way dust trailed behind them, the way the sun caught on chrome, the way the sound filled the air long after the truck was gone. Sometimes there was just one, and I watched until the dust finally settled, unwilling to let the thrill go too quickly. Other times, two or three came together, a convoy of color, red and green and blue, rattling in rhythm. My heart leapt at each one. I did not know why it thrilled me, only that I felt alive when they passed, as if the road itself was giving me a gift. Even now, trucks stir that same spark in me, carrying me back to that dirt road where I first learned what excitement felt like in my bones.

And then there were the planes. My aunt’s house sat close to a small airport, so the sound of them was part of everyday life. You could hear them long before you saw them, each with its own voice. A single propeller hummed like a bee, light and steady, while a twin propeller carried a deeper, throbbing rhythm that you could feel in your chest. They flew low enough that you could see their shapes and colors, a bright red trainer banking against the sky, a white crop duster skimming the fields, a silver body glinting in the sun as if it belonged to the horizon itself.

I learned to recognize them the way some children learn birdsong, by the rise and fall of sound alone. Sometimes the hum was smooth, sometimes uneven, but always familiar, like neighbors passing by in the air. When one appeared above her hilltop yard, everything stopped for me. The dogs quieted, the wind seemed to pause, and I would stand still, eyes following the plane as it cut a clean line across the sky with the Rocky Mountains in the distance. It was never just noise. It was joy. It was wonder stretched wide overhead, a reminder that the world was bigger and more possible than I had ever imagined.

Music lived there too, carried from our neighbor’s workshop. He waved with his whole arm, a gesture that felt like an embrace, and sometimes he called me over. “Come see what I am working on,” he would say, sliding back the heavy garage door. Inside, warm light spilled over benches crowded with tools and strings, sawdust and oil thick in the air. And always, the pianos. Some were gleaming and new, others dusty and waiting, some taken apart to their very bones. I would lean in close as he showed me the shining keys, the hidden wires, the elegant mechanics of it all.

At first, the sounds he made were not music. The tuner’s notes bent and wavered, sharp then flat, crooked enough to make the air feel unsettled. I would stand still, listening, until slowly and steadily they began to align. And then his hands would shift, coaxing melody out of the keys, filling the space with beauty. Brokenness bending into harmony, chaos folding back into order. I did not need anyone to explain it. I felt it in my chest. Music was not just sound. It was medicine. It was magic. It was the language I did not know I already spoke.

All of it lived together in that yard. The cousins’ laughter echoing across the fields. The mud pies drying on flat stones. My dress spattered but twirling anyway. The trucks groaning down the gravel road in their bursts of color. The silver planes humming overhead. The neighbor’s pianos climbing from chaos to song. Each detail stitched itself into me, until the whole place breathed like a second heartbeat.

I did not know at the time that I was building something important, a place inside myself where I could return when the world was too loud or too heavy. I did not know that the sound of a plane could calm my body, that the sight of a truck could spark joy, that music could knit brokenness into beauty. I only knew that when I was there, I felt alive, whole, and safe.

And I want you to know something. You can go back too. You are welcome to step into my story if you need to, into my aunt’s yard with its laughter and mud pies and trucks and pianos and planes. Let it hold you the way it once held me. Or, if you have your own place, your own memory, you can return there instead. Both are real. Both matter. Both are lifelines.

And do not forget this either: you are worth it. You are worth the quiet, the joy, the wonder, the calm. You are worth carrying beauty inside you like a compass. And when the world gets heavy, you deserve to return to that place that steadies you, every single time.

Because I am still that girl, the one in her dress, ribbons tied, mud on her knees, smiling with dirt on her hands. And I promise you this. If she is worth joy, then so are you.

You are allowed to love yourself here, just as you are.