The big open sky reminds us:

We had to leave the mountains for an unobstructed view. The horizon is painted with watercolor hues as we chase the Solstice sun well into the evening. It is later than it seems. We pull into Denver.

My daughter and I are getting closer to home. Finally. After a week-long road trip.

We spend the last leg of the journey in review. We remember city skylines and fields of windmills, trees and lakes, and bridges over rivers, strung together by long stretches of sacred moments.

Just us two.

Sometimes I am twelve and sometimes she is 52.

We’ve been on the road so long now that the weather is poetry. Driving has become secondary to the company. Our thoughts have intertwined.

The last time we traversed these plains, she was five or six years old. My mama was still alive. Back then, we made the 1243.6-mile journey every few months just to see her. We never knew which visit would be our last.

“When Grandma died, I lost my confidence,” my little girl had realized.

But now she speaks freely as we weave with ease through highways and conversation. She talks about a piece of art we saw a few hours ago in a Nebraska museum.

We take turns playing our favorite music: Conan Gray, then Bob Dylan, Taylor Swift, then B.B. King. She tells me things.

We listen to an audiobook—Zen stories about a cat and the moon. The writer prompts us into deeper connection, catalyzed by questions like:

“What have you learned from ‘absence’ that you couldn’t learn from ‘presence’?”

My daughter is surprised by the spiritual savvy in her own voice as she explains that “full is empty and empty is full.” She shares insights about heaven and explains why everything is better when we remember Love. She is confident and eloquent and patient and stunning. And she seems to be noticing herself for the first time.

I’m not surprised by any of this and yet it feels like a miracle. So I simply rejoice the healing happening here on these rented wheels between the black asphalt and the white lines.

And to think that I thought we couldn’t be more bonded. She turns to me thoughtfully and says: “Mama, after this, we will never be the same. And we will be even better.”

This seems like a rite of passage. It’s just another day on planet Earth. Nothing has changed. And absolutely everything has been completely, irrevocably transformed.

Rites move you toward ritual. They are the choices and gestures, whispers and sounds that open the portals to the sacred. There are rites of seeing and being seen. Rites of passage and rites of letting go. Rituals of death, rebirth and recognition.

Some are shared. Others remain secret.

Each time you activate a ritual, you cross a threshold from one way of experience into another. Crossing realms or crossing the road, you wake up to realize the miracle in this very moment.