Hummingbird Medicine

From this week’s Seasonal Oracle card:

HUMMINGBIRD - Joy

There are few creatures that embody joy quite like the hummingbird.

Moving lightly from flower to flower, they seek the nectar that sustains them.

Hummingbird invites you to do the same.

What nourishes your spirit?

What brings you alive?

Seek out the people, places, and experiences that fill your heart with wonder.

Make room for beauty.

Make room for delight.

Joy is sacred nourishment.

Let it sustain you.

Hummingbird asks us not just to notice joy, but to make room for it.

When I sat with Hummingbird this week, I kept returning to the question: What is nourishing me right now? What is bringing me back to life?

It feels like an important question this time of year.

Summer has a way of inviting us back into ourselves—back into the body, back into pleasure, back into the simple things that remind us we are alive.

Not necessarily the grand, faraway kind of joy. More often, it’s the ordinary kind.

Early morning light through the window. Salty skin after a swim. A bike ride. Dinner with a friend. A song that makes you want to dance in the kitchen.

One practice I love is making a list of ten simple things that bring me joy. Things that are accessible. Things I could do on an ordinary day, wherever I am.

Some of the things on my list are going to the movies, walking on the beach, swimming in cold water, having dinner with girlfriends, painting, and dancing.

I keep the list on my phone so that when life feels heavy and I can’t remember where joy lives, I can return to it.

And then I choose one thing.

Better yet, I try to schedule joy into my week.

We’re often so good at making time for the things we have to do. But how often do we remember to make time for the things that make us feel alive?

Maybe that’s part of Hummingbird medicine:

To seek out the sweetness.
To trust what nourishes you.
To let joy sustain you.