Victoria Moran - Living a Charmed Life: Your Guide to Finding Magic in Every Moment of Every Day

Just over ten years ago, I was given the go-ahead to write a book called Creating a Charmed Life: Sensible, Spiritual Secrets Every Busy Woman Should Know. It proposed that living in shades of gray is unnecessary when Technicolor is an option. That books mission was to help women apply elementary spiritual principles to everyday life and as a result discover beauty in the ordinary and wonder in simple things. It apparently did its job, because it became a word-of-mouth bestseller, translated into twenty-eight languages and still very much alive as one woman after another discovers it and gives copies as gifts to her sisters, daughters, and friends.

Living a Charmed Life is a similarly structured collection of action-inspiring essays. It is in one sense a tenth-anniversary sequel, bringing full circle the process of custom-crafting a remarkable life. And yet this book is very much its own, coming from (and responding to) a different point in time. It invites you to discover the magical elements in every nanosecond of your time on earth, when theyre obvious and when theyre not.

Living a Charmed Life comes with a context. When I wrote its predecessor, I found myself in the midst of creative chaos. I was newly married to my second husband, William, after living as a young widow and single mom for several years. We were rehabbing an antique house. Homeschooling (and chauffeuring) my daughter, Adair, a budding actress then fourteen, took lots of time and gave me even more joy. (Adair was Rachael in Creating a Charmed Life, but shortly after its publication she started going by her middle name.) At this same time, I was learning to be a stepmom to Williams children, who were with us part of the time. His daughter, Sin, was an artistic eleven-year-old who loved to read. Erik, nine, was, like his dad, quiet and conscientious. Six-year-old James was bright, curious, and determined to keep up with the older kids.

My freshly blended life wasnt easy, but it was fully, richly, and constantly engaging. Out of that time of sensory overload and of novel experiences coming at me like collapsing dominos, I wrote about forming a bliss-kissed life from the good wet clay of busyness and energy.

I needed another decade, however, to learn how to stay in touch with the magical nature of things in light of events that transpired in my own life and those that took place in the larger world and have affected us all. In one Creating a Charmed Life essay entitled Invite Adventure, I referred to modern life as sleepily safe. Thats not a phrase anyone would use to describe things today. Even the most self-contained among us have been called to respond to the political, economic, and environmental distresses of this moment in time. As the realities that make up the background of our lives continue to readjust and redesign themselves, the act of creating a dazzling life calls for more courage, inventiveness, and flexibility than it once did. We have the daunting charge of taking into account, in our every dealing, all the other beings to whom were connected and the future of a planet. Even when were not consciously thinking of that big picture, a part of us always knows its there.

Nevertheless, we do most of our living privately and close to home. In that personal portion of my own life, I have learned in these ten years that even fulfilled dreams require skillful maintenance. Hanging out on earth is messy under any circumstances: you can take all the organizing classes in the adult-ed catalog and there will still be loose ends, the uncontrollable, the inexplicable. And sometimes something really awful happens.

A week after my publisher commissioned the book youre holding, my stepson James, just sixteen, died suddenly from a virus that attacked his pancreas. There was no warning, only a call to Williams mobile phone as we waited to board a flight at LAX. In a split second, everything changed. Meeting each day, facing the loss, and supporting my husband in his deep, deep grief took precedence over writing a book. We decided to simplify things by moving out of my beloved New York City, a decision that proved, for me, to be another cause for sorrow. When I finally sat down to write during that snow-covered winter in a strange place, I was met with a hard question: how could I write about living a charmed life when tragedies, both old and new, had left shards of sadness that could not be wished away?

I told a friend what I was wrestling with. He said, Think about it this way: what do you see that you do for other people? I felt that Id been put on the spot, like I was supposed to come up with some fancy corporate mission statement. I dont know, I said, I think I help them remember the magic. And he said, Precisely. Thats all you need to do. I knew in that instant that he was right. Losses and detours and disappointmentsmost fleeting, but some profoundare a part of every life. In a charmed one, however, beauty and joy and wonder and serendipity are every bit as real and obvious. We have the option of living in their light, regardless of what else were going through.

The secret is to remember this, although were most apt to forget it when we need it most (and I emphatically include myself in that we ). When I become amnesic and am momentarily lost in despair, someone needs to remind me to tap into my spiritual connection, a source of unending strength and inspiration when I think to call on it; and then to get up and do something: to put into play practical, workable techniques for opening my personal life to what a mentor of mine used to call the upward progression of the universe. Ive written this book to be that reminder for you.

In it youll find fifty chapter-essays designed to help you live a remarkable life, however you define remarkable. Each chapter closes with what I call a lucky charm, a specific action you can take to apply the essence of that essayimmediately, in many cases. The essays are in sequential order, and a few times youll find a couple that play off each other (e.g., Enlist Your Inner Epicure followed by And Your Inner Chaperone). Therefore, I recommend that you read Living a Charmed Life all the way through the first time. After that, if you want to keep it on your nightstand or toss it into your gym bag and read a chapter youre drawn to, or simply one you come to when you open the book at random, that works, too.

There are essays here that cover overarching topics, like upping your optimism and mitigating such negative states of mind as fear and guilt. Some are pure practicality. (Live Richly has to do with financial well-being; Ease the E-mail Onslaught needs no further explanation.) Others, including Take Train Trips and Road Trips and Add a Splash of Red, deal with the charmed-life necessities of lightness and fun. And because you cant go off on a charmed-life adventure without your body coming along, youll get tips on caring for your physical self in Become Surprisingly Fit, Detox Your Body, and Enliven Your Diet.

At the heart of living a charmed life, however, is the spiritual dimension. Key essays such as Stay Close to What Makes You Come Alive, Do the Cosmic Two-Step, and Give Peace a Chance pertain to your inner life, your spiritual self. Because everyone comes from a unique point of view on such matters and we use different words to express ourselves in this arena, I invite you to do a quick translation if something Ive written doesnt sit quite right with your spiritual sensibilities. I take a very eclectic view and draw inspiration from many religious and philosophical traditions. Take what works for you and leave the rest. Im honored that youre allowing me to be your guide for a time, but your charmed life is your charmed life. It develops within the context of your worldview.