As the sun made its final descent into the silvery waters of the Pacific I watched, trying my best not to blink. The quiet of the evening was gently punctuated by the sound of my children playing, the cry of shorebirds and the gentle murmur of wave greeting sand. Each moment brought new depth and dimension to the sky, a psychedelic poem of movement and color. Though I knew the dangers of looking directly at the sun for too long, I threw caution to the wind, not daring to look away lest I miss my chance to witness the elusive ‘Green Flash.’ I had heard tales of this ephemeral phenomenon, a flash of brilliant green light released just as the sun set below the horizon, and I was eager to see it for myself. Though relatively rare to witness, Green Flash sightings were legendary in Puerto Escondido. One of the bars in Zicatela was even named after it, so I figured my chances of seeing one couldn’t be too bad. I’m not exactly sure why I became so intent on seeing one for myself; perhaps I believed the flash could ignite something within me – insight, courage, direction – things that I desperately needed. 

I had discovered this secluded spot a few blocks from the apartment I was currently living in with my partner and children, behind the main road on the cliffs of Bacocho, facing directly west and overlooking the northern beaches of Puerto Escondido. It was the perfect vantage point for watching the sun set – one could see for miles in all directions. Each evening I would gather my children and hand in hand we would walk to the cliffs to continue our quest. Ages two and four, they looked forward to our evening adventure, when they could run and play freely in the softness of the tropical evening. My partner never came on the walks with us, preferring the solitude of his own company instead. 

I was always worried in those days, worried and walking. I walked for miles each day, often carrying one and sometimes even two children in my arms. My partner and I were expats and had arrived in Puerto some months earlier, from the home we had made in the Guatemalan highlands, in Lake Atitlan where our children had been conceived, born, and raised. We had sold the business we had built there and packed our now meager belongings into a Chevy truck and headed north to Mexico, looking for a change of scenery, in search of community and belonging. We had not found what we were looking for, and despite the beauty of the beach and the friendliness of the people, I was lonely, living with a partner who could leave everything except his demons behind. 

Back then I believed that love could heal all wounds, that by sheer willpower I could hold my family together. Back then, I was young and foolish, delusional in the way the lost typically are. I was living in a tropical paradise, surrounded by beauty and abundance, yet trapped in a yawning pit of darkness and confusion. At that time I was not able to recognize the truth of it all – the depression, the abuse, the guilt and shame. Like so many who suffer trauma from a loved one, I was stuck – emotionally and physically – in an almost constant state of freeze. Embarrassed, isolated, and alone, I often felt helpless and hopeless. So I held on to what I could control – trips to the mercado, walks with my children to the beach, the sunset and the search for the elusive flash. When I think back to those times I often see myself from above, floating above the scene, a disembodied spirit – an observer of my own life. Years later my therapist would give me a word for this phenomenon – dissociation, a desperate act of survival. 

Jules Verne popularized the idea of the green flash in his 1882 novel Le Rayon-Vert in which he describes the phenomenon as “a green which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like! If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope.” Perhaps this is the real truth of why I arrived, evening after evening – a desperate seeker of a sign of hope. 

One evening at the cliffs, as I waited for the sunset and the flash, I encountered a woman, a gringa from Sweden who lived nearby. “I almost never come here,” she told me when we met, “but tonight I had this feeling that I should, that someone was waiting for me. Our meeting was not an accident.” An astrologer, an intuitive healer who worked with spirit guides, she had a grounding presence and an intense gaze. I felt drawn to her, saw within her a light of guidance – here, I thought, was someone that could tell me what I needed to do. 

Over the next few weeks we met regularly. She told me of her life and I told her some of mine. I had hoped that she could save me, that her insight could steer me towards the answers I was so desperately seeking. The situation at home was volatile. The money we had brought from Guatemala was running low, and my partner refused to work. He was angry and depressed after the local mechanic he had trusted to fix our truck had instead stolen it. My new friend told me only that my spirit guides were with me, and if I was quiet, I would hear their wisdom. I wanted answers but what instead was given the gift of tough love. The path to redemption would only happen through me. 

We use the word flash to describe a brilliant point of light, one that lights up the world in a sharp burst, but also to describe an idea that emerges from the aether – a ‘flash’ of inspiration or a sudden remembering of a long forgotten moment. When we are lucky, when the stars align and we are ready to receive it, a moment of flash strikes us with an intensity that reminds us that we are alive – intensely, wonderfully, magically so.

Shortly after our meeting at the cliffs that day, sitting at my life’s proverbial rock bottom, I opened up my small laptop and discovered the world of online writing. Though I had always been a writer, I had never imagined it was something that could provide me with income. In what seemed like an instant I had more work than I could handle and money was flowing in. The answers I had sought had been within me the entire time. The unexpected meeting that evening was not the flash I had been expecting. Instead of a bright flash of green in the sky, I had been given a soft flash of friendship, one that ignited a small fire within me and chased some of the darkness from my soul. I felt hopeful. For the first time in a long time someone looked at me deeply and offered me the gift of insight and self reflection. She saw gifts – intuition, strength and intelligence – that lay within me buried under layers of regret and shame. Through her reflection I was able to see them as well, and I began, slowly, to remember who I was.