Once upon a time, I heard an idea on a podcast that caught me. The concept was that you choose your sign or symbol—something that every time you encountered, it’d make you feel like you got a little pat on the back from the universe—some type of celestial “’atta girl.”

I liked the idea that every time you’d see your sign, it would bring you “luck” or at least remind you that the world was in your favor.

And I’d seen it done before. Most notably through an acquaintance whose mother had died of cancer. She and her mother had shared a deep and abiding love of office supplies (what self-respecting editor would not?). And so, after her mother’s death, every time she saw a paper clip, she felt that it was a little sign from her mother, a hug from the other side. Whether or not my friend actually 100% believed that it was really the power of her mother dropping paper clips at needed moments or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that the concept struck me as powerful. How would it be if, every time you saw a paperclip (or a cardinal or a dragonfly) you were reminded of your mother. And not just of your mother, but of her love for you, of her support of you, of all the ways that she was on your team in this life and that she was still there, rooting for you.

Something about that just got me. I wanted to feel like people were rooting for me. I wanted to believe that the universe was on my team. I wanted that celestial ‘atta girl.

And so I set out to find my sign. It couldn’t be so completely common that I would see it constantly (grass or the sky for example). It couldn’t be so rare that I would never see it and thus never feel that the world was on my side. I knew I wanted something from nature. Because nature always makes me feel like the world is on my team, and like God is smiling on me. But what? A red leaf? A beautiful flower? A dragonfly or butterfly or caterpillar? All of those seemed too seasonal. Was I destined to lose my luck during the winter? No, it had to be something I could count on all year long.

And then one day I was walking in my backyard and saw a beautiful, perfect feather. I saw feathers fairly frequently since we have ducks and chickens and since wild geese, ducks, and a variety of other birds make their way through our yard on a regular basis and during all seasons. Yet, it wasn’t TOO common to find a perfect feather (no nasty wet or poopy ones for my symbol; just the good stuff). Feathers had been a little popular in tattoos and jewelry about a year earlier, so I hesitated, not wanting to be too basic and all. But with my love of birds and with our backyard menagerie, it seemed like the right sort of symbol.

Thus, I declared it my good luck symbol. And sure enough, every once in a while on a bad day, one of those perfect feathers would pop up. They made me smile, even if they didn’t quite make me believe in magic.

Spring came with all its true magic—its tulips and dogwoods and greenery. All its baby birds. Spring came, too, with a mood of heaviness that had been hanging onto me for months. I was the saddest (without good reason—just a heavy mood) I’d been in many years. In fact, as a normally happy person, I began to wonder why? What was wrong? Even the flowers and the goslings wandering the streets as they do in my neighborhood did little to lighten my mood. And they should have—what kind of an ingrate was I to have so much beauty around me (both literally and figuratively) and to still feel so imperfect?

In the course of the spring I remembered something—about birds, about feathers, about me. Even in the thrust and throes of life and beauty, things die. One morning a goose family would be missing a gosling. One afternoon, I’d see a hawk flying high with a small bird in its beak. Our own ducks had babies and I remembered how stinky and bloody it was. Then one of the babies died. Swimming about in the morning, dead in the afternoon. Its sibling duck nearly died as well (and is currently being rehabilitated in our basement)—the mother neglecting their warmth and care. I remembered how many animals I’d lost over the years. And I wondered—were feathers really the right symbol for me to have? These things that represent the thrill of life, yes, but also its fragility, also its end. In fact, a pile of feathers in one’s yard was rarely a good sign—it usually meant some unfortunate bird had met an untimely death sometime in the night. Those piles I didn’t go look at. Those piles I waited for the wind to carry off. And this, this was the symbol for luck and goodness I’d chosen. Maybe I should have gone the four-leaf clover route. Maybe I should have picked something more steadily cheerful, more hardy. A tree trunk. Or a pond of water. Although these things also pass—sometimes even quickly, in a flash of lightning or a drainage hole created by a burrowing animal. I’ve seen the results of both.

And then, after a hard night, my mood lifted. Which is an oversimplification. But the sadness I’d been nursing for months turned to a determination, a realization that I couldn’t wallow forever so I might as well get back up and dust off and do my best. I’ve had these moments before in my life, only a few times. Moments when the world seemed to be closing in and I realized that maybe if I pushed against it, or maybe even just stood up straight, I would burst out of it instead of shrinking, instead of breaking.

Which was the day the feather really became my symbol. This thing that represented life and beauty, but also death and loss. A phoenix from ashes. A death that pushes us to be reborn. This complicated, lovely, soft thing with a hard spine at its center. Of course I had chosen it. It’s what I wanted to be.