Living With Purpose: Timeless Wisdom for a More Meaningful Life

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Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so fired up for story time today because I have one heck of a story to tell you about something that happened to me a year ago, almost to the day involving an owl. And I'm going to get to that in just a minute. But first, I want to welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast, particularly if you are brand new. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to something that could make you happier, help you improve your life. That is exactly what this story about the owl is going to help you do. You're going to love this. It is going to give you chills. It is going to make you think, it's going to give you specific things that you can do in order to enrich your experience.

 

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I kind of can't believe I haven't told you this full story before because this has been a huge deal in my life ever since it happened a year ago. It was so impactful. It's almost like I've become the owl lady, like obsessed with owls, but I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. 

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So we got about a 45 minute drive on the back windy roads through southern Vermont to get back to our house. And it is pouring rain and it's pitch black. It's the kind of eerie rainstorm where it is dark, dark. I mean, if you turned off your headlights, there would be no moon, there would be no stars. You would not be able to see the hand in front of your face. Dark. Plus it is raining and it's not just like the sprinkle raining, it's like, and your windshield wipers are, and it's almost like they're not even making a difference. And so here we are, we're driving really slow because obviously hydroplaning and we are coming around a corner and up and down the hills and we're up and down the road and up in the mountains. And luckily there is a car in front of us because can we agree?

 

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Isn't it helpful when there's a car right in front of you in a dark rainstorm, you can track their taillights. So what is right in front of you, even though you can't kind of see in front of you? And so we're all just kind of inching along. And by all I mean the two of us because we are in the middle of nowhere in southern Vermont. So we come around this corner and we are coming down this hill and we can see the car in front of us. We see their taillights. The rain is coming down and up ahead on the other side of the road, I see headlights coming and you can kind of tell based on how far they are, that as we are descending down this hill and they are coming from the other direction, we're going to kind of meet and pass one another as we get to the flat part at the bottom of the hill.

 

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So we're going along and the rain's coming down, windshield Webers are going, and the red taillights are our north star. And I see this just flash of whiteness up ahead of the car that we're following. It's like this giant white out of nowhere from the top right side just flying down toward the road. And that oncoming car is now right there upon us and it hits this white thing and the thing goes tumbling. And I realize, oh my God, that was a bird. And I yell Chris, Chris stop. And he pulls over the car and the car that we had been following just keeps going. That car is not the car that hit the bird. The car that was coming, the oncoming traffic is what hit this bird. And there was a car behind us. And so Chris pulls off and it was so just eerie.

 

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I don't know if you're into things like the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or Game of Thrones, but those scenes where it's super dark and the light is somehow there and the rain is falling and I'm in heels and a dress because I've dressed up for Chris. I don't wear this stuff in Vermont, but for some reason I am wearing this tonight. That doesn't stop me because I just have this first responder syndrome thing in me where if somebody's hurt or some animal's hurt, I'm like first on the scene. And so I've yelled at Chris, we've pulled over. The other car is gone. The car that has hit this thing has now pulled off and the rain is coming down. But here's the craziest part. Our headlights are beaming through the rain. So if you can imagine a scene in a movie where the raindrops, every single one of them is backlit by these headlights and a car pulls up behind us and I hold up my hand and stop.

 

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I don't even know what the person is hit at this point. I just know I'm out of the car and I'm into the rain in my high heels and I am stopping traffic and I am lit in this rainstorm by the headlights. And so I clump, clump, clump, clump, clump through all the puddles and the pouring rain over to this mass of feathers. And it is a huge adult bardel. And its wings are spread open. And this thing must have had a wingspan like three and a half feet, maybe even four. It was huge. And it was just splayed out there, the poor thing. And the rain is coming down and you can tell that one wing is open the correct way and the other wing is flipped backwards. And you just know, oh, that is not supposed to look like that. And the bird is perfectly still.

 

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And I just crouched down over it. I literally step on either side of this thing and I crouched down over it and the rain is coming down and the headlights are lighting me up from behind. And at that exact moment, this owl who had been face down turns its head slowly around and it's now staring at me eye to eye. It was as if Gandalf, the wizard was like, it was the craziest experience of my life. I had this one on one eye lock moment with a wild owl in a rainstorm on the evening of my 27th wedding anniversary. And I just stood there and had this eye to eye intimate moment. I could tell this poor thing was in such a state of shock, but there was just this shroud of mystery and majesty to the moment. And I was in a trance. If you would've told me in that moment, Mel, this owl is here to tell you that you have wings, girl, just sprout 'em out, start flapping.

 

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I would've been convinced that that messenger in that owl was to tell me that I had angel wings and it was time to flap. It was that incredible of an experience. And I have to say as I've reflected on this, if this had happened during the daytime, I'm not sure it would've had the mystery and the magical nature. But there was something about the rainstorm and the fact that darkness was everywhere and the headlights created this just dramatic other world experience. And if you had told me that I spent two hours crouched in my high heels, dripping wet, staring into the eyes of that owl, I would believe you because it was that kind of experience where time just froze. Have you ever had an experience like that where everything around you just disappears and you are in that moment frozen?

 

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It was incredible. I will remember that moment for the rest of my life, those few seconds felt like years. And the only thing that brought me out of it, because that owl and I, man, we were not going to break eye contact. You get a chance to really have that kind of intimacy with AAN owl or a wild animal. You do not look away. It's like the most primal staring contest you could ever be in. And I was trying to communicate through my eyes, you're going to be okay buddy. You're going to be okay buddy. We're going to take care of you. You're going to be okay. And what happened next is all of a sudden I felt the presence of other human beings behind me.

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Unbelievable. And I kind of look at Chris and I'm like, can you believe this? Can you believe this is happening on our anniversary? This is like a message from God or the universe. This is unbelievable. And I even told you the fact that our family are crazy Harry Potter fans. And by crazy, I mean I bet we have watched the entire Harry Potter series probably nine times as a family from movie number one all the way to the end when our kids were little. Chris read the Harry Potter series to our kids every single night of their lives. This I have always wanted a hedgewood. I always wanted an owl. And now I have got this two foot tall bard owl wrapped in my arms. And if you think about Harry Potter or any fantasy novel owls or messengers, they go between the human world called the Muggles in Harry Potter and the Wizard World.

 

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They carry messages. And so I was convinced as I sat there in the front seat of the car, this was a message. I mean, this is no accident. This is happening on our 27th wedding anniversary, which we have just celebrated. And all of a sudden out of nowhere, this magical, incredible bird is hit in front of our eyes and we're the ones who are rescuing it. It clearly has to have a message for us. And so I wrap it up and Chris is so adorable. I've got my arms squeeze in this thing, but not too tight. I don't want to hurt the thing anymore. And then I'm also starting to think, did I wrap its talons in this towel or are they sitting against my skirt right now ready to go? And Chris reaches over carefully and grabs the seatbelt and pulls it out extra wide to click it in so that the al and I are safe and off we go, which presents a problem.

 

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What the hell are we going to do with this bird? I mean, it's not like I am a certified animal rescue responder. It's not like I know anything about how to rehabilitate an animal. And so I say to Chris, dude, we got to figure out we're going to take this bird. You don't take a bird like this to the pound. What do you do? And so Chris goes, oh, I know we should call Dr. Bob. Dr. Bob is the world's most amazing vet. He is our vet here in southern Vermont. We love Dr. Bob. And so we call the after hours service because we think Dr. Bob Ben vet in southern Vermont forever, he is going to know exactly what to do. And so we get the afterhour service and now we're driving, and of course I'm holding this thing like a newborn. And so as Chris is driving, I'm like, be careful.

 

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What puddle? Be careful the bumping. Chris is like, okay, I got it. I got it. I'm doing the best that I can here. And so we get the Afterhour service and I got to give a huge shout out to Dr. Bob. Dr. Bob called us back five minutes later. It's like nine 30 at night, and he had this great calm voice. Hey guys, what's up? I'm like, Dr. Bob, we have just found this bard owl that was hit by a car. And he is like, oh, wow, that's that's really special thing. Thank you for rescuing it. And he immediately knew what to do. He told us to call this organization called VINs, which is the Vermont Institute of Natural Sciences. They specialize in this. They're about an hour and a half from us up in Woodstock. And so we call thereafter hours service and there was no one available.

 

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So I'm then with one hand, as I'm holding the owl, I am Googling what to do. And I find all of these videos about how you are supposed to keep an animal safe like an owl or a bird when you find one injured in the wild. And so we mainline these videos as Chris is carefully driving and I'm holding this bard out in my lap as my own personal messenger from the universe and God and the magical kingdom, and I just can't help it. I mean, this is not like a fly has hit your windshield. This is a big fricking spiritual deal. And so we get home and what I have learned on the drive home by watching these videos online is that the best thing to do is to put the owl in something like a laundry basket because it has holes in it and it is a safe container.

 

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And we happen to have a nice size laundry basket just like you probably do. Shout out to the big container stores that sell these things. And so Chris runs upstairs when we get there. And now meanwhile, the kids are all home. So they come downstairs and I'm holding this thing in the front seat and they're like, oh my God. And it's blinking and it is fully present in the moment and people are, should we name it? I'm like, well, we're not keeping it. We can't name it anything. This is this incredible thing that's happening. And so now we've got five of us all shout like, okay, let's get the thing. Let's put it in dad's tractor barn because Chris has this barn where his tractor is and where he does his wood working stuff. And so we put the laundry basket out there and I'm now holding this thing and we're walking it again through the rain, over to the little barn, keep the dogs away, get the dogs out of here. I don't want the dogs to make a thing. And we turn on the lights and we gently set the owl into the basket and then we all stand there and look at the owl and it's looking up at us. And it's just one of these giant moments. I mean, it's pretty unbelievable to be that close to a wild animal, no fence in between you, no distance.

 

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And it was so still. And we all just stood there and looked at this owl and oh my God, it's poor wing. I mean, it was just like, it's right shoulder was just like two inches lower than the other side. And its wing was just hanging there. It was so sad. And I was like, God, should I take the towel out? Do I leave the towel in? And Chris was like, I don't think the hell cares about the towel right now. I think we should just let it be. And so we put a piece of plywood over the top as the video from the certified rescue people showed us to do. And then we turned off the lights and we went inside.

 

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And I'll tell you what, I did not sleep a wink. If you've ever bought a new puppy home or a newborn home, you do not sleep that first night. You lie awake and you go, uhoh, are they okay? Are they going to make it? How is this going to work? And I remember getting up that next morning and just having this heaviness in my heart, is that Al going to be alive? Oh my God, dear God, I will give anything for this poor owl to be alive. Please, please, dear God, let this owl be alive. And so first thing in the morning, Chris and I go out there, and if you've ever had an experience like this, you don't run. You kind of walk slowly because you have this sense that maybe it's not going to have made it, that maybe it's not going to be okay.

 

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And so we open up the barn door and I walk over to the laundry basket and I don't see any movement at all, and I'm kind of scared that it didn't make it. And so I carefully lift up the plywood because I'm also nervous that maybe it did, and maybe it's going to use that one wing and flap out and attack us all. Like I don't know what's going to happen. This is a wild animal for crying out loud. And so I lift up the lid and there he is, just looks right up at me still I'm sure in a massive state of shock. And I take a giant exhale. Oh my gosh, it made it. And that morning was a blast because we told everybody that we found an owl and Al got hit. And so our friends came over and they all looked at the owl and we allowed people to take, you could lift it up a little and take a photo and we're going to leave it for an hour.

 

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And we had about four hours with the owl in that barn before the volunteers from VINs showed up. And when the volunteers from VINs showed up, it was sad. I didn't want the owl to leave. It was really sad. I had grown so attached to this thing. I felt like there was a message in this and I didn't know what it meant. What was this owl trying to tell me? Because this stuff does not happen by accident. Dear Owl, before they take you away to the rehabilitation center where you will live happily ever, ever, with all your other owl friends that got rehabilitated and I will come visit you forever. What is the message? That is what every single spirit person, guide person, of course, I went on a crazy spiral on Google searching for what does an owl mean? What is the meaning of an owl?

 

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What is a spirit animal of an owl? And owls are messengers. Owls usher in change. And so I'm sitting there as they're packing this owl up and oh wow, that looks like a broken clavicle. That's a really bad injury. Oh boy. And I'm like, oh no. And I'm like, can I check on the owl? How am I going to you just tell them that it was an owl rescued on this date. This is a barred owl. We think it's a male you can call, can check in on your owl. That made me feel a little bit better. But they packed that owl up, they put him in the back of a Subaru and off he went. It turns out what was happening is the barred owl was up in the trees in the dark. And the cool thing about owls is they see in the dark.

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They're fixed. The reason why an owl's head can go two 70 degrees, they've got twice the amount of bones that you and I have in Anex is because they move their necks as a way to move their eyes. See, when that owl up in that tree saw that little thing hopping across the road, it locked its eyes on that little mouse. And once the eyes are locked on the mouse, it takes flights silently because it is a deadly predator man. It is flying down to snatch that mouse. And if it were to have to move its neck all around and move its eyes to track the mouse as it's moving, it would cause it to make sounds as it's flying. And so it can stay stealth and just move its neck to track the mouse, which is probably why it didn't see the fricking car that was coming. It came out of nowhere and swooped down because its fricking neck and its eyes were locked on that mouse, not everything else going on around it. And that's when it got hit. So what happened? What happened to the owl? I was so curious, especially in those days. I was like a mom that sent her kid away to camp or was waiting to hear from the doctors how the surgery went. And I kept calling and calling and finally three days later, I speak to someone on the phone.

 

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The owl didn't make it. I was crushed. I was so devastated in those three days where I was waiting like an anxious parent to hear what the doctors were going to say about this surgery, I had concocted this entire fantasy of my owl, my owl living happily ever after up at VINs and us being able to go once a year and visit the owl and meet the owl friends. And I just had this whole fantasy in my mind. They explained the nature of the injury, how devastating it was. I was kind of angry. I was like, are you kidding me with today's technology? You can't just amputate that wing and of wrap 'em up and let 'em have a one wing life. I mean, I know that's selfish me. They did the right thing by the owl, but I think had the owl lived, my last year would've gone an entirely different trajectory because there was something about learning that the owl died that sent our family into, I don't know, it just triggered this incredible obsession for our family with owls.

 

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I mean, I've always loved owls, absolutely loved owls. But this experience took it to a whole new level. I mean, first of all, what do we do? We bought as many books as we could. We learned as much as we could about owls. They're absolutely unbelievable. We signed up for Christmas. Everybody got a little like owl statue put into their stocking. We gave Chris a book all about owl nests and how you build a owl house if you ever want to build an owl house, which is something that our family has done together. It is a three foot high plywood bird house with a huge opening on one side that took Chris and our daughter Sawyer an entire weekend to build. And then you know what they had to do? They had to drag an extension ladder like the kind of ladder that you see people using to clear out the gutters on a house all the way through the woods on the mountain that we live on up into the woods and up against a tree.

 

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And then Chris had to haul this thing that weighed like 40 pounds up like 25 feet and hang this thing up. Why? Because we're obsessed with owls. We became that family. And I haven't even told you the fact that my husband's name is Christopher Robbins, as in Winnie the Pooh, and who is one of Christopher Robbins' friends owl? Where does Christopher Robbins and Pooh and Tigger and Piglet go to get advice? Oh, owl's house. And so we started as a family going, maybe we should name our house, owl's house. It became this whole thing. And then just a couple months ago as it was turning into spring, we signed up and went on an owl walk. And that brings me to one of the first owl objects that we bought.

 

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Oh my god, this thing is so heavy because if you're, oh my God, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see this. But if you're listening, I'm going to describe this. I'm going to move this over real quick. It's a little too close to me. Okay, alright. You hear that that is probably a 20 pound cement owl statue, which is one of the first objects that we bought to signify that you are now at the owl house. And this sucker right here sits on the front porch greeting you when you come into our home. And it's like it just took off from there. No pun intended. We wanted to just be around owls I guess because we couldn't go visit our owl. We wanted to be able to be around other owls. And so the next thing that we did that was pretty impactful is we signed up for an owl walk at a local state park that also has this great education center.

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You spend so much of your time and so do I. Looking at your phone, looking at a computer when you're walking, you're looking at the ground or you're looking at the phone. There is so much to see, so much magic. And you're missing it if you don't look up from your phone, if you don't look around when you're outside. And that's the first thing that I've learned from this experience with Al, because now whenever I'm out in the woods and look, it's great that I'm just getting out in the woods and I'm hiking, but before this experience, you know what I was doing? I would be out there hiking, it'd be quiet for the first 10 minutes and then I'm like, oh, I should make a video for everyone. Well, I'm hiking or I'd be like texting somebody or I'd be listening to an audio audiobook.

 

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No, my phone is in my fanny pack now, which is a whole nother problem because the dog treats are in there too. And so you got to have them in the back pocket of the fanny pack. But I digress. But I now go on hikes and I'm scanning all the time looking. And that brings me to the second thing that's so cool about owls and what this taught me. Open yourself up to magic. When I go out into the woods now, I expect to see an owl. I am opening myself up to magic. Now, I almost never see one. I have seen one owl in the wild since I had the experience a year ago on my 27th anniversary. That's how elusive they are. But I'll tell you what, every single time I am out in the woods, every single time I step outside at night here at Southern Vermont and I hear the bard owls up on the mountain go, who cooks?

 

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Who cooks for you? I'm like, they're right here. They're right here. Okay, I'm going to open myself up to magic. Something magical iss going to happen. And when you look for something in life, the world has an amazing way of showing it to you. And even though I have only seen one owl in the wild since I've been looking every day and opening myself up to magic, holy cow, my husband Chris has opened himself up to magic. He's looking for owls. Our family kind of believes he's become an owl. The man is an owl whisperer. He steps outside at dusk and it's like they can sense him. They start calling to him. I don't know if he smells musky. And the chicks are out there like, who cooks for you? Christopher Robbins around. I don't know what it is, but he had this crazy experience the other day.

 

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He sees owls all the time. And so he steps down on this hike that we do on this mountain that we live on where he is coming up close to our house and all of a sudden he sees a Bard owl like 10 feet from him sitting right there in the tree and he looks the bard owl in the eye just like I did a year ago, almost to the day, and has this whole experience. And then all of a sudden check this out, that owl starts to call and there's another owl that starts to respond. And he's standing there as they're talking to each other, and then all of a sudden the one that he's looking at spreads its wings and flies to another tree. And then guess what else happens? The other one spreads its wings, flies back to the branch where the other one was.

 

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And now it's staring at Chris. I can't make this up. I was so freaking jealous. He's literally getting these experiences that are insane. He's drawing them to him. It's not happening for me. But going to tell you what, it is going to happen for me because I am opening myself up to that kind of magic too. And you should too, because if you expect it and you keep looking up and you put out that energy, you will draw it to you. I know this to be true in my bones. 

Kim Russo (00:36:27):

So as you know, owls represent wisdom. Well, I keep hearing as you're telling me this wisdom, wisdom, higher wisdom too. That's why now can turn its head. It sees everything. It's like a 360 view and aerial view and bigger picture. I think it's very representative, and I mean bravo to you for doing what you did. Many people might not have done that, but your car was targeted. And I take it as there's this new, especially what you just said about Chris, and there's new chapter opening up of the higher wisdom coming in maybe with him, maybe with you, maybe with both of you. But I definitely feel something is a new chapter regarding I guess everything we're speaking about today with you and Chris.