I'm unsure when my avian shift started, from being a night owl to turning into one of those early birds. The latter having no designated animal feels right; it allows a wide-open possibility of what you might become beyond the sunrise. It could be a hawkish day, or it could be a day where you stick your head in the sand.

In high school and college, the nights seemed the easiest time to set myself on track to take time for myself while the rest of the world slept or went to bars. It was sometime after having kids when I realized that the most clarity I would muster was in the twilight period when I still heard their snores. There were also more concrete deadlines, like school drop-off, which made the time more electric, and, strangely, more filled with peace.

I hadn't realized how much I'd missed peace until I felt the tug of a moment after a few exceedingly stressful days. I was caught in the middle of my kitchen, and even with my husband laughing and the kids running around, there was a surrounding stillness built from the promise of an evening that held no demands of me. I could just be myself in my schlubby housedress.

I've been parking these moments in a memory bank that I take withdrawals from at regular intervals. I shared one with my daughter while driving back from swim practice, after she wondered what it might be like to swim while it was snowing. I told her that years back — when she was a baby, and I was trying to lose that baby weight — I had been waking up at 5 a.m. to join a workout group at a local track. There were about five of us jogging around the track and doing bodyweight exercises on the side of the running track. It was late in the fall and bitterly cold. I hated life that morning.

As we were on our yoga mats doing bodily contortions, slow, large snowflakes floated down on us. I rolled onto my back to watch the flakes appear and slowly grow larger out of the darkness above us. I moved from hating the moment to banking it as magic.

I explained to my desert-born daughter, who has rarely seen snow, how the air changes when it snows, and how it gets quieter. "It was peaceful," I said, "and I like to think about that moment now and then, just to be back there."

The last few months — against a personal backdrop of running a campaign and the grim specter of a world shaking at its foundations — have held little peace. And, more troubling, we have all watched hate grow around us all.

Michelle Obama recently explained the meaning of her quote, "When they go low, we go high," which she said during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in support of Hilary Clinton.

"Going high means finding the purpose in your rage," she said. "Rage without reason, without a plan, without direction is just more rage. And we've been living in a lot of rage."

There have been perhaps more trips to the memory bank to attempt to have the past build you up in the present, but it can also keep you from your purpose. But for growth to come, maybe peace has to take a secondary role, and we must believe in our plans for a future that includes building up moments for true peace.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at [email protected]. To find out more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Aaron Burden at Unsplash