Mama, Remind Me
A Prayer for Rediscovering Magic
This Robynism is scripted on a photo that I took while walking in Sintra Portugal of graffiti and an official sign both existing on this crumbling beautiful old wall
There’s something about certain places that wakes up parts of us we’d forgotten existed. For me, that place was Sintra, Portugal, a hilltop village that felt like it had been pulled straight from a storybook I might have read as a child.
I’d experienced magic before. Just months earlier, I was in Thailand on an island built entirely on rose quartz. The energy there was incredible. But Sintra was different. This was fairy tale magic—dense forests with small homes tucked between the trees, everything painted in soft pinks and whites, the kind of place that makes you remember what it felt like to believe in magic without question.
I was there leading a retreat with women from my community, and something about being in that space kept bringing me back to how we choose to see the world. There’s Gritology—the belief that only what you can see and touch matters. Then there’s Ontology—the understanding that what we can see comes from something invisible, a field of possibility where our thoughts and energy actually create reality.
I’ve always leaned toward the ontological view. But life has a way of pulling you away from that kind of thinking. You get caught up in the daily grind and lose touch with the magic. Sintra brought it back.
It reminded me of a time after my divorce when I was living in New Mexico near the Sandia Mountains. Every morning, I’d sit at my breakfast table with my coffee, looking out at those mountains and feeling sorry for myself. I hadn’t planned to be a single parent. I hadn’t expected my life to look like this, even though leaving was the right choice.
After weeks of this morning ritual of self-pity, I decided to try something different. I started telling myself, “I live a charmed life.” I didn’t believe it at first. But I kept saying it while looking for evidence that it might be true. I had these mountains in my backyard. I had time to figure out who I wanted to become. I had the freedom to create something new.
Slowly, that small thread of truth grew. I started finding more places where my life actually was charmed, and those places expanded until most of my life felt that way. Not because I was pretending, but because I was finally paying attention to what was already there.
That’s what Sintra felt like—a return to that way of seeing, that ontological space where you can look at your life and choose to reshape how you experience it.
I stayed in a converted petite maison with impossibly high ceilings and doors that towered over me. Every night, I’d open the full glass windows and fall asleep to the sound of wind through the forest, moonlight filtering through the trees onto the small chateaus scattered throughout the hills.
Every morning, I took a hot bath. The water there was different, softer somehow, like it was speaking to me. Like the Earth herself was reaching out through that water, reminding me of something I’d forgotten.
One morning, I woke to the sound of water falling. When I looked outside, I could barely see it, just a fine mist drifting down like something from a dream. I stuck my hand over the balcony, and these tiny droplets touched my skin. It was like walking inside a cloud.
I threw on my clothes and went outside. Now, I love a good thunderstorm. Living in the Sonoran Desert, when the monsoons come, they’re powerful and wild. But this was different—soft, gentle, the kind of rain I hadn’t walked in since I was a child.
The village was still sleeping as I wandered the ancient stone pathways. I found myself looking at plants I’d never seen before, some familiar but different at this latitude. At some point, I started kissing the leaves and flowers. I hadn’t done that since I was small, pulling honeysuckle off vines to taste that sweet nectar. You remember doing that, right?
I took off my sandals and felt the cold stone under my feet. When I stepped onto a patch of mossy earth to get closer to a plant, something unexpected happened. The ground was warm. Not just warm, it pulsed with warmth, like a heartbeat coming from deep in the planet.
That’s when I found myself talking to the Mother.
“Mama,” I said, “remind me.”
Remind me of this moment. Remind me of every moment like this that I’ve forgotten. Remind me of what brings joy and wonder and magic back into my life, into my heart, into my very spirit.
Because there are times when I lose it completely. When the world feels like it’s spinning too fast and nothing seems to matter. When I get caught up in things that are ultimately out of my control, things that drain my peace and steal my joy while doing absolutely nothing to change anything.
“Mama, remind me that this is still a magical realm, even though so much of that magic gets covered up by all the noise and chaos and friction out there. Remind me to shed the things that don’t matter. Remind me to come back closer to you, to seek these moments that feed my soul.”
Here’s what I’ve learned: The world is full of problems that other people created and other people have to fix. We can spend all our energy focusing on what’s wrong, talking about it, getting angry about it, letting it consume our thoughts and emotions. But that doesn’t actually change anything. It just robs us of our peace.
It’s like the serenity prayer, knowing what we can control and what we can’t, and having the wisdom to tell the difference. We can control where we put our attention. We can control whether we choose to see magic or choose to see only chaos. We can control whether we ask the Mother to remind us of who we really are.
The people creating the problems? They have to fix them. Our job is different. Our job is to stay connected to what’s real, what’s true, what feeds our spirit and allows us to contribute to the world from a place of joy rather than rage.
This isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about recognizing that we have a choice in every moment about where we put our focus. We can let the chaos define our experience, or we can ask to be reminded of the magic that’s always been here.
“Mama, remind me to be your daughter in this world,” I found myself saying that morning in Sintra. “Help me contribute from a place of happiness and joy and passion, all the things that make our hearts worth beating every day.”
That prayer isn’t just mine. It’s for all of us who’ve forgotten how to see the magic, who’ve gotten caught up in the noise and lost touch with what actually matters.
When you feel overwhelmed by everything that’s wrong with the world, when you feel like you’re spinning your wheels getting angry about things you can’t control, try this: Step outside. Touch the earth. Feel the air on your skin. Ask the Mother to remind you.
Remind you that you are her child in this magical realm. Remind you that your job isn’t to fix everything that’s broken, but to stay connected to what feeds your soul so you can contribute from a place of love rather than fear.
The magic is still here. It was never gone. We just need to remember how to see it.
And sometimes, all it takes is asking: “Mama, remind me.”
Yes and thank you Robyn, we need to be reminded and don’t always think of it when we need it most.
When we ask, the pain will go. It cannot be any other way. Such is her strength and her love.