GraceSpark is a term coined by Nadine Abraham Thompson, LICSW — therapist, author, spiritual woman, and founder of Soul Purpose. It names something women of color have always known: that grace, beauty, and aliveness are not luxuries. They are the balm.

You may have heard of glimmer — the Polyvagal Theory concept describing small moments when the nervous system shifts toward safety and ease. You may have encountered joyspotting, the practice of noticing pockets of delight in the everyday. These are beautiful, meaningful practices, and GraceSpark honors them. But GraceSpark carries a dimension that neither glimmer nor joyspotting reaches: the theological weight of grace.

Grace, in the deepest sense, is not something we create, earn, or manufacture. It is given. It is unmerited. It arrives not because we are ready for it, but because something greater than us is already at work in our lives. A glimmer may soothe the nervous system. A moment of joyspotting may lift the spirit. But a GraceSpark does something different: it points. It points toward the Giver. It invites us to look at a blessing, an opportunity, a serendipitous encounter, a stroke of what the world might call luck — and to say, quietly, “This is not coincidence. This is grace.”

A GraceSpark sits at the intersection of two truths — the science of Polyvagal Theory and the ancient wisdom of grace: the understanding that something larger than ourselves is present, moving, and at work in our lives, even in the smallest of moments. What makes a GraceSpark distinctive is not simply the feeling it produces, but the recognition it invites — that God is present, moving, and at work in your life, even here, even now, even in this.

Learning to notice your GraceSparks is both a clinical practice and a spiritual discipline. It is the practice of slowing down long enough to see what grace has already placed in your path — and to receive it, fully and without apology, as the gift it is.