I coach women in one-on-one sessions. I teach yoga to full rooms of students. I support a start-up as a content strategist. This fall I’ll lead my first writing group.

These are all income streams, and all involve people and teams. And supporting me behind the scenes are friends, mentors, family, and former colleagues.

Ashlynne started at Rapt Studio a little before I did, and left a little before I did, too. We were put on the same project for Google early in our time there and hit it off. We still talk on the phone a few times a week, and send texts with personal, creative, and professional updates. This week, she shared a link to a free social-media bootcamp she’s taking, asking if I wanted to join; last week, I talked about where I was stuck in my memoir. If I go on about things that she knows are less important to me, she’ll ask one piercing question: And how’s the writing this week?

Ashlynne and I also did The Artist’s Way with a small group of women in the fall of 2024. Last fall, I took a five-month memoir-writing course, led by Rise Literary, with just women. Before then, I joined The Writing Room, an online community, for classes and accountability.

In my memoir-writing class, I met Babette, who’s become a reliable, steadfast writing partner. We exchange new material almost daily, editing each other’s work. This week, she sent me a small collection of books related to what I’m writing, and we hopped on a call Monday morning as she was on her way to teach a yoga class.

Then there’s Natalie, whom I met in my life-coach training. Two years with the Martha Beck-led program gave structure and purpose to my days after leaving my full-time job. Natalie and I meet weekly to exchange sessions — her coaching me for an hour, me coaching her for an hour, and giving each other feedback. Recently, we’ve added “writing and business updates” to our calls. How are we growing our businesses? What’s challenging? What are wins? In between, we join 90-minute calls twice a month with our original coaching cohort. A few of us meet to practice specific tools and techniques.

In June, I also hired an editor to review the first draft of my memoir. She was a poetry and non-fiction professor at universities around the country; now she writes poetry and takes on select projects because she misses working with students. She’s the one who asked me to consider an MFA, if it interests me — surfacing a possibility I’d never really considered before.

This is the scaffolding behind my paid work in the world. It’s what keeps me feeling supported, accountable, and learning. I have people offering me feedback, ensuring I stay on track and committed to my goals. Since I don’t have a boss and I don’t get performance reviews, this serves as a substitute for that.

I’m proud of having invested in my own professional and creative growth, and for growing this network of support. I give to those who are giving to me. And I paid for the Writing Room membership, coaching training, memoir course, and editor. I also paid for my own coach for six months to help me get clearer about where I wanted to head professionally. I did this because I believed in myself and wanted the chance to express and serve in new, expansive ways.

On any given day, you might see me in a yoga class, on a Zoom call, or in a coaching session. And now you know the support that’s there behind the scenes. Scaffolding.

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I keep walking. The water approaches my calves, knees. I pause. I look right — the sun, an inch off the horizon.

I look ahead again and sigh.

Children’s laughter fades as I think about my day. One more coaching session. One more conversation between the mother and my client, her daughter. What she’s going through is not all that different from my story.

In the distance, a pair of friends bob on the platform between two buoys. Maybe I’ll swim out there today.

I’ll teach yoga tomorrow. A room that’s new to me: small, with skylights and wood floors, inside a tennis clubhouse. A new set of students.

My dad has invited me over for tri-tip or to make a delivery. I’m staying three streets down, housesitting. He also wants to swing by my grandpa’s with a glass-filled dish of it. Midweek, I’ll see my grandpa’s first love — my grandmother. We’re having lunch outside. I bet we’ll order big salads and sit under wide, striped umbrellas.

This is the day-to-day. The rhythm is new to me, yet familiar — it’s the rhythm I lived a decade ago, when I was living in Santa Barbara. Here again, it’s returning, just like these waves — one after another after another, as I adjust to the temperature.

The air is warm enough for me to stay right here. The water, cold enough to be refreshing. I tread slowly. With every step, a remembrance, a grounding.

A friend darts over. “Camille, Camille!” It’s Zoe — I haven’t seen her in nine years. She smiles. “I ran into Justine yesterday, who says you’re back.” “I am!” I say, bright and also sad, for not having kept the thread between us alive all this time.

I feel the air on my skin, which is slightly sweet.

At night, once it’s cooled off and the sky is inky, I walk. It’s then that I cry. There’s nowhere else I have to go. I’m here, I’m home.

I’ve spent my life returning to this place and then departing. I never liked the departing, at least not back to college. Returning to the Bay was different — I had a home up there. But I like this feeling that any travel I take from here will be on my own accord, when I want it to happen, not on a boss’s schedule or a partner’s. For now, that’s the way I want it to be.

The tears come, followed by my understanding: I’m safe here.

The bougainvilleas curl and splash their pink tissue-paper petals that stay bright even through the night. A cat comes up to me, purring. A basket of lemons beside someone’s mailbox still has a few for the neighbors to take. I inspect them, pick one up, rub my thumb into its skin, and take it with me.

I belong here.

Sunday night, at a party, I got to see familiar faces — the owner of the yoga studio I used to manage, and have returned to teaching at, had all the staff over for a summer party. I saw Emily, whose class I covered last month. I saw Denise, who founded Montecito Yoga before settling in Carpinteria and teaching in Santa Barbara. I saw Drea, who runs a local soup kitchen that delivers meals to my grandfather.

I also met a somatic therapist who turned me toward a new apartment building to check out. She’s new to town, still discovering the gems. And she’s living near a man I met whose class I also covered, who offered me his car. “I have two, and I’ve thought about selling the old one for a thousand bucks. Want it?” I burst out laughing.

Ask, and you shall receive.

Call it the universe, or this gracious community.

The waves are still lapping. I’m still tallying my blessings.

I look west, and the sun is setting. I can’t see past this horizon — past Santa Barbara jutting out of the water. But right now, wading here, there’s still so much to see. And I trust that the rest is arranging itself just beyond my sightline.

It feels good to be teaching again, to hear my voice resonate in my chest and across the room. I like who I am when I teach: commanding, accepting, hopefully inspiring. I also like reconnecting with former students and meeting new ones. I like supporting them as they return to their bodies and listen within. Even though I’m the only one talking during class, I feel like I’m in dialogue with the room as I read body language and tailor the practice to what students need.

Eight years after moving to SF, I’m back in this place, showing up to the yoga rooms that some of my students never left. I greeted a few of them last week and gave them a tight squeeze. Even though I’ve practiced all this time, I haven’t been teaching, so my orientation from the front of the room feels new. My knowledge has grown, and my approach to the practice has evolved. I’m 36 now, not 26, and I prefer more stability in my classes, instead of endless motion.

I can’t help but feel that I’m new at this again, even though teaching was once so familiar. I began my practice in 2008 and took 1,000 classes before enrolling in a 200-hour teacher training at LMU. Before I finished that program, I started teaching, and I even managed Yoga Soup. It was a lot of work, ensuring the operation ran smoothly: 30 teachers, 15 desk staff members, two studios, one shop, and 90 classes per week — while redesigning the schedule and spaces.

By the time I left for San Francisco in 2018, I was ready for a change — and I got it. A full-time job in the design industry, leading marketing and communications. I loved it, but I eventually burned out.

When I was deciding whether to leave SF, I craved the warmth, soul, and community I associate with this place. Sometimes I wonder, though, whether stepping back into familiar places and old roles — like teaching yoga — is a return or regression. Am I falling back on it because it’s familiar, or reclaiming something essential that I’d lost?

I wonder whether “home” is too safe, and whether health and fitness are less interesting than more mental pursuits like communicating the value of design projects with top companies, which I did in SF. But I think teaching yoga is valuable at this stage of my life. Right now, I don’t want a full-time job like the one I had. I’m still working on my memoir, which keeps me internal; I want to step into more teaching and coaching. I can do all of that well here.

Still, navigating the balance between these paths brings its own questions: which avenue to lean into most, and how to prioritize. I want to become a skilled yoga teacher, and coach, and writer. How can I grow these skill sets simultaneously? I don’t want to pick just one; I’m dynamic, with different facets and interests. The efforts accelerate at different paces, and I want to trust that each effort supports the others — that the intertwining will serve me. Every day, I get clearer on what the next steps for each can be. The rest of the time, I try to get more comfortable with uncertainty around where each will lead.

As I return to teaching, continue writing, and start coaching, I’m coming to see a spiral as the path. Being back in Santa Barbara, I don’t believe I’m returning to where I started; I’m circling back to where I started with everything I’ve learned since. From here, I’m building.

I’ve had several harsh, critical bosses.

Now, I get to be my own.

As I walked at lunchtime under sycamores on Monday, meandering on a sandy path with warm air on my skin, I thought, I’m a kind boss.

At home, I fixed a salad with tomatoes from the garden and avocado from my neighbor, and I tossed it with some quinoa, beans, and seeds. I sat outside in a cushioned lounge chair and ate it at a leisurely pace.

And I didn’t lose any time by taking this time for myself. I continued my day unhurried but productive — refreshed from the air and movement and meal.

I trust myself to work quickly when I have the energy, and to rest when I need to replenish.

My bosses didn’t always respect this natural rhythm. They approached work with more hurry, more rush, more pressure than was warranted.

Now, I allow myself more grace. That’s not to say my expectations have slipped; they’re still high. But there’s a lot more softness and a lot more space these days. Between tasks, within tasks, and considering which tasks to take on in the first place. More intention. More, let me feel into this and work at a pace that’s sustainable. I very much like this.

I think I like being my boss — at least for now. And I’m learning something in the process: that I can trust myself to work well and take care of myself, without the harshness I once thought was the price of doing it right.

I have no right to comment on her situation or her body, and she’s explicitly asked that we don’t. Yet, the physical changes in her form have incited cultural commentary because they represent our society’s pressure on women to be rail-thin. And while her circumstances and mine couldn’t be more different, I also once had to step away from life.

I can’t help but express my compassion for her and my support for her choice. She appears to be suffering — and healing is something that’s done in private.

She will bear the cost of that, and also reap the rewards.

While I haven’t followed her closely, I’ve seen snippets in my feed: before-and-after photos, clips from her newest music videos. As she’s gone from movie tour to music tour, I, like her fans, have noticed her extreme weight loss — protruding ribs, angular jawline, sinewy arms. She appears juvenile, as if aging backward toward adolescence, erasing the woman she’s become.

Seeing photos of her reminded me of my own. When I experienced undernourishment, there were visible signs, but there were also changes beneath the surface:

My heart rate dropped, my blood pressure fell, and my temperature ran cool. My bone density decreased; my body shut down its reproductive capabilities. My mental life shrank too, inducing anxiety, stress, and panic.

A prolonged state of severe depletion can cause permanent damage, and some people become so frail that their bodies give out.

But there’s another choice: the grueling work of recovery. I’ve learned firsthand that it’s not immediate, and depending on the severity, it can take a long time.

In stepping away, she’s made the first critical decision. Next, for anyone recovering from severe depletion, comes the long series of decisions that cause profound discomfort: choosing to eat when the mind resists, pushing past the psychological signals that reward starvation. Building physical substance while the rest of our culture glorifies shrinking. Letting your body change and learning to live with the changes.

I believe she can do it, just as I believe anyone who’s suffering can find their way to a better place. My hope is that, in choosing herself, she can become a model of what’s possible.

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I’m feeling grateful. At the same time, I want some parts of my life to be different. My good friend Kendall visited last night — bless her, for snaking through LA traffic up Beachwood Canyon after picking up shelves in Los Feliz she found on Facebook Marketplace. We walked the dirt trail beneath the sign and asked tourists to take our photo, like I’ve been doing for them all week. (I woke up to that pesky message: “iCloud storage full.”) I contemplated pruning my digital library this morning instead of writing, but I always regret not writing. So here we are.

Kendall and I are in transition. It seems like a good many of us are, whether we admit it and give into it or not. I myself am between jobs, between cities, and wondering if nomadism is simply going to be my new reality. It won’t, as this is a distinct season, and I know that’s not my style. And before I make any sweeping claims about what my life will or will not be, I acknowledge this is an unusual time.

For the next several months, I have some new projects lined up, which have recently solidified. I feel like I need to write them down to keep them straight in my head: Content strategy for a biotech company. Life coaching for a few women. Yoga teaching at a studio. Helping someone downsize her life and move homes, supporting with decision-making, clearing out, and designing her new place.

Underneath these client commitments is the steady current of housesitting while continuing to write my memoir. I’m also beginning to research MFA programs.

There are so many ways this could all go. I have a sense that this constellation of activities will feel too chaotic for me come winter. At this time, I feel ready to continue on this trajectory for a few more months, but there may come a time when I say: MEMOIR, ONLY. or MFA, ONLY. or even FULL-TIME JOB, ONLY.

I see another scenario in which my life coaching practice and my yoga teaching build, and I find something interesting with this organizational client — which marries my interest in coaching, clearing out and practicing letting go, distilling life and our homes to what feels most essential, and creating spaces where we can feel fully sovereign and embodied, unencumbered by the items and stories that no longer serve us. I’m already having a few more people reach out asking if I do this kind of work. So maybe it will evolve into its own business. We shall see! It feels exciting to me….

I tell my mom what I’m up to during the day and she gets a headache. It doesn’t give me one, because it still feels spacious, but I can’t help but also feel I want to be more mentally invigorated. I read, I learn, I seek out new experiences, but there’s a dullness that comes with too much decision-making. Some days I want someone to give me a job and promise a paycheck. Alas — the grass is always greener!

I see this as a liminal time, and I’m trying to not be hard on myself that it doesn’t always feel right. Everything I’m creating is an expression of me — whether that’s biotech that leads to environmental sustainability, yoga and movement in community, coaching to help women find internal freedom, housesitting in places that sing to my spirit, and writing my own story.

None of that was easy, and none of it came naturally. It took more courage than I thought I had in me.

Where did that courage come from? I pause and search inside myself. I imagine the roots of a tree going down to the floor from my belly, and a trunk rising.

Someplace deep within me, I found trust and faith — faith that what was coming could be better than what came before. That I could create. That, when given a blank slate of a day, I could return to what I knew gave me purpose, and that I could use my intuition to steer me in making good decisions. That I could write, and I could connect with a friend in a real way, and that everything else from there could fall into place.

How scary it was to make those decisions when the future looked like a black box — when I couldn’t envision life after the relationship that provided love and color, in trips across the world. When I couldn’t see beyond the hours I spent designing things for some of the biggest companies around. When I didn’t know what it would feel like to leave a vibrant city for a smaller town.

Beneath the fear of the unknown lay shame at losing part of my identity. The ego grips: “But this was impressive. This is what I’m good at,” it says, as it tugs, threatening me to remain stuck. Impressive, but unhappy, unfulfilled, stagnant.

But then there is the immense cost of staying where you are.

And the factor of time. We don’t have much time.

Every day, I’ve been swimming in the ocean with my mom. It’s the most immediate way to connect to the present moment. My mom works with people at the end of their lives. Floating in the water, with her presence — wise, always — I have this sense that life is finite. If we don’t act now, we might lose the chance to live the life we want.

In taking a step, there is always a risk. What if our families don’t understand the choice? What if we don’t? What if our minds can’t figure out why we’re attracted to one person over another, one job over another, a certain place? Sometimes, we have to take a step before we’re ready — before we understand from every angle why we’re making the move.

As someone who likes to take her time with things, this has felt challenging.

But I know I’ve waited too long in some instances. I could’ve requested a medical leave before I burned out. I could’ve not signed my lease for a second year, and then a third, when I knew I wanted eventually to leave. I could’ve acted when I knew, instead of waiting to understand why, and until the evidence pointed irrefutably to the fact that yes, a departure would be best — for my heart, and also my mind.

I waited then, but now I know I can take a small step to investigate the possibilities as soon as I have an inkling, a curiosity, or even a small shift of discontent. Because if I’ve learned anything in coaching, it’s the power of a “turtle step” — a small step in the direction we’re called, to learn more. To gather information. To follow a pull that just keeps pulling. To test it.

There’s no need to overhaul everything. But there’s never a risk in starting.

“Are you by chance free to sub my class at Yoga Soup tonight at 7?” It was from a new number. “This is Karly, by the way.”

“Yes!” I said.

Even though it’d been nearly nine years since I last taught. Even though I didn’t have a sequence mapped out. Even though I didn’t have a playlist.

Because it was a real instinct, a real yes. It was the part of me I wanted to listen to, who knew that the only way back to teaching again was to say yes to subbing.

I arrived at the studio early. Stepping into the room, which I know by heart, I pushed past the risk of not teaching “well” — missing my words, fumbling my cues, botching the sequence. But I was willing to risk it, and I chose to be honest.

As we settled into comfortable seated positions, I admitted that while Yoga Soup had been home ten years ago, I was also a decade out of practice leading. From my mat at the front of the room, I saw my students smile. I exhaled.

Once we got moving, it all worked: I pulled poses I used to teach from memory and strung them together. I moved slowly enough to keep pace with my own breath. I watched the room: What did the students need, after the end of a long, hot day, and how could I respond?

It flew by. 75 minutes of flow and yin, and another seated meditation at the end. Throughout, I believed: if I paused, and trusted the process, the students would pick up on my energy.

At the end, as the room cleared, a few students lingered to thank me. One said he’d sleep well. Another mentioned that the low hum of the music allowed him to hear inside himself again. He asked when I’d be back. The teacher inside me was still there.

That night, I remembered that we all find our teachers. My job isn’t to appease everyone but to authentically share what I know, and to walk with students as they climb back into their bodies and re-establish a relationship with the sensations within.

Like them, I’ll keep practicing. Practicing teaching, but also the willingness to show up even if I’m unsure. Saying yes when I can’t predict the outcome. Risking it — because I know it’ll be worth it in the end.

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Sitting still in the sun this morning, my chest exposed and the heat gathering beneath the top layer of my skin, it occurred to me: I don’t think there’s been one thing I’ve experienced or understood in the last few decades and not translated to the page.

Yet writing through life is much different than writing the story of that life. And that story is what I’m currently crafting.

“What’s missing?” is the question I keep asking as I work on my manuscript. “Scanning this document, what does a reader not yet know about me that they need to know?” I run through memories. All of them that feel important are somewhere on some page — in journals, in files in Google Drive.

And they’re not all in my current voice, or in one place, strung together eloquently.

That’s my work.

And that work takes time — more than I realized.

My editor — who is new to my writing — believes that I have between six months and two years before a final draft of my manuscript is complete. She’s read only 135 pages of a first draft and hasn’t seen the thousands more pages that feel relevant to my story. To begin to review them and integrate any facets of them is the real work. What stays? What goes? What still needs to be understood and written? In the braiding, what do I learn?

Because I know that I must know more than I know now to finish this thing. Even if the story has been lived, my understanding is still forming. There’s still knowledge to be gleaned and insight to be integrated. I can’t reach these things without more writing, more editing, more reflecting, and more living.

So I’ll keep going.

“At 36?” I laughed. “I’ll always be evolving!”

But I can see that so many pieces of my life are organizing into days I actually want to live.

The foundation starts with my writing, which my editor told me last week needs the best hours of my mind each day. “Find those hours, and protect them like your life depends on it,” she said. I have, and I will.

I can’t sustain a full-time job with that commitment, but I can implement the next two things I want: coaching and teaching. I purchased personal liability insurance so I can start teaching yoga again (!!!), and I’m two mentor sessions away from having my Wayfinder life coach certification (yay!). I love my clients so much, and I can’t wait to start serving more of them.

A great thing about yoga classes and client sessions is that they slot into the hours between writing. They’re contained, like a gem: one hour, with a clear start and end.

Yet, because I’m sensitive and they involve emotional work, I need a physical reset that clears my energy. The beach — just a mile away from where I’m staying — provides that. The waves, when they wash over me, clear me from the inside out. They dissolve internal chatter. They quiet my mind. In the waves, I’m simply a being that came from the same stuff as the air and sand and water.

So it’s the manuscript — the big creative work — that threads through my days intellectually. It’s the teaching and coaching that give me a chance to serve in real time. It’s the water that clears my field and makes the next day possible, with freshness and clarity.

So much still churns beneath the surface: the looming expense of a new car and the need to find an apartment this fall. My innate ambition and the fear that I’m not being productive or purposeful enough. Fears that I’m out of practice teaching. And what about an MFA? What about local dating — does Santa Barbara have a pool that’s big enough?

I’ll keep addressing these questions while taking action toward building. :)

So, as Brad says, maybe it is all working out for me?

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The people I meet in recovery — from disordered eating, but also addiction — are some of the most sensitive and vibrant people I meet. They’re the ones who’ve wanted to live life to the fullest, to feel at the very edge of their capacity. For them, the middle way is mundane. They wanted a higher high, a rare perspective; they wanted to go deep. They wanted to get out of the boring middle of things.

I was like them. I am like them. I am them. And I’m also in recovery, getting acquainted with the basic day-to-day.

I discussed this struggle in Copenhagen, where I met up with a friend from the States over coffee. Many years sober, he said he didn’t have an internal brake. For him, it had been drinking and drugs; now he’s in AA. He knows his penchant for extremes so watches it daily.

Now, he tracks everything he eats and has a fitness coach — even though, as a senior staff member at Equinox, he’d easily be able to develop his own plan. He needs accountability, and this way he ensures he stays within the bounds of what’s healthy — not overexercising or undereating.

These boundaries are necessary, because the stakes for him were life or death. When he was young, he tried to end his life. Now, fully in it, and conscious of his wiring, he knows who to call when his mind gets “squirly.”

Talking with him about his daily vigilance got me thinking about my own. I know now what my liabilities are, and I know to watch for them. And I’m watching how I feel generally. Despite all that’s amazing in my life, I’ve felt a little lower than usual. I think it’s because through continued recovery, I’m entering reality. It’s not always special, and it can’t be — even with full health. Especially with full health. Because with health and a desire to fully live comes all kinds of experience — the remarkable, the difficult, the mundane.

I’m learning to live with that.

But as grateful as I am to have places to stay, and to have generous friends and family who’ve opened their doors to me, I feel a particular kind of stress that comes from being a guest. I feel like I’m being constantly surveilled, whether I am or not. I try to completely relax, and I’ve made it a practice — to receive.

This week, over coffee, I got at least some confirmation that it’s working: my host remarked that she loved how naturally I integrated into the rhythms of the house: lending a hand when preparing meals, offering to make coffee for us all, and even going on walks on my own in the early mornings or evenings. She noticed how I integrated, and how I took space.

This is a balance, a continuous negotiation — assessing at every moment what I need, and predicting what I’ll need when we make future plans as a group. Do I want to join for an early-morning dip in the ocean, even though it’s 13 degrees Celsius? Yes. Do I want to make cappuccinos for us afterward? Yes. Do I want to go to the summer house this week, an hour outside Copenhagen? No. Because there are other people nearby I want to see — other friends and family. (I also want some time to myself, to write and read and think.)

So I’m practicing the dance of stating my needs, staying flexible, and accommodating but trying not to do too much compromising. Having had so much experience living with others, I’ve learned how to jump in to help out, adopt the rhythms of the places I’m staying, and bring my own routines to the mix. More importantly, I notice what I need and communicate it clearly.

This is the way I’m making this transition work — not simply as a temporary arrangement, but as a time when I can continue building my own foundation even without a permanent home base, before the next lease is signed.

But as I move beyond it and witness the local lifestyle, my history also allows me to see what’s happening beneath the skin, given my recent experience with weight restoration. A drop in a person’s energy might be signaling a drop in blood glucose, because they forgot to eat lunch before 3 p.m. Tiredness might mean mild dehydration or a lack of electrolytes. The body, if it hasn’t had enough hydration and nutrition for a while, might not register tiredness as hunger, but rather the need to rest — that is, hibernation, or going into low gear.

This internal deceleration is visible in people crossing the streets, if you know what to look for. I see it in moments I circle Copenhagen — a place filled with all kinds of bodies, operating in unique ways. I saw it on the metro, on my way downtown the other day: a woman disappearing beneath a wide coat, her collarbones protruding. I saw it on the arms of a man preparing dinner at an event, his veins leaping from underneath a thin layer of skin. I saw it among design-savvy women perusing art galleries, moving languidly, as if through molasses, lifting their feet as if lifting stones.

Perhaps some are just taking their time with the art. But every once in a while, I can identify a person who operates like I used to. Underpowered, and overcompensating through staying busy. It’s unsettling because it reminds me of an awful time in my life, including a time that was filled with denial. But seeing these people, I also feel hope — I know it can be different for them. It can be better. In the meantime, there’s a risk to their brain, heart, and bones. The stakes are high, and I feel urgency. There might not be time before changes become irreversible.

Knowing the severe long-term costs of undernutrition makes me wonder what my role can be. If I see someone in passing who’s suffering, I can’t say anything. But so often, I wish I could. I want to say it doesn’t have to be this way. Compassionate alarm bells go off in my own body.

I’ve realized that these signals aren’t just a reaction, but a calling. The very women I find myself watching — highly capable, creative, and intentional about the aesthetic of their world — are often the ones most likely to be running on empty. They remind me why I intensely want to work with them as they embark on the journey toward full health and wholeness. Of course, this takes their active instigation. Perhaps they’ll see that their internal life deserves the same kind of care as the environments they’ve been tending — externally, in their homes, families, companies, communities.

It felt like bliss.

In the openness, memories from my teenage years surfaced — memories so deep I hadn’t thought of them since, perhaps intentionally.

Had my family added mushrooms to my morning coffee? This felt like microdosing.

The memories arrived in sequence, moving me to tears. I knew I’d have to write them down. But in the meantime, I wanted to enjoy this. I watched without attaching, my feet finding the lip of the water, small stones and more sand beneath my feet.

Eventually, at my computer, I tried to capture the scenes, reaching for language to describe those visuals and emotions. It came easily.

Looking back, I got curious: how had I been blessed with that expansive awareness, devoid of pain or constraints? I take plenty of walks, but rarely are they like this.

Had it been the ocean dip in the morning that sent endorphins soaring? a good night of sleep, finally? the fresh landscape? Was it hearing the foreign language spoken enough to scramble my brain, and thus form new neural pathways that were gliding to new places? Devoid of reminders of where I’d been or where I was going, I was intensely, mesmerizingly present.

The day after this, I didn’t have an experience like it. I jumped into logistics as soon as I woke up, and then my family and I ate, walked to pick up fresh shrimp, asparagus, and the season’s first strawberries to take back to Copenhagen, and then cleaned up the summer house to prepare it for the next guests. Then came the three-hour ride back to the city, made longer with traffic.

I tried not to lament that it was a different kind of day. And I have renewed interest in seeing whether I can recreate the conditions of that walk so that it can happen again.

I think this is what it’ll take:

1. Arrive in nature

2. Take time to orient

3. Walk without an agenda

4. Be open to receive

Beforehand, I’ll follow any practices that tend to open me — like swimming or resting or nourishing. Anything to restore internal balance so that the walk can unfold on its own terms.

This week, I’ll attempt to create the conditions for flow — because the experience is inherently valuable to me, and it feeds my creativity.

I’m curious: what pries your mind open enough to welcome new (or very old) experiences?

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This morning, as I sat at a table that my relatives ate at 125 years ago, I looked at the plate in front of me: two thick slices of sourdough rye bread, just out of the oven, with a crispy exterior and gummy interior that will solidify across the day. Two slabs of a sharp Danish cheese. A cappuccino with shots I just pulled from the espresso machine, oat milk steamed. And as I took my first bite — the tart, deep flavor of the dark bread hitting my palate — I thought, this is what it’s all for. This recovery.

I could eat this meal without a stomach ache, because I’ve healed my digestive tract, and my mind along with it.

This required a long, deliberate reclamation process. For years, I sought explanations for my pain, found specialists to help me treat it, and completed their protocols using medications and supplements — including tributyrin, which supports the gut lining (for those who want specifics). I also ate, ate, and ate — so that I could form the necessary new tissues in my body.

Just as importantly, I addressed my thinking. There was a time when this food caused fear: I couldn’t digest it, and I knew discomfort was coming. So I always anticipated it. I had to practice facing my fears while increasing my intake, waiting for the changes to take hold and make a physical difference. Now that my weight has stabilized at a new normal and my gut is repaired, my mind is starting to relax.

I don’t have to fear food like I once did, because it doesn’t cause the same reaction. I can better intuit what I want — including when I’m hungry, what looks good, and when I’m full — and I can actually feel satiated. For this basic function to work as it’s meant to is, for me, revelatory.

It doesn’t matter to me that my breakfast today might not have included each macronutrient in the right ratios, or that I didn’t hit the recommended 30 grams of protein within an hour of waking. What mattered was that I was hungry, that I followed that cue, and that I ate what looked delicious and felt well eating it — and afterward. That I sat back in my chair, letting it hold the weight of me. That I ate with family, who’d prepared these things for us, for me. That I finally get to slot right into these traditions, instead of skirting them, watching from the sidelines.

I’m now using my body to steer my decisions, and I’m using it to know how to best nourish me. It’s working. I feel so lucky. Proud, too, I might say ;)

A note on the journey: If you’re currently navigating your own recovery, trying to heal your gut, or quiet the noise of chronic health challenges, my inbox is open. Reply directly to this email — I’ve lived through the protocols, and I’m always happy to share what I’ve learned.

I landed in Copenhagen the night before last, after a full day of travel. I was greeted by my relatives Henrik and Lisbeth, who live in an elegant neighborhood called Gentofte just north of the city. It’s filled with large homes on wide lots, and a lake with a perimeter that’s 2.5 km. At this time of year, it’s all miraculously green.

Greeting me back at the house, their son Frederik said, “You look like yourself,” just after “It’s so good to see you,” coming in for a squeeze. Yesterday, his younger brother said the same thing. That feels like the highest possible compliment. Not “You look great,” but you look like who you are, without pretense. Just me, feeling at home in my own skin — finally, and again.

Over the next three weeks, I’ll be exploring and enjoying the city I lived in with this family for nine months back in 2012, when I studied urban design and worked for the municipality. I’m curious how I’ll see it now — now that I’ve changed and the city has too.

Follow along!

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On the way there, I stopped at a new friend’s place at the very top of Beachwood Canyon — someone who’s also wondering if I’d like to housesit this summer. I feel totally flattered by these opportunities, and totally proud of myself for investigating them as potential inroads to LA. I’ve been meeting people and seeking out these openings to feel into whether (and what part of) LA I want to land in next.

Yet, alongside these possibilities, an interesting thing has happened these last few weeks: I’ve noticed how much my heart sings being in the Santa Barbara area. There is a literal lift in my chest when I make it to the beach and see the waves, and when I look back at the mountains, purple and protruding toward the sky. The warm, luscious air on my skin continues to feel so nice.

That contrast became undeniable on the drive down. As I neared Ventura from the 101, with the deep blue water to my right and the mountains on my left, I felt that familiar lift. But once I got deeper into LA, further from the water and closer to the mountains inland — with Friday traffic, I might add — that feeling dissipated.

When questions arise, I can get muddy inside, wondering: Is this right for me? All I know right now is that SB feels like a “yes” and LA is a “maybe.” I haven’t ruled it out yet, but the tallies for Santa Barbara keep adding up.

Last week I spoke with my beloved yoga studio here, and they’re interested in having me teach classes and lead any kind of workshop or series I can conceive of. Amazingly, they’ve been looking for someone who will bring not just embodiment practices but art-making. This is the next creative challenge I’m ready to take on. I’ve been writing my own story in solitude, and now I want to bring my insights to groups and facilitate my students’ insights, and even get them writing and creating. Teaching feels like the next worthwhile challenge I want to meet.

Of course, not everyone sees the map the same way. A well-meaning friend in LA said, “I just worry about your professional future — won’t you have more opportunities in LA?”

If I were looking for a full-time corporate job, perhaps. But the opportunities here are arising due to the community I cultivated in the five years I lived here after college — a vast and beautiful network of colleagues and friends. I have the invite from the yoga studio, which I’m confident will feed my life-coaching practice. A new editor is in Ventura, which means we get to meet in person. A friend and newly-minted therapist asked if I want to share an office space with her in downtown SB to meet with clients in person. Another friend who just published a book is looking for marketing and social support, which I know I can deliver; we chatted by her pool about the possibilities. Even the call with the yoga studio was taken outside under flowering trees.

I’m not hustling, but I’m very much instigating and staying aware of my responses. I’m not overthinking, but rather thinking, taking action, and observing shifts in my energy. What lights me up? What shuts me down? What feels totally neutral?

“You’re listening to yourself in ways you didn’t use to,” my dad said this morning as we sipped our cappuccinos in the garden. I’m so lucky to receive his reflections — and this one felt particularly true, and particularly meaningful, because I truly didn’t used to listen to myself in this way. It’s like I’m unlocking a sixth sense — an extraordinary sensitivity and intuition that has been dormant, and I’m just re-discovering it. It is leading me.

A friend recently called it manifestation. To me, it feels like tracking a new kind of internal guidance system. I’m just trying to see where it takes me next.

My time in “Carp,” as the locals say, has been deeply valuable. What has surprised me most is how connected I feel. Yesterday, I spent the day basking in the sun with high school friends. The day couldn’t have been better. We ran into old classmates while we were out, and later that night at Dang Burger, I saw one of those same friends again, plopped down, and ate with her and her mom.

This keeps happening — these small instances that feel magical.

Last week, I sat on a stone bench at the Music Academy of the West with a fountain burbling at my back, a trellis with snaking vines overhead, and a view of the Pacific in the distance. There, I caught up with another friend, who reminds me to keep trusting my intuition. (Yes, sir.) The next day, I sat with another friend across a table on Linden Avenue, Carp’s main drag, where we snacked on green smoothies and veggie wraps. I’d just taken her yoga class at Olada, the new studio in town.

My days are a continuous stream of seeing friends, writing, walking, and living my life in this place that continues to feel so special to me. I don’t simply want to list all I’m doing, but I want to jot this down because it amazes me: tea with a former high school teacher. Running into another who said, “please tell me if you start teaching yoga again in the area!” An invitation to start leading workshops at the studio I used to manage, after I inquired about ways I could re-integrate.

I feel cherished here. Like I could be of service. Integrated, and convinced I would become even more so. There are so many opportunities to give and receive. Then, there’s the support of family, and this environment — the natural beauty. The air continues to feel good on my skin — as do the walks along the beach and hikes in the mountains.

Maybe — but maybe not.

And “those eyes” — whose are they, anyway?

Each of us has an “everybody.”

We let this invented jury keep us small. We tell ourselves: “Everyone thinks that I should stay in this job.” “Everyone thinks I shouldn’t speak until my ideas are perfectly formulated.” “Everyone expects me to look a certain way.”

But when it comes down to it, it’s just a few people who might think this way — six, I’d guess. Try naming six.

Look at those names. Let them sit there on the page.

The issue with “everybody” is that they think differently than you assume they do, and they also don’t really care what you do. And if they do care, but they don’t support your authentic self-expression, are they really your people in the first place?

The thing you’ve been putting off for ages because you’re afraid of what people think is the thing you need to do.

What would happen today if you named your Everybody, noticed it, and took a leap anyway?

Last week, sitting across from my grandfather at a different table, I heard new layers of those stories. He talked about moving to Carpinteria in the fifties and establishing an architecture firm with two college friends in 1960. He revealed the ways he learned as he went, and his vulnerability was refreshing to me. I’ve liked talking with him about the ways he followed his instincts, and how it’s all panned out for him.

“It’s special, being here, just the two of us,” he said, his eyes twinkling. Before being seated, we’d walked the perimeter of the restaurant as he scanned the building’s exterior. “This all used to be natural wood, but everyone likes white these days,” he said. In his early nineties, he’s reminiscing, and I get to see the lines he’s tracing.

I’m lucky that my grandfather is just one of many people I’ve recently reconnected with, being back in the Carpinteria area after eight years in the Bay. I joined a women’s fitness group on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and when I walked into the first class I saw a high school classmate. I learned that she lives across the street from two others, their kids crossing their driveways. The sister of one of those classmates is one of my best friends, and she’s visiting for the next two weeks, staying just blocks from my parents’ place. We went for a beach walk last weekend.

Last week, I also joined a women’s circle in Santa Barbara, having been invited by a life coach I met on Tuesday at an event in Summerland, who was introduced to me by a yoga friend. At the circle, we discovered that I went to the same school as her sister, whom my dad taught. It’s a small world — and a special place.

I’m noticing that I feel comfortable here — not just with the warmer air on my skin, but with the people I know and am coming to know. I continue to settle in.

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