Until...

Until I heard Zach Bush speak about the different bodies we have — the physical, energetic, emotional, and others. He described the emotional body as an artificial body.

That stopped me.

An emotion is something we label. We tell ourselves a story about it. We interpret it.

I have long been aware that labels create limitations. They define, separate, and reduce. Suddenly I wondered whether labeling an energy as an emotion also limits the energy itself. Not only its expression, but perhaps even the way it moves through us.

And are our labels even accurate?

Fear and excitement can feel remarkably similar in the body. The difference often lies in the story we are either told or tell ourselves about the sensation.

Sitting with this, I realized something else.

Over the past few years I have become far more interested in the energy of what people say than in their actual words. I notice the energy in my own body. Words can be misunderstood. Energy often speaks more directly.

Then another question arose.

What if we stopped thinking?

Labels require thinking. Interpretations require thinking. Stories require thinking.

Nature doesn’t think. It is simply present, responding to what is.

But if we don’t think, how do we communicate?

Does speaking require thinking?

During a group conversation I noticed how often we begin a sentence with, “I think...” I caught myself doing it as well.

Later, in a one-on-one conversation, another awareness emerged. Perhaps there is thinking... and there is thinking.

One kind of thinking immediately creates stories. We see something and move into assumptions, conclusions, explanations. None of these necessarily have anything to do with what actually is. They resemble what I now think of as emotion — energy that has already been captured by interpretation.

The other kind of thinking feels entirely different.

It arises from perceiving. From being fully present with what is. Not only through the brain, but through the whole body.

Out of that presence, awareness emerges.

It gives language to what has already been perceived.

Perhaps thinking in itself is not the problem.

Perhaps the question is whether the brain immediately begins interpreting or whether the body perceives first.

One creates stories.

The other gives voice to presence.

And perhaps that distinction matters more than I had ever realized.

One final thought.

There is no absolute Truth.

There is only our willingness to keep perceiving.

I am 1 week into chemo cycle 3; with at least 1 more, probably 3 more to come. In cycle 1, the pre-med Dexamethasone to avoid side effects like nausea and vomiting really spiked my blood sugar that it scared me. The oncologist cut it in half since I did not have any of those side effects. Together with a new diabetes med which I take only on those days, my sugar stayed level for the next 2 cycles.

Chemo is cumulative. Each time, my neuropathy (hands and feet) has increased a bit, I am more tired, things ntake longer than usual and I need to take a break more often. I walk with a walker, using a cane no longer feels safe. Go shopping with a walker. Thankfully, my daughter was willing to do a major trip with me so the fridge is full.

My body uses a lot of energy to deal with the chemo, so more naps and, luckily, good night’s sleeps, although some times, my body has trouble to get comfortable and relax.

The being less active means I listen to podcasts and am contemplative. Interesting thoughts arise as a result. I would love to have conversations about them and appreciate any comments someone leaves. The insighta and awarenesses of the past 3 articles have impacted me deeply. I am still sitting with them, continuing the explorations.

From what I understand, after the last chemo there will be another breast MRI to give the surgeon a clear image of the tumor and then surgery. Often, after surgery, radiation is recommended. I am sitting with the question of do I do it or not. It is the left breast and the heart is right beneath it. Yes, there are techniques and …… No need to make a decision right now and still feeling into it.

As I said, I’d love to hear from you and have conversations.

What the heck does that mean?

And then daily life got in the way.

Now, I am at the beginning of chemo cycle 3 and woke up not only with gratitude for the body, but also the desire to explore this chrysalis image more.

I looked at the biology of it. What happens with the caterpillar when it enters the chrysalis? Its body dissolves, becomes a kind of living soup out of which a new organization happens as a result of imaginal cells which have been present in the caterpillar from the very beginning.

What if there is something present in me, in us from the very beginning that gets covered over by the programming we receive, the entrainment we absorb, the identities we construct, and the lenses through which we learn to see the world? Would it have the space to surface or develop?

What if that is what can surface in near death experiences or when we truly are at the threshold of death? What if that is what people working in hospice talk about experiencing with their clients?

What if that is something we can access while still alive, may be with the help of thresholds life presents us with? In a way, the cancer diagnosis became such a threshold with all the decisions I had to make. Yes, I somehow knew I had breast cancer before the diagnosis AND something changed.

Come to think of it, it changed while writing the book Re-Imagining Elderhood. The understanding

• that I am not the roles I played or may be still playing throughout my life, especially the one called the seeker;

• that I am not the personalities I developed as coping mechanisms;

• that doing is not the same as living, as experiencing it.

• What if what is innate qualities that can’t fully show up as long as we are trying to be someone we are supposed to be or we have decided to be in order to be successful, such as

• the ability to really be present with what is;

• the ability to listen deeply;

• the ability to be with not knowing;

• to love without needing to rescue;

• to express what needs to be expressed right now, no matter if it is ‘sensible’ or not.

What if chemo, for me, somehow slows down that constant thinking the mind tends to be so busy with which allows other thoughts, deeper knowing to surface?

What if there is something in me that has always been there, like the butterfly in the caterpillar, that doesn’t want to wait until death to reveal itself? What if the chrysalis is not preparing me to die, but inviting me to live from that deeper place now? That deeper place that is needed in this time of global transition?

What has always been there in you, waiting—not to be created, but to be remembered?

Yesterday, I had listened to a video with Dr. Zach Bush where he talked about the Perpetrator - Victim - Savior triad. Somehow that was still with me this morning. Again, feeling low energy, I caught myself thinking: You are dealing with chemo.

And then, there were thoughts from the previous days: My neuropathy is getting worse. My benign tremors are getting worse, I just don’t want to do anything, anything at all. I can’t participate in that any more. And so on..… Suddenly, it hit me: I am playing victim here.

I stayed with this realization, fully present with it. Then the shock came: I am also the perpetrator!! I pretend to talk to my body asking it what it needs and I don’t ‘hear’ anything. I don’t ‘hear’ anything because I intuitively know what it needs. My body is talking to me, just in a different way I had decided it should.

Not ‘hearing’ anything is a good excuse not to do what I know. Immediately another voice appeared: You just lack willpower.

Ouch! That hurts. How can I be with that?

Judging myself harshly is not really changing anything.So I stay with it. Looking at my life, …

there is a pattern that I can perceive. This is not the first time I have done that. Willpower means there is a need to control and I don’t like control. —- Childhood memories of being controlled surface. Unresolved emotions?

And, still staying with it all, there is another layer. Perpetrator, victim, savior are roles we take on. There are judgments we have with each one of them that come up almost automatically.

In my exploration of who am I really, I have become aware that I am moving through roles at different stages of my life, yet I am more than any one of them.

Being present, I began wondering: What if, instead of a role, they are momentary states of being or should I say states of identification I am inhabiting?

Being with that question, I noticed a subtle shift. The amount of judgment I felt became less and I felt movement.

What if life, if being alive is not a series of static events, but a continuous movement of awareness, of inhabiting and releasing different energies?

Now I am awake. What the heck does that mean?

So I start a chat with AI asking the question, wondering what the mirror will be.

I am told that this another layer of the shift I already had made. Shifting from seeing chemo as a poison to seeing it as a healing agent. There is something that feels true. A few back and forth and I am ready to go back to sleep.

After the last chemo, there has been tremendous gratitude for my body being such a trooper and not having many side effects.

Yes, there was the glucose spike as a result of the steroids.

There was a day when I was really tired and slept a lot.

But that was about it.

Now, my hair is starting to fall out. So I may shave it off.

There has been frustration with the medical model, with lack of communication, insights, awarenesses.

Where is this taking me now?

Seems that the new course I am taking with Dr. Zach Bush is feeding into it. Letting go of roles, of definitions of who I am.

Who am I if I let go of all that? I am alive, in this body right now.

Do I really need a definition of myself?

Does an animal or plant need a definition to be alive or are they just alive? Embodied?

How far am I entrained to see myself as separate, as a human being, as someone who needs to have a definition of self?

I can sense a shakiness in me imagining that it is gone.

At the same time I wonder if the self-definition is not a limitation of me?

Is it fear of loosing who I am or fear of becoming aware of how limitless I truly am? Underneath all those roles and definitions?

What is alive that can not be taken? Never be taken?

A question worth sitting with.

While chemo enters my body.

I have been paying much closer attention to conversations lately and noticing things.

How many automatic assumptions do we make when we hear something? Perhaps because we attach our own definition to a word or concept. Perhaps because we view what is being said through our own lens. Perhaps because it triggers a memory.

A doctor suddenly addressed my daughter, assuming I might be dealing with chemo fog. I was tracking the conversation just fine.

I noticed a judgment arise when someone said something that reminded me of a past experience with them. That judgment changed how I listened. I could literally feel myself tuning out. It was as if I had decided the person had remained the same and left no room for the possibility that they had changed. Yet change is one of the few constants in life.

At a Zoom meeting, participants spoke about feeling seen and heard by the facilitator. I sat with the question: What did he do?

What came to me was this: whether he knew the person from previous meetings or not, he seemed to approach each sharing with childlike curiosity, as if hearing it for the first time. There was an attentiveness not only to the words being spoken, but also to the energy behind them and the way they were being expressed. And that was reflected back by him.

I also became aware of how often things are left unsaid because they are “so obvious.” Yet what is obvious to the speaker may not be obvious to the listener. I know I have done this myself, assuming the other person would naturally make the same connections I did.

And then there is judgment.

How much do I judge, even when I do not want to? It seems so automatic. “I don’t like...” because that is not how I would do it, not how I stand in the world.

I may not intend it as judgment.

Yet it is.

Ouch.

PS: I know this is not exactly about my cancer journey, though it grew out of it.

I don’t want to eat. Chemo suppresses the appetite, not just right when getting it, but it seems to lasts. So I need to become a snacker, small meals, a little bit here, and there, a little bit at the time. Good that it is summer and fruit is available. That helps, yet I need to watch out how much. Fruit also has sugar, not good for diabetes.

What I am noticing is that food has taken on a new value. Due to the diabetes,. I am supposed to eat a certain way - 3 meals, each one with protein, veggies and carbs. Counting all of them. That is not working for me, and never has - too much of a rebel. And especially not right now with chemo and hot weather.

Having a better understanding of how the body works with food, I am wondering: Where is the balance between using science and asking my body what it needs? In 3 months the blood in my body is completely exchanged. My A1c has dropped 3 points. Supposedly the contribution of Metformin is 1 to 1.5 points. So there is something I am doing well (wanted to type right) using what I learned.

I am aware that the decline is not going to be linear, will become less as I go on. And what would create the most change? What would change

• if I don’t just sit down to eat, but take a moment for gratitude that I have food available and don’t need to starve,

• to thank the food for its contribution to my body.

A prayer of gratitude!! I notice something bristling in me - not back to parochial school.

And there is another level I suddenly become aware of: I don’t want to do anything either, lethatgy. What is going on?

Am I exploring my rebellious side?

Playing victim?

Lack of willpower?

Wanting to be taken care of?

Sitting with these questions, feeling into them, there is some self-judgment., especially the lack of willpower, of not doing what I know would be good for me. - And there is the rebel: Who says / decides what is good for me? A whole stream of thought about control, self-control floods me. And the question arises: What does it mean to be? To be is not ‘not doing’.

I am writing this lattrer part at 3am. I should be sleeping, circadian rhythm! Should ….. I realize, I will not find an answer now, so may be I stop writing now and see what comes.

I fell back asleep and woke up later than usual, yet with an insight: What if the noise of resistance is so loud that I can’t ‘hear’ what my body is saying?

And there was a second thought: Do I publish that?

I have tremendous gratitude for my body. It has been a trooper.

As I write this, six days after treatment, I have experienced few noticeable side effects. On day two, I received an injection to help rebuild white blood cells.

Also on days two and three, I took medication to continue the pre-med treatment I had received during the infusion. That evening, I measured my blood glucose after dinner and was absolutely shocked. It was through the roof.

No one had told me that the steroid medication could spike blood sugar. I mean SPIKE it.

I was furious. There was fear as well. It took me a long time to fall asleep, and I woke up repeatedly during the night.

You can probably imagine the relief I felt the next morning when my fasting glucose reading was back within a range that felt normal for me.

Unable to get connected to the after-hours physician on call, I ended up making my own decision and taking only one of the two tablets I had been prescribed for that day. The readings that evening and the following morning not only helped me relax, they deepened the tremendous gratitude I felt for my body.

Day 4, I enjoyed my usual breakfast, and, as the day wore on, did not care for lunch, yet thoroughly enjoyed lots of watermelon for dinner.

Day 5 was strange. Feeling constipated, I forced myself to eat a little so I could take my morning Metformin. Feeling tired, I napped often, sleeping a lot to give the body the needed rest after the chemo

Day 6: Today, I feel a lot better, not yet normal, but way more present..

I sat with the question: What am I actually healing? Breast cancer? Diabetes? Or are these simply symptoms of something else, something deeper? It seems this may be the deeper healing the journey is inviting me into.

The lack of communication had infuriated me.

It felt like another example of why I struggle to trust Western medicine. I sat with that reaction and listened to it.

In the past year, I had shifted from seeing a doctor as the authority over my health to seeing myself as a co-creator of my health alongside my medical team. To me, co-creation implies communication.

Instead, I felt as though medicine was being done to me.

- There had already been cancelled appointments for which I had a list of questions;

- information I was told I would receive but didn’t within the time promised, only later;

- in the name of disclosure, an overwhelming amount of information—much of it seemingly unrelated to my specific situation.

As I sat with my anger, I realized there were several layers to the learning.

One was about agency: how do I actively participate in my healing rather than becoming a passive recipient of treatment??

Another was about emotional freedom: how quickly can I recognize frustration and let it move through me rather than becoming trapped in it?

And another was about the healthcare system itself.

The doctors care.

The nurses care.

Yet the system often feels fragmented into specialties that struggle to come together around the person living at their intersection.

I am that intersection.

Cancer care. Diabetes care. Primary care. Each sees a piece. I live the whole.

The experience left me wondering whether what we call healthcare has become more of a disease-management or death-prevention system than a true health-care system.

What would healthcare look like if patients were invited into active participation rather than positioned primarily as recipients of treatment?

These are not conclusions. They are questions I am living with.

What remains strongest for me, however, is gratitude.

After years of ignoring my body’s signals, and at times making choices that did not serve it well, my body is still having my back.

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson of these first days. My body and I are on the same side.

Over my life, I developed an, one could call it unusual, relationship to allopathic medicine and the science behind it.

There is the belief in separation which results in looking at the body as one might look at a car. Separate pieces that work together so the car drives, so the body functions. Each part can be taken out and fixed. With a car that may work, yet not with the body. There, the ‘parts’ are part of a complex system where one piece influences another.

I remember an indigenous, herbal medicine woman saying something along the lines: Science looks for the ‘active’ ingredient in a plant and thinks that is why we use it. We use the whole plant because all the parts are contributing to the healing, not just the ‘active’ ingredient. The belief that everything is separate and can be understood on its own misses the fact that everything is connected and therefore relates to each other.

Then I read / heard things that made me think. Mammograms are not as good for women as they are sold as. Cutting out something that is not considered ‘normal’ is not necessarily helpful. The need for control and therefor speed can interfere with with the way a body heals naturally. And last, but not least, what about the being that inhabits the body. I am not my body. I inhabit the body I have and we work together, or not. I ignored it for quite some time, it being inconvenient paying attention to it. And I accept that the body is now presenting me with the consequences of my choices.

Years of listening and reading led me to distrust medical science. I saw the health care system more as a death prevention system. So I did not seek a medical solution. I allowed space for the body to heal itself. For over a year, nothing changed and I sort of forgot about it. Suddenly my breast changed. I still decided not to take action, yet paid closer attention. Looking back, I can see there was a factor I had not been paying attention to. Cancer cells love sugar and I had diabetes, untreated, uneducated about the effects of food, except for cutting out sugar directly.

What is my role, the role of the being in all of it? Initially, it was more a giving the body the space to do what it does, heal. By now, it had, morphed into co-creation with a doctor.

Even today, there are moments when I struggle with the contradiction between my beliefs about medicine and the choice for chemo I made. I wonder, was there fear somewhere I am not willing to acknowledge? At the same time, I wonder how does my mindset impact, influence the body’s abilities? That’s also when the desire to write about it started, the desire to have a conversation.

PS: I had my first Chemo treatment. I am still working through the eperience and will post as soon as I am ready to talk about it.

I look at the rhythm of a chemo cycle: Monday, blood work; Thursday Chemo; Friday injection; then 2 weeks ‘free’ before it starts all over again, for 4 to 6 times.

Yesterday afternoon I caught up on a few segments of Gregg Bradens Missing Links series on Gaia. I made a note to do heart - brain coherence at least at the beginning of the chemo session. Then, in the evening, looking at today’s schedule, I suddenly felt something in the pit of my stomach. Right away there was the awareness of ‘Chemo starts. I am not even sure what to name that feeling. It wasn’t fear or dread, nor excitement obviously. Relief that the wait is over?

The past weeks had been full of preparation:

• starting with the insertion of a port through which I would receive the chemo;(never having had a minor surgery, I am amazed how long it takes for the cuts to heal / disappear)

  

• a meeting with a nurse explaining the chemo process, asking questions and still having questions due to information overload;

• joining the Cancer Support Community San Francisco Bay Area and taking a Chemo and Nutrition class from them. (coconut water as a suggested fluid intake for electrolytes replacement when flushing the body after the chemo, besides watermelons and the obvious water);

• taking care of a ‘do before Thursday’ list, going grocery shopping, doing laundry, etc so I can rest as much as needed.

Overall it’s a roller coster between feeling overwhelmed and moments of exquisite, surprising, stunning insights and realizations. I am grateful for it, aware that I might not have had those insights in any other way.

About 4 years ago, I took a course with Dr. Zach Bush called ‘The Journey of Intrinsic Health’ and stayed for another year in the online community. With the cancer diagnosis, I checked if it still existed and rejoined it to be in a field that is more aligned with my views.

It is a space that feels not only safe, but also one where I know that people get where I am coming from when I share what’s going on for me. In the cancer support group I joined, I can feel the energy of a surprised “What?”.

Being in that aligned field, listening to the sharing opens me to another level of being, of perceiving.

The other day, towards the end of the meeting, I suddenly had the thought cross my mind: What if I don’t perceive the chemo as a poisonous cocktail and rather as a healing concoction? WOW

Yet sitting with it, the surprise I felt lessened. I could perceive how this point of view was the result of many thoughts along those lines; like the one What if I don’t resist the chemo, but allow it to work with my body?

I am beginning to see how practicing presence with what is, with what I am thinking and feeling creates a different way of being. There are moments when it feels like the “I” is no longer present. On the one hand it feels natural and expansive, on the other it is scary and the question comes up right away Who the heck am I?

When I was involved with Access Consciousness, there was the saying ’no definitions’. Intellectually I got it that definitions limit. It opened up a tremendous space and allowed me to hold paradoxes. Truly not defining myself, who I am, was not on my radar.

Having those moments of wonder showed me how amazing life is. If we allow it, it gently takes our hand and leads us into ever expanding spaces. Have you had such an experience you would be willing to share?

I see death as a reverse birth, so there is no fear of it. Only the desire to be able to die as consciously as I can, with as much awareness as possible for me.And I have no clue what that will mean.

As I said already, last year, while writing the book, I changed a lot. I softened. I became more connected to my body. I learned to trust my intuition way more.Lots of contemplative time. I wondered about questions like:

• How do I c-create with my body?

• What does my soul want me do / learn?

• How can I, in the way I live my life, contribute to the global changes?

• What is required of me?

These questions guided me into a level of allowance, of not resisting life. That translated also into deciding not to fight the cancer, rather go into co-creation. What if I don’t resist the chemo, but allow it to work with my body?

Obviously, I don’t have any answers for that. Noticing that I am not one who takes pills, I got a gentle reminder from a nurse who taught me about the chemo process: ‘Be gentle with yourself and use the meds that are available to help you with the side effects.’ Something I will have to keep reminding myself of.

I don’t like to repeat myself. It feels like not honoring your presence. And, I am aware that a thought may come up in different contexts. Now it is still easy to track and I am asking for your forgiveness if, along the journey, I have already talked about something and forgotten it.

The guiding light right now is: What if this is not happening to me, but for me?

The tumor is in my left breast. A few years ago, when washing my breast in the shower, I noticed a really small lump and decided not to act on it.

I know, I have been called reckless for not having all the suggested preventative doctor visits.I have my reasons for it and I am willing to deal with the consequences of the choices I made.

Initially nothing changed. At one point, it grew and, looking at my naked breast, I was now able to see the change, though someone else probably would not have noticed anything. Same decision. I just did not want to deal with M Deities. Over time, I softened, especially while writing my recent book Re-Imagining Elderhood.

When I moved back to California the end of last year, I decided to see if I could co-create with a physician. Hearing ‘you have to do what I tell you’ still would not work for me. I am not a set of data points. There are reasons why my body is doing what it is doing and, slowly, I am becoming more aware of them.

Without medical evidence, I knew it was breast cancer, so I was not surprised by the mammogram, the Ultra Sound and the biopsy. A PET Scan was necessary because treatment depends on it being local (lymph nodes included) or spread through out the body. Part of me knew that that wasn’t the case which was confirmed by the scan. So it is a stage 3 cancer.

The treatment suggestion by the oncologist was chemo therapy to shrink the tumor, surgery and then possibly radiation.

Intellectually I was against chemo. It does not make sense to me to poison the whole body in order to kill the cancer cells. I have heard about alternative solutions to cancer treatment, not recognized by allopathic medicine. I sat with the question chemo or not, tuning out the intellect, tuning into the body. The surprise was that I got do the chemo.

I struggled some with the mismatch and, in the end, decided to go with what I got, to trust my body. I am curious, what point(s) of view did or would have influenced a decision for you? In my book, there are no right or wrong ones.

I have not written much lately because in February I received a diagnosis of breast cancer. Since then, there has been the impact of the diagnosis itself, the flurry of tests, and a great deal of contemplation.

A cell that loses its connection to the other cells becomes a cancer cell. In its isolation, it loses the awareness of not being healthy and begins to multiply. As I reflected on that, I could also feel my own withdrawal.

Eventually, I shared the diagnosis. Requests to keep people informed slowly evolved into the idea of sharing this journey more openly.

Substack seemed like the right place because people who want to follow the journey can subscribe. Yet I didn’t want to stop writing about other contemplations too. Suddenly the perfectionist in me appeared, wanting to categorize and control everything “properly.” And underneath that? A need for control disguised as caring. Ouch.

In sharing this journey, I am not looking for “poor me.” I am interested in the dance between mindset, body, treatment, stress, fear, and awareness. I am not fighting breast cancer. I am more interested in understanding why it may have developed, what it is asking of me, and how I might grow into more of who I truly am through this experience.

So I truly welcome conversation.

Last week I had a port installed. Before the procedure, I noticed scary, unbidden visualizations arising in my mind — images of holes being dug into my body. Logic kept them from becoming runaway thoughts, yet my sugar still spiked. I have been learning how deeply the body dances with emotion and stress, independent of food.

The port will make chemo easier, which begins June 4th. I have already been given medications to help with side effects, and I was gently reminded not to try to be stoic but to use the support available. Before each treatment I will “donate” blood so they can track how I am doing. Since chemo lowers the immune system, keeping my blood sugar stable may become more challenging.

And so another question arises:
What becomes possible when I meet all of this with awareness rather than only fear?

And then there is the practical question I never imagined I would ask:
Do I shave my head before chemo begins, or wait until my hair starts falling out?

I have been diagnosed with cancer. This is not an announcement. It is an invitation.

An invitation to witness, not just my journey, but the dance between life and mortality, strength and surrender, movement and stillness.

I will continue to share here — sometimes in words, sometimes in silence. Some weeks will be full of insight. Others may be a period of rest, taking deep breaths, or whispers of confusion.

This sharing is not a performance. It is a living archive of my searching for a different way to dance with cancer; not from fear and separation, but from a connection of body and soul.

You are welcome to walk with me. Not as an audience, but as a companion in this unfolding.

Thank you for being here. Let’s see what wants to be revealed.

Honoring Where I’ve Been

When I paused the podcast, I didn’t know how long the pause would be. These past months have been full. Preparing to move… looking at decades of accumulated belongings… deciding what to take with me and what to release turned into an unexpected life review. I needed the time and space to breathe, to feel, to listen.

Alone the papers in the file cabinet and boxes brought up so many memories, showed me what I had done, all the ways I worked to have a successful business. There were boxes from the last move I hadn’t even unpacked. 3 book shelved full with books. I knew I would not fit them into a 1 bedroom apartment. I would have to let go of at least one. These and all the objects I has kept asking the question: Does this still belong to the woman I’m becoming?

In the end, it wasn’t really about possessions.
It was about identity.
It was about shedding old roles and making room for a deeper self to speak.

.Sorting through all of it wasn’t just logistical; it was initiatory. I realized I wasn’t just moving houses — I was moving into a new inner landscape.

What Has Changed in Me

As I sifted through the tangible pieces of my life, I was also sifting through the inner ones—beliefs, attachments, stories of who I thought I needed to be. Presence, intuition, and trust were required

I found myself asking:
What is weighing me down?
What is energizing me?
What is whispering, “You’re done with this,” and what is whispering, “Take me with you”?

This became a daily practice of presence.
Staying with what is, rather than forcing a timeline or pushing for certainty.
Letting intuition lead.
Trusting that the Universe is arranging the path ahead even when I can’t see it. There were moments of uncertainty and moments where I felt a new clarity emerging

All in all, these months have been a kind of quiet apprenticeship—one that has rewritten my understanding of elderhood.

What Elderhood Now Means in My Life

Elderhood, for me, is no longer an idea or a concept I explore, a topic I talk about. It has become the way I am learning to inhabit every day.

It is the slow time of the soul.
The ability to hold both clarity and mystery at once.
The courage to let go of what no longer carries life.
And the humility to let the next chapter reveal itself without rushing it.

I realized that everything I was doing—sorting, simplifying, sitting with the unknown—was actually elderhood in practice.

Elderhood isn’t a stage of life, it’s the quiet courage to stand in the unknown with an open heart. It’s a frequency.
A field you anchor in your body, your choices, your presence.

And I’ve been deepening into that field in a way that surprises me.

A New Chapter for the Podcast

And so, this podcast is also evolving. Today is not a return to the “old” rhythm of the podcast, but an emergence into something deeper, more intimate, more grounded in lived wisdom rather than ideas.

I want this podcast to be a space where we explore the real journey of becoming an elder — not as a role tied to age, but as a frequency, a presence, a way of walking in the world.

• you’ll hear in the coming episodes will reflect that:
  contemplations that arise from my own life

• stories that reveal the subtle turning points we all encounter

• reflections on the world we’re living in and the world we’re co-creating

• Conversations about transformation, identity, presence, and becoming

• And a living inquiry into what it truly means to walk as an elder in a changing world

If you’ve been with me from the beginning, thank you.
If you’re new, welcome.
This is a companionship.
A shared journey of remembering who we are underneath the noise.

Either way, I’m glad you’re here for this threshold moment.

Because something new is beginning — in me, in this podcast, and perhaps in you as well.

Invitation

If something in you is shifting…
If you find yourself letting go, simplifying, listening more closely…
If you’re standing at a threshold in your own life—visible or invisible—
then I invite you to walk this next chapter with me.

Not as an audience.
Rather as a community of elders-in-the-making.
People who feel the call to live more consciously, more spaciously, and more true.

Thank you for being here.
Thank you for your presence.
Let’s step into this unfolding together.

It began with healing.

I suddenly understood why healing — physical or emotional — can feel so elusive, even when we’re doing all the “right things.”
It’s because most of us wake up expecting today to be the same as yesterday.

If we were in pain yesterday, we prepare for pain today.
If we felt discouraged yesterday, we brace ourselves for discouragement again.
If we struggled yesterday, we assume the struggle continues.

We don’t mean to do this. It’s automatic.
It’s how the mind simplifies reality: by projecting the past forward.

But life doesn’t work that way.

The body doesn’t repeat itself.
Cells regenerate.
Hormones recalibrate.
The psyche releases what it can.
We literally become a slightly different person overnight.

Yet when we look in the mirror in the morning, we don’t see what changed.
We see what we expect.

I once heard Dr. Zach Bush say:
“We don’t see ourselves. We see the pattern we believe ourselves to be.”
It struck me then. It strikes me even more now.

Years ago, after a long day of deep internal work, someone took a photograph of me.
Days later, I looked at the photo and felt a shock of recognition.
I looked younger.

My face had softened.
My expression was different.
Something real had shifted.

Yet in the moment it happened, I hadn’t seen it.
My perception was still wrapped around the “before” version of who I believed myself to be.

The body had changed — but my mind had not.

That memory stayed with me, dormant, until this morning when everything clicked.

Healing doesn’t just happen in tissues and cells.
Healing depends on our capacity to let go of yesterday enough to meet the newness of today.

The insight opened another door.

Giving Up, or Staying Connected?

That same morning, I found myself thinking about a friend who, facing unpredictable health challenges, stopped visiting with people altogether.
Her symptoms were real, but what struck me was not the condition — it was her withdrawal from connection.

Not a pause.
A retreat.

It felt like giving up — not morally, not judgmentally, but energetically.

Giving up isn’t decline.
Giving up is disconnection.

It’s the moment we step out of the weave of life and assume the future holds nothing new.

And then I saw the opposite of giving up, and it surprised me with its simplicity:

The opposite of giving up is staying connected,
in whatever way is possible.

Not pushing.
Not fighting.
Not pretending we’re fine.

Just remaining in relationship with life.

However gently.
However quietly.
However differently than before.

This felt like a truth I had lived without ever putting words to it.

There were times in my life when I thought about checking out — truly.
But even at my lowest, something in me stayed connected.
Stayed in the dialogue with life.
Stayed open to the possibility that the next moment could be different.

This is what elderhood has taught me:

Elderhood is not the absence of decline;
it is the presence of meaning.

Meaning deepens as we age — not in a dramatic way, but in a quieter, more resonant way.
Not in what we do, but in how we relate.
Not in avoiding vulnerability, but in allowing ourselves to remain connected even in it.

Today Is Not Yesterday

Healing and “giving up” seemed like separate reflections, until I felt the thread connecting them:

When we assume today is the same as yesterday,
we cut ourselves off from the possibility of healing.

But when we stay connected —
to others,
to ourselves,
to meaning,
to life —
we allow something new to happen.

Healing becomes possible again, not because the body magically fixes everything, but because we meet the present moment as it is: fresh, slightly changed, even if only in subtle ways.

This realization felt like a turning point in my own elderhood:

A deeper layer of life review — not the practical kind that comes with moving and sorting belongings, but the energetic kind that integrates a life from the inside out.

What surprised me the most was how this realization softened something in me.
A space opened.
The fear that had flared recently around money began to dissolve.
The old stories of collapse lost their grip.

This is what staying connected does.
It’s gentle.
It’s quiet.
And it changes everything.

Where we go from here is less about planning and more about listening.
Less about control and more about participation.

The question isn’t:

“How do I heal?”
but
“Am I willing to meet today as itself, instead of yesterday repeating?”

And perhaps that’s where we begin again.

It wasn’t quite the title I wanted. My choice was: “We Are in a Collective Rite of Passage.”

And the path to speaking those words was, in itself, a rite of passage.

On the day of the TEDx event, I was walking through a dim corridor backstage, focused, centered, and ready to speak, when I tripped over an unseen chair. I fell hard and ended up needing stitches. My talk was postponed.

Five weeks later, with my face looking better again, I returned to give it.
But even then, it wasn’t easy.
It took months of delays and complications for our group of 20 speakers to finally have our videos edited, ready for submission to TED. At one point, we thought they might be lost altogether.

And when my talk went live?
It didn’t go viral.
It didn’t spread like wildfire.
But it did speak truth.

I still feel we are in a global Rite of Passage. One that asks us not to wait for the world to return to what it was, but to listen deeply for what wants to be born.

This talk was never meant to entertain.
It was meant to be a doorway.
An invitation.

I decided to re-launch it this week, not even aware that the one-year anniversary of TED’s acceptance was close and returning to that threshold with fresh eyes.

I invited others to watch. I even scheduled a Zoom conversation about the talk.
No one came.

It would be easy to feel defeated. And, for a few moments I deeply felt that. Yet something in me knows: this isn’t just about numbers.

The talk is a seed. And seeds germinate in the dark.

In the end, the absence of attendees felt, oddly, like part of the message.
That many are not yet ready to step fully into the threshold.
Or perhaps they are, yet not in ways that look public, visible, or timely.

We are all in different places on this path.

But for those who do feel the quiet ache of change, the sense that the old world is dissolving and the new hasn’t quite formed…
I invite you to (re)watch the talk.

Watch the TEDx Talk (9 minutes)

If it resonates, share it.
Not because it’s trending,
but because you know someone who might be quietly crossing a threshold, too.

What if, when I eat, I simply enjoy color, texture, and taste without the inner chorus that declares what it says about me? What if fasting is not deprivation or a rehearsal for dying, but spaciousness and nothing more? What if drinking water or jiuce is refreshment instead of a measurement of virtue?

As I let that question sink in, I felt something loosen. Not in behavior first, but in the story beneath the behavior. The grip of this means that softened. And in that softening, I sensed a more radical invitation:

What if fixed meaning isn’t just attached to food, but to almost everything?

A story beneath the story

For example, on the surface, a story says: I eat lunch at noon.
Beneath it, another story quietly binds meaning: Eating at noon means I’m balanced, reliable, in control. That deeper story is where the emotional charge lives. Change the surface story and little shifts. Notice the deeper one and everything can.

Fixed meaning is the scaffolding that holds our days together - useful, but often inherited. We rarely chose it. We absorbed it.

A field we live inside

Fixed meaning is not only personal; it’s environmental. It’s a field, a shared frequency of assumptions that makes certain meanings feel “obvious.” Inside that field, fasting can be coded as virtue or danger, eating as pleasure or sin, drinking as health or neglect. The coding changes by culture, family, season of life.

When I sensed the possibility of unhooking meaning from eating and drinking, what changed was not food. What changed was the field I was standing in. Suddenly there was room to choose.

The pivot from polarity

I’ve written before about moving beyond polarity, holding both expressions of a thing without splitting. This is the same move. Eating vs. fasting, pleasure vs. discipline, presence vs. asceticism. When meanings are fixed, these become opposing camps. When meaning is fluid, the camps dissolve. There is only the next true step.

• Eating becomes color, sensual deligh on the tongue, relationship.

• Fasting becomes quiet space, a different rhythm of energy.

• Drinking becomes clear contact with life.

None of these acts need to carry a moral, spiritual, or identity badge. They can be chosen instead of performed.

Does removing fixed meaning leave us with no meaning?

No. It leaves us with living meaning, provisional, responsive, chosen in the moment rather than imposed by history. If fixed meaning is like concrete, living meaning is like clay. It holds shape while there’s a need, and yields when there isn’t.

This isn’t about abandoning structure. It’s about recognizing that the structure is ours to hold lightly.

A gentle practice: loosening the glue

If you want to experiment, try this with food—or any charged area.

1. Name the surface act.
   “I’m about to eat,” or “I’m about to fast,” or “I’m pouring water.”

2. Ask: What have I been making this mean?
   Let the first answers be simple and honest. (This means I’m disciplined. This means I’ve ‘fallen off.’)

3. Thank the meaning and set it aside.
   “I see you. You kept me safe/belonging/organized. You can rest now.”

4. Drop into direct experience.
   If eating: color, aroma, texture, tempo, breath, gratitude.
   If fasting: warmth, steadiness, emptiness as space, not lack.
   If drinking: contact, clarity, temperature, the way the body says “yes.”

5. Choose on purpose.
   From this quieter place, choose the next right measure: a bite, a pause, a glass, a no. Let the choice end the moment—no retrospective verdict.

6. Close with a sentence.
   “Today, this meant presence.” (Or ease, or listening, or nothing at all.)

Repeat gently. It’s not a test; it’s a re-education of perception.

What about the bigger claim: removing fixed meaning from everything?

It’s tempting to declare a grand cleanse. But the nervous system appreciates rhythm. Begin where the charge is highest and the stakes are low. Food is perfect because it’s daily, sensory, and honest.

As capacity grows, this same inquiry can touch other domains:

• Time: Does a “productive” morning mean I’m worthy?

• Rest: Does napping mean I’m failing, or does it mean I’m listening?

• Conflict: Does disagreement mean danger, or is it a doorway to depth?

Each time a fixed meaning loosens, attention returns. And with attention, freedom.

But isn’t meaning how we make sense of the world?

Yes, and we don’t have to abolish meaning to be free of its grip. We can keep the sense-making while dissolving the compulsion that says the sense we made yesterday must govern today.

Fixed meaning served us when we needed certainty and belonging. Living meaning serves us when we’re ready for presence and choice.

A closing note on food, vitality, and memory

I’ve been sitting with this question: Could the body reorganize if I deeply remembered how it functioned 10–15 years ago? I don’t know the limits of that, but I can feel the direction. When fixed meanings around food fall away, something quiet becomes available: a direct line between memory and present-moment physiology. Not as a performance, but as a way of being. Let the body remember, and then let it choose.

An invitation

If you try this, notice what changes—not only in what you do, but in the flavor of the moment. Tell the truth about ease and difficulty. Be kind in the in-between. And when an old meaning returns (it will), smile at it like an old teacher you’ve outgrown.

Today, I’m practicing a simple sentence:
“This act does not have to mean more than it is.”
And from there, I listen for what is true now.

Today, we live in a world thick with polarity. Judgments fly. Sides are drawn. And yet, the old stories suggest that the deeper invitation is not to win the battle between opposites—but to turn inward, to seek the wisdom of soul.

As I listened to Michael Meade speak of creation, polarity, and the second birth, I felt the resonance with elderhood stir within me. He described how the first adventure of life is shaped by others: parents, culture, expectations, maps not of our own making. We build an ego, perhaps a career. But eventually, we find ourselves at a crossroads—a place where comfort whispers, and soul begins to speak.

The second birth is not given by others. It’s not marked by certificates or ceremonies, though rites of passage can help. It arises when we begin to live from the authentic self—when we remember our connection to the source of life, to Nature, to community, to what is sacred.

In Meade’s words, unity can’t awaken collectively until it is first found in the depth of each individual soul. That is the call of elderhood. Not to save the world, but to become whole enough that our very presence becomes a stabilizing force. Not to live from ambition or despair, but from essence.

The elder within doesn’t fear the tension of opposites. It listens. It waits. It risks the inner journey. And in doing so, it remembers: we are not separate. We are part of the ongoing creation of life.

What might be stirring in the space between light and shadow

?