HUMANS BEing — It’s Here

Last week, in In Search of Stasis, I shared what happened when my search for a little peace unexpectedly turned into an entirely new retreat.

It’s here, and while working on the content, peace expanded into Time.

We often hear that time is not linear. Steve hates it when I say that.

“Debbie, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I…

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I keep thinking that if I can just get this done, that organized, and everything else finally settled, I’ll arrive at a place where nothing needs my attention, and that there, in that beautiful moment of stasis, I will find peace.

The thing is, to get there, I have to intentionally set aside time, and sometimes that feels like another chore! When finding peace starts feeling like another chore, I’m pretty sure I’ve missed the point.

In fact, when I finally do find a little peace, that’s usually when all sorts of new ideas start flooding in!

I began to understand myself more while writing the chapter on The Principle of Vibration for my forthcoming book, Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying.

The Principle of Vibration teaches that nothing is truly static. Everything is in motion, including us. We may long for stasis, imagining peace as the place where everything finally stops, but peace is not the absence of movement.

When we find the frequency of peace, we are still vibrating, but at a frequency that feels like stillness. It is a little like a dog hearing sounds beyond the range of human hearing. The sound is still there. We are surrounded by it, but cannot hear it.

Recently, my friend Susanne Streidl came to visit. She managed El Sol, a small inn in Monteverde, before eventually returning to Germany a few years ago. Her most recent CV lists her as an artist and yoga instructor. While she was here, we shared tales of running an inn in Costa Rica and worked together with my horse partners. You can find her here on Instagram.

Somewhere in that collective place of reminiscing, we tuned up ↑ found peace, and decided that being a human being was actually okay this time around! And of course that peace made room for an idea:

HUMANS BEing

A series of small retreats built around creating enough space to experience ourselves unconditionally.

Our mission became:

HUMANS BEing creates experiences that offer people the space to step away from the momentum of everyday life and return to the experience of being fully human—present in the body, awake to the senses, and aware of our place within the world. Through meaningful experiences with nature, animals, movement, art, and one another, we create space to remember the wisdom already within us.

Then, as former innkeepers, came a practical question.

Where would our humans BE?

Steve and I have created a lovely homestay apartment at Eponicity for one person or a couple coming for a private retreat, but when I have groups of six or so people, we need somewhere nearby that can hold the experience we were imagining.

I happened to mention this to one of our workers.

He told me about a private, off-grid estate hidden away right here in our little mountain community. The property belongs to a successful Costa Rican businessman whose family roots are on this land. It remains deeply meaningful to him, so it isn’t a hotel or a place ordinarily rented to visitors.

It sounded perfect.

There was only one problem: my worker wasn’t sure the owner would agree to let me use it.

So, of course, I called him.

He invited Steve and me to come see it.

What we discovered was extraordinary: acres and acres of rainforest, rivers, creeks, and waterfalls; hundreds of fruit trees; gardens and tilapia ponds; a menagerie of animals; trails; a treehouse reached by a suspension bridge; a wood-fired sauna. The estate is largely self-sustaining and powered by the river. It has a Swiss Family Robinson vibe!

And it’s practically in our backyard.

He agreed to let us bring client groups there!

I had been busy trying to figure out how to make everything fall into place, and then the answer appeared through a conversation with someone working on our farm. Reminder: it’s important to notice when our behind-the-scenes support team is at work—OK, noted.

Which brings me to another of the Hermetic Principles I explore in Inevitable: the Principle of Gestation.

Some things require their own time to become what they are destined to be.

I love it when I am reminded that my job isn’t to run faster on the gerbil wheel in an endless effort to make everything happen. Sometimes I need to get off long enough to notice what has already gestating around me.

So, who’s up for some stasis?

HUMANS BEing | Inaugural Gathering
An Immersion in Art, Horses, Yoga & Nature
March 7–14, 2027 | Costa Rica
Seven nights | Six guests

HUMANS BEing is a seven-night immersion in the mountains of Costa Rica where art, yoga, horses, and nature become ways of experiencing ourselves—and the world around us.

· Yoga asks us to BE in the body.

· Horses ask us to notice how we are BEing in relationships with ourselves and others.

· Art gives form to what cannot be expressed in words.

· Nature reminds us that we are part of something boundless.

Each experience flows into and informs the next. (No experience or expertise needed.) Throughout the week, Susanne and I will facilitate as these different ways of experiencing begin to weave together, creating space to sense more, notice more, express more, and discover what emerges when we give ourselves time simply to BE.

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Yes, this is a real place. Unedited image by Susanne. The purple light revealed itself in the still image. Peace in stasis.

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When I first outlined the book, I made one – well, really many - unusual decision. Although the Principle of Mentalism is traditionally presented as the first Hermetic Principle, I placed it at the end of the book.

Only after exploring and recalling my life’s experiences related to the other principles, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, Gender, and Gestation, did it feel possible to ask the larger question.

Where do our deepest ideas and insights come from?

The Principle of Mentalism holds that everything begins in a collective consciousness before becoming visible in the world.

As I wrote the chapter, I found myself thinking about The Wizard of Oz. Before Dorothy ever stepped onto the Yellow Brick Road, she first existed in L. Frank Baum’s imagination. The story had to be imagined before it could be written, and written before it could become part of our shared culture.

Contemplating my own Yellow Brick Road, I now know that what once appeared to be unrelated experiences were all part of the story I was meant to live. I suspect many of us don't need more answers as much as we need the time and space to recognize the threads that have been weaving our own stories together all along.

That realization also explains why I created A Benevolent Gathering.

More information is here:

A Benevolent Gathering

It isn’t a retreat about fixing ourselves or searching for answers. It is simply a place where thoughtful people can gather to explore life’s deeper questions together. Through horses, nature, conversation, and shared experience, we make room for curiosity—for the kind of conversations that are often crowded out by everyday life.

If you’ve ever wished for more of those conversations, I would love to have you join us in Costa Rica next February.

As I finish the manuscript, one chapter remains especially close to my heart.

It is called The Obituary of Death.

Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying isn’t about death at all. It is about what death teaches us about living, and why contemplating the inevitable can become one of life’s greatest invitations.

Request Notification of Publication

On the Journey,

Debbie

Saludos from Steve and all of our four-legged partners here in the jungle.

I’ve now completed sixty-five cycles of arriving, leaving, letting go, beginning again, and discovering that life has a much better imagination than I do.

When Steve and I moved to Virginia at the end of 2020, we were convinced we had entered the third and final act of our lives in the United States. We settled in, renovated the farmhouse, planted ourselves, and did everything we thought we were supposed to do.

On paper, it made perfect sense.

In my (our) heart(s), it never quite did.

The longer we stayed, the more it felt as though we were living a compromise rather than our calling. Nothing was wrong. Yet something essential was missing. Instead of expanding into life, I felt myself slowly becoming smaller. The light that had always guided me seemed to be growing dim.

Then came March of 2025.

We returned to Costa Rica for the first time since leaving in 2020, intending only to visit. Within days, something awakened that neither of us could ignore. We weren’t simply returning to a country; we were returning to ourselves.

The months that followed became one of the most extraordinary seasons of our lives.

As a former ICU nurse, I have always loved charts, timelines, and algorithms. They help me make sense of what is a complicated process.

Looking back over the past fourteen months, even I can hardly believe everything that happened. Here are the highlights:

When I look at that winding path, I don’t just see a list of accomplishments. I see a life that refused to stay comfortably predictable. I see risk, grief, adventure, exhaustion, construction projects, international horse relocations, new friendships, retreats, travel, writing, and the realization that home is the place where your spirit comes alive.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I wrote Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying. The manuscript is now entering its final stages before heading to a professional editor. After living this past year, I can honestly say I understand the title far more deeply than when I wrote the outline.

So... what’s next?

I’ve learned to stop assuming I know how the next chapter will unfold.

Behind the scenes, new opportunities are already taking shape. There are horses to work with, people to meet, stories to tell, and a new Golden Retriever puppy to tend to!

Oh yeah, and I’ll be signing up for Medicare.

A Benevolent Gathering

One of the projects I’m most excited about is A Benevolent Gathering, an intimate retreat designed for people who sense they are standing at a threshold in their lives.

Together we’ll listen and share the wisdom that emerges when we step away from the noise of everyday life. It is a place to reconnect with yourself, discover what is asking to emerge next, and remember that life’s deepest transformations rarely happen by accident—they happen when we become willing participants in our own unfolding.

The next gatherings are scheduled for December 2026 and February 2027, and I’d love to have you join us.

Here’s to another trip around the sun.

Pura Vida,

Deborah

I just returned from nearly a month working in Europe and was able to spend a day in Milan with my good friend, Sidsel Sommer. Sidsel is an equine (and human) osteopath who took the brave step to return to university to study art history. As a lifelong learner, she felt called to set aside fascia and muscle to explore another kind of connective “tissue” that holds the human spirit together: art.

As our conversations flowed over pasta and gelato, we realized we had both been drawn to explore the same thing: the Hermetic Principles — ancient philosophical observations about the patterns and laws that appear to govern human consciousness, nature, energy, and the unfolding of life itself.

During her art history studies, Sidsel began noticing these principles emerging beneath the surface of some of history’s most iconic paintings. She even wrote her thesis on the subject. Surprisingly, at the same time, these themes have been emerging in the writing of my forthcoming book, The Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying, particularly the tension between what is visible and what is invisible, what is known and what is unknown, and how we choose to consciously participate in the unfolding of our lives.

We spent hours discussing Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, not from the perspective of sensationalism or conspiracy, but through a far more interesting lens: the tension between what is visible and what is not so obviously unseen.

One enduring interpretation of The Last Supper suggests that the figure seated beside Jesus may not be John, as traditionally believed, but Mary Magdalene. While there is no historical evidence supporting this claim, the theory persists due to the painting’s striking ambiguity. Drawing on insights from Sidsel’s thesis, the soft, feminine appearance of the figure, the symbolic tension between separation and closeness, and the pronounced “V” shape formed between the two figures invite contemplation of whether Leonardo may have subtly illustrated the balance between Masculine and Feminine energies. As Sidsel and I discussed the ideas presented in her thesis, we found ourselves wondering whether the Hermetic Principle of Gender may have been Leonardo’s deeper intention concealed beneath the surface of his commissioned work all along.

What makes the conversation compelling is not necessarily whether Mary Magdalene is present in the painting, but why humanity continues returning to the question at all. The deeper fascination may lie in our longing to restore what has often been minimized throughout history: the sacred value of the Feminine.

Lately, I’ve noticed Mary Magdalene appearing repeatedly in my news and social media feeds. Perhaps she continues to re-emerge in modern consciousness not because humanity is seeking scandal, but because we are seeking balance.

During my time in Italy, Sidsel encouraged me to look at works of art with what she calls “soft eyes,” allowing the wider field within the painting to reveal itself rather than immediately analyzing technique or criticizing the portrayal of the subject. She said, the artists’ expression lives in the spaces between the figures — the silence, the geometry, the tension, the voids. The hidden designs beneath the obvious story.

As I began looking through soft eyes, something unanticipated occurred: emotion arose before analysis. Masterpieces that had formerly felt overly familiar suddenly revealed something entirely new, as if I were seeing them for the first time.

It struck me how much this mirrors the times we are living in now. The Hermetic Principle of Correspondence.

Everywhere we look, people are being provoked into an analytic reaction. Politics. Gender. Religion. Culture. Fear. Outrage. Division. The world seems determined to keep us reactively activated, choosing sides before we have fully observed what is actually happening under the surface.

This cycle is not new. The Principle of Rhythm. For centuries, cultures have struggled with these tensions. What cannot be easily controlled or categorized often gets minimized, distorted, or pushed underground until it eventually reappears again through art, story, spirituality, or human longing itself.

To look at life with soft eyes wide enough to hold complexity without immediately collapsing into certainty, outrage, or fear becomes the real alchemy. I am learning that being human is not about choosing sides at all, but about consciously gathering the wisdom that lies within the tension between them.

On the Journey,

Debbie

Next Retreat December 2026

Miracles are hiding in ordinary moments!

Over the last few months, working with local families and private clients, I’ve witnessed experiences that are difficult to explain and impossible to forget.

Last week was one of those moments.

I was working with Leanne, a three-year-old little girl with a significant birth injury caused by a lack of oxygen during delivery. She is unable to walk or talk, cannot sit independently, and is only beginning to bear some weight through her legs with support. Purposeful use of her arms and hands has also been very limited.

During last week’s session, she was riding Titan. Titan suddenly stopped walking and refused to continue. Nothing appeared wrong. The saddle was secure. The seat was stable. Everything was in place.

But Titan stood there, looking at me in that way horses sometimes do — as if they are patiently waiting for the human to notice what they already know.

Then I saw it.

She was reaching for the leather straps that were tying her seat to the saddle.

Both hands.

This was new.

Her mother handed her a small unicorn toy. She reached for that, too. Then, while Titan remained perfectly still, she began passing the toy from one hand to the other, crossing the midline of her body.

What if Titan knew that day was not about strengthening her core balance, but for moving her hands and arms?

He stopped doing what we thought he was “supposed” to do and offered what Leanne needed most.

Another Awesome Moment

On another day recently, Leanne’s session was coming to a close, as it often does, resting bareback on one of the horses. She was lying relaxed and content on my mare, Halsey.

I stood at Halsey’s head holding the lead rope. Her parents stood on either side. Everything was calm, still, ordinary.

Then something changed.

The three of us suddenly began to sweat.

Within moments, we realized the heat was coming from Halsey. Her body was radiating immense warmth — as though we were standing beside a fire.

The child, however, was not sweating. She remained peaceful, relaxed, almost cocooned inside that field of warmth.

The three of us stayed where we were, curious and dripping with sweat, not wanting to interrupt whatever was happening.

This continued for nearly ten minutes.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the heat was gone.

Immediately afterward, the little girl grumbled and wanted to get off the horse. She seemed to know the session was complete.

Maybe miracles are just unexplained science. It is a thought that invites wonder without demanding belief. It allows the skeptical mind to stay engaged while leaving room for mystery. Rather than asking us to choose between spirituality and rationality, it suggests that some experiences may simply exist beyond the limits of our current understanding.

Sponsorship for Local Equine Therapy

Forthcoming Book: Inevitable – Live Like You Are Dying

What if the miraculous is not rare at all?

What if it is happening around us every day, just waiting for us to notice?

For decades, I have stood at the thresholds where life reveals its deepest truths: as a hospice nurse, neonatal intensive care nurse, coach, and facilitator working with horses and families.

I have witnessed the same truth again and again: life is far more mysterious, intelligent, and alive than we often allow ourselves to see.

These experiences shaped the book I was meant to write.

Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying is not a book about death. It is a book about waking up to life while you are still here.

Because this is what I’ve learned: you do not need to chase miracles.

You only need to notice them when they are standing right in front of you!

Join the List

Create Your Own Miracle

The breakthrough you’ve been seeking may not require more effort. It may simply be waiting for the right environment to be revealed. When we enter a state of peaceful being, insights have space to arise

I offer private, one-to-one retreats in the mountains of Costa Rica for those navigating change, grief, burnout, uncertainty, or the quiet knowing that life is asking for something more.

Surrounded by horses, waterfalls, river canyons, and wild beauty, these bespoke retreats combine transformational coaching, equine-supported experiences, and deep time in nature to help you reconnect with clarity, courage, and your next true step.

It is a homecoming to yourself.

Whether you come for a reset, a life transition, or to remember who you are beneath the noise, your retreat is designed around what wants to happen for you now.

Contact

Recent Client Testimonial

“My experience with Debbie and the horses over the last few days was truly special. Debbie guides with so much gentleness, empathy, dedication, humor, and calm, and the horses hold this quiet, sacred field of magic and clarity. They helped me dig into my subconscious and clear out some old blockages — like a gentle emotional spring cleaning. They were incredibly patient, too; they didn’t give up on me until I finally “got it” — what they wanted me to see, feel, or understand. And how magical and joyful it is to experience the true nature of horses, which is hidden in plain sight! 🤩 Go for it, people!”

On the Journey,

Debbie

Website - Eponicity

Not someday.
Not when things settle.

Now.

I’ve been thinking about a person who came to one of my retreats.
She arrived believing she needed to wait for a clue to “figure things out.”

By day three, standing with a horse that refused to move,
she realized something else entirely—
she had been waiting her whole life for permission she didn’t need.

She left having already made the decision
she had been avoiding for twelve years.

This is the nature of the work.

Not insight as an idea—
but as something you can no longer ignore.

If something in you is shifting…
If you can feel that quiet pressure building…
If you know waiting is no longer the answer…

This gathering was created for that moment.

A Benevolent Gathering is not a retreat in the traditional sense.
It is a threshold.

Six days in Costa Rica—held between jungle and mountain,
working with horses, nature, and the parts of yourself
that don’t respond to thinking alone

Small group.
No excess.
No performance.

Just the space to see clearly
and decide.

December 2026 or February 2027

If this speaks to you, don’t wait for a better time.
That’s part of the pattern.

→ https://eponicity.com/a-benevolent-gathering-1

From the mountains,
Deborah

Historically, humans have gathered like this.

On the mountains.
With the horses.
With each other.

For some of you reading this, you know.
You know what happens in those spaces.
You know what it feels like to be part of something almost unexplainable.

And for others…
You’ve felt something like it calling, even if you haven’t stepped into it yet.

After we left Costa Rica, there was a pause.

Not an ending.
Just a space in between our inevitable return, I suppose.

And now… we are opening the next chapter.

We went looking for where this next gathering would live.

I made a short video of the road trip to the hosting venue. Typical Costa Rica!

We’re calling it:

A Benevolent Gathering

In a time when the world often feels uncertain, this gathering offers space to step aside from the noise and remember something essential:

How to move through the world with awareness of its impermanence.

If you want to explore what this is, you can read more here:

A Benevolent Gathering

For some, this will feel like coming home.

For others, it will feel like stepping into something you’ve been circling for a while.

Are you feeling tribal?

On the Journey,

Debbie and Steve

Tootsie, Halsey, Titan, Cowboy, and Tango

My resume says forty years at the threshold of life and death. What it doesn’t say is that I’ve been standing there since the day I was born.

This book began at the bedside of a sheltered, dying woman in the middle of a cornfield in Minnesota. She was in her late thirties with terminal cancer. She had never eaten a taco, never allowed herself to imagine the places she might go. One afternoon, she asked me if she was dying. No one had told her yet. I was her hospice nurse.

The answer I gave that afternoon, and everything that unfolded in the days that followed, became the foundation of how I live my life.

Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying is not a book about death. It is a book born from forty years of sitting with the dying — in NICUs, in hospice rooms, and in the tenacious space between one breath and the next.

From those moments, I have come to a simple, urgent knowing:

The life you are waiting to live is available now. Drawing on ancient Hermetic wisdom, modern science, and experiences that can only come from a life lived in full embrace of its uncertainty, Inevitable offers a living framework for inhabiting your time on Earth with clarity, courage, and full presence.

Because here is what forty years at the threshold has taught me: a sheltered life feels safe. But safety, when it becomes a strategy for avoiding discomfort, keeps us small. And in the end, we find ourselves having avoided the very thing we needed most — the vulnerability that makes life feel real.

Things may not go the way you imagine they will. They go the way they are meant to. And when you can meet that truth — when you can step into the uncertainty rather than around it — that is what it means to live like you are dying.

Not someday. Now.

About the Book

Inevitable is organized around eight Hermetic Principles — timeless laws that have shaped philosophy, science, and spiritual understanding for thousands of years.

As I move closer to my own inevitability, I have come to see that every lesson and event that has shaped my life — from the seemingly inconsequential to the monumental — can be more fully understood through the lens of these principles.

As the ancient philosophers who first articulated them intended, they offer a foundational map for the human experience.

Each principle is brought to life through:

• Personal stories from decades as a nurse, coach, and guide for people navigating life’s most unscripted moments.

• The shadow side of each principle — where it shows up in the more difficult and often hidden corners of our lives.

• A living practice — guided, experiential explorations designed not just to be read, but to be felt. Each one offers an embodied way into the principle, beyond what the intellect alone can access.

• A reflection on what it means to live not on the outskirts of your life, but fully inside it — as if today were the day that mattered most.

• The historical and scientific context that supports each principle, grounding ancient wisdom in the language of the modern world.

The result is a layered experience: part memoir, part wisdom tradition, part embodied practice — and an honest reckoning with what it means to be fully alive.

About Me

I have held the dying more times than I can count.

In the NICU, I have been present for the very first breath — and sometimes the last — on the same day.

In hospice rooms, I have stood witness to the final exhale. In the space between — in the grief, the uncertainty, and the unexpected grace — I learned something no training ever taught me: The people who die most peacefully are the ones who lived most fully.

Not the ones who achieved the most or accumulated the most. The ones who showed up. Who loved without reservation. Who stopped waiting for the right moment and started living in the one they had.

But I have also witnessed the other kind of death. The ones who only began to live as if they were dying in their final days — leaving behind unfinished apologies, unsaid I love yous, and dreams that never left the imagination. Those deaths shaped me most of all. They are the reason I wrote this book.

This is my way of passing that knowing forward — not as theory, but as a living legacy.

I am a registered nurse, Transformational Presence Coach, Advanced Eponaquest Equine Supported Practitioner, Death Doula, and human being. I live and work in Costa Rica, where the land, the horses, and the river continue to teach me — and my clients — what it means to live in full rhythm with life, in the presence of its impermanence.

Inevitable is the book I have been writing my whole life — one patient, one client, one threshold, one breath at a time.

Join the Wait List

Inspired by Pony’s Girl Parables

There is a special language that exists between girls and horses.

You’ve probably seen it before. Something about the quiet presence of a horse invites a girl to stand a little taller, to trust her instincts, to discover a strength she didn’t know she had.

For generations, horses have been quiet teachers of courage, trust, and self-discovery. In Pony’s Girl Parables, these lessons unfold through story. In this retreat, they come to life.

This experience is designed for you and your daughter(s) to step away from the pace and distractions of everyday life and spend meaningful time together—surrounded by nature, horses, and the rhythm of Costa Rica.

Together, you will explore the wisdom of the herd, how horses communicate, how they build trust, and how they support one another through challenge and change.

Through guided experiences with the horses, storytelling inspired by Pony’s Girl Parables, and time to reflect together, you and your daughter will discover new ways to listen, understand, and strengthen your bond.

This Eponicity retreat is not about riding or learning technical horse skills.

It is about something deeper.

It is about discovering how horses mirror our emotions, reveal our strengths, and remind us who we truly are. No horse experience is necessary.

In this space, the unbreakable kinship between mother and daughter has room to expand and grow stronger.

Set in the lush mountains of Costa Rica, surrounded by rivers, jungle, and waterfalls, this retreat creates space for shared adventure, meaningful conversation, and memories that will last a lifetime.

For daughters, it can be a moment of confidence and self-discovery.

For mothers, it can be a moment of witnessing your child in a new light.

For both of you, it becomes part of the story you will carry forward together, your own parable to pass on to the next generation.

Your Home During the Retreat: Casa Gloria

During your stay, you and your daughter will live as guests in Casa Gloria, a welcoming Costa Rican family home nestled in the hills above the Pacific coast.

Casa Gloria is more than simply a place to sleep. It is an essential part of the experience.

Here you will step into the slower rhythm of traditional Costa Rican life—a way of living that feels almost like stepping back in time. Meals are shared around the table, stories are exchanged, and the pace of the day follows the natural rhythm of the land.

Your hosts welcome you into their home as honored guests, offering a glimpse into everyday life in rural Costa Rica. You and your daughter will experience local traditions, home-cooked meals, and the warmth of a culture that values connection, family, and community.

As you return home, you and your daughter will carry more than memories of Costa Rica’s misty mountains and time spent with the horses. You will carry a deeper understanding of one another, moments of courage and discovery, and the quiet wisdom the herd revealed along the way. The stories you lived together here become part of your own Pony’s Girl Parable—one that will continue to shape how you listen, support one another, and walk through life side by side.

Contact me for more information:

Mother Daughter Retreat Contact Form

Magic or Benevolence?

Leanne leaned back across Cowboy’s big, broad back, her small body settling into the steady rhythm of the horse beneath her.

She was calm. Completely at ease.

Just a few months ago, this would have been impossible.

Leanne is three years old. She has cerebral palsy due to a birth injury. She is non-verbal, but she has a lot to say.

When we first began working together about six months ago, she was afraid of the horses. Her parents and I moved slowly and carefully, helping her become comfortable around them.

One of the most important things we could do was learn how she communicates her needs.

At first, we had to learn the difference between a temper tantrum and fear. Slowly, we began to recognize the subtle differences in her cries, behaviors, and facial expressions. As we learned to understand her language, something began to shift in her relationship with the horses.

She began to sense their benevolence.

Trust began to grow.

Gradually, she became comfortable around the horses and learned how to express herself.

Now, when she comes for therapy, she lets us know what she needs through her eyes, her cry, and her smile! She chooses which horse she wants to ride. Sometimes she prefers a saddle—that’s Titan. Sometimes bareback—that’s Tango. And at the end of the session, she simply wants to lie back and relax on Cowboy’s broad back.

In each case, the horses support her—moving slowly, standing steady, offering their quiet presence. They seem to transmit a confidence and calm that connects her to them in ways words never could.

Moments like this make you wonder.

Is it magic?

Or is it something even deeper—an instinctive benevolence that lives within the natural world, waiting for us to notice?

Sponsorship Local Equine Therapy

A Benevolent Gathering Retreat

Live Like You Are Dying

Two Sessions: December 2026 and February 2027

This gathering is for leaders, coaches, therapists, thinkers, and seekers who sense that the world is moving through a profound transition.

It is for those seeking insight into how to navigate these challenging times in the company of like-minded people.

In uncertain times, small circles of thoughtful people coming together matter.

Together, we’ll explore what it means to walk a parallel path—aware of the turbulence of the world, yet not consumed by it. A path where consciousness, courage, and benevolence guide how we live, lead, and evolve.

A Benevolent Partnership

Uniting the Trinity of Ego • Soul • Shadow

We are living in a time when the ground beneath our collective life feels unstable. Institutions shift, narratives fracture, and the pace of change can easily pull us into cycles of fear and reaction.

Many people sense that something old is ending, but are unsure how to move forward without becoming consumed by the turbulence around them.

This gathering is about learning how to live consciously in the presence of uncertainty.

Through the lens of Ego, Soul, and Shadow, we explore a living map of consciousness supported by the horses and Mother Nature.

This map helps us move through life with greater clarity, aware of the chaos around us, yet not consumed by it, but by learning to walk beside it.

If you’d like to explore this topic in depth, click here:

A Living Map of Consciousness

More about the retreat: Over five nights and four working days, participants will explore three ancient lenses through which consciousness expresses itself:

• The Herd Roles, revealing how energy takes shape through our behaviors and relationships in the physical world. The Ego.
• The Chakra System, illuminating how life force moves through the body and connects us to the living field around us. The Soul.
• The Hermetic Principles, the ancient architecture underlying human experience and evolution. The Shadow.

Together, these perspectives form a living map of consciousness.

When we begin to see ourselves through this map, something shifts. We recognize the patterns shaping our lives, the energy we bring into the world, and the deeper intelligence guiding our experience.

In a time when the world often feels uncertain, this gathering becomes a place to step aside from the noise and remember something essential: How to move through the world with awareness of its impermanence.

In other words, how to truly live like you are dying.

Participants will stay at the nearby Vajra Jahra Retreat Center.

Retreats will be offered:

December 2026
February 2027

(No horse experience necessary-space is limited to 8 participants per session)

Find Out More

Customized Private Retreats

These retreats allow time and space to explore what is calling for attention in your life.

Private retreats can focus on themes such as:

• The Trinity of Ego, Soul, and Shadow

• Grief and life transitions

• Leadership and professional direction

• Family retreats to connect and understand each other at a deeper level

• Any area of life that is asking for deeper reflection

Guests describe the experience like this:

“An incredible immersive experience—being in the land, in nature, with the horses and Costa Rican culture.”

“It was a fast track to discovery, things that where holding me captive before I came, seemed to disperse with the morning mist! I was a bit taken aback as to how experiential it was, it moved me at a cellular level.”

“in·ef·fa·ble: too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words. Now I understand the meaning of this word: ineffable. How do you describe the unseen, but felt; the felt, but unknown; the unknown, but known?”

“It was like going off grid for a neurological reset by Mother Nature herself.”

The pace is slow, and each day builds upon the former.
The conversations are deeper and reflective.
The horses become powerful mirrors for what is ready to shift. (No horse experience necessary)

Find Out More

Guests are welcomed by Gloria Ester at her home, Casa Gloria.

Homestay Program

The Red Thread

be·nev·o·lent: Someone who is kind, generous, and well-meaning, showing a sincere desire to do good and help others, without expecting anything in return.

If there is a red thread running through all of this, it is benevolence.

Not as an idea, but as a way of being.

In uncertain times, benevolence becomes our compass.

If this path resonates with you, perhaps it’s time to step into the circle.

On the Journey,

Deborah

The Hermetic Principle of Correspondence teaches us:

As above, so below. As within, so without.

This is not mystical abstraction. It is a biological reality.

The energy around us is moving quickly right now. Information circulates constantly. Opinions escalate. Signals of urgency pulse through our devices and conversations. Even when we try to step away, the atmosphere hums.

Provoking our nervous systems into a state of fear.

It may not always be sharp. Not always specific.
But present simmering under the surface, bracing for the next ball to drop.

Fear’s message is simple: Move to safety.

The challenge is that many of us do not even know what we are afraid of. The threat is often diffuse — ambient, collective, atmospheric. There is no lion in the room, and yet the body tightens as if there is.

When we do not consciously assess that fear, we begin reacting to it unconsciously. We speak quickly. We decide quickly. We burn through our internal resources quickly.

In doing so, we use up our reserves, energy that could have been conserved, clarified, or used constructively. Instead, it feeds the vortex of chaos.

This is where understanding the Principle of Correspondence becomes powerful.

What is happening above, in the deregulated state of the world around us, begins to mirror below, within our own bodies.

The earth’s energy, like our own, is in constant vibration, always seeking equilibrium. Chaos does not appear from nowhere. It often begins as division within individuals - unresolved fear, fragmentation, disconnection. As within, so without. What is below becomes reflected above.

What happens inside us does not stay contained; it reverberates into the larger field. The current state of chaos may be a collective reflection of many individuals carrying unexamined fear within themselves. When enough of that internal fragmentation accumulates, it becomes visible on the public stage.

Perhaps the work now is not simply to resist the chaos, but to step back and discern where the fear originated, and how it grew large enough to take form in the world around us.

Becoming the Sentinel

In herds of prey animals, the sentinel is essential.

One stands watch.

Because one watches, the rest can graze.
Because one is attentive, the rest can rest.
Because one assesses real threat from imagined threat, the herd conserves its energy.

Without a sentinel, the herd startles constantly. Every rustle becomes danger. Resources are depleted. Exhaustion sets in.

We are not so different.

When constantly bombarded with input, our nervous systems can begin scanning indiscriminately.

Everything feels urgent.

Everything feels personal.

Everything feels threatening.

And to increase the unease, it has become hard to distinguish what is real from what is not. Like a zebra in a prairie full of taxidermied lions, we don’t truly know what the real threat is!

The sentinel role inside us asks a simple question:

Am I actually in physical danger right now?

For some, the answer may be yes. In those cases, it is necessary to take measures to ensure safety and preparedness. But first, it is important to step back and look at the bigger picture.

The sentinel energy gives us space to assess before reacting and does not fed the chaos.

This shift requires trust. It requires faith.

When we become the watcher instead of the reactor, our perspective widens. Intuition returns. Discernment strengthens as we give ourselves time to feel into whether the threat is real or imagined.

We begin to sense:

What is mine to engage?
What is not mine?
What requires action?
What requires conservation?

This is how we stop feeding the vortex of chaos.

Stepping Out of the Fear Vortex into the Calm

If chaos feeds on reaction, steadiness feeds coherence. Our individual coherence becomes our collective coherence, feeding the frequency of the peaceful world we want create and starving the fear and division. Just as predators separate members of a herd to make an attack more successful, fragmentation makes us vulnerable, but unity makes us strong.

One regulated nervous system at a time.

As the Principle of Correspondence reminds us, when we find peace, so does the world around us.

Reaching out to you from Costa Rica — outside the vortex.

On the Journey,

Debbie

As we begin 2026, I’m making a small change to this newsletter.

You’ll see a simpler format. Each month, I’ll share a personal story and a few updates. When a topic calls for more exploration, you’ll find a link to a longer essay on my website blog. The paywall is removed.

🐮 Holding Our Ground

Being the cow in a world full of chihuahuas.

I recently returned to Costa Rica after spending two months in Minneapolis, helping my daughter move into a new home. Minnesota is where I grew up — a place I’ve always known as calm and largely non-confrontational.

The joy of living in a diverse, interconnected community felt eclipsed by growing dystopian tensions.

This unease lingered in my body — the kind of vigilance that slowly depletes internal resources. When I returned to Costa Rica in early January, it took nearly a week for my nervous system to settle back to baseline. I was exhausted from staying on guard.

During that time, a memory kept resurfacing.

Years ago, I was working with a young horse — about two years old — free-lunging him in an arena at liberty. I was asking him to go over a small twelve-inch jump. When working with horses, it’s respectful to ask lightly first and only increase energy if needed. I use a scale of one to ten.

This horse did everything I asked — except the jump.

Each time, he skirted around it, batting his eyelashes at me as if to say, Nice try. I escalated all the way to a ten, again and again. He still refused. I was drenched in sweat, exhausted. He wasn’t.

A seasoned Costa Rican horse trainer who had been watching called me outside the arena.

“Debbie,” he said, stating the obvious, “this horse is wearing you out without breaking a sweat. He knows he can outplay you and outlast you.”

I suddenly felt like a contestant on Survivor.

His advice was simple:

• Stand in the center of the arena

• Don’t move your feet

• Don’t turn your energy past a four

• Let go of the frustration

When I stepped back in and did exactly that, the horse circled a few times, again bypassing the jump. Resisting the temptation to escalate, I held my ground and then, without drama, he went right over the jump. He stopped and turned toward me as if to say, Now you see my sentience — instead of getting caught in the exhaustive struggle.

That moment has stayed with me.

When I stopped reacting, stopped escalating, and stopped trying to overpower him — which was impossible anyway — balance emerged. I didn’t lose my power. I preserved it.

Equality is not achieved by becoming louder or more aggressive. Rising through escalation only weakens. Standing one’s ground is something else entirely.

It says: I am not trying to take what is yours — but you cannot take what is mine.

But here is the crucial distinction: he was sane

This is something prey animals understand instinctively. They do not “win” by becoming predators. They survive by adapting, holding their ground, and refusing to feed what would consume them.

The sane way out is not winning the fight — it is refusing to become what the fight is coercing us to become. Be the cow.

This isn’t passivity. It’s coherence. It’s restraint. It’s staying intact when the surrounding energy is anything but.

The young horse knew this.
He did not question his worth.
He simply was worthy — and sane.

The accompanying blog essay explores this idea further, particularly the question of how we maintain sanity when the surrounding landscape feels anything but.

Essay on Gender Justice

🐎 Benevolent Journeys

In the small rural community where we live in Costa Rica, several individuals — including children — are benefiting from equine-assisted therapy with my horse partners.

I would like to expand my offerings. If you feel called to help support this work, you’re invited to become a sponsor.

Sponsorship

🌺 Private Retreats at Eponicity

🌴 Grief Processing in Paradise

A 4 day 5 night Horse-Supported Retreat in Costa Rica

“…despite experiencing death and illness in my home and in my own body, I am thriving in a way I prayed for but only truly learned to do with Debbie’s help… The combination of working with horses, reflection, writing, and learning to listen to my body taught me about leadership, purpose, and love…” client testimonial

Grief doesn’t disappear when it’s unacknowledged.
It lives quietly in the body — shaping how safe it feels to rest, trust, and fully arrive in our lives.

Grief is not only the loss of someone we love. It also arises when something essential is taken without our consent — a childhood we didn’t receive, a sense of safety, health, or stability lost through personal or cultural upheaval.

Grief Processing in Paradise is a short, focused retreat for those who need time, space, and grounded support to be with what has been carried — without pressure to “move on” or make meaning too quickly.

This is not about fixing grief.
It’s about allowing it to be witnessed, metabolized, and held in a supportive, natural environment — alongside horses who understand this language instinctively.

Inquire

🌿 A Mini Sabbatical in Costa Rica: Inevitable — Live Like You Are Dying

The Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying retreat is a 2–4 week mini-sabbatical in Costa Rica.

This is not a workshop or a schedule-packed retreat.
It’s an opportunity to slow down, listen more closely, and live off the clock for a while.

Every life carries two truths we’re often taught to keep separate: that death is inevitable — and that life is meant to be lived fully.

This retreat is born directly from the questions at the heart of my book, Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying, and is for those who, in their own knowing, sense that someday is not promised.

Not as fear.
Not as urgency.
But as aliveness.

These experiences are especially meaningful for those navigating:

• Life transitions

• A sense that “time is asking something of me”

• Integration after profound experiences

• The desire to live more deliberately, while we still can

“Debbie helped me clear the space of unnecessary ‘stuff’ and opened the possibilities of what was in my orbit…”

Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying

🃏 This Month’s Coaching Card

This card asks a simple but potent question:
How does the duality of Predator and Prey show up in your life right now?

Learn more about the coaching cards

Thank you for being here.

This work exists because of relationship. With the horses. With the land. With each other.

On the Journey,
Deborah

Somewhere between darkness and dawn, time feels different. The clocks still tick, but they lose their authority. What governs the quiet hours is not the calendar, but something older—something the body remembers even when the mind has forgotten.

We used to live by this kind of time. Around and around, not by a clock face, but rather by cycles.

Before dates and deadlines, there was relationship: the way soil softened under our feet, the way the moon swelled or thinned in the sky, the way the length of daylight shifted not on a schedule, but in conversation with the land. Lunar time was felt, not calculated. Solar time, though brilliant in its precision, taught us to measure life rather than sense it. We moved from living with rhythm to living under it.

But the moon hasn’t forgotten us.

She waxes and wanes each night, a gentle reminder that time is not a straight line but a spiral. Even the sun participates—steady, masculine, marking beginnings and endings on cue—while the moon, feminine, invites us into the subtler truth: becoming doesn’t happen once a year; it happens every day.

The interplay between them is its own sacred teaching.
Structure and surrender.
Logic and intuition.
Visibility and reflection.

When we start to see our days as cycles rather than destinations, an unexpected softness enters. Patterns return, yes, but at deeper levels of understanding.

And maybe this is why, at 4 a.m., predicting the future feels less like calculating and more like remembering. The Hermetic Principle of Rhythm reassures us that dawn will come, winter will thaw, the tide will return.

Rhythm is not confinement—it is comfort.
A promise woven into the architecture of existence.

In this quiet hour, safety isn’t found in control, but in unity: the sun’s steadiness, the moon’s fluidity, both living inside us. Both necessary. Both guiding us home.

So I sit here in the soft blue hue before morning, breathing with the universe, letting the rhythm—solar and lunar—provide me with a sense of security as I live into another day.

To the moon and back, and then around again.

The Rhythm of Return

As the lunar and solar rhythms shape the movement of our days, the deeper cycles of birth, loss, renewal, and return shape the movement of our lives. When we begin to see ourselves as participants in these greater patterns, something softens. The fear of endings loosens its grip. We start to understand that what falls away is making room for what comes next.

This is where rhythm stops being a concept and becomes a guide—especially in the places where life and death meet.

When we begin to see rhythm as both our teacher and our inheritance, we understand that death is not a disruption of life’s pattern but part of its design. Everything that lives follows the same pulse—birth, growth, decay, and renewal. To live like we are dying is to honor that inevitability, to live with the awareness that every breath, every ending, every letting go is a rehearsal for the great return.

Rhythm is not about holding on; it is about learning when to release.

This truth reveals itself most clearly at the thresholds of life and death, where time bends, and meaning sharpens. It is there, in those tender moments between worlds, that we glimpse what the ancients already knew: that endings are doorways, and where that leads may go way beyond our imagination.

And it was in one of those moments, as a young hospice nurse, that I first began to understand what it means to die well—and what heaven might really be like.

A Story of Death and Dying

It was the mid-1980s, and I was driving an old, rusty 1973 Datsun 240Z — my dream car, though not the best choice for Minnesota winters. Still, at twenty-something, life felt like one big daring adventure. The windshield wiper motors had burned out, and at $80 each, I couldn’t afford to replace them. So, I relied on Rain-X and the occasional act of bravery — sticking my head out the window in the rain to see the road ahead.

At the time, I was newly married and working as a hospice nurse for a home care agency. One of my patients, Cheryl, was in her late thirties with terminal cervical cancer. She and her husband lived in an old farmhouse planted in acres of corn in rural Minnesota. I had set up her hospital bed in the parlor just off the living room, so she could see out across the fields and down the driveway. When I drove up the long gravel drive — often in a downpour, head leaning out the window — she’d chastise me in concern for my reckless disregard for safety.

One afternoon, I was changing her dressings and helping her to the scale. She was frail and pale, her body losing the weight that anchored her to the world. Looking down at the latest number, she asked softly, “Debbie… am I dying?”

I froze for a moment. Surely someone had already told her. She was on what we called Hospice Mix — a combination of vodka, morphine, and cherry cough syrup — and I assumed she’d been given the truth. But it turned out no one had said it plainly. So, standing there beside her, I answered, “Yes, Cheryl. You are dying.”

She met my eyes with calm acceptance. “I thought so,” she said. “Thank you for letting me know.”

I tucked her back into bed just as The Price is Right came on. It was her favorite daytime show. As it finished and after Bob Barker reminded everyone to spay and neuter their pets, she began to talk about all the places she had never been, all the experiences she never allowed herself to even imagine. “I’ve never even eaten a taco,” she said with a little laugh. For some reason, that comment has stuck with me all these years. I was young then — full of ambition and appetite for life — I couldn’t imagine a life so sheltered.

After a pause, she turned to me and asked, “Debbie, what do you think heaven is like?”

“I remember when I was a kid, my siblings and I would ask my mom that question,” I said, “she used to tell us to think of the happiest times we’d had on Earth. We’d shout, ‘Disneyland!’ She’d smile and say, “Heaven is like Disneyland — only ten times better, with no lines and all E-tickets.”

Cheryl smiled faintly. “I’ve seen Disneyland on TV,” she said. Then, looking out the window, her gaze wandered up past the drying cornstalks toward the clouds drifting across a deep blue sky. “When I die,” she whispered, “I’ll let you know if heaven is like Disneyland.”

I smiled back and said, “Deal.” Then I went to the kitchen to see if I could find the makings of tacos.

A few nights later, around 2:00 a.m., her husband called, frantic. Cheryl had passed away and asked me to come over. I told him I’d leave right away. A cold, fall rain was waiting for me as I threw on clothes, ran downstairs, and slid into my old Z. When I turned the key, habit made me flip the wiper switch. And to my astonishment, both wipers swept across the windshield in perfect rhythm.

I sat there in disbelief, then ran back upstairs and woke my husband. “The wipers!” I said. “They’re working!” He groaned, “Debbie, for God’s sake, how many times have I told you? They’re not going to fix themselves!” But they had.

I smiled and whispered under my breath as I drove safely to the farm, looking through a clear windshield, “Thanks, Cheryl, how do you like those E-ticket rides?”

That night, I learned something about rhythm — how life and death are not separate notes, but parts of the same song. Cheryl’s passing was not an end; it was a continuation.

I love hearing from you. If anything in this story—Cheryl’s question, the mystery of the wipers, or the dance between solar and lunar rhythm—touched something in you, tell me what it brought up.
Your insights help shape the conversations we explore in future newsletters.

Just hit reply.

🌍 Where Is Rhythm Calling You Next?

As we move into a new cycle, many of us feel the nudge toward adventure, renewal, or deeper self-understanding. If your inner compass is turning, here are a few opportunities opening in 2026:

🐎 Italy Wild Horse Retreat — May
A rare, heart-stirring journey into Tuscany’s wild landscapes.

Italy Click Here

🏡 Costa Rica Homestay Program
A chance to step out of the familiar and into a slower, more intentional rhythm of life.

More Information

🌿 Private Equine-Supported Coaching Retreats
Designed for individuals who are ready for a deeper walk with their soul’s questions.

Contact

🌕 For Paid Subscribers — Stepping Deeper Into the Circle

This month’s inner-circle content is designed to support you in moving through your own cycles with clarity and compassion.

Inside, you’ll find:
🌿 A contemplative Medicine Wheel exercise
🏡 An update on our Costa Rica construction.
🎧 Bonus audio from Pony’s Girl Parables: “The Sensor.”

If you’re ready to explore these deeper layers, come on in. The fire is lit, and the circle is open.

Subscribe now

Introduction to the Medicine Wheel

For thousands of years, humans have looked to nature—not clocks—to understand where they were in their lives. The Medicine Wheel is one of the most enduring expressions of that wisdom, reminding us that life moves in cycles of beginning, growing, releasing, and renewing. Each direction carries a distinct energy that helps us understand our present moment and what is quietly unfolding within us.

The East is the realm of vision, birth, and new beginnings—the rising sun that invites possibility and asks us to trust what is emerging.
The South embodies fire, vitality, and expression—the season of growth, creativity, and stepping fully into life.
The West holds the waters of reflection, emotion, and transformation—the place where we turn inward, process grief, and release what no longer serves.
The North is the home of integration, wisdom, and rest—the stillness of winter where insight settles and prepares us for the next dawn.

Together, these directions form both a map and a mirror, guiding us to recognize where we stand in our current cycle and what the next turn of the Wheel is asking of us.

This month’s exercise invites you to step onto the Wheel, locate your place within it, and meet your unfolding with clarity, compassion, and curiosity.

Living Practice: Ritual in the Wheel

In this Living Practice, you are invited to reflect on your life as a living circle—embodying the Principle of Rhythm. The Medicine Wheel offers not just theory, but an experience of presence and participation. Through simple ritual, we honor our journey and align our awareness with the greater cycles that hold us—and that we, in turn, hold within.

Step 1: Reflect on the Four Directions

Go outside for a walk in nature and bring your journal. After about fifteen minutes of walking, begin recalling a time in your life that connects with the East.

1. Remembering the East

• What emotions are connected to this time?

• Where were you?

• Who were you with?

• What excited or inspired you then?

• How did this time in the East shape who you are now?

• Look around you—what item catches your attention and wants to hold the East for you? Pick it up and carry it with you.

• Journal about this time in the East for a few minutes.

2. Recalling the South

Continue walking and bring to mind a time when you were in the energy of the South.

• When was this?

• Where in your body do you feel this memory?

• Can you recall something playful or humorous from this time?

• Who helped keep you balanced or “in line”?

• Did you need boundaries during this season? If so, who set them—and how did that shape you?

• Look around and find a small memento that represents this time in the South. Carry it with you.

• Journal about the South for a few minutes.

3. Reflecting in the West

Now, as you walk on, begin to reflect on a time when you were in the West.

• How old were you?

• Was there resistance during this time?

• What emotions are surfacing now?

• What wants to be remembered—old or unresolved issues?

• Who supported you then?

• Look around for an item that symbolizes the West. Pick it up and carry it with you.

• Journal about this time in the West for a few minutes.

4. Returning to the North

Continue until you feel drawn to recall a time in your North.

• How easy or difficult was it to bring up this memory?

• How old were you then?

• Did you experience barriers in the West that made moving into the North challenging?

• What part of that season do you still carry within you?

• Did you find it easy or difficult to move out of the North and into a new beginning in the East?

• Look around for an item that represents the North and carry it with you.

• Journal about this time in the North for a few minutes.

Step 2: Create Your Medicine Wheel

Continue walking for a few minutes, looking for a place that feels sacred or peaceful.
When you find it, place the four items you’ve collected in a circle, about ten feet in diameter—each one marking a direction:

• North in the North

• East in the East

• South in the South

• West in the West

Stand in the center of your circle. Begin walking slowly outward, spiraling toward the edge of your Wheel. As you move, offer gratitude for your journey and the wisdom each direction has given you.

Now pause and discern: Which direction am I currently in on the Wheel of my life?
When you sense your answer, return to the center, anchor that direction within yourself, then step out of the circle through that same direction.

Walk the outer edge of your Wheel, stopping again in your current direction. Close your eyes and listen for insights—guidance about this phase of your life and what it’s asking you to embody.

When you feel complete, take time to write in your journal.

Step 3: Closing the Circle — A Respectful Return

When it’s time to leave, offer a few words of gratitude to the land and the directions that held your reflection.
You might say silently or aloud:

“Thank you, Earth and Spirit, for holding this circle. I return these gifts to the land in gratitude. May balance and wisdom continue to flow for all beings.”

Gently return each item to where you found it—or as close as possible. If you used flowers or other natural offerings, scatter them to the wind or place them at the base of a tree.
As you walk away, know that the circle remains—alive in you, and remembered by the Earth.

If you’re recognizing a cycle that wants attention—grief, renewal, clarity, or a new beginning—let’s talk.
Email me to explore one-on-one coaching or a private equine-supported retreat designed around the direction of the Wheel you’re moving through.
Often, the next step is simply opening the conversation.

Contact

Moving Down to the Barn!

The barn is almost complete—just a few finishing touches left! And see that blank wall in the back? Stay tuned… Steve’s mural is coming soon.
On December 27th, I’ll be hosting an introductory experience here for local expats.

The house is moving along. The boards create the form around the top of the walls that will be filled with concrete; it is called the ‘corona’ in Spanish and the ‘crown’ in English. Steve’s got the plumbing and electric in. Those are two complex matrices.

I am spending time in Minnesota this month. Helping my daughter get settled into a new condo! Growing up in these winters doesn’t make it any easier to be in the cold and snow!

Bonus Audio - Pony’s Girl Parables

Pony’s Girl Parables: The Sensor

🧭 Deep Listener Subscribers, if you would like to have some 1:1 support, schedule a Zoom session here: LINK

🧭 Embodied Path Subscribers, schedule your monthly 90-minute coaching session here: LINK

On the Journey,

Debbie

🌒 4 A.M. Musings:

The Mirror of the Matrix We Live In

It’s 4 a.m.—that thin hour when the mind loosens its grip and truth speaks through the static. Lying awake, I kept hearing: “The universe doesn’t judge—it reflects.”

If the cosmos is a field of vibration, then life itself is a mirror. It doesn’t punish or reward; it simply matches frequency. What we experience “out there” is the echo of what vibrates “in here.” Our relationships, our patterns, our joys and heartbreaks—they are not random. They are expressions of our vibration.

Even in times of upheaval, when the world reflects its own chaos back to itself, we still hold the power to choose which part of that reflection we take in. Within the turbulence may lie a mirror showing us the same patterns we carry within. When we bring these shadowed aspects into awareness—into the light—we help restore balance, both inside ourselves and in the greater whole.

When the reflection disturbs us, the task is not to fight the image, but to understand it. A mirror cannot contort itself to make us happy. The outer world will not shift until the inner field does. The moment we envision something new—something different from what is reflected—we begin to recalibrate our vibration, and the reflection reorganizes to meet it.

Visioning—whether through meditation, journaling, or even a vision board—is not wishful thinking; it is vibrational intention. We aren’t asking for a different life; we are attuning to the frequency of what wants to happen through us.

The universe listens to vibration, not words.

⚡ Critical Course Corrections

Sometimes the universe whispers through intuition. Sometimes it knocks gently on the door of awareness. And sometimes—it knocks the door down.

These moments—those sharp, undeniable shifts in direction—are what I call Critical Course Corrections. They arrive not as punishment, but as precision. Life, in its vast intelligence, redirects us when we drift too far off our divinely intended course.

A lost job, an unexpected ending, a sudden relocation, a global upheaval—each carries the same potential: to awaken us to what can no longer remain unconscious. Course corrections dismantle what is outdated, revealing what is essential for us not just to survive, but to thrive. They remind us that comfort is not the same as alignment.

If we can pause in the turbulence—before rushing to fix, explain, or resist—we might glimpse the deeper order behind the disruption. What if every upheaval is an act of grace disguised as chaos? What if each course correction is the universe’s way of saying: You are ready for more truth, more remembering?

Once we recognize that we are standing at a point of bifurcation—where one path must end for another to begin—something within us softens. Awareness itself becomes the stabilizer. We may not yet know which direction to take, but knowing we are at a crossroads allows us to pause with purpose.

In those moments, choice becomes sacred. The challenge is to stand in the center of uncertainty long enough for the new frequency to reveal itself. When we stop grasping for the old ways, the next step often rises to meet us—not as a force that pushes us forward, but as something that pulls us toward it.

🎧 Caught in the Vibration

Audio:

In 2006, Steve and I moved to Costa Rica. We bought a 25-acre former dairy farm near Arenal Volcano and built a retreat center and boutique hotel in the rural community of Alto Monterrey called Leaves and Lizards Arenal Volcano Cabin Retreat.

For fourteen years, the community, the horses, and the land there were partners and teachers for countless individuals—not the least of whom were Steve and me.

At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, we faced an impossible choice. Airports were closing, and tourism was coming to a halt. We had forty-eight hours to decide whether to stay or leave before the airport closed indefinitely. We knew that if we returned to the U.S., I could work as a nurse to support our team and maintain the property. We also had elderly family who needed care, and our children were there. We decided to go, leaving behind the operation and the life we had built. It broke us in ways we weren’t sure we could recover from.

The Principle of Vibration was unmistakable. In March 2020, as a dystopian world unfolded around us, we found ourselves living in the basement of Steve’s father’s home in deep South Alabama, caring for him and his wife. We were exhausted, grief-stricken, and unanchored. Looking back, I believe we were dissociated—our bodies were present, but our spirits were still back on the mountain with our horses, our community, our life. There is only so much the psyche can hold at once.

It was a rupture—but it was also a summons.

In meditation, I kept asking, What is this asking of me? And all I heard from my voice of intuition was Jack Nicholson’s voice: ‘You can’t handle the truth!’ I wanted hope to come from somewhere outside of me. Instead, what I was being asked to learn was trust. Shadow was teaching me to surrender to the unfolding. The shadow of surrender was at the threshold, asking to come into the light.

If I had known then that I would write a book, Pony’s Girl Parables, that would later be adapted into an animated feature film, I never would have written it. The idea would have felt impossible, even ridiculous. Shadow was protecting me from knowing too much too soon.

In the vibration triggered by the pandemic, Pony’s Girl Parables emerged from a part of me I had never consciously accessed before. It came out of the stillness—the in-between space where Soul speaks when the world finally goes silent.

It was a cocooning: the old identity softening, thinning, and giving way. What emerged was not a “new” me, but the essential me—clearer, lighter, and more coherent.

The stories in Pony’s Girl Parables became the way I made sense of the experiences that shaped me—the Critical Course Corrections that changed the trajectory of who I was becoming.

The global pandemic pause gave me the space I had never allowed myself before. Space to reflect. Space to metabolize sorrow. Space to receive. I needed that time to integrate the wisdom I had gathered—the wisdom I could not yet name while I was still living it. Only in the stillness could I see the threads, the meaning, the message. Pony’s Girl Parables was not something I decided to write. It was something I remembered.

That experience became a living study in Quantum Life Management—how every choice, thought, and emotion is a vibrational signal shaping the architecture of our lives.

Pony’s Girl Parables is available on Amazon.

NEWS AND EVENTS

🎨 Find Wild Horses, Find Yourself – Tuscany, Spring 2026

Join Sandy Sharkey and me in the heart of Tuscany. Italy’s art, landscapes, and wild horses invite you to savor life with all your senses. Space is limited—and interest is strong. Paid subscribers, don’t forget to ask about your discount! There are still spaces available for the second session.

FIND OUT MORE

🌿 Private Retreat & Homestay Experience in Costa Rica

We’re opening dates for private retreats in the mountains of Costa Rica. Here, daily life blends naturally with spiritual practice.
During this intimate 5-night / 4-day retreat, the wisdom of the Four Directions of the Medicine Wheel will be our compass.

Your retreat includes:
✨ Personalized pre-retreat planning Zoom call
🌿 Four immersive days in nature, supported by horses and guided by the Medicine Wheel
💧 Nourishing meals at your rural homestay accommodation
💫 All materials and integration tools
🌺 Post-retreat integration Zoom session

Investment: $1,850 for one person • Add a second participant for $900
(Includes lodging, meals, and coaching; optional round-trip airport transport available.)

CONTACT

Horse Update

Cowboy

It’s been five months and Cowboy is adapting well to life in Costa Rica! Of the three, I sensed he was most opposed to leaving Virginia. However, now that he’s off the sugary Virginia grass, he’s sound, needs no pain medication for arthritis, and is rideable again! These steep hills and re-wilding have been good for him.

Titan

Titan offers the wisdom of years spent carrying countless riders as a trusted trail horse. His steady, calm presence and confident strength seem to reach straight into the human spirit, reminding us that relationships don’t need words—only heart-to-heart connection.

❄️Coming in December:

The Spiral Path: Evolving Through Earth’s Rhythm.

Year’s end invites us to slow down and take stock of 2025—its gifts and its burdens. In December’s newsletter, we’ll explore how Earth’s rhythms model safety and predictability, a framework we can use when shaping our future.

✨ For Paid Subscribers

(Free for all this month!)

If you’ve ever stood at the edge of something new—uncertain but hopeful—this next part is for you.

🌧️ A deeper look into the Costa Rican rainy season—where rivers rise, horses hesitate, and Titan steps into his element.
🌿 A new video construction update—see the latest progress on our house and barn.
🌺 Reflections on the Principle of Vibration—how nature’s rhythm mirrors the process of manifestation and creative alignment.
📖 A first look at my upcoming book, Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying—exploring how ancient wisdom meets our modern human experience.
✨ This month’s Living Practice, “Yep, It’s a Bucket List”—a guided exercise to align your vibration with what wants to take shape.

Upgrade to read the full story, watch the video, and access the bonus audio: Pony’s Girl Parables – The Seer.

Special Offer!

Costa Rica Update — Building, Flowing, and Learning

Even with the rains of this time of year, we’ve made progress on our house and barn — the walls are up, and Steve is now installing the electrical and plumbing systems. We’ve gone around and around about the roof structure. I think we’ve finally decided on metal beams, an insulated metal roof, and on the inside, we’ll finish with tongue and groove teak boards.

The Vinculo Barn is close to completion. The roof panels are expected to arrive later this week. They will then pour the floor for the storerooms and bathroom. In the meantime, the horses have some makeshift shelters to get out of the rain, and the kindly neighbor let me use his covered corral when needed.

It’s the peak of the rainy season here in the South Pacific region, and while our elevation protects us from flooding, our river still gets wild — swelling into a raging force that reminds us who’s really in charge.

The river calms down, about 12 hours after a heavy rain, returning to its peaceful blue-green hue and more tranquil flow. We recently found a quiet spot where the horses can enter the river. Titan came right in with me, no hesitation. The three who came from the States, however, digging their heels in, stood firm on the bank, giving me that look horses do when they think you’ve completely lost your mind. I’m fairly certain I could hear Tango saying, “Debbie, what the heck! You have no idea what happens to this place when it rains.”

In Virginia, they loved the pond, but still water and moving river water are two very different scenarios. I’ll keep working on them once the dry season arrives in early December.

During these rainy afternoons, I’ve found time to write. My death doula work intermingles with the philosophical frameworks I use in coaching the living. This has become the foundation of my upcoming book, Inevitable: Live Like You Are Dying.

The book explores the Hermetic Principles through the lens of real life—how ancient wisdom meets our modern human experience. It invites readers to navigate the intersection of energy, consciousness, and experience as living teachers rather than abstract ideas. Each principle—Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, and beyond—reveals itself not through theory, but through the moments that ask us to grow, surrender, or begin again. I’ll share my personal stories that taught me to live as if I were dying!

And my daughter, who is now surfacing from her own challenging life, is writing a companion parable for each of the principles.

Watching the river rise and fall each day reminds me of how all life moves in vibration and rhythm — what flows, pauses, and reshapes itself according to unseen and in many cases unstoppable energy.

This month’s theme, Quantum Life Management, draws from The Principle of Vibration—the recognition that we are energetic beings broadcasting our internal state at all times.

Form Follows Energy

Quantum physics conceives that what we call “reality” is not solid at all. Everything we see, touch, and experience is energy vibrating at different frequencies. Matter is energy slowed to the point of becoming visible. Even the most solid rock is, at its essence, energy made visible. Thought, emotion, and intention are energy too—just vibrating faster and less visibly; however, they do manifest into form eventually.

We are not objects living in the world; we are fields of vibration in conversation with it. As the saying goes, we are spiritual beings having a human experience — not humans searching for a soul.

Physicist David Bohm suggested that reality has two layers. There is the visible world we experience every day, and there is a deeper, unseen field from which that world arises. He called this deeper layer the implicate order—a kind of underlying blueprint in which everything is connected and in motion beneath the surface. What we usually perceive is the explicate order — the part of reality that has already unfolded into form. A simple way to imagine this is like a seed. The seed already contains the pattern of the entire tree, even before the tree becomes visible. The tree doesn’t appear all at once — it unfolds over time from what was already present in potential.

We live within a field of vibration and relationship. Our thoughts, emotions, choices, and intentions are not isolated events—they move through this field like ripples in water, subtly shaping the world around us. The universe does not respond to our words or wishes; it resonates with the frequency we embody. This is the architecture of becoming—energy arranging itself into form. Manifestation begins as vibration, an inner blueprint of belief, emotion, and vision that organizes through alignment, choice, and embodied action. Every visible structure of our lives was once an unseen pattern within the field—an energetic design taking shape through us.

When a book is written, for example, it does not begin on the page. It begins as a feeling, a dream, or a sudden clarity that arises from the field—the realm of the Soul. Then the Ego steps in as the architect. The Ego becomes the hands and the voice, translating essence into language: a first draft, a structure, a beginning. After that, the Soul returns, shaping, pruning, expanding what wants to be expressed.

It is a dance between the unseen and the seen, the subtle and the substantial. What eventually becomes physical—the printed book you can hold—is energy that has traveled through multiple layers of vibration.

The Frequency of The Bucket List

In 2000, after my divorce, I made a list. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that list was my first conscious act of vibrational alignment. It was a list of ten things I would do if time and money were no object. The idea came to me one night around 2 a.m. while I was working a night shift in the NICU. I was caring for a very unstable baby—one of those fragile little beings who must be touched minimally, monitored constantly. My job in those hours was bedside vigilance: watching, adjusting knobs, listening for the alarms.

In that little corner of the unit, in that deep, quiet focus, something opened. I began to contemplate the kind of desires we usually dismiss as outrageous—the ones we often bury under the weight of practicality and responsibility. And there, sitting beside that tiny infant, suspended between life and death, I allowed myself to dream without restraint.

One of the items on that list was this: Move to Costa Rica and open a themed destination B&B that would earn a red star in Fodor’s guidebook. Absolutely wild, I know. And yet—within a few years, that vision manifested.

Form follows energy. Energy follows intention. Intention follows awareness. When our inner vibration harmonizes with the natural rhythm of becoming, life begins to form inside of that vibrational potential.

Living Practice: Yep, It’s a Bucket List

• Take out your journal and make a list of 10 things you would love to experience if time and money were no object. Let yourself dream without editing, shrinking, or rationalizing.

  Then JUST DO IT:

  • Choose one.

  • Not the most practical one.

  • Not the safest one.

  • The one that makes your chest lift or your heart ache just a little.

Make one small step toward it this week — a phone call, a search, a conversation, a date on the calendar. Commit to live on purpose, now.

Every dream begins as vibration — an unseen ripple in the field of possibility. The moment we give it attention, it begins to take shape. Whether you’re building a home in the rainforest, stepping into a new season of your life, or tending to a dream, remember: energy always follows awareness. What you tend to grows.

Bonus Audio

Pony’s Girl Parables: The Seer

🧭 Deep Listener Subscribers, if you would like to have some 1:1 support, schedule a Zoom session here: LINK

🧭 Embodied Path Subscribers, schedule your monthly 90-minute coaching session here: LINK

🌀On the Journey,

Debbie

Eponicity

As we are starting to get settled here in Costa Rica and 2026 is just around the corner, I’m thrilled to share two opportunities to connect.

🇮🇹 Tuscany, Italy — Find Wild Horses Find Yourself - April/May 2026
Join me, photographer Sandy Sharkey, art historian Monika Eva Sandberger, and Dr. Agnese Santi, founder of the Calvana Wild Horse Rescue Project, for an unforgettable journey through the heart of Tuscany.

Highlights include:
🏛️ Florence Stay – 4 nights at the boutique Hotel Cellai, just steps from museums, piazzas, and artisan shops.
🎨 Guided Tours – Explore Florence and Lucca with professional art historian Monika Eva Sandberger, uncovering the art and architecture that shaped the Renaissance.
🚴 Lucca Tour – Cycle atop the medieval city walls for panoramic views of this enchanting Tuscan town.
🌿 Tuscany Countryside – 4 nights at Agriturismo Corboli, a working Tuscan farm offering warm hospitality, farm-to-table meals, and vineyard views.
🐎 Wild Horse Photography – Two full days photographing the free-roaming Calvana herds in their mountain habitat, guided by Dr. Agnese Santi and supported by wildlife and wild horse photographer Sandy Sharkey.
📸 Photography Support – Optional editing workshop with Sandy and a group slideshow presentation on the final evening.
🍷 Cultural & Culinary Touches – Enjoy authentic Tuscan cuisine, a documentary screening “The Story of Broken Leg”, and a visit to historic Prato.

More Information Click Here

🌿 Private Workshops in Costa Rica — February & March 2026
We’re now opening a few special dates and rates for private 5-night/4-day retreats at our new location in the Costa Rican rainforest.

Your experience includes:
✨ Personalized pre-retreat planning Zoom call
🌿 Four-day private equine-supported coaching
💧 Nourishing meals & peaceful homestay accommodations
🌺 Post-retreat integration Zoom session

Dates:

• February 15–18, 2026 (Arrive Feb 14, Depart Feb 19)

• March 15–18, 2026 (Arrive Mar 14, Depart Mar 19)

Investment: $1,850 for one person; add a companion for $900 more.
Includes lodging, meals, and coaching. (Optional round-trip airport transport available.)

Both journeys invite you to return home to yourself—through the wisdom of the land, the horses, and the sacred cycles of life.

Contact Me Here

There’s something about the quiet hours before dawn when thoughts arrive unfiltered and closer to truth. One morning this month, as I reflected on the paradoxes that shape our lives, I found myself thinking about how parables help us understand them.

Then, out of nowhere, the story of Adam and Eve surfaced—revealing itself as a beautiful metaphorical paradox.

☯The Parable of Dualities

Click to listen or read below.

A parable is a short story that illustrates a universal truth.
It usually centers on a familiar character facing a moral, ethical, or spiritual dilemma.

Parables invite us to explore complex ideas through storytelling, allowing abstract concepts to take form in something we can feel and imagine.

Parables and Experience

As an Equine-Facilitated Learning instructor and Transformational Presence coach, I often find myself working within the realm of parables.

They are experiential and thought-provoking—much like working with horses.

Interactions with horses often unfold as living metaphors, reaching us in ways that words alone cannot.
These moments stir something deep within the psyche, surfacing as sudden clarity or self-knowing—that Ah Ha moment.

And once we know, we cannot unknow what has been realized.

The Power of Story

Our stories—passed down through generations—carry the memory of how we make sense of the world.

Before scientific reasoning, stories gave structure to mystery.
They shaped our cultures and offered moral frameworks for societies.

Parables, especially, hold wisdom without preaching.
They meet us where we are, inviting reflection rather than demanding belief.

Adam and Eve Revisited

Perhaps the most well-known parable is the story of Adam and Eve.

I like to look at it not through dogma, but through the metaphoric lens of duality—
Adam and Eve as the masculine and feminine, the yin and yang, the ego and the soul.

Seen this way, their story could represent the moment consciousness divided itself in order to evolve.
Without contrast, there is no choice—and without choice, there is no evolution.

“It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation… rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good…”
— Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

Darwin reminds us that evolution depends not on strength or intelligence, but on our ability to adapt to ever-changing conditions.

The Dualities of Life

Life continually presents us with dualities:
light and dark, comfort and challenge, holding on and letting go.

These opposites are not meant to divide us, but to awaken our capacity for choice.

In navigating the space between opposites, we exercise freedom—and through choice, we evolve.

In today’s world, we are constantly reminded of our divisions—polarities amplified by culture and media.
Yet the space between opposites is not a battleground; it’s a birthplace.

It’s not compromise, but something far more profound: a space where the polarities themselves become synchronous.

The Space Between

This in-between space is where creation happens—
the point where light meets shadow,
where the known meets mystery,
where ego and soul begin to dance.

It is the pulse of evolution itself—
the moment consciousness recognizes its own reflection
and remembers it was never truly separate.

Earth as a Classroom

Is Earth, then, our classroom for remembering?

We forget who we are at birth so we can rediscover it through experience.
You are not here to be perfect—you are here to experience, to rise,
to return more evolved than when you arrived.

Without our so-called failures and struggles, it would be like skipping school—
leaving this life without doing the homework of the soul.

And in the afterlife, as I like to imagine, there’s no saying “the dog ate my homework”—
the Big Dog knows better.

The Threshold of Evolution

Returning to the parable of Adam and Eve,
perhaps they symbolize the dualities within us—the Ego and the Soul.

Pitting the ego against the soul only strengthens their division,
yet in the threshold between the two lies our choice.
This is the threshold of our own evolution.

Do we choose to serve the soul’s mission—or to live an ego-led life?

Life finds harmony when the soul leads and the ego serves the soul’s purpose.
Here, the yin and yang within us come into balance—
and we remember.

🪂The Dualities: The Last Time & The First Time

As one cycle begins to close and another quietly calls us forward, I invite you to reflect on the thresholds that mark your life—the last times and the first times.
Each carries its own quiet power. Power in choice. Power in awareness. Power in our own evolution.

When we look back at the last times—the moments, people, or experiences that shaped who we’ve been—and then turn toward the first times—the new, the untried, the unknown—we begin to notice that the true work happens in between.

This in-between space is more than transition; it is transformation.
It’s where gratitude meets courage, where endings soften into beginnings.
It’s where vulnerability becomes the bridge to our next becoming.

I’ve been fortunate to live a life full of adventure—one that’s asked me again and again to step out of my comfort zone. Some of those “firsts” came with summoning the courage to move through vulnerability. Others came with actual fear.

One of the most memorable circumstances involves ziplines! 1995, was the first time I came to Costa Rica. Two of my sisters, Barbie and Becky, our friend Carol, and I decided to venture to this tiny Central American country after reading in Outside magazine that the Pacuare River was one of the best white water rafting rivers in the world—and that a hydroelectric dam was being proposed that could soon change it forever. The article urged adventurers to experience rafting this river before it was gone.

(Thanks to tourism and conservation efforts, the Pacuare remains undammed to this day AND another synchronistic tidbit, our river is called the Pacuarito-meaning ‘Little Pacuare’)

Back then, travel looked a little different. We actually drove to a travel agent’s office, and she found us a package deal—airfare, lodging, and a rental car—for $430 total. What a lifechanging adventure it turned out to be—for four women who didn’t speak Spanish and this was before GPS.

The First Zipline in Costa Rica

In Monteverde, there was and unique attraction that had just opened—the very first zipline in the country. Barbie and Becky were all in. Carol and I, on the other hand, thought we’d rather go birdwatching to add the cloud forest species to our bird count. Besides, I insisted, $40 felt steep for swinging through the trees like monkeys.

It is also important to note here that this was BEFORE helmets!

Barbie and Becky gave me a hard time for being “chicken.” They knew I was (and still am) afraid of heights. I ignored them.

Our morning birding tour ended well before the zipliners were done. Carol and I found ourselves in the only “bar” in Monteverde at the time—a local’s home right along the dusty, unpaved main road. We pulled up a wobbly, wooden stool to the kitchen counter, and the owner poured us an Imperial beer. It was 11 a.m., but as the saying goes, it was five o’clock somewhere.

We overheard, and sort of understood, the locals murmuring about “los gringos locos”—the crazy foreigners coming up the mountain to pay $40 to swing from trees. Carol and I smirked, but the chuckles turned to shock when Barbie walked in—face streaked with drying blood, with a large, blood soaked, cloth napkin wrapped around her forehead.

The locals rushed to help, but I quickly reassured them in my loudest English (as if that would help them understand me better) that she was an ER nurse, and she’d be fine. Barbie pulled another stool up to the counter, still bleeding slightly, and ordered a cold beer like everything was normal. Becky walked in behind her, shaking her head.

Apparently, as Barbie was rappelling down from the last tree, her hair got caught in the figure-eight clip of her harness. The guides didn’t have a knife, but luckily Becky did (she is always prepared!). One of the guides climbed back up with Becky’s knife to cut Barbie free—only to realize she was literally hanging by her hair. By the time they got her down, a quarter-sized patch of scalp had torn out when she was freed from the figure 8. Before helmets!

Those wounds bleed a lot.

By the time Barbie finished her beer, the tiny one-room medical clinic in town had opened, where she received 11 stitches for $11. It was a dollar a stitch for non-residents back then! Maybe this was NOT the first time this happened?!

That sealed it for me: birdwatching was definitely safer than ziplining.

Crossing the Threshold

It took me five years and four more trips to Costa Rica before I finally gathered the courage to try ziplining myself—this time near the Rincon de la Vieja volcano, with a helmet.

I did it. White-faced monkeys followed me from tree to tree, chattering loudly, as if cheering me on—or maybe gossiping about the crazy human trying to be a monkey.

I was terrified—even though I knew I wouldn’t die—I smelled like fear. I had no idea you actually could smell fear; turns out, it’s not just a figure of speech. By the way, it reeks.

It took a lot for me to move into this “first time.” I drew upon the courage I’d mustered from remembering the last time I did something for the first time—and not only survived, but discovered that by doing it, I had raised my baseline of courage to step into the unknown.

By stepping off that zipline platform, I stepped straight into the abyss—and into my own courageous becoming.

🪂Each time we cross a threshold, we reclaim the energy once bound to fear or vulnerability and transform it into possibility.

⏳Now It’s Your Turn

To prepare for this exercise, first find a quiet, comfortable space where you feel safe and undisturbed.

• Close your eyes and allow yourself to settle into stillness.

  If thoughts arise, simply notice them. “I’ll come back to you later.”

Take a few deep, steady breaths.
Inhale for a count of two…
Exhale for a count of four.
Continue this slow rhythm for a minute or two.

• With your eyes still closed, begin to notice:

  • Three sounds you can hear in the distance.

  • Three sounds you can hear nearby.

  • Three sounds you can hear within or closest to you—perhaps your breath, the rustle of fabric, or the breeze around you.

• Now shift your awareness:

  • Notice three things you can feel—the texture of your clothing, the ground beneath your feet, the steady beat of your heart.

  • Notice what you can smell.

• Fully present in the space of just being, shift your awareness inward… and invite yourself into a memory of The Last Time.

⌛Entering the Energy of “The Last Time”

Allow it to arise naturally—no forcing or judging, just sensing with curiosity.

• When you’re ready, open your eyes softly.
  Notice what space or object in your surroundings draws your attention.
  The energy of The Last Time is held there, waiting to be acknowledged.

• Walk toward that space.
  What do you feel here?
  What sensations or emotions surface?
  What is this space asking you to notice, to become aware of?

• When you feel complete, take a few notes

  Capture what you experienced an anchor any insights that may have surfaced.

  What message does The Last Time have for you?

• Then, return to a neutral spot.
  Close your eyes again.
  Take a few grounding breaths.

⏳Meeting “The First Time”

This time inviting the energy of The First Time to reveal itself.

Allow it to arise naturally—no forcing or judging, just sensing with curiosity.

• When you’re ready, open your eyes softly.
  Notice what space or object in your surroundings draws your attention.
  The energy of The First Time is held there, waiting to be acknowledged.

• Walk toward that space.
  What do you feel here?
  What sensations or emotions surface?
  What is this space asking you to notice, to become aware of?

• When you feel complete, take a few notes

  Capture what you experienced an anchor any insights that may have surfaced.

  What message does The First Time have for you?

• Then, return to a neutral spot.
  Close your eyes again.
  Take a few grounding breaths.

🌗Integration

What dualities do you notice between The Last Time and The First Time?
How do they relate to one another?

Take a moment to honor what has passed, and to welcome what is arriving.

Upcoming Experiences

🏡 Costa Rica Homestay

Something special is happening here at Eponicity! Our new Homestay Program invites you to step inside real life—sharing meals, stories, and daily rhythms with welcoming local hosts. This is not tourism; it’s immersion.
Wake to the sounds of the rainforest, practice your Spanish over coffee grown nearby, and let yourself relax into the slower, heart-led pace of Costa Rican life. Optional equine-supported coaching sessions help you integrate your experience through reflection and connection with nature.
Come for a week—or stay longer—and rediscover what it means to belong to a place, to people, and to yourself.

Costa Rica Homestay

🌴 Finding Peace in Paradise – Costa Rica, January 2026

Our January retreat in Drake Bay is now full! If you hoped to join us, we’re gathering interest for a second set of dates in 2026.

FInding Peace in Paradise

🎨 Find Wild Horses, Find Yourself – Tuscany, Spring 2026

Join Sandy Sharkey and me in the heart of Tuscany. Italy’s art, landscapes, and wild horses invite you to savor life with all your senses. Space is limited—and interest is strong. Paid subscribers, don’t forget to ask about your discount!

Italy 2026

✨ Coming in November: Quantum Life Management

Next month, we’ll explore a grounded approach to everyday balance—how to manage your energy before managing your to-do list. When we understand that thoughts, emotions, and actions all carry energy, we begin to create more ease, clarity, and flow in daily life.

Small shifts in awareness can change how everything around us takes shape.

✨ For Paid Subscribers

Here’s what’s waiting in this month’s full edition:

• 🌗 Continue The Last Time / First Time journey by exploring the space in between—and create a plan for moving through the threshold of change. The Threshold offers us a choice—and the choice we make determines what lies on the other side. I’ll share one of my biggest choices!

• 🔑 Discover how your choices become the foundation for evolution and personal growth.

• 🏡 Get a behind-the-scenes update on our next big project, including our new house design and a community barn raising.

• 🎧 Enjoy a bonus audio reading from Pony’s Girl Parables, Chapter 5: The Co-Creator.

👉 Upgrade to a paid subscription to access the full content, bonus materials, and monthly practices. If you are already a subscriber, scroll on. You’ll need to open it in a browser to see it fully.

Upgrade to Paid

Read more

Some places don’t just change your view—they change your rhythm. The Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica is one of those rare places. Here, the rainforest meets the sea—where ecosystems merge into one vast living expression of Earth itself.

Our new home in Costa Rica is near the Osa, and I’ll admit: it’s one of my favorite places on the planet. Living there full-time would be nearly impossible—its remoteness and wildness make daily life a challenge. Yet it’s exactly those qualities that make the Osa unforgettable. To arrive is to be transformed.

One of the only ways in is by riverboat, winding down the Sierpe River. On my first trip there—back in 1993—I traveled with my sisters in a dugout canoe carved from a massive Ceiba tree. The boat was long and narrow, with a small motor fixed to the back. Along the way, we picked up live chickens and even a small pig! We were all tucked in together, laughing and swaying as the canoe carried us closer to the Pacific.

I’ll never forget the moment the river gave way to the open sea. Our driver timed the entrance into the Pacific with the incoming waves, guiding us smoothly into the ocean. I told myself over and over, biting my nails: They do this every day. Trust the journey. Soon, we pulled alongside a dock, where men helped tie up the canoe and unloaded the chickens and the pig—supplies for the lodge’s chef we discovered! In that moment, I half expected Mr. Roarke and Tattoo from Fantasy Island to appear and announce, “Welcome!” Our adventure had just begun.

That trip changed me. At the time, I was an NICU nurse working endless hours, holding out for a few weeks of vacation each year. But the Osa called me back to myself. It reminded me what it meant to belong to this Earth—not just to live on it, but to be an Earthling. In many ways, it was the catalyst that eventually led me to leave the United States and root my life in Costa Rica.

For those who traveled with me, it was the same. Something in each of us awakened, urging us to remember who we were born to be. To embrace this one wild and precious life.

More Information

Finding Peace in Paradise Retreat

January 23–29, 2026

Does this stir something in you? Join me for Finding Peace in Paradise—a retreat I’m co-leading with wildlife photographer Sandy Sharkey. We’ll journey together to the Osa Peninsula and let nature do what she does best: open our hearts, shift our perspective, and remind us just how precious and luminous life can be.

What Awaits You:

🌿 Guided boat tour down the Sierpe River with a naturalist, gliding through mangroves alive with monkeys, birds, and hidden wonders before meeting the wide-open Pacific. Plenty of time to photograph this pristine ecosystem.

🏝 Arrival in Drake Bay and stay at La Paloma Lodge, an eco-lodge nestled between rainforest and ocean, where every view feels like a postcard.

🦜 Guided birding at sunrise, a night jungle walk, a day in Corcovado National Park, and a snorkel at Caño Island (with SCUBA option).

✨ Unhurried rhythms—time to journal, float in the pool, photograph, wander rainforest trails, or simply rest in the wild embrace of this place—peacefully reconnecting with your own wild and precious self.

This retreat is intentionally intimate—just 8 participants—so you’ll have the space to listen inward and feel fully supported.

👉 If you’re feeling the nudge, learn more or reserve your spot here:

Finding Peace in Paradise

On the Journey…
From the mountains above Dominical,
Deborah 🌸

P.S. As a thank you for being part of my newsletter community, you’ll receive a special subscriber discount on this retreat. Consider it my way of honoring your presence on this journey with me. 🌿✨

Every time I sit down to write, I imagine you on the other side of these words—and I feel deep gratitude for the opportunities I’ve had to connect with so many like-minded souls.

Recently, I introduced a paid subscription option for this newsletter as an invitation to connect on a more profound level.

The free posts will always continue, and the paid circle includes:

✨ Exclusive reflections and practices I don’t share elsewhere
✨ Access to our private Substack Community—an intimate, supportive space for conversation and connection
✨ Self-coaching prompts with real-life examples you can adapt to your own journey, at your own pace

If you feel called, I’d love to welcome you into this deeper circle. Not sure yet? You can start with a free trial and cancel at any time. Think of it as an investment in yourself. When we engage with our higher self, we step into being part of the greater solution to the challenges of our time.

And if now isn’t the right time, The Whisper—the free subscription level—may be just what you need right now.

On the journey with you,
Deborah

PS: In case you missed it, here is the link to the last newsletter. Next Chapter: This Wild and Precious Life

PSS: 2026 group retreat schedule: Jan 2026 - Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, May 2026 Tuscany, Italy

PSSS: Steve’s busy painting murals in our little mountain village.

Subscription Options

I seem to wake up around 4 a.m. most mornings. They say—whoever they are—that’s the hour when the Ego is still asleep, and the Soul’s voice speaks clearest. So, I rouse myself just enough to listen to the whisper and take a few notes.

One morning this month, a Jimmy Buffett lyric from the song, Lone Palm, came drifting through with the whisper:

“I knew this girl made of memories and phrases,
Who lived her whole life in both chapters and stages...”

It prompted me to reflect on a role from my 30+ years in nursing—conducting developmental exams on infants and children at risk for developmental delays. The tool I used was called Ages and Stages.

I realized we never age out of ‘ages and stages’. Even as adults, we continue to move through developmental thresholds—chapters of change that invite us to grow, let go, or begin again.

We’re all still becoming.

When you feel bored, stuck, agitated, scattered—when you're doom-scrolling or binge-watching but not feeling nourished—these may be signs your soul is signaling: It’s time to enter a new stage.

As Alan Seale, author and founder of The Center for Transformational Presence, teaches, the soul and ego must work together. The soul calls us forward into a greater version of ourselves—into the unknown, into expansion. The ego, grounded in the physical world, wants safety and predictability. The trick is not to reject either, but to forge a conscious partnership.

When the ego feels reassured, it can become a brave and capable companion, allowing the soul’s vision to move into form. When we ignore the soul’s call to evolve, we may seem fine on the outside—but deep down, a part of us begins to fade.

The call of the soul is a cue: It’s time for a new chapter. That is how we ended up back in Costa Rica!

🧭 This Month’s Coaching Framework

This month, we'll work with the Three Fundamental Questions derived from The Center for Transformational Presence. They are:

1. What Wants to Happen? – What is arising, asking to be noticed, from the field of potential?

2. Who is this Asking Me to BE? – What qualities, presence, or energy do I need to be mindful of?

3. What is this Asking Me to DO? – What tangible action would place me in partnership with that unfolding?

These questions open the dialogue between Soul and Ego, where Soul leads from the vast field of purpose, and Ego becomes the builder, translator, and steward of action. Together, they form a dynamic collaboration greater than the sum of their parts.

This week, consider: What energy, idea, or invitation is gently knocking?

Instead of pushing your energy outward, what if you opened yourself to receive? This is how potential finds its way to us—when we pause long enough to let it.

💧 A Visualization: How Energy Flows

Imagine you're holding a garden hose. When we live goal-oriented, ego-led lives, it's like turning that hose on full blast—energy rushes outward. We focus intensely on directing, managing, and achieving our goals. However, this flow can exhaust us and disconnect us from what is trying to reach us.

Now visualize yourself gently turning the faucet down—or even off. In that stillness, the direction of energy begins to shift. It starts to flow toward you instead.

This is the moment of potential. This is where soul-led manifestation begins. At that pause—

When you open to receiving rather than forcing, you create space for the infinite possibilities your Ego can't yet imagine. This is the secret of manifestation: allowing loving energy to move toward you, unhindered by the Ego’s striving or resistance. In the language of physics, form follows energy.

✍️ So, Are You Ready to Write Your Next Chapter?

Let’s begin with the first of the Three Fundamental Questions:

1️⃣ What Wants to Happen?

To discover what wants to happen, begin by slowing down and listening. This isn’t about deciding—it’s about receiving. Follow this soul-aligned process:

🧘‍♀️ Soul-Aligned Practice:

1. Find a quiet place where you can be undisturbed. Settle into stillness.

2. Ask yourself:

“What wants to happen?”
Then, gently let go of needing an immediate answer. Relax into the stillness.
Imagine turning off the garden hose—let the mental flood slow to a trickle.
If random thoughts arise, don’t resist them. Simply notice them, then gently set them aside.

3. Write down three things that come TO you.

4. THEN, Close your eyes and take a few deep, grounding breaths.

5. Open your eyes and look at the three statements you wrote down.

➤ Which one calls to you, surprises you, or stirs something inside-keep in mind it may not necessarily be a good feeling!

That—right there—is What Wants to Happen.

✨ Morning Practice Pointer
Before I even get out of bed, I ask myself a simple variation of this question: “What potential is waiting for me today?”

This gentle practice shifts me away from a rigid, goal-oriented ‘to-do list’ mindset and into the spaciousness of what the day holds. Contemplating it in that liminal space—before I’m fully awake, before the “hose” of the day gets turned on—has quietly reshaped my life. It’s an easy, mindful way to begin each morning more soul-guided, open, and attuned.

My What Wants to Happen

The move back to Costa Rica began with this exact question: What Wants to Happen? It was the starting point for a real-time unfolding of soul-guided living—expressed through our daily experiences and the quiet nudges we chose to follow.

We begin to write the next chapter, move to our next stage even at our age!

That clarity first arrived during our trip back to Costa Rica in February and March. The message was unmistakable: What Wanted to Happen was to return and make our home here once again.

Our chapter in the U.S. had fulfilled its purpose.

During the pandemic, we cared for elderly loved ones who have since passed. I wrote a book and adapted it into a screenplay (now being considered by several major production companies). We built meaningful friendships and found safety and stillness during a time of global crisis.

That time was one of retreat and repair. I underwent three essential surgeries to heal my spine and remove a benign parotid cyst. These were best handled in the U.S. That season of life served its sacred purpose.

But the call was undeniable. It was time to return home.

As I share this journey, you're warmly invited to reflect alongside me, listening gently for what might be emerging in your own life, too.

It takes conscious effort to slow down, to shift from doing to being, and to attune to your inner guidance system. And remember—being is a verb. It’s not passive; it’s an active, conscious state of embodiment.

At first, the decision to return to Costa Rica felt obvious—it was a Soul-led YES. But it quickly became an Ego-testing journey. Doubts surfaced, and that little voice didn’t just whisper—it cried:

Aren’t we too old to do this again? Why leave our beautiful Virginia farm? Can we really manage the overwhelming logistics of moving a household and three horses internationally? And what will people think?

However; in what felt like one fell swoop, we made the decision—but vulnerability settled over us like a fog. And yet, leaning into that vulnerability began to dissolve limiting beliefs and quiet the voice of doubt.

By leaning in, rather than turning away, we began to see the difference between a life that merely looked good and one that felt right—one that made our hearts sing a youthful song.

In that moment, my Ego stood beside my Soul and said, “I CAN do this. I CAN begin to write our next chapter.” Vulnerability transformed into curiosity and courage!

One morning, I had to drum up extra courage. It was the morning, the horses were to be transported by ground from Virginia to Miami, I haltered each one through tears and whispered, “It’s going to be fine—we’re going on an adventure, together.” This was a hard day for me.

But slowly, the pieces began to fall into place. Synchronicities aligned in surprising, almost magical ways. We began to realize: this really was What Wanted to Happen.

As we cut the road into the mountains over the last month, I found myself thinking about how often we resist the inner work that asks us to clear, dig, or level something out—providing a foundation for growth.

Whether it’s forgiving a regret, beginning again, or daring to name what we still long for in the time we have left—stepping into a new stage sure does take courage.

This adjustment didn’t happen overnight. It required time. But each nudge, each unforeseen twist, each “coincidence,” reminded us that we were no longer operating on a strict plan—but living in partnership with something larger.

It reminded me of the film The Adjustment Bureau, where unseen guides subtly shift the details of people’s lives to keep them “on mission.” They move back and forth in time, making course corrections when needed.

It’s a comforting metaphor. The moment we choose to follow what wants to happen, rather than what we think should, we begin to live in collaboration with life itself, turning the page to the next chapter of this wild and precious life.

I’m Expanding Into Coaching-Supported Tiered Newsletter Options

As my own life continues to unfold here in Costa Rica—with all its lessons, detours, and gifts—I’ve felt a clear nudge: it’s time to offer more. Not just more content, but deeper support, structure, and soul-aligned coaching tools to help you integrate this work into your daily life.

That’s why I’ve chosen to expand this newsletter into tiered coaching-supported options—offering monthly practices, personal stories, audio reflections, printable resources, and discounts on retreats and services. These are designed for those who feel ready to write their next chapter with greater clarity, courage, and intention.

I’ve also made the conscious choice to step away from sharing personal and vulnerable content on mainstream social media platforms. This space feels more aligned—intimate, intentional, and free of the noise—to share what’s real and meaningful. Your presence here helps co-create a community grounded in reflection, authenticity, and transformation.

What You’ll Find Here

This space is an invitation to pause, listen, and remember what truly matters. Each month, I share:

• 🌄 Reflections & early-morning musings from the Costa Rican mountains

• 🎧 Voice notes, images, and glimpses of everyday life on the land

• 📬 Coaching prompts, journaling practices, and simple tools for clarity

• ✨ Stories of courage, vulnerability, and transformation

Why Go Deeper?

Many of us long for guidance that goes beyond inspiration—we want tools, practices, and support that help us live our soul’s truth with courage and clarity.

That’s why I’ve created coaching-supported tiers.

• 🧭 Structure and practices to anchor insights into daily life

• 💌 Personalized support that turns reflections into action

• 🎙️ Audio content, behind-the-scenes stories, and guided practices

• 🎁 Access to member perks like coaching discounts, retreat invitations, and more

A Community That Walks Together

This is not just about reading—it’s about belonging. Here, you’re joining a circle of like-minded seekers:

• A safe, supportive space to share and be witnessed

• A community grounded in authenticity, courage, and transformation

• A place where vulnerability is welcome and connection nurtures growth

In a noisy, fragmented world, this is an intentionally intimate and grounded space—free of the distractions of mainstream platforms.

🌿 For paid subscribers, this Substack Chat is our private gathering place—a monitored, safe space where you can connect directly with me and with one another, knowing your voice will be held with care.

Why This Matters Now

We are living in a time of turbulence and uncertainty. The conflicts and divisions in the outer world can feel overwhelming, leaving us longing for peace and stability. Yet we must remember something profoundly simple: peace does not begin outside of us—it begins within.

When we cultivate inner peace, we become steadier, more compassionate, and more resilient. From that grounded place, we can engage with the world differently—less reactive, more present, and better able to embody the change we long to see.

This is the heart of This Wild & Precious Life | A Benevolent Journey Within. With the support of coaching practices, reflection, and community, this space provides both guidance and a sense of protective grounding. Together, we cultivate inner peace that shields us from the noise of outer conflicts, while also empowering us to navigate the world with clarity, courage, and care.

Join Us

If something in these writings has sparked a shift, held a mirror, or opened your heart, I welcome you to journey deeper—not only with me, but with this community of fellow travelers who are choosing to live their own wild and precious lives.

On the journey,
Debbie
Halsey, Cowboy, Tango, and Titan

🌿 Option #1: Free – The Whisper

This free subscription is your invitation to pause—to listen for the whisper that beckons you inward. It’s the gentle beginning of a deeper journey into soul-aligned living, personal evolution, and the quiet wisdom that often arrives in stillness.

As a free subscriber, you’ll receive:
🎧 Glimpses of our life in the Costa Rican mountains—voice notes, images, and short videos
📬 Simple coaching tools: visualizations, mindset prompts, and strategies for personal growth
🌄 Early 4 a.m. musings—soul whispers before the ego stirs

This space is about nourishment, reflection, and trust in the unfolding of your life. And when you’re ready to go deeper, the paid tiers offer guided tools, personalized insights, and soulful accountability.

✨ Option #2: $29.99/month or $299/year – The Deep Listening

Move beyond imagining your next chapter—start living it with clarity, courage, and momentum.

This tier is where we don’t just hear the call—we answer it. Whether you’re taking bold strides or gentle steps, you don’t have to navigate the path alone. Your subscription also opens the door to Substack Chat, a supportive circle for real connection.

Includes everything in The Whisper, plus:
🧭 Monthly self-coaching strategies tied to each month’s theme
📓 Personal stories & challenges from our land project
🧘 Guided practices and journaling tools
🎙️ Bonus audio reflections
🗒️ Behind-the-scenes insights (including the occasional mishap)
💌 Integration tools to apply the wisdom
🎁 First access to coaching retreats & workshops
🎫 5% off retreats and online coaching services

Extra support when you need it:
✨ Quick clarity via brief WhatsApp nudges
💬 Deeper guidance through 1-hour Zoom coaching sessions at the discounted rate of $75

🌟 Option #3: $899/year – The Embodied Path

Here, soulful accountability transforms musings into action. Meeting with me each month on Zoom sharpens your clarity, fuels momentum, and anchors intention into lived experience. Your subscription also unlocks access to Substack Chat, a supportive community for genuine connection.

I’ve walked the vulnerable path of transition—the kind that asks you to trust what you can feel but not yet fully see. You don’t have to do it alone. Together, we’ll bring courage and compassionate momentum to your next chapter.

Includes everything in The Whisper and The Deep Listening, plus:
📞 Monthly private 90-minute coaching session via Zoom
💬 Occasional WhatsApp text support for those “just need a nudge” moments
🃏 A complete Eponicity Coaching Card Deck
📖 A copy of Pony’s Girl Parables
🎫 10% off all other services, events, and retreats

Subscribe now

🔑 Ready to go deeper?
In this week’s paid subscriber content, we continue the journey beyond What Wants to Happen—which you’ve already explored in the free version—and move into the next two transformational questions:

💫 2. Who Is This Asking Me to BE?

What qualities or inner presence is this topic calling forth in you?

🌱 3. What Is This Asking Me to DO?

What grounded, soul-aligned actions can you take next?

You’ll receive coaching prompts and journal exercises to help you:

• Identify the presence or qualities your next chapter is asking you to embody

• Discern your right next steps from that inner alignment

• Move forward with clarity, courage, and conscious intention

🌟 Plus, I’ll share what these questions revealed for me this week—
→ The qualities I was being called to embody (like bravery, vulnerability, and surrender)
→ The specific actions I needed to take to support our transition to Costa Rica
→ What the twists in our land project and horse transport taught me about presence and patience

You’ll also get:
🧭 A printable Three Fundamental Questions journal page
🌿 A mindful nature practice to help you begin again—wherever you are
🎧 Behind-the-scenes experiences & reflections from our new life here
🎫 First access to retreat calendar + discounts for retreats and coaching

Titan

Titan was my very first horse, and one of my most powerful teachers. He came into my life in 2006! He’s back with us at our new location! We believe he’s pushing 30 years old now! Happy to be here, so it seems!

Next Month: Remembering the Last Time

So much of life passes in unnoticed thresholds — the “last time” we did something without realizing it would be the last. The last time we held a hand, closed a door, or walked down a familiar road. The last time we carried our child or read them a bedtime story? The last time we went skiing or played baseball? Honoring these moments invites us into vulnerability and gratitude, reminding us that every ending carries weight.

At the same time, stepping into something new — doing something untried or uncomfortable — asks us to stretch beyond what feels safe. Both the last time and the first time are invitations to presence, courage, and transformation.

Subscribe now

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