In this very spontaneous Live, we talk about sound healing, surrender, trusting the universe, finding your voice, and why I believe there are a thousand different ways to heal.

And then I told you all about the very unexpected encounter I had at an open mic last night with a big, muscly guy who had no idea what he was walking into.

He heard one of my songs—and something opened.

It reminded me of something I’m constantly learning in my own life:

You never know what lives inside the heart and soul of another human being.

We also talk about why singing my own songs is one of the bravest—and most healing—things I have ever done, why I believe older women have so much to offer younger women, and what it means to finally trust that we don’t have to do everything alone.

And, of course, we end with sound healing.

Come join me for this very real, very imperfect, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tearful conversation—and a little healing along the way.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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On September 4, 2026, my latest song, “White Man’s Sin,” will be released everywhere you listen to music.

And as I was sitting down to write about it, something unexpected happened.

I came across an article about Dolly Parton.

I think we can all agree that Dolly was a national treasure—a woman whose life was, in so many ways, devoted to humanity, generosity, creativity, and love.

And then I learned something I somehow had never known.

In 1980, Dolly recorded a song called “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” written by Woody Guthrie after a 1948 plane crash that killed all 32 people aboard, including 28 Mexican nationals. Guthrie was deeply disturbed by the way the Mexican passengers were referred to simply as “deportees,” while the white passengers were named.

The song gave those people names.

Juan. Rosalita. Jesús. María.

It gave them back their humanity.

And suddenly, a song written in 1948 felt heartbreakingly relevant to the world we are living in now.

Because here we are again.

Immigrants being spoken about as if they are less than human. Families being torn apart. People being reduced to labels rather than seen as mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, workers, dreamers, human beings.

Dolly chose to sing that song at a time when doing so wasn’t necessarily the safe or easy thing to do.

And now, all these decades later, I find myself writing a song about the same wound.

Want to hear “White Man’s Sin” when it arrives?

PRE-SAVE “WHITE MAN’S SIN”

Perhaps this wound feels particularly close to me because I am Jewish.

My great-grandfather, whom I was very close to, lost his entire family in the Holocaust. I grew up knowing that history not simply as something that happened long ago, but as something that happened to my family.

I know what can happen when we stop seeing people as human beings and begin seeing them as other.

Long before I knew about Dolly’s version of “Deportee,” I was watching what was happening in Minnesota and around the country.

I couldn’t sleep.

I couldn’t think about much else.

I found myself sinking into what I can only describe as an existential depression—the kind that comes when you are witnessing suffering and injustice and feel utterly powerless to change any of it.

What can one person possibly do?

I prayed.

For a long while.

I prayed to God. I prayed to my angels. I asked for some way to move through the helplessness I was feeling.

And eventually, the answer came in the way it so often does for me:

Write.

Write your way through it.

So I did.

And “White Man’s Sin” was born.

It isn’t a song about having all the answers.

Yes, this is a political song. But ultimately, it is about something much bigger: what happens when we lose our humanity.

When fear becomes more powerful than love.

When history repeats itself.

When we become so blinded by our own wounds, our own beliefs, our own need to be right, that we can no longer recognize the soul in another human being.

There is a line in the song:

“Deep wounds obscure the light.”

I believe that.

I believe that beneath so much cruelty is often an unhealed wound.

That doesn’t excuse what we do to one another.

But perhaps understanding it gives us another place to begin.

Because ultimately, this song isn’t about despair.

It’s about remembering.

Remembering who we are.

Remembering that every human being has a name.

A story.

A mother.

A father.

A child.

A heart.

A soul.

And remembering something I have come to trust with my whole being:

Love will always win.

Maybe not immediately.

Maybe not in the way we expect.

Maybe not in our lifetime.

But I believe it does.

And if this song gets even one person to stop and think more deeply about what is happening in our country…

If it makes someone question the stories we’ve been told about who deserves compassion and who doesn’t…

If it opens even one heart…

If it inspires one person to become a little kinder, a little more loving, a little more willing to see the human being standing in front of them…

then my job will be done.

“White Man’s Sin” is released everywhere you listen to music on September 4, 2026.

Thank you for listening.

And thank you for remembering.

Love will always win.

White Man’s Sin

Lyrics by Ellen Newhouse
Music by Ellen Newhouse & Drew Lawrence
Performed by Ellen Newhouse

I hear the whistle comin’ down the road
Babies cryin’, mama’s screamin’
Everyone tryin’ not to lose their soul
(None of this makes any good sense)

The TV blares with nothin’ but lies
(and nonsense)
While red lights swirl against the midnight sky
I’m begging the angels soaring high above
To dare to touch the ground again

We know you belong to heaven
But we are calling you in
Our world is at sixes and sevens
What’s going on is a white man’s sin

What’s going on is a white man’s sin
Remember love will always win
Love will always win

Why must history repeat itself?
Deep wounds obscure the light
Blinds a man to his own soul-flight
Evil slides in the door and steers him wrong
He’ll die never knowing his heart’s love song

What’s going on is a white man’s sin
What’s going on is a white man’s sin
Remember love will always win
Love will always win

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I’ve been thinking about this conversation with ever since we had it.

And I think I finally understand what it was really about. ❤️

What Bray Bray awakened in me was a memory of the angels.

A memory of what it felt like to belong.

To be completely present. Completely accepted. Completely here.

That is something I knew as a child—and somehow lost along the way.

And sitting with Chris and hearing him talk about Bray Bray, I realized that perhaps this is part of the gift Bray Bray carries into the world.

He reminds us of something we already know.

Something underneath all the striving, the fixing, the performing, the trying to get somewhere.

You belong here.

And perhaps that is why his story has touched me so deeply.

Because Bray Bray doesn’t need words to remind us what is real.

His presence does it.

He has this extraordinary ability to pull people out of their heads and back into the moment—to forget, for a little while, the masks we wear, the lists we’re carrying, and all the things we have convinced ourselves are so important.

Just… here.

And maybe that’s why I felt so compelled to have Chris on The Undoing.

I thought I was inviting him to tell Bray Bray’s story.

But somewhere along the way, Bray Bray began telling my story, too.

And Chris and I found ourselves talking about grief, miracles, perfectionism, presence, angels, belonging, and what it means to stay when life doesn’t look anything like the life you imagined.

And then I offered a sound healing for Bray Bray.

What happened afterward surprised both of us.

The message I received was simple:

Celebrate life every day. No matter what.

And somehow, that became the perfect ending to this conversation.

Because maybe we don’t need to have everything figured out.

Maybe we don’t need to know exactly where we’re going.

Maybe we don’t even need to fix what’s broken.

Maybe, sometimes, we simply need to remember.

It became a remembering. ❤️

And perhaps that’s what The Undoing is really about.

Coming home to the part of ourselves that knew all along:

You belong here.

You may already be someone’s miracle.

You may just not know it yet.

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Yesterday, Jim and I ran the Seattle Seafair Torchlight 5K race. This was his tradition long before it became ours. Over the past 23 years, it’s become one of our most joyous ways to mark summer together. Every year it reminds me that some of the sweetest parts of a marriage are the traditions you bring to one another.

As we stood waiting at the starting line, I thoughtt, Well...this should be interesting.

Truth be told...I’m not really a runner. Jim’s the runner.I’m the one who shows up because I love him...and because somehow, by the end of every race, I’m always grateful I did.

This year was different.

Life got in the way.

Jim injured his shoulder, so we only managed to run twice before race day. Not exactly the training plan I’d recommend. But here’s what surprised me...

At 67 years old, I had one of the strongest runs of my life.

Not the fastest run.

One of the strongest.

There’s a huge difference. For the first time, I didn’t sprint out of the gate, get a side cramp, and spend the rest of the race wishing it was over. Instead, I matched Jim’s pace.

Steady.

Strong.

Breath by breath.

Almost the entire way.

Jim crossed the finish line just ahead of me and turned back to clock my time.

Forty-one minutes.

Now, for some people, that might not sound particularly fast. But for me? It felt like a victory. I still don’t know my official time because of a timing glitch, but honestly, the number isn’t what’s important to me anymore. What’s important to me is how I felt.

Strong.

Capable.

Alive.

We’re told that getting older means accepting more and more limitations. Yesterday revealed something important to me. What we’re really carrying isn’t age...It’s the stories we tell ourselves about aging.

I didn’t run because I trained perfectly. I ran because I’ve spent the last few years consistently taking care of my body.

Lifting.

Walking.

Showing up.

And yesterday...

My body showed up for me.

Maybe that’s one of the gifts of getting older.

Not that we become slower.

But that we become wiser about our pace.

For so much of my life, I lived like I ran. Too fast out of the gate. Trying to prove something. Burning through my energy before I found my rhythm.

This time...

I trusted Jim’s pace.

I trusted my body.

I trusted the years I’d spent showing up for myself.

I stayed steady.

And I finished strong.

Maybe one of the greatest gifts of getting older isn’t certainty.

Maybe it’s trust. ❤️

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There are conversations that answer our questions.

And then there are conversations that leave us with better ones.

Yesterday, during an interview with my friend yesterday, she said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

“It doesn’t have to be scary when you don’t see things the same way.”

Those words settled somewhere deep inside me.

Because this past week I’ve been writing about trust.

Not just trusting God...

But asking myself whether I really do.

Do I trust enough to surrender?

Do I trust enough to receive?

Do I trust enough to loosen my grip when life doesn’t unfold the way I hoped?

Yesterday reminded me that trust isn’t only about certainty.

Sometimes trust is staying open.

Staying curious.

Allowing someone else’s perspective to expand our own instead of threatening it.

I’ve spent much of my life believing that healing meant finding the right answers.

Now I know that healing is also learning to live peacefully with questions.

To listen.

To soften.

To remember that love is often found somewhere between certainty and curiosity.

Music has always helped me do that.

Some songs comfort me.

Some challenge me.

Some remind me who I am when I’ve forgotten.

And sometimes a song becomes the prayer I didn’t know how to pray.

Over the years, I’ve realized that every season of healing has its own soundtrack.

So today I’d like to share the first of what I hope will become a beautiful tradition...

Soundtracks for the Journey Home

Not playlists.

Companions.

Each soundtrack is created around a season of the journey I’m walking—not a lesson I’m teaching.

Questions I’m carrying.

Truths I’m slowly discovering.

Songs that have faithfully walked beside me.

This first soundtrack is Trust.

Two of the songs are mine.

The others are gifts from artists who have accompanied me through seasons of fear, hope, surrender, courage, and grace.

One of those artists is

Years ago, when I was just beginning to believe I might actually be able to write songs Anne was one of the first people to say yes when I reached out for guidance.

I’ve never forgotten her kindness.

It reminds me that trust is often built one generous soul at a time.

So wherever you are today...

Take this soundtrack on a walk.

Listen while watching the sunrise.

Or simply close your eyes.

There is no agenda.

No lesson to master.

Only an invitation.

To breathe.

To soften.

To trust a little more than yesterday.

🎵 Press Play

Take this soundtrack on a walk.

Or simply close your eyes and listen.

And later……I’d love to know...

Which song found you today?

Until our next soundtrack...

Keep walking.

Keep listening.

Keep coming home.

Because music has a way of carrying us where words sometimes cannot.

With love,

Ellen 💛

Keep listening to the whisperings calling you forward.

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Thank you to everyone who joined us live today—and to those of you watching the replay.

Today, Heidi Wall Gersbrecht and I began by talking about what it’s been like to raise four children, all diagnosed with autism.

What unfolded was so much more.

Heidi’s deep love for her children, her willingness to see their hearts before their labels, and her unwavering belief in who they could become brought both a smile to my face and tears to my eyes.

We explored the weight of labels—not only labels like autism and Asperger’s, but all the labels our culture places on us... and the freedom that comes when we begin to see one another more fully.

We talked about trust, relationships, and what it means to believe in someone before they can believe in themselves.

Then Heidi said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about:

“It doesn’t have to be scary when you don’t see things the same way.”

The moment she said those words, my mind went to our country.

Can you imagine what would change if we truly believed that?

What if disagreement didn’t have to become division?

What if curiosity replaced fear?

What if compassion became more important than being right?

I hope you’ll join us for this conversation.

And as always, we end with a sound healing to help you return home to yourself. 💙

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The truth is, I didn’t choose healing. Healing chose me.

There was a time in my twenties when I woke up one morning and couldn’t breathe.

Not because I had asthma.

Not because I was sick.

I simply couldn’t get enough air.

I went from doctor to doctor searching for answers. For two years, I tried everything they offered—tests, medications, treatments—but nothing touched what was happening inside me.

I was terrified.

I wondered if this was simply going to be my life.

Or worse...was I going to die?

When nothing else worked, I did something I never expected.

I turned to God.

Or Spirit.

Or whatever name feels true to you.

Not because I was especially religious.

Because I had run out of places to go.

And that was the beginning of everything.

Over the next two years, something extraordinary happened.

I began healing.

Not because someone fixed me.

Because I slowly learned how to listen to myself.

I learned that my body wasn’t betraying me.

It was speaking.

It was asking me to pay attention to years of buried grief, fear, silence, and a life that had become disconnected from who I truly was.

Little by little, my breath returned.

My joy returned.

I returned.

Then Spirit asked something of me that I never saw coming.

I began a healing practice with no healing degrees at all.

I was horrified.

I felt like a charlatan.

I had earned degrees in Economics and International Relations. Those made sense to me. They belonged to the world I knew.

But a healer?

That word wasn’t even part of my vocabulary growing up.

Doctor? Yes.

Nurse? Yes.

Healer? Never.

Yet after four years of my own healing, I could no longer ignore what Spirit was asking of me.

After all, my healing had happened under that unseen guidance.

So I said yes.

Not because I felt ready.

Because I trusted the One who had healed me.

I began my practice as a pure channel.

I had no idea what I was doing except listening deeply and trusting what Spirit was showing me, one breath at a time.

Soon, I realized I wanted more than faith alone. I wanted every skill I could gather to help people heal.

The same unseen guidance that had led me through my own healing began teaching me to work with energy through my hands.

Then, one day, they asked me to use my voice as part of the healing.

My first response?

“Hell no.”

That felt far too strange, even for me.

But within a month, once again, I surrendered.

Five years into my private practice in New York City, I was guided to pursue formal training. I first earned a degree in Massage Therapy from the Boulder College of Massage. That journey eventually brought me to Seattle, where I completed my Master’s Degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.

Today, when people walk into my office and see the degrees on my wall, they often assume that’s where my journey began.

It wasn’t.

My first teacher was my own healing.

Today, more than three decades later, I still don’t think I chose this work.

I believe healing found me when I couldn’t find myself.

And every day since, it has been my privilege to help other women find their way home, one breath at a time.

If this stirred something in you...

I’d love to invite you a little deeper.

I’ve created Coming Home to Yourself, a private monthly circle for my paid subscribers—a place to exhale, reconnect, and remember who you’ve always been.

If your heart is saying yes, I’d love to welcome you.

With love,
Ellen

I’m so grateful you’re here.

Wherever you are on your journey...

With love,

Ellen 💛

If I celebrate your birthday with you, I will always ask: What do you want for this birthday year?

With my birthday fast approaching, I asked myself that very question over the weekend.

I was surprised by what surfaced immediately:

“I want to offer my Paid Subscribers something really delicious.”

I didn’t have an immediate idea of what that “something” would be, but I knew I wanted to be deliberate—to offer something of true and meaningful value.

Luckily for both me and you, I had a meeting scheduled this morning with Jari from the Substack Accelerator.

I was buzzing with energy before the call. I had so many questions and so much excitement about creating this offering. I was secretly hoping Jari would help reel me in a bit!

Jari listened closely as I talked through all my ideas and questions. I could practically see the pieces clicking together in his mind.

Truth be told, just eight weeks ago, when I started on Substack, I had absolutely no intention of offering a paid subscription until I had at least 1,000 subscribers.

Why 1,000?

I have no idea! 😂

It was simply a random number lodged in my brain.

As we discussed what I’m already doing, I kept returning to Sound Healing because so many people write to tell me how much they love the Sound Healing I offer at the end of my live gatherings.

“I would make that your offer, Ellen. It’s perfect.”

My heart swelled.

I love offering Sound Healing, and suddenly this felt exactly right—a genuine gift I could share.

So... drum roll, please...

Beginning on my birthday, Tuesday, July 7th at 3pmPST. I will begin offering a FREE monthly Sound Healing gathering for all Paid Subscribers. (And do not worry, If you can’t be there in person, you will always get the replay----and it works just as well, I’ve witnessed this for years.)

Here’s what you can expect:

1. A FREE one-hour workshop each month. I’ll begin in July by sharing the story of how Sound Healing came to me (and yes, that language is important).

2. Each month, we’ll focus on a specific chakra, exploring its emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions.

3. I’ll teach you the Western tones, vowel sounds, Indian sounds, and Chinese sounds associated with that chakra.

4. Together, we’ll practice the sounds—first simply as sounds, and then as vibrational medicine directed into the corresponding area of the body.

5. We’ll close with a Sound Healing session led by me.

Here’s what people have said about the transformation from my Sound Healing:

“Every time I listen to Ellen’s Soul Reflection, I can feel its magic working in me. If I’m stressed, it relaxes me. If I’m upset, it soothes me. Soul Reflection touches my heart, my soul, and every fiber of my being.”

— Evelyn Ocasio

“Listening to Soul Reflection is a remarkable and deeply affecting experience. The rich, sonorous quality of Ellen’s voice effortlessly shifted my being into a state of profound peace and well-being... just amazing.”

— Leslie Gifford

“Ellen lovingly demonstrates what spiritual masters have known for centuries—that sound is the most impactful way of realigning the energy field of the human body.”

— Bart Paff, Ph.D

For most of my life, I had a very strange relationship with the idea of practice.

I honestly believed that if you were good at something, you were simply good at it.

People were either talented or they weren’t.

Writers wrote.
Musicians played.
Artists created.
Brilliant people were brilliant.

What I somehow missed—despite living on this planet for more than six decades—was that mastery is usually built through practice. Hours of practice. Thousands of hours.

Yes, I’ve heard the famous number: 10,000 hours.

But if I’m being truthful, it never really landed.

Why?

I’ve been asking myself that question.

I suspect the answer lies in the house where I grew up.

In my family, excellence was expected.

The roadmap was not provided.

No one explained how you became excellent. No one taught me how to study, how to learn, how to improve, or how to fail and try again.

The expectation was simply: Be excellent.

So I developed a different strategy.

I crammed.

The night before an exam, I would absorb enormous amounts of information, and because I possessed something close to a photographic memory, I often aced the test.

I got the grades.

I stayed out of trouble.

I got into an excellent college.

From the outside, it looked like success.

But was I learning?

Was I learning how to learn?

Was I developing critical thinking skills, or was I simply becoming extraordinarily skilled at regurgitating information?

I am deeply grateful for my memory. It opened doors for me.

But it never taught me how to study.

And it certainly didn’t teach me that mastery requires practice.

Then, in my junior year of high school, I met Ms. Eirdman.

I enrolled in her Shakespeare class.

For the first time in my life, a teacher asked me not simply to memorize, but to think.

To question.

To interpret.

To form my own opinions.

I swallowed her challenge whole.

I devoured Shakespeare as if it were manna for my soul. I woke at six o’clock in the morning—not because anyone made me, but because I couldn’t wait to continue the work.

Thank God for Ms. Eirdman.

She was the first teacher who truly demanded that we think for ourselves.

And I discovered something astonishing:

My street smarts worked here, too.

But when I left for college, life intervened.

From hundreds of miles away, my father’s daily threats to throw my mother out onto the street invaded every corner of my mind. What should have been my first experience of freedom became another exercise in survival.

I returned to what I knew.

Cramming.

Only now the exams had changed.

These tests required understanding, analysis, synthesis.

They required the very thing I had never been taught.

And so I struggled.

The truth is, at sixty-six years old, I am still learning something many people learned decades earlier:

Talent is wonderful.

Memory is helpful.

But mastery—whether in music, writing, healing, or life itself—is built through practice.

Not perfection.

Practice.

And now at sixty-six, as I pursue music seriously, I found myself confronting this old belief all over again.

Just last week I asked my singing teacher if people were simply born talented. If great singers just had it.

She smiled.

No.

They practice.

The answer felt almost revolutionary. I realized that for much of my life, I had been comparing my beginning to someone else’s thousands of unseen hours.

Over the weekend I read something about Taylor Swift that stopped me in my tracks.

“Every morning, for months before the Eras Tour began, she got on a treadmill. She ran during the fast songs, jogged during the mid-tempo ones, walked during the ballads, and sang all forty-four songs—out loud, at full performance volume, in order—every single day.”

Then she spent three months in dance training.

Then she performed a three-hour-and-fifteen-minute show, night after night, in front of 60,000 people.

From the outside, it looked like a phenomenon unlike anything the world had ever seen.

From the inside, it looked like practice.

Maybe that is what I am finally learning.

Mastery isn’t magic.

It isn’t talent alone.

It is love expressed through repetition.

It is showing up when no one is watching.

It is doing the scales, writing the pages, singing the songs, asking better questions, and trying again.

And perhaps one of the gifts of growing older is discovering that it is never too late to learn how to learn.

Over the winter, I became consumed by what was happening in our country, particularly in Minnesota.

Even though I am a 66-year-old white woman, I am also Jewish.

I grew up with my great-grandfather’s stories of losing his entire family in the Holocaust. I grew up around women at the bakery whose arms still carried the numbers from the concentration camps.

As a little girl, I was fascinated by those tattoos. I didn’t understand what they meant, but they left an imprint on my young mind.

The images coming out of Minnesota never left me. The ICE raids never left me. Something in me kept returning to them.

Not because I was trying to think about them.

Because they awakened stories I had been carrying my entire life.

Yes, I called my Senators. Yes, I raged on social media. But nothing eased the feeling.

The images had burned themselves into my subconscious.

And then I did what I’ve always done when something won’t leave me alone.

I wrote.

The words arrived faster than I could think about them.

Out came these words:

“I hear the whistles comin’ down the road

Babies cryin’, mama’s screamin’

Everyone tryin’ not to lose their soul

The tv blares with nothin’ but lies

Red lights swirl against the midnight sky”

For the first time, I felt my heart settle a little. My breathing slowed for the first times in months.

Was I changing what was happening in the world? No.

But something inside me had changed.

I no longer felt completely powerless.

I had transformed helplessness into expression.

And somehow that mattered.

For the first time in months, I didn’t awaken five times that night.

The next morning, after being able to meditate for five minutes, I was even able to summon these words—a prayer.

The first verse captured my fear. What came the next morning felt more like a prayer.

And I’m just begging all the angels

To touch the ground again

We know you belong to heaven

But our world’s at six’s and seven’s

What’s going on is a white man’s sin

What’s going on is a white man’s sin

Remember love will always win

Remember love will always win

As I sat reading these words, tears tumbling down my cheeks, I remembered something I’ve witnessed again and again over 36 years of healing work.

Expression changes us.

What we cannot speak, write, sing, paint, dance, or pray often remains trapped inside us.

The world outside hadn’t changed.

But my nervous system had.

Sometimes we can’t change what’s happening around us.

But we can transform what is happening within us.

That night, music became medicine.

And it reminded me of something I hope I never forget:

When the world breaks your heart, make art.

Not because art fixes the world.

But because it helps keep your heart alive while you live in it.

So if there’s something weighing on you today—grief, anger, fear, heartbreak—don’t keep it trapped inside.

Write it.

Sing it.

Paint it.

Dance it.

Scream it out.

Pray it.

Let it move through you.

She was only 39 years old, but she climbed my stairs gripping the banister like an ailing 70-year-old woman.

Her nervousness showed in the staccato movements of her hands and the way she repeatedly tucked her short brown hair behind her ears.

After the usual intake questions, I asked the ones I’d developed over years of practice.

“Was there anything unusual going on in your life when the back spasms began?”

Lila looked at me blankly.

“What do you mean?”

She paused.

I waited.

Eventually, she began to talk.

As she spoke, it became clear that this was far bigger than back pain. This was her soul screaming at her.

I’d seen it before. Bodies often speak the truth long before we’re willing to say it out loud.

Then she said something that stopped me.

“I’m almost 40 years old.”

As if that single fact explained everything.

She laughed nervously.

“You don’t understand. I don’t have a relationship or a house.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

“And I never cry. I don’t like to cry with anybody, even myself.”

I understood.

I said nothing and shook my head.

The air filled with an uncomfortable silence, one I’d learned over 36 years not to interrupt. Over the years I’d learned that silence makes people nervous because it invites the truth into the room.

Lila breathed slowly, patiently.

“Oh man, it was near my father’s birthday,” she said as tears gushed out of her. “He...he...died last year.”

“I’m so sorry, Lila. This first year is so tough.”

She shook her head.

“Take a slow, deep breath into your pain. How does it feel now?”

A look of shock crossed her face.

“I don’t get it. It already feels a little better.”

“I’m so glad.”

“But you haven’t even done anything yet. I mean, you haven’t even touched me or put needles in...”

“Yes,” I said. “This is about you letting go of the deep pain you’ve been carrying.”

Lila tilted her head sideways as if to say, I don’t believe you. “Really?”

“You don’t have to believe in anything. I’m just here to help alleviate your pain.”

“Well clearly you’re good at that,” she said, tilting her head to the other side and staring at me quizzically.

I smiled.

“After 36 years, I’d better be. Are you ready for some acupuncture?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling.

“Great. First I’ll go over all the points with alcohol to create a sterile field, then I’ll place the needles at the points I’ve chosen. Do you have any questions before we get started?”

“Socks on or off?”

“Off, please.”

Lila looked at her feet as if my request was monumental.

“Oh, no worries. I can take them off when I get to your feet.”

She smiled.

The tension in the room softened.

And for the first time since she’d walked through my door, she looked a little lighter.

“Thanks,” she said, laughing nervously. “Normally this wouldn’t be an issue. I climb for God’s sake.”

“I totally get it. It’s weird when we’re so physically fit and suddenly...”

“You can’t bend over and pull your socks off.”

“Yes, exactly.”

I walked over to the massage table.

“Your head up here,” I said, touching the headrest.

After she settled in, I dampened a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol. Her back felt like cold steel beneath my fingertips. I ran long swaths of alcohol down her arms, legs, and feet.

I placed needles at various points on her neck, shoulders, arms, hands, back, legs, and feet. Then I covered her with an emergency blanket. It keeps patients warm without putting any pressure on the needles.

“Comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Great. Now, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to do some Sound Healing on your back.”

“Sure,” she said. “This should be interesting.”

I laughed.

“I promise you, you won’t find many, if any, acupuncturists who do this.”

I said a prayer, opened my mouth, and sang in Lila’s back.

“Mahumba ya, mahumbaya, Aaaaah, om, aaaah, OMmmm.”

As the tones vibrated through the room, I watched her breath deepen through her chest and back.

“Perfect,” I whispered. “Just let yourself rest.”

“I’ll be sitting in the other room. If you need anything, let me know.”

She nodded.

I quietly walked out of the treatment room.

As I reflected on Lila’s condition, it became clear to me that all the pressure she felt about where she thought she should be by now had settled into her back. The weight of expectations—society’s, her family’s, perhaps even her own—had become too much for her body to carry.

What wasn’t clear to me was whether she genuinely wanted any of the things she believed she should have by forty.

What was clear to me was that she didn’t have permission to simply be where she was in her life.

And the body, as it so often does, was carrying the burden of that impossible expectation.

I’ve seen it countless times over the years. The whispers of the soul eventually become the language of the body.

Lila’s story made me think of hundreds of other women’s stories I’ve heard over the years.

Whether it was permission to leave a marriage, go back to school, become successful, start a company, be single, have children or not, be ambitious or not, reinvent herself at 40, 50, 60, or 70—the real question was always the same.

Who convinced us we couldn’t simply be ourselves, exactly where we were?

And who decided which milestones we were supposed to reach by a certain age?

I’m always surprised when I work with younger women who still feel these enormous societal pressures.

Years ago, at the height of the New Age movement, I assumed we were moving toward greater consciousness, self-expression and freedom. I imagined future generations would feel less pressure to conform, not more.

How wrong I was.

At the beginning of my career in the 1980s, the pressure to achieve status and success was intense. Yet I never could have imagined the world would become even more demanding.

But it seems the rise of the internet has only amplified those pressures, especially for women.

Today we’re inundated with messages about who we’re supposed to be, what we’re supposed to achieve, and when we’re supposed to achieve it.

And now, with the patriarchy screaming, it often feels as though women are being told they can’t win. No matter what they choose, they’re somehow getting it wrong.

The loudest voices may still be a minority.

But sometimes they seem to be the only voices anyone can hear.

And yet, what I most want to say to women is this:

You are perfect exactly as you are.

No one—and I mean no one—knows what your soul came here to be, do, or experience except you.

Only you know the work you came here to do, the people you came here to love, and the lessons you came here to learn.

Only you know what your assignment is.

And by the way, it’s the only assignment that matters.

Trying to achieve other people’s arbitrary metrics is a path to hell if you ask me.

They don’t know what you came here to achieve.

They don’t understand the whispers of your soul.

Looking back, I’ve realized that some truths arrive long before we’re old enough to explain them.

For example, when I was seven years old, I made a decision in my bedroom that I wasn’t going to have my own children.

I was going to adopt babies from China.

I was so overjoyed that I ran downstairs to tell my mother. She was cooking dinner when I burst into the kitchen and announced:

“I’m never having babies. I’m adopting them from China.”

To my mother’s everlasting credit, she simply said,

“If I ever thought a seven-year-old could make profound decisions like that, I would have worked to talk you out of it.”

Honestly, it wouldn’t have mattered.

My soul knew what she was telling me.

She knew my assignment.

And she knew that having babies would have distracted me from the real work of healing I came here to do for myself and then to help facilitate for others in this lifetime.

Know that you too have a specific assignment you came here to fulfill. It doesn’t usually arrive with a loud bang but with more persistent whisperings that don’t leave your heart no matter what amazing distractions you offer yourself.

Now is the time for all of us to answer to our own unique whisperings.

So what dream have you postponed?

What uncomfortable step do you know you need to take but you keep sidestepping it? Praying it will go away.

Let me assure you, it won’t.

On my wedding night, sitting in the wedding suite of The Ritz Carlton surrounded by more Tiffany blue boxes than any girl could ever hope for, I knew in one moment that I had made the worst decision of my life. At just 21 years of age, I silently shook with tears burning my cheeks, with one thought looping through my brain, “I will be imprisoned for the rest of my life.”

There was no exit door.

And no one was coming to save me.

I knew what was expected of me and the good girl obeyed for five years until my body could no longer breathe. I wish I knew then what I know now. The body often announces with great precision what we do not yet feel safe enough to say.

My wild child felt suffocated; it’s no wonder I couldn’t breathe.

Maybe you’ve been waiting to leave the relationship.

Maybe you’ve been waiting to write the book.

Maybe you’ve been waiting to take up space in a room where you’ve spent years shrinking.

Illness gave me permission to start voicing what I needed.

Even though my needs were met by deaf ears, I slowly began to listen.

I began to allow myself to get the care I desperately needed.

I realized that no one was coming to save me.

There was no committee.

No official invitation.

No gold-stamped certificate declaring me ready.

There was only me deciding.

Five years later, I divorced my husband.

It’s taken me decades to recover and use my voice in the way I was always meant to.

Imagine what would happen if women stopped waiting.

Imagine the books that would be written.

The businesses started.

The songs sung.

The boundaries set.

The lives reclaimed.

The permission you’ve been waiting for has been inside you all along.

Your soul already knows.

Your body knows too.

The question is:

How much longer are you willing to make them wait?

There comes a moment when the life you’ve built no longer fits the woman you’re becoming.

Perhaps you’ve spent years being the strong one.

The one who figures everything out.

The one everyone turns to.

And somewhere along the way, you lost touch with yourself.

Your voice.

Your joy.

Your creativity.

Your own deep knowing.

The Sanctuary is a place for women who are ready to come home to themselves and their creativity.

It is a private space for healing, exploration, and transformation—a place to reconnect with your inner wisdom, reclaim your voice, and create a life that feels deeply aligned with who you truly are.

This work is not about fixing yourself.

It is not about becoming someone new.

It is about coming home to yourself.

Why I Do This Work

I was my very first patient.

At twenty-six years old, I woke up struggling to breathe.

After years of doing everything I was told to do—and still not getting better—I realized that true healing would require something deeper.

I began listening to the quiet voice within me. The wisdom I now understand as intuition. The guidance that had been there all along, waiting for me to pay attention.

That journey did more than heal my body.

It brought me back to myself.

Over the past 36 years, as an acupuncturist, healer, writer, and musician, I have had the privilege of walking alongside thousands of people on their own healing journeys.

Again and again, I have witnessed the same truth:

The answers we seek are often already within us.

My work is about helping women reconnect with that inner knowing, reclaim their voice, awaken their creativity, and remember who they truly are.

Because when a woman comes home to herself, everything changes.

And that is why I do this work.

How We Will Work Together

The Sanctuary is a private three-month journey designed to support you through a season of healing, awakening, and personal transformation.

For more than 36 years, I have guided people through healing, transformation, and personal awakening.

My work weaves together Transformational Healing, Acupuncture, Sound Healing, Energy Medicine, intuition, nervous system regulation, writing practices, inner child work, and creativity.

I hold a Master’s degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine from the Northwest Institute of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and a degree in Economics and International Relations from Syracuse University.

Yet the greatest gifts I bring to this work are not found in my credentials.

They are my ability to listen deeply, to understand the emotional patterns that shape our lives, to recognize energetic blockages, and to facilitate healing through my connection with Spirit and my profound respect for each person’s unique journey.

I believe that healing happens when we feel seen, heard, understood, and supported in becoming who we truly are.

Six Private Healing Sessions

Six one-hour private sessions over three months.

These sessions provide a safe and supportive space to explore what is calling for your attention, healing, and growth. Together, we uncover what is keeping you stuck and create pathways toward greater freedom, authenticity, joy, and self-expression.

Voice Note Support

Unlimited voice note support Monday through Friday.

Transformation does not happen only during appointments. Voice notes allow you to receive guidance, support, and reflection as challenges, questions, and breakthroughs arise throughout our time together.

Personalized Healing Practices

Your journey is unique.

You may receive breathing exercises, writing prompts, inner child practices, intuitive exercises, creative explorations, sound healing, or other healing tools specifically designed to support your growth and transformation.

A Deeply Individualized Experience

No two women experience The Sanctuary in the same way.

Some women come to heal.

Some come to rediscover themselves after years of caring for everyone else.

Some come to reconnect with their creativity, intuition, and voice.

Some come because they know they are meant for more and are ready to step into the next chapter of their lives.

Our work unfolds according to what is most needed for you.

The Journey

During our time together, we will work with the patterns, stories, wounds, and beliefs that may have kept you disconnected from your true self.

Through intuitive guidance, deep listening, healing practices, and creative exploration, you will begin to:

• Reconnect with your intuition and inner guidance

• Release old patterns of self-sacrifice and overgiving

• Learn to honor your needs without guilt

• Find your voice and speak your truth

• Reawaken creativity, play, and joy

• Trust the wisdom that has always lived inside you

• Develop a deeper sense of self-love and self-trust

• Create a life that feels aligned with who you truly are

This work is not about becoming someone else.

It is about uncovering the woman who has been there all along.

Words from Women I’ve Worked With

“Ellen is a creative force of nature. Watching her move through ever-expanding creative expressions has been deeply impactful in my own life, and her fearlessness is infectious.

As my coach, Ellen has been instrumental in helping me find and trust my own voice. She’s helped me connect with my heart’s desire and find the courage to take my own leaps.

She coaches from a place of deep compassion, understanding, and lived experience.

Whatever your goal, Ellen will help you get there.”

Paula Sodora

“After months of severe neck pain with no relief from modern medicine, I came to Ellen and found everything I was missing—and more. Her healing work is powerful. But what I found most beautiful was that my emotional healing was just as profound as my physical healing. With Ellen, you don’t just feel better. You feel seen, supported, and deeply cared for.”

— K.K.

“One of the things that’s so refreshing about working with Ellen is that she tells it to you straight. She’s direct, deeply perceptive, and has an extraordinary ability to see what lies beneath the surface. Her observations have been invaluable.”

Amy Goetz

This May Be For You If...

• You feel disconnected from yourself and long to come home again.

• You are navigating a major life transition.

• You want to reconnect with your creativity and intuition.

• You are tired of living according to everyone else’s expectations.

• You are ready to trust yourself more deeply.

• You sense there is a more authentic version of you waiting to emerge.

An Investment in Yourself

Because coming home to yourself changes everything.

$3,333

or

Three monthly payments of $1,222

A Final Word

You do not need to become someone new.

You do not need to earn your worth.

You do not need permission.

The woman you seek is already within you.

The Sanctuary is simply a place where she can finally be heard.

If something in you is stirring as you read these words, trust that.

I would be honored to walk beside you on your journey home to yourself.

To inquire about working together, please reach out below.