Your business has barely been breaking even, and now you’re investing even more in it? You’ll never make that back.”

The negative thoughts rolled in as I tossed and turned under the Aquarius full moon the other night.

About a month ago, I decided to take a massive leap in my career: speaking onstage in front of 2,100 people at one of Denver’s hottest concert venues for Living Brave Live.

My decision wasn’t logical. It was a five-figure investment to get onstage as an event sponsor. Would I make back my ROI? Honestly… not sure.

But I couldn’t deny the rush of excitement — that pure life force energy surging through me when I thought about delivering my keynote in my hometown with my kids present, in front of a community my OG business mentor built from the ground up.

In my heart, it felt full circle.
In my body, it felt like pure desire and wild aliveness.
In my spirit, it felt divine…like I was being guided.

My mind had objections. But I went for it anyway.

Now, one month into the process and five weeks out from taking the stage, with the full moon shining light on all the old beliefs and patterns that need to be seen in order to be healed and released…it’s all coming back up.

What I found underneath those voices taught me something I think every person chasing a big dream needs to know.

So I’m sharing it in real time…

The backwards path

I talked to my mentor, , about it. I questioned why I was being guided to do this speech, because in many ways it’s backwards. Most people build their business, stabilize their income, gather client testimonials, master their body of work… and then they take it to the stage.

I was doing it in reverse.

She reminded me that a major part of my message is about going for it — even if you’re scared, even when it doesn’t make logical sense. To stop delaying your dreams for someday or for when you feel “ready,” and pursue them now, because life is finite and uncertain. And to need no other reason than this: it matters to you. It lights you up. It makes you feel radically alive.

Here I was, being asked to do exactly what I ask of everyone else.

When you go for something new, it requires you to step outside your comfort zone and into the unknown. So the fears, limiting beliefs, and doubts naturally arise because you’ve never done this before.

The flex isn’t in suppressing those parts. It’s in getting curious about them, wondering what they’re saying and why. What’s really there?

So as I laid out all my fears and doubts, Elayne invited me to consider that maybe the reason I was being guided here is just this: that I’m in my own initiation around everything I stand for in my work.

To trust myself fully.
To lay down the story that when I go for it, I fail.
To follow my desire and chase my big dreams, even in the face of fear.

To embody my message in every cell of my being — so that when I take that stage, the transmission isn’t just in my words, but felt through my frequency. Because I’m the living, breathing embodiment of my work.

My big dream was initiating me.

Meeting the 18-year-old

When I welcomed those voices in, I found the 18-year-old version of Emily.

She dreamed of becoming a ballerina and went for it — leaving home at age 15 to attend a pre-professional ballet conservatory and dancing a minimum of six hours a day. The version who “gave it all she got” and poured in energy, time away from family and friends, tears, sweat, and blood (seriously — have you seen a dancer’s feet?) to make that dream come true.

And then, in her senior year, when she auditioned for companies and prestigious collegiate dance programs… she got rejected from every single one.

It was heartbreaking.

When I realized a part of me was still carrying that old narrative — when I go for it, I ultimately fail — I didn’t reject her. I spent time with her. I witnessed her. I cried with her in the disappointment of working so hard for something and having it not go your way.

Then I followed where that rejection led her. She quit ballet and went to college, where she fell in love with a man named Ian. Who she’d marry and start a family with — fulfilling the white-picket house fantasy.

But then he got sick. And despite fighting hard for 15 months — every treatment, every prayer, every ounce of hope – ultimately, she couldn’t save him.

That’s when the story got its deepest hooks in me: no matter how hard I work, no matter how badly I want it, it doesn’t go my way.

And then the cycle seemed to repeat in recent years — launching program after program to crickets. No one signing up. Revenue dipping. My dreams of doing work I love, of financial liberation and autonomy over my schedule, dissolving into more disappointment.

Once I saw the pattern, I could see exactly how it was playing out in the fears rising around me taking the stage.

The choice

I could let the old story stop me. I could take all the evidence from the past — all the times it didn’t work out — and let that dictate my future.

Or I could see every past failure as feedback; every rejection as a reroute. All the perceived letdowns and disappointments as the universe guiding me down a more aligned path. A path that often caused tremendous pain, devastation, and darkness — but that would:

• Rewire the way I see the world

• Force me to face my own mortality

• Take me through initiations I would one day teach others

• Make me the woman I am today

• Help me remember the work I’m actually meant to do here

I choose to believe that there are no coincidences – that the plot twists and turns are divine and all happening for me.

And in choosing this empowering perspective – and not just think it but feel it – I was able to release my attachment to the outcome of what speaking onstage will bring.

Yes — I want to make back my ROI. I dream of emails from other coaches inviting me onto their stages. I can literally see the group of women I’m meant to guide on a year-long journey to live with the end in mind.

And I trust that if none of that happens, the universe has bigger plans in store, even if it hurts for a while.

So as the full moon wanes into another cycle, I’m releasing these old stories, beliefs, and patterns — so that when I stand onstage five weeks from now, I’ll be fully embodying everything I stand for.

Your Big Dreams Require Death

Before we keep going, I invite you to pause and reflect on your own big dreams.

What are you aspiring toward in your life right now?
A career that inspires you?
A relationship that makes you feel magnetic, sensual, and alive?

Whenever we move toward something big, we have to become the future version of ourselves who already has it. If you want to make a million dollars in your business, you have to take on a millionaire mindset and make moves from that space. If you want to attract your conscious king — the one who amplifies the magic in your life — you have to become the woman so full of her own life force, so overflowing with pleasure and aliveness, that she magnetizes him her way.

This is the law of attraction: your energy has to be a match for the life you want, and then you take aligned action from there.

Coaches call it Be, Do, Have. Most of us run it backward — once I have the money, then I can do the work I love, then I’ll finally be free. But it works the other way around. You become her first: you embody how she feels, how she thinks, how she moves through the world. Then you naturally do what she does. And the outcome follows.

These are all principles of manifestation, which admittedly I have not mastered.

But what I have mastered is death.

Because in order to truly become a new version of ourselves, an old version has to die. We have to release the old identity — the beliefs, behaviors, and ways of being in the world that don’t align with our future self.

And I believe this is what most manifestation work misses. Because these parts of us run deep, and they’re often tied to a childhood wound that doesn’t just go away with a future-self visualization or a new mantra. It’s about meeting that part of you over and over again — until she can finally stop protecting you and running the show, and let your highest self take the driver’s seat.

Dying as a Practice

This is what I call Death Medicine — and it’s not only about mortality.

It’s the practice of dying while you’re alive: shedding the identities, beliefs, and chapters you’ve outgrown, and alchemizing what’s heavy or ended into gold.

It’s also about using your mortality now to access the clarity, courage, and reverence for life that changes how you think, what you believe, how you act, and how you decide to spend your finite time here.

So how do you actually do it?

Here’s the process I moved through — the same one I take clients through:

1. Ask the mortality question. If I had one year to live, would I do it? This is what cuts through the noise, the logic, the endless pros-and-cons list. Death puts your entire life into perspective. Suddenly your fear of regret becomes bigger than your fear of failure. This is what got me to say yes.

2. Expect the fear — and welcome it in. Saying yes doesn’t make the fear disappear. It summons it. So when those voices show up, don’t push them down or shame yourself for having them. Turn toward them. Ask what they’re saying and why. Get curious instead of critical.

3. Trace them back to where they started. That voice isn’t random — it’s protecting you from something that already happened. Close your eyes. Drop in and connect to your heart. See what memories, people, or symbols surface. Can you identify who’s actually speaking? How old is she? What was she trying to keep you safe from?

This work can be challenging to do along at first. I recommend working with a guide (like myself, Elayne or another healer or mental health professional) who can support you the journey inward.

4. Be with her instead of rejecting her. Instead of trying to silence, suppress or change the part of you that’s afraid, witness her. Speak to her and remind her you are there to simply be with her. Ask her what she needs, offer her a shoulder to cry on, grieve with her. Stay long enough that she feels seen — because that’s what finally lets her loosen her grip.

After you’ve given her the space to speak and feel and your intuition tells you she is ready for a reframe, tell her gently “I’ve got us. I can take it from here. You don’t need to protect us anymore.”

5. Retrace the evidence. The old story says this proves I fail. What if every rejection was a reroute? What if the pain was preparing you for exactly where you’re going? Often events don’t make sense at the time they are happening but if you look again from a higher perspective, you can begin to connect the dot and see how they were guiding you on a more aligned path.

6. Re-write through action. We reprogram subconscious beliefs and release the old stories through action. By witnessing the voice of fear and going for it anyways. This sends a signal to your psyche that your highest self is calling the shots and that you are someone who follows through on her commitments, dreams and desires with action. That’s the foundation of self-confidence!

7. Keep going! This is not a one-and-done process. The voices will continue to return because these patterns run deep! That is not a sign of personal failure. It’s how this work goes. You know you’re making progress when you can simply bring awareness to these voices, lovingly silence them and then choose otherwise.

To go for our dreams and everything we desire in life, we have to be able to lay to rest what no longer serves. That process begins with naming our fears (not stuffing them down) and getting curious about them (not judging them or shaming ourselves), so we can understand where they originate. It means entering the shadows of the psyche to find the wounding that’s subconsciously driving us — and staying with it long enough that it finally releases its grip.

Death also teaches us alchemy. Because death isn’t just an ending, it’s a beginning. In nature, when things die they return to the soil and create new life. We are not separate from that cycle.

So when you apply the alchemical nature of death to your own life, these parts don’t just die…they transition.

Your wound of unworthiness becomes enough.
Your fear of failure transmutes into trust.
Your patterns of lack transform into love.

You learn how to face the painful endings, the darkness, the devastation head on — and alchemize those perceived “tragedies” into portals of self-discovery, growth, and alignment with your true path.

And true to the nature of death and rebirth, this work moves in cycles.

When I was deciding whether to speak onstage, I asked myself one question:

If I had one year to live, would I do it?

In an instant, my fear of regret became so much greater than my fear of failure.

By facing my mortality, I went for it! I got clear on what made me feel alive, accessed the fuel to go for it, then alchemized every fear and obstacle standing in the way.

And I’m right in the middle of that process, sharing the journey with you!

Embrace Death. Make the Most of Life.

Seems morbid… I get it. But death has been my greatest teacher. And the more I’ve faced it head on, the more I’ve learned how to fully live.

So if you’re at a crossroads — feeling lost about which path to take, unsure of your purpose right now — try looking at your life from the end.

What would you regret not doing?

Would you be doing what you’re doing right now? The same job, same relationship, same rhythm of life? If not, what would you change?

What would you leave unsaid? Unmade? Unlived?

What passion or truth would die with you? What would never get to exist because you didn’t go for it?

Sit with those for a second and notice what surfaces. That’s death medicine doing its work!

When you embrace death as a natural part of life, everything shifts:

Your mortality becomes a mirror — reflecting back what actually matters, cutting through the shoulds, the ego desires, the conditioning, and connecting you straight to the callings of your heart.

Life’s finitude becomes fuel — the fears that kept you small shrink in the face of the ultimate one, and with no guarantee of tomorrow, “someday” turns into now. You stop delaying. You take the trip. You launch the thing.

Grief becomes gratitude — when you live each day as if you’re dying (because let’s face it… you are), you slow down and savor more. You remember the privilege, the everyday miracle, of simply being alive. The sunrise. The juicy peach. Your child’s hand in yours.

Endings become openings — you learn to die as a practice, shedding the beliefs and identities you’ve outgrown so you can keep evolving. And when life knocks you down, you alchemize the disappointment into growth, the rejection into a reroute, the tragedy into a portal.

And slowly, your life becomes one you’re actually excited to wake up to… and proud to leave behind.

I’m still in it. Five weeks out, still meeting the 18-year-old who believes she’ll fail, still laying her to rest, still choosing to go for it anyway.

That’s the practice. Not arriving somewhere fearless — but facing the fear, again and again, because you know exactly how precious and finite this whole thing is.

Because the truth is: the more fully you face death, the more fully you can live.

Want to look at your life from the end?

That’s exactly what I guide people through in a Wake-Up Call — a private, live-guided journey to the end of your life and back. You’ll walk away with deathbed clarity on what matters, what needs to shift, and what you want to do with the time you have left.

It’s the same practice that got me on that stage.

BOOK YOUR WAKE-UP CALL

The idea was to embrace YOLO as my living, breathing mantra — to stop delaying my dreams and actually go for it. Because … you only live once! This is kind of it!

One thing I’ve always been passionate about is EDM. (Even as an almost-40-year-old mom. IYKYK.)

To me, there is nothing more magical than a deep, soulful drop that vibrates your entire body and catapults you into another realm of consciousness. I love the funky costumes, the flashing lights, the energy of the crowd.

And since I’ve been a kid, I’ve always had a dream of being onstage.

So I got thinking… YOLO!! Why don’t I learn to DJ?

Sounds crazy, I know. But after my healthy husband Ian passed away at the ripe age of 32 — an event that made no logical sense — I started taking my delulu dreams a little more seriously.

I’ve come to believe that your dreams are the roadmap to your destiny — they are breadcrumbs leading you to what’s FOR YOU.

So I researched some basic equipment, cleared out my calendar, and signed up for two DJ courses at the Denver DJ School to begin my journey.

Whelp — it’s been 6 months since I began, and SPOILER ALERT…

I’ve passed my DJ finals and played my first two gigs, but I’m far from stepping onto a festival stage or becoming the next David Guetta or Tiësto.

To be honest, I’ve realized that probably isn’t my soul’s purpose. Meaning, it’s not how I’m meant to serve or the area in which I devote most of my life force and focus to – but it IS a part of it.

To be a master at anything, you have to devote lots of time and energy to it. DJing fits into my life as a fun creative outlet — a party with family and friends.

But my real purpose… what I want to devote my energy and time to? That’s going toward another stage. (Stay tuned — that story is coming soon.)

Regardless of the outcome, I’m so glad I tried DJing – because there were so many invaluable lessons I learned along the way, and I’d love to share them with you!

Lesson 1: Starting Something New Requires Permission to Be a Beginner

Starting something totally new was much harder than I thought. I had to move through the frustration of learning all the tech — the buttons and knobs, the loads of different effects, where to mix in and mix out — and be okay with creating mixes that sounded anything but hot. I mean, these DJs make it look so easy.

It was humbling to be so incredibly bad at something. But with practice and perseverance I found myself building muscle memory — reaching for the knobs without having to think, and actually enjoying making music (which was the whole point!).

How often do you beat yourself up when you don’t get something right the first time? In business, in parenting, in anything new — we tend to want to quit the moment it gets hard. But learning any new skill takes time and devotion. Stick with it, and you will see your progress.

Lesson 2: When You Want to Quit, See Yourself as the Main Character

At one point I wanted to quit. I was stressed with kids and my real job, and told myself I didn’t have the time to be DJing too.

But as soon as I thought of quitting, I caught myself.

I saw myself as the main character of my own movie. Would she collapse to the demands of her busy to-do list and quit? Or would she breathe, come back to her center, her why, and finish what she started?

Next time you’re ready to throw in the towel — pause. Step outside the moment and ask: what would the main character of your story do?

Lesson 3: Mastery Takes Time — And Passion Doesn’t Always Equal Purpose

If you’re going to get truly good at something — to the point where it changes your life or the lives of others — you have to devote your time, energy, and life force to it. So the real question isn’t can you do it. It’s: is this really the way you’re meant to serve?

Just because you love something doesn’t automatically make it your soul’s purpose.

My instructor put it perfectly: “DJing is like playing a video game with a song.” I’ve never been a big fan of video games. The moment I heard that, something clicked. The technical precision of it — it’s just not where I come alive.

Here’s how I define purpose: it’s what you do as an extension of who you are — in relationship to the world around you. It lives at the intersection of your gifts, your aliveness, your lived experience, the challenges you’ve survived, the ways you feel most at home expressing yourself, and what the moment is asking of you now.

When you evaluate your pursuits against that definition — what lands? What doesn’t?

Lesson 4: Sometimes You Need to Try to Know

I had a dream of DJ’ing. I didn’t know if it would work out, or if it would be something that would stick. But instead of debating the outcome in my head I decided to just go for it and find out.

We so often try to think our way into the answer. But going for it gives us the feedback that no amount of thinking can. You will never know if something is your path without signing up, showing up, and doing the work. The trying IS the data.

Lesson 5: You Can Follow Through and Still Let Go

You can honor a commitment fully — and still walk away at the end. In fact, knowing when to let go is a key part of the death medicine I teach, because the archetypal energy of death is about endings and release.

This is how it works with jobs, relationships, any season of life you’re evaluating. Follow through on your commitments. And then trust yourself to know when something isn’t aligned — and when it’s time to let go.

I made a commitment to finish the course and land a couple of gigs. And I did. But ultimately I realized I’m meant to serve on other stages.

I’ll continue to DJ for fun and to create moments for my friends. But the stage that’s truly calling me? Public speaking. I’ll share the whole story on how I came to that conclusion soon.

So Tell Me, Friends…

What delulu dreams are you visioning up? What’s stopping you from trying them? When you think about how you want to spend your time in this one finite life — what do you want to do with it?

This is what The YOLO Experiment and living with the end in mind is all about:

Going for it Taking chances Doing what makes you feel alive Falling on your face Alchemizing disappointments into lessons to simply course correct And celebrating the journey

Because it’s never about the end goal. The process is the reward.

Stay tuned for more. 🎶

Love & light,

Emily

The kids are home. The schedule is loose. The work still needs to get done. Everyone wants snacks. And somehow you’re supposed to be both wildly present and productive?!

Part of the reason I started my own business was to spend more time on what matters most to me: adventure, meaningful work, and time with my kids. The dream was simple. I would spend the school year doing work I love — writing, coaching, creating experiences that facilitate healing, transformation, and connection — and then summer would feel spacious, flexible, and alive.

But as usual, life had other plans.

It’s taken me longer than I expected to launch my work and get to the financial place where I can totally unplug for the summer. And because I’m not quite where I thought I’d be by now, I found myself feeling totally stressed as we crossed the threshold from school into summer.

I didn’t have summer camps neatly planned. I had babysitters coming and going — my parents helping when they could. Me trying to sneak in work whenever possible. And this constant feeling that I was behind before summer had even begun.

Just a few days in and I could feel myself spiraling. Not enough work. Not enough presence. It was a losing battle either way. The pressure was making me anxious and irritable…

So I lovingly checked myself and said:

“Emily. Get a freaking grip!”

Because this is exactly where I practice the work I teach. I took a little dose of my own death medicine.

When I remember my mortality and this one precious life, I can easily see…

What actually matters and the fleetingness of this magical moment. It crystalized the heartfelt truth that:

The business can grow slower.

My kids won’t stay little.

So adjust accordingly!

I can choose to swim upstream and fight the current…Or I can surrender. Adapt. Go with the flow.

Here’s where I went first.

1. I checked my fears around money

Money seemed to be driving the urgency around, needing to work, so that’s the first place I held up the mirror.

So much of our fear is tied to survival. And for many of us, we’ve projected safety onto the number in our bank account. We decide that once we hit a certain number, then we’ll feel safe. Then we’ll relax. Then we’ll trust life. Then we’ll finally enjoy what we’ve built.

But when I looked at my actual monthly cash flow, I had to ask myself honestly:

Am I actually unsafe right now? Or am I just stretched and uncomfortable? Because those are two very different things.

Unsafe is not having a roof over my head. Unsafe is not being able to put food on the table. Unsafe is an actual threat to survival.

Uncomfortable is not eating out as much. Uncomfortable is delaying a purchase. Uncomfortable is not having the exact level of spaciousness I want yet.

When I really looked at the numbers, I realized that not hitting my goal didn’t mean I was unsafe. It meant I was uncomfortable. And discomfort is not an emergency.

That one distinction softened so much urgency in my body, because the pressure to make it all happen right now was not me moving from love and truth. It was me acting from fear and scarcity.

And once I saw that, I could turn off my computer and play with the kids again.

2. I let things die

The next place I examined was everything I was trying to carry from the school year into the summer — because part of death medicine is learning what to release.

Right now, I cannot do it all. I cannot be fully present with my kids, create magical summer memories, launch everything, respond to everyone, grow at the speed my ambition wants, and also be regulated and joyful.

Something has to give.

So instead of making myself wrong for that, I’m asking:

What can die for this season? What can be paused? What can wait? What is not actually necessary right now?

Summer is a threshold. We cross from one rhythm into another. From school structure into summer wildness. From routine into flow.

And nature is always teaching us how to do this. Seasons shift. Things end. Things bloom. Things die. Things are reborn. We are not separate from that design.

So instead of forcing summer to function like the school year, I’m letting the season change me. I’m letting some things be released so I can actually be here.

3. I remembered the impermanence of this chapter

This is a short window. My kids are young right now. They still want to hang out with me, run lemonade stands, create trampoline campouts under the stars, and make movie nights, slumber parties in my bedroom, and mountain adventures with their mama.

And I know this won’t last forever.

One day, summer will look different. Their friends will become the center. Their independence will grow. Their worlds will expand beyond me. And that is beautiful.

But I don’t want to miss this version of them because I’m obsessing over the next business milestone. I won’t get this exact version of them back. I won’t get this exact summer back.

Death medicine reminds me of the fleetingness of every chapter, day and moment and to slow down and savor it all.

The preciousness is not someday. It’s right here.

4. I used awe to interrupt the spiral

Most of the time, when I’m stressed, I’m spiraling about the small things.

What if I don’t launch this on time? When will I get the webpage copy done? Who is going to watch the kids when I have the podcast interview?

And then I zoom out.

I use what I call the subtraction effect — simply remembering what could be gone.

Ian’s death reminds me of this every day.

I have a pulse. I have a body that can move. I have children who want to spend time with me. I have work I care about. I have another day.

And suddenly, the thing I was gripping so tightly starts to loosen. Not because it doesn’t matter. But because I remember what matters more.

The miracle of being alive is still here. And that is enough to bring me back.

5. I thought about my own death

I know that might sound intense. But for me, it’s one of the most grounding practices I have.

One of the top regrets of the dying is wishing they hadn’t worked so hard. Another is wishing they had let themselves be happier. I lean on the wisdom of the dying — those who have made it to their deathbed and don’t have a second chance to rectify what they have learned. I learn from their regrets, and I apply them to my own life.

I started this business so I could live more.

Now.

My dream life isn’t dependent on external outcomes. I can spend time with my kids, be present with them, and make the most of what life is handing me right now — it’s just a choice. Even while the business is still growing. Even while things are imperfect. Even while reality is still catching up to the dream.

Because I trust my dreams are inevitable. But I refuse to postpone my life until they arrive.

— — —

Don’t Let Your Ambitions Create a Gap

If you’re passionate, ambitious, motivated, and wired to see possibilities everywhere, you probably know this pattern.

It is so easy to live in the gap. To focus on the distance between where you are and where you want to be. To keep your eyes locked on the end goal and forget how far you’ve already come.

To tell yourself: I’ll relax when I get there. I’ll be present when the money is more predictable. I’ll finally start living when I hit my standard of success.

Because the truth is — the journey is the reward. That’s what life is all about.

It’s not the polished future version or destination. This messy, beautiful, inconvenient, snack-filled, summer-schedule-chaos chapter is the life.

And death medicine helps me remember that.

So, needless to say, I’ll be slowing down a bit this summer. I’ll still be here creating, planning epic retreats and experiences, and coaching clients behind the scenes. But I’ll also be camping, going on many more adventures with my kids, and letting the pace be different. I’ll be practicing the very thing I teach:

You don’t get this moment back. So prioritize what matters. Make the plans. Go for it now. Open your eyes to the magic outside your front door.

Let some things wait.

Let some things die.

Let yourself actually live.

How are you feeling as you move into summer?

Are you swimming upstream, trying to force the old rhythm?

Or are you letting this season show you what needs to shift?

I’d love to hear from you.

With love,
Emily

P.S. And yes… You better believe I’m already dreaming up an epic glamping experience for this community in 2027. Doors will open in June. Stay tuned.

All I could bring myself to do in those early months of grief was tend to my one and three-year-old — make sure they were alive, fed and laughing. Move my body at a spin or yoga class, where the sweat and the music drowned out the noise in my head. Or talk about the grief that had cracked me open — the rawness of losing my husband Ian at thirty-two to cancer and having to navigate this new life without him.

Nothing else mattered.

Business emails, deadlines, or even making money — none of it could reach me. I was living inside a body that had been hollowed out by death.

In those early months, I devoured self-help books and memoirs — stories of other people who’d been touched by tragedy and found their way back to meaningful, thriving lives. Candace Lightner, the mother who created Mothers Against Drunk Drivers after her son was killed. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, who built Option B after her husband died on a family vacation. Their stories gave me hope and planted seeds of inspiration in me.

Eventually the seeds rooted into a deep purpose that helped me forge a path forward through the void of my husband’s death. I made a decision.

I decided that I could use my story of loss to help others heal.

I didn’t have a business plan. I didn’t have evidence it would work. I didn’t have anything except my grief and the desperate need for it to mean something. But I decided that if I could help one person with my story, that was enough.

From there, the moveTHRU grief movement was born…and it brought me back to LIFE!

———

From Survival to Service

Why was it that helping others moved me from rock bottom — devastated, apathetic, barely functioning — to feeling like I had a vision, motivation to act, genuinely excited to get out of bed?

For one, it gave my loss new meaning. If I could help someone else navigate their own tragedy, then mine wasn’t all bad. There was a sense of purpose behind it. And by connecting my loss to others — not just my pain, but theirs too — it transported me out of the small, myopic view of my tragedy and into an interconnected web of people going through something hard. I had community again.

Focusing on other grievers also pulled me out of my own suffering. I realized they needed something I could provide. That outward focus gave me relief from my own pain, because honestly, it was just too much for me to metabolize alone.

And because my identity had dissolved with my husband’s death — I didn’t know who I was anymore or if I even mattered. Building something to help others gave me back a sense of self-worth. I couldn’t see myself in isolation — my blooming community of other grievers reflected my worth back.

Viktor Frankl — the psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning who founded an entire school of psychotherapy around the idea that our deepest drive is the search for meaning — said that meaning is never found inside the self. It’s always out there, in the world, waiting to be met. He called self-absorption the primary obstacle to meaning. The moment you turn toward others, the meaning you couldn’t manufacture for yourself arrives on its own.

I came to see that purpose is not something you find by endlessly looking inward. It becomes real when it is placed in relationship to other people, to the world, to something greater than the self.

———

Self-Transcendence Over Self-Individuation

Helping others reignited my passion for life. It opened pathways I didn’t believe were possible and alchemized one of the most devastating chapters of my life into something generative. I ran moveTHRU for almost five years, and in the spring of 2024, I felt that evolution of purpose reach its natural completion. It was time for something new.

Since then, I’ve studied purpose extensively — for myself and for my clients. Through the Gene Keys, astrology, Human Design, the Enneagram. Through dharma and the belief that your soul came here for a specific reason. Through the priestess path of the 13 Moon Mystery School — silence, surrender, somatic wisdom, ancestral guidance. Through oracle decks and tarot, intuitive readers and mediums. I’ve developed frameworks, worked with clients, and turned over every stone I could find.

But here’s what I’ve come to realize:

After a while, the search for purpose can become another thing we chase outside ourselves. The pursuit to know yourself becomes, paradoxically, a little selfish. It can be about control — feeling like you have a specific role to play is reassuring. It feels safe. It prevents you from taking the wrong path, which buffers you from the fear of rejection or the pain of failure. Or it becomes egoic — a way to justify your existence and believe that you matter.

Because the truth is, purpose and self-individuation done in isolation is self-serving. You have to connect the dots to something greater than yourself to give it real meaning. Tangible impact.

In fact, Maslow claimed self-transcendence as the apex of human development. In his later work — often overlooked — he actually revised his famous hierarchy and placed self-transcendence above self-actualization. The fully developed human doesn’t stop at becoming their best self. They move through the self toward service to something beyond it.

Purpose is empty unless it’s about service.

———

Why This Matters So Much Right Now

We are at a turning point in humanity.

We’ve watched the erosion of democratic norms in the US. The Epstein files exposed horrific accounts of sexual abuse that have yet to be brought to justice. Wars are being fought not in the name of people, but for personal profit and self-interest. AI is rapidly transforming the way we work, eliminating jobs and reshaping what skills are valued.

The ground beneath us is shifting.

We are in a collective death portal. A death of the world as we once knew it — and a new one being born. And just like the loss of my husband Ian, it’s leaving many of us questioning everything. Wondering who we are and if we matter as the structures we once relied on dissolve into dust.

I know this territory. I’ve lived it. And here’s what death taught me — when the ground falls out from beneath, everything false falls with it. The money, the status, the titles, the performance of a life well-lived — none of it matters. The only thing that held me was purpose rooted in service. In turning toward other people instead of collapsing further into myself.

And I think that’s what’s being asked of us collectively right now.

———

We’ve Forgotten Our Place in the Web

But here’s the problem: we’ve been trained to operate as islands.

By a culture built on self-reliance — from revolution to westward expansion, we were raised on the myth that you can make it on your own. By a pandemic that siloed us behind screens and severed the ways we used to gather. And by the loss of our ancestral threads — the stories and lineages that once reminded us we belong to something larger than our individual lives.

I barely know the history of my grandparents, let alone my lineage at large. My great-grandfather didn’t want to admit he was Jewish and had survived a concentration camp out of fear of persecution — I literally just found out I’m fifteen percent Ashkenazi Jew this year. That thread was cut to my ancestral tapestry — a gap in story of who I am and how I’m meant to serve.

So when atrocities come crashing into our awareness, it can feel impossible to navigate alone. We get overwhelmed by the news and tune out. Or we double down on protecting what’s ours just to get by. We tell ourselves that doesn’t affect me and go back to business as usual. We feel alone in our efforts, so we dissociate and numb out.

And we keep chasing the things we’ve been told will make us feel better — more money, more achievement, more self-optimization, more what will fulfill me? — only to discover that serving ourselves still leaves us feeling empty. Because the fulfillment we’re starving for has never been on the self-serving side of the equation. It’s on the other side. The side that requires us to look up from our own lives and turn toward each other.

But now is not the time to check out. We have to move from looking away to leading the way.

———

Personally, I’ve had a hard time returning to business as usual when I scan headlines of five-year-old immigrant boys being torn from their families or US citizens being murdered on their homeland. I’ve protested. I’ve used my platform to speak up and called my representatives. But it never felt like I was doing enough or making an impact.

So I stopped to evaluate my coaching business and question what I’m truly here for. I’d been promoting what I call the YOLO Experiment — a series documenting my journey to embody you only live once as my living, breathing mantra. And I had to ask myself: is YOLO only about skydiving, learning how to roller skate and DJ? Or is it about something more?

I’ve really had to check myself and ask: what creates a life of depth, meaning, and aliveness?

And I came back to service.

Because life is not only about what we enjoy. It’s also about what we contribute. It’s about devoting your time, your energy, your voice, your art, your leadership to something greater than yourself. About fueling impact with love instead of ego. About filling our hearts, not just our bank accounts.

———

We Are the Bridge

As I sat with this recognition, I realized my role — my unique weave — is to help people see themselves as part of this global ecosystem. Where purpose isn’t made in isolation but where each of us is one thread in a collective tapestry ushering in a new earth.

Everything we call normal was once someone else’s revolution.

Think about it. The rights, freedoms, and protections many of us live with today did not appear out of thin air. They were fought for by visionaries, rebels, and soul-led humans who came before us.

And now it’s our turn.

Imagine if our ancestors had said…

“I’m too busy to fight for women’s right to vote.”

“I’m not Black, so equal rights don’t affect me.”

“I don’t know enough. I’m just one person.”

The world we take for granted today would not exist.

We are the bridge. The bridge between the world our ancestors helped create for us and the world we will help create for the generations to come.

Your purpose — what you choose to devote your life to — is not separate from that story. Every single one of us has a role to play in shaping the future of this world.

And no — that doesn’t always mean protesting or lobbying on Capitol Hill.

It might mean being in the boardroom and reminding a male colleague that she is a human being and deserves dignity and respect.

It might mean making art that interrupts apathy and speaks against violence and hate.

It might mean sitting at the kitchen table, having a conversation with your child, planting seeds of consciousness that will outlive you.

Purpose is what you do as an extension of who you are. It lives at the intersection of your gifts, what lights you up, the ways you feel most at home expressing yourself, and the obstacles you’ve overcome. And it evolves with who you are becoming — and what the world around you needs.

The question is not just, what is my purpose?

The question is: what is my purpose right now, in this moment, for this world?

———

If that question is alive in you and you want to go deeper into it with me — I’m hosting a 3-day ceremonial workshop called Meet the Moment on May 19–21. It’s designed to move you from watching from the sidelines to playing your part. Over three days, you’ll grieve what you’ve been carrying, uncover the unique role only you can play right now, and leave with a clear plan to act.

You don’t have to do this alone. Save your spot here.

Since the very beginning of my grief journey I’ve been blown away by the outpouring of support my family received after Ian’s death. Yet what I realized on this recent trip to Naples, is that profound generosity was a direct result of my white privilege.

Let me explain.

The Viral Video That Changed It All

Spring Break 2021. Two years since my late husband Ian died. I had been posting about my grief journey on TikTok and Instagram — a way to process, to heal, to feel less alone — when I posted a video that took on a life of its own.

The video explained how Ian and I had wanted to take our kids to Italy before he died, but when his cancer progressed we had to cancel the trip. He ended up passing away four months later, and our kids never got the adventure their daddy had promised. So, when we decided on Naples, Florida for spring break the next year — we joked that it was just like the real Napoli — Naples, Italy — and turned our beachside vacation into a trip to honor him on his second death anniversary.

WATCH IT HERE

I posted it before we boarded our flight in Denver. Three hours later, when we landed in Naples, my phone was flooded. Thousands of likes. Hundreds of comments. And a slew of direct messages from strangers who lived there.

Someone had shared my video in a local Naples Facebook group, and now the whole community was mobilizing to support us — gifting us free photography sessions, complimentary massages and dinners, and a gondola boat ride, the closest thing to Venice we’d ever get.

I wept reading those messages. How a group of total strangers could feel so connected to my family through a story of loss. How they could see themselves in each character — the wife who lost her husband, the two kids who lost their father, the trip that cancer stole, and this chance at something beautiful rising from the ashes of it. They could feel the grief, the love, and the longing all at once.

Grief became the bridge to our shared humanity. Total strangers went out of their way to make a someone else’s life just a little bit better.

Moral Beauty

I didn’t have language for it at the time, but this was what Dacher Keltner calls moral beauty — those moments when someone performs a generous, noble, or brave act that makes us feel the very best of what human beings can be. Random acts of kindness. Gestures of courage. Going out of your way for another human being.

And this wasn’t the only act of moral beauty that followed Ian’s death. In those early days of grief, it felt like the entire community of Lanikai and Kailua showed up — delivering groceries, cleaning the house, helping with childcare. For his celebration of life, his friends gathered local flowers and organized boats for a breathtaking beach ceremony and paddle out in his honor. People appeared from everywhere to carry us through the unsurvivable.

The support didn’t stop in person. Our GoFundMe to cover Ian’s medical bills and travel costs was met with incredible generosity, along with checks in the mail. Followers on social media amplified our story until news outlets picked it up. I was featured in The Warrior Way, invited to audition for the Bachelor, and appeared on Good Morning America in a segment on single parents dating.

That attention provided financial relief, yes — but more than that, it gave me something to hold onto. Knowing that so many people were standing behind us made the darkness feel survivable.

It was a strange place to be — propelled into a spotlight I never asked for, for something so devastating. In hindsight, all of that momentum carried me past a lot of grief I needed to feel (a story for another time). But in those early years, it may have been the lifeline that kept me going.

But here’s what I’m sitting with seven years later.

Not All Losses Are Created Equal

In an ironic and surprising plot twist, I had become a kind of “the golden girl of grief”.

Ian was a white male. Healthy before the diagnosis. A father of two. He died of cancer — another victim claimed by this relentless disease. I was a young, attractive 32-year-old with a one and three-year-old at my hip. We were the white picket fence, the American dream — shattered by something no one could have prevented. Ian was a patriot. He had fought hard. And still, he had to wave the white flag.

It was easy for people to see themselves in our story. Easy to feel heartache on our behalf. Easy to show up.

But what if Ian had been a drug addict? What if he had a criminal record? What if he was Black, or Brown, or Muslim, or trans? What if he had taken his own life?

Would we have received the same support? Would strangers have mobilized in a Facebook group to give our family memories? Would the media have elevated our story?

The truth is, there is a hierarchy when it comes to grief. Some losses are deemed worthy of witnessing. Others are swallowed by stigma, buried in shame, and left in the dark.

The research is clear:

Deaths by suicide and overdose

• Families who lose someone to suicide report significantly higher levels of stigma, shame, guilt, and rejection than those bereaved by any other cause of death — and these differences don’t fade over time. (UK study of 3,400+ bereaved adults, published in PLOS ONE)

• Despite needing more support, suicide loss survivors are actually less likely to seek professional grief help, because stigma gets in the way. (Harvard Health)

• Families who lose someone to overdose face the same wall of silence. An estimated 125 million Americans know someone who has fatally overdosed, and more than 321,000 children lost a parent to overdose between 2011 and 2021. (CDC / SAMHSA) Yet support networks for these families are scarce. The grief gets a clinical label — disenfranchised — a polite way of saying: your loss isn’t welcome here.

Black families

• Only 1 in 3 Black Americans who need mental health care actually receives it. When they do seek help, they are less likely to be offered evidence-based therapy or medication. Only 4% of psychologists in the U.S. are Black. (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance; University of Michigan School of Public Health, 2024)

• Only 26% of Black children who lose a parent receive the Social Security survivor benefits they are legally entitled to — compared to 46% of non-Black children. Benefits their parents paid into. That their families desperately need. (CBS News / analysis by former SSA administrator David Weaver, 2023)

• The median white household holds more than six times the wealth of the median Black household. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2024) That gap isn’t just a number — it’s the difference between a community that can show up for you and one that is already running on empty. It’s why one Facebook post got my family a week of memories, and why that same post wouldn’t land the same way everywhere.

• And the platforms we turn to in crisis aren’t neutral either. A study of over 100,000 GoFundMe cancer campaigns found that donations to white campaign beneficiaries were nearly 18% higher than to Black beneficiaries — even after controlling for the quality and length of the campaign. (Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2023) Donors consistently rated campaigns by white fundraisers as more “trustworthy” and “credible” than identical campaigns by people of color. (Journal of Finance, 2023)

Latino and Hispanic families

• Latino adults are 50% less likely than non-Hispanic white Americans to have received mental health care. (U.S. Office of Minority Health, 2021) Language barriers, lack of Spanish-speaking providers, and fear of immigration consequences keep grieving families from accessing support even when it exists.

• The median Hispanic household holds about one-fifth the wealth of the median white household. (Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022) The informal support networks — the casseroles, the GoFundMe campaigns, the people who can take a week off work — are simply less available.

• Academic research on Latino grief is itself scarce. A 2022 literature review concluded the evidence is “weak” — meaning these communities are not only underserved, they are understudied. (Health Equity journal, 2022)

LGBTQ+ individuals

• When a same-sex partner dies, their relationship is often erased entirely — referred to as a “friend,” excluded from funeral arrangements, denied bereavement leave by employers who don’t recognize the relationship as real. More than 24% of LGBTQ+ adults expect to face barriers related to their sexual identity when planning a funeral. (Palliative Medicine survey, cited by Full Circle Grief Center)

• The lack of full social acceptance forces many bereaved queer people to grieve in private, masking the full extent of their loss. Their grief is real. Their love was real. But the systems built to hold people in loss were not built for them. (Evermore; research published in Death Studies, 2003–2023)

Muslim Americans

• Muslim Americans carry the weight of grief inside a culture that has been treated with suspicion since 9/11 — navigating Islamophobia at the same time they are trying to mourn. Many have been discouraged from seeking mental health treatment and instead merely encouraged to pray (APA Presidential Task Force on Culturally Informed Trauma and Grief Recovery), creating a gap between religious coping and professional support that often goes unaddressed. When those deaths are further complicated — a suicide, an overdose, a death considered “un-Islamic” — shame and guilt compound an already isolated grief. (Psychotherapy with Islamic Clients Facing Loss and Grief, ResearchGate)

This is not an exhaustive list. The grief hierarchy affects Indigenous communities, Asian Americans, immigrants navigating loss far from home, incarcerated individuals, the unhoused, and many others whose mourning happens largely out of view. These examples are offered not as a complete picture, but as a window into a broader pattern: that the support we offer the grieving has never been equally distributed, and that the people who need it most are often the ones who receive it least.

Valeria Kaur writes about this in See No Stranger — how it took a full massacre of her Sikh community in Oak Creek, Wisconsin to earn a brief moment of national airtime. But when the Aurora shooting happened just 16 days prior — white people in a white community — the President paid a visit. The stories that get elevated, the ones that earn a podium or a presidential presence, are not random. They follow a pattern. And we have to be willing to see it.

Just as our prejudices around race and religion elevate some stories and silence others, our biases toward which types of loss deserve reverence — and which ones don’t — do just as much harm.

David Kessler teaches that addiction and suicide are illnesses of the mind, just as cancer is an illness of the body. They are simply harder to see, harder to detect, and harder to treat. And yet we respond to them as moral failures rather than medical ones. They deserve the same witnessing. The same compassion. The same casseroles and GoFundMe campaigns and Facebook groups mobilizing on their behalf.

Coming Back to Humanity

I believe in the goodness of people.

The woman who shared my video in that Naples Facebook group — I don’t know her name. But she saw my story and it ignited something in her – where she acted. And from that single act, an entire community showed up for my children in one of the hardest weeks of our lives. That kind of goodness is real, and it gives me hope.

But I’ve been sitting with a question: why did she share my video? There were thousands of grief videos she could have chosen. What made mine the one?

I think it’s because she could see herself in it. I was white. I was coming to Naples, where she lived. We had a lot in common. And that mirroring — that flicker of recognition — ignited empathy. She could viscerally feel what it would be like to arrive in a beach town with two small children, without their father. And that empathy moved her to act.

Empathy requires seeing yourself in someone else’s story.

And this is the root of the problem.

We don’t see ourselves in stories of suicide or addiction because shame and stigma keep those deaths hidden. They live in the shadows — treated as dirty, or fringe, or something that only happens to other kinds of people. Not to us, and not to anyone we love.

We don’t see ourselves in the stories of Black and Brown families, of trans people, of immigrants, of those at the margins — because we’ve been conditioned to see them as “other.” We see the differences first: skin color, religion, immigration status, gender identity. And those differences create just enough distance to let us scroll past without feeling the pull.

But the truth is: there is no other. There is no cause of death that is more worthy of grief than another. There is no hierarchy of human loss, even though we have built one — through cultural norms, through religion, through the stories we amplify and the ones we bury.

What We Can Do

I know how overwhelming the world feels right now. I know the paralysis that comes from looking at the full magnitude of suffering and not knowing where to start. I feel it too.

But I don’t think the answer is “out there” in some grand, sweeping act. I think its actually much closer; in the choices we make about whose stories we let land.

My invitation?

Notice where you see yourself as separate. Where you scroll past a death that feels too far from your own experience — too messy, too stigmatized, too “other.” Notice the moment you feel judgment rising instead of grief. That distance is worth getting curious about.

Widen your aperture. Seek out the stories that don’t get airtime — the families grieving overdose deaths in silence, the Black mothers who have lost children to violence, the immigrant families torn apart and invisible on the evening news. Let those stories reach you. Don’t manage the discomfort away.

Grief can be a bridge. When we let ourselves actually feel someone else’s loss — not just acknowledge it, but feel it — the distance collapses. What seemed so foreign, so far from our own lives, becomes our shared story. We unlock empathy. We reclaim our humanity. And from that place, action becomes the only natural choice.

I think of one Facebook post, and what it set in motion for my family.

What if we did that for the people who need it most? Not the ones whose stories are already easy to feel — but the ones whose grief seems distant, untouchable, too far from your own life to let in.

The truth is, that’s how I felt before Ian died. I would hear about tragic losses — the drunk driver who killed a friend of a friend, the young wife whose husband died in a plane crash — and think, I can’t imagine. Until I was forced to.

Ian’s death shattered my heart into a million pieces. But it also cracked me open. To a place where my heart can hold not just my own hurt, but the hurt of others. Where I can feel empathy in ways I never could before.

Right now, our world is hurting. And I believe the most radical thing you can do is let it land. Let the stories in. Let your heart break — not just for the losses that look like yours, but for the ones that don’t. Because a broken-open heart is not a wounded one. It’s a willing one.

And the world we want to live in — the one where grief becomes the bridge to our shared humanity — starts the moment we decide to let it.

At the end of my run I sat in the sand to fully drop into the moment. I listened to nature’s symphony — waves crashing, seashells rattling — and thought about the sheer miracle of it all. As I opened my senses to the sights and sounds around me, I felt literally turned on by life. Electric tingles of energy rose from my sacral center all the way to my heart, cracking it open in a moment of expansion, followed by tears welling in my eyes.

Life can really be this beautiful.

And I’m so grateful that I’m in a place in my evolution where I can feel this connected to both my inner and outer world.

But here’s the thing

It hasn’t always been like this for me.

Three years ago I was at the peak of my career — book deal, clothing line, massive online following, multi-six figure business. But the success was costing me. My business consumed all of my life force. I would wake up first thing and jump on my computer, check my phone multiple times a day to post and engage with followers. If I missed a post, I’d have a low-key panic attack. I was barely present with my kids, getting into minor accidents, hydroplaning through life instead of actually living it.

I hired a new coach to help me, and boy did he call me out. I’d show up to sessions with my head spinning, barely there — needing a full hour just to drop in and tune into what I actually needed to address.

“Emily, you tell me you want to do the work. But you show up like this? You say you want to slow down, but your actions aren’t aligning.”

His words punched me straight in the gut. Because I knew he was right. I was stuck in this cycle of productivity and performance — and the painful truth was, I didn’t know how to stop. Slowing down felt dangerous. Like if I stopped moving, everything would fall apart. Or worse — I’d have to feel everything I’d been running from.

I wanted to slow down, be present, and feel my life. But I was stuck in a vicious cycle. My nervous system didn’t know how to take a break. I had been in survival mode for so many years since my husband’s death — using my business to turn my pain into purpose. It had been my lifeline, but I had developed some unhealthy survival patterns along the way. Because not only was my business blocking me from my pain — it was also blocking me from pleasure, presence, and passion. I couldn’t feel a thing.

So I decided I needed a reset.

I booked a retreat in Northern California. The themes were spirituality, sensuality, somatic work, subconscious reprogramming, and sisterhood. “Perfect,” I thought. Upon arrival we drove for hours along winding roads through towering redwood trees to a farm in the middle of nowhere — Oz Farm, to be precise. After sorting out the logistics of rooms and settling in, the facilitators gathered us in an old, rustic wooden barn. They explained that they would be taking away our cell phones for the duration of our stay.

My heart skipped a beat. What? No cell phones? No social media, no way to reach my kids — what if something happened?

The facilitator was clear: she would check our phones for emergencies, but we didn’t need to be checking in otherwise. She advised us to let whoever was caring for our kids know what was happening — and then trust that they would be safe.

Talk about an exercise in surrender.

I reluctantly agreed.

For four days at Oz, we started every morning with ceremony. In silence we would gather around an altar surrounded by candlelight and palo santo filling the air. Our breath and the sound would alter our state and take us somewhere else — our inner world, where I could reconnect with myself, listen to the deeper parts of my psyche, and actually feel my emotions. We danced — sometimes clothed, sometimes fully bare — but moving our bodies to music with no agenda allowed me to feel again. And every time I dared to strip off another layer, I felt more wild, more free. Like the life-force energy within me was slowly being unbottled so it could finally flow.

We ate nourishing food from the farm — fresh vegetables and fruits grown right there, nothing processed, no added sugar, nothing unnecessary. We gathered in nature, bathed in the river, talked to the trees and thanked them for their shelter and shade.

I learned new tools to come back to myself — to bring awareness to my thoughts, my feelings, and the patterns that had been keeping me stuck on autopilot. The retreat was a reset. It gave me a safe container to break the vicious cycles I was living in, understand the root of those patterns, heal them, and bring home new strategies to integrate into my real life.

The retreat didn’t fix everything overnight, but it cracked something open. It gave me the tools and the proof that feeling was possible again. Once I had a taste of what life could be like moving forward, the rest was the slow work of choosing to act differently, again and again

This is the reset I want to offer the world.

The internet revolutionized how we access information. Social media revolutionized how we connect. The pandemic pushed everything onto screens, and many of us are still catching up. And then came AI — another wildly disruptive technology speeding up production, replacing therapists and astrologers and doctors and, in some cases, even partners. We all saw Her with Joaquin Phoenix, right?

Technology, screens, and hustle culture dominate our lives — and it’s making us sick.

• The average American spends 90% of their time indoors

• 7 hours a day staring at screens

• 9.5 hours sedentary

I lived those statistics. At my worst, the majority of my life was being lived on a screen. My followers on social media knew more about my life than my real friends did. My kids constantly yelled at me to get off my phone because they were competing for my attention with a smartphone — and losing. I couldn’t feel my body or my heart because my attention was perpetually hijacked — DMs, notifications, the endless scroll — literally blocking my ability to drop in, be present, and feel anything real.

And we wonder why so many people are suffering from chronic stress, loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

This isn’t a bash on technology. There are incredible advancements that have genuinely improved our lives. But we have to be far more intentional about how we use it — and far more honest about the subtle ways it’s shaping how we experience ourselves and each other.

Frankly? I’m tired of it. I want to get out of Zoom rooms. I crave lying in the grass, feeling my feet on the dirt, holding hands with a perfect stranger. Skin to skin. Heartbeat to heartbeat.

I preach YOLO — you only live once. But I’ve really had to sit with what that actually means to me.

I honestly don’t want to be another talking head on the internet. Another voice, another hack, another piece of content that goes in one ear and out the other. I’m here for something real. Something tangible. Something you can feel in your body and actually experience — the kind of thing that touches you on a cellular level and changes you from the inside out.

I want candles burning and people in circle. Drums. Bare feet on the earth. Something more primal, more alive. Less cerebral, more embodied. Less thought, more felt.

And I want a tribe of soul-led humans who crave deep connection, deep meaning, and real purpose. People who want to live life to the fullest — in alignment with their truth, not performing it for an audience.

That’s why I’m completely rethinking the way I run my business. Less online, more in-person. Less DMs, more conversations around campfires. Less courses that hand you tools you still have to figure out how to use alone — and more retreats that transform you while you’re there, so when you leave after a few days, you step back into your life as someone new.

If something in this piece is calling to you —

If you recognized yourself somewhere in these words — in the hydroplaning, the numbness, the hunger for something real — then I want to tell you about something I’m creating.

This September, my dear friend and co-facilitator Mary Tilson and I are hosting Wild Magic in Madeira — a seven-day retreat on one of the most breathtaking islands in the world.

Mary is a somatic practitioner, recovery coach, and yoga teacher with over a decade of experience leading retreats. We’ve both been through profound loss and hard chapters, and we’ve both found deep healing and resilience in nature, in ceremony, in community — exactly the kind of experiences I described above.

This retreat isn’t an escape. It’s a reset.

Seven days of guided hikes through ancient forests and dramatic cliffs, whale watching on the Atlantic, ocean dips, sacred ceremony, embodiment practices, nourishing meals, and spacious time to simply be. To slow down in a way that doesn’t threaten your nervous system. To break free of the routine, learn new practices, and experience real transformation — not through a screen, but in your body, in nature, with other people doing the same brave work.

We have are half-way sold out – only 7 spots left. It runs September 28 – October 3, 2026.

→ Learn more and reserve your spot: Wild Magic in Madeira

It was about three months after my husband died. I had returned to Colorado with my son still in diapers and my daughter just three years old. We had been in Ian’s hometown of Hawaii to live out his final days alongside family and friends — and to scatter his ashes in a beautiful celebration of life in front of his favorite surf spot, near the Mokulua Islands in Lanikai.

Now I was returning to a large, empty house. A home we had built together. Without him, it felt gutted — hollow in exactly the shape of the hole his absence left in my heart. I was apathetic, numb, still reeling in the shock that my husband was actually gone. The days blurred as I survived those early months of grief, trying to reconcile with a new normal I hadn’t asked for.

The turning point came when I decided to spend a weekend in the mountains with my kids and my parents. I took a solo hike into a wide mountain valley — tall grasses all around me, forest enclosing the space like a container, forming a protective healing bubble. Way off in the distance, a majestic mountain peak rose against the sky.

Everything was quiet, as if I had stepped inside a vacuum-sealed terrarium — the rest of the world pressed against the glass somewhere far away. Not suffocating. More like the stillness of a womb. A sense of floating, of being held. I could feel the wind brushing against my skin, as if the earth itself was breathing. I could hear crickets, birdsong, the faint murmur of a brook. Despite the silence, the whole valley was alive — a complex ecological system that spanned far beyond what my mind could comprehend, all the way to that mountain peak miles and miles away.

I peered up at the endless sky — a vast palette of blue and white, streaky clouds drifting past — and in that moment, I felt incredibly small. Small in a good way. All of my problems — the challenges of solo motherhood, the complexity of my grief, the magnitude of rebuilding a life without my husband — simply melted away. I had a felt sense, deep and inexplicable, that I was going to be okay. Not as a thought. As a visceral knowing.

I couldn’t name it at the time. But this was my first experience of awe.

What Awe Actually Is

UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, author of Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, defines awe as the emotion we experience when we encounter something vast and mysterious — in nature, art, or human goodness — that transcends our current understanding of the world.

His research reveals that a central feature of awe is the quieting of the individual ego — what he calls the “small self” — which creates a felt sense of connection to something larger. Because awe disrupts our normal understanding of how things work, it’s often followed by wonder: a widening into curiosity, open thinking, and big questions about the nature of existence itself.

At a physiological level, awe reduces stress hormones and inflammation, releases oxytocin, elevates mood, and quiets the mental chatter of self-focused rumination. Awe doesn’t just feel good. It literally changes what’s happening inside us — and in doing so, it restructures the way we see ourselves and our place in the world.

That is exactly what happened to me in that meadow. And it’s why I’ve become fascinated — almost obsessed — with understanding it.

Death as a Doorway

After my first experience of awe in the meadow, I found myself returning to nature again and again to access that peace — that knowing that I would be okay. I hiked often: feeling my feet on earthy trails, climbing high to look down at the Denver skyline, communing with trees and birds and wildflowers, seeking signs from Ian — hoping he was still there, in some form I couldn’t understand but could feel.

Awe became my ally in grief. It dissolved my ego and connected me to what I can only describe as my mythic story — the story of the soul — which I had yet to comprehend but could sense. It helped me see that this awful tragedy was so much greater than my myopic, day-to-day view of my life. That Ian’s death wasn’t only about loss — it was an invitation to discover myself and embody my soul’s purpose.

This is a key phase in the healing journey and what world- renowned grief expert David Kessler calls “meaning-making — the sixth stage of grief.”

When you experience major trauma, death, or loss, it’s hard to see beyond the pain and suffering. But awe awakened my imagination. It altered my state and helped me see my loss from a higher perspective, so that I could hold the duality — the tragedy of my loss alongside a new narrative of transcendence and truth.

Awe also helped me access gratitude in times of deep grief. It helped me see what I still had alongside all that I had lost. There’s a concept in psychology called the subtraction effect — where you remove something and only then, in hindsight, understand how much it mattered. Losing Ian did exactly that. Because when you witness the person you love struggle to swallow water or snuggle their child, suddenly everything you took for granted becomes luminous — your heartbeat, your breath, your ability to move through the world. Awe helped me feel, viscerally, what a privilege it is to simply be here.

Trauma and awe are actually close cousins — both, by definition, rock you to your core and re-orient your understanding of life. While trauma forces you into that inquiry, awe invites you. While trauma freezes your emotions and traps you in fight or flight, awe frees you. While trauma tends to leave you ruminating in darkness, awe helps you find the light.

Watching Ian slowly suffer and gradually die was traumatic. And at the same time it inspired a sense of awe that feels almost taboo to touch on. Seeing him lie there lifeless — as if all the oxygen had left the room with his last breath — was an experience of awe and terror wrapped into one. Wondering where his soul went. Wondering if there was life beyond death. Seeing his death as a passage, propelling me into an entirely new inquiry about life, death, and what lies beyond both.

Keltner calls this “dark awe” — and he knows it intimately. After his own brother died of cancer, he describes the experience as the one that gave birth to his entire life’s work on awe. His research confirms that dying can be oceanic and awe-filled, and horrifying — often both at once. About a quarter of all awe experiences are dark in nature, threaded with fear and the terror of encountering something too vast to comprehend.

Death doesn’t just move us. It unmakes and remakes us. It was as if Ian’s death — and the trauma of it — cracked me open. And awe rushed in to soften the blow through the cracks.

Why the Collective Needs Awe More Than Ever

Just like Ian’s death cracked my world open, we are collectively descending into the underworld right now. This is “dark awe” at play — leaving us shocked, horrified, and at the same time, invited to question everything.

The loss is everywhere — of certainty, of traditional values, of trust in the systems and leaders we were told would hold us. We are a society grieving a massive loss, whether you’re attuned to it or not. And like any profound loss, it is asking us the same question Ian’s death asked me: will this break you, or will it break you open?

Because here is what I know from the other side of devastation: the crack is the doorway. The moment of being unmade is also the moment awe can rush in — opening up the pathways to new possibilities as we birth a more beautiful world. If we stop numbing, scrolling, performing, and producing long enough to feel the full weight of what is happening around us and remember that we are woven into something vast and alive and worth fighting for.

Our society hasn’t lost its capacity for awe. Our ever-evolving, progress-obsessed modern world has just kept us disconnected from it.

We’ve been brainwashed to believe that high-frequency feelings like awe, bliss, and elation require the right price tag, the exotic destination, the perfect occasion. So we focus our attention on the wrong things.

We’ve been taught that awe lives at a beachside resort in the Bahamas, when it’s right there on your front porch, coffee in hand, watching the sky shift colors before the neighborhood wakes up. That you have to visit the Louvre to be moved — when your child’s finger painting, their wild unfiltered perspective on the world, is just as extraordinary. Awe is the shape of a cloud morphing from an elephant into a flower while you watch. It’s a living room dance party at full volume. The unlikely mash-up of birds chirping and traffic humming on your morning walk.

In our pursuit of more — more wealth, more ambition, more of everything outside ourselves — we end up on a never-ending hamster wheel of chasing, doing, and acquiring. We keep spinning, pushing harder, running faster, and we end up missing the awe that's literally smacking us in the face. Capitalism keeps us behind computers and addicted to our smartphones, separate from real human beings — when awe is experienced outdoors in nature, skin to skin with other bodies, or in the collective electricity of dancing to live music. Awe is felt in life, not in an algorithm.

We’ve become ego-centric and scarcity-driven — so busy protecting what’s ours that we’ve forgotten we’re part of something larger. So many of us are consumed by fear, anxiety, and depression, and these feelings become all-consuming precisely because we have forgotten that we are all connected — to each other, to this earth, to something far greater than ourselves.

We are in dire need of awe!

There’s a story that awe once ended a war…

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote of a six-year conflict between the Lydians and the Medes — battle after battle, no end in sight — until a total solar eclipse turned afternoon into sudden darkness. Filled with awe, the soldiers laid down their weapons and negotiated peace. The historicity is debated, but the moral is not: awe has always had the power to dissolve the boundaries that divide us and remind us we are one.

The good news is that awe is abundant. Like any muscle, you just have to exercise it — to learn to see it, taste it, feel it. To let it stop you in your tracks and change not just the way you see life, but the way you fully experience it.

Becoming a Student of Awe

I am learning how to incorporate more awe into my life.

I’ve felt it in the bliss and gratitude-steeped culture of Bali, and in the electric, transient connection of traveling with fourteen strangers on a pilgrimage to Egypt — whether we were dancing in a random gas station or standing in private ceremony at the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids at dawn.

I’ve felt it taking in a 360-degree view from the top of a 14,000-foot mountain, and in a psilocybin journey where I felt held by the unconditional love of the strangers lying beside me in the ceremony, and simultaneously one star in the grand cosmic scheme.

I’ve felt it in the unity of thousands of people dancing together at a concert, moved by the same bass line, breathing the same air.

But awe is so much simpler than any of that.

I found it this morning, walking out my front door onto the University of Denver campus — where Ian and I once studied together. I felt it as the morning light cast long shadows down an outdoor corridor, creating what looked like an energy vortex. When I stopped to smell fragrant flowers I would normally have walked past. When I paused to notice that a building was shaped like a wave. When I saw a single chair sitting under a tree and felt the weight of all the people who must have rested there — students, strangers, lovers, grievers — all held by the same shade, the same great mother, the same giving tree.

There is a song I keep returning to — “Burgs” by Mt. Wolf. The lyrics hold up a mirror — that we came into this world with a sense of wonder, desperate to see what it was all about — and somewhere along the way, we stopped wondering about the world and started only wondering about ourselves. We forgot what we came here to be a part of.

The song always hits home!

We are in a collective initiation right now. And awe is the way back.

Put down the phone. Close the computer. Go for a walk and find the awe that is waiting in your own backyard. Taste the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Remember that you are embedded in something vast, generous, and alive.

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I’d walk through a series of empty rooms, each containing a single object—a chair in one, an empty vase, a peacock feather in another. In the last room, I’d step through a door and descend a rickety wooden staircase into a dark, cave-like canyon with rocky, shiny black walls.

At the bottom waited a pool of choppy water, churning with ferocious alligators.

The alligators terrified me, so I’d run back up the staircase. But when I looked back to check if I’d reached safety, I’d see an army of skeletons chasing me. I didn’t know why they were after me, but I sensed that if they touched me, they would turn my arm black.

I’d keep running to get back to the empty rooms, and then I’d wake up.

The dream over.

I almost forgot about that dream until I started working with a depth psychologist—a Jungian analyst—after my 32-year-old husband Ian died in 2019. We analyzed the symbols and images together, processing them alongside my grief journey. We decided it represented my fear of the dark: of going fully into the shadows, the subconscious, the hard emotions of anger, sadness, and grief that our culture’s obsession with light keeps repressed.

We named the fear and the innate knowing—when you go into the darkness, it changes you. You die and are reborn. Hence the skeletons turning my skin black.

You don’t go into the underworld and come back unchanged.

Like most subconscious fears, I wasn’t really aware of this one. It only made itself known when Ian’s death forced me into the underworld and I could no longer avoid the grief, sadness, and rage I felt in the aftermath of my loss.

But Ian’s death only touched the surface of the initiations I would have into the underworld. Not just from literal deaths or ones I’d be forced through, but from the metaphorical ones and the ones I would choose too.

In spring of 2023 I pivoted away from my successful grief coaching business—walking away from TV appearances, a large social media community, and a book I’d just published. For the first time, I discovered my essence—the “me” beneath the roles and identities I wore in the upper world: mom, entrepreneur, influencer, coach.

While I touched it and could conceptualize this life force, this prana, this divine essence that connects all of us, I still couldn’t live from that place. I didn’t let my upper world ways die—my ego, my attachment to success, my old identities. So since 2023 until now, I’ve been in purgatory—skimming the surface of the underworld while still clinging to my upper world ways.

Instead of surrendering to the unknown void and allowing something new to emerge, I’ve felt the urgency to produce, to post on social media and launch new programs—so people won’t forget me, so I can make money, sign clients, be the image of success burned into my brain by society. But every time I clung to control, looking for a lifeline out of the void, the underworld pulled me back down—launching workshops with zero sign-ups, speaking on social media to crickets, investing hours in my business with hardly any financial return.

What looked like failure was actually an invitation to descend.

I’ve questioned my purpose, believed I was broken, and felt incredibly isolated—judging myself harshly against colleagues floating by daintily in their light, joy, and upper world ease.

But deep within, I heard a voice encouraging me to keep going. As painful as it’s been, I kept reminding myself this was happening for me. I didn’t know why at the time.

Now it’s coming together.

I’m currently in what I can best describe as an ego death.

These years of purgatory have been inviting me to fully let go—to release control and all perceptions of who I think I am and what I’m meant to do so I can get out of this middle ground and finally, truly die.

To descend into the pit of alligators.

To let the skeletons touch me and change me so I can rise from the underworld fully transformed.

Reborn. Carrying wisdom that only comes through death.

The universe keeps insisting I go deeper — to serve from essence, not ego; soul-led, not driven by success; and in service not just to myself, but to the collective.

In other words, it’s inviting me to connect back to my heart and fuel my path forward with love.

Grief was the face of love that fueled me through Ian’s death, birthing a business to heal others as I healed myself. And now, as I connect back to my heart, the face of love that fumes through me is anger.

My blood is boiling with rage over systems built on hierarchy and control, over the illusion of separation that pits us against each other, over the toxic belief that our worth must be proven through achievement, status, or roles.

We’ve confused big houses and Instagram-worthy lives with self-worth. And it’s killing us. We’ll trade anything—integrity, truth, our souls—to fulfill that image and feel good enough.

But you don’t need to prove you matter. You are enough just for existing.

It’s my soul’s mission to help burn these fallacies down — the beliefs we unconsciously subscribed to at birth that are tearing us apart. And the medicine I keep coming back to?

Death.

Why Death?

On Feb. 11th, 2025, James Van Der Beek died of colon cancer. Videos of him surfaced all over social media, and one in particular caught my eye. In it, he explained how cancer stripped away his ability to be an actor, a dad, a steward of the land — all the identities and roles he’d worn that gave him a sense of who he was and why he mattered. When he had nothing else to give — just a skinny guy with cancer, stripped fully down to his essence, staring at his mortality — he asked: What am I?

He came to this answer: I am worthy of God’s love simply because I exist. If I am worthy of God’s love, shouldn’t I be worthy of my own? And the same is true for you.

You were worthy upon arrival. Divine, whole, and enough — not because of your impact, your income, your role as a partner or parent, or your adherence to any moral code. Those are man-made constructs that give meaning to life, but they are not measures of your worth. And right now, they are being weaponized for power and manipulation.

We need to see through the illusions. To get honest about our shadows. To recognize how much of our behavior is driven by ego, scarcity, and fear.

We need to summon the courage to face the darkness — to descend into the pit of alligators, to let the skeletons touch us and change us — so that we rise connected to our hearts and guided by our souls once again.

Death isn’t a destination. It’s not the full stop at the end of the road — that’s just the ego’s definition. Death is a process we move through multiple times in our lives, releasing what no longer serves and stripping away the fallacies that keep us disconnected from ourselves.

Right now, we desperately need a collective ego death.

And it won’t be easy.

But this is what the moment is demanding of us:

Let the ego die.

Dissolve the cultural worldviews our identities are fused to so we can finally see each other as one.

Deconstruct the images of self-worth we’re killing ourselves—and others—to attain.

Remember that power isn’t about accumulating wealth or manipulating masses to follow you.

Real power resides within—in knowing your worth, your truth, what you stand for.

That’s the medicine I’m here to deliver.

But I have to go first. I have to descend into the pit, let the skeletons touch me and change me. I have to prove you can enter the underworld and come back transformed.

This Substack is where I’ll document what I find in the dark—not in polished think pieces, but in real time, as I’m living it.

If you’re ready to face your own skeletons, I’ll see you there.