I am jumping back in now to share that I've just gone through a major transition. As of July 1st I am retired from UCSB! This was something I've been planning for a couple of years so I didn't actually expect it to be emotionally impactful. Nevertheless there were some surprises. I think the thing that hit me the hardest was realizing that before she got sick Michelle and I had been planning for me to retire at age 60 so we could travel the world and have fun together. This was supposed to be our transition, not just my transition, and I had actually forgotten about that until a few weeks after I retired.

I don't miss the work at all, and I’ve really let go of my identity as a professor (I will have to stay a little bit engaged because I have a PhD student with about two more years to go). At least for now I am thrilled not to have to think about UCSB or the Bren School or anything to do with work. While I still have to consciously remind myself that it's okay to relax, I'm finding that I really enjoy being relaxed!

I'm writing this in the Taipei Airport, waiting for my connecting flight to go to Bali. I will spend the next three weeks there, partly doing a yoga retreat with two of my teachers from Santa Barbara and also doing a two-week group tour of Bali and the neighboring island, Lombok. I will try to share some photos and highlights over the coming weeks.

I actually took a pre-retirement trip to Brazil in the spring, where I got a foretaste of how wonderful it is just to relax. in July I did a 10-day silent meditation retreat, where I let go of some of my attachments to the stories that are always being spun up in my head. That's a whole other kind of relaxation!

I also decided to really push forward on the cannabis and ovarian cancer project that Michelle and I started about 6 years ago. The results from the preclinical research we funded are really promising but there is a long way to go before we have a medicine that can help patients. I am committing myself to spend the next three years really working hard to see if there is a path forward with that.

So overall I feel like I am not any less busy than I was before I retired! The difference is that I’m getting to do what I want to do 😄

Love and hugs 💕

Hummingbirds were probably Michelle’s favorite birds, and she planted an amazing collection of Salvias in our front yard to attract and sustain them. I realized then that I hadn’t been seeing many of them…. And when I got home from the ceremony I saw them everywhere!

I was also extra motivated to get the irrigation fixed so that the salvias would keep blooming through the summer 😁

Recently I drew the hummingbird card from a wild animal deck. The description opens with:

What could be more perfect!

So when you see a hummingbird, know that Michelle is thinking of you, and make space for her in your heart.

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The Eyes have it

Some of you know about the saga of my eyes, starting with surgery for a retinal detachment in August 2022 . Because of a runaround resulting from the disconnect in the US health system between optometry and ophthalmology, I was slow to pursue treatment and it turned into a fairly major surgery with a long recovery process.

A side effect of retinal surgery is rapid cataract development, so I had cataract surgery last March. Since they are replacing the lens already, they can put in a prescription lens which fully corrects the vision, so I was looking forward to life without glasses! And it is a surgery with a remarkably high success rate and rapid recovery, with vision returning in a day or less. My surgeon had performed tens of thousands of these surgeries (they are quick!), so I was confident. First surgery was on the eye that had the retinal detachment… but the vision didn’t clear. I was supposed to have the second eye done a week later, but panicked, I kept putting it off.

It turned out that the retinal surgery had damaged the nerves to my cornea. The retinal specialist I had been following up with didn’t notice this, as he was focused on the back of my eye; and it’s uncommon enough that the cataract surgeon didn’t look for it (even though both knew I had extreme dry eye, one of the symptoms).

The dry eye meant that that my cornea got more damaged by the cataract surgery than normal. Another effect of the lack of enervation was that “heal me” signals were not getting through; normally, corneal scratches heal within hours or days; mine took a month. That slow healing led to scar tissue developing, which I have still, right in the middle of my visual field. One result is haziness, which is particularly noticeable in low light; the other, more problematic, is multiple images just in that one eye. If I can isolate just one them it’s pretty sharp, but they overlap, causing everything to seem blurry.

So I kept putting off the cataract surgery on my right eye, and eventually put it on indefinite hold.

Since I was still looking through the external lens of my glasses in my right eye, which has always created a lot of visual distortion (that my brain accommodates), the images from my two eyes were grossly out of alignment, and so I wore a patch on my left eye a lot of the time. And the glasses were old enough that they were scratched and somewhat out of date, so even the vision in my right eye wasn’t that great.

This was the state of my vision throughout my summer of transformation and joy. At some point in early July I reached acceptance, saying to myself, “Maybe my vision is going to suck from here on out. That’s OK. I can still see well enough to function, and I’m going to keep embracing life.”

A September visit (scheduling was a nightmare) to a leading specialist at UCLA confirmed the diagnosis and prognosis of my cataract specialist here: the scar tissue would likely never go away; I should take an annoying medication that often helps restore the corneal innervation (to avoid future problems in the eye); and my right eye had no risk factors and should recover from cataract surgery just fine.

So I spent the fall taking Oxervate, a newly developed and insanely expensive (thank you, UCSB insurance!) eye drop containing nerve growth hormone. For 8 weeks, every 2 hours I had to draw fluid out of a sealed vial into a syringe (people kept asking if I was diabetic) and squirt it into my eye. Thank goodness for medication reminders on my iPhone and Apple Watch! There has been a slight increase in sensation on the surface of my eye, and the dry eye is less bad, so I’m hopeful that there’s been enough regrowth to reduce future risks.

Ok, so that’s the bad news backstory. Whenever someone noticed that I had eye issues (which happened more frequently once I was constantly putting in these clearly unconventional drops), they wanted to know the full story. I got so tired of telling it! Especially as it really wasn’t part of my identity now. What’s with the morbid fascination with the gory details of someone’s medical history?!?! Michelle had to deal with this in spades. My advice to you: if someone wants to talk about their chronic health issues, or their current medical status, you won’t be able to shut them up. If they don’t bring it up, please respect their desire to just get on with living life, and don’t ask!

Happily, here is where the good news starts.

It turns out that the multiple images in my left eye were functionally a form of astigmatism, and they can be corrected with a scleral contact lens. Once I was done with the Oxervate I could start wearing that. It’s not perfect, as the dryness in my eye leads to the lens getting hazy over time (and it’s not the sort of lens that you can pop out and back in anywhere), and it doesn’t reduce the low light problems, but it’s a huge improvement.

Even better, I finally screwed up my courage to have the other cataract surgery done. I had a lot of anxiety and fear in the weeks leading up to it (more on that below), but I followed through in early December. My parents came out for a week to be my guide if things should go wrong… but the surgery went perfectly! As soon as the dilation wore off I could see; the cornea has healed normally, and I now have 20/20 vision without glasses! That’s for distance vision, and I’m still dialing in the right power for reading glasses (anyone have recommendations for a brand that is easy to keep clean?!?). But the combination of sharp vision and no glasses is radically changing my engagement with the world, for the first time I’m finding it easy to make eye contact, and my sense of connection (with other people, and with myself in the mirror), has ratcheted up to a whole new level.

👁😍👀

Journeys (the conventional sort)

I traveled a bit, mostly in the early part of the fall. This was going to be its own post but was also waylaid by my writing collapse.

The Eastern Sierra

In late September, I journeyed up the Owens Valley, on the east side of the Sierra Nevada, with a group of PhD students from my program at UCSB. This was the annual PhD Student Retreat, a chance for students to play and bond across cohorts before the school year began. Faculty are always invited to participate, and so, for the first time since Michelle’s diagnosis, I joined them.

We drove the 5+ hours from Santa Barbara in 3 vans, and used the time to get to know one another in ways that don’t always come up in the academic setting of the university (“What’s one of your most interesting travel experiences?”)(I had the best answer to that one, thanks to Michelle’s skill at finding grand adventures). We stayed for 2 nights in the bunkhouses at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab, a UCSB-run research site just outside of the ski town of Mammoth Lakes, where we explored the network of stream channels, cooked and ate communally, and continued to build relationships over games, jigsaw puzzles, and conversations. I shared my summer’s journey into embodiment, and just about everyone was fascinated and intrigued (although I’ve only seen one of them show up at an ecstatic dance…).

During the days we went on various expeditions in the area. One morning we went up to the Mammoth Mountain ski area (which was still in summer mode—mountain bikes rather than skis—but in the midst final maintenance before the onset of winter), where we met with Jeff Dozier, a retired UCSB professor who studied snow for his whole career. He took us on a tour of his remarkable instrumentation suite that measures everything you can imagine about snow. You thought that all that mattered was depth, and maybe how powdery it was? Think again! At this site, with a wide array of high tech (lasers, lidar) and low tech (buckets that tip every time they fill with water), Jeff and his colleagues measure (more or less continually) the weight of the snow, how fast it is melting, how fast it is evaporating, the height and shape of the snow surface (sun cups turn out to be really important!), the microscopic structure (from snowflakes to large ice crystals), the intensity of the sun’s rays and how they are reflected or absorbed by the snow, and more. From all these data they are continually learning more about the surprisingly complex life of snow; and from that understanding they are dramatically improving our ability to predict how much water is stored in the Sierra snowpack each year, a vital resource for California’s farmers and city folk alike.

Another day we drove up into the White Mountains, the next range to the east of the Sierras (and just as tall), from which we stunning views of the Sierra crest. It is also the home of the oldest grove of bristlecone pines; some trees are more than 4000 years old. I had last been there more than 25 years ago, and I swear I recognized many of the individual trees. The story of these trees, who grow so slowly in that resource-starved environment that the wood is too dense for fungus and insects to invade, is fascinating; and their gnarled and twisted shapes are visually stunning. The grove is above 11000 feet, so we were all panting and viscerally felt why this was such a challenging place to live!

Our journey was brief but refreshing, and it was a delight to become friends with students who I otherwise barely interact with in the corridors of Bren Hall.

Under the Oaks

Two weeks later, I went on a men’s retreat, not too far from Santa Barbara. I’ve already written about some of the work we did there, but it was also a refreshing outdoor experience.

We were camping on a lovely private property, in an isolated valley with a substantial creek running through it (yes, still running in early October—thank you to last spring’s torrents of rain!), with lovely old oak trees providing shade (which we desperately needed, as the daytime temperature was still in the 90s). As I was digging the tent and sleeping bag out of the attic, and trying to find a thermarest that still held air, I realized it was the first time that I’d been camping in at least a decade. Even though Michelle and I had each done loads of camping and backpacking before we met, we did very little camping and no backpacking together. I really can’t say why that was.

Anyhow, it was great to spend 4 days outside. And the bug bites didn’t start to itch until I got home.

Annularity

A day after I got my retreat, my friend Jessie called and said, “I’m driving to Utah on Friday to see the annular eclipse. You should come!” At first I fussed and fumed, saying, “That’s ridiculous!” Then I realized that I was projecting an old pattern of feeling put upon and withdrawing in response, thought that it could be a great opportunity, and embraced it. So off we went.

It was indeed objectively ridiculous, 10+ hours of drive time each way for a half hour phenomenon, and Jessie had to do all the driving as this was the nadir of my vision and I was just starting the every-2-hours eyedrops. But the road trip itself was great, my body and my emotions were in an incredibly free and open state coming out of the retreat, and the hours rolled by in great conversation. I’ve known Jessie since I met Michelle, and she was one of the folks that really supported and engaged me after Michelle died, but we’d never had time for more than an hour or so of conversation at a time. On a journey like this, there’s time for the full, unabridged version of stories, and we explored our current and past experiences in great detail.

Jessie also had a great playlist of medicine music playing, and by Saturday morning, driving through the dawn from Cedar City to an empty spot in the middle of the eclipse path, I experienced an extraordinary feeling of expansion, of connection, of universal love. This where I first realized the metaphor of the shack and the mansion that I described in my last post.

The eclipse was great too. I’d had seen a couple of partial solar eclipses, but seeing the sun nearly covered by the moon, with just a ring of fire around the edge, was really special. It didn’t get as dark as we expected, but there was a dimness to the light that had a quality unlike any other source of dimness — none of the red-shift of dawn or dusk, and none of the filtering that comes from cloud cover. Glancing at the sun with the naked eye, the sun still appeared to be a disk; only with the eclipse glasses could we make out the ring. Full annularity was about 20 minutes, but we hung out for several hours, reveling in the astronomical phenomenon. And on the drive home we celebrated by climbing an isolated desert peak.

In the shadow of Mt. Hood

At the end of October I flew up to Oregon, and spent several days visiting the Bests, the family of my Best friend from college, who live in and around Hood River. It was a restful and delightful few days of living simply, walking in the woods, warming up at the wood stove, catching up, and simply enjoying being together. And the dawn views of Mt. Hood from my bedroom window!

Thank you, Wendy, Dick, and Jan! 💞

Heilung

In early December, I went with some friends to a performance in Los Angeles, by a group called Heilung. They call their performances rituals rather than concerts. I won’t really try to describe what they do; go check out this video to a get a flavor (a full performance is here). In person, the drumbeats reverberate throughout the body, and the whole experience was uplifting and cathartic.

New year, new energy

Since sometime in late summer, I had been thinking of finding a housemate. Not so much because I need the money, but rather because I wanted to bring new energy into the house. And also, it’s kind of ridiculous to live alone in a 3-bedroom house when there’s so much need for housing in this town; I was motivated to share this valuable resource with the community. I really imagined someone sharing the space, and decided, “yes, I want to do this!”

After putting out this intention for a while, it all came together quite suddenly: Lea Anna, who I had already met at some dances, announced at the end of a dance that they were looking for a place to live (having recently moved back to Santa Barbara); we talked briefly; Lea Anna came over to see the house and room, and we ended up talking for a couple of hours, followed by another long phone conversation as we got to know each other; and I decided that I liked this person well enough to share my space with them.

So now Lea Anna is living in what was Michelle’s office. Lea Anna and I continue to get along well, and their presence is nudging and supporting me in my self-care commitments of keeping the house tidy and cooking more. When our schedules overlap we enjoy talking, and overall the house feels much less lonely. And the experience is giving my lots of opportunities to examine my ways of being in the home, to distinguish the ones that I really value from the ones that are simply habit.

Out with the old

Of course, cleaning out Michelle’s office (which had been on my to-do list for a long time) was a chore. But I found that there was a lot that was easy to part with, and it felt good to clear and sort and consolidate. I still have a pile in my office to sort through more carefully.

There were some emotional gotchas—for example, I stumbled upon a gratitude journal that Michelle had started just a couple of weeks before we started dating. Seeing me appear in there—from the very first date—and how quickly I became a daily mention just left my heart wide open and raw with love and loss.

The books, pictures, mementos that Michelle had brought to our relationship, and that had special meaning to her, and meaning to me only because they were associated with her, turned out to be easier than I expected to dispose of (big donation to the Planned Parenthood Book Sale!) or store (just a few things, into the attic).

And as I continue this process throughout the house, making room for Lea Anna in the kitchen and various other ways, is proving cathartic; I’m steadily purging items that I’ll never use or that have long since passed their usefulness. And that, in turn, releases a surprising amount of emotional burden.

Building a foundation for a sustainable transformation

Remember how, early in the summer, I dove headlong into the movement medicine—dance, yoga, somatic work—and then my body rebelled? Well, that kept happening, even as I got better at recognizing the physical injuries early, shortening the recovery period. This fall, I finally realized that I was trying to become a butterfly without doing the hard work of metamorphosis, trying to fly in a caterpillar’s body, and that really wasn’t working. The physical issues were just one part of that.

I’ve freed myself from many of the barriers I had erected around self care, and I’m looking ahead to the next period of my life with hope, joy and eager anticipation. And so I’m finally motivated to do the work to sustain my transformation. For example, my body has lots of physical weaknesses imbalances from my scoliosis, and this is part of what leads to repeated injuries in yoga and dance. I made a long list of positive reasons why I want to strengthen my body, the first of which was to be able to continue doing my movement medicine and move my emotions through my body. And so I’m now working with a teacher to develop a systematic program—and actually doing the daily practices that will slowly remodel my body and let me fly like a butterfly. This is new for me, and it leaves me feeling good in my body and good about myself.

All of this unfolded throughout December, around the 6-month anniversary of my initial opening, and the proximity to New Years felt mostly coincidental. But when people started talking about resolutions, I felt called to say this: “In 2024 I will be intentional about my intentions.”

Ringing in the New Year

I filled the holidays with dance, yoga, and socializing with friends new and old. I let myself be outrageous, going to a Christmas Day yoga class in the Grinch PJs that I had gotten for a pajama party at Allison’s a few days earlier; with a trip to a thrift store and Lea Anna’s help, outfitting myself with the blingiest outfit at the New Year’s Eve ecstatic dance at Yoga Soup; and wearing some of that bling to the yoga class the next morning. Over New Year’s I danced three times in 24 hours, including a really sweet dance on the beach on 1/1 (from 11:11 to 1:11), and soaking in the Montecito hot springs with a delightful group of folks for hours after dark on the 2nd (I’ve already been back this week). I’m keeping this energy going, with nearly every day involving something that is fun, novel, cathartic, or just generally expanding my heart and feeling of connection.

The later part of this video shows the beach dance:

But I’m still struggling with how to share the story. I’ve tried telling the linear narrative of the retreat; it gets long-winded and tedious fast. And besides, the effects of that long weekend are still working through me.

The best I’ve done in talking with people is to share vignettes. So that’s what I’ll offer here.

So the intimacy thing — yes, absolutely. The leaders of the retreat had only invited people they had worked with before, who they knew would be able to open up and go all in. And we did, sharing our hearts, our fears, our wounds, our deepest shame. I talked about some things that I’ve never told anyone before, and felt not just safe and supported, but called to do so. Openly describing the thoughts, words and deeds that I am most ashamed of—while doing nothing to undo any harm they may caused to others—released their power over me, as I acknowledged and took responsibility for them rather than shoving them into the back of the couch. And thus I can see how to act differently in the future.

The bonds formed from such intimate sharing are extraordinary.

We spent a lot of time talking about the “masculine archetypes:” the King, the Warrior, the Magician, and the Lover. These had been described in the 1980s as a synthesis of common themes from both mythology and Jungian psychology,1 and played an important role in the development of the mythopoetic mens movement. In their idealized form these archetypes are largely selfless: the Warrior, for example, acts decisively in defense of his realm (whatever that might be), doing exactly enough but no more, and explicitly not acting out of anger, ego, or any other individual emotion.

We are not meant to identify with one of these archetypes, to try to become, say, the King, for that leads to madness. Instead, we strive to recognize that we contain aspects of all of the archetypes, and that inner wholeness comes from balancing the energies represented by the archetypes.

Furthermore, each archetype has shadows, both inflated and deflated, in which the idealized energy and intent is distorted by our history of trauma and psychological wounds. For example, the inflated king is the Tyrant, who is self-centered, terrified of his own weakness, grandiose and defensive; the deflated magician is the Deflated Innocent One, elusive and slippery, who avoids directly answering questions and shuns risks and rejects others’ judgements. How can we lessen the grip of these shadows?

Learning about the archetypes and their shadows, I realized that the way I habitually acted, the beliefs I had about myself and the world, were described nearly perfectly by the deflated shadows of each archetype.

There were a couple of medicine ceremonies; my response to each was incredibly somatic. I was so primed for this from my whole summer of embodiment, but especially by Kiaora showing me how my chronic muscle tightness was as much emotional as physical, by Teagan’s guidance into loving my body. As I dropped into the medicine, I felt muscles releasing all over my body, relaxing away from chronic fears of “I can’t do that” or “It’s not safe to do that” that had made my body so rigid. I experienced intense awareness of my skin, of all the tissues in my body. In the days and weeks afterwards, whether in yoga class or simply moving on my own, my body twisted, bent and reached like never before.

Through the course of individual and group exercises, I became aware of how many of the stories I tell about myself cast me as the victim—I have no control, I acted that way because of such-and-such an event in childhood, my locked up muscles are because of my scoliosis…. So nothing is my fault, and there’s nothing I can do to change things.

Unlike in the earlier retreat in June, where I entered with full awareness of my false narrative of unworthiness, this realization that I habitually played the victim was new. And in fact, I didn’t really understand it until I had stripped it away, discovering an inner being that did have self efficacy, that could take responsibility for his actions, that was capable of effecting inner and outer change.

The grip of the shadow archetypes is much lessened, so that I can see that I actually do embody the qualities of the ideal archetypes, and I have the confidence to take action from that position. This has manifested, for example, in leading a committee meeting at work, where instead of being nervous and feeling out of control, I was calm, just the right amount of prepared, didn’t feel threatened by differing opinions, and was able to hold open a space for us to come to some useful conclusions.

Internally, I often find myself feeling confident and empowered, my whole body buzzing with energy. On the way to see the eclipse, I was suddenly filled with overwhelming emotion, which I was eventually able to describe as fullness, oneness, and connection. This is really different from happiness or joy; rather, it is feeling at home in my Self. This experience of wholeness is deeply soul-satisfying.

As I have talked about this, a powerful metaphor has emerged: Previously, I felt as though I had been living in a tiny shack. Then I stripped off the wallpaper of victimhood, and revealed that I was inhabiting a vast mansion. For weeks my energy has been settling and spreading, as I stretch out my awareness to explore this unexpected realm.

There are more stories to tell, and they will come. I have a whole essay in mind about inviting my shadows into my home. In the meantime I’m still moving, dancing and yogaing, but moving inwardly as well, and that inward movement is freeing new energies that feed back to my outward movement (at 5Rhythms on Monday I was feeling Stillness throughout all of the rhythms—even through the shaking and vibration of Chaos—leading from my belly and from my heart) and carry me forward into a growing capacity for intentionality, an awareness and delight in connection.

Aho.

On Monday I read this essay by Liz Gumbinner, about what it’s like to be a New Yorker with a birthday on September 11, and her journey to reclaim the day for herself. Pretty soon I found myself crying, and continued crying to the end. This was surprising to me, as I don’t usually get emotional about 9/111, and I asked myself, “What’s going on here?” First, I identified that the essay had a clear arc leading from grief (that’s where I started crying), to endurance, and finally to rebirth. “Well, that’s my story too!” I thought. But then I remembered that another significant date was coming up, and which had sensitized me to the grief.

9/26

It will soon be the second anniversary of Michelle’s final farewell. I knew it was up ahead on the calendar, but hadn’t thought deeply about it. But clearly, my emotional body was tracking the change of seasons, and was remembering the grief. Throughout Monday afternoon I became progressively more agitated, unbalanced, physically clumsy.

It’s on odd thing, knowing when you will die. In a men’s group last weekend, one of the activities was, “Lie on your back. Realize that, sometime in the future, you will lie on your back for the very last time. Imagine yourself in that moment, knowing that it is the last time.” I felt that my body was dissolving into the Earth. A sense of peace and relaxation washed through me. I thought, “Oh, so this is what Michelle felt.”

Michelle and I knew a week in advance exactly when she would die.2 She had plenty of farewells with family and friends, but the two of us had long since said the things that needed saying, reminisced about our happy memories, gotten all the practical things in order. So we spent a lot of time simply being together. Sometimes I read to her, and we talked about what we were reading (two really important books on illness and dying3). We told each other how much we loved each other. We reassured each other that I would be ok. It was a peaceful time for both of us.

And as the days ticked by, we both marveled that there was nothing traumatic about being one day closer to her death. It was just one more medical procedure in a long string of medical procedures… but for the first time, we were certain what the outcome would be. And that was somehow, weirdly, calming; reassuring, even.

As I write about this, as I relive those days, gentle tears are welling in my eyes. But in contrast to this time a year ago, I’m feeling almost as much nostalgia as grief. For that week brought us together in a tighter connection, a deeper love, than anytime previously in our relationship (and, as many of you know, that’s a really high bar!). Rather than aching hollowness, my heart is blown up like a balloon, full of that remembered love. I remember, and my mood is subdued, but I’m no longer heartbroken.

And I know she’s cheering me on…

9/11

For Monday was also the 3-month anniversary of my rebirth. My heart-opening. My realization that I am worthy of love. I celebrated by … wait for it … dancing.

I arrived at the 5Rhythms dance with that agitated, unbalanced, clumsy energy I described earlier. For the first hour I was inward turning, closed in on myself, emotionally congested. But suddenly my heart sprung open, letting all that go. I started spinning across the room, arms outflung, swirling in a sense of freedom and emotional release. And the next morning, instead of being stiff from the exercise, my body was free and easy, totally without pain: I had had a physical release as well as an emotional one.

That physical freedom only lasted a day; my body’s habits then reasserted themselves. But it was a delightful preview of what is possible. And more generally, in the weeks since my last post (when I was still clawing my way back from back spasms), I have become much more intentional about my movement practices, both by listening to my body when it says, “No, I don’t think so,” and by actively seeking guidance on specific issues I’ve identified. I have surpassed where I was when my body rebelled in July, while building a grounded confidence in my body and learning to progress at a sustainable pace. And I’ve had some great teachers.

As summer turns towards fall, the days get shorter and cooler, and the school year starts4, I am moving into a new phase of the journey I started three months ago. So far, I’ve mostly been reveling in the freedom from self-doubt and other negative messages about myself, playing with my new-found embodiment. It’s now time to dig in and find out who I want to become. The word “audacity” popped into my head earlier this week. Let’s see where it leads me!

Celebrating my teachers

About two weeks ago I realized that there are three teachers at Yoga Soup whose classes resonate with me so strongly that I make every effort to arrange my schedules around them. I’m listing their class times in case you want to try them out. And read to the end to see what they all have in common.

Jazmin Ment (@jazminmentyoga) teaches vinyasa (flow) yoga Mondays 9-10 and Saturdays 10-11. I started going to her classes in early July, and by the end of the month I realized that I felt like she had tailor-made each class for exactly what I needed that week. I have so many “aha” moments, where Jazmin suggests a tiny adjustment in a muscle, a visualization, a clarifying intention, and suddenly everything shifts. Her Monday morning class also streams online if you’re not in Santa Barbara.

Kiaora Fox (@kiaorafox) teaches the 5Rhythms dance class Mondays 6:30-8 (also streaming online). This was where it all began for me! Kiaora has taught me how to stop thinking about movement with my head, and instead trust my feet, my hips, my arms to lead me. Every week is different, and I still find that Kiaora creates the safest feeling space, of all the dances, to really explore and express my emotions.

Teagan Rose (@teaganrose.embodiedarts) teaches a class called “Somatic activation,” Saturdays at 12:30 (as well as Monday evening and Wednesday morning classes at Power of Your Om, another yoga studio in town). It’s not yoga, and it’s not dance. Her classes incorporate a wide variety of movement exercises that increase awareness of the body, finding out what parts of the body are asking for your attention, what they want you to do, what happens when you follow their suggestions. Working with Teagan has changed my relationship with my body: I am more aware of its messages, and give it opportunities to lead, even outside of dance.

While these three teachers work within very different traditions and practices, they are all explicitly focused on teaching embodiment: getting out of the head and dropping into the body, not just for fitness or meditative stress reduction, but to access and use the body’s wisdom. They are highly attuned to their students, adapting their classes to what is happening in the room. They are really good at finding words (visualizations, metaphors, instructions for precise physical adjustments) that nudge us deeper into what is, after all, a nonverbal practice. I learn something new from each of them every week. And their classes are fun. I am so grateful to Jazmin, Kiaora, and Teagan for guiding me on my journey into embodiment.

A happy equinox to you all!

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For two weeks (an eternity in my new time sense) I had been virtually motionless—no dance, no yoga, just a tiny bit of walking—while I let my back recover. J. reminded me of trigger point massage, and that seemed to help—and unlike previous times when I had only done it a couple of times, I kept it up, 3-4 times per day, getting increasing release in my back, until even the trigger points themselves are becoming less tender (which, in theory, should leave my back less vulnerable).

Did I mention that 2 weeks was a long time? I was starting to lose my somatic memory, it was getting harder to call up that feeling of being in motion. And I barely saw anyone, as I was also getting over a pretty strong cold (I basically slept for the two days after I cancelled my trip). My social life consisted of the virtual interactions—comments, texts, emails, phone calls—from all of you after my previous newsletter. Thank you!

By this weekend I was feeling pretty good—the cold was gone, I could walk around the neighborhood without back pain. So Sunday night I tried a half-hour dance at home.3 There a few movements that felt a little dangerous, and parts of my back that developed a bit of an ache. But nothing like the spasm precursors that I’d been tiptoeing around the week before. The next morning my back was fully recovered, so I decided that I could (carefully) move back into dance and yoga.

So I went to 5Rhythms on Monday, a gentle yoga class on Tuesday, and a “breath & movement” class on Wednesday. I cried a little bit in each of them. It felt like I was coming home to my body.

5Rhythms, being dance, was far and away the most energetic of these, and I was fully prepared to bail out at any time. Fortunately the group was smaller than usual, there were others in physical recovery, and as K. commented at the end, there was a lot of “inner dancing” going on—dancers turned inward emotionally, and with restrained movement to match. Certainly no exuberance. Which was good, it removed a stimulus to be exuberant myself. But I was apparently still emoting, for K. looked to me first in the sharing circle. I had to say, “I have no words. Lots of feelings in my body, but no words.”

The breath & motion class started with a “focus on the breath” exercise. But this wasn’t just the meditator’s attention to the air flowing in and out of the nostrils. Or even the yoga practice of noticing the rise and fall of the chest and belly. No, here a detailed exploration of the the diaphragm moving down, the ribs expanding, all to pull air into the lungs—that was just the start. Then we investigated the do-si-do of oxygen and carbon dioxide, swapping places between the alveoli and the capillaries. We watched the heart pump that oxygen-rich blood, through the arteries, out to the capillaries, all throughout the bodies. Celebrated another chemical dance as energy-giving oxygen moved into the cells and all the metabolic waste came out. Followed the return path all the way to the outbreath (sadly, we did not get into a detailed exploration of ATP). By the end, my body was buzzing with molecular awareness. And with that, I could find deep release when we transitioned into motion.

And so, last night I watched the super blue moon rise over the waves, while dancing… and howling…. Being in the company of bodies in joyful motion, seeing friends, however fleetingly. Connecting with the sand beneath my feet, between my toes, drawing me into its embrace; with the clear blue sky, fading into midnight black, bearing the Moon on her path of illumination; with the ocean waves, reflecting the moon, caressing my legs, offering to bowl me over; with the fiery energy of the dancers, and the literal fire offered by fire spinners and fireworks.

This morning, my body is content.

Writing, honestly

I’ve been having an online conversation with another Substack writer (someone I had met, briefly but lastingly, years ago) who is also groping towards honesty in their communication with the world. While I’m still pondering the Venn diagram of honesty, truth, and transparency, here are some insights that have come to me

Being honest requires knowing one’s own truth. But the mind is a poor guide to this: it likes to make up stories, and then believe them fervently. Many times this summer I’ve had some great insight, about myself, about the universe, and want to shout it from the rooftops. The next day, the next week, I realize that it’s a total crock of rancid butter. And hope that nobody was actually paying attention to what I had said.

The honest truth is in the body, in the heart, in the gut, even in the hips and feet. And if you were here in the room with me, you could see and feel my truths. But the body has no words. How, then, to communicate with you, dear friends, who not right here in this present moment?

Last week, my friend R. shared some of their writing with me, a series of very short pieces. My body responded immediately. I eventually found these words to respond:

I feel as though your spirit has burst forth from your body and ripped open my chest. My heart is seared by the intensity of your imagery.

But it had taken me half an hour to battle past the cliches and platitudes (which, in addition to their inherent faults, completely failed to encompass the emotional breadth of R.’s writing), to carefully examine my body’s responses, to find a metaphor (that dreaded character from high school English) that sorta kinda reflected, however palely, my true response. And I still feel as though I’m emulating Plato in his cave.

Nevertheless, doing this work, trying to find the words to express my body’s truth, leaves me feeling connected to you, as though we were together, sharing experiences with each other.

Oddly enough, transparency is not the same as honesty, and may even be opposed to it. A political scientist I know says that open meeting laws are really bad for effective policy making, as each participant performs for their political base instead of doing the deep work of shedding preconceptions, of groping towards shared understanding, of finding a solution that all can live with and that might actually work. Likewise, if I were sharing a transparent, real time, blow by blow account of my inner work, then I would, despite my best intentions, be editing, performing, to gain your approval. Or perhaps to shock you. But in any case, not letting you see me as foolish, as shameful, as insipid, as mean spirited. And you know what? I have all those moments, and they are an important part of the work. So as I get to know my Shadow, negotiate with it, integrate it, then even the shadow play is counterproductive.

One final thing: I’m quite aware that this kind of public honesty that I’m trying to practice is made much safer by my privilege within American society—of being white, being male, being straight. Of being financially well off and near the end of my career. Of not being a public figure. The tangible risks I face are low. I’m not sure yet what to do with that, but I wanted to acknowledge it.

What I’m reading

I’m re-reading Iron John. It’s a book that’s easy to read quickly, nodding along to the commentary, which is what I did the first time I read it. But it bears closer inspection. Like a good poem (and Robert Bly was primarily a poet), nearly every sentence has something to offer up under careful introspection. It’s a book about traditional male initiation rites, and the emotional and societal maladies that arise from the lack of such rites in modern society. Ultimately, it’s a book about really growing up. Through this second, juicy, reading, I’ve been learning a lot about myself.

I’ve also been reading Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins (I had read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues long ago, at an age when I was mostly interested in the sex scenes, but for some reason never picked up Robbins since). It came up in the same context as “Sometimes a Wild God,” the poem I linked to last time. The novel includes a (fading) wild god, examinations of the body, of the senses. And, of course, the magic of perfume. All wrapped up in an entertaining story. Yesterday afternoon, when reading the pages that described Alobar’s secrets to non-aging and immortality, I found some striking parallels to the breath work I had just done that morning.

Over the past week, I watched Good Omens 2 (Prime). Don’t bother; re-watch (or read) the original instead. I’m usually a huge fan of Neil Gaiman’s work, but in my opinion his attempt to channel Terry Pratchett (co-creator with Neil of the original Good Omens, and since deceased) falls flat. It ends up with neither Terry’s excruciating absurdity nor Neil’s rich world building. Admittedly, it’s hard to follow up on a story about the ending of the Apocalypse. In which all the truly surprising features of the world have already been revealed. The result felt to me felt like a soap opera. With angels and demons. And a painfully transparent and unimaginative hook for a third season.

45

My story spans the Northern Hemisphere’s Summer Solstice, Midsummer’s Day. Traditionally, summer is a time of growth, of fertility. Across Northern Europe, Midsummer was celebrated with great bonfires, perhaps representing the life-giving Sun. People would leap through the transformative fire.

Darkness

This winter and spring were dim and grey for me. I felt stuck in my ongoing grief for Michelle, entombed and abandoned in this beautiful home she had created for me. An eye surgery went wrong, leaving me with only one functional eye (temporarily? forever? remains to be seen), and without peripheral vision I was afraid to venture out into the world, missing the wildflower extravaganza that had emerged across California. And old, old, demons, who for so long had been kept at bay by the joy that was Michelle, came bursting forth. Shame. Inadequacy. Worthlessness. Helplessness.

I was desperately unhappy. I descended into all sorts of isolating, self-destructive habits. Nothing immediately life-threatening, but certainly life-shortening and soul-diminishing. I knew that I would feel better if I stopped, but one of my demons was I-Am-Not-Worthy-Of-Care, and that extended even to self-care.

In May I wrote in my journal,

How can I get past my negative self-talk of “I’m no good”? I think about all the things I “have” to do, [long list of projects]. Not all of [the projects], just one of them. And I feel overwhelmed, I want to shut down, I don’t even want to try, I’m sure I’ll fail, or that if I succeed it will just be never ending. So what’s the point in trying? And if I do make a to-do list and actually work through it then my feeling of overwhelm just keeps growing. It’s like, “This [someone who gets stuff done] is not who I am!” How can I relax into being a person who actually engages with life?

I was deep in the quicksand, and only sinking further. Then a friend intervened.

1. Heart-opening

I trusted my friend’s judgement in this. And so I went.

What was the experience like, you ask? That’s for an offline conversation. But here’s what it did for me.

I had some insights. For example, I realized that I was holding a tightness in my chest that mirrored the physical discomfort that Michelle had carried ever since they cracked her sternum and cut out part of her diaphragm during her first surgery, way back in 2016. Recognizing that, I was able to release that sympathetic suffering, and relax.

I had hours of peace, without agitation, without self-judgement, without longing, without fantasies for the future or recriminations for the past.

At a particular point in the ceremony, on the second day, all thought was burned from my skull, I was simultaneously uplifted and grounded, I expelled all the darkness from my body, my chest opened and presented my heart to the world.

Joy built throughout the remainder of the day.

By the end of the weekend, I felt light. I felt open. I felt connected. I loved myself. I was at peace. And suffusing it all, joy. Others at the ceremony said I was radiant. And so I was.

2. Embodying

So said my friend, and so I went.

It was the final week of the academic quarter, and that day I had had to go to meetings, write emails, and generally attend to mundane things. I could feel the joy from the evening before starting to fray. But after an hour and a half in the dance studio, all that joy came rushing back!

5Rythms is a form of ecstatic dance, and it turns out that there are a whole bunch of ecstatic dances in town. Every week I’ve gone to at least two.

When I’ve told this to friends, most of them look at my quizzically and say, “What’s ecstatic dance?” At the most basic level, it’s a dance to induce ecstasy (duh), and has long been practiced by spiritual traditions from around the world. In its modern secular Western form it looks, from the outside, a lot like disco or shakin’ to the music in front of an outdoor stage. But at its most intentional, ecstatic dance creates a space where it feels safe to let your body move in whatever way is inspired by the music, and release whatever emotions arise; and good DJs can move the emotional intensity of the music around to build to a peak experience, before releasing and relaxing at the end of the dance. We each dance our own dance, and we don’t speak to one another on the dance floor; but pairs and groups can come together and react to one another for a time.

Here’s a video of a dance at White Rock, beside the Santa Ynez River, in early July. See if you can spot me!

Initially, my primary emotion was joy, and I felt like I was moving around as a giant beacon of light. More recently other emotions have started to emerge, especially sorrow. But that’s a good thing! It is freeing to just allow the emotions to flow through.

The Monday 5Rythms class is at Yoga Soup, a wonderfully unpretentious yoga studio in downtown Santa Barbara. When I checked in, they said, “For the price of 2 dances, you can get an introductory membership that gets you into all of our classes for a month!” I said “Sure, I’ll take it,” thinking at first only of getting 4 dances. But with the membership in hand, I decided to start sampling yoga classes, and discovered that I loved many of them. I started going to at least one class nearly every day. I had been working with a private yoga teacher for a while, so I was well established with the forms; many of the teachers of Yoga Soup focus more on movement rather than perfecting the poses, and others teach altogether different traditions; the contrast with my previous work is delightful, and the movement nicely complements the dance.

I’m finding all this yoga and dance, moving in the company of other open-hearted people, to be fun—which is a breakthrough in itself: fun was Michelle’s word, and I never was able wrap my head around what fun felt like. But oh so much more extraordinary is the embodiment of my new emotional being. If I had stopped at the first transformation, I would have been relying on my head to keep remembering that light open connected loving peaceful joy. And I know that, for me, my head just isn’t very good at doing that. It wants to retreat to the old familiar patterns.

But now, those new feelings are buzzing through every cell in my body, whenever I dance or move through the yoga poses. The energy zips from my heart down to my fingers and toes and back again. I get an emotional reset with every practice. My heart opens up and I laugh with joy and delight.

And it’s not just in the studio. I can get that same feeling by putting on some happy music and dancing around the house for 5 minutes. And the other day I suddenly realized that I was spontaneously standing in Warrior 3 as I leaned over to load the dishwasher—I laughed and laughed and laughed. My body is learning to move freely, all on its own, without waiting for instruction from my stick-in-the-mud head.

Now, it’s not that I’m a stranger to movement, or even the idea that emotions are in the body. But movement—“exercise”—was to me walking, hiking, cycling: repetitive, unspontaneous, and ultimately boring (the value of hiking, for example, was to get into Nature, not the movement itself) (and when I’m walking, hiking, cycling, I end up being mostly lost in thought rather than aware of my body or even my surroundings). My prior experience dancing—well there was Contra Dance, with all those comforting rules. And when I tried to learn Swing, I could never get past the need to perfect the basic steps and patterns, to relax into moving my whole body.

My therapist taught me to recognize what various emotions (especially negative ones) felt like in my body. But how to work with them? Just breath into that part of the body. I mean, yes, breath work is important, but it is the most subtle of movement. I need BIG movement to pump those emotions through and out and up. And the same thing with meditation. Trying to induce stillness in my mind by being still in my body? Not going to happen (I already spent too much of my life with a still, seated body and an overheated mind). The stillness in my mind comes when my body is moving, of its own accord. One of my new favorite things to do in dance, especially when I find myself getting caught up in thought, is to move my awareness all the way down to my feet, nearly close my eyes, and just let the feet take me where they want to go. They have great instincts, my feet, and when I relax and trust them then all of me feels dynamic and free.

Interlude

This newsletter took a long pause right here, because just as I was writing the above section celebrating movement, my body started to rebel with strains and spasms. I was suddenly in retreat from movement, and each time I thought I was healing and leapt forward again, the pain returned, migrated, became more intense.

My emotional palette shifted from all-joy-all-the-time to include other, less fun, emotions.

It felt hollow and unauthentic to keep writing what I had planned for this newsletter. Was this path already over? Was my transformation going to collapse like a house of cards? I going to fall back into my emotional black hole?

What, you think I’m going to answer those questions right here? Nah, back to my story.

3. Connecting

With the blossoming of an open heart, with the self-assurance that comes from self love, it suddenly became so much easier to love others. And even bigger (for me): perceive and receive their love for me. I’ve been sharing this story with friends, colleagues, any random person on the street who will listen. So many times that I’ve lost track of who has heard it (hence the need for this newsletter!). And the response has been, uniformly, amazement, happiness, joy—everyone cheers my transformation and feels, in turn, at least a little bit transformed in response. And being able to recognize and accept the love that others have for me, in whatever way they express it, has led to much greater meaning and intimacy in all these relationships.

I am also encountering new communities in the dance and yoga realms. Both places are full of people who are on their own journeys of somatic transformation, who bring big open hearts with them. Ecstatic dance is not a time for verbal interaction—the music is loud, and most dances actively discourage talk on the dance floor—but there is lots of eye contact, passing movement, and recognition. And the open heartedness can make for instant connection: I once watched two people who had never met, never spoken, fall in love during a 5-minute mirror dance exercise. Once it was clear that I was coming regularly lots of folks started introducing themselves afterwards. I already have one very dear new friend there, and am rapidly developing other deep connections.

Yoga class is even less conducive to interaction among students, we are all focused on ourselves and the teachers. But the lobby/shop at Yoga Soup is very welcoming, with couches, bowls of fruit and vegetables, a big pot of soup… I often hang out after class. And that becomes a place to have lovely conversations with strangers, moving very rapidly from shared contentment to deep and meaningful topics. One such conversation led me to a new podcast, Buddha at the Gas Pump, which I recommend. These interactions are rarely repeated, but I am getting to know some of the teachers. I long ago realized (but have struggled to put into practice) that my teaching is most effective when I love my students; so many of the teachers at Yoga Soup are not just great yogis but fill the space with their love.

So: New friends, which is always fun and exciting. New friends whose orientation is so different from the intellectual, rational, scientific perspective of many of my old friends, which gives me interesting and exciting new ways to think about the world. And new ways of interacting with my old friends. I feel suffused with love (even, with my newfound capacity for self-love, when I am alone).

4. Embracing

That’s a word I’m saying a lot: to new experiences, new opportunities, new ways of thinking about the world.

To giving up my self-destructive habits—which is easy now that I find myself worthy of care!

I helped build a crazy creative float, and then danced up the street in a bird costume for Santa Barbara’s Solstice Parade. Check out this video by a random onlooker (I fly by right at the beginning of the clip).

I joined a mens group, and am learning to develop deeply intimate relationships with other men (without a hint of sports!).

On the enthusiastic recommendation of a friend’s daughters, I let go of my preconceptions (a stupid movie about a doll!) and said to my friend, “Sure, I’ll go see Barbie with you!” I’m glad I did. You should go see it too. It’s not what you think.

I’m unskeptically considering other ways of knowing and understanding the world. “Balance my root chakra? Sure, I’ll give that a try!”

OK, the jury’s still out on that one. But here’s an experience I can’t explain with my old way of knowing: At the end of a yoga class recently, when we were lying on our backs, the teacher came around and held our feet, pressing into the instep. “Ooh, that feels really nice!” I thought to myself, and really put my attention on the sensation. “I’m not complaining, but she’s spending an awfully long time with me!” Then I heard her footsteps. For the next five minutes she walked around the studio, attending to the other students; and never took her hands away from my feet.

There’s another kind of embracing too. My love language is physical touch. That’s it. I didn’t even know until recently that there were other love languages. Michelle gave me lots of loving touch, and called me the Love Sponge.

I have plenty of dear friends here in town, but they just about all speak other love languages. I’m training myself to recognize those languages, but they still don’t give me that zing in the heart. It’s Southern California, so everyone has learned to hug hello and goodbye (sometimes very self-consciously). And I got plenty of sympathy hugs early on. But big old loving embraces? Casual touches to reinforce a point of connection? Not so much.

Well guess what, all these somatically oriented dancers love touch! And as I develop emotional connections with them, we get to express those connections in ways that make my heart sing.

Rebirth

My 59th birthday was July 17, and was multiply celebrated in the usual way with good food and good company.

But as that weekend approached I started calling it my re-birthday. Why? Well, for starters I really do feel like a whole new person, finally free from crippling self doubt. The only time I can remember being this consistently happy was the first couple of years with Michelle. I know that many of you have long seen the qualities that I’m now manifesting. But for me, on the inside, the Old Bruce and the New Bruce are not close to being the same being.

And here’s an interesting thing: you know how, as we age, time seems to pass faster and faster? Remember how long summer vacation was when you were 7? I’ve always believed that this speeding up is because, at some unconscious level, we measure passing time not in absolute terms but relative to the number of minutes, days, months, years that we have already experienced. Well, ever since my heart blew open at the ceremony, time has passed really slowly. Not in the sense that the days drag, or that I get extraordinary amounts done in a day. But in the sense that events of a week ago seem ages in the past. As my birthday approached, it felt like years, even a decade, since the weekend that started all this, just one month previously.

My denominator suddenly got really small. My time origin has been reset. That’s pretty clear evidence of a rebirth to me.

At the Dance Hive on Sundays, they have a tradition of celebrating birthdays by lifting people into the air and carrying them around the room while singing to them. With at least twenty people holding me up, it was like floating on a cloud of love.

In the sharing circle that day, I told the story of my initial emotional transformation, how dance allowed my new relationship with myself to “stick” in my body, how I was reborn. I’m told that lots of tears were shed.

The next evening in 5Rythms I retold the story. I credited the teacher as my midwife.

Within a couple of days, my body started its rebellion.

Oh, you’re still hanging onto that cliffhanger from before? Don’t worry, I’m still on the path. I’ve had to adapt. I go to fewer dances, and when I do I move less. I’m finding different kinds of yoga classes (I went to a restorative yoga class last week that had a total of five poses over the course of the hour: lying on our back, lying on our right side, lying on our stomach, lying on our left side, lying on our back. It was wonderful). And to be honest, I’m still doing more movement than I probably should.

But the somatic memory is already so strong that often all I need to do to summon up a surge of joy is think about dancing.

And those less fun emotions? Yeah, they arise. I try to stick with them, ask them what they have to teach me. I am learning to rest in betweenness. I’ve been journaling a lot. You don’t want to see my raw unfiltered thoughts, but I’m sure I’ll have insights to share here sometime.

Here’s the thing: Even though I can no longer move with spontaneous abandon. Even though stabbing pain arises unpredictably. Even though I’m wondering how the heck I’m going to survive a 15 hour flight this weekend.1 I still love myself (even this crazy crooked old body). I still feel worthy of being loved. That is the true essence of my transformation, and from that flows all else.

Thanks for riding along on my summer of transformation! Future newsletters might not be as dramatic, but I hope that you will still find them interesting.

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What I’ve been reading

Ordinarily I might say something about these, but I’ve gone on far too long already. Explore for yourself and see what suits your fancy. And no Amazon links—patronize your local bookstore!

• Iron John by Robert Bly

• Less is More by Jason Hickel

• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

• Inciting Joy by Ross Gay

• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

• Scale by Greg Egan

• Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons (read this one out loud)

• A Brief History of Vietnam by Bill Hayton

• Courting the Wild Twin by Martin Shaw

• I’ve been listening a lot to the album Beauty Thunders by Peia

And don’t forget, go see Barbie!

❤️

I was inspired to start this substack newsletter by a fortunate confluence of circumstances. First, the past 6 weeks, the onset of Summer 2023, has been a time of extraordinary transformation for me (more about that in the next post), and while I’ve been sharing this with individual friends and acquaintances as I encounter them, my broader network of friends is getting increasingly unsynchronized with where I am now.

Second, a few months ago I stumbled upon a post by Chrystina Cappello titled Reconnect with Friends Through a Personal Newsletter. This resonated with me, but I wanted to be able to include images, and I wanted the newsletters to have a permanent home online so you wouldn’t have to save them in your inbox or switch from email triage to thoughtful reading. But the usual blog-hosting sites are overly complex (because their actual purpose is marketing) and the free plans inundate you, dear readers, with ads.

Finally, a few weeks ago my friend Kate started a substack, and with that I realized that this site wasn’t just for big-name commentators like Heather Cox Richardson. A little investigation revealed how easy it would be to set up, and now all I need to do is write!

So here we are. I hope you’ll join me! If you hit the “subscribe now” button below, you’ll get an email (and/or a notification in the Substack app) whenever I publish a new newsletter. Unsubscribing is just as easy, and the site won’t send you any ads or spam.

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