For those who weren’t able to join us live, I’m sharing the recording from our September What If? group gathering below.

A small note about these gatherings: I won’t always record them. Some conversations feel right to share more widely, while others feel more intimate and are best held within the circle of those who were present.

So, when it feels appropriate, I’ll happily share the recording here. And when it doesn’t, we’ll simply allow that particular conversation to remain with the group who gathered for it.

Here is the September What If? conversation:

Recording duration: 01:12:17

Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/dXex8ZgTDYOjR_LMlpN0O5gwLamLU9VtwoFi4CX91HBdbO1LTQiIgpZZpzdIQmEd.7OZda4PG9-rhr2_R

Passcode: 2BRZ?w&T

This recording will remain available for a limited time, likely 60–90 days.

What is the What if? Group?

It’s a gathering of like-minded souls who come together not to teach or preach, but to share stories, explore synchronicities, experiment with ideas, and muse on the mystical and mysterious “what ifs” that have crossed our paths over the past month.

No agenda. No pressure. Just a warm, welcoming space to wonder together.

🌀 September 2026 What If? Group - Gathering Details:

🗓 Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2026
⏰ Time: 9:00 PM Eastern / See your time zone below
💻 Where: On Zoom (link below)
💸 Cost: Free

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2716017767?pwd=aGtML2h3d3I5bW9GYnMxQ05scjF3Zz09&omn=84592701897

Meeting ID: 271 601 7767

Passcode: 54321

🌍 Time Zones:

· Pacific Time — 6:00 PM Tuesday

· Phoenix Time — 6:00 PM Tuesday

· Mountain Time — 7:00 PM Tuesday

· Central Time — 8:00 PM Tuesday

· Eastern Time (New York) — 9:00 PM Tuesday

· London — 2:00 AM Wednesday

· Paris — 3:00 AM Wednesday

· Sydney / Melbourne — 12:00 PM AEST Wednesday

· New Zealand — 2:00 PM Auckland time Wednesday

Come as you are. Bring a question, a story, a synchronicity—or simply your listening heart. We’d love to have you in the circle.

With wonder always,

Cheryl A. Page

PS: This free Zoom group is graciously hosted by the illustrious and benevolent Wendy and Victor Zammit, whose work you may know from their Afterlife Report. If you’re not already subscribed, I highly recommend it. Their weekly offerings are spiritually rich and deeply uplifting. You can sign up for the Afterlife Report free here:
👉 https://victorzammit.com/archives/index.html

A child picks up a seashell, presses it to her ear, and says:

“I can hear the ocean.”

And almost immediately, an adult is tempted to correct her.

No, sweetheart.

The ocean is not really in the shell.

What you are hearing is ambient sound — the surrounding noise of the world — being caught, filtered, and amplified by the curved chambers of the shell.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Technically, the adult is right, of course.

And yet…

I am not entirely convinced the child is wrong.

Because she is hearing something.

Something that sounds like the sea.

Something that calls the sea to mind so completely that, for a moment, she is standing on the shore even if she is now hundreds of miles from water.

And perhaps the more interesting question is not:

Is the ocean really inside the shell?

Perhaps the more interesting questions are:

What becomes audible when we know how to listen?

And must we dismiss something simply because someone else tells us it cannot be what we think it is?

I have been thinking about this metaphor lately in relation to Cross-Veil Communication.

Those moments when someone we love who has graduated from physical life seems to reach toward us through a song, a dream, a sudden thought, a familiar scent, a flickering light, a number appearing again and again, a feather on the sidewalk, a dragonfly crossing our path, a phrase overheard at exactly the right moment.

Someone else may look at the very same thing and see nothing unusual at all.

And, sometimes, they may attempt to dismiss it for us as well.

A song is just a song.

A feather is just a feather.

A dream is just a dream.

A seashell is just a seashell.

And perhaps that is true.

But perhaps it is not the whole truth.

The mistake may be assuming that in order for the experience to be meaningful, Spirit must somehow be contained inside the thing itself.

Spirit is not in the feather.

Spirit is not trapped inside the song.

Spirit is not the dragonfly.

Spirit is not hiding behind the number 11:11 waiting for you to notice.

Just as the sea is not physically contained inside the shell.

Perhaps these things are not containers.

Perhaps they are resonant chambers.

Places where something otherwise difficult to perceive becomes audible — or visible.

That distinction fascinates me.

Because we live in a culture that often assumes that once something has been explained, it has also been explained away.

Perhaps we are too quick to surrender an experience because someone else has a different interpretation of it.

We learn how a rainbow forms, and somehow, we are expected to stop being astonished by it.

We learn that emotion involves neurotransmitters, and suddenly love is “just chemistry.”

We understand something about the acoustics of a seashell, and now we are told that the child is not really hearing the ocean.

But explanation does not cancel meaning.

An echo is still evidence that something made the sound.

Mechanism does not necessarily eliminate mystery.

And knowing how something happens does not always tell us why it matters.

The shell can amplify ambient sound and still remind us of the sea.

The dragonfly can be an ordinary dragonfly and become the precise instrument through which someone in Spirit catches our attention.

Both things can be true.

One does not necessarily have to diminish the other.

And perhaps this is where conversations about communication across the veil become especially interesting.

The skeptical mind often asks:

Could this experience have another explanation?

Of course it could.

Most experiences can.

A song that begins playing at the precise moment you are thinking of someone you love may be coincidence.

Though I prefer to think of certain moments as co-incidence — that exquisite place where we and Spirit coincide.

A dream may arise from memory.

A sudden knowing may emerge from the subconscious.

A scent may have a perfectly ordinary source.

And yet I have come to believe that the existence of a possible mechanism does not automatically settle the question of meaning.

Nor does it eliminate the possibility that someone in Spirit may have participated in the moment — perhaps by nudging something into our awareness, or simply causing us to turn our head at exactly the right time.

Perhaps Spirit does not always need to interrupt the natural world in order to communicate through it.

In my lived experience, Spirit seems to take the path of least resistance.

They work with what is already available.

Memory.

Music.

Timing.

Attention.

Emotion.

The strange architecture of the human mind.

The ordinary things waiting on the shore.

Perhaps Spirit does not need to violate the laws of physics.

Perhaps Spirit works through them.

What if Spirit does not need to break the laws of nature to reach us?

What if Spirit deliberately uses them?

That possibility changes the question entirely.

Instead of asking only:

“Can I prove that this came from Spirit?”

we might sometimes ask:

What happened in me when I received it?

Did something become clearer?

Did I feel recognized?

Did the experience carry a quality of intelligence or timing that seemed larger than my own deliberate thought?

Did it bring comfort without coercion?

Did it invite me toward love, healing, courage, or deeper relationship?

Did it feel like noise?

Or did it feel like Spirit sending me a signal?

These are not laboratory proofs. So what?

When dealing with Spirit, if we insist that every experience must first survive a demand for absolute confirmatory proof before we are willing even to consider it, we may inadvertently narrow the very doorway through which communication is trying to occur.

These are questions of discernment, not automatic dismissal.

And discernment, I think, is one of the great spiritual arts.

Because not every sound in the shell is the ocean.

Not every coincidence is communication.

Not every thought is guidance.

Not every flicker deserves a theology.

Listening across the veil does not mean abandoning critical thinking.

Quite the opposite.

It asks us to become better listeners.

To notice patterns without forcing them.

To remain curious without becoming gullible.

To leave room for mystery without making mystery carry more weight than it can bear.

To preserve a little space for What if? when the world insists on telling us, “It was nothing.”

Perhaps this is why I love the image of the child with the shell so much.

The child does not demand proof.

She does not dissect the experience.

And this feels important.

She does not ask whether she has met some evidentiary threshold before allowing herself to wonder, to feel awe, to become excited by possibility.

She is simply open.

She listens.

And something in that shell returns her to the sea.

There is innocence in that.

But innocence is not the same thing as ignorance.

Sometimes the adult mind becomes so skilled at explaining that it forgets how to encounter mystery.

We become very good at naming the acoustics and very poor at hearing the ocean.

We stand there with our explanations while the child is already somewhere else entirely — barefoot at the edge of something vast.

Perhaps this is what happens to us spiritually.

We grow older and begin to mistrust what we cannot easily defend.

We hesitate before saying aloud:

I felt him near me.

I knew that was her sending me the song.

I asked for a sign, and then this happened.

I dreamed of my mother, and somehow the dream felt different from an ordinary dream.

I cannot explain it, but I knew.

I just knew.

We fear appearing naïve.

We fear being told what we experienced was merely psychological.

Merely neurological.

Merely coincidence.

Merely grief.

Merely imagination.

That little word — merely — does an extraordinary amount of damage.

Because imagination may be one of the ways other points of consciousness speak.

And imagination itself is far more intricate than mere make-believe. You only need to read a bit of Henry Corbin or Neville Goddard to realize this.

Memory may also be one of the instruments Spirit uses.

The nervous system may be part of the receiver.

Perhaps this is one reason contemplative practices like meditation matter so much: over time, they may help us become quieter, steadier, and more sensitive to subtler forms of information.

What if?

And coincidence — co-incidence — may sometimes be the very language through which Spirit arranges synchronicity.

I am not saying that every shell contains the sea.

I am saying we may have been asking the wrong question.

The child does not love the shell because she believes the Atlantic Ocean has somehow been miniaturized and stored inside it.

She loves the shell because when she holds it close and becomes quiet enough, something immense becomes perceptible.

When I was a child, we lived near the sea, and I remember loving to hold shells to my ears so I could “hear” the ocean.

I knew the shell was small.

I knew the ocean was enormous.

And somehow, one gave me access to the other.

Something far larger than the shell itself became present.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh understood something about this.

In her beloved Gift from the Sea, she went to the shore and allowed the shells she found there to become teachers — each one offering another way of thinking about simplicity, solitude, relationship, and the shape of a human life.

At one point she writes:

“I have only clues, shells from the sea.”

Clues.

I love that word.

Perhaps that is what many of our experiences with Spirit are.

Not proof neatly packaged and labeled for us.

Not evidence guaranteed to satisfy every skeptic.

Clues.

A song.

A dragonfly.

A dream.

A familiar scent.

A perfectly timed co-incidence.

Something small washed onto the shore of an ordinary day that asks us to stop, pick it up, turn it over in our hands, and wonder whether there might be more here than first appears.

And Lindbergh offers another piece of wisdom that feels especially important:

“One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea.”

Perhaps listening across the veil asks something similar of us.

Not straining.

Not demanding.

Not searching frantically.

Not requiring Spirit to arrive in the form we have already decided will count.

But becoming a little more like the beach.

Open enough to receive what washes ashore.

And perhaps this is one way to understand signs from those we love in Spirit.

The sign is small.

The relationship is not.

The relationship still exists.

Grief never asked me to stop loving Scott.

It asked me to learn a new way to love him.

And part of that has meant learning to recognize the new ways he may use to capture my attention.

The song lasts three minutes.

The love behind it may span a lifetime.

The feather weighs almost nothing.

The memory it awakens may carry an entire world.

The dream disappears by breakfast.

And yet something in us has already been changed.

Maybe the sign does not contain Spirit any more than the shell contains the sea.

Maybe it gives us a way to hear what was already moving around us.

A way for someone we love in Spirit to whisper:

Hey. I’m still here.

A shell is a shape through which sounds resonate.

A chamber where the sea becomes briefly audible.

And perhaps that is why listening matters so much.

Not straining.

Not searching frantically.

Not turning every leaf, number, song, and coincidence into a coded transmission from another dimension.

Just listening.

Quietly.

Curiously.

With discernment.

With wonder.

With enough humility to say:

I do not know exactly how this works.

But I know something happened.

I know what I felt.

I know what it awakened.

And I am willing to remain open to the questions rather than forcing answers.

Because perhaps the veil is not a wall.

Perhaps it is simply our name for a distance that is not nearly as great as we imagine.

And perhaps love, like sound, behaves strangely across distance.

It echoes.

It reverberates.

It finds chambers.

It uses whatever openings are available.

Sometimes a song.

Sometimes a dream.

Sometimes a sudden knowing.

Sometimes a dragonfly.

Sometimes a seashell.

So, the next time someone tells you:

“The ocean is not really in there,”

perhaps you can simply smile.

They may be correct about the shell.

And still not have heard what you heard.

You do not have to surrender your experience merely because someone else cannot hear it.

You do not have to make them wrong.

And you do not have to make yourself wrong either.

Hold the shell a little closer.

Become quiet.

Listen.

Can you hear the ocean?

Ever in wonder,

Cheryl A. Page

There may be no phrase more universally associated with the family road trip than this one:

Are we there yet?

You can hear it, can’t you?

A child tucked into the back seat of a station wagon, perhaps somewhere between the thermos, the cooler, the pillows, the paper map, and whatever snacks survived the first twenty miles.

“Are we there yet?”

“No.”

Five minutes later:

“Are we there yet?”

“No.”

A few miles farther:

“How about now?”

It is the great refrain of childhood travel.

And increasingly, I think it may also be the great refrain of the spiritual path.

We simply dress it up a little.

Have I awakened yet?

Have I ascended?

Have I healed?

Have I cleared enough?

Have I learned to effortlessly communicate across the veil?

Am I finally living in alignment?

Have I raised my vibration sufficiently?

Have I reached enlightenment?

Am I there yet?

For all our talk about being “on the path,” there is often a secret—or perhaps not-so-secret—assumption underneath it:

The path is supposed to take us somewhere.

Somewhere called Awakened.

Somewhere called Healed.

Somewhere called Enlightened.

Somewhere called Ascended.

Some imagined spiritual destination where, if we do enough work, read enough books, attend enough retreats, meditate enough hours, clear enough ancestral patterns, and faithfully complete enough courses, eventually someone will hand us the metaphysical equivalent of a diploma.

Congratulations.

You have arrived.

Surely there must be a certificate. Right?

But where, exactly, is there?

That is the question I find increasingly interesting.

Because the moment we begin trying to define our spiritual destination, it becomes remarkably slippery and elusive.

Is enlightenment the destination?

Perfect inner peace?

Permanent nonreactivity?

Complete healing?

Absolute certainty?

Unbroken communion with the Divine?

And if we reached such a place, what would happen next?

Would consciousness simply plant a little flag on the mountaintop and say:

Well done. Nothing more to see here.

I truly hope not.

Perhaps part of the problem is that we live in a culture built around completions.

We graduate from high school.

We graduate from college.

We earn qualifications.

We complete training.

We reach benchmarks.

We attain goals.

We cross things off lists.

Then, almost without realizing it, we import that same architecture into spirituality.

Beginner.

Intermediate.

Advanced.

Master.

Initiate.

5D.

Ascended.

Enlightened.

Somewhere along the way, we require the infinite Mystery to hold a graduation ceremony.

We want to move the tassel from one side to the other.

Yet even the language of education contains a wonderfully revealing clue.

We graduate with a degree.

The operative word being degree.

A degree of understanding.

Not Understanding, with a capital U.

Not the absolute knowledge of everything there is to know.

A degree.

A measure.

A portion.

A particular depth of understanding within an immeasurably larger field.

Medicine offers another useful clue.

We call it the practice of medicine.

Not the perfection of medicine.

Not the completion of medicine.

The practice.

There is humility hidden inside that word.

Perhaps spirituality deserves the same humility.

We speak of a meditation practice, a yoga practice, a contemplative practice—not because we expect to perfect them, but because we return to them again and again.

Perhaps spiritual seeking is not something we complete.

Perhaps it is something we practice.

Perhaps it is not a curriculum designed to deliver us to a final destination, but an ever-deepening relationship with Mystery itself…with earned “degrees” of understanding.

And that changes the road trip considerably.

Because, of course, there are stops along the way.

There are rest stops.

There are lunch breaks.

There are lookout points.

There are those extraordinary moments when something we have wrestled with for years suddenly becomes clear.

There are seasons when we realize we have become less reactive, more compassionate, more discerning, or more comfortable inside our own skin (this one took me a long time!).

There are times when the view opens before us and we can suddenly see farther than we could before.

Those moments matter.

Growth is real.

Wisdom is real.

Healing is real.

Transformation is real.

But a lookout point is not necessarily the destination.

Neither is a rest stop.

Neither is lunch.

And heaven knows, neither is the bathroom break.

There are also detours.

Wrong turns.

Road construction.

Flat tires.

Storms.

Periods when we cannot see ten feet in front of us.

And the occasional humbling realization that we have been confidently driving twenty miles in the wrong direction.

Been there. Done that.

All of this belongs to the journey too.

I wonder whether one of the most liberating things we might do is stop treating those experiences as interruptions in our spiritual development.

Perhaps they are our spiritual development.

The inconvenient parts.

The confusing parts.

The challenging parts.

The “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing” parts.

The seasons when we feel certain we are going backward.

The moments when the map no longer matches the road or the GPS insists we head in a direction we are certain is the wrong one.

At this point in my own spiritual road trip, I have become increasingly fond of traveling without a rigid itinerary.

Not a trip without intention.

Not a trip without discernment.

But a trip without the compulsive need to arrive somewhere specific.

Because if we truly consider what it means to be a seeker, there is an inherent paradox in wanting desperately to reach the end of seeking.

If I arrive at the final answer, I am no longer seeking.

If I completely understand Mystery, it is no longer Mystery.

If there is nothing left to discover, curiosity has nowhere left to go.

And what a terrible bargain that would be.

Perhaps genuine spiritual maturity is not the acquisition of certainty.

Perhaps it is an increasing capacity to remain alive inside the questions.

To become more comfortable with the horizon, without the obsessive need to reach it.

To discover that knowing and wondering are not opposites.

That wisdom does not require us to close the book.

That a person may become profoundly grounded while still saying:

What if?

In fact, perhaps one of the signs that we are growing is that the unknown becomes larger rather than smaller.

When we begin, we may imagine that the purpose of spiritual inquiry is to collect answers.

Then, somewhere along the road, if we’re lucky, something peculiar happens.

Every answer opens three more doors.

Every summit reveals another mountain range.

Every genuine insight enlarges our awareness of how much we do not know.

And rather than being discouraging, that can become exhilarating.

Because then the journey stops being something we must endure in order to reach the destination.

The journey becomes the place where Life is actually happening.

Perhaps this is what the child in the back seat eventually learns.

At first, she wants only to arrive.

She barely notices what is outside the window.

Mountains pass.

Rivers appear and disappear.

Clouds throw shadows across enormous fields.

Small towns drift by.

A hawk circles above the highway.

But she is too busy asking:

“Are we there yet?”

Then something catches her attention.

Maybe the mountains turn gold in the late afternoon.

Maybe a herd of elk appears beside the road.

Maybe she sees snow on a distant peak in the middle of July.

And for a while, the question stops.

Not because the car has arrived.

But because she has finally noticed the view.

Perhaps that is the invitation for all of us.

Not to stop growing.

Not to stop seeking.

Not to pretend that every road leads somewhere useful.

But to loosen our grip on the imagined finish line.

To take the scenic route now and then.

To stop at the lookout point.

To eat lunch.

To stretch our legs.

To talk with friendly strangers.

To ask better questions.

To become a little less preoccupied with whether we have spiritually “arrived” and a little more interested in what this particular mile of the journey is asking us to notice.

So…

Are we there yet?

I hope not.

There is still so much to see.

What if?

Cheryl A. Page

“You mustn’t confuse the way you came for the way you will go. The path is in yourself, and you don’t even need a bridge.” — Chao-Hsiu Chen, The Master

Recently, during a Quantum Reading, Ram Dass arrived with Niagara Falls in one hand and a barrel in the other.

Strange, I know. Where was he going with this?

Niagara Falls I understood immediately. The roar. The force. The terrifying beauty of life moving with absolute certainty toward an edge.

But the barrel?

That one followed me around for days.

Ram Dass said that life does, indeed, send us Niagara Falls Moments.

Moments when the mind says, This is too much.

Moments when the heart is swept toward an edge it did not choose.

Moments when all our plans, all our identities, all our careful arrangements are caught in the current.

Boy, did that ever hit home for me.

We’ve all had those life-altering Niagara Falls Moments, haven’t we?

The diagnosis.

The phone call.

The accident.

The betrayal.

The death.

The job loss.

The financial free fall.

The spiritual crisis.

The moment when the life you thought you were living suddenly becomes a life you no longer recognize.

A Niagara Falls Moment is not a puddle moment.

It is not a slight inconvenience moment.

It is not a “my latte was made wrong” moment.

It is the moment when you hear the dreaded roar before you see the drop.

It is the moment when life has already become bigger than your planning mind can grasp.

And I was very curious about the idea of the barrel.

Ram Dass explained the barrel as the thing that offers some level of protection between us and the raging waters. Not total protection. Not guaranteed protection. Not a magical escape hatch.

But a layer.

A buffer.

A humble vessel of mercy.

Life may give us Niagara Falls Moments, but grace also sees us.

And sometimes grace provides a barrel.

The barrel may be a breath, a prayer, a friend’s hand, a cup of tea, a remembered teaching, or a set boundary.

That image stayed with me because I also have my own connection to Niagara Falls.

In 2022, I attended my first Dr. Joe Dispenza week-long meditation retreat in Niagara Falls, New York. So I have stood beside those roaring Falls. I have felt that thunder in my body. I have watched the water move with such absolute conviction toward the edge.

And I remember thinking: how on earth did anyone imagine surviving that in a barrel?

Like many people, I had half-believed it was Houdini who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

But after some research, I learned he didn’t.

That bit of notoriety belongs most famously to Annie Edson Taylor, a widowed schoolteacher who, in 1901, became the first person known to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

But perhaps Houdini is in the story anyway — not historically, but archetypally.

The escape artist.

The one who understood locks, limits, danger, breath, timing, and the strange human desire to survive the impossible.

Still, it was not Houdini who climbed into the barrel.

It was Annie.

And Annie Edson Taylor was not a young daredevil chasing applause. She was 63, a widowed schoolteacher facing financial insecurity and trying to create a future for herself. She had taught school. She had moved around. She had tried different ways to support herself. But by 1901, she was not prosperous.

She was desperate.

The stunt was not simply, I want to be famous.

It was more like, I need to do something spectacular enough that the world will notice.

She chose Niagara Falls because Niagara Falls was already a place of awe and spectacle. People came there for honeymoons, for beauty, for danger, for the thunder of something larger than themselves.

Annie seems to have understood that if she survived something no one else had officially survived before, she might be able to lecture, tour, sell her story, and create some measure of financial security for herself.

Her plan was surprisingly practical.

She had a custom barrel built of oak and iron and padded inside with a mattress. Before attempting it herself, she reportedly sent a cat over the Falls in the barrel as a test. The cat survived, though accounts vary about its condition.

Then, on October 24, 1901 — her 63rd birthday — Annie Edson Taylor climbed into the barrel and went over Horseshoe Falls.

She survived.

When she was pulled from the barrel, she was bruised and shaken, with a cut on her head, but alive.

Her famous warning afterward was essentially that no one should ever do it again.

That part touches me.

Because Annie did survive the Falls, but the money and security she hoped for never really came together. She spent years trying to earn income from appearances and souvenir sales. She died in poverty in 1921.

Her story is not only about daring what most people considered a reckless act.

It is about survival.

It is about desperation.

It is about invention.

It is about a woman trying to build herself a barrel against the Falls of life.

Annie Edson Taylor did not go over Niagara Falls in a barrel because she had no fear.

She went because life had already brought her to an edge she did not choose.

The barrel was not just a stunt device.

It was her plan.

Her protection.

Her gamble.

Her prayer.

Her attempt to be carried through a force larger than herself.

And now, at 63 myself, I understand.

Because life invariably sends us to the edge.

For me, Scott’s death was a Niagara Falls Moment.

Not a difficult season.

Not a challenge.

Not a growth opportunity, though growth did come.

It was the deafening roar.

The edge.

The drop.

The terrible realization that I could not negotiate with the water.

I think all deaths of those we love are Niagara Falls Moments. One moment there is the life before. Then there is the life after. And between the two is the drop.

There are other Niagara Falls Moments too.

The marriage that ends.

The body that suddenly needs our full attention.

The child whose pain we cannot fix.

The parent who begins slipping away by inches.

The business that fails.

The home that is lost.

The friendship that fractures.

The dream that quietly collapses.

The season when the old self disappears before the new self has arrived.

The moment we realize life is changing faster than we can catch up.

Sometimes we choose our Niagara Falls Moments.

Sometimes they choose us.

Sometimes we inch toward the edge knowingly.

Sometimes we are swept there.

But either way, when the water takes us, we discover very quickly what our barrels are.

And the barrel is not control.

The barrel is not a guarantee.

The barrel is not a luxury yacht, a rescue helicopter, or a five-point enlightenment plan.

The barrel is humble protection.

It is what helps you survive the passage without pretending you are not in white water.

The barrel might be your morning meditation.

Your breath.

Your therapist.

Your sobriety.

Your friend who answers the phone.

Your body pillow.

Your hot bath.

Your Häagen-Dazs.

Your journal.

Your dog.

Your medicine.

Your spiritual practice.

Your boundaries.

Your willingness to say, “I cannot do that today.”

Your remembered teachings.

Your altar.

Your playlist.

Your nervous-system tools.

Your little routines.

Your one sane meal.

Your one candle lit in the dark.

Sometimes the barrel is something you reach for with your own shaking hands.

Sometimes it is lovingly provided by friends and family.

Sometimes it comes from a stranger.

Sometimes the barrel is a casserole on the porch.

Sometimes it is someone sitting beside you without trying to fix you.

Sometimes it is a text or phone call that says, “I’m here.”

Sometimes it is a person who lets you tell the same story again and again because your heart is still trying to understand what happened.

Sometimes it is paperwork handled by someone else because you simply cannot make one more decision.

Sometimes it is laughter at the exact wrong time, which somehow makes it the exact right time.

Sometimes it is a book.

A prayer.

A song.

A hand on your back.

A nap.

A walk.

A warm shower.

A boundary.

A breath.

A pause.

A tiny thread of routine in a world that has become unrecognizable.

At this point on my journey I am not too proud for a barrel.

When life sends me over the Falls, I do not need to look graceful.

I need to be held. I need to stay afloat.

And I look for the nearest barrel.

There is something tender and almost funny about that, isn’t there?

The barrel is so rudimentary.

So small beside the Falls.

Almost laughable when placed next to such force.

And yet, we should not despise the barrel.

We should not reject the humble thing because it is not a grand thing.

We should not dismiss the small mercy because it does not stop the water.

The barrel does not cancel the Falls.

The barrel does not erase the grief.

The barrel does not make the diagnosis disappear.

The barrel does not undo the death.

The barrel does not restore the old life.

But it may help us live through the crossing…through the drop.

And sometimes that is everything.

The Falls are the unexpected or inevitable drop-off.

The barrel is mercy from our own hand or the hand of another.

One happens to us.

The other is grace placed in our path to buffer us from the fall.

Life sends us toward the edge sometimes. And all things being equal, I would rather go over in a barrel than without one. Because the barrel gives me the chance for survival.

The barrel may be rudimentary, but rudimentary protection is still protection.

We do not have to despise the small things that help us survive the great things.

This post is dedicated to all of the people who have given me barrels over the past nine years since Scott passed.

You know who you are.

You may have no idea that your kindness was a barrel.

Maybe you have no idea that your text, your calls, your food, your silence, your listening, your prayer, your patience, your presence, your humor, your steadiness, or your love helped keep me afloat.

But it did.

I would not have survived as well as I did had it not been for the barrels you provided.

Perhaps we need to soften, allow others to give to us, and stop despising the barrel because it is not a bridge.

What if we stopped shaming ourselves for needing protection?

What if recognizing we need help is not weakness, but wisdom?

What if the barrel is not a failure of faith, but an answer to a prayer?

What if the mercy of life is not that we never go over the Falls, but that something is placed around us, beneath us, beside us, or within us when we do?

What if we blessed every humble thing that kept us alive?

The Falls will come whether we like it or not.

But there is also the mercy of the barrel.

And sometimes, dear friends, mercy looks like oak and iron, a mattress inside, and a wild little prayer whispered over the roar:

Please help me make it through.

Cheryl A. Page

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the lovely Meera Singh for a conversation on The Channel Within Podcast—and I’m delighted to share that our conversation is now live.

We wandered through some of the territory I love most: consciousness, connection, the unseen, and the mystery of what may be possible when we become willing to look beyond the edges of what we think we know.

Meera was such a warm and gracious host, and I thoroughly enjoyed our time together.

If you’d like to listen in, you can watch our conversation here:

I hope you enjoy it. And, as always…

What if?

Cheryl A. Page

Note: Everything I publish here is free and will remain free. A paid subscription does not unlock additional content—it is simply a way, for those interested, to support my writing and the work I offer in the world. Please never feel that subscribing is expected.

Sheila has created a warm little corner of the internet devoted to self-reflection, spiritual empowerment, and awakening the light within. Her podcast is still relatively new, and I would love to introduce some of you to her work.

If our conversation speaks to you, perhaps wander over, have a listen, and give Sheila and EssenceInU a little love.

What if one of the loveliest things we can do is help one another’s light travel a little farther?

Watch our conversation here:

Note: Everything I publish here is free and will remain free. A paid subscription does not unlock additional content—it is simply a way, for those interested, to support my writing and the work I offer in the world. Please never feel that subscribing is expected.

There are things we know in our heads.

Of course.

We know them well.

We have read the books. Heard the talks. Saved the quotes. Highlighted the passages. Listened to the podcasts. Sat in the workshops. Followed the teachers. Chuckled at the memes.

Sometimes we can even explain the wisdom beautifully.

And yet I’ve come to understand that knowing something is not the same as becoming it.

There is a transformation that rarely comes from collecting ever more astonishing ideas or spiritual wisdom. Sometimes the next breakthrough is not another teaching at all.

Sometimes it is one simple truth finally traveling the distance from the mind into the marrow.

From concept into conduct.

From belief into embodiment.

From something we know into something we are.

That is the journey I have been thinking a lot about lately.

From mind to marrow.

The phrase came up in a reading recently, and it was an aha moment for me.

Marrow is such an interesting word. We think a lot about our bones and brains and organs. We think about our skin, our muscles, even our tissue, but I don’t think most of us spend much time thinking about our bone marrow.

My beloved friends David and Beth, however, have had to think more than most about bone marrow on their cancer journeys. (Love you both so much.)

For those of us a bit rusty on lessons learned in high school Anatomy and Physiology, bone marrow is the soft, living tissue inside our bones. It is hidden beneath the hard structures, protected deep within us. Most of us go our entire lives without giving it much thought.

And yet it is vitally important.

Why?

Because it is generative.

Day in and day out, it quietly produces.

Bone marrow produces the blood cells that circulate through the body and help sustain life.

Which makes marrow, at least to me, an unexpectedly beautiful metaphor for embodied wisdom.

Marrow is not merely something buried deep within the body.

It is a hidden generative place.

A place from which something living enters our circulation.

And perhaps wisdom works the same way.

When wisdom is ingested but remains only in the mind, it is an idea.

But when it is allowed to reach the marrow, it begins producing something.

Behavior.

Relationship.

Instinct.

Choice.

Response.

Presence.

It gets into the bloodstream of the life.

Those of us on a spiritual path have become extraordinarily good at consuming insightful content. We are good students. We seek out wisdom from the far corners of the globe.

Podcasts. Memes. Books. Teachers. Transmissions. Seminars. Quotes. Retreats. Substacks. Videos. Workshops.

There has perhaps never been a time when so much spiritual teaching has been so readily available to so many—from the comfort of our own homes.

And yet access to wisdom is not the same as transformation through wisdom.

We can accumulate astonishingly sophisticated ideas about surrender while remaining controlling.

We can speak eloquently about nonattachment while clinging for dear life.

We can recite that love never dies while continuing to behave as though death has annihilated the relationship.

We can say, “Trust Spirit,” and then demand seventeen pieces of corroborating evidence before we will budge.

As I sit and ponder my own spiritual journey, I realize there is often a significant distance between what I agree with—which can be easy enough—and what I actually live from.

And the more I think about it, the more I understand how much that distance matters.

I sometimes wonder if a great deal of what we call spiritual growth is actually just spiritual consumption at scale.

We are eating.

And eating.

And eating.

Another book.

Another teacher.

Another revelation.

Another breathtaking quote.

Another life-changing weekend.

Another pearl of wisdom to tuck into our pocket.

But have we digested any of it?

Have we stopped long enough to assimilate it?

Has it nourished us?

Or have we simply confused having eaten with having been nourished?

I have joked before about what I call drive-through spirituality.

We want something quick.

Impressive.

Easily consumable.

Preferably served with an inspirational quote and a side of goosebumps.

But spiritual nourishment may work much more like physical nourishment does.

You have to chew.

Digest.

Break something down.

Sit with it.

Absorb it.

Allow it to be carried into places you cannot consciously supervise.

And then, crucially, it must become available for use.

Perhaps there is a kind of spiritual metabolism at work.

Consumption: I encountered the teaching.

Digestion: I wrestled with the teaching.

Assimilation: The teaching became part of how I live.

And then perhaps there is one more stage.

Circulation.

Now the wisdom moves through me.

I no longer need to remember the quotation.

I do not have to mentally summon the teacher or rewatch the podcast.

I don’t need to stop and ask, “What was it that I decided to believe about this?”

The wisdom has entered the bloodstream.

It has become available in the moment it is needed.

That may be one of the clearest signs that something has traveled from mind to marrow.

The teaching is no longer merely something we can repeat.

It has become part of our response.

Part of our reflexes.

It has become embedded and integral.

And perhaps this is why Spirit so often appears to tell us things we already know.

In my lived experience, Spirit often seems to take the path of least resistance. It can be far easier to work with something already familiar to us than to introduce something entirely novel and then somehow make us work to understand it.

This came up in another recent reading. Those in Spirit stepped forward with things the sitter felt she already understood—things, in some cases, she felt she had already mastered.

It can be easy to become impatient with repetition.

Yes, I know that.

I already believe that.

I have heard this before.

But perhaps repetition does not always mean there is nothing new being offered.

Perhaps the invitation is not to encounter a new idea.

Perhaps the invitation is to go deeper into the one already before us.

Spirit may be saying:

Yes. You know it.

Now live your way into a deeper understanding.

Let it leave the clever upper floors of your knowing.

Let it enter the bones.

Let it become marrow.

The mind asks: What does this mean?

Marrow asks: What does this change?

The mind says: I believe Spirit is trustworthy.

Marrow says: Then behave as though Spirit is trustworthy.

The mind says: Relationship continues beyond death.

Marrow says: Then work on building the relationship.

The mind says: I am held.

Marrow unclenches.

Marrow releases the need to understand everything in this now-moment.

That may be the difference.

Once wisdom reaches marrow, we do not merely think differently.

We move differently.

We respond differently.

We choose differently.

We relate differently.

We may even suffer differently.

Not because pain disappears, but because our vantage point has changed.

Not because we have finally mastered some superior spiritual philosophy.

But because what we once had to work to remember has become something we now live from.

Perhaps we do not always need another teaching.

Perhaps we do not need another astonishing idea.

Perhaps we need to stop skimming the surface long enough for one truth to penetrate.

To digest that truth.

To assimilate that truth.

To allow it to circulate.

To let it become part of the fabric of who we are.

There are things we know.

And then there are things that know us.

Ah! There it is.

Things that have entered so deeply that they reshape the way we meet the world without our having to reach for them.

Things that have become instinct.

Perhaps that is what Spirit is ultimately asking of us.

Not merely to understand what is given.

Not merely to admire it.

Not merely to quote it.

Not merely to continually say, “I got some amazing evidence.”

But to take it in.

And to be quietly willing to be changed by what we encountered.

We are not nourished by chewing our food and then spitting it back out.

At some point, we have to swallow that food.

And once we do, something remarkable happens.

The process moves beyond our conscious control.

We are no longer in charge of every step.

We cannot consciously supervise digestion. We cannot direct a nutrient into a particular cell or instruct the body how to make use of what we have given it.

We take it in, and then we must allow an intelligence deeper than conscious thought to do its work.

Perhaps spiritual metabolization asks something similar of us.

We receive the insight.

We sit with it.

We wrestle with it.

And then, at some point, we must become willing to let it work on us—even when what it asks of us feels counterintuitive.

From personal experience, I can say that this willingness to release the need to micromanage everything can be hard-won.

It is one thing to understand the idea of surrender and another to relinquish control.

One thing to believe that Spirit is trustworthy and another to behave as though it is.

One thing to believe that love survives death and another to enter into continuing relationship.

One thing to say, “I am held,” and another to unclench and relax into being held.

For wisdom to become marrow, something in us may have to soften enough to let it descend into places we cannot see.

We may have to release the need to understand everything before we trust it.

We may have to stop demanding novelty and stay with one truth long enough for it to change us.

We may even have to stop asking: What else do I need to know?

And begin asking:

Is there something I already know that I have not yet allowed myself to become?

Perhaps that is the deeper invitation.

Not more wisdom.

Deeper wisdom.

Not another meal.

Nourishment from what has already been consumed.

Not merely something magnificent passing through us, but something received deeply enough that it enters the bloodstream of our life.

Until we no longer have to remember it.

Until we no longer have to reach for it.

Until we move from it.

Until we live from it.

From mind to marrow.

Until what we know becomes who we are.

What if?

Ever in wonder,
Cheryl A. Page

From concept into conduct. From belief into embodiment.
Let it enter the bones.
Let it become marrow.

For Beth P. and David J., beloved friends who have come to know marrow in ways most of us never will. Your journeys have given the word marrow a depth no metaphor alone could hold. This is for you, with love.

Note: Everything I publish here is free and will remain free. A paid subscription does not unlock additional content—it is simply a way, for those interested, to support my writing and the work I offer in the world. Please never feel that subscribing is expected.

What is the What if? Group?

It’s a gathering of like-minded souls who come together not to teach or preach, but to share stories, explore synchronicities, experiment with ideas, and muse on the mystical and mysterious “what ifs” that have crossed our paths over the past month.

No agenda. No pressure. No cost. Just a warm, welcoming space to wonder together.

🌀 August 2026 What If? Group - Gathering Details:

🗓 Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2026
⏰ Time: 9:00 PM Eastern / See your time zone below
💻 Where: On Zoom (link below)
💸 Cost: Free

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2716017767?pwd=aGtML2h3d3I5bW9GYnMxQ05scjF3Zz09&omn=84592701897

Meeting ID: 271 601 7767

Passcode: 54321

🌍 Time Zones:

· Pacific Time — 6:00 PM Tuesday

· Phoenix Time — 6:00 PM Tuesday

· Mountain Time — 7:00 PM Tuesday

· Central Time — 8:00 PM Tuesday

· Eastern Time (New York) — 9:00 PM Tuesday

· London — 2:00 AM Wednesday

· Paris — 3:00 AM Wednesday

· Sydney / Melbourne — 12:00 PM AEST Wednesday

· New Zealand — 2:00 PM Auckland time Wednesday

Come as you are. Bring a question, a story, a synchronicity—or simply your listening heart. We’d love to have you in the circle.

With wonder always,

Cheryl A. Page

PS: This free Zoom group is graciously hosted by the illustrious and benevolent Wendy and Victor Zammit, whose work you may know from their Afterlife Report. If you’re not already subscribed, I highly recommend it. Their weekly offerings are spiritually rich and deeply uplifting. You can sign up for the Afterlife Report free here:
👉 https://victorzammit.com/archives/index.html

I recently completed a Quantum Reading in which a loved one came to the Round Table with an unexpected symbolic gift and a message of wisdom.

As the reading unfolded, the recipient became a little stuck in her head.

“That just doesn’t sound like them,” she said.

And I understood.

Of course I did.

When someone we love first dies, evidence can be profoundly important. We want—and sometimes desperately need—the unmistakable detail, the familiar phrase, the private memory, the particular quirk that causes something inside us to exhale and say:

“Yes. That is her.”

“Yes. That is him.”

“They are still here.”

Evidence can bring enormous comfort. It can loosen death’s apparent finality. Especially early in grief, it may help us recognize that consciousness, love, and relationship continue beyond the body.

I honor that need.

But over the nine years since my own beloved passed, I have come to understand that evidence is not the only doorway through which Spirit wishes to enter.

At some point—particularly after the rawest seasons of grief have passed—our continued insistence upon evidence may begin to restrict the very relationship we are trying to preserve.

We may tighten the reins so firmly that Spirit can travel only along the roads we already recognize.

We say:

“They would never have used those words.”

“That symbol has nothing to do with them.”

“That does not sound like the person I knew.”

“I don’t remember anything like that.”

And because something is unfamiliar, we may dismiss it before asking a more important question: What might this be trying to teach me?

When Evidence Becomes the Price of Admission

The human mind naturally reaches for recognition.

A remembered expression.

A favorite object.

A familiar mannerism.

A private story.

A particular rhythm of speech.

Evidence makes unfamiliar territory feel safer.

And sometimes it comes with startling precision. Those moments matter. I am not suggesting that we abandon evidence, discernment, or our own lived knowledge of the person we loved.

I am suggesting that evidence may be the beginning of the relationship across the veil—not necessarily its final purpose.

For generations, much of modern mediumship has been organized around one central question:

Can the medium provide enough recognizable information to establish the identity of the person in Spirit?

This evidential discipline arose for understandable reasons. It can protect sitters, bring rigor to the practice, and offer profound reassurance to grieving people.

But a method developed to establish survival can quietly become a limitation when proof is treated as the only communication of value.

We may enter a reading with one agenda: Provide evidence.

Spirit may enter with a much larger one:

Love.

Wisdom.

Healing.

Guidance.

Encouragement.

And the continued evolution of the relationship—what I call the VIBRATIONSHIP.

The long-standing assumption is that we will not trust the love, wisdom, or guidance unless Spirit first proves identity to our satisfaction.

Again, this is understandable—especially early in grief and early in our spiritual journey.

But there may come a time when we are invited to grow beyond requiring evidence as the price of admission for every further communication.

There is a subtle but important difference between discernment and control.

Discernment asks: “What feels true or meaningful here?”

Control declares: “It can only be true if it arrives in a form I have already approved.”

One remains open.

The other tightens its grip before the message has had time to unfold.

Are They Still Exactly Who They Were?

We knew our loved ones through the relationship available to us during their earthly lives.

We knew their personalities.

Their habits.

Their vocabulary.

Their emotional capacities.

The things they expressed easily.

And perhaps the things they did not.

But is a person only the portion of themselves they managed to reveal while embodied?

Is it possible that they now understand things for which they once had no language?

We continue to grow here in three-dimensional reality. I believe Those in Spirit continue to grow as well.

Is it possible that death does not freeze a soul into its final earthly personality, preserving every limitation, silence, fear, hesitation, and opinion forever?

The Master Painters Who Could Not Paint Freely

When I was in my early twenties, I attended a remarkable demonstration by the Brazilian trance painter Luiz Antônio Alencastro Gasparetto.

Gasparetto became internationally known for producing paintings at astonishing speed that he attributed to deceased master artists—among them Monet, Renoir, Rembrandt, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Leonardo da Vinci. He painted with his eyes closed, used both hands simultaneously, or moved from one canvas to another in rapid succession.

The demonstration I witnessed was spectacular.

But something he said afterward has remained with me for decades.

When the audience was invited to ask questions, Gasparetto explained that the Master Painters had expressed frustration to him. They felt constrained to paint only in the styles for which they had been known while embodied.

Why?

Because if Monet no longer painted like Monet, no one would believe it was Monet.

If Picasso experimented with an entirely new form, people would say:

“That does not look like Picasso.”

And therefore: “It cannot be him.”

What an extraordinary dilemma.

Imagine continuing to grow, perceive, experiment, and evolve beyond the veil—and yet being required to reproduce your former self endlessly in order to remain recognizable to those still embodied.

We say we want Spirit to communicate freely.

But often we require Them to remain confined within the evidence of who They once were.

The Master Painter may wish to show us a new canvas.

We insist upon another copy of the old one.

And suddenly, the question becomes much larger than mediumship:

Are we asking Those in Spirit to communicate—or merely to impersonate their former selves convincingly enough for us to believe them?

We may believe we are asking Spirit to prove continuity while inadvertently demanding creative stagnation. The story of Gasparetto’s Master Painters offers a vivid example of the very restriction this essay explores.

Consider the person you were twenty, thirty, or fifty years ago.

Would that earlier version of you recognize every thought you carry today?

Would she recognize your vocabulary?

Your understanding?

Your courage?

Your spiritual perspective?

She might say: “That doesn’t sound like me.”

And she would not be entirely wrong.

You have changed.

You have learned.

You have widened.

And yet, you remain yourself.

Perhaps spiritual continuation is not the endless repetition of who someone was.

Perhaps it is the unfolding of more of who they are becoming.

What If They Are Not Only Trying to Prove They Survived?

This is the question that fascinates me:

What if our loved ones are not only trying to prove that they survived death?

What if they are also trying to help us live?

What if Cross-Veil Communication is not meant to remain solely backward-looking?

Not only: “Remember me as I was.”

But also: “Let me love you—and share with you—from what I understand now.”

The human mind often wants those who have died to return wearing the same clothes of their earthly personality.

The same expressions.

The same opinions.

The same emotional range.

The same way of relating to us.

Familiarity feels like proof.

But Spirit may arrive clothed in symbols that seem to have no obvious historical connection to the person delivering them.

The mind asks:

“Would my father really have brought that?”

“Why would my mother choose that image?”

“What does this object have to do with my child?”

The deeper question may be: What did the gift bring to you?

Did it open something?

Did it soften something?

Did it challenge an old pattern?

Did it offer language for what you are living now?

Did it place a hand upon a part of you that needed tenderness?

Did it invite you to see your life differently?

A symbol may not be evidence of who the person was in the past.

It may reveal what the relationship is capable of becoming now.

What Is a Quantum Reading?

A Quantum Reading is the name I use for a different kind of encounter across the veil.

Traditional evidential mediumship generally asks Spirit to help establish identity—an essential and often deeply healing experience.

A Quantum Reading honors that truth and then takes one step farther along the path:

“We already trust in your presence. Now we seek your wisdom.”

The idea did not begin as a service I dreamed up.

It arrived during meditation as a rather direct invitation from Spirit:

“How about letting us take the reins for a while?”

And so, instead of directing the gathering toward proof, I open a Round Table and offer this invitation:

Not: “Prove yourselves according to the expectations of the room.”

But: “Come as you will. Bring what you perceive is needed.”

A Quantum Reading may include loved ones, guides, teachers, historical figures, or others across the veil. Each guest is invited to bring a symbolic gift, a piece of wisdom, or an energetic offering.

Evidence may arise naturally.

But it is not the governing demand.

The emphasis shifts from proving continued existence to exploring what Spirit may perceive as useful for our growth, healing, enlightenment, and evolution. This is the central philosophy of the Quantum Reading: not the rejection of evidence, but movement beyond evidence as the only purpose of the encounter.

This is not an invitation to abandon intelligence.

It is an invitation to let relationship become larger than proof.

When We Tighten the Reins

At first, we hold the reins because we are frightened.

We need to know who is carrying us.

We need to know whether the path is safe.

There is nothing wrong with that.

But when every unfamiliar word is rejected, every unexpected symbol dismissed, and every message required to reproduce the past, we are no longer merely holding the reins.

We are pulling hard against the bit.

Eventually, we may even hobble the relationship—asking Spirit to come close while permitting it to move only within the narrow circle of what we already recognize.

A tightly controlled horse can travel only the path the rider already knows.

What might happen if, after trust has been established, we loosened our grip?

What undiscovered terrain might Spirit lead us toward?

What if the horse has not come merely to walk us back through old memories—but to carry the relationship somewhere it has never been?

A horse joyfully released from tight reins does not necessarily bolt into danger.

It may simply lengthen its stride.

Lift its head.

Feel the ground beneath it.

And move with the freedom for which it was made.

Perhaps the same is true of Spirit.

Perhaps the same is true of love.

“That Doesn’t Sound Like Them”

You are allowed to say: “That does not sound like the person I remember.”

But perhaps you might then add: “I will listen for what the love within it may be trying to say.”

That second sentence opens a window.

You do not need to force belief.

You do not need to manufacture recognition.

You do not need to persuade yourself that every word is perfect.

Relaxation is not gullibility.

Receiving is not the surrender of intelligence.

A message can be held gently.

It can sit beside you.

You can notice what returns tomorrow, next month, or during an ordinary moment in the garden.

Some wisdom is recognizable immediately.

Some must be lived before it becomes recognizable.

Not every question comes with an answer today.

Sometimes we must live our way into the meaning of the gifts Spirit brings.

And just because a gift is not immediately recognizable does not mean it is not precious.

It may be true but not yet understood.

It may be meaningful but incomplete.

It may contain a seed whose flowering belongs to another season.

The Limitations of “Yes, No, I Don’t Know”

In traditional evidential mediumship, recipients are often instructed to respond with:

“Yes.”

“No.”

“I don’t know.”

There is value in keeping feedback clean and not feeding information to the medium.

But this method also contains a limitation.

We sometimes say no far too quickly.

We hear an unfamiliar name, image, object, place, or memory and immediately reject it.

Yet: “I do not recognize this” is not always the same as “this is incorrect.”

More may be revealed later.

A family member may recognize the reference.

A forgotten memory may surface.

A symbol may prove metaphorical rather than literal.

Or perhaps the message was never intended to prove identity in the first place.

Perhaps it was intended to offer wisdom.

I wonder how much is lost because we close the door before the message has finished unfolding.

Perhaps receiving without immediately understanding is itself a form of bravery.

To receive without categorizing.

To listen without grasping.

To remain present without forcing certainty.

To allow an unfamiliar message to be neither accepted blindly nor rejected reflexively.

To say: “I do not know exactly what this is, but I am willing to notice what it awakens in me.”

That is a mature spiritual posture.

Not certainty.

Not cynicism.

Openness with discernment.

Evidence, Wisdom, Guidance, and Love

I do not believe Those in Spirit advance by controlling us.

Nor do we advance by handing away our sovereignty.

Growth occurs through relationship.

Through exchange.

Through the movement of love between fields of awareness.

Our loved ones may grow through loving and assisting us.

We may grow by learning to receive their love in forms that do not always resemble the past.

This is not a betrayal of evidence.

It is a widening of purpose.

Evidence asks: “Is it really you?”

Wisdom asks: “What are you showing me?”

Guidance asks: “How might this help me live?”

Love asks: “Can we continue becoming together?”

There is room for every one of these questions.

When a death is new and the heart is raw, evidence is often exactly what is needed.

We need to know that the person is still alive in another form.

We need the familiar.

We need reassurance.

But some point we must allow the conversation to continue past evidence.

If, years later, we still demand that every communication prove identity again and again, we may never move beyond:

“Is that really you?”

And we may miss:

“Here is what I now understand.”

“Here is what may help you.”

“Here is how our relationship can continue to grow.”

Spirit may have bigger plans for the VIBRATIONSHIP than the endless repetition of proof.

The Courtroom and the Round Table

An evidential reading can sometimes feel like a courtroom.

Spirit presents evidence.

The recipient examines it.

The medium is evaluated.

Identity must be established beyond reasonable doubt.

But a Quantum Reading moves from the courtroom to the Round Table.

A place of counsel.

A place where the visible and invisible are invited to meet not only for reassurance, but for transformation.

In a courtroom, evidence is examined.

At a Round Table, gifts are received, discussed, discerned, and carried joyfully into life.

This does not guarantee that every word will resonate.

Human language remains human language.

Interpretation remains interpretation.

Mystery remains mystery.

But perhaps the measure of a meaningful reading is not whether every voice sounds exactly as expected.

Perhaps the truest measure is whether the gathering offers something alive.

Something loving.

Something useful.

Something we can learn from over time.

Something capable of helping us become more fully ourselves.

Unclenching the Demand

I am not asking anyone to relinquish discernment.

I am asking whether we might unclench our demands only for evidence.

Let the gifts rest upon the table.

You do not have to understand them all today.

You do not need to certify their origin immediately.

You do not need to force your heart to feel something it does not yet feel.

Your memories remain yours.

No reading can erase your lived experience.

No symbol can rewrite your history.

The unfamiliar gift does not have to compete with the person you remember.

It can sit beside that memory.

It can say: “You have known me in one way.

Perhaps you may come to know my love in another way, too.”

To hand Spirit the reins is to risk being misunderstood and sometimes to misunderstand.

But every paradigm shift first appears strange to the paradigm it is widening.

We are so accustomed to asking Spirit to reproduce the familiar that we may have forgotten to ask what else relationship beyond death could become.

We are not required to wrap our heads around all of it.

Let the head remain curious.

Let the heart remain unforced.

Let the soul take what nourishes it.

There is no test at the end.

Only an invitation: Loosen the reins. Open your hands.

Be willing to receive even what is unfamiliar.

Perhaps this is one of the deeper invitations within any mediumistic reading:

Do we accept only what we immediately recognize?

Or can we remain present to the mysterious?

Can we allow love to become larger than the voice in which we first learned to recognize it?

Our loved ones are not erased by this possibility.

They are expanded by it.

Relationship may continue beyond memory.

Beyond expectation.

And perhaps—eventually—even beyond the constant need to be certain.

What if?

Ever in wonder,

Cheryl A. Page

PS: There is an old joke attributed to Ranger Doug of Riders in the Sky: “Is that the way it has always been done?” “Yes.” “Then we know it works.”

Fair enough. But it does not tell us whether something new might work better—or open a door the old method was never designed to find.

Note: Everything I publish here is free and will remain free. A paid subscription does not unlock additional content—it is simply a way, for those interested, to support my writing and the work I offer in the world. Please never feel that subscribing is expected.

“I used to aspire to be the butterfly. Now I aspire to be the Wind.”

I wrote those words years ago after one of those peculiar little epiphanies that arrives without fanfare and then proceeds to completely rearrange the furniture in your mind.

For years, I loved the butterfly.

Who doesn’t?

The caterpillar-to-butterfly story may be one of our most beloved metaphors for transformation. We use it for healing. Awakening. Reinvention. Spiritual growth. Becoming.

And it is a beautiful metaphor because it tells us something we desperately need to remember:

You can become more than you were.

The caterpillar does not simply improve itself.

It transforms.

It enters the darkness of the chrysalis, becomes something very much like goo, and somehow emerges with wings.

How marvelous!

But lately I have found myself wondering:

What if becoming is not the end of awakening?

For that matter, even the word awakening has begun to intrigue me.

Awakening suggests that I have been asleep.

But I don’t think I have been.

Perhaps I have simply forgotten some very important things worth remembering.

And perhaps the deeper invitation is not to acquire yet another label—awake, enlightened, evolved, ascended, transformed—but to stop labeling ourselves to infinity.

What if the deeper invitation is to stop needing to become anything at all?

Because one day it occurred to me that, glorious as she is, the butterfly is still…

a butterfly.

She has wings.

She has altitude.

She has mobility.

She is certainly freer than the caterpillar.

But she still has a shape.

A lifespan.

A trajectory.

A boundary between herself and everything else.

And suddenly I had my aha! moment:

The butterfly is just another box—with a wee bit more elevation.

Well now.

That was inconvenient.

Because I had spent a good deal of my life trying to become the butterfly.

Transform.

Grow.

Heal.

Awaken.

Become wiser.

Become freer.

Become more spiritual.

Become the next version of myself.

And somewhere along the way, I began to wonder whether I had simply continued trading one container for a more beautiful one—forever trying to keep up with the spiritual Joneses.

That is when the Wind entered.

Not as another metaphor, exactly.

More like recognition.

A remembering.

The Wind does not ask:

What am I becoming?

Am I transformed enough?

Am I flying high enough?

Am I doing awakening correctly?

The Wind simply moves.

It cannot be contained by the shape of what it passes through.

It moves through trees and becomes the invisible fingers that rustle the leaves, almost as though the forest itself were an instrument.

It moves across water and becomes waves.

Through a canyon and becomes a howl.

Across your cheek and becomes a whisper.

Through a flute and becomes music.

And yet—

it never becomes any of those things.

It remains the Wind.

That realization stopped me in my tracks.

Because perhaps this is what I have been trying to understand all along.

Perhaps awakening is not endlessly constructing a better version of ourselves.

Perhaps awakening is becoming less identified with the container altogether.

The Wind has no constraints.

The Wind has no box.

The Wind has no questions.

The Wind has nothing to prove.

And oh, what a relief there is in that.

Because if we are not careful, even spirituality can become another achievement system.

We laugh about climbing the corporate ladder, but if we’re being honest, there is a spiritual ladder too, isn’t there?

Become enlightened.

Raise your vibration.

Manifest better.

Heal everything.

Transform.

Ascend.

Evolve.

Be more conscious.

Be more present.

Be more aligned.

Be more.

Be more.

Be more.

Sometimes contemporary spirituality sounds suspiciously like achievement language wearing the scent of incense.

Even the butterfly can accidentally become a spiritual performance review.

Look! I metamorphosed!

(HA! How’s that for a word?)

The Wind could not care less.

The Wind does not submit quarterly awakening reports.

The Wind does not compare its spiritual development to the breeze next door.

The Wind does not wonder whether it has sufficiently healed its ancestral trauma before it is permitted to move across the meadow.

The Wind moves.

And perhaps that is why another layer of this metaphor fascinates me so much.

Across ancient languages, the boundaries between wind, breath, and spirit are wonderfully porous.

The Hebrew word ruach can mean wind, breath, or spirit.

The Greek pneuma carries that same extraordinary constellation of meanings: breath, wind, spirit.

Long before we turned spirituality into something we could diagram, certify, package, or master, human beings seemed to recognize something elemental:

Spirit moves.

Spirit breathes.

Spirit is known by what it touches.

We cannot see the wind itself.

The wind is invisible.

We may see dust or leaves carried upon it, but those things are not the wind.

Instead, we know the Wind by its effects.

We see branches bend.

We watch waves of grain ripple.

We feel something brush our skin and tousle our hair.

We hear the shutters rattle.

We witness the evidence of its passing.

And for many of us, perhaps there is something familiar in that.

Those we love in Spirit may also be unseen.

And yet unseen does not necessarily mean unfelt.

Or absent.

We may learn to notice movement.

A ripple.

A touch.

A coincidence.

A familiar song arriving at an impossible moment.

Something that bends the branches of our ordinary world just enough for us to pause and wonder:

What just moved through here?

Perhaps that is why a line attributed to Buckminster Fuller has stayed with me:

“The wave is not the water. The water merely told us about the wave moving by.”

The water reveals the wave.

And the Wind helps create it.

Water + Wind = Wave.

Something invisible meets something visible, and a third thing appears.

That fascinates me.

Because perhaps there is another equation here.

Wind + world = evidence.

The Wind becomes knowable by what it moves.

And perhaps:

Spirit + us = experience.

Something unseen meets something embodied, and suddenly there is a ripple.

A knowing.

A synchronicity.

A moment of recognition.

A song.

A sign.

A story we cannot quite explain but cannot quite dismiss either.

The Wind does not become the tree when the branches sway.

Spirit need not become us in order to move through our lives.

And suddenly I find myself wondering:

What if I am more like that than I have ever understood?

What if this body, this personality, this biography, this carefully assembled identity called “Cheryl” is not insignificant—but neither is it the whole story?

What if the container is simply one beautiful way something larger is revealing its movement?

That possibility feels very different from self-improvement.

It feels more like surrender.

And surrender is a word I have misunderstood for much of my life.

I used to think surrender meant giving up.

Now, at 63, I wonder whether surrender might mean giving up something entirely different:

the exhausting belief that I have to carry myself everywhere.

That I have to prove I am becoming.

Prove I am awakening.

Prove I am ascending.

Prove I am getting somewhere.

Which brings me back to the butterfly.

Perhaps I do not want wings anymore.

Not because wings aren’t marvelous.

They are.

But even wings imply that I must carry myself somewhere.

I must flap.

Navigate.

Choose altitude.

Choose direction.

Avoid predators.

Find the right flower.

Hang out with the other butterflies and try to keep up.

Keep myself aloft.

There is still effort involved in being the butterfly.

The Wind suggests something radically different:

What if I let myself be carried?

There is real permission in that question.

Permission to stop trying so hard.

Permission not to know where everything is going.

Permission to enter mystery without immediately requiring a map.

Permission to move without first explaining the movement.

Permission to allow life to pass through me rather than constantly trying to engineer it into the shape I think—or someone else tells me—it should take.

Perhaps this is another way of refusing to collapse the wave.

Perhaps I do not need to force one answer too quickly.

Perhaps I do not need to decide precisely what I am becoming.

Perhaps there is wisdom in remaining spacious enough for something unexpected to move through.

The Wind does not know the shape it will take around the next mountain.

It does not need to.

It does not get ahead of itself.

It meets the mountain when it arrives, moves around it, and allows whatever is on the other side to remain a surprise.

That may be the distinction I was trying to name all those years ago when those words first came to me.

I was not rejecting transformation.

The butterfly is beautiful.

The chrysalis is holy.

Becoming matters.

But perhaps transformation itself can become another identity we imprison ourselves inside.

Perhaps becoming is not the end of awakening.

Perhaps there comes a time when the invitation is no longer:

What shall I become next?

but:

What am I willing to stop containing?

For years, I thought transformation meant growing wings.

Now I wonder if the deeper transformation is finally discovering that I was never required to remain a creature with edges.

I used to aspire to be the butterfly.

Now I aspire to be the Wind.

What if?

Cheryl A. Page

Note: Everything I publish here is free and will remain free. A paid subscription does not unlock additional content—it is simply a way, for those interested, to support my writing and the work I offer in the world. Please never feel that subscribing is expected.

My children are adopted from China, and over the years we have eaten Chinese food a lot.

And I do mean A LOT.

So here is the all-too-familiar scene:

At the end of a meal in a Chinese restaurant, just when everyone is pleasantly full and the table has descended into that cheerful disarray of empty plates, teacups, soy sauce bottles, and abandoned chopsticks, the fortune cookies arrive.

Nobody ordered them.

Nobody selected the message they would receive.

Usually, the cookies appear together on a small tray or are casually scattered across the table—as though this tiny delivery from the Unknown is hardly worth mentioning.

And yet, everyone reaches for one.

Even the most practical person at the table—the one who announces in advance that fortune cookies are silly, the messages are completely random, and none of it means anything—still chooses a cookie.

Still cracks it open.

Still pulls out the narrow slip of paper.

Still reads it.

Usually aloud.

Then comes the inevitable question:

“What does yours say?”

Around the table, we take turns sharing our fortunes.

Someone receives a message that seems hilariously inappropriate.

Someone gets precisely the message another person believes was clearly intended for them.

Someone reads theirs and falls unexpectedly quiet.

Someone announces that theirs is “so accurate it’s actually creepy.”

Someone adds the traditional and ever-mature phrase “in bed” to the end of every fortune. 😂

And someone—perhaps the very person who insisted that none of this means anything—quietly folds the little strip of paper and slips it into a wallet.

Because every now and then, the message lands.

The Tiny Ceremony of Revelation

A fortune cookie is not really about predicting the future.

It is about the tiny ceremony of revelation.

The cookie arrives closed.

The message is hidden.

For one suspended moment, we do not know what is waiting inside.

We hold a small mystery in the palm of our hand.

Then comes the satisfying little crack.

The shell breaks open.

The paper appears.

And the unknown becomes known.

Perhaps that is why fortune cookies have remained so delightful. They give us a safe and playful encounter with uncertainty.

The future itself can feel enormous.

Terrifying, even.

But fold it into a crisp little cookie, and suddenly we are willing to take a peek.

There is no ominous oracle wearing a black robe. No lightning bolt. No demand that we sell all our belongings and move to a mountaintop.

There is only a small message waiting to be discovered.

A pleasant surprise is waiting for you.

Your courage will soon be rewarded.

An unexpected opportunity will arrive on your doorstep.

Or, occasionally:

Help! I’m being held hostage in a fortune cookie factory!

Thank you, Great Oracle.

Your powers are astonishing.

The Fortune Cookie Has a Secret of Its Own

Here is something I did not know until I began exploring the history of fortune cookies—and yes, I really did spend time researching the origins of fortune cookies.

Ever the researcher.

They are not traditionally Chinese.

Who knew?

The precise ancestry of the modern fortune cookie remains somewhat disputed, but the strongest historical trail leads back to Japan, where crackers known as tsujiura senbei contained paper fortunes. These Japanese versions were larger, darker, and more savory than the sweet golden cookies familiar to Americans today.

Japanese immigrants later brought related traditions to California, where the modern fortune cookie emerged during the early twentieth century.

Several people and businesses have been credited with helping to create or popularize the American version. Makoto Hagiwara reportedly served fortune cookies at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. David Jung of the Hong Kong Noodle Company in Los Angeles also claimed to have invented them, as did Seiichi Kito of the Japanese confectionery Fugetsu-Do.

The historical verdict remains delightfully unresolved.

During and after World War II, the cookies became increasingly associated with Chinese American restaurants. One explanation is that the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans disrupted Japanese-owned bakeries and restaurants, while Chinese American businesses continued making and serving the cookies.

Over time, they became an iconic part of the American Chinese-restaurant experience.

In other words, the fortune cookie itself contains a hidden story.

What appears to be one thing opens to reveal another.

The cookie is, in a sense, its own fortune cookie.

Why Do We Love Them So Much?

Part of the pleasure is surprise.

Part of it is the not knowing.

Part of it is that wonderful human habit of making meaning.

We do not merely read our fortunes. We immediately begin comparing them with our lives.

What could this mean?

Is this about my work?

Is this about the person I just met?

Is something about to happen?

Why did I get this particular message?

The printed sentence may have been composed years ago. Thousands of identical copies may exist. It may have been inserted into our cookie by a machine.

And yet, when we pull it out at precisely the right moment, it can feel personal.

For thirty seconds, a mass-produced strip of paper becomes strangely intimate.

Perhaps even numinous.

We know perfectly well that the cookie did not study our life before selecting its message.

And still, something in us is willing to wonder.

I think fortune cookies touch a deep and enduring hope within us:

the hope that life is communicative.

That the universe is not merely happening around us.

That perhaps it is also responding.

Participating.

Occasionally winking.

Messages Hidden in the Ordinary

What if signs from Spirit are a little like fortune cookies?

Not because Spirit is handing out fixed predictions.

Not because every feather, song lyric, or flickering light contains a coded instruction.

And certainly not because we are meant to surrender our common sense and organize our entire lives around cryptic messages discovered in baked goods.

But life continually places small, unopened moments before us.

A book falls open to a particular page.

A stranger says precisely what we needed to hear.

A song begins playing just as we think of someone we love.

A familiar scent appears with no apparent source.

A bird lands unusually close.

A coin glints from the pavement.

A stone catches our attention.

A phrase rises unexpectedly in the mind.

Each moment arrives like a small folded cookie:

Something visible on the outside.

Something potentially meaningful within.

But we must be willing to crack the moment open.

Spirit rarely hands us a notarized document stamped:

OFFICIAL MESSAGE FROM THE GREAT BEYOND

More often, it slips something small into the ordinary.

A phrase.

A feather.

A coincidence.

A sudden knowing.

A song on the radio.

Then it waits to see whether we will notice.

The Meeting Creates the Meaning

A fortune cookie does not force its message upon us.

It waits.

We can eat the cookie and throw away the paper.

We can read the message, laugh, and forget it.

We can decide it has no relevance whatsoever.

Or we can pause because something in the words catches.

Something vibrates.

Something seems to recognize us.

Signs often work the same way.

The object itself may be ordinary.

The words may be general.

The song may have played for thousands of people that day.

The bird may simply be doing what birds do.

But meaning is not necessarily located in the object alone.

Meaning arises in the meeting:

between the message and the moment,

between the symbol and the receiver,

between what appears before us and what is already stirring within us.

But we must do our part, mustn’t we?

We must choose to crack open the cookie.

That is where the VIBRATIONSHIP occurs.

The sign is the cookie.

The meaning is the fortune.

Presence is the hand that opens it.

Not Every Cookie Is a Commandment

Of course, we must leave room for mystery without abandoning discernment.

Not every fortune cookie contains a profound spiritual directive.

Not every song is a message.

Not every numerical sequence requires investigation.

Not every bird has flown across several dimensions to deliver our quarterly performance review.

Sometimes a cookie is only a cookie.

Sometimes a feather is simply a feather.

But I do not believe we must choose between declaring that everything is a sign and insisting that nothing is.

There is a more spacious possibility.

We can remain curious.

We can notice what catches our attention without immediately demanding certainty about why.

We can allow a moment to be meaningful without requiring it to be supernatural.

We can ask:

Why did this touch me?

Why did I notice it now?

What does it awaken within me?

Does it bring love, wisdom, courage, or clarity?

Does it invite me into a deeper relationship with life?

The purpose of a sign may not be to prove that the universe has singled us out.

Perhaps its purpose is simply to bring us fully into the moment.

Sixty-Three Unopened Cookies

On Tuesday, July 21, I will turn sixty-three.

I do not know what the coming year contains.

Thank God.

Imagine receiving our complete life story at birth in one enormous envelope:

Here is everyone you will meet.

Here is every place you will go.

Here is everything you will accomplish.

Here is everything you will lose.

Here is every mistake you will make.

Here is every moment that will break your heart.

Here is everything that will eventually astonish you.

Please initial each page.

No, thank you.

I would rather receive my life one small mystery at a time.

At sixty-three, I am not asking Spirit to tell me exactly what will happen next.

I am celebrating the fact that I still do not know.

There are unopened cookies ahead of me.

People I have not yet met.

Words I have not yet written.

Places I have not yet visited.

Books I have not yet discovered.

Questions I have not yet thought to ask.

Laughter I cannot yet hear.

Joy still waiting to be experienced.

Messages I have not yet received.

New ways Spirit may surprise me.

New expressions of love waiting to reveal themselves.

New pieces of myself I have not yet met.

What an extraordinary thing it is to have lived sixty-three years and still be surrounded by mystery.

Age has not answered all my questions.

It has given me better ones.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts of growing older: we begin to understand that the unknown is not merely something to fear.

It is also where surprise lives.

It is where possibility lives.

It is where wonder waits.

Choose Your Fortune

And so, in honor of my birthday, I would like to leave a few fortune cookies on our virtual table.

Choose one.

Do not overthink it.

Simply notice which number calls to you.

The Knower already knows.

Cookie One

The answer will arrive when you least expect it.

Cookie Two

Something you thought was over is learning a new way to love you.

Cookie Three

The door ahead will not open through force. Stay curious.

Cookie Four

You have not missed your moment. Your moment is still becoming.

Cookie Five

Joy has been trying to reach you. Answer the phone.

Cookie Six

The sign you are seeking may already be seeking you.

Cookie Seven

Your life is not asking you to know what happens next. It is asking you to remain available.

Perhaps your fortune is nothing more than a pleasant sentence on a screen.

Perhaps it will make you smile and then disappear.

Or perhaps, for reasons neither of us can explain, one of these messages has arrived at exactly the right moment.

That is the delicious mystery, isn’t it?

We never quite know what will be waiting inside the next cookie.

We only know that life keeps placing them before us.

And every so often, we are invited to reach out—

choose one—

crack it open—

and see what Spirit has slipped inside.

What if? 🥠✨

Xièxiè!

Cheryl A. Page

P.S. And you guessed it—my birthday dinner will definitely be…Chinese food!

Note: Everything I publish here is free and will remain free. A paid subscription does not unlock additional content—it is simply a way, for those interested, to support my writing and the work I offer in the world. Please never feel that subscribing is expected.

Ever since I was a little girl, people have commented on my joyfulness.

Not because I have lived an easy life.

Not because I see the world through rose-colored glasses.

Joy has simply always been the way I have met the world—for reasons I never fully understood until I recently traveled to Scotland.

It is not denial.

It is not perpetual happiness.

It is a posture of openness that has always come naturally to me.

A willingness to smile, to laugh, and to be surprised by wonder.

Perhaps that is why, nine years ago today, when I received the phone call that Scott had been killed, I believed I had lost not only the love of my life...

I believed I had lost myself.

I did not think I would ever know joy again.

And yet, if there is one thing these past nine years have taught me, it is this:

Perhaps joy is not the opposite of grief.

Perhaps it is grief’s highest transmutation—the taste love acquires after it discovers that death cannot end relationship.

What if?

The title of this essay is borrowed.

In 1814, William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet entitled Surprised by Joy after the death of his beloved daughter, Catherine.

He describes one breathtaking instant when something delightful catches his attention and, without thinking, instinctively turns to share it with the person he loves most.

Only to remember.

She is gone.

The surprise is not merely the joy.

The surprise is that joy had dared to visit him at all.

More than a century later, C.S. Lewis borrowed those same words for the title of his spiritual autobiography.

For Lewis, Joy was not happiness.

It was longing.

A deep homesickness for something beyond this visible world.

For years I admired both men.

I never imagined I would someday find myself standing quietly between them.

Wordsworth taught me grief.

Lewis taught me longing.

Scott taught me joy.

In the months after Scott died, I became fascinated by something I was learning from neuroscience.

A thought creates an emotion.

An emotion releases chemistry.

That chemistry washes through the brain and every cell of the body.

I would think,

“Scott was hit by a truck and killed.”

And without realizing it...

I would pour myself another grief shot.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Not because I wanted to.

Because the love inside me was searching for someone it could no longer see.

Nine years ago, I believed grief would become the chemistry of the rest of my life.

Scott had other plans.

Patiently...

Joyfully...

One impossible moment at a time...

He began changing the recipe.

Little by little, he taught me that although the nervous system can become addicted to grief...

The soul remembers another vintage.

During one meditation, after I had learned how to recognize Scott’s presence, he said something I have never forgotten.

“There is no quicker way to intoxication than joy.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

Not intellectually.

I knew it in my knower.

It would be years before I appreciated how perfectly Scott had chosen those words.

After all...

He had been a bartender.

He understood intoxication.

But from beyond the veil, he was no longer inviting me to escape reality.

He was inviting me to participate in a Greater Reality than I had previously imagined.

If you are going to become intoxicated by anything...

Become intoxicated by wonder.

Become intoxicated by gratitude.

Become intoxicated by joy.

For the past nine years, Scott has tended a different kind of bar.

His favorite libation is Joy.

And every so often, when I least expect it...

He quietly slides another JOY shot across the counter between worlds.

I have learned never to refuse it.

Just before this anniversary, I traveled to Scotland—the home country of my ancestors.

It was, in many ways, a pilgrimage.

My great-grandmother, Anna Smith, left Edinburgh when she was only ten years old. Like so many immigrant families, much was lost over the generations.

Stories faded.

Accents disappeared.

Even our family tartan vanished into history.

I thought I was traveling to discover where I came from.

Instead...

I discovered something I may have been carrying all along.

Everywhere I went I encountered people who were quick to laugh...

Quicker to smile...

Ready with a story...

Ready to welcome a stranger.

I wasn’t surprised because Scotland was joyful in spite of its history.

I was surprised because joy seemed woven into its history.

Not as denial.

Not as optimism.

As resilience.

As hospitality.

As a people who somehow learned that laughter does not erase sorrow—

It keeps sorrow from having the final word.

Standing among them, I wondered...

Could joy itself be part of my Scottish inheritance?

Not my family tartan.

Something older.

Something woven into the character of a people.

And perhaps...woven into me?

While I was in Paisley, I learned the story of the Sma’ Shot.

A tiny hidden thread woven into every magnificent Paisley shawl.

Invisible.

Yet essential.

Without it, the cloth would eventually come apart.

Because it could not be seen, the manufacturers refused to pay the weavers for weaving it.

How very human.

We overlook the very things holding our lives together.

As I listened to the story, I wondered if joy is the Sma’ Shot of a human life.

The hidden thread.

Almost invisible.

Rarely celebrated.

Quietly holding everything together.

Scotland gave me another beautiful metaphor.

Whisky makers speak of The Angel’s Share.

As whisky slowly matures inside oak barrels, a small portion naturally evaporates.

The distillers smile and say,

“That part belongs to the angels.”

Scott was the one who first taught me about the Angel’s Share.

And now I couldn’t help wondering...

If the Angel’s Share is what slowly rises toward heaven...

Perhaps the JOY shots are what quietly condense back to earth.

Perhaps the Angel’s Share goes up...

And Scott’s Share comes down.

People often ask whether my work is really about proving that consciousness survives death.

It isn’t.

That is an interesting question.

But it is not the most interesting question.

The better question is this:

What kind of life becomes possible if relationship continues on both sides of physical death?

That question has quietly become the work of my life.

Because if relationship continues...

Then perhaps joy is no longer merely an emotion.

Perhaps joy becomes a way of participating in the Greater Reality.

Years ago, while teaching, Scott gave me another little realization.

JOY.

Just.

Open.

Yourself.

Perhaps joy is not something we manufacture.

Perhaps it is what naturally appears when we stop defending ourselves against wonder.

People often ask me why signs matter.

Why synchronicities matter.

Why I continue inviting people to notice the impossible little moments.

Not to prove survival.

Not even to reduce grief.

But because every sign is, in a sense...

Another JOY shot.

A tiny sacred libation.

Poured from one octave of consciousness...

Into another.

Nine years ago today, I believed I had lost joy forever.

Instead...

I was slowly being reintroduced to it.

By a nineteenth-century poet who gave language to grief.

By C.S. Lewis, who gave language to longing.

By Scotland, which reminded me that laughter can become a form of resilience.

By hidden threads woven into Paisley cloth.

By the Angel’s Share.

And most of all...

By a bartender.

Who, from somewhere just beyond my ordinary sight, has spent the last nine years quietly pouring JOY shots across the veil.

One after another.

Until one day I looked up, standing among smiling Scots whose laughter seemed woven into the fabric of the land itself, and realized something I never imagined possible.

Somewhere along the way, Scott didn’t simply help me find joy again.

He helped me find myself again.

I had not betrayed my grief.

I had become intoxicated by joy.

Perhaps that is the greatest surprise of all.

Grief never asked me to stop loving Scott.

It asked me to learn a new way to love him.

And joy became the language we found together...

One JOY shot at a time.

One Final Invitation...

If, somewhere along your own journey, someone you love has crossed the veil before you...

Perhaps today...

Belly up to the bar.

Ask them to pour you a JOY shot.

Then...

Sit quietly.

Smile.

Pay attention.

Because they may not serve it the way you expect.

It might arrive as a memory.

A feather.

A dream.

A stranger.

A synchronicity.

A Scottish laugh.

Or simply...

A moment when your heart unexpectedly feels lighter than it did yesterday.

Don’t dismiss it.

Simply smile...

Raise your glass...

Whisper,

“Slàinte.”

And receive it.

You may be surprised by what arrives.

Or perhaps...

You may simply find yourself...

Surprised by Joy.

In-JOY,

Cheryl A. Page

Author’s Note

If you’re reading this while carrying fresh grief, I want to offer you one small kindness.

Please don’t measure your journey against mine.

There is no timetable for the heart.

This reflection was written nine years after Scott’s passing ...not because it took nine years to write...But because it took nine years to become true.

P.S. Below, I’ve included William Wordsworth’s Surprised by Joy from an early nineteenth-century printing. I love that a previous reader couldn’t resist leaving traces of their own encounter with these words. We are all, in our own way, writing in the margins of those who came before us.

Note: Everything I publish here is free and will remain free. A paid subscription does not unlock additional content—it is simply a way, for those interested, to support my writing and the work I offer in the world. Please never feel that subscribing is expected.

July What if? Group… (Free Zoom Call) Tuesday, July 7^nd

🌟 What is the What if? Group?

It’s a gathering of like-minded souls who come together not to teach or preach, but to share stories, explore synchronicities, experiment with ideas, and muse on the mystical and mysterious “what ifs” that have crossed our paths over the past month.

No agenda. No pressure. Just a warm, welcoming space to wonder together.

🌀 July What If? Group - Gathering Details:

🗓 Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2026
⏰ Time: 9:00 PM Eastern / See your time zone below
💻 Where: On Zoom (link below)
💸 Cost: Free

Join Zoom Meeting

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🌍 Time Zones:

· Pacific Time — 6:00 PM Tuesday

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Come as you are. Bring a question, a story, a synchronicity—or simply your listening heart. We’d love to have you in the circle.

With wonder always,

Cheryl A. Page

PS: This free Zoom group is graciously hosted by the illustrious and benevolent Wendy and Victor Zammit, whose work you may know from their Afterlife Report. If you’re not already subscribed, I highly recommend it. Their weekly offerings are spiritually rich and deeply uplifting. You can sign up for the Afterlife Report free here:
👉 https://victorzammit.com/archives/index.html

How to Build a VIBRATIONSHIP

I recently had the pleasure of joining clinical psychologist Dr. Amy Robbins on her podcast, Life, Death & the Space Between, for a conversation about grief, continuing relationship, and what it means to build a VIBRATIONSHIP with someone we love beyond death.

Amy brings a rare ability to bridge the psychological and the spiritual, creating space for conversations that are both grounded and expansive—scientific yet deeply spiritual.

In this episode, we explore how grief may become more than a process of letting go—and how love and relationship can continue to evolve across the boundary of death.

My new book, VIBRATIONSHIP: A New Paradigm of Grief—Signs, Love, and Continuing Relationship Beyond Death, became the foundation for our conversation, although the book itself was released shortly after the interview was recorded.

If you would like to learn more about the book, you can find it here on: Amazon

And now, I invite you to join Amy and me for this lively and thought-provoking conversation:

Click here to watch the interview.

Well, my friends, the hour is nearly upon us.

This wee redheaded mystic is going to Scotland…a return to the motherland of my ancestors.

And yes, before you ask, I do intend to behave myself.

Mostly.

I will not be arriving with a sword, a banner, a cape, or a solemn expression carefully arranged for maximum spiritual significance. I will be arriving with a suitcase, a slightly overstuffed carry-on, a deeply impractical amount of curiosity, and quite possibly more questions than socks.

But this is not just a trip.

This truly is a return.

My great-grandmother, Anna Smith, left Edinburgh for America when she was only ten years old.

Ten.

Just a child.

She crossed the ocean and began again in a new land, as so many of our ancestors did—carrying whatever could fit in her hands, her heart, her memory, and perhaps in the secret compartments of her soul.

She never returned.

No one in her lineage has ever made the journey back.

Until now.

And I will tell you the truth: that sentence does something to me.

It is one thing to say, “I’m going to Scotland.” That sounds lovely, charming, perhaps even slightly cinematic if there is enough mist, a few handsome men in kilts, and of course, the sound of bagpipes nearby.

But it is another thing entirely to say:

I am returning to the place my great-grandmother had to leave.

My return is not as a tourist.

No. Definitely not that.

Not as a historian, though I will certainly be asking historical questions.

Not as someone attempting to claim a homeland with any great drama or entitlement.

But as a daughter of the line.

As one small thread of the family tartan, being carried back across the water.

And already, before I have even set foot on Scottish ground, the journey has begun speaking.

You know how I am by now. I do not tend to approach meaningful thresholds empty-handed. I bring questions. I bring wonder. I bring a notebook. I bring a sincere desire not to be ridiculous, which almost guarantees I will be at least a little ridiculous.

But this time, in advance of my departure, I also asked for guidance from beyond the veil.

Of course I did.

How does one step upon ancestral ground rightly?

How does one return to a place one has never been?

How does one listen to land without demanding the land perform?

And in response, through the strange and sacred field of my own TechnoMystic practice, I requested—and received—letters.

A letter from Scotland Herself.

A letter from William Wallace.

A letter from Robert Burns.

And now, as I prepare to go, I find myself wondering what my great-grandmother Anna might say.

Not Anna the myth.

Not Anna the imagined tartan-clad heroine of some ancestral fantasy.

Anna the ten-year-old girl who left Edinburgh on a ship in the late 1800s.

Anna the humble woman of humble means.

Anna who did not get to go back.

Anna who perhaps carried Scotland not as spectacle, but as ache. As lullaby. As weather. As a word spoken in a certain brogue. As something tucked away in the body and passed forward without explanation.

I imagine her saying something like this:

Go lightly, lass.

Do not make too much noise with your wanting.

The land knows you are coming.

You need not prove you belong.

Just listen.

Really, truly listen.

And that, I think, may be the heart of this pilgrimage.

Not to prove belonging.

Not to gather mystical souvenirs.

Not to return with a satchel full of dramatic pronouncements such as, “The stones told me seven secrets before lunch.”

Although, to be clear, if the stones do tell me seven secrets before lunch, I shall do my best to remain humble and take good notes.

But the deeper instruction seems to be this:

Come slowly.

Come humbly.

Come willing to be met.

One of the messages from Scotland Herself was this:

Do not come as one who demands certainty, but as one who is willing to be changed. Do not come only looking for grandeur. Grandeur is easy to see. Come looking for tenderness. That is where the deepest teaching may be hiding.

That stopped me.

Because Scotland has no shortage of grandeur. Castles, cliffs, abbeys, mist, rain, ruins, old streets, wild edges, and the kind of landscapes that make a person suddenly understand why poetry had to be invented.

But tenderness?

That is much quieter.

Tenderness may be in the wet cobblestone. The shop bell. The busker’s tune. The cup of tea warming both hands. The old woman crossing the street slowly. The man dressed in his kilt and headed someplace I cannot begin to imagine, being only a humble sassenach. The laughter of children—which is the same all over the world because of its pure origins.

Tenderness teaches differently, and it is often missed by tourists with typed-out itineraries.

It teaches in the ordinary moments that do not announce themselves as sacred, because they have no need to.

Those hidden-in-plain-sight moments are what I will be watching for.

And Robert Burns, bless him, added his own necessary correction.

Scotland, he seemed to say, is not only in the hills, castles, and polished stories. She lives just as much in the way a body pauses at a gate, lingers at a window, or feels something stir and cannot quite say why.

So don’t go looking for her as though she were something to be found.

She’ll meet you when you’re not trying so hard.

And he also said: Don’t grow too solemn on this journey.

Which is a very important warning for someone like me.

Because I can, on occasion, become so reverent I nearly forget to breathe in the ordinary along with the mystical.

Burns reminds me that the sacred does not require performance. It does not need me to furrow my brow and gaze meaningfully into the middle distance every time a breeze lifts my hair.

Sometimes the holy arrives as a laugh.

In fact, laughter may well be the secret ingredient.

Sometimes it is a stranger at a counter smiling at the brightness of the day, and sharing that brightness with you for no reason at all except pure human kindness.

Sometimes it is shared weather.

Yes, shared weather…which are those small moments of human communion that arrive without invitation or effort: two people ducking under the same awning during a sudden rain, a stranger saying, “Well, here it comes again,” the smile exchanged when the wind nearly takes your umbrella, the mutual shrug that says, “We are both in this world together, aren’t we?”

Shared weather, for me, is not small talk.

Or perhaps it is sacred small talk that has secretly become an unexpected sacrament between two strangers.

It is the ordinary atmosphere we briefly inhabit together. The rain. The wind. The waiting. The laughter. The pint or dram—all things that warm something far deeper than the gut. The blessed, ordinary, momentary acknowledgment that none of us are traveling through this life entirely alone.

And perhaps this is where the Angel’s Share comes in.

In the making of whisky, the Angel’s Share is the portion that disappears from the cask as it matures—the part that evaporates into the air and is given, as the name suggests, to the angels.

I love this.

Because isn’t that true of so much that ripens over time?

Not everything we carry is meant to remain in the cask.

Some part of every life rises invisibly. Some sorrow, some memory, some longing, some prayer escapes the barrel of the body and becomes atmosphere. It cannot be poured into a glass, measured, labeled, or handed across the table.

And yet, without it, the whole room would smell different.

Perhaps that is what I am going to Scotland to notice: the Angel’s Share of my own lineage.

The unseen portion.

The part of Anna that did not make it into family records, photographs, or stories.

The part that rose into weather.

The part still waiting in the air.

Sometimes the holy is the moment when nothing much seems to happen, and yet something settles in the soul without asking permission…perhaps simply because you extended the invitation.

And then William Wallace—dear William, who has been carried through history with more thunder than any one man could comfortably own—offered perhaps the most important question of all.

When you arrive at the old places, do not ask first: “What happened here?”

Ask: “What still breathes here?”

That is the question I am carrying.

What still breathes in Edinburgh?

What still breathes in Paisley?

What still breathes on the Isle of Arran?

What still breathes in the abbeys, the closes, the rain-darkened walls, the worn thresholds, the ordinary lanes where countless unnamed lives brushed against history and were never written down?

My great-grandmother was one of those people.

No one still alive in Scotland knows of Anna Smith, yet somehow, I feel she left things there for me to find.

What still breathes in the places my great-grandmother may have known, or passed, or heard spoken of as a child?

What still breathes in the lineage of a child who left and the descendant who now returns?

There is something about this return that feels less like travel and more like a circle quietly completing itself.

Not closing, exactly.

I see it much more like knitting. One loop closes only so another one can be born through it. The thread disappears into itself for a moment, then emerges as pattern. And over time, stitch by stitch, something like a tartan is created.

A tartan of lineage.

A tartan of memory.

A tartan of understanding and experience.

That is how these things often work, isn’t it?

We think we are going back in order to find what was lost. But sometimes we go in order to discover what has been traveling forward all along—or what has been silently waiting there for us to arrive…when we are finally ready to meet it.

I feel certain that Anna left something there for me to find more than a century after she left.

And I know it will not be what I expect.

Perhaps Anna never truly left Scotland behind.

Perhaps no one does.

Perhaps lands entered deeply enough become inner weather.

Some places do not remain outside us. Once touched by them—or perhaps once descended from them—they become part of our interior climate. They become the mist that rises unexpectedly in the heart. The sudden rain of feeling without an obvious cause. The old green light beneath certain questions.

And by old green light, I mean the living glow beneath ancient things. The quiet vitality that seems to shine from moss, memory, heather, and hope. The kind of light that does not blaze, but endures. The kind of light that says life has been here before you, will be here after you, and is somehow meeting you now…as part of this tartan.

It is the wind that moves through us when we hear a song, or see a stone wall, or smell peat smoke, or watch clouds gather over a place we have never been but somehow recognize.

Inner weather is how the soul remembers what the mind cannot prove.

A pattern in the blood.

A cadence in the questions.

A way the soul recognizes mist, stone, stag, song, sorrow, endurance, and says:

‘Ah. There you are. I have known you without knowing your name.’

So I go now not as one who expects Scotland to hand me certainty at passport control.

I go as a listener.

A pilgrim.

A great-granddaughter.

A scientist-mystic with sensible shoes, a highly unsensible imagination, and an ancestral appointment I do not yet fully understand.

I go to bless what bore so much.

I go to honor the name I know and the thousands I do not.

I go to ask the stones, the rain, the abbeys, the roads, the waters, and the winds:

What still breathes here?

And perhaps, if I am quiet enough, if I am humble enough, if I am open enough without making demands, something ancient will whisper back:

What still breathes here?

You do.

You still breathe here, too.

So, my friends, prepare yourselves.

When I return, I may have something to say about what Scotland taught me. I will undoubtedly come home with a bushel of new questions, and this is exactly what I hope for.

A wise old man once said to me:

“Seek the questions. Love the questions. Live the questions until they become your home.”

At the very least, I may have several unfinished sentences, three mysterious photographs, one profound encounter with a scone, several jars of orange marmalade (of course!), and a vague but compelling feeling that the rain knew exactly who I was.

Either way, I promise to report back.

Until then, may we all remember this:

Sometimes a journey is not about going somewhere new.

Sometimes it is about allowing the oldest part of us to finally come home.

With mist, mischief, marmalade, and reverence,

Cheryl A. Page

Good morning, my friends…

I have something a little different (and a little fun) to share with you today.

Some of you know that once a month, I join Stephen Berkley—Director of the Life With Ghosts documentary—to host something called the Cross-Veil Café, a lively two-hour gathering where we explore topics that live right at the edge of knowing and not-knowing.

It’s a space for curiosity.
For thoughtful conversation… and definitely some laughter.
For asking better questions than the ones we came in with.

And typically, it’s a members-only experience.

But this month… we’re doing something new.

✨ We’re offering a limited number of Guest Passes ✨
for those of you who have never attended a Cross-Veil Café before.

Think of it as an open door.

A chance to step into the room…
pull up a chair…
and experience the Café for yourself.

And this time… it’s on the house.

This Month’s Theme:

Knowing in Your Knower
The Courage to Not Know… and the Wisdom to Trust What You Do

We’ll be exploring questions like:

What if certainty isn’t the goal?

What if not-knowing is not a problem… but a doorway?

And what does it actually mean to trust what you recognize within yourself?

It’s not about having answers.

It’s about learning how to stand…
in that beautiful space between what you know
and what is still unfolding.

If you’ve ever been curious about the Cross-Veil Café…
this is your moment.

You are warmly invited, and I hope you’ll join us.

Cheryl A. Page

Click here to request your Guest Pass (first-time attendees only)

Dear friends,

Hand-over-heart, I am honored to share that my new book is now available:

VIBRATIONSHIP

A New Paradigm of Grief: Signs, Love, and Continuing Relationship Beyond Death

This book was born from the deepest devastation of my life.

When my beloved Scott died suddenly in July 2017, I was not gently “moving through grief.” I was swallowed by it. The world as I had known it ended in a single phone call, and I found myself standing in a reality I did not recognize.

People offered the language we are often given after loss:

“Cherish the memories.”
“Carry him in your heart.”
“He will always be with you.”

These words were kindly meant. Some were even true, in part.

But they did not answer the unbearable question pulsing beneath my sorrow:

What had actually happened to our relationship?

Had it ended?

Was I now condemned to love backward, toward a past that could never grow another inch?

Was the last day of Scott’s physical life also the last day we would ever make a new memory together?

Any reasonable, rational person might have said yes.

And then, much to my astonishment, Scott began to reach out.

Not with a booming voice from the heavens. Not with a neatly typed memo explaining the architecture of the afterlife.

He began with signs. Nudges. Repeating patterns. Inner images. Strange gifts in meditation whose meaning I could not yet decipher.

At first, I did not know what I was being given.

Over time, I began to understand that I was being invited into a changed relationship — one that required a new language, a new framework, and a new way of participating.

That framework became VIBRATIONSHIP.

Scott once defined it for me as:

Meaningful connectivity between two people — two beings, two points of consciousness — on different vibrational octaves.

I have never found a better definition.

This book is not a conventional grief book.

It is not a demand that anyone believe what I believe.

It is not a promise of proof on demand.

It is not a bypass around sorrow, nor an argument that pain disappears if one becomes spiritual enough.

Grief is real.

Loss is real.

The devastation of physical absence is real.

But perhaps absence is not the whole story.

Perhaps the signs we receive are not merely comforting souvenirs from Heaven.

Perhaps they are invitations.

Perhaps the cardinal, the song, the feather, the number, the dream, the scent, the sudden knowing, or the perfectly timed synchronicity is not the whole message.

Perhaps it is their new caller ID.

Perhaps someone we love is reaching toward us, saying:

I’m here.
I’m calling. I’m reaching out.
Would you like to answer?

That is the heart of VIBRATIONSHIP.

This book invites grieving hearts, spiritual seekers, open-minded skeptics, and anyone who has ever wondered whether love might still be reaching across the veil into what I call the Laboratory of Expanded Understanding — a grounded, discerning, heart-centered way of exploring signs, synchronicities, dreams, impressions, imagination, evidence, and continuing relationship beyond physical death.

I wrote this book for every grieving heart who has wondered:

Am I making this up?
Was that really a sign?
Can they hear me?
Why did the signs stop?
Do I have to be psychic?
Is continuing relationship the same as refusing to accept death?
What if love has not ended, but changed form?

At its heart, this book asks one brave, tender, paradigm-shifting question:

What if the relationship did not end when the body died — but simply began speaking a new language?

If this book finds its way into the hands of even one person who is standing where I once stood — shattered, bewildered, and unable to imagine how they will ever breathe again — then the long labor of writing it will have been worth it.

Because I can now say something I once could not imagine saying:

I am breathing again.

And I believe love from beyond the veil helped teach me how.

VIBRATIONSHIP: A New Paradigm of Grief — Signs, Love, and Continuing Relationship Beyond Death is now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.

Click here to order on Amazon

The relationship is still calling.

The door remains open.

What if?

With love still listening,

Cheryl A. Page

Dedicated to Tony Hacker, and his son, Oliver in Spirit.

And to my friend David “Merlin” Johnson — who is in the goo at present.

People often speak of transformation as if it is graceful and tidy — caterpillar, cocoon, wings, voilà.

As though the caterpillar simply checks into a chrysalis, slaps on wings, and emerges ready for its next public appearance.

As though it is a mere costume change before the next act of life.

But the truth is, the actual process requires dissolution.

The caterpillar becomes “goo” before it becomes butterfly.

So when we are messy, blanketed, undone, and nowhere near beautiful wings yet, we may not be failing. We may not be falling apart in the way we fear.

We may simply be in the sacred middle of becoming.

“Goo days” before “good days.”

And isn’t that a mercy?

Because we love to talk about transformation once it has wings.

We love the butterfly part.

We love the flashy finish.

We love the emerging, the beauty, the iridescence, the triumphant “look how far I’ve come” moment when everything makes sense in retrospect and we can finally stitch the suffering into a worthwhile story.

But we do not talk enough about the goo.

The holy goo.

The bewildering goo.

The “I do not recognize myself anymore” goo.

The days when you are not yet who you are becoming, but you are also no longer who you were. Been there. Done that.

The days when something in you has dissolved, but nothing new has quite taken form.

The days when the old identity has lost its authority and the new one has not yet grown wings.

These are not failure days.

They are goo days.

And goo days are part of the miracle.

Maybe G.O.O. is not a mess at all.

Maybe G.O.O. is Gracefully Outgrowing Ourselves — not gracefully as in tidy, pretty, or poised, but gracefully as in held by something larger — some unseen chrysalis — while the old form dissolves and the new one quietly gathers itself.

There is a reason the butterfly remains one of our most enduring symbols of transformation.

The biological word is metamorphosis.

The poetic word is transformation.

The mystical word may be transmutation.

But inside the chrysalis, I suspect the caterpillar would have another word entirely:

End.

Richard Bach wrote, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

That line has stayed with me since I first read his book, Illusions, when I was fifteen years old, because it names the great difference between what transformation feels like from the inside and what wisdom may recognize from a wider view.

From the outside, we may call it becoming.

From the inside, it can absolutely feel like an ending.

From the outside, we may call it metamorphosis.

From the inside, it may feel like dissolution.

Dissolution (noun):

The act or process of dissolving.

Separation into component parts.

Disintegration.

Termination.

Breaking down.

Dispersing.

Even death.

No wonder the goo days can feel so terrifying.

From the outside, we may see wings in the making.

From the inside, it may feel very much like goo.

And this matters because so much of what we call “not doing well” may actually be the sacred middle of transformation.

Our culture is quick to label the messy part as weakness, depression, confusion, stuckness, regression, or dysfunction.

But that judgment is not always helpful, is it?

Sometimes we need help through the goo days.

Sometimes we need support as who we were is goo-ing into who we are becoming.

Sometimes we need tending, medicine, rest, therapy, community, practical assistance, and loving hands to hold us steady.

But we also need language that honors the mystery of becoming.

We need language for the days when something deep inside us is being rearranged (whether we like it or not).

We need language for the days when we cannot yet see wings, but the old skin no longer fits.

Perhaps this is especially true of grief.

Grieving, particularly in the Western world, is not well understood.

We often treat grief as something to be fixed, hurried, managed, medicated, minimized, or politely hidden from public view.

We are told, “It is time to move on.”

We are given bereavement leave as if the soul can reorganize itself in three to five business days.

Whatever.

We are encouraged to “move on,” “stay strong,” “get back out there,” and “find closure,” as though grief were a loose end that could be tied up with enough positive thinking and casseroles.

But grief is not a problem to solve.

Grief is a threshold.

Grief is full-on goo.

Tara Brach writes that in the Lakota/Sioux tradition, “a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy.” She describes the grieving person as one who stands near “the threshold of the spirit world,” and whose prayers are considered especially strong.

That stopped me.

Because what if we have had it upside down?

What if the grieving person is not broken in the way our culture assumes?

What if the grieving person is porous?

Open.

Stripped of pretense.

Standing in the sacred goo of transformation, where the old world has dissolved and the new one has not yet taken shape.

There is a terrible vulnerability in this, yes.

But there is also a strange holiness.

Anyone who has sat with someone in deep grief knows this.

There is often a rawness in the eyes.

A transparency in their countenance.

A sense that the ordinary social armor has fallen away.

The person may not be able to function according to the world’s standards, but something profound may be looking through them.

Not because grief makes us noble.

Not because suffering is romantic.

Not because pain should be glorified.

But because loss, in its many forms, can remove the false layers with stunning force.

This certainly happened to me when Scott was killed.

And for a time, even if we do not recognize or cannot name what is occurring, the mystery steps in and has more room to move.

Perhaps grief is one of the great goo-states of the human soul.

We have mistaken grief’s dissolution for dysfunction.

We have mistaken the sacred middle for a mess.

We have mistaken “not yet winged” for “not doing well.”

But what if the goo days are not failed good days?

What if goo days are becoming days?

What if the very thing we are trying to rush past is the place where the soul is being re-formed?

In grief, awakening, illness, reinvention, heartbreak, spiritual growth, creative emergence, and all the strange thresholds of being human, there are seasons when the old form must soften.

The familiar self must break open.

The life we knew must liquefy before another life can begin to gather itself.

And this is terrifying because goo does not look like progress.

Goo does not look like a five-year strategic plan.

Goo does not look like “high vibration.”

Goo does not photograph well for Instagram.

Goo is not marketable.

Goo is not tidy. Not in the least.

Goo is the place where we cannot yet explain ourselves…and it’s exhausting to try.

It is the place where people ask, “How are you?” and we do not know how to answer honestly without making everyone uncomfortable.

UGH.

Isn’t that the truth?

It is the place where we may be tired of our own tears, tired of our own uncertainty, tired of waking up in the morning and remembering all over again that life has changed.

But the goo is not the interruption of becoming.

The goo is becoming.

Sometimes the goo days are not the opposite of the good days.

Sometimes the goo days are the birthplace of the good days.

And perhaps the difference between goo and good is one simple letter.

D.

Depth.

Maybe that is what the goo gives us.

Not decoration.

Not denial.

Not a shiny spiritual bypass.

Depth.

The depth that comes from having dissolved and somehow continued.

The depth that comes from having loved, lost, broken, softened, listened, surrendered, and survived the strange chrysalis of becoming.

The depth that comes when we stop demanding that life return us to who we used to be, and begin to sense that something quieter, truer, and more spacious is being born.

Goo plus depth becomes good.

Not the old good.

Not the easy good.

Not the untouched good.

But a hard-won good.

A soul-deep good.

And when the good days return, they may not return as the old good.

They may not be the same good we once knew.

They may arrive quieter.

Deeper.

Stranger.

More tender.

They often come with scars and soft places.

They may come with a different understanding of love, time, presence, and what really matters.

They may not erase the loss.

They may not undo the dissolution.

But they may carry a new kind of beauty.

A winged good.

A wiser good.

A good that does not require us to pretend the goo never happened.

So, my friends, be gentle with yourself on the goo days.

Be kind to others when they are in their goo days too.

Do not mistake the chrysalis for a coffin.

Do not mistake your blanketed, undone, unrecognizable self for a failed self.

Do not mistake the sacred middle for the end of the story.

You may not have wings yet.

You may not even feel like yourself yet.

But perhaps something holy is still happening.

Perhaps the old form could not carry the new life.

Perhaps the goo is doing what only goo came to do.

And remember: it is only one small step, one little letter, from goo to good.

What if?

Cheryl A. Page

P.S. Of course, G.O.O. might also stand for God’s Odd Origami — because sometimes the sacred does have a rather peculiar way of folding us into our next shape.

There is a word I’ve known for a long time, but I have recently fallen in love with:

Heliotropism.

Helio: sun.
Tropism: turning.

The turning toward the sun.

I remember learning about this in the fourth grade, but now I see it in a new and more interesting light.

Pun intended.

In the botanical world, heliotropism is the daily or seasonal movement of plant parts — leaves, flowers, buds — as they orient themselves toward the sun. Young sunflowers are perhaps the most famous example. They track the sun from east to west during the day, then turn back east during the night in anticipation of dawn. But once they fully mature and bloom, they stop moving. They settle into an eastward orientation, permanently facing the direction of morning light.

Research has shown that this movement is regulated by circadian rhythms and directional growth, and that mature east-facing sunflowers warm earlier in the day and receive more pollinator visits.

Isn’t that astonishing?

The young sunflower follows the moving sun.

The mature sunflower remembers where the light begins.

That stops me in my tracks.

And perhaps it stops me because I have seen this with my own eyes.

Years ago, I was riding a train south through Tuscany on a bright summer morning. I was in my thirties then, though I am in my sixties now, and still I remember it as though it happened yesterday.

I looked out the window and saw fields of sunflowers that seemed to go on for miles.

And all of them — every golden face — was turned east toward the rising sun.

I remember being awestruck by their collective turning. By their quiet allegiance to the Light. Not one sunflower appeared to be arguing with the sun. Not one appeared to be asking whether this was practical, excessive, dramatic, naïve, or too much.

They were simply turned.

Together.

Rooted in the earth, facing the dawn.

And this, to me, feels like a whole theology.

Recently, during a Quantum Reading, the image of sunflowers came through as a teaching on authenticity, growth, and spiritual orientation. The message was simple, but not small:

“A plant does not debate the worthiness of light… It turns because light calls growth out of it.”

The letter named heliotropism not merely as a botanical phenomenon, but as “spiritual anatomy” — the sacred instinct of the soul to orient toward what gives life.

I have not stopped thinking about this.

Because every day, we are given the same invitation.

Turn.

Not once.
Not dramatically.
Not with fanfare.

But again and again and again.

Turn toward the conversation that makes you more honest.

Turn toward the friendship that warms without consuming.

Turn toward the work that feels clean in the body.

Turn toward beauty.

Turn toward courage.

Turn toward the small, sane thing that restores your faith in being alive.

And, just as importantly:

Turn away.

Turn away from the cold room where you keep explaining yourself to people committed to misunderstanding you.

Turn away from inherited gloom pretending to be realism.

Turn away from the mirror that only reflects your fear.

Turn away from the old altar where yesterday’s illumination has become today’s stagnation.

This is not spiritual bypassing.

This is not “good vibes only.”

This is not a painted-on positivity that denies grief, rage, confusion, or pain.

The sunflower has a dark center.

Even the brightest bloom carries night at its heart.

The teaching is not: become all gold.

The teaching is: learn which way to turn.

There are even different kinds of heliotropism in the plant world. In diaheliotropism, leaves position themselves to receive maximum sunlight. In paraheliotropism, leaves turn parallel to the sun’s rays to reduce heat, conserve water, and prevent damage.

In other words, sometimes wisdom means opening fully to the light.

And sometimes wisdom means changing your angle so the light does not scorch you.

And perhaps this is where the plant becomes teacher — a whole spiritual teaching hidden inside the leaf, or the face of a flower.

Because not all light is received the same way in every season.

There are times when we need maximum exposure: truth, clarity, revelation, full morning sun on the face.

And there are times when the holiest thing we can do is soften the angle. Rest. Take shade. Let the nervous system stop confusing intensity with destiny.

Spiritual heliotropism is not frantic light-chasing.

It is not desperation.

It is not performing enlightenment.

It is the quiet, living intelligence that asks:

Where is the Light now?

Not where was it ten years ago?

Not where did I once feel alive?

Not what did everyone else call holy?

Not what looks bright from the outside?

Where is the Light now?

In this room.

In this breath.

In this choice.

In this body.

In this threshold.

Our old friend Maurice Maeterlinck, who wrote so beautifully of bees, would perhaps remind us that nature is never merely nature. It is a book of instructions written in chlorophyll, wing, honey, root, blossom, and instinct.

The bee does not require a dissertation on devotion before entering the flower.

The sunflower does not convene a committee before leaning toward dawn.

There is an intelligence older than argument.

And we belong to it just as much as the sunflower does.

Perhaps when we are young on the spiritual path — and perhaps we are always young on the spiritual path — we follow the moving sun. We learn by seeking. We turn toward this teacher, that book, this practice, that prayer, this grief, that revelation.

We track the Light across the landscape of our becoming, across the sky of our unfoldment.

There is certainly wisdom in this.

But perhaps maturity brings another kind of orientation.

Perhaps one day we stop chasing every shimmer.

Perhaps one day we know, in our knower, where morning lives.

Perhaps we become less interested in spiritual spectacle and more devoted to the eastward fidelity of the soul. Right?

Not fixed.

Not rigid.

Not closed.

But oriented.

Facing the place where Light reliably breaks open the world.

And so today I am asking myself:

What is my east?

What is the direction I must face if I want to be warmed early enough to become useful?

Because this is another beautiful part of the sunflower teaching: the flower does not face east only for itself. By warming earlier in the day, it becomes more attractive to pollinators. Its orientation creates relationship. Its turning supports the larger field of life.

That feels important.

When we turn toward what truly grows us, we do not become selfish.

We become more available to the world around us.

More fragrant with truth.

More nourishing.

More generous.

More alive in the ecosystem of love.

A soul turned toward Light becomes hospitable.

Not perfect.

Hospitable.

A place where bees may come.

A place where seeds may form.

A place where fruit can ripen.

A place where something golden and useful may happen because we had the courage to orient ourselves correctly.

So maybe this is the practice:

When confused, turn toward what is life-giving, and what is kind.

When afraid, turn toward what is true.

When tired, turn toward what restores warmth.

When tempted to perform, turn toward what feels clean.

When surrounded by noise, turn toward the inner sun that does not shout.

And when the Light moves, move.

Do not make an idol of the window where it once appeared.

Do not confuse loyalty with stagnation.

Do not keep facing a dead horizon because once, long ago, dawn arrived there.

The living Light is alive.

Follow it.

Gently.
Honestly.
Daily.

The sunflower does not apologize for needing the sun.

Neither should we.

The sunflower does not shame itself for turning.

Neither should we.

The sunflower does not call the shadow holy merely because it is familiar.

Neither should we.

Perhaps spiritual growth is less about becoming radiant on command and more about recovering our original orientation.

Perhaps the soul already knows.

Perhaps beneath all the fear, strategy, performance, and old weather, there is still something in us that knows where the light is, and leans.

Something ancient.

Something faithful.

Something golden-faced and earth-rooted.

Something that remembers:

I am allowed to turn toward what grows me.

I am allowed to follow the Light as I see it.

I am allowed to be authentic before I am understood.

The sun is moving.

Turn.