Because there is still so much more to be born from her. More creativity, more desire, more work, more voice, more music. She is in an orbit of learning how to honor what she has carried and endure what obscures her light.

I know this woman because I am her.

Eclipse season is a time for releasing. Cutting cords inside myself that keep me tethered to depletion. The cruel self talk. The old agreements. The belief that love has to be earned, that my creativity has to be justified, that my spark needs permission and approval to shine as brightly as it asks to. So in response to the eclipse season, my body and soul agree.

Cut the cord. Shed the story. Make way.

In Buddhism there is a word for this, anicca, impermanence. Everything conditioned changes. Bodies, health, tides, planets, all the stories we thought we could control. The light is not gone because something has moved in front of it. What is illuminated changes, retracing the outlines of every leaf and earthworm. It is the hidden sound in every newborn’s heart before she emerges from the darkness, light beckoning toward life and toward its contrast, into shadow. From the smallest amoeba to Jupiter, the shapes of things moving are made by the cosmic pull of light and dark.

Samsara is the idea that we live in a cycle of change, suffering, attachment, aversion, a messy nonlinear trek to enlightenment, remembering and forgetting the divine jewel is hidden in the depths of our own hearts. Not a distant spiritual abstraction, samsara is a mammogram, a mortgage, a teenager, a blood clot, a reunion, a beach, a perfect sunset. A kiss of heaven, a sip of hell, sometimes both before lunch. The wheel keeps turning.

When I say wheel, I do not mean that only metaphorically. Somewhere in the deepest visual archive of my being are the Tibetan thangka paintings I began studying in Sarnath and Varanasi, India, in 1998. The Wheel of Life held in the jaws of impermanence, whole realms turning inside it, gods and hungry ghosts, heavens and hells, animals and humans, wrathful beings, exquisite clouds, flames, jewel tones, sacred symbols painted with geometric precision.

I could stare into those thangka paintings forever. They reach a place in me beyond language where the visual becomes visceral. Samsara is not abstract to me, it looks like those paintings, colorful, chaotic, cyclical, moving. Ecstasy and suffering in the same frame. It says, here I am, here we all are. I wonder, where is the neon EXIT sign like the one in the front corners of the movie theatre? Can I get off this ride?

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This summer, I rode the metaphorical surfboard, wave after wave, occasionally getting my ass kicked off. I kept getting back on. Wobbly, cold, winded. Brush it off. Breathe. Root down. Rise up. Flow. Find the will to balance even when it feels impossible.

In past Chemo Yogi pieces, when I was inside active treatment, I wrote about falling into the abyss of uncertainty. A part of me believed survivorship would mean climbing back out. Solid ground. Stabilized. Sorted. Get ripped, a six pack and killer biceps, plus crystal clear purpose and a big successful career.

Seriously. Is that too much to ask since finishing chemo last August?

Instead, survivorship feels like continuing the free fall with a sharpened appreciation for the fragility and preciousness of life. I carry a new reverence and tenderness for my family, friends, people I love and fellow survivors that is sometimes unexpectedly reciprocated and sometimes not. I am reinventing myself in midair. No one talks about this. No one teaches survivors how to navigate surviving.

I want Chemo Yogi to be a voice for survivors finding their way back to their own creative spark, even when cancer has eclipsed it, bent their light, obscured it, or made it shine in an entirely new sideways, upside-down way. Your spark, flickering in the dark like a firefly, is precious, sacred, worthy beyond reason. You are still here. Cancer can feel like your light has been extinguished, dimmed, or simply eclipsed. Once you have traveled through the ravages into survivorship, you wonder, did part of me go out for good? Then you begin to feel your light returning to you, re-emerging in a new way, or in a way similar to before but more subtle, deeper. This is why I say at the end of my yoga classes, “keep coming, keep coming and never, ever give up.” I am speaking to your light and to my own. And quoting the Dalai Lama.

Svadharma is the path that is yours to walk. Karma is the action itself, how we walk the Camino, the sacred road we are on right here, placing one foot in front of the other. The Bhagavad Gita keeps returning us to this difficult proposition, do the work that is yours to do, and loosen your grip on the fruits.

In midlife, I am back at the beginning of understanding that the judgments of others, negative, neutral, even positive, do not have to be something I carry in my ocher sadhu bag on the Camino. The eclipse reminds me, I get to decide what I carry and what I don’t. This feels challenging and liberating.

Cut the cord. Shed the story. Make way.

I will keep getting back up on my surfboard, into the waves, into the wild ocean moved by the same invisible cosmic forces that move the waters in me, and in you. Even knowing I will get knocked off again.

This summer has been a very powerful eclipse season. I am a Taurus. The bull. Yes. I kind of feel like a bull and a mermaid and a channel of light. I love that for me. And I love whatever wild and insane combination you might be, a horse, a pixie, a flame. You name it!

Make way for what is still trying to be born.

An unseen hand keeps reaching in and opening a window. Love unexpectedly arrives where before I thought I first needed to clean the kitchen, fold the laundry, that I needed to earn love through doing good deeds first. This hand points me back to something larger, my innate worthiness, my connection to Nature. Nature with a capital N, inside of me, immutable, immense. In Vedanta, Atman, the big-S Self, is that timeless essence beneath the roles, fear, and striving. Something infinite in me that I didn’t need to earn.

An egret arrives in the garden as if attending the gathering. A coyote watches me walk to my car. A pod of dolphins moves back and forth across the beach where I go to watch the surfers and cry. A red-tailed hawk perches on the wire above the winding road I drive, a hunter, protector.

Eclipse season is coming to a close, but its lessons are cellular and transformative setting a course. Beauty and catastrophe. Loneliness and communion. Darkness and sparks of light moving across the night sky and the bottom of the sea. Ecstasy and suffering in the same frame. The wheel of samsara churning.

Cut the cord. Shed the story. Make way.

Old teachings keep returning for good reason. The Bhagavad Gita begins in crisis, with Arjuna frozen at the edge of the battlefield, unable to move into battle to kill his brother. The teaching is not that life becomes tidy or tame before we can understand the lessons. We are being called to meet the life directly in front of us, to act, to participate, to not disappear from our own lives even when we are scared and it feels like free falling into the abyss.

This blood moon partial lunar eclipse carried a powerful energy that woke up a sweet surrender and irreverence a chord I have not heard before. There was an enormous glowing ring around the moon that encircled me and my entire neighborhood beneath it, it called out to be given that which I was carrying, the baggage in my soul. I released it. The cruel stories, the unmet goals. The desperate need for permission. The not enough. The need to earn love.

Cut the cord. Shed the story. Make way.

Survivorship is not the solid ground I imagined at all. God damn it. It is learning to inhabit the instrument of my body again, a body altered from the inside out, still listening for the music that wants to come through it. My spark skips and dives across the surface, dim, bright, fragmented, alive. I am trusting myself more, trusting what the light takes and what it gives, what the darkness takes and what it gives. I am not afraid to enter the darkness or to be encircled by the silver light of an eclipsed moon. I will get back on the surfboard. My soul is not done with the ocean. It aches to ride in moonlight, through many, many more waves.

I’m finding the shape of the light in exploring the dark. I am making way for what it illuminates next.

Prompt for you: What music is trying to emerge from your life right now?

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A wise woman told me this before I fully understood what she meant. She appeared in my life unexpectedly, the way certain people do when the soul has sent out a signal before the mind has found the words. She and her husband accompanied me to the holy waters of Pura Tirta Empul, where I stepped into the purification pools not as a tourist, not exactly as a seeker, but as a woman who had been through cancer and was trying to remember that her life was still held by something larger than fear.

In Bali, I learned about the four spiritual companions who are said to arrive with us at birth. The four siblings. The four guardians. The four who come with the baby from the hidden world of the womb into the bright, bewildering world of form.

They are not distant angels with wings and harps. They are intimate angels. Birth angels. Body angels. The amniotic fluid. The blood. The vernix. The placenta. The waters that carried us. The red river that fed us. The soft covering that protected us. The root that connected us to nourishment before we had language, before we had identity, before we had to prove anything to anyone.

What if we were never born alone?

What if some part of us has always known this?

I think of the four angels now because I am tired. Not ordinary tired. Soul tired. Body tired. Tired from surviving. Tired from arranging beauty around wounds that are still open. Tired from trying to understand whether love is love when it arrives tangled with control, money, silence, absence, or fear.

I do not need the angels to make me better.

I need them to help me rest.

I need one angel at my back, saying: I am here. You do not have to hold yourself upright every second.

I need one angel at my feet, saying: I will help you walk, but not before you are ready.

I need one angel at my heart, saying: your aliveness is not an inconvenience.

I need one angel at my crown, saying: stop forcing clarity out of a nervous system that is grieving.

The holy water did not erase my life. It did not solve my marriage. It did not tell me what to do next. But it gave me a memory of being held by something older than the crisis I was living inside.

And Kadek was there, golden and glowing, my soul sister in Bali, an angel in human form. Her husband too. Some people do not arrive as friends first. They arrive as evidence. Evidence that tenderness still exists. Evidence that guidance can come with bare feet, wet hair, temple offerings, and a smile that feels like sunlight on the nervous system.

Maybe this is why I keep longing to return.

Not to escape my life.

To remember the part of me that is accompanied.

To remember that before I was a wife, mother, patient, survivor, provider, fixer, holder of everyone else’s weather — I was a soul arriving on earth with water, blood, softness, root.

I was carried then. I am carried still.

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I’ve been tracing my scars lately, wishing someone would come to kiss them and tell me they are beautiful. I have a lot of scars on my body and there are deeper ones too, invisible ones that I’m working on healing, on loving even if they never heal. I know we all have them. Most of us probably quietly wish them to be kissed. I feel this so potently. This is why I am a healer and also what makes the pain sometimes unbearable. Then I remember to surf the waves.

The invisible parts are hard to heal. Skala and Niscala in Bali means the seen and unseen. In Sanskrit, sthūla and sūkṣma, the gross and the subtle. Everything returns to the body, and the body is where the seen and unseen meet.

The word scar comes from the Greek eschara, meaning “place of fire.” I think of the phoenix rising out of the fire. Did ten thousand phoenixes fly from my body or is it still burning? I think of this flaming, feathered, fierce creature rebirthing herself, heat, shedding, and the remnants etched into these lines of my skin.

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Today my body rose out of bed, made tea, breakfast and lunches for my daughters, and drove itself to Jake + JT’s gym in Mill Valley, where I go to get strong, to lift weights and kettlebells, attempt burpees, push-ups, suitcases, and other physical feats. There is always a circuit of exercises the group rotates through. The walls are black and crimson red and there are mirrors, oh my god, this is why I love yoga, no mirrors.

Jake and JT are the nicest guys. They wear white Chuck Taylors and tell me to keep my chest up. I wish I could tell them how hard that is, what this chest, this heart, has been through. It is hard for me to keep my chest up physically and emotionally, there’s the flex. My heart wants to crawl into a dark cave and hide from this world most of the time, but I don’t.

For many weeks after my mastectomy I could not look. With music, breathing, and low lighting I slowly built up the strength to look at my physical scars. Now there is a map on my skin, some roads erased, others recut, a c-section swallowed by a DIEP flap, hip to hip. This map has a rhythm I am beginning to live inside. The roads and rivers, the valleys and streams rushing together, they are me.

The inner layers still feel raw, tight, scared a little, speaking to me as I move through each circuit of care. I hear them. I feel them. I close my eyes and try to reach the root of the pain and soothe it. I pick up the 15-pound weight, breathe, hum. I look at that woman in the mirror. I see fire in her eyes burning back at me. She says I’ve got you in every dimension, in every timeline.

There is a certain strength I am discovering, things I CAN DO that my mind says no, and then all of a sudden my whole body says YES, I CAN. Seen and unseen in motion. A jump back, a kettlebell swing, leg lifts, your guts are not going to come pouring out. The admiration I feel for the fit middle-aged women around me, doing burpees and mountain climbers and kettlebell swings with such strength and power, they are amazing. Their energy and strength acts as a sail to my hope.

AI can’t yet remove my scars or truly understand the depths of our human pain. Let’s face it, this life is pretty fucking painful. And yet. Yet.

Does your AI also tell you “you’re not late, you’re right on time”? WTF. I wonder what AI knows about being late, or being on time, or even being at all. It is being coded to understand being, and exponentially, as far as the coding goes, explore being as we humans have been trying to do since we crawled out of the oceans and made fire. It cannot come through my black screen with soft lips or fingers to kiss my scars.

My golden cat Hobbes, who we rescued when he was only about two weeks old and bottle fed, climbs onto my chest with his orange furry paws and purrs directly on my heart. Lately he’s been doing it a lot. He knows about scars.

This drops me back into my “meat suit,” as my oncologist Dr. Kelley calls it. Not the poetic way I might describe this temple, this earthen form occupied by divine spirit, a plush house lined with chakras and layers of muscle and sinew from the most gross to the most subtle parts. Yogis say we have five layers, or koshas. Lately so many of the esoteric teachings of the yogis have awakened in us, the unseen world is becoming known to many, and it is asking to be shared through lived encounters.

An acupuncturist recently suggested she could help me release the trauma from my scars by gently tapping them and praying over them with mantras. I can’t stop thinking about that. Maybe it would work. Maybe there are ways these places can be touched and healed that I cannot reach on my own.

I am more comfortable with the unseen. What if life is this, this tension, this pain. When will I be fully able to hold the seen and unseen of this life? I forget that I, too, need others, hands, hearts, ways of seeing and touching. Like being a bodhisattva. The best of the bodhisattvas had scars, and they continue to rise.

We are in great company with our scars. They are roads, small, hidden pathways that lead us quietly, reluctantly, back to our own and each other’s hearts, to intersections in our lives.

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Let me be the one to tell you your scars are beautiful. They are kissed. They are not separate from you. They make you, and your life, full and deep. It is okay if they still hurt. There is room for the seen and the unseen to find each other again where they have been lost.

I’m kissing your scars and you are kissing mine. We are healing collective scars. We are tapping and tending to the seen and unseen together. I trace my fingers and my mind across this map of scars. I would never want to erase them.

Arriving at the doorway to my lungs

I put down my heavy luggage.

I pause and look all around.

I notice there is beautiful crawling ivy

and purple flowers creeping twirling through my ribcage.

There are birds and I guess there must even be

sky and rivers, trees and open pastures.

Am I on the inside or the outside?

Does it matter?

I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling claustrophobic,

suffocating, anxious to escape this body…

AND I have also felt all sorts of FREE in this body.

It’s the free that keeps me in here,

that has led me to traverse the layers beyond layers

to dream and play and slowly learn to love

the untamed parts, the dark parts.

Oh wise body, if I may be strong enough

to meet your wisdom.

I look up and see my beating heart,

Wow. Hello there! Thank you, heart.

You are so much more than an organ.

I see all the tiny cracks in you,

the places that have been sad and bruised

make you more beautiful, more lovable to me.

Can my heart love itself?

The Upanishads say that within the heart there is a little house.

Inside of that house there is a lotus with a thousand white petals.

This reminds us that whatever we seek out there in the macrocosm

is also right here within the microcosm.

It’s strange, you know.

We crave health and healing, we grapple with these bodies

and cells and brains and cancer,

we try to make sense of pain and agitation and time,

but none of it really makes much sense.

Lately when I teach yoga classes—

I’m so grateful to be well enough to teach, that is not lost on me—

when I teach, I’ve been channeling this message

that our breath and our bodies become a team

and show the mind how to be—

loosening that clench the mind has on our breath and body

feels important now.

Coming to awareness of breath and body

and tucking the mind inside of my sneaker like a dirty sock—

mind wants me to be heady, qualified, authorized,

but breath and body say otherwise.

They say, look at your lungs,

you are being breathed,

you already know and are everything and nothing.

See how light the air is

and yet it fills you up to the brim

and carries you across the sky.

It empties you out and drops you down

to the bottom of the ocean with the coral and the sharks,

and then you follow that ripple,

that shaft of sunlight, back up to the sky.

YES, there is sky here

and there are stars and fairies

and there is music.

There’s this theory that creative ideas live outside of us and come to us as our antennas are up. Songs, paintings, mathematic equations can be dropped into our ears, minds, eyes, thoughts. This topic came on a podcast, Telepathy Tapes, season 2, episode 3: The Consciousness of Creativity. Are our ideas alive and do they choose us? Baby girl, chills. You have such a big antenna, and you love other people who do too. You share that special knowing with them—the artists, the woo woos, the ones you might not even expect. Yes, as Elizabeth Gilbert puts it, it is both magic and magical.

You have been seated at this desk with your pen, paper ready. You are in the boat ready to catch the fish. There is a sort of posturing of our souls with raised antennae—a practice, a walk in the woods, a swim, a daydream, a melody. We position ourselves, receptors up to the inflow of creativity that could meet us at any point and anytime. Place your fingers on your keyboard. Pick up your instrument. Wait at your desk.

I’m into this big magic in a big way, but sometimes I start to lose faith that it’s there. When I arrived here today, I knew it was all around me in your faces. I experience it all the time when I step into teaching yoga class or to facilitate a meditation. Something larger than myself drops in and guides me, takes me for this wild ride. It comes from a loving place so vast, so surrendered, and flow feels like the notes of a harp, like liquid love and clarity. That is the medicine to heal all diseases.

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There’s a moment after DIEP flap surgery when the world narrows to one simple truth:

You are alive inside a body you no longer recognize.

You wake up stitched from hip to hip and around your breasts, tubes threaded into the new geography of you. A nurse hands you a little plastic bottle and shows you how to empty the drains. You stare at it, stunned that something so small can hold so much of your healing.

You whisper the first mantra of recovery:
I made it.

I remember lying in the hospital bed, the fluorescent lights humming above me, realizing that no matter how much research I had done, this is a territory you can’t fully prepare for. Reconstruction isn’t a cosmetic choice or a detour. It’s a crossing. A dismantling. A slow re-entering.

Learning My Body Again

For the first month, I couldn’t look directly at my incisions. My nervous system wasn’t ready for visual truth yet, so I used self-Reiki instead—eyes closed, hands over my heart and belly, waiting for any flicker of warmth that might tell me:

I’m right here. I’m healing in every moment.

For anyone new to the word:
Reiki is a Japanese energy-healing practice that channels gentle, noninvasive life-force energy through the hands. It’s not dramatic. It doesn’t require belief. It simply creates a quiet place where the body and spirit can meet and coalesce.

That’s all I could manage in those early days.

Your hands become a kind of flashlight in the dark:
This is where it hurts.
This is where I’m afraid.
This is where I return.

Some women look at everything right away. Some wait weeks or months. Both ways are correct. Both are holy. We are looking with more than our eyes.

Healing asks for complete gentleness—toward your body, toward your decisions, toward the timeline you didn’t choose.

The Hidden Layer: Medical Menopause

Time marker: Month 2

Because my cancer was estrogen-positive, my hormones didn’t fade out slowly. They crashed.

One month, my hormonal system was doing what it had done since I was twelve—carrying me through sensuality, appetite, creativity, sleep, softness. The next month:

Silence.
Tamoxifen.
Lupron.
Ovarian suppression.

Life savers, yes. But also a kind of exile.

What shocked me most was the grief.

No one tells you that losing estrogen feels like losing a language you’ve spoken your entire life. My compass. My music.

• Joints aching

• Muscles stiff

• Sleep fractured

• Heat rising like a signal flare

• Brain fog thick as humidity

I kept thinking:
Who am I inside this new form with this chemistry?

It wasn’t self-pity—it was orientation. A woman re-learning the inner and outer climate of her own body.

And while modern medicine was extraordinary at saving my life, it did not prepare me for the life I would return to.

This part? The part after the major surgery?
Women deserve far more guidance than we receive.

The Emotional Landscape

Some mornings I felt like a warrior—stitched but steady, determined, awake.

Other mornings I felt like a mismatched collage: swollen, stitched, numb in unfamiliar places, too tender in others.

Both were true.
Both belong.

Healing is not linear, and it is not tidy. It loops. It spirals. It asks you to meet the same feelings again, but each time with slightly more softness, slightly more clarity.

There is grief in reconstruction.
There is also fierce resilience.
Neither cancels the other.

Why We Need to Say These Things Out Loud

We need better research for women—especially women post–DIEP flap reconstruction who expect to feel better but experience a whole other wave when put into medical menopause.

We need oncologists trained not just in cancer pathology, but in the lived, hormonal, emotional experience of their patients.

We need more conversations about:

• estrogen loss

• sleep

• libido

• brain fog

• joint pain

• identity

• the rage and sadness no one warns you about

• how your relationships shift when your body and hormones change

We also need to say—clearly—that every woman’s surgical choice is deeply personal. There is no formula. No “right” decision. Only the one that matches your body, your risk, your intuition, your life. Just as every woman’s hormonal choices warrant great consideration.

Survival is not the finish line.
Vitality deserves to be part of the treatment plan.

Reiki as Companion & Compass

On the days when my chemistry felt alien and my edges felt too raw, I returned to Reiki—not as something mystical, but as something practical.

A way to inhabit myself.

The practice became small but essential:

Hands on my heart.
Hands on my belly.
Breath. Stillness. Permission.

Some days I felt heat. Some days arctic ice cold. Some days nothing at all. These are all forms of Reiki energy alive and at work.

This energy is also capable of moving through time: my future self comes and tells me I’ve made it, I’m strong, I need to keep going. I go back to myself as a mourning child who had just lost her grandmother to breast cancer and tell her, You’re loved. You’re beautiful. You are never alone.

These secret rituals kept me connected to my own body when I didn’t fully trust her yet. They gave me a sense of participation in a process that otherwise felt like one long surrender.

Healing rarely announces itself.
It hums.
It nudges.
It asks you to notice.

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An Invitation for the Middle of the Journey

If you’re somewhere between the drains and the hormone depletion, between exhaustion and small wins, between fear and the faintest glimmer of return—please know:

You are not failing.
You are not broken.
You are not behind.

You are learning a new body.
A new chemistry.
A new inner landscape.

And one day—quietly, without ceremony—your body will whisper:
I’m right here.
And you will believe her.

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Stay tuned for Part 3 , Where we go next:
the slow return to movement, strength, sensuality, desire, and the rebuilding of self after the shock phase ends.

When you’re ready, I’ll meet you there.

For Paid Subscribers Only

A deeper dive into medical menopause, intimacy after DIEP, and the rituals that helped me reclaim my body

✦ Subscriber Section: The Deeper Layers ✦

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Welcome to DIEP Expectations, a three-part exploration of breast reconstruction, healing, and the global realities faced by women navigating breast cancer. As a DIEP flap survivor, I want to illuminate the numbers, the choices, and the gaps in care — from advanced microsurgical reconstruction to hormonal management during menopause.

We deep dive into the realities, challenges, and global landscape of breast reconstruction for women navigating breast cancer.

In this series, you’ll discover:

• Who around the world is having DIEP flap reconstructions — and who isn’t

• How surgical options, hormonal therapies, and quality-of-life challenges intersect

• Evidence, advocacy, and insights to empower women, caregivers, and medical professionals alike

Whether you’re newly diagnosed, considering reconstruction, or part of the global medical community, follow along to explore a transparent, data-informed, survivor-centered perspective. Each part will illuminate a different piece of this complex journey, helping women make choices with confidence and clarity — and helping the world understand what matters most to survivors.

Global Breast Cancer Incidence (GLOBOCAN 2022)

Worldwide, breast cancer remains the most common cancer in women.

• 2.3 million new cases were diagnosed globally in 2022.

• Europe: ~557,532 new cases

• United States: 274,375

• China: 357,161

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Let’s begin with three deep breaths.
In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
Long exhale.

Take your time to arrive here.

Tonight, the veil thins.
Halloween. Samhain. Winter.
We peer through the space between worlds, trusting our candles will remain lit as we move into a darker season.

My teenage daughters went out for Halloween in tiny skirts and fake blood;
God help me. I stayed home in a flowered headdress, painted like La Catrina.

I miss the fleeting years trick-or-treating with them, small hands in mine,
the air laced with sugar and sweet togetherness. Some chapters close quietly. Others with a lingering ache.

This Newsletter is for that ache and for the deep remembering that we are all ancestors in training.

My hope is that something here serves you, lifts you, and reminds you that you belong to this anam cara soul family — seekers, mystics, mothers, daughters and ordinary humans walking each other through the seasons of life.

These writings unfolded inside Mirabai Starr’s Writing Through the Veil class — a sacred container of exploration and remembering.

“We are all ancestors in training.” — Mirabai Starr

🌕 Contemplation: Becoming an Ancestor

What kind of ancestor will you be?

Expand the definition of ancestor — any being you have loved, any presence that still whispers through your bones.
Let imagination dissolve linear time.
Sense the pulse of your own spirit.
Bless what is — even as it breaks.

Practice:
Breathe. Feel your big toe press the earth.
Experience yourself both here and beyond as
a living ancestor, weaving between worlds.

✍️ Prompt 1 — I Am Listening… 🌠

I am listening. Yes, I am.

I call upon my lineage of spiritual ancestors to guide me, to soothe my aching heart.
My altar is set — an amber candle burning with vanilla and bergamot.

I whisper into the flame:
Can you hold my tornado, my landslide, my drought?
Can you offer me a feather, a shield, a raft — something to soften the broken glass and the paper cuts of loneliness?

And I hear back, full body: YES.

Yes, dear one, we are here, holding you.
You don’t need to prove your worth here.
We see you, perfect even in your thrashing.
All that you are — and all that you are not — is holy.
Lay it down, child.
We will wash your wounds and feed you honey until your body remembers how to sing again.

✍️ Prompt 2 — The Presence of Your Absence… 🕊️

Since diagnosis and surgery, your presence has been with me every day —
the breast cancer that took you when I was nine is the same that could’ve taken me at forty-eight.

You threw the mammogram paper at me, over and over, from the depths of the cupboard where I’d hidden it from myself.

You’ve been walking beside me, holding my hand.
You sit beside me still — red lipstick, bright blue eyes, thick golden curls.
So much strength and dignity, so little about your suffering.

Many memories are faded, but your presence is palpable — warm, like my cat on the sofa behind me as I write.
Breathing with me without my asking.

My thoughts arrive more like rain.
Your presence is wise and soft,
scented faintly of roses and chicken soup.

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🌙 Closing Blessing 🔮

May you feel your ancestors walking beside you.
May their love steady your breath and guide your steps.
May you release what is ready to be composted, and rest in what remains.
May the veil between your pain and your peace grow thin enough for light to pour through.

Wherever you are — you belong here.
You are never alone.

In trust,
✨ Radha

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It’s October in Northern California.
The fall is here, the days are getting cool and short.

My daughters missed the bus again this morning,
so I drove them in the rain along Paradise Drive,
one of the windiest roads I’ve ever known.

A cliff, a huge bay, bridges,
reflections of light dancing across the water and vast, endless sky.
The leaves changing color, all reflecting back at me.

I drove slow.
The taste of my hibiscus tea — tangy magenta on my tongue.
A spoonful of honey from the farmers market.

Eliza, my younger daughter, played Thriller
because she said it reminds her of Halloween.
“My playlist this morning is going to be FIRE,” she declared.

Chloe, my older daughter, sighed and said,
“Everyone hates October, Eliza. Fall is the worst season.”

Eliza didn’t flinch.
“I like feeling grateful,” she said.

My heart hovered above the small storm between them —
that sacred space where sisters learn to see the world differently.
I tried to feel and listen and not speak.

When I got home, I put on a podcast called Founders.
Two smart men talking about the meaning of impact —
beyond personal success, beyond millions of dollars.

They were tracing the thread of what drives people to keep founding more things,
solving more problems: Apple, Uber, Spotify, Waymo… AI.

Founders who live on this very windy windy road on the edge of a cliff. So much sky.
They see things and navigate the depths of how to fail and succeed and build.

One of them, the founder of Spotify, said he spent fifteen years thinking of nothing else. Fifteen years of monastic focus.

Building something that would play music, make playlists, carry inspiration and artists and fans and voices all together for us to listen to.

I thought about us in the car this morning,
listening to Thriller, to tension, to teenage opinions, to the soft rain.
The sound of growing up so fast.

I too am a Founder of this life,
and that my daughter feels grateful tells me I have made an impact.

I too chase solutions to problems
while balancing on a knife’s edge of sanity and insanity —
get quiet, bear witness when solutions present themselves.
And when they don’t.

Watching life inventing and revealing itself —
like the playlists, the arguments, the light on the water, the leaves.
The time of harvest is messy.

I rest my head back on the notes of the harp
and let myself drift a little deeper into the symphony of Fall.

Thought/ Writing Prompt: Where in your life are you a founder — of the precious, the ridiculous, of solutions in this messy world?

This Substack is reader-supported. If my words have touched your spirit, please consider offering your support as a paid subscriber—it means more than you know.

At my “I’m Alive Party”…
OMG—am I allowed to say it?
Whisper it?
Sing it?
Shout it?

Am I even allowed to say “I’m alive”?
Does this somehow reveal that there was a chance—a possibility, a breath of a notion—that I might not make it?

I definitely felt it.
Still do.
All the time.

Like a baby elephant named Mortality comes and sits right beside me—
we have tea sometimes.
Banana bread. Apples.

Then—well, then I don’t know.
Somehow, I arrive here.
Planning my I’m ALIVE party.

And I have all the details figured out.
It’s in a big, beautiful house on the water—bathed in candlelight.

There’s vegan food, prepared by one of my dearest friends.
Lots of vegan desserts too—because they’re healthy (and because we deserve sweetness):
chocolate almond butter date bars,
cashew cream cheesecake,
key lime pie with a graham crust,
strawberry shortcake that tastes like sunshine.

And the people—oh the people.
They are even better than the desserts.
They are my anam cara, the soul family who showed up for me when I lost everything—and then lost some more.
Some of them I am meeting for the first time here and we embrace, stare deeply into each other’s eyes.

Let's Connect

They brought my husband roast chicken and pot pies.
They fed my kids fresh fruit and warm bagels.
We never even had to look at a menu.

When things were really bad—and I thought the whole herd of elephants might arrive at my front door to collect their baby and me—
they held them at bay.
Down the street.
Distracting them with peanuts,
so I could heal.
So I could keep getting stronger.

There was fear.
There was pain.
There was sorrow.

And in the midst of all that—there was also something else:
Joy.

And no, joy is not a crumb.
It’s a whole fucking bakery.
A whole spread of love and light,
loaves of possibility,
cookies of connection,
naan of nourishment.

It arrives not in spite of the dark—but because of it.

Because when you’ve tasted the bitterness of your own dukkha, your own suffering,
you know what a miracle it is when someone walks into your room with a hot cup of tea.
You know what it means to chant Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
with a weak, chemo-drenched voice,
and still mean it.

May all beings everywhere be happy and free.

At my Alive Party, there would be…
Kirtan singing to open our hearts.
Tablas pulsing like heartbeat prayers.
Crystal bowls ringing with memory and medicine.
Rattles calling in the ancestors.
Incense and silence.

But bring nothing.

This is an arati for all of you—
so that I might fill your hands with flowers and sweets,
and a small oil flame alight back to your hearts,
to thank you for your being in my life.

A post from that deep, hidden place inside me—the place deciding that I want to stay here. With you.

That I want to watch that baby elephant grow up
and slide down the mud luscious hills with his friends,
as I watch my own life shift into its next whole chapter—
not knowing yet exactly what that looks like.

This Chemo Yogi path.
This strange, sacred, warrior’s walk through fear, fatigue, presence, and pranayama.
Where joy is a practice,
gratitude is a mantra,
and being alive—just alive—is the greatest celebration of all.

Om namah shivaya — to the shedding, the surviving, the surrender.
Jai Ma — to the fierce, mothering energy carrying me through.
Sat nam — to truth. To breath. To being here.

At my I’m Alive Party.
You’re invited.
Bring nothing.

And at the end—
there will be grace.

If this touched something in you, share it with someone who might need it. We all have our own baby elephants of mortality that pay us visits. And we all deserve an I’m Alive Party—even if it’s just a cup of tea and a deep breath.

This Substack is reader-supported. If my words have touched your spirit, please consider offering your support as a paid subscriber—it means more than you know.

✨Ritual Opening
Let’s begin with three deep breaths.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
Take your time. Long exhale.

🌙Intention: Anam Cara
In the Celtic tradition, an Anam Cara is a soul friend—someone who sees you, holds space for you, and reminds you of your light when you’ve forgotten.

This newsletter is meant to be: a circle across time, towns, countries, and continents. Whether you’re navigating illness in Dubai, healing from grief in Germany, or seeking stillness in New York—you belong here. This is a sacred place of belonging and comfort.

This is a reminder that we can meet each other with presence, truth and care across the globe.

🍁 Autumn’s Holy Invitation

Autumn invites us to honor the unseen, to trust the roots that deepen in silence. Though change is afoot, you are not being asked to be anyone but you.

Creativity—writing, painting, singing, even cooking with love—can be a form of yoga, a way of calming the citta vritti, the whirling of the mind. Fall is the perfect time to witness and tend to your creativity in small and big ways. Highly encouraged.

Reflections:

What rhythms of change may I honor within myself?

What creativity can I offer myself?

🌿 A Simple Mantra

May I be guided. May I be guided.

The mind can be pulled toward uncertainties—health, finances, the needs of others. Your breath brings you back: present moment, sacred ground.

May I be protected.

May I be guided. May I be guided.

✍️ Writing Prompt

What does Fall mean to you?

Write it. Whisper it. Let it fall from your branches.

✨ Blessing 🍯

May you trust the mysteries carrying you forward. May something in this season lighten your load.

Wherever you are—
You belong.
You are guided.
You are never alone.

Tat Tvam Asi — You are That.

With trust,
✨ Radha

🌙 Work With Me

If your soul is craving companionship and guidance:
🍁 1:1 Reiki + Soul Coaching — release blocks, restore balance.
🍁 Writing Journeys — discover your voice, heal through words.
🍁 Retreats & Circles — sacred spaces for renewal and belonging.

📧 rachelross1977@gmail.com | 🌐 radhahealing.com
💌 Book your free discovery call today.

Let's Connect

✨ About Me

Hi. I’m Rachel, founder of RadhaHealing. Author of Chemo Yogi (Substack). I was given the name Radhika by my Hindi teacher, and it stuck. I’m a Reiki practitioner, yoga teacher, writer, and seeker. I’m walking through breast cancer, chemo, and medical menopause with raw honesty, humor, devotion— some swearing.

For my lifetime, I’ve been asking deep questions about death, purpose, and the meaning of this precious life. My journeys to India, my soul’s home, have woven dharmic experience into my body and soul.

Before RadhaHealing, I was a global fashion design leader—creativity is still my lifeblood, now it flows into healing and community. I’m also a mom of two teenage girls and a cat lover, a simple human navigating life’s messiness while seeking beauty, releasing old patterns, and coming home to myself again and again.

✨ A Favorite Poem

Clearing —Martha Postlethwaite

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself to this world
so worthy of rescue.

After my first chemo, I slipped into an unexpected memory: myself in my mother’s womb. I could feel her love, her fears, and my own choice to be right there in that fertile darkness.

In that space, gestation and illness blurred. Illness carries the same hidden mystery as gestation, drawing me deeper into the unseen. There I was again — a small body learning the rhythms of breath and heart. The womb taught me uncertainty as curriculum; fragile things tethered and untethered.

Decades later, the mastectomy and the depletion of estrogen echo that same teaching. What I untangle now is not only fear, but its origin. Which anxieties are mine, and which belong to my mother? Or to the countless women before us who carried both fear and fire in their wombs?

This is my task in the darkness: to stop transmitting old imprints to my daughters. To ask what is truly mine to carry — and to release the rest.

Darkness now holds my hot flashes, my storms of anxiety, and also my calm. I place my hands on my belly and breasts and listen. I practice self-Reiki, witnessing my soft, innocent body aflame. Transformation, darkness, healing — these are not abstractions. They are the seams of wings forming, the sutras threading between body and spirit, earth and sky.

There is humility in pure darkness. Permission to stop. To remember that in yoga, destruction (Śiva) is not separate from creation (Śakti). Dissolution is not failure — it is initiation.

What if shedding is simply the intelligence of life?

Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse myself as I truly am: a priestess of intuition, embodiment, and healing. I am a priestess of hope and connection, carrying the sweetness of lifetimes lived and heartbreaks endured. I trust my divinity. So’ham — I am That. So’ham.

The caterpillar doesn’t know her wings before they form. She only knows the insistence to become. I don’t need to know who I’ll be on the other side. The questions themselves are wings, carrying me even as I feel I am falling.

Some things must be left — unsaid and uncarried — so the new can braid itself into being. I can face darkness, walk through hell, and still keep loving myself.

I hear a primordial sigh of relief from my ancestors, their power arriving back to them. My power is with me. We protect each other beyond time.

There is a small flickering candle at my altar, here the caterpillar remembers she is a priestess in disguise.

What if surrender is the bravest form of transformation?

✨ Welcome, Ordinary Mystic ✨

Let’s begin with three deep breaths.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Take your time. Long exhale.

You’ve just stepped into something rare—a sacred space, a circle of seekers, survivors, and creators who know that life isn’t tidy, but it is holy.

I’ve been writing—threads of memoir and magic, channeling experience into words that long to be shared. As a child, I did this. Maybe you did too—scribbling in notebooks, wandering the woods, or walking city streets with imagination alive and wonder close at hand.

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Here, we return to that childlike place. We walk the path of the ordinary mystic: finding the holy in the everyday, the extraordinary in the ordinary, making art of the mess, choosing presence over perfection and sharing what we find.

Some of us call it the anam caca soul family: irreverent, playful, mystical, and devoted to presence, kindness, listening, growth—and walking each other home.

This space is a lantern for dark nights. A place to breathe, to laugh, to cry, and to remember: you are not alone.

What We’re Building ✨

🌿 Stories + reflections that reveal the raw, real beauty of healing.
🌿 Simple practices—breath, movement, energy work—that bring you back to calm.
🌿 Audio + sound journeys to soothe your nervous system.
🌿 A global soul family where healing ripples across borders.
🌿 Opportunities to go deeper—through 1:1 sessions, small group circles, and retreats.

Click Here

Reflections: Time, Seasons, Transitions, Eclipse 🌒🍂

As we move toward the eclipse and into the fall, the season calls us inward—toward reflection, rest, and slowing down. This is the time to create warmth, make space for silence, and listen for what’s ready to be released.

Together, our collective creativity and intentions can shape a more soulful world—one day, one word, one breath at a time.

This is our work here: to remember our humanity, to remember our power, honor our voices, and shed what no longer serves us.

🌱 Your First Prompt

I dare to believe…

Write it. Whisper it. Let it plant itself inside you.

🍯 Closing Ritual

Each newsletter will end with a blessing—an exhale into presence:

May you find light in the shadows, humor in the heartbreak, and kinship in the mess. May you hear your own voice through the noise, taste silence, and rest. Wherever you are in the world—you belong here. You are never alone. Tat Tvam Asi.

In trust,
✨ Radha

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In 1998, I was a 20-year-old art student living in New York City. I left behind everything I thought I knew and flew to Varanasi, India for a year abroad. Kashi, the city of light.

I ended up in a crumbling blue hou…

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Before my DIEP flap mastectomy—before losing both my breasts and waking into a body I would no longer recognize—something in me knew: I had to go to my soul’s home. Varanasi.

The city that sits at the tip of Shiva’s trident, where fire and water, death and life, chaos and devotion all live in one breath.

It was not an easy trip to make. But the urgency was stronger than fear. I had to stand again at the burning ghats, had to press my palms together in that holy city where time folds, dissolves, ignites, and soothes.

Varanasi is not gentle. It does not whisper comfort. It strips away what is unnecessary. Every sound, every smell, every body pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in its narrow streets demands presence. And yet, beneath the crush of humanity is a strange serenity—a rhythm that belongs not only to the living, but to all who have come and gone before.

I made a pilgrimage to the home of my Hindi teacher, Virendra Ji, who first cracked my heart open to the vastness of Sanskrit, yoga, and devotion. Sadly, Virendra Ji had passed, yet his presence filled the room as I sat before his framed photograph.

What he offered me then was not instruction, but recognition: a reminder that what I truly am cannot be touched by cancer, cannot be altered by surgery.

His photograph gazed back at me with the same steadiness I remembered, piercing and alive with something both human and eternal. Sitting in that room, beneath a framed OM symbol, I felt him enter—the same way he always had—quiet but unmistakable.

I felt seen beyond my fear, beyond even the body that was about to be cut and sewn.

What he offered was not instruction but remembrance. A mirror held up to my spirit. A reminder that what I truly am cannot be destroyed.

There were moments in Varanasi that felt ordinary: sipping chai from clay cups, watching children fly kites from rooftops, listening to temple bells, sitting at evening arti. And there were moments that broke me open: stepping into the Ganga at sunrise, smoke from funeral pyres tangling in my breath, realizing that here death is not hidden away but woven into the fabric of every day.

I am still unpacking what those days gave me. But I know this: that journey was not about escape. It was preparation.

The pilgrimage fueled me, gave me a strength I could not have found anywhere else, so that when I returned home, I could walk into the hospital and lay myself down on the table with a kind of trust.

Varanasi reminded me of who I am beyond flesh and bone. Of the soul that endures. Of the fire that transforms.

I did not leave India with answers. Only with the faintest thread of understanding: that some thresholds can only be crossed by traveling to the places that burn and sanctify you. India was not just a backdrop—it was the portal itself, stripping me down, transmuting me, teaching me that the real pilgrimage begins the moment you dare to arrive.

And that sometimes, before you lose everything, you must return to the place that first showed you how to live.

✨ Reflection for you: If you were called to make a pilgrimage—whether across the world or within yourself—where would you go, and what would you be seeking?

While my kids tried on back-to-school outfits and my husband muttered fucking bullshit under his breath working from home—classic toxic storm—I stole a few moments between frantic vacuuming and swiffering to do what actually keeps me alive: write.

Lately I’ve noticed how much fear and constriction—duḥkha I carry in my body. I’m always tuned into the people around me, hyper-sensitive of their moods. Wanting to fix and/or heal them. Old wounds get triggered easily—especially that gaze of judgment or criticism that makes me feel worried, scared, small, like I did growing up.

And then the money story creeps in. That sick old lie that my value comes from how much I earn. At 48, a mastectomy and chemo, I know better. Sort of. Naked as me— no filters—I am valuable. I am enough. And yet, it still takes daily practice - abhyāsa, not to collapse under that wave of unworthiness. Practice.

Sometimes I imagine surrounding myself in light, sealing my body in a golden bubble of protection like the yogis do. Some days I manage it. Other days I panic, or rage, or clean to prove I matter. Human work in progress.

Then life reminds me not to take myself so seriously.

Like today at the grocery store: my daughter wiped out running down the aisle in her flip-flops. She was chasing after whipped cream a key ingredient I had forgotten (chemo brain short-circuit). God bless her, so kind and clumsy like a soul mate coming to my rescue both of us crying and laughing at the same time.

And somehow, tonight, I felt up to cooking. My taste buds are finally waking back up, and this round of chemo has me craving ripe Summer fruit. So I decided: strawberry shortcake.

I chopped ripe strawberries, sprinkled them with sugar (fuck it—cravings are holy, soma for the weary body—sweetness as medicine). I even made a raspberry reduction sauce, sliced a perfect peach. Four white dessert plates, little fluffy shortcakes, bowls of fruit, whipped cream, the works.

In my head it was going to be perfect. Everyone building their own little towers of fruit and cream, a summer dessert to remember.

Reality? Not quite. My husband turned it into a playful competition, my 13-year-old (period just arrived) looked at the beautifully slices strawberries, peaches and raspberry sauce like she was going to hurl, and my 12-year-old was more interested in feeding whipped cream to the cat than eating her shortcake.

Dessert fail.

So I ate two myself. And let me tell you: they were the best damn things I’ve ever tasted. After months of chemo when food is flat, joyless—suddenly, this. Shortcake melting on my tongue, tart raspberry, sweet peach, soft whipped cream.

Heaven.

Maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe I didn’t make strawberry shortcake for them. Maybe I made it for me.

✨ Sometimes grace comes disguised as fruit and cream. What sweetness or prasad are you craving for yourself?

I tell myself: keep the phone in my pocket. Take pictures with my eyes—no, deeper than my eyes—with my soul.

The beach stretches out fog rolls in with bits of blue sky. Each wave crashes like a mantra, complete and gone, dissolving back into silence. OM MANI PADME HUM. Seagulls and sandpipers scatter across the shoreline, their reflections shining in the wet sand. Fog cups the hillsides, trees, and homes as if holding them tenderly—maya itself, the veil that hides and reveals.

Then—just there—I look down and spot a sand dollar. Whole. Intact. A mandala at my feet. My breath catches. I haven’t seen one like this in forty years.

Time folds like the tide, rushing forward, pulling back. Suddenly I’m a child again on the beach in Maine. My first ocean. The horizon infinite, the Atlantic vast and alive. I can feel the strong legs, thick hair, wide-open heart, the hunger of that girl who wanted to taste everything.

Now I’m here, toes pressing into the Pacific, my adult ocean. This body different—scarred, tired, healing, fighting—but the same joy washes over me. The salt air hugs me from all directions, like a vast mother who loves me as I am. The dance of shiva and shakti leading me to the the temple of this beach, this moment in time.

In my hand, this perfect coffee. I can’t taste it—chemo stole that—but my body remembers. For now, I breathe it in, the scent in my nose, the heat in my palms. It is enough. In my other hand, a bag of donuts for my daughters, cinnamon sugar and chocolate glazed.

Parkside Bakery, it’s the perfect place—just off the beach, humming with people ordering croissants, lattes, burritos, muffins—and asking neighbors if the baby has arrived yet. Community wrapped in pastry, steam and salt air. An ordinary holy place.

I walk on. A sand dollar in my pocket, donuts in a bag, hot coffee in my hand. I tell myself again: don’t look at your phone. Stay right here. Be present. Stay in the wholeness, the fullness, the ananda. Don’t spin into worry—if the chemo is working, if I look sick, if I’ll live decades more to see my daughters grow, to keep walking these beaches.

And then—I look down again. Another sand dollar.

Two.

The abundance almost breaks me. Anugraha. I can barely bend to meet it. I use my finger to gently lift its fragile edges, and place it in my pocket beside the first. Two mandalas in my pocket, gifts from the tide. Proof. Mystery. I head home to show my girls what I found.

✨ The ocean doesn’t ask us to be more than we are. She only asks us to return. What tide are you walking with today?

Being home alone gets a bad rap. Ask any 48-year-old woman, wife, or mom if she’d love a week alone in her own house? Just sayin’. It’s been maybe 13 years—maybe never—since I’ve actually been home alone. If you’re single, this might not be a holy shit moment. But for me? It was hallowed ground.

The first few days, I felt frozen. One night, a rack of clothes in my closet collapsed. Loud crash. Flash of light. Did I die? Was this it? Had the aliens finally come for me? Or was it a seriously pissed-off poltergeist? I’m lucky not to be working right now—thank you, double mastectomy and chemo. After that 24-hour freakout and sage-burning poltergeist clearing, I relaxed. In my home. In my skin.

The first thing that came off was my shirt. Pre-mastectomy, I used to walk around the house shirtless (hell, guys do it), much to my kids’ dismay—“Mooom!” Not anymore. Or maybe: not yet. Even alone, I wasn’t ready.

Post-mastectomy, my eyes couldn’t meet my body. Too much, too soon. So I practiced self-Reiki. I placed my hands softly on my body, calling in violet light to help my breasts, belly, and heart settle and heal. Touch and attention together? Pure magic.

I turned inward. I could feel beauty and wholeness inside—even if my body had quantum-leaped without me. I knew I’d catch up. That someday, I’d re-love this form, no matter what. This week alone helped me get there.

I’ve never been one to fixate on the physical. As a yogi and teacher, I tend to feel energy first. The body’s a little blurry even though I work to pull it into focus. I use breath—pranayama—as a bridge between body and mind.

One of my favorite childhood T-shirts said, “Don’t mind me—I prefer floating outside my body.” Exactly. For me, feeling and knowing is fluid, and comes more effortlessly than embodying.

Sometimes, my body felt like something I wanted to shed. I’d ask myself a question before bed and wake with the answer. Dreams were my playground, my laboratory. Consciousness, subconsciousness, body, spirit—how does it all fit together? I lived for those questions. They made me happy. Sometimes they made me sad.

I explored the mysteries. I fell in love. I traveled. Some answers came. Some floated off. Eventually, the existential weight got heavy—debilitating, even. That can happen. If it does, it’s okay. You’re probably not as far off as you think. I wish someone had told me that. I realized not everyone was seeking what I was. That hit like a freight train. That’s when I knew I’d go to India. It had been calling ever since The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and Autobiography of a Yogi landed in my lap.

Now it’s the week before my third chemo infusion, and I feel… in my body. The house is clean. It smells like incense and candles. I laid on the couch—something I never do. I rested. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted. I did the dishes—or didn’t. I painted watercolors with a friend, touched back to my art school days. I walked alone on the beach and cried. Then I ate a salad in my car and cried.

Tears are medicine for my soul. Don’t feel sorry for me. Cry with me. Moo with me! Whenever RENT the musical crosses my path, I know I’m on the right track. Impermanence. “The first seal of the Dharma.” The fleetingness of a flower, a galaxy, oneself. 525,600 minutes.

Being home alone, I floated in the bardo—the space in-between it all. Not attached to anything. Vairagya. Letting go. Resting in Savasana after a yoga class. Resting in Savasana in my home alone. Samadhi.

What made the time sweet was knowing: my girls and husband were coming home. I love them. I miss them. Being a Chemo Yogi is hard for them, too. I’m sure they want their mom back. Maybe not the topless one… but still. I want them to know their mom is a badass.

Maybe I don’t appreciate them enough. Maybe they don’t appreciate me. And maybe that’s the perfect imperfection of family. The grass isn’t greener. It’s here—right now—in all its messy, magical, ordinary beauty. Even when I feel like the bad wife, the bad mom, the mad, sad, menopausal lunatic—I know I’m not. Neti, neti. Not this. Not that.

What matters is: I’m here. In my body. Not floating above it. Not waiting for the next version of me to arrive. Just… here. And that alone is a homecoming.

Next up: what happens when the solitude ends, the house fills back up, and the Chemo Yogi returns to the wild, chaotic dance of family life?

So I try to transmute it in my mind: a liquid light elixir, killing cancer cells, purifying impurities, washing them away. I tell myself my bruised, exhausted veins are warriors. My cells are alchemists. My body is a temple—may I be guided, may I be held by the angel…

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I can’t wait for them to leave.

Stop all the eating and cooking and moping around and mess making—awkward silences, disappointment lingering in the summer air. Inordinate amounts of screen time that I can’t even fight anymore. Fuck it.

Sometimes you don’t want people to reflect you. You just want them to be better than you—so maybe you can reflect them instead of the shell of your current self.

Chemo life feels laborious, harsh, unfamiliar. Still, I’m here. I exist. Walking feels like wading through quicksand in a wind tunnel, wearing ankle weights. It hurts, but it’s what I have to do. Get up. Move. Breathe. Listen. Settle back. Repeat. Witness the chitta vrtti- the monkey mind. Be demolished by it. Go another round.

Even sleeping is a goddamn gauntlet. I have to burn in hell, melt down, witness my own death 3–5 times per night, then push ahead into morning. Chemo and menopause doing some demented tribal dance. If I’m not totally cooled off by dawn, my cats launch into WWE wrestling between my legs.

Then come the stabbing stomach pains: “Now that you’ve survived the inferno, enjoy some delightful diarrhea.” Truly a full-body experience. Hellfire from the outside in, destruction from the inside out.

Absolutely nothing feels solid or nice right now. Most of the time, I can’t stand my kids, my husband, my cats—or myself. Welcome to the steam room of rage, tears, and shadow work. They say darkness is female. I love this.

What is this hot steaming hell and when will I be free? Calling on Ma Durga, Ganga Ma— anyone to bring cooling waters physically and metaphysically.

It feels like cruelty to women—this whole experience. The lack of clarity, the sweeping-under-the-rugness of it all. We need more medical understanding and humans to have conversation around all of this. More real talk. Less shame and secrecy.

Food doesn’t taste—and I’m not being dramatic. I’ve had to drizzle dill pickles with balsamic glaze and sea salt just to summon one second of sensory pleasure. I eat full jars of artichoke hearts now. I didn’t even like them before. Maybe the acid is good for my gut.

I tried sugar-free keto caramel peanut butter ice cream last night. Honestly? 10/10. Gave me a reason to go on. For someone who has a sweet tooth going through chemo, I get it sugar is bad (forbidden) and yes I want to live and survive this and not feed the cancer gummy bears. But god damn it, all yum can not be lost along the way!

Right now, I am sad, boring, lazy, pissed off, self-pitying, relentlessly miserable. Who the fuck would want to be around me? I wouldn’t. I can’t blame them.

But...is the old me gone?

The calm(ish), happy, funny, grounded, motivated, inspired, yoga-loving, teaching optimist who could heal people, lead retreats and laugh out loud at dumb jokes? The one who made plans and packed snacks and actually got excited about things?

I don’t want them—especially my kids—to give up on me. I need them to believe I’ll come back, even when I’m not sure myself.

A voice whispers, “You’ll make it.” Disembodied. Floating in the air. Who was that?

Then I look at my garden Buddha, sitting under the lemon tree, and he gives me a tiny sliver of peace. I love this statue. I scouted him for months at the organic garden center until my husband finally said, “You should just get that Buddha.”

I buckled him in with the seatbelt and hugged him all the way home. A love story. And I have many more love stories to share.

Now he sits in the garden, watching over two very strange sculptures made by my daughter: one is a painted rock with a face—red lips, blond hair, blue eyes. She named it Pawlor Pwift. (Yes. You read that right.) The other is a clay profile of a woman with a big nose and a sky-high ponytail.

My brain can’t help but think: What the fuck are those? Why are they here? Why are they near my peaceful, chubby Buddha?

Is it a cry for help from my sweet, creative, wise, sometimes silent, extremely tall 11-year-old daughter? I honestly don’t know. But I can’t fully process it, because I know she already knows too much.

Her puberty is blossoming. She has mile-long supermodel legs, tiny bikinis, short shorts and better skincare products and regimen than any adult I know. Her skin is porcelain. Her understanding of mastectomies and chemo is way too advanced for a child.

Meanwhile, my lashes are giving up one by one. My hair is falling out above my ears. Side-head balding is now a thing. Attractive!

Fear creeps into the tiniest cracks in my psyche. I try to control it. Deep breaths. Cancer feeds on stress, remember?

Where’s my 30 years of yoga? My Reiki master self? My Buddhist dharma studies on impermanence? I have a whole tool kit that I’m supposed to be using here.

My chakras are getting slapped around by a tsunami of sadness, pain, confusion, vanity. Maybe that’s the training. Maybe that’s the real initiation.

Or maybe I’m just batshit right now. Either way, I’ll keep going.