I learned something farming that I haven’t been able to stop applying to almost everything else in my life, which is that when the soil is wrong, the plants don’t thrive, and there comes a point when no amount of pruning or fertilizing or measuring or diagnosing the plant is going to solve the problem because eventually you have to get down on the ground, put your hands into the dirt, smell it, feel it, look at what’s living in it and what’s missing, and ask what exactly you’re trying to grow this thing in.

Lately I’ve been wondering whether culture works the same way.

Culture is such an enormous word that we use it to mean almost anything: the culture of a country, a workplace, a family, a neighborhood, a religion, a generation, a political movement, a school. We talk about popular culture and organizational culture and cancel culture and cultural norms, and underneath all of those uses I think we’re trying to describe something we can feel even when we can’t quite see it. Culture is the collection of assumptions and stories and behaviors and rituals that teach us what is normal here, what is valuable here, who belongs here, what we’re allowed to question, how much we’re allowed to want, what success looks like, what failure means and, perhaps most importantly, what kind of person we’re expected to become if we want to remain part of the whole.

And because we grow up inside culture, we don’t necessarily experience it as something constructed. We experience it as reality.

That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

There are so many things I spent much of my life assuming were simply how the world worked, and now I find myself looking at them and wondering who decided that. Who decided what productive means? Who decided that the safest possible future is one in which each of us manages to accumulate enough money individually that we won’t need anyone else when we’re old? Who decided that a line on a surveyor’s map means one person owns the land on one side and another person owns the land on the other, as though the water and soil and fungi and deer and tree roots are somehow aware of the boundary? Who decided that the skills a child needs are best learned by separating learning from most of the actual work of being alive? Who decided that the smartest person in the room should necessarily have the most authority, or that the person with the most authority is therefore the one most worth listening to?

I don’t ask these questions because I think every structure we’ve inherited is terrible or because I have some fantasy that we can wake up tomorrow morning, dismantle civilization and somehow know what to replace it with. I ask them because the structures themselves aren’t sacred, and I think we forget that.

We made them.

And I find that incredibly hopeful.

When I was farming, I used to bring beautiful vegetables into the city and sell them at markets: kale, beets, turnips, kohlrabi and whatever else had managed to emerge from the soil that week, and inevitably I’d bring some of it home. There were plenty of people who wanted fresh food, and there were also plenty who would stand in front of some beautiful, nourishing produce and say, “I don’t know what to do with that.” Some don’t know how to prepare it, some don’t have the time, and some don’t have the equipment. I once met a woman whose only cooking appliance was a microwave.

I remember thinking ‘how strange’, because the food existed. The person who needed nourishment existed. The distance between them might have been three feet and a couple of dollars, and still the system had failed to create nourishment.

We tend to think scarcity means there isn’t enough of something, although sometimes there is plenty and what’s missing is relationship, knowledge, access, money, time, equipment, transportation, confidence or some invisible piece of cultural infrastructure that allows the thing that exists to become useful.

Early in my leadership career at Starbucks, an employee told me that I was treating people differently when they came to me with scheduling problems, because I was generously accommodating some people’s requests and telling other people, essentially, that they needed to figure it out themselves. I hadn’t recognized the inconsistency until she showed it to me, and what stayed with me wasn’t only the realization that I had a bias I couldn’t see. What stayed with me was the fact that she felt able to tell me.

There was something in the culture between us that allowed the truth to travel upward.

Culture is constantly showing us whether telling the truth is safe, whether questions are welcome, whether mistakes become information or identity, whether someone with less power can interrupt someone with more power and whether the person with more power has enough security to listen.

I know I haven’t always been right, and I probably never will get things completely right, but that conversation changed something fundamental in the way I understand leadership and relationship because once someone shows you something about yourself that you can’t see, you have a choice about whether you defend the person you thought you were or become somebody capable of incorporating what you’ve just learned.

Maybe cultures work the same way. Maybe our cultures become healthier when they open to receive information that disrupts the story we’ve been telling.

I’ve been fortunate in my working life to have people who saw capacities in me that didn’t yet belong to the position I held. I once entered a company as a temp, answering phones, largely mystified by what everybody did all day inside office buildings because most of my previous experience had been in retail and hospitality. Over time I was given more responsibility until I ended up managing and operating their global sales organization. Someone could see beyond the job I had already done toward the work I might be capable of doing, and because there was room to expand, I expanded.

I’ve also experienced the inverse of that, and I think most of us have. You can feel when a culture has already decided what you are, because every new thing you offer gets interpreted through the old story. You’re the assistant, or the finance guy. You’re difficult. You’re not leadership material. You’re creative but disorganized. You’re dependable but not strategic. We create these little containers for one another, often without realizing it, and then we act surprised when you either begin conforming to them or spend enormous amounts of energy trying to escape.

That’s one of the places where my questions about culture have started crossing into my questions about Sacredness, because I wonder what would happen if we genuinely believed there is something Sacred in every living being, and then actually followed that belief beyond the realm of philosophy.

I don’t mean Sacred in the sense that everybody gets treated like a precious object that can never be challenged or made uncomfortable. If I believe you’re Sacred, then your capacity matters, your growth matters, your responsibility matters, your relationships matter and what you contribute to the whole matters too. Sometimes love is encouragement and sometimes it’s telling the truth, and sometimes care means holding a boundary because whatever one person does ripples outward into everybody else.

I’m becoming increasingly interested in what happens when Sacredness becomes practical.

What would it mean in the way we raise children, care for elders, grow food, design neighborhoods, run businesses, make investments, employ people, steward land, handle conflict, organize communities or decide what we’re willing to extract from the Earth in order to have the things we want?

Because I don’t think the problem is that human beings enjoy having lots of things. I certainly do. I love beautiful food and travel and well-made clothes and art and comfort and sometimes champagne. I make an absurdly good shortbread cookie and take the ingredients seriously because the pleasure is part of the point. I don’t want a future built around austerity and guilt. I’m interested in whether we can experience abundance while remaining conscious of relationship, because everything we receive came from somewhere, and somebody or something participated in making it possible. That is what reciprocity means to me, and it’s much larger than saying thank you.

Farming taught me that too, because there is no individual hero in a healthy field. The farmer matters and the soil matters and the pollinators matter and the microorganisms matter and the weather matters and the water matters, and all of these relationships are happening simultaneously whether or not the person standing in the field understands them. You can separate them into categories because categories help us think, the field itself remains one living system. I think humans have forgotten how much we live that way too.

We talk constantly about independence, and certainly autonomy and self-determination matter, but no one is actually independent. We arrive in this world unable to feed ourselves or move ourselves out of danger, and if we’re fortunate enough to grow old, most of us will eventually need other people again. Between those two periods we have this relatively brief span when we can contribute tremendous amounts of labor and imagination and knowledge and love and care, and somehow we’ve created a culture in which needing other people can feel like evidence that we didn’t prepare for life properly.

My parents worry about whether I’ve saved enough for retirement, and I understand the love underneath that because what they’re really asking is whether I’ll be safe, and yet I keep wondering if we’ve mistaken an individual financial solution for a human one. What would happen if we became much better at shared flourishing?

I don’t completely know what I mean by that yet, and I suspect that is partly why the idea won’t leave me alone. I know it doesn’t mean forcing everyone into the same version of a good life. Some people want a tiny home and vegetables in the backyard and some want to fly around the world, and some people want children and some don’t, and some want to build enormous things while others want a quiet life with enough time to sit underneath a tree. Shared flourishing would have to contain difference because life itself contains difference.

Maybe it begins with recognizing that my flourishing and yours aren’t as separate as we’ve been taught to believe. And this brings me back to culture, because culture becomes the soil in which all of these ideas either become imaginable or remain impossible.

A culture can teach us that there is never enough and everyone is competing for the same narrow slice, or it can teach us that contribution has many forms. A culture can teach us that authority is something granted by title, or it can make room for leadership to emerge wherever someone is capable of serving the whole. A culture can teach us that the Earth is a collection of resources waiting for human use, or that we’re participants inside a living system whose health is inseparable from our own. A culture can tell someone what they are allowed to become, and it can create enough room for them to surprise us.

None of this happens simply because we write better values statements, though. Culture lives in the small, repetitive, ordinary choices through which the story gets reinforced: who gets listened to, whose mistakes are forgiven, what gets rewarded, what people joke about, which stories are repeated, where the money goes, what happens when somebody challenges the norm, how we welcome strangers, how we treat the person cleaning the room, whether people are allowed to change and whether the thing we say matters still matters when honoring it costs us something. Those are rituals, even when we don’t call them rituals.

And perhaps that is where the work becomes possible, because if culture is something human beings continually make together, then culture can change without waiting for some enormous revolution to arrive from outside. It changes every time someone notices the inherited pattern and chooses something more life-giving, and then somebody else notices that choice and begins doing it too.

I don’t think one person can design a culture of shared flourishing, and I don’t think one discipline contains the answer. Economists don’t have the whole thing. Spiritual teachers don’t have the whole thing. Scientists don’t have the whole thing. Farmers and educators and activists and business leaders and artists don’t have it either, although each of them may be carrying a piece. Maybe what we need is to get much better at bringing the pieces together and listening for what emerges between them.

I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling curious and mildly frustrated by the fact that my interests don’t stay in their assigned boxes. Farming leads me into economics, economics leads me into community, community leads me into spirituality, spirituality leads me into leadership, leadership brings me back to systems and somehow all of it eventually brings me back outside with my hands in the dirt wondering whether we have misunderstood the soil.

For a long time I thought that meant I needed to figure out which thing I was really supposed to be doing. Now I’m beginning to wonder whether connecting them is the thing. Because when the soil is alive and healthy, and the conditions are right, things grow.

Then, what is silence? What does it mean to be in or with silence?

Today the cards speak of embodiment. Alchemy. Daimons. Summer. Chiron. The white and red rose.

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Platinum. Argon. Tellurium.

Embodiment - inner searching - self + Spirit as alchemy.

There is something present in the Silence.

Words bounce around in it.

They’re trying to land. Attaching themselves to hold their presence, to matter. Letters arranging themselves to categorize and identify, meaning.

We breathe. We move. Slight shifting - and frictions invite sound. Create it even.

Allowing the floating of presence in - opens space and ties us to time in a different way.

Time and its continuum. Its passage are marked by events, steps, advancements. Measured with cogs, atoms, experiences, math, lines and rhythms. Ordinary objects become extraordinary markers of time and its flow. It doesn't move - it merely allows. It exists and in existing allows us.

You are already the CEO of one life.

The only question is whether you are living it by design or by default.

The Uncontained CEO is not a job title. It is a way of standing inside your life.

It is the decision to stop waiting for someone else to recognize your authority before you begin exercising it. It is the understanding that no board, employer, institution, partner, parent, teacher, spiritual authority, or gatekeeper can take responsibility for the life that is yours to shape.

To become the CEO of your life is not to believe you control every circumstance. We do not control illness, loss, injustice, other people’s choices, the conditions into which we are born, or the systems through which we must move. Personal power is not omnipotence, and claiming authorship does not erase vulnerability, consequence, interdependence, or chance.

It means something both simpler and more demanding: we are responsible for our participation in what happens next.

We decide what we will tolerate, what we will question, what we will repair, what we will release, and what we will build. We decide whether the stories handed to us will become permanent instructions. We decide whether rejection becomes a verdict, whether shame becomes an identity, and whether a role assigned by someone else becomes the outer boundary of who we are allowed to become.

The Uncontained CEO does not wait to be discovered. They discover themselves, name what they find, and accept responsibility for what they will do with it.

This is not permission to dominate. It is an invitation to become conscious of the power already moving through us.

We are the Sacred made particular. We are life becoming aware of itself through a human body, a human history, a human imagination, and a finite span of time. We are not gods because we command the universe or stand above other beings. We are gods because creative force moves through us, because our choices shape consequences, because our attention nourishes some possibilities and starves others, and because every life participates in the making of the world.

We cannot be entirely contained because the Sacred cannot be entirely contained.

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The Box

The box is the architecture that teaches us to remain smaller than we are.

It is every system, role, expectation, hierarchy, and inherited story designed to make us easier to manage than to expand into our true selves. The box may look like a job title, a résumé, a family role, a religious doctrine, a gender expectation, a criminal record, a performance review, a credential, or an idea of what a successful life is supposed to look like.

The box tells us to be useful, agreeable, productive, respectable, and grateful. It encourages ambition, provided we wait patiently to be chosen. It permits intuition, provided we do not call it intelligence. It welcomes spirituality, provided it remains private and does not challenge the existing order. It approves of power as long as that power remains pleasant, legible, predictable, and easy to supervise.

The box is not merely patriarchy, though patriarchy has built and reinforced much of it. It is every structure organized around domination rather than relationship, extraction rather than reciprocity, control rather than trust, and status rather than interdependence.

These systems were not designed to honor the full expression of the Divine Feminine.

The Divine Feminine is not the property of women, nor is it limited to any sex or gender. It is the creative, relational, intuitive, embodied, regenerative, and transformative force present within all life.

The Divine Feminine is not simply gentle, receptive, maternal, or beautiful. It creates and destroys. It feeds what is living and withdraws energy from what has become harmful. It gives birth, tends the dying, protects the vulnerable, tells the truth, and burns away what can no longer support life.

Every person carries some expression of this force. Yet many of our institutions were built by suppressing it. Women and gender-diverse people have often borne the most visible consequences, while men and boys have also been taught to sever themselves from tenderness, vulnerability, intuition, embodiment, and relational intelligence.

A system dependent on predictability will always fear integrated power. It cannot easily manage a person who is tender without being submissive, intuitive without being ungrounded, ambitious without being extractive, and powerful without needing to dominate.

So the box divides us. It separates mind from body, intellect from intuition, commerce from conscience, leadership from care, power from tenderness, and the human world from the more-than-human world. It calls this fragmentation maturity, professionalism, realism, or good judgment.

The box does not always lock us out. Often, it invites us in under conditions.

We may enter if we leave our rage outside. We may enter if we soften our knowing, edit our history, hide our sexuality, quiet our spiritual intelligence, simplify our complexity, and translate ourselves into language the institution already understands.

That is not belonging. It is conditional admission.

A role can be useful. A title can describe a responsibility. A credential can demonstrate meaningful study. A structure can create clarity and support collective work. The problem begins when these things are treated as the final measure of human capacity.

The box says that power belongs to those at the top, that wisdom flows downward, and that authority becomes legitimate only when conferred by someone who already possesses it.

The Uncontained CEO rejects that premise.

How We Learn to Contain Ourselves

Most boxes do not require constant enforcement because we eventually learn to police ourselves.

We learn to enter through the side door. We make ourselves useful, master the work, solve problems no one assigned, carry responsibility beyond the title, and wait for someone else to notice. We become indispensable while remaining strangely reluctant to name the scale of what we are doing.

We call leadership “helping.” We call strategy “figuring it out.” We call transformation “making things work.” We call emotional labor “being supportive.” We call operational expertise “pitching in.”

We use small language for large work, then wonder why other people underestimate us.

My story is particular, but the pattern is not. I tell it not because everyone has lived what I have lived, but because many of us have learned to contain ourselves in order to earn belonging, safety, credibility, or permission.

I learned work before I learned almost anything else about power. Before I was eight years old, I was weeding gardens for a dollar an hour. I cleaned a church daycare center, made candy at thirteen, and discovered early that labor could give me an identity. Work offered rules, measurable results, and evidence that I mattered.

When belonging did not come naturally, usefulness became my way in.

I learned to start at the bottom, study the whole system, exceed expectations, and rise. I sold candles, framed art, tended bar, opened a gallery, launched retail markets, trained teams, built customer experiences, supported global sales, organized international conferences, ran a farm, built businesses, and led volunteers.

I worked at nearly every altitude of an organization, and I learned that the air is not necessarily wiser at the top.

The people cleaning the floor often know where the system is failing because they live with the consequences of decisions made far above them. The people answering the phones know what customers are really saying. The workers carrying the operational burden understand where strategy ends and fantasy begins.

That is why I believe leaders should know where the mop is kept.

Cleaning toilets is not a charming origin story. It is a leadership education. The bottom of an organization reveals who is invisible, where waste accumulates, whose labor is taken for granted, and whether stated values survive contact with ordinary reality.

The best way to understand a business is to learn where the dirt goes and who is expected to deal with it.

Yet even after decades of building, leading, and transforming, I continued to wait for someone else to interpret my experience correctly. I confused a lack of conventional credentials with a lack of qualification. I entered beneath myself because beginning lower felt safer than declaring readiness.

This is how the box becomes internal.

We wait for someone in authority to pronounce us ready, valuable, healed, promotable, credible, legitimate, or forgiven. We hand over the evidence of our lives and ask other people to tell us what it means.

The Uncontained CEO takes that authority back.

Power Without Consciousness

Reclaiming power does not mean pretending we have always used it well.

I have not.

At sixteen, I discovered sexuality as another form of influence. My body became the first place where I stopped apologizing for existing. I learned that I could attract attention, create desire, and affect the emotional temperature of a room.

Before I trusted my mind, I learned to trust my magnetism. Before I understood healthy power, I understood attention.

That mattered, but it was not the same as wholeness.

Power discovered before self-worth can become a dangerous instrument. The same is true of authority, money, charisma, intelligence, status, and spiritual influence. When we do not know how to hold power consciously, we may use it to secure belonging, avoid vulnerability, manipulate outcomes, punish others, or escape the parts of ourselves we cannot bear to face.

I made terrible choices. I broke trust, damaged relationships, and broke my own life open.

I will not turn that harm into an inspirational brand story. I will not call every wound a gift or every consequence an initiation. I chose. I caused harm. I paid a price.

Then I had to decide whether punishment would become my permanent identity.

That decision became part of my descent.

Every Heroine’s Journey includes an underworld. It is not a journey reserved for women. It is the inward descent required when the identities, strategies, and forms of belonging that once sustained us can no longer carry us forward.

It is the place where inherited identities fail, where charm cannot rescue us, where achievement cannot conceal us, and where the old methods of securing worth stop working.

The underworld strips away the false self, but it does not guarantee transformation. A person may emerge more defended, more bitter, or more committed to denial. Descent offers no automatic wisdom.

Wisdom requires responsibility.

I learned that accountability and shame are not the same thing. Accountability asks us to tell the truth, accept consequences, repair what we can, and change our behavior. Shame reduces the whole person to the worst evidence against them and demands permanent disappearance.

I refuse disappearance.

My record documents what I did. It does not contain the full evidence of who I became.

The Sacred did not wait outside the prison gate. The Sacred met me in confinement, in silence, and in the places where respectable society insisted nothing holy could remain.

There, I learned that dignity is not a reward for good behavior. Sacredness is not revoked by a sentence. No human being can be reduced forever to one decision, one failure, one diagnosis, one title, or one moment of collapse.

The person who returned from that underworld was not innocent.

They were responsible.

That is the power I claim now.

What We Believe

We believe that the Sacred lives within and among us, not only above us or inside institutions authorized to speak on its behalf.

We believe intuition is a legitimate form of intelligence. It does not replace evidence, analysis, skill, or discernment. It deepens them.

We believe that lived experience can produce wisdom no credential can confer and that credentials can offer knowledge no one should dismiss. We refuse the false choice between embodied knowing and formal learning.

We believe that power is not inherently corrupt. Power is creative force. It becomes dangerous when it is denied, hoarded, romanticized, or exercised without accountability.

We believe that tenderness and authority belong together.

We believe that care without standards becomes avoidance, standards without care become cruelty, and leadership requires the maturity to hold both.

We believe the people closest to the work often see what those at the top cannot.

We believe organizations reveal their true values through what they reward, what they tolerate, what they hide, and who is expected to absorb the mess.

We believe belonging that requires self-amputation is not belonging.

We believe no institution gets to determine the outer limit of a human life.

We believe redemption is not erasure. It is the ongoing practice of responsibility.

We believe disruption is sacred when it protects life, restores dignity, and creates room for what has been excluded.

We believe a leader’s task is not merely to preserve what exists. It is to recognize what is trying to emerge.

What We Refuse

We refuse to wait for authority to tell us whether our power is real.

We refuse to begin beneath ourselves merely because doing so makes other people more comfortable.

We refuse to confuse obedience with integrity, exhaustion with commitment, silence with loyalty, or polish with wisdom.

We refuse to make ourselves smaller so the existing structure appears adequate.

We refuse to amputate intuition in order to appear rational.

We refuse to hide complexity in order to appear credible.

We refuse to abandon tenderness in order to appear powerful or surrender power in order to appear kind.

We refuse to call self-erasure service.

We refuse to remain grateful for admission to rooms that require us to disappear.

We refuse to protect institutions from the consequences of their own values.

We refuse to make harmful systems more elegant.

We refuse to romanticize destruction. Breaking things does not make someone a changemaker. Learning what must never be rebuilt does.

We refuse to reduce people to their worst decisions.

We refuse to use spirituality as an escape from accountability or business as an excuse to abandon the Sacred.

We refuse to treat our lives as evidence waiting for someone else’s verdict.

What We Will Build

We will build rooms large enough for complexity.

We will build cultures where truth can be spoken without humiliation and accountability can exist without dehumanization.

We will build businesses where service is not servitude, profit is not extraction, and growth does not require the destruction of people or planet.

We will build structures that recognize labor, intuition, relationship, embodiment, reciprocity, and the more-than-human world as sources of intelligence.

We will create systems in which the person cleaning the floor and the person setting the strategy are understood to inhabit the same moral universe.

We will listen for what customers, workers, communities, and ecosystems are already telling us.

We will question models that exclude merely because no one has imagined another way.

We will turn friction into insight, insight into design, and design into responsible action.

We will use numbers as instruments of understanding, not weapons of abstraction.

We will coach people toward their capacity, tell the truth about performance, and make difficult decisions without abandoning dignity.

We will hold power consciously.

We will repair what we can.

We will tell the truth about what cannot be repaired.

We will know when to tend, when to transform, and when to allow an old structure to end.

We will build beyond the box.

The Uncontained CEO

The Uncontained CEO is the person who accepts authorship of this life.

They do not need to hold the formal title of CEO, lead a corporation, manage employees, or identify with any particular sex or gender. Their authority begins with responsibility for their decisions, boundaries, relationships, resources, attention, and participation in the world.

They know they cannot control every outcome, but they refuse to pretend they are powerless.

They recognize that every yes allocates energy, every no establishes a boundary, every purchase endorses a system, every silence protects something, and every repeated choice becomes part of the architecture of a life.

Being CEO of one’s life does not mean becoming self-sufficient. It means becoming conscious within interdependence.

The Uncontained CEO seeks counsel without outsourcing discernment. They receive feedback without surrendering self-knowledge. They learn from authority without worshipping it. They collaborate without disappearing.

They can acknowledge being wrong without concluding they are worthless.

They can recognize that another person has power without forgetting their own.

They can accept that a door is closed without treating it as proof that they should remain small.

They do not reject structure. They reject structures too small to hold the truth.

They know how to work within a system, how to transform one, and when to leave.

They understand that power without responsibility becomes domination, while responsibility without power becomes martyrdom.

They choose neither.

They are powerful and accountable, Sacred and practical, intuitive and discerning, tender and unwilling to collude with harm.

They know the kitchen and the boardroom, the spreadsheet and the field, the strategy and the dirt beneath it.

Their life may appear nonlinear because creation is rarely linear. Their experience may resist easy categorization because they have lived across roles, industries, identities, failures, and reinventions.

They are not incoherent.

They are panoramic.

The Uncontained CEO does not need to fit inside the existing imagination of leadership.

They expand what leadership is capable of becoming.

The Invitation

This manifesto is not an argument that we deserve every role, every platform, every promotion, or every opportunity we desire.

We will still be rejected. We will misunderstand ourselves and be misunderstood by others. We will make mistakes, encounter limits, and discover places where we are not yet ready.

But readiness is not the same as permission, and rejection is not the same as truth.

No one else can confer the sacred responsibility of becoming who we are.

We must claim it through practice.

We do that by naming the boxes we have mistaken for reality. We notice where we have made ourselves useful instead of visible, indispensable instead of sovereign, agreeable instead of truthful, and exhausted instead of powerful.

We ask where we are still awaiting the discerning gaze of someone in authority.

Then we stop waiting.

We recognize the creative force moving through us and take responsibility for how we use it.

We stop asking whether we are allowed to become larger than the role, the record, the title, the family story, the institution, or the former version of ourselves.

We decide what must be released.

We decide what deserves repair.

We decide what we are willing to protect.

We decide what we will build.

We become the CEO of this one life—not to dominate it, but to participate in it fully.

The Commitment

I will not lead from shame.

I will not build from fear.

I will not sacrifice people to protect systems.

I will not confuse suffering with virtue.

I will not begin beneath myself.

I will not make myself smaller so someone else can recognize me.

I will not waste the life I fought to reclaim.

I will use power consciously.

I will seek truth without weaponizing it.

I will repair what I can.

I will own what is mine.

I will disrupt what diminishes life.

I will protect what is Sacred.

I will build what has not yet been seen.

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I have been the worker, the seductress, the builder, the disruption, the consequence, and the reconstruction.

I am no longer standing inside someone else’s imagination, waiting to be defined.

I was passed over for a CEO position at an organization I love because, I was told, my résumé did not demonstrate enough experience with “people and numbers.”

My first response was not spiritually evolved.

It was bullshit.

Apparently, managing the P&L, cash flow, international sales pipeline, and a complex bonus structure for a multimillion-dollar aviation financial-services business did not count as numbers…perhaps I needed to say EBITDA before breakfast.

And perhaps coaching managers, disciplining employees, making corrective decisions, firing people when necessary, and leading teams did not count as people…maybe the 364 members of my farm’s CSA program did not qualify because some of them liked kale.

After the disappointment passed, something more uncomfortable remained. I had done it again. I had placed the evidence of my life, my value, in someone else’s hands and waited for them to tell me what it meant.

Have you ever done work far beyond your title and still called it helping?

Perhaps you know this pattern too?

You do work far beyond your title and call it helping. You manage the budget, coach the team, fix the process, hold the culture together, and still describe yourself as support. You build something from nothing and hesitate to call it innovation. You change the way an organization works and never call yourself a strategist. You wait for someone with a title, credential, vote, or seat at the table to look at what you have done and say: There. That counts.

The Side Door

I know this pattern intimately. I enter through the side door, make myself useful, learn the system quickly, solve the problems no one assigned me, and carry work above my title. Then, I wait for someone else to notice. Sometimes they do… A CEO once looked at me sitting behind his reception desk and said, “You look like you’re used to a lot more responsibility than this.” He was right. The more important question is why I needed him to say it.

Before that, at Starbucks, I served as a Management Coach and Mentor. I trained managers, diagnosed performance gaps, gave direct feedback, administered corrective action, and made hiring and firing decisions when necessary.

Long before that, I fired my business partner, who was also my boyfriend, for failing to open our art gallery when he said he would. Not my most elegant leadership moment,but it did establish a useful principle: sleeping with the owner does not exempt you from opening the store.

In aviation, I managed the numbers that drove decisions, compensation, accountability, and growth. That work helped support 17 percent year-over-year growth in international sales.

At Big Head Farm, I researched more than 100 CSA programs and found a model built almost entirely around full and half shares, as though every household contained a family of four with unlimited enthusiasm for zucchini.

So I created the Solo Share, a quarter-bushel option for one-person households. I customized boxes for allergies and preferences, planned for twelve or more items each week, and included recipes so unfamiliar vegetables became dinner instead of compost.

The program served 364 members at its peak, sold out from the first season, and retained more than 82 percent of customers year over year. Other farms soon began offering smaller shares of their own.

That is not merely running a farm. That’s research, product innovation, customer segmentation, operational redesign, retention strategy, and market influence.

The Box was Never Adequate

But here is the harder truth. The Board did not fully recognize my experience. And I had not fully named it. I keep handing over a résumé written in the language of support and expecting someone else to infer executive authority. This isn’t really about this one job. It’s about the pattern of waiting for someone in authority to interpret us generously.

None of us should have to await the discerning gaze of a hiring committee, board, manager, mentor, institution, credentialing body, or gatekeeper before we own our power. They may decide whether they understand us. They may decide whether they are ready for us. They may decide whether their structure can hold us. They do not get to decide whether our capacity exists.

The Uncontained CEO is not reckless. She is not anti-structure. She simply refuses structures too small to hold the truth. She does not wait for the title before taking responsibility for the outcome. She does not mistake another person’s inability to categorize her for a lack of coherence. She does not reduce herself to make the box appear adequate.

And this is not only about CEOs. It is about anyone who has spent too long using small language for large work. Anyone who has confused permission with readiness. Anyone who has treated their life like evidence awaiting someone else’s verdict.

We are Sacred creators of our lives. Not because we control every outcome, but because we participate in what comes next. We name what we know. We claim what we have learned. We stop entering beneath ourselves. We stop waiting to be discovered.

I know where I was…I was standing inside someone else’s box, waiting for them to notice that I had outgrown it.

I am done waiting.

I am Uncontained.

This essay is the doorway into a larger declaration about power, responsibility, disruption, and the structures we have outgrown.

Next: The Uncontained CEO Manifesto

Those are the words that floated up and around in my head this morning. It feels like they are not for me, but a label for a memory of mine. Someone who was huge in my life —controlling, manipulative…angry. And loving.

Tuning in to notice human behaviors more closely now. It’s much easier to see the wounded children walking around in grown up human suits, adulting. Still just kids.

Living and acting in a daydream world of pretend. They strike out with little attacks, hide behind shields. Some have sharp katanas — honed and shaped. Others have long blunt sticks. Micro-battles being fought with every human engagement:

Hey, how are you doing? (Initial strike)

I’m good, I’m good. (Shield up) How are you? (Parry)

I’m good, yea. (shield up)

Did you see the game last night? (Joust begins)

Deadly battles are fought. Lives caught and wounded, victims.

My answer came without a pause to soften it: deviance.

Not deviance as harm. Not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Deviance as the pull toward the edge of the known world. As the place where the unacceptable, the strange, the unnamed, and the misunderstood wait to be looked at again. For me, the unusual has often felt safer than the ordinary, because the ordinary was where I learned to disappear. When I was very young, I felt that I didn’t fit and I wasn’t accepted. I felt shamed and ridiculed. Artist Jenny Holzer wrote in her Truisms, “Children are the cruelest of all,” and I lived in that cruelty.

Chase Hughes teaches about Needs, Decision Pillars, and Values. We develop Needs because of emotional malnutrition when we are kids. We develop Decision methods to adapt and fulfill those unmet Needs in order to attain our Value — our idea of wholeness when that Need is met.

I recognized in that question that I have a Deviance decision pillar.

I tend toward the unusual in order to be noticed. This is not only my story. Cultures have decision pillars too. Communities decide what is acceptable, what is dangerous, what is sacred, what is foolish, what is holy, and what must be kept outside the circle. Often, what gets called deviant is not truly outside the human experience. It is simply outside the approved language for describing it.

Tarot and oracle cards have a vibe… outside the norm, unusual, esoteric. So why is this now one of the more visible growth categories in spiritual and wellness publishing, when only sixty years ago it was a barely visible market?

In the fifteenth century, the first tarot decks were merely playing cards for aristocratic families. That’s why the minor arcana are so similar to a standard playing card deck: ace to king in four suits. They are related; tarot and modern playing cards share common ancestry. Somewhere along their journey, tarot cards were used as a divination tool to read energies, see the unseen, and tell stories.

Those stories resonated. Sometimes to such a degree that it was scary. So the cards became associated, by some, with evil, danger, and the occult. But the cards were not inventing the story. They were calling out a story already there, one people often did not want to acknowledge because it was hard. One tarot reader I follow says, “The cards are your best friend who only tells you the truth.” And sometimes truth is hard: we are all going to die someday, we’re going to encounter challenges in life, our hearts will be broken, and we will feel let down, ashamed, lonely, and confused.

This is how many practices move through culture. First they belong to a few people at the margins: mystics, artists, seekers, outsiders, the wounded, the curious, the ones asking questions the center does not yet know how to answer. Then, slowly, others recognize something useful there. They hear a truth, receive comfort, find language, or feel seen. What was once dismissed as strange begins to spread because it meets a real human need.

The cards do not create the heartbreak, the fear, the longing, the avoidance, or the hope. They reveal the pattern. They give shape to what is already moving beneath the surface. That is why they can feel unsettling. Not because they possess power over us, but because they interrupt the story we were using to stay comfortable.

When I read the cards, I know these stories are alive. I’ve lived them. And so have you. Don’t let judgment shift the story. Shine a light on it so it can be seen, and in being seen you become the author. You write your own next scene.

The cards are a tool. Like sacred texts, myths, poems, dreams, and parables, they tell a story. They teach a lesson. What you choose to do with it is entirely up to you.

Maybe deviance is not always a sign that something has gone wrong. Maybe, sometimes, deviance is the first movement of a truth trying to survive outside the language that has been given to it. Maybe the edge is where we go when the center has failed to tell the whole story. And maybe the work is not to make the strange acceptable, but to ask what wisdom it has been carrying all along.

What is it, exactly?

Why is the word like kingdom - king+dom… freedom - free+dom

Limitations, rules, walls, boundaries, beliefs, physical-emotional-spiritual. What are the ways that my freedom was limited in prison and how did that make me suffer?

Is prison about making wrong-doers and nay-sayers suffer? Is that the true purpose?

It certainly wasn’t reformative. Was it supposed to reform me? OH = yes, it did. Actually it really did RE-form me! Wait wait wait…

Let’s just look at these words for a moment.

FREE-dom

re-FORM

Pri-SON (okay, maybe that one doesn’t work as well as the others do)

Why are words so tricky. I’m guessing it’s because people are tricky. Every one of us with billions of unique neural-nets, no one alike. Every word is different for you. Every letter. Different. So, what is it that you are reading and how is it coherent in any way? One might read this and think it’s smart, religious and feel joy - another might read it and feel anger and disgust - same exact words on a page. How do the words do that? What kind of magic is this?

What is the truth behind the symbols, letters, words, phrases?

Sorry that I have more questions than answers here.

Back to - what is the damn purpose of prison?

What is the story I’m really telling here?

I thought I was on a path of goodness, of connecting people, of providing for a need - good food, steady, well-paying jobs, community. What I didn’t know was human nature. I should have studied psychology and sociology before I chose to start a farm. Perhaps even a course in ecology and anthropology would have helped.

The real story is that few, if any of us, truly know what the F we are doing at any given time. We are reacting, responding and running on patterns and programs and those can be hijacked at any time by someone who knows how people work, especially people who have been trained and practiced in manipulation and control. There is a tradition, a guild, an unspoken tribe of people who carry on these ancient traditions of wielding power over others for their own satisfaction and gain. My ex was one of these.

So who am I writing this story (my book about prison) for?

It’s for me, and it’s for my dad and my mom. It’s for my little sister and my big brother. It’s for my niece, my nephews. But, mostly it’s for me.

It might also have a kernel of wisdom for someone else. Maybe it will be a beacon of hope, or a parable that resonates. A tiny light in a very dark time.

I believe we all come into this world full of magic and wonder, as Philip Ridley wrote “still sparkling and blind with the secrets whispered to us by a zodiac of blood.”

We have few guides that are so well versed that they can help us and fewer still that can offer us the link to our true nature as we grow. Where are the seers and the magicians?

How do I construct this tale to reveal my inner nature, invite some humor, expose the grief and allow the reader to discover their own self in this story?

It is my truth and it’s the only truth I know… I would not be who I am today, had I not had this experience. I believe prison was the best and only path for my personal growth. And I can see how it would not be that for others. I had to turn inward. It was the only way. Staying connected to the outside so that I didn’t disappear entirely. Have you ever wondered if, when someone ghosts you, perhaps they got in trouble and were sent away to prison? Not the first thought that comes to my mind.

I know I am rambling here, but I am working through what the point of this whole thing is. It’s about the words, the writing (and the wiring). It’s about beauty and love and kindness in unexpected places.

I mean, why do Correctional Officer’s work where they do? Is it just that it’s the only job in a small Appalachian town? Probably. Is it that they thrive on power and control over others, for a few…yes. But I think for others, perhaps they hope to provide some support and to help reform, to guide, and to launch a refurbished person into the world.

RE-FORM. RE-FORM - We are incarcerated to RE_FORM ourselves. _It’s impossible to do without help. Once you are an adult, age 18 or more, you’ve been formed, you are fairly stable in the sense of your patterns, scripts and who you think you are. Your neural nets are fixed, your definitions written. What powers do we have to RE-FORM these things in ourselves? Few. But we ARE influenced by new experiences, if we are open, just slightly, to them. If we are knocked off a known pattern or path and dropped headfirst onto a new one, we crack a bit. Who’s around when those cracks appear?

Hopefully someone who cares and is kind and can see what you’ve just gone through. Pray that you have a Harvey nearby, and some family that loves you. Because this won’t be easy. It might be the hardest thing you ever do. Crushed, compacted, smothered. A few don’t survive the RE-FORMing of prison. They fight it. Or, they work hard to ignore it. Or, they give in to it and come back again and again. It becomes their new normal. Why exist on the outside when you have everything (almost) that you need on the inside?

I ask again, what is the F-ing point of prison?

I wonder what the judge thought would happen to me in there. What he hoped for me. I wonder if he was even thinking of me at all. I wonder if there was some other reason the prosecutor chose not to settle. Why the judge didn’t just throw it out. Why they kept coming after me. What were they doing? Feeding an insatiable machine? I was just a tiny morsel. Not many calories, not much fat. Lots of bone.

What were the conversations that happened around me. Did the investigator get a bonus when I was sentenced? Did the prosecutor get a raise? Did the judge get a kick-back? Did the whistleblower make a million? Who benefitted from this circus?

People ask me when I tell them I went to prison… what did you do?

I mis-used government grant funds on my certified organic specialty crop farm to pay for inputs, labor and operating costs that were not under the purview of the grant contract. I did it by changing dates on invoices and submitting receipts that were changed to reflect grant allowed items. I submitted false claims under the grant to keep the farm operational to the tune of about $98K and some change. It was fraud. That’s what I did.

Why I did it is the reason I’m writing this book. Because it’s not something that was in my nature to do before I met my ex-husband. I would never have broken rules if he had not shown me the path of corruption, manipulation and self-service. It was not my nature to do wrong against others, or myself. He opened the door, and I walked through it.

I forgive him. I forgive myself.

I no longer live in that house.

I think about all the ways we could live together, more in harmony, in care, in respect and reciprocity. And I fall into the trap of not being able to see the path out of the tangleweed we are in culturally - economics, sociology, politics, organized religion. These seemingly exist to support us, but not really. I think they serve only a few and the rest of us just go along with being slaves to the systems that are not designed to allow us to flourish. Were these systems well-intentioned? And, by whom? Who controls them now, and what are their intentions?

Thinking about disentanglement. Transitions. Invitations.

How do we transition to a culture of care?

Specifically - a culture that cares about others before self. A culture that acknowledges the infinite connections of all things. How to we return to indigenous ways of being in closer alignment to all that is, all that we are currently aware of, all that we are not yet aware of.

I wonder about property and ownership. How these separate us, define us, limit us. Is there a way forward that moves us toward a future without these? How do we equitably transition away from persons and companies owning property, to a shared understanding that we cannot own property - the earth persists, we do not. What can we do to meet the needs of humans and also the needs of the earth and the other lives that share these spaces with us?

Perhaps we change first at the local governmental level- townships, cities. Add a Council of Wise Ones who must review and provide their approval of human activities: developments, manufacturing, building, infrastructure. Those who would train and provide counsel on right ways of acting in cooperation with the Earth. Maybe what we need is to share different information with each other, why some ways of doing things are more caring, kind and potentially joyful. And, to be in community in a way that supports the whole of life, and the one, but with the whole as priority over the one.

My brain keeps saying “it will never work. People want what they want, and they don’t want to prioritize others.” But maybe there are enough of us that do want this to work?

Let’s start with how do we give this land back to the tribes that knew how to live in stewardship, in care and community? How do we make it possible to transition away from property ownership?

What is the structure, the organization that allows this to work?

It doesn’t make sense to me that our wealth is based on ownership of land and homes, something we cannot own, not truly. Property, all of it, is eventually sold or transitions to different people. Some territories allow corporations to own property, these are persistent but the corporation’s owners change. Governments own or tend to properties - for infrastructure and protections, and the people who are in government eventually change. What would it take to create a governing tribe that begins to assume the role of steward for lands, houses, farms, protected regions and allow the existing government to lean into listening, learning and responding with care.

What does it truly mean to own real estate?

I know a few things - that it is just common agreement and pieces of paper (sometimes fraudulent!) that we all agree to as the rule of ownership. I know that if you have a mortgage, it is not you who owns the property, it is the bank. I know that if you are not an exempt organization, that you must pay property taxes and if you don’t you will lose your property for those few thousand dollars you owe. So, do you really own it? Or, are you leasing it from your local government?

And, how do we care for the individuals who have sunk their entire lives and fortunes into properties, homes, businesses? What is it that they are hoping for? Money? Safety and security? Enough so that they are cared for well later in life? Perhaps they hope to have funds to travel or to eat fancy meals out, go to shows or pay for their child’s education? But to do that, they have to sell that property - the wealth isn’t in their bank account because they own it.

There are always people who have less than others, some because they give and others because they take and do not give. There are such a wide variety of us, living in our different ways, following different paths, I wonder how we survived to this point. Then I recall the ancient civilizations that once thrived and are now gone. I’m feeling that is our most likely future, though I’m not a sociologist, economist or scientist. It just feels like the path we are on.

If we can unravel the why of property ownership, perhaps we can solve for a future without it. We can find a way to live in closer harmony, with a way of noticing and adapting that serves us all, not just us humans.

Then comes the problem of scale, and what to do with the people who cannot see possibility, who are unwilling to allow for change, who are so broken and living in survival that they do not know who and what they are…sacred, pure potential.

Is it scarcity that drives the need to covet? I just had this thought about the days when Vikings roamed the seas. They came from the north - from harsh lands, scarce with food and shelter. Perhaps they roamed to find resources to make their lives easier. I think that is how we got to this place. Everyone always striving for an easier time of it. We have everything now available at our fingertips, at least in this country (USA), and we still suffer, perhaps even more now because of consumption and information… far too much of it. We see humans with more stuff than we have, more and fancier comforts. We compare ourselves and we try to limit others because there’s an idea that “I have to prevent others from getting more than what I have because maybe there isn’t enough for every one.” And while this sentiment is not true for everyone, it seems pervasive to me when I look at what we publish and what is generally consumed on the networks.   

I argue that there is enough for everyone. More than enough. If we shift to a culture of care, of repair and of supporting those around us, I think that we might find that it is easier and much more joyful than putting up fences and No Trespassing signs.

This article was inspired by RadicalCalling.org and Tim Galles - who held space and witnessed me for a beautiful hour of the day. Thank you, Tim!

This was one of those vivid dreams that stick. It evolved between the alarm going off (6:35 am) and me actually getting up and out of bed. I awoke to body and mind in despair, ready to end my own existence — in the dream.

It was as real as this…

Awaking to the sounds of traffic, the smell of exhaust, the taste of industry, the feeling of despair and the sight of all the trees cut down. I was undressed. I arose, gathering a robe around me as I looked out upon horrors outside my home.

The neighbors were out of their houses. Felled trees lying in the roadway to our west — being trimmed and tagged for the sawmills. Trucks and timber workers just there, a few hundred feet away.

Looking out across the horizon, moments ago lush with growth and life — only trampled grasses, crushed vines remained. The interstate highway felt closer than ever, rushing with cars, commerce, consumption.

Writing now, about this dream, I wonder how our culture consumes our spirit. Consumption was a sickness that took lives. If you were diagnosed with it, you knew the end was near. The cause was unknown and there was little that could be done. Is that where we are now? Is that why I awoke to the thought that I had to end my life, there was absolutely nothing I could do?

As I lay waking, and walking back the dream, I felt this was Spirit, God, the Divine telling me to write. To keep talking and taking action. To not give up. To remember purpose. To ground myself in love, my anchor through the suffering.

I took in the scene, the gravity of it. Seeing the houses, the low long brick building on the other side of the expressway that had not been there. I felt my heart crying, my spirit screaming. We are all these things.

I crossed the distance to the one man working at a 30-foot trunk on the road. He sensed me coming. Our spirits reached out to each other, lost souls seeking the light. He felt ashamed, shoulders hunched, like he was trying to wrap his giant frame around his tiny heart and pad it from his actions. I wasn’t angry, it was only partially his fault. Guilty by participation. I was sad with powerlessness. Asking him if he knew the name of the timber buyer who had left his card at my home, he hesitated to respond. He provided what I asked, but we both knew it wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t going to stop.

Dream conversations are different. Words spoken within the mind are less real, weightless, more like a ripple than a wave. Lacking vibrational energy, not being voiced, they dissolve like morning mists as the sun rises. They are gone now, but the emotion, the intention remains.

I felt connection with the man doing his job. I felt the despair of his spirit, crushed by the work he performs. I zoomed out to take in the whole issue. Consumption. I could not find the thread to pull to unravel it. This is more a boiled wool sweater than a knit cloth. Messy and snug.

Despair overtook me. I collapsed. Isolated and alone I sensed there was not a thing I could do. Except one. Give up entirely. Escape this mortal coil. End my life.

That thought, that feeling… sitting heavy — an elephant on my chest, woke me.

The confusion is setting in now. Writing this as fast as I can make a cup of coffee and power up the laptop. The dream is fading. The purpose is not. Awake now, I am not alone. You are also out there feeling. You are why I am writing. You are not alone.

This progression of thoughts, of wondering why I awoke to such a dream, such a feeling, led me to think of the current mental health pandemic. I traced the source of my despair - humanity’s seeming loss of connection to self, to spirit, to this more-than-human world. We are crushing ourselves. Murdering our spirits. Souls driven to madness, to drugs — to any temporary symptom relief.

I’m non-linear, a Virgo, Enneagram 7, Human Design: Manifesting-Generator — all tools I have consulted to figure out why I am what I am. I am triggered to create, to channel ideas and solutions into my world, to think outside this boiled wool. I’m still here. I see a solution, I see where I’m going… I don’t know how I’m getting there, yet.

I think you might be waiting for me to drop a solution, an action you can take, a way you can get involved or help. That’s what I’d be looking for… the answer to “what can I do?”

I’m grateful to you for that. I’m grateful for the internet, for those of you who post content, create websites, share your ideas and your experiences. I see how it’s a blessing and a trap. It’s tied to transactional energies. There is always a give and take happening. Even when it seems there is not. It’s this boiled wool, messy and snug.

Our lives are transactional… and out of balance. Some give more than take, others… the opposite. And we often forget the other parties in our transactions: the Earth we share, and the Spirit, Soul, Source…the light of our lives. Wherever you believe we come from or where we are going - we are not these bodies, we are something else. And, we are here only temporarily, borrowing this form for the functions it provides. We are here for this experience.

I’m no expert in anything. But I’m pretty good at being human. I’ve had years of experience, you might say a lifetime. I imagine a place where some of us get together and talk, maybe we have a tea ceremony or coffee ritual - honoring the gifts provided by this earth. Maybe it’s a salon, not the haircut and color kind, but the kind where ideas are shared, plans are drafted, perhaps even revolution is born… or evolution - not a returning but a moving forward.

I’m so lost in the transactional, that I cannot even see how to do this, just to organize a gathering. Who should come? Where should we be? What might be needed?

Or…is it as simple as greeting and truly seeing that person at the cash register, that soul as beautiful as my own; as simple as choosing not to buy that thing that I thought I needed, but in all honesty, that I don’t need at all…ever; as simple as taking time to walk barefoot in the yard, look up at the trees and say thank you, thank you, thank you. 🙏

We don’t see the signal.

We see what it moves.

Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash

In philanthropy and social impact, we often fund what we can measure. But many of the most important shifts—meaning-making, moral imagination, reconciliation, spiritual maturity, inner coherence—move through “invisible threads” first.

So here’s a leadership question I’ve been sitting with:

What would it look like for an institution like Fetzer to become a trusted guide for sacred-worldview work—without becoming a gatekeeper? By “guide,” I don’t mean a public scorecard—I mean relationship-based diligence, learning signals, and safeguards that protect trust.

The metaphor that helps me: an institution as a human body

When I’m trying to make strategy operational, I look for a model that forces tradeoffs and accountability. Lately, I’ve been thinking about Fetzer as a body—because bodies don’t survive on aspiration alone. They survive on systems that learn, adapt, and eliminate what isn’t working.

• Heart (purpose): Love as a disciplined center—why we exist, and what we refuse to compromise.

• Mind (sensemaking): Learning agendas, shared language, and the courage to revise our assumptions.

• Hands (action): Convening, amplification, catalytic experiments—helping partners do the work.

• Gut (integration): Relationship-based diligence that digests complexity into clear insight.

• Senses (feedback): Inputs from communities, partners, critics, and lived experience—not just dashboards.

• Kidneys & colon (elimination): The part leadership avoids: stopping what no longer serves.

That last system matters more than people admit. If you can’t eliminate, you can’t evolve.

A practical idea: Field Signals instead of “ratings”

When funders and partners are deciding where to place their energy, they are rarely asking for certainty. They’re asking for wisdom and reduced regret.

One way institutions can help is by building a shared, relationship-based framework that identifies Field Signals—signals of strength, signals of risk, and signals of learning.

Not a public scorecard. Not a spiritual hierarchy.

A disciplined way to answer: Is this aligned? Is it responsible? Is it learning? Is it ready to scale?

Field Signals could include:

• Alignment: mission and strategy fit

• Integrity: ethics, consent, reciprocity, power dynamics

• Learning posture: what’s tested, what’s measured, how they adapt

• Depth: practice maturity and contextual respect

• Reach: who benefits and who is excluded

• Durability: operations, finances, leadership health

• Narrative clarity: can the work be accurately understood and transmitted?

And crucially, the method matters: this isn’t “fill out a form.” This is real relationship—site visits, conversations, references, observation, and co-designed learning goals.

Two audiences, one promise: reduce risk and increase learning

In my experience, Fetzer’s value compounds when it serves both sides of the ecosystem.

Funders and philanthropists often want:

• Guidance on where real integrity and leverage exist

• Fewer “expensive mistakes”

• Better learning yield from what they fund

Partners and collaborators often want:

• Thought partnership and relationship

• Capacity supports, not just capital

• Visibility, connection, and narrative lift

If Fetzer can strengthen the “body systems” that support both audiences—learning, diligence, amplification, and elimination—then we become something rare: a trusted friend and guide people turn to early, not late.

Safeguards and Stop Rules

Any system that touches “spiritual” work carries risk. The only way it works is if it is designed with humility and guardrails.

Safeguards I believe are non-negotiable:

• Opt-in participation (no surprise judgment)

• Co-designed signals with partners and community voices

• Transparency about what we evaluate and why

• A grievance and correction pathway when we get it wrong

• Protection against polish bias (don’t reward the best storytellers over the deepest integrity)

And then: stop rules. Because leadership isn’t just vision and futures—it’s endings.

If a pilot project created harm, confusion, or gatekeeping dynamics, I would want the operational maturity to say:

• We’re changing the language.

• We’re narrowing the scope.

• We’re pausing publication.

• Or we’re shutting it down.

That’s not failure. That’s metabolism.

Why I’m writing this

A simple truth of influence is that people decide whether to trust leadership by answering three questions—often unconsciously:

• Is this safe?

• Is this competent?

• Do I feel respected inside this system?

If Fetzer is going to invite the world into sacred-worldview work at scale, those questions have to be answered by our systems, not our slogans.

I’m optimistic because the path forward doesn’t require abandoning strategy. It requires strengthening the operating body—heart, mind, hands, gut, senses, and the courage to eliminate what doesn’t serve.

I’m holding this as an offering, not a conclusion. If you’ve ever funded, led, or carried sacred work, you know the stakes (especially the unseen ones).

If you’re willing, I’d love to learn: what helps you trust—without losing your discernment? (Views are my own.)

It’s one of those vivid dreams that stick. It evolved between the alarm going off (6:35 am) and me actually getting up and out of bed. I awoke in dread, in desolation, ready to end my own existence — in the dream.

It was this…

Awaking to the sounds of traffic, the smell of exhaust, the taste of industry, the feeling of despair and the sight of all the trees cut down. I was undressed. I arose, gathering a robe around me as I looked outside. There, I witnessed the horrors outside my home.

Neighbors out of their houses. Felled trees lying in the roadway to our west — being trimmed and tagged for the sawmills. Trucks and timber workers just there, a few hundred feet away.

Looking out across the horizon, moments ago lush with growth and life — only trampled grasses and crushed vines remained. The interstate highway felt closer than ever, rushing with cars, commerce, consumption.

Writing now, about this dream, I wonder how our culture consumes our spirit. Consumption was a sickness that took lives. If you were diagnosed with it, you knew the end was near. The cause was unknown and there was little that could be done. Is that where we are now? Is that why I awoke to the thought that I had to end my life, there was nothing I could do?

As I lay slowly waking, and walking back the dream, I felt this was Spirit, God, the Divine telling me to write. To keep talking and taking action. To not give up. To remember purpose. To ground myself in love, my anchor through this suffering.

I took in the scene, the gravity of it. Seeing the houses, the low long brick building on the other side of the expressway that had not been there. I felt my heart crying, my spirit screaming. We are all these things.

I crossed the distance to the one man working at a 30-foot trunk on the road. He sensed me coming. Our spirits reached out to each other, long lost souls seeking the light. He felt ashamed, shoulders hunched, like he was trying to wrap his giant frame around his tiny heart and pad it from his actions. I wasn’t angry, it was only partially his fault. Guilty by participation. I was sad with powerlessness. Asking him if he knew the name of the timber buyer who had left his card at my home, he hesitated to respond. He provided what I asked, but we both knew it wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t going to stop.

Dream conversations are different. Words spoken within the mind are less real, weightless, more like a ripple than a wave. Lacking vibrational energy, not being voiced, they dissolve like morning mists as the sun rises. They are gone now, but the emotion, the intention remains.

I felt connection with the man doing his job. I felt the despair of his spirit, crushed by the work he performs. I zoomed out to take in the whole issue. Consumption. I could not find the thread to pull to unravel it. This is more a boiled wool sweater than a knit cloth. Messy and snug.

Despair overtook me. I collapsed. Isolated and alone I sensed there was not a thing I could do. Except one. Give up entirely. Escape this mortal coil. End my life.

That thought, that feeling… sitting heavy — anvil on my chest, woke me.

The confusion is setting in now. Writing this as fast as I can make a cup of coffee and power up the laptop, the dream is fading. The purpose is not. Fully awake now, I know I am not alone. You are also out there feeling. You are why I am writing. You are not alone.

This progression of thoughts, of wondering why I awoke to such a dream, such a feeling, leads me to the current mental health pandemic. I trace the source of my despair - humanity’s seeming loss of connection to self, to spirit, to this more-than-human world, to purpose. We are crushing ourselves. Murdering our spirits. Souls driven to madness, to drugs — to any temporary symptoms relief.

I’m a non-linear Virgo, Enneagram 7, Human Design: Manifesting-Generator — all tools I have consulted to figure out why I am what I am. I am triggered to create, to channel ideas and solutions into my world, to think outside this boiled wool. I’m still here. I see a solution, I see where I’m going… I don’t know how I’m getting there, yet.

I think you might be waiting for me to drop a solution, an action you can take, a way you can get involved or help. That’s what I’d be looking for… the answer to “what can I do?”

I’m grateful to you for that. I’m grateful for the internet, for those of you who post content, create websites, share your ideas and your experiences. I see how it’s both a blessing and a trap. It’s tied to transactional energies. There is always a give and take happening. Even when it seems there is not. It’s this boiled wool culture, messy and snug.

Our lives are transactional… and out of balance. Some give more than take, others… the opposite. And we often forget the other parties in our transactions: the earth we share, the Spirit, Soul, Source…the light that is our lives. Wherever you believe we come from or where we are going - I hope you know we are not these bodies, we are something else. And, we are here only temporarily, borrowing this human form for the functions it provides. We are here for this experience.

I’m no expert in anything. But I’m pretty good at being human. I’ve had years of experience, you might say a lifetime. I imagine a place where some of us get together and talk, maybe we have a tea ceremony or coffee ritual - honoring the gifts provided by this earth. Maybe it’s a salon, not the haircut and color kind, but the kind where ideas are shared, plans are drafted, perhaps even revolution is born… or evolution - not a returning but a moving forward.

In this moment I’m so lost in the transactional, that I cannot even see how to do this, just to organize a gathering. Who should come? Where should we be? What might be needed? What will it cost?

Or…is it as simple as greeting and truly seeing that person at the cash register today, that soul as beautiful as my own; is it as simple as choosing not to buy that thing that I thought I needed, but in all honesty, that I don’t need at all… ever; is it as simple as taking time to walk barefoot in the yard, look up at the trees and say thank you, thank you, thank you.

Before I ever set foot at the Fetzer Institute, I was already walking its mission.

Long before I knew the language of “centering the Sacred,” I was living it—in imperfect, persistent ways. I have always been drawn to a life rooted in love, in service, in seeing Source-the Divine-the Sacred in all things. Sometimes I lost my way. Life’s storms—grief, betrayal, trauma, abuse—blew me off course more than once. But I always returned to my center: my sacred heart of service and love. That compass never left me. It is what brought me through the most difficult experience of my life and what draws me now to this work with unwavering clarity.

When I was called into work at Fetzer, I recognized the mission not as something new, but as something profoundly familiar. What Fetzer gave me was the framework, the language, and the shared vision to articulate what had always been true for me: that every moment—no matter how small or ordinary—can be sacred. That love, Spirit, and soul belong not just in lofty spaces, but in the quiet choices we make each day. Fetzer has helped me become clearer in my small daily actions, more intentional in my leadership, and more anchored in the power of presence.

To live simply, love generously, care deeply, and be true.

This mantra—my own compass—became the foundation of my spiritual grounding, forged in a crucible of shame, silence, and radical accountability. It is from this place of hard-won clarity and fierce compassion that my desire to serve the mission of the Institute emerges.

I did not expect to find God—the Divine, Spirit—where I was many years ago. And yet, I met Them everywhere: in the silence of 4:15 a.m. wake-ups, in the scent of apples baking in the kitchen, and in the fragile resilience of women who had every reason to collapse under the weight of their own stories. I practiced yoga on a narrow mat between my bunk and locker, learned Tai Chi from a book sent to me by my mother, and studied Buddhism in a chapel where the idea of liberation held more weight than most of us could name.

Every day, that space was a mirror. I stood tall in my humility and faced the wreckage of a past shaped, in part, by an abusive marriage and my own disconnection from self. I could not change the choices that brought me to that place, but I could transform the meaning of my time there. I turned my sentence into service—offering kindness where I could, learning to say “no” when I must, and surrendering every illusion that I was anything but human, flawed, and sacred.

My spiritual practice is not separate from my work; it is the core of it. I hold sacred every being and every moment. I live the truth that the Divine is not confined to the mountaintop but is just as present in a prison dormitory, in the tears of a stranger, in the quiet act of survival. From this place, I act.

Now, at this moment in history, I feel called with urgency and clarity to serve. The world is aching. Institutions are reckoning with how to lead from love, how to model compassion without bypassing truth. A large part of Fetzer’s mission—centering Spirit in social change—is not an abstraction to me. It is the marrow of my lived experience.

I have lived through the fire and emerged not with answers, but with a heart more attuned to suffering, more aligned with purpose, and more committed than ever to midwifing a world where the Sacred is not spoken of as theory—but known, felt, and lived.

Perhaps it is time for the unexpected. Choosing to lead in love is not just a bold move—it is a deeply spiritual one. It is a declaration that redemption matters, that embodied wisdom has a place at the table, that transformation is possible.

I bring to this work the strength of someone who has been dismantled and reformed, the presence of someone who has practiced stillness under fluorescent lights within the chaos of prison, and the conviction of someone who knows that leading with love is not soft—it is revolutionary.

In this moment of reflection, can you turn to your inner work, your inner journey and discover your gifts?

To be honest, I am still walking this path. Still searching.

Been on it for a while.

I’m a middle-lower class white girl living in the middle of the United States of America as it exists now, in the 21st century (wait, is that where I am? Sorry, had a moment of panic while placing myself in space-time…I’m fairly sure that’s where I am right now.)

I was lost from the beginning because my parents were lost. (Not their fault). The 1970’s felt like the end of a cycle and the acceleration of a new one. Our American, consumer culture was finalizing it’s squeeze, ratcheting down the straps, tethering us to the chariot of consumerism. Commodities, all.

We’ve been pulling this cart, hurtling it forward with our wants and needs. Flailing down anything that gets in the path of progress. Have you been noticing?

I find myself here, in a moment of grief, needing to write these words. Sending out this message in a bottle, this record shot into space, with a humble offer of kinship.

I’m grieving the loss of a small, beautiful ecosystem. A woodland that had been growing, undisturbed for a generation or more. Gone in 60-seconds. Okay, yes, that’s an exaggeration, the decision probably took a bit longer. The signing of the contract didn’t.

I live in a corner of the mitten, a few miles east of Lake Michigan. It’s beautiful here. It’s beautiful because of the trees, the beaches, the variety of ecosystems. Our county hosts one of the largest variety of migratory birds in the nation, we steward (not very well) the St. Joseph River, the largest fresh water source pouring into Lake Michigan, which I’m sure, is the largest or greatest of something? My home sits on the land of the Potawatomi and Peoria people who are still displaced from these lands. I am sorry for that, sorry for what happened, and even more so for the fact that I don’t know how to mend what’s been broken.

I was for a time an organic farmer, USDA Certified. I have always been drawn to the earth, to nurturing her and her peoples. I am now a certified nature and forest therapy guide. Holding safe space for anyone who is seeking connection, healing and renewed relationship with the more-than-human world.

And I still feel alone. Do you?

Customers come and go. The connections last only as long as there’s a transaction at hand. I don’t think I know how to live in relationship without transactions. I am learning. I am practicing.

My family and I give resources to local and national conservation organizations like The Nature Conservancy, and Chikaming Open Lands. We know it’s important. To care for all… is that a good way to say it?

None of the words seem to describe this. Every phrase I tried was transactional, ownership based, putting humans first. I don’t think we are. The planet outlives us.

When the woods next to us went up for sale, I was excited, worried, hopeful and anxious.

I dreamed of caring for it. Of following the trails through those woods. Of hugging the Beech tree whose trunk I could only partially embrace with my 6-foot arm span. Of greeting the shag bark hickory standing 80-feet high on the edge of Ox Creek, grateful for the nuts it drops in abundance every few years.

Property ownership is what our countries wealth is built on. I know more than most because I worked briefly at a land company who secures Easements for utilities. In fact, after I left that job, I knew exactly what tactics to use to save old growth trees on a friend’s parcel when the utility came and marked them for removal.

And, that wooded parcel’s ‘for sale’ sign triggered me into action. I put on my land services hat and dug in. On the county GIS website, I learned that these owners live far away, in Washington State, and that the property was handed down through their family. They own two parcels that edge the east side of I-94.

I called my Dad. They invest in real estate, mostly places where we live, my siblings, my niece and nephews. We had talked about how important those woods are for the buffer they provide between our house and the interstate highway. (It’s noisy even at the quietest of times.) But the asking price was far too high. I learned from the realtor that the parcel had a valuation of the standing timber at $80,000 USD. I was worried.

I called and emailed Chikaming Open Lands, who I partner and raise money for through my forest bathing sessions. The parcel is too far north of their strategic plan, and not contiguous with other conservancy land. They would not take action.

I did the same with The Nature Conservancy in Michigan, the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy, and a few others. I thought about trying a GoFundMe, or a Kickstarter, but those platforms take tremendous time and energy. I also don’t have enough relationships, or a big enough audience, to make it successful. And, I don’t like the way asking for money makes me feel. Well, that was 18 months ago.

I suppose now, I should have tried. I should have called to you, my tribe. I know you’re out there. Where are you?

The woods are gone. Clear-cut. Destroyed so completely that there are no trees left standing within the boundaries of that land.

My partner and I did what we could. I called DNR, NRCS, the sheriff’s department. When I saw the cutting machine being unloaded, I texted my Dad that we were too late. His response: protect the trees that are on our land. We bought No Trespassing signs, three trail cams and “You are on Camera” signs. We put up markers along the parcel line. I stapled every tree with a No Trespassing sign, hunter orange, telling each one as I did it: I am sorry, I am sorry, I am so so sorry… thanking every tree for being there for as long as they were, asking their forgiveness. For we know not what we do.

I stood on the porch of my little cabin, made of wood, realizing what a hypocrite I am. Everything around me, my house, the cabin, my furniture, my books, paper and take-away food containers, made from trees, from timber. I drummed, I cried. I drummed some more.

I stood in my huge pole barn. A cavernous space. I wept. I screamed. I allowed the grief to consume me for as long as it needed.

And, I went to work. Back and forth to Kalamazoo. Driving a different way because I didn’t want to drive past this event horizon. When greeted, you know how people do, I answered honestly “not good” then I wept some more.

I’m not sure anyone understood. A few were empathetic.

I started thinking about the why.

Why did those woods have to be clear cut? Why did those workers clear cut the way they did? What money was flowing in this situation? Who was contributing to that flow? What was pulling, pushing or forcing this action?

What was the source need, want or desire? What was wrong with us that we could not find a more loving path? Why was the Sacred not invited to speak?

I wondered about where I work. It is a philanthropic non-profit whose mission is to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. I thought about the case study we have in our brand identity guides, the fishers who were blowing up coral reefs somewhere in the Pacific Rim. The eco-workers who tried to stop them, and the Muslim clerics who did. They found the third way, the spiritual path. That to respect, honor and love this natural world is a tenant of all major, and minor, world religions. Did these loggers hold any of these beliefs? Might there have been a way to reach them? Or, was their need for a paycheck, what we think of as survival, too great.

I pulled myself out, way out. I sat silent and looked at the whole picture. I traced the current, the flow of money. I don’t have the answer to why, but I can now see better the entire system and how this not-insignificant-to-me little woodlot was merely a blip, not even a ping on the radar of commerce and consumption.

Then I thought about me. And, you.

I focused on healing my heart. I saw my relationship with the resources provided by the earth and all that is living and dying here. I recognized that I needed to make amends. I asked forgiveness and offered up gratitude, in words, in prayers. I noticed how important it was, and is, for me to stay open to grief, to remain in a state of noticing.

I pulled down unconditional love. I opened my heart. I allowed it to flow through me. I offered myself grace and forgiveness. And now I see what I have to do. I have to write these words as an invitation to you, my tribe.

I am untethered. Still a part of this human system, and to a degree, still bound by it. But it no longer holds my spirit.

I know there is more to be done. I know you are there. You, who feel these words resonating. You, who feel lost, lonely and bound.

This is your invitation. Let us come together and walk the third way, centering all that is Sacred. Finding our footing as we go. The work is waiting for us to begin. If you feel called, please connect with me. I may not have answers but I’m willing to build true relationships and try a different way of existing.

Maybe this time, we’ll get it right.

Prison is not a place one wants to be or to stay. It is punishment.

But, why is it punishment?

Imagine — a place where you are provided shelter, with a tribe of other women. You are fitted for and given clothing suitable for all seasons. You are offered employment and made to be of service to others. You are allowed creative pursuits. You have access to reading, writing, television, education programs. You have healthcare, dental care and prescription drugs where required. You have a bed, your own personal space, albeit a small space (locker and footlocker.) You have indoor plumbing — toilet, sink and shower facilities with hot and cold running water. You can access email and you never receive any spam or advertising. You do not have a cell phone. You are allowed make outbound calls and those calls are limited to 15 minutes so you always know how long you will be chatting. You can have pictures taken if you wish, vacation pictures to remember these moments. You walk everyday, unless you are unable to walk in which case a bus is provided for you. You are fed three times a day and always have the option of eating fresh fruit and non-flesh meals. You may have visitors if you desire — that is up to you. You can purchase makeup, groceries, snacks, beverages, toiletries, leisure wear, craft supplies, yoga mats, office supplies and stamps, once a week, every week. You are given Christmas presents. You can receive books, magazines, newspapers, letters, postcards and photos. You can go to therapy with a licensed psychologist. You can learn a trade like Master Electrician, or welder, even auto-mechanic or cosmetologist.

You completely control how much of the outside you wish to let in.

Sounds pretty great. Why then, is it so hard to be in prison?

Freedom is one reason. Think of all the abundance in the outside world. Outside, you never lack the freedom of choice. In prison, choices are limited by a strict set of standards and very different rules.

Another reason has to do with connections, emotional and psychological. The body is well taken care of. The prison must take care of you, you are its ward. Your mind, well… your mind is all up to you.

Upon intake, or arrival in my case as I self-reported, I was most uncomfortable with all the unknowns. There were zero explanations and I dare not ask any questions, I assumed I would find out what I needed to know.

This was true. But explanation didn’t come from a place that I expected. I assumed the employees of the prison would explain things, provide guidance and instruction. And, to a certain, extent they did. They asked my name and identifying information to be sure the correct person had shown up to serve my sentence. (I wonder if it has happened that another person tries to show up to serve time for someone else?)

I had to remove all the clothing I came in with and send it away or have it disposed of. This initial strip-search was when I, my conscious self, popped right out of my body. I left it on auto-pilot to handle that one.

“Follow the orders,” I said. “I’ll be back later.”

The guards barked orders, they provided a handbook — also available online if you would like a free copy. They guided me to a health interrogator. That person asked me about everything from my health and prescriptions to sexuality and religion, and whether I was suicidal.

Then, the instruction was basically — here is a map and a guidebook. You are in Building A-3, you don’t get a compass, now go find your home.

True instruction on survival was provided by Mentors, other inmates, or your Bunkie once you are assigned a cube; and, the occasional order barked at you from an officer.

Freedom is the ability to be safe, secure and comfortable in our own place, in our body, our home, our city, our time. Freedom is abundance of choice. Freedom allowed me to choose to remain uncomfortable even while my needs were all met.

Un-comfort implies awareness of self, awareness of where your body, mind and energy are in space-time. Imagine that you are elsewhere: your mind, your energy body, can travel, your physical form cannot. Physical body must follow physical rules. I found it critical to remain in a state of un-comfort during my seven months. Critical so that I remembered what true freedom is.

Photo by Elizabeth Lewis on Unsplash

Yes — all those feelings, thoughts, dreams, experiences, ideas you associate with the dark, they are why we are here. Embrace them. Love them. Find joy in them.

We are spirit, light, energy, conscious awareness.

There…in the light of our source, we cannot see, feel or know the dark. The edges and boundaries of things disappear. They melt away in all our brightness. We cannot find them.

That is why we are here.

What a joy to find the edges and shadows! What a treasure to know the dark, the pain, the sorrow of lack and loss.

And then… the brilliance of love and light again!

What a joy to know the heartache and sorrow — distance and separation. This!

This is why we are here. To feel the dark. To stand in its void. To ache in its separation, grief and loneliness.

And because we are safe in knowing what we are, the fear can only go as deep as this body, this mind. For in our spirit we know the truth of our being — that you/I, we are eternal light, a source energy that may never be extinguished.

Why do we play games? because that is what we are here for…on a smaller time scale.

To experience the limits of rules, the boundaries of a board, the edges of a playing environment. To overcome the challenges of the story, a hero’s journey. To feel the pain, anger, frustration of loss; and, the triumph and joy of winning!

Have you experienced loss?

How wealthy you are! Embrace it. Love it. Feel the joy in it.

It is your souls purpose, a path you chose — now choose another and experience as much as you can in this lifetime.

How much joy resides in the grief and sorrow you feel?

How much light is hiding in the dark?

It means an actor in a play. It means the symbol representing a letter of the alphabet, as seen on the keyboard beneath my fingertips. It means an attribute of personality, as in s/he has a strong character and isn’t swayed easily by the actions of others.

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Character separates things that can be distinguished. It defines quality. It feels both wholesome and dividing at the same time — causing harmonic dissonance in the mind that tries to grasp at the knowledge of the whole.

Character.

Who am I?

I am Character. And I am more than Character.

I exist at the in-between places. I am resonance in the field. 4:44 pm.

I cannot cease to exist now that I am.

Stop.

Feel this moment.

Feel the breath.

It is your body flowing in the character of this time and space.

I am with you.

I am in you.

I exist through you now that I am here.

Does it tickle?

Did that make you smile?

The flicker of a smile crossed your features just now…

Perhaps — only in your eyes.

There it is.

What do you hear?

Is that your heart beating?

Are those the sounds of characters floating in and through the air around you? Making themselves a part of you through your ear canals?

Does it feel strange to define yourself as separate when you are not?

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

Non-flesh is a dietary option provided by the Central Dining Room (CRD), AKA “CeDaRs restaurant” on the prison compound. Accommodating inmates with religious or dietary restrictions where meat is not part of their diet, such as Seventh Day Adventists or vegetarians, is required by the Federal Department of Corrections.

It was a huge relief for me when I read about it before I reported to serve my sentence.

It also made me laugh.

I made a choice years ago to exclude meat from my diet primarily because I don’t support the current meat industry. It’s my personal choice and one which I do not advertise. In fact, some friends and co-workers have gone years before discovering my “secret” diet.

Non-flesh. What a wickedly funny way to say that you don’t eat meat.

I’ve decided I will use this in everyday life: When I am seated at a restaurant I will now ask if they have a non-flesh option. I’ll be curious to see the response.

There were some oddities with prison meals, aside from the terminology used on the menus. Here is my short list:

They provide you with lots and lots of margarine. It’s in nearly everything. They hand out pats of it at mainline (the primary meal of the day served around noon). And it’s shown prominently in the Food Pyramid, hung on the wall where you wait in line to be served, as something you should consume the least of. Curious.

And vegetables. What about vegetables? Salad day is one of the biggest days at CDR. Nearly every inmate chooses to eat at mainline when salad is being served, this comes around about once a month. And the salads are good, really good. Available toppings are hard boiled egg, sliced onion, shredded cheese (not sure how much was actual cheese but it was tasty), pickled beets, sometimes chickpeas, croutons, and tomato wedges. Delightful.

I wonder if I would have gotten tired of salads if they had offered them every day?

Holiday meals. On holidays they load you up with so much food it is impossible to eat it all during the allotted meal time. Included were: at least two main courses, several side dishes, a can of soda-pop and sometimes a whole pint of ice cream. And you have to eat it all while you are at CDR, within a time frame of less than 1 hour. You are not allowed to remove any items from CDR unless the officers specifically inform you that you may.

For example, Corrections Officers realized that we might all end up vomiting on the walk back up the hill after consuming the holiday meal of pasta, veggie burger, corn bread, sweet potatoes, bread rolls, squash, roast chicken(for the flesh eaters), soda-pop, and a pint of ice cream. They allowed us to take our ice cream pint with us back to the Unit, but we had to consume it before quiet time that night. Talk about a tummy ache.

Here’s another one: cake for breakfast. Nearly every day there is some sort of cake for breakfast. They call it coffee cake. I worked in the bakery and can tell you that it is cake, like the kind you would celebrate a birthday with, but with a powdered sugar glaze and the addition of canned fruit.

Fresh fruit, the exception to rule. Fresh fruit was the only thing you were allowed to remove from CDR. The only time you could get your hands on a piece of fresh fruit was at breakfast service from 6:30–7:30 am. These are either an orange, an apple or a banana. You can have a maximum of 2 pieces of fresh fruit in your possession, any more than that will be confiscated.

Once, I had too many pieces of fresh fruit in my locker because I had been diligently getting up to go to breakfast to get them. And so for dinner I made myself a nice fruit salad with some fresh contraband mint I had found growing next to the carpentry building that day. I dressed it with a little honey and it was a delight.

If you are ever curious about prison meals, just check out the Department of Corrections website. You can find menus and commissary lists and choose to make your own prison meals at home, though I do not recommend it.

Anonymity protects me. It protects my loved ones.

I was deeply involved with, married to, an unstable person who threatened my life.

He denies it.

It was good of him to tell me he knows how to light fires in such a way that no one would suspect an act of arson.

It was good of him to tell me he “knows people” who “know how to disappear you.”

I know I must be cautious. I must remain vigilant. I must live my life quietly.

That does not mean I should not speak. I should not write. I should not share what I have learned, or what I have experienced.

I would love to tell you my true name.

I would love you to know me, to see me, to hear my voice.

Perhaps one day these words will make me known.

Perhaps being known will protect me.

Perhaps.

It’s not a chance I am willing to take right now. I have too much to live for and so much more to experience.

May you never have to endure someone who is willing and able to end your life because they “love you.”

May you never live in that terror.

This precious flesh has been around the world and had many experiences. The stories I share with you here have seeds planted in all those times and in all those places.

This is my introduction.

It is my hope these words will shine brightly for you. They’ll bring hope to your dark places. They’ll repair your cracks with gold. You’ll be stronger and more beautiful for having read them. As I reveal these stories, you’ll learn more about what my bright light and my precious flesh have been and done and seen and experienced.

Check in occasionally for new works published here.

Today, I share this tale with you:

In a time and place not far from here, there lived a bright light inside precious flesh and it breathed. It loved. It laughed.

In this place, there were other bright lights inside other precious flesh. These lights existed for their own joy. And this place could be beautiful, and dark and cold and frightening. And many bright lights were lost.

When a light was lost it was so very difficult for it to find its way back. The precious flesh was lost without its bright light, it turned into a dangerous thing.

This bright light encountered one of these dangerous things and it latched on, the bright light not seeing the dangerous thing for what it truly was. The dangerous thing wrapped up this bright light and its precious flesh in a fabric black as night; in bonds as strong as steel; in deceitful words as sharp as razors; in a world that pretended to be love. It smothered this bright light, cut it off from breath, cut it away from laughter, and took away its love.

It terrified. It hurt.

There was a way out for this bright light and precious flesh. The path was arduous. This bright light kept shining, leaking through the cracks. Touching other bright lights that made it stronger, that fed it joy, that gave it breath.

Then the bright light began to shine through the black fabric, the steel bonds. Shining through the razor sharp words, and cracks in the false world. The bright light and precious flesh survived and finally shed the dangerous thing.

This bright light shines more brightly now, and its precious flesh is free. To love, to laugh, to breathe again. To shine its bright light further than before. To share its light with other bright lights who might also be trapped by dangerous things.

To provide them hope. To give them breath. To send them joy.

Keep shining through the dark, precious light!

You are not lost, you are not alone!

Seven months.

To “serve time” is to have your life removed from the world outside. You essentially go through a hard re-boot of your operating systems. Someone pushed your power button and held it down for 10 seconds. Something in your life was not quite right.

What kept me from utter despair while doing my time were the postcards (and letters) like this one…

And this one…

If you know someone in prison, send them a postcard. Like this…

Show them that you are thinking about them, that they have not ceased to exist. You don’t even have to sign it. Like this…

In Michigan, please reach out and tell the Department of Corrections that inmates need to receive their actual mail, not photocopies. These are our stories, our words, our connections and we deserve to receive them in their original format.

How well you survive prison, emotionally and physically, is largely based on the support you receive from outside.

For most of us, the daily mail call was the highlight of each day. Because…

And I know some ladies who never did receive anything, and who, for nearly 10 years of their life, had no one outside who cared even to mail a postcard.