What If Life Isn’t Asking You to Become Someone Else?
Over the past several months, I have been immersed in conversation with women.
In therapy sessions, Via Sophia circles, and at dinner tables. During walks, ceremonies, and quiet moments after gatherings have ended. I’ve been listening as stories unfold. Different women. Different lives, histories, and circumstances.
Yet beneath the details, I keep hearing a remarkably similar story. Many women are tired.
Not simply tired because life is busy. They’re tired because they have spent decades trying to meet expectations that were never fully their own.
These beautiful women have cared for children, partners, parents, communities, clients, organizations, and causes. They’ve built careers where they persevered, succeeded, and contributed. All the while carrying responsibilities with extraordinary devotion and competence.
Many women have also brought this same determination to their spiritual lives.
Exploring how to heal, grow, and awaken. Working diligently to become more loving, conscious, and present. Always reaching toward some future version of themselves that often seemed just beyond the horizon.
There’s nothing wrong with any of this. In fact, it reflects something beautiful.
These women care deeply, want to contribute well, and intend to live meaningful lives. All share a desire to become the fullest expression of who they could be. I know these desires. I, too, have lived them.
But eventually other questions begin to emerge.
What if Life is not actually asking me to become someone else? Perhaps there is nothing wrong with me, and there never was, so I’ve got nothing to fix? What if wisdom is not found in striving, but in relaxation and restoration and relationship?
Again and again, I witness women arrive at this threshold. Not through force or achievement. Nor through mastering another technique or collecting another insight.
Most women arrive here thoroughly exhausted. And then approach the threshold through honesty.
They begin to examine the cultural messages absorbed, expectations inherited, and identities they carefully constructed. And recognize how brilliantly they adapted to the world around them. And how intelligently they learned to survive, succeed, care for others, and contribute.
Yet somewhere beneath all of that brilliance, effort, and now exhaustion, another life has been quietly waiting.
A life that is willing to rest.
A life that knows nourishment is not a reward for hard work. Rather, it is a necessity for vital engagement with whatever arrives. These women recognize that life that can make room for contraction without turning it into failure. And allow tenderness, beauty, delight, and joy to emerge.
This is one of the gifts I see emerging through the Via Sophia Circles.
Via Sophia invites women to enter relationship with Life itself through the wisdom of the feminine and the 13 Mystical Mothers.
So you may directly enter into relationship with life deeply enough that wisdom, love, and beauty can move through you. Not as ideals or goals, but as lived experience.
Given that women have lived decades with crowded schedules, overflowing with responsibility, Via Sophia encourages a slower pace and invites you to gently notice what is arising. Whatever is alive in your life deserves your curiosity. Not to solve, arrange, or even understand. Just noticing and making some gentle room for what is actually here.
Meeting life. Just as it is. Without needing to change it or yourself. Imagine that.
The 13 Mystical Mothers serve as partners in this exploration. They arrive to support, embrace, and invite you to take a breath. They remind you that wisdom is not something to achieve, but something you recognize and remember. And how belonging, beauty, and pleasure emerge naturally when you soften enough to notice what is already here.
As the nervous system settles and your perceptual capacity naturally expands, life begins to feel different.
You breathe more fully and notice a sense of ease. You soothe rather than criticize. You rest and play without justification. Laughter returns and you enjoy your days without waiting until your life conditions improve.
Releasing the effort and need to manage life, you are free to participate with what is already showing up.
Here you discover that support has been offered through friendship, nature, love, community, the living world, and the quiet wisdom that arises when you stop arguing with reality.
What surprises many women is that transformation still occurs. In fact, it often unfolds more naturally than expected.
As you create room for rest, curiosity, beauty, and honest relationship with yourself, life begins reorganizing on its own. So you may discover a sturdiness that was never dependent upon perfect circumstances. And experience greater ease, deeper trust, and a growing capacity to meet whatever arises.
And perhaps that is what Via Sophia has been teaching all along. That Life manages itself remarkably well.
When you stop trying to force life into a particular shape, you become available to its wisdom.
You begin to notice what is already unfolding. You meet the moment with greater trust. This invites you to live more fully, consciously, and beautifully.
Not someday. You begin right now. Gently laying down decades of conditioned effort and discovering what remains when striving is no longer required.
Via Sophia, The Way of Feminine Wisdom, is not a path of self-improvement. It is not about perfection, transcendence, or becoming someone better. It is an invitation into a different way of living.
A natural unfolding which invites intimacy with Life.
As a conscious participant in reality, so you move with Life rather than against it. Exploring a deep intimacy with Life, you become even more available to the wisdom, love, and beauty that move through you and to you.
If this conversation speaks to something you recognize in yourself, you can learn more here about the Via Sophia Circles and my upcoming Via Sophia Costa Rica Immersion.
Or better yet, reach out. Let’s relax together and have a conversation.
Peace be with you and with all. No exceptions.
HeartWarming
News
Research suggests that gentle music does more than soothe the mind. It helps calm the nervous system, eases stress, supports emotional balance, and even invites the body into a deeper sense of safety. Humming or softly singing along may deepen the effect by encouraging a longer exhale, helping the body settle even more naturally. Choose whatever music brings you pleasure and has you singing, dancing, or smiling.