Month: July 2026

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Leaving Home to Arrive Home

Eight years ago, I traveled to Costa Rica for a week-long retreat centered around ayahuasca, breathwork, yoga, and deep inner exploration.

Like many people who are drawn to these experiences, I went seeking something. You might call it a Divine encounter. You might call it awakening. You might call it healing.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for. I only knew there seemed to be a place people spoke about. That place beyond ordinary life. A place where greater peace, greater freedom, and greater love existed. And I wanted to know it for myself.

On the first evening, I lay on a mattress beneath an open-air pavilion in the Costa Rican jungle.

Night settled around the group as the ceremony began. I was relaxed, open, and curious.
As the plant medicine took effect, I remember making one simple commitment to myself. Don’t turn away. Whatever appears, it is here for you. Meet it.

For hours, I was shown scenes from ordinary moments of my own life.

Every one revealed where I had turned away from what was actually present.

Countless moments where Life was present but I was not.

When someone reached toward me and I wasn’t fully there. 
How beauty quietly presented itself and I hurried past. 
Ways I turned away from myself. 
Living my life while imagining that real life was somewhere else.
Times I let go the Mystery and a sense of wonder.

Scene after scene unfolded. Some scenes were so small and ordinary that I might never have noticed them at all. Others were much more significant and far reaching. There was no judgment accompanying what was bring offered.

Only the opportunity to see clearly. And with the seeing came tears. I cried for hours because I suddenly understood what I had been missing.

I wasn’t grieving my failures or feeling concern about hurting anyone. I was grieving the countless missed opportunities for relationship that had quietly passed by while I was looking somewhere else.

The next morning, I walked alone along a path through the jungle.

Trees swayed gently in the warm breeze, providing a gentle landing for the birds who sang beneath the bright sun. My body felt tired with some lingering sense of motion sickness.

A hangover of sorts from a night of traveling through so many landscapes.

Walking along that path, my inner voice spoke clearly: Now the work begins.

 

Yes, I understood and I agreed.

Almost immediately I heard that same voice laugh. You came here for a magic pill, didn’t you?

Touche. Indeed, I did. I had to laugh. Some part of me believed I would arrive in Costa Rica, meet the Divine, have love break me open, and leave transformed into an entirely new person.

Instead, I was being invited back into relationship with my own life.

The ceremonies continued for three more nights. Each one delivered exactly what it needed.

As I returned home, that invitation reverberated through my being. 

Now the work begins.

Not the work of becoming someone new. It was the staying within the ordinary moments I was living.

It was the invitation to return to the people in front of me, my own body, the quiet beauty, and the potential to meet the moment as it arrived.

To turn toward the life that had never stopped inviting me into relationship.

Looking back now, I don’t think I went to Costa Rica seeking some mystical state, inner contentment, or existential peace. I think all along I went seeking my own life. And Life, in its mysterious generosity, gave me exactly what I needed. 



Not another destination. 

A way of returning home.

 

Peace be with you and with all.  No exceptions. 

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Returning to Yourself

The women who arrive in my classes, retreats, and therapy sessions are sincerely looking for healing, expansion, clarity, or sometimes just a little room to breathe.

They are thoughtful women, deeply engaged with the people and work they love. Rarely do they arrive because they want another spiritual philosophy. Most are carrying something much more ordinary.

A life that has become full. Beautiful in many ways, but crowded.

Crowded with responsibilities, information, expectations, decisions, and the steady rhythm of accomplishing what needs to be done. Yet many quietly sense there may be another way to move through life. One that feels more spacious, more relational, and more deeply their own.

We often assume what we need is another answer. Another practice. Another book. Another workshop. Yet what I’ve witnessed over the years is something much simpler.

Most women don’t need more information. They need a different relationship with the life they are already living.

That’s where Via Sophia begins.

Not as a philosophy to adopt or a spiritual identity to become. Via Sophia is simply the Way of Living Wisdom. A way of meeting yourself, other people, nature, beauty, challenge, joy, and the ordinary moments of everyday life with greater presence, intimacy, and participation.

This is why I’m gathering women in the lush jungle of Costa Rica. Not because wisdom only exists in beautiful places. It doesn’t.

But because becoming spacious within beauty creates clarity.

When life slows enough, something remarkable begins to happen. Your body softens. The constant internal conversation quiets. Your attention widens.

You begin hearing yourself again.

Not the version shaped by urgency or expectation, but the quieter wisdom that has been patiently waiting beneath the noise.

Your voice. Unwoven from the cacophony of societal noise.

Your rhythm. Loosened from the momentum of a cluttered schedule.

There is value of retreating within your own being. More easily done when you are temporarily away from habitual living. Embraced and nourished within the natural world, you relax and reorganize.

So you may return to the relationship with yourself. So you may inhabit the life you are living.

Via Sophia is not something you learn and then apply later. It is a way of becoming more intimate with the life you are already living.

Over time, you begin recognizing wisdom as it appears in ordinary moments. How compassion naturally softens a difficult conversation. Where discernment brings clarity to a decision. When beauty becomes nourishment rather than decoration. How courage quietly asks you to take one honest step forward.

Within Via Sophia, you are invited into relationship with thirteen Mystical Mothers.

Each offering companionships as they model qualities and ways of being that help you recognize what is already living within you. Whether used as nourishing resources, teachers, or mirrors, the intelligence of each Mystical Mother invites recognition of your participation in life. And how you may more consciously engage in the living conversation that is alive in every moment.

Within Via Sophia, every phase of life is welcomed.

Joy and sorrow. Clarity and confusion. Rest and emergence. Belonging and solitude. Loving and letting go. Nothing is excluded. Nothing needs to be hidden. Everything becomes part of the conversation because Life itself holds everything.

Everything is welcome in this natural way of being. Because Life holds everything.

In Costa Rica, this way of living becomes easier to notice.

The rainforest teaches alongside us. The ocean soothes you. Meals offer slow, meaningful conversations. Silence becomes nourishing. Laughter becomes part of the practice. Before long, you begin to notice that every moment is part of the living conversation.

You don’t come to Costa Rica to escape your life. You come to remember how you want to live it.

Sometimes the path isn’t asking you to find yet another way of being. Sometimes it is asking you to inhabit the one that is already quietly unfolding beneath your feet.

This October I’ll be welcoming a small circle of women to Selva Armonia in Costa Rica. 

Together we’ll spend a week exploring Via Sophia – the Way of Living Wisdom – not as something to master, but as a way of inhabiting our lives more fully. If something within you longs for beauty, spaciousness, meaningful conversation, and a more intimate relationship with Life, perhaps this is your invitation.

If you feel called to immerse in beauty with me, I’d love to see what we discover together. Let’s have a conversation.

 

Peace be with you and with all.  No exceptions. 

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Parking with Dan

About twenty-five years ago, I was driving with a colleague to a local conference. As we approached the hotel entrance, I noticed an open parking spot near the front door.

“There’s a spot,” I said, pointing to the right. He drove past it.

A few seconds later, another one appeared. He drove past that one, too. Then I pointed to a third. “There’s a spot.” Without the slightest hesitation, Dan replied, “I’ll leave that for someone else.”

And he calmly parked much farther away. As we walked to the entrance, I asked about that statement.

Dan explained that it was a practice of his. Whenever possible, he left the closest parking spaces for someone else. Perhaps there was someone carrying packages, or struggling with luggage and young children. Maybe someone was tired or had difficulty walking. Whatever the reason, Dan left the closer spots for those who simply needed it more than he did.

I nodded. It made sense, so I adopted that practice for myself that day.

I had hired Dan as a psychologist for the nonprofit agency where we worked with adolescents and families in the community. It was his first professional position after completing his PhD in clinical psychology.

He was fifty years old. It remains one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever had.

When Dan was a young man in college, he found himself asking a question many people ask but few act upon: “Where can I find meaning?” Someone answered, “Go east.”

So he did.

He left college and traveled to Tibet, where he spent years studying wisdom traditions, meditation, and the art of bookmaking. By the time I met him, he had returned to the United States carrying something difficult to define but easy to recognize. He had a quiet steadiness about him. He moved through the world differently than most.

Throughout our years working together, we had many conversations.

When I told him I struggled to quiet my mind, he suggested a simple breathing practice. He asked me where I felt most peaceful. At the time, my daughter was an infant. I told him about sitting in a rocking chair in the dim light while she slept nearby.

“Start there,” he said.

And so I did. That became my place. Not a meditation cushion or a retreat center. A rocking chair beside a sleeping baby.

Dan rarely offered complicated answers. Instead, he pointed toward something simple enough to live.

Like leaving the closest parking spaces for others.

Over time, that simple practice expanded into dozens of small acts of consideration. Not dramatic gestures. Just quiet awareness of the people around me and the people yet to arrive.

Dan and I were together exploring neurofeedback for our clients when news of the attacks on the Twin Towers reached us. I remember walking out of my office and seeing staff members crying as they tried to tell us what had happened.

My first thought was, “What have we done?”

I meant it in the broadest human sense. How had we arrived here? What conditions had brought us to this moment? What responsibility do we all carry for the world we create together?

Spending time with Dan always expanded our view of life and enlarged our circle of belonging. We shared an awareness that our lives are connected in ways we often overlook. Simple yet profound connections that quietly shape the quality of life for those around us.

After we both left the agency, we continued to meet occasionally at Starbucks.

We would catch up on our practices, our work, and our lives. Yet somehow the conversation always returned to ordinary things. A simple question or an observation about the world and our place in it.

Then Dan would say something small. Just a sentence. I learned to pay attention to how his gentle comment reverberated through my being.

Sometimes long stretches of silence would settle between us. Neither of us rushed to fill them. We would sit with our tea, each following our own reflections until one of us felt we had something worth sharing. Or not.

I came to appreciate these simple statements which would often unfold over weeks or months, perhaps gradually becoming another lived practice.

The older I get, the more I realize that wisdom often arrives quietly. Not through grand teachings, but through regular moments with ordinary people who have learned how to pay attention.

A parking space. A deep breath in the midst of tragedy. The pleasure of a perfectly placed rocking chair. A slow conversation over tea.

Dan eventually moved across the country in search of a slower life. I was happy for him. It seemed exactly right.

The funny thing is, I never miss Dan. Not because he wasn’t valued in my life. Quite the opposite. I thoroughly enjoyed our exchanges, our clinical collaboration, and all we discovered together.

Those people who are a beneficial presence in our lives somehow remain present.

I still leave the closest parking spaces for someone else. And when my passenger points out that I missed a few spots by the entrance, I smile.

Because Dan is right there with me. An invisible reverberation of a lesson well modeled.

Peace be with you and with all.  No exceptions. 

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Walking with Wisdom

During the Seeding the Light Gathering, I had the privilege of hosting Pascual and Jose Tomas in our home.

They feel like family as this was their second visit to New Jersey. We’ve also spent a week together in Damanhur and the Temples of Humankind in Italy. I’ve sat in many ceremonies with Pascual in Peru’s Sacred Valley. His flute playing often carried me up mountain trails in the thin air and hot sun.

People often ask me what it is like to spend time with a Q’ero medicine man. The truth is, it is probably not what most people imagine.

Yes, there are powerful ceremonies. Beautiful prayers laid in despacho offerings with sincerity and devotion. Singing to the fire while burdens are released and energy centers are revitalized. There is the witnessing of power flowing through healings, blessing and rearranging lives at a foundational level. And a weaving of wisdom that is difficult to put into words but is felt rippling through every gathering.

And yet what strikes me most has nothing to do with ceremony. It is how Pascual engages ordinary life.

After a long day of healing sessions and ceremony, he hustled over for a group picture, smiling broadly, happy to be surrounded by people. Later that evening, Pascual stretched out on the couch to watch the World Cup as lively conversation bounced between English, Spanish, Quechua, and the universal language of cheers and groans.

Whenever we drove from one event to another, Pascual was interested in everything he saw. Buildings. Trees. People. Stores. Animals. His curiosity about life never appeared to diminish, and he welcomed our questions about life in Peru and his work as a medicine man.

Pascual approached every new experience with the same openness.

He enjoyed traditional Mexican and Italian dinners, American donuts at Dunkin’, ordering pizza, grilling burgers and corn on the cob, and sampling whatever was placed before him. We wandered the Grounds for Sculpture enjoying the art embedded within nature, snapping photos, and quietly witnessing a marriage proposal. We stopped at DSW for sneakers and enjoyed our Walmart adventure, where I insisted Pascual try on pants before buying them. We gathered thoughtful gifts to bring home to his family.

One afternoon someone arrived with a beautiful handwoven band for her hat. It didn’t quite fit.

Pascual examined it carefully. He decided it needed a few stitches. He asked me for a needle and thread and sat down to fix it himself.

 

No ceremony. No spiritual teaching. Just a man sewing a hat and quietly handing it back.

And somehow that, too, felt like a teaching.

Our gathering occurred during a heat wave. The chapel lost its air conditioning. Outdoors, it was 95 degrees in the shade. We were hot, yet no one seemed to notice. Everyone was so fully participating in the moment.

During a wisdom sharing, Pascual handed the microphone to Jose Tomas for translation. I was listening closely when Pascual poked me in my side. He whispered “Meditation,” pointing to my friend listening with his eyes closed and to a woman who was falling asleep in the heat. We dissolved into laughter. Pascual often drops into meditation (or perhaps takes a quick nap). We tease him about this often and he delighted in seeing others doing the same.

Bursting into laughter, making jokes, or just smiling for the joy of it all occurs in every circumstance. Ceremonies which exude power, genuine devotion, and pure prayers also contain bursts of laughter, hugs, and broad smiles.

He welcomed every gift with genuine gratitude. And often offers gifts in reciprocity for the care he is receiving. There is nothing forced in these exchanges. Just a natural way of being in reciprocity.

What touched me just as much was watching the participants naturally begin to do the same. Throughout the week they offered thoughtful gifts, expressions of gratitude, and small acts of kindness to Pascual and Jose Tomas. At the end of our time together they shared how deeply moved they were. Rather than feeling they had come to New Jersey simply to work, they felt they had gathered in ceremony with family.

Jose Tomas told us stories about how well known Pascual is. Not because he seeks attention. Quite the opposite. He has never seemed interested in being important. He is interested in people.

Whether speaking with airport workers in Cusco, blessing a soccer field in Curaçao, offering a despacho in the high Andes, or staying in touch with monthly phone calls, people seem naturally drawn to him.

Given these stories, we started calling him “Hollywood.” Pascual laughs every time he hears it.

Many people inhabit a role.
Shaman. 
Teacher.
Healer.
Pascual inhabits his life.

His reverence for the sacred is inseparable from his reverence for everyday living.

Language and cultural differences don’t seem to matter much. To every experience, Pascual arrived with openness, curiosity, humor, and respect. People felt it and they responded with love, laughter, tears, joy, and respect.

For all the power people experienced in ceremony, I suspect this may be one of Pascual’s greatest teachings. He is fully present to what is arising in each moment.

Many people travel great distances seeking wisdom about how to live well.

Sometimes wisdom arrives in your home town carrying a market of handcrafts to support the Q’ero community. Relaxing during a soccer match. Purchasing gifts for family. Asking for a needle and thread. Working tirelessly through a heat wave. Enjoying a Pepsi. Offering powerful prayers one moment and delighting in an ordinary joke the next.

For me, the greatest gift was watching someone demonstrate how joy, love, wisdom, and power are a natural part of ordinary life.

It reminded me that being a person of wisdom isn’t defined by ceremony or role. It is revealed in the way we greet each person, receive each gift, meet each challenge, and participate fully in the ordinary moments of our lives.

Peace be with you and with all.  No exceptions. 

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Life Beneath the Schedule

I planned to work a bit, complete some projects, and enjoy slow days with plenty of relaxation.

All of that certainly occurred, but beneath it all, something else began quietly inviting my attention.

I still worked, had sessions, responded to emails, taught my Via Sophia class, held conversations, and shared many a meal.

Spaciousness gave me room to notice the quiet invitations that are always there.

One morning I wandered down to the river, watching dolphins surface and disappear again. I sat in the shade with horses, praying for the world and what was possible. I cheered for the US in the World Cup game while the sunset painted the sky over the mangroves behind me.

A tiny resident lizard became part of my daily rhythm.

I read two novels until the Florida sun soothed me into a nap. Waking up flushed and uncomfortable led me to a cooling float in the pool. Eyes open, I glimpsed a manatee. Eyes closed, I listened to the song created by the breeze in the trees, birds holding melodic conversations, boat engines, and murmuring human voices.

None of it was extraordinary. And yet it felt deeply alive.

As the days unfolded, I began wondering how often I move through my own life waiting for some future arrangement before fully inhabiting the one already here.

I often hear women say they’ll relax when the project is finished, the children are grown, vacation finally arrives, retirement begins, or life settles down.

You know this dance. As though living can begin once everything else is complete.

But what if nothing has been waiting? What if life has simply been unfolding beside you all along, quietly offering itself in hundreds of ordinary ways.

A breeze across your face. Morning coffee. Birds outside the window. The sleepy dog hoping you’ll stop long enough for a gentle scratch. The conversation you almost rushed through. The tree you’ve driven past a hundred times, dancing in the wind whether anyone notices or not.

This is one of the quiet discoveries emerging in our Via Sophia circles.

Not another practice to master or another way to improve yourself. It is the simple remembering that life is already in relationship with you. How beauty is already arriving. Your body is already speaking.

The natural world is always in conversation.

You realize that you don’t have to manufacture a sacred life.
You learn to participate in the one already unfolding. Where wonder is already present.

This doesn’t require a vacation, a retreat, or the completion of every task on your life. While time away may certainly help create spaciousness, you might begin with something much smaller.

What if you gave yourself three hours?

What if your phone stayed inside?

What if there were nowhere you needed to be?


What if you wandered without deciding where you were going?

What if you let the day reveal itself instead of deciding in advance what it should become?

For some people, those questions sound heavenly. For others, they set off alarm bells.

If that’s you, begin even smaller. Perhaps only twenty minutes, a slow walk, or a cup of tea on the deck without your phone. Engage the natural beauty of a garden or sunset without photographing it.

Life rarely shouts. It usually whispers.

Maybe what you’re longing for isn’t somewhere else. Maybe it’s here. Hidden beneath the schedule, beneath the striving, beneath the endless doing.

Available and quietly inviting you into conversation.

If you decide to wander sometime this summer, I’d love to hear what you discover. Send me a note and tell me where the day led you. I’m curious what found you when you finally had room to notice. I’ll be sure to read it and respond after I savor one more slice of life newly discovered through different eyes than my own.

Ladies, perhaps spaciousness isn’t something you find someday. Perhaps it’s something you remember.

This October, a small circle of women will gather in Costa Rica to explore exactly that.

Together we’ll slow enough to hear life again, restore our relationship with ourselves and the natural world, and discover what begins to emerge when we stop managing life and start participating in it.

If that calls to you, I’d love to have you with us. Explore the Via Sophia Costa Rica Immersion here. 

If you’re ready to live sacred – naturally and with ease – let’s have a conversation. 

Peace be with you and with all.  No exceptions.