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 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.
Learn the one essential skill that allows you to face any challenge with confidence, sturdiness, and inner calm.
More than a technique. It’s a game changer.
I walked out of the gym one morning into a cold, dreary New Jersey rain.
After my challenging workout, I gingerly lowered myself into the driver’s seat. Taking stock, I felt cold, damp, and hungry. My butt muscles hurt and I didn’t think my packed lunch was sufficient to fuel my entire work day.
I was driving home with my daughter when we noticed a large snapping turtle crossing the roadway. It was a tiny back street lined with a small pond.
I recently found myself thinking about activism. About the many ways we show up for what matters to us.
As I considered this, three memories arrived. Rapidly, as if they were part of my contemplation.
The first was a conversation I had with a woman in my town. She was giving me an update on her recent gathering with other mothers protesting against gun violence. I was interested as we had explored what mattered to her as she approached retirement. Protecting children in schools and on street corners mattered, so she joined with other moms who cared about the same.
Three months ago, I unexpectedly entered into a relationship with a horse.
I met Zor during a visit to Liberty Stables in Florida, where I had gone to spend time with a friend’s horses. I had no particular expectations. I have no background with horses, no training, and no experience in equine-assisted therapy. I simply met this magnificent Friesian, and something quietly familiar unfolded between us.
I fell in love.
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.
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.
