Circles | Edges

As Aaron prepares to enter the final three episodes of the season, he invites us to revisit Episode 004, “Origin Stories,” returning to the stories we inherit before exploring the longer, intergenerational arcs that shape our lives.

There are moments when a stranger’s story feels like a mirror, quietly revealing something we’ve carried for years without naming. In this episode, Aaron invites us into the layered terrain of family origin stories, where identity, belonging, and inherited narratives begin to take shape long before we have language for them. Through a deeply human encounter and a series of gentle questions, the conversation settles into the quiet realization that much of who we believe ourselves to be may not have been chosen at all. As the night unfolds, listeners are asked to sit with the stories they’ve lived, the roles they’ve carried, and the subtle edges where those inherited patterns begin to soften, shift, or ask for release.

Invitations to Consider:

• A powerful real-life encounter that opens the doorway into reflecting on human resilience and chosen identity
• How family origin stories shape identity, often before we are aware of it
• The role of belonging, attachment, and emotional conditioning in early development
• The hidden influence of family roles, myths, and power structures on adult life
• The possibility of rewriting inherited narratives and choosing new ways of being

Light a Candle With Me

A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE

When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show.

You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

There are moments when the patterns of a life begin to feel less like repetition and more like an invitation.

Join Aaron as he turns toward rituals and rites, asking what happens when the customs, ceremonies, and remembrances we inherit meet the person we are becoming. Through reflections on identity and belonging, uncertainty, and the quiet human need to mark change, he considers how ritual can hold both grief and possibility without requiring one to erase the other. The conversation moves gently into life transitions that do not always come with language, witnesses, or ceremonies of their own, and asks whether some thresholds must be created rather than discovered. Along the way, Aaron invites a kind of mindful reflection on the stories we continue to inhabit, the ones that may have grown too small, and the forms of remembrance that might help us meet change with greater presence.

Invitations to Consider:

• How recurring intersections of time and place become rituals, rites, and remembrances that help human beings create meaning.
• The possibility that ritual responds to uncertainty not simply by creating certainty, but by helping us understand who we are.
• Aaron’s experience of creating a “release and transformation ceremony” when an important life transition had no existing ritual that felt adequate.
• The tension between inherited practices and chosen ones, including the question of when a meaningful tradition becomes an empty performance.
• The ways certain transitions, losses, beginnings, or parts of ourselves may go unwitnessed, and what it means to notice them more fully.

Light a Candle With Me

A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE

When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show.

You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

There are seasons when time seems generous, opening around us with enough room to notice where we are, and others when every hour feels like pressure. In this quiet exploration of our relationship with time, Aaron moves between memory, philosophy, family, and the rhythms of the body to consider how deeply our stories about time shape the way we inhabit a life. From the measured world of chronos to the rarer invitation of kairos moments, the conversation asks what happens when presence becomes more important than the clock. Along the way, experiences of time anxiety, childhood shame, parenthood, work, aging, and life seasons gently surface a larger question: how much of what we believe about being early, late, ready, behind, or successful was inherited rather than discovered for ourselves? This is an episode for settling into the present without pretending calendars and obligations disappear, and for noticing the moments that quietly ask whether we are willing to meet our lives as they are unfolding.

Invitations to Consider:

1. When time becomes companion or oppressor. Aaron contrasts two formative memories, holding his infant son and confronting an unfinished seventh-grade assignment, to explore how the same experience of time can deepen presence or become entangled with fear and shame.
2. The stories beneath the clock. The episode considers not only seconds, minutes, and hours, but inherited agreements about workweeks, weekends, deadlines, age, achievement, retirement, and when life is supposedly meant to happen.
3. Chronos and kairos. Ancient Greek understandings of measured time and the “ripe moment” offer another way of noticing opportunities that cannot always be scheduled or recovered.
4. The places we hide behind time. “Not yet,” “I’m not ready,” and “it’s too late” become invitations to examine whether time is genuinely the obstacle or whether it sometimes protects us from fear, uncertainty, or possible disapproval.
5. Living according to seasons. Aaron reflects on the contrast between productivity-centered calendars and the natural cycles of rest, growth, strength, harvest, dormancy, aging, and renewal that shape human life.

Light a Candle With Me

A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE

When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show.

You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

The places we long for, the places we revisit, and even the places we avoid all have something to say about who we are. Aaron gently explores what those landscapes ask of us in return. Through stories of family, travel, memory, and the restorative pull of nature, he reflects on how our relationship with place reveals our deepest longings, our need for belonging, and the subtle ways our environment shapes who we are becoming. Rather than asking whether a destination can change us, this conversation gently invites listeners to notice what they are asking of the places they love, avoid, imagine, or dream about. Moving through themes of self discovery, personal growth, healing, reflection, emotional wellbeing, mindfulness, and the search for inner peace, the episode offers a calm space to consider the difference between escaping ourselves and intentionally stepping toward the life that is quietly calling us forward. It is an invitation to settle into curiosity, to listen beneath the surface of longing, and to discover that the most meaningful journey may be the one that helps us return to ourselves with new eyes.

Invitations to Consider:

• Why human beings repeatedly return to certain places and what those patterns reveal about identity.
• The difference between seeking a place for healing and expecting a place to rescue us.
• How belonging is experienced through geography, memory, and the body.
• A reflective practice for uncovering "the place beneath the place" by exploring the deeper needs hidden beneath longing.
• How to discern whether a place is calling us toward growth or pulling us back into an earlier version of ourselves.

Light a Candle With Me

A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE

When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show.

You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

There are moments in life that seem to disappear as quickly as they arrive. A conversation, a season, a feeling, the weight of a child asleep on your chest. We experience them as fleeting because we experience time as a line. But what if time is something more expansive than that? In this special Circles | Edges episode, Aaron shares a conversation from his appearance on the Create Magic At Work Podcast with Amy Lynn Durham, exploring the idea of quantum presence and our relationship with time, memory, healing, and possibility. Together they consider whether presence extends beyond the narrow space we call "now," how emotional experiences create lasting anchors within us, and what it might mean to revisit the past with compassion or draw comfort from a future self that has already survived what we're facing today. Moving between neuroscience, spirituality, emotional intelligence, and lived experience, this conversation invites listeners to reflect on the limits of perception, the stories we tell about time, and the possibility that healing may be less about letting go and more about learning how to remain connected differently. This is an exploration of presence not as a point, but as a sphere, and of what becomes possible when we begin to trust that we are larger than the timeline we inhabit.

Invitations to Consider:

• Aaron's theory of quantum presence and why he believes humans experience time as more than a linear progression.
• How emotional intensity creates what Aaron calls "quantum anchors" that connect us across time.
• The relationship between PTSD, memory, emotional activation, and recurring experiences.
• Why our future selves may have something valuable to offer our present struggles.
• How expanding our understanding of presence can deepen healing, compassion, and personal growth.

About the Guest:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends practical leadership strategies with spiritual intelligence to unlock human potential at work.

She’s a certified Executive Coach through UC Berkeley & the International Coaching Federation (ICF) In addition, Amy holds coaching certifications in Spiritual Intelligence (SQ21), the Edgewalker Profile, and the Archetypes of Change . In addition to being the host of the Create Magic At Work® podcast, Amy is the author of Create Magic At Work®, Creating Career Magic: A Daily Prompt Journal and the founder of Magic Thread Media™. Through her work, she inspires intentional leadership for thriving workplaces and lives where “magic” becomes reality.

Connect with Amy:

https://createmagicatwork.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/create-magic-at-work

https://www.facebook.com/112951637095427

https://www.instagram.com/createmagicatwork

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnEm4h3fUgaq8qgvZpz6dGg

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

There is a subtle tension that lives beneath our desire to help. Most of us have felt it. Someone we care about is hurting, struggling, or overwhelmed, and something inside us immediately moves toward fixing, soothing, or carrying what they are experiencing. But what if that impulse is not always about compassion? What if, sometimes, it begins with our own discomfort? In this special Circles | Edges episode, Aaron shares a conversation from his appearance on the Create Magic At Work Podcast with Amy Lynn Durham, exploring empathic distress, leaky identity, and the hidden ways our sense of self can become intertwined with the suffering of others. Together, they examine the difference between empathy and compassion, the social conditioning that shapes caretaking behaviors, and why presence often asks more of us than intervention. This is a thoughtful exploration of emotional responsibility, identity, and the possibility of showing up for others without losing ourselves in the process. As the conversation unfolds, you are invited to notice where helping becomes fixing, where compassion becomes exhaustion, and where a deeper, more sustainable form of connection might be waiting.

Invitations to Consider:

• Why the urge to help can sometimes be driven by our own need for relief rather than another person's needs.
• Aaron's concept of "leaky identity" and how identity can become dependent on helping others.
• The hidden ways empathic distress can create exhaustion, overwhelm, and unhealthy relationship patterns.
• The difference between empathy, empathic response, and compassionate action.
• How presence and witnessing may be more healing than fixing.

About the Guest Host:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends practical leadership strategies with spiritual intelligence to unlock human potential at work.

She’s a certified Executive Coach through UC Berkeley & the International Coaching Federation (ICF) In addition, Amy holds coaching certifications in Spiritual Intelligence (SQ21), the Edgewalker Profile, and the Archetypes of Change . In addition to being the host of the Create Magic At Work® podcast, Amy is the author of Create Magic At Work®, Creating Career Magic: A Daily Prompt Journal and the founder of Magic Thread Media™. Through her work, she inspires intentional leadership for thriving workplaces and lives where “magic” becomes reality.

Connect with Amy:

https://createmagicatwork.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/create-magic-at-work

https://www.facebook.com/112951637095427

https://www.instagram.com/createmagicatwork

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnEm4h3fUgaq8qgvZpz6dGg

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This week Aaron explores the teachers, mentors, parents, guides, and unexpected strangers who leave emotional imprints on the architecture of our lives. Moving through stories of nursing school, fatherhood, rideshare conversations, and the subtle transfer of wisdom across generations, the episode gently asks what it means to truly shape another human being without trying to possess or control them. Along the way, Aaron reflects on discernment, legacy, apprenticeship, and the growing tension between authentic guidance and performative influence in modern life. This conversation unfolds as an invitation to slow down, notice whose voices live inside you, and consider the quiet responsibility we all carry as teachers to one another, whether we realize it or not.

Invitations to Consider:

1. How certain voices remain with us for decades, quietly shaping the way we move through the world and understand ourselves.
2. The transformative experience of being recognized by another person in a way that awakens something previously unseen within us.
3. What apprenticeship truly asks of us beyond knowledge: integrity, discernment, emotional maturity, and the embodiment of wisdom.
4. The growing tension between authentic teachers who cultivate freedom and modern forms of influence that seek certainty, dependency, and followership.
5. Why openness to outcome may be one of the deepest expressions of love, mentorship, parenting, and human connection.

Light a Candle With Me

A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE

When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show.

You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

In a quiet room lit by candlelight and softened by rain, this episode invites you to settle into the living rhythm of friendship as something more than connection, something closer to a shared becoming. Drawing from moments of reunion, long-held bonds, and a story that didn’t last, the conversation gently explores how the circles of fellowship shape us over time. There is a sense of returning here, to people who have known us across seasons, and also a quiet reckoning with the edges they reveal in us. What does it mean to truly tend a friendship, not just name it? What do we learn when a relationship asks more of us than we can give, or reflects something we are not yet ready to face? Moving between memory, story, and reflection, this episode becomes a space to notice who walks beside you, who has fallen away, and how each connection has quietly shaped your path. It is an invitation to sit with gratitude, to feel the weight and warmth of belonging, and to consider how friendship, when deeply lived, becomes one of the most powerful forces in who we are becoming.

Invitations to Consider:

• The idea that friendship is not just connection but “tending what we tame,” requiring care, presence, and reciprocity
• How friends act as companions of emergence, shaping who we become beyond our family of origin
• The evolving nature of friendship circles, including growth, distance, repair, and renewal
• A deeply personal story illustrating how friendships can expose moral boundaries and identity edges
• The concept of fellowship as shared investment, drawn from both personal reflection and literary influence

Light a Candle With Me

A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE

When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show.

You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

There are moments when a stranger’s story feels like a mirror, quietly revealing something we’ve carried for years without naming. In this episode, Aaron invites us into the layered terrain of family origin stories, where identity, belonging, and inherited narratives begin to take shape long before we have language for them. Through a deeply human encounter and a series of gentle questions, the conversation settles into the quiet realization that much of who we believe ourselves to be may not have been chosen at all. As the night unfolds, listeners are asked to sit with the stories they’ve lived, the roles they’ve carried, and the subtle edges where those inherited patterns begin to soften, shift, or ask for release.

Invitations to Consider:

• A powerful real-life encounter that opens the doorway into reflecting on human resilience and chosen identity
• How family origin stories shape identity, often before we are aware of it
• The role of belonging, attachment, and emotional conditioning in early development
• The hidden influence of family roles, myths, and power structures on adult life
• The possibility of rewriting inherited narratives and choosing new ways of being

Light a Candle With Me

A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE

When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show.

You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

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This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

Email: [email protected]

There are moments when the world feels heavy with brokenness, when problems gather around us and something inside wants to move quickly toward repair. Aaron gently lingers in that space, exploring the quiet pull to become the fixer in every room. With steady presence and thoughtful questioning, he invites us to notice the subtle line between compassionate presence and identity built on being needed. What happens when helping becomes who we are? What tightens inside us when conflict appears, and what softens when we choose to sit with discomfort instead of controlling it? Through reflections on burnout, empathic distress, and relational tension, Aaron opens a path toward deeper self-awareness and spiritual growth. Rather than rejecting service, he encourages a more spacious way of showing up, one rooted in wholeness instead of fear. The conversation settles into a simple but profound question: who are you if you are not fixing?

Invitations to Consider:

• The difference between fixing as control and presence as companionship in service.
• How empathic distress can drive reactive helping behaviors.
• The emotional cost of attaching identity and self-worth to being needed.
• Why sitting with discomfort can deepen relationships and reveal truth.
• The societal consequences of collective “fixing” rooted in fear rather than awareness.

Light a Candle With Me

A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE

When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show.

You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/