When you buy a home in California, you have to sign off on knowledge that your home is built on a liquefaction zone if that’s the case. Liquefaction is defined as “the process of making something liquid”. Meaning that in the event of an earthquake, the land beneath your home could turn to mush, causing everything you’ve built on it to collapse and float away.

It seems I had built my life on a liquefaction zone. All of the earthquakes through the years have served to clear my life’s structure of down to its foundations. These are foundations that no woman or man made. Foundations that aren’t religious in nature either. My life has being cleared down to the elemental nature of nature. To the foundation that is the earth, and the air that I breathe, the water that I drink and the fire that is my spirit, my life force.

It’s a couple of weeks away from my birthday. Another decade around the sun almost complete. By this country’s standards, by my family’s standards, by the standards of my friends and colleagues, I haven’t collected much in terms of the outward displays of success for someone this many decades in. But for the first time in my life I’m beginning to see success in exponential terms relative to this path I’ve followed. I feel more abundantly wealthy than ever.

I did climb society’s mountain of success. Only to see and experience that that mountain is built on a liquefaction zone as well. The business and its trappings were turned to liquid and floated away.

I’ve had to release and release and release and begin to come to know life from this elemental perspective. Until I did that, I didn’t really have anywhere to build from.

We are all called to different levels of reconstruction based upon how resistant we are to letting go of the structures that don’t serve. These are the initiations of life. We can hold onto that lifesaver that we think will keep us from drowning, but only until the tsunami knocks us over the head causing us to release it. We can let it go and trust in our ability to float, to be held, or we can have it ripped from us. Our choice.

Somehow I’ve been graced with a fairly easy path. My challenges have been more emotional than physical this time around. And while I’ve gone under repeatedly in the undertow, I’ve always managed to resurface. Usually sputtering, but never ultimately drowning.

And, actually, I have been graced with an abundance of travel and “things“ as well as physical health.

So I am here now, in this elemental return - a return to the essence. Truly coming to know what sustains me. I am now being shown a life that is truly beyond my wildest dreams. There has been such grace.

As I round the bend of the last days of this decade, I’m so incredibly grateful for all of the peaks and valleys. The valleys have truly taught me the most. And when we stay on this roller coaster, we come around to the highest heights again and again. It’s the thrill, and the challenge of the ride.

It is a ride. It is a game. A game that we choose to play at a very high-level. A game that we may not even recognize we are playing until the closing bell has rung. I am grateful for this. All of this. Walking through the fears. Feeling everything and rising over and over. This is been such an incredible gift.

Thank you for being a witness and a mirror.