Next week I will be teaching Nature as the Foundation of Regenerative Design to the current Design Science Studio. This essay is a part of my own process of organizing my thoughts for this class, and sharing these ideas a bit more broadly, as I feel deeply that every single one of us can be practitioners of Regenerative Design within our own respective domains. I hope that this gives you a little bit more permission, clarity, or energy to explore what that uniquely looks like for you!

Leaves falling and breaking down into soil.Communities repairing after grief and harm.Water moving through land, reshaping it over time.Wounds healing. Forests burning and returning more resilient.Life growing, life dying, death becoming food for the life yet to come.

Regeneration is not something we invented.And it’s not something we can codify.It is a pattern we belong to.

And in remembering our belonging to this pattern—in learning to be students and participants in cycles of regeneration—we can, dare I say we must, transform the way we shape all human activity.

I believe every single one of us has a unique and powerful role to play.

It can be easy, I suppose, to regard regeneration as a trend, a buzzword, a meme. For many people encountering it for the first time, it means nothing really. It can be a bit nebulous, a little hard to grasp and pin down. For others, it’s absolutely everything. A paradigm shift in the way we think that reshapes not only how we see the world, but how we identify our unique place and role within the transformations our world is requiring of us, on every scale.

Somewhere in between those two poles, Regeneration has become a sort of specialized practice—something you learn from the right institution, and then apply through the correct methodology. There is work being done to establish regenerative industry standards in:

* agriculture and food systems

* real estate and the built environment

* tourism and hospitality

* finance and investment

* supply chains and manufacturing

* energy and infrastructure

* urban planning and regional development

* community development

* organizational design and governance

While there are excellent frameworks, institutes, and lineages that support this work (and I am a student-practitioner of several of them), in my personal and professional view, the most important thing to remember is this:

Regeneration is an essential quality of all living systems.

This means it belongs to all of us.

Every single one of us by virtue of being alive already participates in regenerative intelligence. Look at any child with an active relationship with the Living World and you will see the universal wisdom of of Living Systems at play, quite literally. This is all of our birthright. But living in an Industrial Growth Society in the midst of Late Stage Capitalism often requires us to forget this innate wisdom. My job is to help individuals and the living systems they belong to remember this.

Living Systems, At Every Scale

When I say “Living Systems,” I’m curious what comes to mind for you.

In 10+ years of studying and practicing with Living Systems, what this term entails is ever expanding for me. Living Systems is a term that includes:

CellsSoilBodiesFamiliesCommunitiesOrganizationsCulturesGardensForestsSuperorganismsFungal networksBioregionsThis whole incredible planet we call homeGalaxiesCosmos

None of these exist alone.

Each one breathes within a larger body.

Living systems are characterized by their capacity to self-organize, respond to feedback, and adapt within context. They are not static. They are not optimized once and for all. They live through cycles.

Regeneration is a principle of all Living Systems, and as a Living System yourself, anything you design can (and dare I say, should) be designed with regenerative principles at the core.

Regeneration is the Life–Death–Life Cycle

In its simplest possible terms, regeneration is the Life–Death-Life Cycle.

This is where many people get uncomfortable. We are addicted to, conditioned for, endless growth in our culture. We fear death, and see endings as failures.

But death is both the precondition and ultimate destination of life. The good news is that just as death always comes from life, life always comes from death.

And when we see death as the fertile soil for all vital beginnings, something deep shifts. We begin to loosen our grip. We begin to get curious about what is possible if we let things go with dignity:

Structures that no longer serve.Relationships that have run their course.Narratives that once made sense but no longer do.Ways of working that exhaust us more than they nourish.

Regeneration depends on allowing things to die, to fall away, to be decomposed, recomposed, transformed.

To be integrated, to be created anew.

Everything that appears as waste—food scraps, fallen leaves, dead roots, stale norms, old failures—becomes the substrate for new life. Everything is transformed. Everything comes from transformation.

Breakdown is the prerequisite for becoming.

In a moment I’ll get to the most practical, visceral, real-life teacher of this but before I do, I invite you to take a moment with the second stanza of one of my favorite poems by Antonio Machado, Anoche Cuando Dormía (Last Night As I Lay Sleeping):

Anoche cuando dormíasoñé, ¡bendita ilusión!,que una colmena teníadentro de mi corazón;y las doradas abejasiban fabricando en él,con las amarguras viejasblanca cera y dulce miel.

Last night as I was sleeping,I dreamt—marvelous error!—that I had a beehivehere inside my heart.And the golden beeswere making white combsand sweet honeyfrom my old failures.

I am curious, if you read this slowly, and out loud, either in the original Castilian, or in English, what sensations emerge in your body? What arises? What settles? What moves through you as you consider, that in your sleep, that on some dimension, golden bees are making sweet honey from your old failures?

When I sit with them, these lines often bring tears to my eyes, as they are doing now. I feel my heart beating in my chest as I bring to mind the shame I feel at things in my past that didn’t quite work out the way I’d imagined, the way I’d hoped, the way I’d worked for. And in bringing that shame forward, in a loving context, by imagining these chapters of my own life as nectar for transformation, a warmth rises in my chest. I feel tremendous gratitude for the opportunities and people that made those chapters possible. My mind sharpens to the lessons I can integrate into all that I am creating now. I feel excitement for what is coming.

I trust that I can make something even more beautiful, powerful, loving, life-affirming from what I have been required to release in my life.

What about you? I am genuinely curious, please share!

Enter Compost

Compost is one of the greatest teachers of regeneration both materially and metaphorically.

I cook a lot. I cook from whole foods, sourced from as close to home as I can manage. Which means there are always peels and husks and stems and seeds and squishy bits piling up on my cutting board. Some days I fill an entire compost pail before lunchtime. I feel grateful every time I carry it outside (though sometimes my executive function capacity is low and I put it off for a few days and end up with a few vessels I need to walk out with, alas).

I know not everyone lives in conditions where composting is easy or even possible. That, in itself, is part of the lesson compost teaches:

Compost is all about having supportive conditions for effective transformation.

This is regeneration in its purest expression. Breakdown and integration of what has been, in order to create the fertile soil for what life is asking to give life to.

The balance of browns and greens. Air. Moisture. Time. Movement. Stillness. When those conditions are right, what looks like waste breaks down and becomes what it was always capable of becoming: rich soil. Black gold. Food for future life.

Something discarded, transformed not by force, but by a nourishing context.

Take one half of a banana peel and shove it behind a toaster or into the back of a utensil drawer for four weeks. It doesn’t become soil. It becomes putrid. This can happen so slowly that, living in the midst of it, you hardly notice that something is rotten.

When you live inside those conditions long enough, you acclimate to the smell. It can take an outsider, someone with fresh eyes and a fresh nose, to say, “something isn’t right here.”

That’s true far beyond the kitchen.

Families. Organizations. Industries. Cultures. Internal psychological dynamics. There are ways of doing things that only look normal because we’ve been living with them for so long. From the inside, it’s hard to tell what’s rotten, but could be ground for a fertile beginning—if only the conditions were different.

Now take the other half of the same banana peel and place it in a well-tended compost pile. With heat, moisture, and the right mix of materials, in the same four weeks it can become potassium-rich soil.

The peel doesn’t change its nature. The context changes its outcome.

And I do hope you wouldn’t be angry at the banana peel for not fulfilling its potential to become soil when it was never given the supportive conditions in which to transform.

This is a critical shift regenerative design requires us to make: away from obsessing over what’s wrong, and toward understanding what wants to become possible under the right conditions.

This is just as true for people as it is for families as it is for businesses as it is for neighborhoods as it is for communities as it is for municipalities as it is for entire nations as it is for bioregions as it is for this entire planet. This is true at every scale of living systems.

I’ll add something else, in full transparency:

As much as compost teaches me, I definitely don’t do it alone. Yesterday, our friend Max who helps care for our garden and household in really essential ways processed our compost. They texted our whole household to let us know where to put the new scraps, and that we need to reroute the many eggshells we go through each day. That we need to add more browns. Really helpful adjustments to make sure our waste is composting well. And I noticed a flicker of old shame: the part of me that thinks I should have perfect compost all the time, that I should be handling it all myself, expertly. That if I write about compost and teach from it, I should somehow be an entirely self sufficient compost wizard.

Noticing this shame flicker up was so insightful, and honestly makes me laugh. Because it’s all about having supportive conditions, right? And that means help. I don’t feel ashamed of collaboration. Compost itself doesn’t work without community—microbes, fungi, bacteria, heat, time, relationship. Why would our human systems be any different?

That realization was liberating because it mirrors my work with the people and organizations I support. Helping them see what’s ready to break down. What’s ready to become soil. What new potentials are ready to take root. What kind of conditions would allow their unique regenerative capacities to flourish.

None of us do any of this alone. None of us are meant to.

Regeneration isn’t about fixing what’s wrong.It’s about creating the conditions where potential can finally be realized.

Should we Design for Problems or Potentials?

Much of modern design — whether in engineering, policy, product development, or organizational strategy — begins by identifying a problem and working toward a solution. Something isn’t functioning as intended, so we analyze what’s broken, isolate variables, and intervene to fix or optimize the system.

This approach has enormous value, especially in highly technical and bounded contexts. But Living Systems require a different approach. They are not static, predictable, or reducible to isolated parts. When design begins from the premise of “what’s wrong,” it often narrows attention toward elimination and control, rather than relationship and possibility.

Regenerative design represents a dynamic shift in orientation: instead of starting from problem, we begin from potential. We ask:

What unique potential, what unique essence is arising here? What is the system asking to become? What conditions would allow that potential to unfold over time?

This shift from fixing problems to cultivating conditions can be subtle but it is always profound. It changes not only what we design, but how we listen, intervene, and participate in the systems we touch.

Potential Lives in Context

One of the core principles taught in regenerative development and design work is that potential is never found in isolation. It is always found in relationship.

Nothing regenerates alone.

A seed cannot become a forest without soil, water, microbes, climate, and time. A wetland cannot regenerate without the health of the larger watershed it belongs to. A community cannot heal without attention to the broader social, economic, and cultural systems that shape it. A person cannot grow into their potential while embedded in a family that sees them as fundamentally broken.

This is why, in regenerative design, we look for what we call the next proximal whole: the larger system a given project is most immediately nested within.

If I’m regenerating a landscape, I look to the bioregion.If I’m regenerating a neighborhood, I look to the municipality or watershed.If I’m regenerating an organization, I look to the cultural and relational field it lives inside.

And if I’m working with an individual to support the regeneration of their life, I look to the relational field that shapes their everyday. That includes family, partners, friends, colleagues, and the more than human living world that surrounds them every single day.

Regeneration is context work.

And beyond that, it is essence work.

We ask: What is the deeper nature of this system? What is it here to express? What wants to live through it that cannot emerge under current conditions?

Application to Our Lives

All Living Systems are nested.

That means that yes, the regenerative potential is found within the larger context, but it also requires regenerative capacities within ourselves. The wider systems we belong to cannot regenerate beyond the capacity of the people shaping, holding, and participating in them. We hold the patterns.

Throughout our lives, we accumulate unfinished endings, unspoken grief, broken trust, and exhausted structures. When these are ignored, systems stagnate or even grow putrid. When they are acknowledged, processed, metabolized, something else becomes possible.

Families regenerate when fixed stories about one another are allowed to soften, but only when individuals are willing to acknowledge past harm, keep growing, and meet themselves in the present moment honestly.

Organizations regenerate when outdated roles and power dynamics are allowed to dissolve but only when the people inside them can tolerate uncertainty and loss.

Communities regenerate when grief is acknowledged and shared when individuals have the capacity to stay present with discomfort rather than rush to resolution.

Cultures regenerate when denial gives way to honesty. When enough people are willing to let cherished identities and narratives compost and meet the moment with full presence and a heart open to the potential of the Whole.

How we handle endings, what we allow to die, what we refuse to let go of shapes the soil future life depends on.

Design as Participation, Rather than Control

At its deepest level, regenerative design is not about mastery or control. It is about participation.

It requires listening more than asserting.Sensing more than fixing.Creating conditions rather than outcomes.

When we understand ourselves as living systems within living systems, we see that design gets to be less about imposing vision and more about stewarding relationship.

Every human project—every life, idea, organization, or community—requires fertile soil.

And soil is built slowly. Through attention. Through humility. Through willingness to let what is finished become the ground for what comes next.

I’ll leave you with a question I carry often, both in my work and in my life:

What is ready to compost, so its deeper potential can live?

If you feel called to live, work, or develop yourself and your world more regeneratively but feel you could use some supportive context, I warmly welcome you into a process of Regenerative Wayfinding. I’ve been working and collaborating within this field for years and love discovering the unique, authentic contributions that each of us can make toward regenerating the Whole.

I would be honored to support you.

Learn more here.

If the last year taught Seth Kaufmann and I anything, it’s that we can trust and respect the intelligence of the people we are here to work with, to grow with, to shape the world with.

That realization happened because of Substack, because of you all here showing up and engaging meaningfully and beautifully with the ideas we share here. We are so grateful.

And it’s because of that, that I am stepping out with a little more boldness to clearly articulate the philosophy and principles behind our work, and to welcome you to deepen your capacity to steer and shape your life and our shared reality this coming year.

I would love to hear what this video stirs for you, and to have you join us in a steady, dynamic, adaptive year of shaping change through BeginWithin.

To see a bit more about the origins of this philosophy, see my recent essay Rewilding Cybernetics below.

This week has been very healing for me.

I am writing this from the daybed in my office, curled up under a blanket, with the light of dawn coming in green, filtered through the leaves of my garden. My office used to be my bedroom, back when my mother lived on this side of the duplex, when I moved home after college, when my dad moved back to florida from india when he was diagnosed with cancer, when I didn’t know when or how my life would unfold. So much of my life has unfolded here in this room.

Here, I wrote academic papers on the false dichotomy of social narratives of Buddhist women, often categorizing them as either “monastic“ or “lay,“ erasing the tantric traditions of so many magical mystical women who have lived in the wilderness, practicing Dharma with their whole bodies.

Here, I first made love with the man who would become my husband.

Here, I conducted most of the first few years of my intensive study of Living Systems, reading books, checking what I was learning within my own living body, and then walking out into the garden to check it with the living body of the living world.

Here, I slept through the night when my father died, despite extended efforts by my mother and sister to wake me. That night a beloved friend, whose mother was also dying of cancer that summer, dreamt that she and I were sitting on the moon, singing the souls of the departing off to their next journey.

And here I am, now, seven years later, having made this room into my office, a jewel box sanctuary in motherhood, thickly cluttered with the erotic beauty I find in art, and artifacts, and art supplies, and heirlooms, and so many books spilling from their shelves. Here I am, in the morning light I love so much that comes in at a strange angle through the window which I have dangled with bits of chandeliers which make rainbows when the light is just right.

This is now the room from which I speak to clients, the room from which I do my work. And this week, I am working with mothers. I am working with people already leading regenerative development in their field, who didn’t have the language for it. I am working with someone going through a powerful spiritual initiation, and I am so incredibly honored to be walking alongside her. I am working with the community I was raised in, to begin to heal toxic patterns in order that we may have a future, and that that future could be one of thriving.

This week, I have had conversations on birth, and death, and sex, and organizational changemaking, and the lives and karmas our children choose when they incarnate through our bodies.

On Sunday, on my IG stories, I sent out a call for dialogue with people who, like me, fit the criteria below:

Ok friends, I am doing a bit of market research and would love to have a quick text or voice memo exchange with you if:

—You used to feel a strong sexual charge in your teens or twenties, and you miss that version of yourself.

— You’ve been through periods where your desire dipped, for weeks, months, or longer, and it bothered you.

— You want your sexual energy to feel alive again, but something hasn’t clicked yet.If this feels like you, and you’re open to sharing a bit more with me, just reply “me“ here and I’ll DM you a few questions.

At first it was quiet, and then, a flood.

The responses have revealed to me patterns that are so insightful, both to my own experience and to how the curriculum we have created in the EDGE can deeply support so many in coming to an empowered, alive relationship with their sexual energy.

I heard from strangers and friends, old colleagues and people I’ve hardly spoken to since college. Every experience completely unique, delicately nuanced, and yet following patterns I can discern.The people I heard back from included one woman I have felt enormous pain in relation to, the person with whom I unwillingly shared my most intense, painful, heartwrenching relationship with in college. Throughout this week we’ve connected about the intensity of that time, of that partner we both shared, and how concerned we still are for them while holding strong boundaries. It was deeply healing.

I feel incredibly human this week, and also very proud of the human I have become. It has not always been this way.

I feel grounded in myself and my values and my boundaries. It has not always been this way.

I feel confident and respected in the professional value I bring to my work. It has not always been this way.

In the hours after I gave birth, in the waves of pain and oxytocin and exhaustion and hunger and overwhelm, in the massive hormone cascade that was just beginning, and which would usher in my matrescence metamorphosis, I kept thinking one thing over and over and over again:

I would never look at another human being the same, knowing that someone had to go through some version of what I just did to do to bring them into this world.

Of course, like all psychedelic experiences (and childbirth certainly is one), the intensity of the realization gets muted over time. Integration into our daily lives is not a given. But I do believe that I have integrated this potent awareness of the sanctity and holiness of every life, including my own, into my work.

At every level, I am committed to our collective thriving. I am committed to the Living World. I am committed to healing the harm that so many of us are living with, in the survival patterns that live in the tissues and nervous system of our bodies, in the interpersonal patterns we keep playing out, in the organizational patterns that can and must change, of the cultural patterns that keep us trapped.

None of these things are fixed or permanent. Patterns can and do change every day. Some people call themselves pattern disruptors, but a system with momentum does not do well to be disrupted. There can be a lot of collateral damage. It must be regenerated. Regeneration takes into account the whole.

Regeneration is compost. We see what is still here which no longer serves and we compost it to create the fertile soil of better futures.

This is the nature of my life, of my work, and of the beauty I get to anchor in the world, every day, from this small, magical room.

I don’t know how many ministers will tell you what they do, or say, or pray when they are approaching orgasm, but Seth and I are a different kind of clergy and we are down to share it all.

There are two prayers we’ll say, from two different lineages close to our hearts. Two prayers, holding one vision of a healed world.

One prayer is the opening lines of the Sh’ma, a foundational prayer in Judaism which is said daily, in many sacred moments, including when one is facing death. The other is the Vajrayana Buddhist Dedication of Merit, a much longer prayer that we frequently recite as climax is building, a prayer that devotes all of the potent blessings of that present moment toward the liberation of the entire web of life.

Regardless of which prayer spontaneously arises, we both hold the same vision: a world that works for all of life, a future worthy of our children, the liberation and wellbeing of all sentient beings.

Right now, we’re finalizing the materials for the final phase of our course, the EDGE, where we teach many practices which have steadily transformed my entire relationship with sexuality. I specifically am teaching the practice of dedicating the merit of pleasure to the benefit of all beings, visualizing the best possible timeline for all life, and going there, fully, in my mind and body at the moment of climax.

This orgasmic prayer is a living process we will be teaching, for the first time, as Devotional Creation in this sixth and final phase of the EDGE.

It sounds poetic, maybe even abstract, but it’s strikingly simple once you begin practicing. As you approach climax, alone or with a partner, you turn your awareness toward the living world. Toward the beautiful potential of collective planetary regeneration. Toward the sacred. You offer up the vitality, the love, the clarity generated in that moment as a prayer.

You can find or develop your own words for this, but the essence is something like this:

May the power of this moment fuel peace.

May it support liberation.

May it bless others the way it’s blessing me.

May all beings know the beauty, love, fulfillment, and freedom I feel in this moment.

It hasn’t always been like this.

Like many, I know what it is to be shaped by a culture where sexuality was not a source of connection, but a source of control. I know what it is to inherit spiritual values that elevate celibacy while leaving entire generations fumbling in the dark with shame, secrecy, and silence.

The specific site of my youth was very unique, but the effects of religiously enforced sexual norms that I have had to desconstruct in my life are unfortunately not unique to me or my upbringing.

I was raised on an interfaith ashram where celibacy wasn’t just encouraged—it was required. Unless you were trying to conceive, the ideal was to conserve your sexual energy for higher, spiritual pursuits. Brahmacharya is the Hindu practice at the root of this norm within our community. A noble path, rooted in centuries of tradition. And I understand why it exists. I genuinely respect its power.

But when celibacy becomes a communal requirement, not a personal path, it changes shape. It becomes a rule that weakens the power of that individual choice and practice, and it weakens the bonds of families and couples, and it can be wielded as a weapon to carve out who belongs and who doesn’t. And over time, I’ve come to understand this not just as an overreach, but as a hallmark of high-control spiritual and religious environments which lays the ground for further abuse. Not just in the ashram of my childhood, but in many places where sexuality is tightly governed by those in power.

I want to be careful here. When I critique these dynamics, I’m not holding up “mainstream” culture as a healthier alternative to where I was raised. The dominant culture is often equally disconnected from the sacredness of sex—but often it is expressed in different ways. I’m not saying repression is worse than commodification, or vice versa. I’m saying both distort the truth of what this energy is.

For me, it’s been a lifelong unraveling.

There are seasons when my sexuality has felt like a wellspring, gushing forward, vibrant, alive, creative. And there are seasons when I have felt shut down, even repulsed by sex. Both are easy for me to judge and feel shame about.

I have learned to honor both as real and authentic expressions of where I am in that moment, and thankfully, out of more than a decade of swinging between these two poles, I have arrived at a state of dynamic equilibrium, and a more joyful, steady, connected, beautiful sex life than I ever thought I’d have for myself.

When you set out to teach others something that has made a profound difference in your own life, even after years of training to be a teacher of it, and years of refining one’s own pedagogy, you still don’t know if what you teach will actually make a tangible impact on someone’s life until they move through it. This is why, even as we’re still putting the finishing touches on the EDGE, we’ve opened the doors for early adopters and have offered some 1:1 correspondence to all of them, to be sure it’s truly serving them deeply.

Here’s a message we received from someone else who was raised in a high control religious community, a message that has fueled my confidence that this is something that has the effect we intend for it to have:

“I can’t properly express what has arisen and begun to move again in me from this practice. I don’t think I’ve tapped into this place in me for a few years now, it made me remember a time when I moved from my center, my genuine desire, and from a generous life force. This is the beginning of moving from that place within me again.”

When I have been in seasons of sexual dormance, which at times have lasted for up to and even a bit past a year, it’s always an invitation to do some deep inner work. Not because I owe sex to anyone (though in all honesty, these haven’t been the easiest times in my marriage), but I do owe myself a commitment to my own aliveness. I owe it to myself to understand myself and connect with this part of me that I really do love, and that brings me so much joy when it is flowing.

Many of us were conditioned—whether by religion, culture, or trauma—to believe that numbness is safer than fully feeling our desire. That shutting down was more acceptable than being fully alive. In nervous system terms, this can create a chronic pattern of dysregulation.

For me, that’s often looked like hypoarousal, a kind of flatness. Lethargy, emotional dullness, a desire to disappear. Sometimes it shades into depression. But dysregulation doesn’t always look like shutting down. For many, it swings the other way into hyperarousal. That might show up as constant anxiety, edginess, overfunctioning, or even craving intense stimulation just to feel something.

Many of us swing between these poles, and it really takes a toll on our lives.

I’ve come to see these patterns not as personal flaws, but as intelligent adaptations. The nervous system is always trying to protect us. But over time, these states can disconnect us from the very energy (our sexual life force) that makes us feel most alive.

This is what happens when something as natural and necessary as sexuality is stigmatized, controlled, or suppressed: it doesn’t disappear, it distorts. What should be a source of vitality and connection gets pushed to the margins, and over time, the pressure builds. The pendulum swings hard between extremes, leading to damage that ripples through bodies, relationships, and entire cultures.

We are living in a time when the deep, toxic distortions of sexual energy at the highest levels of power are being exposed in ways that are impossible to ignore. The ongoing release of Epstein emails just this week is just one example of how abuse, secrecy, and control have been embedded in the systems that govern us.

At the same time, Christian nationalism is resurging, with its long legacy of seeking to legislate sexuality, enforce purity codes, and punish deviation. And the hypocrisy is staggering. Again and again, we see that the most extreme accusations often reveal the accuser’s own shadow—projection as confession.

Wherever you fall politically, one thing is clear: distorted sexual energy is not a side issue. It’s at the root of so many of our collective ills—abuse, exploitation, disconnection, and the distortion of power.

That’s why, in creating the EDGE, we’ve focused on offering more than just information. Our pedagogy balances education, embodiment, and empowerment to create a path of practice for reclaiming sexual energy as something sacred, sovereign, and life-giving. Through the integration of both neuroscience and Tibetan Tantric wisdom, we guide students through a process of deepening embodiment and relational clarity.

This is not just for personal healing, it’s preparation for culture repair. We believe deeply that when individuals begin to shift their relationship with sexuality, the ripple effects touch the interpersonal, the intergenerational, and the institutional.

The individual work is not the endgame, it’s the starting point, the first step to reclaiming your personal power through direct relationship with your life force, your desire, and your pleasure.

The Ashram I was raised within was and is quite unique in the world. In many ways it was a place of healing of religious trauma for the many LGBTQ+ people who have found their spiritual home there, as the community was incredibly welcoming and affirming of their sacredness. But when you lived there, no matter your orientation, you were expected to be celibate.

Of course, like every celibate community, we’ve learned that there was still plenty of sex happening. Just hidden in shame and secrecy and double standards. What’s repressed doesn’t vanish, it leaks out in other ways. It gets twisted, contorted, and the distortion gets passed down to the next generation.

This is why it’s so important to look at the roots: culturally, spiritually, and somatically. Not to condemn religion or dismiss tradition. Not to shame anyone who find what they are looking for in a path of celibacy. But we must tell the truth about what happens when people are asked to sever themselves from their own desire in order to belong.

In our work, we’re trying to offer a different pattern. One where people can build an honest, empowered relationship with their sexuality rooted in physiological intelligence and spiritual integrity. The nervous system science and mystical traditions don’t contradict each other, they resonate in a dynamic harmony.

Our sexual energy, when it’s not co-opted or suppressed, is the current of life force energy. It connects us to ourselves, to each other, and to the greater field of life. And when we learn how to circulate it, how to direct it toward the world we long for, it becomes fuel for everything else. Our creativity. Our service. Genuine belonging to the family of life.

I don’t think we should always want sex. I don’t think we need to always feel turned on. But I do believe we can live every day connected with our own life force, our own creative birthright, our own devotional passion for the creation of a better world. And I believe, in every cell of my body, that bringing Devotional Creation into our arousal, into our orgasms, can help us to cultivate that world. Devotional Creation is in some ways a practice for the climax of a sexual encounter, but really it’s an opening, a beginning. It’s planting a seed of vision. It’s working with the incredible potency of the most beautiful, earth-shaking experience we can share with ourselves or another to orient and steer toward a better world for all.

When we dedicate the fruits of our blessings to something greater, we shift from scarcity to abundance. And when we bring spiritual practice into our sex lives we join a long, and too often forgotten lineage of ancestors who knew that pleasure and prayer were never meant to be severed from one another.

But the key is that you can’t do it in a way wholly dictated by an authority outside of you. You must find your own visions, integrate your own prayers, innovate your own practices to find what feels the most profound, empowering, and authentic to you.

I believe that pleasure, reclaimed as prayer, is one of many essential steps in the long walk to healing this world.

If this type of reclamation, experimentation, and healing is something you believe you or someone you love would benefit from, please join us at the EDGE. And if you have any questions, please ask them in the comments below!

This isn’t a neatly tied-together essay. It’s more like a constellation, some thoughts I’m in the midst of grappling with, loosely organized, lit by recent experience, and stitched together by instinct more than structure.

These are themes I’ve been living into lately: vision, voice, syntropy, awe. What core ideas underpin the toxic ideologies rotting our culture, and how can we transform that rot into compost, into fertile soil for the future of life?

This one is more stars than soil, but it’s all the same. Syntropic forces shape the spark of life in the fertile darkness. As above, so in the womb.

I’m thinking out loud. Feeling my way through. It’s not tidy.

But I think you can join me in it anyway, and I want to know what meaning you make, if you are so generous as to share. In the audio voiceover I am speaking from a sleepy bed, with my toddler snoring nearby. I added Alpha Wave backing track an it may be soothing to listen to, if not my most polished.

Yesterday was a very stormy rainy day, and the power went out around four pm.

It’s interesting how the absence of light shifts things.

I’d had the instinct of making dinner early, in fact I’d prepared it for my lunch, so we finished eating (and thankfully began running a bath) moments before the power went out.

The sky was glowing a sort of muted golden yellow, and that color bathed the front rooms of our house in a strange light.

We all immediately got the message: rest.

So a candlelight bath for our toddler and some texts to neighbors and the utility company later, Seth and I passed shifts of napping and being with our child between us.

So, time and rest patterns being altered by the darkness and absence of wifi, we are now a bit disoriented in time, and I am wide awake at 2:46am.

And it is perfectly appropriate as I spent all day writing and thinking about stars, and vision, and voice. It seems fitting that I should be present with them tonight, even if they are heavily shrouded by the clouds here.

I am thinking and writing about stars so much because they are the final of four teachers of the Living World we are connecting with in the Reality Reorientation Experiment, and I am preparing the material that will be released on Saturday.

Why stars? At first glance, this is the only one of the four teachers (Stones, Trees, Waters, Stars) that is experienced on Earth, but not located here. But please, look down at your own hands.

The carbon in your cells, the calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, all were birthed in a star’s ecstatic becoming, long before our sun, our local star, even existed.

So yes: stars are here, too. Within and all around us.

So many indigenous teachings tell us that the stars are our ancestors, and I have come to understand this is not metaphor, it’s the wisdom of deep time, the insight that arises from a cosmology aware that we live within a Living World.

As I’ve learned more about the subcultures brewing online that are behind a lot of the political violence we’re seeing, I’ve come to understand that a lot of the worst things happening right now are happening because scared, sad men and boys are convinced that entropy is all there is, that the inevitable fate we are all hurtling toward is chaos and heat-death. So the belief is that they must accelerate it or use the chaos to consolidate as much power as possible to secure their control and safety.

Of course, each of these strategies undermines the quality of life of many other people, and makes no one more safe, and it emerges from a tragically incomplete understanding of reality.

Some of the more disturbing ideologies gaining traction today—particularly in online reactionary spaces—treat entropy not only as inevitable, but as the truth behind all things. Curtis Yarvin, also known as Mencius Moldbug, is one of the leading figures in the so-called “Dark Enlightenment.” His worldview asserts that democracy has failed, that modern institutions are beyond repair, and that what’s needed is a hyper-centralized, authoritarian order—perhaps a tech-enabled monarchy—to restore control.

It’s a worldview of collapse as destiny. Of power-over as the only remaining tool. Of entropy not just accepted, but enthroned and managed by a rarified elite who abhor empathy.

This is entropy as ideology. A framework that sees disintegration as the natural end of all things, and thus places no faith in the human capacity to regenerate, to repair, to cohere.

It’s a vision of the world stripped of relationship, reciprocity, or possibility. It says: let it all fall apart, and let the strong survive.

This is a worldview dangerously ignorant of the reality of syntropy.

Syntropy refers to the tendency toward organization, coherence, and life—an orientation toward increasing complexity, cooperation, and beauty. It is not entropy’s enemy, but it’s dancing partner, the inhale to the exhale, the gravitational pull that brings together space dust to make new stars.

Here’s an essay I wrote about it because I felt frustrated that barely anyone I knew, knew this word, and I wanted to change that:

You don’t need to know the word to know the phenomenon.

Syntropy is present in every ingredient of every meal we eat, and indeed the meal itself. It is the living process of life coming together. It happens in the creation of spiral arm galaxies like our own, and the soil beneath our feet and the visions we bring to life.

Human activity is profoundly syntropic, most all of the time. Even when faced with devastating experiences of entropy: fires raging through a city, collapsing climate conditions, patterns of distrust and poralization, even so, so many of us choose to come together, to feed one another, to shelter, to organize, to love.

This is real, and this is possible, and this is happening everywhere.

Perhaps we can see it best in the dark, when syntropic visions and the will to move toward them are more vitally important than ever.

Movements that embody syntropic principles include regenerative development, mutual aid networks, restorative justice practices, sociocracy, and bioregional organizing. These aren’t utopian fantasies, they’re dynamic ways of being with one another, and with the wider Living World that can be easily adapted to your life, your place, your community.

They are grounded, emergent responses to collapse, and they are pathways to profound connection, joy, and healing.

And vision, I believe, is essential to human syntropy.

Vision is what begins our reorientation from fragmentation and collapse toward regeneration and mutual thriving.

Syntropy is not a passive process. One could argue that entropy is what results from passivity, and that is why people see it as the tragic fate we are all hurdling toward. But while we are living, we act, we engage, we create. We cannot help it.

The only people utterly passive are the ones for whom everything is done. It’s no accident that groypers and other entropy accellerationists are most often characterized as grown men living in their mothers’ basements, never needing to take meaningful creative action to truly care for themselves or those they love. This is a byproduct of a culture of hyper-convenience, a male loneliness epidemic, a total failure of our culture to nurture authentic potential and emotional capacity in our boys and young men, and a patriarchal sense of entitlement that leaves these lives profoundly empty when they should be full of love and meaning and connection.

Syntropy, on the other hand, arises through our active choice to bring things together. To weave. To remember. To reconnect what has been separated by fear or force. This is not just philosophical; it is practical. It requires our thoughts (our visions), our words (our voices), and our actions to align in order to shape change.

And syntropic living is available to all of us, each of us, every day.

Syntropy is a choice.

We must use our will and our energy to shape reality, and there is nothing more dignifying or beautiful than bringing a syntropic vision to life. A syntropic vision shows us what is possible when we stop waiting for harmony to arrive and begin participating in its creation.

Vision can be anything, and in fact, I invite you to look around. Look outside your window. With few exceptions, pretty much everything you see exists because someone had the vision to create it. Our objects, materials, social systems and norms, even most plants you encounter, someone had an idea, a vision, and they experimented until it took form.

So, knowing you have this incredible force, this incredible potential within you, what do you envision?

When we give ourselves permission to imagine a life-affirming future (not just for ourselves, but for all of life), the vision reveals to us who we are in relation to that future. Our unique longings, values, potentials, our particular way of loving the world.

I’ve felt this most powerfully through motherhood. Through giving birth and raising a child, I’ve come to know in my bones that life does not enter this world to destroy. No baby arrives wanting to exploit, extract, dominate. We are born with the capacity—and I believe, the call—to create life-affirming realities. We are living. We are meant to participate in life.

But we’re born into systems that confuse and constrict us. Systems that reward disconnection. That incentivize narcissism and sociopathy. That make it easier to dominate than to cooperate, easier to accumulate than to share. And so we forget. We begin to think that harm is just human nature. That oppression is inevitable. That our job is to survive in a system that profits from our disconnection, rather than to shape change toward the way we know, deep in our hearts, that the world can truly be.

That’s why vision matters so much. When we dare to imagine what a different world could feel like—what it might mean to live in harmony, in reciprocity, in co-creation—we begin to remember ourselves. We begin to locate our authenticity not in reaction to the system, but in relationship to the world we want to help birth.

So what helps us make this shift from entropy-focused resignation, burnout, and management to a vibrant, inspired, syntropic, creative way of life?

One essential element is awe.

Scientists studying awe have found that when people spend time looking at stars, waterfalls, or great trees, something profound happens in the nervous system. The brain’s default mode, generally looping in self-focus and worry quiets down.

Stress hormones decrease.

Empathy increases.

People report feeling both smaller and more connected — what psychologists call the “small self” experience, which paradoxically expands our compassion and creativity.

Awe is the body’s way of remembering scale, reminding us that we are part of something vast, ancient, and ongoing.

These are the states from which we are best able to connect with our authentic visions for life affirming futures.

Please don’t take my word for it, please go see for yourself. Take yourself outside some night this week and gaze at the night sky. The moon is bright and full right now, and many of you may live in cities or areas with light pollution, so if you can’t see many stars, you can still see the moon, and maybe some of our local planets.

If the night sky doesn’t do it for you, go to an ocean, a mountaintop, meet a newborn baby, watch a dang sunset, take time to appreciate the people you love. There are infinite gateways to awe and they all can help us connect with our capacity for vision.

Whatever you do, genuinely spend some time practicing presence, relaxing your body, opening up to the moment. Allow this moment to connect you with your ancestors, and therefore with the future, as deep time capacity is omnidirectional.

And from that place, invite your imagination to play.

Imagine best-case scenario futures, ones in which we’ve learned the hard and essential lessons of the times we are currently living through.

Futures in which we have agreed that all life truly is sacred, and have worked together to right the wrongs that had pit us against one another for so long.

Futures in which we remember our place in the family of life, and commit to supporting all forms of life to thrive.

Futures in which poverty and incarceration and hunger are distant memories.

Futures in which children are safe and know themselves deeply in relation to community and wilderness and their own dreams for the world.

Futures in which we’ve transitioned fully to restabilize the earth’s systems, and redesigned our cultures and built environments and technologies to support the whole system’s thriving.

When your brain is operating from its default mode (which it likely is now), you might find these ideas ridiculous, impossible, absurd. You may be scoffing or rolling your eyes now. That’s fine.

But you should still make time for awe, and in that awe, please revisit this question. Please see what elements of life affirming futures show up as essential and important to you.

There’s something for you there, in the visions that will come.

Some clue about what your unique contribution and gifts are.

Over the years, I’ve facilitated visioning sessions that have resulted in such beautiful, powerful visions and inspired big changes, pivots, repair, and growth steps. I’ve seen people connect dots of all the different things they’ve loved and longed for and worked on laying the groundwork for what they can uniquely do to serve life affirming futures.

And lately I’m deeply aware of how lost and disoriented so many of us are feeling as we feel the world hurtle toward a lot of worst case scenarios.

But the story is still unfolding, and we are co-authoring it.

When we commit to living into our vision, we find the world conspires to support us, and we may be surprised by the blessings that flow. A vision of deeper care, reciprocity, belonging, and collective healing brings those things about. You learn to live your vision, and the world responds in kind.

A big part of my own vision is to be in deep relationship with people I share strong mutual resonance. I am blessed that this describes all the work I do.

I’ve been quietly opening space in my calendar to offer more 1:1 support to those seeking grounded, clear eyed, open hearted reflection and/or strategic support.

A few nights ago, another rainy night, I stepped through Seth’s office doors, outside onto the driveway, barely dressed, and pulled him out after me. I was beaming with joy, present to the wonder and sweetness of one moment of far deeper awareness of sharing the blessings of place and time with stone (in the asphalt under my feet) and trees (the giant oaks surrounding my house, through whose branches thicker drops of water fell) and water (the rain falling, the rain puddling at my bare feet on the warm asphalt) and the stars (again made invisible by the clouds but present by virtue of darkness anyway).

All of these teachers, and so many more, coming together in that one moment, giving me such a jolt of aliveness, and from there, energy, will, and clarity.

And they’re always there. Syntropic forces are always here, all around us, inviting us to live into our relationship with all of life.

When we’re present and paying attention, we can see the small miracles in the everyday, even where others see things falling apart. We are, if we choose, to fall together, and to find ourselves again and again in a mysterious future of our own making.

May we continue to be able to delight and surprise ourselves as we stumble, and find rest, and create wonder, through the night.

Today is an eclipse.

The next two weeks mark what astrologers and skywatchers call an eclipse season, a window of time between a lunar and solar eclipse. It often turns out to be a quietly transformational stretch in many people’s lives, sometimes noticed only in retrospect.

Today is also the 14th day of the month of Elul, a beautiful and powerful month in the Hebrew calendar of preparation for the High Holy Days which begin just after this eclipse season closes.

On September 20th, we are beginning an experiment in relationship with deep time and deep ecology that will last four weeks and bring forth a lot of deep shifts for myself and anyone who joins us (click through if you’re curious, but there will be more on that later).

All of this has me thinking about transformational time.

Everyone has a different relationship with time.

Some people see it in blocks and lists. Some feel it rushing past. Others experience it more like fog, or tide, or pressure.

I’ve been learning more lately about how time works for me—how my particular neurodivergence shapes my perception of it, how my sense of “now” and “not now” affects everything from housework to how I prepare for travel, how I move through the world.

The way each of us experiences time tells us something about what time really is. Not a machine. Not a neutral container. But something alive. Relational. Shaped by context, nervous system, memory, ecosystem, lineage.

We’re shaped by time, yes, and we shape it in return.

There are many ways to connect with time as a transformational force. Some are given to us by the cosmos. Some are passed down through culture. Some we choose, intentionally, with others, as a path of learning or reorientation.

Today I want to speak about three such forms of time:

* Celestial time—the eclipse season we’re entering now.

* Cultural-sacred time—the High Holy Days of the Hebrew calendar, and the current month of Elul.

* Chosen time—the kind we create on purpose, like a spiritual practice, or a shared container for transformation.

These three forms of time are converging right now for me, and perhaps for many of you as well. And if we meet them with presence, they can reshape us. Help us reshape what comes next.

We begin with celestial time.

Eclipses have always held a particular kind of charge for me. Not in the astrological sense, though there are insights there, but more in the felt somatic experience of what they bring. They arrive like pressure systems—subtle at first, then unmistakable. Often disorienting. Sometimes exhausting. Always intense.

I got engaged on an eclipse. I’ve also often found myself literally breaking things, nearly always drawing blood on eclipse days. When I’ve ignored what my body needed and pushed through high-stakes experiences like creative directing a photo shoot, leading a ceremony, or giving a major talk, I’ve often paid for it afterward with days of rest and recovery. My system demands recalibration after trying to do too much in a time that asks for quiet presence.

This particular eclipse season begins today, September 7th, and ends with the solar eclipse in Virgo on September 21. I invite you to mark it by not only the astronomical alignments, but your personal and collective thresholds. Eclipses often reveal what was hidden, amplify what has been ignored, and accelerate change that’s already underway. Doors open. Doors close. Life’s curveballs remind us that there are larger forces that don’t follow our logic or our schedules. They ask us to pay attention.

In my own body, I’ve learned to stop trying to push through eclipse portals. I rest more. I simplify. I listen to what’s surfacing not just in my own field, but in the collective. For many of us, this may be a time of deep review, of shedding, of stepping into a more aligned way of being. There’s a bigger invitation asking for us to show up to life in a more authentic, present way.

Pictured above, an eclipse day nine years ago which called for stitches. Today, right now I have an ace bandage on the same exact wrist. I allow the injury to be a teacher, and am grateful I seem to only ever injure my right, non dominant hand on days like today. Pictured below, the painting of an eclipse I did after I came home from the clinic with my stitches, having realized it was an eclipse day (I wasn’t aware before). Writing this, and going back into these archives I’m realizing this was the last time we went through a cycle of Virgo-Pisces axis eclipses.

Celestial time reminds us that transformation doesn’t always come from striving. Sometimes it comes from tuning in to what is already happening.

We exist within the larger cycles and patterns of our solar system. That’s not woo, it’s a geospatial, gravitational, and biological reality. The earth spins, the sun sets and our bodies respond. The moon shifts and our tides follow.

You don’t have to believe in astrology to notice that you are part of something vast and rhythmic. But I do encourage people to learn the archetypes—the cosmological stories of the planets and lights that our ancestors mapped and named. Just notice what resonates. Notice how those patterns might reflect dimensions of your own experience.

Celestial time isn’t something out there. It’s something we’re already inside of. The invitation is just to listen a little more closely.

Next, we turn to cultural-sacred time.

In Judaism, the primary spiritual technology is the calendar. Not as an abstract framework, but as a relationship with time that is spiralic and rooted in the land, in memory, and in transformation. This time of year—Elul through the High Holy Days—is especially powerful.

The month of Elul is a time of preparation and reflection, a month where our dreams speak to us and we prepare for the most intense period of soul work in the year. Elul softens us, attunes us, calls us inward. And it leads into Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and the Ten Days of Awe that follow. A liminal time when the gates are open, when we are invited to remember who we are and consider with great awareness, who we are becoming.

The tradition teaches that during this window, our names are written in the Book of Life or the Book of Death in the year to come. In these ten days, it is understood that our actions, our prayers, our atonement, our generosity, our return to center, all of these can change our fate. These can shape the year to come.

This living ritual where millions of people around the world are living out ancient rituals in ways that are always, somehow both timeless and unique to the moment, the place, and the family or community in which they are unfolding, is a truly amazing thing to participate in. Yes, I cry sometimes when I sing this silly song with my husband and son and remember how connected and held we are in such a beautiful tradition.

Holy days are a sacred structure for transformation. If you are connected with a cultural invitation to slow down, get present within a larger community or context, take full account of our lives, and begin again, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Finally, we come to chosen time.

There are kinds of time that we intentionally create or step into. Retreats, journeys, deep practice containers. Sometimes these are guided by a teacher or held by a community. Sometimes they’re self-initiated. But they are always marked by intention.

We cross a threshold and say: I will move differently through these days. I will listen more closely. I will open to transformation.

Reality Reorientation Experiment: Living in Time is just such a container. Four weeks of simple, powerful invitations to slow down, to attune to the place you live, to reconnect with deep time and the living world. Rather than another thing to consume, it’s an invitation to remember our wholeness within the web of life, and repattern how we live.

And it begins soon.

I’ve been working on it for more than a month actually, but I wasn’t sure when I would offer it, just that it would be free, and the time would be right. A few days ago when I realized the timing of the eclipse that will close this season (September 21), and the day that Rosh Hashanah begins (September 22), it clicked that this will be something that will carry many of us into the new life we are able to choose and cultivate through these transformational times.

So Reality Reorientation begins on September 20th. Whether you’re observing the Chagim, feeling big changes in your life with the unfolding of the eclipses, or are feeling the call for transforming your relationship with time, place, ecology, self, or world, this is here to support you.

Each week we will connect gently with one of the great teachers of the Living World: Stones, Trees, Waters, and Stars. Each week there will be a brief lesson, an embodied meditation, and some prompts to help integrate the insights that organically arise from within you when you make time to connect with yourself and with life, into your life.

You can find more information here. There is no cost to join, and we encourage people to participate alongside loved ones: friends, lovers, family. Growing alongside one another nurtures intimacy, shared reality, affinity, and overall integrity. So feel welcome to invite your friends in to this process!

This morning, my son picked up the book that’s been sitting on my nightstand—Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman—and called it the "clock book." It’s a collection of imagined worlds where time moves differently in each one, framed as the dreams Einstein might have had while working on the theory of relativity.

I’ve always loved reading this book aloud, and I’m thinking of doing just that—hosting a little live storytime. Reading a passage and exploring what it might teach us about time, imagination, and the living world.

Would that interest you?

Let me know. I’d love to explore this with you.

And before we close: a reminder. Opportunities for transformational time are not limited to eclipse seasons or holy days or special containers offered by people on the internet. They are always here. Always available.

Every month in the Hebrew calendar holds deep teachings. Every moment astrologically is alive with motion and meaning. And every ordinary day offers us moments to listen, to share, to realign with what matters.

Whether or not you join us for this next round of the Experiment, know this: time is not something that happens to you. You are already inside it. You are already in relationship with it. And it’s listening and being shaped by you.

What kind of relationship with time do you want to have?

The incredible response of resonance to my recent essay Villaging, Not Homesteading: We're Not Doing This Alone has made it clear: many of us long for a world of deeper interconnectedness and interdependence. We dream of shared resources, mutual care, and a sense of belonging that extends beyond the walls of our own homes. And yet, for so many of us, the simple act of stepping outside, walking over to a neighbor’s house, and knocking on the door feels nearly impossible.

The tension between wanting community and feeling unsure of how to create it is real. We hold back, unsure of whether our presence would be welcome. We hesitate, fearing awkwardness or rejection or differences between us that we cannot overcome. Perhaps we fear that something we’ll learn about a neighbor will make us feel even more alone or unsafe. So we stay indoors. We seek likeminded people on the internet. We talk about the need for third spaces and we dream of the world we want to live in. But we too often feel too frozen to do what lies before us to bring that world into form.

I say we, because this is me. I crave connection but am deeply accustomed to solitude. I generally prefer it. This is why The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye resonates so deeply with me:

When they say, "Don't I know you?" say no.

When they invite you to the party,remember what parties are likebefore answering.

Someone telling you in a loud voicethey once wrote a poem.

Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.

Then reply.

If they say we should get together,say why?

It’s not that you don’t love them anymore.You’re trying to remember somethingtoo important to forget.

Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.Tell them you have a new project.

It will never be finished.

This poem evokes the way I feel much of the time, and I know I am not alone in this. When I host meetings of the emerging neighborhood village co-op, one of the first things most of us say about ourselves is that we are introverted, that we are hermits. “I could spend weeks on end with a fridge full of groceries and a book and netflix and not see another soul and I wouldn’t mind,“ is a verbatim quote from our last meeting this past weekend. Many of us nodded in self-recognition. There’s almost a need to disclaim it, as if to explain why this kind of gathering is an anomaly for us. And yet, they show up. We show up.

Something in us longs for this—not the noisy, performative kind of socializing, but a quieter, more intentional way of being together. A way of being seen and known without being overwhelmed.

James Crews’ poem Neighbors speaks to another way of being that exists alongside Nye’s, a way of being that is what so many of us long for:

Where I’m from, people still waveto each other, and if someone doesn’t,you might say of her, She wouldn’twave at you to save her life—

but you try anyway, give her a smile.This is just one of the many wayswe take care of one another, say: I see you,I feel you, I know you are real. I wave

to Rick who picks up litter while walkinghis black labs, Olive and Basil—hauling donut boxes, cigarette packsand countless beer cans out of the brush

beside the road. And I say helloto Christy, who leaves almond croissantsin our mailbox and mason jars of fresh-pressed apple cider on our side porch.

I stop to check in on my mother-in-law—more like a second mother—who buys ustoothpaste when it’s on sale, and callsif an unfamiliar car is parked at our house.

We are going to have to return to thisway of life, this giving without expectation,this loving without conditions. We needto stand eye to eye again, and keep asking—

no matter how busy—How are you,how’s your wife, how’s your knee?, makingthis talk we insist on calling small,though kindness is what keeps us alive.

The tension between these two poems speaks to the truth of where I live. It captures why I think it’s so important to take the first step, but not expect ourselves to do everything.

As I read these poems I sense that they’re pointing to the same thing, even if they seem at odds: they’re pointing to an attunement to awareness of the deeper tissues of the living world.

You’re trying to remember somethingtoo important to forget.

Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.Tell them you have a new project.

It will never be finished.

I see myself so completely in these lines. And for me, villaging is the remembrance of something too important to forget. And it is trees that we are tending and planting in our neighborhood. This deeper way of living is a new project. It will never be finished.

This is the essence of villaging: no one has to be the one who organizes the whole community. No one has to see it all the way through. But what we do have to do is show up, say hello, and be willing to connect.

What I have found is that by hosting a few initial gatherings and sharing a vision, the skills, gifts, passions, and connections of everyone involved begin to flow. The system begins to flow. People are introducing people to other neighbors, connecting the dots, and weaving the web of connection. There’s a lot of that going on that I don’t know about.

People are having conversations with one another that I don’t have to be a part of. Just yesterday I was thinking of what on earth to do with the dozens of squash plants that have spontaneously germinated from my compost recently. We don’t have the space or the sun for them. I googled some things and started imagining some of our neighbors who get way more sun than me building trellises, tunnels, all kinds of things where squash can grow. With the volume of little seedlings emerging right now, we could definitely have more than enough for the whole neighborhood for years if we distribute them and care for them just enough. I felt inspired and a little overwhelmed at this idea, and so I stepped outside to visit the little squash babies. Lo and behold, two of our neighbors who are the resident food-growing specialists here were just coming from a consultation with another neighbor a block over who is eager to do exactly that. The squash babes will find their home very soon.

People are collaborating and developing ideas for things they will create together, and I don’t need to be involved—but I will benefit because I live here. The genius of different people is coming forward in astonishing ways. We are all being pleasantly surprised, again and again, by the hidden talents and skills among us, and I don’t believe that any of us feel our solitude is being infringed upon, just enhanced.

The Gopher Tortoise

If you’re around me often enough, in person or online, eventually you’ll hear me talking about gopher tortoises. They’re big, beautiful keystone species that are critical in my home ecosystem here in the scrubland of Florida. They move slowly, live long lives, and dig deep burrows in the sandy soil, which provide shelter for more than 420 other species.

The way they provide habitat for so many other species is just by existing. Just by digging their own burrows. Just by living their lives, in their ecosystem, they benefit countless others, including all of us humans who live here, who depend on biodiversity in ways we will never fully understand.

Though gopher tortoises are primarily solitary, their burrows are often clustered near one another. Some tortoises visit particular burrows repeatedly, forming patterns of quiet companionship, especially the females who might go and visit one friend more often than others, even if others live closer to them. This reminds me of what’s happening among many of the women in my neighborhood. We each cherish our solitude, our self-sustaining little worlds, but more and more, we find ourselves wandering over to each other’s spaces, knocking on doors, going for walks, sharing tea.

Like the tortoises, we are creating a network—not through forced togetherness, but through gentle, chosen proximity. And as we make our homes and gardens more hospitable and fruitful for one another, we are also making them more welcoming to the broader web of life. What we build for ourselves inevitably becomes a refuge for others.

Not all solitude is isolation. Not all community is constantly social. The balance lives in the in-between.

I’d love to hear from you– how do you hold this tension? Where do you lie on the spectrum? What do you long for, and what feels like the next doable step for you to make it real? How can you begin where you are?

We are all living in a degenerative culture. Today, waking up to the prospect of another Trump administration is, frankly, degenerating my will, my being, and my function right now. I want to be honest about that. I began writing this last week, and am returning to it now as an exercise in regenerating my will, being, and function in devotion to all that I love in this world.

This culture degenerates both ecological integrity and human dignity in countless ways every day. This is the water we’re all swimming in, so we’re all wet. We belong to this culture. It is a system we are embedded within. There is no opting out. There is no sitting on the sidelines. There is only the degree of agency and consciousness with which we participate in transforming it from within.

I won’t go into the ways that this culture degenerates our water systems, our soil systems, our air quality, and the biodiversity that both depends upon and upholds the remaining integrity of all of those systems. I won’t go into that because I want to talk about us. I want to talk about you, and I want to talk about me. I want to talk about what we can do, who we can be, to be agents of regeneration from the inside out.

What I do want to focus on is the ways that our culture degenerates our self-trust, and therefore our trust in one another, and therefore our trust in our ability to effect meaningful transformation in our world. This is a much longer conversation that my writing will continue to explore.

Dignity, Belonging, and Unconditional Love

There are two core needs that I am always attuned to in my toddler, and in myself, and in the people I work with: dignity and belonging.

If we look at ourselves and one another throughout the course of a day or a lifetime, we can attribute most of our actions and choices to pursuing one or both of those core needs, dignity and belonging.

Early on in childhood, most of us get the message that there are things that are wrong with us, and we must adapt in order to secure our sense of belonging. From that moment onward, there is an internal struggle as we develop into ourselves, a struggle in which we are continuously hitting the gas and the breaks on our authentic desires, our authentic self-expression, our authentic interests.

We sacrifice our authenticity in order to secure a superficial sense of dignity and belonging, and therefore we sacrifice the potential for true dignity and true belonging.

This continues until and unless we are fortunate enough to find ourselves in a field of unconditional love, which can feel rare to those who are unfamiliar with it, but which is profoundly abundant where it has taken root.

There is much that I have to say about unconditional love, and to be frank in this moment, it’s something I am struggling with today. But I do believe that unconditional love creates the most supportive conditions for true regeneration to emerge, and is worth investigating and cultivating. Even, and perhaps most especially, when it’s hard.When I am within a field of unconditional love, I feel my own dignity and belonging deeply, and those I come in contact with rise into their own dignity, and settle into a deep sense of their own belonging as well. We would do well to nurture this as much as we are able.

Reclaiming Self-Trust

Regenerative living involves regenerating the self-trust that has degraded in our messy journeys toward finding dignity and belonging.

When we talk about regeneration, we’re talking about more than personal change. Regenerative living is about adding value to the larger systems we are part of. To do this, we need to see those systems–as well as our place within them–as whole and capable of evolution and healing. We need to identify our place within them not from a place of ego or control but from a place of essence—an understanding of our unique life’s contribution.

The way I approach this begins with a process of remembrance—a deep dive into who we are, where we come from, and the experiences that have shaped us. Remembrance leads us to reconnect with parts of ourselves that we’ve neglected or hidden away. The seeds of our regenerative potential are found in these parts—in childhood passions we set aside, in stories we inherited but never claimed, in moments of wonder we didn’t fully understand.

It is easy for those of us who have a deep drive to contribute to collective healing to put all of the focus on the systems outside of us that need changing. It’s particularly easy when looking backward on our past, our childhoods, our early conditioning (and often early trauma) is painful. But it is only from deep self-discovery and a willingness to recognize our true, unique place that we can begin to really know our true service within the world.

What parts of my story might hold seeds of potential for a regenerative life?

What forgotten or neglected pieces of myself are ready to be rediscovered and nurtured?

Regeneration and the Life-Death-Life Cycle

Regeneration is unfolding in all systems, all the time: internal, cultural, ecological, communal, cosmological. In simplest terms, regeneration is the cycle of life, death, and rebirth—the life-death-life cycle. In nature, nothing regenerates without decomposition. This means we must ask ourselves: What is ready to be decomposed here? 

In our culture, there are countless beliefs, systems, and practices ready for decomposition. But true decomposition is different from destructive, violent erasure. It’s not about burning everything down but creating the conditions for healthy decay—conditions that honor the value of what is passing while nourishing what is to come.

This is an approach that is explored with depth in the field of Integral Theory, where we practice “transcend and include“ rather than “transcend and abandon.“ This core distinction makes a world of difference, and helps us to examine the relics of our own past and the past of the collective with more curiosity, compassion, and creativity.

How might I compost old patterns within my life and within the larger world in a way that honors their contributions while making space for new growth?

Contributions to the Larger Wholes

For something to be regenerative, it must be value-adding to the larger wholes to which it belongs. Regenerative living is not just about personal growth but about contributing to the ecosystems—human, ecological, cultural—that we are part of. We need to see ourselves as integral parts of these systems, capable of both drawing from and contributing to their health and evolution.

This is why regeneration calls for understanding our essence, our unique contribution. It’s not about mimicking someone else’s path but finding our own ecosystem service—the niche where we can thrive and help others thrive. There’s no checklist. And to do that, we must bring all of who we are. The experiences we thought were too disconnected or unimportant may hold the key to our most impactful work.

What gifts or perspectives have I overlooked within myself that might add value to the systems I belong to?

How can I shift from viewing myself in isolation to seeing myself as part of an interconnected, evolving whole?

An Invitation to Regenerate

Regenerative living is about embracing our potential, discovering our essence, and living in a way that adds to the world around us. It requires the process of death and decay of old patterns, old systems, old ways of being. It’s about trusting that, no matter where we’ve come from—even if it’s from the very heart of the “degenerative machine”—we have something essential to contribute. It’s about working with all that we have been to create the fertile soil for new life to emerge.

There is so much more I’d like to say about this, but to be frank my energy is very subdued right now as I move through many layers of feeling in response to this election result. But I know, deep in my bones, that this work is now more essential than ever. The future needs all of us, and we need to be coming from our true essence, our true gifts, a deep place of authentic self-trust.

So, I invite you to live the questions, to find your place within this complex, beautiful, often chaotic, interconnected system. To remember who you are, compost what no longer serves, and allow your unique gifts to regenerate the world around you. If you would like personal support with your own journey of regenerative development, please feel welcome to reach out to me, or book a consultation with me here.

Let’s move into the future together, as our whole selves.

I’m writing this from bed, watching the patterns of sunlight filtered through the leaves outside my window. The way it dances across my headboard, the gentle shift of shadows. It’s only this way for a short time of the year, and I got to know it intimately in the tender weeks after giving birth to my son two years ago.

There’s something about those early postpartum days that opens you up to the rawness of life. I remember lying in bed, cradling new life in my arms, feeling overwhelming waves of wonder and vulnerability. I was suddenly aware of the intricate, fragile beauty of the living world in a way I hadn’t been before. Bringing life into the world deepened my awareness of my place within all that is so much larger than myself. It was from that place that I felt called to create this substack and return to the creative work of giving voice to the life that moves through me– something I’d honestly neglected in the high pressures of the consulting, strategic advising, creative production, and leadership training work I was eyeballs deep in in the two years leading up to the birth of my son.

The tender, unknowable vulnerability of motherhood called me back to my creative expression as a lifeline of remembrance of who I truly am, and I am so grateful to those of you who have come to join me in my exploration of the living wisdom of the living world over the last two years. I’m even more grateful to those who have expressed their resonance with financial support. Those few paid subscriptions each have gone farther than the dollar amount ever could; they’ve affirmed that my work connected to deep relationship with The Living World is valuable, which has helped me regenerate my own self-concept to recommit to the work I have known for a decade is mine to do, supporting the leaders healing the earth in the subtle dimensions of shaping change. That work is taking off in ways I could have hardly imagined even months ago, and it’s all in service to the integrity of this biosphere we call home, and the integrity of we humans as living, agentive, powerful lifeforms whose power and place within the living world, we are urgently called to remember.

And here I am again, feeling that same light, that same connection—a reminder that we are not separate from the living world. We are contributors, participants in its continual process of creation, growth, and regeneration. Becoming a parent was one of the most powerful reminders of that truth for me: I was in a contributing relationship with the life of the world, part of the web and the family of this earth in a new way, a way that required greater presence, maturity, and willingness to feel.

This reflection, this sense of interconnectedness, is at the heart of what I’ve been wanting to explore here; the meaning behind this title. When I speak about the living world, it’s an active choice to move away from the language of “nature.” The idea of nature often creates a false sense of separation. Nature is out there, a realm separate from us which we must visit and protect and fight for, but it isn’t us. The living world on the other hand, is everything—the air we breathe, the light that filters through the trees, the children we bring into the world, and even the technologies we create. All of it is part of an intricate, interconnected system, and nothing in the human experience is separate from it.

Welcome to The Living World, where we explore the living wisdom of the living world and seek to understand our place within it. I am your host, Ganga Devi Braun, and I work as a developmental partner and advisor to the leaders, visionaries, and nurturer’s shaping regenerative futures. To learn more about me and my work, please visit gangadevibraun.com.

Early this morning, I saw a note from Guy James that elegantly summarizes something that’s always on my mind: “You’re constantly, and mostly unconsciously, proving your myth of the world to yourself.”

This simple idea cuts to the core of what we’re going to explore here. The way we see ourselves in relation to the world—our self-concept—is not only shaping our individual lives but is also deeply influencing how we interact with everything around us. Whether we realize it or not, we’re continually reinforcing whatever dominant (often unconscious) worldview we’re operating from. Our worldviews become self-fulfilling prophecies. It’s essential we choose them mindfully, with hearts and eyes open to the world we long for for ourselves and all of life to come.

Ecosomatic Cybernetics

Recently with Gray Area, a San Francisco based based antidisciplinary cultural incubator, I’ve been delving into the histories of cybernetic countercultures, studying its evolution from Norbert Wiener who coined the term from the greek word to steer, to seeing how industry, history, and culture diverged into multiple branches of this discipline, including machine cognition and intelligence, but also including the study of Gaian cognition and intelligence.

What many people who study cybernetics in tech don’t know is that the animal body’s system, particularly the nervous system, was present at the roots of the earliest stages of cybernetic inquiry.

This was most famously developed within Psycho-Cybernetics, a book which has changed the course of the world. In Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz showed us how our self-concept determines the course of our lives. This book, written in 1960, is at the root of most self-development work, the human potential movement, and so many forms of leadership, manifestation, and self-help that have emerged from there.

Maltz’s work emphasized that our internal image of ourselves—the stories we hold about who we are—shape our actions, our limitations, and our potential. Th potentials that are unlocked with this work are profound, but the limitations of are becoming more and more obvious; the limitations of solely focusing on the power of your mind to affect change in your life.

My husband Seth Kaufmann has been experimenting on an expansion of this framework through methods he calls Psycho Somatic Cybernetics—which explores how our bodies carry and shape our beliefs, influencing the way we live and move in the world. The body remembers, the body stores, and the body participates in creating reality. This more embodied approach, integrates what scientific studies and the larger community of somatic practitioners are continuously discovering: the role of trauma in limiting what we believe is possible for ourselves, and the role of pleasure in expanding it.

On the trauma side, this includes inherited traumas, collective traumas, and often very subtle traumas that we may not even take seriously within ourselves, but which, when resolved, free us from the patterns of self-sabotage that we as individuals, as families, and as a collective humanity have been stuck in for far too long.

On the pleasure side, this includes sensual and sexual pleasure, the pleasure of good conversation, the pleasure of intellectual stimulation, the pleasure of time spent in nature and within community, the pleasure of intergenerational relationships, the pleasure of ritual, the pleasure of meaningful accomplishments, the pleasure of rest.

Just this morning Seth published his Sunday Substack exploring this idea in the context of grounded expansion.

In my experience of motherhood meeting my return to the deeper regenerative work that moves through me, there’s a piece I’ve been longing to express that is ecosystemic in nature. Last night I began thinking of framing it as Eco Somatic Cybernetics, which we are seeing as a larger whole that can and must contain the nested frameworks of Psycho Somatic Cybernetics and Psycho Cybernetics and the Cybernetics of mainstream computational development in the machines that we, living humans, have created and which now belong to the living world.

The essence of what is emerging with Eco Somatic Cybernetics is remembrance that we belong to the living family of the living world. And when we shift our self-concept to remember that, the potential of our lives and what we can accomplish from a place of embodiment, love, deep listening, and profound care is immense.

Just as the work Seth is bringing forward with Psycho Somatic Cybernetics helps us understand the feedback loops between our mind and body, Eco Somatic Cybernetics invites us to see how those loops extend beyond the individual—into the ecosystems and living networks we belong to.

Becoming a parent awakened this understanding for me in a visceral way. Holding new life in my arms, I could feel my place in the ongoing dance of creation, the way my body and actions were part of a larger system of care and continuity. The light coming through the window, the trees outside, the child in my arms—we are all part of the same process.

Healing Ourselves, Healing the Living World

It’s no coincidence that so many of our physical, personal, and societal struggles stem from disconnection—from ourselves, from one another, and from the living world. And it’s no coincidence that restoring connection is key to healing, whether we’re looking at poisoned soil that heals through mycoremediation, or injury in the body that heals through the many ways we can restore connection to the body.

Fascia is essential for the body’s coherence—it’s an interstitial network that keeps everything functioning as a whole. Fascia connects and coordinates within our bodies, allowing communication between muscles and organs, we are connected to and constantly in conversation with the living world. Similarly, mycelium in forests forms an underground web that connects all plants and all decaying matter, facilitating the transfer of nutrients, information, and energy, ensuring that the entire ecosystem thrives together.

Both fascia and mycelium remind us of the importance of interconnectedness. They show us that nothing functions in isolation—not our bodies, and not the ecosystems we live in.

But here’s the critical piece: the way we conceptualize ourselves in relation to these networks determines how we interact with them. If we hold a worldview where we see ourselves as separate from the living world, we disconnect from these essential networks. Our choices and actions, whether conscious or unconscious, reinforce that disconnection. And just like a body with damaged fascia or a forest without a healthy mycelial network, we begin to see breakdowns—dis-ease, imbalance, and fragmentation.

On the other hand, when we shift our self-concept to remember that we are an integral part of the living world, everything changes. Just as fascia allows for the body to move as a coherent whole, our sense of belonging to the earth allows us to act in ways that regenerate and restore the interstitial connections between ourselves and the living systems we depend on. We move from disconnection to participation.

The mental models we hold—whether we view ourselves as connected or separate—create profound feedback loops. These feedback loops are cybernetic by nature, constantly shaping and reshaping our actions, which then ripple out into the ecosystems around us. When we embrace a self-concept rooted in interconnectedness, our actions begin to heal and restore the webs of life that sustain us. We no longer see nature as something “other,” but as a family of life that we are actively contributing to.

Just as fascia can regenerate and repair itself through movement and care, and just as mycelium can re-knit the forest after disruption, we too can regenerate our connection to the living world. By continuously attending to our self-concept, we can begin to participate in this ongoing process of creation and regeneration—both within ourselves and within the larger ecosystems of the earth.

Motherhood taught me this in a way I couldn’t have anticipated. In nurturing new life, I was not just caring for my child—I was participating in a larger movement of life itself. And that’s what each of us is called to do, whether we’re parents or not: to recognize that in healing ourselves, in tending to our bodies and our hearts, we are also tending to the living world. And that when we remember ourselves as belonging to the living world, our bodies, hearts, minds, and relationships begin to naturally heal as well.

When we live from this place, we are no longer just individuals seeking self-actualization. We are agents of change within the larger systems of the earth, participating in its healing and growth.

Listening to the Living World

So how do we live this truth? How do we move from seeing ourselves as separate to experiencing ourselves as integral to the living world? It starts with simple practices of reconnection.

One of these practices is what my friend Dajé Alōh, The Story Doula, teaches as a Listening Walk. It’s a way to move through the world with attention, listening not just with our ears but with our whole selves. As we walk, we notice the light filtering through the trees, the way the earth feels under our feet, the sounds of birds and wind. We allow ourselves to be present, to listen for the messages that the living world is constantly offering.

Another practice is to sit with the land. Whether it’s by a tree, a river, or a simple patch of grass, we can sit and let ourselves sink into the natural rhythms around us. These moments remind us that we are part of a longer, ongoing story of life, one that stretches back long before us and will continue long after us.

And finally, we can start to pay attention to the natural cycles that pulse through the living world—the phases of the moon, the changing of the seasons, the cycles of growth and decay, and how these cycles show up within our own bodies. When we align ourselves with these rhythms, we begin to see that our personal healing is inseparable from the healing of the world.

At the core of Eco Somatic Cybernetics is the simple remembrance: we are the living world. Our bodies, our actions, our choices are all part of a larger system of life. When we remember this, we stop seeing ourselves as isolated individuals and begin to understand that every action we take ripples out into the ecosystems around us.

Whether we are nurturing new life as parents or simply walking through the forest, we are participating in the continual process of creation, healing, and regeneration. The living world is not separate from us. We are its agents, its participants, and its caretakers. And when we live from this understanding, we participate in our collective healing—one moment, one breath, one action at a time.

I am a child of the most biodiverse estuary in North America. Named for the Ais people, who lived interdependently with this river and lagoon ecosystem, Indian River County is nested within a bioregion for which hurricanes are a part of the pattern of life. The Ais people lived with these storms, and there is so much we don’t know about how they anticipated, adapted to, and moved through these powerful storms that mark the end of the season of heat.

Indian River County is the heart of the Treasure Coast, named for the gold and jewels that the Spanish Crown stole from the indigenous peoples of South America. It was all reclaimed by the sea in 1622 when a hurricane sunk a fleet of ships holding what would have been in today’s accounting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen treasure. Even now, after big storms, beachcombers can find galleons and jewels in the sand. Hurricanes are, in every sense, a force of redistribution. They redistribute heat, water, attention, gold, nutrients, awareness, gratitude. 

Growing up in this place, I’ve learned that hurricanes are more than just destructive forces; they are teachers, ceremonies that demand our attention, our presence, and our humility. They teach us about the delicate equilibrium the Earth seeks, and they remind us of the vital importance of community and interdependence. Hurricanes have shaped my understanding of the land and my place within it. Over time, these storms have come to symbolize much more: the necessity of bioregional resilience, the power of communal care, and the opportunity for regeneration after destruction.

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One of the most profound lessons hurricanes have taught me is how easily we are geared to fixate on entropy—what is broken, what is threatening, what feels unstable. But when faced with a hurricane, I become so aware of what is whole, what is still standing strong. I become keenly attuned to syntropy, the counterforce to entropy, which brings things together, which enables life, which makes our wholeness possible. In the anticipation of destruction, there is an opportunity to pay attention to what is still intact: solid land, the standing trees, the unbroken homes, the blessings of community, and the forces that are still alive, holding us together.

The Land as Teacher

The wisdom of this land teaches me every day. It has shaped my entire life, both personally and professionally in my work of shaping regenerative futures alongside brilliant people and remarkable organizations creating positive, life affirming change every day. When I teach about Buckminster Fuller’s concept of trim tabs—the idea that one small, well-placed action or agent can create immense change—I can’t help but mention the gopher tortoise every time. This small creature, native to our area, plays a crucial role in the ecosystem, digging burrows that offer shelter to hundreds of other species. When I speak about the resilience and growth patterns and power of trees, it’s not an abstraction; I’m speaking of the oak trees around my home, those strong, flexible protectors that buffer us from the wind. They are some the greatest teachers of the living systems dynamics I’ve been studying and teaching for nearly a decade.

This land, this incredibly diverse bioregion, constantly teaches me about dynamic equilibrium. Hurricanes, though often seen as destructive forces, actually play a key role in maintaining the regenerative flow of life. They redistribute heat, moving it from the equator toward the poles, helping to regulate the planet’s temperature. This Earth, in its wisdom, is always dynamically changing, seeking equilibrium. Hurricanes are part of that living process. Humanity must be too.

And while it’s easy to see the devastation hurricanes bring, they also redistribute nutrients, clear space for new growth, and remind us to pay attention to the ever present forces of life that are so much bigger than us. Amid the fallen branches and floodwaters, there are always trees still standing, land that remains whole, and the strong roots that hold steady. In these moments, I am reminded that life is not only about what has fallen apart but what remains and grows stronger.

Hurricanes as Ceremony

Every time a hurricane approaches, it brings with it a ceremony. 

Like all ceremonies, hurricanes transform us. They require preparation, surrender, and radical presence.

I learned about ceremony from my parents, who were the head ceremonialists at the Ashram I was raised on. They led rituals throughout the year, including Durga Puja / Navaratri, which is a powerful 9 nights of honoring the Goddess in many forms, a ceremonial time that always overlaps with the heat of hurricane season. They taught me that ceremonies require deep preparation and our full presence. During the storm, we must show up for every moment: sometimes in action, sometimes in stillness, sometimes in connection, and sometimes in solitude. The lessons we learn during these times are ones that we carry forward, long after the storm has passed.

Hurricane Milton has taught me lessons of responsibility, leaning into the new experience of navigating the choices that a hurricane presents us with, now as parents of a toddler. The physical preparations are straightforward: we move potential projectiles, put up shutters, ensure we have enough water, prepare food, and charge our devices. We check on neighbors and prepare for the potential loss of power—sometimes for weeks.

But the mental and emotional preparations are just as important. I often remove social media from my phone to stay focused and grounded. It’s a time for discernment—being incredibly careful about the information we take in, tuning out the fear-mongering, and attuning to what is real. I pay attention to the data from NHC NOAA, and I also attune to the signs in nature, the wildlife, and my own instincts. I listen to the wisdom of my body, the signals of my nervous system, and the voices of those who are in it with me. There is a fine balance between understanding what we know intellectually and what we feel on a deeper, intuitive level.

And here, again, hurricanes remind me of the power of paying attention to what is intact: the strength of my home, the resilience of my family, the community that holds together in the face of uncertainty. It’s easy to fixate on what might go wrong, but hurricanes teach me to stay present to what is still holding, what is still working, what is syntropic.

And hurricanes, like any ceremony, are about not only the dissolution they bring but the potential they reveal. In the aftermath of a storm, when everything feels shaken, community comes together more than at any other time. It is truly a powerful, beautiful thing. I am reminded to look at what is still standing, what continues to support life, and what roots us in place. There is always something strong to anchor to if we pay attention.

Community and Interdependence

No one can survive or recover from a hurricane in isolation. Whether the storm leaves behind devastation or passes with little damage, it is always a reminder of our need for one another.

I remember the sense of togetherness that came after the hurricanes of 2004. In the wake of four major storms in rapid succession, our community came together in ways I had never experienced before. We shared meals, resources, and care. FEMA support was essential and as a middle schooler I ate MREs for weeks alongside friends and neighbors, and though the devastation was real, the bonds and strength of the community is what I remember most.

Years later, during Hurricane Matthew as a young adult I found myself throwing on galoshes the morning after and riding my bike around our community, checking on neighbors and friends, and serving as a messenger and a good neighbor. It was an honor to be part of that web of connection. Hurricanes demand that we put aside our differences—be they political, religious, or economic—and face the storm together. They remind us that we are all on this same ground, praying for safety, for rootedness, for the well-being of our homes and each other.

And again, while it’s easy to focus on the chaos, hurricanes remind us of the power of community—the people who remain, who show up for each other, who rebuild together. The integrity of community, much like the integrity of the land, is something to celebrate even amidst the storm.

Birth Story

Perhaps the most transformative hurricane I’ve experienced was Hurricane Ian, which arrived just days after we moved to my hometown, and two weeks before I was due to give birth. It became an undeniable part of my birth story.

At a time when most people expect mothers to rest and nest, I found myself out in the mounting winds, nine months pregnant, moving projectiles and putting up shutters. My family urged me to stop, but I stood firm, finding tremendous energy and repeating to myself and anyone who would listen, “I am strong. I have to be strong for what I’m about to go through.” The storm felt like an initiation into my strength as a mother. It was a powerful reminder that when life requires it, we often discover new reserves of power within ourselves.

And as Ian passed, I was again reminded that while some things break, other things hold. We lost electricity for 6 days, and on the 7th day, right in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, during the Days of Awe, the power returned, and I gave birth the next day. This transformative, liminal time is one in which we can change our fates through prayer and generosity and atonement. This year, Hurricane Milton came through during this same window of transformative time, and now on the eve of Yom Kippur, I feel deeply how this storm has shifted my own life.

Regeneration & the Life-Death-Life Cycle

Hurricanes bring devastation, loss, and death. They remind us that life is fragile and impermanent. Yet in the aftermath of destruction, there is always the opportunity for regeneration. Just as hurricanes redistribute heat for the planet, they offer us the chance to shift stagnant energy, redistribute our own energy and resources, and to connect more deeply with the land and with each other.

In the face of devastation, we can choose to become jaded and shut down, or we can open our hearts. We can offer support, receive it in turn, and commit to living in a way that supports life, equilibrium, and the well-being of our communities. Hurricanes invite us into a consciousness shift—a chance to realign with the Earth and each other.

They teach us to focus not on what has been lost, but on what is still here, still holding, still offering life.

Hurricanes remind us of our radical interdependence. They teach us that we are all in this together, interdependent within our bioregions, and responsible for the common ground which gives us life. Whether or not you have experienced a hurricane, the lessons they offer are universal: stay connected, stay present, and work toward a world that supports life in all its forms. It’s an invitation to live with greater consciousness, to recognize our role in supporting the equilibrium of the planet, and to move toward a regenerative culture in every aspect of our lives.