Embracing Mystical Life: Part Two

Following Session 8: Embracing Mystical Life: Part Two

May 12, 2026 — June 9, 2026

Synthesis Statement

This session came as a bit of relief. The previous session left some unresolved tension for me as our homework was to explore what facilitates our journey away from Spirit. While I found a certain sense of peace in a natural expansion and exploration away from, that left a certain void, or responsibility on us to remember where we came from, intimately enough that we can hold it in a way as to preserve its value. And in truth, memories are fragile. They are easy to distort, to alter, even to fabricate. So, the practice and homework of Part One left a certain vulnerability, an openness to loss. Maybe that is part of the Witness, Grieve, Pray, Act that we have learned about. 

But, enter Part Two, and we discussed a longing to return to the soul’s journey. “In the end, people tire of everything except heart’s desiring Soul’s Journey”. I don’t know whose quote that is, it was in our packet for this session, but I do find that true in my own life. I find less and less of the mundane existentially interesting. Sure, I can dive in for play, for fun, momentarily. But I know this or that will not quench the depth of my hunger. 

Embracing Mystical Life: Part Two taught that the soul awakening back to the journey of return is an act of grace. Spirit calls us and we can choose to respond or not. There are four ways to remember this engagement with Soul & Spirit:

• Way of Remembrance - remembering we come from (and somehow forgot) our source. Then we can begin to return. 

• Way of Descent - In order to return, our ego must diminish/get out of our way, which is frightening for the ego thus it resists. 

• Way of Community - Community is richly supportive as it is in the presence of others, and working with and for others that we start putting others before ourselves. This is a way past ego, and an act of self-negation. It is also an act of accountability. Living for community helps keep a bigger picture, a bigger orientation in mind. 

• Way of Oneness - Along the way, we eventually discover our path of walking towards a path of Spirit becomes walking with Spirit. Through that connection, we recognize that we are part of that living oneness. 

We were given practices across each of these ‘Ways’ to deepen our engagement and understanding, to enrich our practices, and ultimately, to help us further be able to stand as space, allowing what is divine to work in and through us, and to enter the world. 

Report on Practice

I have been wrestling with the intersection of two insights we have encountered in this program:

On the one hand, we have: Trust in God, but tie your camel - an old Islamic/Sufi proverb teaching a healthy balance between faith and human responsibility. When I think of this, I think about doing what is in my control, my circle of influence, in order to help increase the likelihood of my desired outcome. I prefer for my camel to be here when I get back, thus, it’s better that I tie it to the post. 

On the other hand, in the Way of Descent, a plea we are offered to recite as a way to move ourselves closer to Spirit, and a mantra we discussed earlier in the program: I do not ask to see; I do not ask to know; I ask only to be used. This is a way of allowing our ego to get out of our way, and to align ourselves with the will of God/Spirit/Creator. 

I am somewhat comfortable holding either of these independently. I struggle to hold them together. No, I don’t need to know 100% that the camel is going to be there when I get back. But I need to reasonably have some sense that it will, or that I will want that camel later to decide to tie it up in the first place. 

For years, I have somewhat struggled with my vocation. I have always wanted to give the majority of my time to work that helps humanity and/or the planet (I do believe these are interlinked so helping one helps the other). The company I founded decades ago, Our Olive Branch, has that name for exactly that purpose - a peace offering to the world. Of course, in starting my career, in starting my professional life, I needed to be sure my camel was tied to the post, so I was somewhat agnostic about what clients I served. I turned down some companies that I felt had a negative impact on the world, but others that seemed neutrally participating in commercial society, I onboarded. I thought may have been able to help people within those organizations in meaningful ways. And I have. But that still left me feeling like I wanted more. I wanted to help in more directly impactful ways. 

Eventually, I decided to get more involved in public service. The pull had been with me for years, though I had never found the right opening. It so happened that after my daughter died, and after there were some political changes at the national level that I found distressing, I was looking for more meaning in my life and also felt the need to engage politically rather than sit at home being upset about what I was seeing. Not long thereafter, a seat on our City Council was vacated. Several people encouraged me to apply. It was a thorough interview process and there were a total of six applicants. In the end, I won the appointment. Later that year, I was elected to remain on our City Council for a full term. This work proved to be qualitatively more aligned with what felt like what I wanted from my vocation. I don’t know if that is the nature of the council work - the way that sort of work container operates, or, on the other hand, the type of clients I have had, or the type of work I have done for those clients, in the past. 

All that said, I have been thinking and meditating this period about the Way of Community, and how working with and for community helps support “self-negation”, accountability, and for me, working for the greater good. So, I then cannot help but wonder, do I lean more deeply into finding public sector work - not only as a vocation but also as a spiritual practice? Would a larger scale diminish my connection or expand it? If I were to onboard more clients with this more community-centered/mission-driven focus, would that be enough to satisfy my craving? My hunger to return to Spirit? To walk with Spirit as part of my vocation? 

While I wrestle with the idea of an office with greater impact, larger influence, and if I would be able to serve as well there as I do in my City, and if I would find it as satisfying, as soul nurturing, etc, I also have found another opportunity before me. A different path. One that is a bit more quiet. One that allows me to work more directly with individuals and help them gain their spiritual footing in a world of chaos. To grow as people, as leaders, and help bring forth a better future. This is a very different container than public office, but is also deeply in service of the whole. And, I am also called to write. I am inspired to sit, as I am now, and put words on ‘paper’. This too nurtures me, and I occasionally get powerful feedback that it nurtures others as well. 

Each of these ‘vocations’ are different, and some of them are potentially mutually exclusive. This creates the tension. I can resonate with all of them. I feel in some way like I should know down which path to walk. All of these, to me, somewhat call for a “need to see”; a “need to know”. Again, I know things may work out differently than I may think, but I feel like I “need to know” which direction to walk in order to tie my camel. And not needing to see, and not needing to know, and asking only to be used, feels a little like I have to take my camel everywhere I go, all the time; and that is a bit of a burden. I am still discovering how to hold all of the above, together.

My deeper sense, whether I like it or not, is that at this moment, now, in the present, there really is not a decision to make. My ego yearns for the resolution, the ‘need to see/know’ because it will feel better, more in control. But that is all projection and fantasy. Today, I have the practice that I have. I can deepen it in the ways that are available to me today. I can contemplate and explore other elected or public service work that may be available, but I don’t have any specific doors to walk through at this moment anyway. So I can relax back into this moment and allow what will come as I continue to walk my path. As I stand as space. 

The truth is, the future holds an infinite field of possibilities, as I think Deepak Chopra once called it. My job is to be present in this moment, and allow myself to be open to what is my highest and best use. 

Connecting With Nature

Part of our homework was to spend time in nature. Touch the Earth, and allow ourselves to be touched by the Earth. This sounds pretty basic. Yet, for some reason I struggled here. I did go out and sit in our yard a few times. I took my shoes off and tried to ground myself better. I wanted to work in the yard but somewhat found myself short-circuiting. Sort of like a gardening version of writer's block. I would get outside, not know what to do with myself, and just sort of be stuck. 

Part of my issue is my wife changed the face of our yard last year. She planted many new plants in different places. Now I don’t know when I am looking at a plant that needs care or a weed that should be pulled. I don’t know where there is space to plant something new, or if there are other bulbs underground already soon to emerge, or maybe intentionally empty. My wife does not love when I ask a bunch of questions or ask for directions about what to do, as she does not like to delegate, so the yard has somewhat become entry level prohibitive for me to engage with. 

My other issue is my vestibular issues. It is easy to set off my symptoms. Lots of bending, lifting, carrying, etc. can set off my system in a way that requires hours of recovery time. So that inhibits my engagement as well. So, I have to find ways to keep the interaction within a safe vestibular zone, not ask my wife for directions, and know what is doable. It just seems to be a lot to figure out when I just want some simple, natural interaction. Even in the yard, life has gotten so complicated lately. 

Reminders of the Power of Nature

All of that said, I had a call with a friend where we talked about connection with the divine, or a lack thereof. We talked about whether that descriptor is God, Spirit, the Divine, Nature, Love, Creation, Source. We talked about how Buddhism does not even care if you have a god to pray to. It is more about maintaining the right orientation of being present, which will give you what you need (which some will argue is that connection with God). Buddhism does not feel the need to name it - that is beside the point. I mentioned Steve Hagen's book, Buddhism Plain and Simple, as a way into that orientation.

I also shared a bit about Internal Family Systems as a way to drop internal conflict, and how a monk, Genpo Roshi, used a similar practice for a guided meditation to lead people to 'Big Mind'. By walking through different parts of the self, the damaged self, the controller, the seeker, the ego can get out of the way and we can connect to and experience Big Mind, the awareness that is larger than ego, and often can be felt with no boundary.

Then I recalled that she had mentioned loving being in her garden. I asked if she ever sees or resonates with the majesty, the grace, behind the plants, the flowers, the trees. She said yes. I suggested that when she goes out there, she could start by appreciating that, and then try to realize that she is made of the same energy, from the same creative force as all of that. Then she could try to let the boundary she feels at the ends of her body dissipate. Let herself be one with the garden. Be Big Mind in her garden. This is a practice I have done before, when looking out across a valley, at wondrous trees and taking in nature. 

That conversation helped me realize something about my own experience. I often felt those kinds of connections when I was out in nature. They seemed more likely to spontaneously arise when I was in a place surrounded by natural beauty. I can recall pretty clearly when I was reading books on mindfulness, for example, that I would often look up from the page and feel as one with the world around me. Totally present with the nature surrounding me. But I had that experience more frequently when reading outside on my back deck in my yard than in my office. Same book, different space. That was a really interesting realization to me for a few reasons. I don't have answers to these questions, but the realization gave rise to these, which do point in certain directions.

• Why did I experience these connections more often in nature than not in nature? 

• Was this program pointing at spending time with the Earth and nature for the same reason that I tended to experience that connection in that way?

• Is it our common bond with all of nature and the ground of creation that allows us to slip into harmony with nature more easily when we are together with nature rather than in a space that is separated from it?

• If our society did move to put connection with nature as a primary value, how would that reshape our collective experience? 

Recalling & Collecting Threads of Divine Love

I also spent time gathering private memories of grace, synchronicity, awe, and connection - “threads of Divine Love” that have appeared throughout my life. I won’t list them all here, but the practice itself was meaningful. It reminded me that the return to Spirit is not only future-facing. It also involves remembering that Spirit has been present all along.

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Embracing Mystical Life: Part One

Following Session 7: Embracing Mystical Life: Part One

April 14, 2026 — May 12, 2026

Synthesis Statement

This session explored what it means to remember ourselves as souls, and how modern life gradually conditions us to forget. We reflected on the ways indigenous cultures often lived closer to Spirit, and how contemporary life pulls us toward distraction, productivity, and separation from Being.

We looked at history, myths, and parables to better understand how we can be connected to a more Spirit-led existence and what that might look like. The Rainmaker from another country remembering what it was like to be in balance, the grail seeker who had to remember that the grail serves the Grail King, and how we might reconnect with that. 

We were even called to write a poem about how modern culture helps us forget that we are souls and sets us on a journey away from Spirit. Five minutes. Go:  

More. Better. Faster.
Play with your phone.
Dopamine hit.
Information overload. 
Learn more. Be better. 
Optimize. 
Output means success. Not connectedness. 
Connectedness is only immaterially valuable. 
Do more today, so you can be better off tomorrow. 

Finally, my favorite line from the day: Don’t just do something, sit there.

Report on Practice

Rooting in Balance

One of the stories we were to feel our way into this period was one of balance. The parable was that an area was suffering droughts. Crops were dying, people were going hungry. They called a rainmaker from a distant land to come and help. The rainmaker met with villagers, felt the spirit of the community, the energy of the place, and knew what he had to do. He went and sat on the cliffside, on his own for days. Eventually, the rains returned, the place was healed. The village elders asked what he did. He said, well, I come from a place that is in balance. This place was not. I just had to remember for this place what it feels like to be in balance. 

One of our homework assignments this period is to spend time daily rooting ourselves in that ‘other country’. I love this metaphor for several reasons. The first two that stood out for me: 1) In somatic healing, one of the practices I learned about is that the body can hold trauma. While we may hurt initially from an acute injury, we may hurt later from a stored trauma. But when we are feeling that trauma manifest, say in one’s right leg, we can try to feel our left leg and how it feels healthy, and we can work to bring that healthy feeling back to our right leg. I have experienced this working on a number of occasions in my knees, my legs, and my back. So that lived experience makes it not entirely foreign that we could do something similar with rooting our Being overall in a balanced, healthy state, and that the more time we spend in that, the more natural it becomes, the more that state becomes our baseline. Very smart practice. 

However, my limitation with this practice, as I suspect others will experience, is that I feel I have a bit of a blindspot on what that holistic healthy balanced self actually feels like. I do remember moments where I felt totally at peace, totally in the moment. I just need to work on recalling them more fully. Re-rooting myself there. 

So I go back. What moments did I feel the most directly connected? I think in part this is why I liked mountain biking, as it was such an intense activity that if you did not hold your focus, especially on technical trails, you were likely to wreck. There were times when listening to music I was able to completely become absorbed into the moment and feel one with what was happening. I recall practicing a ‘Big Mind’ meditation, a sort of Internal Family Systems style dialog with various parts of yourself and eventually getting to ‘Big Mind’ where you are able to prompt yourself to drop your ego and become one with all there is. 

All of those moved me into the kind of consciousness this practice seems to be inviting. But none of them persisted beyond the activity, and I think that is a key insight. The goal should be to find a way to access this rootedness such that you can bring it with you always. There was a time, a summer when I did a deeper dive into reading books on mindfulness, where while reading I would slip into a very present and mindful state. I would be sitting outside reading in the shade and look up from the book, and be totally quiet in my mind. Totally present. Birds could come and go, deer could walk by, bees pollinating on the flowers, an occasional breeze passing through the trees or the wind chimes, all of which could happen, all of which I could witness, and none of which took me out of that ever-present awareness state. 

In that state I further realized the connectedness of all things. I realized just as the blank space around color in a work of art helped show that color, how the silence before a note helped give that note life, so too the space between me and an object was as sacred as the object itself. For how could that object be if it were not for the space before it. 

And so as the time passed over the course of this practice period, as much as I could remember, I tried to put myself back in that state. I tried to remember the silence, the stillness, and the profundity of connection I had in that moment, that I know is available to me now, and in any moment. I only need to allow myself to remember. 

Combination Lock Metaphor 

When I was young, I recall looking down the barrel of a bike combination lock - the kind of lock that is integrated to the end of a cable, and as you turn all the numbers to the right combination, it allows the key, integrated to the other end of the cable, to slide into the lock. When the numbers are wrong, you can see how they block the frictionless entry of the key. 

As I aged, I came to view this as a sort of metaphor for life. Once you got the variables into the right position - your health routine, your diet, your relationships, your income channels, your hobbies, etc. - your life would somehow just flow. I struggled for years, perhaps even decades to get the variables into the right position. Life has a knack for knocking things out of place. You get in a rhythm with exercise and get injured, or sick, or perhaps something goes awry in another category, so then you have to go try to fix that. 

The ‘rooting in another country’ or ‘rooting in balance’ ideal really helped me shatter that combination lock ideal. Chasing that perfect combination was really a fool’s errand. There is no way to get to and maintain the combination perfectly. Life is too messy. But, the rootedness in Spirit, that perfect centeredness is available to all of us, always. We just have to remember to go there. We have to practice being there. And we have to get good at bringing it with us wherever we go. 

Thinking vs. Reacting

Michael Pollan wrote a new book, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, and is on his PR tour. I recently watched a conversation between him and Ezra Klein where they discussed relevant topics. One of the comments Pollan made was about how social media is not facilitating our own original thinking (in most cases). It’s our reacting to others’ content. This helped me see why it was wasteful to my own mind to spend it on social media rather than allowing my own observation of my mind to reveal my actual thoughts. I spent far less time this month on my phone, consciously choosing to put it down and sit in silence. I allowed my thoughts to arise. I allowed myself to witness what was arising in my own mind. I allowed myself to choose to think about certain topics more deeply rather than react to what was being put in front of me by an algorithm. When I upheld it, I noticed a meaningful shift in the quality of my attention. Solid reinforcement for ‘just sit there’. 

Missing My Buddy

During this period I had the great fortune to travel a bit with my family. The disruption to my schedule was a welcome break to my typical routine. However, it also led to an unintentional disconnection from my spiritual practice and my regular check-ins with my New Story buddy. While I was so immersed in what I was doing at the time that I did not even notice that I was not checking in, by the time I got back, I felt deeply disconnected. It was somewhat surprising how much time I felt I had lost to not practicing. How far behind I felt for not being rooted in the other country, and for accidentally slipping back into looking at my phone rather than ‘just sitting there’. 

While this realization was somewhat sad, it was also refreshingly clarifying. I hope I can carry forward the usefulness of accountability, the power of connection and community, and the depth of discipline within a practice. 

Journey Away From Spirit?

Finally, in addition to our five minute poem, we were asked to draw our intuitive sense of what it is in modern western culture that quickens our journey from Spirit, and what Spirit is replaced by. I want to share a few reflections on this exercise. While I somewhat resisted it at first - I did not want to go sit down and draw something - I ended up appreciating the assignment deeply. The fact that we had to draw it forced me to sit in a different space, with different tools in hand. My default is sitting at my keyboard. To sit with an intent to draw, to try to conceive of what shapes to put on paper, what forms to create, required a different type of thinking, which forced me into a deeper form of meditation. I would arrive at an idea and force myself to try to go deeper. Is that really what it is? Is that what I should draw? Or is there something behind that? Something more? So content aside, the exercise, the change in medium itself, was powerful. 

Now, the journey away from Spirit. This is really interesting. As my poem above indicates, my inclination was things like consumerism, productivity, technology, doing over being, all accelerate our drives and distract us. Initially, I was trying to figure out how to draw that. But I kept pondering, trying to go deeper, to see something more. Before there was this consumer culture, were we moving away from Spirit? Do all cultures do this? What cultures stay so centered? Is it even possible? 

The image that next arose for me was an anecdote Bill has told a few times where he mentioned ‘the first light of creation’. How do we stay connected to that? But then I thought about what came after that first light of creation - the big bang. The universe exploded into existence, or so we think. Creation itself seems to move outward, expanding into multiplicity and distance from its original source. We are being propelled away from that first light. That is not a rejection of the first light, just a natural propulsion away from it. 

The next image that came to me was of a mother and a child being born. As the child grows, it too eventually moves away from its mother. It takes on a life of its own and becomes its own person. 

So, I guess I land at a place where I don’t think it unnatural or a violation of some divine natural order that we move away from Spirit as a part of our life journey. I think we somewhat naturally move in a direction of exploration away from our source. I do think it is easy to become distracted or caught up in so many of the things life has to offer, whatever they are. Other people, hobbies, vocations, etc. Moreover, I think previous generations struggle to teach new generations how to stay in touch with that source amongst all that is new for the new generations. The more things change in culture and society, the greater the disconnect we have between generations and the more challenging it is for one generation to speak in a way that resonates with the next generation. Just as the universe accelerates the farther it gets from its source, so too with our journey. 

Thus, I’m less inclined to lay blame solely on modern culture than I initially was. Time, distance, novelty, and the nature of becoming itself all seem implicated. This recognition however changes the nature of the task at hand. It becomes our duty to remember and find a way to stay connected, ‘stay rooted’, even while we grow further. It is completely natural to grow away. But it would be unnatural, and certainly a bit sad, to deny connection. We are genetically connected to our mother. We are cosmically connected to the universe. We are wholly connected to the whole. The more we can find our way to remember that, the healthier we will be. The more we give space for that in our lives, and make space for that for others, the more rooted we all will be. 

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Something Rather Than Nothing

What it Might Mean to Follow God

Every so often, my son and I spontaneously have a long and interesting conversation that spans physics, philosophy, psychology, religion, music, technology, culture, and more. We both love it when that happens, and it just so happens that last night was one of those nights.

My son is a very logical person, and hasn't had the kind of experiences that make God feel real to him. He has consumed a plethora of content, arguments for and against, and given the lack of direct experience, tends to land on the side of the skeptic. Yet, he admits that, at a minimum, agnosticism makes sense. There is really no way to know for sure, so how could one truly land in a position of atheism.

I said, "well, as a logician…" he chuckled, "what about the argument that if there is no God and you spend your life believing, what is the harm, but if there is a God,"

"You are not seriously going to try to throw Pascal's wager at me are you?" he said.

He went on about how history has so many gods and if you are going to believe in a god then the chances of picking the right one are so slim, and if God was all powerful anyway or all knowing anyway then, yada yada yada.

We then got into God creating man in his own image, but really it was man interpreting God in man's image, and how limiting that must be.

So, then he asked me.

So what then dad?
What is the point?
What does it mean to follow God?
Wouldn't it just be to do what you want and live a life that makes you happy?

Obviously, I don't know. I don't know God any better than the next person. Either we are all connected to God or we are not. But if I were to offer my best guess based on all I have read, studied, and experienced, I would say the following.

No, it's not just about doing what you want to live a life that makes you happy. Lots of people do exactly that and look at the result.

When people are allowed to act purely in their own self interest, and have the means to do so, other people are often radically hurt, the planet gets decimated. The sick get sicker, the poor get poorer, the hungry starve.

Why?

Not because we don't know how to solve these problems.

Because we have not earnestly and collectively prioritized solving these problems.

I go back to the baseline. Creation. Not whether it was evolution vs divine, but the simple fact that there is something rather than nothing.

Here we are.

Alive and not not.

Being and not not.

Something, rather than nothing.

As that something, I personally feel a responsibility of stewardship of that something.

There is a trajectory to being alive. You grow, you nurture, you get sick and heal. You try to organize and do better.

I suppose it's all where the rubber meets the road where people then diverge on this.

Some think pruning off that which does not serve is the way, others think optimizing what is working best is the way, some work to raise ceilings, others raise floors.

For me, I think the first move has to be to acknowledge that there is something at all.

We are all that something.

We are all inextricably connected.

When we make choices about the best way to move forward, we need to do so with that whole in mind.

If there is a God, that, to me, is what is in God's mind.

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My Heart Doesn’t Fit in a Box

A reflection on trans lives, human complexity, and the limits of our labels

It’s not uncommon these days that I involuntarily offer primitive prayers, crying out Oh My God. I am deeply saddened, and have been for years, but increasingly so, for the ongoing progress in the assault on the trans community. From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry. I am sorry you are living in a time when so many people are either afraid, ignorant, or have ulterior motives and using you as a scapegoat.

But let me step back for a moment.

At the highest level, we are all people. We all have hopes, fears, and lives shaped by both biology and experience. Human variation is real and worth appreciating. The problem is not that this variation exists. The problem is what we do in response to it.

But this is not abstract. Right now, a specific group of people is being targeted through policy and public discourse in ways that have real, immediate consequences for their safety and dignity.

However, out of fear, out of ignorance, out of a desire to hold certain things fixed, out of distraction, many have chosen to scapegoat this community, who, through no fault of their own, do not fit within what some have decided are our social “norms”, and now are a source of significant problem in our society. Though this community makes up (estimates vary but let’s say) <1-5% of the population, many legislative bodies are spending a disproportionate amount of time actively making the lives of these individuals significantly harder. As I recall, the role of government, at least in the US, is of the people, by people, and FOR the people, and in order to form a more perfect union. Union as in coming together, not as in eradicating diversity. Yet, in the last month or so I have seen:

Kansas retroactively canceling driver’s licenses if they did not match one’s designated gender at birth. So, if someone had a then canceled license, they would be driving illegally if they were driving to get the ‘legal’ license. Moreover, the Kansas law also established what amounted to a bounty – a private right of action allowing anyone who suspects someone is transgender to sue them for $1,000 in damages for using the "wrong" restroom in government buildings.

Ohio lawmakers passed a bill in the House (not a law yet at the time of writing this article) that wearing makeup while performing that is inconsistent with your designated gender at birth is a crime. That seems highly discretionary and problematic in terms of enforcement. Many men wear makeup, particularly on camera. Some just anyway. Many women don’t. Maybe ‘Big Makeup’ will step in and fight this one. Further, who’s to say what performing means. If a woman who presents more masculine is playing guitar in the park, is she breaking the law? This is a pretty open door to the erosion of civil liberties, but that is a bigger picture and I don’t want to take away from the clear and present assault on trans people here and now. 

Idaho passed a law that one must use the bathroom associated with the gender that was designated at birth. So, now someone in Idaho, designated at birth to be female, but presenting with broad shoulders, large biceps, and a full beard, must use the women's bathroom. That makes everyone uncomfortable. It may cause a fight. It may cause a call to the police resulting in wasted time for law enforcement since that person should be using the women’s room by law. Alternatively, if the person uses the men’s room, they are now breaking the law and could end up in jail. Nikson Mathews, a trans man with a beard and chair of the Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus, recently testified: "Every single day when I'm out in public, I have to decide: Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked."

Again, the operative concept here is ‘designated gender at birth’, and that is inherently problematic. Regardless of how we explain any of this, no one should have to justify their existence in order to be treated with dignity and basic rights. It’s also worth acknowledging something we often oversimplify when we talk about sex and gender. The reality is far more complex than two clean categories suggest.

There are well-documented biological variations that complicate the idea of a strict binary:

• Some individuals are born with XY chromosomes but develop typically female bodies due to androgen insensitivity

• Others are born with XX chromosomes but develop typically male characteristics due to hormonal conditions

• Some people have variations like XXY chromosomes or chimerism, where multiple genetic patterns exist in one body

These are not edge cases in theory. They are part of the natural variation of human biology.

There is something worth naming about what is happening underneath all of this. We label things in order to understand them. Classification is the foundation of science, of knowledge, of how we make sense of a complicated world. That impulse is not wrong. But labels have a shadow side. When we draw a hard line and say this is one thing and that is another, we sometimes mistake the line for reality. The line is ours. Nature does not always agree.

Light does not stop being blue before it becomes green. A person with autism does not flip a switch between functional and not. These things exist on spectrums, and the spectrums are real even when our categories are not. The same is true of sex and gender. As the biology above demonstrates, the variation is far greater than two clean boxes would suggest. When we force a spectrum into a box, we do not eliminate the spectrum. We just make it harder for people to live safely within it, and in some cases, we make it illegal.

I am writing this for a few reasons, and I want to be honest about all of them.

First, for those who are suffering, you deserve to know you are not invisible. Many of us see what is happening. Many of us are angry. Many of us are grieving alongside you, even if we are not living it the way you are.

Second, for those who are still finding their way to understanding. Those who sense that something is wrong but haven’t quite landed on why, or who have been handed a narrative about trans people that doesn’t quite sit right. I hope the specifics here help. Not to argue, but to illuminate. The more clearly we can see what is actually happening to actual people, the harder it becomes to look away.

And third, I want to be careful here, because this is not a moment that calls for easy optimism, and I don’t want this to sound like cold comfort or a reason to wait. But I do see something unexpectedly hopeful buried inside all of this cruelty. Not enough to make today okay. But enough to hold onto. Bear with me.

What I find somewhat ironic about this urgency to say no, trans is not real. It is a social construct. If you are a boy, you are a boy. If you are a girl, you are a girl. Well, then to that I say fine, but you must then refine your understanding of what a boy or girl is. Girls can have beards and boys can have breasts. Girls can have broad shoulders and play rough while boys can enjoy makeup and wear dresses. If you drop the rules for what makes a gender a gender, then trans people don’t have to fight to be another gender. Perhaps conservatives are actually paving a way toward a warmer embrace somewhat in spite of themselves.

But that is way down the road and may or may never happen. Today, we have brothers and sisters, friends, family, neighbors who are being targeted, disenfranchised, attacked physically, verbally, and legislatively. As of March 20, 2026, there are 500 anti LGBTQ bills in the US. 500 bills targeting less than 10% of the population. We have so much more significant issues than what makeup people are wearing or what bathrooms people are using. In my role, I’m continuing to think about what it means to show up in ways that protect dignity and belonging at the local level, even when the broader environment feels uncertain.

To all of you who are suffering, you are not alone. Many of us see you. Many of us hear your cries. Many of us are trying to help where we can. I am deeply sorry, and I hope our society at large can change faster than it will.

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Listening to Survivors of Commercial Sexual Exploitation

Summit on Crime Survivors: Commercial Sexual Exploitation

January 29, 2026 – Seattle City Hall

This week I attended the second annual Summit on Crime Survivors, focused specifically on Commercial Sexual Exploitation. I went because I knew this was an area I did not understand well enough, particularly as it relates to our region. I wanted to learn, to listen, and to better orient myself to a reality that is often discussed abstractly, if at all.

The morning included remarks from organizers, elected officials, judges, advocates, and service providers. There was discussion of efforts to support victims and to mitigate harm upstream. A recurring theme was the lack of stable resources—especially for prevention. Funding for services is often reimbursement-based and uncertain, which makes long-term planning difficult and proactive work nearly impossible. This pattern is familiar across the nonprofit and government world: we regularly affirm the value of prevention, yet struggle to fund it because its success is, by definition, difficult to prove.

Just last week, I spoke with the executive director of a homeless shelter who shared a variation on a story he hears often: “If I had just had $500 to fix my car, I’d be fine right now. Instead, I lost my job, my car, and now I’m here.” Money to keep shelters open or to provide food is easier to secure than money to fix the car before everything collapses. Different issue, same structural problem. We fund crisis response far more readily than early intervention.

What stayed with me most deeply, however, were the voices of survivors.

While there was a formal survivors’ panel of three women, the room itself was filled with survivors. Many of the people I spoke with casually—standing in line for coffee, chatting between sessions—were survivors. Their presence, their attentiveness to one another, and their quiet leadership were striking. One woman noticed I had taken a seat in the back of the room and immediately invited me to join her table. She was a survivor. She was kind, grounded, and extraordinarily aware of others. Throughout the day, she made space for people, checked in on them, and helped orient those who seemed overwhelmed. Without any formal role, she became a kind of unofficial host. Watching her care for others was deeply moving.

Another survivor I met while waiting in line for lunch—I’ll call her “T”—shared a sense of real discouragement. She had prepared extensively to testify before a legislative committee in Olympia on these very issues. She was scheduled to testify remotely near the end of the session, but as earlier speakers went over their allotted time, she was ultimately cut and never given the opportunity to speak. Preparing to publicly share a deeply personal story is not a small thing, and having that opportunity disappear carries its own harm.

When I mentioned that I had recently met one-on-one with the state legislator who chairs that committee, her entire demeanor changed. She lit up. There was surprise, relief, and something like hope all at once. She immediately recognized his name and role, and I could feel how much it mattered to her that someone in that position was paying attention. I shared that he had raised this issue himself in our conversation—that it clearly mattered to him, that he and his staff were actively researching approaches from other countries, and that this work was not peripheral for him.

It didn’t undo the fact that she had been silenced that day. But it did seem to lift something. There was a sense that her preparation hadn’t been wasted, that her voice belonged in that space even if it hadn’t been heard yet. The timing of that exchange—having spoken with him just weeks before, having this be the very issue he raised unprompted, and then standing in that lunch line with her—felt quietly profound. I felt genuinely honored to be able to share that moment with her.

The survivors’ panel itself challenged many common assumptions. Two of the three women had been groomed or manipulated into exploitation at a very young age. It was decades later before they fully understood themselves as victims. This is the reality of coercion: being forced into something in ways that are not always immediately recognizable as force.

Another panelist, a trans woman, shared that a roommate had secretly filmed and livestreamed her for years without her knowledge—capturing not only her body, but her transition. That detail mattered. Not because it made the crime worse in some abstract hierarchy, but because it revealed how exploitation so often intersects with vulnerability, identity, and moments of becoming. Her story made clear that exploitation adapts itself to whatever intimacy or exposure it can extract.

All of these women were used—unknowingly, non-consensually, and unwillingly—for the benefit of others. Two of the panelists were over sixty years old and had only been living freely for less than a decade. They were from here. They went to school here. They saw classmates drive by while they were trapped in circumstances they didn’t understand and couldn’t escape. One woman said that given the number of times she had been beaten, threatened, sold, drugged, and placed in life-threatening situations, “it’s a miracle that I’m alive.”

What I keep returning to is the cost of telling these stories.

Survivors are repeatedly asked to recount deeply personal trauma in rooms full of professionals—caseworkers, lawyers, judges, policymakers, and concerned citizens. This is not therapeutic entertainment. It is emotionally taxing. It takes something each time. And if listening is where it ends—if stories are gathered but systems remain unchanged—then even well-intentioned attention risks becoming extractive.

Listening is essential. Human connection is essential. Empathy formed through real encounter is different from empathy formed through reports or statistics. It shapes judgment. It sharpens discernment. It changes how decisions are made.

But empathy alone does not correct structural misalignment. Systems that reliably fund reaction while struggling to fund mitigation will continue to produce harm, no matter how aware we become. Prevention is harder to measure, harder to justify, and harder to defend politically—but the cost of neglecting it is borne by real people, often for decades.

This experience did not leave me with answers. It left me with a clearer sense of responsibility: to stay attentive to where human connection should inform decision-making, to question funding structures that privilege symptoms over causes, and to remain unsettled when awareness is mistaken for action.

That unease, I think, is where the real work begins.

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Grief as Learning: A reflection on The Grieving Brain

In the wake of a death—especially an unforeseen one—we search for answers. Why did this happen? How? What could have been different? Often the mind searches even when there are no answers to be found.

I didn't read The Grieving Brain until nearly two years after I lost my daughter. Even so, I found it deeply validating. It helped me make sense of experiences I had already lived through but didn't yet have language for. A friend recommended it after her own profound loss, and she too found it useful in navigating the disorienting territory that grief creates.

Mary-Frances O'Connor is a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist, and professor at the University of Arizona. The book reflects that background—at times academic, but consistently humane. She distinguishes grief from depression, explains why yearning is not pathology, and shows how attachment is not merely emotional but physiological. We quite literally build our lives, and our nervous systems, around the people we love.

At the heart of the book is a deceptively simple idea: the brain is a learning machine. More specifically, it's a predictive machine, constantly anticipating what will happen next based on past experience. This works remarkably well—until it doesn't.

How the Brain Maps Relationships

O'Connor explains that when we form deep attachments, our brains learn that certain people exist here, now, and close. Even when a loved one is not physically present—at work, traveling, living across the country—we still carry a stable internal map of their existence. They are part of the world our brain expects to encounter.

That map does not update instantly when someone dies.

A familiar example helps. If you always place your keys in the same spot when you come home, your hand reaches there automatically. One day, distracted, you put them in your coat pocket and hang the coat in the closet. The next morning, your hand still reaches for the old place. The brain is not broken—it's doing what it has learned to do.

Grief works the same way, only the discrepancy is far more painful.

The brain continues to predict the presence of the person who has died. Each time reality contradicts that prediction, it hurts. Not metaphorically—neurologically. O'Connor frames grief as the repeated correction of a deeply learned expectation. This is why grief can feel so disorienting, even when we consciously know what has happened. Knowledge and learning are not the same thing. Unlike depression, which flattens experience, grief is marked by yearning—the continued pull toward someone who is no longer there.

When my daughter died, I experienced this painfully and clearly. In the months before her death, she had been traveling across the country. We weren't in close proximity, and we communicated only intermittently. After she died, those surface conditions were the same: she wasn't physically with me, and we weren't texting or talking in any given moment. My brain's map had not yet caught up to the deeper truth—that she would never again be here, now, and close in the way it expected.

My conscious mind knew this immediately. My brain did not. Each time the discrepancy surfaced, it hurt.

The most important takeaway from this is simple, but not easy: the brain needs time. Time to unlearn an old map. Time to build a new one. The pain is not a failure of healing—it is the healing process itself.

O'Connor offers an image I found helpful. Imagine walking through your home in the dark, used to brushing past a table in a particular place. If the furniture is suddenly rearranged, you immediately notice the absence. You may even question whether you're in the right room. Eventually, though, you learn the new layout. The room still works. Life still works. But the learning takes time.

For me, part of that learning involved realizing that my relationship with my daughter had to change—not end, but change.

Discovering the Scripts

I knew rationally that she was gone. I knew I would never again exchange looks, jokes, or hugs, or watch her become the person she was so beautifully becoming. But I also knew I would never forget her. Which meant the relationship itself was not disappearing—it was transforming. I just didn't know what that meant yet.

I noticed that most nights, as I was falling asleep, I was running the same internal script: I love you. I miss you. I'm so sorry. Over and over. The words were sincere. They were also static. I realized that if I kept repeating the same script, my brain had no new information with which to learn. I was reinforcing longing without offering a path forward.

So I made a conscious decision to interrupt the script.

Instead of speaking only from sadness, I began to invite different forms of connection. I intentionally recalled memories. I noticed moments in the present that she would have found funny or beautiful. I tried to experience joy with her, rather than only grief for her. This did not erase the loss—but it did allow my brain to begin building a new map, one that was less constantly jarring.

This, I think, is where agency quietly enters the grieving process. Not in forcing ourselves to "move on," but in gently offering the brain new experiences to learn from.

The Role of Mindfulness

The other major lesson I took from the book—one that reinforced practices already present in my life—was the importance of mindfulness. I've meditated on and off for more than twenty years, and I believe this helped me notice the scripts I was running in the first place. Mindfulness didn't make the grief go away. It changed my relationship to it.

One of the most painful patterns in grief is the endless chain of what-ifs. What if I had done this. What if I had said that. What if, what if, what if. These thoughts arise without warning, and early on they can feel inescapable. But they don't lead anywhere except deeper pain.

Mindfulness offers a different option. Not suppression, and not avoidance, but recognition. When a thought arises, we can notice it. Feel it. And then, if we choose, not follow it. Over time, this becomes a capacity. The thoughts still come—but they no longer carry us away from the present moment every time they appear.

The goal is not to stop thinking. The goal is to avoid being endlessly dragged by thought. Meditation, as unglamorous as it may seem, is a kind of medicine. And like most medicine, it works best when practiced before we're desperate for it.

What the Book Offers

There is far more in The Grieving Brain than I've captured here, and I would recommend it to anyone—whether grieving now, supporting someone who is, or simply wanting to understand how deeply human attachment really is. The book does not promise relief. What it offers instead is orientation.

Grief is not a malfunction. It's the brain doing its best to learn a world that has been irrevocably changed. Understanding that doesn't remove the pain—but it can make the pain feel less lonely, less frightening, and less wrong.

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While most of my writing lives on this website, I do share occasional writing on Substack for those who prefer to receive it there. You can find me on Substack here.