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When the Map Runs Out: Finding Your Way Through the Desert In-Between

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When the Map Runs Out: Finding Your Way Through the Desert In-Between

On liminal seasons, sacred disorientation, and the slow work of becoming

There is a moment — if you have ever been truly lost — when the map in your hand stops making sense. The road it promises isn’t there. The landmarks don’t match. And you realize, with a strange mix of dread and something almost like relief, that you have entered unmapped territory.

That is the desert. Not necessarily sand and scorching heat, though those images carry real weight across ancient wisdom traditions. The desert is any season where the familiar landmarks disappear — where the identity you carried into a transition no longer fits, and the one you will carry out has not yet taken shape. Theologians and contemplatives have long called it the wilderness. Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep named it liminality, from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. You are on the threshold. Neither here nor there. The door is open, but you haven’t stepped through.

I have lived in that doorway. In different seasons, I found myself between jobs, between marriages, and navigating the slow aftermath of a health crisis — like pancreatitis, which has a way of stripping everything to bare essentials with very little ceremony. Each loss arrived not as a single blow but as a kind of systemic unraveling. What I thought I knew about myself, about my direction, about what I was building — all of it came into question at once.

What I did not expect was that the desert would become a teacher.

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The Threshold Has a Name

Liminal space is the technical name for the in-between — the transitional zone that exists between what was and what will be. Van Gennep first mapped it in his study of rites of passage: every significant human transition, he observed, moves through three phases. There is separation from the old identity, a liminal period of disorientation and becoming, and eventually reincorporation into a new form.

The middle phase — the liminal — is not a waiting room. It is a crucible.

 

Ancient traditions knew this. The Hebrew Bible is full of desert wandering — forty years for a people who needed to become something they were not yet. Moses on Sinai. Elijah under the broom tree. Jesus in the wilderness before the beginning of his public ministry. The desert, in these stories, is never incidental. It is the point. Something essential is being formed that could not have been formed any other way.

The desert fathers and mothers — those early Christian monastics who literally fled to the Egyptian wilderness in the third and fourth centuries — went to the desert on purpose. They understood that the stripping of comfort was not punishment but preparation. What could not be heard in the noise of ordinary life could sometimes be heard in the silence of the barren places.

“The desert is unadorned. It removes noise and clutter allowing you to reevaluate your values and focus on what is truly essential.”

I did not choose my desert. Most of us don’t. But I did, eventually, choose how to inhabit it.

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What the Desert Actually Does

There is a temptation, when you are in a liminal season, to treat it as a problem to be solved. To scramble for the next thing, the next role, the next relationship — anything to end the suspension. I understand that impulse deeply. The in-between is uncomfortable in ways that are hard to articulate to people who are not in it.

 

 

But the desert has purposes that cannot be rushed.

It strips away self-reliance. When the external scaffolding of identity falls away — the job title, the relationship, the health you assumed — you are brought into contact with something deeper. Who are you when you are not who you were? That question, honestly held, is one of the most spiritually generative questions a person can carry.

It establishes roots. A plant in the desert sends its root system down far deeper than plants in well-watered soil. It must, to survive. Liminal seasons do something similar in us. The roots we grow in the in-between often reach depths we would never have explored in ordinary seasons.

It offers distillation. The desert is ruthlessly clarifying. What matters to you? What were you carrying that was never really yours to carry? What were you building toward that came from someone else’s vision for your life? The desert asks these questions quietly and persistently, and if you are still enough to hear them, the answers begin to come.

During my own desert season, I found myself returning again and again to contemplative practices — extended periods of silence, long walks without destination. Not as escape, but as a form of listening. I was learning to let the quiet do its work.

The emotional intelligence framework Lynette and I work with at spirit of EQ has a concept that became very real to me during this time: the difference between reaction and response. In a liminal season, there is enormous pressure to react — to fill the silence, to fix the disorientation, to manufacture certainty. Learning to pause, to stay present to what is really happening rather than what you fear might happen, is one of the deepest EQ practices I know. And the desert is where I learned it at a cellular level.

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Learning to Look for Small Signs of Life

One of the most important practices I developed in those seasons was what I can only describe as desert botany — the discipline of looking for small signs of life in apparently barren ground.

The desert is never as empty as it first appears. It is full of life that has adapted to scarcity, that blooms in small and unexpected ways, that knows how to wait. When I stopped looking for the dramatic turnaround — the moment when everything would resolve — and started looking for the small green shoots, something shifted.

A conversation that went deeper than I expected. A morning of clarity after weeks of fog. A friendship that appeared out of nowhere and offered exactly what was needed. A passage from a desert father that named something I hadn’t been able to name.

Julian of Norwich, writing from her own experience of suffering and disorientation, offered words I returned to often: that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Not as denial of the present difficulty, but as an orientation toward a goodness that exists beyond the current view. The desert does not last forever. It has a purpose, and when that purpose is accomplished, a new season comes.

But the new season is shaped by how we inhabit the desert. Those who fight it or flee it arrive depleted. Those who learn to dwell in it — not comfortably, but honestly — often arrive at the other side with something they could not have acquired any other way.

Desert Journal Worksheet Link

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A Practice for the In-Between: The Three Questions

This exercise is best done slowly, with a journal or open space for reflection. Allow at least twenty minutes. There are no right answers — only honest ones.

The desert fathers practiced a form of structured self-inquiry they called examen — a slow, honest review of what was present, what was absent, and what was stirring beneath the surface. This exercise draws on that tradition.

Settle first. Before you begin, take three slow breaths. Release the urgency of solving anything. You are here to notice, not to fix.

Question One: What has been stripped away?

Name, without judgment, the things that have fallen away in this season — roles, relationships, certainties, identities. Don’t evaluate whether their loss is deserved or fair. Simply name them.

Question Two: What remains?

When the stripping has been named, turn your attention to what has not been taken. What is still true? What in you has endured? These are often the things that matter most — the ones the desert is revealing rather than removing.

Question Three: What small sign of life can you see today?

Not a resolution. Not a next step. Just one small sign — a glimmer, a green shoot, a moment of clarity or connection. If you cannot see one today, that is honest information too. Write it down.

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The Map Will Come

I am on the other side of that desert for now — or perhaps more accurately, I am in a different landscape, carrying what I learned in the in-between. The job that came after that season shaped Lynette and me into what we now call spirit of EQ. The health crisis that stripped my certainty about my physical resilience also deepened my empathy for people navigating their own fragility. The relational losses became — slowly, painfully, eventually — the soil from which something more honest grew.

I don’t want to romanticize the desert. It was hard. There were stretches of genuine desolation. But I also don’t want to minimize what it gave me — a set of roots that go deeper than anything I had before, a clarity about what matters, and a capacity to sit with others in their own liminal seasons without needing to rush them out the door.

If you are in the in-between right now — between who you were and who you are becoming, in a season of dryness, disorientation, or loss — I want you to know two things. First: you are not lost. You are in unmapped territory, which is a different thing entirely. And second: the map will come. It is being drawn, even now, by the roots you are growing.

The threshold is not the end of the journey. It is the most important part of it.

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Peace and every good.

 

Today Is Hard. Tomorrow Is Worse. Why I Kept Going

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The Day After Tomorrow

There is a photograph I keep in my mind from the early days of Varment Guard — not an actual photograph, just the image burned in from living it. It’s a door. A plain commercial door, nothing fancy about it, with a small wooden frame above it. And inside that frame, four words someone had taken the time to put there deliberately: Failure was not an option.

Mike M. and I had been meeting for eight months before we ever turned a key in a lock. Eight months of yellow legal pads and bad coffee and spreadsheets that kept being wrong and late-night conversations that neither of us was willing to end because ending felt like quitting. We were two people trying to think of everything — preparing the way you prepare for something that matters — and when we finally opened those doors, we discovered we hadn’t thought of even half of what was coming for us.

THE FOUNDERS HONEST LOOK WORKBOOK

That’s when Jack Ma’s words would have hit differently. “Today is hard and tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.” — Jack Ma, Founder, Alibaba Group.

Hold that sentence for a moment. It isn’t a motivational poster. It’s a map.

WHAT’S BEHIND THE WORDS

Jack Ma didn’t build Alibaba from a position of ease or advantage. He was rejected by Harvard ten times. When KFC came to his city and hired 23 of 24 applicants, he was the one they passed on. China’s first public internet company turned him away. When he finally pitched the idea of an online marketplace for Chinese small businesses in 1999, he did it in his apartment, to a handful of friends who weren’t completely sure they believed him. He knew today is hard the way you only know something you’ve actually lived.

The history of business is, at its marrow, a history of stubborn people who refused to let a bad today become a permanent condition. Henry Ford failed twice before building the company that changed manufacturing forever. Milton Hershey lost everything in New York and again in Chicago before returning home to Pennsylvania with nothing but a process he still believed in. Walt Disney was told he lacked imagination by the very newspaper that had hired him. The pattern is so consistent it might seem like a cliché — except for the people living it. For them, it never feels like a pattern. It feels personal. It feels like an exception. It feels like it might be permanent.

What the ones who make it through seem to understand — sometimes while it’s happening, sometimes only years later — is that the difficulty is not a detour from the path. It is the path. The hard is not a sign you’ve chosen wrong. More often, it’s a sign you’ve chosen something real.

WHAT WE KNEW AND WHAT WE DIDN’T

When Mike and I opened Varment Guard, we believed we were ready for the hard. What we hadn’t prepared for was the texture of it. Not the spreadsheet problems — those were almost welcome, because spreadsheets have answers. It was everything else. The family dinners missed, and then just stopped being expected. The friendships that didn’t end loudly — they just went quiet because you weren’t available and eventually people found their rhythm without you. The money questions that didn’t arrive as dramatic crises but as a low, grinding background hum that followed you everywhere, even into sleep.

Nobody writes that part down. Not honestly. Because the real story of building something is longer and more irregular than any narrative shape can hold, and no one wants to tell you how much it costs before you’ve decided to pay it — because if they did, maybe fewer people would start.

So why did we do it?

Why does anyone?

The easy answers are all true: we believed in the idea, we wanted to build something that was ours, we wanted to see if we could. But the real answer lives underneath all of those. It has to do with identity. With the recognition that there was a version of life available — something that matched what was inside you — and that settling for something smaller would be a slow erosion you weren’t willing to live with. We did it because the alternative was becoming someone we didn’t recognize. And that felt worse than everything that came with the doing.

WHAT WE GAINED AND WHAT WE LOST

What did we gain? That part comes easier now than it did in the middle of it. We built something real — a company with a culture, a reputation, a set of values that held through hard seasons. Over the years, Varment Guard employed hundreds of people. Families were fed. Skills were developed. Careers were built that might not have existed otherwise. There is no dollar figure for any of that. And there is something else, quieter but just as real: you find out what you are actually made of. You discover your own capacity. You learn what you can carry. You don’t find that out any other way. No shortcut delivers it. Only the going does.

What did we lose? That one is easier in the dark than in the daylight. Sleep, certainly — and the kind of easy rest that comes when you’re not carrying something large. Margin, regularly. Time with people we loved, which you cannot really reclaim even if the relationships survived. Parts of yourself that were softer and more patient that got traded, over time, for something harder and faster and more efficient. I won’t call all of it loss, exactly. But I notice the absence of some of it. I think that’s worth naming honestly.

HOW TO KEEP GOING WHEN YOU FEEL ALONE

DAY AFTER TOMORROW WORKBOOK

Here is the part no one tells you about keeping going when you feel like you’re carrying it entirely by yourself: you are. You actually are. And that’s not a crisis — that’s the position.

Every person who has built anything real has sat in a room where no one else fully grasped what they were holding. Not the advisors. Not the investors. Not even the partners — because it’s your specific weight, shaped to your specific frame, and no one else quite feels it the same way. You can resent that solitude or you can learn to read it as information.

What it’s telling you is simple: the decision to continue is yours. Which means it cannot be taken from you. The market can’t take it. A bad quarter can’t take it. A difficult competitor can’t take it. A hard year can’t take it. Only you can put it down.

Jack Ma is telling you something real when he promises sunshine on the third day. But he’s also telling you something harder: you have to make it through the first two. Not around them. Not above them. Through them.

The frame above that door at Varment Guard wasn’t decoration. It was a daily instruction — renewed every morning when someone walked under it. Failure is not an option doesn’t mean failure is impossible. It means you’ve decided in advance that however bad today gets, and however much worse tomorrow is, you are not stopping here. The sunshine isn’t guaranteed. But it’s only available to the ones who are still there when it arrives.

Mike and I didn’t think of half the things that would come for us. But we had made a decision. And on the hardest days, honestly, the decision was the only thing.

Make the decision. Keep making it. The day after tomorrow is real.

Peace and every good.

The Chairman Thought I Wasn’t Paying Attention

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Picture a waiting room. You’ve been there five minutes, and without meaning to, you’ve already written a story about everyone in it — the man with the expensive watch who checks his phone every thirty seconds, the woman with paint on her jeans who hasn’t looked up from her book, the teenager in the corner with earbuds in like armor. You haven’t spoken to any of them. You may never speak to any of them. But somewhere in the architecture of your brain, a file has opened on each one, and it is filling itself in without your permission.

This is what we do. It is fast, it is mostly unconscious, and — here is the part that costs us — we tend to trust it.

Confirmation bias is the cognitive shortcut that turns a glance into a verdict. Once we’ve formed an impression, we filter everything through it, collecting evidence that confirms what we already believe and quietly discarding what doesn’t fit. The psychologist Leon Festinger spent decades helping us understand how fiercely the mind protects its working assumptions — not because it is lazy, but because uncertainty is expensive. The brain is a prediction machine, and prediction requires categories. The trouble is that people are not categories. They are houses you have never been inside, and the front door tells you almost nothing about what’s in the rooms.

It causes me to think about the ways I’ve been filed.

I was asked to lead a financial committee for an international organization. In the first meeting, I was the quietest person in the room. I tend to listen before I speak, to let the space fill before I take up any of it. I was watching. I was also reading — the numbers that weren’t adding up, the relationships between people that were bent in ways that take time to see, the kind of bent that looks like warmth from a distance but reads differently when you’re close and paying attention. Embezzlement. Alliances that were costing the organization more than they were protecting it. I could see it, and I called it out.

The room exploded.

What I learned later — from the chairman himself — was that he had watched me sit quietly when he asked me to be on “the committee” I wasn’t really present and could not tell what was going on. That my stillness read as absence. That I could be managed, even manipulated, and that bringing in someone so apparently passive had been, in his mind, a calculated move toward a controllable outcome.

He had filed me. Quickly, confidently, and very wrong.

I am not the first person this has happened to. You are not either.

Think about the moments you’ve been looked past — the job interview where someone’s eyes glazed before you finished your first sentence, the meeting where your idea was ignored until someone else said it twenty minutes later, the day you walked into a room in the wrong clothes for the assumptions people had already formed about you. Your hair too natural, your accent too layered, your stillness too unreadable, your energy too large. The label arrives before you do, and it does not ask for your input. It does not ask for your history, your interior life, your gifts, or your grief. It just lands, and it sticks, and quietly it shapes every interaction that follows.

The philosopher Martin Buber, my fav, spent much of his intellectual life writing about what he called I-Thou and I-It encounters — the difference between meeting someone as a full subject, irreducible and alive, and relating to them as an object, a role, a function, a category. Most of our daily encounters, Buber admitted honestly, are I-It. The world moves fast; we cannot hold everyone in full attention at every moment. But the cost is real. We move through life surrounded by people we have reduced to fit the size of our assumptions, and we call that knowing them.

The label is not the person. The label is a shortcut we mistake for a destination.

There is a practice I’ve come to think of as staying curious past the first sentence. Not the performance of curiosity — the enthusiastic head-tilt and the “Tell me more” — but the actual discipline of holding your impression lightly, the way you’d hold a rough draft: with interest, not authority. And this is what real coaches do. It tells you something. It does not tell you everything. The quiet person in the room is watching. The loud one is sometimes afraid. The polished one is held together with things you cannot see. The disheveled one has already solved a problem you haven’t noticed yet. Every label you apply is a door you close, and some of those doors open onto entire worlds.

What Josh Freeman of the emotional intelligence company Six Seconds has trained us to do here is not to have certainty but curiosity — not the confident read, but the open question. It asks us to notice what our brain wants to do with a stranger in the first thirty seconds and then, gently, invite it to wait. To ask a question we don’t already know the answer to. To sit with not-knowing long enough to find out who’s in the room.

The chairman’s assumption about me wasn’t malicious. It was human. But it was a choice — and choice is where practice lives.

When I left that boardroom after the explosion, I wasn’t angry. I was, in a strange way, grateful — because what had just happened was the clearest possible evidence that the quiet person had been paying the most attention. The label had failed. The person it was attached to had not. I walked out still whole, still present, still myself. And whatever the chairman thought he had managed had just become the thing that managed him.

That is always the risk when we label. The person inside the box tends to be larger than the box. And eventually — not always, not on our timeline, but eventually — they will show you.

Mystery Workbook Link Here

So the next time you sit across from someone, in a meeting, at a table, on a commute, in a waiting room, try this: let them be unknown a little longer. Let the file stay open. Notice what your brain wants to do and then invite it to wait. Ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.

The person across from you is always a mystery.

That is not a problem to solve. It is an invitation to pay attention.

Come continue the conversation in the community where these ideas live — [link here].

Peace and every good.

Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957)

Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923; trans. Walter Kaufmann, 1970)

From the Frats to the Hippies: How Not Belonging Taught Me to See

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Good Enough for This Life

Do you ever think about whether you are good enough for this life?

I ask it that way on purpose — not “good enough at your job” or “good enough for the relationship” but for this life, the whole thing, the fact of being a particular kind of person moving through a world that was mostly built for a different kind of person. It is a question I have carried for a long time. And I want to tell you where it came from, because the origin of this story matters.

Picture a room full of people who seem to know where to stand. You are at the edge, not by design but because the middle arrived too fast and too loud, because you are already receiving the room — not just the nearest conversation but every conversation, the ambient emotional temperature, the undercurrent of music, the way the light is sitting differently on one side than the other. You are cataloging all of it without meaning to, because that is simply how your mind moves.

I know that room. I spent most of my adolescence looking for the group that would finally let me in — not merely tolerate me but receive what I was bringing. I tried the frats, with their crisp hierarchies and their belonging-by-exclusion, their handshakes and their unwritten ledgers of who counted. I tried the greasers, leather and bravado, a different code but a code all the same, enforced with the same quiet ferocity. I tried the soul brothers, drawn by the warmth and the music and the sense that community here might stretch wide enough to hold more kinds of people. And finally, tentatively, I found the hippies — loose-structured, philosophically suspicious of tight categories, practicing a kind of radical acceptance that was imperfect and sometimes chaotic but real. They were the closest thing to a fit I had found. And even there, I was only partly in.

What I didn’t understand then, standing at the edges of all those circles, was that the thing keeping me out was also the thing that made me able to see.

I have dyslexia and ADHD. Together. Which, if you’ve lived it, means the mind doesn’t run one stream of consciousness but several — simultaneous, layered, cross-referencing, sometimes chasing each other into corners before snapping back. The squirrel jokes are accurate. Mid-sentence, mid-thought, something peripheral catches your sight and suddenly you are somewhere else entirely, following a thread that no one else in the room can see.

What I couldn’t name as a teenager was the experience of receiving a conversation on six channels at once — the words someone was saying and the words they weren’t saying, the slight tension in their shoulders, the way their story didn’t quite line up with their eyes, the ambient emotional weather of the room, the connection to something said three exchanges ago that suddenly mattered now. All of it arriving at the same time. All of it real.

This was not comfortable. For years it was almost unbearable — the sensation of always arriving sideways to the conversation, unable to slow the intake down enough to meet people where they were. I tried to explain it, and it came out tangled. I tried to belong and it came out strange. Large parties still overwhelm me quickly; the signal-to-noise ratio collapses under too many inputs running at once, and I learned early to find the wall, the corner, the quieter edge where the room could be read rather than absorbed whole. And so, the question I carried — quietly, persistently, the way you carry things you cannot put down — was: Am I good enough for this?

Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, developed in the early 1980s, named what many people had quietly suspected: that intelligence is not a single axis running from less to more, but a wide range of distinct capacities — linguistic, spatial, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and more — that show up differently in different people, and are cultivated or suppressed depending on the environments those people move through. Ned Hallowell, who has written about ADHD from the inside for decades, describes it as a Ferrari engine with bicycle brakes: enormous processing power that simply needs a different kind of structure to channel it well. What both are pointing toward is this — the brain that struggles in one environment is often extraordinarily capable in another. Not as consolation. As fact.

The multiple streams I couldn’t turn off at parties became, in smaller rooms and deeper conversations, something closer to precision. I could hear what people meant underneath what they said. I could hold several threads at once and notice where they crossed without losing either. I could sit with someone in confusion and not rush them toward clarity, because I knew from the inside what it felt like to have the mind moving in many directions at once and not yet know which one was true. The gift and the difficulty were the same thing, running on the same hardware, expressed differently depending on context.

I think now about that teenager trying the frats and the greasers and the soul brothers and the hippies — not as someone who failed to find a home, but as someone learning, by accumulation and by refusal, what belonging required. It wasn’t a group that would tolerate him. It was a context in which his actual nature could be useful. The hippies came closest because they had, almost by philosophy, released the requirement to be one thing, to arrive in a straight line, to present a coherent and unified self at all times. They were practicing, imperfectly and sometimes chaotically, the idea that a loose structure could hold more kinds of people and more kinds of minds.

What I do now — working with people around emotional intelligence, around the interior life, around the persistent gap between who we are and who we think we should be — is built directly from those years of standing at the edges of rooms and learning to read them. The overwhelm at large gatherings is still real. The squirrels still appear. But I have learned to trust the multiple streams, to follow rather than fight them, to understand that the signal is often in the thing that looks like noise. Observation turns out to be one of the rarest things one person can offer another. And it was built, in me, precisely by not being comfortable in the middle.

So: do you ever think about whether you are good enough for this life?

Edge Of Room Workbook

Here is the reframe I want to offer — not a reassurance, not “of course you are, everyone is,” which is kind but lame and thin. Instead, the question assumes a standard that was probably never built for you. The thing you experience as a deficit — the way you process or move or think or feel that doesn’t match the room — may be exactly the mechanism by which you will eventually see most clearly.

I still sometimes find myself at the edge of a room, taking in more than I was asked to take in, following threads no one else is following. But I am no longer trying to get to the middle.

The edge, it turns out, is a very good place to observe from. And observation, it turns out, is exactly what most people are waiting for someone to offer them.

If this landed somewhere in you, the conversation continues at [Substack/Mighty Networks] — a community that keeps asking these same questions together.

Peace and every good.

The Tender Work of Healing Loneliness, Gently, Slowly.

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The ache of loneliness is deep and profound for some of us. It shows up in our posture, our energy, and the way we relate to the world. I remember when I went through a painful divorce and the loneliness I felt. I didn’t have self-esteem, and I didn’t know what was next in my life. I traveled on autopilot, grunted responses to questions, and went deep inside myself in a protective stance.

My shoulders hunched as if trying to make myself smaller so I would take up less space—and maybe be less likely to be hurt again. That posture mirrored how I felt inside: small, raw, and on guard. My days blurred together. I thought loneliness was something to be fixed quickly, as if I were just a machine with a loose bolt. But loneliness isn’t just a problem to be solved. It’s a human experience that asks for tenderness, time, and gradual re-learning about who we are when we are alone.

Loneliness wears many faces. Sometimes it’s noisy—restless, consuming, hard to shake. Sometimes it’s silent. It can arrive after a breakup, a move, retirement, the loss of a loved one, or during seasons when you don’t fit into the surrounding culture. And sometimes it arrives without an obvious cause. You might be surrounded by people yet feel profoundly disconnected. Loneliness can color how you see yourself (when I felt unlovable) and how you see others (“nobody understands me”). That lens is heavy. It makes ordinary tasks feel larger, heavier, and harder to start.

When loneliness becomes long-term, it shapes habits. You might withdraw from invitations, avoid phone calls, or spend afternoons scrolling through images of other people living bright, full lives. Facebook (as an example) can be especially brutal in these seasons. You might develop defensive behaviors—sarcasm, irritability, or constant self-criticism—to keep others at a safe distance. These are understandable survival strategies. But they can keep us stuck, tightening the loop between pain and isolation.

A friend of mine, John, is a gregarious person by nature. But after his father died, he sank into a quiet, deep loneliness. He would show up to gatherings and laugh easily, but afterward he would go home and close the curtains. One night he told me he felt like a house with rooms no one ever walked into.

Over the next few months, he knew something needed to change. He began meeting with a grief group and volunteered at a local community garden. The volunteers didn’t try to fix him. They simply shared tasks and stories. With time, his personal rooms were visited more often—not because he suddenly changed overnight, but because small, consistent human interactions built a sense of belonging again. (True Story)

Another story: Ana moved to Italy for work and felt disconnected from the language and customs. Her loneliness was layered with isolation and cultural disorientation. She found solace by starting a weekly ritual—Tuesday potluck evenings with a few colleagues. No grand obligations, just a bowl of soup and one good question: “What was the best thing you did for yourself this week?” That question became a conduit for sharing. It helped her feel seen, not solved. (Example)

If you’re lonely right now, I want to say this clearly: being lonely is not a personal failing. Gentleness is not indulgence. Responding to loneliness with self-blame usually increases the pain, as if the heart needs to be punished before it can heal. Instead, try meeting yourself with care and clarity—like you would meet a friend who is hurting.

Here are four practical, compassionate ways to be gentle with yourself on this path:

  • Acknowledge the ache without rushing it.

Sit with the feeling and name it: “This is loneliness.” Naming reduces the power of the sensation and helps you observe it instead of being swallowed by it. You might say it aloud when you’re alone or write it in a journal.

  • Normalize your experience.

Many people have felt this—it’s part of being human. Reading stories, memoirs, or essays about loneliness can make you feel less alone in your aloneness. You’re not broken; you’re human.

  • Create small rituals of care.

When we’re lonely, big plans can feel impossible. Start with tiny rituals: a cup of tea at the same time each afternoon, a ten-minute walk, lighting a candle before dinner. Rituals create structure and a sense of predictability—soothing when the world feels unstable.

  • Befriend your body.

Loneliness often settles physically tight shoulders, shallow breathing, a heavy chest. Try simple body-based practices: slow diaphragmatic breathing (inhale for 4, exhale for 6), progressive muscle relaxation, or a short yoga sequence that opens the chest. Even gentle movement can change your internal state and communicate kindness to yourself.

Even with these practical steps, there may be times when seeking therapeutic support is the most important thing you can do. A therapist, counselor, or spiritual director can provide tools to navigate loneliness, process past hurts, and gently challenge patterns that keep you isolated. Group therapy can be especially powerful because it combines professional help with human connection.

Comforting exercises you can try today

  • Write a letter to your future self.

Describe what you are feeling right now and what you need. Seal it or save it to be opened in six months. This creates continuity and an ally you can visit later.

  • Try the “two-minute reach” practice.

Each day, do one small, friendly thing for someone: send a message saying, “Thinking of you,” or thank the person who refilled the coffee. Small gestures often return warmth and remind you you’re part of a social web.

  • Use the self-compassion break.

When you notice pain, put a hand on your heart and say: “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself.” Pause and breathe for several rounds.

  • Make a list of “gentle yeses.”

These are optional social activities that feel manageable—a short walk with a friend, an hour at the library, calling a sibling. Start with one gentle yes per week.

When loneliness persists

If loneliness feels chronic—or if it’s accompanied by hopelessness, persistent fatigue, or changes in appetite or sleep—reach out for professional support. Loneliness can be connected to mental health conditions like depression, and it can benefit from therapy, medication, or both. Asking for help is a courageous, practical step. It can comfort your heart and change the trajectory of your days.

A compassionate ending

Loneliness can be a fierce teacher. It can expose where you’re tender, where you fear rejection, and where you’ve forgotten how to tend to yourself. But it can also be a doorway to deeper self-knowledge. When we meet loneliness with small acts of kindness—tending our bodies, creating rituals, reaching out in tiny ways, and seeking community—we slowly reweave the threads of belonging.

Please hear me when I say, “you don’t need to hurry the healing.” On hard days, remember the posture you instinctively assume in pain: protective, small. Try instead to soften one muscle at a time. Breathe. Put a hand over your heart. Say one gentle thing to yourself. These are not grand solutions, but they are steady—and steadiness is what heals. Over time, small moments of tenderness add up, and the world starts to feel a little less cold.

A poem I wrote about loneliness….

Alone, I fold myself into small shapes, a quiet shell against the world’s bright wind.

Don’t see me

My shoulders learn to hide, my breath grows shallow, and I move through days on soft autopilot.

Don’t see me

Inside, a spark remembers how to rest and keeps a small light against the dark.

Don’t see me

I light a tiny ritual — tea, a song, a name — and let the ache be a visitor, not the whole house.

Maybe see me

Softly I unfold, muscle by muscle, word by word, until a single hand on my chest becomes a bridge.

See me

Peace and every good.

Choose Your Altars: Context Before Commitment Now!

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Can I be heretical for a moment? I want to talk about worship—not as doctrine but as human behavior. When we use words like “worship,” “blessed,” or “devotion,” we often assume everyone shares the same map for those terms. But what if we treated those words as claims that require context and interrogation the way we would any major life commitment—like marriage, career choice, or a mortgage? Do we know why we are doing the deeply important things in our lives, and what it really means to be doing them?

Let’s start with a simple observation: language is slippery. “I worship God” can be a conscious, reflective claim about meaning and purpose, or it can be shorthand for a family habit, a cultural identity, or a weekly routine. The same goes for secular “objects” of devotion—money, status, sex, drugs, career. People often enact profound loyalties without pausing to ask whether those loyalties are chosen or inherited, adaptive or harmful.

I talked about context a few posts ago and I want to dive into it a little bit differently.

Examples make this more concrete.

  • The executive.

Consider Linda, a chief operations officer who describes herself as “dedicated” to her company. She works 70-hour weeks, vacations with her laptop, and measures self-worth by quarterly results. Her friends joke that she “worships the bottom line.” Is that hyperbole? For Linda it’s not; her weekends are filled with email, she’s missed births and birthdays, and financial metrics shape her identity. The question is: did she choose this life because it aligns with an examined set of values, or because the expectations and incentives around her nudged her into a default devotion? If she says she “devotes her life to work,” what does “devotion” actually mean for Linda—satisfaction, security, avoidance of other pains? What is the context that made work the main altar of her life? (I changed content of each of these examples because I was not given permission to use the people’s identities)

 

  • The influencer.

Jamal, a 23-year-old social media creator, measures success in likes, followers, and brand deals. His waking plan is content production optimized for engagement. That rhythm organizes his social circle, daily habits, and self-esteem. When his follower count stalls, he becomes anxious and makes riskier content decisions to chase virality. Is he worshipping audience approval? Again, the symbol matters: the behaviors are indistinguishable from religious devotion—rituals (posting), community reinforcement (comments), moral accounting (metrics). But does he understand why he chases those metrics? Is it autonomy, recognition, or fear of obscurity?

  • The habitual churchgoer.

Sara attends Sunday services every week, has for decades, and calls herself a person of faith. But she admits she often sits in the pew on autopilot—singing the songs, nodding at the sermon, rarely thinking about the theological claims. For her, worship is a social ritual that binds her to family and community. That’s meaningful in certain ways, but if someone asks whether she “devotes her life” to the principles taught there, she struggles to articulate specifics. Is her participation a moral compass, a habit, or a defense against loneliness? Without context, the claim “I worship” can mask a lack of considered commitment.

  • The non-believer.

Tom, an engineer, publicly states he does not believe in God or organized religion. What does that mean for him? Is he rejecting the metaphysical claims, the social practices, the institutional authority, or all of the above? For some people, atheism is an intellectual conclusion; for others it’s a cultural stance or even a reaction against abusive institutions. Context matters: a blanket “I don’t believe” can be an invitation to conversation, but it can also be shorthand for “I was hurt,” “I never saw the need,” or “I never had a framework to meaningfully engage.”

  • The addict.

Marcus struggled with substance dependence for years. He would prioritize the next fix over relationships, work, and health. In a clinical sense, addiction can look like a form of worship: consistent rituals, surrender of agency, and a value hierarchy in which the substance ranks above all else. When he entered recovery and asked why he had chased substances so relentlessly, he uncovered fears, trauma, and a hunger for acceptance. Recognizing the context changed his approach to life and meaning.

These vignettes point to a few recurring patterns.

First, devotion and habit are not the same. Something you do every week can be either a carefully chosen expression of core values or a default behavior sustained by habit and social reinforcement. We routinely confuse frequency with meaningfulness. The critical move is to ask: does repetition reflect reflective commitment or mere inertia?

Second, context transforms words into claims that can be evaluated. To say “I worship X” without specifying what X is, what X gives you, and what X costs you, is to make an ambiguous claim. Is the worship chosen freely? Is it compensatory (filling a void)? Is it communal or isolating? What happens if X is removed—does the person reorganize their life or collapse?

Third, many social institutions encourage uptake of labels without fostering critical thought. My pastor friend who worries about biblical text being used without context has a secular analogue: workplaces, subcultures, and social media ecosystems often pass down language and practices that people adopt without understanding origins or alternatives. Some call that “faith” or “loyalty”; others call it suspension of inquiry. Either way, it’s worth asking whether your assent is informed.

So, what do practical steps look like if we decide to insist on context before committing to the things that claim our lives?

  • Ask the “why” questions: Why this devotion? What needs does it serve? Whose approval or reward structures support it? Try to make a list—psychological, social, economic—that explains the attraction.
  • Consider the long-term ledger: How will this devotion look in five, ten, thirty years? What will be served, and what will be sacrificed? Try to envision the trade-offs honestly.
  • Test alternatives: Could you allocate attention differently? If your life’s axis shifted even slightly, what would change? Small experiments reveal if a devotion is truly intrinsic or simply convenient.
  • Seek external perspectives: Talk to friends, mentors, or a therapist about what they see. People immersed in a system often miss its blind spots.
  • Demand specificity from claims: When someone asserts “this is what we do” or “this is who we are,” ask follow-up questions. What do you mean by “this”? What metrics or stories support that definition?

Click Here For Free Workbook Link.

Language matters because it shapes identity. “Worship” is a provocative term because it exposes the sacrificial structure of devotion. You don’t have to use religious vocabulary to admit you are giving your life to something. You can be as devoted to a career, a relationship, a cause, or a compound as anyone kneeling in a chapel. The crucial question is whether that devotion is the result of an informed, reflective choice or an accident of context.

I can’t accept words without context. Can you? If you want to live honestly and with purpose, start asking context questions about the things that claim you. It doesn’t require rejection or conversion—only clarity. And when we have clarity, we gain power: the power to recommit intentionally, to redirect energy where it matters, and to stop pretending that habits equal meaning..

Be the Light: Support Ser-Kallai, Heal Communities

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There are moments when a single idea — compassion made practical — can change a life and, eventually, a community. That is the group I have worked alongside for the last few years. Lynette and I have served on the board and in the field, and from firsthand experience we know what this work means to people affected by poverty and trauma. That’s the promise at the heart of Ser‑Kallai. Founded in 2019 with a name that means “to be light,” Ser‑Kallai grew from the simple conviction that trauma healing, emotional intelligence, and community connection are not luxuries but essentials for thriving societies. Today, as our country faces growing emotional and social challenges, Ser‑Kallai’s programs are not only timely — they’re pivotal.

A personal beginning, a universal mission

Nathalie Caycedo’s story is the origin of Ser‑Kallai. Born in Colombia and shaped by early volunteering in neighborhoods scarred by poverty and violence, she learned that small acts of attention and care can create lasting opportunities. Years later, when she helped refugee families adjust to life in the U.S., she saw that healing comes from trust, from consistency, and from programs that teach emotional skills along with academic support.

That experience seeded a nonprofit that centers emotional intelligence (EQ), trauma‑informed care, and community resilience. With help from her church, Living Word Christian Community, Nathalie and a committed team began offering after‑school programs, coaching, workshops and high‑impact EQ festivals that equip children, teens and adults to handle life’s stresses and build stronger relationships. Ser‑Kallai has already made a measurable difference across Arizona, California, Ohio and Florida, supporting foster and kinship families, federal‑custody teens, refugees and low‑income communities.

Why this work matters now

We live in turbulent times. Rates of anxiety, depression, and interpersonal conflict have surged across age groups. Children are navigating more complex emotional landscapes than prior generations. Communities dealing with the aftermath of displacement, economic strain and systemic trauma need resources that go beyond immediate aid — they need tools to rebuild capacity and hope.

Emotional intelligence is not just “soft” enrichment

It is the foundation for better decision‑making, improved school and work performance, and healthier families. When we teach children and adults how to recognize emotions, regulate responses, and build empathetic relationships, we invest in a future of lower violence, higher civic engagement, and stronger workforce readiness. Ser‑Kallai’s programs do exactly that — they transform vulnerability into resilience.

My personal perspective

Working with Ser‑Kallai has been one of the most meaningful commitments of my life. On the board and in program rooms, I’ve seen small, quiet breakthroughs that ripple outward: a teen who finds a new way to communicate with their caregiver, a parent who learns to manage their own stress so they can be present, a classroom that shifts from reactive to restorative. Those moments fill me with gratitude and hope. At the same time, I feel urgency — the need to scale what works so more families and neighborhoods can find stability and healing.

I’m proud of what Ser‑Kallai has accomplished, and I’m deeply moved by the people we serve. Every success is earned through the courage of participants, the dedication of volunteers and staff, and the generosity of supporters. Personally, I give my time and energy because I have seen the difference that consistent care and practical emotional skills make in a life. I believe that when a community learns to tend its emotional wounds, it becomes stronger and kinder.

Your gift creates tangible results

Donations to Ser‑Kallai go directly into programs that produce measurable outcomes:

• After‑school enrichment that combines academic support with EQ lessons, helping kids succeed in school while building emotional resilience.

• Trauma‑informed workshops and coaching for families affected by foster care, displacement, or systemic inequities.

• Community‑level events like EQ festivals that bring practical tools to large groups, fostering connection and collective healing.

• Virtual and in‑person training so local leaders, teachers and volunteers can replicate Ser‑Kallai’s model in more neighborhoods.

Each dollar multiplies: a workshop can reach dozens of children and their caregivers; a festival creates networks that last long after the lights go out.

How you can help?

If you’re moved by this work, there are several ways to be the light: donate, volunteer, share Ser‑Kallai’s story with friends and local organizations, or bring our training model to your school or faith community. Every action matters.

Give today: https://serkallai.org/get-involved

My closing,

I am convinced that healing and emotional education are essential building blocks for resilient communities. Ser‑Kallai is putting those ideas into practice, and it’s an honor to stand with them. Please join us — your support helps more people move from hurt to hope.

Understand your growing edge

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“Look well to the growing edge. All around us worlds are dying and new worlds are being born; all around us life is dying and life is being born. The fruit ripens on the tree, the roots are silently at work in the darkness of the earth against a time when there shall be new leaves, fresh blossoms, green fruit. Such is the growing edge. Look well to the growing edge.”

Howard Thurman

There are moments when the world around us feels raw and divided, when headlines and conversations seem to pull us apart rather than bring us together. In those moments I return to Howard Thurman’s words and find an invitation: to look for the small, persistent beginnings — the growing edge — where life quietly insists on renewal. Thurman’s lines are not a denial of loss; they are a map of hope. They remind us that endings and births travel side by side, that even in the shadow of decay there is an unseen labor preparing the next season.

Think of the growing edge as the slender green that appears on a branch after winter, or the first breath that follows exhaustion. As Thurman says, it is “the extra breath from the exhausted lung, the one more thing to try when all else has failed.” It is the steady, stubborn impulse that keeps us trying, learning, and reaching for what is better. This impulse is not grandiose or flashy; often it is quiet and humble — a neighbor listening, a teacher staying late, a community garden taking root in a vacant lot. Those acts, multiplied, become the scaffolding for something new.

 

Our world today bears many fractures — political rancor, social pain, environmental strain. Yet if we look only at what is breaking, we miss the synchronous birth of possibility. “All around us life is dying and life is being born.” If we pay attention to the growing edge, we can choose to live in alignment with that emergence. That doesn’t mean ignoring difficulty. It means placing our energy where life is being renewed: toward understanding, toward repair, toward building structures that invite flourishing rather than entrenching harm.

How do we tend the growing edge in the life we live? First, by embracing change instead of fearing it. Change is the canvas where new worlds are painted. Thurman’s vision encourages us to accept transformation as natural and necessary — to learn, adapt, and be curious about new perspectives. This openness creates the possibility of connection where division once stood.

Second, by intentionally looking for the positive developments that flicker into being. When we “look well to the growing edge,” we train our attention on those emerging efforts that point toward life: grassroots movements organizing for justice, teachers designing classrooms that foster belonging, neighbors organizing to protect a local river. These are the places where hope is not theoretical but practical. Thurman calls this “the upward reach of life when weariness closes in upon all endeavor.” Even a single upward reach can change the direction of a weary heart.

Third, by cultivating resilience. The growing edge is “the basis of hope” because it gives us evidence that renewal is possible. When we recognize obstacles as opportunities to grow, we reclaim agency. Speaking truth, showing up for others, and insisting on dignity in daily choices are acts that compound. They make us stronger and they signal to others that building anew is worth the struggle.

Fourth, by engaging in meaningful dialogue. When “times are out of joint and men have lost their reason,” Thurman suggests the incentive to carry on lives in relation, in listening and in sharing. Conversation done with patience and empathy can soften hardened positions and reveal common aims. It’s not always easy; it requires humility and courage to speak and to listen. But such exchanges often become the quiet work of the roots, preparing fertile ground for new leaves and blossoms.

I have to say without a shadow of a doubt there have been times in my life where I did not want to “engage in meaningful dialogue”. I even went so far as to decry the impulse to do so. How can you expect me to talk with “this person” for what they are doing around them?

It is HARD. It is WORTH IT!

Finally, by nurturing new leaders and ideas. “The birth of a child — life’s most dramatic answer to death” points to the profound power of beginnings. Supporting those who are starting — young people, marginalized voices, community organizers — replenishes our collective capacity to imagine and build alternatives. Their insights are often fresh because they are less encumbered by the constraints of what has always been.

History and daily life offer countless examples of the growing edge in motion: movements that transformed societies, technologies that reconnected people across distances, community responses to climate crises that turned despair into action. These all began as something small and persistent — a few people refusing to accept the finality of the old story.

There are challenges. Cynicism can blunt our sight; uncertainty can make us cling to familiar pain; idealism without grounding can falter. Thurman’s call — “Look well to the growing edge” — is precisely a remedy for these trials. It trains attention toward the life that insists on being born even in difficult soil.

So, when the world feels fractured, remember to look for the new leaves, the fresh blossoms, the quiet roots working underground. Tend to them when you find them. Join them when you can. In that practice, one extra breath at a time, we become participants in a larger turning — from fragmentation toward a renewed and shared life. Look well to the growing edge.

Folks, reading Howard Thurman is a life changing experience for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Peace and every good.