Alicia M. Rodriguez's Blog

And then you’ll know what you didn’t know. I want you to stop, stop everything.

Really.

Stop.

Stop doing what you’re doing.

Stop doing what you always do.

Stop running to catch up to yourself.

Just stop.

Why?

Because doing what you always do keeps you exactly where you are.

How long do you want to stay exactly there?

It doesn’t mean that “there” is bad or negative. It could be fantastic there. You might have the most amazing life there.

But it’s only for the moment. You are here only for the moment.

And you don’t grow if you stand still.

Notice a paradox here? Yeah.

I’m saying stop and I’m staying don’t stand still.

It may be confusing. Yes, I understand that.

Let me explain.

Life is in constant motion. It’s a universal law that nothing stays the same. All your cells are regenerating right now. The planet is constantly spinning. The breeze outside will subside in an hour. The tides ebb and flow. Nothing is permanent.

But what happens when that movement is unconscious? When how you are moving and where you are moving to lacks awareness, presence and the intention to be moving in that direction?

You end up being carried by a river of events as you resist the flow, trying to hold onto whatever you felt kept you safe. So you keep doing the same things you always do because it’s familiar. You feel secure even as the tsunami of change is upon you.

Stop.

Just Stop.

Because you don’t know where you’re going, why you’re going and the resistance to what is calling you keeps you stuck where you are. Not where you should or want to be.

When you stop, when you pause, you interrupt the patterns that keep you stuck. You build awareness that things have indeed changed but you have not changed with them. You notice that who you thought you were is not who you are.

Stop.

Just Stop.

Take that pause. Do something unlike what you’ve been doing. Break your conditioned pattern and notice what emerges from that change.

Something new. Something you didn’t expect…

A new way to be in harmony with your Self, with your work, with others.

But you won’t experience this unless you stop…

This pause takes courage, faith and trust.

You may be going so fast because it’s what you know.

You may be running so that the truth of who you are today doesn’t catch up with you.

What if it does?

What is it that you don’t trust? What have you lost faith in?

What are you afraid will happen in the still moment when everything that envelops you falls away?

Can you trust yourself to pause so you can acknowledge and embrace your truth?

This pause holds the possibility for transformation.

Stop. Be still. Listen.

Have faith that what you hear is exactly what you need right now.

This whisper is coming from a sacred place, one that holds more power than you have believed possible.

Stop fighting the flow of time and align with that universal movement to manifest what you were meant to manifest now.

In the middle of the rushing river, lie back into the flow and no, you won’t drown. You’ll still be moving even as you are still. The flow of what is will show you what you are meant to acknowledge in this moment.

Stillness becomes alive.

And then you’ll know what you didn’t know before.

You’ll know who you are in this moment and what you need in this moment.

And only in the present moment does any form of creation happen.

Stop.

Just stop.

Trust yourself and discover yourself anew in this moment.

Break the old patterns that keep you exactly where you are.

Consciously get in the flow of your life and you’ll be happier, more authentic and fulfilled.

For now pause until that stillness becomes alive. Keep the Threshold Open

A Collective Shift

I was walking on the beach this morning, watching Sophie run into the waves, the seagulls diving for breakfast, and the fishermen dragging their boats out to sea with that radical faith that there would be a catch today.

The idea that we are in an “in-between place” ruminated in my mind. We are not where we were, nor where we are going. We are suspended on a bridge we must cross between the nostalgia of the past and the uncertainty of the future.

So much of our personal and collective story is dying, our illusions being ruthlessly swept away, revealing the shadow elements we’ve been hiding from.

The greatest illusion was that we actually had control.

This time of shattering of illusion holds pain and suffering at the dissolution of what we believed was true. Replacing the illusion is the creative potential of our lives if we stop resisting the flow of energy and release our attachment to the past.

“The presence of this life is like a single day. The presence of the bardo is like tonight’s dream. The presence of rebirth will come as quickly as tomorrow. Deal with life’s real meaning straight away”. — Longchenpa

I’m reminded of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the term bardo, or “intermediate state,” that refers to the space between the moment we die and the afterlife. But it also applies to an in-between state, a time of change and transition. We feel a loss of control, uncertainty, and a sense of groundlessness. We have lost our old reality but have not yet created a new one.

We can embrace this liminal space as an opportunity to reflect and recalibrate. We can enter the pause intending to reflect on what holds meaning.

This may stir unexpected emotions and discomfort, but it is also the birthplace of inspired creativity. All creation is born out of a void, an emptiness, a vastness before all that was and remains after our material self, our body, has expired.

Like the universe, it is an infinite consciousness that becomes available to us when we can sit with the discomfort, without judgment, open to whatever may arise as an expansion of our individual and collective selves.

This is where reflection births harmony, meaning, and purpose; when our inner essential nature aligns with our external world in action and deeds.

“First the shattering. Then the renaissance.”

In between is bardo, a non-space between what was and what will be. This transition may be obvious now, but it is not apparent that we live in a continuous bardo, forever suspended between past and future, although we seldom recognize it. We are in constant motion; life is (and we are) constantly changing and flowing, and we have far less control than we imagine.

YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES TODAY.

You can yearn for the comfort of what you knew in the past, resist what is happening, rail against the slowing of our society, stay attached to the trappings of success and materialism, and remain contracted and protected from anything you can still hold on to.

Or you can step into the flow of this mighty shift and move towards the challenge, joyfully creating a new chapter of your story based on different priorities, oriented around deeper values and aligning your internal essential nature with your ability to manifest in the external world through right action, conscious leadership, and a unitive purpose.

THIS IS A TIME OF SHATTERING THE ILLUSION OF WHAT WAS AND AWAKENING TO NEW POSSIBILITIES ORIENTED AROUND AN INCLUSIVE COLLECTIVE STORY AND SHARED MEANING.

Your invitation is to embrace this rich, generative space, honestly peering into your own shadow and the shadow of our systems and collective beliefs to redefine how you want to be from this point forward and choose where you want your energy to flow.

Nothing has ever been or will ever be permanent. Resisting what is in front of you now is futile and will cause suffering, like trying to grab a wave as it meets the beach. The seawater runs through your fingers and returns to the ocean, only to become a new wave that cannot be stopped.

Instead, choose to meet the tide, diving deep into the silence as you meet the you you are becoming and embrace what could be the birth of a new possibility for you and our global community.

If you are in that in-between space, join me in Portugal for a Becoming Limitless Experience—a time-in so that you return renewed and clear on the next steps. Learn more here.

Nourish the words.

Unlock the power of journaling with 10 free prompts.

Did you know that your pen can create as much magic as a magician’s wand?

I’ve been journaling since I was a child. Back then it was called “keeping a diary.”

The journal is the place where my creativity unleashes random words that could eventually become a poem, essay or even book.

It’s a practice of connecting with myself, unearthing treasure in the shadows, pausing a busy life to remember who I am and what matters.

There is no “right” way to journal - only your way.

I find that a quiet space, inside or outdoors, is essential for listening to the whispers I can’t hear in the noise of life.

Sometimes there are words, fleeting, and I run to my journal to capture them before they fly away forever unspoken or unwritten.

A GIFT

As a patron of my writing, I’d like to gift you this ebook on journaling that I call Notes to Myself.

It’s an easy download with 10 prompts for you to begin the practice of journaling or dive deeper into your own practice.

Thank you so much for supporting my writing.

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK HERE Nourish the words

Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash

A Poem - Goodbye Summer

This morning,

I wore my fluffy robe and warm slippers

when I went outside.

Summer had gone with a whisper in the night

without a tender goodbye.

I’ll miss you, I called out

as I sipped my dark coffee

blowing the steam into the wind

like an offering

to the changing season.

Nourish the words

Photo by kian zhang on Unsplash

Ordinary Sundays Become Sacred Memories

Whenever I smell the scent of newly mowed grass, I remember Sundays on Hearn Street. It would smell sticky-sweet, and it was moist as if it had rained that morning, even if it hadn’t.

Sundays were special. They were the only day my Dad didn’t go to work. My mother would hush us all morning and kick us out into the yard so my father could sleep in. Every other day, he would rise at 5 a.m. and go to bed at 1 a.m. after a day of working two jobs. By 6:30 a.m., he would be at work as a stock clerk at Hewlett-Packard. The storage rooms were his office, lined with computer parts, each with its own 12-digit number. He would take counts of each bit and byte and record where they would be shipped in the future. He’d drive home at 3 p.m. to have dinner and change. By 6 p.m., he would be on the night shift in the produce department of Star Market, a few miles from our house.

He was always so proud of how that department looked. Pristine, with all the vegetables lined up neatly in their baskets and the fruit shining under the plastic wrap. He greeted each customer with a smile and, using the English he had learned, he’d joke with them and they would smile and chat with him as he continued his task of keeping everything in orderly rows on the counters.

The store would close at 10 p.m., and he would sweep the floor, leaving everything sparkling and ready for the next morning. By midnight, he was home getting ready for bed. We were all asleep by then. Years later, my mother would tell me that he would enter our room and spend a few minutes simply watching us sleep. Then he would go to bed.

We would always have a late breakfast on Sunday. Pancakes with fruit and maple syrup were our favorite. My mother would take out the special pancake pan before she shooed us out of the house. We knew that once my father woke, we’d be called into the house for our family meal before a day’s work in the yard.

I still remember the roar of the lawn mower as it cut through the overgrown grass leaving a trail of green mush behind it. Armed with rakes, my siblings and I would clean up the remnants of the cut grass, filling garbage bags, and then we’d line the chain-link fence with them for Monday’s trash truck to come and take them away.

In the afternoon, my mother would come out with lemonade and biscuits, as well as homemade grape jelly made from the big purple grapes growing on the vine over our patio. Not only did the vine provide the jelly, but also the shade under which we would gather, celebrating a day’s work together.

One time, when we were helping to pick the grapes, my brother was stung by a wasp. His ring finger swelled up. My father came out with a saw and I thought for sure he would saw off my brother’s finger. Instead, he sawed off the ring and the swelling subsided. My brother kept his finger and from then on, we all wore gloves when we harvested the grapes.

Every Sunday was the same, except on Catholic holidays, when we would dress in recycled Easter clothes for Mass at Sacred Heart. You could say we were fair-weather Catholics, attending Mass on special occasions, while the rest of our Sundays were devoted to our family and yard work.

Perhaps our devotion wasn’t the typical kind of dressing up for church to show off to our neighbors or to hear the “good word.” Our devotion to each other was rooted in our own traditions, which began in Colombia, my parents’ home, where Sundays were about family.

Those memories seem so distant now. My parents have died, and my siblings and I no longer live close by. Time seems to rush by, and Sundays are lost to schedules and catching up on the undone of the week. Yet anytime I smell newly mowed grass, time stands still, and I’m transported to a simpler time when Sundays were about pancakes, biscuits, and grape jelly, and a yard on Hearn Street where a small family gathered to work and play. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I often wonder about other writers and how they began to write. Were they encouraged at a young age or later told to get a “real job?” Did they spend hours tucked in their beds reading novels? Were they drawn to poetry, comics, Scooby-Doo books (like my son), or maybe fables and myths?

All writers have their writing journey story. I think we forget how those early years formed our love for writing. Do we appreciate the consistency and perseverance to take pen to paper (figuratively speaking) in the face of a vast void where we have no idea if anyone even cares what we write?

Even after years of writing and publishing, I had not yet written my own writing journey, to see it there in front of me, to appreciate all the threads that contributed to the writer I am.

I’m not famous. I’m just someone who tells stories. Here’s mine.

Seeking My Place of Belonging

In the tapestry of my life, threads of my Colombian heritage and American upbringing weave together. I stand as a storyteller, a guide through the domains of personal development, spirituality, and wisdom.

From a young age, I felt a spiritual longing amplified by my family’s strong faith.

The stories my parents told me of our culture, filled with dancing and joy as well as tragedy and hardship, guided my steps even as I stood on the periphery, a quiet observer in a world that often felt foreign to me. In our family, dreams were prophetic and important. Sensing was as natural as thinking. Intuition mattered more than knowledge. Imagination was the doorway to freedom. However, we lived in the United States, where results and being practical mattered more than simple joys and mystical realms.

As a child, books were how I explored the world without leaving home. I found solace in poetry, whose rhythm and rhyme soothed my apprehension of feeling like an outsider. My imagination was limitless, and my curiosity about the natural world was insatiable. As I began to record my dreams and observations, I began to connect with a deeper understanding of the human condition and my place in this world.

During and after college, travel became my escape, and I began to document new feelings from experiencing other cultures and ways of life that felt more aligned with my nature. Yet, despite my innate creativity and curiosity, I followed the path laid out by convention, navigating the corridors of the business world while my heart yearned for deeper truths waiting to be unearthed. It wasn’t long before I began actively seeking mentors and guides and exploring the inner spaces of my mind and heart.

After years of devastating losses, an intolerance for conventional living and societal expectations began to grow within me. Through the ebb and flow of relationships and experiences, I discovered the power of resilience and self-love, a journey marked by quiet rebellion against those who sought to silence the voice of my spirit.

After facing several dark nights of the soul, I began to recognize the courage that I had not known existed within me. Gradually, I made intentional but difficult decisions to change my life, forging a path toward healing and wholeness.

Nature has always been my sanctuary, a sacred teacher whose wisdom spoke to my soul. My church was the forest, and my confessions were spoken in the winds over the ocean. In Nature, I found solace and inspiration and the fundamental principles that drive my life and writing: first, the interconnectedness of all things through a sacred life force energy, and second, that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. I choose to live by the ocean, where I most feel the pull of consciousness reflected in the depths of her waters, in the ebb and flow of her tides, and in her calm and stormy moods.

My life is a constant dance of duality, a delicate balance of light and shadow, power and surrender. In life’s paradox lies the possibility for harmony and healing and the essence of what it means to be human. As a storyteller, I weave tales of resilience and redemption, inviting others to embrace their own journey of self-discovery and healing. Through the power of self-forgiveness and self-love, we unlock the doors to our limitless potential. With intuition and empathy, I guide others toward lives of meaning and purpose, honoring the divine spark that resides within us all.

Well, that’s my journey, my story. When I published my memoir, The Shaman’s Wife, which had been many years in the making, I began to review my life. How did I get there, and from that place, how did I put it all into words?

How about you?

Have you reflected on your story and how you got to where you are as a writer? If you’re not a writer, are you an artist? Whoever you are, whatever you do, you have been on a journey and followed signposts that led to where you are today.

So, let me ask you, what’s your story?

Are you an aspiring author with a story to tell but unsure of how to start or where to go next?

UNWRITTEN JOURNEYS IS FOR YOU

Maybe you've begun writing, only to find yourself struggling with doubt, stuck in negative self-talk, or questioning if anyone would care to read your words. Imagine if you could find a place dedicated to nurturing your writing mindset—a space designed not for craft or technique, but for the courage, clarity, and confidence to hear your story and let it unfold.

Unwritten Journeys is a transformative writing mindset retreat designed for new and aspiring authors who need space, quiet, and community. Held in the serene beauty of the Algarve, this retreat offers time to pause, reflect, and reconnect with your vision, far from daily distractions.

DETAILS FOR UNWRITTEN JOURNEYS HERE

On memory, place, and the invisible marks we leave behind.

I believe that the story of our lives is told through the places we have inhabited. As I reflect on the places I have lived, uncomfortable answers poke at me, reminding me of how Sophie my dog keeps poking me when I neglect giving her my attention.

My friends and visitors come to Portugal, looking for a new place to call home. They arrive carrying their own histories, their own collection of places left behind. I watch them move through my adopted country and wonder what they see, what they feel, whether this might become their next chapter or simply another stop along the way.

It makes me think about all the places I have called home and how I left vestiges of who I am scattered across landscapes and living rooms. A garden of peonies blooming long after I moved away. A Christmas tree planted with ceremony and hope. A fountain for birds that still catches morning light. A small shed to house garden tools, standing sentinel over someone else's dreams now. These physical remnants are the easier ones to catalog.

The other kinds of memories I left behind run deeper—relationships and friendships created in kitchen conversations and late-night revelations, experiences shared over mundane Tuesday dinners that somehow became sacred, lives birthed and lives lost within walls that held our grief and joy with equal tenderness. Weddings where we danced until our feet ached, funerals where we learned that love doesn't end when someone leaves, divorces that brought us to our knees, graduations that marked not just achievements but the passage of time itself.

When I moved, I gave away or threw away things which held memories of the places I loved in, grew in, struggled in, and ultimately decided to leave. Each discarded item carries weight—not just physical, but emotional. The coffee mug that witnessed a thousand morning rituals. The throw pillow that absorbed tears during a difficult season. The books whose margins hold conversations with my former selves.

I experience what the Portuguese call "saudade"—a longing for something ineffable, a past we don't quite remember, a nostalgia for a life we perceived as clothed in delight. Images appear in my mind of sharing my life with a two-year-old who is now a grown man that I see only rarely. A home in Severna Park on the property of a private school where I experienced a sense of community and safety. Visions of a happy family at Christmas, sharing the food we had all cooked and gleefully opening presents between bits of pastries, empanadas and wine while my mother smiled in delight and my father playfully threw wrapping at us. A property on a hill overlooking the Pacific in Ecuador whose dreams were never realized.

How do we inhabit the places of our life?

Are we present to our lives as they happened in that moment, or do our memories bring alive that which we missed while we were there?

How did we arrive—fearful or in anticipation of new adventures? Did we depart in sadness, or did our longing make us jump into the unknown future courageously and joyfully?

What about now?

I find myself holding the past as a treasured moment to be taken out on occasion, lovingly held as the stories it contains wash over me. Then I put it back into the boxes lined with velvet with care and step into my current life to create more timeless experiences—until at last the hourglass runs out, leaving the treasure box for someone else to care for or discard.

But perhaps that's the point.

The places we inhabit do indeed inhabit us, becoming part of our internal landscape long after we've locked the door for the last time. They live in the way we arrange furniture, the rituals we carry forward, the people we choose to love, the gardens we plant wherever we land next.

And maybe, just maybe, we inhabit them too—leaving invisible marks that future residents will somehow sense, adding our layer to the palimpsest of human habitation that makes every place sacred in its own quiet way.

Photo by Ferhan Özbek

If you’d like to stay updated on my writing, books and retreats please consider registering for my newsletter. (Substack is not my newsletter, more like my writing journal).

REGISTER HERE

If you live in Portugal, especially in the Algarve, consider joining me for Unwritten Journeys: A Masterclass in Creativity and Memoir, on September 25, 2025 in Portimão, Portugal.

UNWRITTEN JOURNEYS DETAILS

Mister Kludde

Losing Mister Kludde and relearning lessons on love and loss 💔

Having lived in other countries and being of Latina parents, I've always experienced grief differently than my white USA friends.

It was never something to overcome or get past.

In many ways, grief - individual and collective- is a gift. To be in that space non judgmentally with self and others connects me to a deep longing that is obscured by my daily living.

It reminds me to love deeply, to forgive, to honor life, and greet it with open arms even when it hurts.

Crying is so cleansing, and I always know I'm in trouble if I can't cry and access grief.

Grief is not a solitary event. It is a river running through our humanity that cannot be ignored.

When a pet or anyone close to us dies, it's not just about their death. It's about facing our own mortality and the death of those around us whom we love.

We think we are mourning the loss of one person or pet, but we are mourning so much more.

A disconnect from another living being.

A sense of our mortality.

Regrets – could we have done better, more?

There are layers to our grief that are not apparent in the moment. They unravel as days go by, and we are constantly barraged, unexpectedly, by feelings we thought we handled.

We compartmentalize, deceiving ourselves that we can deal with it, but we forget that they, whoever they are, have been part of us.

We are left with a hole in the fabric of our lives, and we have no idea how to mend it.

So, we grieve. If we are aware and lucky, we grieve.

We don't set aside our sorrow, our tears, the sobs that wrack our bodies with grief.

We give in to them, allowing all of it to course through our bodies.

Animals, pets, bestow the gift of learning to grieve without being completely decimated by loss. 

Or, by being decimated by their loss.

Both are appropriate and real.

Losing Mister Kludde, knowing I was going to lose him, despite my promise at the beginning to keep unattached in my heart (that didn’t work!), has placed me in this void, this silence that meets me in the morning when he is not purring over me in bed asking for a tender touch and to be fed.

Despite my best efforts, I fell in love. I loved Kludde. My heart is broken but surely will mend knowing that love was present in his last moments and that in some way I was the bridge to another plane, another place of love and peace.

I feel the void. I feel the grief. And I feel the gratitude for having the privilege of providing love and a good life for this black cat that only knew survival and a short time with someone else who cared for him.

We do this for all we love, no matter if they are human or animal.

We open our hearts to pain because there is something inside us that knows we can love deeply, that we can be greater than the pain of loss because of our capacity for love.

So, Mister Kludde, despite trying not to love you, I loved you. And my final decision was a profound act of love, even as my heart breaks.

I pray that we all dare to hold our losses, our grief, as sacred testimony to the love, so much love, that we are capable of

Sophie and Mister Kludde at home

Recovering from a narcissistic relationship is like being held hostage in a house that someone else built, designed to keep you small and contained.

You're standing in a dark room and you begin to search for the light. Your hands trace the contours of walls. You find a light switch and flip it, but no light turns on. You keep running your hands along the walls and you come to another light switch. You flip it and no light turns on.

After a few times of this, something stirs within you, a memory older than the shadows. Light lives near thresholds, near places of passage and possibility, so you begin to look for the door. You find the door, and next to it, there is a light switch. You flip the switch and the light comes on. You notice that there is a key dangling from the lock in the door. You turn the key, the door opens, you step through, and behind you it closes with the finality of chapters ending.

It's another dark room. You run your hands along the walls looking for another light switch. You find a switch and flip it, but no light comes on. You do this maybe two more times until you remember that the light switch is typically next to the door. You find the door, and there's a light switch next to it. You flip the switch and the light comes on. You notice a key dangling from the lock and when you turn it, it opens into another room.

This time, however, you know that the light switch is on the wall next to the door. You flip it and the room illuminates. You go through every room in the house turning on the lights, remembering what it's like to have the key, remembering what it's like to awaken to yourself.

Each illuminated room reveals the architecture of your captivity, but also the return of your inner compass. You remember, room by room, who you were before the shadows fell, before someone else's smallness tried to eclipse your vastness.

Your movements become more certain, your search more purposeful, armed with the knowledge that insight lives where beginnings and endings meet, where one space yields to another. You move through room after room, turning darkness into enlightenment, collecting keys like promises kept to yourself.

Eventually, you come to the front door of the house. An ornate key dangles in the lock. You turn the key, and the door opens. You step into the expansive light outside. You are free.

It takes many rooms and many light switches, many failures and many successes, to be free of the confines that were created to keep you small. That is what it's like to heal from a narcissistic relationship until you find your own freedom, the one that you yourself unlock.

You are free, and you did it yourself. Now you stand in the glow, owning the life that you deserve and claiming it for yourself. You remember who you truly are, holding keys forged in darkness, recognizing the truth that no shadow can diminish: you are vast, you are resilient, you are whole. Not because someone granted you permission to be these things, but because you never stopped being them, even when you forgot.

The house still stands behind you, but you have stepped into your own story now, author of your future, keeper of your light, never again to be confined to what doesn’t belong to you and what you will never belong to.

If you’re ready to write your next chapter, consider working with me in Portugal on a Becoming Limitless Un-Retreat, a curated, one/one, transformational experience that helps you identify your desired future. More Here.

There is a knowing within us that precedes thought—an inner clarity that speaks before our analytical mind constructs its careful arguments. I first recognized this voice when my external life appeared perfectly aligned with conventional success, yet something felt fundamentally misaligned. While colleagues congratulated me on recent achievements, an unmistakable whisper persisted: This isn't your path.

This inner guidance doesn't arrive as elaborate reasoning. It emerges as immediate recognition—a simple "yes" or "no" that surfaces before we've had time to weigh options or construct justifications. Unlike our calculating mind, this knowing doesn't negotiate or rationalize. It illuminates what's already true for us, whether or not we're prepared to acknowledge it.

We evolve continuously, rarely in predictable patterns. Our work transforms, relationships deepen or dissolve, and various catalysts—welcomed and unwelcome—periodically disrupt familiar patterns. The uncomfortable space between established identity and emerging self creates a particular disorientation, a threshold state where the maps we've relied upon no longer accurately represent the territory.

During these transitions, the pressure to choose the path of least resistance intensifies.

We're surrounded by voices urging caution, reminding us of sunk costs, and highlighting potential risks. The familiar—even when unsatisfying—exerts powerful gravity against change. "Later" becomes our default response to inner promptings. Later, when circumstances align. Later, when security seems guaranteed. Later, when significant others approve.

For many, this promised "later" never materializes. Dreams are postponed until they quietly expire, leaving behind a vague melancholy we can't quite name.

Last spring, I sat with a friend who had spent decades building a successful legal practice while quietly harboring creative aspirations. "I always thought I'd write after retirement," she confided. "But now that I'm here, I realize I've lost the connection to those stories I once carried. I waited until I had time, but I didn't understand I needed to nurture that voice all along."

Her reflection haunts me.

What voices within ourselves are we systematically silencing while waiting for perfect conditions? What aspects of our authentic nature are we postponing until some idealized future that may never arrive?

The path through transitions isn't always dramatic reinvention. Sometimes, it involves subtle recalibrations that honor emerging truth while respecting established commitments.

Here are practices I've found valuable during evolutionary thresholds:

Maintain modest momentum. During transitions, we often become paralyzed, contemplating sweeping changes. Instead, identify one small action you can take today that honors your emerging direction. Consistent small shifts ultimately create more sustainable transformation than occasional dramatic leaps.

Cultivate discerning support. Surround yourself with people who recognize your potential rather than reinforce your limitations. Be selective—not everyone who cares about you can hold space for your evolution. Seek companions who neither push nor restrain but witness your unfolding with clear-eyed compassion.

Externalize emerging vision. Create tangible representations of what you're moving toward—written descriptions, visual maps, and consistent practices. These anchors reconnect you to possibility when the gravitational pull of the familiar intensifies.

Align goals with essential values. Pursue objectives that resonate with what genuinely matters to you rather than what merely impresses others. When our external actions contradict our internal values, we experience a kind of exhaustion that no achievement can remedy.

Acknowledge incremental growth. We often dismiss meaningful progress because it doesn't match our idealized expectations. Create regular practices to recognize how you're evolving, especially in subtle ways that others might not perceive.

Eliminate unnecessary depletion. Identify what consistently drains your energy without providing a proportional return. Creating space often proves more valuable than adding more activities. What might become possible if you released one obligation that no longer serves your direction?

Practice compassionate presence. When plans falter or progress stalls, respond as you would to a beloved friend—with understanding rather than judgment. Sustainable evolution requires gentleness with our humanity rather than harsh expectations of linear progress.

Honor your complete journey. Your past experiences contain wisdom even as you release patterns that no longer serve. Transformation builds upon rather than erases what came before. What elements of your history might support rather than hinder your emerging direction?

Distinguish difficulty from suffering. Meaningful pursuits naturally include challenges but shouldn't consistently deplete your essential vitality. When do you experience the "good tired" following worthwhile engagement versus the emptiness accompanying misaligned effort?

Recognize hidden opportunities. When constrained by circumstances, ask: "What might be available here that wouldn't be accessible elsewhere?" Sometimes, our most significant growth emerges precisely from situations we would never have chosen.

Evolution occurs through both dramatic catalysts and quiet, persistent shifts. Whether change arrives suddenly or gradually, maintain clarity about what you're moving toward rather than focusing primarily on what you're leaving behind. The most profound transformations often begin not with external reinvention but with the simple courage to acknowledge what you already know to be true.

This doesn't mean impulsively abandoning commitments or responsibilities. It means bringing honest awareness to how you're investing your limited time and energy. It means recognizing that postponing alignment with your deeper knowing doesn't ultimately serve anyone—not yourself, not those who depend on you.

Consider this: What truth are you waiting for permission to acknowledge? What aspect of yourself awaits expression? What would become possible if you listened to the quiet revolution already underway within you?

This post is an excerpt from my new book, Everyday Epiphanies (2nd edition): Uncovering Wisdom in Ordinary Moments. Everyday Epiphanies is a series of essays that explore how we navigate transitions with authenticity, establish boundaries that deepen rather than diminish connection, and create meaning through intentional presence rather than endless seeking.

GET EVERYDAY EPIPHANIES HERE Ready to view your life as a gift?

These essays speak to anyone who senses possibilities beyond productivity metrics and achievement milestones—readers who are seeking not another self-improvement formula but a more authentic relationship with their own experience. It's an invitation to discover that the wisdom you've been searching for elsewhere has been waiting patiently in the ordinary moments of your extraordinary life.

GET EVERYDAY EPIPHANIES HERE