TGIF :: The Might of Perspective

#82 || Reflections after the first ClearLife & The Eight Awarenesses Retreat + A Winter Solstice Practice & Poem

Dec 20, 2024

An earlier draft of today’s post-retreat TGIF was a bit more of a “What happened; What it felt like; What I learned; What’s next” after co-leading The Eight Awarenesses Retreat last week at MEA. Instead I tell a story and offer a peek into the transformation that can happen when we remove our dimmers and do the work—the changes are from the inside out. I leave you with a practice and a poem. ✨

12.9.24 | Terminal 2

I’m sitting in a well-worn leather swivel chair at the end of Terminal 2 at the San Francisco International Airport. It’s a Monday morning, so we are surrounded by busy, focused travelers. Most appear to be flying for business. Roller bags. Phone calls. Intense attention on phones and laptop screens. Most food and drink “to go.”

My bag, for once, is full of dresses for warm weather, twelve blank journals, a few books, and one pair of sandals. Ooh… I forgot my speaker. They’ll have one at the campus, surely!? We are on our way to MEA, Baja to lead a weeklong workshop/retreat on this topic of “getting clear” as shaped by The Eight Awarenesses framework.

It’s been a busy day+ getting ready for this adventure, but I feel rested, centered, and oddly calm about embarking upon this “first.” I’ve written extensively on this framework (including a book that’s now in the birth canal with my publisher), lead various standalone and monthly community Zooms, and launched Season 1 of a podcast, but guiding trusting participants through five days of ClearLife practices, material, and various forms of exploration and expression? This is new.

October, 2016 | Flashback

Taking in my surroundings, I notice a set of three steps behind me, access between the nearby open-air restaurant-bar and the airplane entry gates. My eyes and attention linger. I hear the echoing sounds of the terminal—the din of voices near and far. The occasional clink of silverware hitting plates. Wheels rolling on polished floors. Announcements on overhead speakers, reminding travelers where to be and when. Is there a room in the airport where these announcers hangout? Or, is this a remote job now?

It’s a familiar din. I used to regularly fly in and out of this airport in my years as a startup executive—sometimes weekly. New York to lead sales team monthly kick-offs and business reviews. Seattle for quarterly board meetings. LA to network with record labels and the occasional publisher or advertiser. Deal or event-specific overseas adventures to Beijing, London, Tokyo, or Paris.

I poke around my yogurt cup with my spoon, trying to avoid the mushy berries, and sip on the last lukewarm bit of my coffee. An exasperated couple runs by, clearly trying to catch a plane about to leave.

Then, a memory comes.

✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨

~Autumn, 2016. It’s a weeknight. I’ve worked a full day at the Palo Alto office and made the slow two hour drive north to our family’s modest home in the woods. A stiff drink immediately followed by dinner—prepared by my then-husband—with the family. Bath time. A bedtime story. A glass of wine on the counter as I move around the house and pack a roller bag and my tote. Shower. Dress. Uber to the airport for my redeye to New York. Check in. Get through security. Wait.

I’m sitting on a few stairs between the bar and my flight gate with a vodka soda in my hand. My second, I believe. I’m waiting to board my overnight flight only to make a quick change in the bathroom on the other end and go straight to the office. I secretly loved it when my team commented on this routine: “You are such a savage!” The glass is perspiring in my hand, wetting my fingers, making it hard for me to scroll around on my phone.

I’m anxious about leaving my family, again. Do the kids ever ask about me when they wake up the next day and I’ve vanished—or are they used to this and barely notice?

I’m nervous about the meeting in the morning. I didn’t practice the flow of the presentation, which I always regret.

I’m annoyed that the shoes I’d ordered to complete by outfit for the awards dinner tomorrow evening didn’t arrive on time. Maybe I can have them sent to the hotel?

✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨

A screenshot of images from my phone that week. Dad texted me a picture of the pumpkin T carved while I was on a boat with colleagues.

The airport looked and felt different then—more chaotic, unpredictable, and intimidating. I remember not wanting to make eye contact with anyone. I think I wanted to seem or at least feel mysterious. “Keep them guessing,” my late mother used to say—the master of sunglasses indoors and excessively warm coats in summertime. I wonder if she ever knew how these choices were actually perceived. Of course, yes, she would care. We usually care.

Today, almost a decade later, things are different.

Same airport. Same gate. Same restaurant. Same noises.

Yet, it’s brighter inside. I know where I am. I connect with people with ease. Eye contact. A smile.

Different me. Different perspective. Different life.

It’s hard for me to grok I am in the same physical place.

The Classroom at MEA, Baja

Several hours later, we enter the main classroom on the Modern Elder Academy (MEA) Baja campus, the same room I entered a mere 22 months ago as my partner’s +1 as he was teaching with our host and MEA founder, Chip Conley that week. The room felt different this time. I noticed more details—sweet photos on the walls, the thoughtful furnishing choices. Perfectly hung curtains. A skylight.

This time my attention is less on whether I was being tended to and safe, more on the faces and body language of others as they entered the space. Are they comfortable, at ease, nervous? We were all experiencing some form of excitement, curiosity, perhaps a bit of trepidation. It takes a lot to sign up for a week of open shares and learning with a room full of strangers.

I took a moment to reflect on why this same room felt different—a similar sensation to what I’d explored in Terminal 2 earlier that same day. It wasn’t the absence of my legacy dimmer, alcohol, but something else.

The last time I was here, in this room, I was a mere two weeks out of my January 2023 lumpectomy, still digesting the news of a “cancer micrometastasis.” I was happy to be there, but my nervous system (and body, really) were still shaken from the rollercoaster of discovery, decisions, surrender, and the early stages of healing that had transpired in recent weeks. Our relationship was also more nascent then. I recall going to our room after that first day of that workshop, almost two years ago, and sharing my fears and sadness with him, anxiously waiting to be validated, reassured, and comforted by a response. I was a bit needier, perhaps. Hand on heart. Of course I was. Little did either of us know at the time, the experience just needed run its course. It had to move through.

And it did.

2023 and much of 2024 have been characterized by a lot of healing. I connected with women teachers. I shifted my diet and various household habits, attempting to reduce toxins. I traveled to my ancestral home, deep in Western Scotland. I dove in deep via The Hoffman Process and even did some transformative guided plant medicine journey work. It’s no wonder things look different. The changes almost always come from the inside out.

Reflections on the week

What does this all have to do with the workshop or The Eight Awarenesses?

Everything.

The invitation of this work is not to check a bunch of goals boxes:

Drink less ✅
Eat less sugar ✅
Limit screen time ✅
Only one Netflix show a night ✅

…though sure, these are fantastically important intentions along the path, and part of the (essential) first two Awarenesses: My Life Is Better Clear and I Choose What I Consume.

What matters are the life changes that follow (hence the remaining six). Who is the real me (Awareness #3 on Intuition)? What pain am I trying to diminish (Awarenesses 4 & 5)? How do I want to spend my time (Awarenesses 6, 7 & 8)? And so on.

By the end of our retreat, I was hearing less about commitments to change habits (though those were certainly present) and more about how the participants felt: different. “I can’t believe the love I feel for each and every one of you,” someone commented at graduation. “I’m going to stop hiding from and dimming out that pain from growing up” another shared in a teary goodbye. “I’m more focused on healthier habits now, as I can see that these changes support deeper, even more important changes” in a farewell note. And a simple comment: “I quit drinking in August. Thank you.”

But one of my favorites? “Damn, I am trying to get a handle on my controlling tendencies and I just caught myself trying to control the way a discarded flower moved through the river!?!!”

“Perfect. You noticed. That’s 90% of it!”

Hence, a refreshed perspective: It is not about removing the thing, it’s about what we discover when we are in full presence with ourselves and others.

And that is the why, my why.

You?

I leave you with a practice & a poem.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice is upon us, a time for introspection, rest, and renewal as we mirror nature’s cycle of dormancy. Many spiritual traditions view it as a metaphor for rebirth, hope, and the journey from darkness to light.

Find a way to light a candle in solitude, somehow, in these days. Notice your perspective on this shortest day and the longest night. What feeling does this awareness evoke? Do we feel dread for the enduring cold and darkness? Eagerness for the daylight to start extending? Settle in with curiosity. Simply observe.

Trust that transformation takes time. We may not even notice it’s happening until one day we can recognize an opportunity to shift perspective, or that it has already changed. Trust.

The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival. Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always catches us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing it.”

― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

May we take our time (but not too much).

Love. ❤️ ❤️‍🩹