In Memoriam

A pause at a new threshold to look back at what changed the past nine years.

If you’ve been a spiritual seeker at any moment in the past decade, your algorithm is likely tuned towards posts about 2025 being a “nine year” – a cycle completing before we begin again as the Fool in 2026 – a “one year.”

I saw a unique perspective recently that 2026 can also be looked at as a “ten year” – a year that holds both one and zero. Yin and yang. The energy of creation requires both to be present.

As a deathworker, I recognize the importance of closing rituals. Those that honor the endings of chapters, portals, paths, lives lived. Roles and archetypes embodied, shed, and composted.

This is my obit for the identities I held over the past nine years since 2017. An honoring of the milestones and events, big and small, that have whittled my form into my current shape.

1. I got married and publicly proclaimed to my family and loved ones my commitment to my chosen life partner. Our relationship became a whole being unto itself that requires thoughtful tending and nurturing. And I’m learning how to flow with how that tending shifts season by season, year by year.

2. I consciously chose to leave an almost two decade-long career in digital product marketing and design as an executive creative director. Up until March 2018, I lived for my career. It defined my external persona and gave me my sense of worth and value as a human. I was so proud of this identity, until I became conscious that it was a mask I wore to hide my vulnerability and true essence.

3. I went on a month-long solo road trip (a driving meditation, if you will) across the southwestern U.S. to reflect on my identity without the creative director label, as well as what it meant to be someone’s wife – a new role for me at the time.

4. I co-created the brand We Are All Daughters with a dear colleague, friend and soul-sister who left the agency life with me. I learned what it meant to be a true business-life partner. To honor disagreements and to face uncomfortable conflict. To share our wins and celebrate the milestones we achieved because of our combined efforts. To witness each other through our individual growing pains as we waded clumsily through the unknown territory of entrepreneurship. To be the mirror for each other, spurring challenging conversations. To know when to gently and bravely call it when we felt our partnership had run its course. And to love each other even more fiercely now, cheering each other on as we continue down our separate evolutionary paths.

5. I co-created my first podcast called Woo Knew that explored spirituality and alternative healing modalities. I learned to use my voice and to be less self-conscious, rehearsed, and precious when expressing myself.

6. I trained to become a certified breathwork facilitator after encountering my dad’s spirit in one of my first ever breathwork journeys.

7. I was initiated into my healing path to confront my unexpressed grief and trauma. It brought me into a respectful, sacred relationship with mother Cannabis and the Sacred Mushroom children. I became their advocate and steward, companioning many through their own transformational journeys with their support.

8. I woke up to the illusion of toxic new age spirituality and began my deep dive into decolonizing and liberating my body and mind. I began to focus on somatic healing and healing my relationship with the Earth. I turned away from communing only with the ethereal planes in recognizing that to be embodied is a gift. That we are meant to be present here in the physical as much as we can be. And that the ethereal is in every leaf, every hug I receive, every tear I shed as I honor the grief and joy that flows through me.

9. I experienced the ten-day Vipassana silent retreat – a profound, life-altering experience that brought me home to my body. I came out of the retreat into a silent, locked down world. I discovered I was pregnant a week later. And four weeks after that, I experienced a miscarriage that allowed me to come to terms with motherhood and the loss of an imagined future family.

10. I moved eight months later with my life partner to a small mountain town in the San Jacinto mountains with a population of 3500 at the time. Within the first five months of living there, we were blessed with two adopted pittie mixes – Norm and Lola. We became a family of four. I grew my medicine practice in the mountains, and became a voracious student of the Pines and Cedars, the Cahuilla ancestors and the Mushroom.

11. I studied Somagetics trauma energetics and became a certified somatic coach, supporting others in reconnecting to the wisdom of their bodies and repairing their relationship with the Earth.

12. I was guided to participate in the Going with Grace death doula training retreat led by Alua Arthur. I felt like I had finally found my life’s calling as a deathworker – a lightbulb moment of identifying my medicine work as death work. I created a podcast called MUM that gave voice to shared personal stories of grief and loss. I created my Water + Fire breathwork for grief circles.

13. 2025 brought me back to Los Angeles, a full circle moment both physically and energetically. I ran my Alive! Membership all year and got to walk with the members through an intense year of shedding. I realized how much I missed creating, writing, and podcasting so I consciously decided to sunset the membership to make room for my creativity to flex in new directions.

I recently realized that my journey the last nine years – from advertising to healing to this liminal moment – has prepared me to finally step into my “Artist Era.” A new timeline of unapologetic bold expression from a place of joy and gratitude for this life and body and voice, in ways my ancestors and parents never could.

As I’m writing this on the last day of 2025, our mountain home sale just closed as I was typing. I’m sending blessings and prayers to the next inhabitants, that they will experience the magic of Nature and the wisdom of the well ancestors as we did, and deepen their commitment as stewards of the Earth.

What a ride! What a journey! What’s next?!

For the first time in my life, I’m not straining to know.

I am in-development on a new podcast project without any expectation on launch dates. I’m learning how to DJ. I’m rediscovering music as a lover and not a facilitator of healing spaces. I’m writing only when I’m moved to, and not for the algorithm to get more followers or likes on IG. In fact, from now on, you’ll really only find me expressing myself here on Substack and in my newsletters.

I’m trusting the process of unfolding, trusting right time and place.

I’m consciously working to keep my qi flowing.

I’m enjoying the scenery rather than focusing on arriving at the next destination.

And I’m graciously content where I am.

I’m holding a prayer for all of us that we meet 2026 with audacity, with our energy clear and sustained. And that however we show up, it’s from a rootedness that honors all that came before.

It’s no accident that you are here on this Earth, now.

Thank you for your gifts.

Thank you for your beingness, your aliveness.

Thank you for inspiring me with your bravery.

Meet you at the starting line of this next cycle, kicking off with the Fire Horse.