Today is August 8th, the peak of the Lion’s Gate.
The Lion’s Gate has always been a powerful time for me. Over the years, some of the greatest changes, revelations, endings and beginnings of my life have happened during this strange stretch of summer between late July and August. I don’t pretend to understand exactly why. I only know that when this time comes around, something tends to move.
This year has been no exception.
I’ve been quiet for many months. Not because I had nothing to say – because some things have to be lived all the way through before they are ready to become words.
There are times when words come easily to me. They sparkle and inspire, wrap themselves in beautiful ribbons and fly out into the world. But this time life quietly took me by the shoulders, sat me down, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Not now. Now you live it.”
So, I did.
The past year stripped me bare.
I lost the home I loved. I lost work that had become part of my identity. I lost my horses. I lost my marriage. I lost friendships I believed would last a lifetime. I watched my son struggle in ways no mother ever wishes to witness.
There were days when I honestly didn’t know who I was anymore.
If someone had asked me a few months ago what this year had been about, I would have answered without hesitation:
Loss.
So much fucking loss.
But sometime during these past few months, something unexpected began happening inside me.
Not dramatically. There wasn’t a lightning bolt or some magnificent shamanic revelation. It came quietly, the way dawn comes without asking permission from the night.
I began asking a different question.
Instead of, “What did life take from me?”
I asked: “What did life give me through all of this?”
And that question changed everything.
Because I suddenly realized that if I had died today, I wouldn’t have taken the house with me. Or the horses. Or the marriage. Or my work. Or the titles after my name. Or even the books I still hope to write.
None of it.
But I would have taken something.
I would have taken the experience of loving another human being with my whole heart.
The unbearable ache of saying goodbye.
The smell of horses after rain.
The feeling of someone’s hand finding mine in the dark.
The warmth of a dog curled against my body.
The taste of chocolate savored slowly on an ordinary afternoon when simply being alive felt like enough.
The tears that came because, somehow, after everything, my heart refused to become smaller.
And I realized something that has been quietly turning my entire understanding of life upside down.
For a very long time, I thought this human life was somehow… less.
Less than Spirit. Less than Home. Less than whatever beautiful place we came from and eventually return to.
As though Earth was a difficult assignment, a rather inconvenient place where we temporarily find ourselves trapped inside these messy human bodies until we finally remember who we really are and get to go Home.
I don’t believe that anymore.
In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if I had it completely backwards.
I think only the bravest souls come here! The kick-ass brave ones!
The ones willing to risk forgetting who they are so completely that they can experience what it feels like to remember.
The ones willing to fall in love without guarantees.
To have their hearts broken.
To forgive.
To fuck things up.
To hurt someone they love.
To be hurt by someone who loves them.
To make choices without knowing whether they’re the right ones.
To lose.
To grieve.
To begin again.
To stand beside the ocean and feel something ancient stirring inside.
To hold a newborn child and suddenly understand terror because now there is something in the world they cannot bear to lose.
To bury a beloved dog.
To say goodbye to a parent.
To watch their own face age in the mirror.
To have bodies that hurt and tire.
To lose things they were absolutely certain they couldn’t live without… and then wake up one morning and discover: I’m still here. Still breathing. Still loving. Still capable of wonder.
Maybe that’s the miracle – not escaping this world but entering it fully.
I’ve spent much of my spiritual life looking upward. Toward Spirit. Toward other realms. Toward Home.
And now, strangely, I find myself looking around.
At us.
At these ridiculous, magnificent creatures called human beings.
And the reverence I feel brings me to my knees!
Because reverence doesn’t only belong to Heaven – it belongs to trembling human hands.
To wrinkled faces.
To stretch marks and scars.
To exhausted mothers.
To frightened men.
To people starting over at fifty-five.
To tired bodies that somehow get out of bed one more morning.
To hearts that have been broken and broken and broken… and somehow still haven’t figured out how to stop loving.
What extraordinary creatures we are!
What brave souls we must be to come here and risk forgetting everything.
And perhaps Heaven is where we remember perfect love.
But Earth… Earth is where we know courage.
I don’t know nearly as many things as I thought I knew a year ago. And strangely, that feels like freedom.
I don’t know exactly what happens after we die. I don’t know how much of this life we chose before we arrived. I don’t know whether we have lived a thousand lives or only this one.
But I know this: I no longer want to treat my humanity as an obstacle to my Soul.
I want to bow to it.
I want to inhabit this life. This body. This imperfect heart. I want the whole damn thing!
Love and grief.
Joy and disappointment.
Chocolate and tears.
Ocean and dirt.
Birth and death.
Holding on and letting go.
I want this astonishing, messy, heartbreaking, funny, terrifying, beautiful experience of being alive!
And I find myself bowing to every Soul who chose to come here. To every Soul who forgot. To every Soul who got lost. To every Soul sitting somewhere tonight wondering whether they can possibly begin again. And to every Soul who is remembering.
Not by leaving this world. Not by transcending their humanity. But by finally falling in love with being here.
That is what this Lion’s Gate has opened for me.
Not another doorway out.
A doorway in.
Into the body, into grief, into love, into incarnation, into Earth.
Thank you for waiting while I found my way back to my words.
I’ve missed you.