When Life Asks for Presence, Not Answers | Blog

As the year comes to a close, I’m noticing something. I’m less interested in summing it up and more aware of what’s been opening up.

This wasn’t a year I could neatly categorize or tie with a bow. In many ways, it felt like living more in the unknown, not the dramatic kind, but more of the persistent, low-grade uncertainty that kept me wondering.

Questions about where I was going to live, yes, but deeper than logistics: questions about how I was actually living. Why certain things felt stale or stalled. Why did everything seem more puzzling?

What was trying to emerge beneath it all?

I spent time searching for answers, trying to figure things out, but again and again, life seemed to ask for something different.

Not conclusions or certainty, but presence.

Some years are oriented around clear paths, defined pursuits, a sense of knowing where you’re going, or at least where you’re aiming.

2025 wasn’t that kind of year for me.

Instead, it was a year of letting go of old ways and familiar ideas. A year of softening, listening, and allowing myself to be closer to my own lived experience rather than standing just outside of it.

A few weeks ago, I shared the quote: “Mr. Duffy lived one inch removed from his body.” It landed because it named something I recognized.

During a webinar I co-led with Aila Coats, I shared how I’d been experiencing this persistent sense of “blah”, not sad, not anxious, just flat. And through sitting with that feeling rather than trying to fix or analyze it, I had a realization: the blah wasn’t about what was happening in my life. It was revealing where I was living from inside myself.

I started to see how much I was living in my mind: interpreting, narrating, observing, managing.

Maybe you know this pattern too, that subtle distance between living and observing your life.

Moving through life, not disconnected, but slightly removed.

My mind was doing what it does so well: making sense of things, trying to direct and guide me. What can be a strength, when overused, turns into a weakness.

This habit of mind was keeping me separate from the aliveness I was actually craving.

This year, something shifted.

Through the gift of friends pointing and guiding me to what wanted to be met within, I started to shift from the mind and allow myself, as best as I could, to meet life more fully, less pulled back.

Focusing on less commentary and more sensation, less analysis and more connection to the moment.

As I leaned more into this, I also saw…

Insight alone doesn’t always move us.

Understanding, as valuable as it is, doesn’t create change by itself.

Life changes when insight turns into lived experience. When we move and live from the insight.

When we step into our lives and meet old patterns, fears, or limited ideas, and keep moving. When we let that insight, that deeper truth, move us, inform our actions, and let the mind of the past settle and fade.

Embodiment, new expression, or outcomes, arrive when we move and act upon the nudges, the deeper truths, and what’s alive in us. From here, our knowing, our truth, finds its way into our bodies, our choices, and our conversations.

I wonder how many of us are waiting for more info, more confidence, more certainty before we move.

How many insights are sitting in our minds, not yet lived?

This year invited me into the kind of knowing you don’t think your way into but feel your way through.

There were moments when clarity didn’t arrive on schedule, when I didn’t know what was next and could only sense what no longer fit.

One of the clearest examples of this was something I never planned.

I found myself back in St. Louis, living with my mom. It wasn’t part of a strategy or a plan I worked toward. And somehow, it’s where life placed me.

Being here has offered gifts I didn’t know I needed. Time with her, shared moments that might have otherwise passed us by, and a closeness with my brothers and sisters that has enriched my life in so many ways.

It wasn’t all graceful surrender. There were moments of resistance, even the occasional inner tantrum. And still, as so often happens, a knowing that I’m right where I need to be.

Rather than forcing answers, I’ve been practicing, as best I can, allowing and following life rather than all my ideas about what should be happening.

Staying with the not-knowing. Staying present enough to be informed by what was actually unfolding rather than directing it all with my mind.

This journey toward more trust hasn’t been dramatic.

It’s been quieter, a gentle steadiness, and with it, a surprising sense of certainty beneath the uncertainty.

At the same time, I noticed a change in how I wanted to share and express myself.

Rather than sharing from a buttoned-up, I got this place. Or I know what’s happening, and I know where I’m headed. I am getting more and more comfortable with the “Yep, apparently, this is my life” kind of place.

Because of this, I’m allowing more fluid, unfiltered sharing along the way rather than waiting until I’m on the other side of something.

I’m still leaning into this, learning to allow less containment, less polish, and more of what’s present.

This has also opened up new avenues and paths in my work. Speaking, creating, and leading from my own lived experience, and sharing what’s been meaningful and helpful to me.

A body of work that grows and expands as I grow and expand. Rather than trying to stay within the lines of what I should do, what I did in the past, or what others have said is the right way or the more evolved way.

Instead, sharing from what’s alive in me and what has had the greatest impact in my own work and life.

I have loved focusing on creating powerful containers of awakening, transformation, and insights that move others toward a more aligned, alive work and life. Experiences, teaching, and programs that bridge the profound and the practical, helping people live into their full expression.

Not by methods, formulas, or force, but by connecting to their deeper nature, their truths, their bodies, their lives – their way.

Widening the range in which they meet their humanity, their heart’s desire, and the deeper call within, and letting that fuel, guide, and fund their movement.

I’m incredibly thankful for all the moments I’ve had with others. For their presence and engagement, and for sharing themselves with me.

As the year winds down, I find myself returning to where I began, aware of what’s opening up and curious to see where life takes me.

I’m grateful for this year and what it has shown me about being available to life, to experience, and to what’s real.

How about you? What are you available for? What is opening up for you? Where is life placing you?