October Reflections ~ Risk ❤️‍🔥

October was very filling.

I went to Sierra Ma

dre for two weeks to assist with a training and see clients and friends. When I was there, I got to go to a day-long retreat with the amazing Kendra Cover. (Italy 2026, anyone?)

I’ve been walking with this question: how do I live into this next level of maturation and mastery?

That day at the retreat, there was a practice with the simple invitation of feeling your love. So there I was on my mat, trying to feel my heart, trying to connect to what “my love” was. Around me, lovely sounds from the other participants were happening, and I could hear Kendra’s sweet voice throwing prompts as to what it might feel like: “Honey, warm, sunshine, bright….” All the words were so far away from what I was experiencing. My heart felt tight and pulled back, like a dark, dried prune that I couldn’t access. I took a breath, gave myself permission to be as I was, deepened my attention, and tried to get curious. (Just like I tell all of you to 🙃 ) 

We then split off into partners. Knowing that whatever was next might open up a can of worms for me—since my heart and love were clearly not on the same page as others—I beelined to someone in the group I have a deep, long, rich history and relationship with, so I had a safe space to land. 

As we shared about our experience, I could feel Kendra tracking me (she’s a good facilitator :), and so she spoke to the group about how your love is your heart expressing as it is: the ache, the discomfort, the hate, the pain, the fury, the grief, the joy, the sweetness—it’s whatever is true in your heart. And the invitation is to let it pour out of you and be truly seen and felt by your partner.

Oofta.

My body softened at the permission to have the freedom of my experience, while at the same time feeling the fear coursing through. 

So… we started the exercise, opening up my love, my heart, to my partner through only eye contact, movement, and being a body.

Let me tell y’all, I felt an edge being fully expanded into and broken through. It felt like RISK. But risk in a way that I had never experienced—a new level of depth, openness, rawness, like a physical tearing open of my pericardium—and I just kept opening to it. I said, no matter what, you keep opening, you stay, you let her see, you feel it all. Keep daring.

Pain. Hate. Fear. Hurt. Tenderness. Playfulness. Loss. Grief. Love. Hope. Betrayal. Wildness. All of these things were my love, my heart, and I just kept letting it pour out—through my eyes, through my body, through my heart, through my tears.

While seeing her love. While receiving her wild heart.

The depth of trust, of courage, of embodiment that is required for that to happen between two humans is rare—and it was exactly what I needed.

The wildness and Truth of it all.

So what if I brought that risk, vulnerability, honesty, courage, and openness to my work, business, and life? That is how I step into the next level of maturation and mastery.

For those of you who have been with me for a long time, you may know that on the equinox—both spring and fall—there often is some kind of big shift for me. Things end, new things begin, and there is always a new level that pushes me past an old edge. It’s so uncomfortable, but so necessary for this continual devotion I have to my freedom and work in the world. Those big dreams of mine that just keep calling (no matter how many times I change my number 🥴)

And so there I was—a big new opening—as I stepped into the week of training.

That week was a whole other kettle of fish. RISK continued to be my theme, because when the universe cracks me open, she doesn’t half-ass it.

Holding so much space while meeting all those insecure parts of me that want so badly to just get it right—to be seen, to be told I’m doing a good job. I really got to see the expertise I’ve grown in this realm of BODY and risk—to give my wisdom to others. It felt really good, and scary. All of the doubts, shortcomings, and perceived failures had their turn on the stage, too. It was a mix of many things that I’ll be digesting for some time to come.

I got to see old friends and feel parts of myself come out and play that I haven’t felt in a long time.

I also got to receive a session after the training that opened up that tender wound of mine around being celebrated and seen. I want so badly for it, and yet it feels so terrifying to me. Do any of you long to be seen and yet want to run and hide at the same time?

So… there’s been a lot, but those are a few nuggets I wanted to share.

The talk my group did in the training was around Courage—because hello… that’s my theme. So I wanted to share a poem that I’ve held close since the beginning of 2023.

Courage by David Whyte

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life. With another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything but to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerability of those consequences. To be courageous is to seek our feelings deeply in the body and the world. To live up to and into the necessities of relationship that often already exist with things we find we already care deeply about—a person, a future, a possibility, a society—or with an unknowing that begs us on and has always begged us on. To be courageous is to stay close to the way we were made. Courage is what love looks like when it is tested by the simple, everyday necessities of being alive. 

Alright, loves, I wish you all the courage to keep risking, to keep opening, to keep daring.

“May you dare to enter into relationship with what is both unknowable and excruciatingly intimate.”— Sadee Whip