My father died at a time when I was entering the workforce in my early twenties. I’d had one overwhelming moment on a bus where grief ambushed me - the words of a poem struck a chord (Tending to the wound). But I’d pushed it back down. Buried the grief in work.

A few years later, my partner and I decided to travel to Australia. We were buying a car from the backpacker circuit in Sydney’s Kings Cross car park. As I was assessing the options in our budget, I found myself drawn – guided to a beat-up old Ford Falcon. It didn’t look pretty; I was visually drawn to other options. But it was like my father was standing there with me. His profession was a mechanic, so if there were anyone, I would listen to it would have been him. I went with my intuitive nudge and bought the car. Given the sellers needed to move it soon, as they had an impending flight to catch, they were open to generous negotiation and off we went on our Australian adventure.

Travelling around with a tent and a car the only ‘to do’ was where to go next, set up at our destination and what we would eat to concern us. I’d kept busy long enough, the path of grief still needed to be journeyed. Distractions removed allowed things to gently percolate to the surface.

I found myself sitting on a beautiful beach near Diamond Head, blue skies, the warmth of the early morning sun on my face. When thoughts of my father’s untimely death, and dreams I’d had at that exact time rose up.

I’d had a lucid dream where I was witnessing a boy running down a driveway out onto a country road. It was twilight. He passed by me running towards a cross roads, and was gone. I awoke, looked at the clock and later found out that was the time he died. This was before mobiles, and all the technologies we now so heavily rely on.

Sitting on that beach in Diamond Head, surrounded by all this beauty a heaviness began weighing in on me. I went through a phase where I felt like I was walking through mud. Heavy. Aching. A slow beating down. The unresolved grief resurfacing.

When I arrived in Darwin, I felt the need to express many things to my father. But he was gone, had I missed the opportunity?

I decided to write to him. Expressing all the things I wanted to say, how I felt about his passing. All the things I wanted to tell him, how I felt wronged (even by his passing). The guilt and regret for things not said and done, for issues not forgiven. I wrote to empty myself to get it out.

And finally, to forgive him, to forgive him for all that he did and did not do as my father. And to tell him I loved him and missed him but I now accepted the way it is.

This letter I wrote on and off over many weeks until I felt it was done. I acknowledged he had done the very best he could as my father with the awareness and knowledge he had, and that was enough. It was nothing personal, it was not about me. I honoured and celebrated his life and thanked him for the gift of life.

After that I went to the beach just before the setting sun. I lit a small fire, burnt some incense and quietened my mind and body and said a prayer inviting my father to be there. I read the letter out loud, tears streaming down my face. I sat with it and then burnt the letter in the fire with the intention of letting go. Almost five years after his death, I put my father down and let him go.

Years later I learned that in Japan’s Shinto tradition, people bring written messages to temple priests who burn them in a great fire — the smoke said to carry their words into the heavens. Prayers to loved ones that have passed, quiet requests, messages of gratitude and respect to Kami – spirits/deities. I didn’t know that on the beach in Darwin. But something in me already knew.

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As the sun is rising, I hear birds singing a spring morning song. The gravel crunches under foot and I can taste the moist earthy air of the forest. I see a hare racing through the long grass and lichens growing on the rocks. The wind blows gently through the trees. I have always loved walking in nature. Not for exercise but to drop out of my head and commune with nature. Breathing mindfully, opening my senses and remaining as present as possible to the moment. Sounds easy, but when presented with the shock and the pain of losing someone close it’s easier said than done.

A friend of mine lost his wife a few years ago. They were childhood sweet hearts and had two now grown children together. Her death was tragic to the family and he missed her terribly. He would walk the length of Salthill promenade morning and evening. It was his way to cope, to drain the energy and almost physically exhaust the pain. But it came at a price.

So mentally caught up in his anguish, he didn’t even notice the physical impact of wearing the wrong shoes and the effect the constant pounding was having. It caused irreparable ligament and tendon damage to his ankle.

He was walking, but he wasn’t there. Caught in the maelstrom of inner noise, it was like he was in a loop with no way out. But he didn’t know any other way, this was his response to the grief, an automatic coping mechanism.

Exercise can be a great way to burn off pent-up energy and stress. But it can become just another crutch, and used to avoid what is actually going on. If you have experienced deep loss, you will understand the need at times to just let off steam.

My mother used to get up in the middle of the night and paint the house after my Dad died. Caught up in the head, unable to sleep, unable to think straight, painting walls was her way of channeling that.

I take a regular walk up a hill, where initially I use the ascent to shake the mental cobwebs, getting out of my head and getting the heart pumping. Then when I reach the top I just drop into it. I become very aware of my physicality and clear mental state, then walk in nature with purpose, the purpose of being present to the moment. Which is purpose enough. I inhale the beauty of the simple things, the rocks, the colour of the heathers, the shape of clouds. And fungi. I love fungi. They have an effect on me where I seem to shrink down to their size, I love discovering different ones and marvel at their diversity.

Over the winter I’ve taken up walking in the dark. My intention was to address any residual fears and cut out the many senses and just be more present. The new moon is my favourite time because it is so inky dark. It wasn’t always like that. At first it was pretty scary; I had a few moments of terror on my initial outings. But then as I realised there was nothing to fear and it was all in my head I settled in. I made friends with the dark and now when I walk it is a wonderful feeling. The velvety cold darkness wraps around my body and I feel held and safe. Like walking naked without a care.

On my day time walks I have various stops along the way where I just sit or hang out with the trees. When there is a lot of emotional upheaval, I find a quiet spot where I am witnessed by the trees and I just allow myself to express. To feel and deeply share with the forest. I trust that nature absorbs and recycles that emotional energy and always feel better after being held in this way by nature. Insights come to me, I have a refreshed creativity. The forest doesn’t judge and I am as authentic as I could ever be. It is so freeing and renewing.

When my daughter died, I just did that daily. I’d walk initially to burn off then slow it all down. I would allow myself to just feel and be present. Sometimes there would be deep anguish, or other times heavy depressive feelings. Darkness just looking to be acknowledged and befriended. I would walk, stand, sit and express whatever was coming up. Always returning with a sense of renewal. The journey through grief is the way we heal.

Nature is just another ally waiting to support us if we are willing to go there and even ask for that support. To trust we will be held and in doing so walk a little lighter as we share the pain and leave a little of our burden behind.

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May your time in nature bring healing and renewal.

Jason.

My father died unexpectedly the day after his 62nd birthday. I had just turned 22. It was my first real brush with loss and death that mattered deeply to me, even if I didn’t fully recognise it at the time. I believed life continues, and in that comfort, I moved on quickly—or so it seemed.

Six months later, I was sitting on the back of a bus, reading a book, when I came across the poem Father Forgets by W. Livingston. A father, expecting too much of youth, is disarmed by the love expressed in his son’s instinctive actions. I came to the line:

“You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither.”

Spontaneously, I burst into tears, overwhelmed by deep feelings of loss and grief. It was like a shock to the system. Almost as quickly, the fear of being seen rose up and with embarrassment I swallowed down the invading feelings to compose myself.

I’ve heard many stories like this from others like leaving a full shopping trolley in a supermarket and running out in tears, or sobbing to a stranger after a few drinks had loosened the grip. You probably have a story of your own. Avoiding what we need to tend to can become like holding ping pong balls under water where eventually they pop up at the most ‘inconvenient’ times.

Inconvenient, perhaps, because our society teaches us that in our fast-paced modern life, emotions are not to be aired in public. People are uncomfortable with emotional expressions of pain, often because they are uncomfortable with it in themselves, so we tend to hide it.

But being human we need to grieve. We need to give our pain an outlet to heal. To express not just loss, but all emotions in ways that nourish us. Without this, frustrations become angry outbursts, sadness implodes into hopelessness, and anxiety quietly undermines our confidence and joy.

Sometimes pain simply needs acknowledgment. It doesn’t have to have a “meaning” or a “message.” It just needs our conscious attention. The emotions are real, even if the reason is not.

Sometimes, an old wound of self-doubt can surface within me. Bringing confusion, low energy, depressive feelings and a desire to just hide away. However, I’ve learned to recognise this pattern and to stop, drop into the heart and allow these feelings. It is a place of power, rather than weakness.

I would paraphrase: feel the fear and do it anyway. Sit with it, allow its presence, don’t rush to fix it, just giving conscious naked attention. Often, there is a subtle shift as you breathe into it, as if welcoming a small child who needs to feel safe, seen, and heard. Then action naturally arises that is more aligned, more gentle, more whole. Action taking too early can miss the opportunity and cause situations that reinforce rather than heal the wound.

After my daughter died, I found I needed to set aside regular time just to go there, fully, without interruption. In the workplace, when I would feel the grief welling up, I would retreat to the back of the facility, I just needed to sob without anyone consoling me or risk making anyone ‘uncomfortable’. I arranged to work from home some days, giving myself space to walk in nature, to be witnessed by her, and to fully express sadness, helplessness, and frustration.

Setting time aside, I made a sacred ritual. Lighting a candle, slowing down, and breathing into my heart space. Taking a deep breath and holding it for eight to ten seconds, repeating three or four times. This helped me drop out of the head and into the heart, opening to feeling. I allowed emotions to arise without needing to understand or fix them. I simply acknowledged them, honoured them, and gave them permission to exist. It was at times exhausting, but it brought relief. And I learned to commit to this practice as self-care, patient and welcoming everything that arose. To quote Rumi:

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

Holding space for your own pain is an act of power, an act of love. And we all have this capacity. Creating a loving container for what arises in a safe and nourishing way, in holding space for another, I see as a healing service, a privilege and a gift.

How do you tend to your needs so that you can make room for some new delight?

Be well Jason.

The message came in early December, a year after a conversation I’d had with a friend around a fire.

I’d told him something I’d been feeling for a while but couldn’t quite name: that there was power in parts of myself I’d been taught to fear. Receptivity. Tenderness. The capacity to be moved by life. As men, we’ve learnt to push these qualities away, to associate them with weakness.

The feminine within belongs to all of us, yet our culture has gendered these qualities, associating receptivity, tenderness, intuition, and vulnerability with weakness. For many men, being emotionally affected is seen as a loss of control, so we suppress these parts of ourselves and that suppression often shows up outwardly as judgement, rigidity, or even oppression.

When I received my friend’s message about The Grail Rite where men would be guided by women to explore this very territory, I knew I had to go. Not because I fully understood what would happen there, but because something in me recognised its importance.

The work was centred on learning to marry the feminine within and begin experiencing it as a form of strength. To bridge heart and mind. To listen to inner wisdom rather than only responding to external demands.

It addresses the ‘quest for the holy grail,’ the calling for men to integrate the feminine wisdom within us all. By balancing this aspect, men can show up more powerfully with both strength and vulnerability, and embody greater authenticity.

What I Didn’t Expect

After my daughter’s death, I committed to the journey of grief, sitting with the pain, with rage, despair, confusion, and eventually arriving at a place of deep gratitude and love. I thought I’d faced the hardest thing.

What I hadn’t fully understood is that transformation in life is an unfolding path that doesn’t move in straight lines. Where there is unfinished work, we spiral back, deeper each time, to layers we couldn’t reach before.

On the fourth morning of the retreat, I woke with a feeling in my chest I couldn’t name.

I lay there, not trying to fix it or understand it. Just letting it be present. It felt like grief, but older. ‘An icky feeling’. And then, almost without thinking, I said it out loud: “Shame.”

I’d never used that word about myself before. Never applied it to my own experience. I wasn’t even sure I knew what shame meant.

But sitting with it, just being with it, I began to recognise its texture. How it had always been there beneath the surface.

I am fundamentally flawed.
I am inadequate.
I am wrong—in what I do, how I am, who I am.
I am not enough.

The Architecture of Avoidance

As I stayed with this feeling, memories began to surface. Not dramatic moments, but subtle patterns.

The way I’d overwork, overprepare, overextend—always trying to prove something.

The way I’d need to control situations, conversations, outcomes—because if I let go, my inadequacy would be exposed.

The way I’d sacrificed my own integrity, my own knowing, to meet what I imagined others needed from me.

The way I’d shut down emotionally, kept people at arm’s length, made myself unreachable.

The joylessness that had crept into my life without my noticing.

And all of it, I began to see, was a rejection of the receptive, the vulnerable, the emotionally available parts of myself. The “feminine” qualities I’d been taught were unacceptable for a man to embody, even dangerous.

The grief that arose was not just about loss but about recognition. About seeing clearly what’s been true for so long. It moved through me in waves—deep, uncomfortable, and draining. It left me out of sorts, not fully embodied. But the shame was no longer hidden. I could see it.

The Unexpected Comforter

But then something shifted.

There was a presence within that could hold this shame without judgement. That could witness it without needing to fix it or explain it away. It was located in the heart, not the head.

This was the feminine I’d been avoiding. A quiet knowing that could simply be with what was true.

A different kind of strength. The capacity to be with what is, without needing to change it. To allow rather than control. To receive.

And from that place, I began to remember: all the times I had been enough. Times I’d shown up authentically. Times I’d spoken my truth. Times I’d been present without performing.

I could see how the shame had been a lie, under the radar of my awareness. A subtle lie inherited and repeated until it was like a reality that could remain unnamed.

Later, I remembered reading a line from The Way of the Servant, just before closing an app on my phone the day before:

“It is simply not possible to transcend what you refuse to acknowledge and embrace.”

When we have put down the resistance and surrendered to it, we are ready to receive. Love takes the final step.

Why this matters

I share this not to convince anyone that this is the way to do inner work. There are many paths.

I share this because I believe the work of integrating what we’ve rejected within ourselves has profound implications beyond personal healing. When men can access tenderness without feeling emasculated, we become safer partners and parents. When we can be vulnerable without shame, we can build genuine intimacy rather than performing connection. When we can receive as well as give, we stop needing to dominate in order to feel powerful. When we stop seeing the feminine as weak, we stop treating women as lesser.

Men at war with the feminine within themselves will continue to wage war on the feminine around them. Our collective healing requires both inner transformation and outer action.

For myself, this work has made me a better father, a more present partner, a more trustworthy friend. It’s allowing me to show up more fully in my community, to hold space for others’ pain without needing to fix it, to support rather than dominate.

The Universal Invitation

Though I’ve focused on men’s experience here—because that’s the territory I’m navigating—the invitation is universal.

We all have parts of ourselves we’ve rejected. Qualities we’ve deemed unacceptable, dangerous, too much, not enough. And those rejected parts don’t disappear. They shape our lives from beneath the surface.

The invitation is the same: to turn towards what we’ve been turning away from. To integrate rather than reject. To become more whole.

Not because it will make us better or more evolved, but because it might make us more wholly human. More available to life as it actually is, rather than how we wish it would be.

One Breath At A Time

I don’t have this all figured out. Self-rejection still arises even as I write these letters. It’s a personal challenge in itself. The pattern of control still shows up. The temptation to push away tenderness.

But I now recognise it. Name it. And while not always catching it in the moment, I can choose differently.

That’s all transformation is: the ordinary work of becoming aware of what’s been unconscious. Of meeting what we’ve been avoiding. Of allowing life to break us open into something more true. We are home—just been living in the basement of our Grand Selves.

It doesn’t happen all at once.

It happens one breath at a time.

What part of yourself have you been turning away from—and what might it mean to welcome it back?

Be well, Jason

When life cracks you open and everything you knew falls away, where do you turn?

For those crossing thresholds they didn’t choose.

The uncomfortable, awkward in‑between space where old patterns are fading and new ways of being are emerging.

Letters from Liminal Healing Space is for anyone living inside grief that won’t lift.
A relationship that keeps mirroring the same wound.
A life transition that has undone what once felt certain.
Or the final passage.

This is a space for those willing to descend rather than distract.
To feel rather than fix.
To discover that transformation lives in the space in between,
where we can set aside unnecessary suffering
and embrace the journey.

My Path Here

I’ve always sensed there was more to life than what we are usually given.

As a child, I had moments—glimpses of a larger way of being.

One that stayed with me happened when I was twelve, alone in a forest.
I met a squirrel.
We stopped and looked at one another, and everything went quiet.

There was an alive stillness.

I felt a communion with life.
A sudden bursting sense of love.
An undeniable knowing of our connectedness.

Moments like this set me on a lifelong journey of self-discovery—
less about finding out who I am,
and more about peeling away who I am not.

Around thirty years ago, I trained in bio-energy healing rooted in Chi Kung.

I witnessed remarkable recoveries and felt I had found my calling.

Then one day, a former client came for what she described as a “top-up.”
She was struggling in her relationship and wanted relief, but not change.

Something in me stopped—
like pulling a handbrake at speed.

It made me question deeply what I was doing, as it felt like assuaging rather than empowering.

Closing the practice, I turned instead toward wisdom traditions for lived experience and understanding.

One of the most influential was apprenticing in the Toltec teachings of the Eagle Knight lineage with Don Luis Molinar, one of Don Miguel Ruiz’s first apprentices.

Over three years—
through one-to-one work,
group workshops,
and a power journey to Teotihuacan in Mexico—
these experiences opened me to a profound sense of connection with Life
and the love that moves through us all.

During a period of regular meditation, I once found myself walking alone along a river in the early morning.

I stopped and noticed a tree.
It seemed unusually alive.

Then, as if a switch had been flicked, description fell away.

It was an experience of Presence—
where life seemed to be looking through my eyes,
and I was simply witnessing.

A deep inner peace arose
and stayed with me for over an hour.

I didn’t know it then,
but this inner work was preparing me.

The Threshold

Preparing me for the birth
and death
of my second daughter,
who died unexpectedly at twenty-two months.

Losing a child opens a wound that runs immeasurably deep.

From my experience, it is unlike any other loss.

It brings you into a descent many people instinctively avoid—
a liminal space of uncertainty,
definitely not in control,
where the ground beneath you is no longer stable.

The path is disorienting.
Nonlinear.

And yet, it is precisely in this space
where the deepest power of love,
and a fuller expression of who we truly are,
can emerge.

Drawing on healing tools and practices from many traditions,
I eventually reached a place where I no longer carry a burden.

What remains is gratitude.
Love.

Reverence for the journey.

For being her father and guardian
for our short time together,
and for my beloved daughter.

The Work

I now feel called to serve those who want to empower themselves
and discover the wisdom and healing that already lives within them.

The path of descent is not easy.

It requires effort.
Honesty.
Ownership.

But when we are willing to do the work,
we often discover that suffering is not the end of the story.

Pain will come—this is inevitable—
but suffering often grows when we resist,
avoid,
or turn away from what hurts.

Facing that pain is not about forcing it,
but about making the choice to meet it
when we feel safe enough.

In this presence,
love runs deeper than pain.

My role is not to fix,
but to hold space.

To create a container
in which insight can arise,
and new ways of being can emerge.

This often begins with slowing down.

Coming into the present moment.
Reconnecting with the heart.
Allowing what wants to arise.

Sometimes this looks like addressing repeated setbacks
or relationship difficulties—
and discovering that external conflict
has been mirroring a quiet self-rejection
beneath conscious awareness.

With this recognition,
healthier boundaries grounded in mutual respect can form.

Sometimes it is about moving through grief—
honouring what has been lost
while integrating the experience
and finding renewed purpose and hope.

And sometimes it is about standing at the final threshold—
facing fear and uncertainty,
and preparing for the next great adventure
with active acceptance and peace.

The work almost always involves dissolving blocks
and discovering the love and gratitude
on the other side of confusion, pain, and resistance.

What changes is not merely behaviour,
but fundamental shifts in being.

That twelve-year-old in the forest,
stopped by a squirrel’s gaze,
didn’t know where the path would lead.

Through healing practices and profound loss,
through moments of presence
and the deep grief,
I’ve learned this:

Transformation doesn’t happen by avoiding the descent.
It happens by meeting it.

This is why Letters from Liminal Healing Space exists.

Not to fix or rescue,
but to companion those willing to face what’s true.

To honor what hurts.

To trust that within the liminal space—
in that uncomfortable, awkward in-between—
something is waiting to emerge.

If you’re here,
you’re already on the path.

Thank you for walking it with me.

In 2023, I was serving as a ritual elder on a team of sixteen volunteer men delivering the Men’s Rites of Passage in Ireland. The MROP is a powerful, intensive five-day event—a held sacred space where men come to better understand their value and place in the world.

The team of elders, all initiated men who have completed their Rites, are committed to their own inner work. But no one attends the Rites unaffected. It works on the team perhaps as much as the initiates. It touches unhealed wounds. It pushes all that is not love, moving into awareness what is ready to shift.

After a deeply moving session, I was walking back to the main building. All morning I’d felt something coming up, stuck in my chest and throat, though I was unsure what it was or what it related to. I stood in the river, breathing into it with the intention of release. Something shifted. Some of it let go. I felt better and continued to our council circle.

As we sat in silence, I could feel a ball of grief rising. When it was my turn to share, there was a massive outpouring of sadness, anger, and grief. The place seemed to shake, it came up that powerfully.

I was met with memories of the intensive care unit where doctors were attempting to resuscitate my daughter with CPR and a defibrillator—eight years before.

We had arrived that evening after a call to come in. Isabelle had taken an unexpected turn. There were many staff present. When I asked how long they had been working on her lifeless body, the reply was over forty minutes.

I was enraged. I felt it was so disrespectful to continue to work on the body of a 22-month-old child—a typical Western health view: extending life by all means possible, rather than allowing her to die with dignity. I told them to stop. Just let her go.

Everything emotional was pushed down. I was in action mode, feeling a deep need to protect my family. We were there surrounded by staff who were slow to move on—understandably now, people witnessing the death of a child and the grief of parents. But at the time it felt completely overwhelming. I just wanted everyone to leave.

My reaction to that experience had been frozen in time.

The Paradox

Many years before, I had arrived at a place where I have only deep gratitude and love for the privilege of being Isabelle’s father and guardian for the short time we had together. And I would like to share how I arrived here in future letters. I thought the grief work was done. But transformation rarely moves in straight lines.

Here I was, years later, a piece I had become unaware of resurfacing.

Here, in the safety of this held space, that part of me was ready to release that deeply painful experience of letting my daughter go. To release the energy. To forgive the staff. To heal the emotional wound so the experience could become a memory and no longer affect me.

The Frozen Present

The Irish psychiatrist Ivor Browne wrote about this phenomenon in his book Music and Madness. He called it “the frozen present”—how unprocessed pain can remain suspended in the body, cut off from conscious awareness.

When someone is overwhelmed by a deeply distressing experience they cannot face, the system shuts it down as an instinctual coping mechanism. The experience doesn’t integrate into memory, not that it’s repressed, but rather unprocessed. It becomes frozen, existing outside time.

As Browne said: “You don’t remember it. You feel it. And of course, that’s when people think they’re going mad, because nothing around them seems dangerous, yet they’re flooded with fear or pain. That’s why I called it ‘the frozen present’. Because when it comes, it comes as the present, not as the past. Eventually, when you’ve experienced it and allowed it to move through you a few times, it finally becomes the past.”

Decades may go by. Then some ordinary event triggers the memory, and a person finds themselves “overreacting,” flooded with fear or pain, not understanding the cause.

The Way Through

Pain, when faced and allowed to move through us, eventually transforms.

When pain is avoided, it remains trapped within us, shaping our lives from beneath the surface.

When we choose to bring our present attention and go to the pain until it no longer affects us, we heal the emotional wound. Transformed pain no longer demands to be relived in the present. It takes its place in memory, with loving understanding.

The concept, while relatively new and even controversial in modern psychology and psychiatry, was known in indigenous wisdom traditions for thousands of years. Regardless of the lens or tradition we use, when something happens in our lives that we struggle to make sense of, we need to be able to go to it. Allow what wants to arise. Face our shadow and release it in the light of our present awareness.

It can be delayed, as we apply the many distractions and vices, we all use to try and quieten the inner tension. But it cannot be avoided, sooner or later it surfaces and at times in the most inconvenient ways. Until we stop running and finally turn toward what’s been waiting for us all along.

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Blessings Jason

If you’re here, you’re likely standing at a threshold. Perhaps trying to make sense and find a way to pick up the pieces after profound loss. You could be facing your own mortality or in the midst of a transformation you didn’t choose but must undergo.

Profound loss and major life transitions don’t just change how we feel, but how we show up, who we are being. We undergo a dissolution of the old self, something we all resist. While this is disorienting and a struggle, it doesn’t mean we have to suffer. Resistance to what is causes the suffering. It is painful opening and cleaning wounds, but as we do, slowly, sacredly, a new horizon begins to emerge. We begin to heal. Life breaks us open to be more of who we truly are.

After the death of my daughter, I chose to go there as completely as possible and I eventually arrived at a place where I only had love and gratitude for the short time we had together and the privilege of being her father and guardian. That was in 2016. I thought that was it, but transformation rarely moves in straight lines.

In 2023, I served as a ritual elder at a men’s rites of passage retreat—part of a team of sixteen volunteer men creating liminal space for others crossing their own thresholds. No one attends the Rites and is unaffected. And in the power of that holding, and witnessing of other men’s becoming, something within me shifted. I experienced the frozen present I’d been carrying dissolve.

This poem came to me shortly after.

One Breath At A Time

When your mask slips and the awkward tears roll down your face, rest

When the dance overwhelms, let the ground of being beneath, hold you

Look deep into the beloved and allow a blanket of love wrap around you

Have eyes of wonderment for a new dawn, and let the presence restore awareness of your untamed soul

All transformation happens in liminal space.

One breath at a time.

Welcome.

Jason