Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash
“We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
~~ T.S. Eliot
Greetings to all my precious people!!
This is Thanksgiving week in the United States – a time traditionally set aside for gratitude, for gathering, for acknowledging what sustains us.
It’s also the final Friday of November.
The completion of our HOMECOMING arc.
We have cleared physical space, honoring the body as sacred vessel.
We have released ancestral patterns, choosing what to carry forward.
We have quieted the mental noise, creating space for deeper knowing.
Now we arrive at the deepest homecoming of all: returning to the soul that arrived here.
Not the self you’ve become through adaptation and survival.
Not the person you were taught to be.
But the essential YOU that existed before all the conditioning.
T.S. Eliot understood this: we explore, we journey, we search – and eventually, if we’re fortunate, we arrive back where we started and know the place for the first time.
We come home to who we’ve always been.
Your Original Nature
In Buddhist philosophy, there is a teaching about Original Nature – Buddha Nature, the inherent wholeness that exists before and beneath all conditioning.
You were not born broken.
You were not born needing to prove your worthiness.
You were born WHOLE – with an essence, a particular quality of being that is uniquely yours.
Then life happened. You learned to adapt. To perform. To become who you needed to be to stay safe, to be loved, to survive.
And slowly, the original nature got buried beneath layers of learned behavior.
In Daoist philosophy, we speak of Te (德) – your inherent virtue, your essential character. Not virtue in the moral sense, but the particular expression of Dao (the Way) that moves through you specifically.
A pine tree doesn’t try to be an oak. A river doesn’t try to be a mountain. Each expresses its own Te – its own nature – effortlessly, perfectly.
You have a Te. An original nature. A soul that arrived here with particular gifts, particular medicine, particular work to do.
Midlife is when that soul gets tired of the costume.
The Questions That Reveal Essence
Who were you before the world told you who to be?
Think back:
What delighted you as a child – before you learned what was “appropriate”?
What made you feel ALIVE before you learned to be “productive”?
What did you know before you learned to doubt yourself?
What wild, weird, specific thing about you did you learn to hide?
That wildness? That specificity? That’s your essence trying to show you the way home.
For some women, the essence shows up as:
- Unbridled creativity that doesn’t care about “good enough”
- Deep sensitivity that feels everything (which you learned to call “too much”)
- Fierce truth-telling that makes people uncomfortable
- Quietness that others mistook for shyness (but was actually deep listening)
- Leadership that emerged naturally (before you learned to shrink)
- Sensuality and embodiment (before you learned shame)
- Mystical connection to unseen things (before you learned to be “rational”)
Whatever it was – whatever YOU were before the layers – it’s still there.
Buried, maybe. Quiet, maybe. Waiting patiently for you to remember.
Midlife is the invitation to excavate. To remember. To come home.
What Metal Season Reveals
We are completing Metal season this week – the element of autumn, refinement, letting go.
Metal’s gift is this: when you clear away what’s not essential, the pure gold remains.
All the work we’ve done this November – clearing physical space, releasing ancestral patterns, quieting mental noise – has been preparing you for THIS moment:
The recognition of who you are beneath all of it.
The Chinese Medicine organ associated with Metal is the Lung. The Lungs govern:
- Breath (the first thing you did when you arrived here, the last thing you’ll do when you leave)
- Grief (the emotion that clears the way for what’s next)
- Wei Qi (protective boundary – knowing what’s you and what’s not)
- Connection to Heaven (Po, the corporeal soul, lives in the Lungs – the aspect that knows your original design)
Your Lungs remember who you came here to be.
Every breath is a return. An arrival. A remembering.
“I have arrived. I am home.”
This Week’s Contemplation: Meeting Your Essential Self
This is not a quick practice. This is a sacred encounter with the part of you that has been waiting, patient and persistent, for you to come home.
Choose a quiet evening this week. Ideally Thanksgiving evening (after the chaos calms) or this weekend.
What you’ll need:
- Uninterrupted time (at least 30 minutes, longer if possible)
- A candle
- Your journal
- A comfortable place to sit
- Optional: photos of yourself as a child
Part 1: Creating Sacred Space (5 minutes)
Light your candle. If you have childhood photos, place them where you can see them.
Sit comfortably. Hand on heart. Begin to breathe slowly, deeply.
With each exhale, release:
- The roles you play
- The expectations you carry
- The person you think you should be
- All the “shoulds” and “supposed-tos”
With each inhale, invite:
- Your original nature
- Your essence
- The soul that arrived here
- The YOU before all the conditioning
Do this for several minutes until you feel more spacious, more present, more YOU.
Part 2: The Inquiry (20 minutes)
Open your journal. Write quickly, without editing. Let your hand move faster than your critical mind.
“Who was I before the world told me who to be?”
Remember:
- What did you love as a child? (not what you were praised for – what you LOVED)
- What made you feel most alive?
- What did you know that others seemed to have forgotten?
- What wild thing about you did you learn to hide?
- What would you be doing RIGHT NOW if no one cared, no one was impressed, no one benefited but you?
Write until you hit truth. You’ll know it by the tears, by the recognition, by the “Oh. Yes. THAT.”
Part 3: The Gratitude (10 minutes)
Now write a letter to your essential self – the one who’s been waiting:
“Dear [your name],
I see you. I recognize you. I’m sorry I forgot you for so long.
Thank you for waiting. Thank you for not disappearing. Thank you for the whispers and nudges and the persistent aliveness that wouldn’t let me forget entirely.
I’m coming home. I’m ready to be you again – or maybe for the first time with full consciousness.
Here’s what I commit to…”
Write your commitments. What will you do to honor your essential self? What will you stop doing? What will you start?
Part 4: The Return (5 minutes)
Place both hands on your heart. Close your eyes. Say aloud (or whisper):
“I have arrived at who I’ve always been.
I am home in my essential nature.
I remember the soul that came here.
I honor the unique medicine I carry.
I choose to live from my essence, not my adaptation.
This is my homecoming.
This is my return.
I am here. I am home.”
Sit with this for as long as you wish. Let yourself feel what it feels like to come home to yourself.
Blow out the candle with gratitude for the journey that brought you back to where you started.
The Completion and the Beginning
This is the end of November’s HOMECOMING arc. We have cleared the way – physically, ancestrally, mentally, spiritually – for what wants to emerge in December.
But homecoming is not the end of the journey. It’s the BEGINNING.
Because once you remember who you are – once you return to your essential self – the question becomes:
What does this soul want to DO?
What medicine does it carry?
Who is it here to serve?
This is December’s work: REMEMBERING and RECLAIMING.
We’ll explore:
- The stardust wisdom encoded in your cells
- The soul fire (Shen) that wants to burn bright
- The sacred service of walking each other home
- The incubation and intention-setting for what wants to emerge in 2026
But all of that work requires what we did this month: clearing space. Coming home. Returning to essence.
Gratitude
As we make our way during this week of Thanksgiving (for those who celebrate), I want to express my gratitude:
For the women who read these words and recognize themselves.
For those brave enough to clear, release, quiet, and return.
For every person doing the work of coming home to themselves.
This is sacred work. Not self-improvement. Not optimization. But re-membering – putting yourself back together by reclaiming what was always there.
If you’re feeling called to go deeper with this work – if you recognize that homecoming is just the beginning and you want support for what comes next – I’m here.
I have a few spots for 1:1 intensive work using the COACH Method. We start where you are (just coming home, just remembering) and support the emergence of what wants to unfold through you.
Not fixing you. Midwifing your return to yourself.
If this calls to you, let’s talk. Email me directly to set up an appointment.
For now, for this week: meet your essential self. Come home to who you’ve always been. Arrive where you started and know the place for the first time.
This is the homecoming. This is the return.
Welcome home.
P.S. Next week, we begin December’s REMEMBERING arc. We go deeper – into cellular wisdom, ancestral knowing, soul fire, and the sacred work we’re here to do. Everything we cleared this month makes space for what wants to emerge in December. Stay with me.
“I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving
for my friends, the old and the new.”
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
