I recently had an inquiry conversation where I explored my feelings about growing older, living alone, and envisioning what I want the rest of my life to look like.

For the past five years, I’ve often said, “I am alone but not lonely.” This phrase became part of my identity, a way to signal to myself and others that “I’m fine,” “I’m not lonely.” But during this conversation, as I engaged with open-ended questions guiding me inward, I realized this statement wasn’t entirely true.

Instead, I came to a deeper truth: I am lonely, but I am not alone. This realization shook me to my core. I felt a shift within—a cellular and gut-level rearrangement of my perceptions of myself, my life, and others. The truth is, like most people, I experience loneliness—sometimes profoundly. And it’s also true that I am not alone. I belong to Al-Anon. I belong to the natural world. I have a beautiful daughter, two loyal dogs, a community I’m part of, and friends. Even the neighbors I hardly know and the greeter at the grocery store are part of my aloneness.

Our humanity includes loneliness. It’s part of who we are. Yet, another essential part of our humanity is that we are not alone; we belong to all of life.

The phrase, “I am alone but not lonely,” was a kind of armor, protecting me from what I imagined others might think of my life. But the shift to “I am lonely but not alone” is richly paradoxical. When I admit and open up to my loneliness while holding the awareness that I am never truly alone, the loneliness itself softens and subsides.

Aren’t we all familiar with this feeling of loneliness? While in reality, we belong to each other; we are not truly alone.
 
In this inquiry conversation, I shared a poem as a Third Thing to help me listen more deeply to myself. This poem, acting as a Third Thing, brought unconscious insight, hidden in my psyche to the surface as a gift of awareness and action. 

Something More Than Lightbulbs   by Ariel Dorfman
 
Unexplainable in the middle of the night,
a bird is singing
and sings and signs again.
Only I am listening to him.
Only I am awake
Now when everybody
                        is sleeping.
I am awake and alone.
My friends are not here
my marriage is in trouble.
Now when I try to mearue 
if what I did
was good or bad,
when weith every turn of the toboggan
the question comes back a child,
like a lieaf that falls from the tree that is the same but older,
when I insist and insist again
that no one can hear me,
the bird continues
now as if no one were
hearing him either.
Perhaps he has confused my light
with the beginnings of dawn.
He sings, he wants company,
maybe he is hapy that day
has come back sooner than he expected.
Wiser than me,
with his hudnered times smaller brain,
so much wiser.
And I who can see no other light
than his song at night,
his song for me
because he thinks I'm the sun.
And now my son gets up
to pee.
Really, the night is full of dawns
I I were not embalmed,

 I initially thought the poem ended with a comma, and that ambiguity resonated deeply. It left me feeling once embalmed—held by my old identity of being alone, yet not lonely. I could sense the bird arriving to sing for me, but what was her song? Could I even hear it?

How might you feel “embalmed”? Write about that. How do you identify yourself when it comes to being alone, old, young, or coupled? Take a moment to contemplate that.

How is the night, during this difficult time, full of dawns? Write and contemplate that.

Which lines in the poem stand out for you?  Write about that.

This poem, along with the open-ended questions posed by my partner in this inquiry,  offers me encouragement and insight. It’s an invitation to show up with equanimity, with curiosity, and with openness and courage to whatever arises.

Later, I discovered that the poem had a few additional last lines. Here’s how it truly ends:

oh if I could only sing
certain that in the middle of this night
the sun
the sun
               is rising
somewhere near.
 
 “Oh, if I could only sing,” the inquiry and poem brought me to the awareness of my own singing and song: I am lonely but not alone.  You, dear reader, are also here with me.
 
 
What might bring you to the awareness of your song and how the sun is rising, somewhere near? 
 
 
Here is a link to the entire book to purchase: In Case of Fire In a Foreign Land  by Ariel Dorman

So much happens on the way.
On the way to the wedding.
On the way to finishing that manuscript.
On the way to your ideal life.
On the way to figuring things out.
On the way to making a decision.
On the way to enlightenment.
On the way to forgiveness.
On the way to our death.

We often believe in an ultimate arrival—a moment when everything finally makes sense and comes together. But in my experience, there’s no final arrival. When we reach a destination, some kind of conclusion, it’s fleeting because another horizon calls us forward.

Most people come to me as a mentor and therapist because they feel stuck. They’re waiting for that final moment of clarity. But life isn’t about final moments. Life is always forward-facing—even into death. Life means movement, growth, always with a new horizon unfolding before us.

On the way, things want to happen. Events, discoveries, synchronicities—they emerge unexpectedly. It’s important not to rush to a conclusion. Instead, appreciate the surprises and insights that might change your direction. That’s why I encourage you to embrace how “things take as long as they take.” Focus on the present experience and give attention to who and what shows up on your way.

Write about what you’re on your way to, and where you are right now.

Write about all your arrivals—make a list. What had to happen to arrive there? What inner transformation accompanied your external arrival?
​
Contemplate what you’re on your way to next. What makes up your horizon? What action becomes possible from this contemplation? 

Writer's Prompts: 

• Write about a time when you were “lit up from within.” What does it mean to be lit up from within? (reveal this in your writing). 
• Write about a profound spiritual experience using imagery and analogies, metaphors, body sensations and the elements. (without using adjectives.) 

Active Contemplation:   

• When have you “turned your face for a moment and it became your life.”?
• What are the great winds that are blowing your soul across the sky?  

Contemplative Action:

• Take a step out into the world, take some action  with what you know, from what you know.

​“You just write about your personal experiences.”

The comment was casual, yet it lingered, adding to a hesitation that kept me from finishing my next book. He may have intended it to be a question, but I had no follow-up response. I had started and stopped writing this latest book many times. This wasn’t my first time feeling this conflict, but hearing it spoken aloud strengthened my resistance.

We were walking the Military Trail, and the words came from someone I was getting to know from my yoga class. Perhaps that made it even more unsettling—he had unknowingly touched on something I secretly believed: writing about yourself is selfish, self-indulgent, and dull. In addition, he was an investigative journalist who had shared how he lost his way to the page.

Then I heard these words from Clarissa Pinkola Estés from her audiobook, How to Be an Elder: Myths and Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype. (I listen to her as I walk the same Military Trail out of Mount Horeb.)

“What is an elder?” she asks. “Elders are the keepers of stories, the holders of memories. We tell the stories because we remember them. Stories come to those who are able to tell them.”

She explains how the stories we share—whether through writing, in therapy, or around a fire—are all forms of transmission. Just as Tibetan elders pass on wisdom through teachings and transmissions of stories, we, too, who are born to write, teach, serve, and guide, transmit wisdom through our personal stories. She  speaks about how these stories that come to us are meant to be shared.

“Recording and sharing the stories of your life is how you transmit knowledge to those younger than you.” Younger in consciousness or understanding, not necessarily in age. “An elder,” she says, “is recognized by the stories they carry.”

I felt a surge of energy as I realized that my stories are transmissions—of what I’ve learned, the mistakes I’ve made, and the wisdom waiting to be shared. All our stories are here to be written or spoken, inviting connection, reflection, and transformation for ourselves and others.

A painter creates from what they see, know, and experience—they paint their stories. We would never suggest that they shouldn't draw from their own lives to create their art.

I have always written from my experiences—from my life—eleven books to be exact. Even my (unpublished) novel is borrowed from my life. When a story becomes a transmission, I’ve turned what is meaningful to me into something meaningful for others. Let’s have the courage to push through the resistance that tries to silence us. As women, we’re often told that our stories are "just" personal, not significant. Yet within these very stories lies the medicine that can heal us.
 
So, what stories have come to you? Write about them.  List pivotal moments in your life and write about one at a time. Go to my home page on my website to get your free PDF on how to write powerful stories from personal experiences:Turning Your Life into a Story.
 
One final note—in writing this piece for you, I laugh with joy and relief. I have not only written from personal experience, but much of my teaching and mentoring is all about successfully writing from our life experiences. So yes, I do write about (and from) my life.
 ​

–For Ric.  (The pieces in quotes are from his unpublished memoir, And Then There Was I ). 
 
 
By thirty-six, he’d already lost
his soulmate to AIDS
and had sat by the beds of two hundred and fifty men,
watching them slip away and wrote about it in his memoir,
And Then There Was I.

“The thing I soon realized after his death was that the only thing that I could possibly do with the loss was to learn to love myself the way that only he could.  It was as if my severe grief was all tied into this feeling of abandonment that I was being challenged to fill in for myself.  Something that came naturally and easily for him was nearly impossible for me to implement—it caused me many years of mourning, depression, and upset with God.”

When I met Ric, he encouraged me to dance.
He danced every morning, with Sai Baba,
his heart lifted in ecstasy,
opening to his teacher.

He sent my mom a Mother’s Day card,
thanking her for raising me.
Mailed me fresh macarons from his local bakery wrapped
in crinkly brown paper.

He left the family farm in Wisconsin,
left his dog, left it all,
to find out who he was.
He came out when being gay
meant death by disease.

“My whole life was swallowed by
 the suffering of the AIDS community.”

He was a massage therapist to those
blistering and broken bodies, a container
for their grief, promising them meaning.

“While the world searched for a cure,
I searched for meaning
in the spiritual care of the dying.”

His heart carried their weight,
but he never stopped loving.

He missed his mom--
believed no one should grow up
without their mother’s touch,
that something vital would be lost forever.

Sai Baba spoke through him,
told him to write,
promised he and I would meet again
that we will all be together.

He made lemon bars, just for me,
put them in the freezer for when he was feeling better, and I could visit.

Then his heart gave out.

Survived too by me—just a friend.
I feel him dancing out beyond my view,
still speaking, still loving,
still keeping the promise alive.
​
“Where does my love for him begin?  Looking back, it is hard to tell.  Was it at his deathbed where I sainted him?  Was it the first time we did ecstasy at Charm Lee Park?  Was it the first time you stepped out on me and told me about it?  Or was it when you gave me that makeup present from the Bodhi Tree bookstore of Joseph Campbell and the Mystery of Myths?  Or was it that Easter Sunday out in Joshua Tree National Monument, where I pointed out that we were in the middle of a temple with the faces of God watching over us and directing our way?  Or was it that other Easter Sunday when I slipped and crashed in Joshua Tree, and you had to tend my arms from all the fragments of quartz impaled into them?   Or was it that first time you introduced me to a threesome that I hated and continued doing with you because of my inhibitions?  Or was it when you told me your cousin molested you when you were 12?  Or was it the time that I took my family to the Universal theme park and left you home because you were too sick to go?  Or was it when we came home, and you had assembled an entire dinner for all of us and couldn’t eat a bite yourself?” 

Ric's memoir may be lost to the world—this world—but I witnessed every word and story open and transform him.  And me.   

A writing prompt for you: Write a poem for a friend who has passed. 
A contemplation:  What impact are you leaving behind for your friends and loved ones? 

"The soul wants to give us life and wants us to pass that gift along, to become life-givers in a world that deals too much death." —Parker J. Palmer Parker J.

Palmer’s teachings and mine come from a similar dye. Though we have different lineages of teachers, our paths at times have been parallel, for we advocate and teach similar themes: living life from the inside out, understanding and developing our true nature, living with contradictions, trusting our inner truth, and being in authentic relationship.
 
During initial conversations about the possibility of this book (The Clue of the Red Thread), Parker referred to his core teachings as “red threads.”
 
I trusted the arrival of the red thread as a well-timed metaphor. Through Parker’s intuitive nature, the helping spirits, and my own explorations, I chose the red thread as the thematic metaphor for this book. This makes for that perfect blend of an active life that Parker and I so often refer to, one in which we trust what arises out of authentic conversation, we actively engage in contemplative action through our observations, and we acknowledge that there is an underlying filament of Spirit helping bring together what is truly possible. With each turn we take in the metaphorical labyrinth, which represents particular points in our lives, we use a red thread teaching and related practices offered here to help us explore and try on a particular concept for ourselves. We take hold of the red thread clues to go down into the centers of ourselves, confront our fears and limitations, and come back out to our communities truer to our calling and inner nature. In exploring these teachings for ourselves, we come to recognize the potential within each of life’s turns and circumstances. Life is about holding onto and passing on the red thread, which, of course, is a metaphor for the available wisdom and possibilities present in any given situation. The red thread is a rich analogy for how we can unravel the truth contained within us to navigate our outer life at any point, no matter the circumstances. As it turns out, the greatest and most needed adventure of our life is to go inward and, ultimately, live from the inside out.  

This is an excerpt from Here, Take This Gift, in The Clue of The Red Thread: Discovering Fearlessness and Compassion in Uncertain Times

I recently had one of my dark days. This is when a negative mood or attitude gets triggered, and I fall into the rabbit hole.  How long I remain in the dark is entirely up to me.
 
I don't want my habits to live my life. I don't want my habit energy to interfere with my relationships with others. I don't want my habitual ways to be the lens through which I view my life or others. Usually, a life of excessive comfort is a life of habits. When we free ourselves from our habits and habit energy, we feel the discomfort of a fully engaged life. Habits are happy sitting on the cruise ship’s lounger. Freedom from our habits has us off the ship's deck, meeting up with new and strange places and people. Habit energy will have us respond similarly to circumstances, let our anger, grief or disappointment filter, and infiltrate everything like poison in a well. The water becomes undrinkable, life uninhabitable for authentic living.
 
(By the way, our beliefs can be habits, too! When we don’t engage our curiosity, challenge our misunderstandings, and make assumptions, our beliefs are habits.)

There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse gallops quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. A woman standing alongside the road shouts, "Where are you going?" The man replies, "I don't know! Ask the horse!"

We can be like this. We don't know what we are doing or where we are going, and we need help to stop. When I feel an intense emotion, habit energy will surely be there, and I find it hard to push through it.  The horse is our habit energy dictating our feelings and actions. And we often either don't know we aren't free or in control or can't seem to free ourselves from the clutches of our habit energy. 

The best way I have discovered to stop letting habits live my life, to get up and off the deck chair, or not to let negative habit energy ruin a good day is to switch the channel. First, I recognize that this is habit energy. Then, I change the channel by reading something helpful, consulting the I Ching, or listening to a spiritual teacher's wisdom.  This takes a willingness to let go of the negativity and the ability to focus on something else. I do whatever I can to stop and notice that the laziness or negativity is habit energy. Next, I consciously choose to focus on something uplifting.  I often walk, talk to the trees, and talk to my higher power, becoming more and more mindful of the moment's reality.

I have a couple of reliable practices in my back pocket to help me transform habit energy and reactivity. One is to become aware and mindful of the sensations in the body and thoughts in the mind without adding any narrative. This is a witnessing practice called Hosting The Edge that I write about in The Clue of The Red Thread. We host our edges and become free.
 
My second favorite practice is using the 3 R’s to touch reality rather than being reactive and caught up in some habitual response to difficult circumstances. More on this practice can also be found in The Clue of The Red Thread.

The Three R’s of Touching Reality

1.    Recognition. Recognizing the reality of the moment. What is this situation really about?
   
2.  Receptivity. Opening and being receptive to the reality of the present moment through the practice of principles. Not letting some habit or negative internal dynamic determine our actions and the experience.
3.  Receiving Reality. Receiving (touching) reality. We can touch reality because we have let go of the habit energy. 

All we have to do to gain the power to recognize reality is to ask ourselves and explore the question: What is this about? Not What is happening here? What do I want? What should I feel? What should be happening? or Why do I feel disappointed? Ask What is this about?
 
When was the last time you fell down a dark rabbit hole? How did you get out? Write about that.

I'm approaching 70, so I am confident that I am an expert on rejection and abandonment—so much so that I have written about it in a couple of my books. However, I can't wholly admit that I am an expert at anything else I write about. I find that those dynamics that keep showing up in our lives tend to offer lessons, and when we learn from them, we may well become experts on the subject. 

So here I am in the last year of my 60's an expert on rejection and abandonment anxiety. 

I sent out a book proposal to an agent last week. This book is about how people who hear and see inwardly and outwardly discover the divinity within themselves and outside themselves. And how this divine presence can transform anxiety into serenity. It took her one day to let me know that this was not what she was looking for. On my walk the next day, I had an ah-ha moment -- well, more of a reminder. I remembered that this wasn't a rejection but simply a "not now," "not this person," and "not at this time.” 

I get my best ideas on my walks. This ah-ha came on the heels of another idea for the book on divine presence. Had the agent accepted my book, I likely would have missed this valuable insight. So, "not yet," allows me to explore more about this subject of our inner and outer divinity as a healer to our myriad expressions of anxiety.
 
What tends to repeat in your life that may be worth exploring on the page? Write about that.

"There are other ways to know she is present as well, perhaps most occurring under the “category” of a sweetly quiet “Aha!” somewhere in the vicinity between heart and divinity."  Estes Ph.D., Clarissa Pinkola. from, Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother's Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul 

Some Day, if you are lucky,
you’ll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.
 
Eyes will examine you for signs
of damage, or change
and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces
 
of fur, or leaves,
if thrushes have built a nest
of your hair, if Andromeda
burns from your eyes.
 
Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste
their own possibility, who barely dream.
 
If your hands are empty, treasureless,
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,
 
you will reassure them. We warned you,
they might declare, there is nothing else,
no point, no meaning, no mystery at all,
just this frantic waiting to die.
 
And yet, they tremble, mute,
afraid you’ve returned without sweet
elixir for unspeakable thirst, without
a fluent dance or holy language
 
to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where
no one crosses without weeping
for the terrible beauty of galaxies
 
and granite and bone. They tremble,
hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings
will redeem them, yet they fear
 
your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished
mouth, they-like you-must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.
 
— Geneen Marie Haugen, The Return
 
Writer's Prompt: 

• “That song your body now sings,” write about that. What is the song your body now sings?

Active Contemplation:   

• What is your secret? Why do others fear it is dangerous and shattering? What might it shatter?

Contemplative Action:

•  We hold these gifts as seeds till they must take root and then push through the soil of our daily lives and into the light to nourish (and entertain) and inspire others. The action I invite you to take is to share with at least one friend what your secret gift is. Or gifts.  Take them (your friend and secret) out for a walk or meal. Tell your friend what you will bring forth for all of us to see and consume. Tell them of your secret song.  Share your secret song. 
  
  The song of your body can indeed redeem them. Redeem us all. 

There is much to feel anxious about and much to keep us busy–overly busy these days. So many options arise of where to give our attention and energy.  When we lose the ability to pause, hang out in a gap,  or take a conscious breath, we will find ourselves exhausted, discouraged, overwhelmed, or (and) overcommitting .  

A bird can't always be in flight.  Write about that. 

Without such pauses, we cannot listen to ourselves; we will not know how to listen, like the robin, for that sweet nourishment beneath our feet. Even what we most want will elude us because, as research reveals, chronic busyness doesn’t increase our satisfaction but decreases it. 
 
When we pause, we can consider what truly nourishes us and others. 

When we pause, we take a look inside and out—we bring a curious awareness to the moment or the task before us and listen but do nothing. We can choose to pause before we speak, before and during our meals, and while engaged in a creative activity. Rushing oneself or others is an act of aggression. A life without routine pauses is harmful to our well-being. 

In my writing, I take purposeful pauses. I don't go away from the writing to eat something or get distracted in another way. Instead, I stop and pause. Breathe. Be curious about where the writing is taking me and where it might take the reader. 

Natural gaps in our lives provide some pause, like waiting in line, taking a break between tasks, finishing up a meal, or some other activity—those moments when nothing has been planned, randomly occurring times of an opportunity to pause purposefully. 
 
"When was the last time you were bored—truly bored—and didn’t instantly spring to fill your psychic emptiness by checking Facebook or Twitter or Instagram? The last time you stood in line at the store or the boarding gate or the theatre and didn’t reach for your Smartphone seeking deliverance from the dreary prospect of forced idleness?" —Maria Popova, “How We Learn to Be Alone,” brainpickings.org

We may discover discomfort in pauses, often telling us something is wrong. Or the pause may give us space to make a more conscious choice. In my yoga practice, these pauses let me be in the moment of a pose without rushing into the next one. That way, I receive even more benefits. 

Take a pause now.

When I walked down the road
taking only You,
until the noise became less—and the light more
true, then
the river began to flow again
under my skin.  
                                       by Rebecca Cecchini, Her poems can be found throughout my book, THE CLUE of the Red Thread: Discovering Fearlessness and Compassion in Uncertain Times as places to take pause and notice.