Hola First name / Tribe,

 

Wishing you a full hearted embrace of you, meeting the end of the year and all that has unfolded for you.

 

In times like these, it can be tempting to believe that doing our inner work should lead to an easier life—less friction, fewer struggles, smoother outcomes. Many of us come to this work hoping, consciously or not, that if we “do it right,” life will finally cooperate.

 

Yet the truth is more subtle, and more demanding.

Doing our inner work does not grant us an easy life. What it offers instead is something far more valuable: the capacity to be resourced, grounded, and engaged with life as it actually is. Not as we wish it to be, but as it unfolds—complex, uncertain, and often uncomfortable.

 

We are living in challenging times. The tensions of opposing forces—social, political, relational, and internal—are no longer abstract concepts. They are being felt in our families, our communities, our workplaces, and within our own nervous systems. The question is no longer how to make these tensions disappear, but how to meet them without abandoning ourselves.

The work is not about always getting what we want. It is about staying fully ourselves as we meet what is here.

 

Yesterday, I was sitting in the car with my son, waiting for the local farm store to open. The rain was coming down steadily, the kind of rain that invites quiet rather than urgency. He has been struggling with some things, and in that small, contained space, the conversation naturally turned toward what it means to live with difficulty rather than avoid it.

We began talking about the oyster and the pearl.

 

An oyster does not create a pearl because its life is comfortable. A pearl forms because something irritating—a grain of sand, a foreign body—enters the shell. The oyster cannot remove it. Instead, layer by layer, it responds. Over time, what was once an irritation becomes something formed, shaped, and meaningful.

 

Across cultures, the pearl has long been a symbol of purity—not because it is untouched by the world, but precisely because it is formed through contact with it. Its purity does not come from avoiding disturbance, but from the integrity of the response. The oyster does not harden itself against what enters. It meets it, coats it, and slowly transforms it without losing its essential nature.

The irritation does not disappear. It is transformed through presence and persistence.

 

This is what our inner work asks of us.

Not to deny pain, tension, or uncertainty. Not to pretend that life is easier than it is. But to stay engaged. To meet what irritates, challenges, or unsettles us with enough presence and compassion that something true can take shape.

When we stay present, when we remain grounded in who we are—even when we do not have answers—life does not necessarily become simpler. But we become more capable of living it. More resilient. More honest. More whole.

 

In these times of heightened polarity, that capacity matters. It allows us to hold complexity without collapsing into reactivity. It allows us to stay connected—to ourselves and to one another—even when the conditions are difficult.

This is not the promise of ease.
It is the invitation to integrity.
To remain pure in the sense that matters most: not unmarked by life, but faithful to who we are while living it.

 

Like the oyster, we cannot always choose what enters our lives. But we can strengthen our capacity to choose how we respond. Through the inner work, we encourage our capacity to stay open rather than armored, present rather than numbed, faithful rather than fragmented. And over time, through patience and presence, what once felt like an intrusion can become a pearl—evidence not of a life without difficulty, but of a life lived with depth, integrity, and the authenticity of our love.

 

See you in 2026.

Love,