This post is a continuation of my account of surviving Hurricane Helene. You can read the previous parts here:
Day 3: Sunday, September 29th
This was the day I started losing my grip.
Sure, you might think that I had already lost my grip when I started seeing my landmates as the different faces of God, pretending to be human beings — and then on top of that, started earnestly perceiving the situation as a cosmic video game.
And sure, you could also argue that there was no reason to lose my grip. After all, we were as lucky as lucky could get, given the circumstances:
We all got along harmoniously — which, in a survival situation, is literally what your life depends on…
We had enough food and propane to last weeks, which probably wouldn’t even be necessary, hence our giving so much of it away to neighbors…
Our uphill neighbor Terry, despite usually being a grump, was now like our nurturing grandfather, giving us even more food and propane, and a hose to bring his intact city water supply down from his house and in through our kitchen window, before he evacuated to Florida…
And 3 of my landmates had cell service now, so I could contact my friends and family through their hotspots…
Yet, despite all this provision, something was building up within me.
Pressurizing.
Threatening to break.
When I woke up in the morning, I had an intense headache, and all my muscles were sore.
“Why am I feeling this?” I wondered aloud while limping to the kitchen. “What did I even do?” I hadn’t been shoveling trenches like Will and Jude, so I felt guilty for being in pain.
“It’s probably the adrenaline,” Valentina said quietly.
With that simple statement, so much of the unsaid was said:
It’s probably the fact that you’re in fight-or-flight mode.
And the fact that you watched a man die the other day.
And all the secondhand trauma you heard from people yesterday.
And the horror of witnessing catastrophic devastation all around you.
And the fact that your cat has been actively trying to escape the house.
Ah, yes. Jupiter.
My little dimension-hopping darling,
forever making the unseen, seen.
Jupiter was miserable. She didn’t understand why we were in this house now, sharing space with 4 more people and another cat. Since arriving here on Friday, she’d become quite anxious, alternating between hiding under the couch and testing all the doors as if seeking an escape hatch. And last night, it had come to a head.
Sally went to open the front door for just a few moments — and Jupiter, an all-black cat, bolted out into the pitch-black night.
“JUPITER, NO!” I shouted, my worst fear coming true.
Thankfully Sally caught her and brought her back in. But a few minutes later, Jupiter did it again — and this time, Will caught her.
Jupiter did not relent. She dutifully waited by the front door, anticipating the moment it could open again. She probably just wanted to run back to the familiar comfort of our airstream a few yards away, but in my high-strung state, all I could think about was bears, coyotes, and mudslides.
Not wanting to make my landmates responsible for wrangling Jupiter all night, I put her in the office and locked the door. She scratched and yowled from the other side, vexed at the injustice… and I found myself getting vexed at her.
Then, an uncomfortable thought bubbled up from my subconscious:
I’m doing to Jupiter what my mother did to me.
My mother, who could not stand my emotions, desires, or needs.
My mother, who would never come when I cried, made Dad deal with me instead, and laughs about that to this day.
In fact, along my healing journey, the specific memory of myself as an infant, wailing and wailing in desperation to a mother who pretended not to hear me, has resurfaced multiple times when I’ve gone searching for the root of various, seemingly unrelated ills.
Yet, as tempted as I was to hate my mother in that moment, another thought broke through the noise of my racing heartbeat:
This is probably how my estranged mom feels right now.
Worried sick.
Terrified to lose me.
Powerless to protect me from the world.
Through the murky waters of my reluctant awareness, I could sense the subliminal hum of my genetic mandala, or self-repeating grid, which had been weaving itself around my ancestral line for generations — around my mother, and her mother, and hers, and hers, and hers — a self-reflecting pattern that created a cymatic song — our familial song, you might say: the sound of crying daughters becoming silent mothers, begetting crying daughters who would become silent mothers… Looping, spiraling, braiding itself through our ancestry — a pain that would not heal, because nobody wanted to face it. And even I, childless and estranged, was still automatically manifesting this genetic curse through the vehicle of my poor cat, who just wanted, so innocently, like I did, to go home.
That was last night. Now, in the daylight, it was clear how the foundation of reality was slipping away to reveal undercurrents of un-dealt-with issues.
Like in a dream, the crumbled roads and exposed foundations were mirroring our own inner worlds back to us in a frightening fractal feedback loop.
Speaking of dreams:
When I went to post an update on Instagram to tell friends I was safe, Instagram had a momentary glitch where the date of my post said “December 31, 1969.”
I blinked, and it was still there. I refreshed the page, and then it disappeared.
Normally, any sort of reading-related glitch is a trigger I’d use to do a reality-check in a dream.
And given the trippy nature of the past few days, I genuinely wondered, in horror, if this was not an instagram glitch, but rather, a clue that I might be dreaming.
Maybe this entire storm had been a dream!
And maybe I could wake up!!!
So, just as I would in an actual dream, I decided to count my fingers as a “reality check.”
If I had more or less than 5 fingers, this was a dream.
If I had 5, I was awake.
I held my hand before my face and counted.
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5.”
Again:
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5.”
One more time:
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5.”
Pinky, ring finger, middle finger, pointer and thumb. All accounted for.
Okay. I wasn’t dreaming.
Okay. Fuck.
Speaking of making the Unconscious, Conscious:
It is now 11 days since the peak of Helene, and once I’d returned home and acquired internet access again, I was — truthfully — shocked and hurt to see how many people were investing their time and social media usage to the spreading of geoengineering conspiracies.
Now, let me be clear: I’m never mad at the spreading of Truth. It seems obvious to me, as it probably does to you, that weaponized weather was, indeed, a factor in the excessive destruction of Asheville — a city 400 miles inland, almost never touched by hurricanes, and suspiciously abundant in valuable lithium and quartz.
But even so:
“No weapon formed against [us] shall prosper.” (Isaiah 54:17)
Since I began writing on metaphysics and human psionic potential 4 years ago, I have fiercely and belligerently maintained that humans are much, much more powerful than any pathetic technology could ever be — and I do not make concessions for even the slightest hint of paranoia or fear-mongering about “elites” or “the illuminati” allegedly controlling our lives.
Of course there are evil people trying to control us. But to focus on them is to willfully deny ourselves the realization of how much more powerful we are.
“Their” “power” is actually-entirely our power —
just unconscious, misapplied, and misunderstood.
I wrote about this 2 years ago, and it’s more relevant now than ever:
If you’re mad at these words, I invite you to consider the following:
Why should it be offensive, for me to suggest that Asheville’s collective state of consciousness contributed to the devastation, as much as — or perhaps more than — “the controllers” did?
Why is it more acceptable, for me to say tHe iLLuMiNaTi DiD tHiS tO uS — thus rendering us eternally helpless cosmic baby-victims?
What if,
there’s a subconscious to your consciousness?
— a force beyond your wildest, scariest dreams
that runs like a shocking electric current beneath your reality,
powering the whole hologram around you
unbeknownst to yourself
and begging to be consciously harnessed?
What if it wasn’t the Controllers that did this, with their silly material technology,
but all of us, with nothing more than the horrifyingly effective force of our own multidimensional souls?
Ask and Ye Shall Receive is a Cosmic Law
I was ready to find out how it might be true that I, somehow, on the cosmic level, co-created my experience of this disaster.
So I asked Huracan why?
Why this destruction?
Why here, why now?
This is the answer Huracán gave me,
voice thunderous with both rage
and the pain of knowing too much:
“SO YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH?!”
Her arms violently swirled, knocking down houses and all their memories, obliterating the temples of idolatry we’d so proudly built towards the sky…
“YOU CAME TO ASHEVILLE FOR THE ANSWER?!”
…and her heels struck the mountains, and landslides spilled forth, swallowing all the temporary things we’d become so woefully attached to…
“I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING YOU THINK MATTERS,
SO YOU WILL UNDERSTAND”
…and her hips swung in rageous spirals, stirring and churning the rivers, drowning the last of the false gods we worshiped…
“THAT NOTHING IN THIS WORLD WAS EVER YOURS”
…and her eyes flashed with lightning, shocking the people awake, to action: to save lives, to rescue neighbors, to divert landslides, to distribute food, to help…
“AND THAT YOU NEED EACH OTHER TO SURVIVE.”
That, is the Truth that Huracan taught me.
Take care of each other.
That’s it.
I cannot speak for others; I cannot pretend to know how or why they experienced hurricane and its gruesome aftermath. I can only speak for myself, and express how I genuinely perceive this disaster from my limited personal vantage point.
Truth was what I was seeking, so Truth is what I found
amidst the rubble and debris and bodies piling up:
Love one another.
Meeting Indra
That night, I cooked dinner for us: buttery sprouted chickpeas for Will and I, and buttery rainbow trout for the others, both doused in miso-lemon-tahini sauce, served over quinoa. When asked how I made the fish “perfect” despite not being able to taste-test it while cooking, I explained, sincerely, that the key ingredient is Love.
This whole “Love is the Truth you’ve been seeking” revelation, had me re-evaluating everything.
Up until this point, I’d had a million dreams.
I want to be a successful musician! And writer! And I want to own a restaurant — that’s also a venue! And I want to start a church! And, and, and…!
These dreams seemed so impossible now, given my spiritual bondage to my house in Tennessee…
“Now explain your house situation to me in the simplest possible terms,” Will said, when it was just the two of us in the living room.
“Okay.” I put aside my sense of shame and ’fessed up: 4 years ago, I had made the naive decision to buy a house in Tennessee with my family. I put forward half of the down payment (which constituted my entire savings), and my parents put forward the other half.
Though I was an owner and therefore felt entitled to have decision-making power, the arrangement quickly devolved into an emotional nightmare of feeling like the house actually belonged solely to my mother, whose word always trumped mine (thanks to Dad, so well-trained, being her perpetual “yes man”).
Then, when I tried to get free of the mortgage so I could move on with my life and own other properties independently, the bank denied my request, citing my parents’ bad credit and astronomical unsecured debt as a reason the house could not be refinanced in their names only.
So now, in a nutshell, I was stuck in a mortgage (mort-gage = “death pledge”) I wanted nothing to do with anymore, and I couldn’t own new property because the Tennessee house made my debt-to-income ratio too high.
“Hmmm…” The gears started turning. Then, Will launched into a mini masterclass on real estate, equity, refinancing, loans, debt-to-income ratios… He fluently rattled off legal terms, and I listened like an eager student — because if anyone would know a thing or two about real estate, it would be him.
As he casually worked out the solution to my housing problem, the veil lifted once again to reveal that I was not just talking to “Will,” but to Indra — king of the gods, who commandeers great wealth and riches with ease and confidence.
But then, at the end of his spiel, he paused, reflected, and shifted focus: “It’s actually a spiritual problem,” he said, “and it just needs time. I once got into a bad business deal with a friend and lost a huge amount of money. But then I realized that the business failure was reflecting an internal issue, so I worked on that, and that’s when the situation fixed itself. So keep working on yourself, keep healing, focus on that — and the house issue will resolve itself in the background.”
Breaking Point
That night, when Valentina reassured me that the ground was dry enough, I took Jupiter back into our airstream. It was such a relief to watch her return to her normal, cuddly self.
I, on the other hand, was far from my “normal self.”
I was wound up, tense, agitated. I’m generally someone who considers myself “good under pressure,” but this whole “being stranded in a disaster zone” thing was a totally foreign experience, and not one that I knew how to emotionally handle.
I tried and tried to sleep, but to no avail. My mind was racing with strategies, plans, backup plans, backup plans for the backup plans…
But it was impossible to strategize when I didn’t have all the facts. Without cell service, we were entirely relying on word-of-mouth to understand our situation, and that lent itself to a gnarly game of “telephone.”
Duke Energy said the power would be back this week — but how would that even be possible with all the downed and snapped power lines?
Were they just trying to stop people from freaking out? — and were our messengers in denial about how bad the devastation really was?
There were rumors that a second hurricane was coming up the Gulf Coast. Was compounded damage a chance worth taking, now that Helene had proven that even our inland city could be harmed?
Most of all, though we had plenty of food and a water source, other people did not…. And when people get hungry, they get violent.
In the total darkness of my airstream, I felt vulnerable. Every little noise set me off. A twig could snap and I’d panic. What if this was it — looters, desperate with fear, marching onto our land, rifles in tow?
•••
My intuition has saved me from dangerous people and circumstances so many times, that now I listen to it 100% of the time, no hesitation, no questions asked.
However, wound up with fear, I genuinely could not tell if this was my intuition or the adrenaline talking.
All I knew was, at 2AM, I was pulled out of bed by an overwhelming instinct to pack a bag and be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
So that’s what I did. By the cold light of a cheap battery-powered lantern, I threw together 2 outfits, my government documents, and the remainder of Jupiter’s canned food in a backpack.
Then I went back to bed with Jupiter, singing her a song to comfort both of us — the song my mother had often sung to me as a child:
You are my sunshine…
•••
A few hours later, I was awakened again
by the feeling of my entire airstream shaking.
Oh God! Oh no!
Was the ground giving way?!
Was this a landslide?!
We we about to tumble down the mountain and be crushed under the mud?!
A few seconds later, my consciousness adjusted to wakefulness, and I realized:
it wasn't the airstream shaking.
It was my own heart, beating hard and fast.
DAY 4: Monday, September 30th
In the morning, Will sent me on a mission to feed the elderly couple downhill with some of the bounty Terry had given us: pastisio and green beans. I made my way down the sloped forest, thick with brambles and slick with mud.
It was a hoarder house — like a future version of my own, if my mom didn’t get her own hoarding in check — and I had to consciously put aside my judgments and triggers while handing the food to them.
They deserved to be loved, too.
The maternal mandala that directed my fate, continued to reveal itself…
When I got back, I made oatmeal for everyone with our overripe bananas and plums, honey, and white chocolate chips courtesy of Terry.
While I was cooking, Valentina came in. "I don't mean to freak you out, but I just got some bad news," she said. “They’re saying another dam might break."
Dear reader, you must remember:
Without cell service, we were relying on word-of-mouth. A dam hadn’t broken in the first place (rather, it had “spilled over”), nor was a second one about to.
But tell that to my fight-or-flight brain.
A million worst-case-scenarios raced through my mind:
Sure, we were on a mountain, but what if more flooding happened, and more roads closed? Then we'd be stranded for far longer.
If I didn’t leave now, maybe I never would…
An irrational fear set in. I couldn't stand the feeling of powerlessness anymore. I finally did the thing I’d been avoiding: I texted my Dad.
I sent him the disaster photos I’d taken yesterday. And I confessed, “Dad, we watched someone die…”
“I will come get you,” was his immediate response.
Parallel to this, my family in Clermont, Florida also offered me a place to stay. So I had 2 options. But I felt torn.
Do I go to Florida, which might get hit with more hurricanes soon and need to evacuate anyway?
Or do I go back to “my” house in Tennessee, and face my estranged mother — a place and a person I had tried so desperately to get the fuck away from?
All my effort, wasted. All my struggling to get a good job and afford rent, in vain. I felt mocked by the Universe.
And when we convened about our plans, I even mocked myself: “I have a gut feeling I should evacuate, but I’m hesitant to go to Tennessee because” — I sneered, impersonating myself — “i DoN’t WaNt To TaLk tO My MoOoMmM.”
“FREE YOURSELF!” said Will/Indra, suddenly firm with me. "This is clearly weighing on your consciousness! Go home, face your karma and liberate yourself, so you can move on!”
It clicked.
The “spiritual problem” holding me hostage to the Tennessee house, was my karmic debt to my mother.
You don’t get out of your karma by running away from it — but rather, by facing it, understanding it, integrating it.
The way out is through.
•••
Remember how I said before, that this hurricane was collective, yet personal?
Yeah.
This disaster wasn’t about me. Not even a little bit.
And yet, it absolutely was. In every imaginable way.
It was about all of us.
•••
It was about Valentina,
who broke down as soon as Will left the room, sobbing, chest heaving.
“I feel so guilty about leaving. I was supposed to be the land manager and grow Clarity into something big — but I want so badly to help people in this crisis, and how can I do that when my car can’t even leave the mountain?! When I have no access to resources?! I feel like I have all this love to give, but no way to give it…”
Tears cascaded down her face, so beautiful and human, and yet, so undeniably divine.
The veil lifted once again, and suddenly I was looking at Mitra: the god of love.
Of course the god of love would love everyone so much that it hurts.
Sally, Jude and I held Valentina/Mitra as she wept, and wept, and wept, her heart so full of love that it felt heavy, like a burden on her soul.
•••
It was about Jude, who sat in his Jeep with medicine music playing loudly — so loudly, that we didn’t hear him scream, and scream, and scream. All we heard was beautiful, soothing melodies, reverberating in the mountain air.
He told us later: “I almost cried. Almost.”
•••
It was about Sally, who held a funeral ceremony for the black-and-white bird that her cat dropped at our doorstep.
“The death of duality,” she said wisely, before wandering into the forest to ritually bury it.
Escape Hatch
This was the plan:
Valentina’s friend Sage owned a huge retreat center in Marshall, NC, about an hour from us. When he heard of our plight, he said we were welcome to stay there. My parents could pick me up from there.
So their mutual friend Gus agreed to come get me and Valentina in his pickup truck. He would drive up to the neighbor’s yard, and we’d walk down to him, leaving our cars behind until our road was fixed and we could come back for them.
Valentina packed her bags. I already had my backpack ready to go. Will, Sally and Jude said they’d stay at Clarity because they felt safe and well-resourced — and they figured our mountain road would be drivable within a few days.
But when Gus came to pick us up and reported that the city had started closing more roads, making it harder to leave Asheville, Sally and Jude looked nervous. Now they had a few minutes to decide whether they’d come with us, as this might be their “last ride out of here.”
In a flash decision, they decided to come along to Marshall, and ran around gathering their essential belongings. Gus, Will and I waited in the living room.
But then 5 minutes passed… and became 10 minutes… then, 15 minutes…
We overheard crying in the closed bedroom.
“We’re losing daylight” Gus said gravely.
“I’ll go talk to them,” I said. I went to the bedroom and knocked. "May I come in?"
A weak voice responded: "Yes."
I stepped in and closed the door behind me. The room was dark. Valentina was kneeling at the edge of the bed where Jude and Sally sat beside each other. In the last sliver of daylight coming through the window, I could see only the outline of Jude’s solemn expression as he told me,
"I'm staying, Alicen."
A million anxious thoughts raced through my mind. But what if you get stranded? What if you run out of food or propane? And what about looters?
One look at him, and I knew he already knew the risk he was taking. He did not need to be reminded.
So Jude drew Valentina into his arms and kissed her cheek, long and slow, while breathing steadily but intensely. I could feel the storm of fear, sadness, confusion, anger, grief, raging in his chest, in the intensity of his breathing. He needed to keep his breath steady; he needed us to help him keep his breath steady.
He let Valentina go, and then turned to me, and we did the same dance: He held me, my face nestled snugly in the side of his neck. He turned his face to kiss my cheek, long and slow. We breathed together, chest to chest, for what I wished was forever.
When we let go, he turned to Sally to share the same ritual. The embrace. The kiss. The breathing.
As I watched them, I felt compelled to say, whispering,
"No matter what happens, remember this: 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For God is with me. God’s rod and God’s staff, they comfort me'." (Psalm 23:4)
Jude, Will, Gus, and his friend Damien helped us all cram into the single backseat of his pickup: me with my cat, Sally with her cat, and Valentina with her cat and 2 dogs.
Using back roads that hadn’t been closed off, Gus and Damien drove us to Marshall. Exhausted, I could hardly even enjoy the serenely peaceful retreat center, founded on 250 acres of lush greenery.
Over dinner, whatever questions I had about whether I was justified in evacuating, were answered when Damien winked at me with a creepy smile and insisted that we all get in the hot tub naked together.
I didn’t even register how predatory this was until days later. I guess there was only room in my brain for one survival issue at a time.
Instead, I simply told everyone I was tired, went back to my room to cuddle with Jupiter, and slipped in and out of crying spells all night, grieving the life I’d tried to build in Asheville, and fearing the life I’d have to return to in Tennessee.
I would be starting my entire life over with no job, and no vision for the future. I could barely even conceive of what life would look like from this moment forward — it was all too much, too soon. It felt like my chest cavity had been hollowed out, and my broken heart, barely beating, echoed through the emptied space.
When the morning came, while everyone else slept, I stripped down and got into the enormous hot tub alone. This would be my first real bath in days.
The warm water was a welcome balm against my tense, tired muscles. Normally, having a big hot tub to myself would feel luxurious, but I didn’t feel much of anything. I was numb.
Will’s words from Day 1 returned to me: “First you’re like ‘Fuck!’ and then you surrender.”
I floated in the nebulous warmth, despondent, mind cleared of every thought. There was only this moment. The rest could wait.
Surrender,
surrender,
surrender.
•••
With only a few minutes left before my parents would arrive, I asked myself, What is it that I’m really afraid of, about seeing my mom?
Was it the embarrassment, that I could not manage to stay estranged from her for long?
Was it anger, at how I needed her right now?
No. It was none of that.
It was that I was afraid to cry in front of her.
That may seem simple, or even silly, but that was the original wounding.
Sally held my hands while I cried and chanted to myself, “I can do this. I can cry in front of my mother. She only mocks my tears because they remind her of her own sadness, which she is afraid to express. So when I cry, I liberate us both. My tears are a gift I give to her. I am not afraid.”
Minutes later, my parents walked in. And my mother was wearing stripes — just like I was.
“Get out of my head!” she teased, referring to our life-long inside joke about how we’d often incidentally wear similar outfits — so deep was our telepathic connection.
Just like that, we fell into our old familiar rhythm, as if I’d just seen her yesterday.
Deny it as I may, I am my mother’s daughter.
Aftermath
Hurricane Helene was a revealer, all right. A revealer of true character.
Some people, when faced with disaster, become heroes. They step up. They help.
Others, become creeps who take advantage of the situation. They scam. They cheat. They try to get a traumatized woman into a hot tub with them, as if they’re owed something for rescuing her.
Others still, put aside their differences to take care of each other, like my mother did for me. She even put aside her long-held, superstitious hatred of black cats to welcome Jupiter into our family home — and praise the Lord, they’re in love with each other.
Disasters give us the opportunity to choose which kind of person we will be.
And now, having been shown — viscerally — what Love feels like, when my life was in the hands of my landmates, I know what I’ll be choosing.
Once safe in TN, all the dreams I’d temporarily lost during this ordeal, came back to me to be revisited.
Why do I really make music?
Why do I write?
Why do I want to own a restaurant?
Prior to this experience, I would’ve told you “I just like to sing and write and cook.”
But now I see: Love must be at the center of it, or it is in vain.
For example, I don’t just want to own a restaurant — I want to own a Free Energy restaurant that feeds people in need — with a pay-what-you-can model, like this one, where God provides the food, pulling fish and loaves out of the ether like Jesus did, so nobody has to starve.
And as if to confirm that I had permission to continue pursuing these ambitions, when I got back online and finally got to see the logo that the freelancer had made for my church, it could not have been more symbolic:
Two suns, shining boldly, after one of the darkest periods of my life.
How to Help
As a closing note, I’d like to address The Big Question: How do I help?
People are looking for ways to help Helene survivors, and with Milton on the way, there will be even more people eager to donate, volunteer, and provide resources.
In the physical, I discourage support of FEMA because of their questionable delegation of funds. My former employer, ABCCM (Asheville Buncombe County Christian Ministry), might be a better choice if you’re looking to donate money or volunteer in-person. I can personally confirm that they’re working around the clock to help in every way: finding shelter for people, providing meals and financial relief, etc.
In the spiritual, though, there is good news:
If you aren’t able to give tangible resources, you can Meditate, and you can Pray.
Please know, dear reader, that I am being very serious.
As I wrote in my essay “Thoughts and Prayers,” our focused, intentional cultivation of peace and healing, when directed psychically to a particular region, can and does heal that region. This has been scientifically proven.
So please, dear reader. Pause the doom-scrolling, and fear porn, and conspiracy theorizing, for just a moment.
And instead, consciously choose to focus on a vision and feeling of the Southeastern United States repaired, replenished, renewed, and revived.
Make it real in your heartspace.
Hold it there for just 5 minutes. 15 minutes. 30 minutes.
Know that it is done.
You have that power.
34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your Law, I said, Ye are gods?
I see that now.
Oh, do I see that now.
Ad my dearest hope, after all of this, is for you to see it too.
I love you, lovelings.
💓
Your ability to convey powerful energy through your words is uncanny. I read your accounts with a focus and breathlessness that I can only describe as “edge of my seat.” Thank you Alicen. Please keep sharing your experiences and the deeper meanings you mine from them. They are invaluable!! 🙏🏻💜
I so appreciate how you honor and respect all those who struggled and are still struggling while, on a parallel track, urging us to never lose focus on the big picture *and* the inner journey.
Thank you, bestie... 🙏