Last weekend I had a most welcome intermission from the solitude of working on my book and proposal. With her passionately inquisitive guidance, Jobi Manson of Sefari led us into one of the most beautiful landscapes in all of Sea Ranch (Pomo land) for a creative listening workshop…

In this new era of my life – post 40, post pandemic, post people-pleaser self, post Mom’s death, post heeding various calls to forgiveness and grace, post falling deeper in love and commitment to my own soul – I am so passionately curious and driven to offer myself and my work to the true reason why I believe we’re all here: to be love, to be light in this world. Those I am close to know that I have become preoccupied with listening to others’ stories of near-death experiences (NDE’s) on YouTube and podcasts…. I find it fascinating, reassuring, transformative and exciting that so many people who’ve come back -- even from a clinically recorded death of their body -- have the same lessons to share: that death is nothing to be afraid of, that the soul lives on, that every act of kindness we offer matters greatly, that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to become too mired in our suffering, that even challenging experiences and pain are good opportunities to elevate our capacity to love, which is, indeed, why we are here.

So… I am asking myself, if my soul will live beyond this life and this present body of Jessica, what can I hope to truly learn? How can I open my heart wider, gain wisdom, brave even deeper healing of the personal, collective and ancestral trauma that I carry, and how can I evolve so that I don’t have to endure the same challenges in the next life?

Dear Friends Old and New,

I hope this finds you well, healthy, inspired and thriving!

I am so happy to be in touch again, and to finally be emerging from a long period of quiet and furling inwards… I find myself standing with newfound grace and clarity on beautiful, bold new ground, ecstatic to offer the pearls of sweet inspiration and wisdom that found me and began to blossom during this sacred time of incubation and recalibration. 2020 brought for many of us a time to pause; to appreciate the gift of health; to realize the radical tenderness of our bodies, souls, hearts, and lives; to awaken anew to our need for each other (including our forgotten ancestors); to duke it out with time and reprioritize what really matters within the ridiculous matrix of modern life; to breathe more deeply; to say ‘no’ more; to stand up for our equality and our Earth like never before; to give our presence to beauty with heightened awareness of the law of impermanence….

Floating in the electric blue open ocean, deep in the South Pacific, I fixed my eyes on black and white fluke of the Singer. With his head pointed down to the ocean floor, his voice entered everywhere inside my body as a seismic, visceral, mammalian tremor. I felt my chest exploding open to the radical eccentricity of this throbbing cetacean melody. I let my body relax, suspending my awareness of being in the realm of hammerhead, bull, and tiger sharks, and fearlessly listened with my whole being. I let his strange voice penetrate my own mammalian core without trying to categorize any single sound, or anthropomorphize the meaning of his song.

That rain moves down, down down

expresses the core of its essence

as much as its wetness does.

The same water that soaks the roots of everything,

causing the upward flourishing of all life

Is also what brings the elder oaks

in the woodland where we live

back down to Earth again.