Standing at the Threshold

Trusting what is growing before you can see it. (And I am sharing a big shift in my creative life)

The other day, for a very brief moment, 13 hawks circled around out back of our house. Before there is any evidence of something new growing, these messengers appeared as if to say, “Something new is emerging. Trust it.”

What happens when the life you’ve been trying to build no longer feels aligned? This piece is about the sacred moment of standing at the threshold—letting go of old ways that drain us and trusting the quiet emergence of something new.

I also share a very personal unfolding of my own about a big shift in my creative and sharing process.

This is a long piece that invites you to brew a cup of tea and linger with this reading experience.

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early spring emerging

I have been trying to make something happen in my life for a long time now. I really want it to work out. And I’ve been clinging to it trying to make it work. It’s part of my personality that I don’t like to give up. I will try a hundred different ways before I quit.

But recently, I have been (slowly) admitting to myself, “This is not working out.”

The old way I am going about it just doesn’t nourish me. Actually, it drains me. If I’m being honest, it even hurts my heart and my body.

My soul is asking me to put it down…and let it go. Then to step across the threshold into a new timeline.

I love that language: a new timeline.

A new way of orienting, seeing, exploring, and living life.

But the old way – I first have to let it go.

And I have to trust that something new is quietly growing underground, even though I can’t see it yet.

On a Global Level

This is happening on a global level – the old paradigms that have shaped our societies are beginning to crack. Systems built on endless growth, domination, and extraction are showing their limits and exposing how harmful they are. We see it in how people are questioning economic models that prize productivity and profit above human wellbeing. People are waking up to the fact that the treadmill of endless productivity is exhausting us. People are exposing the corruption and violence of an elite few.

The old way is collapsing.

Some people will continue to hold on and try to keep pushing for “the old” to remain. Others will cross the threshold and step into what is growing and wanting to emerge: the evolution of humanity.

In Your Own Life

On a personal level, maybe you have been pushing for something in your life that you really want to work out. Maybe you are clinging to an old story, habit, relationship, way of interacting, or way of living. You stay with what is old because it’s familiar. You cling tightly to an old dream that you know needs to go.

You’ve tried to make it happen. You might sit at your desk and strategize how to make it still work. You ruminate about it. Your prayers in the middle of the night seem to go nowhere. You hold on tighter.

Pause for a moment with me and ask yourself, “Is there something in my life right now that I keep trying to make work but isn’t?”

Maybe it’s something you have prayed about, strategized about, and thought about on a daily basis.

And then ask, “What is the quieter, inner voice telling me?”

I’d imagine that underneath the chatter of your brain and anxiety, you already hear the guidance – you know what to do – but you keep holding onto what needs to go

You keep clinging

to what God is gently asking you

to release.

I get it – we push away the wisdom we hear because it feels scary to lean in, trust, let go of what’s familiar, and embrace what our souls know is a new direction – a new timeline.

The more we resist, the more our inner voice persists. It will keep calling us for our soul’s evolution.

Most likely, you can’t quite make out the shape of what will come next. But there are rumblings in the earth-soil of your soul - something new wants to emerge.

The Hand of the Beloved

My Darling,
how is it that you search for Me like
a poor beggar on hands and knees, 
frantically scrounging the dirt 
floor for food?

My Dear Heart, if you wish, 
I can continue to beg and scrounge 
alongside you, and we can keep 
bruising our hands and knees,
never really filling our bellies on 
the scraps this world happens to 
toss our way.

But wouldn’t it be easier and 
a lot less on our hands and knees 
and hearts to take the hand of the 
Beloved who has always been 
holding such sweet nourishing 
delights to your parched lips?

Come, let’s rest for a while.
Let’s go outside and
lay under the vast 
moonlit night.

A Threshold Moment

The old way is not our way forward anymore. And there comes a moment when we are standing at the threshold between the old and the new unknown of our soul’s truth.

We have one foot in the familiar and one foot hovers hesitantly over new ground.

It might totally rearrange our life. And so this doesn’t feel like just a small choice; it feels like an identity shift.

Inside each of us, an unsettling question arises:

“Who am I

if I let this go?”

What often comes next is this one:

“What will happen

if I stop clinging

and let this go?”

This threshold moment holds so much tension. We can stay in this threshold moment for a long time. I know I have.

Let me share more personally now…

There’s been this desire on my heart around my writing for a long time now.

I am a writer. I love to write. I have been writing my whole life and sharing online for over 15 years.

In that time of sharing online, I have met some incredible people. Some have become friends, coaching clients, psychotherapy clients, and dear soul connections. I am deeply grateful for the connections that have blossomed from being online.

But the landscape of being online has changed.

Somewhere along the way, I found myself spending more and more time on my phone, thinking about posts, revising words, navigating platforms and algorithms, and trying to say something meaningful in spaces so crowded that my gems seem to disappear into a vast digital sea.

In the beginning, it felt fun and exciting to connect to people all over the world! But for awhile now, most of the time, I put forth a ton of time and heart into what I share, and I feel like I am writing into an abyss.

Recently, I’ve had the courage to admit to myself:

I am deeply unsatisfied with the way that I am currently spending my time writing and sharing online.

I love to interact with people. I deeply appreciate it when people want to connect more personally with me and they message me or reach out.

But now, it just feels mostly...lonely. And isolating.

I don’t like to play the algorithm game. I don’t write things to chase likes or followers. What matters most to me is something more soulful and deeper: genuine connection.

And the old ways I’ve been sharing online just aren’t nurturing that anymore.

Something holy in me is calling me in a different direction that feels more aligned and also nourishing to me.

A New Way

The other day, a gentleman who lives in our neighborhood stopped me and Sherlock on our walk. Earlier in the week, I had created a Valentine’s Tree in our front yard where I hung hand-painted Valentines and included some of my poems. There were close to 40. I left a note on my poetry board about how I just wanted to spread some love and for people to take a valentine. Within a few days, all the valentines had been taken home by neighbors!

My neighbor gave me a big hug. As we hugged he said, “Lisa, you have such a beautiful soul.” He was tearing up and that made me tear up.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that you have such a beautiful soul.” He pointed to the willow tree, now empty of Valentines. He talked about how he walked by the other day and was so moved by the offering. He took a Valentine home for his daughter who was going to be visiting later that day. He told her that when she left, to go out of the neighborhood via my street and to see the Valentines Day Tree. She did and she told him she was so moved by it too!

My heart swelled. Seeing my sweet neighbor who I love talking to when we stop to chat when we are out walking our dogs – seeing his eyes and his sincere kindness as he shared from his heart what an impact I made with the Valentine’s Day tree and the poetry board I used to put up….it made me think,

“This human interaction is what matters. This is what I love.”

I love connecting on a deeper level with a few people. To see how my writing truly impacts someone. To hear about their life and their story. To see their eyes, to feel their heart, to see how their bodies settle and expand in realtime in a poetic experience.

This is when I feel alive and grateful to be alive!

I told this to another friend and said, “The feeling of the experience with my neighbor will remain with me forever. Getting 10,000 likes on a post? That dopamine hit will fade.”

This has me at a threshold point about my writing. I love to write. I will always write. But something sacred is saying, “Let go of the old way you’ve been writing and sharing.”

And I’m like, “Okay. So what does that mean? What do you want me to do?”

And my soul is like, “Go outside.”

WHAT?!!!!

That makes NO sense – at least to the “old way.” The old way tells me to just keep going in the same way I have been

But the new way? GO. OUTSIDE. (more on this in a moment!)

Maybe as you start to entertain the idea of letting go of your “old way,” a new way arises and you are like “WHAT?! That makes no sense!” It feels crazy, irresponsible, unrelated, and even unfathomable.

But this is our soul trying to get us to evolve! To step out of the old paradigm, cross the threshold, and step into a new timeline.

So we are at a threshold point.

Will you fight against the current of your own evolution as you cling to your old way?

Or will you step across the threshold into a new unfamiliar landscape that you somehow already know is for your blossoming?

Courage

There is courage required here. Courage to let go of the life we have outgrown. Courage to hear the quiet inner prompting and trust it before there is evidence. Courage to follow this call even when it dismantles the self we’ve known.

Something sacred within us is whispering – it’s time – time to soften our grip and let go.

Just as winter’s ice and snow melt into spring rain in order for green shoots to appear, something within us is saying it’s time for a new season.

Courage

Someday, you will look back at
this very spot where you stand now
as holy ground.

It will be the place where you 
finally stood still and decided that 
you could not keep ignoring
the Voice Within You.

And though you weren’t feeling 
brave or completely certain,

there came this moment, 
at this exact spot,

when you felt yourself surrender 
everything to the Beloved 
within you.

“Take me,” you said,
“I’m Yours.”

Heeding the Call of the Soul

For my own self I feel it’s time to put down my phone and even my pen.

I keep hearing, “It’s time to go outside.”

This is what my soul is telling me:

It’s time to move my body and work in the garden. To dig into the earth, hold seeds in my hand, and press each one into the soil.

It’s time to be with people and gather together, to see their eyes, their bodies breathing, how their mouth makes different shapes as they talk, to hear with my own naked ears the tones in their voice.

It’s time to dream of writing in new ways where you interact more with people.

I know with every fiber in my being this is what I need to do rather than cling to the old way of just posting online that is just not working for me.

So today, as I’m writing this, I took a break. I went for a long walk with our dog, Sherlock. And then I went over to our garden beds. I am digging them all up and starting fresh with raised beds. I have a lot of digging to do. The ground was still cold and wet from all the snow and rain we’ve had. I held the shovel in my hands and started to dig.

Ten minutes in and this felt more aligned with myself than being inside, sitting at my desk, trying to craft the perfect sentence – trying to figure out what will resonate with people and spinning around and around in my head.

Poetry flowed in my heart - it always does. But the new ways I will share are not quite formed yet.

I don’t know exactly where this will lead me (or my writing). Maybe I will have more live events - in person or online where we can gather and interact. Maybe I will perform a poem at an open mic night! Maybe I will print out a poem and send it to a specific person so when they open their mailbox, they have a little surprise! Maybe i’ll collaborate with more writers. Maybe I will think of creative ways to gather us - that can even be both online (but live) and can meet for a retreat in person!

I dont know yet. But I trust my soul. And as I took one step over that threshold into “soul guidance territory,” I felt more peace.

I do not have answers. I only know that beauty is calling me. Connection is calling me. And I know that will give over to creative ways of writing and sharing and being in community that truly nourish us – on this new timeline.

I wonder if you feel this, too – the moment when you decide to answer the question: “Will I trust my soul or keep following the fear of the old way?”

Your soul and my soul have given us the answer.

Will we surrender even if it sounds illogical?

Will we trust even if we don’t know exactly who we will become?

Will we let go even if we have very little to hold onto?

The only thing we know is that our souls are ready to blossom.

I can feel how the old way forward doesn’t work anymore. But I feel a wisdom rising up within in me that is begging me and also guiding me into something different. And I bet you do, too.

Perhaps our only work right now is to listen…

the way we listen

when we kneel in the garden

and press a seed

into the waiting earth

trusting that something is already growing

even before we can see it.

Blessings,

Lisa

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What does this mean for Substack going forward? I don’t know! I have to go outside first and honor that.

If you stay, awesome!!! You might share ideas with me, tell me what would delight you, or simply be part of this unfolding, knowing that Creativity has its own rhythm. And now it is asking me to pause, to wander outside, to listen for what wants to grow and blossom next.

If you are a paid subscriber, you might consider that your offering is a way of supporting the creative process - the writing, reflecting, experimenting, and listening that eventually blossoms into goodness for the world. Or if you’d like to end your subscription, that’s okay. If you just paid and need a refund, no problem - just email me.

And if you stay, I’m grateful to have you walking alongside me into this unknown landscape. If you don’t, I am grateful for how you have supported this creative body of work and me, and I wish you well.

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Offerings

Garden Talk Coaching Sessions

This spring and summer, I’m inviting you to experience coaching in a new way…out in the garden, surrounded by the organic rhythms of life and the nourishing whispers of growth. Much like my beloved “Walk and Talk” sessions, these Garden Talk sessions blend reflection, conversation, and gentle guidance but with the added grounding and inspiration that comes from being in nature.

We can do these sessions in-person or online.

In-person, you’ll come to my office and be in our backyard. As we move among the soil, plants, and blooms, you’ll have space to explore what’s ready to grow in your life, what needs tending to, and how you are shaping a beautiful life for yourself. The garden becomes a mirror for your own inner landscape—a place to metaphorically or actually dig in, plant seeds, and witness new possibilities emerging.

If we are online, we’ll talk on the phone - you’ll be in your favorite outdoor space and I will be in mine. We’ll connect with nature and let it support your session as you listen to your soul’s calling.

Whether you’re seeking clarity, support for a transition, or simply a soulful pause to connect with your own inner wisdom, these sessions invite you to step into the season, your body, and your life in a deeply nourishing way that values beauty and blossoming as lived experiences.

To work with me in coaching: check out my integrative coaching page. You’ll find my pricing and my approach. Then sign up for a consult on my website. Please note: I am only working with a handful of clients this summer.

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The Clear Collective

For those who feel the pull to step into something new, but want to deepen their clarity and be in a supportive community, this is the kind of energy we hold in The Clear Collective.

My dear friend and colleague, Maria DiLorenzo, and I have teamed up to offer this sacred space. It’s a space where an intimate community of people come together for a 10-week intimate coaching experience to clear what no longer serves them—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—and make room for the life and self they’ve been quietly yearning for.

You’ll be guided in a deeply nourishing and beautiful way to step through the threshold of what your soul is calling you to, and you’ll be doing this work in community, allowing you to witness, support, and be supported in the unfolding of something new, even before you can see the full picture.