Not because I had nothing to say. Because I had too much happening in my body to trust my words.

Something was churning — in my chest, in my gut — and I needed to stay with it long enough to understand what it was before I brought it here.

I’m still not sure I understand it.

But I promised you honesty. So, here’s what I’ve got.

A missile I helped pay for with my tax dollars struck a school in Iran.

Children died. Teachers died. A grandfather’s world was shattered.

And in the days that followed, as the celebratory language filled the airwaves — our forces dominating, the enemy devastated, the bad people neutralized — I noticed something happen inside my body that I am ashamed to share.

I felt safe.

Pride flickered.

Something ancient and conditioned and white and male and American lit up in my chest for just a moment and said: we crushed them.

And then I felt like puking.

Walking for peace with monks didn’t raise me up. I am not above any of this. The nausea churned because I’m still inside this shit show.

I am not separate from the forces that launched that missile. I carry the same conditioning that makes tribal victory feel like safety. I have lived my whole life inside the story that says my people’s power protects me — and some part of my nervous system still believes it, even as it breaks my heart.

That’s the war I’ve been sitting with for a month.

The one inside me.

Thich Nhat Hanh taught that “the way out is in.”

For years that’s been a guiding light for me. Turn inward for peace. Find the calm beneath the chaos.

Now it means more than just where to look.

It means the war out there and the war in here are the same war.

The men who chose to launch that missile didn’t come from nowhere. They came from bodies like mine — bodies that learned early that dominance is safety, that the enemy’s defeat means our survival, that power over others is the only protection that works.

I know that body. I live in it.

And if I want something different — for my grandchildren, for that grandfather in Iran, for all of us — I have to be willing to feel what that conditioning has done to me. Not just observe it from a distance. Not just name it as a social problem.

Feel it. In my chest. In my gut.

Sit with the shame of it.

Let it move through.

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So.

To the grandfather in Iran whose name I don’t know, whose language I don’t speak, whose grandchild is now in the ground:

I wish to sit with you on the Earth and add my tears to the grave of your beloved.

I am sickened by what was done in my name.

I am sickened by the part of me that briefly felt good about this attack on others.

I am inviting your grandchild’s spirit into my heart — not as a ritual, but as a commitment. The only power I carry is the power of the truthful word, and I am using it now to say that their life mattered. That your grief is sacred. That the 7,000 miles between us cannot sever what connects us as human beings who love our children and their children.

War is wrong.

We are one.

And the distance between those two sentences — that gap — is where I am living right now.

Still churning and caught in the current.

Still sitting with it.

Still here.

Where do you notice the war — out there — landing in here?

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The struggling Potomac below. The still-standing monuments ahead. And between me and them — a river of brake lights that gave me an opportunity to practice what I preach. Acceptance. Loving kindness. Patience.

I don’t always remember to practice.

That particular morning I was somewhere else entirely — running scenarios in my mind, crafting arguments for a project that kept getting blocked, rehearsing conversations with people who resisted my idea. My chest was tight. My shoulders were up around my ears. I hit the brake pedal harder than I needed to.

I caught myself clenching the steering wheel with both fists.

And then I thought of Viktor Frankl.

Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who lost nearly his entire family in the Nazi concentration camps. After liberation, he could have spent the rest of his life in rage, in grief, in permanent victim consciousness. Instead, he wrote one of the most important books of the 20th century: Man’s Search for Meaning.

His central insight was this: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

It’s not what happens to you. It’s how you meet it.

My nervous system doesn’t know the difference between gridlock and genuine danger. It just knows threat. The alarm is the same ancient mechanism — lit up, scanning, ready to fight a battle that may exist mostly in my mind. And somewhere in that response, Frankl’s words found me. He understood this mechanism before any of us had language for it. He left a map for exactly this moment — not about the magnitude of the circumstance, but the choice that lives inside it.

On the 14th Street Bridge, in traffic I cannot control, heading toward uncertainty I cannot fix, Viktor Frankl is one of my spiritual teachers.

I loosened my grip.

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When I remember to leave more than a car-length distance between my bumper and the one ahead, something shifts. Not just in my car. In the flow itself.

People can move — left toward the White House, right toward the Capitol — through the gap where I made room.

Crawling together beats being stuck in a standstill.

The driver behind me didn’t appreciate the space I was leaving. He made that clear.

My first instinct was judgment. But then I caught something: I was doing the exact same thing to the people blocking my project at work. Assigning them a story. Certain I knew their motives.

What if I don’t have the full picture?

What if there are factors I’m not aware of?

What if my project has real problems I haven’t been willing to see?

The uncertainty didn’t disappear when I asked those questions. But something in my chest did.

There’s a difference — a palpable, physical difference — between thinking and being.

When I’m in my head, I’m in my neck and shoulders. Running scenarios. Building cases. Defending positions.

When I drop into my heart — down through my chest and into my solar plexus — something opens. A spaciousness that makes room for what’s actually happening instead of the story I’ve been telling. The scenarios quiet. What’s true becomes more clear.

Frankl called it finding meaning in the moment. I felt an expansion in my heart.

The hardest part is remembering to make the move when something pops up and provokes me. The driver behind me. The meeting that went sideways. The news playing in the background. Something catches my attention and I clench.

But if I can remember — even once, even imperfectly — to pause before I react, something loosens. Not everything. Just enough.

Enough to move.

Moving slowly across the bridge, I’m still traveling faster than the Buddhist monks Annie and I followed this month across the National Mall to the Lincoln Memorial.

They had walked for more than 100 days from my native state of Texas, crossing the Potomac River that was carrying about 250 million gallons of raw sewage from one of the largest spills in American history.1 Sacred and broken. Both true.

When I arrive at work, join my colleagues in the elevator, and ask them about their commute, I can see that same sacred and broken paradox in their experiences.

Those who found a moment of grace somewhere between their front door and our building have something lighter in their eyes.

And the ones who fought every inch of the way carry more than just their lunches and laptops. I can see what the commute did to them. What they couldn’t put down.

I carry both versions in myself.

Once we all arrive, something shifts. We’re not commuters anymore. We’re people showing up — together — in service of others. What I carry in my heart is the best thing I have to offer to our cause. Not my arguments. Not my strategies.

Just my presence.

My heart.

World peace starts with a ripple from a single chest.

And the beautiful, and terrifying, post-pandemic truth: We spread what we shed.

Where do you find yourself clenching this week?

What would it mean to loosen your grip, just slightly?

Who has helped you find meaning like Frankl found in his darkest days?

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Idle chit chat. The weather. How much snow they’d get. Their health. Their dog. What’s new.

Then they mentioned they’d turned on the news lately, “but we had to turn it off again. Same old story.” They were talking about politics, not the weather.

I hung up with gratitude that they had power to watch golf, movies, and TV series—images that help their nervous systems stay calm.

I also felt sick in my guts. I sat in the truck writing this feeling sorry for myself, and my neighbors, as we continue to get hammered by the wintry political conditions making headlines right now.

I wondered if my family understood what it’s like to live and work here, inside the beltway, where the headlines aren’t abstract—they’re the environment we navigate every day.

Like so many of my neighbors, I swore this same oath every federal worker vows:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”1

Every federal public servant makes that sacred promise. It’s an oath that requires staying rooted in facts, speaking truth, and maintaining steady footing when navigating uncertainty. My devotion doesn’t stop when my day at the office ends.

My neighbors and I don’t have the luxury of tuning out. This is where we live. This is where we serve. Proudly.

Lately, we’ve been doing a lot of shoveling.

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Connecting with my family reminded me that the front line is not the Capital Beltway.

The real battle here is in my heart.

In the space between heartbeats—that moment of silence and stillness where I connect with my truest self, even in the most dire circumstances—I discover the clarity that comes with noticing what’s really happening.

This is a tug of war between fear and love.

I love my family. I want them to have happy days. I also wish for them to understand the weight of what we carry here—not to burden them, but so they know we’re doing our best to serve them. I want them to be proud of me for doing my best right now.

But when I heard them say they were turning off the news because it was too hard, I thought about all the people throughout history who chose to look away from abuses that were clearly visible. I felt alone. Unseen.

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The paradox of presence

As a paramedic, I testified in court during a murder trial. When I raised my hand and took an oath to tell the truth, I could see the man facing murder charges and feel the weight of my words in my heart. As a journalist, and a public servant, I chose the path forward that does not look away.

For years, I thought that meant striding into disasters to rescue. To report. To fix.

But I learned that rushing to fix isn’t the same as helping to heal. My need to rescue sometimes prevented others from finding their own path forward. Their own truth.

Rushing to the rescue has its rare place in an unfolding crisis, but trying to force a change doesn’t match the power of bearing witness with empathy.

After dictating a first draft of this in the truck, I went into the hardware store.

Somewhere between the power tools and the screws, I felt the true power of compassion when I released my expectation of my family. I’m here. They’re there.

When I released my grip and stopped feeling “bad,” I received more clarity in my heart. I felt more love.

Love I can use—not to fix—but to feel. To witness. To hold space for the paradox:

I need to say “no” to unconstitutional acts. That’s not optional for me. My oath requires it. My heart demands it.

AND I need to make space for those trying to protect their nervous systems from pain—even when their protection means turning away.

Both are true.

I don’t want to react from fear. I don’t want to deepen the conflict by demanding everyone look at what I’m looking at.

My desire is to facilitate healing from a middle point between polarities.

Holding space while others awaken

There is privilege in being able to tune out.

And, maybe my family is not just apathetic.

We all need to become stronger and more flexible to meet the global challenges that are coming at us faster and faster. Maybe they’re subconsciously protecting themselves while something deeper shifts inside them.

What looks like avoidance might be a nervous system saying “I need a minute before I can face this.” What sounds like dismissal—”same old story”—might be a soul preparing itself for a truth it’s not quite ready to hold.

I don’t know what’s happening for my relatives. I don’t know what’s stirring in their hearts when they turn off the news and turn on golf. But I’m learning that my job isn’t to wake them up or shame them for not seeing what I see.

My job is to stay awake myself. To keep my own heart open—even in a news blizzard.

To hold the light while they find their way.

What’s happening in my body

It feels a bit crazy wandering around an enormous hardware store looking for tiny batteries while noticing what is happening in my nervous system. But here I am.

When I feel like I am carrying the weight of intertwined crises alone—when the people I love get to retreat while I stay on the front line—my body responds.

Resentment. Tightness in my chest. A feeling of not being seen.

But when I breathe and remember that everyone awakens in their own timing, something softens.

My jaw unclenches. My chest opens. The front line moves from out there (defending against those who don’t understand) to in here (staying connected to love even when I’m frustrated).

This is the real work.

Not convincing others to pay attention. But staying present with what’s alive in me while they walk their own path.

The only thing I control is where I place my attention and how I meet what I find there. Love or fear. Compassion or resentment. Presence or absence.

Holding space or forcing awakening.

Between each heartbeat, I get to choose. Again and again.

Maybe they’ll see what I see—eventually. Maybe they won’t.

But I can stay connected to the truth that exists in my heart—that we’re all finding our way through this together, each at our own pace, each carrying what we are to carry.

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Practice: Noticing without forcing

This week, I invite you to notice your own relationship with looking and looking away:

Where do you feel called to pay attention?

Not because you should. Because something in you can’t turn away. What are you witnessing that feels important for you to hold?

When do you need to look away?

What would it feel like to give yourself permission to rest? To tend your own nervous system before wading back in?

Who in your life is tuning out?

Notice what happens in your body when they do. Frustration? Judgment? Relief that they don’t have to carry this? Can you hold compassion for their journey while honoring your own?

What if their turning away is part of their awakening?

What if they need to look away right now so they can look more clearly later? What if protection is wisdom, not avoidance?

Can you stay steady in your own seeing?

Not as a burden. Not as proof you’re more aware. But as a choice to remain present with what’s real for you—trusting that your steadiness serves the whole, even when you can’t see how.

I looked at it several times during the day, held by her words, feeling the tenderness of being seen. Reminded that I have light to carry, I embraced those who crossed my path—especially those who are suffering—with compassion and hope.

Her morning notes ground me and remind me that I’m not alone.

But this one opened a door to something harder to explain.

When I close my eyes and reach for that light Annie sees in me, I am not alone.

I find Stan Heath, Larry Orluskie, and Tom Squitieri.

Men who moved me deeply. Men who were my friends and colleagues. Men who left this Earth too soon. Men whose physical bodies are gone, but whose presence—thankfully—is not.

This isn’t memory.

Memory carries grief. Memory says they’re gone, tightens my throat and delivers the weight of separation.

This is something else.

This is what happens when I stop thinking about them and start connecting with them. When I drop from my head into my heart space and reach for their essence—that spark, that light, that thing that made them them—I feel them as a current. I feel their energy.

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Last week I quoted Martin Luther King saying “love without power is sentimental and anemic” in the context of working for justice. These men devoted their lives to serving others and their spirits continue to touch me and teach me about love in action today.

Like the beautiful note waiting for me on the kitchen table, they are still accessible.

Through efforts that included personal sacrifice of their own safety for others, and unflinching devotion to truth and justice, these men were expressions of light. Vehicles or channels. Transmissions of something larger into a form I can hold.

Their love still holds me.

Love is the energy that runs through everything. That energy exists in the quantum field—that unseen network connecting every living thing. Love is the creative force powering the Universe.

When I connect with Stan or Larry or Tom, I’m not conjuring their memory. I’m tuning into the frequency they still transmit. The energy that animated their bodies—their souls, their light, whatever you want to call it—that energy didn’t disappear when their hearts stopped beating.

It can’t disappear.

Energy doesn’t die. It transforms. It moves. It continues.

And when I tune into it with intention, when I reach from my heart space toward their strong spirits, I feel the resonance of their public service.

Still Present

I can still sense Stan’s presence and feel him sitting at his desk at Homeland Security headquarters, facing the impossible task of guiding the public through an unthinkable catastrophe with honest messaging. Two public servants in a tiny office, trying to use truth and human connection to help people navigate their fear to survive and stay safe.

We had our backs against the wall—literally and figuratively.

But in that office, we had each other. And what passed between us wasn’t just strategy or facts or clever communications plans. It was shared purpose. Shared light. A bond that said: We’re in this together for the sake of others.

That bond doesn’t break just because one of us left the building.

I can still feel my chair backed up to Larry’s at the DHS cybersecurity office. The unwieldy, foreign world of cybersecurity looming around us. Cyberattacks mounting. Armies of experts mobilizing in a mind-boggling digital world. Two guys trying to build relationships, navigate bureaucracy, and serve something bigger than ourselves.

The energy between us—partnership, trust, and hilarity—remains.

I can still feel Tom sitting next to me on that flight to Mobile, Alabama. The map spread across our tray tables. Racing to cover a deadly Amtrak train derailment into a bayou. And later striding into the Arizona desert in our cowboy boots to understand the militia mindset that idolized a homegrown American terrorist. Both of us driven to get the facts, tell the story, serve our readers.

We were a team. And teams create something together that neither person carries alone. A third wave of combined energy. A resonance. A song we kept humming even after the story was filed.

That song is still playing.

The Network of Love

This is what I mean by the network of love.

Not the emotional attachment we feel to specific people in specific bodies. That’s real, and it matters, but it’s not the deepest truth.

The deepest truth is tricky to describe because it’s beyond words. Within words. Between words. Between heartbeats. Connecting with intention. Bonding through service. Showing up for each other and with each other in light and truth creates something that transcends physical form.

We plug into the field.

The quantum field of love and light that runs through everything. That is everything.

And once we’re connected in the quantum field, once we’ve created that resonance, it doesn’t end when one of us dies.

The body stops. The personality dissolves. But the energy—the essence, the light, the love we shared—remains.

And we can access it anytime we choose to tune in.

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I know this may sound woo-woo.

I’m saying it anyway because it’s true. Because in all the illusion and noise and constriction and despair swirling through the world right now, this grounds me.

The network of love is real.

It’s not metaphor. It’s physics. It’s the way the universe actually works. Energy does not die.

We are energetic beings having a human experience. And the connections we form—the bonds we build through partnership, service, friendship, love—those connections create lasting energetic unions.

They create a resonance like a song.

And we can keep humming that song. Keep feeling it in our hearts. Keep accessing the energy that flows through it.

Not to escape our grief. Not to pretend the physical loss doesn’t hurt.

But to remember we’re not alone in this world so full of pain.

To remember we’re part of something much larger than our individual bodies.

To remember the power that needs to be unleashed right now—in this time of heartbreak—comes through our bonds; especially when we work to serve others.

The healing power we need now comes through the network of love.

When Annie left me that note, she wasn’t just being sweet.

She was reminding me of what’s true.

I have light to carry.

And so do Stan, Larry, and Tom; and so many others.

And so do you.

The light doesn’t end when the body does. The love doesn’t stop when someone crosses the veil.

It transforms. It moves. It continues.

And when we tune into it—when we drop from our heads into our hearts and reach for the essence of those we’ve loved—we access that amazing energy. We remember:

We’re all connected.

We always have been.

We always will be.

The network of love isn’t something we have to build.

It’s something we remember.

It’s something we choose to feel.

It’s something we can trust.

Practice: Connecting to the Network

This week, I invite you to try this:

Think of someone who touched your life deeply. Someone who’s no longer here, or someone you haven’t spoken to in years, or even someone you see every day with a sense of disconnection.

Close your eyes. Drop from your head into your heart space.

Don’t think about them. Don’t replay memories. Don’t analyze what happened or what you wish had been different.

Just reach for their essence.

That spark. That light. That thing that defines them them.

Feel for the resonance between you—not what was lost, but what is.

Notice what shows up.

You might feel warmth in your chest. You might get a flash of knowing. You might simply feel less alone.

That’s the network.

That’s the quantum field of love.

That’s the creative power we all share.

You’re not making it up. You’re tuning in.

And the more you practice tuning in, the more you’ll feel it.

The more you’ll trust it.

The more you’ll carry your light into the world.

I’d love to hear about your experience. Who did you connect with? What did you feel?

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Until next time, may you feel the network of love holding you.

I recently sat across from a former business leader I’ve long respected and listened as they explained why cruelty and lies are sometimes necessary tools.

“Sometimes you have to lie,” they said with the strength of great certainty, adding that cruelty may also be justifiable.

I disagreed, respectfully, noting the importance of sharing values of decency and honesty.

There was no attempt to resolve our difference in that discussion. But after we each expressed some of our deepest truths in a moment of vulnerability that felt safe enough to share, I noticed what was happening in my body.

My chest felt heavy and tight when I replayed their words: “Sometimes you have to lie.”

My hands tingled and clenched the steering wheel as I drove away, hearing the echo of justifiable cruelty over and over.

A growing desire to fight back rose in my gut.

The Body Knows

By focusing on the sensations in my body rather than replaying the conversation in my mind, I was able to notice what my internal technology was pointing toward.

The quickened breathing when recalling their statements.
The heaviness in my heart space.
The clenching fists.
The rage building.

My body was telling me something my mind might have missed while busy constructing counterarguments and defensive positions and feeding a delusion.

Don’t Feed the Delusion

A cop recently shared a tip about how to deal with somebody suffering from delusion.

He recounted a time early in his career on patrol when he responded to a call about stolen pants. A man was furious at his roommate for the theft. While listening to the complaint, the officer realized the man was railing at a mirror, ranting at his own reflection. He was accusing his mirror image of stealing his pants.

The young officer stepped in to help. He told the man to step away from the mirror, then addressed the mirror sternly, turned back to the man, and said the roommate promised not to do it again. Problem solved.

A more seasoned officer observing corrected the rookie: “Don’t feed the delusion.”

When dealing with someone who is delusional, he said, ask: “Can you hear my voice?”

Bringing the person back into the present moment—inviting them to connect with what’s real right before them—can break the cycle. That pause, that interruption of the images controlling their mind, creates space for a reset.

Can You Hear My Voice?

In this time that feels increasingly unhinged, I am using this tactic to stop feeding delusions—including my own.

The delusion that I can argue someone out of defending cruelty and lies.
The delusion that my rage alone will change anything.
The delusion that I’m separate from this mess, observing from moral high ground.

Over recent weeks, as dread and fear and grief rose to new levels in my body, I needed more than just awareness. I needed a practice that could transform this energy without bypassing it.

The human condition is lost in thought, Eckhart Tolle writes in Stillness Speaks. The evolutionary move of our time, he says, is to transcend thought.

But I find it nearly impossible to meditate when I’m filled with anger and grief.

That’s when I turned to Richard Rudd’s teaching about the power of the pivot.

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The Pivot

Rudd’s book, The Art of Contemplation: A Gentle Path to Wholeness and Prosperity, offers a practice that works even when meditation feels impossible.

His framework is simple:

Pause. Notice what’s happening in my body to gain insight.
Pivot. Redirect energy from reactivity to clarity by accepting, allowing and embracing.
Merge. Move toward everything in friendship with generosity and gentleness.

This isn’t spiritual bypassing.

This is taking the off-ramp to see the highway from another point of view—standing beside a babbling creek full of life and wonder while the traffic roars past.

Pivoting requires accepting the pressure I feel first. Then not resisting it because I don’t like it.

I hate that a leader I respect defends cruelty and lies as effective.
I hate that we’re in this crisis.
I hate that I’ve been part of creating it.

Because here’s the truth: As a privileged white male leader, I have wielded power without love. I have hurt people while thinking I was helping. I have used the very tools that got us into this mess while claiming to want something different.

We are all complicit in ways we can barely see. We are all struggling with how to build something new using broken tools.

The pivot is the practice of transforming this recognition from paralysis into movement.

Pivoting Transforms the Direction

Rudd teaches that pivoting requires the strength of will to make a subtle, internal move that changes the direction of energy from reactive to creative.

I found this week that I can’t make that shift by bypassing the anger. Pretending the grief isn’t real or spiritually gaslighting myself into false peace doesn’t create a shift.

But working with my shadows and desires can transform my view so I can hold both the rage at injustice AND the stillness needed for wise action.

This is what MLK’s quote means to me and why I keep it posted on my office wall.

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.

Not power OR love. Both.

The contemplative practice isn’t weakness or escape. It’s the fulcrum that allows me to balance forces, to create space for grace to enter as harmony between divergent parts.

When I pivot from fury to grounded presence, I’m not abandoning the fight.

I’m positioning myself to fight effectively.

With power AND love.

Justice at Its Best

This is my aspiration in this era.

When I face leaders who defend cruelty and lies, I choose grounded presence over despair.

When I catch myself feeding delusions—theirs or mine—I pause.

When I feel the urge to fight fire with fire, I turn my attention toward my inner flame.

The practice is simple: Pause. Pivot. Merge. I Ask myself: Can you hear my voice?

The voice beneath the rage and grief.
The voice that knows transformation happens through presence.
The voice that whispers: You can hold both the horror and the hope.

King knew what we’re facing now. He named it in 1967:

“It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.”

Immoral power wielding cruelty and lies as a tool. Powerless morality collapsing into despair or spiritual bypassing. Both are dead ends.

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.

This is the path between collapse and cruelty.
This is the pivot that transforms energy from downward to upward.
This is how we refuse to use broken tools to build something new.

Practice: The Pivot

This week, when you feel rage or despair at what’s unfolding:

Pause: Notice the sensations in your body. Where is the tightness? The heat? The clenching? Don’t bypass it. Feel it.

Pivot: Ask yourself: “What direction is this energy moving?” Is it pulling you down into despair or reactivity? Can you redirect it—not suppress it, but pivot it—toward grounded action?

Merge: Empty yourself of the stories about how it should be different. Just for a moment, accept what is. From that acceptance, can you move more lovingly toward others?

This practice isn’t about being nice to people defending cruelty and lies. This practice isn’t about staying silent in the face of injustice.

This practice is about stepping into our role within the collision that King named—immoral power meeting powerless morality.

This practice is about embodying his vision—power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice—by using our inner technology to create a shift.

What came up for you reading this? Where are you struggling to hold both power and love?

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I got sick with something viral that knocked me flat for two weeks during the holiday season. My body forced me to rest while obligations piled up like unopened mail.

Unable to move, my mind worked me over nonstop:

You’re weak. You’re letting people down. Everyone’s waiting on you. Real commitment means showing up anyway. You’re not that sick.

The judgment felt like that lead vest used during X-rays. Heavier than the virus. Fatigue and brain fog smothered me with the frustration of failing.

I couldn’t write. I couldn’t show up. I couldn’t fulfill my promise to be here every week for you.

Big. Fat. Loser.

Now as the fog lifts, I see that the exhaustion wasn’t just from being sick. It was also from fighting myself while being sick.

I don’t watch much TV when I’m well. But I couldn’t concentrate enough to read. My queue of audiobooks and podcasts felt too heavy. So I turned on the news.

And that’s when I saw it. The same energy beating me up inside was playing out on every channel.

Judgment.

Perpetrator. Victim. Right. Wrong. Weak. Dangerous. Over and over, pundits slicing people into categories with the same surgical precision my mind was using on me. You failed. You’re out of shape. You should have been stronger.

I watched a PBS NewsHour interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.1

The journalist, Amna Nawaz, was doing her job—holding a public figure accountable for past actions. I recognized the technique immediately. I taught it for eight years as an adjunct professor at The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs while reporting for USA Today.

“Go for the jugular,” I’d tell my students. “Public officials need to be held accountable. Don’t let them off the hook.”

But lying on my couch, exhausted from judging myself for being too weak to show up, I saw the exchange through a different lens.

Greene was trying to tell a story about waking up. About seeing clearly how she’d gotten caught in a corrupted system. About walking away from the toxic game she’d been playing.

Amna asked: “Do you regret calling the President a liar at the State of the Union?”

“I have already addressed that,” Greene responded.

Greene said it four times. Four different attempts to say something like: I’m trying to tell you I’ve changed, but you keep pulling me back to prove I was wrong.

She’d said on CNN months earlier: “I would like to say, humbly, I’m sorry.”

But in this moment with Amna, I watched Greene’s face go flat. Watched her retreat until Amna told viewers: “We lost Congresswoman Greene’s video feed during the interview and were unable to reconnect. But we thank her for joining us.”

I don’t know exactly what happened, but lying there—tired, weak, still judging myself for not being strong enough—I felt sad. Helpless. Empathy for Greene. And worried.

As a former federal communications director who prepared officials for tough interviews, I imagined a scenario where someone watching that interview—a staffer, an advisor—sees their boss struggling under accountability questions and says “we’re done.” Protect her. “Pull the plug.”

That’s what made me feel sick about the prospects for our future.

Not just the judgment itself. But the whole habitual pattern we’ve built around it.

On one side, journalism slides from accountability into shame. On the other, political spin deflects with talking points. I’ve worked both sides. I know the moves.

Both sides performing their roles. Neither creating space for messy, incomplete, stumbling-forward change.

We pull the plug. We move to the next talking point. We cut to commercial.

We unconsciously conspire to avoid the vulnerable moment where change can heal the world.

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And lying there under the covers—literally hiding—I realized: This is what I was hiding from.

Not just the virus. Not just my own judgment.

The grinding system itself.

I taught the "go for the jugular" technique. I practiced the deflection and spin as a federal communications director. I know these moves intimately.

And it exhausts me.

Not because I think either side is wrong in what they’re trying to do. Amna’s doing her job. Greene’s trying to protect herself while attempting to change — in the national spotlight.

But caught in the middle of it all—watching it play out on screen while experiencing it in my own body—I felt helpless.

How do we connect meaningfully with strangers when we’re all trapped in this cycle?

How do we create space for healing when journalists slide too easily into shame and politicians deflect with talking points?

How do we allow transformation—messy, incomplete, stumbling-forward transformation—when people who take sides prevent anyone from sitting with discomfort long enough to actually change?

I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I was hiding under the covers. Ashamed. Exhausted. Feeling the impossibility of change.

Now as a coach, I see what I missed in all those years of teaching journalism and practicing federal communications:

The public is right to be skeptical of a public official who caused harm with their words. Amna’s questions were fair. Greene’s past actions were harmful and accountability matters.

AND we must find a way to create space for healing if we are to move forward together.

Both things are true.

But the judgment itself—even righteous judgment, even necessary accountability—left no room in that moment for someone just starting out on a path of transformation. And the jousting—journalism that slides into shame, politics that deflects with talking points—makes it nearly impossible today to complete that journey in public.

Judgment isn't making us feel better. It divides us from ourselves, from each other, from the possibility of transformation. We stay stuck—exhausted from fighting ourselves while claiming to fight for what's right.

On this New Year's Day, I'm not making resolutions. I'm just noticing:

What happens when I can't let go of who someone was when they're trying to change? What happens when I can't let go of who I think I should be when I need to rest?

How do these paradoxical narratives keep me—keep us—trapped?

I don’t have solutions.

I’m not going to tell you to “choose love over judgment” or offer five steps to stop the cycle.

I’m just naming what I saw:

The same energy that was exhausting me from the inside was exhausting us from the outside, making meaningful connection feel impossible.

And maybe—just maybe—noticing that is where we start.

This week, I’m showing up. Still tired. Still uncertain. Still noticing.

And I’m grateful you’re here too.

Maybe, in showing up together, we create the small spaces where healing becomes possible.

Can we sit with discomfort long enough to actually change?

Can we be accountable for our past and allowed to transform?

Can we witness the judgment and transmute it?

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Happy New Year. I’m grateful we’re walking this path together—one stumbling step at a time.

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Not from the engines on either side of Row 8.

The father held his daughter in the aisle seat—8D. Across the aisle, 8B sat empty between two strangers in heated debate.

The man in 8A attacking Biden’s policies. The woman in 8C bemoaning Trump’s actions. Presidential names punctuating the air like exclamation points.

All of us without noise-canceling headphones were forced to hear every word.

I’ve been sharing deeply personal stories here to reveal the front line of a crisis.

And here it was again on a 5-hour flight across the country: my body registering the conflict before my mind could make meaning of it. Anxiety rising in my chest. The instinct to flee—change seats, ask them to stop, plug in my headphones and disappear into a podcast.

Then I noticed the father’s baseball cap.

Each time a president’s name punctuated the conversation, he’d glance over at the debaters. No emotion on his face. Just holding his daughter.

When he turned, I saw the number embroidered on his cap: 47.

One of those signs from the universe that says pay attention.

On my tray table, the book I was reading lay open to a passage from one of the Federalist Papers written by James Madison — Federalist No. 47.

I confess I basically slept through a lot of civics classes. I was more interested in gazing out the window at the firehouse across the ball field, wishing I could run rescue calls with my dad than learning about American history.

But now, 37,000 feet in the air traveling more than 570 mph, Madison’s words landed differently:

“The accumulation of all powers—legislative, executive, and judiciary—in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

The father’s calm, protective hug of his daughter.

The elders in front of me, whose conflicts and misunderstandings have led to a crisis of societal separation that threatens our democracy.

The waves of anxiety moving through the cabin—through my body—as their voices rose and fell.

The signs pointed me inward.

The Nervous System Is the Frontline

Here’s what I noticed: My anxiety spiked when their voices rose. I calmed when they calmed.

I wasn’t just witnessing their conflict. I was receiving it. My nervous system—the sophisticated antenna designed to keep me alive—was picking up the collective energy inside a metal tube hurtling through the sky.

I closed my eyes like the girl with the butterfly pacifier and let the energy pass through me. I tasked my nervous system with receiving the waves moving through all of us.

The debates on the news. The arguments at the family table. The tension at work. The fear in the grocery store line. The rage on social media.

We feel it in our bodies before our minds know what to make of it.

And right now, the waves are bigger, faster, more frequent than most of us have ever experienced.

The Only Thing I Control

Trapped in that middle seat, I had a choice.

The only thing in my control was my reaction.

Not their volume. Not their opinions. Not whether they’d find common ground or storm off the plane still angry. Just: How do I meet this wave hitting my body right now?

My first instinct: flee (change seats, escape, shut it out). My second instinct: fix (interrupt them, mediate, make it stop).

But as I sat there, something shifted. I noticed they were actually doing the work.

Between the heated exchanges, something was happening: They were listening to each other!

They were seeing each other’s perspective. The woman in 8C said something that softened and showed she was not judging the man. The man in 8A nodded, actually considering what she’d said.

“Is that what is really happening?” he asked, before reflecting silently for a while.

The escalation I feared didn’t come.

Instead, de-escalation. Space. Breath.

And as they calmed, I calmed. Not because I did anything to alter the situation, but because I made space within myself for what was unfolding.

The Space Between Us

Here’s the realization that hit me somewhere over the Cascade Mountains: The space between us is defined by the openness I create within.

If I constrict—shutting down, fleeing, demanding they stop—I eliminate the opportunity for new connection. But if I can hold space in my own body for the discomfort, the fear, the uncertainty—if I can breathe and stay present while the waves move through—then the space between us is open.

The empty middle seat, the space where democracy lives, the space where strangers can talk and actually hear each other is revealed.

The father showed me what this looks like:

Calm presence amid the storm.

Not ignoring the conflict.

Not pretending it isn’t happening.

Just being steady while it moves through.

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The Practice: Notice the Wave

This week, pay attention to your nervous system as the receiver it is.

When you feel a surge—anxiety, anger, tightness in your chest:

1. Pause and ask: “Is this mine? Or am I picking up the room?”

2. Name it: “I’m feeling a wave.”

3. Breathe and stay present while it moves through

4. Notice: Do you calm when others calm? What shifts when you create internal space?

You’re not responsible for stopping the waves or fixing the conflicts.

You’re responsible for how you meet the energy when it hits your body.

That’s where your power lives.

The middle seat might be the worst seat on the plane.

But it’s also where strangers can sit side by side. Where heated debates can lead to actual listening. Where a father can hold his daughter in calm presence while the world argues around them.

That space is sacred. And it starts with the space you create within yourself.

Next week: What I’ve learned about holding that space—even when it feels impossible.

I’d love to hear about the waves you’re noticing. When do you feel them? How are you meeting them?

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Nearly a thousand people gathered—doctors, paramedics, researchers, manufacturers, and families changed by cardiac arrest. The energy was amazing. Hopeful. Collaborative. Electric.

When Hilary Gates and I finished our first presentation at a breakout session on “Lifesaving Storytelling,” Dr. Tom Aufderheide approached to say hello and express his gratitude. We had all been together at the Institute of Medicine 10 years ago wrestling with the same question we’re still asking today: How do we get bystanders to act when someone collapses?

Ten years. A lot can change in a decade. Including me.

The next day, Dr. Aufderheide, a pioneering resuscitation researcher, sat in the front row as Hilary and I spoke on a panel about time-sensitive emergencies. Our friend, Dr. Ed Racht, chief medical officer of Global Medical Response and the conference host, moderated the discussion.

What struck me most wasn’t just the size of the gathering, though that mattered. It was the faces. Familiar faces, of course, but more importantly new ones. The new energy.

Between me and Hilary sat two young women who represent something I couldn’t have imagined a decade ago: Rhea Sinha, a Florida high school student, and my stepdaughter Emily Butters, a Tulane University medical student. Both watched our Six Minutes to Live mini-documentary and felt called to act. Both joined our team. Both brought a creative spark to the panel discussion that could finally shift what’s been so stuck.

They don’t carry what the rest of us old-timers who have toiled for decades carry—the weight of all the people who died while we were figuring this out. They carry something lighter and more powerful: pure possibility.

Walking through the exhibition hall, I ran into two renowned EMS medical directors and cardiac arrest researchers—Dr. Ray Fowler of Dallas and Dr. Michael Sayre of Seattle. As we caught up on our individual work, Dr. Sayre suggested a book: “Storythinking” by Angus Fletcher.

The premise intrigued me immediately. Story doesn’t just communicate information—it literally rewires how our brains respond. It prepares us for action. It moves us from paralysis to possibility.

As I listened to it on Audible flying home to Washington, a narrative thread from the summit came into focus as a key to our remaking of the world.

Since my USA Today series was published more than 20 years ago, since I spoke at the IOM 10 years ago, we have been focusing on awareness. On statistics. On making the case that bystander CPR and a handy AED is the lifesaving recipe. I assumed if people just knew the facts, they’d act.

But it turns out knowledge isn’t the problem. In the moment someone collapses, something else can take over. Fear. Hesitation. The assumption that someone else will handle it.

What Rhea and Emily instinctively understand—what I’m just now learning to articulate—is that we’ve been trying to move people with fear when we need to move them with love.

Not sentimental love. Warrior love. The kind that says: This person matters. This life matters. I can help.

The kind of love that overrides the freeze response and moves us toward life instead of away from it.

Dr. Tom Aufderheide said something at that Institute of Medicine meeting 10 years ago that stays with me: “Cardiac arrest is not always the last event in a person’s life.”

But only if we’re prepared. If we act. If we choose love over fear in that critical moment.

The person who collapses doesn’t have to die.

I’m energized by the young people bringing fresh creativity to this work. I’m grateful for reconnecting with dozens of colleagues who have stayed in this fight for the long haul. I’m enthralled with the new science emerging at the intersection of emergency medicine, neuroscience and AI.

After the conference, Dr. Racht agreed to join the board of our Six Minutes to Live nonprofit. All of it lights up my heart space. And I’m as hopeful as I have been in decades.

We’re on the verge of something shifting.

But hope requires preparation to save a life.

So before I sign off, I want to ask you four practical questions. Not deep spiritual reflection this week. Just simple readiness:

• Do you know what sudden cardiac arrest looks like?

• Do you know CPR?

• Where is your nearest AED?

• Are you ready?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. Someone you love might depend on your answers.

Until next week …

Many have reached out to ask me about forgiveness in response to the painful experiences I shared in last week’s Siren Call. It’s challenging to think about forgiveness this week when we’re being hit daily with news of acts that are generally considered unforgivable.

My intention for sharing here is to invite us to consider how we choose love over fear. That choice is the fork in the road we face today. When the fog of suffering obscures our path forward, forgiveness is the clarity tool we need most.

It gives us the power to choose a new way forward.

The Way Out Is In

Thich Nhat Hanh taught that the way out is in. The solutions to our suffering aren’t found in the external chaos but in our internal landscape. Albert Einstein observed that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Both the spiritual teacher and the scientist point to the same truth. When the old approaches led us into the crisis, the path forward requires turning inward.

This is counterintuitive. Our conditioning tells us to look outward, to identify the enemy, to assign blame, to fight harder using the same tools that brought us here. But that’s the kind of thinking that created the problem.

In truth, the way out is in.

The Wall I Didn’t Know I’d Built

After my marriage collapsed, after I saw my own reflection in Susan Smith’s choice to send her boys to their deaths from the boat ramp, I thought acknowledging my failures meant I’d dealt with them.

I was wrong.

I built an inner fortress brick by brick with regret and shame. I defended the uncomfortable feelings with anger and resentment toward others—and myself.

Anger toward those who had caused me pain. Frustration toward the people and systems that wielded power over me. Resentment toward those who hurt others. I didn’t see them as mirrors, so I rejected what they were reflecting back—the me that I didn’t want to see.

I told myself and others, “I’m fine.”

Long after my first marriage ended in divorce, I thought I was reacting righteously. What I was actually doing was blocking my own source of loving compassion, the very energy I needed to heal. The energy that comes with forgiveness.

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Shadow Work: Meeting What I’d Hidden

My path into genuine forgiveness began with shadow work, guided by the late Debbie Ford’s teachings in her book “The Dark Side of the Light Chasers.”

Shadow work is the practice of turning toward what we’ve pushed away. It’s the willingness to see that every quality we judge harshly in others exists somewhere within us, not because we’re bad, but because we’re complete. We contain multitudes — the whole range of human possibilities, both good and bad. Light and shadow. Compassion and cruelty. Generosity and greed.

The parts we refuse to acknowledge don’t disappear. They run the show from the basement.

Ford taught that our shadows hold our power. The energy we spend suppressing what we don’t want to see in ourselves could be used to create, to love, to serve. But first, we have to be willing to look.

So I looked.

I asked myself the question I’d been avoiding. Where am I like Susan Smith?

Not metaphorically. Actually. My shadow work involved accepting that I am capable of murder.

That allowed me to see more clearly how I eliminated something precious—my time with my daughters, my presence in my marriage—because it interfered with what I wanted.

Where had I justified harm by telling myself a reasonable story about it being necessary?

Where had I murdered possibility in service of ambition?

The answers made me want to puke.

Breaking From The Pack: The Susan Smith Turning Point

Susan Smith is easy to hate. It feels righteous to join a chorus of others calling something or someone unforgivable. But shadow work doesn’t let you stay in the comfort of collective agreement.

When a mother drowns her two young sons by rolling her car into a lake, the consensus is clear and comfortable. Monster. Evil. Irredeemable. Standing in that judgment felt righteous. It meant I was on the side of children, of justice, of basic human decency.

When I asked myself “Where am I like Susan Smith?” I had to go deeper. I had to look at what actually happened to her. The abuse she suffered as a girl. The disconnection from her own light that led to those terrible choices. The profound pain and confusion that creates a human being capable of such harm.

This is where the mystic path diverges from conventional wisdom. Every spiritual tradition teaches the same counterintuitive truth. Being “right” about someone else’s wrongness keeps us trapped in an illusion. The Buddhist concept that everything is interconnected. The Christian teaching to love your enemy. The Sufi poets who wrote about seeing the Beloved in everyone. They all point to this. Our need to condemn blocks our access to compassion, and compassion is the only force powerful enough to heal.

I realized that condemning Susan Smith while refusing to see my own capacity for harm was keeping me stuck. As long as I needed her to be the monster so I could feel not monstrous, I couldn’t actually forgive either of us.

The day I genuinely forgave her, something unlocked inside my chest.

I wasn’t doing it for her. I was doing it for me. I was working with my shadows for everyone that my unforgiveness was keeping me from loving fully.

Forgiveness didn’t mean excusing what she did. It didn’t mean pretending harm didn’t happen or consequences don’t matter. It meant recognizing that the same divine light that exists in me exists in her, whether she was connected to it or not.

When I could see Susan Smith as a human being disconnected from her light, making terrible choices from a place of profound pain, I could finally see myself the same way. Not as a villain in my own story, but as a person who’d been running on outdated programming, unconscious patterns, and a nervous system wired for survival rather than presence.

This is the alchemy the Sufi mystic poet Rumi described: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Through forgiveness, my pain became medicine.

Being “Right” Keeps Us Stuck

Anyone who has felt the heartbreak of a failed relationship knows this intimately. It’s easier to catalog the other person’s misdeeds when you feel injured than to look inward.

For years after my marriage to Holly ended, I kept a mental ledger of her actions that contributed to its demise. I could list them, rank them, trace cause and effect with prosecutorial precision. I thought this accounting meant I was seeing the situation accurately. I thought being “right” about what she did wrong gave me solid ground to stand on.

But being “right” was just another wall.

The walls go up to protect the hurt self, keeping anything that could cause more pain away from the inner bruise. It’s a story the ego tells that makes perfect sense. They hurt you. They did this. Poor you. Stay defended. Stay righteous. Stay right.

This is victim mentality dressed up as clarity.

While I was fixated on her choices, while I was busy being “right” about her failings, I couldn’t see my own patterns of defensiveness. The automatic reactions. The ways I met situations not unfolding as I wanted with rigidity rather than responsiveness. I had lost sight of the one thing I actually had control over, not her actions, but my own reactions and responses.

Here’s what forgiveness actually does. It brings clarity to inner perception. Blaming and focusing anger and resentment on others obscures the very awareness we need to change anything.

Blame is like a spotlight that illuminates a target but leaves everything else in darkness.

Forgiveness didn’t mean deciding the actions of others were fine. It meant releasing my grip on the narrative where her choices were the story. And in that release, a different picture came into focus. The defensiveness I couldn’t see while blaming others was the very thing blocking my access to my real power. Defensiveness blocked my ability to choose how to respond, to learn, to change course.

The clarity forgiveness brings isn’t about seeing the other person differently. It’s about finally being able to see yourself.

This is the shift from victim to empowered.

Practice: Choosing The Path Forward

We’re still standing at that crossroads where the news triggers us and we have a choice.

You can stay in the comfort of collective agreement, in the righteousness of being “right,” in the protection of your walls. Or you can turn inward and do the harder work.

This week’s practice is simple but not easy.

Think of someone you haven’t forgiven. Maybe yourself. Maybe someone else. Maybe someone the world agrees is unforgivable.

Ask yourself these questions.

• What would become available to me if I released this grip?

• What part of them do I refuse to see in myself?

You don’t have to forgive them yet. Just notice what holding on is costing you.

Where does unforgiveness live in your body? Is your jaw tight? Your chest contracted? Your stomach knotted? Breathe into that space. This is where your power is locked up.

Forgiveness is how we clear our vision from the fog of suffering. Not because it’s nice. Not because it lets anyone off the hook. Because it’s the only way to access the clarity and compassion we need to choose love over fear.

We cannot heal the world from behind our defended walls. The energy we spend maintaining those fortresses is the energy we need to serve, to love, to create the world we want to live in.

The way out is in.

What came up for you reading this? What are you not forgiving that might be blocking your light?

Until next week, may you find the courage to release what you no longer need to carry.

This Thanksgiving, madness appears to be accelerating. To navigate it, I look inward.

That’s why I’m investigating my past like a crash site. I’m searching for clues to patterns I didn’t see while flying toward my goals as fast as I thought I should.

The patterns themselves aren’t good or evil. But without awareness, they can trap me in cycles that don’t serve love. Real self-awareness is an internal move. Stop. Look inward. Ask what’s serving me now—and what’s not.

Behind the wheel, Holly drove us across Wyoming toward our future. In her mirrored sunglasses, I could see the highway stretching both behind and ahead of us—but not what was right in front of me.

She was young and beautiful. We were taking on the world, about to have daughters while I chased my dream of being a newspaper reporter who covered the nation.

We thought our traumas were behind us, reflected in that rearview mirror.

But my disconnection from self—that’s where evil lurked. And I couldn’t see it at all.

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I had a Five Year Plan.

By age 30, I’d be a national reporter at USA Today.

Most journalists I knew said it was overly ambitious. Impossible, even. You had to put in decades at smaller papers, work your way up slowly, pay your dues. I was off to a late start after flunking out of college and working as a paramedic before earning my journalism and history degrees as a young father.

But I had something they didn’t. I was willing to sacrifice anything to get there.

Just a few years into my practice of banishing God from my cells after wrestling with the images of a murdered child in a firehouse bunkroom, I was on a new mission to prove that I didn’t need anyone or anything else either.

Just hustle. Just a willingness to do anything. Just my Five Year Plan.

The pattern started long before journalism.

As a paramedic, I’d learned to run toward sirens while everyone else ran away. Emergencies were my comfort zone. I felt most alive amidst chaos. Present, focused, useful.

I hatched the Five Year Plan in college and landed a job at the small Colorado sister newspaper of USA Today covering cops and breaking news. Holly made professional sacrifices to stay at home with our daughter whenever I was on a story deadline.

The math was simple: Five years. Thirty years old. National reporter. If not, I’d get a real job.

I’d chase every breaking news story. Master in-depth reporting. Make myself indispensable. Get noticed.

What I didn’t account for was how many people I’d leave behind in the chase.

The calls started coming almost immediately.

An airliner crashed near me, landing me a front-page USA Today byline. Seeing my name above the fold and getting my reporting hustle into the hands of more than 1 million readers around the world erased any possibility of self-doubt about my dream.

“You’re lucky,” other reporters would say.

I’d nod, but inside I was thinking: Luck has nothing to do with it. I have My Plan. My ego used each “lucky break” to double down.

See? I was right to make the sacrifices.

See? The cost to my family was worth it.

See? I was on the right track.

I followed a local man who wanted a rare and risky heart-lung transplant. I hung out with Dave Benefiel through his long wait for the organs, looked into his empty chest cavity during surgery, and stood by his side in the ICU until he died from infections.

During nightly check-in calls, Holly would often cry for help. Our daughter was sick. Holly was exhausted. They needed me.

“I know, babe,” I’d say. “But this story is huge. I’ll be home soon.”

Soon was always later than promised.

I won awards for my stories and I was a national reporter at USA Today at age 30.

I’d won. My Plan had worked.

Hurricane Andrew hit when some of the star reporters were away on summer vacations—with their families. I was thrilled to leave mine behind to fly into the disaster scene. I could navigate a crisis. Sources trusted me. Editors noticed my work. Story after story I was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis got tossed into a field not far from my home. A standoff between a cult and federal agents in Waco, Texas, occurred when the top reporters were in New York covering the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. I rushed to Oklahoma City’s bombing without a suitcase and was gone for weeks.

Each assignment I dropped everything to advance my career. Each did more damage at home.

I was sitting in a motel room that smelled of curry in Union, S.C., when Holly told me on our nightly check-in call that she wanted a divorce.

We had two daughters by then. She now had her own plan. She was taking our girls back to Colorado. I’d destroyed my marriage by making one reasonable choice at a time.

But even in the wreckage, I kept working.

Because that’s what professionals do.

Shake it off. Move on.

Rocked by the news of my impending divorce, I drove my rental car to the boat ramp where Susan Smith had put her car in neutral and let it roll into the lake with her sons inside. Michael and Alex, still strapped in their seats, drowned in the dark water of John D. Long Lake.

This felt like my story. I had been the first national reporter to believe and publish Susan’s lies about a Black man carjacking her. As morning news anchors read parts of my copy on TV, the nation mobilized a manhunt. Search teams. Volunteers. Media coverage. The desperate mother pleading on TV for someone to return her babies.

I’d covered the story from the beginning and now I was one of dozens of reporters camped in this small town.

After Susan Smith confessed, I found myself standing where she murdered her boys.

Looking at the water where her car sank.

Toys, teddy bears and flowers memorialized the little boys who had trusted their mother completely.

I felt rage.

Pure, white-hot hatred for this woman who could do something so incomprehensible.

What kind of monster eliminates her own children?

This is where the evil lives inside me.

What I didn’t see standing there raging against Susan was the monster in myself.

Susan Smith had a boyfriend. He didn’t want to be with a woman who had children. She saw a choice: Her sons or the relationship.

She chose the relationship.

I had a career goal. It required relentless absence from home. I made a choice: Professional advancement over time with my daughters.

I chose the career.

She used a lake and a lie.

I used planes and deadlines.

Both of us eliminated what mattered most for what we wanted most.

I’m not saying they’re equivalent acts. They’re not.

Susan Smith committed double murder. I committed a different kind of abandonment.

But by reflecting on myself in the stillness of that lake water, I see now something that makes my knees weak: Evil doesn’t live in dramatic headlines. It lives in reasonable choices made by unconscious people who tell themselves they’re serving a higher purpose.

Practice: Your Reasonable Choices

This week, I invite you to look at your own “reasonable” choices.

Not the dramatic moments. Not the big obvious mistakes.

The reasonable ones. The ones that made sense at the time. The ones you justified with logic and ambition and “higher purpose.”

What did you eliminate for what you wanted?

Who paid the price for your unconscious choices?

What siren keeps calling you away from what’s right in front of you?

You don’t need to fix it this week. You don’t even need to forgive yourself yet.

Just notice.

Just see it clearly.

Sometimes that’s enough to begin.

I didn’t see these patterns while I was living them because I wasn’t paying attention to what was happening inside my body.

Next week: When the nervous system runs the show.

I’d love to hear what this brought up for you. What reasonable choices are you noticing? What siren keeps calling you away from yourself? Hit reply and share your story—I read every message.

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As a paramedic, I’d gear up for some calls before we even arrived. A severe crash meant crumpled metal and broken bodies. Shooting meant arterial rupture and a race against time. Cardiac arrest meant choreographed interventions to restart a heart. The rehearsal in my head got me focused—and protected my psyche.

Like Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise, I loved racing into the unknown. Siren yelping. Others yielding. My skills and clinical creativity churning. Shields up. Let’s do this.

But this day, I was caught completely off-guard.

We’d been canceled on a call for an “unknown medical problem” just as we pulled up to the house. “Unknowns” were sometimes a step up from a 911 butt dial. The cops inside had confirmed medics weren’t needed.

I had no defenses in place when I saw the plastic pool in the front yard. Toys scattered across the lawn. A couple of police cars parked with no flashing lights.

I told my partner to sit tight and finish his cigarette. I’d go check it out. We were already there.

I walked into the house without my kit.

A police officer pointed toward the back bedroom. I noticed how quiet it was. Peaceful. Deep blue curtains cast a sleepy hue across the bed.

Naptime, obviously.

I quietly approached the girl on the bed, put my hand on her shoulder.

“Honey?”

I assumed the problem was some emotional issue with whoever the cops were talking to down the hall. I thought the girl had her face in her pillow to hide from the drama. I didn’t want to startle her so I let my hand rest on her back. “Sweetie.”

She wasn’t breathing.

I pushed her shoulder. “Honey.” No response. I lifted her shoulder.

Where her face should have been, there was only void left by a bullet.

I let go. She plopped back into the pillow. Once again, she appeared at peace.

I stood up, struggling to breathe.

Fuck, I whispered. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I tried to act cool getting back in the rig. “DOA,” I told my partner. “Let’s go.”

All day I shrugged it off. Ran a few more calls. Focused on other things.

That night, in the silence of the darkened firehouse bunkroom, the murder scene looped in my mind.

My breathing quickened. My throat tightened. My eyes began to water. I was trapped.

The bunkroom was filled with snoring and farting firefighters with decades more experience. On the verge of bawling, I wouldn’t make the twenty steps to the door without being heard.

I pulled the pillow over my face and clutched it tightly, trying to smother my sobs so none of these men would think less of me. Tears, snot and spit soaked the pillow.

Desperate to get control over my body, something inside me suggested I pray to God.

Immediately, I slammed that idea to the floor of my being.

My family had stopped going to church when I was in elementary school so I don’t know how God came into my mind in that moment. I slammed on the brakes.

God? If there was a God, that innocent child would not be dead.

I sent a message to every cell in my body: God does not exist.

Silently—but screaming inside my body—I shouted with my mind:

There is no God! There is no God! There is no God!

Now all my defenses were at full power, focused on this one battle. I was fighting something in my body, beating it down with my words. I gave myself a direct order:

“Every cell in this body is forbidden to speak the word God. Every part of me. There is no God. There is no God. No God. No God.”

The fight felt physical. Like I was wrestling with something in every part of my being.

I felt something had to be evicted cell by cell.

I got control over my breathing and slowed the mantra—pouring it onto smaller and smaller waves of anger and frustration like beer on a smoldering campfire.

I managed to stay in bed.

To this day, I don’t know if any of those men heard me sobbing or recognized my struggle. If they had, the unwritten rules of the bunkroom meant they’d let a man cling to whatever dignity he could salvage.

The next morning, I felt better.

My new marching orders to banish the idea of God seemed to give me strength.

I suited up. Ran more calls. Felt fine.

The feeling that had troubled me so deeply in the darkness was gone.

This, I thought, was how a professional man was supposed to deal with very bad things.

Shake it off. Move on.

I began to notice more vividly the hypocrisy of modern religious practices. I looked down my 20-something nose at priests and those who were openly faithful as people leaning on a crutch.

I managed to keep the thought of God out of my life for decades after that, pointing back to that innocent girl’s death as proof. Scientists and atheists affirmed what I had learned the hard way.

“Trust me,” I’d tell my friends. “I know. That church shit is just a crutch for the weak.”

That one dark night in a firehouse bunkroom left me thinking I’d won the battle.

I then spent decades believing that I was in control of my own Starship.

A note on memory: I’ve carried this story in my body for decades. Trauma shapes memory. What I experienced, what my nervous system recorded, and what I’ve reconstructed over time have merged into something both vivid and uncertain. I can’t be sure of every detail. I know something broke in me that night. The cellular impact is real. That’s what matters enough for me to want to share this for our journey together.

Practice

What happens inside when you witness something beyond comprehension?

Do you banish? Numb? Rage? Freeze? Pray?

Notice this week. Let it have space.

I’m here if something wants to be shared. Hit reply. I read every message.

While turning out the lights to enjoy a good night’s sleep on a trip to see my parents, the news of a possible deal in the Senate was like a spotlight coming into the window and loudspeakers booming in more chaos.

I was hundreds of miles away from Washington wondering how fast I’d have to return.

My Tuesday lunch with a friend suddenly felt at risk. Waves of sadness and frustration moved through me.

The good work that helps so many people—now sitting idle in my closed laptop—sparked ripples of hope. I found myself thinking: What will I do first when I’m back in the office?

Ending rare unhurried time with my parents caused heaviness in my heart. We’d spent days in conversations about where we came from and what we’re leaving behind—the long view that makes daily chaos feel small.

Driving back to suit up and protect myself from political nonsense means letting go of a natural flow of love to face more man-made fears.

This historically long furlough is not the first time I’ve let go during a forced time out.

During COVID—when I found myself in a studio apartment following another brutal divorce, pushed out (again) from a job I’d worked so hard to get, and isolated more by my own actions than by the pandemic—I took to nature.

On long morning walks watching the sunrise on the Potomac River, I started following voices that brought me inspiration and hope.

I got rid of my TV. I unplugged from the news.

This was a risky move since my job was to oversee media relations and advise senior government officials on their communications strategy. I hid the fact that I was a recovering headline addict.

As a kid, my maturity was judged by my father based in part on my knowledge of current events. Over time, however, “current events” turned into stories that delivered an overly stimulating jolt.

My nervous system, I learned while leaning into silence and contemplative reflection with wise teachers, was constantly getting hijacked by “breaking news.”

I helped bastardize that term as a USA Today reporter, stoking fears to hook readers.

A scared reader keeps reading.

My reporting that they (or a loved one) faced doom—due to circumstances I was about to explain—kept them engaged in the story for at least a few paragraphs. From there, it was up to me to hold their attention long enough to see what I’d seen. We’d land together at the happy, positive or upbeat ending—if they read all the way to the end.

Nuance was my goal, but the news medium required a more black-and-white approach.

Headlines about “Aviation Disasters” or “Deadly Attacks” grabbed attention. But the fuller truth—reforms that could prevent future tragedies—required patience most readers didn’t have.

The stories that scared people got shared. The nuances were usually buried on inside pages.

I was complicit in training millions of nervous systems to stay on high alert.

All of that fear peddling began to become clearer to me as I walked my new path along the water during COVID. Wisdom teachers sharing spiritual lessons through podcasts and audio books propelled me toward regular practices. An inner peace emerged.

Buddha belly breathing. Grounding my bare feet on the earth. Noticing when fear was manufactured versus real. Feeling my heartbeat between thoughts.

Now, as I prepare emotionally to return to the Washington office, my most important work is to remain rooted in that inner peace—even as my days are uncertain.

It will be more challenging to find time to travel to those I love, to sit without rushing and to be present for what matters most, while serving the American people in this political environment. But it is possible with intention and will.

Picking the path of love over the path of fear is a choice I can make in any moment—if I remember to do so.

That remembering is the work.

When the news buzz hits my body, I can pause. Breathe. Ask: Is this real danger, or manufactured urgency?

When political chaos threatens to pull me from what matters, I can notice the heaviness. Feel it. Then choose: Do I suit up for the nonsense, or stay connected to the natural flow of love?

Both/and becomes possible when I’m present enough to choose.

This week, I’m practicing that choice: Protecting my inner peace to make my public service sustainable.

Being present for a friend while government chaos swirls.

Honoring time with aging parents while preparing for professional demands.

Accepting the fact that the events that make news are deeply felt inside my body.

Breathing deeply. Feet on the earth. Heart center engaged.

The news still comes. The chaos still swirls. But I’m learning to meet it from a different place inside myself. This is the only thing I can control and it is where my greatest power emerges.

Between each heartbeat, there’s a choice: fear or love, separation or connection, manufactured crisis or present-moment truth.

I’m learning to pause long enough to feel which direction I’m being called.

Practice: Your News Audit

This week, I invite you to notice your relationship with “breaking news”:

• What sensations arise in your body when you see those words?

• Are you consuming news that informs, or stimulates?

• When you put down your device, do you feel more connected or more afraid?

• Can you identify manufactured urgency versus real need to know?

Try this: Before checking news tomorrow morning, put your bare feet on the ground. Take five deep breaths. Ask yourself: What actually needs my attention today?

Then check the news if you choose to—but from a grounded place rather than a fear-driven one.

I’d love to hear what you’re noticing about your own news consumption. What shows up in your body? Hit reply and share.

Until we connect again, may you find the pause between your heartbeats. I’m grateful we’re walking this path together.

One month furloughed. No paycheck coming. Boots still muddy from the trail where I’d been grounding myself, trying to figure out how we fix the mess politicians have made in the nation’s capital. I was heading back hoping to serve the American people, who I so deeply adore, even as uncertainty pressed down on everything.

That’s when her wisdom broke through.

Like “breaking news,” my heart broke open and let in the light of an “Ah Ha” moment.

That’s the kind of breaking news I live for now. Not the chaos in the capital—though that’s real. Not the political gridlock—though I’m desperate to get back to work. But the breaking OPEN that happens when you’re raw enough, open enough, ready enough for ageless wisdom to land exactly when you need it.

And I’ve seen something. Something I want to share.

There’s that essence in Maya’s words that ignites my reporter flame—because I’ve witnessed something that feels like the big story the rest of the pack is missing. And I don’t want to share it as “I told you so.” I don’t want to share it as preachy. And yet it’s all about crisis.

I’ve seen how so much of what is happening in the world has a deeper nature to it. My own seeking, my own awakening, my learning to walk a path that allows me to be a modern-day mystic — to intentionally find the divine in the moment, to come into direct connection with something larger than myself, to savor love even in chaos, and to be an empty channel of service to that love and light — all of those things have a preachy sound to them.

I want to share this without preaching. I do not want to tell people what they should do. I merely want to share what has created so much opening for me, so much love and light in my life — even amid trauma, even amid chaos, incredible uncertainty, suffering, and pain like I’ve never known before. With my heart so wide open that I feel it all so deeply. I can feel so moved and so sad and so afraid, and yet at the same time have direct contact with divine love and light.

It helps me see meaning and sit with uncertainty and bring forward an energy through my body, through my existence, through my daily acts. That act of being present feels like love and light. It’s a blooming feeling.

What broke me open was traumatic and largely of my own making. So in a place of vulnerability and truth-telling, I have something I want to share. And I’m very cognizant of the fact that how I share this is everything. I know that when people are ready to hear it, they’ll hear it. So I don’t need to overthink it. I don’t need to try and coax people into this. I don’t need to try and sell anyone, to hook anyone. I don’t want to try and convince anyone of anything.

I just want to be honest and straightforward and share in great humility and vulnerability what has unfolded for me—and what I am certain can unfold for others if they choose to walk a path of seeking inside, of looking deep within to find the divinity that is within them.

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Here’s what my three careers taught me to see:

As a paramedic, I learned to read crisis. To see what’s breaking down — on the scene and in a body — what’s failing, what needs immediate attention.

As a national reporter for USA Today for 16 years, I learned to read patterns. I noticed what millions of people were missing in the big stories. I saw us witness traumatic suffering together and somehow miss the lesson, lose the meaning in our reactions of judgment and fear.

As a mystic, I’ve learned to read what lives beneath all of it.

And here’s what I’m seeing now, driving back from the forest to the capital:

I thought I was heading back to grind with political problems. I thought the crisis was in Congress, in the shutdown, in the mess our politicians made. I thought the emergency was economic, systemic, structural.

But that’s not what’s breaking.

What’s breaking — what’s been breaking — is something deeper.

This isn’t a political crisis.

It’s a spiritual one.

The sense of separation from each other — and from our higher self as individuals — is at pandemic levels globally. This spiritual disconnection is the root cause creating toxicity that we are imposing as a species upon this planet. Upon each other. Upon ourselves.

And I want to report from inside it.

Not from some mountaintop. Not from a meditation cushion in a quiet room. But from the front lines. From deep within the patriarchy, deep within my life in the hustle and bustle and struggle. From the real world where I’m getting bumped and bruised, fired, knocked down, belittled, shamed, and almost always feeling uncertain. And at the same time, through connection with beloved people on my path, wonderful teachers, wonderful comrades, I am also feeling emboldened and supported and empowered and eager to continue to show up and do the work. It’s both. And.

To show up and be fully present — not anxious about the future, not regretting actions of the past — just showing up in the present moment 100%, rooted in who I am, my truth, with all my flaws.

That’s what I want to share. That’s how I want to share.

This seeking is not something outside of us. This seeking is becoming still and sensing what is inside of us. What is our innate power, our innate wisdom, our innate glory.

This is what I wish to report on.

Dispatches from between heartbeats. From the space where life actually happens. From inside the spiritual crisis, where I’m standing with muddy boots and an open heart, watching what breaks and what blooms.

God help me.

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If this resonates, I’ll be here next week with another dispatch. If not, I understand.

Either way, the reporting continues.

• How do you stay heart-centered when everything around you feels urgent?

• What does it mean to walk a spiritual path in a world that’s actually suffering?

• Is it possible to hold both grief and hope without bypassing either?

• What if your body knows something your mind hasn’t caught up to yet?

Life happens in the space between heartbeats.

That’s where the present moment lives. Where fear loosens its grip. Where your highest self reminds you: you are not alone on this path.

This is a space for those who sense a better world is possible and want to walk toward it together — without bypassing the real suffering around us, without pretending love alone will fix what’s broken, but trusting love is still the way through.

I’m Bob — former paramedic, national journalist, practicing mystic and leadership coach. I’ve spent my life at the intersection of crisis and hope, trauma and transformation. Each week I share stories from those front lines, along with invitations to live more heart-centered in a world running on fear.

Welcome to the space between heartbeats.

This is where we meet.

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