This is episode 100, and in honor of that milestone, I’m showing up with a reintroduction. The first episode of the Sage Family Podcast, an introduction with myself, my husband, and my three children, was shared with you all over 6 years ago. Needless to say, those beautiful souls have insisted on perpetually growing and evolving and I have grown and evolved right alongside them. Our life looks so different now, and yet, the heart and spirit of the values that inspired this movement remain. In this new season of life, I just wanted to give us, you and I, the opportunity to refresh and connect anew.

To reflect on where we began and how far we’ve come, I went back and listened to episode 1, and oh my goodness, what a sweet time capsule the second half of that episode is. My children were 6, 9, and 12, we were solidly in the middle childhood season of family life. My children are about to be 13, 16, and 19, putting us fully in the season of adolescence with our children while we experience the awakening of entering our forties. It feels like a profound crossing of a threshold to experience my firstborn child turning 18 the year I turned 40 (and my husband and I celebrate twenty years coupled).

The first season of my adulthood felt almost like a race to personal enlightenment, digging my way out of intergenerational burdens to free my children of that inheritance. And then I turned forty and I felt . . . like enough. The self-actualizing fervor, the impassioned depth I had always extended to hold everyone else’s needs, the fiery drive to heal the world, gave way to a sense of accomplished, tired (the good kind you feel after strenuous yet rewarding exercise), contentment. I have done enough. I am, fully as I am in this moment, enough. My body, mind, and soul are ready to rest in the hard-earned peace of the immense work I spent my entire life doing to grow into the best possible version of my self for the benefit of the world around me. Now I am ready to enjoy my own company. I was traveling recently for one of my kid’s sailing regattas and after dropping him off I solo hiked 280 feet up a rock and I was struck by what a friendly place it is inside myself. That is an example of the enoughness from which I am operating this days. I’m trying to really savor it, to allow myself to come even more alive with it’s glowing yet quiet energy. I am still, and will forever, be meeting all the invitations for learning and shifting and growing, but it feels like I am doing so from a place of wholeness now, instead of indebtedness, spacious choice instead of constricted obligation. I am finally standing tall in the space of all that is mine to own and truly letting go of all that is not. I have collected all the versions and parts of myself, and in doing so, I have identified the edges, made visible the boundaries between where I end and all else begins. It feels like a gift to return ownership of all I had unjustly carried under patriarchy back to their sources of belonging. 

The space that is created by my children’s expansion beyond our connection is space that I am patiently and compassionately holding for myself to evolve into. There is some natural grief there, but I’m also meeting more of myself there, and that is as exciting as the grief is sad. I will always have an open palm outstretched for my children to land in, but I’m conscious to never close my hand around them. This is their time to flutter and fly, and in this transition, I hold nothing tightly. My unconditional love is a steady law of nature, like molecules of oxygen in the atmosphere they will breathe forever. But everything else, I hold ever so gently and lightly.

Six years ago, I was a full-time gentle parenting and natural homeschooling mother with three adventuring children steadfastly under wing. Today, Sky is about to graduate from university with her bachelor’s degree and is preparing to apply to law school. She loves concerts, camping, and travel. We cheer her on with enthusiasm as she harnesses the power of her natural way of being to create meaningful change in the world. Bay is about to start his associate degree in business and is looking ahead to a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering. He has a girlfriend and a keen sense of style, he sailed gold fleet at Nationals in sailing this summer, he is so gifted at working with kids in the water, and I deeply admire the confident and easy way he lives so fully in alignment with his values and version of a fulfilling life. West is such a light, his loving, friendly, and brave nature are inspiring to everyone that light touches. He still prides himself on curating the depth of his pirate skills (like sailing and fencing), he sings in a great choir program with me, and he’s about to start his first school experience in a sweet Montessori junior high in the forest. And I have expanded into the newfound space as a therapist, continuing to show up in the Sage Family Village and an upcoming Sage Mothering Course and Coaching but now also offering the support of therapy in a way that fulfills a special place in my heart, having the work I do made visible and valued for the depth of what it truly is. My husband and I are still frolicking through life together. He’s about to leave for a week of adult skateboarding camp and we’re still renovating our fixer upper together (I enjoy sharing all the updates with my email subscribers). 

My family’s evolution has been reflected in real time across these hundred episodes that I’ve shared with you, like a hundred layers of myself, and a shared social construct, unfurling, one deep conversation at a time. I feel so touched and grateful that you all have received me with a depth of love that has reflected the impact of these ideas as inspiration that has nourished your own evolution.

Consciously and compassionately relating to my fellow humans, naturally learning throughout my lifespan with openness and curiosity, humbly living in peace and harmony, all with a playful and brave sense of adventure . . . these are the values that brought us together and these are the values that will carry us forward.

The Sage Family Podcast continues next time with a powerful and poignant episode on pregnancy loss. I’ll keep showing up for these conversations for as long as they feel mutually enriching. I hope you’ll keep showing up here with me, wherever these conversations take us as individuals, as families, and as a community in a world we have spent the last six years together co-creating.

If you feel inspired to extend a token of gratitude in celebration of this milestone 100th episode, you could leave a review of the podcast, sharing something that has resonated with you, something you have integrated that has contributed to your authentic becoming or the freedom, connection, and joy you now share as a family. Know that I will receive your kind words as a most rewarding gift.