A Threshold of Completion
This week, I crossed a threshold I’ve been walking toward for a very long time.
On Monday morning, I sent the completed manuscript of The Mother Ache: Healing the Wounded Daughter Within to my editor. Yesterday, almost on cue, the cover design for Integration Alchemy: The Real Ceremony Is Your Life arrived in my inbox—inviting me into the next phase of bringing that book into the world.
Although I wrote both manuscripts this year, I’ve actually been carrying these books inside me for years.
I began rewriting my original integration book five years ago, sensing it wanted to become something deeper than what I had first self-published. And the mother wound book has been quietly forming itself for more than two years—slowly, gently, revealing its shape one thread at a time.
When Sentient Publications offered me a contract to publish both books earlier this year, it was both terrifying and motivating.
Terrifying because suddenly there were deadlines.
Motivating because someone outside of me recognized the value of the work—and that invitation stirred a discipline I didn’t know I had. The commitment helped me move through every wave of uncertainty, every whisper of self-doubt.
At first, I signed on to write The Mother Ache. But then I was invited to rewrite Integration Alchemy as well—and together we decided to complete that book first. I’m so grateful for that order. Writing the integration book brought forth new insights and clarity I needed for the mother wound book. On my retreat in Peru last summer, after finishing Integration Alchemy, the metaphors of basket weaving and the feminine archetypes arrived fully formed—and became the spiritual architecture of The Mother Ache.
For the past year, my days have begun in the dark, at 3:30 or 4 a.m., when the house is silent and something within me is most awake. I would write for hours before the day began, and return to the pages whenever time opened. Seven days a week. Not out of pressure, but out of devotion. These books wanted to be written, and I surrendered to their timing.
Writing them both has been wild, beautiful, disorienting, and deeply nourishing. There were mornings I didn’t know how I would keep going, and mornings when entire chapters arrived effortlessly, like gifts placed in my hands. These books have changed me. They have asked for more honesty, more humility, more presence, and more trust than I knew I possessed.
Now, one is in the hands of my editor.
The other is preparing for the world with its new cover.
And I find myself standing in the quiet between completion and becoming.
There is still editing ahead, design ahead, launch ahead. But today, I’m allowing myself to feel the fullness of this moment—the relief, the gratitude, the quiet joy of honoring a long and sacred commitment.
To everyone who has walked beside me—clients, friends, teachers, sisters, elders, and the plants themselves—thank you. These books carry many voices, many teachings, many threads of wisdom I did not weave alone.
More soon.
For now: a breath, a pause, and a whispered thank you to the mystery that continues to guide the way.
