:coming into center:
2023/2024
As the Spring Equinox approaches here in the Oakland Hills, I look outside at the towering redwoods and see dark clouds beginning to cover up the morning’s brilliant sunlight. Pink and White blossoms from fruit trees burst in color amidst a backdrop of still-dormant trees and the hills around the bay, from the craggy peaks up to Mt. Tam in Marin to Mt. Diablo rising above Walnut Creek to the East, to the beautifully rolling emerald-color hills that gently roll out from the canyon sitting between us and Moraga. Nature is waking up and presents a nudge for me to share a little more about what I’ve been creating these past few years and introduce Liminal Space 2.0, a project I’ve been working on for the past year.
I reflect with gratitude on the beautiful souls life I’ve come into connection with over the last years; the doors opened, conversations had, challenges that have enabled introspection and growth. Inspiration, cheerleading, support, focus and allowing my “becoming”.
All of you reading this are part of this and I thank you.
Last year, I was deep in discussions and proposals with Pfizer to develop and facilitate a series of women’s leadership programs for their leadership team. Former colleagues had highly recommended me to their internal team and towards the end of their discussions, they asked if I had a YouTube channel or other social media to share (beyond my website). My heart sank. The honest answer was no. The honest answer was I haven’t felt a draw to do this, given that all of my clients had come through personal referrals and I hadn’t prioritized this given my focus in 2021 and 2022 (in addition to becoming an entrepreneur and serving my clients to the best of my ability) was deeply caring for and investing in my own health and well-being and spending time with my family supporting my Dad on his transition from this life.
A few weeks later, reposted an article on Linkedin written by the New York Times about Dr. Roland Griffiths, founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research after he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 terminal cancer. I was moved to tears reading it, as he shares how working with psychedelics had helped him practice gratitude for the preciousness of our lives and I resonated with this completely. I’d very unexpectedly found this path myself through my own inquiry around my parent’s aging and wanting to be present for this, requiring me to face my deepest fears. Little did I know that a whole world would open up to me including guiding others through these experiences, with years of additional training and apprenticeship in the Mazatec indigenous traditions of Mexico, energy work, parts work and trauma-oriented somatic therapeutic methodologies to feel ready to hold the space in a way that felt in integrity.
The tricky things is, depending on who you talk to the Wall Street Journal is calling microdosing the new ‘life hack’ for working women and the worst kept secret for bio-hacking in the silicon valley and also the wild west in terms of legality and acceptance much less fly-by-night ‘healers’ and downright dangerous practices. Soon after posting, I took down the article from LinkedIn. What if Pfizer researches me and the only thing it finds is this article on psychedelics?
That day, I realized I could use some support in my entrepreneurial business to help me find the words to describe my work. Luckily, in contrast to Liminal Space 1.0 built as a northstar to what I felt called to do, Liminal Space 2.0 is built on the foundations of work I am already doing, thanks to not only my experience and training, but the hundreds of clients I’ve been honored to serve.
[thomas huebl]
Many of you have play an instrumental role in my “becoming. I didn’t realize that that moment of not knowing what to say or write on LinkedIn symbolically represented a polarity I was living myself. Tech/Corporate and Leadership Jen to some folks and Medicine woman to others. This past year has magically been the opportunity for me to integrate all of that into one. Me. Liminal Space 2.0. Medicine work and Corporate work. Working with leaders in the medicine space. Working with leaders using (cutting-edge) techniques I’ve learned through medicine work.
