For a long time, I believed my life was something I built, title by title, milestone by milestone, accomplishment by accomplishment. I was a devoted mother and partner, proud of the work I did in the world, and deeply committed to doing it all well. But I was also moving quickly, constantly, measuring myself by what I produced rather than how I arrived. Presence was something I admired in others, not something I knew how to inhabit myself.

My opening came not as a whisper, but as a rupture.

After the birth of my second child, I experienced postpartum psychosis, a moment when the ground beneath my identity gave way. The life I thought I understood, the version of myself I had carefully constructed, could no longer hold what I was living. In the disorientation and vulnerability of that season, I was forced to confront a question I had never truly asked: Who am I when I am not achieving, striving, or holding it all together?

What began as a search for stability became a journey into stillness.

I found my way to the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, where I began to sit, often for the first time in my life, with nothing to accomplish and nowhere to go. Under the guidance of my teacher, Gil Fronsdal, I learned that awareness itself could be a refuge, that the simple act of paying attention, with kindness, could become a form of healing. Later, I deepened that path through a three-year mindfulness certification program with the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, studying with teachers like Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. But the real curriculum was not academic. It was my own life, moment by moment.

Mindfulness didn’t give me a new identity, it gave me a full embodied life.

Today, I move through the world differently. I meet my children and my partner, friends and strangers with my full attention instead of my divided mind. I relate to my work and ambition with humility rather than attachment, gratitude rather than pressure. I honor my talents, and I also know, deeply, that I am enough without proving anything at all.

The greatest change is in the smallest moments.

A breath I actually feel. A laugh I don’t rush past. The quiet recognition of beauty in ordinary days. I notice the miracles, the large, the small, the fleeting, and let them land. I feel alive in my body, awake in my life, and rooted in a sense of peace that doesn’t depend on what I accomplish next.

An Opening was born from this way of being.

It is an offering of conversation, curiosity, and connection, a space where we can meet each other not as finished stories, but as living, unfolding ones. I believe we are all carrying a moment that cracked us open, changed the way we see, and invited us into a deeper, truer version of ourselves.

This is mine.

And this is where I now stand — not striving to live, but finally, fully, being alive.