All my life I’ve written as a way to make sense of what I couldn’t yet speak. When my son Zai was born, I stopped, caught in the blur of survival and parenting. Nearly a decade later, I returned to the page. At first it came in fragments: scribbled notes, late-night reflections, voice memos I thought no one would ever hear. I was trying to trace my way out of collapse.
It first took shape back in 2018, during the earliest edge of my spiritual awakening. I thought it would be a quick climb out. It wasn’t. It took eight years. What started as survival writing, a way to metabolize grief, rupture, and dislocation, has become a living platform. A practice. A scaffolding.
Today, Rise rests on five pillars, not ideas, but lived truths:
- The Body Has the Code: Somatic memory as guidance.
- Nature Is the Operating Manual: Ecosystems as teacher.
- Oscillation Is the Rhythm: The cycles of surge and stillness.
- Origin / Zero Point: Collapse as fertile ground.
- Collective Is the Future: We rise by rising together.
These are the patterns and signals I share; part journal, part map, part invitation. Rise is where I’ve rebuilt myself piece by piece, and it’s also where I offer a path for others who are seeking coherence in their own chaos.
But Rise isn’t just about me. It’s about embodied legacy and a map to get there. The kind of map leaders (parents + founders) carry when they know their choices ripple forward for generations.
Through the lens of leadership, Rise invites us to build lives and companies that are whole, resilient, and aligned with nature.
Alongside my writing, I offer pathways to practice:
- Signals → The patterns and synchronicities that reveal truth.
- All Rise (Podcast) → Collective conversation, intimacy, and awakening.
- Patterns (Art) → Sacred geometry and imagery as maps of memory.
- The Path → Courses, practices, and resources to anchor your growth.
- Love Letters → Devotion to self, community, and the world.
If this resonates, I invite you to support Rise; by subscribing, reading, and sharing, or by engaging with my design services. This is not just content; it is a body of work in motion, and it grows when we rise together.
Pillar One: The Body Has the Code
My body remembers before my mind does. And yours does too. My board role with OYA has taught me this. Trauma, love, fear, desire, all of it is etched into somatic memory, stored. It's the way we find our way to cancer. For years, I tried to think my way through collapse, relying on intellect and strategy. But in the ashes, I found that my body held the real map.
- Somatic imprints told me when I was safe, when I was repeating old patterns, when I needed to pause. Rise became the practice of listening to those signals, a tightening in the chest, a softening in the belly, the way my breath shortened or expanded.
- We live in a culture that disconnects us from our bodies, rewarding productivity over presence. That disembodiment is a root cause of burnout, addiction, and disease.
- Medicine has long treated the body as machine, yet healers across centuries, from Hildegard of Bingen to Wilhelm Reich, pointed back to the body as truth-teller.
- Mystics describe the body as temple, a vessel for divine intelligence.
- Many traditions teach that memory is stored not just in the brain, but in the bones, muscles, and nervous system. Ceremony, dance, and ritual keep this wisdom alive.
Over these months, listening to my body has been the most radical act of trust. It’s how I’ve known what to write, when to stop, when to push publish. My body is the code that unlocks voice.
Pillar Two: Nature Is the Operating Manual
When I was lost, I turned to ecosystems. Nature does not argue with itself. Forests, rivers, tides, fungi, they adapt, regenerate, balance.
- Watching the seasons, I realized I didn’t need to force myself into constant growth. Like a tree, I could have winters of stillness and springs of expression.
- Our current systems deny nature’s operating logic. Extractive economies deplete rather than regenerate. Yet businesses, like ecosystems, thrive when resources circulate.
- The Industrial Revolution severed humanity from nature’s pace. But indigenous agriculture, permaculture, and biomimicry remind us: nature solved for resilience long before we did.
- Nearly every sacred text points to rivers, trees, and stars as teachers.
- Traditional ecological knowledge is clear: humans are part of, not apart from, the web. Stewardship is survival.
Over these five months, I have designed my own life like an ecosystem: pruning what no longer serves, composting the waste, seeding new projects only when the soil was ready. Rise itself is proof, a garden of words that grew from ruin.
Pillar Three: Oscillation Is the Rhythm
Oscillation is the rhythm of everything: inhale and exhale, tide and moon, rise and fall.
- Rise taught me to honor my own cycles. I write in surges and pauses. Some weeks my voice is loud; others it is quiet. Both are necessary.
- Economies, politics, even cultures swing. Pretending growth is linear only destabilizes us.
- Empires rise and fall. Civilizations oscillate between expansion and contraction. History spirals, it does not march.
- Breath is oscillation. Prayer is oscillation. Even the heartbeat is rhythm.
- Ceremonies mark the cycles of the sun, moon, and seasons. Communities rise and rest in alignment with the land’s rhythm.
Oscillation freed me from perfection. Instead of judging myself for inconsistency, I began to see my voice as tidal. Silence is not absence; it is part of the song.
Pillar Four: Origin / Zero Point
Collapse is not the end, it is the beginning.
Five months ago, I hit my zero point. Everything felt burned down: relationships, structures, even my sense of self. For weeks, all I could do was sit in the ashes. But ashes, I learned, are fertile.
- Zero point stripped me down to essence. With nothing left to protect, I could finally rebuild in truth. Rise is my testimony: collapse cleared the space for clarity.
- We are collectively at the origin. Climate collapse, political breakdown, systemic injustice — each signals the end of one pattern and the beginning of another.
- After the plague came the Renaissance. After wars came new orders. Collapse precedes rebirth.
- In mystic traditions, the void is sacred. Darkness births light. Death precedes resurrection.
- Fire ceremonies teach that destruction feeds renewal. Crops burn, soil regenerates, life begins again.
Zero point is where I found my voice because it left no illusions to hide behind. Every word I’ve written in Rise has come from that ground zero.
Pillar Five: Collective Is the Future
The final pillar is connection. We do not rise alone.
- Personal: Writing is solitary, but Rise reminded me it is also communal. Every post is a signal — a call to others who are also in the ashes, also rebuilding.
- Societal: Healing requires networks. Shared nervous systems regulate trauma. Communities create resilience that individuals cannot.
- Historic: Every movement — abolition, suffrage, civil rights — was collective. No one rises alone.
- Spiritual: “Where two or three are gathered…” Community is the sacred multiplier.
- Indigenous: The circle is central. Decisions are made with the seventh generation in mind, weaving the self into the collective.
Over five months, Rise became not just my voice but a bridge. I have heard from readers who see themselves in my words, who feel less alone. That, more than anything, is why I keep writing.
Five Months, Five Pillars, A Living Atlas
Rise began as survival. It became my expression. And now, it feels like a map, a living atlas of how to grow from ashes.
The five pillars, the body, nature, oscillation, origin, and collective, are not just ideas I’ve studied. They are truths I have lived, day by day, word by word, over the last five months. And with this I finalized my thesis Rich by Nature which is a pattern atlas based on the connections found in Nature.
I am still rising. My voice is still forming. But what once felt like fragments now feels like a pattern. And that pattern is not mine alone, it belongs to anyone standing in the ashes, wondering if they can begin again.
The answer is yes.
The body remembers.
Nature knows.
Oscillation carries.
Zero point clears.
The collective lifts.
We rise.