Standing on the Bridge

What we can do when we have mouths to feed but the world burns outside the door.

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Honestly, I have a note in my phone with about fifty topics I want to mull over with you but as I sit at the coffee shop this morning, none of them feel right.

The world is on fire. It’s winter and we’re all so tired. I’m trying to balance mothering a nine month old baby girl while co-parenting with my entrepreneurial counterpart, my husband. And also, I’m living with my in-laws. I’m needing to focus on my home, my family, my health, my businesses— but none of that feels like the priority with what’s going on right outside our doors.

I want to write to you today about setting intentions for 2026 or learning how to sleep or living now instead of living for the afterlife but I don’t know, all of that feels tone deaf.

My heart is truly breaking and my momma-heart, scared.

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We Cannot Let Them Win

I have been thinking this week about how all of these horrible things in history have happened.

How on earth have dictators like Hitler and authoritarian leaders like Iran’s current ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made it to the top and gained control, leaving the rest of us essentially feeling powerless?

I know… not exactly “wintering” vibes, you may think. But wintering doesn’t ask you to check out of reality. In fact, it invites you to slow down enough to truly wake up to your life. It asks you to question, to consider, to let parts of you die that are no longer leading to new life.

And just as I hoped, I think we’ve arrived at our topic today.

I hoped if I just put some Bon Iver in my ears and started writing to you the divine would arise and the message would come through that I needed to share with you today. Works everytime.

So, how do these horrible people inflicting horrible injustices on people make their way into power?

Well, sadly, I think it’s because regular people like you and me have children to dress, mouths to feed, emails to send, errands to run, friends who need us, and bodies to care for.

We are busy keeping the lights on. And because we are busy, those in power can continue to shape our world in ways that make us feel powerless and helpless.

I feel so powerless and helpless. Our digital age makes it possible for us to be tapped in 24/7 to all of the pain and atrocities happening in the world. And while I feel it’s important we not look away, it creates an ever-growing sense of overwhelm and grief.

I lie awake in bed lamenting, crying out— god oh god, help me know how to help the people in the world who are so scared to be alive:

• Iranian women

• My brown friends in America

• My queer brothers and sisters

• Even, my MAGA mother

Mother divine, give me the courage to not be scared. Give me the courage to lead with love. To believe in hope. To fight for injustices. To talk to strangers. To assume good intent.

To stand on the bridge between two opposing ideas, two opposing political parties, two worlds– the one in my home and the one outside my door.

Help me stand in the tension. Help me resist the temptation to villainize others that are different from me because I know better– I know we are really not very different at all.

We are human. We want the same things:

• We want safety

• We want esteem

• We want control

We all believe our way is the way to gain these things. God help me remember this– do not harden my heart.

When we harden, the ego wins. Fear, Shame and Hate win. We cannot let them win.

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The Containers We Live In

The book that changed my life and walked me home– home to a divine knowing that always existed in my bones– is Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.

It gave me permission to believe in mystery.
To not have all of the answers.
To find comfort in the unknown.
To find safety in loving my neighbor over being right.

In this book, Father Richard explains there are two halves of life. The first half is spent building and living in containers—establishing identity, career, relationships, security, and ego structure (aka personality or enneagram type).

In these containers, we think dualistically: right versus wrong, good versus bad, me versus them, familiar versus unfamiliar. This is not inherently bad, it helps us create a sense of self necessary for childhood development. But in these containers we cannot access our higher mind, our higher self, our divine essence.

Whatever container we are in, we think is good, right, me because it’s familiar. Because it’s safe. Because it makes me feel good.

Our ego does not have the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the same container and say all can exist here. It doesn’t like others who don’t look like me, think like me, believe like me or talk like me. Our ego feels threatened by what lives outside our container.

So it tries to keep the container intact. But by keeping the container intact, our world only gets smaller and we become prisoners living inside these empty, meaningless containers that only foster fear, shame, hate and control.

Rohr says we are only able to enter into the second half of life when these containers are broken. And the containers are only broken through great suffering– great loss, great failure, great heartbreak– something your dualistic mind cannot fix.

When that container breaks open, we are truly free and are able to see the wholeness of everything. That we are all connected. When the container breaks, we gain the ability to stand in paradox, to stand on the bridge.

To be okay with uncertainty.
To love those who are different from us.
To accept we don’t have all of the answers.

The sad reality is not everyone reaches the second half of life. To arrive at the second half of life has zero to do with the chronology of your life and everything to do with accessing consciousness.

And we can really only access this greater consciousness through pain or maybe, just maybe an invitation. But there has to be a crack in the container first.

So, you might be thinking– Elle, what does any of this have to do with the state of the world?

What does any of this have to do with slowing down enough to truly wake up?

I believe our only hope for a healed world is if those of us in the second half of life are willing to continue doing the work to steward those in the first half of life into the second.

And the only way we can do that is if we continue to make space to slow down and do this deep ego work.

The Work Begins Within

I know what you might be thinking: Elle, I can barely keep up with my own life. How am I supposed to heal the world?

Here’s the truth: You can’t single-handedly save the world. Neither can I.

But what we can do is tend to our own inner landscape. We can notice when our containers are keeping us small. We can do the brave work of examining our own fear, our own shame, our own need for control.

Because here’s what I’ve come to believe: The most radical act of resistance against the forces of fear and division is to do your own inner work. To refuse to let your ego harden. To stay curious about people who think differently than you. To hold paradox without needing to resolve it.

When we heal ourselves, we raise the collective consciousness. When we move from ego to essence, we model a different way of being in the world. And slowly, person by person, conversation by conversation, we begin to shift what’s possible.

An Invitation

Maybe you’re reading this and something is stirring in you. Maybe you’re starting to notice the shadow side of your own containers—the ways your beliefs keep you feeling superior or separate, the ways your certainty protects you from discomfort, the ways your busyness shields you from grief.

If so, welcome. This noticing is the beginning.

The work of breaking open is not easy. It requires great courage to look at your own ego patterns, to question what you’ve always believed to be true, to risk the discomfort of uncertainty.

But I promise you: this work is beautiful. This work is love.

It’s love for yourself—the parts of you that have been trying so hard to stay safe.

It’s love for others—even (especially) those who threaten your sense of rightness.

It’s love for the world—because the world desperately needs people willing to stand on the bridge, to hold the tension, to resist the ease of dualistic thinking.

So as we move through this winter, through these dark and heavy days, I invite you to ask yourself:

What containers am I living in?

What am I afraid will happen if those containers break?

What might become possible if I let them?

The world needs you—not your perfectly curated version, not your most certain self, not your busiest self.

The world needs you awake. Present. Tender. Willing to be broken open.

That’s where healing begins.

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My journey hasn’t just led to healing—it’s led to a calling.

I’m building Naxos Health—a new kind of space for women’s healing that honors both data and intuition, root causes and soul work, evidence and the feminine. And I want you to help shape it. If this resonates, join the waitlist.

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