I want to talk about something that doesn’t get spoken about enough.
Not the retreat itself.
What comes after it.
We tend to place so much focus on the experience. The ceremony. The journey. The breakthrough.
And far less on the quiet, unglamorous chapter that follows.
The return.
In the Book of Exodus, there is a well-known moment.
The people of Israel have only just been freed from Egypt. Freed through miracles and wonders, brought out of generations of slavery into a freedom they have never known.
But Egypt is still within them. Its ways. Its fears. Its habits of mind.
I first became acquainted with the term “secondary gain” through my PSYCH-K® work, because it’s a major theme we touch upon in the process.
Over time, I realized this term isn’t clear enough for many people.
And often, people think it means something it doesn’t.
So I’d like to start there.
To put it simply, a limiting belief is a self-made conclusion about ourselves, about who we are, and about the world we live in, that holds us back. Hence, “limiting.”
It’s a negative belief we carry, one that restrains our minds and narrows what we believe is possible for us.
Loss is one of the few human experiences I find almost impossible to write about.
Not because I haven’t known loss.
I have.
But because every sentence I write feels too small for what loss can be.
Fear has been part of the human experience for as long as we’ve existed.
Whether it’s fear of failure, rejection, loss, or uncertainty, fear is something every human being knows.
Some fears keep us alive.
Hope has terrible timing.
It tends to show up exactly when logic packs its bags and leaves.
When every spreadsheet says “don’t.”
When statistics roll their eyes.
I’ve noticed something over the years.
Forgiveness seems to have become a destination.
Almost a milestone.
As though one day we’ll finally be able to say,
“I’ve forgiven.”
I don’t usually write about books.
Not because books haven’t shaped me.
They have.
Some of them have changed me in ways I only understood years later.
Not losing a friend to death.
But the death of the friendship itself.
When a friendship comes to an end.