The Invitation
For as long as I can recall, I have been so meticulous about what I want and precisely how it should arrive. Whether it was a grade, a job, a relationship, or a title, my entire sense of self depended on my achievements. I measured everything in binaries of good and bad, right and wrong, success and failure. I wanted what I wanted on my own unrelenting terms. When every measure of success I had accumulated began to dissolve, I found myself in the wilderness without the career I had spent my life building, a family of my own, titles, or milestones of achievement. Isolated and stripped of the will to go on, I felt utterly undeserving of any love or acceptance.
It took me nearly eight years before I could see with profound clarity that my failures, my struggles, the shame and trauma I carried for so long were not obstacles blocking my path. They were the path. When the road back disappears, it’s intentional. Otherwise, we might return to what is familiar but deeply unfulfilling and remain a fraction of who we are. It’s only when we let go of who we thought we had to be and the path we thought we had to follow that we finally become who we’re meant to be.
Paradoxically, it is this relinquishment that liberates us. The moment we finally let go of our attachments to a particular path, the resistance dissolves. We access the enduring truth of our own inner knowing and become receptive vessels into which life can pour.
Throughout those eight trying years, I couldn’t imagine ever reaching the other side, but I promised myself that if by some miracle I did, that I’d shine a light for anyone else walking through the dark valleys of life.
This book is the fulfillment of that promise, a lifelong dream that could never have emerged without those devastating losses. As I wrote, I began to recognize that while the particulars were mine, the patterns extended far beyond my own story. The slow erasure of who we are in exchange for acceptance, the millions of ways we silence our inner knowing, the shadows we spend our lives running from, the haunting sense of lack, and the exhausting search that takes us everywhere except home.
The elixir I carried back with me is R.I.S.E., a set of time-tested ancient wisdom that restored that innocent childlike wonder that knows no limits or boundaries, the innate state we inhabit before we learn what is or isn’t possible. Without it, I’d still be a fraction of who I was capable of becoming. Because of it, there is a renewed coherence between my inner and outer world I never dreamed possible.
My commitment to you throughout these pages is to offer no sugarcoated platitudes or empty promises that fail to hold you in your time of need. When life throws you off course, when you can’t seem to find your footing and there is no one you can turn to, R.I.S.E. will orient you to your true north.
May this compass illuminate the way as you forge your own uncharted path.
Above all, may it restore your certainty beyond logic.