Third Season (Part I)
A bit of backstory.
For the past eight years — since my smokin’ hot Zen Buddhist monk husband died of ALS at sixty-two, after twenty-eight glorious years together — I’ve been trying to reimagine how I earn a living.
For nearly thirty years, I saw women clients while insurance panels carried much of my business. After he died, I wanted something different. Something less entangled. Something freer.
I spent over $12,000 starting a nonprofit called The Mother Tree Collective. For a year and a half, I imagined funding it myself by selling a three-month course I created: Come Home to Yourself — a program about ending self-abandonment and practicing self-rescue.
I spent five years building that course.
When I launched it, no one bought it.
I invested another $10,000 of life insurance money to work with high-end business coaches who promised a path out of insurance dependence. For a year I tried to build a fully private-pay practice.
Very few people were willing to pay cash.
I had stepped away from all insurance panels.
I nearly lost my twenty-acre retreat center — my home.
After a last-ditch attempt to sell my husband’s beloved gun collection to pawn brokers, the bank gently suggested I return to insurance.
I did.
Reluctantly. To survive.
Eventually, I had to sell the property anyway. Selling paid off debt and gave me a small buffer to relocate and begin again.
I decided I would not take insurance with me.
I let go of my licensures. Burnout is probably the clean word for it.
That brings us to the last seventeen months.
I am seventy-three years old.
I live in a small, adorable one-bedroom apartment in the University District, in the center of the city.
I’m now advertising myself as a small house cleaner — chop wood, carry water — the minimalist version of myself that remains.
Still self-employed.
No longer rescuing anyone.
What I am clear about is this: I want to build a life worth living in this third season.
For me, that means:
A primary bond.
A family of choice.
A village.
