Good Morning,
As I continue to mature the skillset of integrity — integrating the concrete, symbolic, and sacred — there have been some profound thoughts.
Paradox is the life that is created by stewarding the alpha and the beta. The me and the we in integration.
One of my focuses this year is that the older I get, the healthier I become. With a specific focus this year on healing my ability to receive, which has led me to an interesting FYI — it’s not just about inhaling and exhaling. It’s also about stewarding the pause.
Yesterday I was doing somatic work with Daniel Recchia, which has been truly healing my relationship with my physical body — the body I am accountable and responsible to steward. My physical body is a gift to me, and I can trust it.
We have been working together since January 2024 to focus on healing my nervous system, and it has been a fascinating journey. In addition to several other modalities of releasing both short-term and long-term trauma, this somatic prioritization has been a long-term game changer.
If courage is unpracticed confidence, confidence is practiced courage. I am beginning to make that transition.
We had a transformational conversation yesterday.
The “ground zero” of much of this nervous system healing has been my right Achilles tendon — and I have been sitting with the question: Why? What does that tell me?
There is a book called The Secret Language of Your Body by Inna Segal that has been an important resource in my healing journey. It offers a beginner’s roadmap for exploring the connections between physical pain, emotional patterns, and the places where we feel stuck.
As I reflected on my own story, I realized I had been conflating my ankle and my heel.
That distinction matters.
The Ankle
In May 2010, I ruptured my Achilles tendon.
That morning, I had facilitated the National Day of Prayer — bringing together many of the major churches in Durham to bless the city and share a meal together. The evening of the 3rd day of that moment, I was getting ready to head to Bald Head Island with Sandy and Jessica the next day. I went to bring up laundry and stumbled on the stairs going up.
It felt very spiritual. The injury far exceeded the physical event.
And thus began my orthopedic journey.
When I finally saw an orthopedic surgeon a week later and had X-rays taken, I learned that I had actually broken my right ankle as a teenager. In the 1980s, I had been told it was only a sprain.
According to Segal’s framework, the right ankle can symbolize:
Feeling weighed down by responsibility. Feeling trapped in relationships you don’t know how to leave. Giving away your power. Trying to please others first. Having difficulty saying no. Fear of making mistakes. Feeling off balance and uncertain of your next step.
That absolutely describes my teenage years.
When my father abdicated his accountability/ responsibilities within our family, I naturally stepped into the role of caretaker. I took responsibility for my mother, for his mental well-being, my family, and circumstances far beyond what a teenager should have been carrying.
Squirrel- In the spirit of paradox, he had prioritized his courage journey, for which I am grateful. If he had not, I would not be who I am today. Just wish he had done the both/and versus the either/or. Owned his courage journey AND led our family.
The ankle gave me clues.
But the ankle wasn’t ground zero.
The Heel
Ground zero was the heel in 2010.
More specifically, my Achilles tendon near its attachment to my heel. That is where the rupture occurred. And symbolically, that changes the question entirely.
The ankle asks: What step should I take?
The heel asks: Do I have a right to stand here?
According to Segal’s framework, heel challenges can relate to: questioning the essence of who you are. Feeling out of alignment with your life. Walking on tiptoes around others rather than speaking truthfully. Internal conflict. Doubt. Confusion about your place in the world.
That is fascinating.
If I had to summarize my life’s journey, it would be this:
At age 13, I began seeking to understand what love is.
At age 14, after my father’s death, I entered a master class on death, grief, hope, and meaning. The deeper question underneath all of it was not simply “What is love?” It was: Why was I created to exist? Existence was overrated in my mind.
The reality is that after my father’s remarriage and death three weeks later, a part of me did not want to exist. Life is pain, don’t be fooled. (AND spoiler alert- it is joy too).
“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
— Westley Princess Bride.
At age 19, I made a decision. I chose life. I committed to living life to its fullest. Stewarding well became my response.I had a picture in my mind that I’ve been solving ever since. A book of audit that I would give to Jesus when my time on the 4th dimension was complete that I did the best I could to leave my potential/my all in this arena called life NOT just an analysis at the end.
Then at age 39, through the miracle of adoption, I became a mother. A new season opened.
I began realizing that life was not only about stewarding well externally. It was also about healing my relationship with myself internally. It was about loving well, starting with my most important relationship. Me.
The deeper healing was discovering that it was God’s pleasure to create me. That my existence itself is a source of delight. That my life is rooted in joy, love, and belonging. And that revelation needed healing within me.
The journey became learning how to prioritize loving well — beginning with myself.
The Heel and the Seed
Yesterday, while Daniel and I were discussing healing and my relationship with my body, he anchored a thought back to Genesis.
The archetypal challenge between the woman and the serpent.
He would strike my heel. My seed would crush his head.
As I reflected on Genesis this morning, something began to emerge.
For sixteen years, I have viewed my Achilles rupture primarily through a physical lens.
Today I see something deeper.
The injury happened in my heel.
The healing is happening in my mind, heart, nervous system, and spirit.
The wound happened in embodiment.
The fruit is emerging in leadership.
The serpent strikes the heel.
The seed crushes the head.
The wound occurs at the point of contact with the earth. The victory occurs at the level of wisdom, consciousness, and leadership.
My seed.
My offspring. The manifestation of my life in others. The fruit of my existence. The seeds within the watermelon.
My children. My businesses. My leadership. My writing. My community. The people whose lives have been impacted by my own willingness to heal.
The word head — it is about leadership. The beginning of the next. The fruit of the expression of my life in the form of others.
Stewarding the Gift
I do not believe God caused my pain.
But I do believe He redeems our stories.
Our tests become our testimonies.
The cobbler’s children have no shoes because the cobbler spends all day making shoes for everyone else. The gift and the gap are often the same thing.
The healer learns how to receive healing. The leadership teacher learns how to be led. The steward learns how to receive. The lover learns how to be loved.
For years my journey was learning how to carry.
This season is teaching me how to receive.
That is a different skillset.
Andy Dufresne’s breakthrough in Shawshank Redemption was not escaping prison. It was accepting reality fully enough to walk through it.
The prison existed. The sewer existed. The suffering existed.
And acceptance became the path to freedom.
Not passivity. Alignment.
For me, the Achilles has become a similar teacher. Not because the wound was good. But because the wound prepared me to understand something I could not have learned otherwise.
The deepest stewardship is not learning how to carry life well.
It is learning how to receive the gift of my own existence so fully that its fruit naturally nourishes others.
Perhaps that is the true healing of the heel.
Not proving my worth.
But finally believing that I already have it.
AND this thought — the heel, the seed, the stewardship — is the anchor with which I am processing how I see the world, leadership, and decision making around the sidewalk. Which side am I walking on in each moment.
It is where the sidewalk begins.