When my first marriage was falling apart, I was in counseling. One day, during a session, I looked beyond the counselor and out the window.

Sitting on a branch in the tree by the driveway, in broad daylight, was a barred owl.

Big.
Beautiful.
Calm.
Watching.

My counselor was so amazed that she took a picture of it and emailed it to me - I still have it. That experience settled deep, and I thought it would be a once in a lifetime kind of moment that I would cherish.

A couple years later I was taking a course on shamanism.
Learning the practices, tools, and philosophy of that way of life. One of the practices was a journey to our spirit animal.
Visualization isn’t really my thing, but I gave it a shot. Laying in meditation, chanting, humming, shakers, drum... total blackness..
and for a quick flash - the barred owl.
It was gone as quick as it came.

This is when it came into focus that maybe the first experience wasn’t a once in a lifetime.

There was a time later, where I was struggling with addiction, stress of a job I hated, and had no direction or meaning in my life.

I was standing outside of work by a dumpster smoking a cigarette.
I looked up into the woods and 30 feet away a barred owl was observing me.
I slowly reached into my pocket to get my phone to take a photo. As I pulled the camera up as slowly as I could, just about to get the owl in the frame…
it looked at me,
then bounded off the branch and flew deep into the woods.

Years later I was struggling with chronic lyme disease. The sickness hit me hard and I wasn’t sure what life was going to be like anymore.
I had to leave my job, we couldn’t pay our bills, and I could barely string together complete sentences.

My train of thought was broken.
The pain was nearly unbearable.
My focus was gone, as was my vision of what life could be like.

Over this time, there were many occasions where I would see barred owls perching in trees very close to my house or hear them calling to each other in the distance.

They were always there for me.
Watching.
Observing.
Holding space for me to connect with something beyond my struggle.

The owl didn’t judge me.
It never fixed anything for me, never tried to change me.
It had no expectation that I perform healing. There was no timeline I was behind on.
It just stayed long enough for me to remember I wasn’t alone in it.
And simply offered a quiet presence while I found my own way through.

I have a photo of one that watches over me that sits behind me right now as I type.

The connection has shaped me, and as I think about it this morning - I realize that is exactly what I hope you experience with my work.

Not diagnosed.
Not fixed.
Not rushed toward some better version of yourself.

Just presence –
Space held for whatever is true right now –
the grief,
the fog,
the fear,
the piece of you that doesn’t have words for itself yet.

Just awe,
if you let yourself find it.

With someone willing to sit on the branch nearby...
Observing.
Listening.
Curious, open, and honest.
Trusting that given the space, you’ll begin hearing yourself again.

And in that stillness – the same stillness I found looking up into a tree, again and again, at exactly the moments I needed it most – something in you gets to exhale.

From that place of presence –
of awe,
of seeing things through the eyes of beauty…

The path forward has room to reveal itself.

And that path…
is yours.