Some days feel like a lifetime.

Some days feel like a lifetime.
Not because so much happened —
but because something shifted.

A realization.
A letting go.

Today, I was sitting in a work meeting, watching a presentation that occupied only a small corner of my awareness. And then, without warning, I dropped into a deep, quiet interior space.

I found myself standing in my inner realm, facing a door that was slightly open. From behind it spilled a red light — eerie, unfamiliar, alive.

I turned around.

Behind me stood my old self.
The woman who survived.

The one who divorced, remarried, had children.
Who met waves of anger and rage when she became a parent, carrying the generational imprint of her father’s rage.
Who entered therapy after punching the pillow beside her baby’s face.
Who tried to become a Zen Supermom.
Who trained as a trauma-informed coach so she would finally stop yelling at her children.
Who put in the years, the effort, determined that the pattern of abuse would end with her.

The one who alchemized the pain of her father’s abuse — painted it, wrote it into a poem, and sent it back to him.
The one who functioned.
Maintained.
Endured.
Fought.
Survived.
And chose healing — again and again.

She faced her shadows.
Her demons.
Her ghosts.
Her greatest fears.

She let go of so much.
Things she loved.
Things she hated.
Things she doubted, feared, raged against.

And today, I let her go.

I thanked her — deeply, tenderly.
I placed her on a boat, set it on fire, and sent her out to sea.

Because today, in the middle of a work meeting, it was time for her to die.

I don’t know who I am now.
I don’t know what waits behind that red-lit door.

What I do know is this:
I am carrying a sword and a healing staff.

And I am walking through.

I opened the door and plunged —
falling and falling and falling,
until fear ran out of places to live.

Then I felt it before I heard it.

The dragon.

Rising from below.
Catching me on its back.
Carrying me.
Flying together.

The meeting ended.
I gathered my things.
Returned to my desk.

Everything looked exactly the same.

And yet, nothing is.

Sometimes the biggest changes don’t arrive with ceremony.
They come quietly,
in the middle of ordinary days,
when no one is watching —
except the soul.