In Into the Flow, you share an open account of your search for spiritual freedom throughout decades of grief, Catholic certainty, marriage, work, money, divorce, and desire. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I wanted to write the book I couldn’t find when my life split open; I was drowning in the questions, and suddenly couldn’t seem to relate to anyone or anything around me, including my old self.

There were plenty of books out there offering help. Self-help. Psychology. Spirituality. Many made big promises. (You name it, I read it!) There were also great novels to get lost in. I was devouring all of the above, but what I craved was the best of both worlds: a story with one continuous narrative arc about someone on a spiritual journey, but that was grounded, honest, and realistic.

I wanted a book that told the truth about spiritual awakening. What does it really look like when your life falls apart and you start rethinking everything: your beliefs, identity, career, marriage, and all your old notions of success? Where was the book that portrayed the seeker who’s not only wrestling with the questions but trying to embody those new revelations through the messy realities of grief, money, and day-to-day life? I wanted the book that would have made me feel less alone in my journey: the confusion, absurdity, missteps, and especially the humor. Because life is pretty ridiculous, so let’s all have a laugh about it, you know?

Anyway… I couldn’t find that book, so I wrote it!
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What was the most challenging part of revisiting your experiences on the page?

At first, lawd, it was just getting the experiences down in whatever form I could!​
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In the very beginning, I decided the easiest way for me to start this monster was to send myself emails. I literally created a brand new email account dedicated solely to this endeavor of seeing what sorts of things wanted to emerge. I’d set aside an hour, sometimes less, sometimes more, open a blank compose-email screen, and write. Some of the stories were funny, and I laughed my way through writing them. Some were gut-wrenching. Some made no sense at all. I didn’t judge or censor, and I definitely didn’t tell myself I was writing a book. I was simply allowing creation… and it was arguably the most fun part of the process. No pressure or expectations—just the joy of it.

Then came the larger challenge: How do I wrangle all these random, disparate stories into one cohesive narrative? Gah! And how do I find a voice that can hold both humor and depth?​
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That took years to nail down.

But, looking back, wow: what an amazing, totally mind-blowing thing the creative process is.
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You write openly about the desire to be rescued by something outside ourselves. Why do you think that longing is so universal?​
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I’ve given this one a lot of thought over the years. Many psychologists and spiritual teachers talk about this “oceanic feeling” we have as infants, where we don’t experience ourselves as separate from everything around us. There’s just… this sense of oneness.

As we grow and develop, a story of “me” starts to come online. (In Western cultures arguably even more than others.) We start to see ourselves as separate individuals with our own identities, and personalities. We develop our own particular brand of fears, defenses, and conditioning. This separation is a completely natural and necessary part of being human.

However, my personal take is that the moment we start to experience ourselves as separate, there also begins a longing for that deeper sense of connection we remember.

Many call this the wound of separation.

And so begins the journey of seeking that connection, that love, outside of ourselves: parental approval, societal approval. If we are raised religious: approval from the God-man-in-the-sky. We start to associate safety with achievement, performance, certainty, beliefs, roles, money, success, or simply staying so busy and numb we no longer feel the longing and discontent anymore. With childhood trauma, often this seeking and suffering is even more magnified.

Over time, we get further and further from our inner knowing.

For me, the spiritual journey – call it awakening, self-actualization, individuation, whatever term you prefer – is about getting back to that inner knowing. Slowly peeling back all the fears, defenses, and patterns we’ve accumulated so we can remember who we really are and reconnect with the deeper wisdom, wholeness, and aliveness that was there all along but just maybe got buried for a while. ​
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From that place, in my experience, we can start partnering with life differently. Instead of trying to force life to conform to our perfect little script, we begin trusting its twists and turns a little more. We fight with reality a little less.

Personally, the more I’ve trusted life, the more I’ve come to see that life really isn’t something “out there” happening to me… I am life, and life is me. It’s all one unfolding. Life on Earth may drive me absolutely bonkers sometimes—Christ on a bike, the endless minutiae!—but there’s an intelligence there that’s often a lot smarter than I am. I’ve found I’m much better off partnering with it than resisting it. Life always wins anyway. Ha!

That said, please: we’re human. We’re going to lose our footing. Maybe we just get a little better at returning to ourselves when we wobble. As they say in yoga, the master isn’t the one who holds the perfect pose uninterrupted. She’s the one who knows how to return to the pose after falling out of it… and learns to laugh more at the absurdity of it all. ​

What does living “in the flow” look like for you today?

Great question! I’ll answer with a story.

Seven years ago or so, I kept hitting obstacles trying to publish this book. None of the various next steps felt right. I just couldn’t find the spark needed to take this book across the finish line, and I was deeply discouraged by this. After all that work… now just… nothing?

Then one day, on a winter trip to San Pancho, Mexico, still feeling lost around the whole thing, my partner Greg looked at me and asked, “What would we do right now if we weren’t afraid?”

Five months later, I’d put the book on ice, we’d sold our house in DC, our cars, and just about everything we owned… and spent the next six-plus years vagabonding around the planet while working remotely. Definitely NOT the original plan, but best detour ever.

Then COVID hit while we were in the middle of the Atacama Desert in Chile.

We scrambled onto one of the last flights back to the States, canceled six months of travel plans, and ended up wandering around the U.S. until the world reopened. One of those unexpected detours led us to Asheville, North Carolina, which eventually became our home… and where it finally felt right to bring this book across the finish line.

Absolutely none of it was part of the plan.​
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That’s what living in flow means to me now. Not the shiny Instagram version where everyone’s perfectly aligned and somehow has amazing lighting 24/7, but the kind with uncertainty, frustration, plot twists… where life has its own timeline. ​
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For me, it’s about listening inward while also learning to partner with life. Taking ownership of the choices that are mine to make, but letting go of the illusion that I have to control every outcome. More often than not, I’ve found that life has much better ideas than I do. Or as Byron Katie writes, “Let life live you. It does anyway.” Maybe easier said than done sometimes! But it rings true to me.

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