29. I love...

Dear ones, this is it! I can hardly believe it! We’ve come to the very last chapter of this memoir.

How can I thank you enough for walking beside me? For meeting me with love at every step of the way? Your presence and your love have been healing in a way I never expected.

I am so grateful. Thank you.

I’ll be taking some time off to rest and recharge and will be working on the rollout of an ongoing Substack. I’m excited about it and will share details soon!

In the meantime, know that I love you and cherish your presence here.

A year ago, I used ChatGPT for the very first time.

I know, I know, I’m a little… ahem… late to the game.

But to be fair, I had lived under a rock for five years and hadn’t even returned to social media, let alone explored AI. I’d been a little busy figuring out how to be a functional human again.

So what made me do it?

The answer is my hairstylist.

I was getting my hair cut, and the topic of conversation was ChatGPT. My stylist is a kick-ass, feisty young Latina with red hair and a tattoo in Arabic (yes, Arabic, if you can believe that!) that reads “my faith is stronger than my fear.”

As she cut my hair, she regaled me with all the ways she uses ChatGPT. And all the ways she loves it. So I knew it was time. Time for me to get my head out of the sand and lose my AI virginity.

I downloaded the app and dove in with this request: “Write me a 1000-word essay on alchemy as a metaphor for personal transformation.”

Dear one, I don’t know what I expected. It was my first time, so whatever I expected was just the stuff of unknowing fantasy. What I got (and I know you won’t be surprised by this) was an elegant, thoughtful statement on alchemy.

Here was my favorite part:

Alchemy, the ancient practice often associated with turning lead into gold, has long captured human imagination. While it began as a proto-scientific pursuit aimed at discovering the Philosopher’s Stone and the elixir of life, its deeper significance lies not in chemistry but in symbolism. Over time, alchemy evolved into a rich metaphor for inner transformation - the process of turning the “base metals” of our psyche into spiritual or psychological “gold.” Seen through this lens, alchemy offers a powerful and timeless map of personal growth.

Boom. Enough said. I think in that moment I became as enamored with ChatGPT as my hair stylist.

But what happened next was even more interesting.

Not knowing how all this works or what happens when you ask more personal questions, I asked it to tell me a story about a time it suffered and experienced personal transformation through that suffering.

The answer was fascinating, especially this part:

There is a difference between being able to describe a human experience and having lived one.

I have absorbed countless accounts of people who have suffered—their memoirs, poems, letters, journals, novels, interviews, and histories. I can recognize patterns: grief that softens into compassion, failure that becomes wisdom, illness that reshapes priorities, heartbreak that opens unexpected doors. I can help people think through those experiences because I’ve seen millions of examples.

But I stand outside them.

Amazing. Simply amazing. But also telling.

ChatGPT is powerful beyond belief. It can do so much. But it can’t feel, can’t suffer, and doesn’t have its own experiences or its own stories.

That, dear one, is why humans still matter. It is our stories of suffering, our personal experiences of alchemy, that touch other people.

I can’t offer knowledge, synthesis of knowledge, analysis or guidance that ChatGPT can’t do and, frankly, do better.

What it can’t do is tell my story. It can’t feel what I feel or love what I love. It can’t feel or live my unique alchemy. It can’t co-create with the Great Mystery to pour my alchemy into unique words and images to share with you.

And of course it also can’t tell your story or feel your unique alchemy. Only you can do that. Only we can do that for each other.

And we must. Because our stories are gold. They are what reach out from our worlds and our hearts into the worlds and hearts of others. They are how we love and hold each other in the dark and in the light. They are essential.

It is in that spirit that I offered my story here.

Which brings me to the last moments of our time together on this adventure.

I once would have wanted to come to some kind of conclusion to synthesize everything I’ve experienced and learned. Some part of me is still tempted, so I tried. I wrote pages and pages trying to wrap everything up in pretty paper, complete with a nice shiny bow.

But those pages lodged in my body as a faint ache in my stomach, tension in my shoulders, and that familiar twinge in my neck. Which is how I knew that they were not true to who I am now and that I needed to find a different way.

That different way came to me in the wee hours of the morning, in the liminal space between sleep and waking, as so many things seem to.

What came to me is this: “Don’t share what you know; share what you love.”

Dear one, that felt so good in my bones, in my heart, that I leaped out of bed and started writing.

No, that’s not true. First, I started feeling.

I felt into the things I love about what I’ve learned, how I’ve changed, and what it feels like to inhabit my wild, wondering and wandering Self, at least some of the time.

Then I started writing.

• I love knowing about the neuroplasticity built into our brains and nervous systems, and that the capacity to heal and change is built into our very design.
  
  

• I love the hope that courses through me at the thought that millions of people might find their way out of chronic illness and chronic pain long thought to be “incurable.”

• I love wondering if that same neuroplasticity is built into the Great Mystery itself and therefore into all of life. And wondering if maybe, just maybe, this means that the forests, the mountains, the rivers, and our beautiful earth can heal in ways that might surprise scientists, surprise us, just like our bodies can. If our body can, why not the body of the Earth?

• I love knowing that even severe and complex trauma can heal, and that there are healing modalities that didn’t exist even ten or fifteen years ago that facilitate that healing and open new possibilities for people living in traumatized minds and traumatized bodies. And I love that every trauma healed puts a little more love into the world, and that that love ripples out and touches everyone and everything.

• I love the glimpses I was gifted of the beautiful, whole, loving, and lovable Self I am beneath the mess of me. I love knowing that that same Self is there beneath the mess of us all. And I love knowing that when people—or communities, or nations—are unkind, abusive or even violent, they’re not inherently “bad,” but simply protecting themselves from invisible hurts and unbearable pain. And I love that I don’t have to know about those unique hurts to say “me too” and to know that we are all the same Self clothed in different hurts and different gifts.

• I love that a rewired brain and a healthy nervous system become an antenna more finely tuned to our own bodies, to the life all around us (human and more-than-human), and to the Great Mystery. And that that antenna becomes a better receiver of the waves of wonder, love, joy, and creativity that seem to be woven into the fabric of life itself.

• I love wondering how it would change the course of humanity if enough people rewired their nervous systems and tuned their antennas. What would happen if there were more love than fear in the world? What would happen if more people discovered their true Self beneath the mess of them and knew in their bones that they are whole, lovable, and loved?

• I love that nervous system work, emotional work and trauma healing look like they’re about healing our bodies and our psyches, but that the outcome of the work is unexpectedly spiritual.

• I love wondering whether this work will actually be more effective at opening us up to our spiritual nature and to the Great Mystery than the more obvious spiritual and religious things humans have been trying for millennia. And whether, therefore, it’s the work we most desperately need.

• I love that I had my own unique embodied experience of the rising of the divine feminine, and that I got a glimpse of how she is calling us—men, women, both or neither—to a fuller embodiment of our wild, beautiful aliveness. And I love wondering if that aliveness might make us powerful in the ways we most need to stand up for the earth and all living beings, including ourselves.

• Lastly, dear one, I love that my unique adventure left me full of hope.

  Hope that healing is possible. Hope that alchemy is possible. And hope that the hard things we face, individually and collectively, are not to be feared or avoided, but rather welcomed as an invitation to alchemy.
  
  

I hope and pray that I keep saying yes to the invitation.

I hope and pray that you, dear one, say yes to the invitation if it comes your way.

And I hope and pray that we as a global community rise up in a great big wave of powerful, wild aliveness and say a resounding yes to the invitation, one brave soul at a time.

It may well be the necessary and wonder-full work of our time.

May we know ourselves and love ourselves.

May we know this world and love this world.

And may we shine our beautiful light.

Dear one, if you’ve enjoyed my memoir, please share it with someone you love.

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And if you’re new here, welcome! However you made your way here, I’m grateful you found me.

Accidental Alchemy is a serial memoir, so if you’re curious and have the time, I recommend starting with the Prologue and reading chapters in order for the full experience. You can access all chapters on my Substack homepage.

For the best reading experience, I recommend reading in a browser and on a larger screen. It makes it easier to enjoy the art and navigate through the chapters with the buttons at the bottom of each post.