Hello my friend,

Here’s a secret, I’ve been crossing thresholds since my conception. So have you.

I’ve been exploring transitions, similar to thresholds, for decades. Maybe you have too?

I’ve been at a threshold contemplating this topic far too long rather than sitting my bottom in the chair and plucking on the keyboard. In truth, I wrote volumes on the topic and erased most of it. I jammed everything under the sun plus scraps from the earth to connect with you. Thank you for your patience in the empty inbox. Yet, with a hug and wink, I am certain other events and priorities have occupied your attention. (We won’t go there.) And if you are new to Somatic Finance on Substack, welcome. I’m truly glad you are here.

• I’ve missed you while traveling the trip of a lifetime celebrating my 65th.

• I’ve missed you while supporting my son’s marriage preparation for a year and enjoying the celebration in a whirlwind weekend.

• I’ve missed you while laying low and slowing my pace at this mid-sixties peculiar stretching stage.

• I’ve missed you while I swim and surf in my business transition, flummoxed that the way through is more complex than I imagined.

• I’ve missed you while giving attention to other areas of my life beyond writing.

• I’ve missed you.

Let’s enter the essence of crossing thresholds.

Krista Tippett wrote of crossing thresholds worthily when the On Being Project shrank operations. Wow, what an invitation, what a calling ~ do I, do we dare?

Thresholds for the unaware, not you because you are here, are a marker along the road of life not experience but endured. Thresholds for the aware are filled with potential and possibility. We choose how we cross. Can we pause and look back with reverence and adoration, appreciating the territory we traveled and how we did it, what we felt? Let’s add how we grew, who we loved, where we generated, what creativity we expressed, and we allow our wobbles, bobbles and missteps too. We honor what was, that we no longer hold or serves where we are going, moving with grace.

Bullsh*t you say? I hear you. This way is not familiar or well practiced, but it can be.

My old story (maybe yours?) about thresholds and transitions is that they are hard, tiring, drawn out, and require serious intentional attention. Many helpful tools and protocols assist us with our transitions. I have engaged and shared these protocols regularly. They are important, helpful and a partial story.

In my current transitions, my direct experience isn’t matching the support available, leading me to new moves with a lighter heart, softer hand.

Today, I claim a new story.

Thresholds are thrones of appreciation and encouragement. I appreciate all that was, how I experienced each moment, situation and noteworthy event, loving my perfectly imperfect human choices. I recognize my growth with pride including humble mishaps as learning edges. I honor what no longer serves me and humanity by letting go. I am encouraged gathering new energy with a “lighter load”, fortifying strengths and skills that serve me across the threshold into realized potential and new possibilities.

I wave a generous goodbye courageously walking toward my chosen tomorrow welcoming and receiving resources, support, love, joy, and wonder.

Please join me in a new story of thresholds and transitions, releasing fear and gathering courage and receiving support from all directions in many forms.

Traveling, Shifting, Being in the Space Between

Late fall I chose to participate and be supported in a program led by my friend Patty Lennon called Six Weeks to Shift (catchy name that doesn’t capture the experience) post Thanksgiving through February. My password for the course changed to “threshold2026” since I forgot the original, Patty began talking about thresholds in her trainings and threshold showed up frequently in various contexts in my travels and routines. Clearly all the signs pointed to thresholds!

The second week of December my beloved and I skipped town for my 65th milestone birthday and holiday celebration with our children and their new spouses. Our good fortune and choices took us to New Zealand for several weeks. After our children departed, Rich and I cherished meeting the land and people in New Zealand in daily hikes, friendly connections with others, observing their country’s values and aweing often.

New Zealand made it very easy to be in wonder.

Wonder filled me, my pace, my view, my being.

So much wonder enveloped us that on a rigorous hike up one trail of Te Papakura O Taranaki, a dormant volcano, 1000 plus steps and through goblin forests, I took over 50 photos of “nature thresholds”. Stopping for my first 5 photos, Rich was amused, isn’t she cute. His initial adoration quickly grew to annoyance, especially since our pace doubled the stated hours for the hike.

Each gorgeous, gnarly, welcoming threshold captured me and I chose to capture it.

Huffing, puffing, laughing and stopping to rest, then crossing breaks on the trail, I saw life’s thresholds. The hefty ones (birth of child, death of spouse), the practical ones (home relocation, college graduation), the contextual ones (money, relationships), cosmic thresholds (use your imagination) and the whispers.

Are you curious to explore and ignite conversation about thresholds?

• What thresholds are you facing?

• What threshold(s) have you just crossed?

• Are you resisting thresholds?

• Are you running toward them?

• How are you meeting these gateways?

Let these questions enter your heart.

Pay attention to your breath as you read the questions below feeling the expansion and release in your chest. Ask yourself:

• What thresholds am I facing? Breathe and notice what arises.

• What thresholds have I crossed? Breathe and notice what arises.

• Am I resisting a threshold? Breathe and notice.

• Am I running toward a threshold? Breathe and notice.

Your answers are invitation threads you can choose to follow.

Let’s explore a few thresholds beginning with money.

Money Thresholds

Common money thresholds are well practiced and enmeshed in financial services. In addition to learning about the flow of money, spending, saving and investing plans, practical protection with insurance, taxes, estate planning, financing, we gain expertise addressing common changes—a first job or job change, home purchase or sale, debt management, financing a home or automobile. Most financial services have structures and formulas to gain confidence, clarity and take action on good decisions. Common money thresholds are the scope of financial literacy. In a world of conscious money and caring, these skills are/should be taught naturally within a container of pragmatism and generosity. Fear and shame are void. No critics allowed. Of course, our world is not money conscious—yet. But we can choose better, beginning with a new story.

Are you navigating an important common money threshold? If so, you’ve got this! What would your new story be?

Beyond common money thresholds are intense, sometimes permanent, money thresholds that contend with subjects like the end of life, divorce, physical and mental decline by aging or accident, and the myriad financial issues holding emotional responses. The human side of money (not separate from the material side) welcomes kind attention to these experiences by honoring feelings, values, beliefs, patterns, which allows money decisions to balance with healthy actions. All life flourishes, including money, when it is in balance.

Are you navigating an intense money threshold? If so, my heart goes out to you. It is not for sissies, as the sassy Helen Hayes said about old age. Be kind to yourself. Recognize your strengths, let go of old stories, create supportive new stories.

Relationship Thresholds

A surprising relationship threshold for me became apparent after my son’s wedding last November. My daughter married in April of 2024, and my son married under three months ago. Our grown children are living their separate and distinct relationship with their “person” building their family. They, having gone through a marriage threshold, catalyzed a threshold for my spouse and me. Returning to “just us two”, we are nurturing our relationship with a new story across the threshold.

I choose potentials and possibilities crossing to just us two, again, as budding elders in our 38 year marriage.

Career Thresholds

As a founder and owner of a business almost 40 years old, my career in financial planning is different than a career in a large corporation or institution. Rules for retiring, and transition, are guided by my firm and our values. Since inception, my primary role as a steward of our organization lodged deep in my heart, a guiding principle for my choices. Steward is a word my father taught me as a young teenager which recognizes that our fleeting life on this planet owns nothing. We are merely stewards taking care of, improving, enjoying, until the next steward comes along.

Though I formally and energetically passed the stewardship of Colman Knight to younger partners a year ago by giving them shares of the company, I energize other roles in the organization which slows my final crossing of this threshold. It is no small feat for me to release the reins of an organization and remain steadfast to its purpose and the people serving, who are often meeting and exceeding our original vision forty years ago.

The bedrock mission, vision and values are embodied in the Colman Knight way of serving, including an annual question: Does this organization still benefit the world? As members stand on our founder shoulders and imprint their genius, their service, their hearts and mind into the walls and structures with a vibrant living vision toward the future, my gratitude blooms.

Whispers and Weaving

Thresholds whisper to us. Unless we are listening well, we don’t hear them. I know this to be true. Whispers are heard by the heart, not the head. My brain is highly skilled at rational thinking, planning, solving problems (making up problems), and when analyzing a threshold, my brain is loud, and fast, rarely listening. Space, silence and stillness are the ingredients for me to hear whispers.

When we are sufficiently patient, and hear the whispers, we become weavers of our life tapestry. All thresholds—money, relationships, career—offer colorful thread for the loom to create the landscape of our life.

Choose a new story for your thresholds, changes, transitions, the unknown. In Krista’s invitation of crossing worthily, she says “it asks us to tether not just in the question of what we will do but in tending the quality of our presence in the disorienting space and time that has opened.”

I’ll be with you in new stories crossing my thresholds, tending the quality of my presence in the disorienting space, until abiding on the virtuous flow. *

With so much love,

Gayle

* Beyond thresholds we abide in presence living every moment awake and aware, awakened awareness. There are no thresholds. Life experienced like this is Love in motion and has no preferences, no judgments, no gripping of anger or fear or worry. We taste these moments. We float for days a bit longer. Eventually, I believe, the moments and days stretch indefinitely as a realized being.

Expanded awareness blossoms sufficiency and generosity. We practice abiding on the Virtuous Flow of Somatic Finance®, a mobius strip moving from me to we and we to me in a field of sufficiency and generosity without any thresholds.