I’ve spent most of my corporate career “measuring” people.

Not literally, of course. But close enough. Over 10,000 interviews, several million survey responses, and over a thousand focus groups. I’m paid to understand human behavior, to predict what people would do based on who they are.

Education level. Income bracket. Job title. Psychometrics. I’d take IQ scores if I could get them.

I was good at it. Really good at it.

You’d be surprised at what I can predict about you based on a conversation. Psh, back in the day, I could probably name the brand of ketchup you buy.

I could tell within five minutes whether someone would give us “useful” data. I’d learned to spot “intelligence,” articulation, strategic thinking—all the markers our society uses to determine who has something worth hearing.

Then my brain broke.

Traumatic brain injury. Suddenly I was on the other side of those measurements. Watching medical professionals measure my worth through their tests and concerned faces.

I had been cruel.

All those interviews where I’d dismissed someone’s insight because they couldn’t articulate it the way I wanted. I’d built a career on sorting people into categories of value, never questioning whether the categories themselves diminished us all.

But that realization wasn’t enough to crack the framework. That came later, in a waiting room, watching a woman love her husband who couldn’t remember her name. Watching him teach me about presence, while every measure we use said he had nothing left to offer.

When Nancy reached out wanting to share what her daughter Sheila had taught her about living in the moment, I recognized something. That slow, uncomfortable realization that the person you thought needed your guidance has been teaching you all along.

This is Nancy’s story and mine. About recognizing the teachers who’ve been right in front of us.

Nancy...

Having a child with Down syndrome is an on-going lesson in adapting and changing. One of my earliest lessons came when Sheila was not yet 2 months old.

My husband and I attended a conference our local Down syndrome support group hosted. The keynote speaker was Emily Perl Kingsley. At that time, she was still writing for Sesame Street. She was also the mother of a son with Down syndrome (who was often one of the children on the show). She discussed the importance of taking one day at a time and not getting “too far ahead of yourselves.”

“Live in the moment,” was her rallying cry.

My arms tightened around Sheila, startling her awake. I forced myself to relax with a few deep breaths. Easier said than done, I thought.

Living in the present is much easier said than done, especially when you’ve just given birth to a child with a disability and there are so many unknowns.

When will she roll over? Or sit up, walk, talk?

When faced with unknowns it is so easy to perseverate on these endless loop questions. I became involved with the local support group and instigated restarting a playgroup for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. The good was the support it provided. The bad was the comparisons it inevitably created.

I found it easy to let go of comparing Sheila’s developmental progress with her sister’s. Where I struggled was at the support playgroup. Seeing other three-year-olds with Down syndrome beginning to talk while Sheila wasn’t even babbling left me feeling bereft. I longed to hear her talk.

I started working on taking deep breaths, then reminding myself of Kingsley’s rallying cry, “Live in the moment.” This became a signal to let go of the worry and stay present.

Two-steps forward, one-step back.

The pediatric nurse in me knew there would be help and support along the way. The mom part of me was terrified. What if Sheila never talked? What if I never heard her say, “I love you?”

What if I couldn’t give Sheila enough support and have anything left over for my other daughters? So much of my time was absorbed by Sheila, our middle child. I realized I had to become intentional about carving out individual one-on-one time with my other two girls and not feel guilty about it.

Learning to not feel guilty about taking time for myself also had to become a priority.

I started reading everything I could get my hands on related to the growth and development of a child with Down syndrome. I learned as much as I could about their learning style. They are primarily visual learners—they need models, visual aids, observation of what others do, and they are concrete thinkers.

Sheila fit the mold.

It also became clear that Sheila lived in the present. She didn’t spend time worrying about the future or dwelling about what happened in the past.

It is a lesson that I continually struggled with as she was growing up.

In this, Sheila became the teacher.

Alex...

Years later, I was the one sitting in a waiting room, supposedly there to get fixed.

Brain rehabilitation center. Every week, same uncomfortable chairs, same fluorescent lights humming their anxious song. I was there because a traumatic brain injury had shattered my ability to perform the version of myself I thought I needed to be.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d spent years as a researcher studying human behavior, conducting thousands of interviews about authenticity. I could tell you exactly what the data said about presence and wholeness.

I just couldn’t inhabit any of it.

But there was this couple. Elderly. They sat in the same spot every week. He had severe dementia. She’d been his wife for fifty years.

I watched her meet him exactly where he was.

Sometimes he was lucid, telling stories about his days in the army with perfect clarity. Sometimes he was lost, confused about where he was or why. Sometimes he didn’t know her name.

She never flinched. Never corrected. Never tried to pull him back to some version of reality he couldn’t access.

She’d laugh sometimes, catching my eye. “The moments where I’m just a little frustrated? Well, he forgets. Good thing too, because they don’t happen often. After 50 years, he was so good to me. I want to be as good to him as I can be.”

I was a stranger to him every single week.

Every time we met, it was the first time. He’d light up, tell me about his fantastical adventures as a banker, these elaborate stories that may or may not have happened the way he remembered them. We’d be fully there together, completely present in whatever world he was inhabiting that day.

Then I’d stand up, walk through the door to my appointment, and the entire relationship would reset.

He’d never remember me. But I’d remember what I witnessed between them.

Nancy...

One moment, forever etched in my brain, is Sheila twirling and whirling along the edge of the ocean.

Sheila had a long verbal speech language delay. Despite her lack of speech, she communicated through gestures, rudimentary signs (signing exact English) and Sheila “made up” signs. Adding her signs along with observing her emotions via body language we began to realize, Sheila lives in the moment, all day, every day.

She embodied Kingsley’s rallying cry, “live in the moment.” Sheila’s emotions informed us she was not weighed down by grudges, nor were her moods governed by fears of the future. She just “was”—she was present in the moment.

It was the moment, by the sea, dancing in and out of the waves lapping the shore. I knew she was right there fully enjoying the pull of the waves, not worrying about the heat, or the kamikaze mosquitoes following the hurricane that had run up the coast the week before.

By contrast, the rest of us complained about the heat, humidity and the mosquitoes. It impacted our enjoyment of the moment while she danced by the sea running a low-grade temperature as her pituitary gland was failing.

The low-grade fever every day nagged at my pediatric nurse brain. She was susceptible to sinus infections, but there were no other symptoms. Worry about her health pulled me from maintaining a Zen, live-in-the-moment place. I constantly had this push-pull relationship between worry and trying to stay present.

But we were on vacation, at the ocean. Waves lapping on the shore, long walks on the beach helped convert worry to a more “be like Sheila” state.

Alex...

Here’s what I couldn’t stop thinking about: even when he struggled to remember her name, her face, their entire history together, he never forgot her presence.

Not her identity. Her presence.

The way his whole body would relax when she walked back from the front desk. How he’d reach for her hand without knowing why, just that it felt right. The softening in his face when she spoke, even when the words themselves made no sense to him.

She wasn’t trying to make him remember. She wasn’t performing some idealized version of caregiving for an audience. She was just meeting him, moment after moment, exactly as he was.

No agenda to fix. No need for him to be anyone other than who he was right then.

I realized I was watching something I’d been trying to intellectualize my way into for years. All that research about authenticity and presence, all those interviews about what makes people come alive, all that data about how we perform ourselves into exhaustion.

She was showing me what I’d been studying.

Presence isn’t a technique. It’s not something you achieve through practice or perfect through repetition.

It’s what emerges when you stop trying to make the moment into something other than what it already is.

Nancy’s story and mine keep circling back to the same uncomfortable truth: the people we think need our guidance are often the ones teaching us how to be alive.

Not because they’re inspiring despite their challenges. That’s the patronizing version we tell ourselves to feel better about our own discomfort.

Because they’ve learned to inhabit reality without the crushing weight of pretending it’s something else.

Sheila dancing by the ocean with a fever. Not performing joy. Just being joyful.

The man with dementia reaching for his wife’s hand. Not remembering their story. Just knowing her presence.

Both of them showing us what presence actually looks like when we stop making it complicated.

Our culture is obsessed with optimization. With improvement. With fixing what’s “broken” and enhancing what’s “normal.” We measure intelligence, track development, compare milestones.

We create elaborate systems to determine who has value and who needs help.

I say this as someone who spent years believing my worth was tied to my cognitive performance. Who thought the brain injury made me less than. Who’s still fighting the impulse sometimes to prove I’m “better” now.

Nancy learned this with Sheila. I discovered it in that waiting room.

The wisdom we’re looking for isn’t hiding in the places our culture tells us to search.

It’s dancing by the ocean. It’s sitting in waiting room chairs. It’s in the people we thought needed us, patiently showing us what we forgot.

They were never the students.

We were.

Nancy...

Sheila died two years ago. Her death unleashed a grief more intense than I have ever experienced before.

When I was a young girl, I learned to stuff all my feelings down. It took several years of counseling to start recognizing and honoring my feelings.

Then Sheila came along and every feeling she had was right there, in the moment. If it was joy she felt, we all saw it. If it was sadness, hurt or pain, it was right there.

None lasted forever. Each lasted as long as her “presence in the present” lasted.

With her death, my ever-present teacher, my role model of living in the moment, is gone.

Grief gave me an opportunity to embrace what I was feeling, acknowledging each feeling throughout the day. Yes, the first days, weeks, months meant there were more tears than I had cried in all the prior years of my life.

At the same time, I understood that honoring, accepting and leaning into each feeling would help me move forward.

I cannot think of a better way to honor the importance of Sheila’s life than by being intentional about staying present in each moment of the rest of my life.

This might matter to someone you know who’s measuring worth in all the wrong ways. Would you share it with them?

Share

About Nancy

I’m Nancy Holroyd – pediatric and school nurse, mother, disability advocate, and writer.

Nurse for over 50 years (mostly retired, but not completely), mother for 40 years. Gave birth to three girls. Survived the excruciatingly painful death of our middle daughter who taught her whole family about unconditional love.

Writing started as a means of coping with the birth of a child with a disability. Now I write about raising, loving, saying goodbye, and grief.

I, also, write about topics adjacent to school nurses, school nursing and parenting.

Subscribe to Nancy

About Alex

I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.

Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.

These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.

This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.

Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.

Free subscribers get weekly articles and insights (sometimes twice a week!). Paid subscribers get the Thursday Offerings, seasonal companion pages, post-nidra audio, and live slow sessions. Join me?

Subscribe now

I'm launching this new collaborative series with a topic that sits right at the intersection of survival and aliveness: our relationship with money.

My dear friend Teri Leigh joins me to explore how the stories we inherit about worth and safety can either keep us small or help us remember what it feels like to be fully alive in our own lives.

This isn't your typical personal finance article. It's a raw exploration of how money becomes a proxy for permission. Permission to take up space, to choose what brings us joy, to inhabit our lives fully instead of just surviving them.

But here's where it gets even better: After you read this piece, you're invited to join us LIVE for an exclusive Substack event on Saturday, September 20th at 12:00 PM EST. We'll dive deeper into how these patterns show up, respond to YOUR comments and questions in real-time, and explore what changes when we stop negotiating with inherited voices about our right to be alive and present.

This is your chance to be part of the conversation that bridges personal experience with universal patterns. Mark your calendars—this dynamic, interactive experience will help us all see these themes more clearly.

Ready to explore what happens when two perspectives meet around money, aliveness, and the courage to choose what brings us joy? Let’s dive in, my friend.

Alex...

I have a visceral memory of standing at the farmers market, holding a basket of strawberries that cost twice what I'd pay at Smith's.

These were organic, locally grown, and I knew they'd taste like actual strawberries instead of red-colored water. But some part of me was still calculating whether I deserved to spend the extra $4 on fruit that tasted SO much better (plus reflected my buy-local values) instead of just getting the job done with supermarket fruit.

I had the money in my account.

But my nervous system was treating those strawberries like an indulgence instead of a choice that reflected who I actually wanted to be in the world. I was running calculations that had nothing to do with my bank balance and everything to do with stories I'd inherited about worth, safety, and what happens to people who want things.

Money isn't just about money, is it?

It's about the invisible rules we learned before we knew we were learning them. The way our bodies respond to abundance or scarcity. The beliefs we carry about what we deserve and what safety actually looks like.

Teri knows this, too.

When she locked the door of her yoga studio for the last time, bankruptcy papers signed, she experienced something she didn't expect...

Teri…

I rolled up my yoga mat after my last practice ever.

The yoga studio was empty now, just me and my mat on the glorious beautiful bamboo floor.

Oh how I loved that floor. (20 years later, I still miss that floor)

It was a good floor that had provided stability, foundation, and structure for my dream come true. It had absorbed the sweat, tears, and footfalls of thousands of yoga students over the past two years.

I loved that floor.
It held me.
And now I had to walk off of it, one last time.

I turned the key in the lock and heard the deadbolt slide home with a soft click.

This was the official end of everything I'd built, everything I'd believed about myself as a business owner, a teacher, a woman who could make her dreams financially sustainable.

• Two years of 6am classes and late-night bookkeeping.

• That time, my 10-week-old puppy chewed through my internet cable right before class.

• The youngest student who offered to mop my floors to pay for classes.

• The oldest student who did the full hanuman splits to model to the rest of the class.

• And the many times I cat-napped in the massage room cuz I believed that if I just worked harder, cared more, gave everything I had, the numbers would eventually add up.

And they did!
. . . until they didn’t.

When LifeTime Fitness opened the largest facility in the country just two miles away, offering free yoga to all new members in a specially designed mindfulness wing…and the local mega-church preached that my little Yoga Path was un-Christian, attendance dwindled.

My silent partner backed out, and I was left with no other option.
Bankruptcy.

As I pulled the key from the deadbolt lock, instead of the devastating grief I expected, something else happened.

A whoosh of relief..

Standing there on the sidewalk, keys heavy in my palm, I realized that even though I was teaching relaxation and deep breathing every single day, my own nervous system had been holding its breath for months, waiting for permission to let go.

The Financial Identity I Didn't Know I Was Wearing

Before the studio closed, I thought I knew who I was with money.

I was a responsible saver who paid her credit cards before accruing interest.
I color-coded my budget spreadsheets.
And, maaaaybe I was a bit obsessive about money….just a bit.

Opening the yoga studio felt like proof I'd followed in the footsteps of my entrepreneurial family’s history. I had a business plan, an angel investor, and a vision board with pictures of packed classes and peaceful faces.

What I didn't realize was that I operated from the same inherited money story shaped by my Scandinavian heritage.

Work harder, and the money will follow.
Struggle equals virtue.
If it's not difficult, you're not doing it right.

I threw myself into 12-hour days, teaching back-to-back classes, convinced that my exhaustion was evidence of my dedication. When the numbers didn't add up, I worked more. When students stopped coming, I blamed myself for not being good enough, spiritual enough, business-savvy enough.

But, as much as I business-planned and strategized, I couldn’t account for the unknown unknowns. I most certainly couldn’t combat the corporate fitness giant up the road or the denouncing words of the local mega-church pastor.

The Inheritance I Didn't Ask For

The bankruptcy lawyer's office had fluorescent lights that made everything look sickly. As I sat across from him, listing my debts and assets, something became crystal clear: I had perfectly recreated my grandmother's relationship with money.

I'd inherited her scarcity nervous system and dressed it up in wellness language.

Every late-night panic about rent was her voice. Every time I undercharged for private sessions because "people can't afford much" was her belief that abundance wasn't for people like us. Every time I said yes to teaching free classes because I felt guilty asking for money was her shame about having needs.

When I sat down at the conference table to sign my bankruptcy papers, my lawyer said, "This might feel like the end of your world as you know it. And it is. But it's also the beginning of something you can't even imagine yet."

Now, nearly two decades later, I understand why he does what he does for a living. He’s an alchemical money magician, ushering people through a portal to financial change, should they choose to walk through.

Learning to Float

People kept asking when I'd 'get back on my feet', expecting me to get a “real” job, such as going back to teaching high school. But I realized I didn't want to get back to normal. Normal was the version of me who worked too hard and called it passion. That woman had to die.

Fortunately, GiggleBumps had another plan for me, just enough of a life raft to float me through a regrowth phase.

When I announced the studio closing, one of my students asked me to come teach private classes at her house for a group of her friends.

“I’m gonna have to raise my rates. Is $100/class okay?” I asked sheepishly.

“I’ll pay whatever you want to charge. And can I buy all your old blocks, straps, bolsters, and mats?”

A week later, I found myself at the end of her long driveway, pressing a button on a gated keypad asking for entry. I had no idea she was that rich!

“Will you come three times a week?”

I exhaled a deep breath, another whoosh of relief.
$300 per week.
I was gonna be okay.

The Slow Alchemy of Rewiring

The next fifteen years, I learned to inhabit money differently, one tiny choice at a time.

I started paying attention to my patterns with the same curiosity I'd once brought to yoga poses. I noticed how my body tensed when the bill came at dinner. I caught myself when I automatically said, "I can't afford that." I swallowed and retracted myself whenever I deflected compliments about my teaching with apologies about my rates.

I began practicing "financial mindfulness." When a student tried to tip me extra, instead of my automatic "oh no, that's too much," I practiced saying "thank you" and actually received it, while gushing gratitude, even though it felt so wrong. When friends offered to pay for coffee, I noticed the flinch of scarcity that wanted to refuse their generosity and consciously chose to let them love on me.

Each small act of receiving was like strengthening a financial muscle.

Those years weren’t always easy. There were months when I'd think I'd figured it out, only to spiral back into scarcity when an unexpected bill arrived. But gradually, I started noticing when abundance showed up in unexpected ways—a client who tipped extra, a friend who brought dinner unasked, a tax refund I'd forgotten about.

Transformation happens in tiny moments of receiving over rejecting, enough over not-enough, and learning a new language, one syllable at a time.

Full Spiral: The Other Conference Table

Fifteen years after my bankruptcy, I sat at another conference table. This time, I signed mortgage papers for my dream home – three bedrooms, a screened-in front porch, and yes, good hardwood floors throughout. They’re even better than the bamboo cuz they are over 100 years old!

The financial identity that died when I locked that yoga studio door and signed bankruptcy papers was replaced by something I couldn't have imagined: a relationship with money based on trust instead of terror.

Alex…

Reading Teri's story, I recognized something I'd been carrying without knowing it: the belief that financial transformation had to be dramatic, decisive, all-or-nothing. But she showed me something different, that it could be a slow alchemy of tiny choices, each one teaching our nervous system a new language of trust. So…

I bought the strawberries.

And they were sweet, juicy, and I wouldn't have traded them for anything.

I felt my body relax just a little more with each berry I ate, my body remembering what it felt like to simply enjoy something. To be delighted. To taste the literal fruits of choosing aliveness over safety.

Teri's story reminded me that our relationship with money isn't really about money at all.

It's about whether we believe we're allowed to inhabit our own lives fully. It's about the difference between surviving and actually being alive in the world we're creating for ourselves.

Those strawberries were just strawberries. But they were also the taste of permission to be present, to savor, to choose what brought me joy instead of what kept me small.

What would change if you stopped negotiating with the voices that tell you to settle for less than what you actually want?

A Note From Teri

The Path to Financial Freedom

What I've learned through this fifteen-year metamorphosis is that most of us are trying to heal our money stories with the same thinking that created them. We read books about budgeting and manifesting, but we never address the inherited nervous system patterns that keep us stuck in cycles of scarcity and struggle.

This fall, I'm offering a 9-week journey called Abundant Money Mindset—a program that combines the spiritual work of healing inherited money patterns with the practical work of building real financial stability.

Applications are now open for a small group of people ready to do both the inner healing and the outer work on the path to financial freedom.

If you are interested in learning more about the program, you are invited to learn more here:

Abundant Money Mindset

Start Here ~ A Healthy & Wealthy Relationship with Money

The 3am Money Spiral…

Read more

8 months ago · 10 likes · 2 comments · Teri Leigh 💜 and Dr. Axel Meierhoefer 🏕️🔥

About Teri

TeriLeigh is a grounded mystic who helps sensitive souls embrace their spiritual gifts without losing their real-world footing. With over 30 years of experience, she's taught 200,000+ students and worked one-on-one with 2,000+ clients as a spiritual mentor, chakra expert, and creator of the MindfulSense method.

Known for her rebellious approach to wellness, TeriLeigh challenges conventional spiritual teaching by making mystical concepts accessible through plain language and embodied practices. She believes your sensitivity is spiritual intelligence, not something to fix. Her synesthetic gifts allow her to translate complex energetic experiences into practical tools for nervous system regulation and emotional healing.

From bankruptcy to abundance, divorce to deep love, TeriLeigh writes with vulnerable authority about the messy, beautiful journey of spiritual awakening in midlife. She lives in Minnesota with her husband "Hobbit" and their wonder corgi, Tosha, turning everyday moments into mindful magic.

Subscribe to Teri Leigh

About Alex

I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.

Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.

These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.

This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.

Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.

Free subscribers get weekly articles and insights (sometimes twice a week!). Paid subscribers get the Thursday Offerings, seasonal companion pages, post-nidra audio, and live slow sessions. Join me?

Subscribe now

This Saturday, when we pressed “Go Live,” we also pressed on a bruise.

Money.

Those prickly stories we carry.

The ways money can cause us to flinch from our aliveness in an instant, and the simple practices that thaw it. We gave ourselves a 28-minute time box and then promptly spilled over 🙃, because the room was honest and warm and curious. It felt right. It felt like community.

For those who joined us live, thank you. It was so wonderful to have you with us.

For those of you joining us after the live in this replay. Thank you. It is still so wonderful to have you with us.

Here is a recap of what we covered (and it isn’t everything, so you are going to have to watch 🩵):

The script and the crack.

She grew up feeling like the poor kid in a rich ZIP code and wore work harder like armor, until it cracked under 16-hour days and bankruptcy. The wisdom that replaced it: receive what’s offered, let “psychic income” count, and move with joy; abundance follows motion, not martyrdom.

Origin stories matter.

A season of homelessness at 17 taught me most of what I know about money, and the imprint remains. An empty fridge or pantry still startles my system. When I treat myself, I so often choose used because some old part whispers that I don’t “deserve new.” Keeps me from overspending, sure. And it’s environmentally great, sure. But that narrative persists and pervades my system. The body keeps its own ledger, even when the dates have changed.

Receiving as a practice.

The most actionable shift from our conversation was tiny and seismic: “Yes, thank you.” Teri started saying those exact words to every offer and watched her life change. She also named “psychic income,” the non-monetary wealth we give and receive (energy, joy, meaning). Naming it dissolved shame and multiplied gratitude.

The trap of hyper-independence.

We laughed (and winced) at the “Bank of Dad” shirt and the spreadsheet of every borrowed dollar. Proof of integrity, yes, and also proof of a reflex to refuse help unless it’s perfectly justified. Many of us don’t lack access; we lack permission to ask. Hyper-independence keeps us safe and sometimes starving.

Money is a relationship.

Relationships thrive on clarity, boundaries, and co-created priorities. When we treat money like a partner (not a villain or hero), we stop deflecting its gifts and start collaborating with it. Community helps us catch the old moves we can’t see alone; someone else’s honest question will surface the pattern our journals keep missing.

Manifesting, de-mystified.

We framed it as joyful action: hands to the work, spirit at the party. You name the desire, then take the next brave step in alignment. Sherry’s “audacious dreaming” and fellowship acceptance were a live case study: declare it, apply, and then take the next action to resource it. Joy + motion = momentum.

Try this (micro-practices from the live):

• Catch one deflection. When someone offers help, pause and say, “Yes, thank you.” Notice the body buzz. That’s a belief loosening.

• Name your psychic income. Make a short list of the non-monetary wealth you create/receive this week. Let it count.

• Trace the origin. Pick one money belief (“I have to suffer to earn,” “I don’t deserve new”) and write its origin story. What protected you then, and what serves you now?

• Co-prioritize. Sit down with “money” like a partner and choose one shared priority for the next 30 days. Boundaries included.

• Ask in community. Post one concrete ask. Let people love you out loud.

Join the Conversation

This project grows in community. If you’d like to bring your perspective to Life As We See It, maybe an essay, conversation, or experiment, send me a quick note ⬇️

Co-Collab with Me

A Note From Teri

Abundant Money Mindset

Today, I shared that applications for the Abundant Money Mindset program are open. This program is a 9-week journey that blends spiritual work in healing inherited money patterns with practical efforts to build real financial stability. If you're interested, you can find out more about that program here:

Abundant Money Mindset

Start Here ~ A Healthy & Wealthy Relationship with Money (applications now open!)

Abundant Money Mindset…

Read more

8 months ago · 13 likes · 5 comments · Teri Leigh 💜 and Dr. Axel Meierhoefer 🏕️🔥

About Teri

TeriLeigh is a grounded mystic who helps sensitive souls embrace their spiritual gifts without losing their real-world footing. With over 30 years of experience, she's taught 200,000+ students and worked one-on-one with 2,000+ clients as a spiritual mentor, chakra expert, and creator of the MindfulSense method.

Known for her rebellious approach to wellness, TeriLeigh challenges conventional spiritual teaching by making mystical concepts accessible through plain language and embodied practices. She believes your sensitivity is spiritual intelligence, not something to fix. Her synesthetic gifts allow her to translate complex energetic experiences into practical tools for nervous system regulation and emotional healing.

From bankruptcy to abundance, divorce to deep love, TeriLeigh writes with vulnerable authority about the messy, beautiful journey of spiritual awakening in midlife. She lives in Minnesota with her husband "Hobbit" and their wonder corgi, Tosha, turning everyday moments into mindful magic.

Subscribe to Teri Leigh

About Alex

I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.

Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.

These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.

This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.

Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.

Free subscribers get weekly articles and insights (sometimes twice a week!). Paid subscribers get the Thursday Offerings, seasonal companion pages, post-nidra audio, and live slow sessions. Join me?

Subscribe now