From the book: Rise

Sometimes the most important ideas arrive quietly — not with a plan, but with a feeling.
That’s how this book began.

In a still moment, something clicked:
a thread I didn’t want to lose,
a truth I’d been carrying,
a voice I finally let speak.

Rise is the story of how I came back into alignment with myself —
how I stopped chasing, started listening,
and allowed my life to reshape from the inside out.

This is the first chapter.
The beginning of a becoming.
And maybe, if you’re here, a part of yours too.

🎧 🔊 Listen to Chapter One 🔊🎧
(This is the voice I recorded when I first remembered it clearly — before I even knew it would be a book.)

Chapter 1: Trust In Alignment

Life doesn’t always take the most direct route, but when it takes a route, it’s always on purpose.

Every step, every stop, every difficulty, every ease—all of it is for a reason. Those reasons may not be known to us in the moment, but if we look back, we begin to see the patterns emerge. We see how walking a certain path, doing a certain thing, following a certain lead, led us exactly where we needed to go. Even if, at the time, we didn’t know why.

This book is about trying to understand more about those moments—the whys, the hows, the whats. It’s about paying attention to the little pings we get from the universe. It’s about learning to listen.

This is my story.

It begins with a pretty big change. A midpoint in life where I realized I had been walking a path for so long simply because it had once felt like the right thing to do. And I kept walking it, convincing myself it was still right. There was no other path, I told myself. This was the best one. Everyone would have agreed.

But at 43, I decided to change everything.

I left my job at Google. I left a decades-long career in tech leadership—a career built with grit, long hours, self-funding my education, climbing ladders, making a name for myself. I had risen from nothing to what most would call the pinnacle of success. And in many ways, it really was. I enjoyed my time there. I met incredible people. And the experience helped me understand, more deeply, what I truly wanted to do.

But something about it felt off. Like I had reached the top of a mountain and found that the view didn’t match what I had imagined.

At the same time, other parts of my life were beginning to feel out of sync. I’d been living in London for nearly 20 years. It had pulled me away from America. It felt like home. I’d rooted there. But something inside me started to feel… done. Like I’d rung everything out of it, and the bell had stopped singing.

And then there was my relationship.

This was the catalyst.

Rewind about a year. I found myself in a club in London—probably the last place I would’ve expected to meet someone who truly lit me up. But there he was. Eyes across the room. Time stopped. I knew something significant had just happened. He was important. And I barely knew him.

Fast forward six months later, I had left my previous relationship within days of meeting this person to give it a shot with him. We faced challenges. I tried to navigate the ups and downs. I believed deeply in the happiness I felt was possible beneath it all. It was a turbulent ride, but I clung to the belief that it was going to work. There were so many good times. Surely this was right.

But was it really? Was I feeling truth, or projecting hope?

Another six months passed, and the dissonance peaked. A fight. A realization. I was going to have to choose—between myself and the love I thought was the best I could ever hope for.

And that’s when it hit me:

Real love doesn’t ask you to shrink.

Real love doesn’t ask you to be anything other than who you are.

If I couldn’t be myself, love myself, and be loved in return for the truth of me—then this wasn’t real love. Or at least, not the kind that endures.

So here I was. Disoriented. Displaced. A job that no longer felt like mine. A city that had become a ghost of itself in my heart. A partner I was about to walk away from. The collapse wasn’t graceful. It was like a shelf of books crashing down all at once. No place to hide. Just run. Run toward something. Anything.

And funny enough, when everything collapses, you realize: you can go in any direction. Any step is somewhere new.

So I walked. One step at a time. Toward whatever felt even slightly more aligned. And as I did, something began to shift. Life started to rise to meet me.

It wasn’t the first time.

When I first moved to London, I struggled to find a way in. I wanted to move, but couldn’t find a sponsor. Then, the moment I mentally committed, I got an unexpected email. A job opening. A transfer. My exact skillset. Within weeks, I had an offer. Everything flowed. It was like magic. And I’ve seen this kind of thing again and again.

Over time, I stopped calling them coincidences.

Because they aren’t.

Nothing is random. The universe is always moving with us. Nudging us. Guiding us. Offering us chance after chance to step into coherence.

That’s what this phase of life has been about: learning to trust that nothing happens by accident. And that if we pay attention, if we follow the shimmer—those little signs and feelings and pings that light up in our chest or whisper in our mind—we begin to understand the deeper patterns.

This book is about that understanding. It’s about my story. And the stories of a few others, including one who is not entirely of this world.

Together, these stories led me to flip my life completely inside out. To pursue new adventures. To seek deeper meaning. To live with purpose.

But more than anything, they’ve shown me this:

You are not alone.

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If this chapter speaks to you, I’d love to hear from you. Just email or find me on Instagram — I’m listening.