The Center That Holds

What if the bravest thing you could do for your work, your calling, or your life is to carry less of it?

In this episode, I move from the messy middle into a quieter clarity - exploring how impact, ambition, and worth can become entangled with performance, metrics, and the need to be “enough.” Using a simple marshmallow-and-toothpick game as a living metaphor, I reflect on the beliefs, identities, and internal scaffolding that once kept us upright - and how those supports can be gently dismantled once the wounds they protected have been tended.

I share how past structures helped me survive earlier seasons, and why releasing them now isn’t failure or betrayal, but reverence. The conversation then turns toward the future: how dreams quietly turn into duty, how calling can become measured by reach and audience size, and how an old “not enough” scorekeeper can still linger beneath spiritual language.

Motherhood and partnership offer grounded examples of what happens when love is no longer required to validate worth - and how stability strengthens when outcomes stop carrying the load. The episode turns on a roadside encounter with monks walking for peace: no messaging, no persuasion, just presence. That moment reframes impact not as louder or bigger, but as coherent - felt in the body rather than proven through results.

This episode is for anyone who feels tired of optimizing their soul, carrying the weight of expectations, or mistaking visibility for meaning. It’s an invitation to unburden what no longer needs to be held, to trust the strength of the center, and to remember that coherence itself is impact.

⭐If this resonates, follow the show, leave a review to help others find it, or share it with someone who may need to be met right where they are.

The Keepers' Garden - A Repository of Reflection

YouTube Channel - Watch The Remembrance Codes on YouTube

Chapters

• 0:44 Weathering The Middle
• 2:18 The Hidden Closet Of Spirituality
• 5:20 Marshmallows, Toothpicks, And Beliefs
• 7:27 Releasing The Past Scaffolding
• 9:57 Future Braces And The Not-Enough God

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:22

The clouds had already begun to part before last week's episode aired, but I decided to share it anyway. Not because I want to model vulnerability, not because I needed anything from anyone, but because clarity doesn't always arrive cleanly. Sometimes it comes through friction and sometimes through heartache, sometimes from being honest while you are willing to stay inside of the weather by sitting in the storm until it runs out of rain. In Patreon, I shared a reflection about Monica's closet from Friends and how everything else in her life is immaculate and polished and tightly controlled, except this one hallway closet that no one has access to. It is floor-to-ceiling chaos. And I shared that because so much of the spiritual world operates the same way. It is clean on the outside and it is carefully curated, but the mess, the middle, that part stays hidden. And we live in a culture that is obsessed with polish. There are 45-minute makeup tutorials with 72 products for you to look barefaced. Spiritual language that smooths over the very places where real integration is happening. And that is not what I want to offer you. I am not messy or polished and both. And last week I let you into the middle, not because I needed it fixed, but because the middle is rarely witnessed. And I think there's something really honest there. And today feels different. The tears are gone and not in the temporary way of the past few weeks, where it felt like they were just gathering steam to come back again. But they feel complete in their offering, like they did the work they came to do. Yesterday I was working on a jigsaw puzzle and I remembered a game that we played at the company Christmas party. It was a reindeer game that is meant to be silly and forgettable. The goal was for each team to try to build the tallest structure possible using only mini marshmallows and toothpicks. And each team had a different strategy, a structure strategy, but most quite honestly never got very tall. They focused on widening the base and reinforcing the bottom, making sure it was stable and safe and supported, but not vertical. But I started seeing that game everywhere in my life. Each toothpick like a belief, a story, an identity, a dream, a brace that helped hold the structure upright at one point in time. And for a long while, I needed a wide base. I needed support structures strong enough to hold wounds that hadn't yet been tended. And that made sense. The braces weren't wrong, they were protective. But over time, as I've learned to sit with the wounds themselves, to witness them, to tend them, to love them, I didn't need the same amount of scaffolding anymore. The support structures that are erected to protect wounds can be dismantled once the wound itself has been met. And I've already removed so much of the structure that held my past. That girl who stumbled, who lost herself in depression and drugs and men, she needed a wide, stable base. And I don't reject her. I love her. She waited in the storm until I was strong enough to go back and get her. Recently, I was at a tennis tournament and we were all staying in a house together, a loud, rowdy house together. And we played a game at night that was essentially like never have I ever. And I have. More than some expected. And one girl joked, like, oh, I had no idea, Saint Susan. But friends, I've lived a full and colorful life. But I don't drag my past behind me anymore, which means I don't need those toothpicks to hold me upright. They did their job and they can rest. What surprised me this January is realizing how much scaffolding I had quietly built around my future. The dreams, the identity, the calling, the sense of responsibility to steward what's been given to me well enough, or broadly enough, or visibly enough. I shared last week through my tears this longing to be met. But underneath it, I found a deeper fear, disappointment. That if I didn't carry this material far enough, wide enough to enough people, that I would somehow fail it. And as I stayed with that fear, something familiar was standing there. The old God, the white-haired, white-robed, judgmental God, not punishing me for being bad, but for not being good enough. Like tallying laps on the not enough circuit. Here she comes again. But I needed to see him, not to fight with him, just to recognize where this striving was being held. And after I saw that, something could soften. Maybe this material was never meant to validate me through reach or numbers or audience or size. Maybe it was meant to reorganize me, to change my field, to bring me into coherence. I'm here speaking to you now on this podcast, to one of you or five or hundred. I don't actually know. I share this podcast because I do hope it stirs something in you, that it helps in some way. But I also know this. I do it because it changes me. I process differently when something is going to be shared in the writing, in the speaking, in the hearing it back, it helps me move through layers more honestly than if I journaled and closed the book. So tier by tier, I have been unbraiding myself from the belief that a larger audience is required for something to matter. And what initially felt like a crumbling, as you heard, did begin to feel empowering. These braces aren't being ripped away. They're asking to be removed because my center is ready to test the capacity to hold. And I've been here before. Not because my kids are perfect, they are not. But because I didn't require their output to validate me as a good mother. I knew early on that I wanted to untangle what I thought of as a good child away from society's metrics. And in doing so, I untied my performance from their metrics as well. And so when I shared that motherhood felt like the easiest path in 2025, it was not because it lacked challenge, it held many, but because the braces carrying the load were already gone and my center could hold. I don't require their perfection or their output to confirm me, to validate me outwardly for my performance. And the same has happened recently in my partnership. When I stopped binding my worth and every conflict to a future contract, I became freer in the present, better able to love without tightening around outcomes. And so now I'm just recognizing that this is the unbinding that is happening with my dreams. And it is not to shrink them, it is to unburden them. And I was fortunate enough to see this embodied recently when I stood roadside as the venerable monks walked by in their walk for peace. I waited quietly with my hands on my chest and tears spilled over, not from sadness, but from recognition. One monk, as he passed, met my eyes and reached out, offering me white carnations. He didn't know my story. He didn't need to. And it was enough. That was impact. And thousands greet them now and millions follow them online. But that was never the point. They are not performing peace. They aren't branding it, they aren't persuading anyone, they are being it quietly enough that my nervous system recognized it as real. That experience made me see how distorted my vision of impact has become. That it has to be loud or measured or optimized, that it had to leave a trail of proof. But what he offered was something rarer: coherence, impact that moves through bodies, not metrics. One foot in front of the other, the walking embodiment of who you are without leaving yourself. Even for a future version you think could do more. That's not a smaller life. It's a deeper one. And I sat with that, and I I realize that this is not an invitation to do less. It's an invitation to carry less. So when I picture those beautiful monks and their amazing smiles, I see them gently helping me bring down the braces that are no longer needed. Too spick, I toothpick, trusting that what remains can stand. Thank you, friends, for being with me when it's polished or when it's a mess. Thank you for sharing this walk with me. If it has ever helped you in some way and you would consider taking a moment to leave a review, I would greatly appreciate it. And please share it with somebody who needs to be met in the middle. Have a great week.