How Much of Your Own Life Are You Actually Here For?

Eleven

I've lost eleven people in sixteen months.

Some were friends. Some were teachers. Some shared their wisdom with me. Some simply touched my life through their kindness, their presence, or the experiences we shared.

Eleven people who existed in my world and left something of themselves behind in me.

And lately, I've been thinking a lot about what that actually means.

Not only death.

But how they gifted themselves to me through our connection.

I consider this…

Legacy.

Not the kind of legacy measured by accomplishments, businesses, books, money, awards, or anything with our names attached.

I'm thinking about the pieces of ourselves that remain in other people.

Was I a comfort?

Was I a catalyst?

Was I the person who asked the question someone needed to hear?

Was I an invisible support system?

Did I make someone laugh when they desperately needed to laugh?

And here's the strange thing about legacy:

Most of us will never know.

What If We Didn't Wait Until Someone Was Gone?

One of my friends, Susan Lake-Harris, wrote a book called I'm Dying. Let's Party.

The premise has stayed with me.

When someone knows they have a terminal illness, why wait until after they've died to gather everyone w

ho loves them into a room?

Why wait for the memorial?

Why wait until the person we're talking about isn't there to hear the stories?

Have the party while they can still attend it.

Gather the people.

Tell the stories.

Laugh.

Cry.

Say the things.

Let someone hear how they changed your life while they're still here to receive it.

I find that profoundly beautiful.

But I've started thinking about the reverse side of that experience.

What would it be like to discover how you have lived in other people's lives?

We know the ways other people have affected us.

But how often do we learn how we've affected them?

Maybe we’ve said something memorable.

Maybe your kindness changed the trajectory of a sucky day.

Maybe you introduced two people who became important to one another.

Maybe you taught something that someone still uses twenty years later.

Maybe you were simply there.

Would it affect how you live here and now?

Would you be more apt to voice your divinely given gifts responsibly?

Would you be less fearful?

But We Don't Always Get a Going-Away Party

That's the other truth I've been sitting with.

Sometimes there is a diagnosis.

Sometimes there is time to prepare.

And sometimes someone believes they're sick

and then they're ... gone.

No carefully planned goodbye.

No gathering.

No final opportunity to tell them:

You mattered to me.

Unexpected loss strips away the illusion that we'll always have another opportunity.

Another dinner.

Another phone call.

Another trip.

Another conversation.

Another someday.

And that realization has brought me to a question I can't shake:

How much of my own life am I actually here for?

I Don't Want to Mark Time

My work has always been about intentional living, healing, purpose, and helping people recognize the wisdom already within them.

But something has shifted for me.

I don't want to work so hard at fulfilling my purpose that I miss the life my purpose was supposed to be part of.

Let me repeat that: I don’t want to work so hard at fulfilling my purpose that I miss the life my purpose was supposed to be part of.

I don't want to serve everyone else while abandoning myself.

I want enough room to live.

Room for Mike.

Room for my family.

Room for friendship.

Room for my spiritual life.

Room for my body.

Room for creativity.

And yes, I want room to build things that matter deeply to me.

I want all of those things to coexist.

That's different.

My Body Gets a Vote

I'm not getting any younger.

And I'm not saying that with sadness.

It's reality.

My body isn't always going to function smoothly simply because my mind has decided there is something important to accomplish.

My calendar doesn't get the only vote.

My ambition doesn't get the only vote.

My responsibilities don't get the only vote.

And even my sense of purpose doesn't get the only vote.

My body gets a vote.

So I've been asking different questions.

What does harmony actually mean for me?

What is my natural rhythm?

What is my frequency?

What am I calling an imperative simply because I've decided it has to happen?

And why would I create an imperative that contradicts my body's wisdom, the relationships I treasure, the life I want to experience, my core beliefs, or the things I say matter most to me?

That's not intentional living.

That's another form of leaving myself behind.

Expand Whole: I (Really) Choose Me!

For years, I Choose Me!® has been at the heart of my work.

But eleven losses in sixteen months have made me ask myself what choosing me actually looks like when it moves beyond words and becomes a way of living.

And one question keeps returning:

How much of my own life am I actually here for?

Not how productive am I?

Not how many people am I serving?

Not how much am I creating?

Not how much of my purpose am I fulfilling?

But how much of this one precious life am I actually present for?

That question has given me new language for something I've been learning to live:

Expand Whole™: I (Really) Choose Me!

The (Really) matters.

Because I can say I choose me while building a calendar that leaves no room for me.

I can say I choose me while ignoring what my body is telling me.

I can say I choose me while postponing Mike, family, friendship, spirituality, pleasure, and rest until after I've finished everything I believe I'm supposed to accomplish.

I can even abandon myself in the name of purpose.

So Expand Whole™ asks me something.

Can I grow what matters without becoming absent from the life that matters?

Can I contribute without disappearing into my contribution?

Can I honor my purpose and my body?

Can I build and rest?

Can I serve and receive?

Can I love other people deeply without leaving myself behind?

Can I make room for ambition, relationships, creativity, spirituality, adventure, stillness—and an ordinary afternoon in which absolutely nothing needs to be accomplished?

Can I choose my whole life?

That's what I (Really) Choose Me! means to me now.

A Way to Look at the Whole of Our Lives

As I've been sitting with all of this, I've also found myself returning to something I've been developing over time called The Restorative Weave™.

I don't share it here because I think everyone needs another framework to follow. I share it because it has given me a way to see my own life more fully—and mayb

e part of it will be useful to you, too.

The Restorative Weave holds eight interconnected layers: Infinite Healing Principles™, Seasonal Cycles™, Life Domains™, Body Wisdom™, Portals™, the Trinity Weave™, the CHOOSE Method®, and Healing Expressions™.

They give me different places from which to notice my life.

Am I treating healing as something to finish, or allowing myself to continue growing and evolving?

Am I expecting myself to function at the same pace all year, or remembering that I am part of nature too—and letting its rhythms support me?

Am I paying attention to my whole life, or only to whichever part is demanding the most from me?

Am I listening to my body, or expecting it to keep carrying whatever my mind has decided must happen?

Am I recognizing when I'm standing at a threshold and something in my life is changing?

Am I tending my Sacred Core, Sacred Surroundings, and Life Sphere—myself, what surrounds and sustains me, and how I participate in the world?

Am I making conscious choices about what I discover?

And am I allowing what I've lived and learned to take whatever expression is genuinely mine—through healing, relationships, creativity, contribution, purpose, or simply the way I live?

I don't always have beautiful answers to those questions.

I'm living them, too.

Maybe that's why they matter to me.

They bring me back to the same question that these eleven losses have made impossible for me to ignore:

How much of my own life am I actually here for?

And increasingly, I want my answer to be:

More of it.

Maybe Legacy Is Happening Right Now

Eleven deaths in sixteen months have made mortality very real to me.

But I don't want that awareness to make me frantic.

I don't want to think:

I'm running out of time. I need to hurry up and get everything out of me.

That would simply create another imperative.

Instead, I want the awareness of mortality to make me present.

Because maybe legacy isn't something we leave behind.

Maybe we're leaving it all the time.

A little essence of ourselves embedded in experiences that eventually become someone else's memories.

My friends have given this to me.

Their wisdom lives in my heart space.

Their kindness lives here.

Things they taught me live here.

Memories make me smile.

Conversations still make me think.

Pieces of them continue to influence the way I move through the world.

They left something in me.

And maybe that's one of the truest forms of legacy there is.

So I'm Asking Different Questions

Not:

How much can I accomplish before I die?

But:

How much of my own life am I actually here for?

Who do I want to spend time with?

What conversations am I postponing?

Who needs to know they've mattered to me?

What do I want to experience while my body still can?

What wisdom within me wants to be shared?

What am I building because it genuinely matters?

What am I maintaining simply because I haven't stopped long enough to question it?

Where do I need stronger boundaries so that the life I say I value actually has room to exist?

What am I willing to receive—not only give?

And perhaps:

If the people I love someday carry a little essence of me with them, what do I hope that essence feels like?

Comfort?

Courage?

Permission?

Joy?

Belonging?

A catalyst?

A question?

A safe place?

An invisible hand at their back reminding them that they can?

I don't completely know.

And perhaps I'm not supposed to.

Because I don't get to control how another person experiences me.

My responsibility is to be here.

To love.

To receive.

To contribute.

To create.

To rest.

To laugh.

To sit still sometimes.

To protect what matters.

To let people matter to me—and tell them while they're still here.

To continue serving as I serve without forgetting myself in the process.

To expand without disappearing.

To Expand Whole™.

Because I don't want to spend the rest of my life marking time.

I want to experience it.

I want to contribute to it.

I want to receive from it.

I want to love the people who are here—and let them know what they have left in me while we still have the opportunity.

I want to leave some essence of myself behind simply because I was fully here.

How much of my own life am I actually here for?

More.

That's my answer.

Expand Whole™: I (Really) Choose Me