Standing at the Threshold
Honoring the life that brought us here while answering the life now calling us forward.
During a recent weekend meditation circle, a fellow Mystery Scholar read an excerpt from John O’Donohue’s chapter “Thresholds” in To Bless the Space Between Us.
His words made my heart sing.
They also made something in me sit up and pay attention.
“At which threshold am I now standing?”
— John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
I am in such a transition - in my life, in my body, in my work and in my understanding of who I am now - that the question felt less philosophical than diagnostic.
A threshold is a transition between a familiar identity or way of living and a new territory we have not yet learned how to inhabit. We may choose it, resist it or have it thrust upon us. Either way, it asks us to release something known before we have proof that the unfamiliar will hold us.
Sometimes a threshold is obvious: a marriage, a birth, a death, a diagnosis, a relocation, a retirement, a new job.
And sometimes it begins quietly, years before we understand what we have set in motion.
Did This Begin With the House?
Recently, one of my clients asked me a provocative question:
“Do you think this started with your whole home redesign?”
I knew exactly what she meant.
In December 2022, with Michael’s reluctant support and without anything resembling a responsible budget, I began a complete redesign of the home we had lived in for years. We did not remodel or make structural changes. But in less than four months - while continuing to live in the house - we changed almost everything we could see and feel.
We let go of approximately 90 percent of our furnishings. A few things were sold; most were given to delighted recipients. I packed 65 banker’s boxes, each holding somewhere between 35 and 40 books, and gave them to a local organization committed to finding a home for every one.
We painted every wall. Updated the lighting and electrical. Deep-cleaned the tile and grout. Replaced curtains and window treatments. Chose new furnishings, textures, colors and objects.
We spent far more than we had intended - and far more than was comfortable. It was exhilarating, beautiful and, financially, not especially prudent. All of those things are true.
My guidance to the feng shui practitioner, artist and interior designer helping us was simple:
I want to be able to turn in any direction and see beauty and feel joy.
I want my home to reflect on the outside how I feel on the inside.
I also imagined intimate salons, workshops and gatherings there. In November 2025, five women joined me in our home for a non-residential retreat. Six of us together. It was lovely. Whether gatherings like that happen regularly in this home, somewhere else or in forms I cannot yet imagine remains to be seen.
But the deeper intention had already been fulfilled.
I had put a stake in the ground.
My outer environment would no longer be asked to represent an older inner life.
The Crossing Had Already Begun
Looking back, I can see that the house was not an isolated project. It was one visible expression of a larger declaration: I was ready for greater congruence between who I knew myself to be and how I was living.
Seven months after the reveal, I had a total knee replacement. Since then, I have lost 36 pounds and am continuing to release weight. I am stronger, more mobile and more at home in my body.
My business is crossing a threshold, too.
For years, I used language that sounded something like: mom with a small business on the side.
But even that description needs to be reclaimed, because it can make the mothering sound small and the business sound like evidence that I was playing small.
I was not playing small.
I was playing very big in the arena I had chosen as primary.
Michael and I were raising four boys: Dan, Matthew - now Mattie, John Robert and Patrick, whom we call Patch. During much of that season, Dan, my stepson, was away at college and then married and launched, while the three younger boys were still in school and at home. They were the focus. My business was intentionally secondary because mothering them well was the work I had prioritized.
Today, all four are launched. They are successful and generally happy, loving, solid human beings - the kind of men people adore and would gladly choose as neighbors. They like us. They love us. They make room for us in their lives. I do not take any of that for granted.
Their accomplishments delight me: Dan has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and works in healthcare business development. He and Andrie, a genetic counselor, are raising our 11-year-old grandson, Max, in Illinois. Mattie has a Ph.D. in Physiology and is a beloved, out-and-proud professor of Physiology and Leadership in the Sciences at the University of Arizona. John Robert and Patch are Doctors of Physical Therapy who work together at PhysioShop Tucson, the respected and thriving physical therapy, athletic training and whole-wellness business John Robert co-owns. John Robert is married to Abbie, also a DPT, who delivers in-home care through PhysioShop Home. Patch is married to Natalya, whose work spans project management, HR support and gymnastics coaching.
But their degrees and professions are not the point. Who they are is the point. Three of them live within four or five miles of us. Dan, Andrie and Max visit from Illinois as often as they can. We enjoy one another. We remain part of one another’s lives.
Michael and I did that.
Not perfectly. Not alone. And not without the boys becoming themselves through their own choices, gifts, struggles and effort. But yes: we helped raise these four men. That was not a detour from a significant life. It was a significant life.
COVID brought three of our four sons back for about a year, a reminder that launching is not always a straight line. Eventually, they launched again. Patch is now 27, and for the first time the active, daily chapter of raising children at home was truly complete.
That was the threshold beneath the home redesign. The center of gravity in my life had shifted. I was ready to refresh the home, make it ours - and make it mine - in a way that reflected who I was after decades of family life organized around children.
Mother is not an identity I am discarding. It is an enduring relationship and one of the great achievements of my life. But the season in which it occupied the center of nearly every decision has changed.
I am not demoting Mother in order to promote CEO.
I am allowing the Founder and CEO, who has also always been here, to take up more space in this season.
I am claiming a truer identity (one of them, at least):
Founder and CEO of a boutique coaching and leadership consultancy built for depth, impact, reach and sustainable prosperity.
This is not a title pasted over unfinished reality. It is a responsibility I am learning to inhabit.
It is also something my clients, former and current, have pressed me on for years: Step onto a larger stage. Serve more people. They need to hear from you, learn from you, grow with you. Why do you keep staying local?
The mother who organized her business around raising four sons knows the answer. I understand and honor why she made those choices. And she is no longer the only one leading.
For most of my 23-plus years in business, revenue has been modest. I have not consistently paid myself. I have not used the business to build retirement savings or market investments. I have often barely broken even. Michael was the primary breadwinner. My income contributed to our shared life and paid for things that mattered to us, but I did not build a business that consistently paid me or invested in my future.
I am no longer willing to pretend that meaningful work and prosperity are opposing values.
I want to reach more people, make a greater contribution and make more money. I want to build an enterprise that supports my life while my work supports the lives of others.
I have set a goal to grow my income fivefold by this time next year. I do not yet know exactly how I will do that. I do know I am building the pathways: serving existing clients, writing consistently, developing signature talks, pursuing speaking engagements, preparing to record my podcast and allowing myself to become more visible.
After more than 23 years in business, I delivered my first Main Stage talk this month. It went very well. I have another speaking engagement booked for December 9, and I intend to have more 2027 opportunities booked within the next 30 to 60 days.
I am not there yet.
And I am no longer where I was.
That is the threshold.
Even Invited Change Can Be Uncomfortable
We often imagine that change should feel easier when we choose it.
It does not.
An invited threshold can still awaken fear, grief, confusion, impatience and doubt. We may miss what we willingly released. We may long for certainty about what comes next. We may question our judgment, particularly when the crossing costs more, takes longer or requires more of us than we anticipated.
Part of us wants the new territory. Another part wants the safety, familiarity and competence of the old one.
This is not evidence that the change is wrong. It is evidence that we are human and that a consequential crossing asks the whole person to participate.
There are real losses at a threshold, even a welcomed one. An old identity may have become too small, but it was once protective. A familiar way of working may no longer be fruitful, but we know how to do it. The life behind us may not fit anymore, yet it contains people, patterns and proofs of competence we have relied upon.
Crossing asks us to honor what brought us here without allowing it to determine where we go next.
That requires discernment. Grief. Courage. A healthy relationship with ourselves and our power.
It requires the capacity to stay with competing truths:
I chose this, and it is hard.
I am excited, and I am afraid.
I am grateful for what was, and I am ready to leave it.
I believe in what is emerging, and I cannot yet prove that it will work.
Wholeness is not the elimination of these tensions. It is our growing capacity to remain in relationship with all of them without abandoning ourselves.
How We Actually Cross
A threshold may feel like one dramatic passage, but most crossings are made through hundreds of ordinary choices.
One foot in front of the other.
One clear YES.
One necessary NO.
One conversation, one investment, one rehearsal, one episode, one article, one request, one brave act of visibility at a time.
We cross by listening inwardly and then creating outward evidence of what we have heard. We cross by focusing long enough for our efforts to accumulate. We cross by noticing which choices nourish the emerging life and which ones keep negotiating with an identity we have already outgrown.
We cross by allowing ritual to mark what productivity alone cannot hold.
The reveal of a redesigned home can be a ritual. So can walking onto a stage. Lighting a candle. Clearing an office. Giving away 2,000 books. Naming a new business identity. Recording the first podcast episode. Writing the check. Declining what no longer aligns. Saying aloud what we are now ready to build.
Ritual does not guarantee the outcome. Like the bell in a meditation, it signals a shift: an invitation to the mind, body and spirit to pause, listen and prepare for what is changing. It tells the psyche and the life: Pay attention. Something is changing here.
The Fruit Comes in Time
Thresholds are fertile and juicy places, although they do not always feel that way while we are standing in them.
The fruit comes over time, with effort, commitment, focus and repeated acts of alignment. Some of it arrives as visible results: a healthier body, a beautiful home, a growing business, a booked stage, a published essay.
Some of it is quieter.
We trust ourselves more. We recover faster from doubt. We become clearer about our YESES and NOs. We stop requiring everyone else to understand the life that is calling us. We learn that uncertainty can travel with us without being given the steering wheel.
And sometimes the greatest fruit is aliveness itself: the pleasure of watching the path appear beneath our own feet. The rapture of being alive.
I am having fun.
Not every minute. Not without fear or financial concern or the occasional desire for a detailed map and guaranteed return on investment.
But I can see the journey unfolding.
I am not trying to become someone else. I am making room - in my home, my body, my business and my public life - for the woman and leader who is already here. Who has always been here. And who has grown her capacity to hold what life and leadership are asking of her now.
Perhaps that is what a threshold finally asks of us: not that we know exactly what waits on the other side, but that we recognize when the life behind us can no longer contain the life within us.
“The time has come to cross.”
— John O’Donohue
And so, with heart engaged and awake, one foot in front of the other, we do.
May you acknowledge the thresholds at which you are standing, the crossings asking for your attention, and the self within you who is ready to be met.
May you pause often enough to greet and welcome that self - and to celebrate each step - making room for the fruit of your life and for more joy.
Love,
Dori
A Few Questions for the Threshold
What is a personal threshold?
A personal threshold is the passage between a familiar identity, role or way of living and a new territory that has not yet become familiar. It may be chosen or unexpected, welcome or painful. Thresholds often involve both loss and possibility.
Why can a positive life transition still feel uncomfortable?
Even welcome change asks us to release familiar roles, rhythms and sources of competence. Excitement can coexist with fear, grief, confusion and doubt. Mixed emotions do not necessarily mean the transition is wrong; they often mean the crossing matters.
How do we know when we are standing at a threshold?
We may feel that an old identity no longer fits, even though the next one is not fully formed. What once worked begins to feel flat, constricting or incomplete. It can be a murky time. Yet beneath the murkiness, we may notice a persistent inner invitation toward greater truth, congruence or aliveness.
How do we cross a major life threshold?
We cross through attention, discernment and small, meaningful choices repeated over time: listening inwardly, clarifying our YESES and NOs, honoring what we are leaving, creating rituals of acknowledgment, and taking the next honest step before the entire path is visible.
And perhaps the questions to sit with are these:
At which threshold are you now standing?
What are you being asked to honor and to leave?
What new territory is calling you?
Which YES would move you toward it?
Which NO would protect what is trying to emerge?
What is the next honest step you can take without needing to see the entire path?
What support, practice or relationship would help you meet this crossing with greater self-trust, clarity, curiosity and grace?