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Why do I offer so much for so little?
Because I love you just the way you are, even when we might disagree.
Rather than ending 2025 at 76 and adding something new, I am listening to my body. When it stopped negotiating, it screamed so loudly that it got my full attention.
This Had Always Worked Before
For most of my life, expansion came naturally. I stretched into new rooms and new roles. New ideas came without hesitation. My will carried me forward, and my body followed.
This year, that equation changed.
At seventy-six, I jumped out of an airplane. I had wanted to skydive for years. When the opportunity came, I said yes without drama or bravado. I trusted the experience. I trusted the instructor and myself.
Turns Out the Body Has Opinions
What I did not anticipate was how violently my body would respond to being forced past its readiness.
The freefall was fast and exhilarating. The canopy opening was not.
The jolt across my chest knocked the breath out of me. I remember whispering that I could not breathe. I was afraid to move and afraid of what might happen if anything loosened.
When I landed, I couldn't get up or even sit up. I couldn’t even hold myself upright for the interview they wanted to do afterward. People had to lift me up and walk me off the landing field.
Three Weeks to Get the Message
The following week in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, I was essentially an invalid. I was unable to walk on the beach or laugh without pain.
If coughing was unbearable, can you imagine how a sneeze feels?
For weeks afterward, every breath reminded me of what had happened.
Yesterday, three weeks later, I coughed without excruciating pain for the first time.
That was the moment the lesson fully landed.
When my body reached the state it did after the skydive, I knew I was done forcing it to expand. Nothing new is required.
This was not about age. It was about wisdom arriving through consequence.
Forced stretch damages tissue. In the body, that truth is obvious. In life, we often ignore it.
The skydive made it impossible to ignore.
I Could No Longer Pretend I Didn’t Know
At the same time, something else shifted quietly and powerfully.
For much of my life, my best work happened in partnership. As my husband and I traveled, we’d use those hours to build ideas aloud. Creation was conversational. It moved through dialogue, not effort.
As his body has required more care, the shared creative space narrowed. Not because the love changed or because the respect faded.
Pain has a way of becoming noise, and caregiving reshapes the day whether you want it to or not.
If I had nothing else to give, I would care for him without hesitation. He knows that as do I.
He also knows I still have work in me. There’s much inside of me to share.
Carrying Everything Alone Was the Real Stretch
This year, I stopped pretending I could carry everything alone.
Helen Groom entered my life through next-level speaker training, a six-month investment that looked like education but functioned more like reconnaissance. I was doing what I have always done at the poker table. Noticing and profiling.
Through reading the room, I discovered what people revealed before they spoke. I was paying attention to who invested in themselves, how they showed up, and what they might be missing.
What I found was a partner.
Helen meets me eye-to-eye. She challenges without coddling, and collaborates without draining.
She restores the shared thinking my husband once offered when his body allowed him to play there fully.
Together, Helen and I teach and speak. We build conversation-first work that feels alive again, and Legends Lounge Podcast is being birthed by two badasses. (I almost wrote “two badass bitches,’’ but I digress 😂)
Helen’s Pity Party Pivot™ and my MindShifting™ technology mirror each other seamlessly.
Me teaching poker to beginners over Zoom may seem different. But it brings me back to what I do the best. Simplifying.
Slowing things down, watching people closely, and teaching inside the moment rather than above it.
The same lesson applied everywhere.
I looked at boxes of old papers I had been holding onto and asked myself, “What to do with them?”
The answer was immediate, “Let them go!”
Releasing what no longer serves is beyond the woo. It is physical. It creates space where breath can return.
This Year Asked Me to Get More Precise
This year did not ask me to grow bigger. It asked me to stop forcing what is no longer needed to stretch.
The skydive delivered the message through pain. Partnership reinforced it through relief.
That is the milestone.
I am no longer expanding for its own sake. I am refining what already works. I am choosing alignment over force.
And for the first time in a long while, my body agrees.
This is the 3-minute movie of me tandem skydiving, and I was scared shitless!
