A River Runs Through It

There’s a scene in A River Runs Through It that has stayed with me for years. Not because I’m a fly fisherwoman. I’m not. But because the river in that story feels like life itself.

Always moving.

Always changing.

Always carrying us somewhere.

The older I get, the more I realize my life has been a series of deep dives into different rivers. At the time, each one felt like the answer. The thing I had been searching for, the place where I would finally understand myself, heal, become free, or arrive.

But life, like a river, doesn’t really work that way.

The water keeps moving.

And so do we.

 

The Early Currents

 

The River of Listening

When I was a little girl, I had a tendency to wander off. Being the eighth of nine children made that surprisingly easy. I was five, six, and seven years old, living on the South Shore of Long Island, and the world felt like one big adventure.

So I’d wander.

And wherever I went, I stopped and talked to people.

There was an elderly woman with a house full of cats who invited me in for tea and told me stories about her late husband. Shopkeepers shared news about their families. Crossing guards and store clerks told me about their lives.

Most of the time, I didn’t fully understand what they were telling me.

But I listened.

Looking back, I realize how wonderfully odd it was that so many people trusted such a young child with their stories.

And I loved it.

I loved hearing what mattered to people. I loved discovering that every person carried a world inside them that I knew nothing about.

At the time, I thought I was wandering.

Now I wonder if I was being prepared.

Prepared for the work that would eventually become Voices That Matter.

Long before I knew what a writer or a scribe was, there was simply a little girl wandering through her neighborhood, listening to people tell her about their lives.

And somewhere, without either of us realizing it, the river had already begun.

 

The River of Writing

If I’m being honest, this may have been my very first dive into self-discovery, although it was a shallow one.

And before I go any further, I should probably confess something. What can I say? Shades of growing up Catholic still seep through.

My secret-and perhaps not-so-secret—guilty pleasure has long been reading romance novels. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent turning pages and falling into stories of love, longing, heartbreak, and happily-ever-afters.

Though if I’m being completely honest, I’ve never been entirely convinced they were a guilty pleasure.

Stories have a way of teaching us things. About ourselves, about what we hope for, what we fear, and what it means to be human. Maybe that’s why writing was one of the first rivers that called to me.

Years ago, I wrote a sample chapter of a romance novel and mailed it in response to an advertisement in a newspaper. Not long after, I received a letter back encouraging me to write more. I was thrilled. Excited. I even told a few people about it.

And then…

Nothing.

I dropped the ball. I got scared. I talked more about writing than I actually wrote.

Looking back, I suspect the whole thing may have been a scam. One of those advertisements  that are designed to encourage aspiring writers to send in their work. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.

But the truth is, that wasn’t the reason I stopped.

I stopped because I was afraid. Afraid of failing, afraid of discovering I wasn’t good enough, afraid of putting something into the world and having it rejected, and honestly, probably afraid of succeeding as well.

So I did what many of us do when fear visits.

I stayed where I was.

I don’t judge that younger version of myself now. I simply notice her. I can see her excitement, feel her longing deep in my soul, and recognize the spark that was trying to emerge. I can also see how quickly fear convinced her to step back onto the shore.

What’s interesting is that life has a way of circling back.

Decades later, writing returned. Not as a romance novel, but as stories. Stories of healing, grief, transformation, and ordinary people living extraordinary lives. And, my stories. My insights and truth throughout my life.

What I couldn’t do then, I find myself doing now.

Not perfectly.

Not fearlessly.

But consistently.

Perhaps that first dive wasn’t a failure at all.

Perhaps it was simply the first time I stepped into the river.

 

The River of Healthcare

I went to school excited about helping people. There was something deeply fulfilling about being of service and being present with people during moments that mattered.

Like every river, that journey took twists and turns I couldn’t have predicted. Some parts were wonderful. Others, not so much.

Over the years my work evolved through different roles in healthcare and eventually led me into the world of insurance physicals. For more than twenty-five years I traveled to people’s homes, sat at kitchen tables, collected medical information, performed physicals, and listened.

So much listening.

At the time, I thought the physicals were the work. Now I realize the conversations I was having with clients were often the real work.

People told me about their children, their marriages, their losses, their dreams, their regrets, their health scares, their triumphs, and the ordinary moments that somehow become the most meaningful parts of a life.

I wasn’t interviewing them, and I certainly wasn’t collecting stories, at least not consciously. I was simply showing up, one person at a time, one home at a time, one conversation at a time.

Looking back, I can see those years differently.

Those kitchen tables became a classroom.

Those conversations became an education.

Thousands of encounters taught me something no book ever could. Every person carries a story, and most people are longing for someone to truly hear it.

Long before Birth to 100 and Beyond. Long before Voices That Matter. Long before I ever called myself a writer or a scribe.

The seeds were already being planted.

Twenty-five years of listening.

Twenty-five years of witnessing lives unfold in living rooms, kitchens, and dens across Long Island and beyond.

I thought I was collecting blood pressure readings, heights, and weights.

What I was really gathering was an appreciation for the extraordinary stories hidden inside ordinary lives.

Voices That Matter didn’t appear out of nowhere. It grew from thousands of conversations and countless moments of human connection.

The river had been carrying me there all along.

 

The Search for Myself

 

The River of Self-Discovery

There was the river of personal growth and self-help.

For years, I followed that river with curiosity and determination. Sometimes it felt like an exciting adventure, full of new insights and possibilities. Other times it felt like hard work, uncovering old wounds and facing parts of myself I would have preferred to avoid.

There were the books stacked beside my bed, their pages marked with underlines and notes. There were workshops that opened new doors of understanding, teachers who challenged me to see things differently, and conversations that lingered in my mind long after they ended.

And there were the endless questions:

Why am I the way I am? What happened? How do I heal it?

Each answer seemed to lead to another question. Each discovery revealed another layer waiting to be explored.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that this river wasn’t only teaching me about myself. It was teaching me how to sit with uncertainty, how to listen beneath the surface, and how to honor the complexity of a human life.

Those lessons would eventually become just as important as the answers I was seeking.

 

The River of Spirituality

There was the river of spirituality. It began long before I had words for it. Learning to sit with mystery, wrestling with faith, losing faith, and eventually finding something deeper than the faith I lost. There were seasons when I was certain I understood how the world worked and seasons when everything I believed seemed to fall apart. Questions replaced answers. Certainty gave way to curiosity. What once felt solid became fluid.

For a long time, I thought faith meant having the right answers. Over time, I discovered it might have more to do with staying present to the questions. It meant learning to trust what could not be proven, to listen for wisdom in silence, and to recognize that some of life’s most important truths cannot be neatly explained. The deeper current was not about doctrine or certainty. It was about connection—to something larger than myself, to other people, and to the quiet knowing that often emerges when we stop trying to control the mystery and allow ourselves to be shaped by it.

 

The River of Tantra

There was the river of Tantra. Fifteen years and counting of exploring intimacy, embodiment, pleasure, devotion, shadow, longing, and the sacredness of being fully human. A path that invited me to meet myself more honestly, to embrace both the light and the places I once tried to hide, and to discover how deeply healing it can be to bring awareness and compassion to every part of our experience.

 

Love, Loss and Transformation

 

The River of Grief

Losing my parents. First my mother, so young, when I could barely comprehend the depth of what had happened. Then my father, at a time and age when I was able to be with both him and the experience of losing him in an entirely new way. With greater presence, understanding, and love.

And Thomas…

Losing him on my last day with the Lions. Heartbreaking and profound. A loss that carried its own weight and meaning, arriving at a moment of transition and leaving an imprint that remains with me still.

Losing Dean, my dear friend and brother-in-law.

His death blew up the world as I knew it.

Some losses arrive gently, giving us time to prepare. Others tear through our lives like a flash flood, leaving us standing on unfamiliar ground, trying to understand what just happened.

Dean’s death was one of those losses.

It shattered assumptions I didn’t even know I was carrying.

About life. About love. About choice.

About how quickly everything can change.

Losing people I thought would always be here.  Through death or separation. And, sometimes through fracture or conflict, at times the hardest to understand or navigate. 

Each loss carved its own channel through my heart. Each one taught me something different about love, and each one reminded me that grief is not something we get over.

It is a river we learn to travel.

 

The River of Africa

Perhaps one of the deepest dives of all.

It began with a call I couldn’t explain.

Long before I ever set foot on African soil, white lions began appearing in my dreams. There was something about them that stirred something ancient inside me. I couldn’t explain it, but I couldn’t ignore it either.

Eventually, that call led me halfway around the world into the bush, into silence, into mystery, and into places within myself I didn’t know existed.

Africa wasn’t simply a trip.

It was an encounter.

An encounter with the land, the lions, grief, spirit, and ultimately myself.

There were moments of awe that took my breath away and moments that stripped away everything familiar. Some experiences felt impossible to explain, while others seemed to speak directly to parts of me that had been waiting a lifetime to be heard.

I went looking for something, though I’m not sure I could have told you exactly what it was. Meaning. Connection. Belonging. Purpose. Maybe all of those things.

What I found was not an answer, but a deeper relationship with the questions.

There was another layer to that journey that I didn’t fully understand until much later.

The lions may have called me to Africa, but it was the elephants of Zimbabwe that grounded me there.

The training I attended was called The March of the Matriarchs. At the time, I thought I was going for the lions. And in many ways, I was. A year before going, I had dreamed of a white lion who placed his forehead against mine and whispered into my soul:

“It’s time to remember.”

That dream stayed with me. More dreams and messages followed.

Followed me all the way to Africa.

But once I arrived, it was the elephants of Zimbabwe who held me first.

There was something about their presence that felt ancient and steady. They seemed connected not only to the land itself but to the emotional landscape of the continent. And somehow, through them, I began to feel more deeply connected to the landscape within my own body.

They grounded me.

They slowed me down.

They taught me how to listen differently. The showed me and taught how much wisdom can be held in a bigger body as well.

Only later did I discover something that felt less like coincidence and more like a wink from the universe.

A family of elephants is called a memory.

The lions had called me.

The elephants taught me how to remember.

They held me in the emotions of the land and in the emotions I carried within myself. They created the ground from which I could finally receive what the lions had come to teach.

By the time I arrived in Timbavati, the message that began in a dream no longer felt abstract.

It felt alive.

The lions had called me to remember. The elephants had shown me how.

Africa taught me that not everything is meant to be understood. Some things are meant to be experienced, felt, lived, and trusted.

It taught me to listen differently, to pay attention to what was moving beneath the surface, and to honor mystery without needing to solve it.

And perhaps most importantly, it reminded me that life is far bigger, stranger, and more sacred than I had imagined.

At every stage I entered the water believing I was seeking something.

Now I know that what I was seeking more than anything else was myself.

Or perhaps not even myself.

Perhaps I was seeking remembrance.

A remembering of who I had always been beneath the noise, the expectations, the roles, and the stories.

A remembering that continues even now.

 

The River That Was Always There

The truth is, I realize now that this river has been with me far longer than I understood.

Long before I called myself a writer.

Long before I called myself a scribe.

Long before Birth to 100 and Beyond or Voices That Matter ever existed.

As a child, I was the one who wandered off to listen. I was curious about people—their lives, their experiences, and the stories they carried.

I didn’t know then that I was being drawn toward something. I simply knew I liked hearing people talk about their lives.

That same thread followed me into adulthood. It sat beside me in hospitals and healthcare settings. It rode with me to thousands of homes throughout my years performing insurance physicals. It sat at kitchen tables and in living rooms. It listened while people shared pieces of themselves they may not have shared with anyone else in a very long time.

At the time, I thought I was collecting information.

Now I realize I was collecting stories.

Or perhaps more accurately, stories were collecting me.

One conversation at a time.

One person at a time.

One life at a time.

Today, as a scribe, I sit with people and listen, not for facts, perfect memories, or a polished version of their lives, but for the heartbeat beneath the story. The meaning. The wisdom. The truth that lives underneath the details.

What I have discovered is that every life contains a story worth telling. Every person carries moments of joy, grief, love, loss, courage, regret, and wonder.

Every person matters.

Perhaps storytelling was never another river at all.

Perhaps it was the current running beneath all the others.

The thread weaving together healthcare, healing, grief, writing, spirituality, coaching, and the work I do today.

A quiet current that has been guiding me all along.

 

The River Beneath the River

What fascinates me about A River Runs Through It is that the river isn’t just a river.

It’s the thread connecting everything.

Family. Love. Beauty. Loss. Mystery.

The things we understand.

And the things we never will.

For years, I approached many of my explorations as though they were separate rivers.

But lately I’ve begun to suspect they were never separate at all.

They were tributaries feeding the same river.

Different expressions of the same longing.

The same question.

Who am I?

And perhaps even more importantly:

How do I become more fully myself?

 

The Places We Cannot Fix

One of the most beautiful and heartbreaking themes in A River Runs Through It is the realization that we cannot save everyone we love.

We cannot heal every wound. We cannot understand every mystery. That lesson has visited me more than once.

I’ve wanted to save people or be saved. Fix things. Carry burdens that were never mine or someone else’s to carry.

I’ve hidden truths from myself and others from a misguided intention of protection.  I’ve delayed difficult conversations because I thought someone else needed protecting more than I did.

I’ve spent years learning that love and rescuing are not the same thing.

Sometimes the deepest act of love is allowing people their own river, their own journey, and their own lessons. Even when we wish we could spare them the rapids.

Even when we wish someone had spared us.

 

Standing in the Water

These days I find myself less interested in arriving somewhere and less interested in finding the final answer.

I’m more interested in standing in the water.

Feeling what is here.

Listening.

Paying attention.

Every person sits beside their own river. Some are reflecting on childhood. Some on marriage. Some on careers. Some on grief. Some on faith. Some on death. Some on joy.

And yet beneath every story runs the same current:

The desire to be seen.

To be known.

To make meaning of a life.

To understand what mattered.

 

The River Runs Through Us

Perhaps that’s what I’ve learned from all these years of diving deep. The goal was never to master the river.

Never to reach the end or finally know everything about myself.

Be willing to enter the water.

Again and again.

To let it shape me. Soften me. Teach me.

And to trust that even when I couldn’t see where it was going, it knew how to carry me.

In the closing lines of A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean writes:

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”

The older I get, the more true that feels.

The questions. The mysteries.

Eventually, they all merge into one.

And somewhere beneath it all…

A river runs through me.