Craig-45 Years of Shalom
I started going to Shalom in 1980, and looking back, I can honestly say it was one of the most important decisions of my life. At the time, I was 32 years old and, by my own description, shut down. My mother had died when I was in high school, and I pretty well shut […]
Faye-I Am, I Can, I Will!
John Bottone and I were married for 20 years, and we have two wonderful daughters. We remain quite close. I read his story, and I thought, I have a story to tell too! My experience with Jerry and with the Mountain transformed me. I haven’t been up to Shalom in a really long time, but […]
Always Realizing Something
Emily-77 If I had to name the way I move through life, I think I would borrow the words of my grandson Lucas. He looked right at me, completely present, completely alive, and said,“Gaga, I’m always realizing something.” And I remember stopping. Really stopping. Because something in me recognized itself in that. Yes. That’s it. […]
Amelia-Love, Grief, and the Body That Knows
Shalom has held me through some of the biggest thresholds of my life. It is where I came home to my body.It is where I had a ceremony to become a woman.It is where I met my husband.It is where I mourned him.And it is where I eventually stepped into leadership. I came to Shalom […]
The Life That Was Waiting for Me
Kelly-46 A part of my purpose in this lifetime is to tell the truth. Maybe that is one of the reasons I’m here: to speak honestly, to share, to take what I’ve lived, learned, and transformed, and offer it back in some way that might be of service. I like to think I’ve turned some […]
Maxine-This is Me
For the last several years, I have found myself thinking about what, exactly, I still wanted to do with my life. My husband was sick for seven years before he died, and illness has a way of shrinking a life. In the beginning, we could still go places, still do things, still imagine a future […]
Angela-There You Are
In 2008, my life felt like it was splitting down the middle. My relationship with my spouse had ended for what would become the final time, and we had two young children together. I felt deeply trapped. I couldn’t imagine leaving because of them, and I couldn’t imagine how to stay on the East Coast […]
Speak Up and Wait
Jennifer-61 When “Speak Up” Isn’t the Solution Recently, Melania Trump encouraged victims connected to Jeffrey Epstein to come forward and testify. And something in me didn’t just disagree. It tightened. Something about that lands hard. Not because encouraging truth is inherently wrong. But it ignores a deeper, more painful reality. Many of the victims already […]
John-Discovering Shalom
There’s a moment before something beginswhen you don’t yet know that your life is about to shift. A story told by someone you trust.A change in them you can’t quite explain.Something in you leans in, even as another part pulls back. That’s how it was for me. I first came to Shalom in 1987. I […]
The Path I Didn’t Know I Was Asking For
Maria-63 The Crisis This story begins in a moment of crisis that unlocked a door to an entirely new identity and life path. If I had known that my soul was asking for a new direction, I might have recognized what was unfolding. Instead, I experienced it as too-much-to-hold, system-overload news. In deep despair, I […]