If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, most of us are in deep trouble.

Most of us have plenty of good intentions. We mean well. We have plans. We tell ourselves what kind of person we are going to be, what kind of work we will do, what kind of love we will give. Our intentions are sincere. Some of them are even beautiful. And on their own, they accomplish almost nothing. Worse, most of what we call intention isn’t intention at all — it’s an outcome wearing intention’s clothes.

Amateurs Die Holding Their Cameras

My father drifted away from the fox den to position himself for a great shot of the musk ox silhouetted against a mountain range. It’s the kind of image a photographer lives for – beautiful, powerful, dramatic.

And then the musk ox turned…and charged.

I remember as a child, lying on a grassy hillside, peering through purple wildflowers, from the edge of things.

Close to the earth. Slightly hidden. Listening.

I was the youngest in my family by eight years. The only grandchild. Aware of the adult world unfolding around me, yet somehow aware that I wasn’t quite in it.

I found a sense of belonging in nature, and in my own fanciful imagination. I found companionship in pine grove castles and the birdseye view from the maple boughs.

As I grew older, friendships took shape, but I noticed a familiar pattern. I was rarely the main character. I was the sidekick—the steady one, the supportive one, the one who helped keep things smooth around the edges.

Somewhere along the way, I formed a quiet belief:

I am not the center of the story.
I am here to be supportive, stabilizing, and easy to love.

I should stay quietly on the edges.

I have sat with so many clients who were told, in a thousand different ways, that their voice was too much. Too emotional. Too direct. Too soft. Too loud. Too political. Too uncomfortable. Just — too.

I have watched them edit themselves into something smaller. Swallow their knowing. Resort to performing a version of themselves that would finally be acceptable. Wait for the right moment, the right room, the right amount of permission to say the true thing.

That moment rarely came.

So their voice went underground. It became anxiety. Exhaustion. The specific grief of someone who has stopped trusting what they know.

This is not ancient history. It's happening now.

Thirty of us sat in a circle in a dark forest clearing in West Virginia. Singing was rising from the trees. Nobody could explain where it was coming from — it was a sound that had no source you could point to, and no explanation your mind could understand.

I had heard something like it before. The first time, I was a girl on the bank of the Shenandoah River.

The water was swollen with summer rain, rushing muddy and fast. Beside me lay a large buck — softly moaning, quietly dying. I inched closer until my hand rested on the soft velvet of his antlers.

He permitted my presence, even seemed to welcome it.

Something moved between us in that silence that I have never been able to name. No words. No fear. Just the warm weight of his breathing slowing beneath my palm, and a presence so vast and still it felt like the river itself was holding its breath.

And then — he was gone.

It's four a.m.

The village lights flicker below me — small, scattered constellations pressed into the dark mountainside. The electricity is on. Good. It's not a given here. I feel a quiet surge of gratitude for something I rarely notice until it's gone.

The coffee pot burbles and gurgles behind me, coaxing out a slow, fragrant stream of black, liquid gold — geisha coffee, grown right here in the highlands.

Not even the birds are awake.

Outside, Simon, the guard dog, sleeps – snoring softly and unconcerned. The only thought that passes through my mind is a brief awareness — it's scorpion season. A flicker of curiosity about what moves unseen in the dark.

And even that feels…neutral.

Mostly, I feel peaceful. But it wasn't always this way.