Leisha I have been thinking a lot lately about love. Not romantic love necessarily, although that is part of life too, but deeper than that.
What does it actually mean to love a life? To love what you are doing? To love the process even when the process hurts sometimes? And how do you know the difference between the ego chasing importance and the heart simply recognizing where it belongs?
I think about this a lot because there is also a tremendous amount of spiritual bypassing in the world right now. People trying to rise above life instead of fully entering it. Pretending pain does not exist. Pretending anger, grief, exhaustion, heartbreak, fear, frustration, jealousy, loneliness, or uncertainty are somehow signs of failure or “low vibration.” But life is not bypassed. It is lived. Growth is not always graceful. Healing is not always peaceful. Sometimes evolution looks like collapse, conflict, endings, deep discomfort, or being forced to confront parts of yourself you would rather avoid entirely. I do not think loving life means pretending everything is beautiful all the time. I think it means remaining present enough to keep participating in it honestly, even when it hurts.
I love Living Ground. I love what I am doing even when it is hard. Actually, maybe especially because it is hard. There is something about building something real that changes a person. The gardens, the buildings, the meals, the books, the workshops, the constant problem solving, the endless financial juggling, the exhaustion, the creativity, the failures, the people, the strange conversations, the weeds, the beauty, the uncertainty. I love all of it because it feels alive. Nothing here is sterile. Nothing here is fake. It is muddy and chaotic and deeply human.
Wisdom is realizing that life never stops teaching you, even when you think you finally have it all together. Probably especially then.
I was chatting with a friend recently about how life never really lets up. When I was younger, I felt or thought I was in this deep process of learning and eventually things are supposed to even out. Like one day we are finally going to “arrive” and suddenly understand life. But honestly, the older I get, the more I realize that is not how this works at all. Life never lets up. It just changes shape. The lessons change. The terrain changes. The people around us change. We change.
And maybe wisdom is not that life becomes easier. Maybe wisdom is simply realizing you stop panicking every time things shift. You begin to understand that change is not the interruption of life. Change is life.
What would have completely freaked me out years ago often does not even touch me now. Not because I do not care, but because experience teaches you that almost everything changes eventually. Situations, feelings, relationships, financial situations change. Opportunities appear where there once looked like there were none. Doors close and others open. Time moves everything whether we want it to or not.
And honestly, I think age, hopefully and eventually teaches a person that if everything around them disappeared tomorrow, they would still survive. Maybe not comfortably or gracefully. But they would survive. There is a strange freedom in realizing that.
I also love that who I have been most of my life is finally starting to make sense to me.
A friend recently had me do one of those personality tests and it came back ENTJ-A, what they call “The Commander.” Apparently only a small percentage of the population falls into that category and only about one percent are women. And honestly, reading through it explained a lot.
It explained why I have always felt different. Why I have always struggled trying to fit into systems that never quite fit me. Why I always seem to be building something. Why my brain never stops moving. Why I see structure and possibility everywhere. Why I cannot just sit around talking endlessly about ideas without wanting to actually create them. Why I naturally move into leadership even when I do not intend to. Why inefficiency drives me insane. Why I can hold massive visions in my head while simultaneously trying to figure out how to pay for groceries or payroll.
And honestly, it also explained a lot of the struggle.
Because intensity in men is often praised, but intensity in women is often interpreted differently. Strong vision, leadership, directness, ambition, independence, and certainty do not always land softly in the world when they come through a woman. I think for many years I tried to soften myself to avoid conflict or misunderstanding. I worried too much about criticism, judgment, accusation, or being misunderstood entirely. But the older I get, the less interested I am in shrinking myself to fit comfortably inside other people’s expectations.
And honestly, maybe that is part of wisdom too. Eventually you begin realizing that constantly trying to reshape yourself so everyone else feels comfortable is exhausting and unsustainable. There comes a point where you stop apologizing for the way you naturally move through the world. Not from ego, but from acceptance. I am intense because I care deeply. I build things because I cannot imagine not building things. My mind is always connecting, envisioning, organizing, creating, and trying to bring ideas into reality. Living Ground finally gave all of that somewhere to go.
And maybe that is part of freedom too?
I think maybe that is part of why Living Ground means so much to me. It gave direction to parts of myself that for years felt difficult to contain or understand. The constant ideas, the need to create, the endless learning, the intensity, the visions, the projects, the gardens, the books, the meals, the workshops, the conversations, the desire to build something meaningful and real instead of just talking about it. So much of my life suddenly started making sense once all of those pieces had somewhere to be expressed instead of constantly feeling like they were too much or scattered in a hundred directions.
I love my life here in Ecuador too. I love the people who embraced this wild and crazy gringo woman and somehow made space for me here.
Honestly, some of the deepest love I have experienced in my life has not always come from where I expected it would. When life became difficult, when things were uncertain financially, emotionally, physically, when I was exhausted, overwhelmed, heartbroken, or trying to carry far more than I knew how to carry, there were people who quietly stood beside me. They helped me, supported me, worked beside me, accepted me, laughed with me, and reminded me that family is not always defined only by blood. Sometimes family is revealed by who stays present during the difficult seasons of life. Not sometimes, this is family!
And I love the gardens deeply too.
There is something incredibly emotional about watching gardens mature over years. You plant something tiny and almost insignificant looking and then, slowly, through time, observation, mistakes, microbes, weather, attention, and care, it begins becoming something entirely different. Shade appears where there once was none. Soil softens and darkens. Birds arrive. Water moves differently. Systems begin forming. Life begins supporting more life.
One of the greatest pleasures of mature and wise gardens is finally meeting the underground world beneath. It comes with time. The fungal networks, the smell of living soil, the softness, the roots, the moisture, the endless movement of organisms beneath the surface. I have moved so much throughout my life that I have only really had glimpses of this kind of maturity before. To stay long enough to watch soil truly come alive under your care changes something inside of you. Even if I were to fall in love again someday, I think I would still choose to begin another garden from scratch just to experience that underground world forming all over again.
Gardens teach patience because nothing truly alive can be rushed, and the things that endure are almost always built slowly.
And I love the strange characters life brings here too. Living near Vilcabamba exposes you to some truly rare and peculiar people from all over the world. Wanderers, healers, artists, misfits, visionaries, broken people, brilliant people, people trying to reinvent themselves, people trying to escape themselves. And somehow we can sit around tables together eating food, talking about life, laughing, disagreeing, sharing stories, and not tearing each other apart over nonsense that ultimately does not matter.
That feels increasingly rare these days.
I love the people who are no longer in my life too, whether because they passed away or because life simply moved on and away. Every single one shaped me somehow. Even painful relationships eventually teach something important, maybe especially the painful ones. I have not been able to have any relationship with my only granddaughter, Kaya, and there is a particular kind of grief in loving someone so deeply while having no place in their life. But I also think love sometimes means leaving the door open without force, without bitterness, and without trying to control the outcome. So I wait with a huge open heart and trust that life still has many chapters left unwritten.
And I think that is something people do not talk about enough. When people move on, whether through death, distance, conflict, growth, or simply life unfolding in different directions, a version of you moves on too. Relationships shape identity. They shape routines, thoughts, emotions, dreams, reactions, even the way you see yourself. So when someone leaves, it is not only the loss of them, it is also the quiet ending of the version of yourself that existed in relationship to them. And I think part of healing is allowing those older versions of ourselves to be loved too, instead of endlessly trying to drag them forward into lives they no longer belong in.
Today, I love that I finally feel freer to express myself, honestly and unappolgetically.
For a long time I felt trapped behind judgment and accusation. I filtered myself too much. I hid and cowered. I held back too much. But freedom to express is powerful. There is something deeply liberating about eventually realizing that you do not need permission to become fully yourself.
Today, I love the failures and challenges. I love that life still forces me to adapt. I love that change always creates the possibility for something new. I love that after all these years I finally understand that what I am doing is not random at all. It took a very long time to realize what I was actually meant to do with this life.
But I do love my life. Here is to more loving…to come!
