It’s the middle of winter in Northern California.

It’s been rainy, gray, and cold for weeks, and I’ve been really quiet.

I’ve been hard to reach.

I’ve been in the gym, in the sauna, on walks with my dog, meeting with a handful of clients, and otherwise keeping to myself. It’s felt good to do this since I got back to the West Coast. I was exhausted upon arrival.

I’d been on the go for most of last year. After summiting the emotional Mt. Everest of my personal life and demonstrating the healing process in real time, it felt good to be quiet and with myself for a while.

To reflect. To integrate. To settle into the new foundation I built for myself.

I didn’t have much to say to anyone. I’m just now starting to pick my head up and look around.

On my way back to Northern California, I found out that a really good friend of mine, Mariam, someone I had been supporting through cancer, passed away.

It broke my heart at a time when I didn’t think I had the capacity for more.

The Charlie chapter was brutal. My healing heart was still tender, and learning of Mariam’s passing landed right in my core. It hit me like a freight train.

It was devastating. And it was also the most merciful ending that could have come to her.

She had been fighting an aggressive, unforgiving breast cancer for more than a year and a half. After trying a dozen chemotherapies, radiation, and brutal surgeries, that fucking disease still spread. And in the end, there was nothing we could do about it.

I was part of a support group of women who met with her every Tuesday for a couple of hours at a time. We held space. We prayed. We sang songs of healing rooted in Native American traditions. We offered counsel and poured love into her while she fought for her life.

While I was in North Carolina, we stayed in touch. This woman, who was quite literally fighting for her life, was also trying to support me, to hold space for me, while I was fighting for mine in a very different way.

I was coming back to see her. Stopping at her house was my first priority when I returned.

I didn’t make it in time.

She had been in hospice for three weeks and died at home in Humboldt County, surrounded by the love of her partner, on the very day I headed west.

Mariam’s death and my stint in North Carolina made me think a lot about life and time. About how we choose to spend the hours of our days. Where we pour our energy and attention. How we invest our one unrenewable resource.

It made me look hard at what I was doing with mine.

While I was working with Charlie, and while I was watching my friend fight cancer, I realized something.

Eventually, all of our lives become very small.

Places we go, people we see, activities we enjoy, things we look forward to…

Over time these and all other categories that when taken together comprise our lives, our whole world, shrink around us.

Our lives contract in different rhythms. For some, it happens quickly. For others, it happens slowly, over many years. But eventually, our worlds become very, very small.

A single room in our home.

A hospital bed.

A locked memory care facility.

An ambulance.

A hillside somewhere.

Eventually, our worlds get small.

So what do we do with the time we have? And what do we do with the energy we have while we have it?

After giving the question thought over the past few weeks, I’ve concluded that I want to have a lot of ground to cover as the waters of my life recede. I want the widest, biggest ocean of experience possible so that when the waters pull back, there is a great expanse beneath them.

I want to leave it all on the field.

I don’t want to die thinking that I could have loved more, tried more, learned more, forgiven more, or experienced more.

I want to know that I gave the whole thing all of me, all the time. That I gave it my best shot. That I lived my life completely. And with enthusiasm.

And I hope that for all of you too, assuming that’s what you would want for yourself.

My version of a very big life isn’t the same as yours, and that’s a good thing.

For some people, reading every New York Times bestseller might be their version of a fully lived life. For others, it might be traveling to every continent, making memories in every time zone, seeing every bird, or drawing every sunset.

For some, a full life means going as deep as possible in one place. For others, it means widening and pushing the horizon again and again.

However it looks, there’s no single right way to live.

But if I could encourage you to do anything, it would be to live it. All of it. While you can.

Eventually, for all of us, that option leaves the table.

Right now, most of you reading this have daily options and opportunities that are varied and limited mostly by your imagination. I promise you that will not always be the case.

For some of us, it will happen really quickly. Our worlds will shrink in a moment.

For others, it will be a slow recession, gradual and methodical over time.

But it will happen.

So what are you going to do in the meantime?

What am I going to do in the meantime?

I’m going to love harder.

I’m going to try more.

I’m going to breathe deeply into all of the places where I feel stuck.

I’m going to expand my knowledge and my awareness. I’m going to cultivate an even more dynamic human within myself.

I’m going to hold myself to higher standards, while offering more compassion to myself than ever before. The two go hand in hand.

Right now, I’m in the process of upgrading discipline and reaching toward devotion.

Discipline, to me, is grounded in duty. It’s grounded in structure, requirement, and obligation. Operating from demand.

Devotion is discipline plus love.

Devotion is voluntary.

Devotion is about wanting to do it.

It’s doing something not because we have to, but because we can. Because we want to. Because something in us is pulled toward it.

Devotion carries desire. It carries choice. It carries agency.

I’m learning how to really be me in this world.

For a long time, my understanding of who I was was rooted in who I didn’t want to be.

I didn’t want to do it like her.

I didn’t want to be like him.

My sense of self was shaped more by resistance than by choice.

Now I’m far more interested in discovering what it’s like to be like me.

To do it like me.

To live like me.

I think role models are important. I think they can help us navigate our way through the rapids on this river of life.

But ultimately, you have to row your own boat. You have to point it in the direction you’re going and move it forward in the way that’s true for you.

And the only way to do that is to get good with yourself.

I’ve been incredibly blessed to have courtside seats to some powerful transformations in the lives of people I love and in the lives of clients I work with.

The more I witness it, the more encouraged I become.

The more certain I am that profound transformation is possible for all of us.

Not all of us will take the leap. But all of us have the capacity to.

Just because you can doesn’t mean that you will. And if you don’t, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.

And if you don’t do it the way other people think you should, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong either.

I think we’re all here to live our lives the way we’re here to live them. There isn’t a single correct path or pace or depth that applies to everyone.

But we are still choosing.

And if you’re going to choose, choose consciously. And give it everything you’ve got.

Live and enjoy it.

Make it memorable, make it messy, make it count.

Do it the way you do it.

Do it loud. Do it hard. Do it quiet. Do it consistently. Do it with joy. Do it with enthusiasm. Do it with wild a reckless abandon.

Do it while you can. Do it all the way.

Take no day for granted, because one day you will not have the choice again.

Make your life big while you can, and let that “big” be whatever feels true to you.

Learn yourself. Learn who you are. Be curious in that discovery.

Put down whatever judgment you’re carrying about how long it’s taking you or what you should have done by now. Put it down. It’s not helpful.

No amount of shaming or blaming yourself for who you are in this moment is going to move you forward. If that strategy was going to work, it would have by now.

I know this from experience.

Bring more love into your life.

Learn what that means to you. Learn how it feels in your body.

To me, love is a verb. It’s not just an emotion. It’s a state of being. It’s a way of moving through the world.

Infusing love into every moment of your life will transform it. It can’t not.

And having compassion for yourself when you fail to be perfect in that effort is essential.

Compassion is another form of love.

A quote I once heard said:

Now is a really good time to do your own inventory.

To look honestly at what you could learn about yourself.

And what you might need to unlearn.

I’m noticing that for me, it’s often less about adding new things and more about stopping things.

About putting things down. About clearing space.

I find that it’s usually essential for me to clear space in my life before I can invite something new in.

This year, I’m committed to learning a lot.

I’m committed to completing a yoga teacher training.

I’m committed to learning how to share my work with a broader audience.

I’m committed to listening more closely to my intuition when it’s offering quiet hints, before it has to scream to get my attention.

I’m learning how to be present.

I’m learning how to make my life as big as I can, in new and exciting ways, and in ways that feel right and true to me.

And I’m unlearning even more.

I’m unlearning how to criticize myself into achievement.

I’m unlearning how to wait for the perfect time to get started.

I’m unlearning the expectation that other people should know what I need and how to give it to me.

I’m unlearning the belief that if someone doesn’t show up perfectly in my life, there’s something wrong with them.

I’m unlearning the idea that my worth is tied to my productivity.

I’m unlearning the belief that my safety depends on what I’m able to provide for others.

So this is an invitation for you to do your own inventory. Do it honestly.

Do it with kindness and compassion. But do it from truth.

What can you let go of?

How can you begin making your version of a big life today?

With Love, Sunny