The First Circle
A door. Your name, held among the first.
Not a newsletter, not a funnel — the people I keep close so I can find them when there's real work worth saying something about. One letter when it matters; nothing on a schedule but the seasons.
Step in below
What this actually is
One letter when there's something worth saying — new work finished, a door that opens, field notes carried back from the practice itself. Nothing on a schedule but the seasons. I'm not going to fill your inbox just to prove I'm still standing here.
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What arrives
New work, when it's real. An open door, when one opens. Field notes from the actual practice.
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What doesn't
No drip campaign, no content calendar, no filler sent just to keep the lights on.
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How often
Nothing on a schedule but the seasons.
Who's on the other end of this
Twenty-one years before I ever called myself a Shaman.
Twenty-one years in the U.S. Coast Guard taught me what steady looks like when the water isn't. Chief Petty Officer, retired — 350,000 nautical miles logged before the sea let me go, and years afterward teaching other leaders how to hold a room at the Coast Guard's own Leadership Development Center. Most of what people call leadership, I learned, is just presence, held long enough to matter.
Somewhere in the middle of that career, people started asking me to stand at the front of things — a wedding, then a funeral, then another wedding. Thirty weddings and five funerals, in the end, as an ordained Reverend through the Universal Life Church. Nobody trains you for the funerals. You learn that work by standing in it, and staying steady anyway.
The title I hold hardest wasn't one I picked. My own community started calling me their Shaman before I ever claimed the word for myself. I wear it now — carefully, the way you wear something given to you rather than something you bought.
Observe. Learn. Grow. isn't a slogan I chose to sound wise. It's the actual operating system underneath all of it — the Coast Guard, the ceremonies, the practice, this realm. Watch first. Let it teach you something true. Let the truth change what you do next.
If any of that is why you're here — leave your address below. That's the entire ask.
Double opt-in — you confirm before anything arrives. Leave anytime.
Curious what the practice looks like on the page? The first book is out — Sacred Thresholds, Book I: The Foundation. No pressure to open it today, or ever. See the book →