A Letter from the Abyss

Midjourney prompt: “An illustration of a typewriter floating in the abyss”

Hey, hello, and tbh… what’s happening?¹ It’s been a minute. Actually, it’s been about five months. How have you been? Seriously, I’d love to know.

Me? I’ve been floating in the abyss.

I suppose I’ve been in some level of “abyss-ness” for two years, since I stepped down from the company I cofounded, moved across the country, and set out to… not sure what. Find myself? Figure out what I wanted to do next? Discover why my life had an everpresent sensation of numbness and anxiety most likely rooted in shadows from my childhood? Yes… all that.

Then over the past five months, a public interpersonal conflict and a series of family health emergencies swept me like a rip tide out to the deep end of my abyss.²

I had a choice. I could try to escape the rip tide and swim back to shore, where it’s safe and there are cool shells, or I could surrender, let the tide take me, and see what happens.

I decided to surrender.

To do so, I had to drop everything. I stopped writing this newsletter. I stopped using social media. I stopped taking on new clients. I went inward. Deeply inward. I entered the abyss.

🕳️

In the “Parable of the Trapeze” (sent to me by

❤️ Jenny Blake

), Danaan Parry beautifully illustrates these moments in life:

“Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It carries me along at a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I'm in control of my life[…]

But every once in a while as I'm merrily (or even not-so-merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of me into the distance and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It's empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that, for me to grow, I must release my grip on this present, well-known bar and move to the new one.

Each time it happens to me I hope (no, I pray) that I won't have to let go of my old bar completely before I grab the new one. But in my knowing place, I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar and, for some moment in time, I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar.”

That’s what the last five months have felt like. I let go of the last bar and have been hurtling through space… floating… unsure when or if the next bar might come.

---

A Tour of My Abyss

A New Yorker cartoon Jenny Blake said reminded her of me.

It’s hard to describe what being in the abyss feels like.

Emily McDowell

describes it as, “…the feeling of being in a very small boat, in the middle of a very big ocean, with no visible land to navigate by.”

That feels right.

You’ve lost sight of where you’ve come from, but can’t yet see where you’re meant to go. You know there’s something out there, calling to you, but it’s beyond the horizon.

In his book “Transitions”, William Bridges calls this the “neutral zone”. “People go through an in-between time when the old is gone but the new isn’t fully operational”, Bridges explains. “It is when the critical psychological realignments and repatternings take place.”

There’s nothing to really do when you’re in the abyss. You can only surrender. Alan Seal describes this uncomfortable sensation, “For whatever reason, you feel caught. Much as you might like to move on, you realize that something is going on inside, and you can’t hurry the process. It will take as long as it takes.”

So you float.

The “sunken place” from the critically acclaimed film “Get Out”.

But, in the stillness, there’s a flurry of motion.

In

Expanding States

, Jenny writes about “Śūnyatā”, the Buddhist concept of the void. “It isn’t just emptiness or nothingness. It isn’t nihilistic. It’s crazily alive. It’s where we experience a profound understanding of the nature of reality.”

For the first time in my life, there was nothing to distract me from sitting with myself. No work. No travel and adventure. No drinking or smoking. I took away all the distractions, all the numbing agents. There was nothing but space for my inner voice to fill. And fill it did.

It brought me right up close to my shadows. At the core of it all, I discovered a deeply seeded belief that “I am not enough”.

To fill that void of “enoughness”, over the course of my life, I formed a constellation of “parts”³. These parts focused on reputation, success, money, people pleasing, conflict avoidance, perfectionism, creativity, moralism, competition… all things I thought would make me feel like I’m enough. There was also the “inner critic” who would judge all the other parts for never being successful enough, liked enough, moral enough, etc.

Of course, it never worked. It just reaffirmed the belief that I wasn’t enough, that I needed external validation to be enough.

It’s been a raging internal battle and the source of my anxiety and depression.

I discovered that the work I set out to do two years ago when I stepped down from my company, the work that’s been waiting for me my entire life, was to discover the place within me that was already enough.

How do I tune into enoughness? How do I show up to my work, my relationships, my parenting, my art, and every aspect of my life, from a place of enoughness?

These are the questions I’ve been asking. This is the journey I’ve been on.

---

What I’ve Been Doing

Fortunately, the tide brought me a lot of support. I’m not sure I ever believed in the idea that if you surrender the universe will bring you what you need. In this case, it did.

Here’s a list of some of the people, groups, and practices I’ve been working with:⁴

1. A conflict and transformative justice coach approached me after witnessing the conflict unfold. We started working together to help me show up as openly and consciously as possible. It’s helped me navigate both the interpersonal conflict and, surprisingly, my inner conflicts.

2. A friend invited me to a chat group for founders on spiritual and consciousness journeys where I found dozens of people navigating many of the same questions and shadows as me. It’s been a wonderful blessing and has led to a number of fulfilling new relationships like…

3. After I posted in the chat group about my struggles with “enoughness”, an Internal Family Systems (IFS) coach named

   Derek Haswell
   reached out to me and suggested I try IFS. He offered to be my guide and we started working together. It’s been the most impactful practice I’ve found for tuning into my “parts” and finding “enoughness”.

4. Steven Schlafman
   and
   Peter Corbett
   announced they were hosting a retreat for founders navigating their next chapter. “That’s me!” I said, and I quickly sent my not-so-small payment without knowing much about what it would entail. I expected exercises on choosing your next project, visioning and values workshops… that kind of stuff. It ended up being none of that. What it did include was two very intense breathwork sessions (there was lots of sobbing and roaring), six hours sitting in one spot in the woods, cold immersion in a lake, a sound bath, and morning and evening Zazen meditation sessions. It ended up being exactly what I needed. (Peter is hosting another one in May).

5. That retreat led me to commit to a daily Zazen meditation practice⁵, which I later deepened further with a weekend retreat at the Zen Mountain Monastery where I lived like a resident for three days in the Catskills. Zazen has helped me connect much more deeply to my body, to my emotions, and to practice surrender. It has helped me tune into “enoughness” which I’ve found is the same as “oneness”, “awakening”, “abundance”, and the many other words people use for “nonduality”.

6. I found a new therapist locally who I’ve been meeting with weekly. It’s been a helpful space to talk about and process all the things coming up in my other practices and in my life generally.

7. Every Friday I’ve been doing long solo hikes and nature sits. I made a list of hikes in the Hudson Valley and choose a different one every week. I also do multiple short hikes in the woods by my house every week. I feel a sense of peace and presence in the woods. It teaches me a great deal about enoughness and surrender. It’s my happy place.

8. My sister (in-law but we don’t like using that term, there should be something better tbh) and her partner invited me to start going to the gym with them. So I’m lifting weights again for the first time in 15 years, and committed to a healthy, high-protein, high-calorie diet. I’ve only thrown out my back once so far!

9. I’ve been writing morning pages to start each day. It helps me get *all the things* out of my head. When I find myself deviating from “enoughness”, I use journaling to tune into what’s happening internally. I use Notion for this, where I also track my mood, health, diet, phone usage, and sleep every day.

10. I’ve been having much deeper, more vulnerable 1-1 conversations with friends and professional peers. There are a number of people I’ve been checking in with monthly. Some are supporting me. Some I’m supporting them. Some we’re supporting each other. My calls don’t drain me anymore. They are usually 60+ minutes and are either in-person or on the phone (like an actual phone call) while walking in the woods. They’ve been delightful.

11. I’ve been present with my family. I’ve built (and destroyed) countless magna-tile towers with my kids, cooked dinners my kids refuse to even sniff, watched The Sopranos (we’re on Season 5 and if you spoil anything I’ll have you “taken care of”) with my wife, and spent long weekends in Long Island with my parents.

12. I’ve felt hungry for learning in a way I haven’t in a long time. I’ve spent much of my free time consuming long-form content: reading books and newsletters and listening to podcasts.⁶ I also started taking Hebrew classes at the local JCC. Staying totally off social media for five months has been a big shift in how I consume content. I don’t think I want to go back.

It’s been a full reboot.

More moments than not, I’m feeling grateful, calm, and at peace.

I still have moments where I feel anxiety, where my shadows show up, where tension and anxiety arise. I still get hijacked with fear, envy, competition, self-doubt, etc. My ego is still there. But I’m building a more keen awareness of when it arises, and I have tools that help me return to enoughness.

I asked my wife the other night if she’s noticed anything different about me since I started doing all this work. She said, “Actually, you haven’t had an ‘off day’ in a while”, which is what we call my short, sometimes not-so-short, bouts of depression. I’m not getting caught in the downward spiral nearly as often.

I’m not “crushing it” and I’m not getting crushed. I’m balanced.

I’m enough.

---

Where am I floating next?

People keep asking me what I’m doing and I keep responding, “I’m in the abyss”, to which they either awkwardly chuckle and change the subject, or they give me a deep, knowing look because they, too, are familiar with “the abyss” 🕳️.

That said, I’ve started to catch sight, just barely, of the shoreline on the other side.

I can’t quite see it yet. I still have a lot of questions. I still find myself reaching for the old trapeze bar.

In a recent

SatPost by Trung Phan

, Phan shares an essay titled, “Second Wind” from Václav Havel, a Czech playwright and former President, about the three choices an artist faces after achieving “success”. It captures the struggle I’ve been experiencing with deciding what to do next:

“Sooner or later, however, a writer (or at least a writer of my type) finds himself at a crossroads: he has exhausted his initial experience of the world and the ways of expressing it and he must decide how to proceed from there.

He can, of course, seek ever more brilliant ways of saying the things he has already said; that is, he can essentially repeat himself.

Or he can rest in the position he achieved in his first burst of creativity, subordinate everything he learned to the interests of consolidating that position, and thus assure himself a place on Parnassus. 

But he has a third option: he can abandon everything proven, step beyond his initial experience of the world, with which he is by now all too familiar, liberate himself from what binds him to his own tradition, to public expectation and to his own established position, and try for a new and more mature self-definition, one that corresponds to his present and authentic experience of the world.

In short, he can find his "second wind." Anyone who chooses this route—the only one (if one wishes to go on writing) that genuinely makes sense—will not, as a rule, have an easy time of it. At this stage in his life, a writer is no longer a blank sheet of paper, and some things are hard to part with. His original elan, self-confidence, and spontaneous openness have gone, but genuine maturity is not yet in sight; he must, in fact, start over again, but in essentially more difficult conditions.’

Phan summarizes the options:

1. Repeat the exact same thing as past successes

2. Build on top of past successes but remain in the same creative lane

3. Find a “second wind” by trying something completely new

I’m no longer a blank sheet of paper. I’ve been building and teaching Community for business for 15 years. It was my first wind and the only one I’ve known. It’s very hard to let go of that identity.

In this moment, I know I don’t want option one. I don’t want to keep doing the same thing. I feel drained by the battle of proving the ROI of community to businesses, and the tension of building community in a container where it’s not a true priority.

But I’m torn between options two and three.

For option two, there are still elements of community and human connection that are calling to me. There are still big themes around loneliness and social health I feel excited to work on. I still enjoy working with community leaders and businesses where community is the core priority.

For option three, the “second wind” I feel guiding me is more intimacy, more depth, working more directly with individuals to help them feel seen, to help them heal, to help them do meaningful work. Or maybe it’s something completely different I haven’t yet seen.

I don’t know where exactly the tide is taking me.

Alex Dobrenko`

shared a passage in his newsletter from “Letters to a Poet” by Maria Rilke that I’m keeping close to my heart:

"I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

My purpose, in this moment, is to live these questions and see where they take me.

---

A few projects that have been emerging

These are the paths that are starting to emerge. I’m following where my heart is taking me. I don’t know where they lead.

1. I’m starting to write again.

This post is my attempt at getting words out there and starting up a regular publishing cadence again.

I don’t know what direction this newsletter will go. I’m still planning to research and write about human connection and community. I also have a lot I’d like to share about my journey with inner work and seeking “enoughness”.

One interesting theme unfolding for me is the weaving of “community work” and “inner work”. How our “parts” show up in our relationships and communities and how our communities and relationships show up in our “parts”. How the way we navigate conflict internally is connected to how we navigate conflict in community. How belonging with others starts with belonging with Self. What does building community look like from a place of “enoughness”? I’m excited to explore this intersection more deeply.

There’s a part of me that’s afraid to start publishing again. Afraid of becoming attached to likes, comments, and subscriber counts again. Afraid of seeking enoughness through external validation. But writing is something I love. I love the craft. And I love the connection it brings with all of you. I’m hoping I can come to it from that place of love and connection.

2. I’m supporting a couple of friends on their projects.

They’re both focused on helping founders and high performers navigate transitions and connect around inner-work journeys. Both are very intimate and hands-on community experiences, one an online cohort and one an in-person retreat. They’ve both been delightful to work on.

I’m not making any money on these projects. I do have to start earning income again soon because my existing clients have now wrapped up and my kids eat a small country’s worth of berries. We’re also hoping to one day afford a house in the United States of America.

I’m doing my best to trust that “surrendering to enoughness” will bring me to do the work I’m called to do, and that will lead to sustainable financial security.

Which leads me to my third project…

3. I’m shifting my work to a coaching practice.

Slowly, I started to shift how I worked with my consulting clients to more of a coaching format. I started working less with teams and more with individuals. I’ve been working with them on both community work AND their inner work journeys.

The truth is I’ve always enjoyed being a coach. I often naturally take on that role for peers at work. My friends in college jokingly called me “Dr. Spinks” because I’d always sit with them and talk through their problems. I get a great deal of energy from going deep with people.

I don’t know exactly what form this coaching practice will take but I sense there’s a powerful opportunity at this intersection of “community work” and “inner work”.

I recently updated my coaching page. I’d LOVE any questions, reflections, challenges, poems, or soliloquies you feel called to offer me on this new direction. And please get in touch if you’d like to explore working together and we’ll set up a complementary call. Note: I’m offering a few sliding-scale pricing slots for those who need it.

So that’s what I’ve been up to.

I still feel like I’m in the abyss, but I’m getting more comfortable in it. Maybe you never leave the abyss. You welcome the abyss. You accept the abyss. You become the abyss.

Maybe the abyss is enoughness, and we are all already enough.

---

So what’s up with you?

1. What parts of this post landed with you and your life experience? What parts made you feel seen? What parts made you feel unseen? What are my blind spots?

2. How have you navigated the question of “enoughness”? What have you learned?

3. Tell me about your abysses (abyssi? asbyssum?). How did you decorate?

4. Seriously how do kids eat so many berries?

6. What questions do you want to ask?

1. I love how

Alex Dobrenko`

opens his newsletters and seem to have channeled him here.

2. I’m not going to get into the details of the conflict or family health emergencies today as they’re still unfolding and I want to be respectful of everyone involved. I expect to reflect on it all here one day.

3. “Parts” is a term I learned from Internal Family Systems, a practice that has had a profound impact on my life in a short amount of time. Here’s a brief intro on how it works. The book “No Bad Parts” is a good primer. I recommend working with a coach or therapist on this practice, it’s helpful to have a guide.

4. I’m not sharing any of this as advice because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s how little I know. And I’m conscious of how I’m sharing from a place of ego. There’s a part of me that’s saying, “Look at all the intense inner work I’ve been doing! Aren’t I awesome?” I see that part. When I tune into “enoughness”, I know I’m sharing this because I value transparency, to connect with those of you who see yourselves in this journey, and to offer some potential paths to those of you who feel lost in your own abyss.

I also want to acknowledge that I have a great deal of privilege that has been present throughout this journey. I’m a white, straight, able-bodied, financially stable, cis male human. That gives me access to networks and support systems that people from marginalized groups may not have (though I will say that finding safe emotional support spaces for people like me hasn’t been easy). I had the ability to take the time off from work to focus on myself and the ability to pay for support. I’m not rich and this period has come at a significant financial cost to me and my family, but I was able to make that choice and survive (so far). If you feel like you can’t safely do this work on yourself, email me, and I’d be happy to help you find accessible paths. Most of the people and practices I’ve found have accessible options for those who can’t afford them.

5. Zazen is “sitting meditation” or “just sitting”. It is the primary meditation practice in Zen Buddhism. The traditional format is sitting on a cushion cross-legged (with alternative positions available), eyes open, looking down, and counting your breath (until you can release the counting), for 30 minutes at a time.

6. Here’s a list of some of my favorite books, podcasts, and newsletters I’ve been consuming around these themes:

1. The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer

2. Transitions by William Bridges

3. Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown

4. Emergence by Steven Johnson

5. The Pathless Path by

   Paul Millerd

6. When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön

7. We Will Not Cancel Us by Adrienne Maree Brown

8. What’s Our Problem by Tim Urban

9. Untethered Soul at Work by Michael Singer

10. The End of Your World by Adyashanti

11. The Creative Act by Rick Ruben

12. The Will to Change by bell hooks

13. Pod: Breaking Down Patriarchy with Amy McPhie Allebest

14. Pod: Emerge with Daniel Thurson

15. Pod: Curious Humans with Jonny Miller

16. Pod: The Art of Accomplishment with Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler

17. Newsletter:

    Where the Road Bends
    by
    Steve Schlafman

18. Newsletter:

    Both Are True
    by
    Alex Dobrenko`

19. Newsletter:

    What Do We Do Now That We're Here?
    by
    Rosie Spinks

20. Newsletter:

    Consciousness ∞ The Doorway to Human Evolution
    by
    Scott Britton

21. Newsletter:

    Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h with Jenny Blake
    by
    ❤️ Jenny Blake