“This is absolutely it — I can’t do any more,” I thought as I lay in the grassy shade which didn’t feel like shade at all. I used up the rest of my food and Gatorade. I caught my breath.

And then — “Well, I’ve come this far.”

I kept going.

And collapsed at the next tree, the next shade.

And then kept going.

The last song I heard as I completed the 10K run was “Run the World (Girls)” by Beyoncé and I think of that moment every time I hear that song.

When I was running my first half marathon, I got a side cramp in the first five minutes. It seemed like the race wasn’t meant to be.

But the race was four loops around a park in Brooklyn, not too far from where I lived.

“I’ll just do one loop and then I’ll walk home,” I bargained with myself.

The first loop was painful. But then it was over.

“Well, I’ll just do one more loop,” I thought.

And two loops became three became four and the race was done and my side cramp had vanished.

Cancer reminds me of this. It’s not the same, but there’s a structural similarity:

I get news. I feel the shock and devastation. I think it’s too much. And then I keep going. And somehow what was unthinkable becomes normal. What wasn’t possible suddenly is. And I keep creating.

You don’t know what you can do until you do it.
You don’t know how you’ll react until it happens.

But guaranteed, however strong and resilient and powerful you think you are… you are more than that.

Most people have a phobia of bad feelings, of collapsing, of shattering into pieces.

But collapsing isn’t a problem when you know you can Chumbawamba and get back up again.

So the Rebellion isn’t to grit teeth and force through. And it’s not to avoid feelings like they’re contagious, nor to bathe in them like they’re a healing tonic.

It’s to allow experiences to move through you.

And keep going.

This is from a section called Resonance in the Liminal Space: reflections on business, money, identity, grief, relationships, autonomy.

To read the marrow-in-the-moment, the behind-the-scenes, read Rebellion Just By Existing here.

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Marsha Linehan, the founder of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, teaches that the primary dialectic is this:

the best way to change is through radical acceptance of the way things are.

I am an achiever.

I could list my résumé, and it would be impressive to certain people.

In fact, one job I worked at had a reputation for hiring “insecure overachievers,” and I was thrilled. Finally—a place where I belonged!

I carried that overachieving everywhere I went. I wanted to prove not just that I deserved a seat at the table, but that I deserved to exist at all, through excellence.

And then I got cancer.

Relationships that survived on my utility—what I could give, what clout I carried—disappeared almost instantly, one by one.

Work I had been doing for the sake of keeping busy was no longer possible.

My body—and my mind, which is part of my body—let me know, loudly, when they were tapped out and I had to take a break or pivot.

Treatment is a full-time job. I was told to watch TV and color.

I didn’t want to.

I still had the hustle voice in the back of my head:
If you disappear, you’ll be forgotten and have to start from scratch.

Then the Red Devil stopped me in my tracks. For about five days, I could not work at all. My longest “vacation” from work in years.

And… I missed my work.

I thought about the idea of starting from scratch. I remembered:
I’ve done this before. Many times.
If I start from scratch, I start from scratch. I know how to build.

So I started building—not for a quick win, but for legacy.

And for the first time in years, I wasn’t working to get something.
I was working because it fueled me.

When all I had to do was exist, all I wanted to do was create.

And I kept creating.

80K words in a blog.
Songs finally being released after years of saying “not yet.”
Programs clients tell me are changing their lives.

All while under physical duress.

Because for the first time, creation wasn’t a chore.
It was oxygen.

Both things were true at once:
I radically accepted my limits.
And I refused to believe I was limited.

Rebellion Just By Existing gave me freedom and sovereignty—to hustle my way, to work on my own terms, and to honor the rebellion of overflowing productivity in a world that insists it shouldn’t be possible.

This is from a section called Resonance in the Liminal Space: reflections on business, money, identity, grief, relationships, autonomy.

To read the marrow-in-the-moment, the behind-the-scenes, read Rebellion Just By Existing here.

Be cringe.
Be unhinged.
Be alive.

Say the thing that’s been unsaid.
Say sorry. Say I love you. Say: this matters to me.

Give more hugs. Write letters on paper and send them in the mail. Romanticize the everyday. Find the awe and wonder.

Be embarrassing. Fail publicly. Learn that you live and it’s a funny story.
Be visible, imperfectly.
Be successful publicly. Attract haters. Learn that you live and it’s a funny story.

When life hands you ice mittens, dance and sing.

Open your heart so much you could cry.
Take off your armor and amp up your boundaries.
Let yourself breathe. Let yourself be.
Rebellion just by existing.

Soundtrack: “Opalite” by Taylor Swift plus the percussive sound of ice in mittens.

P.S. There are some surprises in store… both for Rebellion Just By Existing and in general. I think you’re going to like them. Stay tuned.

Read more:
Rebellion Just By Existing
Resonance in the Liminal Space

What was is no longer. She’s a different version of her, and sometimes she misses the previous version. And those who were around her… aren’t. And she misses not just them, but who she was when she knew them.

She looks at her toddler and she sees her newborn and knows that she’ll never again have those sleepy snuggles that fit on her chest with this perfect being.

Her iPhone gives her a notification of a new photo album it autogenerated just for her — moments of glee and silliness over the years with a friend who stopped returning her messages. Not all at once, but gradually, over time, the person who knew her every thought has become a stranger. She views the photos and then puts her phone away.

She’s a specialty baker, and she loves creating works of edible art, but she used to be an executive. She used to have a title at the bottom of her email signature, proof of her status and place in the world, just before the expensive letters that trailed her name and made her believe she was moving toward something.

She looks in the mirror and sees grays on her roots and fine lines around her lips. Evidence of a life lived. Evidence of smiles. But sometimes she doesn’t recognize herself.

She braces herself and heads to the residential facility where her grandmother lives now. Her grandmother doesn’t know her anymore. She hugs her anyway. She wants her grandmother to feel the love that she has, of all of the long talks and shopping trips and getting waffle fries with lunch and sneaking her butterscotch candy. She wants to believe that her grandmother can feel it, even if she can’t remember it.

Nothing’s wrong. Her life is full and beautiful. And yet, there’s that undercurrent.

Ambiguous grief isn’t just one moment.

It’s a persistent poke in the ribs, pressing on the heart, saying in words left unsaid: love lived here.

Ambiguous, because there’s no clear ending. No closure for the mind to latch onto and settle, see the ashes, and build something new.

There’s the echo of “what if?”
Or, “could I have done something differently?”
Or, “I get it, but I wish you were here.”

She feels the instinct to close off after bone-deep pain — the way flowers close during wind or rain, the way porcupines show their quills instead of their soft bellies.

But if grief, even ambiguous grief, is a signal that this mattered… she can anchor it as love. Not fragile love. Not conditional love. But the kind of love that doesn’t need another participant because it’s self-generated, from and through.

Every aching heartbeat becomes… this mattered. I witnessed. I was here.

So she hugs her tighter, even if she doesn’t know why.
She smiles at the photos, even if she’s the only one looking.
She stands up with straighter posture as an executive even as she does the laundry.
She loves harder, because she’s learned how to transmute pain into softening to what’s beautiful.

When the world would forgive you for closing off, shutting down, numbing out, loving less…

The rebellion is… open your heart even more.

As always, this is your mirror. It’s a story about specific moments of ambiguous loss, but it’s also about:

• living in the liminal space

• showing up without reinforcement or reward

• embracing uncertainty

• identity erosion without catastrophe

• grief even when it’s change that you want

• choosing care over callousness

• being generous as a practice for yourself first

• staying open when it would be understandable not to

• evolution as a gift

You don’t have to have it all figured out to move through the liminal space.

This is from a section called Resonance in the Liminal Space: reflections on business, money, identity, grief, relationships, autonomy.

To read the marrow-in-the-moment, the behind-the-scenes, read Rebellion Just By Existing here.

She’s five years old and has big, creative ideas for how to manage unorganized play time. An adult calls her “bossy” and the kids repeat the word like it’s a taunt. She learns to wait for someone else to make the first move so that she can be “agreeable.”

She’s nine years old and the test results come back and someone who’d had trouble calls her “smart.” She learns to hide her tests and swallow big words so that she’s not seen as “obnoxious.”

She’s twelve years old and she already knows that “pretty” is not the right thing to be. She wears baggy clothes and someone comments on her body anyway.

She’s in her twenties and thirties and forties and fifties and she’s been “too much” and “not enough” in thousands of ways that replay in her head in her dimmest moments.

She’s collected “not this” and “not that” from thousands of directions — words and data inputs that she thought would be useful, held in her mind and body like a prayer offering.

But what she doesn’t know is that she’s been carrying a lifetime of shame… that isn’t hers.

Secure people don’t try to shame others for shining.

And “too much” is always “too much” for someone who doesn’t have the capacity for more, the way the ocean is too much for a teaspoon.

The teaspoon asks the ocean to make it more comfortable, to shrink, to contort, to fit into that tiny container.

But the ocean isn’t meant to be contained. It’s meant to be witnessed. And experienced.

She never needed to “be nice.” She was allowed to have boundaries and preferences.

She was never “bossy.” She is a boss. And she’s a leader. A creative force.

She was never “too smart” or “pretentious” or “you think you’re better than us?!” She has a rich inner world and way of processing that illuminates everyone around her.

And she is pretty, in the way that every being in their own light is beautiful. Her expression of her own physicality was never the problem.

She peels off all of the “not this” and “not that” and realizes that “too much” was a label assigned by those who did not root for her, who wanted her to be smaller so that they could feel better about forgetting that they, too, are the ocean.

You will always be too much for someone who doesn’t want to fully know you.

The rebellion is…

Go on and be even more.

This is from a section called Resonance in the Liminal Space: reflections on business, money, identity, grief, relationships, autonomy.

To read the marrow-in-the-moment, the behind-the-scenes, read Rebellion Just By Existing here.

It’s months later. I exit my job, step into free fall, and journey through the long, tedious process of eventually getting hired by the company everyone wants on their resume. I should be jubilant at the news, but I’m ambivalent. I’m seeing PhD and corporate executive clients and wondering how I’ll juggle my business with executive life. I hire my first coach and rename my company Infinite Liminal Space. She tells me to do a shamanic journey on what lessons I’ll learn at my new job. I do, and that same week, the offer that was locked-in… disappears. I’d learned what my soul needed to without actually joining. Years go by and Infinite Liminal Space becomes accuracy and prophecy. I find myself permanently in the liminal space in every area of life: my name, my gender, my career, my relationship, my location. I’m a digital nomad, the fancy way of saying without a home, and I wander the earth solo, making friends as I go, and yearn for a soft place to land.

I show my face and now my company is me, River Ayla. I try it on. It doesn’t feel right. I redesign my website 4 times trying to make it feel right. I miss the stars and trees. I restructure how I’m working. I don’t want to be the face anymore. I want the feeling to be front and center. I want my words to echo even when I’m not there.

What I didn’t know was that I was preparing my business to support both me and my clients while I underwent treatment for advanced cancer.
When the news dropped in via WhatsApp and ChatGPT (see this post for that story), what I needed was already in place.

Clear Resonance Lab is Infinite Liminal Space’s older, more boundaried sister.
Her communication is clean and firm. She leads with resonance and quickly pivots from anything that’s not that. But, she still experiments. Because efficiency and efficacy are her north stars, and good and great and extraordinary can still be more efficient and effective, always. So we keep evolving. She also has a team that loves the mission and the work itself. This isn’t a solo operation. This is a team built with love and that love overflows into anyone who opts in.

I changed my brand name 4 times and I can’t say I won’t again.

I’m not searching.
I’m letting it evolve as I do, as my clients do.
I love each stage and what it taught me.
And I’ll learn to love the next evolutions, too.

As always, this is your mirror. It’s a story about a brand name, but it’s also about:

• believing your intuition when no one else does

• living in uncertainty

• reinventing yourself again and again

• being prepared for something life-altering without knowing why

• building something bigger than yourself

• surviving liminality

• evolution as a spiritual practice

You don’t have to have it all figured out to move through the liminal space.

This is from a section called Resonance in the Liminal Space: reflections on business, money, identity, grief, relationships, autonomy.

To read the marrow-in-the-moment, the behind-the-scenes, read Rebellion Just By Existing here.

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