Fifty — A Decade of Becoming Reflections at the threshold

I have always loved the way the word fifty looks written down. And I have been waiting since that SNL skit came out to do my full Sally O'Malley impersonation— high kick and all. Thanks to yoga, I am still flexible enough to pull it off. I've been practicing.

Before the Threshold · The Kali Sadhana

Before Lakshmi, there was Kali. I had been deep in Her Sadhana— raw, primal, uncompromising. I painted my room dark blue, the color of the void, the infinite. As a rock and roller at heart, Kali made sense to me in a bone-deep way. I felt Her in my marrow. An astrologer once told me I was Kali and Durga in this lifetime— and something in me recognized itself in those words like an old name spoken aloud. A man who made murtis once looked at me and said, without hesitation, that my Ishta devata was Lakshmi— and I remember the surprise of it. Lakshmi felt soft to me then. Too golden, too gentle. I was more primal than that. More untamed.

And yet— they are all one. Different faces of the same vast, fierce feminine. As I cross the threshold into fifty, I feel something in me genuinely refining, settling into a lustre I couldn't have accessed before. I understand Lakshmi now. She was always there, patient as river gold, waiting for me to be ready to receive Her.

The Lakshmi Sadhana · Age 40

My forties arrived not gently, but through fire and devotion. It had begun on March 20th— I was driving the mystical coastal road to Stinson Beach to teach a yoga class for another woman's fortieth birthday, held at Jerry Garcia's beach house. On the way, I felt something shift in my lungs. Strange, because I wasn't sick— not yet. Meanwhile Antoine, my lover, was not doing well. He had spoken of suicidal ideation and I knew, in the way you know things you don't want to know, that something was wrong. As I drove, a crow flew directly across my path— the messenger bird, the omen— and something in me said: pay attention. I looked up and saw a street sign that spelled my name, Erica, differently rendered but unmistakable in its timing. The world was trying to tell me something. It would take two months of walking pneumonia to slow me down enough to hear it.

It was in that crucible of illness and devotion— forty days of Lakshmi Sadhana— that I fought my way back. And on the fortieth day, I turned forty. Each day I had gazed at Her framed photo— Her golden form, Her grace— until the Insight Timer bell rang on that final morning and I opened my eyes. And there, in the reflection of the glass, I saw myself looking back. I was Lakshmi. I emerged from the practice as from a chrysalis, the veil of two months of walking pneumonia finally lifting like mist off a morning river. I was new. I was radiant. I was Ojas— vital force, liquid gold of health — poured back into this vessel just in time.

I would need every drop of it.

The Stripping · Kali's Work

Around forty-two, Uranus squared its fateful angle and Kali came— not asked for, not invited, but undeniable. She does not knock. She dismantles. She showed me the duality of life with both hands: one open, one a sword. Everything I had built, everything I thought I was, began to spiral and shift and be taken. I moved and moved again, roots refusing the ground. A beloved fell into the abyss of their own darkness and chose to leave this world. Covid descended like a black moon over the whole of humanity and both yoga studios I had poured my practice into— my teaching homes— folded, silent as closed altars.

"All I could do was fall back into Kali's embrace, and trust that what She unmakes, She unmakes with love."

My sweet Leo arrived on a full Wolf Moon in Leo— eight weeks old, all paws and prophecy— landing at my door as if sent ahead as a sign. And then my father: pancreatic cancer, the hardest kind, and on the Winter Solstice of 2020— the longest night of the year— he crossed. The wheel turned to its darkest point and took him with it. The old world truly ended that year. For all of us. For me, in every way a world can end.

The day after he died, I went to teach a yoga class. The Winter Solstice sun was blazing— that particular fierce brightness that belongs only to the shortest day, when the light returns defiant and gold. I turned on the radio, and the first song that came on was Sweet Child O' Mine. Guns N' Roses. I burst out laughing through my tears. Because in sixth grade, my father had confiscated that very album— he'd seen the upside-down cross on the cover and, in his thick Bolivian accent, declared with absolute conviction that he would not allow me to listen to satanic music. He would not allow me to listen to heavy steel. And there he was, the day after he left this world, sending me exactly that song. His sense of humor, reaching through the veil. His way of saying: I see you. I'm still here. And maybe I was wrong about the heavy steel.

Love in the Time of Kali

And still— there was love. Kismet love. A connection that arrived through the most unlikely thread— two dogs from the same litter, finding their way to two people who would find their way to each other. It felt like fate woven into fur and moon. But not all fated things are forever. There was beauty and there was storm. When I spoke my truth that we were out of alignment, rage would rise to meet it — and I learned that love built on conditions crumbles under the weight of honesty. I had to let it go. Kali demanded it.

The Court, the Chalisa + the Departure

A long-time friend moved in, and then moved against me— the one with whom I had once sung the Hanuman Chalisa each morning, voice meeting voice in devotion. He became my adversary, and then the court became my altar. I won. The last time I saw him was while I was teaching in Sausalito— and what I saw stopped me. He had shape-shifted entirely. He was this old man now, wrapped in a blanket, shuffling slowly down the street— almost unrecognizable, and yet deeply familiar. He looked, uncannily, like Neem Karoli Baba walking past. It was my suffering servant moment. The one who wronged you, revealed as the one who cracked you open. A full circle I hadn't expected to feel so vast. He was, in his strange way, the catalyst that broke me open toward the next country of myself.

I kept asking my father where to go. Dad. Show me. I'm listening.

The Sign · Nevada City

I was leading a retreat. I was staying in a friend's home. I had considered Placerville— but the land didn't call, the soil held no welcome for my bones. Then Nevada City. A listing on Zillow I had circled in my mind for weeks— one my friend had also sent me, as if the universe were underlining it. The realtor couldn't meet me for a few hours. I drove to the property alone, asking my father for a sign from the beyond. Dad. Please. Just one sign.

The moment I pulled into the driveway, the phone rang. It was the realtor — calling my father's name by accident, a wrong number, a holy mistake.

What are the odds? Infinite. And zero. That is how the dead speak. And in the front yard stood his favorite Japanese maple tree — shaped, impossibly, into a heart.

The New Country · The Rooted Life

I am here now. Growing food with my own hands. Tending herbs. Building an apothecary and an Ayurveda line from the earth's own medicine cabinet. The hustle has quieted into something older and truer— a life I always visited in dreams but never dared to fully inhabit. The mountains hold me. The culture hums— artists and musicians and seekers who dance and pray and make art together, who gather in the way San Francisco once did, before the gold rush of a different kind swept through and scattered us.

I never had children, though that longing lived long in my chest. But I look around at this family I am weaving from shared meals and sacred ritual, from laughter and land— and I know: this is the tribe I was always building toward. The bigger vision blooms— more land, more communion, more hands in the soil, more mouths to feed from what we grow together.

If I could say one thing to anyone moving through their own decade of waves — keep going. Fifty years goes by in a flash, and what we are building, all of us, are communities of love. As Ram Dass always said, "We are all just walking each other home." Keep walking. Keep building. The home is closer than you think.

Fifty years. A decade of riding waves too big to name. Kali painted me dark blue and broke me open. Lakshmi poured gold back into the cracks. And my father — he gave me a heart-shaped tree and called me home.