It’s been six years today. On August 15, 2019, I set out on a three-month open-road motorcycle sabbatical, determined to transform my life-long depression. I called the journey Inward Ride. Over time, it became far more than a trip.

For three months I rode through California, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah—camping, staying in people’s homes, writing, and reflecting. I shared blog posts then, and when the pandemic began in 2020 I stopped publishing. Still, I continued writing privately and working quietly to transform the legacy of depression.

In 2019, I experienced a watershed moment in my life. After forty years of treatment-resistant, chronic depression, I had reached rock bottom. What once kept me afloat no longer held me. But what would?

The answer, surprisingly, was the thing I knew least about: how to be myself. Not as an idea, but as the truth beneath every attempt to impress, to be accepted, to belong. From that raw place, I began a practical journey—slowly, steadily—of living more honestly, letting go of who I wasn’t, and slowly uncovering who I was. Rock bottom had stripped away posturing and pretense. From there, even the smallest steps—provided they were rooted in personal integrity—counted as progress.

To create perspective, I asked myself a simple question: What would I do if I had been diagnosed with a terminal illness? The answer was immediate: I would go on an open-road, motorcycle journey.

So I did.

Now, in 2025—six years to the day— I stand in new territory. I am an Internal Family Systems Institute trained IFS Practitioner and a Certified Life Coach, successfully guiding others through transformations of their own. And I now resume the public telling of a life shaken and transformed.

What has happened since 2019? How do I live now? Is depression still present? How did those three months of open road shape the years that followed? How successful was the experiment of living as myself? And how does the work I now do with others connect to my own process of overcoming chronic depression?

Over the coming weeks, I’ll share that story—the journey from then to now—with you, along with the practical steps that helped me change my life.

Your presence meant a great deal during Inward Ride in 2019. I look forward to your company once again.

After a couple of months working in the kitchen at a restaurant in a ski-resort town – still in the French-speaking region of Switzerland – I got a job as a kind of nurse-assistant in a place that was a blend of a hospice and a mental institution, where I ended up staying for nearly a year. There they provided all the training that I needed to perform such a job. “Residence Victoria,” as it was called, housed about thirty residents/patients with different stories and conditions, but they all shared the fact that their lives were probably going to end there. And for two of them they did, during my shifts, right before me.

One of the residents was a minuscule old lady who had the energy, playfulness and the giggle of a toddler. She seemed to be about a third of my size, and that relationship between the physical space that each one of us occupied seemed to further fan her mischievous nature. She was all heart and kindness and was adorable to be around. Everything was an excuse for a joke: while bathing her, dressing her, taking her downstairs for breakfast with all the other residents. She was always immersed in her magical present, never aloof, never checked out.

After shopping for groceries last week, I had an experience that made me think of that minuscule Swiss lady of 30 years prior. It also brought back the sense of magic that pervaded the 97 days of my solo motorcycle travels, between August and November of 2019.

A lady in her 80's laboriously pushed a supermarket cart in my direction at the Trade Joe's parking lot in Ventura, California. I tracked her incremental progress until she pulled up to my left, nearly brushing the motorcycle with the cart, and that is when I saw how small she was. Standing a little taller than my handlebar, she must have been a little over 4 feet (1.22 m) in height.

Softly but intently enunciating every word, she commented, "that's a big one," referring to my BMW R1200GS Adventure motorcycle.

Her tempo slowed down my world. I smiled, and agree with her, "yes, it is!”

"Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?” I asked.

”Yes, when I was young.”

That must have been in the late fifties, early sixties, before the time when I was born. 

Although apparently frail, and despite moving and speaking slowly, her stamina and piercing presence affected me, gently but firmly jolting me away from thoughts, landing me there, before her.

She started pushing the cart again, headed for the entrance of the supermarket. She let her left hand loose from her handlebar and grabbed my hand, and she said, "Ride safe. And have a good year."

The minimalistic tone with which she uttered her wishes for my future, rather than sounding bland, only seemed to emphasize the loving charge that they conveyed. Taken by her sweetness, by the sweetness of the exchange, I felt speechless as I watched her move away. I didn’t want her to leave just yet…

From behind the invisible curtains of my future she had walked through the stage of my life, and was already leaving toward my past.

I wanted to expand the pleasure and the sense of connection that I was feeling. I wanted to memorialize it. I thought of going after her and asking to take her picture. Instead, I chose to let the moment dissolve on the outside while it continued evolving inside of me. And as it did, still in the parking lot, this essay that I’m now writing started taking shape.

It wasn’t playfulness that reminded me of the minuscule Swiss lady, but the quality of presence of my newly-met American little old lady, this invisibly felt impact that another human can have on me, after entering my awareness, unannounced, and disappearing in the same way.

My Inward Ride travels were filled with such moments. Perhaps, while living my daily life in the town and state that I call home, I can still cultivate such magic and delight of fortuitously encountering other humans, if only I can keep away the jaded bubble of protection that the “home” gestalt seems to grant my daily life.

To respect the linearity of my storytelling, I have lowered the frequency of my posts. It takes time to flesh out an honest report of the events while still living them fully. I have been a professional photographer for most of my life, using images to tell stories. But recently, I have prioritized the inward perspective of written essays.

Still, how to write about intimate experiences such as falling in love and experiencing your beloved’s presence for the first time, while still preserving the privacy of that intimacy? This one, as well as my two previous posts (First essay, here.  Second, here. ) are such attempts.

I got to the Airbnb-rented house half an hour before she did after a short ride from Twentynine Palms, the neighboring town where I had spent the previous night. I had stopped at the Joshua Tree health food market to grab groceries and flowers, but had found no flowers. And no eggs.

I parked the bike by the front door, circled the house – the smallest of the three rental units on the property – and unlocked the back door. I inspected every room, and to my delight, the chosen Casita felt like a welcoming home to our first encounter as a couple, with a perfect combination of comfortable and modern decor. It was clean, elegant and inviting. I was still missing the flowers for her, but I didn’t have enough time to fetch them in the next town. I unloaded the motorcycle and changed out of my riding suit. Now I could relax into the exciting anticipation of her arrival.

She pulled in a few minutes later. I walked up to her and was filled with joy when I saw her glowing smile through the windshield. She came out, walked toward me, and we hugged in silence.

I had played out this scene many times before in my mind. We both had. Yet, it unfolded in an unpredicted way. Unlike the expansion that I had experienced thus far, this time around I found myself closing off. It was a strange experience adjusting to the spacial representation of her, as though she were a separate person from the one I had fallen in love with during our FaceTime calls; I found myself being distant, nearly avoidant. And I was freaking out with my own response.

Utter loss of control: first, opening my heart, then fearing opening my heart. And for a couple of hours, I remained at the mercy of fear. And weirdness.

Slowly, my defensiveness became clear; this was the first time that I was opening again after an important, long-term relationship had ended. Unbeknownst to me, I had been both eager for and also dreading new emotional involvement. The nearly one month of FaceTime connection had hidden this from me, but now that we were physically together, the fear had been unveiled.

You see, we never really had a “honeymoon phase” of blind idyllic adoration. We had adored each other, yes, but in the bright light of our humanity. Because of our stance of vulnerability since the very beginning, ghosts from each other’s wounding had already arisen, and we had confronted them. 

This time was no different, and we addressed the challenge thoroughly. On Saturday, my mind was present again in the same location as my physical body, and our intimacy and trust were bright and sharp, as was the glorious desertscape of Joshua Tree. We indulged in time at the house, then went for a sunset visit to the National Park only a few minutes away. The photos you have seen @inwardride, on Instagram, were taken during that visit. 

On our way back, we stopped at the local Thai restaurant. As we walked in, the owner, with a heavy accent, shouted to us, “We ran out of food…!” Her customers had also heard her, and as in a crescendo of a dramatic TV commercial, they all stopped to look at us. Silence in the room. I looked back at them, all sitting motionless across the small, packed restaurant, waiting for their own (probably very limited) chosen dish to be served, frozen in a half-stunned, half-dull, gaze. It was in Twentynine Palms, fifteen miles away, that we finally had our Thai dinner.

Sunday came too soon. During breakfast in town, away from the weekend crowd that had devoured all Joshua Tree’s Thai food, a couple shouted out as she walked by: “Hey! You’re slaying it with your style!” We both laughed with joy and complicit mischief.

At the bakery, a couple approached us when they matched my riding suit to the packed motorcycle that they had seen outside. They had traveled together to Alaska on a BMW R1200 GS Adventure a few years earlier. We all sat down, exchanged stories and I marveled at the idea of riding two up and camping. (Already fully loaded while riding alone, I wouldn’t know how I’d do it.) They both recognized and pointed out how we were glowing, and the wife asked us to tell the story of how we’d come together. Holding my hand, she started. It was the husband, only a couple of minutes later, who interrupted her mid-way and hijacked the conversation, diverting the subject. His jolting intervention was curious to me; I’ve always wondered what internal discomfort prompts such abrupt interruptions…

It suddenly felt like we had spent too much time socializing, when, in fact, we were about to say good-bye. But we didn’t. At 3:00 p.m., we caravanned West, taking turns at following each other. Our short 48-hour encounter had barely addressed the urge to be with one another, and we returned to the way it all had started: our mobile phones. Although in separate vehicles, still together, we milked every last bit of our proximity, until we could meet again in person.

She had become part of my journey.

One more month is nearing its end. It is Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. I suddenly notice trees turning half-red here and there. At this time last year, I was in Jackson, Wyoming, witnessing an aspect of nature that is foreign back home in Southern California.

People at older stages in life usually confess to their concerns and resistance to entering into the “dating world”. But there is something very special about starting a relationship later in life, in one’s forties or fifties (which might get even better with time). Despite being more wounded and perhaps cynical after ended relationships, provided that both have done deep inner work, there is a joy of being authentic, vulnerable and bold that outweighs those concerns. That is what is happening to us.

Telling the story of my life to a new person is like planning the arc of a novel: how much do I tell, how soon? What is wise to divulge? I settle on just being real. 

She crosses my mind all the time, and there is an impulse to write her a little note here and there, to express the desire to connect, to update her about what I’m doing, how I’m feeling, how I miss her. Our last FaceTime call, which ended at 3:00 a.m. this morning, lasted five hours. Personal record, even for someone often so hungry for connection.

The weather has changed many times today already. The heavy clouds and sunny patches give way to a pale gray sky, thunders and a sudden drizzle. Lightning strikes northwest of here, and three seconds later I hear its thundering roar. The thundering continues, and I laugh at the prospect of riding in the rain tonight for dinner at Kris and Nathan Fant’s house. As Kris herself had told me before, when she moved to the Pacific Northwest from California and started riding, she had explained to herself that “this is what people here do: they just ride in the rain.”

Roughlock Resort, Monticello, Utah – October 2019

As she and I spend more and more time together, FaceTiming daily, we are reminded of our physical distance and our frustration grows. (You will appreciate the fact that we have been falling in love with one another, while not even knowing the scent of each other's skin). After many conversations that addressed the practicality of her being a mother, her hesitation to meet a “technical stranger” (her words), the fact that I am on a long, open-ended journey some 1,000 miles (1.600 km) away from her, she comes up with the plan to drive to a mid-way location for our meeting. And we finally set it for the following weekend, eleven days away.

I am thrilled as I feel the roots of our love deepening, reaching for and wrapping themselves in every aspect of my inner and outer life, squeezing both joy and fear out. I have always longed for the level of reciprocity that we have experienced since our first talks. Our stance of deal-breaker resolve against one-sidedness shows itself in the avidness and curiosity that we have for one another, in our mutual ability to take responsibility when either one, or both, have caused a conflict. And in the life-changing vulnerability that allows us to remain open and to be taught by one another during challenging moments in ways that heal fear and shame, and usher in further intimacy and trust.

I am scared at the speed with which this is all unfolding. It’s only been a few weeks, although our experience of time falls outside its regular temporality. Hours have felt like minutes, weeks like months. Could it be possible that I am deluded, and this is all a very beautifully-wrapped projection of my innermost desires? What do I know that is real?

Thus far, this relationship has brought me peace, serenity, and a newfound lightness. Because of her values, priorities and healthy habits, even before meeting her in person, I have already changed some of my ways. The proof is in the pudding of the sweets and sodas that I no longer consume. I have more energy than I did before; I feel stronger and more alive. I eat less and I laugh more.

With the openness and the inexistent pre-planning of my journey, at times I feel the pressure of what I “should” do next, where I should go. (Sometimes there is freedom in having no choice…) I dwell in the discomfort of “shoulds” for a while and finally remember, for the millionth time, that wisdom, and freedom, lie in following inner guidance, not shoulds. I settle on Joshua Tree as the destination for our meeting. Simple, beautiful and close to her, given her time constraints. It is about four hours from Ojai, where we both live, ten to fourteen from where I am in Utah, depending on the route I take after leaving Monticello. I would like to see the Valley of the Gods this time around since I didn’t last year when I rode through Moki Dugway. And Zion. But part of me just wants to rush to Joshua Tree and wait for her arrival. I’ll camp there the night before we’re due to meet on Friday at the house that I booked on Airbnb.

This is the new turn of Inward Ride and I welcome it.

Wednesday comes, and two days before our meeting, I leave Roughlock Resort and head south. I ride through the mythical Valley of the Gods for the first time, pass Monument Valley, in Arizona and reach Lake Powell late in the afternoon. The beauty of the landscape that I am traversing is undoubtedly a visual feast, but there is something, too, to the crossing, alone, of these vast and quiet expanses of land.

By nighttime, I’m in Kanab, back in Utah, where I’d booked an inexpensive hotel. Riding into town toward a life-saving Mexican restaurant (I am originally from Brazil and need the comfort of rice and beans at frequent intervals), I just miss a deer crossing the road a couple of yards in front of me. At the restaurant, I am told by a deer hunter and outfitter that the region I’m in has the highest population of deer in the originally country. 

Some 30 miles (48 km) from the East entrance to Zion National Park, I wake up to one of the most eventful and exciting days of my life. I have posted about each installment of this day on Instagram, so I will be brief here. It included the stunning landscapes of Zion, the intense headwinds with billowing dust clouds on Interstate 15 going through Las Vegas, the sighting of what looked like an “alien lighting tower” (The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System), the balmy and mystical ride through the Mojave Desert, the first time dropping the bike since the beginning of this journey by the Kelso Sand Dunes, nearly running out of gas in the desert, and finally getting to a gas station exhausted and grateful as a stranger takes upon himself to find me a last-minute, affordable hotel in Twentynine Palms.

From Motel 6, I FaceTime with her once more before our first meeting as a couple, tomorrow, in Joshua Tree.

Since I left in mid-August, many new friends have chosen to follow my narrative here, so I’ll explain this journey in a nutshell. With an over thirty-year-old history of depression, and of dedication to getting to the bottom of it, last March I had the most severe of breakdowns. I understood that there was nothing left in life as I had known it, in the way that I had lived it. I felt that I had been catering to an image of a man that had been culturally indoctrinated, but had nothing to do with who I really was. The rational construction of who I should be (a.k.a “the shell”) crumbled, and that man died in March.

As I buried the old identity, I found that I had nothing to replace it with; I only truly knew what I was not. The only path left was to understand what was real in my very personal experience. I had, over the years with depression, developed a practice of inner loyalty, of following a deep inner guidance that had grown increasingly stronger. That guidance helped me move on from the loss of the old, known “me.” And it offered a new direction: the open-ended motorcycle journey that I am now on.

So I opened my heart. I came fully out of the closet with the fact that I had been suffering from severe depression most of my life. I debunked the hiding places that I had erected in order to feel safe in the shame of my condition. I shared it with everyone who was important in my life, and I started to share it here, too. I asked for help, for love, and for support. I invited my community to be a part of my new journey.

Boldness and vulnerability don’t bring comfort, but they bring a sense of strength and the knowing that I am in integrity with my own path, that I am walking in my own shoes. So my confidence grew in direct proportion to my ability to open to, and trust, that life is wiser than I am and brings what I need when I need it, both in terms of lessons as wells as of means.

And it did. All kinds of gifts were and have poured into my lap, as I increasingly learned how to recognize them in both their minute expressions, as wells as in their magnanimous proportions. Kindness, generosity, money, books, guidance, friendliness, companionship, housing, food, joy and adventure are a few of the currencies in which those presents have been delivered. And then there was the supreme form, too: love.

I have always found it remarkable how life morphs into and out of existence at a moment’s notice, birth and physical death being the most prevalent examples. But relationships have that quality, too.

On September 17, I published a post entitled Longing Is My Middle Name (link here: https://www.inwardride.com/blog/longing-is-my-middle-name). If you haven’t yet, I strongly recommend that you read it, either before or after finishing this essay.

Around that time, she replied to a previously unanswered message I had sent her three months prior. Surprised, I asked, “why now?” She had read one of my blog posts and wanted to know more. Even though I am a writer, I am not a texter, so I proposed a FaceTime call, and we schedule it for the following day. 

The call came and went, as it did the next day, and the following. And in the most stealthy fashion, our effortless exchanges started “growing down” as psychologist and author James Hillman would put it, creating invisible roots that increasingly missed further watering. Without planning or anticipation, our new realities had been graced by love. 

In-between rides in the desert during the day, and cold nights in my tent, I missed her presence more and more. Our daily FaceTime encounters continued and lasted for hours, despite our impression upon hanging up that only a fraction of the actual time had passed. Modern-day technology was not only allowing us to interact daily; it was making it possible to grow a bond unmitigated by our physical distance. Our long hours had made for reduced sleep; although instead of the draining aspect of the previous “honeymoon passions,” the more she and I surrendered to our growing need to interact, the more energized we felt in our daily lives.

Days and weeks went by, and life started to change. Although there had been no diet change, I started to lose weight. I then felt less compulsive toward food and nearly stopped resorting to the anxiety-assuaging sweets. Serving portions became smaller. I started exercising. Being away from her was increasingly painful, but in my solitude, I felt more peaceful and serene.

The natural question became: “when are we going to meet in person?”. I was still over two months from the end of my journey, but she had become an integral part of that journey. 

The next few conversations included this topic more and more often, and the planning began.

BobbyJane Gregory walks into the saloon at Roughlock Resort in her pink robe, her short pink hair down, and backs into the antique space heater wedged into the stairs that lead to the “brothel” rooms on the second floor. “Urrr’, she grumbles, but her chills in this early Fall morning soon fade away in the comfortable temperature of the Line Camp Steakhouse Restaurant, the downstairs portion of the saloon.

At this hour, she has already checked that raccoons haven’t snatched any more chickens during the night (six were taken during the past two months), picked up the eggs they’ve laid, inspected the property, and has milked Spearmint, one of her three Nigerian dwarf goats – which along with pregnant Juicy-fruit and Double Mint, were named after gums. “They chew on everything, you know.” explains Bobby. Goat milk and cheese are served to guests for breakfast.

Modeled after a 1920’s saloon, when Bobby’s great-grandfather homesteaded in the region, Runnin' Iron Inn is a hotel with a restaurant downstairs that serves dinner a few nights a week, and a “whorehouse” upstairs, with five rooms named after prostitutes. The one where I’m staying, called “Miss Kitty,” was named after the brothel owner in Larry McMurtry’s 1985 Western novel Lonesome Dove. It is flanked by “Miss Dolly” to the right, and “Miss Belle” to the left. “Mad’am Roz,” and “The Shady Lady”, around the hallway, are larger rooms and have private balconies. The former has a king-size bed and a sofa, and the latter, two queens. All five rooms have their own bathrooms.

Roughlock Resort is a little Western town that sits on a 70-acre property. Besides the hotel, it has a lodge with three bedrooms, two baths, kitchen and living room that accommodates up to ten people, and a campground with basic cabins and space for tents and RV’s. The resort was named after a device – either a chain or pole – used to slow down or stop heavy wagons while going downhill in the rough roads of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Expecting a boy, who was to be named Robert, BobbyJane’s family gathered in town nearly forty years ago as they waited for the delivery of Bob and Jane’s sixth baby. The last expected heir, nine years younger than its previous sibling, turned out to be a girl. The name Robert was recycled into Bobby, and joined with her mother’s middle name, Jane.

A multi-dimensional woman, Bobby tells me that she can “change a toilet and take down a tree.” (She also trained for five years as an MMA fighter.) Bobby is the third generation to own and run Roughlock Resort, which she inherited along with five siblings when her father, Bob Musselman, passed away in 2018. She was brought up on the property and has just returned after leaving in her twenties. Before her return to Roughlock Resort, she and her husband, Jarrod, had worked in Napa Valley, California, for ten years, she as a massage therapist, he as a sommelier.

Inside the saloon, protected from the cold front that brought below-freezing temperatures to Utah, I am shielded from the weather, and embraced by the textures of the Western Lifestyle of old. The rough-cut lumber of the walls, the unmilled round log beams and railings, the saddles, antlers and large elk trophies, smoothly usher the exterior ranch experience into the interior of the saloon. Restaurant tables, with embroidered linen cloths and napkins, kerosene lamps atop, add to the refinement and the delight of my old west historic episode.

Roughlock Resort’s raison d’être is to offer its guests an authentic Western experience. All the artifacts in the premisses – which include cowboy hats, Hopi and Navajo baskets, tapestry, antique American flags, tools, bows and arrows, and other weapons, are authentic, and were either used by “cowboys” or “indians” in the past. Bobby’s grandfather, Rusty Musselman, had an antique store and propping company that leased original artifacts, along with his stagecoach, to John Ford, the American director who imprinted the look and feel of the region’s landscape into what is known as the Western film style. Many of Ford’s movies were shot in this region, as well as most Western movies ever produced, between Moab, to the North, and Monument Valley to the South.

But Roughlock and the Musselman (Bobby’s maiden name) family’s intersection with Hollywood doesn’t end with John Ford. Bobby’s father, Bob, participated as an extra in 1961’s Comancheros, starring John Wayne. In his only scene in the movie, Bob is thrown across a table by John Wayne.

Proudly, nearly giggling, Bobby tells the story of a foreign guest: “One night he came down to dinner dressed to the nines like a cowboy. He had on cowboy boots, and wranglers, and a big ole bowie knife that went half way down his leg, and a big ole huge hat. And you should have seen him walk across the floor...” Which he capped (or topped?) with a “Howdy!”

The context is different, but the pursuit is similar: an authentic experience of either a historic, or a fictional era. Bobby equates Western aficionados to Trekkies and their Star Trek conventions. Both groups are after either fantasizing or role-playing their favorite cultural experience. In the case of the “Western Fairy Tale,” as she calls it, individuals seek a taste of the ruggedness of the terrain, the fight for food and territory, the chase of outlaws, all in the eye-candy context of red-colored stone, arches, plateaus and deep canyons.

Between mid-December and late February, Bobby and Jarrod close the Steakhouse, chosen by locals as a “fancy-date place to go,” to rest from their 6-1/2-day work weeks the rest of the year, but Roughlock Resort is open year-round for stays, both for tourists as well as for stranded locals fleeing Winter’s challenging weather and road conditions.

I was exposed to some old Western movies which my father used to watch during my childhood, but my Brazilian origin offered me little connection to the old American West. Before Roughlock Resort, I had never particularly sought it. But my week here has brought a special appreciation for this lifestyle, in both its history and its inherited present, with the opportunities and hardships it presented, the beauty of this land, and the adventures that it did and does host to its visitors.

As I close the door of the saloon behind me, I smell a scent from my childhood in Brazil since forgotten. I recall having seen Bobby in her office sitting at a 1950’s IronRite mangler, a machine coveted in households of that era for its status and versatility while ironing shirts, bedding and linens. What I smell is the scent of washed linens in contact with the hot iron of the mangler.

If in the 1950’s this activity and machine were part of the job-description (and identity) of many a 50’s housewife, in 2019 it is a wise purchase and one of the many hats that a business, self- proclaimed tomboy-ish woman has to wear for the feasibility of her enterprise, mostly staffed by husband and wife.

My stay here was comfortable and unique, and I felt welcomed by the owners and their goats, cats and dog alike. It was beautiful to see Bobby’s commitment and dedication to preserving and transmitting to future generations of her family the values and the culture in which she was brought up. I am very grateful to Bobby for accepting to host a stranger and for joining Inward Ride as a sponsor, while offering me such comfortable and delightful shelter as I waited out the cold front.

~~~~~

Stays at Roughlock can be booked directly through AirBnB. Room’s range between $65 and $89 depending on size, and the lodge for $135 per night, plus tax. For dinner reservations, call 435-587-2351

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LineCampSteakHouseRunninIronInn/

I stop at different look-out points and run out of words to say to myself in response to what I see; the only accurate one, which doesn’t describe the scenery – but the reaction to it instead – is “wow.” Perhaps as an attempt to share the experience (with none other than myself, as I am traveling alone), I keep repeating sequential “wow’s,” hoping that the next one will finally make it humanly possible to take in the scale of what I am witnessing.

No words, no picture, can hold a candle to this magnitude. Not the memory of it, either. The canyons of Utah can only be experienced first-hand, albeit with the humble understanding that the cup of my humanness can only hold a small portion of their magnitude. The landscape here takes me back in time, to a council of Gods who gathered in the region on days immemorial, and played a godly game trying to out-God one another while carving and molding the earth around them. We, humans, have built roads through this pantheon of rock formations, and as we cross them, in-between thoughts, in the gaps between our humanly concerns, we have a glimpse of true perspective. A very sophisticated animal I am; nonetheless, an animal with a perishable body that roams the vastness of what was created here as the canyon-lands of Utah. Creation that will outlive me by Millenia. 

Being impacted by such breathtaking beauty doesn’t go unnoticed. Slowly, progressively, I start to recognize some some shifts in my cosmology. Lately, ever since I left Portland, in Oregon, where I was stationed for about forty days, I have noticed that I have become a different person. 

I can’t quite pinpoint one cause, and I don’t think there is one. The cocktail of life experiences in the first portion of my journey is the likely cause. A three-session Ketamine regimen for treatment-resistant depression was at one point the star of the show. But it was soon out-staged by other characters that while improvising, might have stolen the whole show. 

In the first half of this journey – today being day 58 –, I have met people who are now part of my life. The openness and vulnerability of my now nearly-permanent stance seems to deliver very precise content. Real, vulnerable, generous and caring humans have abounded lately. 

Conversely to the previous experience of depression, according to which I was disconnected and far removed from love and the core of human experience, I now feel like I belong to the human family. And it belongs to me. 

This isn’t only the fascinating newness of first encounters during peak experiences. It feels more like the recognition of peers, journeying along the same road, albeit in different, personalized geographical paths. 

Something has and is continually changing in my daily experience. I have learned to trust more, to surrender more, to ask for help more frequently. Life seems to like that stance, and has been continuously matching it in kind. 

There is more happening, too. But it is a bit early to write about it.

At the half-mark of Inward Ride, I thank you all for the immense blessings that you have sent my way. May my journey and the lessons that I am learning – and sharing here with you –, reciprocate your love, one-hundred-fold. 

After a quick bath to recover from all the rain of late, my faithful companion is ready for the next phase of our adventure together that starts tomorrow.

The journey continues…

I am currently on an open journey in which planning happens daily, not beforehand. I am often asked “where/what is next”, and my response is, “I’ll tell you when I know.” The journey is beautiful and exciting, but there is a measure of anxiety, too, with so much openness, so much uncertainty, both now and in the future after the planned completion of my travels, in mid-December. Inward Ride is not only the name, but the true motto of this journey, and the moto–my beloved companion vehicle–and the surroundings, are the stage where my inward ride unfolds.

Waking up to intense, bitter-tasting dreams, before, signaled an imminent bout of depression. Today, after the dream, I woke up and felt the emptiness of life, of my life. But hold, for a moment, from attributing any meaning to this statement… 

For a number of years that I can’t count, while first opening my eyes in the morning, I would encounter a gloomy inner landscape, the often overcast weather of life tainted by a depressed cosmology. However, since the Ketamine treatment that I did, here in Portland, at the end of August, opening my eyes in the morning has been a different experience. As have other moments when I have felt waves of emotions coursing through my system.

Used to gloom, as I perceived emptiness this morning, I felt a little afraid of a looming bout of depression. But I held back from adding meaning to this spaciousness that in the past would have felt scary, deficient. I could sense the old habit of waking up to a gloomy reality avid to take root again. Since the Ketamine treatment, however, it has been almost as though old habits have been trying to recreate their previous synaptic network of a perception inclined toward suffering, but without success.

Trauma biases the nervous system toward a state of hyper-arousal in which there is a constant anticipation of threats, even when they are not present. In a healthy individual, arousal happens when there is a real threat to defend from, and it is relaxed once the threat is no longer present. A similar process happens with depression: there might not be a reason for gloom, but since gloom is the deep groove developed in the nervous system, toward gloom I slide, inevitably.

But my habits seem to have lost momentum. I, as the center of volition, have also been more successful at keeping meaning-making at bay. The combination of the two seems to be interrupting the loop that before used to rule my life. The more I see this process, the more I put energy into reframing my experience, thus strengthening the new neuropathways being developed in my post-Ketamine brain.

But I am careful at this point to issue any final statements about how the treatment has impacted me; results will have to stand the trial of time. And I will report accordingly.

In the presence of emptiness this morning, excited with what might be taking place in my brain, I wondered how to make the most of my new synapses, and I chose a different strategy. Before, when emotionally stuck, I resorted to one of Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing strategies to deal with trauma. Roughly, “pendulation" is the shifting of attention from where in the body I feel the frozenness, the stuckness, to an area that feels “neutral,” without the intensity of the one consuming all of my psychic and emotional energy. According to Levine, the alternation between the locus of intensity and the neutral one, helps to regulate the nervous system and to bring it down from its hyper-arousal state.

I wasn’t feeling frozen now, but I wanted to change the object of my awareness for the sake of exploration. So instead of remaining within the physical edges of my body, I expanded its felt sense farther and farther out to include the house where I’m staying, and the property where it sits. Simply putting it, it was a cognitive command to alter my inner perception of where my body ended. I liked this exploration and I continued the practice.

Here, time moved very slowly and experience seemed devoid of unfoldment. I kept inquiring, looking for a lesson here, a cue of direction, an insight. While being still, paradoxically, the inner landscape continually shifted, and I was again aware that changes were actualy taking place.

Suddenly, slightly jolted as though having had a double-take, I found myself at a threshold: I stood right outside the engine room where the steam of longing originates and propagates from. “Wow”, I said to myself, recognizing the implications of where I stood. Still outside the engine room, in what felt like a threshold in my evolution as a human being, I marveled at what was happening here: I was being granted access to the core of my own being.

Perhaps it was the jolting of the surprise, or the wisdom of homeopathic dosage while led in today’s lesson, but the visit ended before I got to enter the room. Still in awe, I no longer had the alertness of before, and awareness shifted elsewhere to no particular object.

I have been up for a few hours since then. I have made the morning coffee and feel the warmth that it creates in my chest as it rolls down past my throat toward my stomach. I sit in my camping chair looking out the sliding glass doors and time feels still now, the only motion perceived in some grass and tree branches swinging to the light breeze outside.

While longing is often an experience of deprivation, here, in the memory of the threshold where I stood while introspecting, I feel the opposite of longing. Here, there is fullness and there is joy.

At times, I wonder if I am using my time wisely in this lifetime. Buddhist teacher Pema Chödron jokingly comments about her meditation practice: “I spend a lot of hours doing absolutely nothing; I am really good at doing nothing.” I too, apparently, do a whole lot of nothing while investigating the truth in my inner experience. At times, I fear that I am not “producing” enough on the outside, as everyone else seems to be. Other times it feels like I’ve found gold, and the eagerness of my quest is justified. But regardless of results, this is the only way that I know how to live my life, and that I am honoring this opportunity of being alive and the time that I have left here.

Often, at the heart of longing is a somewhat unconscious process with more or less obvious, or even apparently hidden, symptoms… In a recent conversation with a new good friend, I told him of my suspicion: that when we feel stuck for no clear reason, or can’t seem to be able to make a choice, there’s likely a secondary process taking place in our unconscious that is hijacking most of our energy.

I have dwelt on this idea for a few decades. Depression, with its massive energetic draw, is like an atomic version of this unconscious process at the center of experience. But there are other, milder ones that frequently knock at our basement door and often go unnoticed… We usually blame our behavioral habits and distractions for the time and energy that is wasted in our lives, when in reality, they are just an avoidant response to an inner longing. Longing for what? Asking the question is answering the knock. Personally, the way I frame the question is: “What do I need right now?”

We have a multitude of wants, mostly probably driven by our unacknowledged and unmet real needs. But needs, not wants, are at the center of behavior, and our ability to first recognize, and second to move toward meeting them, is what gives the real quality of our lives. Meeting wants is ephemeral, and throws fuel in the fire; meeting needs turns the fire into warmth, and there I nest.

Understanding a need can sometimes be like an earth-shattering realization, but not necessarily. It can be as simple as understanding that I’ve gone too long without a glass of water, or that I just need two minutes of quiet inactivity to recenter. Frequently catering to our deepest, simplest needs reverts a sense of personal disconnection.

I remember the first time that longing was expressed as romantic love. I was eight, and I still know, as if it were today, how I felt. At that moment, I simultaneously knew longing and how it felt to have the longing met. Think about it: can you miss something that you have never experienced before? (Interesting implications for the pursuit of the Divine…)

Years before knowing the physical expression of love, I already knew, in my body, what it was like to long for the feminine embrace.

In the last few days, this is the very longing that I have felt. I miss dancing with the feminine. I hear music that prompts me to stand up and start moving, and recognize how much my body wants to share this dance. There is music and there is the desire to dance, but I am alone in the Milonga.

I have been alone before, many times. But it’s the first time that I am alone and in my fifties. Whether I am old or not, depends on who is looking. I continue feeling like myself, and despite a sense of agelessness, I still notice incremental changes in the mirror. I am now, very likely, a little more invisible to onlooking potential partners. At least this is what we, above our 40’s, tell ourselves sometimes. 

But whether at 50 or 100, looking like a tambourine or a pre-historic dragon, now, or on the day that will be my last, I know my own hunger for life. And naked, with or without clothes on my body, I say no! Romantic love will never be over for me.

After I moved from Brazil to California in the mid 90’s, I found myself in a new world, very conducive to inner development and exploration. I started reading various psychology and Buddhist books. Information, schools, methods, teachers and fellow practicing friends abounded.

Given the intensity of my inner experience, and my lack of practice to contain it, initially I could only sit to explore my inner geography for one or two minutes at the time. Although very slowly and gradually, the interest in the practice of introspection and contemplation started to take root.

I look back at my ignorance about the flood of access to real transformation that I was going to be subjected to in my new chosen country, and I giggle with joy and gratitude.

It wasn’t until 2005, after doing the Hoffman Quadrinity Process–the most transformational and healing experience I have ever had–that I could sit for much longer periods of time. A dear friend, yoga and meditation teacher Sarah Powers, who had strongly encouraged me to do Hoffman, urged me to develop a daily practice in order to sustain the gains and insights from the Process. She stated, “it is important to integrate into a daily practice all the beauty that you’ve experienced during the Process, otherwise it will fade away into a memory of an experience that has no connection to your present life”. I am deeply grateful for her advice, as it established the practice that continues to this day.

Over the last twenty years, my response to the bouts of depression has been gradually changing. I remember that about five years ago I started noticing that after a strong bout, I would have a deep experience of compassion for the suffering that I had just experienced. My wish, at that moment, was that I had been a little more caring during the suffering, that I had held back the attacks, that I had held the suffering one as I would have an ailing infant. How could I attack a crying infant? So I started remembering, during subsequent bouts, that I could plunge deeper and deeper within and find a ground of compassion from which to unconditionally hold the suffering self.

This morning I sat to practice and noticed sneaky cognitive attacks coming from different fronts. Only apparently random, the demeaning thoughts kept poking here and there, vying for the foreground of awareness. Whereas before I would have heeded their message at face value and would have caved in, today I decided to go after them. Not as in a battle, but with deep interest and curiosity. I was now cornering them instead of their cornering me, asking them to show me what they’ve got. And then the bubble burst: the crying came, and rolled down like an Oregon waterfall.

I remembered my intention to stand in compassion during episodes of suffering, and so I did. I held the crying with ample space and kept if full company, monitoring the cognitive content, protecting the suffering part from intellectual attacks of meaning and decision-making. In safety and space, the crying felt clean, and full, and as it had come, it went.

Resting with ease, feeling as though I have just finished a warm, healthy meal, I ponder about the experience. What will my life look like, going forward, if every time that I suffer, that I feel lonely, I am capable of holding myself in utter protection from meaning-making?

I shift from the intellectual appraisal of my experience to my body. 

I recognize a deep pang, a craving: a part of me needs to be physically held. “Hold me tight” is the clear request. I, the 54-year old grown-up-in-residence, watch as this intangible, almost unquenchable desire, drives the command of my body. I ponder whether being held now, as an adult, would meet this need. I feel it wouldn’t.

What would, then? What behaviors could soothe the vacancy of love that this core of being holds? Smoking (two packs a day 20 years ago), alcohol or food binging, the easy sex of my late twenties, being adored or care-taking, chiseling away at to-do lists? I’m afraid none would. At the end, I would still be met at the room next door by the same originating pang, perhaps inflated by the disloyalty of having run away from it in the first place.

Hold tight as I ask the question… “What would, then?” As I inquire, I blow off the easy self-help, spiritual bypass formulas that first pop up for the uninformed crowd. Nope, none of that… If it were obvious, monkeys would be teaching us how to do it. But it ain’t. 

The long quietness of inquiry, the time I’ve spent asking the question, seems to be the holding that I needed. As I stay, I am held. There’s no resolution as in the intellectual equation of question-leads-to-answer-that-solves-the-problem. (This reminds me of the suggestion that I “get a 9-5 job” to heal my depression, which I wrote about in a previous post.) There is no linearity here, but a honey-like loop of presence, of being by being, of holding by returning, back again and again with interest and caring.

From here I can hold myself as well as another, with no frantic doing, no binging, no bypassing, with my own simple presence assuaging the previous vacancy of love, the vacancy of presence, the former kite-flying of holding myself at thread’s length.

Rumi taught that the Divine IS the longing for the Divine. Attending to the need IS meeting the need.

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]]>Reeling Myself InCiro CoelhoTue, 27 Aug 2019 17:30:00 +0000https://www.inwardride.com/blog/the-loyalty-of-going-back65398a5138271b06d857e697:653e5e283db52712ca298ba2:653e5edb85326d1e6a7ea6f8

One day at 23 I had an epiphany that professional photography was my future, and I steered my boat in that direction. A couple of weeks later, I got an internship that turned into a job as a professional photographer’s assistant. At the photography studio of the largest publishing company in Brazil, I was now making US$100 per month. Even for 1988 standards that was low, but I couldn’t care less; I was working 12-, 16-hour days loose and lost in a candy store of image-making. School it was, and I learned from various photographers and from fellow assistants.

Last Friday, 31 years after “photography school”, I had a strong taste of how life was then, how I was then, how taking pictures was then. I was not a professional doing my craft; I was lost in the unconditionality of play.

I had left Eugene, in Oregon, and was making my way toward Portland at a fast pace to get there early at night. I had chosen to ride on Highway 99 to avoid the fast-paced Interstate 5. The sun was low in the West and was backlighting everything left of me: the little towns, the farms, the animals and the hills in the distance. There were scents of pasture, of mildly acidic and musky wood, of mowed lawn, of cows, and more than once, whiffs of Tulsi tea, although I doubt that it was truly Tulsi tea. The single-lane highway was quiet and mainly straight. With earplugs on, I could still hear the muffled sound of the tires rubbing on the asphalt. 

I was here, now, enjoying my new Oregon, the progression of my physical displacement, when images started showing up. I had just passed a barn-like building and asked myself the eternal question: “Do I go back?” Having been a photography-addict who also hid behind the camera, for a few years now wanting to enjoy the experience above recording it for future consumption (but wanting to find a balance between the two), I always ask the question.

I don’t truly know who I am. While on this path of discovery, I follow the trailheads that have juice. Loyalty has juice. Honoring the strong desire to capture something that I saw has juice, so I turn around and surrender to my fascination with the barn-like building and photograph it from every angle. I gear up again, mount my computerized-on-wheels motorcycle and get back on the road, only to find, in the next block, a similarly fascinating scene. What looked like a 70’s rusted-gold-color Dodge stood atop a trailer, both framed by another barn-shaped structure, this time a residence. I had already passed it, but once more I turn around, and take the image. 

Since my twenties photography has mediated my relationship with reality. It has been both a profession and a hobby. Nonetheless, last Friday, something was different: I was back in a very passionate openness, in the un-jaded innocence of my early days. I was being hosed down with colors and shapes. No, I had not consumed substances of the mind-altering kind (my first Ketamine-treatment session wasn’t scheduled to start until two days later). Oregon, with its simplicity, was altering my mind.

It isn’t long until a herd of backlit sheep are shouting at my eyes. I, loyal to my directives, turn around a third time and pull over by the fence that separates me from the sheep. The sheep, loyal to their peace, flee the noise of my engine.

There is often that: the perfection of my universe versus the third reality created by its intersection with other universes. (Doesn’t that about explain the challenges of relationships?)

I smile as the image that I had turned around to capture crumbles away; in a comic, awkward manner, I recognize that I was left empty-handed, and that jars me out of the play state I had been in.

I am back as a separate, self-contained universe, the professional photographer who also takes pictures as a hobby, riding on Highway 99, making my way North to get to Portland early in the night.

The inner pressure is such that it pushes me against a wall and I freeze. Better yet, it raises the water levels of raw emotions such that I start floating. That is when I surrender. And weep.

There is no particular content to the tears, just raw sadness and some relief. (I suspect that this is a natural, wise, internal equalizing mechanism. I have learned over the years not to add rational meanings to the process.) As the tears flow, inner and outer pressure find a balance, and there’s quietness, despite today being gardeners’ day in the neighborhood. 

Water levels recede again. I am back in the center of my experience, as the center of my experience. 

The answer to the questions “what would I do with my life if I won the lottery, or were diagnosed with a terminal illness”, is what prompted Inward Ride. Yesterday I was thinking that now that I am about to depart on that very “end-of-life, very meaningful life choice” journey, what would I do if now I won the lottery (yes, I continue playing)? I would extend to others what was given to me: free access to medical treatment of depression and other mental illnesses. In this lifetime, I have swum in an ocean of inner suffering, but have lived under a downpour of grace and gifts.

There are choices that I can still make without the need to win the lottery. I want to get trained in suicide prevention to help others. My own daily spiritual practice, coupled with studies of psychology, have allowed me to persevere in my quest for healing. Many others are not as fortunate. All over the planet, every day, one person a minute takes their own life. That is too many, too often. And ending one’s life doesn’t end one’s suffering. The intimate knowing of that truth also helps me with my unrelenting perseverance. 

I want to learn more and more skillfully how to communicate the possibilities inherent to human suffering. If often changing the circumstances of my life isn’t an option, learning from them is always available. Perhaps my deep passion for learning has saved my life time and again.

I owe my depth, the strength of my presence, and my compassion all to depression. I am certain that without it, given my wits and talents, I would have blossomed into an utter asshole.

Depression is a very powerful teacher who delivers its course load in a haltingly slow fashion. It doesn’t matter how intelligent one is; the learning is done slowly, incrementally, over many, many years. Like earthquakes, there is a pressure that accumulates and lets off, rises and bursts, only to start all over again in new cycles. When all is said and done, the landscapes have changed, the surface of one’s life entirely altered. And many new lessons learned. Rubble is one form of nature’s architectural design, and it can be beautiful, too. If only I let go of comparing…

But these earthly movements, in retrospect, don’t feel or look so bad, and what is left to be experienced in the present is a new landscape, a new life, a sense of calmness after the storm, and a budding seed of excitement: I have survived another earthquake! I am still here, more capable of loving than I ever was before! More capable of encompassing the totality of the human experience. And more denuded of what I am not.

________________

I wrote this post in early August while preparing to leave on this journey. I publish it today as I dedicate it to Ash (photo) who has suffered from depression since he was eleven. At 15, he says that he knows few people who don’t have depression. After a long, sincere and invigorating conversation at a campsite with him and other members of this family who also suffer from depression and anxiety, he mentioned a quote that he likes, "I would rather hear about your suffering than about your death.” So we talk about our suffering, and our humanity.

Today, after seven days on the road, I understand and agree with what I’ve heard many times before: that the biggest gift from this kind of open travel are the people we encounter. Everyday, as I tell my story with sincerity and vulnerability, others open to me the same way, and express their gratitude for the quality of the interaction.

I want to live in a world where there is real connection in the simplicity of every moment.

Inward Ride and Ciro Coelho are supported by:

Aether Apparel website, Facebook and Instagram

NMA Architects website, Facebook and Instagram

Shawn Thomas website, Facebook and Instagram

On this porch, I am much closer to the large tree on the property, and can almost touch one of its limbs. A squirrel makes his loud squirrel noise as he observes me in my very important ritual of drinking the first coffee of the day.

Gatita comes up the fence of the downstairs unit just below me and groans in a plea to come join me. Unlike me, she still lives in my old home, and seems confused as to why here is where I am now. She is not the only one… I feel a little stunned by the speed of life, my life at least. 

I have always marveled at how Americans can uproot their lives and move from city to city as though recreating one’s life elsewhere were no big deal. I am very Brazilian that way. Brazilians seldom move. There is still the large flow of populations toward the big cities there as is the case everywhere, but culturally, Brazilians seldom change cities. In my experience here, Americans seldom build a life where they were born.

Nothing other than weather and the changing seasons exert external pressure to hit the road. Officially, Inward Ride has not yet started as I haven’t left Ojai. But, oh boy, has the journey started!

It seems that no amount of jumping into the tasks at hand will ever feel like it is enough to check them off. Post-production continues, framing some pictures later today for delivery, a new shoot early this coming week to help support four months on the road without working. Passport renewal interview and 12,000-mile service plus new tires for the bike in Los Angeles mid-week, continued sponsorship efforts and communication, and final delivery of all images by week’s end. I will be ready when I’m ready.

Something else has started, long before the physical migration: the kindness of others. As the days go by, the list of generous offerings continues to grow. Different gestures, different means, different things gifted, some not even palpable. A beautiful variety of “goods” that reminisce of times of trades in community markets of old. I am the one on the receiving end, hoping that my open heart, my sincerity and vulnerability will give them all something in return for their kindness.

I choke a bit with the beauty of this path in my life that has no return. Only through now, into the wilderness of the unknown. 

Very soft notes are played in a piano nearby. A move to a mere few yards away and a whole new experience opens up. Tree, cats, squirrel, sounds…and the quivering in my heart. 

I end now in deep gratitude, thanking you, all of you, with all of your very personal expressions of generosity and interest in my quest. Through your very unique gifts, you are also allowing me to see deeply into who you are. 

Thank you.

Inward Ride and Ciro Coelho are supported by:

Aether Apparel website, Facebook and Instagram

NMA Architects website, Facebook and Instagram

Shawn Thomas website, Facebook and Instagram

Caro has taken over my house while I’ll be traveling. My original plan was to leave at the end of June, but my lack of experience overestimated my progress in getting ready. The new deadline was July 29, only three days away. But architectural work yet to be finished, changes in the ketamine treatment schedule in Portland, OR (now starting August 25), and the sheer volume of tasks related to Inward Ride have pushed the departure back to August 8 at the latest.

The last few months leading up to the imminent departure have been very intense. The resolution and excitement to leave on a long journey don’t preclude the nitty gritty of daily life, nor does it put the internal turmoil in pause. 

Depression is a very multifaceted phenomenon that can be approached and described from so many different angles. Decades of experience with it have shown me a great deal about its intricacies, but also about its advantages. 

Up until 1996, when I moved to the United States, I was a chain smoker. I quit when my ex-wife invited me to make a choice: her, or the addiction. She made her point so kindly and non-reactively that I had no reason to fight back. There was no fight, really, only an important decision to be made. Since the trade off was highly positive, it wasn’t really about the choice to be made, only about how to make it. My approach was to understand what I was gaining from the cigarette addiction, as that was what I would have to relinquish. 

And here is the parallel with depression. No one would ever choose depression consciously. Yet, it is very important to understand its foundational purpose. At this point in life, I do believe that personally, depression has had the purpose to hide trauma from my conscious mind, much like a fuse that trips with excess current. I might get into more details about this in a future post.

My resolution to live for healing has shaken up the foundations of my personality, including depression itself. As I become more and more conscious about my inner experience, I resort less and less to the depressive state. It is as though the gage of the wires that hold the inner current is increasing. As a result, I have experienced more anxiety. The “current” that was previously repressed is gushing out. 

I can be with this. I have turned my life into a practice of presence to this. Sometimes I need to take time away from daily tasks, from people, in order to introspect and observe the two inner rivers: the one of turmoil, and the one of peace. The more I sit, the more I have a conscious choice about which is in the foreground running the show. “Practice makes perfect” as the saying goes… But “perfect”, for a perfectionist, is a trigger concept, so instead, I’ll say that “practice makes peace”.

Baby cat is now spent, and sleeps soundly beside me as I get up to resume working on my to do list.

Inward Ride and Ciro Coelho are supported by:

Aether Apparel website, Facebook and Instagram

NMA Architects website, Facebook and Instagram

Shawn Thomas website, Facebook and Instagram

I have noticed for myself that when I'm suffering, I don't need anyone to solve my problems or to carry my load for me. This is an important distinction: Perhaps the fear of being a burden to others creates the shame and fear of opening up about what’s really happening, and asking for help. It’s no accident that in social networks we tend to see only the shining perfection of people’s lives.

Among the most common experiences of those with depression are a sense of disconnection and a feeling of not-belonging. The help that I need when I'm suffering is to be able to reconnect and feel that I belong again. (Those who fortunately don’t suffer from depression are not able to understand this deep sense of disconnection.) I don’t need solutions, or a pat in the back, but instead, the quiet availability of one's attention and loving interest. That alone makes me re-experience connection, and that I again belong to the human family.

We don’t need theory about why we’re suffering. Who truly knows the ‘why’? And we certainly don’t need uninformed interventions, either. I was recently told that what I truly needed was a 9-to-5 job, and that would help my depression.

Irvin Yalom, M.D., Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and one of my favorite authors of all time, explains that in his life-long practice as a psychotherapist, he believes that what cures is the quality of the listening.

Not advice, just kind and loving presence.

As the proverb says, “Pray to God and tie your camel”. So we do ask for help, for loving presence from those in our lives. And we do what it takes, in healthy ways, to stabilize our suffering and our behavior. Sometimes with antidepressants and therapy, mindfulness and meditation, exercise and healthy nutrition, and sometimes with more extreme measures, such as the Ketamine treatment that I am going to go through in August.

It takes courage to acknowledge, even to myself, that I am suffering, and that I need help. May we all be able to develop this courage.

Inward Ride and Ciro Coelho are supported by:

Aether Apparel website, Facebook and Instagram

NMA Architects website, Facebook and Instagram

Shawn Thomas website, Facebook and Instagram

Perhaps my new journey in July is as important to me as Patagonia had been to him. The open road, the runway that allows us to take flight on our motorcycles.

I never got the photo. Shortly after our FaceTime talk, he was hospitalized with kidney and liver failure. The doctors explained that it was related to his struggling heart. His condition rapidly declined.

Luis was an athlete, swimming miles in open ocean until a few years ago when he had a heart attack. Despite the loss of forty-percent of his heart’s functionality after the heart attack, he continued riding his Triumph Rocket until very recently. Last March, when I was visiting my family in Brazil, he showed up on his 770 lb motorcycle.

Today, at 77 years of age, Luis left us. He is riding rockets again.

Inward Ride and Ciro Coelho are supported by:

Aether Apparel website, Facebook and Instagram

NMA Architects website, Facebook and Instagram

Shawn Thomas website, Facebook and Instagram

But here I’m not criticizing those fears; instead, I am willing to look at them with humility and the scrutinizing light of wisdom. I do need an “audience” in order to make this trip feasible. Could I be so honest and vulnerable as to share Inward Ride fully, and at the same time, expect no results or rewards from it? I desperately need to live with this vulnerability, which is the antidote to the shell of personality that I need to break out of.

I can no longer compare myself to others. I have done that my whole life, and it’s an act of aggression, particularly for someone with severe depression. Conversely, I need to feed the quiet compassion of acceptance, of slow-moving. Radical measures for radical times.

The world certainly doesn’t need yet another “adventure rider”. But, perhaps, a vulnerable and sincere rider can make a difference.

Inward Ride and Ciro Coelho are supported by:

Aether Apparel website, Facebook and Instagram

NMA Architects website, Facebook and Instagram

Shawn Thomas website, Facebook and Instagram