What does it mean to come to terms with the utterly unexpected?

Not the mild surprise kind—but the kind that blindsides you from every angle. It’s the breakup you never saw coming. The career loss that cuts deeper than a paycheck. The children who decide, without warning or discussion, that your presence is no longer welcome. The death, the diagnosis, the devastation we never thought would touch our homes. It is the unraveling of the identities we've spent years nurturing. And it leaves us breathless.

I joined the Wisdom Tree Collective in July 2022 when I began my studies at The School of Spiritual Direction. It was a beautiful beginning, a deepening into spiritual practice and presence. Then, just weeks later in August, an email arrived—from one of my sons—informing me that he and his wife no longer deemed me "safe" to be around their infant son. COVID-19 was cited. I had barely met him.

The rupture to my identity as a mother began there, a slow implosion.

By December, my second-born daughter followed suit. She—who once adored both me and my husband—cut off all contact. No explanation, no space for conversation. The echo of abandonment swelled, reverberating through the walls of our home and the chambers of my heart. Slowly, and often unwillingly, I began the painful work of releasing not just relationships, but the part of myself clinging to who I thought I had to be—the practiced personality rather than the truer Self underneath.

Then came the medical unraveling.

This past December, Jimmy’s biopsy landed us in a nightmare: sepsis nearly took his life. After recovery, we received the diagnosis—prostate cancer. We were told surgery would come late August. We clung to hope and took the advice of his medical team: go on the cruise we’d booked through the Panama Canal in April. It was a stretch of optimism in a storm of uncertainty.

Meanwhile, my long-delayed appointment with an ENT—needed before I could be referred to a gastroenterologist—was scheduled just four days before the cruise. Living in a rural community means specialists are hours away. His are eight. Mine, four. So, with tweaks and lists and prayers, we packed up and went to the ENT.

The exam revealed thickening and a nodule on my vocal cord. Surgery was recommended. We consented, departed for the cruise, and kept checking email for the scheduling notice.

Back on US soil, still nothing. I called. A miscommunication, they said. My surgery was booked for June 25.

Then, the whirlwind: Jimmy’s surgery date was suddenly moved up to June 3. A mad scramble of organization followed. Afterward, the follow-up call came. The cancer had spread to his bladder. They were unsure if they got it all. Our hearts cracked again.

Two weeks later: my own surgery. A “day procedure” that required overnight recovery due to anesthesia sensitivities. Two days later, on the long drive home—with no cell service through half the route—my surgeon called. Her timing was uncanny. And the news? I, too, have cancer.

Neither of us was ready. I couldn’t speak. Jimmy tried. We sat in stunned silence, grief curling around us like fog.

There are questions still unanswered. And on this holiday, they must wait. We live in the unknown, the silent limbo that feels so unbearable to occupy. Yet maybe this—this liminal space—is the invitation. The sacred threshold where we are asked not to fix or flee, but to live.

To live fully awake, aware, alive.

To let our hearts whisper “Yes, I am here,” even when everything else is in flux. To BE in the in-between, in every layer of our being.

Kasey asked if I’d share my journey here. I hope to write in ways that resonate and reflect. I hope you feel seen in your own chaos, in your own unknowings. May this be a space to honor our shared humanity—and explore how we nurture one another in the cracks, the mystery, the holy mess of it all.

For such a time as this. Dayenu.

~Lauree Morris, WTC Alumni