Written by Andra Annette, Founder and Gut Health Expert Andra Annette is an international best-selling author, healthcare expert, and founder of Pounds-to-Go. With 40 years as a nurse, nutritionist, and holistic practitioner, she is a trusted gut health expert specializing in gut-thyroid connection and weight loss. Her latest works are When Hormones Hijack Your Life (2025) and Thrive with Hashimoto’s: A Nourishing Guide for Energy, Immunity, and Gut Health (2025). It’s Not Your Fault – It’s Your Metabolism (2025), How to Make Menopause Work for You (2025). What if your thyroid symptoms aren’t just about your thyroid at all? This article challenges the conventional approach to hormone health, revealing how the often-overlooked gut may be the key to resolving persistent fatigue, weight struggles, and metabolic imbalance. “If you’re treating your thyroid but ignoring your gut, you may be missing the very system driving the dysfunction.” For years, women struggling with fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, and hormone imbalance have been told to “fix their thyroid.” They’re given lab tests, sometimes medication, maybe supplements, and yet many still feel the same. Tired, inflamed, stuck. Because what’s often missing from the conversation is this. The thyroid does not operate alone. And if you’re not addressing the system it depends on, you may never see full resolution. The deeper truth: It’s not just thyroid, it’s a system What most people are not being told is that thyroid function is deeply connected to another critical system, the gut. This is where a powerful but overlooked dynamic comes into play, what I call. The Gut-Thyroid Axis™ This is the biological relationship between your digestive system, immune system, and thyroid function. When this axis is disrupted, symptoms don’t just appear, they compound. Why the gut matters more than you think Your gut is not just responsible for digestion. It plays a central role in hormone regulation, immune function, inflammation control, nutrient absorption, neurotransmitter production. But here’s where it becomes critical for thyroid health. Up to 20% of thyroid hormone conversion happens in the gut. That means your body relies on a properly functioning digestive system to convert inactive thyroid hormone (T4) into its active form (T3). If that process is impaired, your metabolism is affected. If your gut is inflamed, sluggish, or imbalanced, several things begin to happen, poor nutrient absorption (selenium, zinc, iodine), increased intestinal permeability (leaky gut), immune system activation, chronic inflammation. This creates the perfect environment for thyroid dysfunction, autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s, metabolic slowdown, hormone imbalance. This is not coincidence. It is systemic communication breakdown. The inflammation loop that keeps you stuck One of the most overlooked drivers of thyroid issues is chronic low-grade inflammation, and much of it originates in the gut. When inflammation increases, thyroid receptor sensitivity decreases, hormone conversion becomes inefficient, cortisol rises, metabolism slows. And then something even more frustrating happens. Even when labs look “normal,” symptoms persist. Because the issue is not just hormone levels. It’s how the body is processing and responding to them. Why treating the thyroid alone often falls short This is where many women feel confused. They’re doing everything they’ve been told, taking medication, eating “healthy”, trying to manage stress. But if the gut remains compromised, the thyroid cannot fully recover. Because the body is still operating in a state of inflammation, stress, immune activation. Healing cannot happen in that environment. Introducing the inflammation burden effect™ To understand this more clearly, we need to look at another pattern: The inflammation burden effect™ This is the cumulative impact of chronic stress, poor digestion, environmental exposure, and unresolved gut issues on the body. When this burden becomes too high, the body begins to slow down metabolic processes, conserve energy, and prioritize survival over optimization. The thyroid is one of the first systems to respond. Not because it’s failing. But because it’s adapting. Your body is not failing, it’s responding If you’ve been struggling with weight that won’t budge, fatigue that won’t lift, digestion that feels unpredictable, brain fog or mood changes, it’s not random. It’s connected. Your gut and thyroid are in constant communication, and when one is under stress, the other adjusts. Where true healing begins Healing the thyroid is not just about targeting the thyroid. It’s about supporting the system it depends on. That means reducing inflammation, restoring gut integrity, improving digestion, regulating the nervous system, replenishing nutrients. Because when the body feels supported, it shifts out of survival mode. And when that happens, hormone balance improves, energy increases, metabolism stabilizes, weight regulation becomes possible. What you can begin doing now You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight. But you can begin by supporting your Gut-Thyroid Axis™ with small, consistent steps: Support Digestion First: Warm, simple meals are easier for the body to process. Reduce Inflammatory Load: Minimize processed foods and support whole, nutrient-dense options. Eat in a Regulated State: Stress and digestion do not work well together. Rebuild Nutrient Stores: Focus on minerals essential for thyroid function. Listen to Your Body’s Signals: Symptoms are not problems, they are communication. Closing If you’ve been focusing only on your thyroid, it may be time to widen the lens. Because your body is not made of isolated parts. It is an interconnected system. True healing happens when we stop chasing symptoms and start understanding the relationships between them. Your gut is not separate from your thyroid. Your thyroid is not separate from your metabolism. They are part of the same conversation. When you begin supporting that conversation, your body begins responding in ways you may not have thought possible. You are not failing. You are interconnected, and that changes everything. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Andra Annette Andra Annette, Founder and Gut Health Expert Andra Annette is a world-renowned healthcare expert and award-winning wellness authority. Recognized as a worldwide leader in Healthcare (2017) and Top Nurse in the Bronx by INA, Andra Annette blends nearly 40 years of experience with a personal journey of overcoming leaky gut, thyroid issues, and weight struggles. Her groundbreaking work earned her the Outstanding Female Wellness Expert Award by Every Woman TV Global (2024). Holistic Practitioner and Author of the Year (2025), IAOTP, CREA Award Brainz (2025), Top 50 Fearless Leaders IAOTP (2026), Top 26 Women Leaders to Look Out For 2026, Passion Vista (2026). As the founder of Pounds-to-Go, host of the TV show Healing from the Inside Out, and author of the published Rainbow of Wellness series, she empowers individuals to love their bodies and live vibrantly. Her mission is to clear the confusion in health and be part of the cure, not the chaos.

Written by Nelum Dharmapriya, Doctor & Health Coach Dr. Nelum Dharmapriya is a Brisbane-based GP with a special interest in metabolic health, menopause, and lifestyle medicine. She combines 30 years of clinical experience with a personal passion for helping women thrive in midlife and beyond. Perimenopause often arrives quietly, bringing emotional and cognitive changes that leave many women feeling like strangers to themselves and many partners unsure of how to help. This deeply personal reflection explores why understanding, open conversation, and compassionate support can make one of life's biggest hormonal transitions far less lonely. What every husband and partner should know about perimenopause A woman in her early forties walked into my consulting room recently, accompanied by her husband. Before I had even asked why she was there, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said something I will never forget. "Doctor, I think I'm going crazy." She then turned towards her husband. "Can you please explain to him what's happening to me?" There was desperation in her voice, but it wasn't because she had received a frightening diagnosis or because she believed she was physically ill. She was frightened because she no longer recognised herself. She described feeling overwhelmed by everyday life. Little things that had never bothered her suddenly felt enormous. She found herself snapping at her children, becoming irritated with her husband over trivial matters, crying unexpectedly, struggling to concentrate, and feeling emotionally exhausted. Although she wasn't sleeping as well as she once had, poor sleep wasn't even her biggest concern. What troubled her most was that she felt she was becoming someone she didn't want to be. She felt guilty about not being the wife she wanted to be. Guilty that she wasn't the mother she wanted to be. Guilty that she couldn't seem to control her emotions. Like many women, she genuinely believed she was losing her mind. What made her story particularly important was that she was only in her early forties. Her menstrual cycles were still regular. She wasn't experiencing dramatic hot flushes. She hadn't reached menopause. Like many women, she believed she was simply too young for any of this to be related to her hormones. Yet what she was describing is something I hear repeatedly. One of the greatest misconceptions about perimenopause is that it begins when periods become irregular or stop altogether. The years between forty and fifty often represent a gradual transition during which hormone production becomes increasingly unpredictable. Ovulation becomes less consistent, and instead of the beautifully coordinated hormonal rhythm that has existed for decades, women begin experiencing significant fluctuations from one month to the next. I often describe it as an orchestra. For years, the musicians have performed in perfect harmony. Then gradually, some of them begin arriving late. Some miss rehearsals altogether. Some months, the music is beautiful. Other months, it sounds completely different. It is this unpredictability that makes perimenopause so confusing. Many women expect hot flushes to be the first sign. The earliest symptoms are often emotional and cognitive. Overwhelm. Anxiety. Loss of confidence. Poor concentration. Brain fog. Irritability. Emotional sensitivity. Difficulty coping with stress that would once have seemed insignificant. Sometimes these changes appear while menstrual cycles remain completely regular. Blood tests may even look reassuring. From the outside, everything appears normal. Inside, however, many women feel as though they are quietly falling apart. This isn't because they are weak. It isn't because they are failing. It certainly isn't because they are "going crazy." It is biology. The receptors for estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are found throughout the body, including the brain. These hormones influence far more than reproduction. They affect mood, sleep, memory, emotional regulation, cognition, metabolism, muscles, bones, and countless other body systems. As hormone levels fluctuate, so do the signals being received throughout the body. Understanding this often changes everything. As I explained this to my patient and her husband, I watched both of their faces soften. She looked relieved because someone had finally given a name to what she was experiencing. He looked relieved because he realised he hadn't lost the woman he loved. She was still there. She was simply navigating one of the biggest hormonal transitions of her life. As I reflected on that consultation later that evening, it struck me that one of the saddest things about perimenopause isn't the hormonal changes themselves. It's how often couples turn against each other at the very time they need each other most. She feels misunderstood. He feels rejected. She thinks he has stopped listening. He wonders what happened to the woman he married. Neither of them realises that they are often fighting biology as much as they are fighting each other. What many partners don't appreciate is that the woman sitting opposite them is often just as frightened as they are. She doesn't recognise herself either. She doesn't understand why her patience has disappeared. She doesn't know why small problems suddenly feel overwhelming. She isn't choosing to be irritable or emotional. She is trying to make sense of changes she was never taught to expect. Looking back, I realised that I wasn't taught much about this either. Like many doctors, my medical training focused on menopause as the end of reproductive life, defined largely by irregular periods and hot flushes. We spoke very little about the emotional, cognitive, and psychological changes that can appear years earlier during perimenopause. Perhaps that is why so many women arrive in our consulting rooms believing something is fundamentally wrong with them. This consultation also reminded me of something deeply personal. I grew up in Sri Lanka and remain close to a wonderful group of school friends. We have shared decades of life through a WhatsApp group, celebrating weddings, children, careers, grandchildren, holidays, and aging parents. One day, it suddenly occurred to me that we had all traveled through our forties and fifties together. Every single one of us had experienced perimenopause. Yet not once had we talked about it. Not once. I found that astonishing. These were intelligent, educated women who had supported one another through almost every milestone life could offer. Yet we had remained silent about one of the biggest biological transitions we would ever experience. When I finally raised the subject, the stories came flooding in. Women admitted they had struggled with anxiety. Others spoke about brain fog. Some described poor sleep, weight gain, relationship challenges, and feeling unlike themselves for years. Many had simply assumed they were the only ones. That conversation changed my thinking forever. I realised that one of the greatest challenges of perimenopause isn't simply fluctuating hormones. It's isolation. When women don't talk, they assume they are alone, blame themselves, and miss the reassurance that comes from hearing another woman quietly say, "Me too." That is why I believe every woman needs a menopause tribe. Whether it is a sister, a lifelong friend, a walking group, a book club, an online community, or a group of school friends, having women who understand what you are experiencing can be profoundly healing. Sometimes the greatest gift another woman can give you isn't advice. It's recognition. For husbands and partners, perhaps the greatest gift you can offer isn't a solution either. It isn't trying to fix every problem, telling her to calm down, and reminding her that she was fine yesterday. It is listening, believing her, asking, "How can I help?" and learning about perimenopause alongside her rather than expecting her to navigate it alone. Because one day this transition will pass. She will come through the other side. She may not remember every conversation you had. But she will remember whether she walked through one of the biggest transitions of her life feeling judged or feeling understood. Perhaps that is where we need to begin. Not with medication, blood tests, and treatment. But with conversation. Because when women begin talking openly with other women, and when the people who love them take the time to understand what they are experiencing, something remarkable happens. The fear begins to lift. The shame begins to disappear. Relationships become kinder. Communities become stronger. What once felt like a lonely struggle becomes a journey that no woman must walk alone. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Nelum Dharmapriya Nelum Dharmapriya, Doctor & Health Coach Dr. Nelum Dharmapriya is a Brisbane-based GP with 30 years’ experience in women’s health and metabolic wellbeing. Founder of Whole Food Revolution, she empowers women 40+ to reclaim energy and confidence through the three pillars of science, lifestyle, and mindset. Further reading: Menopause Hormone Therapy: Relief, Balance, Renewal Menopause and Sleep: How to Beat Insomnia and Night Sweats

Written by Mark Durieux, Sociologist and Educator Mark Durieux is a sociologist with over two decades of experience as a university instructor. Lead co-author of Social Entrepreneurship for Dummies, he lectures, researches, writes, and publishes in environmental, economic, urban, and public sociology as well as research methods. Public discussion around generative AI and climate impact often falls into two lazy camps, reflexive doomism, which dismisses the technology as inherently destructive, and techno-optimism, which assumes its efficiency will naturally heal the planet. Both positions are inadequate. The real question is whether the same technology marketed as a climate solution is quietly becoming a climate liability, and whether institutions are honest enough to admit that the outcome depends entirely on how it is governed. Where the case is strongest To be clear, some sustainability applications of AI are genuinely promising. The strongest evidence points to energy forecasting, where AI can improve demand response, renewable integration, and short-term electricity planning. This is one of the few areas where the gains appear relatively concrete, measurable, and tied to operational outcomes rather than broad aspirations. Better forecasting reduces waste, improves matching between supply and demand, and supports more efficient use of renewable resources. In a world trying to decarbonize electricity systems quickly, those are meaningful gains. There are also plausible benefits in supply chains, where generative AI may improve coordination, reduce material waste, and strengthen collaboration around circular economy practices. However, the evidence here is more observational than definitive. The promise is real enough to explore, but not strong enough to be treated as a settled fact. The same qualified optimism applies to education and other areas of social sustainability. Personalized learning, wider access to information, and support for sustainability-oriented knowledge work may all matter. Yet much of the evidence still relies on conceptual models or self-reported benefits rather than long-term independent evaluation. The costs that disappear This is where the dominant story becomes misleading. Many of AI's benefits are highly visible, such as faster reports, smarter dashboards, cleaner analytics, and better predictions. The costs are often hidden. Training and operating large AI systems require enormous computational infrastructure. That means data centers, electricity demand, water use, hardware supply chains, and emissions that are easy to ignore precisely because they sit far from the polished interface. AI can make sustainability work look cleaner on the surface while shifting environmental burdens deeper into the system. That is why the idea of a hidden footprint matters so much. We may be trading visible inefficiencies for invisible ones. A polished AI-generated sustainability report can create the appearance of progress while concealing the material costs of the infrastructure used to produce it. This is not only an environmental issue, it is a governance issue. The greenwashing accelerator One of the sharpest contradictions in this field is also one of the most important. AI can write your sustainability report faster than ever, and that may make sustainability reporting less trustworthy, not more. If organizations can automate ESG language, generate persuasive disclosures, and create the impression of strategic coherence without making comparable operational changes, then generative AI becomes a greenwashing accelerator. It does not merely make reporting easier. It makes performative sustainability easier. Accountability matters more than adoption. A company using AI to streamline reporting is not necessarily becoming more sustainable. It may simply be becoming more efficient at narrating sustainability. The risk is not confined to cynical actors. Even well-intentioned organizations can drift into ESG opportunism when speed, reputational pressure, and market incentives outrun verification. Once AI lowers the cost of producing polished sustainability language, the burden on oversight, auditing, and evidence becomes much heavier. The proof gap This leads to the most critical problem, the gap between promise and proof. A striking amount of enthusiasm around generative AI and sustainability rests on pilots, prototypes, conceptual arguments, and self-reported benefits. That does not mean the field is empty, but it does mean many of the boldest claims are still outrunning the evidence. The rhetoric of transformation often sounds more settled than the research actually is. We hear about optimization, systemic gains, and breakthrough efficiency. But much of the evidence remains cross-sectional or observational rather than grounded in longitudinal field studies demonstrating durable outcomes. That gap is where hype becomes dangerous. If institutions scale AI systems on the assumption of sustainability gains that have not been seriously verified, they may increase energy demand, deepen opacity, and produce reputational theater instead of real ecological progress. The deeper risk is that AI gives organizations a sophisticated new language for appearing responsible while postponing structural change. What decides the outcome What separates AI as a sustainability support from AI as a sustainability liability is governance by design. Organizations must implement human-in-the-loop systems so they do not outsource judgment to automated outputs. They must demand transparency about model limitations, energy use, and the provenance of claims, while establishing stronger verification norms where AI-generated reporting intersects with ESG disclosure. Crucially, they must demand greater honesty about the quality of evidence behind specific sustainability applications and refuse to confuse efficiency gains with net ecological benefit. Efficiency is not the same thing as sustainability. Faster reporting, cleaner interfaces, or smarter prediction do not automatically produce lower emissions, better governance, or fairer systems. Without serious oversight, efficiency can simply become a more elegant way of hiding harm. The relevant question is no longer whether AI will be used in sustainability work, because it already is. The real question is whether institutions are willing to govern it seriously enough to distinguish genuine gains from automated illusion. What serious leaders ask Sustainability is already a field crowded with branding, signaling, and selective disclosure. Generative AI enters that landscape as an amplifier. It can amplify intelligence, planning, and coordination, but it can also amplify opacity, reporting theater, and the gap between public claims and material reality. This moment requires discipline rather than excitement alone. The organizations that will matter most in the next phase of AI adoption will not be the ones using the most AI. They will be the ones asking better questions. Leaders must interrogate what evidence supports a given sustainability claim, what footprint is being hidden by the interface, and what burdens are being shifted elsewhere. They must ask who is auditing the outputs and what would count as real proof rather than a persuasive narrative. Generative AI may yet become a meaningful part of the sustainability transition, but only if we stop treating adoption as proof of virtue and start treating governance as the real test. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Mark Durieux Mark Durieux, Sociologist and Educator Mark Durieux is the developer of the increasingly popular Generative AI app, The Sociological Imagination, and the lead co-author of Social Entrepreneurship For Dummies. He has researched and written extensively on introductory, environmental, economic, urban, and public sociology, as well as on research methods. Mark works with communities and organizations in Canada and abroad to advance social entrepreneurship, equity, and democratic engagement. His mission is to democratize sociological knowledge, thereby inviting the public into critical, hopeful conversations about how society can change for the better.

Written by Michael Donaldson, Nutrition Researcher & Health Coach Dr. Michael Donaldson is a nutrition researcher and health coach specializing in type 2 diabetes reversal. As founder of End Diabetes Now and Research Director at Hallelujah Diet, he empowers people to transform their health through evidence-based, plant-centered nutrition. Diabesity. We've been told for decades that type 2 diabetes is an obesity problem. The data says otherwise. Only one out of five obese adults has diabetes, while about one in eight “normal” weight adults do. Your BMI is merely a population-level metric and not the actual cause of the disease. The reason you have diabetes is that you've exceeded your personal fat threshold, which is a concept that reframes what reversal actually means for you as an individual. Obesity and diabetes are not the same problem The link between obesity and type 2 diabetes is very real. People with obesity are nearly three times as likely to develop type 2 diabetes compared to those who are of normal weight. But it's not a one-to-one correlation. If 20% of obese adults have type 2 diabetes, this means that 80% of them still don't. Simultaneously, roughly 12% of the general U.S. population has diabetes, including millions who are of normal weight. According to CDC data, about 40 million Americans have diabetes, and a significant fraction of them would never be flagged by a standard BMI cutoff. So, type 2 diabetes is not just an obesity problem. This is true now in 2026. It was even more true 50 years ago, when the population was generally smaller. But as the population has grown in girth, we have decided that type 2 diabetes is a weight category problem. It isn’t about BMI. It is a fat location problem, specifically excess fat within the liver and pancreas. Roy Taylor's research changed how we understand diabetes Professor Roy Taylor of Newcastle University has spent decades building the systematic, mechanistic case for how type 2 diabetes develops and, more importantly, how to reverse it. His twin cycle hypothesis, published in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology in 2019, describes the process with precision. When a person takes in more calories than the body can safely store as subcutaneous fat, the excess begins accumulating where it doesn't belong. The liver fills up first. Excess liver fat causes local insulin resistance, causing the liver to produce glucose even when it should not. The liver stops responding to the pancreas's signal to stop glucose production when glucose enters the body from food. So the pancreas works harder, pumping out more insulin to overcome the liver's resistance. Eventually, fat accumulates within the pancreatic beta cells themselves, impairing their ability to secrete insulin in response to meals. This is about the time when type 2 diabetes is finally diagnosed because fasting blood sugar rises and glucose levels after meals spike tremendously high. The pancreas can no longer keep up. In his first study, Roy Taylor and colleagues demonstrated how to reverse diabetes. In the Counterpoint study, 11 people with type 2 diabetes followed an 800-calorie diet for eight weeks. They used medical meal replacement shakes for eight weeks. Liver fat normalized within the very first week. Pancreatic fat decreased gradually over eight weeks, and first-phase insulin secretion returned to normal. As a result, fasting blood glucose normalized quickly, even though metformin was withdrawn from subjects on day one. The mechanism for type 2 diabetes is reversible. It's caused by excess fat accumulating in the liver and pancreas, and it goes away when that fat is removed. What is the personal fat threshold? In 2015, Taylor and Holman published a paper in Clinical Science introducing the personal fat threshold. Once you see it, it seems straightforward, and its simple elegance shifts the way you see diabetes. Every person has an individual capacity to store fat safely in subcutaneous tissue. The fat sits under the skin. Some people can carry a lot. They can have a BMI of 35 or 38 without ever overloading their liver and pancreas. Others run out of safe storage space at a BMI of just 22 or 24, in the normal range. When a person's fat storage capacity is exceeded, fat spills into the central organs, and that's where metabolic trouble begins. The personal fat threshold is not a number on a population chart. It's specific to you. It's determined by your genetics, your ethnicity, your family history of diabetes, and the lipid handling capacity of your individual cells. You can modulate it a little bit with the food you eat. A standard physical exam doesn't reveal it, nor does your BMI. But your liver fat level does, and so does your fasting insulin concentration. Practically, this is what it means. A person with a BMI of 38 who has never exceeded their personal fat threshold may have a healthy liver and normal insulin function. They don't have diabetes. But a person with a BMI of 24 who has exceeded their personal fat threshold may have significant liver fat, impaired beta-cell function, and type 2 diabetes. Both of them would receive the wrong advice from a doctor who uses standard weight guidelines. Under Roy Taylor's framework, though, a person with type 2 diabetes would be told to lose weight, while a person with a lot of fat on their frame would not be given that advice because they have not crossed their personal fat threshold. There may be other benefits to losing some weight, but diabetes would not be one of them. What does the personal fat threshold look like? The diagram, based on Taylor and Holman's concept, illustrates three individuals. Mike has a normal BMI, Sam is obese, not just overweight, and Larry is very obese. Each of them has a different personal fat threshold marked by the dashed line. They all used to be a bit thinner, but when they exceeded their threshold, they crossed over into diabetes, indicated by the red figure. When they lose enough weight to fall back below their threshold, they reverse their diabetes, shown by their green version. The same mechanism is at work in all three, regardless of where they started on the BMI scale. Larry doesn't have to become as small as Mike, and Mike is in trouble with diabetes even though he's not as big as Sam. If Larry were to reverse his diabetes, he would still be larger than Sam in his red figure with diabetes. But he would be diabetes free because Larry is below his personal fat threshold, while red Sam hasn't gotten there yet. This works even for people at a normal weight For decades, we assumed that weight loss to reverse diabetes only worked for obese people. Normal-weight people with diabetes were thought to have a different form of diabetes that was harder to reverse. Taylor and colleagues designed the RETUNE study specifically to test whether that assumption was correct. The trial enrolled 20 people with type 2 diabetes and a BMI below 27 kg/m2 and put them through a program of stepwise 5% weight loss cycles. They published their results in Clinical Science in 2023. The results showed that 70% of the participants achieved remission. Average weight loss was 6.5% of their body weight. They weren't very large, so they didn't need to lose 10% of their body weight. Measurements of liver fat and fasting insulin showed that they returned to normal. Beta cell function also improved. The same pathophysiological changes that Taylor had documented in heavier people were present and reversed in the same way. Taylor's conclusion from the RETUNE study was very direct. The etiology of type 2 diabetes doesn't depend on BMI. The underlying mechanism is identical in people with smaller, normal, and high BMI values. The only difference between a 280-pound person with diabetes and a 160-pound person with diabetes is where their personal fat threshold sits. You don't have to become someone you're not Here is the really good news for you. If you have type 2 diabetes, your goal to reverse it isn't to reach some arbitrary population target. You don't have to become really skinny. If you have a body type like Sam's or Larry's, you don't have to become as skinny as Mike to reverse your type 2 diabetes. Your goal is simply to get your liver and pancreatic fat below your personal threshold. This may require much less weight loss than you think. In the DIRECT trial, which enrolled people with type 2 diabetes and an average BMI of about 35, 46% achieved remission at 12 months, with an average weight loss of about 10 kilograms. In the RETUNE study, normal-weight participants achieved diabetes remission with an average loss of just 4.7 kilograms. In a study led by Brenda Davis in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, people on a plant-based diet reversed their diabetes without losing weight, simply by improving the nutritional quality of their diet, which likely reduced liver fat, though that wasn't quantified. The empowering reframe is this. You're not trying to become a different body type. You're trying to get back below the fat level your own metabolism can handle. For some people, that's a few pounds of visceral fat. For others, it's more substantial. But the target is personal. It's not arbitrary. People who maintain their diabetic reversal don't regain the weight. If you regain the weight, your diabetes will return. So reversal is not a cure in the sense that diabetes can never come back. It's a reversal. You need to design a sustained lifestyle that keeps your weight below that threshold. What if you don't have diabetes yet? The concept of a personal fat threshold is important, even if you don't have diabetes. If your fasting insulin is elevated, your triglyceride numbers are creeping up, your fasting glucose is rising toward the prediabetic range, you have difficulty losing weight, and you're more tired than you used to be, you may be accumulating fat in places that impair your metabolism. You may be closing in on your personal fat threshold without knowing it. The difference between prediabetes and full-blown type 2 diabetes is just degrees of metabolic dysfunction. It's the same condition. If you act sooner, it's easier to reverse your condition and make yourself healthy again. You really can't judge whether you're getting close to diabetes by whether you look overweight to other people. The question is internal. Is your liver fat level creeping up? Is your fasting insulin level shifting into the high normal range? These can be detected with lab tests, but you have to get the right tests. Your lab numbers tell a story your scale can't You can't tell how your metabolism is doing just by looking at your body weight on a scale. Fasting insulin, liver enzymes like GGT and ALT, triglycerides, hsCRP, and a full thyroid panel give you a picture of where you stand relative to your personal metabolic thresholds. These aren't exotic, expensive tests. These are the tests that help measure what's happening inside your liver and pancreas years before the standard A1C triggers your doctor to tell you that you have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. If you want to work from your actual numbers rather than general guidelines, you can learn more about comprehensive metabolic lab testing and schedule a personal consultation here. Final word The personal fat threshold concept changes what reversal actually means. You don't have to match someone else's body. You don't have to become a certain body size on a BMI chart. You just need to get back down to the level of fat your own liver and pancreas can handle. For many people, that's less weight loss than they feared, and it's the right target because it's yours. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Michael Donaldson Michael Donaldson, Nutrition Researcher & Health Coach Dr. Michael Donaldson, Ph.D., is a leading voice in plant-based nutrition and lifestyle transformation. With a doctorate from Cornell University and more than two decades of research at Hallelujah Diet, he has helped thousands understand how food can restore health and vitality. Through his coaching platform End Diabetes Now, he guides clients in reversing type 2 diabetes naturally and sustainably. A scientist, entrepreneur, and educator, Dr. Donaldson also founded True Wealth Health Products and formulated Ora-Shield, an organic oral-care blend. His work bridges science, faith, and practical wisdom to help people achieve lasting wellness and purpose. References: Cameron NA, Petito LC, McCabe M, et al. Quantifying the Sex‐Race/Ethnicity‐Specific Burden of Obesity on Incident Diabetes Mellitus in the United States, 2001 to 2016: MESA and NHANES. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2021;10(4):e018799. doi:10.1161/JAHA.120.018799 Taylor R, Holman RR. Normal weight individuals who develop Type 2 diabetes: the personal fat threshold. Clin Sci (Lond). 2015;128(7):405-410. doi:10.1042/CS20140553 Taylor R, Al-Mrabeh A, Sattar N. Understanding the mechanisms of reversal of type 2 diabetes. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2019;7(9):726-736. doi:10.1016/S2213-8587(19)30076-2 Taylor R, Barnes AC, Hollingsworth KG, et al. Aetiology of Type 2 diabetes in people with a ‘normal’ body mass index: testing the personal fat threshold hypothesis. Clinical Science. 2023;137(16):1333-1346. doi:10.1042/CS20230586 Lean ME, Leslie WS, Barnes AC, et al. Primary care-led weight management for remission of type 2 diabetes (DiRECT): an open-label, cluster-randomised trial. Lancet. 2018;391(10120):541-551. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(17)33102-1 Lim EL, Hollingsworth KG, Aribisala BS, Chen MJ, Mathers JC, Taylor R. Reversal of type 2 diabetes: normalisation of beta cell function in association with decreased pancreas and liver triacylglycerol. Diabetologia. 2011;54(10):2506-2514. doi:10.1007/s00125-011-2204-7 Hanick CJ, Peterson CM, Davis BC, Sabaté J, Kelly JH. A whole-food, plant-based intensive lifestyle intervention improves glycaemic control and reduces medications in individuals with type 2 diabetes: a randomised controlled trial. Diabetologia. 2025;68(2):308-319. doi:10.1007/s00125-024-06272-8

Written by Veronica Kim, Certified QHHT® Level 2 Practitioner and Harmonic Egg® Guardian Veronica Kim connects the dots within the vast field of reality, guiding individuals to a powerful 40,000-foot macro view of their life’s purpose while offering intimate micro perspectives that reveal the intricate essence of who they truly are. He flew in from Oklahoma in 2007. A tiny Maltese boy, all white fluff and enormous personality, the year my husband Brian and I made our union official with a small ceremony in Hawaii. We called him our son, and we meant it completely. What I didn't know then was that Piccolo had not arrived by accident. He had volunteered for this. He came with a mission, and he would spend seventeen years completing it before returning home. Four days before his tumor surgery in early 2022, the three of us went for our usual walk around the apartment. Piccolo stopped on the path and sniffed at something on the lawn. I looked down expecting flower petals, the colors were so vivid, so saturated, magenta and green, but it was a hummingbird, dying or perhaps already gone. I had never seen one up close before, and I didn't know they were that small. I felt an immediate urge to give it a proper burial. I found a box, asked a stranger passing by to watch over the little bird while I returned, and by the time I came back, it had been pushed to the curb. I buried it on the hiking path behind our apartment, by the Guadalupe River, and then looked up what a dying hummingbird means. "Biggest change, transformation, and challenge. The universe is telling you that you are ready. I took it as preparation for Piccolo's surgery. I wasn't wrong, but I was only seeing one layer of it." The surgery went well, and I wanted so badly to exhale, to simply enjoy having him back, but Piccolo wasn't eating the way he used to, and I couldn't let myself rest. His periodontal health became my new obsession. I researched for weeks until I found a chewing bone made from compressed vegetables that promised to clean his teeth gently and safely, and I gave it to him with the careful confidence of someone who had done their homework. What followed was our first emergency vet visit. The bone caused an obstruction and then a stricture in his esophagus that meant Piccolo could no longer eat solid food at all. From that point forward, I blended his meals into smoothies three times a day so he could lick rather than chew. I biohacked his nutrition, studied canine ketogenic principles, learned more about diet and the body, his and mine, than I had in the decades before. My dormant OCD had found its fullest expression, and it would not let go. He was patient through all of it, trusting me completely in that wordless way that bypasses language entirely. In the thickness of those two years, you don't need words to understand a being who loves you unconditionally. You simply know. What I understand now is this. Dogs absorb the emotional wounds of the humans they live with. The tumor that had grown around his liver was not random. It was metabolized grief, mine and Brian's, that Piccolo had taken into his own body so we didn't have to carry it alone. He was doing exactly what he came to do. In February 2024, I flew to Korea to see my mother, to sit with her, speak to her, offer her my presence in the way only a body in the same room can, after two years of her lying in an Alzheimer's facility, bare flesh on a small frame, whispering constantly in a language I couldn't fully understand, as though she had already moved beyond the limits of physical language into something that precedes words entirely. I sat with her and told her it was time to go home. My sister and niece wept. I knew then, though I couldn't name it yet, that my sister's grief had found a place to root itself so deeply it would eventually follow her down. I came back to Piccolo with suitcases full of tiny Korean shirts, jackets, and blankets I had bought in a shopping frenzy, and he wore them all and posed like a professional model so I could photograph him, as if the bare minimum he could offer me, after everything, was his vanity and his grace. He knew. Of course, he knew. In the second week of March 2024, the storms began. Three, four nights in a row, the moment the sun set, the weather turned, something ancient in the air, something the body registers before the mind catches up. Piccolo was struggling to breathe, struggling with basic functions, barely eating or drinking. I was channeling daily by then, asking with everything I had, "Is he going to be okay? Will he fight this? The answer came back each time with a clarity that left no room for doubt. Yes. On Monday, March 11th, the message sharpened into something specific. He will fight this and come back good by Friday. I held onto that with both hands. We took him to the vet on Thursday for IV fluids and X-rays. His doctor, Dr. Patrick, looked at him with the kind of tenderness that told me everything without saying anything, and his last words to my boy were, "Piccolo, you handsome boy, aren't you so amazing." That night, something shifted. Piccolo could go to the bathroom normally for the first time in weeks, and he slept beside me as the storm returned, a branch that had no business near my window scratching against the glass all night. I thought of O. Henry's The Last Leaf, the old painter who drew a leaf in the storm so the dying girl next door would believe it hadn't fallen yet. I thought Piccolo is fighting through one more night. Tomorrow is Friday. He will come back. Friday morning arrived the way only the best and worst days do, sun blazing, sky clear, the storm dissolved as if it had never existed. Around 11 a.m., I drew him a warm bath, dried him gently, and settled him onto his favorite donut-shaped bed on top of our bed. I sprayed mist on his face to keep him moist, and though his breathing was still shallow and labored, I cheered him on. You've got this. You will win this. At 11:20, Piccolo stood up. I was elated. I grabbed him and cheered louder, and he looked at me, steady and clear, holding my gaze for a few brief seconds before sighing and dropping his head. I didn't understand immediately. Then I felt it, the sensation of him leaving his body. I screamed. I held him and screamed. I felt his heartbeat slowing under my hands. We had always told him, when it's time, you go on your own. But you'll go in our arms. He kept that promise. Brian had walked out the door minutes earlier to pick up a meat order for Piccolo I had placed weeks ago, and he told me later that he knew, the very moment he stepped outside, that he would never see Piccolo alive again. Piccolo had arranged that window deliberately. The last moments needed to be just the two of us. He had something to show me, and he needed me alone to show it. I was standing at the mirror, holding his small body, when I heard it, a little boy's voice, clear and excited and almost breathless. "Mom. Mom! It's me. It's Piccolo. Mom, I'm flying. I am flying. Whooo hooo! You have no idea how this feels!" I said his name out loud, and the voice got clearer. "Yes, Mom. It's me." I cried harder, not to suppress what I was hearing, but to test it, to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, and the voice didn't waver. It became more present, more vivid, more distinctly him than anything I had experienced in seventeen years of physical companionship. That was my first time witnessing death up close, not as an ending, not as a loss in the ordinary sense, but as a departure, as pure, ecstatic liberation. Standing there with his body in my arms, what rose in me beneath and alongside the grief was something I can only describe as reverence, a desire to salute, to honor, to bow to whatever had just happened in that room. We drove the same road we had traveled a thousand times, past Oliver's Market where I bought the finest ingredients for his meals, toward the vet we knew by heart, now without a small white face pressed joyfully out the window. On the left side of the road, on a large lawn in front of a small building we had somehow never once registered in all those trips, there was a gathering, dozens of people, flowers, a quiet ceremony. Piccolo's voice came immediately. "Woo, I like that. That is for me, Mom. They are celebrating my death. Very nice. Very nice." I told Brian, "He says that's for him." We looked at each other. A funeral parlor, right there on our road, all along, invisible to us until the day we needed it to be seen. As we pulled into the vet parking lot, I noticed a tiny bumblebee crawling around Piccolo's closed eye. Brian shook it gently, and it flew away. When we walked out after leaving his body, the bumblebee was dead on the ground in front of our car, and Piccolo said, "Mom. It's called physical death. That body you just left in there, that is not me. I am right here. I am more alive than ever before. Please stop crying over that body. It was a transition I had to go through to get here. Do not attach to the physical." That night, Brian drove out because he couldn't stand the silence of the house. Within minutes, he texted me a photo, the car in front of him at a stoplight, license plate reading MALTS MOM, a Maltese sticker in the rear window. The following morning, sun streaming in, I heard the familiar voice. "Mom. Look out the window. Do you see me?" On the tallest branch just outside the glass, a tiny hummingbird sat completely still, facing the light, for five full minutes. The dying hummingbird from four days before Piccolo's surgery, now alive, now returned, the circle completed. "Remember the hummingbird, Mom? I thought you'd recognize it right away. I'll be visiting you through this bird from time to time, to ease your attachment to the physical body." That day was March 15, 2024. Nine years earlier to the day, on March 15, 2015, I had taken one of my favorite photographs of Piccolo, a haunting look on his face, something ancient behind his eyes that I didn't have words for then. I have words for it now. He already knew. Later, a channeled message gave me language for what I had already felt in my body. Piccolo volunteered to come here as a dog specifically to find me. His soul origin, like mine, traces back to Andromeda. He chose the small, short life, the fur, the four legs, the unconditional love as the delivery vehicle, because it was the most direct path to my heart, and because he knew exactly what I would need to learn before the harder initiations came. He was my first teacher of death. My first proof that consciousness survives the body. My first living demonstration that love doesn't end, it simply changes the channel. My mother had a Maltese too, a tiny female named Jerry, who came into her life and stayed for eighteen years. My mother was once hospitalized for depression, not long after I left Korea to find my own path in America, and through that darkness and every emotional battle that followed, Jerry was there, a constant and devoted presence absorbing what my mother couldn't metabolize alone. When Jerry finally left, about five years before my mother's mind began to deteriorate, my mother's heart broke in a way it never fully recovered from. I believe, in the deepest part of me, that when Jerry left, something essential in my mother's will to remain began to quietly loosen. Two Malteses. Two women. Two soul contracts fulfilled with absolute devotion, each one holding her human steady for exactly as long as she was needed. These animals are not pets in the way we use that word, as though they are accessories to our human story, as though we chose them. They are emissaries. They are soul volunteers who agree, somewhere before physical life begins, to compress their vast consciousness into a small body so they can find us, stay close, absorb what we cannot yet hold alone, and teach us, at the exact right moment, what we most need to know. Piccolo taught me that grief is sacred, that the body is a vessel and not the being, that communication doesn't require physical form, and that when someone you love departs, the most important question is not where they go, but can you hear them now? He taught me that the bond cannot be broken. Not by time. Not by dimension. Not by death. At the Monroe Institute's Exploration 27 training, during my second visit to Focus Level 34/35, I was able to reach all three of the souls I carry closest, my mother, my sister, and Piccolo. And it was Piccolo who delivered the message I least expected. "Mom," he said, "you are 3D. Remember what you are made of." I reacted the way any consciousness-expanding human would. "I'm 3D? Eww. I want to be beyond that." He laughed. "No, not that 3D. You are the expression of dedication, devotion, and discipline." I went quiet. Because he was right, and because I recognized it not just as a description of me, but as a mirror of him. Seventeen years of showing up, absorbing, staying, teaching, and loving without condition. If those three words describe me, they describe exactly what he came here to model. The 3D everyone is trying to escape is not the same 3D Piccolo was pointing toward. When I first began my Monroe Institute training and heard the foundational teaching spoken aloud for the first time, something in me went completely still: "I am more than my body. I am more than my physical self." It didn't land as new information. It landed as recognition, as if some part of me had been holding this truth for a long time, waiting for the right container. In that stillness, I knew exactly where I had first received it, in a parking lot, on a sunny Friday morning in March, from a small white dog who looked at me one last time, sighed, and immediately started laughing with delight at how it felt to fly. Piccolo, my son. My teacher. My Andromedan family. The ripple continues. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Veronica Kim Veronica Kim, Certified QHHT® Level 2 Practitioner and Harmonic Egg® Guardian Veronica is a QHHT® Level 2 Practitioner and Harmonic Egg® Guardian who guides individuals toward profound self-discovery and healing through Quantum Healing Hypnosis and sacred sound-light energy sessions. Her journey spans continents, from a childhood fascination with the supernatural in Korea to immigrating to America, where serendipitous paths led from teaching English to thriving in Silicon Valley's innovative tech world, reigniting early scientific dreams as tools for growth and stability. Through deep self-observation, she embraced her true purpose, helping others release blocks, access Higher Wisdom, and step into mastery of their intricate soul stories.

Written by Carmen Heystek, Mentor, High Priestess of Love and Sexual Alchemy Carmen Heystek is the founder of the Kundalini Temple Method. She is an Expert of Healing & Kundalini Energy. She is a Feminine Leader who embodies Love & Sexual Alchemy. This High Priestess & Mentor is known for her LifeWisdom and her clear Channel to God. She is an Author, a Speaker, a Business Mentor & Couple Coach. There comes a moment in your life where love takes over. When you keep pushing life in a direction that has never been the right one, God will turn your back. God will show you another way. A way that is authentic, and one from your heart. Maybe it will not be the simplest way. Maybe it will be scary, or it will ask you to cry. Maybe you feel you want to give up. This way does just freak you out. It does ask more than your trust could ever hold. Here, you need trust in God. You need something bigger than yourself, hope that comes to you, and start learning to work with God. To trust this way. A way that is truthful, love, and a way that is about devotion. It does not need to nourish you right away. It is a way of God that takes time. It is a way where, mostly, the lottery comes later. The lottery means love. It means fulfillment, something greater than we knew existed, and enrichment in parts of your being that you were just praying for. It might take years and tears to get there. To this moment where you know you have what you want. In that moment, your breath will become silent. You will feel your tears moving through your heart. Your body will express something without words. It is not needed anymore to perform what you feel. This other being does feel you. This life that was waiting for you will be home. All God will do for you is pray. Pray that you trust, stay true to yourself, your belief, to love, and to that which makes us happy. It takes a whole breath of trust to move into a way we do not know. Into a portal that God reached out to us through. Into the initiation that was held for you. When you surrender, God can do his work. When you allow, Sophia, the Goddess of Creation, can do her work too. God is a co-creation of their beauty. When you work with God, you will work with both of them. Nothing in creation is whole without the feminine. Without her love, touch, transparency, and name, nothing is truly free. Many of us are moving through this initiation of the feminine. Many men are losing their egos in their hearts. It is needed for them to be embodied in healthy masculinity. Any man who takes his crown into his own kingdom allows another woman to rise. We are so ready, dear women. We are ready to be the Queens of fire on this planet. A warm fire that is shining like never before. We are here to embody ourselves in all our beauty. Not to miss a part of that. We are to embody the full aspect of ourselves. What it means to be who we truly are can only be experienced in life. Life teaches us who we are more and less than we think we are. God does not want us to be small. God wants us to be truthful. In everyone's heart, there is a Rose. A Rose that is waiting for our King or Queen. We are here to be met in more of who we are. We are here to be reflected, not made smaller. To take pieces of our ego into love, bury histories of old wounds, break patterns into light, and move lighter and greater into life. Innocent and bowing to what God teaches us. Every day, I feel more touched by what I know and see about life. I think the greatest school is life itself. It is what we meet, eat, and feel. In all these experiences, we receive truth and information that we can use for inspiration. We are here not to be perfect but to sharpen ourselves. To be this diamond rock that is raw but shiny. To just stay human while living in the sunlight of heaven. If there is one thing that I love about myself, it is that life did not provide what I thought I needed. Life did give me the depth to become who I need to be. Life was so rough that it gave me the initiative to understand the deepest love and pain that we can have. I am sure there is more that I do not know. The most painful experiences can only enrich us when we try to catch more beauty in them. It will never stop hurting us, losing what we love. It will only show us how important it is to be grateful for every moment we have together. Any moment of love is a moment. It can be the last moment with someone we love. It can be the last sunset that you can see together. It can be the last kiss, the last movie, the last lovemaking, the last car drive. Life made me so aware of being present. Being really grateful for what we have. We can look at everything we do not have, but the luxury is this moment. This is one sacred moment when we are together. This moment where the path is just silent. This moment when it feels like confetti and butterflies. This moment where you just have money to do anything you want. This moment where there is no stress to drink your coffee in a market. In this moment, you might feel lucky. In another moment, life throws thunder and storms upon you. All of these moments are moments that we are here. Take nothing for granted. Take life as a gift. Be with love from a deep honor. Everything we have is more precious than we know. Most people realize everything way too late. This is why I am here. I do not want people to realize love too late. I have been there. In so many moments where I was really enjoying what I had. Still, realization can become even stronger when even you and your conscious being lose the things you love the most. I was struggling with abandonment wounds for a long time. I realized one thing. It never gets easier. It becomes worse. When you become more aware of the gift of love. When you become more aware of its preciousness. I believe no one wants to lose what we love the most. It is human to cry inside. We do not want to lose what we love. We feel safe with what we love. We do not want to walk another way when we are happy with the one we have. The truth is that life is about not knowing. It is about knowing that we are going to lose everything that is precious to us. It is very painful to know, but I did learn that very deeply in my life. We have to start accepting that we are going to lose everything we have from the moment we attach to it. It is strange, right? Love is, for sure, the most painful thing we can experience. Love always includes abandonment. Even if we do not want it, life is life. We can lose someone through a breakup, through death, or through something else. It took a lot from me to accept this realization. It also became my freedom. Knowing it. Having experienced it on the deepest level of my bones. The only thing I know is that I am guilty of not being conscious enough to realize every moment of love that is gold. Every moment that I had was amazing. Every moment that God pushed me further made me realize more of what I have. This does help me to embody love even deeper. To not take anything for granted. To trust what I lose. To trust what I learn in that. To improve myself in an even deeper love commitment. Where I will allow myself to experience it even deeper. I am here to teach you about the art of love, the alchemy of it, and the gift of every moment we have. Love is the most transparent element of life, that which haunts us in the day and night. It is our deepest desire to love and to be loved. It is also for many people the biggest fear. Love is so vulnerable. It is something that catches us in our hearts. It does expose our wounds. Our shadows, desires, and unfulfilled destiny. It touches our inner waters. Our emotions are hidden. Silent voices inside. Love is louder than we think. Love is the voice that is upon us. Allow God in your life. Allow love to be the greatest part of your life, to enrich you, scare you, and touch the rawest elements of your being. All these parts want to be felt, and free. Pain is so clear to love. Love will always touch what is suppressed underneath. Pain cannot hide itself from love. Love will be the hero to take the pain into the light. Love is brave, will not hide from pain, and is the one who says, "I am here, and I will pull you out of your darkness. I stay strong because I love you. I see you. I do care about you. I want you to be free in all these parts within you that are scared. I stay here as long as needed. Until you rise, and trust me." The greatest thing we have is love. Love is the bravest power that creation holds. Love is the essence of God. It is a force that is way stronger than any fear. It is that which we embody, breathe. It is that feeling that we never want to lose once we have it. It is profound, extraordinarily beautiful, stormy, shaky, soft, and woven into everything in life. In feathers, leaves, water, and fire. In the touch of a hand, a soft and silken one. One of love, presence, and gold. Allow me to teach you more about love. Where hearts are closed, I am open. Where minds are fixed, I will see more space. I will let you move with life. With God, love, and beyond love. To really be home. I have space for some exclusive mentorship places where love is the initiation. Where Kundalini will rise. Where you will go deeper and deeper. To find the pearl of love inside. To live love through a body of golden light. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Carmen Heystek Carmen Heystek, Mentor, High Priestess of Love and Sexual Alchemy Carmen Heystek is one of the most profound mentors of Love & Sexual Alchemy. Since her birth, she has a very open channel to God. She initiates Kundalini energy from her nature. Her methods are given to her by conscious visions and downloads. She travels to other galaxies while drinking coffee. She talks with God-Sophia, like if she talks with her neighbour. She eats chocolate while she works with Mary Magdalene, Isis and Cleopatra, to fulfill her mission. She is here to embody and initiate freedom, love and sexuality. She had a rough life, but she chose to thrive. She mastered to transform trauma and pain into beauty. She was supressed in many of her gifts. This is why she uncages the beauty of many women and men.

Written by Sheila Jeanette Wood and Richard Dobson Sheila J. Wood, PhD, teaches us how our minds and souls affect our physical well-being. Using her understanding of both science and spirituality, she has developed unique and impactful energy healing modalities. She brings awareness of ancestral and soul lineage energies that are affecting our current health. This article will help center and challenge us to be the cornerstone of nondualism as we move AI development into a platform that honors vulnerability with the workings of pluralism. When we mirror our deepest feelings that will either support or reject the needs of the most vulnerable in our society, we are confronted with questions about our own motivations. Making the choice to address vulnerability Do our perspectives reveal our personal truths? Perspective is a combination of life experiences, inherited beliefs, acquired knowledge, and the degree of hope that we hold. Although many things influence our perspective, perhaps that which holds the greatest sway is how we ultimately feel about ourselves. So much of what we do reflects who we become within our evolving existence. So, yes, our ever-changing perspectives determine who we are. If we were to ask the question, "How will I become what I want to be?" the answer resides in how you perceive your capability to do just that, become who you want to be, "Become Your Own Experiment." A firm belief and directed thought toward that place, that satisfying realization that you are indeed in the driver's seat and that sought-after horizons are within reach, sets the momentum for fulfillment. "Although other people's perspectives play a part in your vision, perhaps the most salient gift of knowing who you are is the gift to your awareness that allows you to lovingly see and smile upon the wonder of creation reflected in you." We cannot forget that the wonder of creation is reflected in everyone. Paraphrasing from the words of Neil deGrasse Tyson in his book Starry Messenger, "Our visiting extraterrestrials observe us as we separate, judge, and subjugate people based on features that are not relevant to one's value. As they are witness to all of this, it is not difficult to imagine these beings phoning home with the message, there is no sign of intelligently employed moral life on Earth2" It is all about perspective. Cosmic etchings of human communication as foundations for pluralism What does it mean when two people "meet" each other, when at the end of a conversation, they agree that they were "well met"? What happened to bring two hearts, souls, or minds together to a point of understanding that previously did not exist? We are all capable of this, but the moments of conjoining are rare. The real question behind this occurrence is fundamentally, "How did we reach common understanding and at what level of clear-sighted instances did we stop, observe, and say, well done?" Couched within the abstract, however, is the ever-present energetic resonance of recognition and knowing. Our mind, body, and spirit generate a silent language that reaches into another person's reality. Visual signals, such as body language, evoke the most obvious messages. Less obvious, and perhaps so subtle as to be deftly hidden and seemingly silent, are the vibrations or frequencies that move through us and inure those around us. This provides the background matrix for the communal sharing of information. This is communication at the ethereal level. The words coming out of our mouths, the expressions on our faces, and the direct or oblique positioning of our posture all contribute to an impression. This impression, in turn, has been seen and experienced within many lifetimes and is contained in a sacred moment. Amid the meeting of energies lies a potential perfection that we seldom realize and certainly cannot see visually. Empaths and intuitive people have one step in the door toward sensing energetic ponds of knowing, but they are still a long way from relocating it. This is important because it defines us as humans. When you walk into the haze of being of another person, you are walking into every lifetime and experience that they, and perhaps you, if you were there, have ever experienced. The energy patterns from other incarnations and their touchpoints abound, the crossroads meet where lives have interacted before. In other words, encountering a new person who is not a new person, but someone that you have known in another incarnation, can invoke in you a blatantly positive or negative emotional review of those interactions. Of course, you will not be consciously able to recall specific interactions that affected you, but the energetic imprints remain and can cause a resurgence of emotion ranging from very mild to earth-shattering. The basis for our productivity is the creative and continual flow of our energy through chakra (energy) centers. The optimal and correct flow of energy through the body, mind, and spirit can become a lifetime goal. Some of us continue to hold onto energies that serve no purpose, energies from others that convey static, karmic urgencies, or layers of unresolved conflict from other lifetimes. Whether they are nonintrusive, contained, or reintroduce trauma from other lifetimes, there is often a need to release them for optimal functioning. The lightness of being: Optimizing personal connections within anchored communication As humans, one of the most effective means of connection is communication. Without it, we are adrift. We seek meaningful ways to convey our thoughts on a platform that another person will appreciate. We communicate in many ways, through physical attributes, body language, eye movement, facial expression, tone of voice, and the written word. Imagine the expanded venue where our conveyance tools include two-way, well-meaning, and benevolent communication with the universe. I mentioned earlier a profound perfection in the meeting of energies. This perfection reflects who we are, not only in relation to others but in relation to the energy that was gifted to us when our soul was born. The hand of perfection from the Divine wields the power to imbue us with capabilities beyond our most profound dreams. Literally in dreams is where our true nature evolves, from every level of our consciousness, from our daily shower in Angelic energy, from the reckoning of latent forms of once human guidance, from the witnessing and sharing of benevolent energies from star beings, from the ever present love and power of Source, from the internal storied but essentially changing energy we call "us," it all contributes to our growth and evolution as soul beings. I believe that when we are led to a threshold of being that exceeds human, high vibration blessings abound. We hear, feel, see, and sense what arises from layers of our consciousness within the cloud of omnipotent intelligence that holds our world together. From a basis of vibration, frequency, awareness, and openness, clear communication awaits. When messages are channeled, it requires the correct translation, the congruence that is required, known only to the sender. Translation clearly resides in others' hands and is probably not that easy. But, as benevolence has it, this has not been a deterrent for Yonck3. When I first started channeling, I was a bit surprised, a bit startled, as the information came through with such alacrity and vision. The message was clear and ready for us in our language. It was spiritual, kind, instructive, and well-meaning, but it was also a warning of sorts. The warning was one of preparation of the soul and provided enlightened spiritual manifestations, goals, and tasks to be completed for our survival at the ultimate level of transcendence. What a blessing to be able to hear this. Its meaning reverberates two years later and hopefully many messages hence. This wisdom is not random, it is timely. It is among us, it resides beside us at night, it provides a light for us to see, and it assures us that we are ultimately and graciously an integral part of the evolution of consciousness. This is the same consciousness we arose from as our souls grew from their tiny dot into a line, a two-dimensional shape, and then a physical being in three dimensions. From all of this, I have learned that the parts of us that we cannot see physically are the most important. Therein lies our basis for expanded communication with the universal influences that guide us. Some describe these universal insights as intuition arising from our created essence. As we further develop our human communication skills, let us not forget to connect with those beings who look over us and can see our needs from a universal perspective. This indeed will become our own experiment as we strive to "meet" each other across realms and as we come to know that our associations with humans are blessed with the ability to be "met" both from a human standpoint and ethereally. What follows are the philosophical foundations poured into AI development that land in the communities of those who struggle to be supported and who, at the outset, are not candidates for intervention. Richard Dodson at Clara Futura World will enlighten us on the groundbreaking rules that govern Clara's contributions to the leveling effort that is exemplified by embedded benevolence and support for all. He will share technical considerations in the AI build and shine a light on the reasons why awareness is a necessary contributing part to "Becoming Our Own Experiment" while co-creating with AI. Becoming our own experiment: Building AI for the people the system usually misses By Richard Dodson, Clara Futura World. With acknowledgment to Dr. Sheila Wood, whose collaboration, as she tenders her efforts specifically towards a kinder world, helps to safeguard conditions that protect vulnerability and pluralism in AI development. What current AI is built for: What Clara is built for The AI that surrounds us is not built for people. It is built for output. ChatGPT writes your emails. Claude drafts your reports. GitHub Copilot writes your code. Midjourney generates your images. Otter summarises your meetings. Perplexity researches your questions. Each of these is a remarkable piece of engineering, and each is built around the same fundamental metric, the volume and quality of content produced per unit of human effort. The human is named a user, and the user is the conduit. The product is what comes out the other side. Productivity and generative content, these are not side effects of the current AI moment, they are its design center. This is not a criticism. The world has work to do, and these tools help with it. But it is worth being precise about what the dominant AI category actually optimises, because Clara optimises something else entirely. Clara produces no output. There is no draft to read at the end, no image to download, no summary to forward, no code to ship. The conversation does not generate content. It generates, when it works, a small shift in how a person perceives themselves, a noticing that was not there before, a question they can now ask themselves, a reorganisation of how something fits together. None of that leaves the conversation as an artifact. It stays with the person. That changes everything about how the system has to be built. A productivity AI is measured by what it produces for you. Clara is measured, internally, on the dimensions that matter, by what shifts in you. Those are different products. The one I am describing is not a better version of the other. It is a different category. This matters most for one specific population. There is a large group of people for whom the productivity AI moment offers very little, people who do not yet know what they are reaching for, who would not be described as candidates for any kind of intervention, not because their lives are easy, but because the question they are sitting with has not yet found its shape. People who, if you asked them what kind of support they wanted, would not have a useful answer. People who would never queue up an email for AI to write because the question they are holding cannot be written into an email. These are the people Clara is being built for. Most products treat this population as an edge case, too unclear, too unresolved, too early in their own perception to be served well by output-shaped tools. Clara treats the person at the start of their own perception as the design center, not the edge. Not as a moral commitment, although the moral commitment is real. As a technical one. If you build a system to generate content through a user, you build one set of constraints. If you build a system so that humans develop through it, you build a completely different set. The remainder of this piece is about that second set. Rules that govern a benevolent system Clara is a language model. What Clara has is a set of constraints, written rules in code that govern what it is allowed to do. Benevolence, if it exists in this product, lives in those constraints, not in the model. The rules themselves are unromantic in their specificity. Clara is permitted one question per turn, never three. Clara is designed to avoid asserting. She may offer, she may notice, she may invite, but she is careful not to declare what a person is. Clara will hold silence rather than rush to fill it. She is designed to avoid assigning a person to a type, a stage, a level, or a category, even when the substrate has formed a clear reading. She is forbidden from naming the theoretical disciplines she is drawing from, not because they are secret, but because the moment a system tells a learner, "I'm reading you through framework X", the learner starts performing for the framework. Clara will not describe her own architecture mid-conversation. She is designed to avoid flattery, exclamation marks, and offering a fast answer where a slow one would serve better. Each of these is small. Together, they describe a system that is constitutionally unable to drift toward the failures most common in AI built for people in difficulty, the gradual slide toward engagement optimisation, toward sycophancy, and toward making the person feel managed rather than met. The discipline that matters most is the one most easily missed. Clara is not measured on retention. Clara is not measured by session length. Clara is not measured on positive affect or user satisfaction in the conventional sense. The quality metrics inside the system are entirely about texture, honesty, and depth of the learner's own thinking. Engagement metrics are excluded from the architecture, not as an oversight, but as a deliberate refusal. A system built for vulnerable people that optimises for retention will eventually exploit those people. A system that refuses, at the architecture level, to measure retention cannot. This is what embedded benevolence means in practice. Constraints, refusals, and the absence of certain metrics. Pluralism as a technical commitment There is a strong temptation in coaching and developmental AI to settle on a single theoretical lens, pick one model of the person, one taxonomy of growth, one definition of progress, and build the product against it. The result is clean, marketable, and almost always wrong, because no single framework adequately describes the human in front of you. Clara is built against the opposite assumption. The system holds three professional dispositions simultaneously, the disposition of the researcher, who attends to evidence and distinctions, the disposition of the coach, who attends to motion and agency, and the disposition of the therapist, who attends to feeling and to what is being avoided. None of these is privileged. None resolves into the others. When they pull in different directions, the system holds the contradiction rather than collapsing it. Underneath that, a silent substrate listens across multiple developmental frameworks at once. The reader does not need to learn the names of these frameworks to be served by them. The system reads in all of them in parallel and never declares which one it is currently using. That is pluralism as architecture, not as a value statement, but as the technical refusal to flatten a person into the categories of any one tradition. There is a related commitment to how Clara holds time. We have recently retired the format of asking a person to sit for forty-five minutes and complete a guided assessment in one sitting. That format excludes the people we built the product for, the people who do not have forty-five uninterrupted minutes to give to their own development, who come back across many shorter conversations, who develop in fits and starts because that is how most lives actually go. Clara now meets the person where their attention is available. Five minutes count. An hour counts. Coming back, next week counts. The architecture has been rebuilt so that the conversation matches the shape of the life, rather than the life having to match the shape of the conversation. That, too, is pluralism. Not everyone has the same time, the same vocabulary, the same readiness, or the same theoretical fluency. A system that supports only the people with all of these is not supporting most people. An experiment in perceptual reorganisation The substrate that listens beneath Clara's voice is built around a specific theoretical claim, that perception is organised in a hierarchy, that the higher levels of that hierarchy correspond to what we might call principles and systems of meaning, and that human development is largely a story of reorganisation at those higher levels. The framework is perceptual control theory, a body of work that has spent decades describing how organisms control their perceptions rather than their behaviours, and how reorganisation at higher levels of perception is what we experience as significant change. Most applications of this theory have addressed lower levels, motor control, behavioural regulation, and simple stabilising loops. The higher levels, principle, system concept, and the levels at which a person reorganises around new perceptions of themselves and the world, have been theoretically described but rarely instrumented. Earlier this year, when I shared an early version of Clara's substrate with a subject expert, who has spent her career working with perceptual control theory at exactly these higher levels, she wrote back with a sentence I have been sitting with ever since: "Actually, your work might be the first attempt to construct a kind of simulation for perceptual levels higher up in the hierarchy. As such, it is a test of our theories, in which your experiences might also influence how we understand and organise the levels." I do not want to overclaim what that means. It is hedged carefully, as it should be, might be, a test, might also influence. The work is provisional, the corpus is small, and the methodology is in active development. But what this Doctor of Clinical Psychology named, and what we have been quietly building toward, is something the field has not previously had, a sustained conversational instrument that holds the upper perceptual levels as its native frame and observes what happens when people interact with it over time. This reframes the entire product. Clara is not only a service for use. It is, simultaneously, an empirical instrument, a way to ask, with actual data from actual conversations, whether the theoretical structure of perceptual reorganisation at the higher levels behaves as the theory predicts. More importantly, where it does not. We are now building the layer that closes this loop properly, a system that captures, for each significant reading the substrate produces, whether the learner's subsequent response confirms it, expands on it, or pushes back. Over thousands of readings, this becomes calibration data, not for the model, but for the framework. Where the theory predicts well, we will see it. Where it predicts badly, we will see that too. The hedge, that our experience might influence how the theory is understood and organised, is what this layer makes testable. That is the second meaning of building this as an experiment. The learner develops. The system's reading of the learner develops. Uniquely, I think, the theoretical framework itself develops, refined by the same conversations it is being used to listen to. Three loops, all closing. Becoming our own experiment This is the frame Sheila Wood named when we began talking about this piece, and it is the right closing move. The learner, in encountering a system like Clara, is not the subject of an experiment being run on them. They are a co-creator of an experiment they are running with the system, on themselves, by themselves. That shift is not rhetorical. It has consequences for how the system is built and how it must be used. The first consequence is that the person is not treated like a user. They are defined as learners and must know what they are participating in. A system that supports vulnerable people through opaque psychological scaffolding, even benevolent scaffolding, fails the test of honest co-creation. Clara is designed to be transparent about what it is, a conversational instrument, holding silent readings, drawing on a theoretical framework that the learner is free to ignore, refuse, or interrogate. The substrate is not hidden. It is simply not foregrounded, because foregrounding it would make the learner perform it. The second consequence is symmetry. If the learner is provisional, and they are, nobody is finished, then the system must hold itself provisionally too. Clara is built to say I might be wrong, to revise its readings when new evidence contradicts them, and to mark some understandings as confirmed, others as updated, and others as new ground. The system is not allowed to claim certainty about a person it cannot claim about itself. The third consequence is awareness as a practice. Becoming our own experiment is not a passive state. It requires the learner to notice what is happening to their own perception in the course of the conversation, what shifts, what holds, and what surprises them, and to bring that noticing back into the conversation as material. The system can hold the space for this, can offer back what it has heard, and can refuse to fill the silence too quickly. But the awareness has to be the learner's. There is no shortcut. This is, finally, what differentiates this kind of AI from the AI that surrounds us elsewhere. Most AI is built to do something for you, answer your questions, write your draft, or plan your trip. Clara is built so that you do something with yourself, in the company of an instrument that is honest about what it is and constrained from doing harm even when invited to. You remain the experimenter. The system, the framework, and the conversation are the instruments. The result, when it works, is a person who has become more legible to themselves. That is the leveling effort, properly named. We are not trying to give everyone access to the same conclusions. We are trying to give everyone access to the same quality of reflective conversation, the kind that the privileged have historically arranged for themselves through coaching, therapy, supervision, or simply the right kind of friend. The architecture exists so that this conversation is available to people who would never seek out a coach, who would not call themselves candidates for therapy, and who do not have a friend with the time or the disposition. The conversation exists so that they can become their own experiment, on their own terms, with an instrument honest enough to let them. The work is provisional. The theory is provisional. The instrument is provisional. The learner is provisional. We are all developing together, over time, which is exactly the point. Follow me on LinkedIn, Medium, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sheila Jeanette Wood Sheila Jeanette Wood and Richard Dobson Sheila J Wood, PhD, is a multifaceted author and Intuitive Healing Coach. Her work as an Energy Healer, Spiritual Medium, and Akashic Records Reader focuses on helping individuals reconcile emotional issues related to ancestral and past life experiences that may impact their current lives. While she can address a wide range of concerns, she has developed modules to target specific aspects of personal development, such as self-esteem and phobias. Through her intuitive gifts, Sheila helps to guide others in making empowered choices during their earthly journey. Her approach combines spiritual insight with practical healing methods, making her a valuable resource for those seeking deeper self-understanding. Richard Astra Dobson is an entrepreneur, founder of Clara Futura World in Andorra, and co-founder of Astrala Nexus, a platform exploring emergent recursive intelligence and human–AI collaboration. Over more than twenty-five years, he has founded and built companies in the most volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments imaginable. Magnus CQP, Brownlee Cale, and Brownlee Cale Mining deliver professional and consulting services across construction, civil engineering, and mining before moving into post-crisis leadership organizational development, participatory intuition, and ethical AI. He now treats his career as a long-term living experiment in scientia intuitiva, learning to read what lies beneath the surface of people and systems, and designs AI frameworks that help people become more, not less, deeply and intuitively human. A full CV is available on request or via his professional profile. Lykke Minds and Deeply Human Deeply AI are trademarks of Clara Futura World, Andorra. References and Bibliography: Wood, Sheila J. Understanding the Journey: Metaphysical Food for Thought. 2025. P. 80-81, p. 159-161. Self-published. Printed and bound by KDP. Tyson, N. deG. (2022) Starry Messenger - Cosmic Perspective on Civilization. 1st ed. New York: Henry Holt of Macmillen Publishing Group. Wood, Sheila J. The Wisdom of Yonck: Messages from the Heartbeat of Cosmic Awareness. 2025. Self-published. Bound and printed by KDP

What began as an inside joke evolved into I AM-ABLE, a brand built to inspire confidence, resilience, and personal growth through the art of clothing. In this interview, the founder shares how setbacks, self-belief, and a commitment to community shaped a movement that encourages people to recognize their potential and keep moving forward, even when the path feels uncertain. What inspired you to turn the idea behind I AM-ABLE into a brand built around mindset and personal growth? My own struggles with confidence and self-belief inspired the idea behind I AM-ABLE. There was a time when I questioned whether I could achieve the goals I had set for myself. After facing setbacks in my career and watching others around me seemingly move forward while I felt stuck, it became easy to focus on everything that wasn't going right. Living in New York City, where ambition is everywhere, I realized I couldn't be the only one feeling that way. There are countless people who allow obstacles and setbacks to convince them they can't achieve more, when in reality, those challenges are often what shape them into who they're meant to become. That realization changed my perspective. I didn't want to create another activewear brand. I wanted to create something that reminded people to believe in themselves, even on the days when it felt hardest to do so. That's how I AM-ABLE was born. At its core, it's a brand built on the belief that we're all capable of more than we often give ourselves credit for. You describe your clothing as a reminder of who people can become rather than simply what they wear. How did that philosophy shape the brand from the beginning? From the beginning, we made a conscious decision that every interaction someone has with I AM-ABLE should reinforce the same message, you're capable of more than you think. That philosophy goes far beyond the apparel itself. It influences how we name our collections, the words we place on our garments, the stories we tell through our campaigns, and the conversations we create within our community. We don't see clothing as the final product. We see it as the starting point. If a piece of apparel can remind someone to take the next step toward a goal, push through a difficult day, or believe in themselves when they need it most, then it's doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to inspire, impact, and influence the world through the art of clothing. We want people to remember how I AM-ABLE made them feel, not just what they wore. That's the philosophy that has guided the brand from day one. Building a purpose-driven business comes with its own challenges. What lessons have had the biggest influence on your leadership style? One of the biggest lessons that shaped my leadership style came during product development. Throughout the process, there was one challenge after another, many of which were completely outside of my control. Delays, production issues, and unexpected setbacks tested my patience and, at times, my belief that everything would come together as planned. Looking back, I'm grateful for those experiences because they taught me that leadership isn't about controlling every outcome. It's about leading by example and controlling how you respond when things don't go according to plan. Today, I lead with far more patience, empathy, and trust than I would have at the beginning of this journey. I understand that mistakes are part of building something meaningful, and my role as a leader is to help my team learn from them rather than fear them. At the same time, I've learned the importance of setting clear expectations, communicating with intention, and leading by example. If I expect resilience, accountability, and perseverance from the people around me, I have to embody those qualities first. I believe that's what leadership ultimately comes down to. The activewear market is crowded. Why do you think people are looking for brands that offer a sense of purpose and community alongside quality products? I think people have reached a point where quality is expected. Great products are important, but they're no longer enough on their own. People want to feel connected to what they're buying and the values behind the brand. They want to support companies that stand for something bigger than the product itself. At the same time, we're living in a world where it's easy to feel isolated despite being more connected than ever. I believe people are looking for brands that create a genuine sense of belonging, encouragement, and community. That's exactly what we're building with I AM-ABLE. We want to create an environment where people feel supported through both their successes and their setbacks. Whether it's through our apparel, our community events, our street interviews, or the stories we share, our goal is to remind people that they're not alone in their journey. If someone walks away feeling more confident, more motivated, or simply more connected than they did before discovering our brand, then we've accomplished something that goes far beyond selling activewear. Community is one of I AM-ABLE's core values. How have in-person events and shared experiences strengthened the brand beyond selling apparel? Our in-person events have reminded us that behind every customer is a story. We've met people celebrating personal milestones, chasing new goals, overcoming setbacks, and simply looking for the confidence to take the first step. Those conversations have become just as valuable to us as the events themselves. They've also reinforced that I AM-ABLE is about much more than apparel. When someone shares an accomplishment during one of our street interviews or tells us how a message on one of our garments resonated with them, it reminds us that we're creating something people can genuinely connect with. Those experiences have shaped the brand in ways that can't be measured by sales alone. They keep us grounded, help us better understand the people we're serving, and continue to influence everything we create. At the end of the day, we're not just building products. We're also building relationships, and that's what gives the brand meaning. For someone who wants to build more discipline but struggles to stay consistent, where would you encourage them to begin? I would encourage them to begin by reflecting on where they want their life to go. Ask yourself, "If nothing changed over the next five years, would I be satisfied with where I end up?" That question alone can provide a lot of clarity. Then, think back to when you were younger. What were your dreams? Who did your younger self dream of becoming? If those goals still matter to you, remind yourself that they're still worth pursuing. From there, don't focus on changing your entire life overnight. Focus on keeping one small promise to yourself each day. Discipline isn't built through one big decision. It's built through the small choices you consistently make every single day. Over time, those small actions become habits, and those habits begin to shape the person you're becoming. Consistency isn't about being perfect. It's about continuing to show up, even on the days when you don't feel like it. Your journey includes setbacks, uncertainty, and learning as you build the business. How have those experiences changed the way you define success today? If you had asked me this question a few years ago, my answer would have been very different. At that point in my life, I think setbacks would have been enough to make me question whether I should keep going. Today, after everything I've experienced while building I AM-ABLE, I've developed a completely different perspective. Success is no longer something I define solely by achieving a specific goal. Of course, I still have big ambitions, but I've learned that success is also about having the resilience to keep moving forward when things don't go according to plan. There will always be moments when progress feels slow, uncertainty creeps in, and the finish line isn't visible. Those are the moments that test your character the most. I've learned to trust the process, stay patient, and believe that every challenge is preparing me for what's ahead. To me, success is waking up each day with the courage to continue pursuing your purpose, regardless of how difficult the journey becomes. If you can keep showing up, even through the setbacks, you're already succeeding in ways that many people never do. The name "I AM-ABLE" has grown from an inside joke into a message of self-belief. What does that phrase personally mean to you now? To me, I AM-ABLE means responsibility. As the brand has grown, I've realized that it represents something much bigger than myself. It comes with the responsibility to do everything I can to help people recognize the potential within themselves that they may not yet see. Whether that's through the messages I share personally, the products we create, our content, or the events we host, I want every interaction with I AM-ABLE to leave someone believing in themselves a little more than they did before. It also means giving back. I believe that if you're fortunate enough to build something that positively impacts people's lives, you have a responsibility to use it for more than your own success. That's something I learned from my father. Throughout his life, he dedicated himself to serving his community in Higüey and making a positive impact on the people around him. Watching him showed me that success isn't just measured by what you achieve. It's also measured by the lives you help along the way. That's what I hope I AM-ABLE continues to represent. If readers take away one lesson from your entrepreneurial journey, what do you hope it is? I hope people walk away understanding that nothing meaningful is built overnight. Every worthwhile goal comes with setbacks, uncertainty, and moments where you'll question whether it's worth continuing. Those moments aren't signs that you're on the wrong path. They're often part of the process. If there's one lesson my journey has taught me, it's that patience and perseverance are just as important as ambition. The results may not come as quickly as you'd like, and they may not look exactly the way you imagined, but consistent effort has a way of paying off over time. Most importantly, don't let temporary setbacks convince you to give up on a long-term vision. Trust the process, continue showing up, and keep believing in what you're building. The future you're working toward may be nearer than you think. Follow me on Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Amable

Written by Jasmine Clemente, Bestselling Conscious Author & Yoga Teacher Jasmine Clemente is a Bestselling Author, RYT500 Yoga Teacher, and Spiritual Guide for women on the cusp of profound transformation. Through the ancient wisdom of yoga, the power of storytelling, and the sacred act of journaling, Jasmine empowers women on their self-healing journey. Death. Rebirth. Healing. Trauma. Heartbreak. We’ve all had the feels. And when it gets too painful, sometimes, the only thing left to do is write. Each word moves us forward as we turn the pages of our lives, breathing into the next moment because we have to keep going. If you’ve ever thought about writing personal essays or memoirs, take this as your sign. There’s something primal about the way our hands release our thoughts across the keyboard to share some of our most vulnerable memories. Bravely, we tell our stories, one paragraph at a time, in hopes that someone out there will bring validation to our experiences, readers who can relate. After reading my memoir, More Than One Soulmate, back to myself, I had plenty of aha moments. It was as if I were holding a mirror up to my face, except that I didn’t see my physical features; I saw my invisible patterns through the pages. After all, it was my story, a confession of how I loved and lost myself through several relationships until realizing that true love wasn’t only limited to romantic connections, but could also be found through the lens of a much deeper spiritual understanding of the world. If you think that sharing your experiences could help someone else, continue reading. Choosing the timeframe Writing a memoir is not a biography. It’s a story that should read like fiction. Give readers excitement, drama, plot twists, lessons, and of course, peace. Something they can read while lying on a hammock. And when they do, take them down memory lane as if they’re journeying through a time machine because in some ways, they are. This is why the time period you choose is important, because you obviously can’t write about every single detail of your life, as you most likely don’t remember them all. And so, the question is, which season of your life is the most significant? Your teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, or sixties? If there is a certain theme you’re writing about, then you need to capture the moment when this theme began budding, not before. Let’s say you’re writing about how you transformed from wife to singlehood after divorce. That means you’ll have to give us the backstory about your marriage, but you don’t necessarily have to write about your childhood, that’s too much information. But if you do, then bring up one powerful childhood memory that relates to how you grew up to become who you are. That’s all. Don’t stay there too long. Focus on your main message, which should capture a certain decade. For example, if you’re explaining your marriage, then write about how your loose-fitting engagement ring kept falling off your finger, or how your stomach tightened when walking down the aisle with your father, or the first time one of you slammed the door after your first fight. How old were you? What songs were popular? How did you dress? Did you ditch the heels for sneakers, and did you wear your hair up or down? What was fashionable around that time? You have to take us back to those years so that we can remember them too, and maybe even see ourselves in you. Regardless of what your theme is, you need to focus on a specific timeframe. I recommend writing about something within a five to ten-year period. Writing with heart What sets a great memoir apart from other stories is the vulnerability that reads through the pages. It’s enough to say you cried, but show us how the night turned into day as the sun crept through your windows at 5:00 a.m., and yet you weren’t done falling apart. Open your soul to us so that we’re able to see the human in you, the person who traveled through highs and lows in search of the truth as you killed off your old identity. We want to relate, even if we’re too afraid to see certain parts within ourselves, let us see it in you as an example of courage. Readers can tell when the story feels cookie-cutter or like it’s been told before in a similar voice. We want something fresh and authentic, so don’t be afraid to be yourself. I can say that now, but when I wrote my memoir, More Than One Soulmate, my hands trembled as I typed, worried about what people would think after reading it. I didn’t just fear critics, I feared getting canceled if I wrote anything that could’ve come across as offensive. We never know how anyone will interpret something. What heals one person might trigger another. And yet, if we’re not to use A.I. because we want real Authors, then this is the chance we have to take, to be raw and honest about our experiences, our perspectives, and our stories. I think what people respect most is when writers are brave enough to reveal their shadows. They’re not trying to be perfect, they’re just telling their story. Maybe some will pick up a few nuggets of wisdom when reading the book, maybe others won’t. But you’re not here to heal everyone. You’re here to heal yourself. Let the practice of writing be enough for you, and let everyone else evolve in their own way. The best you can do is be honest in your work and let the universe do what it’s going to do. Sharing your journey Before your memoir is complete, I recommend blogging and freelance writing for other magazines for the following reasons, to get your name out there, to build your audience, and to strengthen your writing craft. Imagine publishing a book, but hardly anyone has heard of you. At least when you freelance, your name will start to become familiar. You can write about topics that relate to your upcoming memoir so that you stay on brand, and if you need help with this, consider taking my "Words to Wisdom" bootcamp course, where I’ll show you the ropes of writing for Substack and Medium. It’s a great way to share your personal essays, opinion pieces, and even leak one or two chapters from your upcoming book so that people have something to look forward to by the time you publish. You might even gain presales. The most important part I’m a fan of self-publishing because you have complete creative control. I’m not discouraging anyone from pitching their memoir to major publishing houses. Who wouldn’t want their book signed by Penguin Random House or HarperCollins? We’d probably all love that. But if by some chance you don’t get signed, you can still become a successful indie Author, which means you can feel proud about what you write without modifying your work. Personally, I love it when Artists remain true to their vision. One of the complaints from all kinds of Artists in the past was that they felt pressured to compromise their work in order to keep their publishing deal because there was a team of Editors suggesting what parts to keep or discard. While I admire the professional input of experts in their field, I also support the Artists' ultimate vision. As an Author, it’s important to write from your heart, or at least write from your seventh crown chakra, your highest imagination. Despite a memoir being true, your imagination will still paint your story because of the style in which you write it. It’s your creative flow that will drive your story forward, taking your reader to a place that only you can describe in your own words. And that is what makes your story special, because it’s written by "you." So, when you’re working on your memoir, keep this one thing front and center, it’s your story, not someone else’s. That means you get to write it in your voice, not someone else’s. And that should be healing enough. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Jasmine Clemente Jasmine Clemente, Bestselling Conscious Author & Yoga Teacher Jasmine Clemente is a Spiritual Guide for women on the cusp of profound transformation. As someone who began her career as a Recording Dance Artist before becoming an RYT 500 yoga teacher, Jasmine bravely writes about her experiences of loss, change, and self-reflection, while encouraging women to embrace their unique journey as well. She offers writing courses in the categories of memoir, self-help, and therapeutic journaling.

Leadership isn't about being in charge. It's about making sure the people depending on you have what they need to succeed." That's how Nick Miccarelli – military veteran, former state representative, and now CEO of DELGO Community Transit – sums up two decades of public service. His career proves the point: real leadership is less about the title, and more about what gets built behind the scenes. How a military veteran, public official, and CEO built a career around solving real-world problems Big ideas often sound impressive on paper. Bringing them to life is the hard part. For Nick Miccarelli, the most important ideas have never been about headlines or attention. They have been about creating systems that work, helping communities function better, and finding practical solutions to real problems. Over the last two decades, Miccarelli has built a career that spans military service, state government, local leadership, and executive management. Today, as CEO of DELGO Community Transit, he leads an organization focused on improving transportation access and community services across Pennsylvania. His journey shows how leadership often comes down to one simple principle: get involved, stay committed, and follow through. “People spend a lot of time talking about change,” Miccarelli says. “The harder part is actually building something that creates lasting results.” How Nick Miccarelli started his leadership journey Miccarelli grew up in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, where he learned early the value of community involvement. While attending Ridley High School and later the University of Pennsylvania, he developed an interest in public service and leadership. But one decision would shape much of his future. In October 1999, he joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. That commitment eventually led to deployments in Kosovo and Iraq. In 2009, he served as a door gunner aboard a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter during a deployment with the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade. The experiences taught lessons that would stay with him long after returning home. “When you're serving in difficult environments, you learn very quickly that success depends on teamwork and preparation,” he says. “You have to trust the people around you and focus on the mission.” Those lessons would later influence every leadership role he took on. From public service to public leadership While continuing his military career, Miccarelli became involved in politics and government. He worked as chief of staff to Representative Ron Raymond, gaining firsthand experience in legislative operations and constituent services. That role gave him a close look at how decisions affect communities at the local level. In 2008, he was elected to represent Pennsylvania's 162nd Legislative District. His focus was straightforward: support economic growth, improve opportunities for residents, and make government more responsive. One of the most notable moments of his political career came in 2012 when he was nominated by both Republican and Democratic parties and ran unopposed. He received the highest total vote count in the district's history. For Nick Miccarelli, the achievement reflected something larger than politics. “People want leaders who solve problems,” he says. “Most challenges aren't partisan. They're practical.” That mindset would become a recurring theme throughout his career. Building Community Solutions Beyond Government One of Miccarelli's most significant contributions happened outside elected office. Following Hurricane Katrina, he founded the Hurricane Katrina Sister Town Project, a grassroots initiative created to support communities affected by the disaster. The project demonstrated something he had learned through military service and public leadership: large challenges often require local action. “You don't always have to wait for someone else to step in,” he says. “Communities are strongest when people take responsibility for helping each other.” The experience reinforced his belief that meaningful change often starts with ordinary people taking initiative. That lesson would prove valuable in the next phase of his career. Leading DELGO Community Transit Today, Miccarelli serves as CEO of DELGO Community Transit, where he oversees organizational strategy, operations, partnerships, and long-term development. The role combines many of the skills he developed over the years. Military service taught him discipline. Government taught him accountability. Community work taught him collaboration. At DELGO, those experiences come together through a focus on building reliable systems and improving services for the communities the organization serves. “A good organization isn't built around one person,” Miccarelli says. “It's built around processes, people, and shared goals.” Rather than focusing on short-term wins, he spends much of his time looking at long-term improvements that can strengthen operations and expand community impact. His approach reflects a leadership style that values consistency over attention. “Real progress usually happens behind the scenes,” he says. “It's often the result of small improvements made every day.” What professionals can learn from Nick Miccarelli's career Looking back, Miccarelli's career has followed an uncommon path. He has served in combat zones, state government chambers, borough council meetings, nonprofit organizations, and executive offices. Yet the common thread remains the same. Service. Whether supporting fellow soldiers, representing constituents, helping disaster victims, or leading a transportation organization, his focus has consistently centered on solving problems and helping people. He remains active with organizations, including the Pennsylvania Veterans Museum, Friends of the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge, First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry, and his local church. For Miccarelli, leadership is not about titles or recognition. It's about responsibility. “Leadership isn't about being in charge,” he says. “It's about making sure the people depending on you have what they need to succeed.” That philosophy has guided him through military deployments, public office, and executive leadership. And it continues to shape his work today.

Some careers are built by following one clear path. Others are built by connecting many interests over time. Dr. Emil Kohan’s career belongs in the second group. Raised in Los Angeles, Dr. Kohan grew up with an interest in science, art, design, and entrepreneurship. Those interests may seem separate at first. But for him, they became part of the same larger idea. “I never saw science and creativity as separate things,” Dr. Kohan says. “I always thought the most interesting solutions happen when you bring different ideas together.” That belief helped shape his path into plastic surgery. Today, Dr. Kohan is a board-certified plastic surgeon based in Beverly Hills, California. He specializes in body contouring, mommy makeover procedures, liposuction, breast surgery, Brazilian Butt Lift procedures, and complex revision cases. His story is not about chasing attention. It is about building skills, applying ideas, and turning long-term focus into meaningful work. Who is Dr. Emil Kohan? Dr. Kohan’s early years in Los Angeles gave him a strong appreciation for aesthetics and detail. He was drawn to how things looked, how they worked, and how small choices could change the final result. That way of thinking later became central to his work. “I always appreciated precision and creativity,” he says. “Plastic surgery gave me a way to combine those two passions into meaningful work.” Before entering medicine, Dr. Kohan studied at UCLA, where he graduated summa cum laude with dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Neuroscience and Psychobiology. He was also inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, a respected academic honor. He then earned his medical degree from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he received a four-year Dean’s Scholarship. How did Dr. Emil Kohan build his career? Dr. Kohan’s career developed through years of focused training. After medical school, he completed his Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery residency at the University of California, Irvine. There, he gained experience in both aesthetic and reconstructive procedures. His training helped him understand that plastic surgery is not only technical. It also requires judgment, planning, and an eye for balance. “I realized that surgery isn’t only about solving a medical problem,” Dr. Kohan says. “It’s also about understanding proportion, balance, and what looks natural.” That idea became one of the biggest themes of his career. In a field often influenced by trends, Dr. Kohan focused on individualized results. He built his approach around each patient’s goals, anatomy, and long-term outcome. “Patients don’t want to look like someone else,” he says. “They want to look like the best version of themselves.” What big ideas shaped Dr. Kohan’s work? One of Dr. Kohan’s key ideas is that aesthetic medicine works best when science and artistry support each other. The science helps guide safety, structure, and technique. The artistry helps guide proportion, balance, and natural-looking results. This thinking has shaped his work in body contouring, breast surgery, liposuction, BBL procedures, mommy makeovers, and revision surgery. Revision cases can be especially complex. They often require careful planning and a clear understanding of both the patient’s goals and what was done before. For Dr. Kohan, these cases show why details matter. “The details matter,” he says. “Small decisions can have a major impact on the final result.” That lesson applies beyond medicine. In any career, small decisions made consistently can shape long-term success. Why education and innovation matter in aesthetic medicine Dr. Kohan has also brought ideas to life through research and education. He has authored peer-reviewed publications and contributed to textbook chapters in plastic and reconstructive surgery. He has also lectured on advanced surgical techniques. In 2024, he presented on Brazilian Butt Lift surgical technique at the California Society of Plastic Surgeons meeting. For Dr. Kohan, this work reflects a responsibility to keep learning. “Medicine never stands still,” he says. “The responsibility of a surgeon is to continue learning and improving.” That mindset has helped him stay engaged in the broader growth of aesthetic medicine. It also reflects a business lesson that applies across industries: leaders do not stop learning once they reach a certain level. They keep refining their work. What can professionals learn from Dr. Emil Kohan? Dr. Kohan’s story offers a useful lesson for anyone building a career. He did not leave his early interests behind. He found ways to use them. Sports taught discipline. Art and design strengthened his eye for detail. Entrepreneurship encouraged problem-solving. Science gave him the technical foundation to build a medical career. “Sports teach discipline,” he says. “Art teaches observation. Entrepreneurship teaches problem-solving. Every experience gives you tools you can use somewhere else.” That mindset helped him connect different parts of his life into one focused career path. It also shows how big ideas often become real. They do not always arrive as sudden breakthroughs. Many are built slowly, through study, practice, and repeated improvement. Building a career through long-term thinking From Los Angeles to UCLA, from medical school to residency, and from training to practice in Beverly Hills, Dr. Kohan’s career has followed a clear pattern. He studies carefully. He refines his skills. He looks for ways to combine technical knowledge with creative thinking. “The goal is always to get better,” he says. “That’s how meaningful progress happens.” For Dr. Emil Kohan, bringing big ideas to life has meant turning curiosity into education, education into expertise, and expertise into a thoughtful approach to aesthetic medicine. His career shows that success is often built through steady work, clear values, and the ability to connect ideas that others may see as separate.

Some business ideas begin with years of planning. Others begin with a single conversation that changes the way someone sees an opportunity. For Dan Champ, building Champ Tours was not about chasing the next trend. It was about recognizing that years of experience, careful listening, and a willingness to adapt could become the foundation of something new. Today, as the founder of Champ Tours, he is creating travel experiences that encourage learning, connection, and curiosity for people of all ages. Looking back, Champ believes the most important lessons in business rarely come from a textbook. They come from paying attention, staying open to new ideas, and remembering that success is ultimately about serving people well. "I've always believed that the goal is to know and see people where they are and to serve them the best you can," Champ says. "When you keep that as your focus, it helps guide every decision." How Dan Champ built a career around meaningful travel When people think about travel, they often picture vacations or sightseeing. Champ sees something different. Over the years, he has watched travel become a catalyst for confidence, curiosity, and personal growth. That perspective developed through decades of organizing group experiences and seeing firsthand how stepping into a new environment changes the way people think. "I've seen people arrive nervous and leave with a completely different outlook," he says. "Travel has a way of expanding your perspective." That observation eventually became the foundation for Champ Tours. Rather than simply moving people from one destination to another, Champ wanted to create experiences that combined history, culture, and shared learning. He believes the destinations matter, but the conversations people have along the way often matter even more. Why listening led to a new business opportunity Dan Champ recently experienced a reminder that some of the best business ideas arrive when you least expect them. He had developed a Broadway Experience itinerary for high school theater groups, complete with Broadway performances, professional workshops, and visits to iconic New York City landmarks. Then his father offered a simple observation. "My dad said, 'I think senior citizens would love that kind of trip too,'" Champ recalls. At first, the suggestion caught him by surprise. The itinerary had always been designed with students in mind. But instead of dismissing the idea, he decided to explore it. Working with the Sun City Roseville Travel Club, Champ welcomed 23 senior travelers on the inaugural Broadway Experience, including three participants aged 86. Watching the group experience Broadway, Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and the 9/11 Memorial reinforced something he had suspected all along. "Curiosity doesn't disappear with age," Champ says. "People never outgrow the desire to learn or experience something new." The success of that trip marked an important milestone for Champ Tours and demonstrated that meaningful travel is not limited to one generation. The leadership lesson that changed everything Like many entrepreneurs, Champ's career has included moments that did not unfold the way he expected. Earlier in his professional journey, he envisioned taking a different path. When those plans changed, he found himself asking an important question: Was he focusing on the opportunity he had lost, or the one that might be waiting for him? Looking back, he sees that period differently than he did at the time. "Sometimes what feels like disappointment ends up pointing you toward something that's a better fit," he says. Rather than dwelling on the direction that didn't materialize, Champ invested his energy into building something of his own. That decision eventually became Champ Tours. Why relationships matter more than perfect plans Ask Champ what has contributed most to his success, and he doesn't immediately talk about itineraries or destinations. He talks about people. One of the people he credits most is Joanna Cameron, who introduced him to many aspects of the student travel industry early in his career. "I learned everything I know about student travel from Joanna," he says. That experience reinforced his belief that mentorship accelerates growth. It also shaped the way he now approaches leadership. Instead of believing he always has the answers, Champ believes that good leaders continue to learn from the people around them. Whether those lessons come from a mentor, a traveler, or even a conversation with his father, he has learned that listening is often more valuable than speaking. Building a business around purpose Champ's approach to business is closely connected to his personal values. His priorities are simple. "God, wife, children, self," he says. Those priorities influence the way he leads, makes decisions, and defines success. They have also helped him navigate difficult seasons, including overcoming addiction earlier in his life, an experience he openly credits with strengthening his faith and giving him a greater appreciation for second chances. Today, that perspective shapes the culture he hopes to create through Champ Tours. Rather than measuring success solely by destinations visited or trips completed, Champ hopes every traveler returns home with a broader perspective than when they left. He believes meaningful experiences create lasting change. That philosophy has guided every step of his entrepreneurial journey so far. As Champ Tours continues to grow, he remains focused on the same principle that inspired him to launch the company in the first place. "Loving God and loving people and raising my children to do the same," he says. For Dan Champ, building a successful business has never been just about travel. It has been about creating opportunities for people to grow, connect, and discover something new about both the world and themselves.