Maybe In The Next Life
Photo by Getty Images via Unsplash.
I just completed the final session with a client who will be featured on my upcoming podcast.
She received a full private retreat coaching package in exchange for her willingness to have our sessions recorded and shared. My intention with this offering was to demonstrate the kind of transformation that unfolds through this way of working. I knew she would receive benefit. I just didn't know how revolutionary it would be.
I wanted to share some of her story with you now—long before the podcast is released.
Her name is Nicole—a name I've used to protect her privacy—and she's an actor and a mostly single mother to a four-year-old boy. She came into our work carrying something many of us carry—a deep, persistent sense of unworthiness. She'd done a great deal of work on herself through therapy and other modalities. She was taking all the right action steps. And still, the inner tape ran.
By our final session, two and a half months later, something had shifted that I'm going to try to put words on—even though words can't quite touch her actual experience.
She showed up to two back-to-back film festivals for a short film she wrote, produced, and starred in. At one she felt anxious and insecure. At the other she felt relaxed and present. And what struck her was that she wasn't making one experience wrong and the other right. They were just experiences—and she moved through both without getting stuck in either.
She described parenting her son without the internal scorecard. No longer checking the imagined boxes at the end of the day to earn her good mom moniker. Instead she opened to just being with him, and discovered that without the pressure she was more of what she'd been striving to be all along.
She described quietly unsubscribing from endless email lists and courses she'd been collecting for years—strategies to help her book more work, be a better mother, become worthy enough to have the life she wanted. Not from burnout. But because the urgency that had made them feel essential simply wasn't there anymore.
Her words about this dissolving are something worth hearing for yourself.
→ You can listen to this short clip here.
She didn't get the goal and then feel free. She met what was underneath—and the noise cleared on its own.
What happened for Nicole isn't unique to her.
The mind does its best to help us feel how we want to feel—worthy, loved, successful, enough. And it tries to do that by moving us toward something. If you have this, you won't feel that. A better body. A bigger income. A relationship. A cleaner house. More followers. Whatever the version is for you.
And there can be a short reprieve when we get the thing. A moment of relief. But it doesn't last—because the misunderstanding underneath didn't get met. It just got quieted for a moment. Before long the noise returns, the bar moves, and now you need a little more to feel okay.
This is the nature of the mind. It lives in duality. There must always be conflict—a problem to solve, a gap to close, a version of you that isn't quite there yet.
Going to the root looks different. It's what Nicole did—not working on the belief, not reframing the story, but going beyond the mind entirely. Into direct experience. Into feeling. Into presence.
What is felt does the transformation. Because presence is bigger than story. And in presence, story dissolves.
Nicole didn't become a different person. She shed what was never truly her. And from that place, everything shifted—how she showed up at the festival, how she mothered her son, how she prepared for and performed auditions… even what she felt she needed to do to be enough. All of it changed—not because she achieved something, but because something fell away.
You'll hear more of the conversations that led to Nicole's transformation when the podcast launches. For now I invite you to:
Imagine how you might show up differently if you weren't consciously or unconsciously trying to get love, success, or worthiness. Imagine how life might be without the pressure to get it right, to prove you belong, or to earn your place.
How would your listening differ? Your communications? Your choices? Your parenting, eating, driving, visiting family—your life all around?
There is another way to take care of yourself. One that goes beneath the noise—and meets what's actually there.
This is the work at the heart of The School for Humaning Well®—and the next cohort begins January 2027.
It's a six-month immersive journey—in person in Los Angeles and on Zoom—limited to 14 participants. Not a lecture series. Not a curriculum to master. A living laboratory for exactly what Nicole experienced.
Early enrollment closes October 31st.
Enroll before then and you'll receive The Pre-School Gathering Sessions—a private 60-minute coaching session with me, plus two 75-minute group calls with your cohort before January begins.
I'm having conversations with curious students now.
→ If that's you—a curious student—you can learn more and enroll here.
If you'd like to talk first, email me at hello@amberkrzys.com. I'm here.
With loving,
Amber
P.S. If you're curious about the work before committing to The School—I'm hosting a free Guest Faculty Conversation Series this fall. Three live conversations with extraordinary teachers, each exploring a different doorway into this work. The first is with Dr. Amy Johnson and Dan Kelso on October 13th. You can learn more and register here.
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