We live between root and sky.
We belong to the earth that holds us and the vastness that calls us home.
In between are the stories of our lives, rooted yet forever reaching.
You already know the life you’re leading doesn’t fit.
Not in a dramatic, walk-away-from-everything way. In a quieter way. The way a coat you once loved starts pulling at the shoulders. The way you catch yourself standing at the kitchen window, mid-task, looking at nothing in particular, and the pause lasts longer than it used to.
You've tried the prescriptions. The retreats that promised clarity by checkout. The self-help shelves, the podcasts, the five steps to reinvention. You did the work. Some of it even helped. You may even understand what needs to happen.
And you still haven't moved. You keep telling yourself you're not ready yet. That there's one more thing you need to figure out first. One more question to answer before the answer becomes clear enough to act on.
But the deepest thing — the thing that keeps surfacing in the shower, on the drive, at the edge of sleep — won't fit inside anyone else's framework.
What if clarity is not what you need to move forward? What if waiting to be ready is what keeps you stuck?
Perhaps what you need is a bold question, one that no one has asked you, and someone outside your world capable of asking it. Someone who has left a life that looked right from the outside, and knows what that leaving costs. And what staying costs.
You don't need a guru. You need a guide who's traveled that road and knows the questions you dare not ask yourself.
This is where I invite you in.
Hello. I’m Alicia.
I work in the space between who we were and who we are becoming. The quiet reckoning that arrives when the life you built stops fitting, and something in you — before the mind even names it — begins to turn toward what is next.
I live on the Algarve coast of southern Portugal, on the edge of Europe, where the Atlantic meets limestone, and the light does things to the afternoon I am still trying to find words for. I came here because I had spent a lifetime building something that looked right from the outside. And one day I realized I was living inside someone else's idea of me.
My work starts here. On the cliffs, the winter ocean, the uncertainty of becoming someone new in a country that did not know me before, in a life I only dreamt of. Every reflection begins in this landscape and in the interior one it keeps reshaping.
Before Portugal, I spent years coaching in corporate halls and walking in Ecuadorian rainforests. I have studied with business leaders and with indigenous shamans. That range is why I can sit with a woman at the edge of a life she built, ask the question she has heard echoes of, and hold the space for her to listen to the answer.
The Threshold Letters
Every Tuesday, a letter.
I write about transitions, about place and belonging, about what arrives when the old life stops fitting. Some weeks it’s an essay. Some weeks it’s a question I am still sitting with.
Start with my guide, "The Story You Haven't Written Yet: Seven Thresholds for Beginning." Yours when you subscribe.
Work with me
Two ways to work with me. Each begins with a conversation.
Private Advisory
Private Advisory is strategic advisory grounded in spiritual depth—for women navigating identity evolution, reinvention, and conscious leadership transitions. A combination of strategic thinking from years beside leaders and deeper listening learned from contemplative practice. This is the work I have done longest.
Becoming Limitless
A Private One-to-One retreat on Portugal's Algarve coast, shaped entirely around you. For accomplished women carrying burnout, grief, or standing at a threshold in life or career. Mind, body, spirit, and heart, held in confidence. Guests leave with a calmer nervous system, renewed vitality, and a truer sense of what comes next.
MY BOOKS
I am a storyteller, writing from the edge of the Atlantic on belonging, reinvention, and the life you did not plan.
From childhood, I was either listening to my parents’ stories or creating them. I read voraciously and, from the age of ten, kept a journal where I recorded all the things I couldn’t understand and hoped one day to understand.
I am the author of four books, including the award-winning memoir The Shaman's Wife: A Mystical Journey of Surrender and Self-Discovery and the poetry collection Between Root and Sky: Poems on Love, Loss and Longing. My essays and poems live on my blog, also called Between Root and Sky.
Get in Touch
If something here is sitting in your heart…
Write to me. Tell me where you are and perhaps where you’d like to go. I read everything myself.
