A year and a half ago, I wrote to you from this same terminal. Terminal M at Vancouver International Airport. You can read that letter in the archives. It was my second time writing from this departure gate in four years, and somehow, it's become a ritual. A rite of passage. This is where I leave for Peru—a place that holds my deepest healing, my most sacred transformations.
In four days, I'll be walking through this terminal again. But this time feels different.
What's Changed Since Last Time
Since that last letter, I've lived a lifetime. I took six men into the depths of Peru with me. We did the work—real expedition, ceremony, the kind of men's work that cracks you open and rebuilds you from the inside out. For the first time, I felt the full expression of my purpose flowing through me. There's something profound about taking people to meet the Divine and watching them remember who they really are.
When I returned, I went straight into two back-to-back rite of passage experiences. Both hammered home the same truth: I need solitude. I need silence. There's a gift in being alone with yourself that can't be found anywhere else.
Then the universe threw me a curveball. I met her—the most incredible, wild woman in the most spontaneous way imaginable. Pure creative fire. A true ode to the wild - in flesh and bone. This relationship has been an initiation unlike any other, bringing up everything we thought we'd healed, everything we thought we'd figured out. But each time something surfaces, we've chosen to lean deeper into love. Each time.
I got back into martial arts and competed for the first time since my kidney diagnosis. I lost the fight, but I won something bigger—a renewed appreciation for this body and everything it allows me to experience.
My ex-wife and I went through a ceremonial severing of our marriage. Real closure. We found our way back to the love we'd started with, through proper ho'oponopono. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is let something end with grace.
I found my way to the Red Road—a deep place to pray, sing, and hold ceremony in community. I started going to live shows again, something I'd avoided since the pandemic. I realized that all this healing work should lead to integration, not separation from life.
I spent months in a primitive community up north, learning homesteading, wild food, tracking. Reading the signs the land leaves for those who know how to look.
And I joined Search and Rescue. And the Freemasons.
What's Different This Time
As I prepare to head south again, three things feel fundamentally different.
Unlike every other time, I'm bringing someone special to meet my special place. One beloved meeting another.
Unlike past departures where I just disappeared, this time has been full of meetings and farewells. Through that process, I've felt something unexpected—grief about leaving for Peru. Grief because the home I've been seeking might already be right here. My people might already be with me. That wounded part of me that believed I was always alone is having to reconcile with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I'm not.
There's a deeper integration happening. A connection to myself that feels more whole than it ever has.
What I'd Tell My Younger Self
The home you're seeking isn't as far away as you think. Remember The Alchemist—sometimes your treasure is buried in your own backyard, with your community, your chosen family. Sometimes you have to leave home to realize you were already there.
True integration isn't choosing between the modern world and the spiritual one. For too long, I wanted to reject modernity, thinking I didn't belong here. But a properly integrated person learns to live in both worlds—human and wild, sacred and mundane. They feed each other. There's medicine in being able to walk the Red Road and sit in a Masonic lodge, to hold ceremony and hold a day job. The light exists because of the dark. Life because of death. One world gives meaning to the other.
And here's the big one: there's no initiation more challenging than intimate relationship. Everything you think you've learned about yourself gets questioned, challenged, turned upside down when you're truly vulnerable with another person. If you've done enough inner work, you might be ready for this advanced initiation. Might be.
The Departure
In four days, I'll walk through Terminal M again. But this time, I'm not leaving home to find home. I'm taking home with me to share with another sacred place. I'm not running from integration—I'm deepening into it.
The wounded part of me that always felt alone is learning what it means to belong. Not just to a place, but to a purpose, to people, to love itself.
Peru, here we come. Both of us this time.
From Terminal M,
Ish
P.S. My books are open for deep, impactful 1:1 work for two people for the next three months.
Do you want to show up more authentically?
Do you want to love and be deeper more openly?
Do you want to learn how to lean into life deeper?
If you give me six months, I can help you.
But only if you are ready to help yourself.
