26/05/2026
Last week I learned that Jean Houston passed away. (born May 10, 1937 — passed May 16, 2026, at the age of 89.)
I took a course with Jean back in 2019, just as the world was entering this heightened period of chaos and change.
For those who don’t know her, Jean was a wise woman, elder, visionary, philosopher, author, scholar—one of the original leaders of the Human Potential Movement and a lifelong explorer of human consciousness.
She was, in many ways, a midwife of transformation—an archetype I also recognize and resonate with in my own work and way.
An extraordinary woman who will no doubt continue helping us through this great shift in human consciousness from across the veil.
I’ve alway deeply resonated with her work and loved how she spoke about grief and change.
She knew the immensity and intensity of it. She didn’t soften it.
She named it as an abyss.
But she also knew its potential.
Grief, for her, was sacred ground. Not something to avoid, but something to enter.
A threshold, a passage, a rite of passage.
She spoke of grief as part of a deeper metamorphosis; an essential hatching process in a human life.
And rather than avoiding the pain, she encouraged people to lean into it and see it for what it is:
a radical transformation, a radical alchemization of the self.
Like a caterpillar dissolving in the chrysalis, she said these are the moments when the old self must break down completely so the new, wiser self can emerge.
What I also loved is how she spoke about how, when we are deeply wounded, we are also deeply available—to our own depths, to the meaning to be found within it, to transformation.
For Jean, sorrow was not a flaw in the human experience—it was one of its most formative forces; a vital ingredient for the soul’s journey.
And in these seasons, the question is not how quickly we can escape the pain, but whether we can stay with it long enough for something new to form.
Rest well, Jean. Though I suspect you’re not one to rest much. ;)
Thank you for your being, your teachings, and for the ways you continue to inspire and open possibility in us.
🤍🪽
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