You Don’t Get Resurrection Without Death
"Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead." — C.S. Lewis
2024 after closing the literal door on my old life and stepping into the new and unknown
April 6th, 2026
📍Bucerias, Nayarit, Mexico 🇲🇽
¡Saludos desde el desierto!
This past weekend, I found myself moving through the story of death and resurrection as a reflection of my own healing journey. The contrast was hard to miss—one moment holding the weight of an ending, the next already shifting into something new and beautiful.
The same pattern kept revealing itself: something ending, and something beginning.
And it made me realize how easy it is to keep this pattern at a distance. To treat it like something symbolic, something meaningful, but still something happening somewhere outside of myself. Something to witness. When in reality, it's something I’m being invited into. Something to embody.
We're drawn to the language of renewal. Of transformation and new life. But the part where something actually has to end—the part where we’re asked to release the comfort of the familiar, even when it no longer fits—that’s the part we tend to want to move past. Because it costs us something. I can feel that in my own life right now.
My little Lola cerca 2022
There's been a steady unraveling in my life over the past few years—grieving the loss of my furry companion, sacrificing my comfort zone to travel as a digital nomad, and navigating a marital separation (all the while watching human suffering play out across the global stage).
The old ways I learned to move through the world, the egoic identities I built (my masks), the patterns that once made sense—they're not holding in the same way anymore.
Some of it has been obvious. Some of it has been quieter. Harder to name, but just as real. And letting those parts go hasn't felt clean or clear. More like standing in between—no longer fully anchored in who I’ve been, but not yet fully rooted in what’s emerging.
There’s a kind of grief in that. Because even the parts of me that weren’t fully aligned… still carried me for a long time.
Closing out the Year of the Snake and 2025
But something has shifted. What once felt like loss is starting to feel more like refinement. Not because it’s easier, but because I can see that something is being made possible through it. This isn’t about becoming someone new.
It’s about returning. Returning to who I was created to be before I learned how to shape myself to be loved. Before I built an identity around performance or control or proving. A return to living in Conscious awareness with I AM, instead of constantly reaching for something just out of grasp.
And that kind of return seems to require a kind of death—not of who I am, but of who I thought I had to be.
I named freedom as my word for 2026. For a while, I understood that in a familiar way—Freedom from old patterns. From fear. From expectations that were never really mine. But that framing has been shifting over the last quarter. Because freedom isn’t only about what we’re leaving behind; it’s also about what we’re stepping into.
And the question that keeps surfacing is simple, but not easy to answer: What is this freedom actually for?
Entering the Year of the Horse in Mexico
I don’t have a fully formed answer, yet, but I can sense where it’s leading—Toward a life that is rooted in alignment instead of performance. Toward a way of being that is led, rather than controlled. Toward creating from a place of overflow instead of depletion. Trusting that I don’t have to earn what has already been given.
I don’t feel like I’ve arrived anywhere. If anything, I feel more aware of how much is still unfolding. There are still pieces loosening their grip. Still moments where I want to reach for what’s familiar instead of staying present to what’s new. But I’m no longer only focused on what’s falling away.
I can see, even if only in glimpses, what all of this letting go is leading toward. And that changes the way I hold it.
As I continue preparing for the RENEW Janzu Retreat 2026 that starts Sunday, I can feel how central this is to everything my fellow Desert Mothers and I are co-creating. A space where it’s safe to release what’s no longer true, without needing to rush into what comes next. A space where nothing is forced, but something real is allowed to emerge. Because so much of this work happens in that middle space. Not in the clarity of arrival, but in the honesty of transition.
So the invitation this week is simple. To notice what in you is ready to end. What needs to die so that you can be reborn? To loosen your grip on what feels familiar but no longer fits. And to begin asking—what is my freedom for? Because, whether we try to bypass it or not, you don’t get resurrection without death.
With Love, unconditionally—
Jennifer
P.S.—You won’t be hearing from me next week as I will be deep in the RENEW experience. But I look forward to sharing my initial experience with you once I resurface.
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