It's Your Life.

There’s a moment — maybe you’ve had it — 

when you look around at your life and think:

Wait.

Whose life is this?

The weird part is that 

you recognize everything. 

The house. The people. The routines. 

The version of yourself who apparently agreed to all of it.

You just don’t recognize yourself in it anymore.

Sometimes this happens all at once.

A betrayal. A diagnosis. A death. 

A marriage or important friendship ends. 

Some piece of information comes to light and 

before you’ve even figured out what it means, 

your life has divided itself into Before and After.

Other times it takes years.

Something stops fitting, but you keep wearing it anyway,

 because technically you can still get the buttons closed.

Until you can’t.

 That’s roughly where I found myself a few years ago.
I'm still figuring out what to make of it.
And maybe this is where you find yourself, too.

Standing at the edge of something unfamiliar,

 looking out at a horizon with no map, 

no guarantee, just a terrifying suspicion that 

 all of this upheaval, loss, and disorientation

might somehow be necessary
for your next step.

I hate to tell you this, 

but I'm beginning to think it might be.

I know. 

I don't particularly want to hear it either.

But here's what I'm starting to understand:

Sometimes something has to stop fitting
before we can discover what might fit next.

Would I prefer a less disruptive system?

Of course. 

 I'm never consulted.

Disruption is remarkably good at getting your attention. 

And paying attention to your life 

as it is right now...

in the painful, prickly, ridiculous parts,

 the parts that seem insignificant,

 the parts that make you laugh 

when nothing is particularly funny,

in the parts that are already over this

and bored with the pity party,

in the things you keep noticing 

and then immediately talk yourself out of noticing...

 is how you find your way back.

Not to the person you were before everything happened.

But toward whoever has been patiently waiting underneath all the things that no longer fit.

 I've been tracking my life in real time
and writing essays that expose what 

the ordinary has been hiding all along...

The Extraordinary.

A portable generator delivered by mistake... or was it? 

An ad for a pair of boots on a dating site that was 

more compelling than the profiles of men holding fish.

 The particular silence of menopause

 that nobody warns you about. 

The moment you stop outsourcing 

your own knowing and finally trust yourself 

to be the authority on your own life.

This isn't the Promised Land.

But there is plenty of writing material.

(Which to me is like manna from heaven.)

 So maybe that's my invitation to you: 

Pay attention to your own life.  

Because attention is a compass. 

And when your attention begins to shift 

from what's gone,
you start noticing what remains...

what's wilder, stranger, and
more honestly yours.

Please know this: 

You are not alone on this quest. 

I'm here to walk alongside you in this oddly specific, 

devastatingly disorienting, occasionally absurd, 

and surprisingly funny experience of losing everything 

familiar and finding out who you might be without it. 

Together we'll read and write 

our way out and through.

Read It and Leap is an ongoing collection of essays 

from inside the upheaval, 

written for anyone standing on the brink 

of their own leap into the unknown. 

Come find yourself in the stories.

Sign Up Here 

Penny Plautz has spent most of her life being curious, 

asking questions, and finding the meaning 

— and the humor — in things.

She has worked with shamans in Mexico and healers in Bali.  She has written books, built practices, led retreats, 

hosted podcasts, and spent three decades 

helping people navigate change. 

She still does. Just more intentionally now.  

With better questions and fewer answers.

When her own life fell apart — spectacularly, instructively, publicly —   Penny found herself having to put 

all those years of questioning to the test. 

She did what any reasonable person does

in the aftermath of a lifequake  

that rearranges everything.

She moved to her family farm with two dogs 

who secretly knew they were also therapists. 

Ruby — her fire, her ride or die, 

her partner in all adventures. 

Pearl — her joy, her love bug, 

her gentle daily reminder to play.

She started writing essays about losing everything familiar 

  and figuring out what was still hers. 

She's no longer the fitness instructor she once was, 

or the consultant who helped others 

optimize and improve

 their way to wellness.

She has traded hustle for wholeness, 

achievement for aliveness, 

metrics for meaning,

and the relentless pursuit of more

for the unexpected thrill of being less. 

 These days, Penny pays attention to what fascinates her. 

It has proven to be a surprisingly reliable compass. 

Somewhere along the way,

 she realized the thing she'd been looking 

for wasn't another answer.

It was consciousness. Connection. 

And people willing to ask better questions together.

Turns out, it had been the quest all along. 

 Penny isn't interested in telling you how to live your life.

She's too busy paying attention to her own.

The messy parts. The surreal parts.

The things that fall apart and the things that 

somehow find their way back together.

Turns out, there's more than enough to work with.

 She is still here. 

Still evolving. 

Still learning to be 

unapologetically herself. 

Maybe you are, too?

If so, come be part of this.