LIVING Update — In the Midst of Life

There are moments in life when everything changes, not gradually, but all at once.

Two weeks ago, my husband experienced a life-threatening medical emergency. What we initially thought was something relatively minor revealed itself to be far more serious. That morning, he went into ventricular tachycardia and had to be brought back through emergency intervention.

Within days, we learned he had already experienced a prior heart attack, and then another. He underwent a quadruple bypass. There was a balloon pump supporting his heart for several days.

There were moments that asked everything of us.

And now, here we are.

He is now home.
Healing.
Recovering in ways that feel both miraculous and deeply earned.

I am currently in full-time care with him—supporting his healing in every way needed. Our daily rhythm has completely shifted into presence, care, and devotion to life itself.

We have had to pause work.
Cancel our upcoming work and living season in Colorado.
Release our storage shed we were moving minimal belongings into.
Cease building out our new trailer into an RV for our mobile living journeys.
Release plans we thought were certain.

And in their place, something quieter has emerged.

A deeper Trust.
A profound Appreciation.
A reverence for life that cannot be spoken, only LIVED.

There is something else I have been witnessing, both before this experience, and even more clearly within it. In the weeks leading up to this moment, I found myself observing certain energies moving through the collective—subtle at times, screaming at other times, and clearly unmistakable.

A reaching for significance.
A claiming of space.
Moments where presence felt replaced by self-focus and/or absorption.

And as always, I turned inward. Not in judgment, but in awareness. Where was my attention placed? Where had I moved so deeply into solitude, quietude, and sanctitude that I might not have witnessed what others were moving through?

There was no wrongness in this, no judgment, no sabotage. Merely a contemplation of witnessing. An awareness of where my focus had been, and what if anything was asking now to be included or excluded.

At the same time, without fully understanding why, I could feel something shifting.

A quiet knowing.
A subtle grieving.
A sense that something in our lives was changing, before there was any visible reason for it.

In hindsight, I recognize this as a kind of awareness that arrives before the mind can name it. Not something to figure out, but something that was already being FELT.

This experience has also revealed something deeper about connection.

There are moments when support is offered with genuine care, and moments when it lives more in words than in lived presence. And even within great love and support, there are spaces in life that ask us to stand fully within ourselves.

Not alone, but in a kind of presence that no one else can occupy for us.

This, too, is part of LIVING.

For now, I am here, PRESENT.

Caring.
Listening.
Honoring what is unfolding.

Being the “ing” of life.

There is no need to define what comes next.

The LIVING Foundation continues to move – softly, steadily – revealing itself in its own timing. If anything, it is being rooted more deeply through this experience.

Thank you for being here.
For your presence.
For the ways we each, in our own lives, are learning what it truly means to LIVE.

With love and honor,
Terri Akaya Malek

P.S. I wanted to honor and appreciate my dear husband Tim for all the amazing journeys we have had over the last several years, and the many that will come, in whatever capacity that is. Here is just a mere highlight of some of our times together in travels.