We live between root and sky.
We belong to the earth that holds us and the vastness that calls us home.
In between are the stories of our lives, rooted yet forever reaching.
You already know the life you’re leading doesn’t fit.
Not in a dramatic, walk-away-from-everything way. In a quieter way. The way a coat you once loved starts pulling at the shoulders. The way you catch yourself standing at the kitchen window, mid-task, looking at nothing in particular, and the pause lasts longer than it used to.
You've tried the prescriptions. The retreats that promised clarity by checkout. The self-help shelves, the podcasts, the five steps to reinvention. You did the work. Some of it even helped. But the deepest thing — the thing that keeps surfacing in the shower, on the drive, at the edge of sleep — won't fit inside anyone else's framework.
It's not a problem to solve. It's a story to tell. Yours. The one you've been living in fragments — the loss that reshaped you, the leaving that saved you, the becoming that has no name yet because you haven't written it down.
You don't need a guru. You need a page, a pen, and permission to tell the truth about your own life.
This is where I write from. This is where I invite you in.
Hello. I’m Alicia.
I work in the space between who we were and who we are becoming. The quiet reckoning that arrives when the life you built stops fitting, and something in you — before the mind even names it — begins to turn toward what is next.
I live on the Algarve coast of southern Portugal, on the edge of Europe, where the Atlantic meets limestone and the light does things to the afternoon I am still trying to find words for. I came here because I had spent a lifetime building something that looked right from the outside. And one day I realized I was living inside someone else's idea of me.
The writing comes from here. From the cliffs, the winter ocean, the foreignness of becoming someone new in a country that did not know me before. Every essay, every poem, every reflection begins in this landscape and in the interior one it keeps reshaping.
Before Portugal I spent years coaching in corporate halls and walking in Ecuadorian rainforests. I have studied with business leaders and with indigenous shamans. That range is not decoration. It is why I can sit with a woman in the middle of dismantling her life and hold the space for her transformation.
The Threshold Letters
Every Tuesday, a letter.
I write about transitions, about place, about what arrives when the old life stops fitting. Some weeks it’s an essay. Some weeks it’s a question I am still sitting with. Always thoughtful reflections and practical insights to help you design an intentional life—rooted in clarity, mindfulness, and daily practices that spark possibility.
Start with my guide, "The Story You Haven't Written Yet: Seven Thresholds for Beginning." Yours when you subscribe.
Work with me
Unwritten Journeys
Strategic Advisory
Private Advisory is strategic advisory grounded in spiritual depth—for women navigating identity evolution, reinvention, and conscious leadership transitions. This is the work I have done longest.
A writing retreat in the Algarve for new and aspiring authors. Seven people, by application. We walk, we write, we eat, and we get underneath whatever has been stopping you. Writing experience not needed.
Becoming Limitless
Writing Mentorship
One-to-One custom retreat in Portugal for anyone navigating burnout, grief, or life or career transition. Guests leave with a calmer nervous system and renewed vitality and clarity into what comes next.
Writing Mentorship is a private, one to one, for women writing their own story. Months, not weeks. We work on voice, on structure, and on the harder question of what you are willing to say.
MY BOOKS
First and foremost, I am a storyteller, writing from the edge of the Atlantic on belonging, reinvention, and the life you did not plan.
From childhood I was either listening to my parent’s stories or creating them. I read voraciously and from the age of ten kept a journal where I recorded all the things I couldn’t understand and hoped to one day understand.
I am the author of four books, including the award-winning memoir The Shaman's Wife: A Mystical Journey of Surrender and Self-Discovery and the poetry collection Between Root and Sky: Poems on Love, Loss and Longing. I publish a free newsletter on Substack called Between Root and Sky, with essays, poems, and audio readings. (You’ll want to subscribe!)
WHAT CLIENTS SAY
Get in Touch
If something here is sitting in your heart…
Write to me. Tell me where you are and perhaps where you’d like to go. I read everything myself.
