FIELD NOTES ON BECOMING
NOTES FROM THE WILD EDGES OF CHANGE
We are always becoming.
Sometimes by choice. Sometimes because life breaks open and the person we have been can no longer carry us where we are going.
Field Notes on Becoming is a monthly essay series by Gillian Lichota, founder of iRise Above, that explores what it means to live fully amid change.
Rooted in lived experience and the natural world, these essays follow the questions that arise when certainty falls away: about the body and identity, loss and belonging, courage and wonder, and who we are becoming when the path ahead is not yet clear.
These are observations from the threshold—gathered along the way.
LATEST FIELD NOTE
THE LIVING EDGE
What if the boundaries we need aren’t walls, but living edges?
From the glowing waters off Vancouver Island to the alpine reaches of the Tour du Mont Blanc, The Living Edge explores what nature teaches us about uncertainty, discernment, and trusting ourselves when the path vanishes.
FROM THE FIELD
THE CURRENT BENEATH ME
May 2026
Some currents are visible. Others reveal themselves only after they have begun carrying us somewhere new.
THE BODY ALWAYS KNOWS
June 2026
What changes when we stop treating the body as something to conquer and start listening to what it has been trying to tell us?
THE NAKED TRUTH
July 2026
What remains when we strip away the stories we have been taught about our bodies? A reflection on exposure, vulnerability, and the freedom that can emerge when there is nowhere left to hide.
THE LIVING EDGE
August 2026
At the edges of ecosystems—and of our own lives—boundaries are rarely fixed. They breathe, shift, protect, and enable exchange.
NOTES FOR THE JOURNEY
Field Notes on Becoming grows from the same belief at the heart of iRise Above:
A life altered by breast cancer can still be expansive.
There can be adventure after diagnosis. Pleasure. Curiosity. Grief. Beauty. Reinvention. Wildness. And a future that need not resemble the life we imagined before.
These essays are written from within that terrain.
A new Field Note arrives each month.
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