“I am okay. Everything is okay. I pass the baton to you.”—Nonnie

There is a mystical river that runs through the rainforest above San Mateo in Costa Rica, a living portal that whispers only to those who grow quiet enough to receive her voice. To call her enchanting feels insufficient, almost irreverent, because language falters beneath the weight of her deific beauty. She answers to Rio Machuca, yet the name feels small against what she is, as if language were trying to cup something that refuses to be held. Some places are not mere destinations at all, but initiations that awaken the calling the soul has carried all along.  Rio Machuca invites you to be undone.

A dear friend first led Adi and me along a narrow path through the dense green canopy to encounter this sacred tributary. She spoke of the river with reverence, not as a place to visit but as a presence to engage, a confidant and spiritual guide for those willing to examine their sacred cows and release what no longer serves. She told us that whenever something weighs heavily upon the heart, we must allow ourselves to feel every thread of it without resistance and then surrender it to the current. The river, she said, has a way of dissolving what we cling to, returning our convictions altered and our certainties softened. After sharing this gentle instruction, she stepped back and left us alone with the water, trusting that its living current would finish the lesson without another word.

The roar of the cascading current swallowed every other sound in the rainforest, and for a suspended moment it felt as though time had stepped aside. There were no clocks, no obligations, no histories pressing against the edges of our thoughts. It was only Adi and me and the steady hymn of moving water. Something shifted in that widening silence. We felt the presence of Adi’s grandmother, whom she called Nonnie, a soul who had laid down her body only weeks before.  We had sensed her nearness in subtle ways since her passing, often in the sudden crow of a rooster, a creature she loved, yet on this day her presence was not a sign or symbol. It was unmistakable. The river carried her spirit and delivered her to us without ambiguity.

It was Nonnie, not as a fading echo but as the force she had been in life, vibrant and unmistakably alive. Her presence pressed in on us with a strength that left no room for doubt. She did not speak through sound, yet the message moved through us as clearly as the current before our eyes. “I am okay. Everything is okay. I pass the baton to you.”

Adi began to cry in a way I had not witnessed before. These were not tears of despair but tears of remembrance, tears that carried healing in their descent. Through the thunder of the river, she yelled for all to hear that Nonnie was not gone. She was everywhere; alive in the trees, in the water, in the very air that brushed against our skin. And in that moment the truth felt undeniable. We are not extinguished when the body yields. We are not confined to the machinery of mind. We are Divine Consciousness expressing through form for a season before returning to the greater field from which we came. Nonnie had set aside her body and mind, yet her spirit moved freely through leaf and current and light.

As I sat beside the water, I felt my own father draw near. Much has unfolded in my life since he laid down his body in 2014, and the river seemed to loosen memories I had tucked carefully away. I found myself thinking about the Secret Blue Butterfly movement my children and I began years earlier, a simple campaign of kindness built on anonymous gestures that appeared small but traveled like seeds across neighborhoods, cities, and eventually countries. In time, people from around the world began sharing stories of how those small acts had altered the course of their days and sometimes their lives.

Years ago, when my father discovered what we were doing, he called me with the familiar mix of humor and practicality that defined him. A child of the Great Depression, he could not quite reconcile giving away hard-earned money without receiving something in return. He would joke with me about our kindness mission, asking for his own portion with a half-smile in his voice, convinced that generosity, like everything else, ought to square itself in the books.

While these memories moved through me, something occurred that felt orchestrated beyond coincidence. A Blue Morpho butterfly descended into view and began to dance above my head with effortless grace. It was the first blue butterfly we had seen in Costa Rica despite my quiet longing to encounter one. As its wings flashed brilliant sapphire in the filtered sunlight, a shiver traveled through me. I knew in the marrow of my being that my father was present, offering his own silent benediction, reminding me that even what appears random is woven into a larger design.

Adi and I stood there with different revelations unfolding inside us, yet they settled into the same quiet certainty. Since arriving in Costa Rica, something within us has finally come to rest. We felt like we had found our home. For the first time in a long while, we felt connected to something greater than our ambitions or our need to prove anything. Our new friends opened their homes and their hearts without hesitation, and the ease of those connections felt natural, unforced. Surrender is no longer a concept we speak about. It is shaping the way we live. In such seasons, what once required striving begins to move with its own rhythm, and life steadies itself without being pushed.

The river binds it all together. She calls, and within her current lies an answer for any heart willing to ask. The requirement is simple. We must grow quiet enough to hear it. In that quiet, what once felt like loss begins to reveal itself as change. In that quiet, we remember we were never separate from the One moving through river, butterfly, and breath alike.