From Snake Venom to Shared Stories
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Have you ever had a moment where every logical part of your brain is screaming one thing, and something quieter and way more inconvenient is pulling you in a completely different direction?
I had a conversation recently with someone who got on a plane to Mexico to receive snake venom treatments from a medicine man he had never met, during a holiday weekend, while actively bleeding, because something in him said to trust it, and it worked in the most literal, undeniable, still-doing-it-seven-years-later kind of way. (Not metaphorically… actually worked–I know!) I share that not to start a conversation about alternative medicine, although honestly we could, but because that story shifted something in how I think about what it actually means to follow your instincts when your instincts are being wildly inconvenient, and what quietly gets lost every time we choose the comfortable, explainable option instead.
The Part Nobody Talks About When They Tell You to Trust Your Gut
Intuition rarely feels like a warm, golden knowing, and the wellness world does a pretty terrible job of admitting that. Most of the time it feels like the dumbest idea in the room, showing up when you are exhausted and scared and the responsible choice is sitting right there looking very reasonable, while your gut is over in the corner suggesting something that cannot be justified in a group chat and honestly sounds a little unhinged. The reason so many people override it is not because they do not feel it, it is because trusting something you cannot explain feels irresponsible, and most of us have been taught for a very long time that irresponsible is the thing to avoid above all else.
Ignoring your intuition has a cost too, one that tends to accumulate quietly in the form of a life that looks fine from the outside and feels vaguely airless from the inside. The career that made sense on paper. The relationship she kept trying to logic herself into. The book she never wrote, the trip she never took, the conversation she kept rehearsing and never had. Intuition is not asking you to be reckless, it is asking you to be honest about what you already know and to stop pretending you need more information before you are allowed to act on it.
Why Storytelling Is the Bravest Thing You Can Do
There is a reason we connect so deeply when someone tells us the real version of their story, not the edited highlights reel, but the actual thing, the moment they almost gave up, the decision that looked insane from the outside and felt like the only option from the inside, the version of events they kept quiet for a long time because they were not sure the world was ready for the unedited draft. When someone hands us that version of themselves, something in us exhales, because we recognize it, and we have our own version of that story sitting somewhere inside us that we have been keeping very tidy and very quiet for the same reasons.
Storytelling is brave because it requires honesty, and honesty has a way of making us feel exposed in a world that rewards the polished version. The polished version impresses people, maybe, but it does not actually reach them, and reaching someone is a completely different experience than impressing them. The real story does the reaching, the one where you did not have it together, where you followed something you could not explain, where it worked out in ways you could not have planned and also where sometimes it did not, and you kept going anyway, because that is the story that makes someone else feel genuinely less alone in their own unpolished, unfinished, very human experience.
What It Actually Means to Want to Help the World
I think a lot of people carry this quiet longing to contribute something real, to leave some kind of mark that is not just about accumulation or achievement but about actual impact on actual humans. And I also think a lot of people talk themselves out of acting on it because they are waiting to feel ready, or qualified, or certain enough, or healed enough, or far enough along in their own journey before they are allowed to show up and be useful to someone else. (As if the people who have helped you most in your life were the ones who had everything figured out. They were not. They were the ones who showed up anyway.)
The desire to contribute does not require a finished story. It does not require a perfectly packaged message or a platform or a plan that makes sense to everyone around you. It requires showing up with what you actually have, which is your experience, your perspective, your particular way of seeing things that nobody else has because nobody else has lived exactly your life. The world does not need more people waiting until they are ready. It needs more people willing to be in the room before they feel ready, willing to tell the truth before it is tidy, willing to trust that what they have lived through is exactly what someone else needs to hear right now.
On Building Community When the World Keeps Trying to Pull Us Apart
Something I have been sitting with a lot lately is how much easier it has become to feel connected while actually being quite isolated. We have entire relationships that exist in little rectangles on our phones, we consume other people's lives in ten-second increments, and we can go days without a single conversation that drops below the surface, and somehow it does not immediately feel like deprivation because there is always something else to scroll to. The hunger for real connection is still there, quietly underneath all of it, it just gets muffled by the noise until we find ourselves in a room with actual humans and realize how much we have been missing.
In-person community does something to the nervous system that a screen genuinely cannot replicate, and I say that as a relationship coach who also loves a good Zoom call and is not trying to shame anyone for their screen time. When you are physically in a room with people who are trying to grow, who are being honest, who are willing to tell their real stories and hear yours in return, something in your body that has been quietly braced starts to release, and you remember that you were built for this kind of contact. The more intentional we have to be about seeking it out in a world that is increasingly designed to keep us comfortable and separate, the more worth it becomes to actually do the seeking.
The Quiet Invitation You Have Been Waiting For Permission to Accept
The person whose story started all of this is Hal Eisenberg, an award-winning social worker, educator, author, and the founder of Eisenberg Leadership Solutions, who has spent more than 25 years helping people recognize their worth, find their voice, and build real impact in their communities. He is also the author of Whispers in the Rain, a book that reads the way a real human being sounds when they stop performing and just tell you the truth, which in a world drowning in AI content is genuinely refreshing.
Hal is one of those people whose energy you feel the moment he walks into a room, not loud or overwhelming, just steady and warm and deeply, unmistakably present, the kind of person who makes you feel like what you have to say actually matters, because to him it genuinely does. He also survived a cancer diagnosis that came with a four-month prognosis seven years ago, which he handled by going on a years-long spiritual, dietary, Eastern and Western medicine deep dive that included, yes, the snake venom, and came out the other side more committed than ever to building community and helping other people tell their stories. (He also has a band that has been together for 28 years, which is its own kind of miracle and maybe the subject of a whole other conversation.)
What Hal has created with the Whispers in the Rain Impact Tour, coming to New York City June 18 through 21 (An hopefully more cities across the world!), is a four-day live experience built around exactly the things we have been talking about here: storytelling, in-person community, real human connection, and the particular kind of courage it takes to show up and be seen before you feel ready. There are author readings, panel discussions, a literary-based Amazing Race through the City, a live concert, a silent auction raising money for education charities, and a closing morning of yoga and reflection, all paced in a way that actually respects your nervous system instead of trying to cram transformation into a single overscheduled afternoon. I get to be a part of it, and if any of this landed for you today, I have a strong feeling you are meant to be there too. You do not need to have it all figured out before you show up, and all the details are waiting for you in the show notes. 🧡
Learn more about the Whispers in the Rain Impact Tour and grab your tickets here. Whispers in the Rain by Hal Eisenberg is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
