Divine Assignment = Divine Alignment

On surrender and the origin of it all

What if the moments we try hardest to escape are the very ones designed to bring us home to ourselves?

Joseph Campbell called it the Call to Adventure—the moment when the ordinary life ends, and the real journey begins. Despair is often the refusal of that call. Divine alignment begins when we say yes. This story is my yes.

A few months ago, I drove up to Oregon to visit my mother. A sudden onset illness had nearly paralyzed her overnight. What started as fatigue had progressed into something far more serious. Her body was declining. Her spirit dimmer than I’d ever seen it. The doctors couldn’t offer a clear path forward—only the vague conclusion that there was no known cure.

I looked at her and knew. She didn’t have the strength for this chapter, at least not alone. So I packed her bags, loaded her into the car, and we took the scenic route home. We would face this together.

I approached her care the way I would a startup in its most fragile early days.

I ran a process. I built a spreadsheet of contacts, leveraged social media to expand beyond my network, and asked for insight from anyone who might know more than we did. I leaned on both my default alpha intelligence—strategic, efficient, action-oriented—and my intuitive omega intelligence, the part of me that felt deeply, that listened closely, that knew in my bones there was another path. I knew there was something we simply hadn’t found yet.

I let go of ego. I let go of the fear that I’d be seen as weak or attention-seeking. I simply asked for help. I opted to be with all of it.

And life answered.

We heard from an acquaintance, an investor I’d met once, four years ago, at a gathering in the hills. He reached out and told us about his own experience—young, healthy, then suddenly sick. So sick he was walking with a cane. His story mirrored my mother’s, but he had found a stem cell treatment that helped him fully recover. Two years later, he’s running again. Independent. Healthy. Fully living.

My mom was accepted into that same program and her treatment begins in three weeks.

The past six months have been a period of Divine Assignment. A calling to step in, to slow down, to reorient my life around care and cultivating rather than creating and producing. It hasn’t been easy, but it has been profound. And it’s brought me into alignment with something deeper than ambition. Something wiser than control.

When we stop asking why is this happening? And start asking, what is this here to teach me? We soften. Not because the situation changes, but because we do. When we stop resisting reality, we start listening. And when we listen, we’re able to treat whatever challenge life puts before us not as an interruption, but as an opportunity.

We don’t know where this will lead. But life isn’t about certainty. Life is about presence. It’s about choosing to stay, to show up, to believe—especially when there’s no map. To embrace all of it.

If you’re walking through something tender right now, something life-altering, I want you to know: you are not alone. And if no one has said it to you recently, let me be the one—your devotion is not invisible. It’s not small. It’s not a detour from your path. It is the path.

That’s what I’ve been learning.

That’s the heartbeat behind this podcast—Life, Death, All of It.

I’d love to say that it was born of my own genius, but its moniker came from someone far more wise: my 100-year old grandmother. My grandmother was dying when she gave me the name. I had come home to support her through hospice, holding her hand in the first and last conversation we had before she left this earth. We were sitting together, as I had done countless times before, when she looked at me with fierce clarity and said, “You need to write a book.” I asked her, “About what?” She paused, then answered, “life, death, all of it.”

Then she closed her eyes and we never spoke again.

That was the beginning.

And here’s what I’ve come to know: it is all of it that shapes us. The moments we want to skip. The ones we wish would last forever. The ache. The beauty. The mess. The mystery. The relationships that bring us to our knees and back to our feet.

In every founder, every executive, every visionary I’ve coached, the real unlock has never been a tool or a budget or a blueprint. It’s been belief. Belief that they are worthy of support. Belief that they are not too much, and not not enough. Belief that they can stand exactly as they are and still lead. Still build. Still become.

This is the truth behind every breakthrough:

Life coaching is business coaching.

Who we are is how we lead.

How we lead is how we build.

And what we build is our life.

If you're moving through your own divine assignment right now, here’s a framework to help shift from despair into alignment:

S.H.I.F.T. — A Practice for Moving from Despair to Divine Alignment

S: Stop + Soften – Notice the contraction. Pause. Breathe.

H: Hear the Invitation – Ask, “What is life trying to show me here?”

I: Identify the Fear – Get honest. What am I afraid of? What belief is driving that?

F: Follow the Thread – What deeper desire or value lives beneath that fear?

T: Take Aligned Action – One small step from belief, not fear.

We’re dropping the first episodes of the Life, Death, All of It podcast next week. There’s part of me that’s nervous it won’t be enough. And part that’s afraid it will be too much. I’m nervous it won’t be enough. I’m afraid it will be too much. But if I were coaching myself, I’d say this: life loves bravery. Leap!

So here I am, leaping. And so deeply excited to bring you deep truths from experts, scientists, artists, leaders, and everyday humans who have dared to live fully. And bringing you deep truths from experts, artists, leaders, and everyday humans who have dared to live fully.

Our first episode explores the origin of this podcast, the decade of research that shaped the book my grandmother insisted I write, and the shame that quietly sabotages nearly 90% of our relationships with money. The shame that quietly sabotages the relationship with money for 90% of us.

If this resonated with you, subscribe below to get the first episode delivered straight to your inbox the moment it drops next week.

Here with you in all of it,

Krista