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UNEVEN GROUND A MOVING TOWARDS by SJ HODGES

Uneven Ground: A Moving Towards Copyright @ 2024 by Mountain Mama Media All rights reserved. First Edition Published and printed in the United States of America by Mountain Mama Media https://www.uneven-ground.com Uneven Ground is written and designed by human artists for a human audience. Scraping data for the use and/or training of generative AI infringes upon the copyright.

Oh Clayton, my darling. You know this one’s for you.

1 ONE THE PASSAGE IS A PORTAL Palccoyo (aka “Rainbow Mountain”) Cusco, Peru December 5, 2021 **************** I was terrified of Rainbow Mountain. For months before I traveled to Peru, Branden sat across from me, at our shared writing table, regaling me with stories about his journeys into the Amazon, the wisdom gained from meeting Mama Ayahuasca and the brutality of climbing Vinicunca (more commonly referred to as “Rainbow Mountain” on the posters plastered all over Lima.) It wasn’t that the hiking was treacherous, Branden explained. He knew I’d crested several ridge trails on O’ahu, trails that required strength, coordination, navigating broken stairs, mud, weather, hunger and sometimes even rope-work. No, Branden warned, Rainbow Mountain wasn’t about the technical aspects of hiking. It was all about the altitude. Though Vinicunca is not the highest mountain in Peru, it is still the equivalent of climbing to base camp at Everest. You never take one step below 14,000 feet. It’s challenging from the get-go, so I took Branden’s warning seriously. Branden is a Nike master trainer who times himself running the 1,000-stair incline at Koholepelepe in under fifteen minutes so if he says something is gonna kick your ass, it is most definitely going to kick your ass. Past attendees of his Warrior Retreats leadership adventure were no shrinking violets expecting luxury travel. They were global entrepreneurs, wellness influencers, yoga instructors and pro-athletes who, despite their youth and vigor, had crumbled under the weight of Vinicunca’s physical and emotional demands.

Uneven Ground 2 During my intake interview, one of the retreat facilitators suggested I consider riding a donkey. I decided to train instead. My training started with an eight-mile Spartan race over the sacred lands and utterly breath-taking beauty of Kuoloa Ranch on O’ahu, where I am blessed to live, and ended with a fifteen-mile swim at the Kailua Y to raise three-grand for the American Cancer Society. I pushed my body to the point of being laid up for a weekend, unable to put weight on my left leg without collapsing. By the time I boarded the plane to Lima, I was physically stronger than I’d been since my early 20’s but still, Vinicunca loomed large and impossible in my imagination. It didn’t help that after a week of ayahuasca ceremonies, I arrived in Cusco running a high fever and missing my daughter profoundly. In the years since Clayton’s death, Cecilia and I’d become inseparable, wrapped in a tricky bond of healing and heartbreak that was only amplified by Covid’s lockdowns. There’d been days when I desperately needed a solo-mom trip (spoiler alert: I would have settled for adult conversation) but now that I was thousands of miles away, free of all parental obligations and sick as a dog, I wept with the pain of missing her. I was utterly miserable. Branden decided I had altitude sickness and sent a facilitator to my hotel door with a tank of oxygen. I rolled my eyes, informing her with great disdain, that air had never been known to cure an infection. Still, I acquiesced and strapped the oxygen mask to my face and lay there in bed, fuming and glaring and sucking air like a middle-aged Darth Vader. It was into this hot mess that my poor roomie entered carrying a handwritten note and leather-bound journal from Branden. A gift from him to all the retreat participants. I didn’t even read the inscription. The second she handed me that book, I threw it violently across the room. It slammed against the wall and dropped to the floor. Yes. Good. Exactly that. That’s what I felt about his damn journal. I was (as they say) NOT in a good place. **************** Before leaving home, I’d had the “you’re her only parent, you have to stay alive” foresight to get a physical, update my tetanus and load my luggage with numerous and varied antibiotics. Dosing myself with a Z-Pak, flooding my system with purified water and a full-day of deep sleep worked its magic. I was no longer feverish or chucking books at walls, so I was back in the mix for Rainbow Mountain. The plan had slightly changed. We’d still be driving the three hours southeast

SJ Hodges 3 from Cusco to hike but instead of Vinicunca, we’d be climbing Palccoyo. It was a longer and more remote trail, over four miles, but with an easier grade and slightly less elevation gain. We’d be dropped off somewhere near 14,000 feet then climb an additional 2,300 feet where at the summit, we’d offer up our flowers, our prayers and in my case, the ashes of my dead husband to our Andean Earth Mother, Pachamama. I’d been carrying Clayton around in a plastic shampoo bottle since Hawai’i. I figured if I got stopped in customs with what appeared to be human remains, I’d mix him with water and pretend he was a super-organic face mask. That used to be our kind of humor about death, until it wasn’t. Until death came for a long unwelcome visit, in all her horror and her glory. Ripping our home to shreds like so much confetti in the wind. This Peruvian plan of mine was not what Clayton requested in his will. Clayton wanted his ashes to “tread the boards” for eternity, meaning he wanted to be spread in the Broadway theaters, maybe sprinkle a dash here and there at some prestigious regionals or in London’s West End. I had to settle for Vegas. Covid may have shut down every other venue around the entire world and possibly the Universe, but dammit, Vegas was open. By God, there would be magicians and ventriloquists and showgirls come hell or high water. So, Vegas it was, with my plastic shampoo bottle and daughter in tow. Here’s the thing: human ashes are dense and bright white and while this may be disturbing to hear, they include pieces of bone. They are not wispy or light or in any way subtle. Spreading bright white human ashes inside a theater entirely upholstered in Vegas red velvet is the equivalent of throwing Anthrax into a newsroom. It’s a really, really good way to get yourself arrested. I mean, I still did it. And I got away with it. But it was nerve-wracking. I wasn’t hip to repeat that anytime soon. Especially in London or New York. Oh my God, I could just picture myself being hauled off for terrorism, my dear Cecilia waving as they tossed me in the paddy-wagon. So I made the executive decision, being Clayton’s medical proxy (whether he was dead or alive) to take what remained of his body to see some of the world. We’d go on the vacations we never got the chance to plan. We’d travel together one last time. Plus, his globe-trotting brother had been to Machu Picchu. It just seemed right. As we boarded the bus in Cusco, I spoke privately with our spiritual guide, Valerio, and in my broken Spanglish confirmed our conversation from the night before. I showed him the green plastic bottle and his gentle eyes met mine. He bowed, more than nodded, and a calm settled over me. This wasn’t a hike. This was a mission. ****************

Uneven Ground 4 Even the drive to Palccoyo was harrowing. I was seated by a large window which was delightful and charming when spotting a llama and bowel-rippingly terrifying when the side of the bus was hanging over a cliff. Closing my eyes didn’t help. My whole body tensed, and I squealed like a frightened mouse. Branden thought it was hilarious. I did not. Somewhere inside me, a song started to rise. It was “Rainbow Connection” the lullaby I’d sing to Cecilia as I rubbed her back and everything that was deadly and wrong in her world mercifully disappeared - at least for the night. I hadn’t been able to sing that song since Clayton’s death but on the bus, it soothed me. A welcome visitor. An old friend. A comfort among the cliffs. Finally, we arrived and as we all tumbled out of the bus, my mission kicked in. Squealing mouse no more, I was ready to do this. Even if the odds were against me, I was determined to give it my best effort. And believe me, the odds were stacked against me. Here were, as my road-dawg Quez likes to say, the indisputable FACTS: We were at altitude. I occasionally suffer from exercise-induced asthma. I was the oldest in our group. By a decade. Some of the others were professional athletes and trainers. They were faster than me. No doubt. I’m a slow-ass, methodical hiker. In the water, I’m a fish but on land, I refer to myself as The Honu (Hawaiian for turtle). PS: There was not a donkey in sight. My plan was to head off by myself. While everyone else was posing for The Gram, I would sneak away, go at my steady pace, and get a strong lead. If I was far enough ahead maybe I wouldn’t fall so far behind. This plan was thwarted immediately. I was called back to join a ceremony announcing our arrival to the ancestors, the mountains and honoring all who’d come before us. Valerio dribbled, what us Southern folks refer to as “Florida Water,” in our palms, handed us flowers to use as offerings and coca leaves to bless then chew. Believed to ward off altitude sickness, coca leaves are bitter and earthy and for someone like me who hasn’t had so much as a sip of caffeine in twenty years, they will get you high as hell. The day prior, during a tour of several sacred sites, Valerio passed out coca leaves, and I just popped them in my mouth without even thinking. Ten minutes later I was skipping around stones, talking non-stop and in a great fucking mood. It took me another ten minutes to realize I’d been chewing cocaine. So, I opted out of the leaves for Palccoyo. After our prayers, a herd of llama galloped towards us giving me the perfect

SJ Hodges 5 Instagram distraction. Everyone whipped out their phones and I took off by myself. Not too fast, not too slow. Go, honu, go. For a long time, I walked alone in silence. Palccoyo is a quiet place. You can hear your own thoughts as if they’re spoken out loud. I felt Clayton riding along in my coat pocket. I wondered if, this time, I’d break down when I released his ashes. Spreading him in the Vegas theaters, there’d been no room for my grief. I was too busy eye-balling the security guards while grinding bones with the heel of my shoe. But there, on that stone trail, there was nothing but space and quiet and me. Plenty of room to cry and feel and lose my mind. Is that what would happen? And if it did, would that feel like freedom? Is that what I wanted? My freedom? Freedom from what? Suffering? Grief? Remembering those awful final days? I heard the shuffle of steps and looked over my shoulder. It was one of the professional trainers, Bryan, jogging to catch up. He slowed slightly until I smiled, giving him visible permission to join. A few quick steps and then he matched my pace. Our walk together began. We called ourselves ‘The Bookends’ since we were the youngest and oldest in the group. In the jungles, we’d developed a beautiful connection, him confessing his secrets and me keeping them. I listened as he talked about his relationships, rather, his hook ups and let downs, the sad way that ghosting has replaced goodbyes and I remembered the confusion and swirl of being in my 20’s, pulled around Manhattan by my addictions and libido, calling that sexual empowerment. (Lord, you couldn’t pay me to repeat those days.) Bryan is a hive; young women buzz around him. They want the taste of his honey on their lips. There’s a frenzy to it that I recognize - that urgent need to know what comes next and who will be with you and how to make sure you’re doing everything just the right way. As if there isn’t time. As if mistakes are the enemy. We’re very affectionate with each other, Bryan and me. We link arms, both in desperate need of loving, careful and unconditional touch. Touch without an agenda. Intimacy without sex. I miss the daily brush-bys in the kitchen, the nightly kisses of marriage. I miss being held and adored. I’m grateful for Bryan’s affections. I’m honored to receive and embrace them, knowing my age is my safety, his safety, our safety to express ourselves and practice love in a brand-new way. We passed a tiny, steady stream, tinkling against the rocks, an aquatic wind chime. Bryan knelt to record the water’s music and I held very still so as not to disturb his efforts. As he got down on one knee and smiled up at me, I wondered, “How many young women have longed for this view?” I smiled back and listened for a moment then left him there. I felt strong. I wanted to capitalize on my energy and get ahead so when the others caught up, I wouldn’t be left behind.

Uneven Ground 6 Don’t be left behind. Don’t be left behind. He left me behind. Clayton left me. He left. He left. It’s not breaking news that abandonment is my kryptonite. I’m an adoptee with a list of dead friends and relatives long enough to rival a CVS receipt. But losing your forty-year-old husband to cancer lays down a whole other strata of trauma bedrock. I’d gone into years of isolation, hiding and healing in Hawai’i, undetected in the fray of Covid’s quarantines. We’re just like everyone else, right? We’re just staying safe at home. This isn’t despair. This isn’t suicidal ideation. This is social distancing. That’s a good thing now. Bryan’s affectionate presence was a reminder that I was traveling in the company of twenty-four other seekers. Thoughtful people asking questions, digging deeper. I could no longer hide. I was seen, I was witnessed, and I was heard. Maybe that’s why I left Bryan by the stream and took off. Maybe that’s why my pace was faster than I realized. Maybe I wanted to be left alone. Maybe I wasn’t hiking. Maybe I was running. **************** I came upon a farmer leading a llama. He spoke but my Spanish wasn’t strong enough to understand. He seemed upset I was walking alone. Maybe I was on his land? I was still on the stone path. I hadn’t ventured off. Maybe he was worried about Covid? Neither of us were wearing masks. But there was distance between us. I gestured back to my group to indicate there were others, but no-one else was in sight. How did I get so far ahead of them? Were they stopped for another ceremony? I shrugged my shoulders, shook my head, unable to explain. His face reddened with frustration until we both finally gave up and parted ways. A few moments later, Bryan caught up but this time, we were quiet. My mind kept playing out the strange interaction with the farmer. Had I done something wrong? It’d been several years since tourists walked these stones. Had I scared him? Angered him? Was it just weird to see me? On the Amazon River, the kids ran out of their village to stare at the boat full of travelers who docked at their local floating gas station. The Covid lockdowns meant the littlest ones had never seen tourists at all. They stared at us, wide-eyed and silent, befuddled. One little boy touched my knee to see if I was real. I

SJ Hodges 7 touched his back and he laughed. The teenage girls all stood in a corner, twirling their hair and gazing longingly at our shirtless “Thor,” a handsome, green-eyed, long-haired hippie from Maui who also happened to be built like a brick shithouse. Mayra and I laughed as the thin girls shifted from foot to foot and whispered about him. After two years of quarantines, I’m sure Thor seemed like Marvel manna from heaven. Everywhere we went, we were conspicuous, and I didn’t like that feeling so much (and maybe that farmer didn’t like me so much) but I kept my worries to myself while Bryan and I walked past a herd of grazing alpaca. Now and then, Bryan took pictures of me. In some, I was uncomfortable, attempting to smile; in others, I was completely unaware. Just taking my steps. One foot in front of the other. We were the first to reach that technicolor dream-coat of a mountain, Palccoyo. Even with an overcast sky muting her saturation, she was still a showstopper. A ribboned slope of mineralization in warm hues, iron-oxide rusty red abutting indigo blending into turquoise sidled up to gold. Being in her presence was a humbling moment of awe. One of the rare gifts of global warming is that she’d been hiding under layers of ice and snow until the last five years. A bittersweet discovery. Bryan unloaded his drone, and the robot took to the overcast skies with an angry buzz. It was an agitation, a modern disturbance in an ancient world. I was shaken from my reverence and looked behind to realize no one was even on our tails. Still? We were way, way ahead of the others so I allowed myself a rest and some water. Eventually, the group gathered, in dribs and drabs, revealing their struggles as they slumped to sit on the ground, pulling for breath. People were having problems. The altitude was kicking ass and taking names and we weren’t even close to done. Before us was an even steeper push to reach the top of the Rock Forest, where our final ceremony would take place. This time, there was a real incline that zig-zagged up the mountain to the giant shards of rock protruding like jagged glass. Our Peruvian guides began to whistle and skip, explaining it was important to approach the Rock Forest with a sense of gratitude, play and joyfulness. I knew better than to further exert myself. Every breath took effort. Every step took time. I held my pace and my tongue. Talking wasn’t an option, though when one of our guides passed me playing his flute, I had to laugh. Me in my North Face gear, so ill equipped. It was sloooooowwww going up that mountain but we all finally made it, some of us in better shape than others. Some of us unable to stand or speak. I drank deeply from my camelback, grateful for the water. It was cold at the top, with spectacular views of Ausangate, Mariposa and even Vinicunca. Our guides gathered our flowers and offered them to the rocks. We stood in a circle and spoke about our insecurities, our fears, our past. I chose not to speak. More people dropped to sit, struggling for air. We were there a long time.

Uneven Ground 8 Then finally, it was time to descend. Quez walked ahead of me on the icy ridge. He and I’d bonded immediately when everyone else braved the pouring rain to shop and we opted instead to stay inside, curled up in dry, comfy chairs, reading. We ordered smoothies that more resembled swamp water and drank them through fits of hysterical laughter. Our first act of communion. The next was ayahuasca and by the end of our stay in the jungles, Quez and I were road-dawgz. Fam. Snoop & Martha take on the world. At 6’3, he towered over me, arms and legs akimbo, his career on the court still in his bones but it had been a minute since his retirement and only two weeks since he’d been asked to join the retreat. He hadn’t trained for this, and he was hurting. I watched as his booted feet slid on the ice. He was dizzy, unbalanced and the path was narrow, dangerous. I placed my palm gently on his lower back, unable to carry him. “Just go slow. One step at a time. Bend to the earth. Hold it. Don’t stand up straight. If you’re dizzy, stop.” He knelt and grounded, held to the rocks beside him. In that moment, I knew if he fell, I wouldn’t be able to help him. I would not be able to save him. I would have to watch him die. And stand there, powerless. Again. **************** Clayton’s diagnosis was terminal. Glioblastoma in his left frontal and left temporal lobes. Stage Four with a 95% chance of death within five years, a 75% chance he would be dead within the year. Eleven months was the average. Still, we fought. Three surgeries, chemo, radiation, a magic hat, leukapheresis, another surgery, we didn’t make it to the clinical trials. Halfway through this gauntlet, we’d gone to see Michael Eselun, the chaplain at the Simms Mann Center at UCLA, speak about the journey of cancer, about faith and rebuilding life around a “new normal.” I sat through his lecture in quiet despair and when the Q&A began, I raised my hand and confronted him about The Book of Job. I’ve always found The Book of Job to be problematic, pretty much pushing me into atheism from the age of fourteen until my mid-twenties but since I don’t know how long it’s been since you fidgeted through Sunday school, a refresher course may be in order. I’ll start at the beginning. Job and his perfect family are healthy, wealthy, and loved. Trouble begins when Satan asks God’s permission to destroy Job. God grants Satan’s request and thus begins a sorrowful exploration of faith in the face of great misery.

SJ Hodges 9 Satan, with God fully aware, proceeds to murder Job’s children, rob him of his wealth and wife, strike him with boils then refuses to give him the peace of death. This portion of the story takes all of five little verses to recant. Five! To lose his wealth, his land, his herds, his children, his home, everything! Just remember this: Our deepest miseries, the most profound events of our lives, the moments we hold to the light like diamonds will, in the end, measure up to about five verses in a forty-two-chapter book. The other forty-two chapters and seventeen verses will go on to explore the mysteries of God, which might lead one to believe that God has well, a God complex…but I digress. Through it all, Job holds to his belief in a just and righteous God while attempting to rationalize or, at the least, understand why he must suffer. God watches silently from above. Finally, after much dialogue with false comforters, God appears in a whirlwind to Job. Job abhors himself and repents and is then restored to his former glory. The End. Okay, wait, did y’all get that last part though? Those five little infuriating words: “restored to his former glory” just zipping past you, like blood-thirsty lions disguised as loping gazelles? Let me break that down. After surviving tremendous grief, our God-granted “reward” is to be handed, once again, the potential for searing pain. Our “gift” is to love when we will be left, bear children who will be killed, plant when the floods will come. In my humble opinion, The Book of Job is a horror story. Standing in the theater at UCLA, I asked Michael outright, why in the world would I ever want to be restored, to rebuild, knowing everything could, no, that everything would just be obliterated again? I argued very clearly that on the other side of any joy that might come, any happiness that might be created, was death, just waiting in the wings. What was the fucking point? I realize now I was suicidal. I realize now Michael could hear that in my voice. He said, “There’s been moments when an exit seemed like the better choice…but my friend didn’t say ‘Look at all you’ve got to live for, look how many people love you’ she said, ‘How would you do it?’ She heard me and I was almost instantly healed by that connection.” And that, my friends, is the moment Michael became my chaplain. I wasn’t instantly healed but I was heard, and I knew I needed to keep talking. Actually, yelling. On the car ride back to our North Hollywood apartment, I was overwhelmed by my complete inability to stop the freight train bearing down upon my beautiful family. I screamed and wailed at the top of my lungs, “I cannot save you, Clayton! I can’t! I’ve failed you! I’ve failed your family, your friends. I’ve failed our daughter! I can’t save her childhood! I can’t save you! I can’t save you! I CAN’T SAVE YOU!!”

Uneven Ground 10 This is called Driving While Crazy, a condition I discovered during a three-month solo road trip across America, hiking the national parks. I do not recommend it. Especially in LA traffic. Clayton said nothing. He had no emotional reaction at all. His lack of emotion had been one of the first big warning signs that something was terribly wrong. The Clayton I married wore emotion like a linen suit. Layered and effortless. He’d been trained, as an actor, to fearlessly feel. It made him mercurial and sensitive and kind. This man in my car was wearing a Clayton suit. He resembled my husband, but he was not him. He stared at me blankly. It was an excruciating glimpse of what was to come. There was nothing I could do for my husband. But there was one thing I could do for Quez. I could yell for help. After years of persistent and perhaps compulsive self-sufficiency, Clayton’s disease beat me into submission. I’d learned to acknowledge my need, ask for and receive help with humility and gratitude instead of shame. I’d been lifted and carried by those who loved us, literally thousands of people donating their time, money, energy, and prayers to hold us in love. So, I was well-trained in recognizing when situations were beyond my control. I yelled for help. The guides came and they took Quez in their arms and led him to safety. There are always angels among us. If you're willing to scream at them from the audience. If you're willing to yell for them on a mountainside. They'll come. And they'll help. **************** As I descended, skirting along the Rock Forest, one of our guides gestured for me to pause and wait. I was still quite a bit ahead of everyone else, so I was unaware of the drama unfolding on the mountain above. My roomie was in trouble. Mentally confused, speaking nonsense and struggling to breathe, she was being carried down by four men as the guides rushed to get her oxygen. She wasn’t the only one struggling, others were sick, but all of this was happening out of my sight. I only knew I was really cold, and it was windy so I tucked in behind a protruding rock for shelter. And waited. Valerio eventually appeared and nodded for me to join him. He explained that where we were standing was a passageway for souls. On either side of us rose the shards of the Rock Forest but directly in front and behind, the rocks did not “grow” allowing the wind to pass from mountain to valley unobstructed. I

SJ Hodges 11 understood I was standing in a portal through which our ancestors travel to join the living and that I was to carry Clayton to the ancestral side. Valerio led me behind the rocks, held my hand as we carefully navigated the snow and ice-covered ledges until we came upon a sloping field of beautiful stones. He gestured and said, “Walk until you know where to let him go. Then kneel and offer him to the stones and the earth and pray and say your goodbye.” Valerio sprinkled my hands with Aqua de Florida and blew mapacho around my head. He sang and prayed with me until I felt ready to walk and then he stepped behind a large stone to give me privacy. I could hear his singing as I slowly navigated the field of stones. There was a large, flat, beautiful grey stone streaked with orange that felt…right. I positioned myself to see its view, a rolling expanse of the Andean landscape that was peaceful and stunning and perfect. Yes, that felt right. I knelt and pulled out my green plastic bottle, sprinkling the white, bony ash around the rock’s edge. The mossy earth held his ashes, they did not blow away. I reached down and took a fragment of bone between my fingers, remembering how Clayton always held my hand, driving in the car, walking on the sidewalk, watching movies on the couch, sitting poolside for Ceci’s swimming lesson. The instructor remarked one time, “I see all the parents come and watch their kids. None of them hold hands. You two, that’s love.” It was. It was love. Maybe we didn’t get enough time for it to be anything else. Maybe the speed of meeting, marrying, moving, having a baby, starting two businesses in less than nine years didn’t give us the time to grow apart. We were too busy growing together. Yes, we were human and there were arguments. There were fights where doors were slammed and locked for good measure. There was the day he asked me to fill the ice-cube trays before putting them in the freezer, when I was thirty weeks pregnant. A day that will live in infamy. But for the most part, we got along, we made it work, we liked each other. As Clayton said all the time, “We’re a good team.” We were still a good team. Talking to Clayton, feeling supported by him, that hadn’t changed. He was still fixing things from the other side, providing for us, even leading me to the right school for Cecilia. That’s not an exaggeration. After taking a tour of a school on O’ahu, the principal called me directly and said, “I think we’re almost related.” Turns out she’d grown up in the same Tulsa church with Clayton’s family. Her grandmother used to pass him candy after Sunday services. The structure of our marriage had obviously changed. I joked to friends that I was now in an “open marriage” because that’s how it felt - that Clayton and I were still bound together, still in union, but you know, without the monogamy. So, it came as no surprise that as I balanced the bone fragment on my fingertip,

Uneven Ground 12 I heard Clayton whisper inside my brain, “This one is for you.” I knew exactly what he meant. He was talking about my Big Plans. Before I left for Peru, I invited all his family to join us in Honolulu. On the anniversary of his death, we’d board a boat, scatter his ashes in the sea and have a luau. It was going to be A Whole Thing. Clayton’s quiet whisper was a tidal wave of truth. The Vegas theaters, those were for him. The boat and luau would be for his family but this moment, just us in a field of stone, this was for me. A loving warmth spread through my ribs and I knew it was time. I whispered my goodbye. There were no tears, no cathartic release. Just peace. I stood and walked back to Valerio. He sang and prayed over me again. He offered me snow from the mountain, and I ate it, ingesting the majesty and miracle of those lands, of that moment, now forever in my blood. I thanked Valerio, hugged him, so grateful for his wisdom and kindness. Heading back to our bus, I stole one last glance at Clayton’s new resting place. Looking over my shoulder toward the Rock Forest, I smiled. Flying through the passageway, the portal where I’d left my husband, an eagle soared. I watched for a moment as that huge bird slowly circled, gliding higher and higher until I could see him no more. Yes. Yes. This one was for me.

151 AUTHOR BIO SJ Hodges began her writing career as a New York playwright, completing her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. In 2008, she won the LA Weekly Annual Theatre Award for Playwriting for How Cissy Grew. The play that launched her career, Old Woman Flying, debuted at The O’Neill, won the Norfolk Southern Foundation New Play Contest, and went on to production at Mill Mountain Theatre, VA. During that time, SJ also worked as a ghostwriter and celebrity interviewer, writing for Interview magazine and A&E’s popular Biography series. Her first novel, Party Favors, a roman a clef co-authored with Nicole Sexton was published by Lyons Press. Her third book, a memoir co-authored with Animal Planet’s “Pit Boss” Shorty Rossi was purchased by Random House. It hit #36 on Amazon and went into its third printing six weeks after its release date. After moving to Los Angeles, SJ’s TV career began as a staff writer on NBC's "The Player" then quickly escalated, launching her as the Executive Producer/Creator of "Guidance" Season Two & Three for Awesomeness/VerizonGo90/Hulu. In 2013, she was named the sole female winner of the Humanitas New Voices in TV Award and in 2018, she was hired to create “Damaged Goods” a pilot for CBS TV Studios. After losing her husband to brain cancer in 2019, SJ walked away from her nearly twenty-year career in entertainment to focus on grief and healing. Her studies in meditation, yoga, trauma recovery, plant medicine and energy alignment have taken her around the world from New York to Peru to Thailand to Bali to New Mexico and back to her home on O'ahu, where she teaches yoga to Marines, hikes, swims, and digs holes in the sand with her daughter, Cecilia. Uneven Ground is the first in a series of episodic memoirs that unfold in (mostly) real-time and follow SJ and Cecilia as they travel the world exploring the magical, mystical, and often miserable journey from grief to resilience to courage to joy. Not necessarily in that order. Their behind the scenes photos, videos and additional stories can be found at www.uneven-ground.com or follow SJ on Instagram @sjhodges_writer.