A Memoir of Thresholds, Plant Medicine, and the Practice of Listening

Fourteen thresholds. One question underneath all of them: are you willing to listen?

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From the Author

This is my story. Not the polished version — the real one. The one with wrong turns and uncomfortable truths and moments I still don't fully understand.

It's the story of a woman who immigrated from the Philippines, joined the U.S. Navy with an intention to pay for her mother's cancer treatment, spent seventeen years in the aerospace industry, and somehow ended up sitting with strangers through the darkest nights of their lives in a candlelit room in Southern California. I did not plan any of it. I just kept saying yes to the next thing, and the next thing, until one day I looked up and realized my life had become something I never could have imagined.

This book is about that journey. It's about what it cost, what it taught me, and what I'm still learning. It moves through my life, across countries, across ceremonies, across grief I wasn't ready for and joy I didn't expect — traveling outward and inward at once. It's funny in places, because life is funny, and I've never been able to keep a straight face about my own story for very long. It's hard in other places, because some of what I've been through was genuinely hard, and I'm not interested in pretending otherwise.

Are you willing to listen?

14

Thresholds

The Structure

The book is organized around fourteen thresholds — moments where something ended and something new began, whether I was ready or not. Not milestones. Not achievements. Just the places where the ground shifted and I had to find a new way to walk. Each one asked me the same question, in a different language, from a different country, at a different point in my life: are you willing to listen?

About the Author

Lourdez Olanda immigrated from the Philippines, served in the U.S. Navy, and spent seventeen years in the aerospace industry before she ever expected to sit with strangers in a candlelit room in Southern California, listening them through the darkest nights of their lives. Still Listening in the Dark is her first book.