Vachon Imagined

I was doing land navigation on a biting cold day in Germany when my azimuth began to read incorrectly because my compass froze.

It locked in place—and for a moment, so did my mind.

The tool I relied on to get me home in the freezing cold had stopped working. And in that instant, so did the certainty I had built around it.

Our lives are very similar.

I spent years trying to be the best soldier, the best intelligence officer, the best person I could be—mother, wife, whatever role was in front of me. I set goals. I shot azimuths. I trusted direction.

But life doesn’t stay aligned to intention.

When disruption comes—miscarriage, job loss, betrayal—something starts to crack. The structure you built to orient yourself begins to fail. And slowly, you rely less on fixed goals and more on movement itself.

Change becomes the only reliable thing.

This comes in. This goes out.

And underneath it all, there is something quieter becoming clear: you are not the structure you built to navigate life. You are the movement through it.

You are the breath of life itself.

And you don’t need anything external to make that true.

Not direction. Not certainty. Not control.

Just the willingness to stay with what is changing, even when the compass no longer works.