Episode #139
Breathing Through the Cracks: Creating What’s Next Without Fighting What Is
What if creating a different life doesn’t require fighting the one you’re leaving behind? In this episode of Soul Stories with Jill, Mena Teijeiro shares the unlikely path that took her from life in Miami to creating The Florrest, a 153-acre leadership sanctuary in rural Georgia and the deeper philosophy that emerged along the way. A hurricane became an unexpected catalyst. Faced with the possibility of losing investment properties she had spent years building, Mena began questioning not only what she owned, but what she actually wanted to create next. She followed that knowing into something she could never have fully planned. What followed wasn’t a clean reinvention story. There were unconventional decisions, resistance, county meetings, attorneys, structures that didn’t know what to do with what she was creating, changes in family life, and plenty of moments when the path she could see seemed to disappear. Rather than making the obstacles the center of the story, Mena learned to look for the opening. She calls it Breathing Through the Cracks: allowing something new to emerge without draining our energy fighting what already exists. That philosophy ultimately shaped far more than a piece of land. Today, Mena is a Leadership Calibrator and founder of The Florrest. Her body of work, Return to Center, explores what happens when we notice where our energy is being drained by what isn’t ours to carry, fix or fight and reclaim that energy for what we actually want to create. Her work with leaders, teams and individuals is rooted in a simple idea: when we return to ourselves, we can discern more clearly what is ours, what isn’t, and where our energy can create the most good. This conversation explores what becomes possible when we stop measuring our lives by the paths already available to us, stop exhausting ourselves fighting what isn’t ours to change, and begin paying attention to where there is still life, possibility and room to create. Sometimes you don’t need to break through the wall. Sometimes you find the crack and breathe life through it. Name: Mena Teijeiro Job title: Leadership Calibrator Email: menafesting@theflorrest.com Social Media Handles: @menafesting @theflorrest
