We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Aubrey Morgan Yee a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Aubrey, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

My adult life has been a series of risks taken and seemingly illogical turns. Changes in a course that appeared on the outside as ʻsuccessfulʻ but was not in resonance with my soulprint. The most recent of these twists was leaving a very stable job doing what I loved during the pandemic to focus on homeschooling my kids – itself a big leap of faith – and starting my own consulting business as a futurist.

The year is 2021. I was working at the Hawaiʻi leadership forum in Honolulu, a wonderful organization with the express mission to positively change the future of Hawaiʻi through a leadership development fellowship and network called the Forum of Fellows. I had helped to start the Forum of Fellows network seven years prior. The work was thriving through the pandemic as our fellows leaned into the leadership in times of uncertainty. They were showing up just as we had taught through the adaptive leadership models and curriculum that my colleagues and I had developed over the years. We were shining.

The organization was funded in perpetuity, my work was secure and steady, I loved my team and I had a fun and catchy job title I had created myself – Network Weaver. All seemed perfect and steady for the future in the eyes of an onlooker. Except that something within was already taking a turn, a subtle but profound turn away from certainty and back towards the unknown. I had begun working with a coach for the first time ever and she was helping me to name this dis-ease within.

Somehow, it was becoming clear to me that my time was coming to a close, and I would have to take a leap of faith into something I could not yet see. I had learned what I needed to learn in this role, and I was feeling the constriction of a space that had gotten too tight for where I was meant to go.

My ego did not like this course of events. And even as I knew it had to happen, my ego kept finding ways to feel ashamed, afraid, and resistant to the change. Add to that my deep sense of responsibility and care. I cared, and care, deeply for all the fellows in our network and all the people I had worked with for those seven years. Leaving them was like being exiled from the tribe. Disowned by the family. It felt deep and deeply tied to my calcified identity.

But my highest self knew it was time. My family needed my focus, and something more was on the horizon.

The messy part is this: I started the process of change, and then I backpedaled. This happens a lot. We start down the courageous path of change and take the leap into the chasm. Then, halfway across the void, when it starts to get really scary, we try to go back, take it back, and return to the safety of the known. And thatʻs when we fall on our face.

This happened to me. I was in the process of transitioning out, handing over my responsibilities, empowering the network of fellows to self-lead their next chapter, and suddenly, I felt the grief of all I would be losing. And in that moment, I started to seek reasons, excuses, others to blame as if the choice to leave had been forced upon me. I fell into shame, feelings of exile, fear of not belonging, a swirl of grief, and sadness. Iʻm not proud of this moment. And I realize now how human that was of me.

Thankfully, I had the guidance of my coach and the guidance of the fellows who could see me and hold the whole, helping me to move through and to let go.

What I couldnʻt yet see but could somehow sense was that on the other side of that clumsy leap of faith lay my beloved futures. And true to universal guidance, as I came back down on the other side of the chasm, as my safe, secure role of ʻNetwork Weaverʻ wound down and ended, the divine winds of fate and support landed me in Costa Rica at a place that has become a second home and a core generator of my work now – Brave Earth, Tierra Valiente.

Brave Earth is a center for applied cultural transition. A place leaning into the more radical futures thinking that speaks to my soulʻs purpose. Post-capitalist, life-centric futures of interbeing and collective liberation guide our thinking and action. I had found a soul tribe that I never would have known existed if I had stayed in the safety of the known. And as fate would have it, I arrived on their doorstep just as one of their projects, Culture Hack Labs, was launching a fellowship, and they needed support. What do you know…

I now co-lead this fellowship with my new, equally amazing team. It is called the Rhizome Fellowship for Culture Hack Labs. It is a narrative-led systems change fellowship that supports organizations seeking to transform the narratives and source-code of the dominant, extractive, colonial cultures of modernity.

We are in our third year of the fellowship, and this year, we had 1,200 people sign up for our application open calls. I feel nourished and enlivened by this work. It is soul-purpose work that suits me at this stage of expansion and growth. I am deeply grateful to the Hawaii Leadership Forum for all that I learned during my time there.

I took a leap of faith and found my footing on the other side of the chasm. My life has expanded as a result of my willingness to risk it all, leaving behind safety for the wilds of unknown possibilities.

This is possible for you, too. You, too, can follow a soul hunch and take the leap. Notice where you feel unsatisfied, as if life has become too tight or restrictive, and ask yourself if your soul is yearning to stretch or thirsting for growth. How might you trust life enough to step off the edge and see what lies beyond? I believe that within this ability to leap, lies your waiting destiny.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

In 2009, I was on a train in Alaska when I read Dr. Jim Datorʻs short tome: To Be a Good Futurist. It was like I was reading the Cliff Notes of my own destiny. Every line spoke directly to my soul and lit my life force on fire. I had found the nexus between academia and activism. The place where I could apply my ability to hold vast amounts of information, to see patterns, and to sense emergence into the service of Life, and of my beloved emerald Earth.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a love affair with the Earth. Gaia is my first muse, my bae, my beloved, my why. I feel her heartbeat, give thanks to her radical abundance, and find solace in her timeless grace and patience. She guides everything I do.

My study of alternative futures started in 2009 at the tail end of a chapter in entrepreneurship. My casual study turned into a dissertation and a PhD. It became the way that I can guide and be in divine service to the moment we are in here as earthlings.

I have been studying collapse since 2009. I have been preparing for this moment of cultural and societal free fall. I am ready to hold the grief of the collective as we realize what we have done to each other and to Earth. I am ready to help us build back from the edge of extinction to the more beloved futures that await us on the other side of grief and surrender.

Collective liberation and peace on earth are not sayings to me. They are guiding stars. They are the compass by which I determine my days and the fuel for my life force.

Along the way, I have collected a variety of titles and experiences that are relevant to what our current culture deems as important qualifications.

I hold a PhD in Political Science – Alternative Futures and Indigenous Politics. Iʻm a Dr! I have a CPCC coaching certification from the CTI Coaching Institute. I am the beneficiary of a deeply resourced background in adaptive/emergent leadership and network building for social impact. Iʻve done deep and applied study of systems change for societal transformation and narrative-led culture change for more just, life-centric futures. I have studied breathwork with Owaken and lead transformative breath and embodiment practice. I have spent years studying human energetic healing with the Sacred Path school, based on the work of Barbara Brennan. I have built a permaculture farm and sacred Venus temple on Oahu with my beloved husband, Brady. And I hold space for others to lean into their transformation so that they may be of highest service in this time of collapse and rebirth.

We are unraveling to be rewoven whole and holy in our innocence. And I am here for it. All of it. My role is as guide, steward, mystic, and wayshower. I am here to hold you in your unlearning and to remind you of your immensity. I see you, and I love you.

This role of mine takes a variety of forms in what you might call my work. There is the form of consulting for organizations at the forefront of the regeneration of culture and ecology. Organizations like Project Biome, Farmers Footprint, Transition Resource Circle, and Culture Hack Labs. It shows up as coaching for individuals and groups who are making the leap of faith into a life that fits the immensity of their soulprint. My work manifests as poetry and inspired writing. My first book, Our Beloved Futures, will be published in October 2025. My work emerges as culture and community building at Brave Earth in Costa Rica and Hokuao temple on Oahu.

In all that I do, I am stewarding us through collapse and into new beginnings. Through violent and toxic systems and into peace and abundant communion with capital-L Life. This manifests at the interpersonal level all the way to the societal and planetary level. This prayer for peace and interbeing is at the heart of my lifeʻs work.

I am interested in building networks that challenge the toxic systems of extraction and domination, in people and organizations that understand the abundance of Earth and the power of animist Indigenous lifeways to heal and make whole that which we have decimated through the violence of modernity.

I am seeking others who want to build with me. We are many, we are gathering, we are building new worlds amongst the ashes of the old. This will not be celebrated in the media headlines of the dying systems. It is a revolution that will not be televised. Rather, this movement is emerging from the rich, dark soils of mycelial, rhizomatic grace. These new ways of being human, new-ancient practices of centering Life will emerge and emerge until all we can see is the blooming riot of color that is our innocent love for earth and each other. This is what I can see. This is what is coming. I hope you will join me.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My mission is to help steward cultures of care, radical generosity, abundance and collective liberation for all beings on earth.

The word radical means to the root. Surface fixes are often necessary to bridge from one phase to the next with as little harm as possible. But what we are after, what I am here for, is a radical reimagining of our role in the web of life. Getting to the root of the issues we face.

I hold open space for remembering that we are nature. That we are always interbeing with all other beings at all times. And that we are but one younger sibling in an interconnected meshwork of more than human life forms, all coexisting in an intricate dance of life. When we can situate ourselves in this way, possibilities for joy and peace open. This is what all my work points towards.

We are at a point in human evolution where the toxic systems of empire are ready to be composted and new ancient futures are emerging. More people see and sense this every day.

My goal is the full embodiment, empowerment, and activation of life force in as many people as possible in service to this great turning. Everyone has a place in the symphony. Everyone has a gift, an innate genius that is valuable and profound.

It can feel like a scary time to be alive, but I know that we came earthside for this moment. What is coming will not be easy, but it will be incredible. We are in the midst of a meta-historical transition from extractive cultures of domination and oppression to the remembering of what it is to be alive in a life-centric, animist, awake, and aware cosmos. That is awesome.

I am here to hold the grief of our awakening. To steward cultures of care and to help people remember the power of our natural ability to imagine and co-create new worlds.

We dream the world into existence every day. Whether we are aware of this or not, it happens. Every day. My goal is to reawaken the dreamer who knows only love, kindness, interbeing, and abundance.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

David Hawkins, the American scientist, consciousness researcher and creator of the Map of Consciousness, has said, “One individual who vibrates to the energy of pure love will counterbalance the negativity of 750,000 who do not.”

My goal is vibratory. Itʻs a frequency state of being, not a doing state. I think people who are more attuned to doing as a mode of achievement will have a hard time understanding this.

I didnʻt understand it for most of my life and so I struggled under the weight of not-enoughness. So many of us have this same struggle. I was never doing enough to achieve the love that I wasnʻt able to offer myself. Itʻs a hampster wheel that never stops spinning. Never enough – wealth, fame, degrees, likes, views, experiences. Never enough because the hole of lack is within, it can never be filled from with-out.

My journey as a creative is grounded in daily practices of gratitude, movement, breath and contemplation. When I explained to a colleague that my morning practice is usually 2 hours a day, she couldnʻt believe it. This is the way of the spiritual warrior. This is where I find my enoughness in simply being.

There are many days I fall off my game and fall back into the old patterns. This is practice. It doesnʻt happen overnight and the strength is built when you fall off your center and then find your way back to alignment. That is the work. That is the creative process. Itʻs a process, a journey, not a destination. You never ʻget there,’ so enjoy the ride. Every aching, precious moment of it. It will not last forever. That is the only thing that is actually guaranteed.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ourbelovedfutures.com
• Instagram: @aubrey.morgan.yee
• Facebook: Aubrey Morgan Yee
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aubrey-yee-phd-110153186

Image Credits

Federico Suivre
Tahiti Kulia