Circles | Edges

What do we do with the stories, wounds, strengths, and unfinished work that arrive in our lives before we ever have a chance to choose them? In this deeply personal exploration of generational inheritance, Aaron reflects on the long arcs that move through families, carrying patterns of pain, resilience, memory, love, silence, and survival from one generation to the next. Through the story of his father, his own experience of fatherhood, and the final days they spent together, he considers what it means to become a conscious steward of what we have received. The conversation does not ask us to reject our origins or take responsibility for healing everything that came before us. Instead, it invites us to notice where repetition might become interruption, where silence might become truthful speech, and where witnessing itself may be enough. Somewhere between ancestor and descendant, each of us is adding another link to a chain, with the quiet possibility of deciding what deserves to continue and what might finally be allowed to end. Invitations to Consider: We inherit more than trauma. Aaron considers how generations pass forward wounds and unfinished work, but also humor, courage, recipes, skills, tenderness, resilience, and the ordinary practices that help families continue. From repetition to interruption. Becoming aware of an inherited pattern creates the possibility of asking what needs to change before it moves into another generation. The responsibility is stewardship, not perfection. Aaron challenges the idea that becoming aware of generational pain means we must single-handedly repair everything that happened before us. Witnessing can itself be healing. Sometimes breaking a pattern begins not with fixing or confronting it, but with becoming willing to see and name what has gone unwitnessed. A father and son story comes full circle. Aaron reflects on caring for his father at the end of his life and unexpectedly becoming able to offer him some of the tenderness and protection his father had longed for as a child. Light a Candle With Me A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show. You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/ About Aaron: Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care. Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/ https://lucusgroup.com/home https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges Email: [email protected] Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

As Aaron prepares to enter the final three episodes of the season, he invites us to revisit Episode 004, “Origin Stories,” returning to the stories we inherit before exploring the longer, intergenerational arcs that shape our lives. There are moments when a stranger’s story feels like a mirror, quietly revealing something we’ve carried for years without naming. In this episode, Aaron invites us into the layered terrain of family origin stories, where identity, belonging, and inherited narratives begin to take shape long before we have language for them. Through a deeply human encounter and a series of gentle questions, the conversation settles into the quiet realization that much of who we believe ourselves to be may not have been chosen at all. As the night unfolds, listeners are asked to sit with the stories they’ve lived, the roles they’ve carried, and the subtle edges where those inherited patterns begin to soften, shift, or ask for release. Invitations to Consider: A powerful real-life encounter that opens the doorway into reflecting on human resilience and chosen identity How family origin stories shape identity, often before we are aware of it The role of belonging, attachment, and emotional conditioning in early development The hidden influence of family roles, myths, and power structures on adult life The possibility of rewriting inherited narratives and choosing new ways of being Light a Candle With Me A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show. You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/ About Aaron: Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care. Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/ https://lucusgroup.com/home https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges Email: [email protected] Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

There are moments when the patterns of a life begin to feel less like repetition and more like an invitation. Join Aaron as he turns toward rituals and rites, asking what happens when the customs, ceremonies, and remembrances we inherit meet the person we are becoming. Through reflections on identity and belonging, uncertainty, and the quiet human need to mark change, he considers how ritual can hold both grief and possibility without requiring one to erase the other. The conversation moves gently into life transitions that do not always come with language, witnesses, or ceremonies of their own, and asks whether some thresholds must be created rather than discovered. Along the way, Aaron invites a kind of mindful reflection on the stories we continue to inhabit, the ones that may have grown too small, and the forms of remembrance that might help us meet change with greater presence. Invitations to Consider: How recurring intersections of time and place become rituals, rites, and remembrances that help human beings create meaning. The possibility that ritual responds to uncertainty not simply by creating certainty, but by helping us understand who we are. Aaron’s experience of creating a “release and transformation ceremony” when an important life transition had no existing ritual that felt adequate. The tension between inherited practices and chosen ones, including the question of when a meaningful tradition becomes an empty performance. The ways certain transitions, losses, beginnings, or parts of ourselves may go unwitnessed, and what it means to notice them more fully. Light a Candle With Me A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show. You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/ About Aaron: Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care. Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/ https://lucusgroup.com/home https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges Email: [email protected] Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

There are seasons when time seems generous, opening around us with enough room to notice where we are, and others when every hour feels like pressure. In this quiet exploration of our relationship with time, Aaron moves between memory, philosophy, family, and the rhythms of the body to consider how deeply our stories about time shape the way we inhabit a life. From the measured world of chronos to the rarer invitation of kairos moments, the conversation asks what happens when presence becomes more important than the clock. Along the way, experiences of time anxiety, childhood shame, parenthood, work, aging, and life seasons gently surface a larger question: how much of what we believe about being early, late, ready, behind, or successful was inherited rather than discovered for ourselves? This is an episode for settling into the present without pretending calendars and obligations disappear, and for noticing the moments that quietly ask whether we are willing to meet our lives as they are unfolding. Invitations to Consider: When time becomes companion or oppressor. Aaron contrasts two formative memories, holding his infant son and confronting an unfinished seventh-grade assignment, to explore how the same experience of time can deepen presence or become entangled with fear and shame. The stories beneath the clock. The episode considers not only seconds, minutes, and hours, but inherited agreements about workweeks, weekends, deadlines, age, achievement, retirement, and when life is supposedly meant to happen. Chronos and kairos. Ancient Greek understandings of measured time and the “ripe moment” offer another way of noticing opportunities that cannot always be scheduled or recovered. The places we hide behind time. “Not yet,” “I’m not ready,” and “it’s too late” become invitations to examine whether time is genuinely the obstacle or whether it sometimes protects us from fear, uncertainty, or possible disapproval. Living according to seasons. Aaron reflects on the contrast between productivity-centered calendars and the natural cycles of rest, growth, strength, harvest, dormancy, aging, and renewal that shape human life. Light a Candle With Me A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show. You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/ About Aaron: Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care. Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/ https://lucusgroup.com/home https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges Email: [email protected] Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

The places we long for, the places we revisit, and even the places we avoid all have something to say about who we are. Aaron gently explores what those landscapes ask of us in return. Through stories of family, travel, memory, and the restorative pull of nature, he reflects on how our relationship with place reveals our deepest longings, our need for belonging, and the subtle ways our environment shapes who we are becoming. Rather than asking whether a destination can change us, this conversation gently invites listeners to notice what they are asking of the places they love, avoid, imagine, or dream about. Moving through themes of self discovery, personal growth, healing, reflection, emotional wellbeing, mindfulness, and the search for inner peace, the episode offers a calm space to consider the difference between escaping ourselves and intentionally stepping toward the life that is quietly calling us forward. It is an invitation to settle into curiosity, to listen beneath the surface of longing, and to discover that the most meaningful journey may be the one that helps us return to ourselves with new eyes. Invitations to Consider: Why human beings repeatedly return to certain places and what those patterns reveal about identity. The difference between seeking a place for healing and expecting a place to rescue us. How belonging is experienced through geography, memory, and the body. A reflective practice for uncovering "the place beneath the place" by exploring the deeper needs hidden beneath longing. How to discern whether a place is calling us toward growth or pulling us back into an earlier version of ourselves. Light a Candle With Me A candle is part of my nighttime recording ritual, which makes Keap Candles a natural partner for Circles|Edges. If you’d like to bring the ritual into your own space, explore Keap through my affiliate link HERE When you purchase through this link, Circles|Edges receives a modest commission at no additional cost to you, helping support the production of the show. You are also invited to dive deeper with me and join our circle at https://www.circlesedges.org/ About Aaron: Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care. Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/ https://lucusgroup.com/home https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges Email: [email protected] Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/