Issue #2 — The Dip Is Actually a Portal

Do you believe that we shed who we are every seven years?

Yes, biologically, but also wholly, as a human being, inside and out — each seven-year cycle brings a new layer of who we are into the world. The first seven years: the body establishes itself. The second: the inner life awakens. The third: we begin to think independently. And so it goes, we shed and grow, all the way through adulthood.

I've lived this.

At 36, I found a kind of peace I hadn't known before. Years of inner work — Rilke, Steiner, long solitudes, hard questions — had composted into something clear and settled. My favorite word back then was distilled. I felt so distilled and clear. I knew who I was. I knew what I wanted. And the answer, when it came, was surprisingly simple: marriage and motherhood.

So I said yes to both.

What followed was the most beautiful and brutal seven years of my life.

By 43, I barely recognized myself. We had moved to Turkey. I was living in a country where I couldn't speak the language. The extreme highs and lows of building companies, of building a marriage, of building a child into a person — all of it had done something to me. I wrote about it at the time, honestly and without softening: "I don't flow. I don't paint anymore. Writing and heartfelt conversations are scarce and feel like blips in the matrix."

I was in the dip. The compost phase. The part nobody talks about because it doesn't make for good content.

Here's what I've learned about the dip: it's not failure. It's the soil turning over.

Every seven-year shedding requires a dip before something new can form. It's the pull back before the leap. The caterpillar doesn't know it's becoming a butterfly while it's dissolving inside the chrysalis. It just has to trust the process it can't see.

I didn't know, at 43, that the farm was coming.

I didn't know that Koray and I would pivot from Albania to Bukidnon. That what felt like the collapse of a dream was actually the dream finding its real address. That the years of wandering — Turkey, the language barrier, the four-hour sleeps, the crashes — were all composting into something I couldn't see yet.

I'm 45 now. I’m midway through a new seven-year cycle.

And this time, I know what I'm building. Farms and a dairy network of cow entrepreneurs. A weekly newsletter where I connect all the dots. A practice of showing up as my whole self instead of the edited version. A return to art and painting.

The dip wasn't a detour. It was the exact path. One might even say it was a portal to something beyond my imagination—a quantum jump.

If you're in the dip right now — the confused, pull-your-hair-out version of yourself — I want you to know something: the soil is turning over. Every single thing you're composting is necessary. It's becoming the ground for what comes next.

You'll know what that is when you're ready. Not before.

The pilot farm in Bukidnon is in motion. We're in the middle of finalizing infrastructure before the first cows arrive in early 2027. Atolita Dairy is getting ready to resume deliveries — local cow milk, carabao milk, and yogurt, freshly made and brought to our communities weekly.

Years ago I was in a dip I couldn't name. Today I'm building the life that dip was composting toward. That's the only update that matters this week.

What's the hardest cycle you've gone through — and what did the dip make possible that the peak never could?

Hit reply and share. I read every one. These are the messages that keep me going.

With you in the turning-over,

— Jo

Atolita Group · @montalut_ · @doodlesanddairy

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