I'm Natalie, and this is where my work began.

vim & zen started as a personal process.

I wasn't trying to build anything. I was trying to figure out how I could work so hard at the relationships most important to me, yet feel so much distance, frustration, and pain.

I always thought I was self-aware. I studied humans and their development from the time I was little. I eventually earned my bachelor's in it. I also had persistence; I'd learned how to push through and achieve things that were important to me. So how could something that mattered so much, something I put so much effort into, be the thing I couldn't figure out?

The pain eventually pushed me to some realizations. The first: I was very other-aware. Self-aware? Not so much.

I had to figure out what I thought, believed, felt, wanted, even didn't want, as a prerequisite to the close relationships I was seeking with others. I'd been doing it backwards. I thought connection with others was the goal, and I'd disconnected from myself in the process.

Have you ever plugged your phone in, walked away, and come back hours later expecting it to be fully charged...

...only to find the battery still dead? You look down and realize the cord was plugged into the phone, but never into the wall.

You can spend all day making sure the cable is right and the connection is tight. But without you tethered to the wall, no one is benefiting.

The cables aren't the problem.

The work is the connection to the source-yourself.