Integrating Notes January 2026

My monthly newsletter seeks to connect you to sources of wisdom and inspiration in order to help you live a more integrated – joyful, purposeful, capable, and connected – life.

Dear Boston Brain Integration Community,

In the final paragraphs of Middlemarch, George Eliot writes, “There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.” As January arrived, and with it a record breaking snowstorm in Boston and heart breaking images of unrest in the United States, I am struck by how true Eliot’s words are. As I discussed in my talk on January 15, our brains, minds, bodies, and selves are shaped by our environment, as children and throughout our lives. No one escapes this. We are all affected by forces that lie outside of us. The challenge of adulthood is learning how to respond to the vulnerability of this reality.

Until the end of the twentieth century, we believed we were born with one set of neurons and that was all we had until we died. Thankfully, we have since discovered neurogenesis, the ability to grow new neurons. We now know there is hope for growth and change throughout our lives. No sooner did we uncover this amazing possibility, however, but we also learned that high levels of stress can decrease the number of new cells the brain is able to grow. This is the impact of trauma on brain development. This is why I, as a Brain Integrator, pay so much attention to what is happening in the world around me. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to notice what is happening to the collective and to urge us all to take a deep breath.

As George Eliot urges us, we have the opportunity in this life “to throw the whole force of one’s soul towards the achievement of some possible better.” This is the agency we return to again and again each January, as we set New Year’s resolutions and vow to powerfully create the lives of our own choosing. The impact of our environment on neurogenesis reveals both the profound vulnerability of humanity, and the astonishing possibility that our brains, once removed from traumatic environments, can heal. Whatever kind of injury your brain is recovering from – physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual – a safe environment that stimulates your curiosity, appropriately challenges you, and provides support will give you the best chance to make a full recovery.

My heart is with all those who wake up each day afraid. Together, may we take a deep breath.

The Complexity of Change: How Brain Integration Can Help Us Meet Life’s Challenges

Presentation by Elizabeth McIntire

Workshop Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-DEuOWTwG0

Let’s just notice…

• How did the environment of your childhood shape the way you see yourself and the world?
• How does your present environment support you and challenge you? What about your present feels healthy? What is happening in your environment that might be impacting you more than you’d care to admit?
• What is it like to consider how deeply you are, and have always been, impacted by forces outside of your control?

A Litany for Survival

By Audre Lorde

For those of us who live a the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision and crucial alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children’s mouths so their dreams will not reflect the deaths of ours: For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

Fear is inside us and all around us for a million different reasons. To be human is to be conscious of our own mortality. Even while we busy ourselves pretending otherwise, that is a very scary proposition. The more integrated we are, the more choices we have. None of us get to choose the circumstances of our

beginnings. These simply are. Blossoming into adulthood, however, gives us the opportunity to “throw the whole force of one’s soul towards the achievement of some possible better,” as George Eliot says. We get to choose to work toward the scary, daunting, wonderful possibility of a better world within ourselves and without every single day. How miraculous is that?

In Solidarity,

Elizabeth McIntire