The Voices That Open Each Chapter
Every chapter of Tracking Triggers begins with a quote. What started as a simple editorial choice became one of the more instructive journeys of writing this book, one that nearly included a eugenicist and, for a while, featured almost no women.
A Near Disaster
Early in the process, I had selected a quote from David Starr Jordan, the founding president of Stanford University. It seemed fitting at the time. Then Anne Healy, one of my Inner Trackers advance readers, flagged something I hadn't known: Jordan was a prominent eugenicist whose views on racial hierarchy were central to his legacy, not a footnote to it. The quote came out immediately. It was a reminder that words don't arrive in isolation. They carry the full weight of who said them and why.
The Parity Question
Anne wasn't finished. She also pointed out that the voices opening each chapter were overwhelmingly male. She was right. I hadn't noticed, which was itself instructive. But a book about emotional literacy, empathy, and tracking your inner life should reflect the full range of voices doing that work.
So I went looking. Not for token inclusions, but for women whose words genuinely belonged at the threshold of each chapter. What I found were voices that didn't just fill a gap. They elevated the book. Audre Lorde on the courage of self-knowledge. Leymah Gbowee on peace as hard work. Deb Dana on the nervous system as tracker. Rachel Naomi Remen on the power of listening. Brené Brown on clarity as kindness. Maria Popova on the stories we tell about our pain.
The final count: six male voices, six female voices. Not because I was counting, but because once I started looking, the right voices were there.
The Quotes and the Voices Behind Them
Introduction: The Track Within"I don't know where we're going, but I know exactly how to get there." Renias Mhlongo, in Boyd Varty's The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life
Renias Mhlongo is a Shangaan tracker from South Africa whose partnership with author Boyd Varty became the foundation for one of the most beautiful books on presence and purpose I've ever read. His words capture tracking's essential paradox: certainty about method despite uncertainty about destination. They also capture this book's.
Chapter 1: The First Track: What Is a Trigger?"To find the lion, you must also follow yourself." Boyd Varty
Boyd Varty is a South African author, life coach, and conservationist who grew up on the Londolozi Game Reserve. His meditation on tracking as a metaphor for living with presence deeply influenced the structure and spirit of Tracking Triggers. To find what triggers you, you must also follow yourself.
Chapter 2: The Three-Part Trigger: How Reactions Take Root"Your nervous system is a tracker; it's always asking, 'safe or not safe?'" Deb Dana
Deb Dana is a clinician and consultant specializing in the autonomic nervous system and its role in our experience of safety and threat. Her framing of the nervous system as continuously scanning for danger resonates with the tracking approach at the heart of this book.
Chapter 3: Recognition and Regulation: Returning to Center"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) was an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor whose experiences in Nazi concentration camps informed his development of logotherapy. This passage has become foundational in psychology, mindfulness, and emotional regulation work. It captures the space this entire book is trying to widen.
Chapter 4: The Stories We Tell: Tracking Thoughts and Feelings"The stories we tell ourselves about our pain shape our experience of it." DailyGood, inspired by Maria Popova
Maria Popova is the creator of The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings), a beloved online repository of wisdom that has for nearly two decades woven together literature, philosophy, poetry, and science in service of what it means to live a meaningful life.
Chapter 5: Feelings and Needs: Where Storied Feelings Point"Every message, regardless of form or content, is an expression of a need." Marshall Rosenberg
Marshall B. Rosenberg (1934–2015) developed Nonviolent Communication in the 1960s, drawing on his experience as a clinical psychologist and his study of factors that affect our capacity for compassion. His recognition that all expressions point toward universal human needs became the foundation for The Empathy Set and the approach to emotional tracking developed in this book.
Chapter 6: Feel and Act Anew: The Work of Integration"We do not heal by understanding the past. We heal by being present with what the past left in us." Michael Brown, The Presence Process
Michael Brown is the author of The Presence Process, a ten-week emotional integration practice that fundamentally shaped my understanding of how unintegrated emotional charges from the past shape present reactivity. His key insight, that we don't feel to understand but feel to integrate, informed the breathing practice and integration work at the heart of this chapter.
Chapter 7: The Tracker's Compass"I can afford to look at myself directly, risk the pain of experiencing who I am not, and learn to savor the sweetness of who I am." Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) was an American poet, essayist, and civil rights activist whose work centered on the courage of self-knowledge as a foundation for both inner integrity and meaningful action. Her insistence that looking at oneself honestly is something one can "afford," rather than fear, reframes self-knowledge as an act of strength.
Chapter 8: Choosing Your Path"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German writer, statesman, and polymath widely regarded as one of the greatest figures in Western literature. His observation names the two gaps that stand in the way of change: knowing must become application, and willing must become doing.
Chapter 9: Listening and Empathy"The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen." Rachel Naomi Remen
Rachel Naomi Remen is an American physician, author, and pioneer in relationship-centered medical care. One of the first women to graduate from Stanford Medical School in 1962, she brings both professional expertise and a lifetime of living with chronic illness to the practice of witnessing suffering. Her teaching: genuine listening, free from the urge to fix or advise, creates space for healing.
Chapter 10: Expression as Assertion"Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind." Brené Brown
Brené Brown is a researcher, author, and professor whose groundbreaking work on vulnerability, shame, courage, and empathy has reached millions. This insight comes from her leadership research, where she discovered that the most compassionate managers were also the most direct. Avoiding difficult conversations in the name of kindness actually breeds resentment and confusion.
Chapter 11: The Three Paths: Justice, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation"Peace is not a dream. It is hard work." Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (2011) who mobilized thousands of women across ethnic and religious lines to end Liberia's civil war. Her autobiography, Mighty Be Our Powers, chronicles how ordinary women confronted extraordinary violence through sustained, strategic action. Peace, she reminds us, is not the absence of conflict but the product of deliberate, often difficult work.
Conclusion: Becoming the Tracker of Your Own Life"I don't know where we're going, but I know exactly how to get there." Renias Mhlongo, in Boyd Varty's The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life
The book ends where it began. The same words, but you hear them differently now. That is the work of tracking.
Continue the Journey
Tracking Triggers is more than a book. It is a living exploration of how we move from reactivity to responsiveness.
The Inner Trackers are a small community walking this path together, receiving occasional reflections, new journal entries, and a first look at the work as it unfolds.
If this resonates with you, I'd be glad to have you join us.