Open the present® to live your best life.
You may be standing at a threshold: a loss, an ending, a beginning. You may feel a quiet restlessness, or a pull toward more calm, more passion, more trust, and wonder how to reach it in the middle of a full life. You’ve tried resting. You live a full life of responsibility and commitment. You’re drawn to beauty and simplicity, even if you can’t explain why. Some of you are seeking a new or emerging experience of Spirit. Others aren’t sure what to call it, only that it’s persistent, and real.
Nothing is wrong with you. Something in you is ready.
I believe Grace happens, and possibility emerges when we pause, breathe, become curious. Courage and willingness are the alchemy. I need them to do this work, and so do you.
People struggle to find their next chapter until something rooted helps them pause first.
Unplugged, so you can plug back in
That pause is not the end of the story. It’s where clarity starts. Picture the shift: you arrive weary in a way you can’t quite name, whether you’re walking along the water at River Raven Sanctuary or sitting with a video and a quiet cup of tea at home. By the time the pause is complete, something in you has settled enough to hear your own thoughts and yearnings again, and a next step you couldn’t see from inside the weariness becomes clear, and joyful to take. This is what Open the Present® exists to help you find: not a program to complete, but a presence to walk alongside you, in person or from wherever you are.
My story
I’m Pegge Erkeneff, and I know this pause because I’ve needed it myself, more than once.
I grew up in a Southern California beach town, where tucked between five lanes of traffic and the saltwater horizon, I’d watch the sunset or walk the beach at sunrise, and soak in the wide-open horizon and sounds of waves reaching the shore. From 1990 to 1993, after returning to college at the University of California, Irvine, and working part-time in ministry, I simultaneously discerned a religious vocation, making retreats at a monastery in Crestone, Colorado, and two one-month retreats in the woods of Nova Scotia, where I truly learned to listen. I thought I might leave the beach for God.
Then the path turned toward marriage and my life-long desire to be a mother. I married in 1994 and began more than a decade in Colorado, where I became a foster-adoptive mother and occasionally returned to the monastery in Crestone for week-long retreats. For 15 years I worked in Catholic ministry with teens, young adults, and women, leading more than 100 weekend retreats, most of them in the mountains.
In 1997 I completed spiritual director certification, and later taught in the program. Since 2004 I’ve been the media review editor for Presence journal, published by Spiritual Directors International and from 2007-2017 was the founding editor of Listen: A Seeker’s Guide to Spiritual Direction.
Rooted and growing
Wherever I’ve lived or led, the pull has been the same: wide open sky, teeming water, wild places, and something natural rooted underfoot. Growing things. Things that stay. Saying “yes” to Spirit without asking permission of anyone.
Alaska, and the lodge
In 2006 our son Justin died. A yearning for rootedness, and a need for healing, led us to Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula in 2007, where my parents, who had retired north after my dad’s years as a CEO on the East Coast, were running a lodge on the Kenai River. I made my home in a log house in the woods of Kasilof, my “zen house in the woods,” and loved it. My marriage ended in divorce in early 2011. In late 2020 I sold that home and moved to town to one of my parents’ lodges, I purchased it from my parents in early 2021 while serving as director of communications, community, and government relations for a K-12 school district, a role I held for 11 years. What looked at first like taking over a family property became something else entirely: today I own and operate River Raven Sanctuary, a contemplative retreat lodge on the Kenai River, where I host retreats and VIP days, and through Open the Present® I write, accompany, and connect people with what’s next.
Where I am now
In 2026 I returned to studies to complete certification as a Women-Centered Professional Coach through Dr. Claire Zammit’s institute, and began to write my memoir about healing from my son Justin’s death by suicide. My identity architecture coaching welcomes everyone who seeks transformation, disruption of old patterns, and becoming fully alive. Identity architecture is a shift from achiever identity to creator identity: letting go of what no longer fits and stepping into who you are becoming.
How I walk with you
As a published author with more than 30 years as a trained spiritual director, 45+ years of contemplative meditation practice, 15 years in church ministry, and training in transformational coaching and facilitation, I accompany people and groups across thresholds with presence that is tender and fierce: deep compassionate listening, kindness, and the courage to act on what we hear. I help people find more peace, more calm, more passion, and more trust in God, and I delight in the wild places where all of that comes alive.
Ways to begin
Read or watch a Pause Here Postcard video on Substack. Join the December 8-17, 2026, Busy Person’s Retreat: Ten days to pause, breathe, and come alive, right where you are. Begin Threshold Coaching or Soul-Flow companioning. Or book a retreat day at River Raven Sanctuary.
Ready for the next step?
Book a call to explore coaching, or reply and tell me what’s stirring. Or start simply: watch one Pause Here Postcard to notice beauty and what exhales. Subscribe to the Open the Present with Pegge newsletter.
Let’s connect.
www.OpenThePresent.com · www.RiverRavenSanctuary.com · Open The Present with Pegge | Substack or find me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or TikTok.