Speaking at ICON and Bringing Two Worlds Together

Developmental Pathways and the Female body

Sixteen years ago, while trying to conceive my first daughter, I found myself in two very different worlds.

On one side, I was immersed in the work of Ken Wilber and developmental models, maps, frameworks, and ways of understanding how humans grow and evolve.

On the other hand, I was stepping into a much more intimate inquiry: what it actually means to be a woman. Not just a human, but a female body, shaped by rhythms, cycles, and hormonal tides.

The only problem was that these two worlds didn’t speak to each other.

The developmental spaces I was in had nothing to say about the lived reality of the female body. And the women’s spaces I entered, while rich in embodied wisdom, rarely connected that wisdom to broader developmental frameworks.

So I walked both paths. In parallel. For years.

Until something in me began to weave them together.

Through menopause, a rite of passage still largely unrecognised in our culture, this integration deepened. What emerged was a way of seeing development that includes the body, its’ rhythms, and the very real differences in how we are shaped.

This year, I’ve been invited to speak at the Integral Conference 2026 in Denver, where the theme is “Exploring the Role of Integral in a Post-Tragic Future.”

What I’ll be sharing there feels like a harvest of the last sixteen years:
An exploration of what becomes possible when developmental models meet the intelligence of bodies and what remains incomplete when they don’t.

I feel both excited and humbled by the opportunity.

I’ll be alongside thinkers and practitioners from many fields, people who, in different ways, are devoted to imagining and enacting what a post-tragic world might look like.

In a time when so many are responding from fear, urgency, and fragmentation, what becomes possible when we gather from a place of care?

If you are able to attend (in person or online), I’d love to connect.

And if you’re not, but there’s something you feel should be voiced into that space, if you have questions, tensions or insights, send them my way. I’d love to carry a thread of you into that room.

If you can, please spread the word. You can check out the other speakers here, and here to know more about ICON’s vision.

With love,
Adriana