DARVO

DARVO is a manipulation tactic used by psychological abusers. It stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. Once you unpack the patterns of one abusive person, it seems like they all operate from the same playbook—you start to see it everywhere. This isn’t just a pattern that plays out interpersonally, it can also be seen systemically and on a global scale. Imperialism, capitalism, and oppression of all kinds persist through these very same patterns and require very similar work to heal. The effects on the victims of this kind of control dynamic are familiar, if not identical, regardless of the context (whether micro or macrocosmic). 

Thanks to being raised by people who never learned to meet their own needs—who obtained love by force, coercion, and manipulation—my idea of love was intimately intertwined with abuse. I repeatedly and almost exclusively chose people who were volatile, selfish and treated me more like an accessory or an extension of them, instead of an individual with my own wants and needs. They saw my ability to love as a weakness to be exploited. And they did just that. Leaving these relationships always left me feeling confused, heartbroken, and like a shell of my former self, which was, tbh, a shell of a shell of a shell already. 

Extricating myself from these situations was usually harrowing, to say the least. I was met with smear campaigns, denial, deflection, gaslighting, anger… I had to lose everything, or almost everything, to get away. Whether I was discarded or walked away, the refusal of the other person to take any responsibility left me grappling with my sense of reality; wondering if I’d asked for it.

As I started to heal and research these types of dynamics, I started seeing the same patterns happening in the world politically. “History belongs to the victors” is a great example of DARVO. We see the past through the lens of the people with the power. It takes a concerted effort to look beneath the chosen narrative to see the truth. The state of the world, much of the generational wealth of the world, wars and genocide, and fascism, are founded on the mass marginalizing (aka systemic abuse) of communities of color, oppressed religions and cultures, queer people, disabled people, elderly people, children, and women. Anyone who wasn’t able to access power (decided by the people hoarding the power) was considered less than human. Part of the goal of propaganda is to dehumanize the “enemy,” so they become easier to kill.

The way we have been taught about protests, uprisings, revolutions, colonization, slavery across the ages, across the globe, and even genocide is rarely from the standpoint of the victims, but of the perpetrators. Even the way that the younger generations buy into conspiracy theories denying the holocaust is an example of the effectiveness of the DARVO technique. Or the way people back Israel’s genocidal narrative about Palestine without looking more deeply into the situation.  The lens of the white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy is thick. To see past it, you have to want to, you have to unpack it from moment to moment. It’s pervasive. It distorts everything. 

I was taught all through my public school education in Virginia that colonization was a good thing! That we owed industrialization and the “modern, civilized” world to the brave explorers who discovered land that already had people living on it, tending to it, with cultures rich with tradition, beliefs, and languages. We were taught that being colonized was good for them. Christian missionaries to this day think they’re really doing something good for humanity when they travel the world inflicting their belief system on people who didn’t ask for it. Erasing the humanity of someone is one of the worst things you can do to them—reducing them to property, to a problem, to a wayward soul to be saved. It’s fucked!!

“That didn’t happen. Or if it did happen you deserved it” is the mantra of DARVO. It protects perpetrators of harm from ever having to take responsibility. This is why healing from abuse is so often a solitary endeavor. Looking for closure or confirmation usually just ends up in more denial. Smear campaigns serve to cloud the waters, so it becomes difficult for people outside of the situation to be able to tell who’s causing harm. It serves to further isolate the victim and enable the perpetrator to access more energetic supply from people rallying to their side. Some people are prone to always align themselves with power. Others tend to gravitate to the underdog, intuiting when someone is being hurt. 

Getting away is a blessing, no matter how messy the way out is. Even if it means losing everyone. Even if it means you look like the bad guy. Unpacking and healing internalized biases that perpetuate harm to historically marginalized communities is loving work. It will only serve to liberate you, too. People obsessed with power benefit from others unable to see how they obtain and maintain that power. This white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchal system rewards high conflict, selfish, low empathy people with status and money, enabling them to exploit and control to their ego’s content. 

A future where love is the law is available to us, only if we arm ourselves with knowledge—if we see the patterns and hone our discernment. Only if we learn to move differently than we’ve ever allowed ourselves to before. Let honesty, integrity, softness, empathy, and consideration lead the way. Things can be so much better—if we let it. 

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Remember Who You Are

I went to a healing workshop in Bushwick when I first moved to Brooklyn where the facilitator said “Healing isn’t about creating something new, it’s about uncovering what has always been there.” I’ve thought about it every day since. 

The prospect of healing can be so daunting when you’ve been through trauma and abuse. That’s why most people don’t do it. Wading through the shame and regret of moments when you didn’t know and couldn’t do better. Embarrassment about times when you weren’t your best. Grief at the time lost. Not to mention the PTSD, the fears and anxieties, the not knowing who you are. 

My safest caretaker when I was a child was overbearing, emotionally volatile, and deeply invested in a fantasy of who I would become. I learned to fawn, to submit, to be perfect, in order to receive her love and approval. Every ounce of autonomy or individuality I managed came hard-fought and with many consequences. The lack of safety didn’t always feel worth it—the emotional blackmail, the guilt. Every failure or fumble felt like a tragedy, like I could lose everything if I showed that I wasn’t perfect. I molded myself into who she wanted me to be, and I didn’t know how to be anything else. 

This pattern stuck as I moved into adult relationships. At work, in my friendships, and in my romantic relationships, I was accommodating and overgiving. I left my real self, including my needs, boundaries, and feelings at the door. I gave until I crumbled. I never had to really let anyone in. I protected my vulnerability by aggressively taking care of everyone. I grew resentful. I got my feelings hurt. Whenever I needed someone, I found myself handling it all alone. 

Every toxic relationship I’ve experienced (and there have unfortunately been many) was a carbon copy of the one I had with my grandmother. When they inevitably ended (thank god), I would be left not only heartbroken but as a shell of myself. I didn’t know how to function without an overbearing partner telling me who I was or chasing someone by making me who they wanted. I didn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have someone to take care of. The grief came with the realization that I had lost myself was soul-crushing. This is why, when I look back on my 36 years, I often feel like the happiest times in my life were times when I was single and with very few friends. They were the times I would do things alone, and spend my time on what I wanted to do. I would begin to uncover the me that has always been underneath the trauma. Because of the aching loneliness that would set in whenever I was alone too long, these glorious phases of self-discovery didn’t last. Luckily, the things I uncovered about myself tended to stick. Sometimes they were covered up again, but never as bad as they used to be. Nothing was beyond healing. I’ve come to learn that very little is. 

Over the last few years,  I ended another one of these cycles—one that has spanned my entire life. One of the most difficult I’ve ever experienced. One that snuck through the cracks of all my healing work. When I walked away, my confidence, my boundaries, my inner peace, my safety, my focused vision of what I wanted, all of it was gone. I was like a-not-caterpillar, a not-yet-a-butterfly pile of goo. I was in the purgatory stage, the void of this-thing-I-so-heavily-identified-with-was-gone-but-who-am-without-it. The sadness felt like it was going to swallow me whole. I had to deal with all the usual feelings of ending a toxic situation, plus I had to deal with the intense grief at realizing how much of myself I had lost. All that I had worked to uncover over the years felt lost to me. But then I remembered that all I had to do was remember who I was. 

I had already laid the groundwork, I knew how to heal. So I got to it. I talked it out with trusted loved ones. I made sense of it in my head. I felt my feelings all the way through. I wrote myself love notes. I took every compliment and word of affirmation given to me by someone outside myself to heart. I wrote them down. I read them again and again. I flowed away from anyone who didn’t seem to have a kind word. I learned to be drawn to reciprocal love. I restructured my life. I remembered the things I loved to do, the things that made me feel good. A newfound (though modest)  financial stability helped me acquire the resources I needed to tend to my physical health, to have the tools I need to make my art—which is a tremendous part of who I am—and something I went way too long without. I started learning to love life again. 

To be honest, after four years of starting this cycle of a lifelong wound, I’m still not all the way back. And that makes me really sad. But I know it’s a process, and after I reach equilibrium, I will no doubt face these wounds again, as I climb the healing spiral, knowing myself ever better, hopefully loving myself more and more.

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How to Heal from Betrayal

A betrayal wound is one of the most difficult to heal. It warps your reality and makes you doubt yourself. It’s embarrassing, which triggers shame. It makes it hard to trust, which makes intimacy in future connections terrifying. It’s what creates the vibe of always waiting for the other shoe to drop. That’s a heartbreaking way to live. 

Trusting someone and having that trust broken is just a motherfucker of a thing to get over—especially if you experienced betrayal in childhood. Trusting in the first place feels like a feat of strength in and of itself, because it is such a vulnerable thing to do. 

You should know that if you’ve ever trusted someone and they betrayed you, that does not make you foolish. That is no reason to beat yourself up. To be vulnerable is a strength, full stop. Discernment is another thing—it’s just a necessary tool that those of us who were raised by people who were not safe have to teach ourselves later on in life. Discernment is not a psychic power. It’s just knowing what you will and won’t tolerate, and paying attention to the red flags and patterns. Someone else’s decision to betray you 100% is On Them. 

Unrequited loyalty is a burden and a half. Being a loyal person and being attracted to people who aren’t capable of reciprocating is an isolating experience. If they’re malicious with it, or unable to take responsibility for it? That can be crazy-making. You can get to the point where you don’t even trust YOURSELF. 

So, how do you find your way back from betrayal? Well, to start, you put the responsibility of the betrayal on the person who did the betraying. If someone’s going to move through life like that, they are going to regardless of the actions, love, patience, worthiness, whatever, of the people they are going to leave behind in their path of destruction. It’s about them and their dysfunction. 

People who struggle with codependency often tend to take too much responsibility and people who tend to mistreat others tend to take too little. This creates an inner monologue of “What could I have done to prevent this?” Outside of having a stronger sense of discernment and paying closer attention to red flags, probably nothing. Hindsight is HD and all that. Take it as a lesson and move differently in the future. 

It is a strength to have grace for others, to be able to trust and to love wholeheartedly. Being able to give people the benefit of the doubt, to understand the whys of who they are is such a lovely way to show up in relationships. But sometimes the pendulum needs to swing a little the other way, and we need to learn to give those things to ourselves at least as much as we are willing to give them to others. And then take it one step further and make sure the people we let into our hearts are capable of reciprocating what we have to give. 

Betrayal causes a reality collapse, especially if there’s any amount of gaslighting involved. It can make you question your sanity. It is so important to get back in your body with your feet on the ground. Seeking out external help in getting clarity on the situation, whether through friends, a therapist, a spiritual practitioner, or a mentor. Anyone who is outside of the situation, who can see it clearly, is invaluable. 

Carrying yourself through the grief is crucial, as well. Betrayal comes with all the mourning of the end of a relationship, plus that gut-wrenching grief that comes from feeling like nothing about the relationship was real—that you aren’t even allowed to feel joy and reminisce in the happy times, because they were all based on lies. Let yourself feel that. It’s fucking sad!! Understand that relationships have lots of layers and if what you felt was real, that’s all that matters. Try to think of the ending as for you instead of to you. 

Sometimes it takes something big and terrible for the people involved to take the leap of walking away. Our suffering has to get to a point where we feel like we can’t take it anymore. Change is a lot! We have to be sure, especially before we really learn how to flow. What is meant for you will never pass you by, so if something is passing, try to let it go. If someone can’t love you and honor your loyalty, you’re probably better off without them. 

Part of the beauty of destined goodbyes is the inevitable glow-up that follows. Allow yourself to flourish, to feel the absence of something that was weighing your spirit down. Feel this without guilt or regret. Just be in your new life, free to find souls aligned with your generous spirit. Expand, fill your cup with your own love. One day you’ll look back at the betrayal and, even though you might not be able to imagine it now, you’ll say “thank god.” 

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How to Stop Overthinking

Overthinking comes from our evolutionary impulse to recognize patterns. Our ancestors benefited from tracking their environment—prey and predators, weather—it’s basically a natural predilection for vibe checks. This natural tool for survival turns into a kind of toxic constant vigilance when combined with childhood trauma. When everything is a threat, it becomes difficult to differentiate when to run, when to fight, when to freeze, or when to fawn. We become used to being in a state of hyperarousal. We scan everyone around us (especially any unstable caregivers) for danger, never knowing stability, always trying to anticipate how safe we are. Once we escape the instability, our brains have a hard time learning how to relax. That’s kind of what trauma is; the body and mind don't understand when the danger is no longer present. It runs itself ragged, not understanding it’s jumping at its own shadow. Often, we find ourselves repeating patterns that are very similar to what we went through in childhood. We haven’t yet created an environment where we can begin to learn how to relax. 

Overthinking can be torturous. I used to have moments before I started healing where I would break down crying because of how sick of myself I was. I couldn’t sleep because of my brain’s incessant thinking. I was exhausted. I felt like if I had to live in this hell for the rest of my life, I didn’t know how long I could stand it. So I decided to figure out how to get out of my head. 

I dove into self-help books and YouTube channels, therapy, spirituality, tarot, and meditation. I started taking loooonnnng walks outside. I started following my intuition. I started teaching myself to take action. 

It helped to find spaces to emotionally dump and unload the thinking spirals. I needed a safe space, a nonjudgmental space, and a place to go where I could do no damage by speaking what was going through my mind. My journal was the first place I felt comfortable. I have journals on journals full of pages on pages of spiraling thoughts, fears, anxieties, patterns, and my deepest, darkest self-hating beliefs. When I go back and read, everything is so clear, but at the time, when I was just putting pen to paper, I had no idea. 

Next, I went to therapy. This was revolutionary. Having someone there to witness my patterns and spirals, to point out the things I was missing, to mirror empathy back to me, and to give me the tools to move in a more positive direction changed my entire life. My healing started happening more quickly. The realizations were coming from every direction. I sobbed through every session, sometimes through the week following, but eventually, I started to feel lighter. I was starting to feel my brain slow down. I was starting to feel unburdened by my trauma. 

My spirituality was unfolding simultaneously with the journaling and therapy—and once therapy ended, it carried me through. The self-reflecting nature of tarot, my connection with my spiritual guides through meditation, and my connection with nature helped regulate me even further. 

I remember getting a tarot reading from a friend who told me that I needed to work on my solar plexus chakra because I didn’t know how to take action. That was way harsh, Tai. But 100% true. I was blocked from being able to take action on anything. The merry-go-round of overthinking was too overwhelming. I had what is called analysis paralysis. Even the thought of action would trigger my imposter syndrome, my self-doubt, all the horrible things that people had said to me in childhood, and all the different scenarios of how things could go wrong. I had interpreted the unstable patterns I saw in childhood and projected them onto my adult experiences, making even the most positive situations terrifying and overwhelming. 

With every uncovered wound, the most amazing thing started happening. I started being able to take action, to put myself out there, to let myself have things I wanted. My life started shifting in the most beautiful ways. There was still grief, pain, and failure, but the shame that usually came with those emotions was abating. It made my energy feel even lighter as I moved through my life. 

These days, after a little more than a decade at this work, I still find myself overthinking when I get triggered or overwhelmed. The difference now is that, because it isn’t my constant state of being, I recognize that it’s happening. I have an entire tool kit of self-care that helps me get myself regulated. I have built a support system of people I can reach out to. 

Stopping yourself from overthinking is a liberating gift to give yourself. It can help you learn how to feel safe, how to feel stable, how to know what you want, know yourself, and take action toward your goals. It helps you parse out how you ACTUALLY feel from how you’ve been conditioned to feel. It makes life feel neutral at worst and like a daydream at best. It frees you from feeling like your patterns are happening to you because you are choosing new patterns. It helps you remember who you are. It helps you see that you are in charge of your life. And that changes everything.

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Notice

I get a lot of guidance when I’m on my yoga mat. The combination of presence and relaxation and movement really puts me in an open state; a quiet mind leaves room for my higher self to come in. You could call your higher self anything— God, the Universe, clarity, whatever. It all applies. A couple weeks ago, in the middle of a stretch, I heard “notice.” 

It was a reminder to notice the stretch in my body, notice how it felt after I released it. To take a moment to feel the elongation, the blood flowing, the energy release. But also to notice myself, my vibe, my thoughts, my feelings, my mental state. 

I first learned this lesson in a yoga class at the LGBT center in Norfolk, Virginia 10 years ago. This wonderful light of a person taught free classes there on Monday evenings. He used to say “notice how it feels in your body” between every stretch. And it unlocked so much for me. 

When you experience trauma, especially at a young age, you become separated from your body. It’s why modalities that include somatic healing are so powerful. To put your consciousness back in your body is empowering, it’s grounding, it brings you to life. 

Remembering to Notice these past few weeks has shifted my awareness yet again. I’ve been noticing how good working out feels, and how necessary my hour of stretching in the morning is for my holistic health. I’ve been noticing how certain connections resonate (or don’t). I’ve been reminded to tune into the tuning fork of my body to connect to the frequency of everything. It’s made all the difference. 

All the things I love doing, but which take a concerted effort—discipline, concentration, motivation— to do every day, have stopped feeling like chores. They’ve started feeling like gratitude. And isn’t that amazing?! 

I’ve been walking through all my tasks and chores and jobs with a lightness that makes them feel easy. This is a feeling I have accessed before, but noticing—really stopping to notice— how they feel in my body makes me want to return to them again and again. It also makes resting blissful. I don’t need as much rest as I used to, because the rest I am getting is high quality. I also take care of myself in such a multitude of ways, that rest has become built into my work days. But that has taken time. It also has taken a shift in perspective.

Thinking “I get to” instead of “I HAVE to” has created the shift that has stepped my pussy up in a big way. Especially because I remember what it’s like to Not get to. 

Noticing is a gateway to presence. Think of being in nature—noticing the beauty around you gives way to awe, which always gives way to gratitude. And gratitude is the highest vibration. Gratitude is an overflowing cup, it just aligns you with more gratitude, which helps you accentuate the positive, which quiets the negative thought-spiraling mind. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Before you know it, life starts feeling more gentle, more supportive, and less antagonistic. 

Start small. Start with a moment. Noticing something beautiful. Noticing when you’re happy, when a bite of food is extra delicious. A deep breath. A good vibe. Then expand that out, until you embody presence, until every moment is a meditation. Until you just Are. 

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We Are Our Actions

The thing about the healing spiral is that from a certain vantage point, you start to be able to understand where everyone is coming from. You understand the patterns, the whys and the hows, the intentions, and the pure, loving soul beneath. This level of awareness is dangerous to attempt to force before you’re ready, though—before you’re ready, the difference between intention and action is too murky to navigate. It can keep you from upholding the boundaries of distance. It can keep you from healing. 

Because of the nature of toxic relationships— the denial, the deflection, the gaslighting— it can be tough to respond to people’s actions as opposed to their words. 

Before my healing, I took everyone at face value. That’s not even completely accurate. I took everyone at the core of them that I could sense underneath. The loving spirit, the glowing potential. They could look me in the eye and say “I am a terrible person” with the kind of conviction that would make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I would reassure them that they weren’t, even as they were stabbing me in the back. It took me years sometimes to see the truth of someone’s actions—to understand that just because I could intuit why someone was behaving in a way that was causing me harm, didn’t mean I had to put up with it. 

When I think of the people who have pulled away from me, those who were hurt by my lack of ability to receive love, my attraction and devotion, and my prioritization of less healthy people over them, I get it. I know my intentions. I know I was doing my best. I know the way my traumas influenced my choices, and that I was operating from a dysfunctional place. I was in incredible pain. I was barely surviving. I couldn’t always think my decisions all the way through. I was so dissociated and so sure that I was inconsequential that I didn’t even realize anyone noticed what I was doing, that anyone cared. I was asleep at the wheel. I know, after so much self-reflection and radical self-acceptance that my intentions didn’t matter, the ways I was struggling didn’t matter, my actions did. And that’s what I have to live with. 

Holding someone accountable for their actions is not the same thing as holding a grudge. It’s a logical, necessary, and self-loving thing. It’s none of your business, really, if someone has changed. If you choose to maintain your distance because of things done in the past, if you have no interest in checking if the person has changed and would do better by you, if you are sure they haven’t, it’s ok to stay away. It’s ok to protect your peace. 

Our actions are our responsibility. Once you start to heal, you become more conscious of your actions. You move more carefully through life, or maybe a better way to say it is that you move with more care. You think your actions through, you soothe the meltdown-having-triggered inner child, and you respond instead of reacting. Your best gets better and better. 

You can see your past actions with the HD vision of hindsight, of knowing better. You can hold space for the wounded you, without excusing or deflecting responsibility for your actions. And this leads to more compassion for those that have wronged you. This helps you release resentment. This helps you let go. This helps you understand why someone you hurt might be lost to you, and, while you wish you could show them your growth, you know you’re not entitled to that. 

Get your words, intentions, and actions in alignment. Speak carefully, move lovingly, and consider the marks you’re leaving. Are they kisses or scars? Become a person of integrity. Say what you mean, and walk your talk. After all, we are our actions. 

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Healing is a Miracle

There is this liminal space between the old leaving and the new coming in that seems to go on forever. I guess that’s kind of the nature of liminal spaces. It’s so painful, the void. It makes you question everything—was it all worth it? Am I always going to be alone? Am I unlovable in my authenticity? Is my truth too much of a burden? Is the purgatory of the dark night of the soul the healing spirit’s final destination? Is seeing things as they are too much to carry? There’s no going back, but do I have to keep going?

You do. You should. 

I love the adage “You never have time to do it right, but you always have time to do it over.” Rebuilding the correct way takes time. It takes patience. Honing discernment is a training ground fraught with barbs and backslides. You will make the wrong choice (although wrong is relative—if you learned from it, can it really be wrong?) waaaay after you thought you’ve figured it allll out. But one day, after learning to take this life day-by-day, forgetting to look up once in a while to see the bigger picture, you will stop to notice your progress, and you will see a gentle life you don’t recognize. You will think I know I built this with my own two hands, but it feels like it just happened. It feels like a miracle. 

And it will be. A miracle of your own resilience, your own tender heart, your own strength and courage. It will be a gift your past self left for you when they had next to nothing to give. It will be a gift your current self is refining for the future you to receive with awe, what did I do to deserve this? You healed. You chose you. You grew towards the light, you trimmed your dead leaves, you uprooted and moved on. You looked in the mirror, honest and raw, and saw the ways you could become softer, and did. Though everything you experienced told you harder and more numb was the only way to make it through, you felt it all and then some. You surrendered. You found gratitude at every wrong turn and torn-open wound. You endured every failure, betrayal, and ending with grace. Your wins only made you more humble. You embodied your purpose. You became of service. You radiated the frequency of love. You left fertile ground for others, even those who cursed your name and watched from the shadows rooting for your downfall, you did it for them, too. Knowing the world will only shift for good when we all heal. 

The blessings will start as a trickle, barely felt. Maybe they’ll be conditional—good with an expiration date, simply a glimpse of the good to come, but not yet, not yet. Then a drizzle, a brook, a stream, a rainstorm, a flood, a tidal wave. The good comes one day, in a way that leaves you overwhelmed. Is this good?!? Could it really be this good?!? It can, it is, you were there when you created it, step by grueling step. 

It’s not that there won’t be bad days, wounds triggered, heartbreaks and losses—but when they come they wash over you, like waves on the shore. You will feel your feelings, all the way through. You won’t have to search for the silver lining. You won’t have to burn it all to the ground, anymore because all that you have created will be yours. Will be true. Will be made from love. You will feel righteous in your boundaries and solid in your self-love. Your inner child won’t need tantrums, because you keep them safe.

If you’re in the thick of it, if you only see everything going but nothing coming in, if you wonder if you’ll ever feel safe or stable or like you’re living a life you love, take it from me, you will. I lived so long in that liminal space. Some days, I feel like they’re barely behind me. And I can assure you, from the depths of my soul, it will get better. It probably already has. When I started my healing journey, my only goal was I just want to feel better. And I do and I have, every day, a little better. If that’s all you have, cling to that. That’s beautiful. To feel better? That’s a miracle.

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A Daily Practice

It is so synchronistic that this week's blog/podcast episode is about the power of a daily practice, because I have never been more grateful for mine. 

Something happened this week that I’m not ready to go into specifics about yet, but I will say that it triggered me in about 100 different ways. It’s one of those sudden tragedies that would throw even the most well-adjusted person for a loop. Thankfully, I have been riding the waves of grief like a pro surfer and I am so unbelievably grateful to have taught myself how to do that. 

There was a time, at the very beginning of my healing journey, when getting triggered could knock me on my ass for weeks, if not months! It would derail any progress, bring forth those dreaded default settings, and unravel any good habits I had worked so hard to establish. I would have to isolate, hibernate, and melt into the goo of my emotional chrysalis. It was all I could do just to process. 

I talk in the podcast about a metaphor I often utilize to describe the feeling of traveling through life pre-healing and it’s one I stole from vampire lore. There are some vampire stories that speak about vampires being able to turn themselves into a mist, in order to move in and out of spaces undetected. That was me, in the before-times—a mist. 

Organization was not an option. Focus was accessible to me, but only in extreme amounts. It was either 12 hours on a task, resisting stopping to even eat or sleep, or nothing for months and months. My extreme executive dysfunction and struggles with linear time (lol) were a constant source of frustration within myself and for the people around me. 

Like so many intuitive decisions that the universe has inspired in my life, I didn’t initially realize I was beginning a daily practice. I just gravitated towards what made me feel better; lighting a candle, writing in my journal, pulling a tarot card, and prayers of gratitude. After a couple of years, I added stretching and eventually (after a lengthy struggle) work. But it was a long process of streamlining and organizing. As always, a balanced marriage of the spiritual and practical was what served me best. But that is much easier said than done. 

When I received the news this weekend, I braced myself to fall apart. But when I woke up Monday morning, all I needed was a good, hard 15-minute cry. I let it all out, then let my body move me through the steps of my daily practice. Waking the dog, breakfast, yoga and meditation, rehearsal, work. The steps are as autonomic, at this point, as breathing. All the self-care I need is built into my schedule. I don’t need to disperse into a mist or fall to pieces, I am tethered to the earth by my daily practice. It nurtures me, it protects me, it reminds me how I heal. I don’t have to build anything or tear it apart, all I have to do is step into the flow, and there it is. There I am, on my way to the other side of this moment, this wave of emotion, this way of being.

A daily practice is a foundation you can build on. It’s a holy offering to the altar of yourself. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. It channels your energy into an arrow of manifestation, aiming right for the bullseye of the life of your dreams. 

My daily practice is my sanctuary. I didn’t realize how committed I was to it until this week—a week I would have barely made it through—even a year ago. I am full of gratitude for past me, for putting each brick into place, removing and replacing the faulty ones, escalating on the healing spiral, revising and revisiting and facing my faults, mistakes, and struggles, and accommodating my needs and difficulties. For doing The Work, which now allows me to live; in my truth, attuned to the vibration of love, in healing, allowing me to know that I can carry myself through anything. Blessed be. 

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A Sense of Self

Developing a strong sense of self is a crucial step on the path to recovery. Getting familiar with who you are over the course of a lifetime is the whole point of coming here as a soul and manifesting in the physical. Unfortunately, the limiting and conformity-demanding system we have all been forced into and the ways that those programs play out in our families of origin make that process an uphill battle. 

Most people’s parents create them with a set of impossible-to-meet expectations about who they will be. Then, we all spent a significant portion of our lives attempting to live up to these expectations. It’s painful, it’s futile, and it’s not fucking fair. One of the more difficult parts of developing a sense of self is learning how to disappoint people. Difficult, but necessary. After all, you aren’t responsible for someone else’s unrealistic expectations. 

This pattern of creating a false—or at least compartmentalized—version of yourself that will help you acquire someone else’s (conditional) love verbally trickles down into adult relationships. 

Having a strong sense of self makes having boundaries easy—you know what your core values are so you don’t waffle on them, you know how to listen to your intuition which empowers your discernment, and you don’t second guess when someone has a bad vibe or can’t respect a boundary. Having a strong sense of self also helps you own your shit because you are well aware of your shortcomings, and can give yourself grace when you slip up. You can apologize and do better without having to navigate the emotional quicksand of shame. Knowing who you are becomes a cloak of protection. Manipulative people won’t waste their time on you, your authenticity attracts only people who can meet you where you are. 

I struggled with having a sense of self my entire life. I started out totally unaware that there was anything wrong with me and proceeded to get repeatedly and unkindly rejected by my peers and my family of origin alike. I got the message that I was at once too much and not enough very early on, and being someone who takes criticism well, I got to work. The first issue of business was to be less bossy, less angry, and to take up less space. I tempered my “smart ass mouth” and started wishing my powerful, strong, chubby little body away. I embraced hunger, acquiescence, invisibility. Not being seen became my safe haven, my comfort zone. I became less wild, less free, and less me. 

Everyone knew me as sweet. I hardly ever spoke. I lost my funny, my brave, my tough cookie, my take-no-shit, my truth. I let other people tell me who I was because I had forgotten.I had stuffed so much of me beneath the surface. I felt lonely everywhere I went, even surrounded by people. I knew people loved me, certain people who, because of their intuitive nature and our resonant frequencies, but I couldn’t take it all the way in. I hated the body I lived in, I hated the mind I felt trapped in, I was resentful and terrified and numb to the grief I desperately needed to start feeling. 

Eventually, the pain became so big, I cracked open. And what came out, was authentic. It was so scary because the people I had let close to me had become accustomed to a version of me that wasn’t real. It was part of me, but it wasn’t the totality of me. They felt lied to, they felt shocked at my unfolding. My growth became a betrayal. It became “go back to how you were or I won’t love you anymore.” It was my worst fear realized. The real me wasn’t lovable. 

But something then something surprising happened. In the absence of the expectations of others, I was left with myself. I found what I liked, I took myself on dates, I convened with my inner child. I reflected on my patterns, my dependencies, my strengths. I became my own priority, my own best friend. I fell in love with myself and my journey. This empowered me to make choices for my life from an internal place. I came out, I laid boundaries, I started understanding my power.

Moving through life with a strong sense of self has been the best tool I have in my spiritual tool belt. It’s where everything starts—confidence, discipline, recovery, relationships. It has become a protective and guiding force, ensuring that all my close relationships are grounded in authenticity and respect. There is no gossip or eggshell walking. It’s just all love all the time. And it starts and spirals out from me. And that’s unshakable.

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Me vs We

I write a lot about codependency. It’s been such a struggle in my life. Growing up with emotionally immature caregivers—many of whom struggled with addiction— trained me early. My sense of self has been something I’ve had to work very hard to uncover. It was buried deep.

I was reluctant to get close to people for a long time, but that led to such deep loneliness and longing that once I managed to get someone to stick around for more than a minute, I became desperate to keep them. I would shove myself into the tiniest places, bend over backward, leave my Self in the dust, just to experience a glimmer of what it felt like to be loved. Who could blame me?! I was starved!

But it didn’t work. Eventually, the real me would rear its autonomous big-haired head, and I would start to crave freedom. There was this confusing dichotomy going on inside me where I was obsessed with love, I was sure it would fix everything, but once I got it, I couldn’t wait to get away from it. I have come to recognize that as an anxious-avoidant attachment style.

I was raised in such a way that I was either being smothered, neglected, or abused, there was no in-between. This made it extremely difficult to actually get my needs met.

Me vs We is the balance between the self and the other. This should be a balance that comes relatively naturally when someone experiences healthy attachments as a child. This means their parents were attentive, but not overbearing. This creates confidence in the child that allows them to be interdependent. I’ve seen it in children I’ve nannied. They go and play and explore and attempt to make friends and try things, and then when they get overwhelmed, they come and check-in. Then, they get some love until they feel better and then go merrily on their way. But, for many reasons, most children (aka future adults) don’t experience this.

Maybe their caregiver was enmeshed with them and took their individuation personally, infantilizing them and leaning too much on them, creating a bond that would disempower their child from individuating from them. Maybe they were emotionally distant, neglectful, or downright abusive, cultivating a “running” impulse later on. Any dysfunction tends to lead to problems in relationships in adulthood. Someone who grew up as their parent’s Emotional Support Child will probably either end up extremely avoidant, feeling that love and connection are burdens, a people-pleaser with poor boundaries, or some confusing combination of the two.

Interdependence is when a person knows that, truly, no man is an island. No one gets where they’re going on their own. Family, community, and partnership, it’s all just as important as one’s relationship with oneself. All of these connections require boundaries, forgiveness, and vulnerability to be healthy, stable, and sustainable. They require a balance of me and we.

The balance of give and take can be a difficult one to maintain in a societal program that sustains itself on exploitation. We are literally conditioned to give until we have nothing. Work takes precedence over all things, even our own well-being; and we are taught that consumerism is our only solace in this terrible, stressful, disconnected world.

So, how do we first achieve, and then maintain balance between ourselves and others?

I don’t know, I’m still working it out lol

I think we get there by internalizing the fact that all people need love. It is not a sign of weakness to crave connection. It’s entirely natural. Humans, like all other primates, have always been communal beings. Our social lives are important to our survival. Next, understand and believe that everyone is inherently worthy of love. Everyone deserves to be seen and understood. Everyone deserves to have good quality friends and partners to rely on. Everyone deserves to be cared for and respected. No, nothing you went through makes you the exception. Everyone is worthy of love. Just by the sheer act of existing. After that, it’s about pouring into that cup of yours.

Assess relationships past, present, and visualize those of the future. What patterns do you tend to play out again and again? Where do you overgive? Where have you taken too much? Where were you afraid to love or be loved? We all tend to play different roles in different relationships. Each connection causes different wounds and facets of ourselves to flare up. Take stock. Be honest. Do it with compassionate clarity. You don’t need to judge yourself or feel shame through this process, you are simply teaching yourself something new.

Next, figure out your boundaries, and learn how to be honest about them (with yourself and others). Practice with the people you feel the safest with. Sometimes it will not go well and that will be hard. Sometimes people who aren’t used to you standing up for yourself will be able to get used to it, sometimes they won’t. Try to be discerning about who resists this self-loving endeavor. Try to figure out why they might. Exert more energy on the connections that receive your vulnerability and communication with love and gratitude. Go where your grass is watered.

After that, it’s about learning how to self-soothe when the people you love lay boundaries with you. If the ego gets triggered or some abandonment issues rear their head, learn to sit with the feelings of discomfort. Reassure yourself if you can. Ask for reassurance from your loved one if you need it. Reassure them back.

Mastering the Me vs We axis is an exercise in radical self-acceptance. It’s about surrendering to the process. It’s about the humility of starting out every day as a novice—of self, of others, of life. Embrace the mess, the heartache, the frustration, the fears, the mending, the heart-to-heart honest-to-goodness love that washes over you.

Real love will never ask you to sacrifice yourself for the sake of the relationship. Remember, like Dr. Maya Angelou said, “love liberates, it doesn’t bind.” Choose love you feel free in, love others in a way that makes them feel free, too.

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Looking Back to See What’s Coming

As I get older, I am stepping into this profound gratitude that I have so much life to look back on.

Once, when I was a kid, I was skipping through a shopping center backward at full speed. I rammed into a brick column and stumbled back, dazed, before bursting into tears. It took my breath away! That’s how my twenties felt. I was skipping backward through life, running into brick column after brick column. I can’t blame myself for not knowing what I was doing, it was my first time being an adult, after all!!! All I had to look back on was my childhood, and that was no walk in the park, pretty much everything I learned there needed to be unlearned by the time I reached my late 20s and my Saturn Return. But now? Now, at 35, almost 36 (Happy Libra Season!!) when I look back at the previous cycle I see an adult. A full-grown person! And I can remember everything I went through, I can remember making conscious choices to go to therapy, or end a relationship, or move somewhere new. Life was no longer just happening to me, I felt like an active participant.

When I look back on the past, I see my patterns so clearly. I see how they were reflections of the patterns that were passed down to me by my family of origin. I see how much we all were suffering. But I see the good patterns, as well. Being able to hold space for the duality of a situation is a sign of maturity, I have come to learn that too.

When I look at the present, I see every choice I made back then meeting the consequence of the Now. Some exciting, some less than desirable. Seeing the fruition makes me more discerning with my current choices. I know there will be culmination, I have seen the proof, myself. I am happy with most of my choices, but it wasn’t a flawless ride, by any means.

When I look into the future, I am not afraid. I feel like I have a good sense of what’s in store, because I choose every day with love, discipline, and focus. Even when I rest it’s focused. I know my wounds as intimately as I know my strengths, I hold both in very high regard. I understand what an exercise in humility healing is, and I trust my own resilience. I fully know how little I actually know, so I don’t require any ego-shattering experiences like I used to, but if one should come, I will understand that it’s for my highest good. I can look back at every redirection, failure, block, heartbreak, illness, and all the other life-altering experiences and see the way they ebb and flow; the same lesson in a different box. I am always down to learn it again.

Settling down into the groove of healing is just a commitment to surrender. Fear of change, your own expansion, or the growth of someone you love is normal, but it is meant to be faced and overcome. Look at how many yous you’ve been! Look at all you’ve let go before! Some things have gone, probably, yes, that is as it should be. But look at the things that stayed!! Are they not beautiful? Are they not bountiful? Are they not sacred? Are they not the most honest reflections of the true you?

What a blessing it is to have lived and learned and loved so much, and to be able to keep doing so. When I was young, I used to look at certain older people and marvel at their nonchalant wisdom, their vast database of experience, the total comfort of their souls in their bodies, and the richness of a life lived.

Looking back isn’t a weakness, though it’s important to keep nostalgia, that tricky little devil, in check. Looking back at your experiences is like picking up the breadcrumbs you left behind so you could find your way back to yourself. The Universe sets us up with repeated cycles on the spiral of life. You might revisit the same core wounds for the rest of your days. They aren’t meant to be “gotten over” and then left behind, never to be heard from again. That’s just avoidance masquerading as moving on. They are meant to show you where you need the most patience, the most kindness, the most compassion. They are there to help you uncover, recover, become what you have always been. An infinite reservoir of love. A living being. The Universe, knowing itself.

Stand with your feet firmly planted in the present. Make every decision, knowing that your future self is watching you with gratitude for how well you’re preparing life for them. Be confident in your ability to create a life you love. Look into the future with excitement more than trepidation. Things can change so quickly and in such magical ways. Look back into the past, not with shame or criticism, look back with gratitude for all that you’ve endured. See your challenges as a classroom, see both your wins and your losses, alike, as information. See each experience as a story you’ll one day tell some young person, who’s marveling at your well-lived life.

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The Pause

Inhale like a wave called home,

clinging to the shore,

but still,

going.

Muscle fibers woven in between rib bones

lift

like butterfly wings to make room for

air.

Bubble gum lungs fill up! up! up! and!!!

Pause.

Feel the fullness.

Expansion.

Living awareness.

Energy,

that great

pulsing

frequency of

life.

Exhale, like waves on a shore.

A crash or a tickle.

A release of tension.

A surrender of the belly

like a body roll

top first, then down

down, down until

empty.

And then?

Begin again.

There is a frailty to being human that we are conditioned to try to overcome. This futile effort puts humility and gratitude on the back burner while force and ego take center stage. When did we start expecting the impossible from ourselves? Who was it that taught you that you were always expected to ignore the softness of your body; that it was a virtue to ignore the sacred call of rest, of balance? Who was it that first punished you for “falling short?” 

I’m in a flare-up right now from a little bit of stress, PMS, and poor sleep three too many nights in a row. It’s thrown off everything!! My perfectly and well-thought-out calendar filled to the brim with work, my daily workout and meditation practice, my ability to focus, my patience with everything (including myself), it all crumbled.

Last week, though?? Last week was a flawless week. I checked every single thing off my to-do list, every single day. I worked out harder than I’ve been able to in years, my meditations were deep and fruitful and my work flowed like breathing. I was able to breathe into The Pause with blissful ease.

Last week I made the fatal mistake of believing this is it!!! This is my life now!! Gone are the days of being bedridden, gone are the days of distraction and that chronic case of the grumpies!!! I’m cured!!!!!! I have the energy and organization to accomplish everything!!! This is a sustainable and achievable goal!!!!!!!!!

This week, it’s the bizarro version of that. I am in the foulest mood. I can’t think straight. There were fireworks late last night and I overslept this morning. I fell while rehearsing and made my already sore, tight, and crampy body even more sore, tight, and crampy. I kept dropping things (my phone, a drink, various snacks, my soap and razor in the shower), I’m bloated and my heart isn’t in literally anything I requested I get done in the bright, delusional sunshine of last week. My brain keeps spiraling this is it, I’m sick now, and I’m never going to be able to work again. Everything will fail because I am Not Capable of functioning. I am never going to thrive. Life, the world, the universe, MY MISBEHAVING DOG are against me. Things are never gonna be good again. This is my life now. 

Here I go forgetting the illusion of permanence, that This Too Shall Pass. Here I go forgetting that every day is a clean slate, and the energy is new every day. Here I go forgetting about the importance of The Pause. 

The Pause is what I call the space between the inhale and the exhale of the breath. It’s also the nickname I give the rest, recovery, burnout, sickness/flare-up, and/or life circumstance that forces me to lay the fuck down once in a while. It’s that diffuse state of learning where you walk away from the active practice of learning in order for your brain to integrate the information. It’s crucial, it’s natural, it’s a gift. 

Going through an experience that requires you to prioritize rest–whether it’s chronic illness, injury, losing a job, depression, etc etc–assures that you get well acquainted with pausing. If you can unpack that capitalist nonsense that says we should always push ourselves to work harder, and that it’s admirable to be able to overcome our bodies’ needs, humility blooms. Grace towards yourself and others starts to occur to you. You no longer flip out when someone needs to cancel plans, you don’t force yourself to do things you aren’t up for. Your self-care game elevates. Your boundaries become iron-clad. All from learning to embrace The Pause. 

Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, it’s much easier to look upon the past and see the moments where a pause we were resisting actually ended up serving us. So let this be a reminder to you, in moments where you are struggling with the fallibility of being human.

The Pause is the fuel station of your energy, inspiration, productivity, and grand plans. The pause is the place where you recalibrate between one growth cycle and the next. It’s that astral corridor you stand in between one door closing and another one opening. It’s a temple, it’s presence, it’s where you hear the voice of the universe. It’s loving awareness. Without it, you’d just go and go and go, never stopping to take a shit or smell the roses. 

I know this. I just recorded an episode on this lmao. And still… this week… I struggled. So lemme go take my own advice and get back in bed, allow this day to pass with as little resistance as possible, reminding myself to stay thankful for The Pause.

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The Paradox of Tolerance

image from @mattxiv on Instagram

A double standard is a tricky thing to navigate. It’s like how young girls are tasked with maintaining their virtue while “boys will be boys.” It’s how the poor receiving government assistance are “shirking the system” while the banks receive bailout after bailout and nobody bats an eye. It’s injustice incarnate. It’s the kind of thing that makes my inner child want to stomp their lil foot and shout THAT’S NOT FAIR!!!!

Philosopher Karl Popper spoke about the Paradox of Intolerance, making the point that “unlimited tolerance will lead to the disappearance of tolerance.” And we see it happening around us every day.

On a political level, it’s “news” outlets providing coverage of leftist protests against fascism and actual terrorism by actual fascists as “two sides of the issue.” It’s giving bigoted election fraudsters a platform. Twice. It’s alpha male grifters making millions by doing misogyny on social media sites, which are mining our attention and obliterating our ability to critically think, but activists receiving death threats for talking about how a piece of media could have better representation. It’s debate bros in the comments section with no stake in the game, playing devil’s advocate against someone just expressing their right to exist. We are swirling around the paradox like a turd that just got flushed down the toilet.

The tolerant left, the neo-liberal/center of the political spectrum prides itself on its lack of integrity. “I don’t need to get angry, I’m better than that.” And therein lies the tolerance. We’re not talking about “tolerating” marginalized people by improving the way the world treats them, we’re talking “tolerating” intolerant people. Bigoted people. Difficult people.

Picture it, pussycat. A holiday is approaching and the whole family is planning on getting together. Your “tolerant” mom pulls you aside and asks you not to bring up politics because it might upset your conservative uncle and make things awkward. This is the uncle who shouts his shitty opinions from the rooftops; who misgenders you, or disrespects your partner, or believes the earth is fucking flat and Don*ld Tr*mp is here to save the children from alien sex offenders, or all of the above and then some. But you must be tolerant of his intolerance because “we are tolerant people.” If you do choose to let your feelings be known and things get heated, you get in trouble for '“being divisive.” Does anyone correct or reprimand him? Usually not.

The Paradox of Tolerance.

I’ve also seen this play out interpersonally. The double standard that occurs in almost all abusive relationships is a perfect example. The person who controls the relationship expects to be able to yell, leave, cheat, lie, manipulate, triangulate, gossip, use, steal, and all manner of other bad behavior while suffering few-to-no consequences. They expect the people who care about them to stick around, to have the patience of a God, to have impenetrable feelings, to never know better, to never love themselves more. After years of putting up with mistreatment, maybe one day, someone lays a boundary or calls them out in some way. Suddenly that person is the devil, It doesn’t matter what nice things the toxic person thought and/or said about their friend/partner/whatever moments before— they deserve it, now. They committed the cardinal sin, they stood up for themselves.

I always find it funny how the meanest people are also the most sensitive. They will tell you you need to learn how to take a joke as they widdle you down to nothing, but if you say something innocuous that could be taken offensively by them, it’s over for you! Here comes the smear campaign!

There is this sentiment that doesn’t sound right until you’ve done a fair bit of healing. “We teach people how to treat us.” Sometimes people get triggered and defensive at that statement, taking it to mean that the abuse they endured was their own fault; like they deserved it or something. But really, healthy people don’t fall for the abuser’s game. They might give them a chance and start to get to know them, but after they drop a few red flags, the healthy person will pull away. It’s not about deserving, it really isn’t. It’s about having boundaries. It’s about no longer putting up with mistreatment because you’re afraid to be alone. It’s about not continuously breaking your back to prove yourself and your love to someone who has a vested interest in always moving the finish live. It’s about not tolerating intolerance.

At the end of all my abusive relationships, after the love bombing had long stopped, I always started to wonder does this person even like me. Not because of insecurity or self-worth issues, but because they were constantly criticizing my every move. They would make fun of my ideas, they would critique my jobs, and belittle my spirituality. They would act like spending time with me was a huge burden. But then, when I would finally work up the courage to end things, here they would come acting like I’m taking the best thing that’s ever happened to them. They would fight and (sometimes) stalk and send their flying monkeys after me and I would always be shocked! SHOCKED!! Why are they trying to make it so difficult for me to walk away? They don’t even like me!!

Well, that’s because it was more about losing than it was about losing me.

They weren’t used to consequences.

In our sweep-everything-under-the-rug-codependent-ass-society, we are conditioned to always cater to the most difficult person in the room. That’s why the most difficult people in the world are in charge of everything. But remember, consequences are good actually. They may act like you’re literally torturing them to death (/drama) but a boundary is an act of vulnerability—an act of love. Give the difficult person you love the gift of no longer tolerating their intolerance. Maybe the discomfort of receiving that boundary will give them the pressure they need to change. At the very least, you’ll set yourself free.

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Living With Intention

Do something today

that your future self

will thank you for.

There is a before and an after to my life.

Before healing

and after.

The best way I can ever find to describe what it felt like before is being asleep. Existence felt like a dream; hazy, distant, just beyond my consciousness. I was hardly ever present.

In therapy speak, I was dissociated. I had spent so much of my time chilling outside my body (as a survival mechanism, of course) that it became my primary way of being. The moments where I was able to find presence stick out to me, looking back. Like the beam from a lighthouse, guiding me home.

I can understand why so many unconscious people find it so hard to take responsibility. When you are asleep, nothing feels like your choice. Your trauma guides all your decisions. We become addicted to running the same scenarios over and over again, trying to manifest the desired outcome (I am worthy of love, I am good enough, I am safe, I am whole) through similar situations to the one that caused the wound in the first place. It makes sense, but it usually doesn’t work that way. Instead, we eventually have to learn that we shouldn’t have been put in harm’s way, to begin with. Adapting to abuse isn’t a healthy roadmap for life. We learn to put down our walls and weapons, to grieve, to love and be loved, and to choose.

It’s a bruised and bloody battle. My metaphors are always things like jumping out of planes, crawling through barbed wire, standing on a cliff facing a towering shadow monster—the journey to awakening isn’t easy. But it is beautiful.

Living with intention is a commitment to being present. It’s a choice made in every single moment. Yes, there is faltering, there is slipping back into old patterns, there is failure, but there is also a new opportunity to commit, with every single Right Now. A fresh start.

Anything can be done with intention. Loving with intention means understanding your own blocks, wounds, and projections, and ensuring to communicate carefully and with love, instead of defensively or reactionarily. It’s being proactive and productive. It means never going on the attack or hitting below the belt. It’s giving your presence, your respect, and your understanding. It’s knowing when to give the Benny of the Doubt™ and using your discernment in choosing who to love. It’s knowing when the kindest choice is to walk away. Eating with intention means honoring your hunger, nourishing your body the way it needs, recognizing when you are nourished, choosing foods that help you instead of hurt you. Sometimes, for me, that’s french fries and dairy-free ice cream, sometimes it’s a smoothie and a salad. It’s almost always (about 99%) gluten-free lol. Shopping with intention means doing your due diligence, making sure you aren’t buying mindlessly or out of compulsion or emotional pain. Activism and art with intention means creating from a place of true generosity and integrity, instead of ego. It means checking that capitalist grind-mindset bullshit at the door. Living with intention is putting the ego in the backseat and leading with love.

There is a discomfort that comes with living with intention—it doesn’t really let you get but so petty. It often leads you to take the high road when what you’d really like to do is get down in the mud and start swinging. It means feeling those pangs of shame and regret (and I mean really feeling them) when looking back on moments where you didn’t know better yet. It means understanding the weight of the consequences of every decision.

It isn’t all hard work, though. There is a gentleness, a bright light, a profound wisdom and magnetism that emanate from someone who lives with intention. They are the kind of people who always seem to know what to say. They are the kind of people who have a positive impact on most people they meet. They become the kind of people that garner great respect, not out of fear or intimidation—they are not tyrants, bending everyone to their will with brute force or manipulation—they just walk their talk. And that’s contagious.

I encourage you, from wherever you are on your healing journey, no matter how many mistakes you’ve made or how far you’ve fallen, make the choice to be intentional with how you move through the world, how you consume, how you connect, how to speak to yourself, and notice what happens. Do you feel lighter? More loving? Do you feel like you have your wits about you? Can you feel it? Is the gratitude settling in?

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Accentuate the Positive

We’ve all been there—stuck in a quality time situation with someone who is so deeply negative that it starts eating away at your sanity like someone is cheese-grating your brain. We’ve also all probably been the source of the brain grater. Negativity is a fucking bummer.

But so is life. And I consider complaining to be a sacred practice. It’s good to get the bad vibes out. Holding them in or pretending they aren’t there is just stuffing them down to deal with later, because what you resists, persists. So, how do we walk the line between venting or honoring our frustration and dwelling in it?

Like so many things, I think it starts with grace.

Grace, to me, is the inner voice of the archetypal loving parent. The parent that doesn’t get angry, that sees every mistake as a teachable moment, a bearer of life, and a bringer of unconditional love, a being with infinite forgiveness. This is the type of love we all crave that most of us are denied. It takes a being of exceptional healing to love like that, and most people aren’t doing their healing homework. I think many of us would love to embody that type of love, but when it comes to pouring that love outward, we often fall short. That’s ok. The best place to start practicing loving unconditionally is to you from you.

Reparenting yourself with grace means gently guiding yourself back to the right path every single time you veer off in the wrong direction and doing so with patience, with loving redirection, with understanding. Everyone knows what it feels like to make a mistake, everyone once experienced what it felt like to not know better—why do we berate ourselves so hard when we struggle through the grueling learning process that is Life? Because we were never taught any other way.

An emotionally immature person will meet a mistake with criticism, the more immature they are, the more toxic the criticism will be. Most of our parents and their parents and their parents were emotionally immature. People who haven’t unpacked their own harsh upbringing tend to think that the only way to teach people is to berate them into being better. I don’t think it’s as effective as they would like to believe. We become accustomed to a pattern of negative attention being the only attention we get.

I have heard so many people complain about this in regard to their superiors at work. I only hear from my boss when I’ve done something wrong, I never hear a peep when I’m doing a good job. I hear a lot of people say similar things about their partners, parents, and even friends. There’s this phenomenon on social media where if you were to get 100 positive comments on a post and 1 negative comment, you’d pay more attention to the 1 negative than the far more prevalent positive ones. This comes from that cycle of negative attention.

There are a lot of negative experiences in the world, and most of us have experienced way more trauma, mistreatment, exploitation, and struggle than we have peace, joy, love, abundance, or even simple contentment. The world isn’t set up for us to enjoy our lives. It’s by design. So our default setting is to accentuate the negative over the positive.

This is why cognitive behavioral therapy is so helpful to so many people, it’s main focus is retraining our thoughts in a positive, gentler, and more loving direction. Reframing our experiences as positive (even if that just means calling it a “learning experience” can drastically improve our confidence, our ability to access gratitude, and can make life feel a little bit more bearable. Knowing you have what it takes to get through tough times is seriously half the battle.

A negativity spiral can make a bad moment turn into a bad day, a bad week, a bad life before you know it. It can fuck with your executive functioning. It can exacerbate anxiety and depression. It can cause you to withdraw or others to withdraw from you. We’ve all encountered people (and have probably been this person at one point or another) who have a negative retort for every piece of advice, who bat away every compliment like a cat swatting at a fly. It’s frustrating for the person who’s stuck in the negativity spiral, it’s frustrating for the people who love them and are just trying to help.

So, how do we begin to redirect ourselves toward a more positive mindset? Catch the negative spiral. Pay attention to your thoughts. When you experience something negative in the world, try to notice your reaction to it. After the moment passes, how often are you returning to it in your mind? Are you simmering with rage, shame, or sadness? Are you obsessing over what you could have done but didn’t? What stories are you telling yourself about what happened? What is it triggering in you? What feelings are coming up? What is the spiral and what is true? Is there a way you can give someone the benefit of the doubt? Is there a positive spin you could put on the situation? Or if not positive, a more neutral spin? Can you bring yourself back to center? Can you let it go?

There is a lot to be unhappy about in life. There is so much suffering in the world, so much injustice. Accentuating the positive isn’t about ignoring that fact. It is so important to honor your feelings, even the less desirable ones, after all, the only way out is through. We have to express our feelings to be able to transcend them. Creating positive or neutral stories from some of our struggles is just a practice in restoring balance. Since childhood, many of our minds have been floating in a sea of negativity where we internalized messages like I am unworthy of love or nothing good ever happens to me or I am a burden. Accentuating the positive doesn’t sound like Life is perfect and I am happy no matter what happens to me, it’s more like I made a mistake but I am still loveable or I am a work in progress or shit fucking happens but this too shall pass.

Practice giving yourself credit for all the things you survived. Celebrate your wins like you would a friend’s, and if you wouldn’t celebrate a friend’s, work on that.

This Little Light of Mine

I was at the playground with a baby I was nannying who was just learning to walk. We were practicing with one of those little push walkers when he got distracted by a little girl, about 7 or 8 years old, who was parkouring all over the jungle gym. She was flipping and jumping and spinning and having the time of her life. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her! Eventually, she noticed and laughed “That baby is watching me!!” I said, “he’s mesmerized by your cool tricks!!” She said “Yeah… I do have a LOT of cool tricks!” Then she started doing cartwheels and monkey bar climbing while the baby and I clapped and cheered. After a few minutes, she jumped down in front of us, got really serious, and said “Sometimes when I’m doing my cool tricks, someone will say “show off…” kinda quiet so I won’t hear, but I do hear them!! It really hurts my feelings!” I said “Oh my goodness that is not very kind! I think you are amazing and you should be proud of all the things you’re good at. Those people are probably just upset because they think they can’t do what you can.” And she said “Exactly. They THINK they can’t, but if they tried, they probably could!”

I think about her all the time. I think about my inner child—so bold and brazen and bossy and so sure of what I was good at. Where did they go? When did I lose them? Why is it such hard work to get them back and keep them?

Well, it’s probably because I have always found myself surrounded by insecure people. I was literally taught that a woman knowing how beautiful they are automatically makes them less beautiful. I was taught that “if you get too big for your britches, God finds a way to humble you.” I developed a kind of OCD superstition around feeling good about myself. If I felt like shit, things would go well. If I felt good about myself, though, something bad was bound to happen.

For so long, every time I ever stepped off stage after, repeatedly facing my debilitating stage fright to perform and perform well, somehow, by the grace of God, I always had someone waiting there, someone’s who’s approval I was desperate for, to point out how flat I was, or how shy I seemed, or how the microphone wasn’t loud enough, or how if I just lost 5 pounds I’d be perfect. I was never allowed even a moment of pride or gratitude or appreciation. And I never heard son much as an unqualified “good job.”

Capitalism holds no place in our interpersonal relationships—a scarcity mindset and chronic competition doesn’t leave much room for real emotional intimacy or trust. It’s often one of the biggest barriers to really being able to truly see one another.

I’ve been trying to make art my career off and on for my entire life and I have seen some shit, ya’ll. Whether it was cutthroat opera singers playing psychological mind games in the audition waiting rooms, burlesque performers who’d seen Showgirls 100 too many times, at the ready with a handful of beads for anyone they perceived as a threat, or trust fund kid artists in the city who literally get jealous of their peers’ poverty origin stories because they think it makes them less interesting bi proxy (which it does lol), the scarcity mindset is everywhere. And the people with the most power are always the most belligerent, the most stingy, the most ruthless. People will tout “community over competition” while backstabbing their best friend for a little power. Everyone has crossed paths with someone like this at one time or another… I’m sure someone specific popped into your head as you read that.

It’s so unnecessary. Everyone is special and no one is more special than anyone else. Our mission here is to shine our unique light as brightly as we can to be a beacon for those who will follow in our footsteps. We are supposed to be confident, guided by our intuition, authentic, and generous. We are supposed to uplift and encourage one another, hereby easing our individual burdens. We are supposed to support each other as we follow our respective paths.

It’s hard out here! There are so many unconscious people trying to tell you what’s right is wrong and what’s up is down. Many of us even know the particular trauma of having our own mothers compete with us! It’s wild! The white supremacist capitalist cishetero patrairchy is constantly making itself known through bosses, media, our peers, and authority figures in our lives. There are hoards of systemically zombified Judgey Judgersons just waiting to tear us back down to size the moment we start to shine our light. Who needs God to humble you when your “Best Friend” will do it any and every chance they get?! Unpacking is not enough, we need constant vigilance to stay in our right minds and grounded in our integrity.

In the grand scheme of things, we’re all just Hungry Hungry Hippos, fighting for a few little white balls. It isn’t our fault, it’s how we’ve been taught to survive in a system that refuses to give us what we need, even though It’s got it to give. We didn’t create scarcity, but we do need to do the work to transcend it.

Think of the people you love… Aren’t they each unique? Don’t they each carry a vibe that is specific to them? Isn’t the love you feel for them completely different than the love you feel for anyone else? Not better, but different? What feelings do they inspire in you? What do you think you inspire in others? When the people closest to you compliment you, what do they say? That’s a clue! A first step toward knowing what you bring to the table.

If we’re all here to be a genius at a few things, then to take that genius and share it in a way that helps others—if we all have an integral piece of the cosmic puzzle, but we’re so busy competing with each other to recognize our own, much less anybody else’s—how are we going to get anywhere?

The need to feel superior drives a lot of toxic behavior. It chips away at the self-esteem of those around us. It can stop people from following their own divinely guided path. It has stopped me from following mine. I always get back to it after some recovery, but boy have I faltered. When you’re putting yourself out there and the people closest to you have nothing good to say, how are you supposed to feel?

When you feel ready to show off your cool tricks, don’t let anybody call you a show off—and if they do, just let it roll off you like water off a duck’s back. Just as importantly, when you see someone else shining, don’t go over there trying to hide it under a bushel or snuff it out with your purposefully withheld congratulations or petty gossip. There is infinite abundance in the world, tap into it. Embrace your light! There has never been another like it before you came here and there will never be another one exactly like it again. Remember that, keep it in mind as you navigate a world brainwashed into mindless competition fueled by fabricated scarcity. You are special, not more special, definitely not less special, perfectly special, and miraculously you. Unleash that heart space glow, recognize your gifts and talents, let that appreciation for yourself pour out into everyone who comes near you, then recognize and appreciate theirs’ as well. Feel the warmth of the vibration of the frequency of love emanating from you and let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!

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The Teachings of Suffering

Little Green

Sometimes a broken heart 

pours more freely.

Tender as ever and 

strewn about in pieces, 

the pink astral substance 

flows out unencumbered by 

fear-made damns,

untainted by the poison 

of pain past.

I'd like to build a stone 

sarcophagus around 

the foolish organ. 

Wall it up.

Let it shrivel and die,

and be bitter, 

like everyone else 

seems to be.

But it won't let me, 

and I don't know why, 

except that sometimes, 

a broken heart 

pours more freely. 

Suffering has been one of my greatest teachers. I know that sounds like bullshit, but it’s true. The ways that I have suffered in this life have helped mold me just as much as the strokes of luck, the falling in love, or the occasional glimpse of success. Looking back, some of my most proud “loving myself” moments have been when I was deeply hurting.

I didn’t always have this perspective. After being hurt by religion one too many times, my late teens and early 20’s turned me into a surly skeptic. I was jaded and closed-off and sure that I was right that there was no way to improve my situation. I got offered good advice, which I shot down, I was recommended spiritual teachings, I laughed at them, and I mostly just partied my way through while emotionally white-knuckling life.

I was someone who needed to learn the hard way, until I struggled enough to learn how to let in good advice when I heard it. And I did. But all that pressure and grief and fear and struggle started to cause something beautiful to happen—I started to soften. I started to notice the patterns playing out in my life. Whenever I found myself going way too far down the wrong path, I started correcting myself sooner and sooner. The wisdom I had gained from suffering started to help guide my way. I was getting more sure-footed with every step.

Inside of each of us is a duality. We are, at any given moment, fluctuating between our default settings and our higher self—usually distress causes the default settings to come forward, but the higher self is the one that urges us to move more lovingly and thoughtfully. My default settings are a stark reflection of my abusive childhood. When I think back to the rawest version of me, I was angry. I got in fights all the time. I was a walking, talking trigger. I was sensitive, I was bossy, I was controlling, I was competitive, I was blunt to the point of rude. I was fearless in a way that was dangerous. I struggled socially. I almost quit school in the 7th grade because I was too depressed handle it most days. I was mercilessly bullied for at least a few years and honestly that was a relief compared to what I got at home. If I had allowed my suffering to harden me, what would I have become? It makes me scared for myself when I think too long about it. It makes me so grateful that I went the other way.

The thing about life is, it’s full of suffering. From the second we are ripped from the universe and then again from our mothers’ bodies, it starts. The missing, the longing, the sadness, the anger, the worry. So many of us find ourselves in such strong resistance to any experience that isn’t perfect (or any experience period) because we are trying to avoid suffering. Think of the person who got their heart broken in high school and now they’re 37 and have managed to avoid ever trying to love again (leaving a path of destruction in their wake). That’s irrational!! Part of loving is losing. Not everything is supposed to last forever!! Each relationship comes into our lives to teach us something and the pain is often a big part of the lesson. To miss out on a whole lifetime of love because you’re scared of a little heartbreak?! Sounds like a one way ticket to Regretville to me.

It really isn’t about avoiding the suffering. That’s impossible. It’s about changing your reaction to the suffering.

Getting your heart broken will always hurt, but the hurt doesn’t come with so much extra baggage if you just see it as a rite of passage in service of the goal of learning how to love and be loved. Being born into a family that traumatized you is awful, the trauma really does do everything it can to ruin your life, but it can also make you careful, it can push you to heal in ways that people who grew up in loving households might never understand. Being bullied can lead you to be someone who stands up for the underdog, it can make you staunch in your authenticity, because it came at great cost. Being marginalized can radicalize you into being someone who fights for the liberation of all people—someone who could change the course of history.

It’s not easy to allow yourself to acknowledge the teachings of suffering. The ego gets in the way. It knows that to embrace the full experience of being human is to keep it in the back seat, far away from the power it so voraciously seeks. Surrendering to the full spectrum of human emotion and all that can happen to us in one lifetime is a cheat code for life. It is the key to transcending attachment, opening up to intimate connections, and even reconciling with our own eventual death.

Allowing suffering to soften us is one of the ways to stop repeating cycles of generational trauma in their tracks. You can be sure you are learning and healing when you realize you could never imagine treating anyone the way your were treated. You’d be surprised how many people feel entitled to cause others to suffer because of the fact that they have suffered. But that’s because they let their suffering harden them.

Look back on your life so far and consider those moments of hardship, heartbreak, loss, and disappointment that ended up being blessings or lessons or warnings from the universe. Look at the ways that suffering has taught you, guided you, softened you. See if there isn’t any gratitude to be found in that, or at the very least, a shift in perspective.

We leave the blissful oneness of being the universe to come here, put on these awkward human suits, and love and fuck and fight and cry and cringe and die. It’s a MESS! It’s full and fun and absurd and a roller coaster ride and the most profound classroom. If you remain open-hearted and present, if you allow the transformations to wash over you like a river over a pebble, smoothing you out, you will reach the end of your life knowing you lived it well. That’s a fucking miracle. And besides all that, remember—a broken heart pours more freely.

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Asking for Help

Feeling like you can’t count on anyone is one of the loneliest feelings there is. Hyper-vigilance combined with staunch independence is the recipe for a closed heart. The emotional pain that comes from needing help and being rejected is one of the worst heartbreaks I’ve ever dealt with. The feeling of being a burden to someone (and having them confirm it) is just as bad.

Learning to ask for help has been a complicated and messy lesson for me to learn. I wasn’t born not knowing how to ask for help, after all, infants are literally helpless. When we’re babies we rely on everyone around us to provide us with care and protection, and we do so without shame. When the world (through our caregivers) starts projecting shame onto us (and programming it into us) depends on your specific situation. For me, it was early.

I have vivid memories of being a burden as young as I can remember. Whether it was being beat over the head with a hairbrush for crying about my tangles while getting ready for my first day of kindergarten, or being screamed at for trying to get myself something to drink and making a mess, I was constantly being made to feel stupid and useless. The feeling of feeling someone else’s contempt for me became very familiar. I learned quickly, for self-preservation’s sake, to take care of myself.

This followed me into my interpersonal relationships throughout my life. I wasn’t the kind of person that selfishness came easily to. I was a nurturer and a caretaker. I was a lover! So I protected myself by over-giving. I became the king of “I’m good, how are you?!” I refused to let anyone see me suffer, not even when the suffering felt unbearable.

This lead me to becoming extremely resentful and bone-weary lonely. Even if I had more friends than I could handle, I always had this overwhelming feeling that none of them really knew me. My family had taught me how to put on a happy face and pretend until I believed it. I was good at it. But because of this, I only attracted people who were attracted to my over-giving. The people I was closest to were always takers. I didn’t have boundaries and no one expected me to. I was constantly distracting myself by putting out other people’s fires, meanwhile my house was in cinders.

Those inevitable moments when I would need to feel vulnerable, when something would happen where a normal person with healthy relationships would have a supportive community, I had no one. I was left to pick up my own pieces again and again. For a long while, I saw this as proof that I wasn’t worth helping—that I was broken and destined to keep everyone at arm’s length. I developed a kind of nihilism about the inherent selfishness of people. I withdrew and got numb and started going about giving up.

But divinely, at times annoyingly, the Universe had other plans. Once someone showed me they were never going to come through for me (sometimes it took a couple handfuls of times lol), I couldn’t bring myself to show up for them anymore. My heart started selectively hardening. Without realizing it, I was developing a boundary around reciprocity. I had such a tenuous grasp on it, I couldn’t have even put it into words at that time, but I started moving away from people who expected my codependency while giving nothing in return. Not a thank you or a kiss my ass or nothin’. In fact, they were often more keen to point out the ways I had fallen short. Instead, I started gravitating towards relationships that felt more reciprocal. This was a years-long process that I often stumbled through. I accidentally pushed away many people that loved me, and got too caught up with people who really didn’t. I got burned and burned in return, but considering where I started? I can give myself grace for that (even if no one else will).

Asking for help, or even just letting people in, has become a daily practice. All of the relationships I have established in the last half-decade, and some who came with me from the before times, get to experience the real me. They know the real me. They don’t put me on a pedestal as someone who doesn’t suffer. They don’t see me as some kind of maternal martyr. They allow me to be myself, in good moments and in difficult ones. In that energy, I am able to give them the same. The energy is able to flow freely and reciprocally and no one is ever drained dry. We become a circuit, recharging each other and it is such a pleasant surprise.

When you’re stuck in the muck of codependent relationships, it can feel like love, friendship, family, community will always be a burden. This is where avoidant attachment styles come from. The prospect of being loved doesn’t feel worth the misery connection brings with it. But when you’re in relationships based on mutual love and respect, as well as reciprocal giving and receiving, everything becomes so effortless. Not to mention that all of our burdens feel lighter when our loved ones can help us bare the weight of them.

If you often find yourself over-giving to protect yourself from needing anyone or from truly being seen, consider why. Think about how you react when someone asks you for help. Do you feel like they are a huge burden who isn’t worth the effort, or do you feel honored to step up for them and show them how loved they are? Who in your life do you feel like gives as good as you do? Who has the loyalty, the compassion, the empathy? Who truly sees you? Try asking them for help. Even if it’s for something small.

When you first start putting in the effort to be vulnerable with your loved ones, there is often a period of resistance and rejection. Everyone who was attracted to you because they perceived you as weak or easy to take advantage of, will start to repel from you. They will poke all your deepest wounds and your biggest fears. They will belittle, reject, abandon, guilt, or try to control you. Stay strong. Those kinds of reactions are just clues to the fact that they aren’t your people. Try not to take this as evidence that you will never get to experience real love or belonging. You will. The purge of the negative from your life is part of the process. Train yourself to appreciate the people who come through for you more than you resent the people who don’t. Soon enough, you’ll notice the shift.

Finally, asking for help is a radical act of anti-capitalist empowerment. The “I Am a Rock, I Am an Island” mode of operating is nothing but white supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchal propaganda. Anyone who claims to be thriving under these conditions is not a reliable narrator. At the very least they aren’t looking at themselves or their lives holistically. Humans are communal mammals—we are meant to work collaboratively. No man is an island, he’s just extremely avoidant.

So remember, when you ask for help, you are challenging the status quo and helping make the world a little bit softer for those who come after you, regardless of what the reaction to your vulnerability is. Be brave, be open, honor your boundaries, and when you need to, ask for help.

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Building Community

Image by Tim Mossholder

For people who’s family of origin was unhealthy, there is an ever-present deep, guttural longing for community.

I have tried to fill that void so many times, in so many ways—some beautiful, some heartbreaking. Regardless of whether or not things lasted forever, my relationships have taught me the most important lessons of my life. They have helped me grow (even the toxic ones), they have helped me find my true self (which was in hiding for so long), and they have helped me learn how to use my voice.

There is nothing more touching or more healing than feeling seen. It can also be deeply triggering when you haven’t felt it before. It never ceases to amaze me how good things, blessings, can tend to scare us more than our struggles. When you aren’t accustomed to being loved, being loved can be terrifying.

There is no question that relationships take work. A good portion of that work is internal and individual, even though that feels counter-intuitive. To be a conscious member of a healthy community, we need to be able to tell what is a “me” problem, what is a “we” problem, and what is a “you” problem. We need to be able to self-regulate our emotional reactions, and to be able to be vulnerable enough to ask for reassurance when we need it. We need to be able to navigate healthy conflict without resorting to toxic defense mechanisms. We need to be able to take responsibility for ourselves with humility and grace. Discernment is the most crucial skill of all, because trying to build a community on a bad foundation will only lead to endings. That being said—the endings and beginnings and almost-there’s are necessary along the healing path to co-creating a gentle, loving, spiritually-aligned life. There are no mistakes, only lessons.

In this time of the unraveling of late-stage capitalism, with fascism breathing down our necks on the daily, we are conditioned to believe we don’t need anything from anyone. For a long time, after feeling emotionally rode hard and put away wet, I listened to the Simon and Garfunkel song “I Am A Rock, I Am an Island” to get me pumped every single morning. I had spent half a decade learning how to open up, challenging myself to trust people, teaching myself how to ask for help, and what did it get me?! Rejected. Over and over. Worst. Fucking. Nightmare. So I withdrew into the familiar territory of hyper-vigilance. Without realizing it, I became the King of “I’m good, how are YOU?!” even on my worst days. Navigating (and flailing through) this life alone seemed easier than depending on others and being let down. I felt like I couldn’t take another disappointment, betrayal, or the army crawl through hell that is cutting off a toxic person. So I micro-dosed connection by knowing others, but never allowing them to know me.

The Universe, of course, saw my plans and lauuuughed and lauuughed. They sent me a friend. The kind of friend I have always dreamed of. Not someone who needs to be up my ass every day of the year, but someone who loved exactly as I did. No drama, no guilt, no manipulation, no gossip, just trust and easy conversation and an effortless feeling of my heart opening on it’s own. I felt seen. And loved. And I loved what I saw just the same.

Well, once I felt that I wanted more!

The clouds seemed to part at my own willingness to connect, and these diamonds in the rough kept shining for me to find. Some from my past that I couldn’t see before, because I (or they or both) were distracted by someone toxic, and some completely new, that seemed to be the very reason for certain life-altering decisions I had made along the way.

I remember once doing a tarot reading for myself at one of my lowest moments and the cards saying “things will work out and this will be worth the wait.” It felt rude and impossible at the time, but I can now say they were right.

I can say from experience that weeding your garden and being discerning about where you direct your energy can result in a more beautiful life than you could ever imagine The gentleness of a loving life is nothing short of Big Miracle Energy. It’s like going from the desert to an oasis. It’s like coming in from the cold.

Giving yourself the gift of a soft life is one of the highest forms of self-care. There is hard work in undoing relationships formed by toxic patterns or trauma bonding, taking inventory of the why’s and how’s of where you are, examining who you’ve been and the things you’d do differently now that you know better. But it is so worth it.

Life is hard enough, don’t we all deserve a soft place to land? Don’t you want to be safe to be your most vulnerable self everywhere you go? Don’t you want people to feel that level of safety with you? If you do this work, if you stay soft and open, while also engaging your discernment, your people will find you. Happiness, belonging, real, lasting love, respect, and support are absolutely available to you. All you have to do is make space for it. What you seek is seeking you.

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Everything is Everything

The journey of self-actualization is ever-expanding, just like the Universe, which created us in Their image. There are infinitely unfolding levels to the healing spiral that urge us to continue on the path of least resistance, the path of our most conscious selves. We aren’t only souls and we aren’t only human, we are a cosmic dance, like DNA, like the Milky Way, all things forever entwined. We are an experience. A collection of experiences and wounds and lessons and gifts and things that only we can bring to the world in a way that is totally unique to us. There has never been a you before now and there never will be again, what a blessing it is to have you here, now.

I got a comment on one of my TikToks this week (in a rather rude tone lol) asking what the fuck I was even talking about, jumping from discussing a system of government and then jumping into a conversation about my feelings. I realized when I set out to make this podcast that I was challenging myself with a lofty goal—to demystify spirituality, personal growth and healing. Demystify. Make accessible. Break. It. Down. Basically, I was inspired by the people who did that for free on the internet at a time when I needed help wading through the rough waters of my early days of recovery and spiritual awakening. I’m paying it forward.

Along my journey, it has become clear to me that everything is political. It is a red flag any time I hear a spiritual teacher suggest that it is low vibrational to participate in or care about politics. I’ve said it before, I will say it 100 times; we came here to be human. Human!!! Flawed and real and messy and feeling and mistaken and egoistic and hilarious and embarrassing. That’s part of the gig of coming down here. A major aspect of our collective mission is to make this world a better place for future humans. Ignoring politics is sure as shit not gonna achieve that.

Yeah, in a perfect world, there would be no hierarchies, no oppression, no exploited labor, no need for politics, but that is not the world the people who came before us co-created, is it? And what happens in spirituality when we ignore a problem hoping it will go away?

WHAT YOU RESIST PERSISTS

It is true internally, inter-personally, in regard to our physical health, and politically—you have to look at it in order to fix it. Admitting it is step 1. So that’s all I’m trying to do. Admit it.

When I was unpacking my tumultuous and abusive childhood in therapy for the first time, I was overwhelmed with the idea of why. How did my family get this way? How is not a gotdang one of us normal? How far does it go back? So I started investigating. War, sexual, physical, emotional abuse, neglect, narcissism, control, toxic relationships, poverty, emotional unavailable parents, addiction, untreated mental health issues, untreated trauma… I could go on… All of these issues began as systemic issues. Choices made by people in power that trickled all the way down through my ancestors and into lil ol’ me.

The first time I ever did mushrooms, I remember writing in my journal it is soooo simple, we just make it hard. This is true in the way we make our lives more difficult by refusing to honor and feel our feelings, choosing instead to hide our softest parts away, never allowing ourselves to be seen and then wondering why we are lonely. This is true in a spiritual sense, wherein which we bogged ourselves down with these superficial institutions with all these rules and limitations and rigid ideas of what God is or could be, alienating and oppressing so many in the process, when we could just have continued nurturing a personal relationship to the spiritual and allow everyone else to do the same. And this is true politically, all choosing to run our lives by the collective delusion of money—literally suffering and dying for money or due to a lack there of, killing the Earth (OUR ONLY HOME BTW!!!) for the promise of a quick buck?! Throwing our fellow humans under the proverbial bus for what?! A little piece of power?!

Which brings me to ego. Greed is a function of the ego, as is a thirst for power. As soon as we start desiring power, our willingness to cooperate goes right out the window. An “I’m gonna get mine” mentality overrides many of our more loving impulses. Everything becomes a competition. The need to feel superior is addictive to the ego and it uses all sorts of methods to put itself in a situation of better-than.

Everything is everything. The ways we learn to cope as children end up being the ways we self-sabotage as adults. A fear of commitment usually means an inability or unwillingness to commit to anything. It creates a lack of follow-through, which causes a shame spiral, and before you know it, you’re debilitated. Marginalization can instill in us all sorts of self-hatred and shame that can become a major block to accessing the kind of self-love that we are all entitled to, just by nature of being alive. Bigotry in the government reinforces bigotry within families and amongst peers, which adds even more levels of unpacking that needs to happen when a person is working toward spiritual liberation.

The programs that keep us limited were put their by political people, with political motivations, who more-often-than-not have some form of inherited generational power.

To ignore that is a mistake.

A holistic approach to life is the only way forward. This means looking at the political, the physical, the interpersonal, the spiritual. This means tracing every wound and block and struggle back to it’s roots. It is becoming more and more clear that no one is going to liberate us, we have to do it ourselves, just like the brave souls who came before us. True healing is holistic, because everything really is everything. So that’s what the fuck I’m talking about :)

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