Walk On Podcast Episode 67 : Radical Self-Acceptance

The amount of people I have talked to who think it is impossible to feel good about themselves, who take pride in their self-hatred, or who deeply identify with their most self-abusive thoughts really takes my breath away. So many people I have seen so much beauty in cannot see how brightly they shine. Compliments just bounce off them. They have rejected me because they think something must be deeply wrong with someone who loves them. Every time someone I love calls themselves a “piece of shit” I recoil from the truth that inside of them is a wounded child who bears the brunt of that verbal venom, who’s probably been called that their whole lives. It isn’t ok.

Whether it’s weight loss and diet culture, or self-improvement, or chasing perfectionism, or fucking capitalism, people seem to have this really bleak view of humanity that without at least a little self-flagellation and abuse, nobody would make the right choice. That is so incredibly toxic. It is not possible to shame or abuse someone, into healing. It is not possible.

I think losing touch with our inner child causes a lot of these problems. When you grow up not being loved correctly, you figure there must be something wrong with you. You know your caregivers are supposed to love you, so if they don’t, you reason, you must not be worthy of it. This internalization festers. As we grow and hurt more, as we experience more situations that remind us of, and further validate, those first experiences, we take that as proof of our original realization. “I am unworthy of love, unworthy of kindness, unworthy of forgiveness, I am deeply broken. Safety, feeling good about myself, and secure attachment are not available to me.” Often, these thoughts and feelings are not conscious, they live beneath the surface. To realize them would mean touching the tenderest parts of that wounded inner child and enduring a tidal wave of grief. Most of us live in fear of exactly that. Some people cover it up with avoidance, some try to numb it away, some cling onto others, making it their partners’ and friends’ responsibility to fill the void—or worse, their children’s. Being out of alignment with the child inside of us that holds our wounds, sometimes can cause resentment at the reminders our own children bring us—sometimes this can cause us to reject our own children the way we were rejected. Thus, the cycle continues.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is wonderful because it gives us a safe space to externally express and explore these terrible inner thoughts. For some reason expressing them to someone else helps take the sting out of them. A therapist can see them objectively and point out their flawed logic, and then share some tools and strategies for correcting these thoughts into more self-loving ones. Then, the healing begins.

With healing comes a bitter-sweet clarity. When you start becoming aware of what the kind and compassionate choice is, once you start learning boundaries and how to communicate, once you understand how unconscious you once were, it hurts to see the mistakes you made, the pain you caused in glaring high definition. This is where radical self-acceptance comes in. This is where you practice self-forgiveness. This is where you speak to yourself as you would a child who made a mistake.

“I’’s ok to mess up. It’s ok to make a mistake. Nobody is perfect. But we should talk about why you did what you did. What were you feeling? How did you handle that? Was that the right choice? What would have been a better choice? What choice are you going to make now that you know better? You don’t have to beat yourself up. Just try to do better next time. You are safe to make mistakes. It’s ok. You’re ok.”

Correcting ourselves and others can be as gentle, as patient, and as loving as we want it to be, it just takes practice. It just takes patience, It' just takes forgiveness. It just takes a little Radical Self-Acceptance. Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 66 : Aging Gracefully

“You look so good for your age!!”

“You don’t look a day over 25!!”

“Woooow, you haven’t aged at all!!!”

These are all sentiments we’ve been taught are compliments, but if we dive a little deeper its like… are they? Why is it so bad to look one’s age? Why is eternal youth so utterly desirable and why is visible age seen as the epitome of ugly?

Being fat, or embodying any “undesirable” trait according to the white supremacist capitalist cis heteropatriarchy, you either internalize the bullshit and spend your life hating yourself, or you see the bullshit very clearly and realize… wow, “beauty standards” are all made up.

The second option is the freer one.

That being said, even if you unpack racism or fatphobia or queerphobia, agism still has a way of persisting. I think this is because it is possible to unpack one aspect of the white supremacist capitalist cis heteropatriarchy without unpacking the others, and the “capitalist” head of that hydra of oppression is the most acceptable to uphold, to most people. In fact, the majority of people still think being a capitalist is a good thing!! A virtuous trait! I mean, can you believe?! In this most dystopian year of 2021?!?!

Agism has a connection to ableism, the ism which says your value as a human being is directly correlated to how well you can “CoNtRiBuTe to SoCiEtY” which is gross and annoying and a really shallow way of perceiving multifaceted human beings. Pre-capitalism, elders were community leaders, valued for their wisdom, they were revered, cared for, loved. “Contributing” took on different meanings at different points in one’s life. I could spiral out at this point into how emotional labor and more domestic contributions to households/communities/relationships are excessively undervalued in our current way of life, but my carpal tunnel is acting up and I’m not getting paid per word (or at all lol). Maybe I’ll do a podcast episode about that too.

Lemme just take this moment to say lots of multigenerational households and cultures that aren’t white have a much different relationship to aging and the elderly and still do operate in this pre-capitalistic way. Although capitalism has been forced on humanity pretty globally, AND the beauty standard of eternal youth does penetrate even in places where getting older isn’t seen as a personal failure.

We can’t help getting older. One big motto in self-help spheres is “I can only control myself and I release what is out of my control.” There is so much suffering in resistance to what is. There is so much pain in wishing things were different, and there is so much freedom in the surrender of radical self-acceptance. Aging gracefully is just a state of mind.

Aging is complicated because, as humans with egos, we fear change. Aging is a visual reminder that time marches on and that physical life is finite. Aging is also seen as a limitation in our society, which considers one more or less valuable based on how able-bodied and patriarchally f*ckable they are. What if our fears and resistance toward aging could be transcended? What if we could surrender to the process? What industries would crumble? What power would we have to gain? What wisdom? What connection? Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 65 : Diet Culture

fat n loving it, photo by Sarah Lyev

I was 20 years old and crying on the treadmill to Abba’s The Winner Takes It All the day after a break-up. I had just managed to get myself discarded by a boy who used to critique my body as I moved naked around his room after I let him cum inside me. He’d tilt his head sideways and say “you have a beautiful……. shape??? to your body.” I really leaned into my eating disorder while we were together, hitting the gym for about 3 hours a day. 90 minutes of cardio, an hour of weightlifting, 20 more minutes of cardio, stretch, walk home. His mother would ask, as if to say it didn’t show that I spent 3 hours a day in the gym, “really?!? 3 hours?!?!” Her side eye was sharp any time I took seconds.

I was 8 years old when I went on my first diet, 13 when I first tried diet pills (which I continued taking until I was in my 20’s), and 20 years old when I carried myself to the gym the day after a nasty break-up, only to sob, loudly, while I ran as fast as I could.

I would like to tell you that I realized how ridiculous that was and stopped there, but no such luck, dear reader. This went on for four more years. I yo-yoed, a starve and binge cycle which had micro and macrocosms in my life. After I was sexually assaulted by a very close friend my senior year of college, I gained about 80lbs and, considering that nearly everyone I knew took this as an opportunity to gossip about me and make fun of me, I isolated myself and hid out in my room with potato skins and The Office to keep me company. After long, this began another diet pill, starvation, exercise bulimia weight loss spiral. This went on for a couple of years, I lost those 80 pounds, and plateaued. Hard. Cue another montage of me crying at the gym.

I did Insanity, the really intense HIIT workout program, I danced, I ran, I weight lifted, I counted every calorie that ever passed my lips. I was praised, I was rewarded, I was supported and cheered on. I was miserable. I tore up my knees, my ankles, my shoulders, I had a migraine every day from the physical exertion. Without enough calories to function properly, my immune system quit working and I was sick all the time. And yet, still, I wasn’t thin enough.

My entire life fat had been an issue. It was the most hurtful insult a person could throw my way. I knew I was smarter than most adults I knew. I knew I was strong and brave and funny, I knew I could outrun, outsplit, outsing, outdance, outcartwheel any friend I had. But I was way fatter than the rest. And so it became my achilles heel. And boy did people stab at it.

When I was thinking of starting burlesque, my abolute biggest fear was that I would get naked on stage and people would find me disgusting. About a year into it, I posted a photo of all of my 204 lbs in a teeeny tiny underwear set I had made myself. A clearly very unhappy woman commented “this is disgusting. You should be ashamed to post yourself naked like this looking the way you do. Nobody wants to see this on their timeline. It’s gross.”

the “disgusting” photo in question

I had stopped dieting 2 years prior, I had been working on my confidence, my self love, every day, like a meditation. I had reprogrammed my brain to understand that “fat” was simply a descriptor, and was not, in fact, an insult. It was just a way of being. A way of being, by the way, that I couldn’t seem to help. At my adult skinniest, I could never get smaller that 175 (still over weight by my doctor’s standards) and that was proved over and over again. That was only achieved through starvation and excessive exercise. And it was not sustainable. Every time I relaxed a little I would gain and gain until I landed somewhere between 195 and 230lbs. I know it’s a wide spread, but I am a fluxuator, and I have worked to accept that too.

I was shocked when I read this woman’s comments. It was my worst fears come true. It was everything I feared about being a fat stripper happening to me. And it didn’t hurt me one bit. I was shocked at that too. My self-love, my unconditional positive regard for my body, my radical self-acceptance had become an armor. I understood why I would trigger someone. I’d heard it my whole life, when I would go to the beach with skinny friends, modest in their one pieces, while I frolicked in my triangle string bikini, “I wish I had your confidence!!” or more accurately “I have a good body and I can’t wear a bathing suit like that!!” My confidence was triggering. It was calling something out that these people hadn’t unpacked yet, and maybe never would.

a poem I improvised over one of my “self love selfies” I called my hips biscuits, initially derogatorily, but eventually, lovingly

The industry of Diet Culture wants to sell us the idea that we aren't enough. Like all white supremacist capitalist cis heteropatriarchal constructs, this can be deprogrammed. When we practice radical self-acceptance and choose to give up on striving to be "perfect" what's left? Our wounds? Our imperfections? Presence? Healing? Maybe even self-love? All you've got to lose are your illusions. Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 64 : Communing with the Dead

Happy Halloween, Heathens!!!!

October, autumn in general, my birthday, Halloween season is my favorite time of year. I love pumpkins and corn mazes and crunchy leaves. There has always been a feeling of magic in my heart this time of year. Trick or treating, costumes, non-stop scary movies, Halloween haunts. My neighborhood growing up threw the best Halloweens—everyone celebrated and celebrated BIG.

Once I got older, started dabbling in the occult, and began opening up to the vibrations and sensations of Grandmother Earth and the esoteric beyond, I started to experience… more. A deeper connection to Samhain, to the veil thinning, to the dead.

My cousin Dustin died of a drug overdose when I was in my early twenties. A couple of years later I lost my familiar, a beautiful long-haired dachshund named Mercedes. One death was the kind of tragic shock which is only made worse by the fact that you could see it coming from a mile away but couldn’t do a goddamn thing to stop it. The second death, was a choice made by me, to end the suffering of someone I very much didn’t understand how to live without.

Both of these losses had an impact on me. I had loved ones die before, but, growing up my cousins and I were closer than close—more like siblings or comrades in arms or something. We stuck together. We all lived hard lives which fostered a very special kind of joy whenever we got together—an unspoken understanding of the hardship, a knowing, and the just-being-kids-ness we got to experience during those playdates, sleepovers, vacations. At one particular sleepover, Dustin and I stayed up later than everyone else, playing with the karaoke extra on the menu of the Wedding Singer DVD. We sang all the songs, loud, obnoxious, disrespectful of the sleeping bodies around us. The one that sticks in my mind the most is Hold Me Now, by the Thompson Twins, because, aside from it’s appearance in the movie, I had never heard it before… and neither had he. But somehow we knew every note. We knew exactly how to sing it, and boy did we sing—with all the schmoozy lounge-singer pathos of the original vocals. It has always been one of my favorite memories. As adults, our collective trauma started showing up in heartbreaking ways. Addiction, avoidance, self-harm, bad relationships. But still, when we got together, there was this palpable feeling of love.

I remember the day we got the call that he died, the tears came immediately heavy. The sobs were full-body ones. I felt a hole, a space, a break in the chain of what had been a lifelong bond between all of us. An absence. At the funeral, I looked at him, grown, peaceful, handsome in his suit (I’d never seen him in a suit as a grown-up), and I felt heartbroken all over again. Confused and betrayed, in a way. He wasn’t there. It was his body, but his soul, his spirit, his essence, his wheezy laugh, his hot temper, his easy tears, they weren’t there. I wanted to say goodbye to him but he seemed to be already gone.

Then a thought came, like a lightbulb. “Energy can neither be created or destroyed.” He had to be somewhere. This notion aided me in wading through the grief, which came in waves, will always come in waves.

One day, I was really missing him. I was feeling really angry at my family for the harm they caused, for the avoidance, for their refusal to deal with anything—always sweeping more dirt under the proverbial rug; for making every problem into either a joke or petty gossip. “It’s our fault. We should have helped. It’s all our fault.” Over and over and over. I was walking around Michaels Art Supply store, touching the Halloween decorations when over the loudspeaker came

I have a picture, pinned to my wall…

And I could feel his presence with me and I closed my eyes and listened with all my heart and hummed along, right there in the aisle, letting the tears fall.

Then, on his birthday every year, at least once, but sometimes all day long

An image of you and of me and
We're laughing and loving it all

On the anniversary of his death, as well,

But look at our life now
All tattered and torn
We fuss and we fight and
Delighting with tears
As we cry until dawn
Oh, whoa

And then it started to happen all the time, really. Any time I missed him or thought of him, or healed something big from my childhood, on the way home from therapy, in moments of bliss, seemingly randomly, but also so definitely not

Hold me now, whoa
Warm my heart
Stay with me
Let loving start
(Let loving start)

Once I started accepting that that was him, once I opened up to the possibility of his energy, he started visiting me in dreams. We’d hang out like it was no big deal. He’d give me advice or encouragement, an ancestor now. I’d wake up still feeling his energy. I didn’t need to miss him so much, because he wasn’t really gone.

My dog Mercedes took her last breath with her nose pressed to mine, her eyes closed after looking into mine one last time. She loved her chosen people so fiercely that she hated everyone else. Whenever I left, she would wait for me—refusing food or play or entertainment, waiting by the door. Watching her golden big-eared head bounce just above the screen when I was walking up the sidewalk was some of the greatest joy I’ve ever known. We have Big love. Huge. The night she died, just as I was falling asleep, she came to me. I sat in the black liminal space behind my eyes and she came and laid across my lap like always. I could feel her, smell her, as if she were really there. Except now her energy filled the entire space. I could feel her love for me as tangibly as I could feel mine for her. I cried and cried and cried “she’s so big now. She’s SO big now.”

Ever since then, she’s visited me in dreams and meditations. She’s always guarding me, guiding me, loving me—in my loneliest moments she comes to cuddle me. She’s an ancestor now, too.

When the veil between the worlds is thinnest, the lines of communication between the living and the dead become clear. Why should we fear such a natural occurrence? What if our ancestors are there to guide us to our highest good? Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 62 : The Power of Ritual

I always say my first meditations were also my first experiences with masturbation; my first secret with my own body, my own self. My first rituals were intuitive meetings with the divine. I learned to meditate in the bathtub, after facing my childhood and trauma-induced fears of bathing alone. Breathing deeply, I would picture myself hiking in the autumn woods. After a harrowing few years of adulthood, I began a more concrete ritual practice, one that continues to this day. I would wake up, bake up, pour myself a cup of coffee, light a white candle and say

Mother Universe, show me the way.

I would like to thank all the goddesses who have come before me,

who allow me to live in their light

and I would like to thank all the goddesses who will come after me,

who I will allow to live in mine.

I would picture all the women who came before me—all the artists, philosophers, activists, spiritual figures, mothers, grandmothers, and Gaia herself. I would allow their energy to wash over me. I would think of how they inspired me, guided me, paved the way for my footsteps. I would think of myself, how I far I traveled to get to where I was, how much I’d been through. I would think of my desires, I would talk to the Universe, like a mother, a therapist, a friend. I would cry, pace, yell, stomp my feet and throw a tantrum. I would get it all out. Then I would go out into my garden and put my hands in the dirt, sing Joni Mitchell to my plants, enjoy the sun. Next, I would shower, washing every bit of my body, every nook and cranny, slowly, lovingly. Then rinse and rinse and rinse again, hot water, then cold. I would step out and anoint myself with oil, again, every bit of my body, while saying my morning affirmations

you are beautiful, you are kind, you are sweet, you are smart

you are resilient, capable, strong, funny

you are brilliant, all that you desire is available to you,

you are loved, you are lovable, you are love.

Then I would cleanse the house with incense, then I would begin my day. Sometimes, yoga would follow, a walk, work, rehearsal. When I started my day with this ritual, I spent the whole thing in a magnetic, calm, centered, present space. When I saw this time as necessary, as healing, as a priority—if I didn’t rush it or neglect it or belittle it, I noticed a gradual, beautiful, profound change in myself and how I moved through the world.

I eventually found a group of friends who also seemed interested in ritual magic, and we began meeting as a coven on full and new moons—often at the beach. I led everyone in a basic ritual of writing down a list of what they’d like to release and what they’d like to call in. We would sit around a fire, meditating on it, visualizing it, picturing ourselves and feeling our wills and desires as deeply as if they were happening in this very moment. Then we would burn our papers, and watch them, focus on them, until the flames turned them to ash. We would breathe out in surrender, and close with the saying “As I will it, so mote it be.”

There is a clarity that comes with ritual. Ritual helped me see and understand what it is I wanted. It allowed me to allow myself to want. In a world and a system that benefits from making what we want unacceptable to ourselves, it feels revolutionary.

On a practical level, struggling with executive functioning and the cyclical, self-harming thoughts that come with cptsd, one day I decided to start giving myself stability. I began tracking my moods (I used a 1-10 rating system and took notes on what I was feeling in my journal), I documented what I ate—not to serve the purpose of a diet, but to make sure I was eating regularly and enough—I also wrote down how much sleep I was getting and what I did every day. Then I gave myself a bedtime and a wake-up time. I made sure to include stretching every day, I tried to get outside and in some kind of nature as much as I could. I started taking myself on dates. I started really getting to know and falling in love with myself.

The whole concept of Walking On, for me, began with these rituals. This very podcast was born in those moments sitting in front of that white candle, talking to God.

Ritual on a mystic level, routine on a material (depending on how you look at it) can be life-changing. Taking the time to clarify how you feel, what you want, what you don't want, and to engage in the practice of creating stability is a pivotal first step towards self-care. Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 61 : Let The Tower Fall

darktarot.com

So much of letting go, of Walking On, is about change. So much of shadow work, or healing, or introspection, or however you like to define—or refer—to your personal journey of the integration of the divine into your human experience, is about staring your own personal Big Fear Monster in the face.

I’ve been watching a lot of horror movies lately (Happy Halloween!!) and it reminds me of The Babadook. The bisexual icon says, in his scrap book, “the more you deny me, the stronger I become.” In the New Age community where we love catchy slogans that sort of rhyme, it’s the same thing as “what you resist, persists.”

We are intuitive beings, naturally. Antenna to the frequency of The Universe. We are guided by feelings, by emotions, by signs and synchronicities, to continue moving forward—or, more accurately, expanding in all directions. What gets in the way is our resistance.

Fear of the unknown is a natural fear. It’s evolutionary. It’s what kept our ancestors in their dwellings after dark. It’s what gives you that uneasy feeling when you walk past a dark alley way. It isn’t inherently bad, it is what keeps us safe! That being said, if we can’t discern between what is a warranted concern and what is the ego’s fear of change, that is when we get in some trouble.

The Universe starts with a whisper.

I think something needs to change

We shrug it off. We might tell ourselves we can learn to be happy, things will change on their own, we need more time, we aren’t ready. The Universe, nonjudgmental, waits.

Then, a bit louder.

I think you should take a step towards another direction

“I can’t leave this job/relationship/location!! What if it’s a mistake!! I can’t get to know someone new or learn a new skill!!! What if I get lonely??!! What if I fail?? What if I regret it?! I think maybe I’ll just stay here growing increasingly more unhappy, resentful, and dis-empowered because that’s much easier in the short term, you know, hahah, I’ll be fine!! This is fine!!!!”

A few more interactions like this, and things start falling apart, like a rowboat with too many holes to plug up with your hands, springing leak after leak, sinking sinking sinking. You may ask yourself “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME????!!!!” The Universe replies, cheesy, cloying, cliché, annoying, but still, somehow profound, correct…

Maybe, it’s happening for you.

Change is scary. If we don’t listen to our intuition about when it’s time to change, change can become downright destructive. Have you been ignoring what’s best for you? Have you been clinging onto what you know even if what you know isn’t what you want? What about on a societal scale? Are we being prompted to change--bombarded with clear signs that things aren’t working? Are we listening? First the Universe whispers, then they scream. Throw your hands up in surrender, let the tower fall.

Listen here.

Sobriety Milestones

I have been performing regularly, semi-professionally for 10 years. Last night I played my first show sober, ever.

This is kind of tough and a little embarrassing to admit because, like many people who have a problem with alcohol, I didn’t think I had a problem with alcohol.

When I was in high school, before every audition, I would shake like the dickens and break out in hives. Being autistic with PTSD from abuse, and being mercilessly bullied causes this impulse to want to be invisible. Being a musician causes this impulse of wanting to be seen. My life has been one long journey of confronting my intense stage fright.

I trained for a year to be able to make it through my college audition, and I got in. And then was forced into the immersion therapy of needing to perform in front of people multiple times a semester. Eventually I did stop shaking! But the nerves were still there.

When I started my first band (a rock n soul cover duo), our whole shtick was being kind of silly and being lushes and not always playing perfectly. It was glorious. It was so fun—both to escape the perfection of classical music, and to learn how enjoyable playing music could really be. I was always drunk on stage. Always drunker after our set was over.

My next band played out a lot more, as we released an album of originals, and free drinks were part of the deal. I’d usually have my two drinks before we even got onstage. Afterwards, people would buy me more. I clung onto my buzz for many reasons—the stage fright, the social anxiety, the over-stimulation of trying to make conversation in a loud bar, the being seen, the critical thoughts in my own head of myself, and the critical sentiments expressed by some of my harshest loved ones (everything was fair game, my weight, my intonation, my performance, my dance moves, my banter, my mic levels, how the rest of the band played). It was too much.

Burlesque was a similar story—except different. I wasn’t as nervous with burlesque. I was kind of living, actually. I have always loved dancing and I’d wanted to be a stripper for as long as I remember. Longer than you would think, considering the pervasive belief that no one dreams of doing sex work. I was practicing twerking and floor work in my bedroom in middle school. But it was such a party atmosphere!! And you got free drink tickets! And when I finished mine, sometimes my friend who didn’t like to drink as much as me would give me hers. I would save the bulk of my imbibing for after my routines were done, but I would always be nice and toasted by the end of the show—ready to schmooze and socialize and take photos with audience members who were just a liiiittle too handsy.

After I quit burlesque and started busking, I quit drinking. I quit for 6 solid months and it was really nice. It was really, really nice. I felt clear-headed and healthy. I felt happy and healing and whole. I felt soooo good waking up not hungover every single day. I hadn’t gone more than a couple weeks without a hangover since I was 19 (I was now 27). But then, I started again.

After I moved to new york, there were more performance opportunities, more shows, more busking. One night, I was busking in the subway and a teen handed me a PBR tall boy as a tip! This city is WILD, honey!! I was definitely more moderate with my drinking, but there were still boughts of over-indulgence. And I still, never ever performed perfectly sober.

My other vice is weed. I smoke weed, I will probably always indulge a little, because, well, it’s fucking great. I love being stoned. But for a good 7 years there I was blaaazed out of my mind. I was smoking an 8th like every four days or so. I was withdrawn, lethargic, unfocused, and depressed. I was coping with some very difficult and very triggering life events that I didn’t want to deal with yet. Avoidance is a beautiful tool for procrastination.

So even if I wasn’t drunk, I was stoned AF. And if I couldn’t smoke, I would pop an edible.

Since covid, since I moved in with my partner in August of 2020, I went from having at least one drink a day, to hardly ever drinking. It has been a slow process, a pretty effortless process—something that just… kind of occurred.

There’s this truth expressed in healing spaces (whether it be CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) or spiritual healing or recovering from eating disorders) that you can’t just take something away, you have to replace it… you have to fill the space. If you’re quitting smoking, a lollipop can help curb the addiction to the physical act. If you have a negative thought spiral, catching it, stopping it, and replacing it with the kinder truth, or a loving thought is the key to getting yourself out of the spiral.

My one drink a day was replaced by healthy, mutual emotional processing. Support. Reciprocal love. Presence. Laughter. Time in nature. Delicious meals. Stability. Love. Being loved. And the urge or the need to drink just… evaporated. I stopped smoking as much, too. My stash started lasting months instead of weeks. I wasn’t feeling as anxious or overstimulated on a daily basis. I reached a new level of healing. Honestly, it’s one I don’t think I could have reached on my own. I needed community.

So when I booked this show over a month ago, my first since February 2020, I was understandably nervous. I fretted and worried. I had nightmares about it. I was most worried that, though I really wanted to be sober for it, that I would chicken out and not be able to do it and I was afraid of what that would mean about my healing. It’s easy to be at peace on a mountain top, not so in the middle of a city. Could I really socialize without it??

I am happy, and very proud to report that I did it!! I did it!! I was so nervous, my hands were shaking and I fucked up a bunch lol. It was a good performance, but it was a nervous one. I felt every little bit of my fear, which is what I think I was avoiding by being tipsy during every performance for the past 10 years. I heard every murmur of conversation in the audience. I felt every mistake and wrong note and chord. I felt disorientingly clear-headed. Agonizingly present. It was wonderful. To remember every moment so clearly???? WOW. What a gift.

I am a hedonist. I do love to indulge. I am not the kind of person that abstinence works for. I’m a Libra, I need moderation. But I think, from now on, I will always play sober.

An Overstayed Welcome

cover by Sarah Lyev

When making art, everything always seems to overstay it’s welcome. One draft, revision, take too many. Sometimes 10 too many. I feel like I am 10 months pregnant, like I ate a feast of gluten—like I felt like I was gonna shit my pants but then only a little pebble turd came out—like I was gearing up for a massive orgasm and blinked and missed it.

My book still isn’t done.

I submitted it with the wrong page sizes and now everything is alllll fucked up.

Tha’ts what I get for needing to submit during mercury’s shadow period for the upcoming retrograde—my retrograde. This fall one always hits me really hard because it’s the one that’s in my chart (though mine is in Scorpio) but I wanted the book out for October so…

Here I go again.

I’m so frustrated. When I realized what happened I was sick to my stomach. I can’t believe I made such a silly mistake. This book took me a year to write—I’d obsess for three months and then take three months off. It’s hard writing about trauma because you’re triggering yourself in this very undiluted way. Diving in. Going deep. I feel like my body is made of bricks.

These last couple weeks as I put on the finishing touches have been fun, easy, light!! I have read the poems so many times that they no longer feel like mine, I’ve become numb to the sting of them, of the memories. That’s why it’s been so healing. Looking at something so deeply insures that you’re releasing.

But the actual submission process?????????

HELL

It’s been hell.

Being autistic, paper work is my Achilles heel. I have no patience, no follow-through, no eye for details for it. It feels like sandpaper clothes, it feels like a too loud sound, like the disgusting bounce of jello in my mouth. UGH!!!!

I always have to do things twice or more, because I always do them wrong the first time.

I guess I should get used to this kind of thing. At least you only have to learn how to do something once. Next time I publish I won’t make this mistake. Just like I always ultra save all my documents because I’ve lost so many. Just like I always check to make sure I have my keys before I shut the door.

A week ago I was feeling like I just wanted to hold onto the book a little longer—to have it be a secret with myself for just a couple more days. Now I want it the fuck over with.

I guess that’s the beauty of an overstayed welcome.

Walk On Podcast Episode 60 : Astrology

Astrology was one of the first sciences humans ever engaged in. It was seen as a fact that the celestial bodies around us had a profound effect on our life. Originally, it was used to predict weather patterns for agricultural purposes. The art form, the poetry, the story of the stars was considered a well-respected and highly useful science. So why has it been relegated to an after-thought, some pseudoscience nonsense on the last page of your favorite gossip rags?

I think this has everything to do with the colonizer mentality.

When I was in public school in Virginia, we were taught the propaganda of the American Dream. This is the white supremacist story of how we (““former”” Europeans lol) escaped religious and tax persecution and landed in America and then proceeded to “civilize the natives.” As if colonizing someone was doing them a favor. Literally, this is what I was taught in school. No real discussion of how the Indigenous people of these colonized places felt about it (other than a weird amount of focus on scalping????) or that Indigenous people still existed to this day. Pre-industrial Industrialization/Colonial Expansion, and this conquering-and-claiming-ownership way of being was portrayed as virtuous, as more logical—as more evolved—than living in harmony and having a spiritual connection with the land.

There’s this NPR program Offshore that (albeit imperfectly) portrays this centuries-old conflict. It’s about the fight between native Hawaiians and colonizer scientists who want to build a giant telescope on Mauana Kea, a sacred place to the Indigenous population. To them, it is the birthplace of the universe (their spiritual tradition knew about the Big Bang before science did, btw). It is the home of their Gods. It is a portal to the cosmos. And the spirit guides who inhabit that place have communicated that they do not want the scientists there. This is not enough for the scientists to stop. They see this spirituality as ridiculous—as not a good reason to not move ahead with their plans. They see themselves as smarter, more logical, more civilized. NPR tells a beautiful story, while still doing it’s usual both-sides-of-the-story-why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along bullshit. Nothing has changed.

Money beats rock, paper, and scissors.

Some things are better understood internally, I think. Emotionally, spiritually. Sometimes making the spiritual material does it a disservice. Some things will never be understood logically. I think the way we dogmatically engage with logic and reason has swung the pendulum so far, that we’ve rendered ourselves numb to the answers that call from within.

While trying to be mindful of disrespectful appropriation, because I understand that I come from colonizers, I make an effort to learn about, learn from, understand, respect, and love any and all Indigenous expressions of spirituality. There is something there that white people (and anyone too indoctrinated into our most successful method of colonization, Christianity) are missing. Our White Christianity is more rooted in political control and capitalism than any kind of self-actualization or growth or higher connection to what we call God. It discourages critical thought, a personal relationship with the divine, and calls anything actually spiritual or autonomous the work of the devil, including astrology.

So many are so quick to write off things they have barely taken the time to understand. Most serious astrologers are extremely academic. They publish papers, they present at conferences, they teach classes, they are scientists. They know more about their field of study than many astrology deniers know about anything.

At some point in human history, some Chaddeus decided that astrology was nonsense and every Chad he begot perpetuated his legacy. All I ask is that, before you call something factually false, you consider reforming your statement to “I actually don’t know enough about that to comment on it.” Or don’t, I really don’t care. I’m just saying you look like a close-minded asshole.

All of the people I know who are into astrology are self-aware, focused on healing, always-trying-to-better-themselves people. They use the tool of their birth chart to get to know themselves better, the state of the world better, our collective wounding as human beings better. They are working towards making the world a more loving, more compassionate, and more unified place. Why does that make skeptics so angry?

Astrology: sense maker of the great cosmic mess we're all a part of. So why is it considered silly woo-woo pseudoscience nonsense? Probably misogyny and a colonizer mindset. Need guidance, feel lost in life, want to get a better idea of what you came here to work on in this lifetime? Maybe do what your ancestors did... consult the stars. Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 59 : The Tarot

The Tarot are not quite ancient and were not originally used as a divinatory tool, but were actually, historically, the template for playing cards. Big fan of Texas Hold ‘Em? You owe that to the tarot.

In my own life and path to healing my generational baggage, Tarot has been one the biggest influences and most effective healing modalities for me. It lead to me self-awareness and taking responsibility. It lead me to learn how to walk away. It inspired me to lay boundaries. It began my (now constant) conversation with God, the divine, the universe, the dark lord Satan (lol what you call them depends on what floats your boat tbh to me it’s all just aspects of the same Love Consciousness so I have no issue using whatever words that make my clients most comfortable). It’s a really beautiful and humble service, both to give and to receive.

The readings I have received from friends, colleagues, and other professional readers who I sought out just because I liked their work, have stayed with me and guided me for literal years. It’s been more than 10 years since my first reading and I still think about it, I still use the wisdom I was given in my every day life. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

If you’re curious, buy a deck (or better yet ask for one as a gift), sleep with the cards under your pillow, shuffle them whenever you get the chance, pull a few, see what happens. If you have a few extra bucks, book a reading, you can even book one with me!! It’s all sliding, scale (no minimum) so just pay what you can!

Any tool that leads you to knowing and loving yourself better is a divine tool in my book—after all— whatever get’s you to the light, ‘s alright.

Tarot cards have been one of the most influential and effective healing modalities for me along my journey. They connect to the subconscious and bring forth any information you might have an awareness of, but maybe haven't been ready to acknowledge yet. This can be deeply healing, teaching, and affirming. Everyone should own a deck, everyone should have their cards done at least once in their lifetime. It's mysterious, it's divinatory, it's fun, it's a humbling act of service to read for another. It makes way for vulnerability and connection, and--if you're open to it--it works. Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 58 : Block, Delete, Unfriend, Unfollow

The internet has brought us a very shallow kind of immortality. Nothing you post is ever really deleted, but if this cyber world ever crashes, every photo, memory, quip, work of digital art will cease to exist. It’s a hologram within a hologram. It’s a metaphor. It’s a poem. It’s a habit, an addiction, a lifeline, a community. It’s beautiful, it’s terrible, and for now, it’s here to stay.

I’m a big proponent of mindfulness. At its most basic form that means doing life thoughtfully. Being conscious of all of the decisions you make. That means trying not to engage in behavior that is motivated unconsciously or subconsciously. This is why I don’t engage with toxic people, this is why I no longer have casual sex, this is why I will never get drunk ever again. All of these behaviors at one point did serve me—at least in the sense that they helped me survive some very rough moments in my life. They also showed me my wounds—the Rock Bottom of all of them did create the foundation of healing I am currently standing on. Once I realized that I was operating exclusively from a place of pain, avoidance, numbing, I #walkedon

I like to consider myself a connoisseur of bad relationships. I know how to pick ‘em and boy howdy have I picked ‘em. Especially friendships. For a long time, I tortured myself to see what past bullies/frenemies and sometimes, yes, abusers were up to—only to have to see them living their #bestlife while I walked around with a stomach ache for approximately 3-6 weeks. I would put their handle in the search bar, daily, sometimes multiple times daily, and absolutely agonize over what I had found. Some of the more malevolent people from my past would use their social media to further smear, discredit, or abuse me through subtweets or posts about me, and by my looking at it, their plan worked.

One day I decided to take matters into my own hands and to start making healthier choices. I started blocking people whose posts hurt me, people who couldn’t respect my boundary of needing space from them, and people who trolled me or left fatphobic, queerphobic, or other problematic comments on my work. And honestly? It felt good.

Any time you lay a boundary, people take it personally. Sometimes it is personal. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lay it. We are all in charge of our own mental health, our own happiness, our own peace, and our own energy. If something makes you upset, its OK to disengage.

Be honest. How many people do you hate follow? How many people come across your feed and cause you to roll your eyes or feel a kind of low grade rage? How many people do you follow just hoping something bad will happen to them? How many people do you follow out of obligation, because you fear the backlash of the UnFollow? How many people do you keep on your mutual list just because you don’t want them to think you’re a bad person? How many people do you keep muted because you find them really fucking annoying, but you can’t bring yourself to make the commitment of the dreaded UnFollow. (I’m sure lots of people feel this way about me and if that’s true, I lovingly release you <3)

I like to think of my virtual space as my internet bedroom. I want to see stuff that teaches me, that helps me grow, that feels healing and inspiring to me, that makes me laugh, that makes me love, that is beautiful or interesting, I like to see gorgeous people and sunsets and people with pretty manicures crumbling soap. What I don’t like to see are hateful politics, Jordan Peterson stans, too much TSwift content, or people who have emotionally abused me doing well. So I mute. I block. I delete. I unfriend. I unfollow.

I have received some backlash from this. But honestly, it’s no different than anyone who expects permanence when something has so very obviously run its course. I am autistic. I have no interest in engaging with people who only keep me around to make fun of me. I am an intensely earnest person, there’s a lot of make fun of, so go ahead, I just don’t want to see it. I don’t want to engage with anyone who competes with me. Competition leads to resentment and schadenfreude. I believe in the evil eye. I don’t care to have that shit mixing with my intention, spells, or energy. I’m workin’ magick over here!!!!

I’m not here to be contrarian or to hurt feelings. I just think this idea that we need to always know everyone we’ve always known is just absurd. And it’s pretty new. Used to, if you broke up with someone, you could avoid them—now you’re expected to like their every post. And it’s gonna be a no from me, on that one, dawg. We’re ministering the philosophy of Walking On in this corner of the internet.

So much of life today is about forcing yourself to do things that don’t feel good (lol @ work), shouldn’t our cyber experience be a positive one? Shouldn’t it at least come with a little escapism? You’re the master of your domain, baby!! Act accordingly.

The internet encourages us to know everyone we've always known. To unfriend or unfollow someone is the modern-day equivalent of peeling off your old-timey glove and slapping someone across the face with it. Cyberstalking people we no longer know IRL is so passé at this point it's basically a meme. Hate following and trolling have become nearly legitimate hobbies. Sitting here in my almost mid-30s nursing-home-rocking chair, I can't help but wonder... is this healthy? Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 57 : The Importance of Being Earnest

qz.com

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

-Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Whenever I’ve met someone I would describe as earnest, I feel an overwhelming affection for them immediately. I always enjoy a person who wears their personality on their sleeve. That is not to say that they are unkind or one of those “that’s just the way I am” types of unapologetic bullies, but just… that they don’t operate from a place of pretense. Earnestness is seen as a kind of seriousness, and I think that being authentic does take a certain amount of seriousness. But being earnestly funny can exist, right? Earnestly sad? Earnestly awkward?

I think it’s a seriousness in regard to a sense of self.

Oscar Wilde, I think, was a good poster child for an earnest way of being—full of quips and elegance and glamour and style—the kind of person who is never not invited to a dinner party. He wasn’t boring, he didn’t take himself too seriously, he wasn’t humorless. He just was who he was, with whoever he was with.

Living in the capitalist society we do, where everything surrounds work, we are often encouraged to split ourselves into digestible chunks. This friend gets the comedian me, but none of the emotions, this hookup gets the sex kitten with none of the depth, work gets the committed professional, responsible me without personal boundaries, my parents get the perfect child they can be proud of, never the trainwreck… I tend to think that this kind of emotional labor A) dehumanizes/objectifies us, which according to spiritual teacher and mystic Osho is the most unkind thing you can do to someone else and B) is a way of attempting to live up to the impossible expectation of perfection. And, by now, we should all know how I feel about that.

Are we not multifaceted beings? Each and every single one of us??? Why are we not allowed to express that truth of ourselves?? Why is it even off-limits within our own self-perception? And (as above, so below) if we understand how it hurts us not to be seen, heard, and understood completely, why do we hold others to these same standards?

“Just be yourself!!” we tell a friend who’s nervous about a date, which they shrug off because it’s become such a cliché that it almost feels like bad advice. Many times, our real, vulnerable, softest parts were rejected in early childhood by the very people society tells us are supposed to love us inherently unconditionally. So we learn, very quickly, to mask (which is what we call it in the autistic community).

I’m not saying that masking is bad—we all do it for survival. Think of the phony, robotically pleasant customer service voice you develop when you work that kind of job. “My pleasure!!” nobody says that IRL lol. I once had a boss tell me that I was never allowed to say “no problem” because it implied that it wasn’t a problem right now, but that it might be a problem at another time and that might offend a customer. Wuh-WHAT??????????????????

I’m not saying that you should walk around this cruel and judgmental world (or post on the even more cruel and judgmental internet) with your soul laid bare—but I am saying, understand that you are a unique and beautiful expression of the universe, that those things you consider flaws might be the things that someone else loves the most about you, that anything that is destructive or harmful about you is totally healable, and that there is nothing shameful about the essence of you.

Practicing vulnerability is just that, a practice. Avoidance is so indoctrinated into us as the way we should be; that not feeling = strength, that simply being yourself is a forever process of unpacking, unlearning, and relearning how to be committed to and to be earnest (lol) about being earnest.

See children as your teacher. Young children are completely oblivious to self-consciousness. If they want to walk around with their arms tucked in their sleeves, pretending to be a t-rex, they’ll just do it, judgmental stares be damned. If they want to do a lil dance while walking down the sidewalk, they will get their groove on!! If they are feeling upset with a friend, they’ll tell them—and the friend might cry about it or express their upset feelings back, but they definitely won’t reply “ew. cringe.”

We are sooooo judgmental. We are soooo guarded. Loosen up, my friends. Allow yourself to be a little messy, a little flawed. Make an effort to communicate clearly. When someone hurts your feelings, tell them. If someone expresses that you hurt theirs, receive it. Wear what you’ve always wanted to but were too afraid of what other people would say. Dance like no one’s watching, live laugh, and motherfucking love!!!!

But really.

You are so much more beautiful and more complicated and more human and more divine and you realize. Allow yourself to be. Life is so much more lonely when no one knows the full, real, flawed, gorgeous you. If it’s only one person, one friend, one family member, even if it’s just on the internet, let them in. Let them see. Feel how much more loved that makes you feel. Feel how much more fully that fills your cup. Witness the totality of someone else. Do so without judgment, without projection, without the discomfort of second-hand embarrassment.

The idea that we should make ourselves smaller to fall in line with the status quo is just a construct, just a tool to make us more efficient workers. Fuck that. Break free.

Heavily traumatized, sarcasm and avoidance are the way we are encouraged to move through the world. Capitalism doesn't allow time for vulnerability and processing the depths of our emotions, so we cope by walling up our softest parts. Fear of rejection keeps our societal masks in place. What if we all agreed to let our guards down? What is the importance of being earnest? Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 56 : CaNcEL CuLtUrE

Public shaming is not new; think public executions, throwing petty criminals in the stockades, witch trials. People have always LOVED the drama. Why else would Reality TV exist?

Father of some of our most embarrassing psychological theories Sigmund Freud coined the term “schadenfreude,” which means taking pleasure in watching someone else suffer. I think this is what possesses so many of us to gleefully participate in what antiquated shock jocks and Chrissy Teigan call “Cancel Culture.”

In the glory (and also sometimes really cringe) days of tumblr dot com, I was consuming information about social injustice like a black hole. I could not get enough. We were critiquing, everything, hunny!!! And it felt good. It felt good to question everything that always felt wrong but no one would admit was wrong—it felt good to feel motivated to change the status quo, it felt good to have answers to the age-old question why is life so hard?. We were fighting the good fucking fight!!! I needed this. 20something and struggling financially, with my sexuality, my gender, my relationship with my body, seeing a major push back against police brutality, reading other people’s problem’s with capitalism, finding the words “patriarchy,” “white supremacy,” and seeing them discussed as now problems and not some monsters of the past, it changed me. It woke me up.

We were watching, for the first time in history, cis men and white people who abused their power, being forced to take responsibility. And that felt like healing. It absolutely was healing. This spun out into public call-outs of people being problematic in one way or another. Post a racist joke? That shit went viral and you would lose your job. Say something homophobic? Boom, life as you knew it was changed forever. DM an underage person with the intent to hit on them? Not today, J*mes Fr*nco!!! This was a cultural shift in the way we handled oppression in the macrocosm of society and the microcosm of interpersonal relationships. The marginalized finally had a voice—the internet was our loudspeaker. It was beautiful.

I have this theory that healing happens on a pendulum, and that it often has to swing between extremes in order to find balance. I think we—or maybe I should just speak for myself—I swung a little too far. I really enjoyed watching people I perceived as powerful fall from grace. I really enjoyed knowing a fucking Karen was losing everything. I really enjoyed occasionally making a fellow white woman cry by simply explaining how racist she was being. I do not regret these moments, but I have also come to love living in the discomfort of realizing I still have a lot to learn and doing the never-ending work to learn it. I have started to wonder if some people haven’t been denied the opportunity to fall in love with being wrong and learning to know better and then begin doing better, by living in fear of saying something wrong and being Next™.

I started to notice something that made me pause, take a step back, and reconsider this way of operating. I started to see public shaming done by people with more capitalist and opportunistic motives used as a weapon to take down people they considered competition. This happened to a former friend and mentor of mine and it almost ruined her career—she then turned around and used that same tactic on me, which gave me an even more personal experience with the shadow side of industry-disguised-as-community. Its effective. It works.

The mob mentality is full-proof in the sense that—once the snowball starts rolling downhill, no one wants to jump in front of it, lest they be run over too. The Cancel is contagious. Defend someone in the harsh spotlight, and it’ll shine on you too. I always start to feel doubtful of anything that insists it shouldn’t be questioned. If it can’t stand up to a little scrutiny… maybe the foundation isn’t really that strong. I mean, look at the faith of dogmatic religious people.

Once I started studying the philosophy of abolition and restorative justice—how in order to move away from a punitive society, we have to provide more resources to people and stop operating from a space of scarcity—I realized the punitive nature of what we were calling social justice. I began to change my mind and move differently. Abolition requires prevention of suffering in the first place; a complete overhaul of how society runs. Abolition requires infrastructure. Basically, it’s the abolition of global capitalism. This is why the ruling class won’t have it.

I think the Big Goals of being a leftist eventually bring on the disappointing realization that being on the left means that we might never see the change we are fighting for. This is extremely disheartening. I think nit-picking our comrades can be a lot more satisfying and rooted in instant gratification than the grueling and lifelong work of taking direct action in our real-life, nonvirtual or real virtual, non social media witch hunt communities. I think the ego loves feeling like the smartest person on the internet. I think “well actually” can feel really good and can very easily cloak itself in "education” when it might actually just be superiority. I think “google it” culture has linked up with “you don’t owe anyone anything” culture has linked up with “ghost people who don’t live up to your unspoken expectations” has linked up with the capitalist program of perfection to have one big orgy called Disposability Culture.

If you are still reading, let me clarify. If you are marginalized and someone who is in a position of holding privilege over you is demanding you educate them, that burden should not fall on you. That burden should fall on your allies. If someone is a fucking shitbag and they get called out for being a shitbag, that is absolutely their fault. If someone is toxic, abusive, or straight-up unwilling to learn, but demanding interaction with you, fucking block a lil bitch. Otherwise, maybe what we really need is some good old-fashioned (new fangled???) conflict resolution. A conversation. An understanding that it isn’t about being perfect, it’s about never stopping trying, never stopping learning, never stopping fighting against the real enemy—the real, systemic oppressor. If we turned all this energy, all this vitriol, all this doxxing, all this resentment, all this schadenfreude on Them, we might actually get something done.

"Cancel culture" is what bigoted Fox News anchors, problematic starlets, and washed-up comedians call taking accountability--buuut more and more people are experiencing public shaming and the use of internet call-outs as a power play amongst people who may not have entirely altruistic motives. When does activism turn into bullying? Have we lost sight of the goal? Is "perfect" even attainable? Is there a way to foster communication and accountability without adding shame to the situation? It may be time to have this conversation, after all, you could be next. Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 55 : ThE GeNeRaTiOn WaRs

Get off my lawn is a right of passage.

With age, you can’t help but notice the ignorance of youth, and (hopefully) that helps you understand how ignorant you are in this moment compared to all that you will come to understand in 5, 10, 20 years (God willing) and that (again, hopefully) will also give you compassion to those with less lived experience in this fucking hellscape we call ReALiTy.

Capitalism operates under the weapons of scarcity and competition, which begets separation. In a better, more altruistic system—one that supported us, that worked for us, that supported us in serving one another, we would have community. Community says you are not less valuable because of your youth or your abundance of years of lived life, we are not in competition. One of us does not have to be wrong for the other to be right.

The media creating an ultimately false and superficial beef between generations who could be learning from one another... ? hmm almost like it's on purpose. Youth is the market demographic deemed "tastemakers" but who are really the easiest and most beneficial to manipulate (expendable income, free time, new to neuro maturity/critical thought) and that's why Gen Z is "cool" and Milennials are no longer. It was once us and, believe it or not, it was once the Boomers in charge of what was cool. We all get old, let's not repeat our for-bearers mistakes and write off a younger generation that has a lot to offer because we can't let go of our "cultural relevance"/being the “Bad Boys” of Earth. There's a new kid on the block, and they are snarkier, more sardonic, more academic, and screen-addicted than we were. They got this. Plus, you can take comfort in knowing, they will one day be old and "irrelevant" too.

Get off my lawn IS a right of passage, as is aging out of the role of deciding what's "cool", but that doesn't mean we all have to be assholes about it. Is there a way to transcend DUN DUN DUUUUN the generation wars? Could the powers-that-be possibly be gaining something from the division, the competition, the orchestrated opposition of people based on age? Let's unpack that.

Gotta Keep ‘em Overstimulated

Tuesday, while working on some demos (first drafts) for my next record I was having so much fun I got overstimulated. Overstimulation, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, sensory input gets to be too much and it causes a kind of physical, emotional, mental, spiritual overwhelm. Usually, for me, this happens in crowds, if the lighting is too loud or a smell is weird, when I’m wearing uncomfortable clothing, and/or when I’m hungry, tired, sick or in pain. I stop speaking, I feel like I’m having a panic attack, I fight the impulse to RUN AWAY from wherever I am and crouch in a small space in a kind of little ball shape. Sometimes I get the urge to hit, though I haven’t done that since childhood. Well, ok, that’s not true—one time I did beat up a box of Pop Tarts cuz it fell on my foot when I was tired and another time, after a particularly draining day of taking care of 24 crying infants and their extra ass parents, my truck door kept falling closed on me while I was collecting my stuff to go inside my apartment and I 100% started kicking the shit out of that thing like I was Tony Soprano and it owed me money—I only stopped because I noticed a neighbor watching me and saw how Not OK I looked through the lens of the horror on their face. These more physical meltdowns usually only happen when I’m alone.

The one that gets me into trouble when I’m with company is that I lose the ability to speak, my mind goes totally blank, I lose all sense of direction, and I cannot make a single decision. Obviously, this can be pretty annoying from an outside persepctive. It seems like I’m angry, being passive aggressive, or like I’m not having a good time, and in many ways, I am not having a good time. In some cases the sensory overload is worth it. Mostly, though, my favorite way to be in a crown is just outside of it, sitting or stretching, with my eyes closed, listening to the low-humming vibration of many different conversations occurring at once, without any expectation that I should participate. But that’s not really acceptable to the average neurotypical population is it?

Overstimulation because I’m having too much fun is whole different level of “fuck you” from the universe. I love making art. I looooooove making art. I love making art so much it is a hyperfixation of mine. I can talk about it until my voice goes hoarse. I have enough ideas in my head for three lifetimes. I am always, chronically, compulsively creating; whether it’s accidentally choreographing a dance routine when I just meant to vibe around the house, writing writing writing all the time, thinking about/planning/rehearsing my podcast, improvising silly little songs as I move through my days, or sitting down to make an album, I pretty much never stop. I love it. I LOVE it. And I have always been this way.

Sometimes, though, when I get really fuckin stoked on how the making process is going, things turn from fun to scary. My heart starts racing, I get hot and sweaty, I get giddy to the point of feeling manic, my mind starts moving 3-20 times faster than my body but my body tries it’s lil hardest to keep up. I get a migraine, I get nauseous. I have to stop. Sometimes stimming helps—flapping my hands, bouncing my leg, pulling on my hair, rubbing my scalp and face REALLY hard, chewing on something bouncy, going for a really fast walk, moving my body, hypersupercleaning the house. Sometimes I just need to curl up in the dark under the blankets with my eyes closed and call it a day. Sometimes being squeezed by my partner three times in a row helps. This particular day it was finally a cold shower that calmed me down.

I haven’t tried to work on the album again and it is now Friday. I don’t like the feeling of overstimulation. It makes me feel uncomfortable, like my energy is too big for my body. I get claustrophobic in here. Like a pair of pants that don’t really fit digging into my belly, I wanna rip it off!!! But that’s ok.

My process and relationship to linear time is different because of my autism, and that is something I have come to love. I cannot be forced to go faster than I am going. I cannot be forced to be different than I am. And I cannot be expected to do anything when the time isn’t right because I simply won’t. These are boundaries. I work them daily with the capitalist cop in my head. And I am freer for it.

Becoming overstimulated for joy does feel a bit like a cosmic joke, buuUUuuuut it’s also pretty rad because to experience that level of happiness, excitement, fulfillment and concentration feels really special to me. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Walk On Podcast Episode 54 : The Dharma of Being Wrong

Being wrong is one of my favorite feelings. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a saint, being right is also one of my favorite feelings. I looooooove being right. When someone tells me I was right, I feel that familiar tingle in my toes that denotes the onset of pleasure. But, being right isn’t as healing as being wrong. Being wrong is a clear indication of learning, if you accept it. If you can sit in the icky feelings that come with an ego death for just a moment, if you can lean into the sensation, if you can surrender to the transformation, it can lead you to a new reality, a new way of being, the Greatest Version of You that is possible to achieve in this moment. It is the surest pathway to growth.

Taking responsibility is not the same thing as shame. You can admit you were wrong without feeling shame, it just takes practice. Being humble is as close to being Holy as you can get. “It is the wise man who can admit that he knows nothing.” This takes self compassion and forgiveness, which are practices, not destinations.

Being wrong is a tool-the sculptors hands smoothing the clay. Being wrong is the friction that is ever perfecting you, you gorgeous work in progress!! Being wrong is The Work, is the Dharma, is the process, is the healing. Go forth and be wrong, my friend!!!

Being wrong is a gift, because it means you know more in this moment than you did before--so why do we resist the discomfort of it so hard? In this week’s Walk On Podcast, we discuss how to see the upside of being wrong; how it simply means you're growing, which is the most important Work we can do in this life. Let yourself be wrong, you might learn something. Listen here.

The Grief of Growth

Death-Rebirth-Death

This is the way it is. Surrendering to the process is key to releasing oneself from the suffering of life. Def easier said than done, but needs doing anyway.

I am someone who has learned to enjoy a good goodbye. I like to walk away before things get bitter and resentful. I pick up red flags and hold onto them, when I’ve gathered enough, I see myself out. I used to resist the letting go, out of fear, out of conflict avoidance, out of not wanting to be disliked. I don’t really entertain worries like that anymore. It doesn’t matter if you stay or walk away, an abusive person holds contempt for you. I’d rather be hated and safe.

Lately I’ve been thinking about this Grief of Growth in the context of my art. I’m working on an album—which I am tentative about talking about, because I’ve become one of those insufferable move in silence people—its an album I have been wanting to make for, like, 7 years. It’s taken so long because I was very poor and I didn’t have any resource. Every time I would get access to a resource, it would quickly-but-not-quickly-enough-for-me-not-to-waste-a-bunch-of-time fall through. I cried, a lot.

Once, a couple years ago, I sat on the steps of the Grand Army Plaza Public Library and sobbed, audible, snotty, heaving sobs, after getting kicked out of their recording studio for singing to loud. The journey of a struggling artist is full of heartbreak.

I would worry that, if this album took too too long to make, that I would outgrow the material and all that great material would go to waste. And, well, tbqh with you, dear reader, like so many moments in my life, my worst fears absotutely came true.

As I sat down yesterday to record the idk 5th??? 6th??? draft of a cute love song I wrote about my married ex-boyfriend’s appreciation of my fat body (I wrote it 5 years ago lol), I just… couldn’t get my dick hard about it. I tried different arrangements, different styles of singing, different layers of things and nothing felt right.

Last night, while talking it over with my partner, I realized, I didn’t resonate with it anymore because it just doesn’t resonate period. To put out art where I am not a full blown “man-hating, angry as fuck, agenda of rage, bitter dyke” just doesn’t feel honest.

forum.dvdtalk.com (I’m the one on the bottom)

I don’t hate men, ya’ll. That’s a quote from the lesbophobic Kevin Smith film Chasing Amy, which, because I’ve always watched it from Alyssa’s perspective (the lesbian who briefly falls in love with Ben Affleck, who CANNOT, I repeat, CANNOT handle it (fragile masculinity is a mother fucker)) its a movie I’ve watched and enjoyed at least 20 times. It’s just that, as a late bloomer and reformed straight bitch, reformed cis girl, reformed bisexual, I feel I have reached my final form of I’m-Never-Fucking-A-Cis-Man-Again.

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I just can’t have people vibing out to my music and having even a doubt in their mind that I am a card-carrying, home depot hanging, strap wielding, obsessed with my dog, uhaul driving, fist-me-baby dykeasaurus rex.

This means I am going to leave a lot of art behind. There is some grief in that. There is grief in realizing I’m so different than I used to be. There is grief in so many songs and poems going unreleased/unpublished, so many “best I gots” of my past becoming just stepping stones to my Present as an artist. There is grief in a little bit of ‘back to the drawing board,’ too.

But also the feeling of growing is my favorite thing. Seeing proof of my self-actualization, realizing old versions of me could never contain my current vastness, seeing that I am also, simply, a better artist now, because I know myself better and am able to be more authentic… its all a blessing.

TLDR; don’t quit because you haven’t “made it” by 30, the best is yet to come. And, sometimes, in retrospect, you look back and think “thank GOD I didn’t get what I wanted.”

And you begin again.

Listen to my first EP here

Walk On Podcast Episode 53 : The Silver Lining of Chronic Illness

It started with migraines. Maddening pain over my right eye that would cause light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, nausea and vomiting—sometimes I would pass out. This seemed caused by allergies, stress, over-heating, low blood sugar, and hormones. When they started I got an MRI and put on medication that made me too drowsy for school. I learned to cope by stopping whatever I was doing and laying down in the dark, this made it hard to get through a whole day at school, a vacation, a family function, a shift at work. I started popping Excedrin which began an over-a-decade long dependence on the caffeinated pain killer.

It also started with my period. Days spent in the fetal position crying, groaning, unable to think of or feel anything but the searing pain in my stomach, my back, my thighs, my knees. Everyone told me that a period wasn’t an excuse, so I powered through, somehow, thinking that everyone felt this way. But the thing was, I knew I was no punk ass when it came to pain. I used to laugh at getting spankings. I once played a field hockey game with a chipped tooth and a mouthguard full of blood. I once toured the country dancing on a broken ankle every night. Hyposensitive to pain, I have often hurt myself and barely even noticed. I wasn’t being dramatic, I was being tortured from the inside out.

Then came the body aches. The fatigue. The realization that, thanks to a handful of bad car accidents, the trauma of getting close-lined WWE style by a pull-up bar in sixth grade, my two front teeth forced up into my sinus cavities, and over 10 years of surgeries, PLUS the bracing for impact my body got so used to from being physically, emotionally, verbally, and sexually abused in my childhood, my body had no idea how to relax. Throughout my 20s the pain escalated every day to the point where being at the bottom of a staircase, a trip to grocery store, cooking dinner, doing my laundry would make me feel a deep sense of hopelessness about continuing to live.

If this is always how it’s going to be I don’t think I can do it.

Working was difficult. Making art was difficult. Sleeping was difficult, being awake was difficult. I retreated to hot baths which soothed my joints and muscles and angry uterus, but increasingly caused migraines. Any time I got sick with anything, it would cause a flare up. Any time I worked a double shift, it would cause a flare up. Any time I got stressed out, it would cause a flare up. Any time I got my period, it would cause a flare up. I was in a perpetual state of flared up.

I spent my 30th birthday rocking back and forth, sobbing, as it felt like every joint in my body was on fire, tensing up against an invisible enemy, out of my control.

I have had to quit dancing/stripping, working out, riding dick, anything but gentle yoga practices, food service work, even playing guitar for long periods of time started to hurt. This brought on a level of grief I couldn’t have anticipated. During this time in my life I didn’t have health insurance, so weed was my only solace, being blazed out of my mind and a handful of Tylenol my only medication.

I have missed out on opportunities, been flaky as fuck, experienced judgment and ridicule, had people take my unpredictable health extremely and unnecessarily personally, found little-to-no-help from doctors, and had to put my dreams and ambitions on the back burner so many times at this point that I sometimes fear, now that I’m able to work on my art more consistently, I may be too old. I have been achingly, depressingly, almost unbearably lonely in moments, too. It turns out being constantly in pain doesn’t make you much fun to be around.

I withdrew. I rested. I found identity outside of work, capitalism, being consumed. I learned to meditate, to rest, to work, to cum in comfort. I learned to relish rest and not spend my resting time yelling at myself for not working or cleaning or working out or being social. I learned isolation is better than subjugation. I learned my value lies in who I am in the world, in my ability to be present with a sunrise, with a birdsong, with the breath in my lungs. I learned gratitude for each millisecond I get to experience without pain. I learned I needed to lay boundaries in every area of my life, even within my own mind. I need as little stress as possible, I need gentleness and I let myself leave anything that isn’t that behind without guilt.

Since covid and the bitter-sweet gift of being on unemployment, I have had more pain free days than I’ve ever had in my life. I have set up ways to work that allow me to do so from bed, should I need to. I live in a supportive, peaceful, quiet, as-stress-free-as-possible loving home, where I am able to process my trauma and treat my pain with rest without scrutiny or gaslighting. I am learning to love the chrysalis, the protection, the unchangeable reality of my chronic illnesses. This is the most profound lesson in surrender I have yet to experience. I am at peace.

Finding the label "chronically ill" like so many of my other coming home labels came with a sense of relief, a sense of explanation, a sense of forgiveness and self-compassion, but also a lot of loss, a lot of anger, frustration, depression, anxiety, and resentment at my lack of resources, at my relentlessly difficult life, at my failing body, and at the systems that make it so hard for me to survive, let alone thrive. But then came the sacred art of rest, an ever deepening relationship to myself, a very natural weeding out of people who can't muster empathy, a kind of freedom. Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 52 : The Beauty of Neurodivergence

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I’m pretty sure everyone I’ve ever loved has been neurodivergent. I am drawn towards brilliance and non-conformity, and people who fidget a lot. I find complexity and multitudinousness and a life lived free from social constructs fascinating. And, more importantly, I don’t feel as far away, as misunderstood, as obviously inhuman as when I am around more neurotypical folks.

I say more neurotypical and not just neurotypical, because I understand that if something occurs on a spectrum, that means there are infinite ways to be that thing. That means that more people fall on that spectrum than don’t, statistically speaking. This is how I have come to the conclusion that the construct, the idea, the standard of “neurotypical” is yet another impossible-to-be perfectionism-upholding weapon of the white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy. This is why you see soooo many people relating to content about neurodiveristy and seeking out official diagnoses and treatments for struggles they never had a word for, before.

This isn’t some sPeCiaL-sNoWfLaKe agenda to feel special. Actually, it kind of is a special snowflake situation, in the sense that, like gender, like sexuality, like perception in general, like literal snowflakes, each person is a unique expression of humanity with a totally personal relationship to experiencing life???? And none of us can know what the color purple is to anyone else unless we hear each other out??? And receive each other’s stories without the projections and expectations of our own?? Open-hearted?? Open-minded?? Willing to learn??

When we function under capitalism, there is a necessary-to-the-system scarcity and competition that keeps us at each other’s throats. Divide-and-conquer is a technique used in all abuse dynamics. We continue upholding unmeetable expectations by enforcing them on one another and we can choose to stop at any time.

Moving through life in a neurotypically-designed society can feel, to the neurodivergent, like we have our experience set to hard mode. Every system, process, requirement elicits feelings of being a burden, being a failure, and lots of unnecessary struggle and suffering. Take away the expectations and booby traps of the white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy, though, and what we find is the utter awe-inspiring, world-changing, outside-the-box beauty of neurodiversity. Let's co-create from this place. Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 51 : On the Spectrum!!

I would sit on my pretty Barbie sheets, snot running down my face, eyes puffy red, gasping for air, mid melt-down, while my mother stood over me screaming. It wasn’t that I was trying to be difficult, it’s that the dress clothes I was supposed to wear made me feel like I was dying. It wasn’t that I was too lazy to go into the grocery store, or that I was trying to be mean/grumpy/a little fucking brat/disrespectful, it’s that the variance in temperatures, the loud buzz of the florescent lights, the smells, the other people, the incessant beeping, made it hard to be sweet. It wasn’t that I was ungrateful for vacations or parties or romantic evenings, it’s that I didn’t realize I wasn’t smiling. It’s not that I blatantly ignore a text, bail on plans, or get lost on the way to functions, out of some personal grudge or malice, or malleable character flaw, I am simply autistic.

I sat down at a piano the first time in a church sitting next to my father, who only lives in a couple of my memories. I loved the sensation that the keys made—the delightful little thump of the hammer striking the strings. This began my lifelong love affair with the sensory experience of making music. Any time I sat down with an instrument, I would obsess over teaching myself how to play it. I started writing and composing, printing out my lyric sheets in rainbow comic sans, with underscores to mark the length of notes.

I was hyperlexic; meaning, I just knew how to read. Beginning at age 4 (that I can remember) I started reading books on my own and didn’t ever stop. I read like I breathe, constantly, and almost automatically—the words just fill my head with images and I lose all sense of here and now. I love it. I started writing, too. I made a little newsletter in my diary, I created elaborate worlds for my friends and I to play pretend.

My inner world is so vast that I can be happy sitting in a room alone, just thinking. I can dissociate so easily that, in my childhood, when something horrible or even just boring was happening, I could glaze my eyes over and disappear, with no memory of what happened IRL, but a vivid one of whatever mind path I was traveling down. This was a seed that would bloom into a deeply healing and reality-bending transcendental meditation practice.

I stim by dancing, I can pick up choreography after seeing it once. I started choreographing whole routines when I was 8. I stim by singing, I practice constantly, and have for at least 31 years. I stim by walking, I’ve put in miles, hunny!! I stim by swimming. I stim by rubbing my cuticles raw and bloody. I stim by chewing on the sides of my cheeks, playing with my bottom lip, bouncing my leg.

I mask and mask well. Mostly because I never had a word for what was “wrong” with me, so I just pretended I was normal, wishing my alien family would beam me up and save me from this confusing hellscape. People always complimented me on my ability to be very social, while remaining hospitable to those who weren’t as good at it, and without feeling the gravity of what I was saying, I would reply, “I’m a really good actor.”

I burn out. I shut down. I hibernate. I go quiet. I bundle up. I watch the same 3 things I’ve watched 1o0 times, because knowing what line comes next makes me feel safe. I lose friends, I lose jobs, I lose opportunities, I let bridges burn, too tired to argue, I recharge, I try again.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

I am autistic. I did not have a word for my feelings of "different" until I was 27 years old. This has been a constant source of suffering, judgment, oppression, rejection, and struggle for me. It has also been my biggest blessing. My autism makes me who I am, and I wouldn't change a thing about it. Hear my experience with the light and the shadow, the wins and the losses, hear how this optimizes me for non-conformity, creativity, and social justice. Let this inspire you to release yourself and others from the expectations of the white supremacist-capitalist-cisheteropatriarchy. May we all find the peace of just being.

Listen here.