Walk On Podcast Episode 74 : Fake Friends

Fake friends are like a puncture wound. Remove the screwdriver from your thigh and you might cause more damage—but leave it in and that shit’s never gonna heal. Also, you probably need professional help to really recover cuz, baby, that shit is rough.

Toxic friendships are one of those universal situations that most people experience at one time or another in their lives. They are so common in people who are assigned and socialized “female” that it has become a stereotype for women to not like their “friends” at all. When something is so pervasive that it starts to feel like a naturally occurring phenomenon, it feels impossible to unpack, to correct, and to heal.

Toxic people all seem to read from the same playbook. Things start off heavy on the flattery, fast with the commitment, affection, near constant communication, they quickly become an overwhelming presence. Then comes withdrawal which lays the groundwork for a trauma bond—love-bombing combined with discarding, bread-crumbing, intermittent abandonment, hoovering, gossip, triangulation, gaslighting. It all becomes a delicate dance designed to keep a victim addicted to the approval, the attention, the conditional affection of this seemingly all-powerful puppet master.

Think of Regina George from the 2004 Tina Fey classic Mean Girls. Regina doesn’t have a single genuine connection throughout the entire film. She has minions. She has victims. She has sources of what is called “narcissistic supply”—ranked hierarchically based on who gives her the most valuable energy based on things like social status, loyalty, attention, love, or even sex (in the case of her boyfriend and side-piece). She is a tyrant who rules with an iron fist. She is more feared than liked, but either way it leads to a kind of celebrity status in her school and in her every day life. Even her parents seem to fear her. Being close to her offers a kind of popularity by osmosis, but like Icarus and the sun, get too close to Regina, and you’re probably going to get burned. Anyone who cares about her is subject to brutal discard, ridicule, and gossip. She doesn’t seem capable of vulnerability, loyalty, or love. We come to learn she is insecure, lonely, and, deep down, quite sad.

Have you ever had a friend like that? Obviously Regina George is beefed up and exaggerated for entertainment purposes, but I have certainly known my fair share of toxic friends that shared many of her traits and most people who have dealt with complex-ptsd fueled codependency can probably say the same.

When you grow up in an abusive, demanding, withholding household as a child, you never learn what a healthy relationship looks like. It takes a long time and a lot of conscious work to untangle healthy love from toxic love. This untangling often comes at the price of experiencing unhealthy relationships enough times that you learn what red flags to watch out for—but there is some re-wounding that happens, unfortunately. CPTSD can cause us to ignore red flags that a healthier person would know to steer clear of.

I remember in some of my most toxic relationships, I felt really special. I felt like the ‘mean girl’ whisperer. I was the only person who could get close to these tough, harsh, forked-tongued, chaotic women with emotional walls of steel. I was the exception to the rule. I was the one who was safe from their ridicule, their bullying, I was the only person they really liked and respected. Until I realized I wasn’t.

You see, toxic people try it with everyone. Anyone who has boundaries, who is turned off by their abrasiveness, who doesn’t fall for their flattery, who sees through the persona and finds them disingenuous is deemed unfit for pursuit. They are looking for someone who is attracted to the power they possess, someone who feels the need to earn their place beside them, someone who feels unworthy of them, someone without boundaries, who is down to clown*.

* become totally enmeshed

A series of conscious or unconscious tests commences wherein-which maybe they throw you a backhanded compliment and see what you do with it. Maybe they play a game where they abandon you to see how you respond (do you ““ReSpEcT their need for space”” or do you indulge them and chase them?). Either way they hold your actions over your head for future control. “Remember when you didn’t respect my space?!” Orrr “How could you not fight for me?!” Maybe they demand you choose them over an opportunity or another friendship or relationship or even your own damn well being. The harder you work to keep them, the more fit you are to be their Gretchen Wieners friend.

At my most codependent, I found myself really going to bat for these Fake Friends (I had many over the course of my teens and 20’s). They would try to steal my partners, I would sweep it under the rug. They would belittle my achievements, I would take that to mean my achievements weren’t that great and I would set out to do better. They would make fun of my weight, I would eat less. They would offend everyone we knew, I would do damage control or defend them. They would start drama, I would finish it. I was like Olivia Pope to these egregious fucking assholes— constantly cleaning up their messes. (I literally once cleaned up a girl’s apartment she had moved out of after she straight-up bailed for better plans (I had never lived there!!!!!) while one of her friends/roommates stood over me (not helping) while making fun of me for being a professional maid at the time “the way you’re bent over scrubbing that tub* reminded me you do this for a living!” (Please don’t judge me, baby needed therapy BAD!!!!)

*the tub was disgusting

I look back and my heart breaks for younger me, especially in the moments of deep pain that lead to clarity. Like all the times a mutual friend would come to me to tell me something horrible my ‘best friend’ had said about me. Or, long after the friendship was over, all the good, kind people who I got close to who told me they never gave me a chance because of the company I kept. Or all the smear campaigns that were run on me where nothing I ever said in confidence, in the trust of the sanctuary of that friendship, was ever held sacred—not my trauma, not my fears, not even my skills or talents, not my insecurities, not my secrets. All of it was fair game and laid bare for anyone who would listen. Boy, howdy, the lies that were told on me which ruined my life as a knew it in those moments!! I had careers destroyed, relationships destroyed. That’s not even to mention the deep abandonment of all the times I would really need my friend to step-up for me in some small measure of the ways that I had for them time and again and was rejected or left hanging. The eye rolls when I was upset, the constant scrutiny and criticism, the harsh vibe they projected out that I was annoying and a burden. The slow, simmering resentment if I happened to garner some attention or do something well. The passive aggressive silent treatment for days or weeks or months if, unbeknownst to me, I stepped out of line. The guilt trips, the betrayals, the emotional turmoil. The constant making fun of me. The hours of listening to them talk about the same asinine bullshit hour upon hour and, when it was my turn to talk, the absolute lack of interest. The drama!!!!

One day, it started to dawn on me that, to quote Tyler Perry, “I could do bad all by myself.” With no energy and a strong desire for no one to want anything from me, I withdrew. I faced my subconscious fear of being alone by letting myself be alone. In that time of hibernation, I considered, for the first time ever, what I actually wanted and needed in a friendship. I integrated the lessons I’d learned about that I didn’t want. I found my boundaries and I began laying them. I started taking it slow and getting to know people before I enmeshed with them. I stopped enmeshing all together. I walked away from anyone who clearly meant me harm. I blocked, deleted, unfriended, unfollowed. I welcomed in reciprocal, healthy love of all kinds. I had less friends, but the ones I had were of the highest caliber—honest, autonomous, loving people who had no ulterior motive but to love and be loved by me. It changed everything.

You deserve love. You deserve reciprocity. You deserve respect. You deserve safety. You deserve it all. Don’t sell yourself short. Listen here // watch here.

Happy healing.

#healing #selfhealers #fakefriends #toxicrelationships #toxicfriendships #meangirls #reginageorge #healing #codependency #fightflightfreezefawn #trauma #traumasurvivor #fromsurvivingtothriving #writer #traumawriter #healingblog #spiritualityblog #spiritualblogger #advice #adviceblog #howtohealyourself #walkingaway #walkonpodcast #podcastblog #selflove #selfhelp #selfcare #selfcompassion #boundaries #redflags #complexcptsd #childhoodtrauma

Walk On Podcast Episode 73 : 2022 : Accepting Where We Are

Looking around at the state of the world, listening to the activists fighting for the future, for the survival of the most vulnerable in the present—seeing the parallels in the handling of covid (or the refusal to handle, more accurately) by the ruling class and the ever-increasing presence of the fallout of climate change has inspired me to really consider the pervasiveness of denial.

I have this theory that everything stems from generational trauma, which stems from systemic oppression from capitalism (or the institutions of the past that weren’t called that, but resembled the class-race-gender-sexuality-and-ability-based discriminatory system we live under today). Scarcity, struggle, oppression, suppression, the real trickle-down economics that manifests in interpersonal abuse—a feeling of desperation in the need for some control in some area of one’s life. Think about it. Patriarchy has given men power over women but insists that men be breadwinners at any cost. Historically in war times, the men went away and came home traumatized. Though they have held more systemic power than women, working-class men still suffer from the decisions made for them by ruling-class men. Race and sexuality contribute to being squished harder and up against more by the systems-that-be. That is not even to mention the patriarchally imposed rule/belief/misconception that real men don’t have feelings, which leads to—you guessed it—denial. If we don’t feel our feelings, they burst out in unexpected and inappropriate ways. Commence self-medication. Commence tyrannical control over one’s household and family. Commence emotional avoidance and unavailability. We’re just talking in binary and heterosexual terms here for simplicity of the discussion at hand. Nuclear family bliss*

*hell lol

Mothers not getting their emotional needs met in their marital lives, having lived through their own parents’ manifestations of this model in their childhoods, did what they saw done. They enmeshed and abused their children, exerted control where they could. How did the children cope? Avoidance, dissociation, running away, eating disorders, acting out, bullying one another, etc etc etc. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Whenever a member of the family stepped out from the cycle, realized something was wrong and had the absolute audacity to tell the truth and heal, what happened? They were gaslit, smeared, discouraged, ostracized, shamed.

If we take this cookie-cutter experience and blow it up to the macrocosmic and look at society, the model is very much the same. The government does something undeniably evil, barely justified by some kind of propaganda-peddled lie, paints anyone who disagrees with the choice being forced on them as crazy or unintelligent or weak, and the populace splits into opposing ideological factions drowning each other in the hopes that they will be able to attain or maintain some kind of power-over (with the most marginalized just trying to survive), all while the people with the real power do whatever the fuck they want.

Much of the working class is in denial that the ruling class is abusing them. Scroll through any comments section and you will see people with no capital, no real chance of ever even coming close to ruling class status, defending billionaires, defending government choices made from the philosophy of property-over-people. Denial. People who vote for things like fracking and against climate-conscious legislation are literally called climate deniers. Denial. The fact that we are in the age of perpetual pandemics, climate collapse, and the worldwide power of the institution of America is very clearly hanging on by a thread and yet no policies reflect these realities? Denial. The fact that most of the country is displeased with the leadership that is supposed to represent us and yet they tell us that if we aren’t happy we should just vote about it, even though they give us no good options to choose from? Denial. Sending children and teachers and workers into life-threatening working and learning environments because “the economy” when trillions of dollars are spent on the military and billionaires don’t pay the appropriate amount in taxes? Denial. People thinking their weddings or vacations or girls’ nights or dinners in a restaurant or ability to get away from their kids which they chose to bring into the world is more important than collective safety? Denial and selfishness. But it all stems back to that quest for some kind of control in one’s life. Or at least the illusion of it.

Subconsciously, I think there is an understanding that on the other side of denial is a tidal wave of feeling. Bargaining, Anger, Depression—a whole ass fuck ton of unfelt, repressed, avoided baggage that hasn’t been properly dealt with. This is understandably scary and understandably overwhelming. But ignoring the problem has done nothing for us—except to cause us to hurt others the way we’ve been hurt, to perpetuate the cycles of generational (and systemic) trauma.

Denial is the first stage of grief and some people stay there forever--suspended in animation, never being able to see past their own pain, acting out of that wounded space, all while having no idea where it's all stemming from. As individuals, as family units, as communities, as a country, and as a species, we have been suffering from collective denial about the state of things. Maybe it's time to start accepting where we are. The only way out is through. Listen here.

#blog #blogger #mentalhealth #mentalhealthblog #mentalhealthblogger #toxicfamily #generationaltrauma #anticapitalist #leftist #activism #activismblog #advice #lifeadvice #thestagesofgrief #denial #acceptance #recovery #selflove #selfhelp #selfcare #selfcompassion #healing #selfhealers #love #collectivehealing #solidarity #workingclasssolidarity #classconsciousness #wakeup #woke #spirituality #spiritualawakening #communication #podcast #podcaster #mentalhealthpodcast #spiritualblog #spiritualityblogger

Walk On Podcast Episode 72 : The Airing of the Grievances (A Festivus Celebration)

taps mic

I got a lot of problems with you people!!! And now! You’re gonna hear about it!!!!

What a doozy this year has been. Jeff Bezos and that other bond villain went to space in giant flaming dick rockets, c*vid is still wreaking havoc on our lives, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, motorized scooters are terrorizing the streets of New York City, people are still claiming Taylor Swift is good?!

I don’t fucking know.

I’ve had it. I have literally started having chest pains because the daily fucking bullshit of existing with the consequences of living under late-stage capitalism, all while watching the g*vernment and it’s pick-me’s cling ever closer to their denial that all is not well has got me on a simmer. Maybe not a rolling boil. But I’m cooking, BABY!!

Trying to become a self-actualized entrepreneur/independent artist is tough. Everything costs money. I have anxiety and also am capable of looking around me and seeing that it hasn’t been safe to move about the world freely since January of 2020, so I am let’s just say less-than-excited about leaving my house to self-promote or play shows or sell my book or busk. And everything costs money. Maintaining a website and store, keeping my book in distribution, keeping my album streaming, heck, every time I sell a shirt I have to pay for it and get reimbursed by my print-on-demand people. I have thought about quitting so many times this past year. The only reason I haven’t is because the universe breadcrumbs me by giving me a little growth as a treat just as soon as I think I can’t take anymore.

Whenever I hear what’s being played on the radio, I get this overwhelming feeling that I’m 150 years old. Why is everyone barely singing these days? And what’s with the whisper mumbling? Is this Harry Styles, JBiebs, or Nick Jonas? Why has Drake made the exact same song 250,000 times and people still pay him to make more? Have you ever read Taylor Swift’s lyrics? Like, out loud, like a poem? It’s not good, lads. It’s not fucking good. Taylor Swift writes for Instagram captions for toxic exes who like to imagine everyone they’ve ever abused is still pining away for them even though said exes have long had them muted.

I recorded this episode before Omicron started stomping around the planet like Godzilla and wowee have things gotten worse in the last couple weeks. The numbers are as bad as they’ve ever been, except, now, the government is even more hands-off than it was last time. They’re offering even less help (re: none). Things are getting canceled and closed with no financial help to speak of. Everything seems up to personal discretion, and let’s face it, kids, if we’ve seen any proof of anything these past couple years, it’s that the majority of humans aren’t that interested in making good or safe choices. Student loan collections are back on, schools are never closing again, everyone is still being forced back into the office and for what???

Money.

Profits over people, baby.

Shit is bleak.

Any solidarity or community we had at the start of the panini press has all but faded thanks to that frog-in-a-slowly-boiling-pot phenomenon. We’re just used to it. We’re being systemically abused and lead to the slaughter by “““““““““public servants”””””””” with corporate interests who see the mass death, loss, grief, illness and trauma we’ve experienced as necessary risk. That’s easy to say when you’re in a money bubble, Scrooge McDuck.

I have no solutions. I’m just airing my grievances. I can “love and light” with the best of ‘em, but the reality is, if you aren’t mad, you aren’t paying attention.

Listen here.

Walk On Podcast Episode 71 : Jesus Fucking Christ!!

When I was doing research for this episode I found the phrase “activism the0logy” which mirrors the sentiment/mission statement buzzword that I follow, which is “sacred activism”. Apparently, there are Christian-specific activists following the plight-of-poverty-centered teachings of Jesus Fucking Christ. Thank God.

For me, my spirituality and politics are inherently entwined. The more I listened to experiences outside of my own, the more I unpacked the wounds within me and realized they could be traced back to systemic sources, the more awakened I became. Likewise, the more I connected with source consciousness, the more I listened to my intuition, the more in touch with All That Is I was, the more it brought me back to the awareness of the necessity of systemic change. How people can spiritually bypass human suffering is beyond me. A lack of empathy, an overabundance of privilege, an egoic clinging to power, I guess.

I have always loved the figure of Jesus. As a kid I loved the Christmas story, the barn, the manger, the star, the virgin birth, all that. I have always been drawn to any passionate, purpose-driven, world changer (Soujourner Truth, Dr. Maya Angelou, Malcolm X—and before I unpacked my indoctrination into colonialism Patrick Henry and TJ). Jesus was the first activist I loved. I loved hearing about him. How he fought for the underdog, how he loved the people no one else would love. I thought maybe he would love me, too, I felt like he did. Even when I was in my questioning/agnostic and eventually reactionary atheistic phase, Jesus still resonated with me.

Years later, while meditating, after spending several years connecting with what I call artistic ancestors and several months of experimentation with transcendental meditation and terrestrial higher dimensional beings, I got the call to connect with Jesus. I looked up from my yoga mat to see the sun flooding in through the window like it never had before, only interrupted by a shadow in the shape of a cross. I began researching him from a leftist point of view. I started wondering what he had actually believed. I started thinking of him more as a man than as the son of God.

Isn’t it cooler if he wasn’t anything special? Isn’t his conviction and impact more impressive if it came from a human man? I like my Jesus as a brown, Jewish revolutionary—inspired by the persecution of his ancestors. I like him angry at the imperialism of Rome, ready to risk his life to be a voice for change, a stepping stone for liberation. I like to think of him as a person, a dirty hippie, if you like, of deep, abiding integrity, that wouldn’t allow him to sit idly by while hypocrisy ran wild. Like Tupac before him, maybe he thought, “I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.”

I like to think he’d be furious at the Joel Osteens, the Ronald Reagans, the atm megachurches, the homophobic congregations, the religious parents who kick their kids out for being gay, the puritanical, capitalistic, corrupt conservative Christian right. I’d like to think he’d be flipping a table or two.

The historical and/or mythological figure of Jesus has been highly depoliticized by the Christian right. Why? Could it have something to do with the fact that their messiah's politics dramatically opposed their own? Would he be pleased with the direction his brand is going? Or was he a marginalized people-loving-anarchist who hated the kind of hypocrisy currently being pedaled as a means of control?

Listen here.

#jesus #anarchist #leftist #communism #anarchocommunism #healing #equality #spirituality #sacredactivism #christianity #christmas #waronchristmas #podcast #podcaster #spiritualpodcast #activismpodcast #podcastlife ##podcasthost #writer #writingcommunity #themeekshallinhereittheearth #lovethyneighbor #nonjudgment #detachment #unconditionallove #christconsciousness #activismtheology #hypocrisy #integrity #love #blog #blogger #spiritualblogger

Walk On Podcast Episode 70 : ThE wAr On ChRiStMaS

“Happy Holidays!”

You say it to your neighbor, full of holiday spirit, trying to spread a lil’ cheer. “MeRRrY ChRiStMaS!!” he sneers like Mr. Hyde. What the fuck was that about? you ask yourself as you continue about your day. And he grumbles like Yosemite Sam into the cold, shoulders up ‘round his ears, which do actually appear to be emitting steam.

I hate to break this to you, but you may have just unwittingly engaged in The War on Christmas.

“But!! But!! No arms were drawn, no harsh words exchanged, I didn’t even mean any harm!!” you contest. It doesn’t matter. Your certificate of induction into the PC mafia will be emailed to one of your free-trial burner email accounts in 24-48 hours. Welcome to the dark side.

White Conservative Christians, especially those with McAllister mansions, are not marginalized in the slightest. Maybe that makes them feel a little left out. Maybe nobody likes to think of themselves as the Ebenezer Scrooge archetype. Maybe the Fox News Propagandists understand that evoking xenophobia and fear of progress into the hearts of their followers is the fastest route to maintaining control. And maybe, just maybe, there’s just a hint of gaslighting taking place.

In abuse dynamics, one manner of gaslighting a victim is to re-frame the abuser/victim dynamic by reversing it. If someone who is being abused gets angry and yells, for example, because they’ve been pushed too far, the abuser will say “look at you, look at what a monster you are, I’m not even yelling! Maybe it’s you who’s abusing me.” It works because it puts the victim on the defense. This is also often the main tactic used during smear campaigns, which are used to punish and discredit the victim for daring to get away. “If an abuser can’t control you, they will control how others see you.” It’s rough stuff.

Conservative Christian wealthy white people hold systemic power. Colonization and the role Christianity played as a control mechanism in that whole thing aside, the white supremacist capitalist cishetero patriarchy favors those who check it’s overlapping boxes, so to speak. And yet, pastors get on stage Sunday after Sunday, preaching about the dying morals of the nuclear family, the threat of liberal hedonism on Christian values, and—between Thanksgiving and Christmas—The War On Christmas.

It’s all made up.

The same way that queer people having legal rights to marriage has literally no effect on straight marriage, some people not celebrating Christmas exclusively has no effect on Christians who do. Being inclusive is not damaging. It does no harm. In fact, studies have shown that simply being exposed to other cultures greatly reduces prejudice.

And by the way, the Christmas we know and (some people) love wasn’t even codified until Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and, a little later, soda giant and cocaine pusher Coke-a-Cola introduced a red-velvet-wearing-jelly-tummied-rosie-cheeked Santa as part of their holiday ad campaign. It’s literally a capitalist invention!! And what’s not comes from a cautionary tale about the evils of wealth-hoarding workaholic landlords who have to be emotionally tortured by ghosts to see the error of their ways. What’s left after that is pretty much pagan in origin. Oh, the irony.

As usual, white christian conservative propagandists work their critical-thought lacking followers into a state of hysteria over something completely and (almost) comically (if only it weren’t so dangerous) made up. Love 2 see it.

Listen here.

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Walk On Podcast Episode 68 : How to Get Through the Holidays

In (for lack of a more appropriate term) narcissistic family dynamics “keeping up appearances” is more important than whether or not anyone is actually happy or healthy or having a good time. The Holidays are peak pretending time. Guilt, shame, and control are used in excess, the pressure to spend money and energy nobody has on gifts, decorations, and elaborate meals is suffocating, and let’s not forget the expectation to be around our abusers and play family several times in a short period of time. It’s exhausting, it’s traumatizing, it leaves a mark.

When I went no contact with my family, I thought all the holiday yuckies would go away. I was wrong. Every year I am surprised by the heavy cloud that descends upon me right around the middle of November and doesn’t leave until January 2nd. I am nebulously triggered. It always takes me at least a week of going “what the hell is wrong with me?!” before I remember. I have tried everything. Spoiling myself with hotel visits, avoiding the internet and holiday movie marathons on TV, isolating, getting blackout drunk, popping xans like Santa pops sugar cookies, but I could’’t escape it.

It was way worse when I was still spending Holidays at home, though. Even as I healed and started learning how to lay boundaries, I would crumble as I watched them get trampled all over. I could feel my heartbreak every time I was shown how little my feelings mattered—how vastly more important it was to keep up the illusion. Even as I pulled away, spending Holidays with a partner’s family, having a much better time, I would still have to deal with the post-holiday guilt deluge.

So, being alone to feel my feelings was hard, it was heavy, it was actually kind of a living nightmare the likes of which I thought I would never escape, it was preferable to continuing to be traumatized.

We all have our triggers. Death and losing loved ones can make the holidays hard. Not having a family while everyone else is living it up with theirs can bring on deep waves of grief. A breakup. Simply not having money to buy everyone gifts, not being able to afford to travel home and see your family, or working in retail and having to work through Black Friday sales and be abused by the dregs of human behavior. The list in endless.

Even though we are supposed to be eating, drinking, and making merry, the Holidays, statistically are one of the most depressing times of the year.

So what can we do?

The answer I’ve found along my own journey is self-care, getting to know your boundaries, laying those boundaries, finding joy where you can, making your own traditions with people who really love you, treating yourself in whatever ways you are able, reaching out when you need help, and keeping in mind that this, too, shall pass.

If The Holidays are the most joyful time of year, why do they get people so down? Easy: capitalism and trauma. Here's my Holiday Survival Guide full of coping mechanisms to get through and maybe even enjoy the Holiday season.

#holidays #theholidays #howtogetthroughtheholidays #holidaysurvivalguide #narcissisticfamily #toxicfamily #toxicrelationships #capitalism #boundaries #cptsd #healing #sayingno #grief #loss #podcast #spiritualpodcast #guilt #maniputation #spirituality #personalgrowth #selflove #selfhelp #selfcare #radicalselfacceptance #selfcompassion #selfhelpblog #selfloveblog #spiritualityblog #advice #adviceblog

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.