Discipline

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So much good advice/so many truths of life are unfortunately often manipulated to mean something that serves to uphold the white supremacist capitalist cishetero patriarchy by people in power, instead of something meant to help us transcend it.

Discipline is one of those things.

Under capitalism, workers are a means to an end. There is no care or consideration, there is no empathy or even a second thought about the fact that your life force is finite—in fact, that’s part of the reason things work the way they do! So they can use you up as close to your death as possible, so The State doesn’t have to take care of you for very long once you are no longer a “productive member” of it. Never mind that you dedicated your precious time and energy to providing a service to your community (every job is a service, every job helps things run! No labor is unskilled or unimportant). We are conditioned to view ourselves in terms of what good little workers we are. This programming starts in school—which is why schools are run the way they are.

You know that phrase love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life?

That is categorically untrue.

There is no labor that doesn’t feel like labor. Some might be more enjoyable than others. We might be better suited to some more than others, but at the end of the day, work is work. Yep, even a “dream job.” If you love what you do and you don’t have good boundaries, what you love will burn you out just as much as that day job you hate so much. That’s why it’s so important to reconsider our relationship with work.

Discipline is one of the most powerful tools you can learn to use on this journey of life. Discipline can get you everywhere. Having the patience, persistence, and clarity of vision to follow through on your goals is truly a gift. However, the way we are taught to perceive “successful” discipline isn’t sustainable. If discipline comes at the expense of a life lived in balance, then it isn’t going to last.

Discipline is, by nature, sustainable. Discipline is a marathon, not a sprint. Part of connecting your intuition to your ability to commit (to a change, a task, a goal, a partner, anything) is being a student of your SELF. Learning your process, learning your triggers, learning what energizes you and what depletes you. This self-knowledge leads to self-love and self-compassion because you become able to see yourself clearly (flaws and all) and can hold space for your multifaceted humanity without the burden of shame. Without shame, everything feels lighter and brighter, and the intuition gets louder, and the current toward your highest good gets stronger and suddenly find yourself flowing with it.

The power of really knowing yourself is that you can release unrealistic expectations for yourself (and others tbh) that you may have been carrying around since childhood. Consider the ways you perceive yourself as a failure or falling short. Ask yourself where did this expectation come from? Does it actually have anything to do with me? Do I even want to achieve this thing?

Because of the expectations of capitalism, we have a tendency to expect way more out of ourselves than we can actually accomplish. Even those who really seem to have it all together and are able to get an impossible amount done every day are probably struggling. Burnout comes for us all eventually (if you aren’t able to take good care of yourself). Everyone expects themselves to give 100%, One Hundred Percent of the time. We may expect ourselves to never call out of work, or never cancel on a friend, or never turn down a gig, or never stand up for ourselves, lest we lose everything.

Readjusting the benchmark for your expectations of yourself is actually a really revolutionary thing to do. Say, you work retail and you decide you need to take your break every shift, even though your boss always acts like a nightmare and you’re worried you’ll be replaced by someone who doesn’t need a break. Well, you might be. But if we all collectively agreed to honor our humanity and release the cultural brainwashing that tells us we aren’t entitled to what we are owed, everyone would feel comfortable taking their break, then bosses wouldn’t feel so empowered to exploit the labor of their underlings, just as their labor is exploited by the people above them on the class hierarchy.

Understanding how much you actually have to give to something is the beginning of a boundary, and boundaries are the gifts that keep on giving.

Discipline is a choice, and it isn’t always easy, but everybody’s expression of discipline is unique to them. All it’s really about is returning to the things you care about after mental health breaks, burnouts, and other difficult situations you may be going through. It’s really just about returning to your practice, your faith, your self-care, over and over again. Remember, from a bird’s eye view, that non-linear journey of healing does tend to have a linear trend, it’s just slower and more fucked up than everyone wants it to be.

When you feel as if you have gone off course, say to the universe

If I should go off course, bring me back in a beautiful way.

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Leaning Into Ease

The Big Lebowski

It is so hard to convince people to take it easy on themselves. You tell someone they’re being too hard on themselves and their first reaction is usually “WHY WOULDN’T I BE?!?! I DESERVE IT!!!”

We have been conditioned to believe that life should be hard. But the “hard” we come to expect isn’t the kind of “hard” that’s good for us.

The most glaring example of this is “relationships take work.” Yes they do. To maintain a healthy, intimate relationship, you need to constantly make yourself vulnerable. You need to tell the truth. You need to put yourself into the uncomfortable and (for many people) unfamiliar territory of truly being seen. That is good work. That is soft work. Trusting is soft. Communicating Mindfully is soft. It is difficult, but it is the kind of difficult which helps you grow. It smooths you over. It makes you better. It opens your heart infinitely more and more each time you put in the practice. But that’s not what people mean when they say “relationships take work.” They mean forgiving (with infinite patience) any mistreatment your partner should put you through. They mean sticking with who you choose to commit to regardless of how far apart you might grow, or how incompatible you find yourselves to be. They mean to stifle and sacrifice your own well- being for the maintenance of this choice you made that may or may not be right for you, but By God, You Better Keep Doing It!!!

LEST YE BE A FAILURE!!

Part of the soft work that relationships (including the one with yourself) require is knowing when it is the most loving choice to walk away. The white-supremacist-capitalist-cis-hetero-patriarchal relationship program doesn’t allow for this choice. That’s because under that operating system, we have entitlement. We have owning each other. We have every day isn’t a fucking holiday!!! Or what makes you think you deserve to be happy?!?! NOBODY is happy!!!

I have learned/am learning this lesson the hardest in regard to my art. While I have made and done more than I ever thought I could, I also simultaneously perceive myself as late, incapable of manifesting the life I want where art is my job, and berate myself for not being a hard enough worker. In this self-flagellating state, I cannot take into account very real influences and limitations like time, rest, chronic illness, mental illness, trauma, capitalism and the resources that working a day job take from me just so that i can meet my material needs, I can only see the ways in which I am failing to meet my own (albeit unreasonable) expectations.

Sometimes I will have grand plans for the work I’m going to get done in a day, week, month, year. I will set an arbitrary deadline (usually it isn’t all that arbitrary and has been decided based on the luckiest astrology of the moment lol) but it won’t be reasonable. It won’t factor in my humanness. Sometimes I don’t feel good, sometimes I’m not inspired, sometimes my batteries are dead and all I can do is lay in bed and power through several seasons of the Real Housewives. Because I didn’t take that into account when making my plans, I miss my self-imposed deadlines and begin bullying myself like the boss of my nightmares, meaner than anyone outside my own head has ever been.

I’ve been trying to redirect myself to a place of compassion and also just, like, lighten the fuck up, because ultimately, who cares but me? When I can click into the flow state, into ease, when I can trust myself to explode with productivity when I am in the headspace to do so, and remember that those moments of rest are what prepare me to do that kind of work, it just pours out.

Discipline is a life long process, but finding discipline within the parameters of respecting and honoring your fallible humanity is the key. Workaholism kills, man. Missing out on the gorgeous multifaceted experience of life is an insult to our souls’ incarnation. For what? To GRiNd?! To impress your followers? To never be satisfied with what you have accomplished, always looking ahead to the next thing?!

I’m gonna keep saying it. Rest. Is. Revolutionary. Optimizing your own ability to function by deprogramming your inner tyrant and allowing yourself to flow is the way to bring your best self, your best work, your truest self-expression into the world. And right now, with so many asleep, being lead astray by false prophets and snake oil salesman, with late-stage-capitalism ruining art and music and film and literature and tv and nothing being sacred any more? So many people are talking SO much, but so few are saying anything.

The inner journey. The self-love. The flow. We need it. We need truth and justice and REAL Work from your heart. An exhausted activist is one who’s out of the game, who can’t engage their integrity, who loses hope. Take that day off, come back when you’re rested. You’ll watch yourself thrive in ways you never though possible. You’ll pour from a cup that is not only full, but overflowing.

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The Revolution Within

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Heart-centered revolutionaries are the prophets, the poets, the philosophers of their time. Do you know the level of faith in their missions they had to muster to continue fighting in the face of so much resistance to progress? It’s the stuff of miracles.

Activism requires a certain amount of delusion, a certain knack for the technique of visualization which brings about manifestation. You need to see the world as it should be, and keep the laser focus on that intention, even when things around you only seem to be getting worse.

Nihilism holds no place in the mind of a heart-centered activism. It’s too hard a fight if you don’t believe in it. But it is difficult not to fall down that hole when you’ve seen progress made and destroyed in less than a generation.

The thing is, self-reflection is one of those rare things that you can’t have too much of. It never hurts to look in the soul mirror. Learning is the same. Every step towards self-awareness is a step towards a better life for yourself, and a better experience of you for every one you encounter (no matter how brief the experience). But the ego is a trickster and it’s easy to get caught up.

We often—when operating from a Downstairs Brain mentality—externalize things that should be internalized. For example, jealousy. When you feel jealous, the healthy thing to do is self-reflect. Why do I feel jealous? What triggers this feeling in me? When was the first time I felt this way? How can I self-sooth? Do I need to ask for reassurance? When we’re in downstairs brain, however, jealousy can be externalized by blaming someone else for making you feel that way or laying down the law and trying to control the other person, or resorting to petty attempts to undermine the other person’s self-esteem, or running for the hills without having a conversation at all!

In activism (especially internet activism) this same thing happens with radicalization. We have created a culture of purity politics, where everyone is striving for a kind of perfection that is impossible, and holding others to that same standard. In order to prove how good we are, we virtue signal and go on the attack to call out others to make sure that no one ever looks too deeply at us, lest they find us flawed and still in the process of unlearning.

So much of the real work happens internally, in a lifelong dialogue with ourselves. Outside resources can give you information and a window into experiences and struggles that are different than your own, but only you can integrate the information. Only you can tame your ego enough to open your mind to the ever-expanding awareness of the nature of the white supremacist capitalist cishetero patriarchy program and how it has informed your internal biases since the moment you could think.

That’s the real flaw in purity politics. Everyone is programmed to uphold the hierarchy of the society we’ve created. This operating system isn’t something you can overcome just by putting Black Lives Matter in your bio and never thinking about it again. It is a constant practice. It is a moment-to-moment choice. Just like the journey to self-betterment. There is no finish line, there is only better than before.

You see examples of people who stop doing the work at a certain point (usually when it comes time to recognize how they might be playing the role of oppressor) everywhere. It isn’t easy. Self-reflection is often painful and induces a healthy amount of cringe, but it’s worth it. Think of it as an offering to the altar of your own growth. A small price to pay.

When you decide to embark on the journey of the revolution within, you will find that in unpacking the white supremacist capitalist cishetero patriarchy lies your own liberation. This process is a naturally healing one. Uncovering the ways you’ve been programmed to hate yourself puts everything into perspective. The more you understand yourself, the more you are able to understand others—this leads to deeper and more authentic relationships. It empowers you to move through the world more confident when walking in your integrity. This makes you magnetic. You start attracting people on similar wavelengths. Your life starts shifting.

Every single one of us is a drop in the ocean. We are all significant. What if we lived responsibly, walking in the knowing that we had the power to change the world?

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Burnout

Burnout has been the bane of my existence for a long time.

It’s common for undiagnosed/late diagnosed autistic adults, when pushing through life by masking, with no help or resources or even a breadcrumb of a benny-of-the-doubt* (not even once lol) to eventually experience a life-changing burnout.

*benefit of the doubt

This happened for me right out of college and it lasted about a decade. The worst of it lasted about 7 years.

While I didn’t love the forced socialization, the sensory overload, or the limitations on the amount of days you could miss of school, I did enjoy learning. I loved the rigidity of paying attention, studying, getting a good grade. I’m a sucker for any task with a proven formula. A + B = C. I can thrive at anything with clear directions. After years of stressing (to the point of panic attacks) due to outside pressure of the expectation of perfection and the inner knowing that an education was the only way I was getting out of my family’s cycle of generational trauma, and succeeding at great personal cost, when I finally graduated college, something snapped.

I’d had small glimpses of burnout before—running myself ragged with clubs and activities and multiple different friend groups that I split my time between (Libra 💅), going even when I didn’t want to or really felt like I shouldn’t (or couldn’t), forcing it until eventually my body would give up. Literally. I would always get sick and not be able to get out of bed for days.

I was lost. The nebulousness of life and it’s rules and how to function in a work space and budgeting and going to the doctor and feeding myself and cohabitating with a partner and gender roles and all of it was too much for me. I crumbled under the pressure.

I went nonverbal for weeks. I was so depressed that I could barely function. I slept 10 to 14 hours a day. I was so anxious that leaving the house for a walk around the block would cause a panic attack. Everything was uncomfortable. I lost all my friends, I stopped singing. My intrusive and passively suicidal thoughts started to be a lot less passive. I was drowning.

I would be out of work for months at a time, pissing off everyone around me. Because I was so broke I was often unable to be generous, I wasn’t able to reciprocate financially in any of my relationships. This only added to the stress. The big question of “why is life so much harder for me than it is for everyone else?!” plagued me.

I’m only just now seeing the other side of that big, life-changing burnout, and it actually taught me a lot.

I learned, just like with keeping a tidy home or taking care of your health, a little bit of daily self-care does a lot to prevent disaster. I learned how to check in with myself, ask myself how I’m feeling, assess how much physical pain I was in, how much energy I had, and how to set expectations that were reasonable given that information. I learned to flow with my energy. I learned how to rest. I started to see that the more grace I gave myself when I needed to do nothing, the faster I would recover. I learned that no one is really capable of doing it all, all the time. I learned to protect my peace. A stressful home or social life is a killer for me. Stress causes these full-body flare ups of pain that prevent me from sleeping and put me in a shitty fucking mood. Which makes me more stressed. Which makes the pain worse.

I learned to unpack any notions of success or expectations of productivity that came from capitalist programming. I let go of my American Dreams. I let go of comparison, which helped me release competition, because I realized everyone is working with entirely different resources, and that has more to do with who “makes it” than talent or HaRd WoRk or any mythological moralistic bullshit rhetoric like that.

I have learned to navigate burnout with grace. I have learned to prioritize self-compassion and self-care above all else. That’s not to say I don’t care about other things, I don’t work on other things, that I’m incapable of building community or making art, being a good partner, or am an inherently selfish human being; it just means that I keep my cup full. In fact, the more full I am, the better the quality of love I am able to give.

We put so much value in self-sacrifice. I reject that. If everyone took care of themselves first, we would have a lot less dysfunction in the world. Everyone would have better boundaries, that’s for sure.

Burnout is a bummer but there is a lesson to be learned during the winters of your life. Nothing blooms forever, but it will always bloom again. Rest without guilt or abusive self talk, or thinking about all the things you should be doing. If you need to phone it in at work because you’re exhausted (or better yet, call tf out!) take care of YOU. Over-giving is a thankless job, anyway. In fact, the venn-diagram of people who would enjoy your self-sacrifice and people who will ALWAYS take more is a circle. Let it go.

Make yourself a priority. In the inherently exploitative program of the white supremacist capitalist cishetero patriarchy, rest is revolutionary.

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Trust the Timing of Your Life

a synchronicity I pass on the way to work every day

Trusting the timing of your life isn’t easy. Surrender is an active process that requires constantly checking in for any subtle (or not-so-subtle) resistance that may be happening in your ego. 

We resist mostly out of fear of the unknown that comes with letting go. What happens if I surrender? Who will I become? What if I accept my current situation and I stay here forever? Will I be able to handle the change that I know is asking to be made? 

“Why is surrender so important?” you may be asking? “In this white-supremacist-capitalist-cis-hetero-patriarchal system aren’t I supposed to grit my teeth and force my way through, stifling and ignoring all my emotions and physical body until I break or age out or die?” 

Surrender gives you a deep-down freedom that cannot be reached through any external means. It allows you to flow towards your highest good more effortlessly all the time. It also you to listen to the signals of change, and to take the inspired actions steps to bring about that change yourself. It stops the Tower Moments™️ from needing to be so extreme. The Universe no longer has to fight for your attention. You learn to Just Be. 

There are so many tools to help you with the seemingly impossible task of maintaining a state of surrender. One of my favor it (and by far the most helpful) is astrology. Knowing my birth chart and tracking the astrology of the moment and seeing how it interacts with my placements gives me a reason for what I’m experiencing. This is especially true when I’m having a difficult time and operating from a place of resistance. 

Whenever I’m going through a period of struggle (and tbh usually after a few days/weeks of going WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!) it occurs to me that maybe I should check the stars. Always, 100% of the time, what I’m experiencing, why, what I can learn from it, and how I can best navigate it is there, in plain language, for free!!!! It’s wild!!! 

Another thing that has helped is divination—my favorite form being the Tarot. I remember when I was going through my Saturn returns, just having THE WORST time, pulling a few cards, and getting the message “you have everything you deserve.” I was like, the absolute nerve.

What they meant was our current place in life is the sum of all the days we have lived so far. There is a point in all of our lives where we don’t fully understand that concept. Everything is a fucking mystery. Once you learn it, though, you start moving more mindfully in the present. 

Astrology, the Tarot, journaling, meditation, gratitude, therapy, and living long enough (and putting in the work) to have proof that I am creating my future with every choice that I make has helped me trust the timing of my life. 

You can’t go faster than you’re going. You can’t know better before you do. You can’t go back and change anything about the past. You can’t force or shame yourself into making better choices. All you can do is take each moment as it comes, be as conscious as you can as you move through the world, and lovingly guide yourself along your journey of becoming. Beyond that, all you can do is all you can do. 

I’m so glad I didn’t get what I wanted when I wanted it. I’m grateful to understand that I couldn’t see the whole picture when I was in it. I have witnessed just how drastically things can improve even when they seem hopeless. I have learned to trust my own power to heal, my own strength, and the timing of my own life.

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Other People

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Hell can absolutely be other people.

And not only in the Jean-Paul Sartre kinda way.

But he is right, we can’t escape other people’s perceptions of ourselves.

First of all, everyone seems to be more than willing to tell you what they think about you (and are usually more comfortable relaying the negative verses having to deal with the uncomfortable vulnerability of relaying the positive) but also, from the time we are born, so much we learn about being human comes from external reactions to our behavior. We know what is good and bad based on how other people respond to us.

The big problem with this is that people aren’t always conscious with their perceptions—meaning, they aren’t sure when they are projecting or being honest; and it isn’t always easy to tell when someone’s being honest or when they’re being mean (or when they’re being honest and being kind, for that matter).

Being a human is so messy.

And made all the messier when clouded by trauma.

Hell can also be other people who aren’t present and aware as they move through the world. Think of the hot-headed rode rage guy or someone who’s abusive to service industry folks, or a friend that’s exceedingly self-involved. Sometimes just commuting to work can feel like a test towards my faith in the inherent goodness of humans. That’s not even to mention the billionaires, politicians, internet trolls and status quo automatons who continue to refuse to surrender to progress, hereby making all of our lives harder.

Honestly, the small every day inconsiderate choices people make is enough to drive you to run away to the woods and become a Bigfoot. Blocking the whole isle with your shopping cart while you meander around other parts of the store?! Physically putting your hands on people to ensure you get on the train before them?! Back-handed compliments?! Gaslighting?!?!?!

The point is, other people really can make your life hell.

Before you learn discernment and you find yourself in the wrong relationships, it seems like your greatest fears about yourself are always being mirrored back to you in a way that makes them feel like truth. It makes it hard to see the good in you. It makes you insecure and it dims your precious light.

But after you tap into discernment, you start encountering loving, open hearted people, people who see the good in you and who mirror it back to you in a generous way. They make you feel worthy of love because they love you. They help you grow by nurturing you and reassuring you. The positive, loving, confident voice within you is louder when you are with them. This is when people can be heaven, too.

Sometimes I find myself walking through the city, headphones blaring, eyes forward, holding my breath for the stress of getting from one place to another, living in a place where capitalism reigns supreme, everyone in a hurry, only able to see their path, their timeline, getting their piece of the proverbial pie. It makes me anxious and it makes me feel hopeless. It’s easy to forget that people can be kind and deep, or silly, or strange in some truly beautiful ways. But then, inevitably, between songs or breaths in the podcast I’m listening to, I’ll overhear something sweet or funny or wise coming out a stranger’s mouth and I will be overcome with the feeling of affection. Affection and gratitude, for existing as a human in this moment with these people.

It isn’t always easy to shake off the heaviness of living in a world where you fare better the more selfish you are. But it’s only that way because that’s how we have made the world. It isn’t always easy to leave negative encounters behind and to turn up the volume of the positive ones. But, when you can manage to, it does make your life easier, brighter, more hopeful, more patient. It makes the world a softer place, if only in microscopic ways.

So be conscious as you move through the world. Move with the intention that you will leave it better than you found it. Be patient when you see someone doing their best, say thank you often and genuinely, compliment a person when you think something nice about them. Continue to heal so that your heart can stay open. We need it and we need it bad.

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Consequences Are Good, Actually?

image from @vintagefantasymag

Accountability can be a huge trigger for a shame spiral. Feeling blamed is not an easy place to be. But learning how to be accountable is one of the most important parts of recovery (or, more broadly, becoming a mature, self-actualized person in the world). Being able to hold yourself accountable gives way to a deep sense of self-awareness, which helps with not wading into the murky waters of projecting your subconscious bullshit onto everyone around you. Being able to hold space for accountability, while simultaneously keeping the shame monster at bay, is the key to everything.

Where do these shame spirals come from?

Imagine you had an unstable parent who was never able to embrace the discomfort of being responsible for their own actions. Every time something broke, or they fucked up, or something bad was happening in their life, or whatever everyday annoyance they were experiencing, they would find a way to either blame or take it out on you. Besides never demonstrating the grace of being able to be accountable, what do you think being blamed for stuff that is beyond their control does to the child in this scenario?

It makes blame so heavy.

It becomes a trigger.

Before we make ourselves a safe space for ourselves and our wounds and faults and patterns, we do everything we can to avoid feeling our feelings. It’s that pandora’s box thing—it’s that feeling of “If I feel even one feeling, the whole lid’s gonna blow off and I’m going to have to feel it all. I don’t know if I can handle that.”

This makes us seek out distractions or addictions that can numb us out, or relationships that distract us—we might throw ourselves into work or hide away from the world; anything to not have to feel our feelings.

The only problem is that whatever goes unexpressed or unconscious,

will rear its ugly head.

People who don’t know how to be accountable hurt other people. Plain and simple. Part of taking responsibility is learning to consider all the consequences before following through with an action. Yelling at your child? Gossiping about a friend? Pushing someone you love away? Cheating on your partner? Hitting below the belt in an argument and saying the worst thing you can think of? When you’re self-aware, you can greet these impulses head-on and think them all the way through, eventually rising above them and moving in a healthier direction.

When you aren’t, well, life can get messy.

Refusing to take responsibility can cause a lot of harm. We see this happening now with so many adults who are products of toxic family dynamics choosing to put distance between themselves and their family that refuses to heal or change or even respect a boundary. Usually, this comes after many hard conversations and attempts by the person who’s doing the healing to try and bring some of the darkness from the past to light. What they usually end up getting is gaslit.

This gaslighting isn’t usually coming from any more malicious a place than the person being confronted not being able to sit with their own discomfort in knowing the ways their actions affected someone else. But regardless of how unintentionally hurtful it was, it creates a barrier to the kind of emotional intimacy and trust that creates a deep bond. And for many people, a superficial bond rooted in eggshell walking isn’t enough. Plus, if someone isn’t willing to face their own consequences, they are more likely to cause harm in the same way again.

Without changed behavior, an apology means nothing.

Discomfort is something we logically try to avoid. It’s probably something evolutionary where the feeling of discomfort meant danger was near and that’s why we’re so hardwired to avoid it. But it isn’t a source of danger. It’s a tool for growth. It’s a relationship builder. It nurtures intentional communities. It’s an act of love.

How many people start their recovery stories with tales of Rock Bottom? That’s because Rock Bottom is a consequence. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to think about it!! That doesn’t mean there isn’t all kinds of cringing at the physical sensation of shame!! But those feelings pass. If you can sit with them and ride them all the way out, they pass.

Then all that’s left is a new way of seeing, understanding, and being. Then you can move through life more and more gently with every wound properly tended to with compassion, forgiveness, and love.

The shame won’t eat you alive—it’s totally healable.

But the avoidance and unwillingness to change will.

Embrace accountability. Understand why you did what you did when you did it—not as an excuse, as an explanation. Explore your patterns, and allow the knowledge of any harm you’ve caused to wash over you. But if you hear that venomous voice of shame creep into your process, try to redirect your thoughts to compassionate ones. Think about what you would say to someone who’s coming to you genuinely trying to make amends, and give yourself that same grace.

This exploration won’t only be painful, it will also be beautiful. It will deepen your understanding and relationship with yourself. It will make you less guarded, less critical, and less judgmental. It will reinforce your integrity. It will give you stability. It will set you free.

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Harbingers of Chaos

When you have become accustomed to chaos, it’s hard to see when you are the eye of your own storm.

Like Steve Urkel, you might look at the collapsed Rube Goldberg machine around you, bolts and screws and wires bouncing off of things as the other people in the room run for cover, a faint “Did I do thaaaat?!” escaping your lips, a half apology.

Yeah, you fuckin’ did, Steve, obviously.

I think a big part of healing is recognizing where we might be contributing to our own suffering. Contribution is not the same thing as cause, responsibility does not imply deserve, it’s just about pattern recognition. No more, no less.

But seeing your own patterns isn’t as easy as it sounds. There’s levels to it. Growing up in a chaotic home (or even spending many years of your adult years in a chaotic relationship dynamic) (or several)) can desensitize you to chaos to the point that you forget that anything else is even possible. Much of this manifests subconsciously.

See, when we’re in “downstairs brain,” we can’t see things clearly—we can only see things through the lens put into place by our trauma. This can cause you to be stuck in a feedback loop, where many of your worst fears are confirmed over and over again, because you are drawn to situations that remind you of the situation that gave you your original wound.

Being conditioned to normalize chaos can either manifest in someone becoming a manager of other people’s chaos OR becoming someone who creates chaos and expects others to manage it. This becomes a subconscious attraction to people who will play that pivotal role (the manager for the ceator, or vice versa) in your life. This becomes a pattern that repeats until you bring awareness to it.

A manager of chaos is usually someone codependent who may be struggling with a lack of boundaries. Sometimes, when things get really bad, they can appear manipulative because their attachment to “keeping the peace” can come in the form of telling everyone what they want to hear, instead of the truth. Often times, codependents have a hard time even knowing what their truth is because they are so used to being whatever everyone around them needs. They have a habit of taking too much responsibility for other’s decisions, actions, and treatment of them and too little for themselves.

A creator of chaos is often the life of the party, they often struggle with addiction, extremely toxic relationships, they may put the people that love them through tests of emotional abuse, harsh criticism, or creating conflict—just to see if they’ll stick around. They often use the managers in their life as scapegoats, avoiding taking responsibility for their own actions.

Most of us fluctuate between one of these modes of operating and the other, becoming some combination of the two. While creators of chaos can come with high incidence of narcissism and have a tendency to wear people tf out, managers of chaos aren’t necessarily altruistic.

A lack of boundaries (good intentions aside) can look a lot like lies from the outside. When we get used to betraying ourselves and our own peace, safety, and stability, there is a very slippery slope towards betraying others. It is so important to find the truth of you and never waver from it again.

Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, it’s important to get off the ride. Authentic relationships don’t require managing, and you’ll find that relationships with peace, respect, and love as their foundation aren’t boring or too good to be true—they’re the way it should have always been, if only you hadn’t become so accustomed to chaos.

If you find yourself stuck in your own web of chaos or trapped in someone else’s, please know, it’s never too late to get out. You can touch feet-to-earth and start protecting your peace any time you choose to. All you have to do is start choosing you.

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The LARP of Life

watch me LARP as Slutty Brienne of Tarth

When I look back at myself in the before times (the times before my decision to heal, obv) I am plagued with one burning, annoying, resounding, repeating question

“WHO IS THAT?!”

It’s not that everything about me has changed—so much hasn’t— I still love music and singing, I’m still silly and love to laugh, I can still throw ass like my life depends on it…

It’s the way I operate in the world has changed completely.

It was like I was LARPing as who I had been conditioned to be and the real me was buried so deep I couldn’t even tell they existed at all. I had lost the plot. I was so committed I fooled everyone around me and I almost fooled myself, too.

The trouble with telling a child who they are, or projecting your own expectations of them onto them, instead of simply witnessing them become, is that more often than not, you’re going to be disappointed. Well, either disappointed or lied to. And if you never see someone’s authentic self because they’re afraid to show you? Well, that’s a kind of love, but it’s not the love we all long for.

I was raised in chaos with perfection as the benchmark bestowed upon me by someone who saw me as their last shot at redemption. It was a lot of pressure and for most of my life, I did a moderately decent job of it. Whenever I slipped, though, hellfire rained down from the sky. I was held to a higher standard than everyone else around me, and that kept me striving.

To spend your life striving for someone else’s approval and happiness is a thankless endeavor. The whole point is to keep moving the goalpost. Once the person says “good job, you’ve done it,’ they lose all their power

and the power is the point.

The volume of my striving drowned out nearly any other voice I had. I had lost the plot of my own story. I was LARPing as the perfect granddaughter, the perfect care-taker, the perfect little sidekick, the perfect surrogate mother, the perfect punching bag, perfect student, perfect “natural” beauty, perfect perpetual dieter, perfect bad bitch, perfect cool girl, a straight, cis, femme, neurotypical functional member of society (if I could only learn to keep my head above water). By 23 I was so burned out I could no longer continue on.

Then everything fell apart.

Over and over, in my hour of need, I found myself alone. The people who held the love I bent-over-backwards trying to attain couldn’t be bothered. I was a burden, and asking them to love my Real was way too much of an ask.

I decided to pull away, to hibernate, to give myself a little of what I’d given so many. Every time I brought myself back to me, there was an ending (or several). Every time I said “no” I was met with resistance. It didn’t matter. I was too exhausted to LARP any more. And what a blessing that was—it lead me to the greatest feeling I’ve ever known.

Authenticity.

We come to this planet these gorgeous, amazing, complicated puzzles and it is our major purpose in each lifetime to learn as much as we can about the puzzle we inherited when our souls chose to incarnate. The better you know yourself, the better you are able to know others. The more others know the true you, the more belonging you feel. And the feeling of belonging is so healing.

LARPing through life is tempting—its what conformists call “the easy way.” You never have to challenge the status quo or ruffle any feathers, you just coast along on the life escalator, doing what the white supremacist capitalist cis hetero patriarchy tells you to, checking off milestones like a grocery list. But the end of the LARP will hit you eventually, whether you want it to or not.

Why not choose the path less trampled? Why not make it up as you go along? Why not prioritize the safety of self-love, which enables you to open your heart and your mind to growth and experience and community with people who actually get you?

Doesn’t that sound nice?

So every so often, try checking in with yourself, “Am I living authentically? Or am I just LARPing through life?”

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Putting the Linear in Non-Linear Healing

Listen to this if you need a pick-me-up!!!

So, like many of us who are connected to our higher consciousness, I have experienced somewhat prophetic dreams. Sure, they are often steeped in symbolism and its up to my waking self to decipher the meaning, but sometimes the meaning is incredibly clear.

Several years ago, I had one such very obvious dream.

It was my birthday and I was working at a water park. I am often at water parks in my dreams. I spent a lot of time at water parks as a kid and they hold a lot of happy memories for me (some not so good as well). There’s a hefty amount of nostalgia, regardless. Water parks/water slides tend to represent going with the flow. This can be a negative thing (being too passive) or a positive (surrender to what is). I took this one to have the positive interpretation.

The staff at this water park had to do a rigorous obstacle course test to make sure you were up-to-snuff when it came to physical fitness and safety. This test took place in an arena that looked a lot like a barren desert. This thing was straight-up dangerous—you had to scale cliffs and dodge boulders, every time you thought you were on solid ground, it would collapse beneath you. It was challenging and scary, but I. Was. CRUSHING IT. I was dippin’ an dodgin’ and divin’ and duckin’. I was present and quick to respond and I finished without so much as a scratch.

When I was finished, instead of a congratulations from my clipboard brandishing boss, I was informed that while I was testing, the arena was deemed unsafe and was no longer qualified to be a training facility. I would have to test again.

I was pissed.

Pissed at my boss, at the company, at crapitalism (yes, even in my dreams, lmao), pissed at God and at myself for giving it my all and it not mattering. But, I took a deep breath, and prepared myself for take 2.

Before my second test, I had to attend my birthday party. It took place at a comically long mad hatter style table filled with food and sweets and pastel flowers in an emerald green garden surrounded by 7 foot tall hedges. All of my loved ones were there (some I hadn’t even met yet irl yet!!). We ate and laughed and talked until my boss came to tell me it was time to go.

To my surprise, everyone at the party stood up with me. We all walked to the obstacle course together and continued through it together, too—every step of the way. It was abundant with plants, flowers, butterflies, babbling brooks, cute little corgis; there were children laughing and playing and beautiful conversations happening all around me. And then, at the end, there was a lazy river filled with the bluest water which we all drifted down into the sunset.

I think of this dream daily because the message it held for me was so profound. Sometimes you have to do things more than once. Some days it seems like all your hard healing work was for nothing. Sometimes you get triggered by unfairness or frustration and you just don’t think you can take another day. Sometimes you’re stuck in the falling down desert so long you forget what solid ground feels like. Sometimes there is no love, no light, no safety, no joy anywhere to be found. Sometimes you have not choice but to create it yourself. Sometimes, one step at a time, a path opens up— you may not know where you’re going but you know it’s gonna be better than wherever the hell you’re at. And you keep walking on.

Healing isn’t linear. Our default settings are always one bad day away from running the show, choosing recovery isn’t a destination, it’s a daily practice. It can often seem thankless and daunting; especially if you’re surrounded by people and situations that resent your growth or can’t come with you.

When I was traversing that obstacle course, it was clear that I had done it before—I knew it like the back of my hand. I wasn’t new to healing, either. Wasn’t new to betrayal or heartbreak, abuse or addiction, poverty or chronic illness. I knew this terrain. I knew I could get through it.

By the time my friends and family got up to go with me, I had all the confidence in the world that I could handle anything life threw my way. I knew how to do hard. I was good at it. What I didn’t expect was easy, joyful, loving, cooperative, abundant. But when it arrived, I opened my arms and I reveled in it.

If you’re stuck on your rocky road, full of back slides and mudslides and self-doubt and frustration, if your heart is broken or you’re afraid to face the parts of you you haven’t yet, if you’re angry at the non-linear nature of recovery and you’re wondering if it’s worth it, I’m reporting from the light of a clear blue morning, to assure you that it absolutely is.

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What You Resist Persists

I know a rhyming aphorism is the quickest route between saying something interesting and resonant and people tuning you out completely but stick with me for a second.

What you resist persists.

The loving presence of the Universe is constantly sending us messages, clues, guide posts, and breadcrumbs called synchronicities to gently nudge us in the direction of our own evolution. When we are babies, we flow with the natural progression of what we are meant to learn and at what time. Once we start meeting external expectations, our intuitive voice gets replaced with the much less loving voice of CONFORMITY. This voice is loaded with all kinds of judgment, capitalistic benchmarks, generational trauma, and bullshit from our parents about who they thought we’d be… it’s a mess. And healing is the rigorous process of muting that voice in order to reconnect with our own.

Resistance has a place and a purpose. The ego is terrified of death (that’s why it developed in the first place—to help our ancestors discern when danger was near) but the metaphorical death of growth is good for us. Internal stagnation causes a lot of avoidable suffering. Learning to surrender is an active process and daily practice, but it is absolutely one worth doing again and again.

If you pay attention, you can see the resistance to the natural flow of progress everywhere. The early days of covid gave the world an opportunity to abandon unsustainable lack-based economic systems in favor of societies founded on mutual care and abundance. People seemed, for a brief moment, to understand the ramifications of working people to the brink of exhaustion, the terrible (and dangerous) practice of guilting and shaming people to coming into work when they’re sick, the ability to use our technological advances to make a more accessible world where disabled people could attend events virtually, where parents could spend time with their children, where our finite energy could be used in ways we chose instead of through the obligatory commute-work-commute-eat-sleep-rinse-repeat-retire (if you’re lucky)-die cycle of misery that everyone was so trapped in for so long.

But as quickly as was possible (I would go so far as to argue that it was not possible and currently isn’t working but I digress) we went “back to normal.” Back to hustling, back to suffering, back to resisting our highest good.

Many of the social justice movements which so many people consider “newfangled” have been around for decades, centuries in some cases. Why are we fighting the same fights over and over again? Why won’t the world progress?

Cuz the people in power are resisting.

They have been resisting for a loooonnnggg time.

They will probably continue resisting until they aren’t able to anymore.

The good news is

what you resist, persists

The fight will keep fighting. Those that are open to learning, growing, healing, and progressing will keep on keepin’ on. The world will move past those that are holding onto the old world for dear life, terrified to lose their power. It’s a kind of ideological rapture. After having committed to the unfolding of my own evolution, having undergone small death after small death and lived to tell the tale, having felt the bliss of infinite expansion, I look forward to the new world.

It’s like Bob Dylan said “your old road is rapidly agin’/get the fuck out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand/

oh the times

they are a changin’!

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Holding Grudges

That “one love kumbaya forgiveness is next to godliness I am a beacon of love and light my ego doesn’t get angry anymore because I have transcended human pettiness” bullshit doesn’t really work for me.

Well, not entirely.

You see, when I am being mistreated I get angry.

I get resentful.

And yes I have been known to get petty.

The thing is, when I was in people-pleaser mode, it would take me so long to get mad. My anger would move like a humming bird. It would flit in and flit out just as quickly.

I didn’t know I had a right to my anger, yet. I didn’t know I was worthy of somebody standing up for me. I didn’t know how deep my “no” could go because I had been shown it didn’t matter.

My anger could about-face with a glib sort of apology “I’m SoRrY yOu FeEL tHaT wAy”, a compliment, a free drink, literally something as small as the person that hurt me making me laugh?!

See, I would think hopefully, everything is fine now aha, back to normal.

And then I would slip back into my comfortable role of ignoring my own hurt feelings, minimizing my own wants and needs, forgiving someone who wasn’t sorry, tenderizing myself up to get hurt again and again until…

I stopped.

First it was unanswered phone calls. I couldn’t face the discomfort of my boundary so I laid it silently and it almost went unnoticed. In the aloneness of my space I ruminated. I fumed. I felt every heartbreak, betrayal, crossed line, non-apology, act of extreme selfishness, every lie, and it strengthened my resolve. Every hoover attempt at sliding back into my energy was blocked by my bitter heart. Every pick and prod at the squishy parts I mistakenly let them see were suddenly calloused over. Rock fucking hard. No longer allowing myself to be distracted or swayed by anything less than changed behavior, my feet were more sure than ever, and my path unfolded in full HD.

And then something surprising happened…

Given the space and time to love and heal myself, to find forgiveness for my flaws and mistakes and wounds, to get my head and my heart on straight, to understand the ins and outs of my own subconscious, to see the technicolor red of my open wounds, compassion bloomed. The grudges gave way to understanding. The need to hold onto to the small version of someone else who lived in my past faded away. I could see it all.

Far away from the reach of the toxicity of others, I could see their humanity and divinity, I could feel that unconditional love that people make sound so easy.

It isn’t.

Forgiveness and love aren’t necessary for healing. They are a bonus that comes from it—the cherry on top of the self-love Sundae. They come in time, with practice, and when you have been safe from abuse long enough to become unaccustomed to the feeling of mistreatment.

We get so much about healing and forgiveness twisted. I honestly think we use these concepts to gaslight each other into silence over mistreatment because liberation is contagious, its a chain reaction, and the people in power only have power because of exploitation which is essentially systemic abuse.

My lil petty ass grudges were my gateway to self-love. The first time I let myself get angry for myself because of someone’s treatment of me felt so good that I kept on keepin’ on. I haven’t ever stopped. Each betrayal, each brush with someone else’s toxicity, each cutting remark or whisper of gossip has phased me less than the one that came before it. It could be called toughness, but I’m not closed off. It could be called transcendent, but my feet are on the ground. It’s really just deep, abiding, ever-expanding self-love.

And without my grudges, it wouldn’t have been possible. So the next time someone takes your healthy boundaries for low-vibrations, remember that this is a necessary step on your healing journey. No one is entitled to your forgiveness. Stay mad as long as you need to.

Listen here!

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The Call is Coming from Inside the House

We all know it.

A phone rings.

The babysitter’s head turns toward it and

picks it up.

The breathing on the other side makes her angry

This isn’t funny, BRAD!!

She hangs up.

The phone rings again.

And again.

And again.

No matter how many times she hangs up and then,

a voice

Have you checked the children?

It’s all a game of cat and mouse

when the cops tracing the call tell her

The call is coming from inside the house!

This urban-legend-turned-horror-trope is the perfect metaphor for the ego’s way of protecting itself with the artful dance of projection. We’ve all done it—pointed the finger at someone else for what we later discover to be what I call a “me problem.”

Whomst among us hasn’t put the burden of soothing one of our wounds onto someone we love? Or an achievement? Or the culmination of something we’ve dreamed about and obsessed over only to find that when we get the thing we thought would heal us, that infernal wound is still there?!

That’s because everything we experience has a tether to a root inside of us. Our wounding is never our fault, but our healing is our responsibility. Until we understand that what we experience as external is actually giving us a clue as to what is going on within us, the world feels like endless suffering.

And honestly it kind of still is…

BuUuuUt once we understand the infinite love of the universe— that we are being guided towards self-actualization and our own highest good, we realize that everything is already working out in our favor.

The ability to take something terrible and make it work for you is a superpower. It isn’t easy. It’s really brave, it requires a deep committment to radical self-acceptance and forgiveness, and you have to be willing to care for yourself in your darkest moments, to pick yourself up no matter how many times you fall down, to take responsibility for what’s yours and to leave the rest behind.

An ego death is painful. There is grief even in positive change. There is grief even in healing. Sometimes the wounding we’ve endured can trick us into thinking that’s who we are. Being stuck with your abusers in childhood can make you believe yourself to be stuck for the rest of your life. Having someone constantly undermine your worth when you’re little can follow you around forever. Being abandoned can cause a fight, flight, freeze or fawn response pattern that can get you into some sticky situations.

It is so important to take an inventory of our feelings, to analyze and question why we do the things we do and why we perceive things the way we do. It is so crucial to not take our perception at face value. After all, it may simply be projection. But also, it’s so necessary to get in touch with our intuition, for it usually plays the pivotal role of the voice of reason.

The process of questioning and considering every thought and feeling and reactionary impulse may seem daunting at first, but I like to think of it as clearing the cobwebs that have been taking up space in my energy since the first time I didn’t feel loved properly. The clarity that can dawn is unshakable. It helps protect you from the projections of others. It helps you not be so afraid of conflict. It makes solving a problem as simple as finding a solution, instead of an all out war.

Self-awareness is the gift that keeps on giving. Understanding yourself sweetens all other connections. It protects you from things thrown at you by less aware individuals, and it allows you to access a higher level of compassion, understanding, and love.

Looking in the healing mirror and getting past the ego’s attempt to protect itself can be terrifying. But this is work that only you can do—even (and probably especially) when it seems like it’s someone else’s problem, or something someone else is doing to you.

Always remember,

the call is coming from inside the house.

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It’s Never Personal

Before we’ve tended to our wounds, everything feels personal;

that backhanded compliment someone throws your way to ruin your day, a red light when you’re running late, someone slamming a door in your face—but is it?

Sure, the backhanded compliment may have been intended as a personal slight—an attempt to undermine your confidence, make you feel less good about an accomplishment, or an example of mistery just loving company, but anyone who doles out this kind of passive aggressive warfare is almost always in an intense and lonely battle with themselves. To be the kind of person who can’t be happy for someone else is a reflection of their character, not yours.

Every insult is an omission of insecurity.

In short,

it’s about them.

That red light that has you all in a tizzy is just a consequence of being in a rush, of not planning ahead, of sleeping in, of a random series of unfortunate events. Maybe it’s a reminder to set your alarm earlier, to tweak your routine, or maybe you were just meant to get where you’re going a little bit later.

All you can do is do better.

Maybe that person who didn’t hold the door for you, letting it slam in your face, was not present or considerate at that moment because they had something troubling on their mind, maybe they were stressed or sad or heartbroken, maybe they just received bad news, maybe they’re running 15 minutes behind.

Sure, be annoyed.

But then, let it go.

There’s a story in Buddhism about two monks walking down a long road. Despite committing to a vow of celibacy that included never laying hands on a woman, when they come across a woman trying to get across a river, one monk picks her up and carries her across. Once safely on the other side, he puts her down and continues walking. The other monk is aghast. He can’t believe it. He’s fuming as they’re walking. Finally, he works up nerve enough to say “I can’t freakin’ believe you picked up that lady!!” The other monk says, “I put her down ages ago, you’ve been carrying her all this way?”

Why is this happening to me?!?! Is the kind of melodrama that’s hilarious when it’s not coming out of our own mouths or taking root in our own egos, but when we feel it maaaaaaan, it’s serious as all get out.

It’s not personal!

Maybe you have mean friends because you haven’t learned how to discern who to keep at arm’s length yet. Maybe that lover won’t meet you halfway because there’s something better waiting down the line for you after you cut yourself loose. Maybe you’re always late because you have a hard time getting moving and need to give yourself room to move at your own pace.

Maybe life is a learning process. It’s soul school. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be nice and easy. Maybe it was meant to be nice and rough— at least ‘til we figure out how to stay centered within. Maybe if we never met with discomfort, we would never learn anything. Maybe the secret to happiness is surrender to what is.

Conflict can trigger our ego’s natural defensiveness. Sometimes we get so caught up in the illusion of protecting ourselves from rejection and abandonment, that we can let things escalate when they don’t need to. If we can remember that nothing is ever personal, that it’s always about the mirror of yourself reflected in the other, the issue at hand comes more clearly into focus.

I think Kendrick Lamar said it best when he said

“I always thought it was me vs the world

until I found it was me vs me”

Even when it feels personal, it isn’t. Even when someone is being cruel, it’s still a battle they are fighting within. Don’t get caught in the middle of that battle. It’s none of your business. You’ve got your own shit to work on.

Self-love is a journey of getting to know yourself better every day. The mirror of conflict, of failure, of hardship, of joy, success, praise, love, can reveal so much of you to you if you let it.

Remember, everything is temporary and nothing is ever personal.

even when it feels like it is.

Listen Here!

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What is the Opposite of Shame?

Delia Giandeini

Queerness has never not existed.

Queerness will never not exist.

Many have tried to un-exist us.

They have all motherfucking failed.

The bigotry of queerphobia is a campaign of shame.

They want us to feel ashamed of who we are.

I know the 2010 Born This Way narrative of allyship and the attempt to appeal to the cis-hetero status quo feels a bit hokey and regressive now, because “we can’t help ourselves” isn’t as deep or nuanced as the technicolor experience of queerness really is. The truth is, if I had a choice, I would choose queerness every time. In fact, I do and am and will every day for the rest of my life.

Shame is a toxic monster. Shame is an infectious disease. Shame sits in your gut and eats you from the inside. Keeping your identity, your truth a secret can make life unbearable. To want someone—a marginalized community—to feel shame, to want them to repress their truth, to want them to go back in the closet is a crusade of evil. For much queer youth, it’s a death sentence.

For many extremist right-wing Christians, that’s the point.

Releasing shame is revolutionary. For oppressed people, shame is simply the mental program of the oppressor. It’s nothing but something false that you were taught. It’s so difficult to hear the loving guidance of your own inner voice when the program of the white supremacist cis heteropatriarchy is turned up to 11. But once you do, nobody can shake your foundation of self-love. Once you do, you are liberated internally, which keeps your cup full as you fight to be liberated externally.

The reality is, historically speaking, queer people have always been a target

and yet!!!

here we are!

What is the opposite of shame?

It’s living in spite of someone else’s desire and commitment to erasing your existence. It’s a drag queen putting the bass in their walk. It’s every drag king tossing out their packer. It’s a gender fuck mullet leather daddy kink. It’s queer-community-chosen-family-winter-solstice-dinner. It’s butch lesbian witch covens. It’s zinefests and protests and homesteads. It’s changing your mind. It’s autonomy, freedom, and choice. It’s fighting fascism, embracing liberation, it’s healing trauma. It’s ancestral gratitude. It’s survival. It’s thrival. It’s joy! It’s laughter through tears. It’s living. It’s love.

It’s PRIDE!! It’s PRIDE!!! It’s PRIDE!!!

Listen here // Watch here

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“The Victim Complex”

Why is it whenever someone musters up the courage to speak on their experience with respect to being abused or marginalized the reaction from the peanut gallery is not one of empathy or compassion, but judgment?

“Look at you feeling sorry for yourself…”

Every time I attempted to confront my toxic family of origin, long before it ever even occurred to me that walking away was an option, just on the precipice of my unsteady attempts at speaking my truth and laying boundaries, I was met with sometimes subtle, sometimes loud-and-clear gaslighting.

Oh COME ON it wasn’t that bad…

Yeah, that’s right, go to therapy and suddenly everyyythinngg is the parents’ fault…

THAT’s funny, I seem to remember you having a HAPPY childhood…

Sure, you had it SOoooOOOooo HARD

The irony is, the people accusing me of hysterics, of blaming them for my misfortune, of “being stuck in the past,” of “playing the victim” are the same people who were so hindered by their own pain that they couldn’t see the wide swath of damage they left wherever they ventured.

My truth felt like accusation. My humble attempts at re-establishing these relationships from a healthy place—an honest place, a place of accountability felt like blame and subsequently, shame.

It wasn’t really about me, was it?

An inability to take responsibility shows a certain lack of self-awareness and points to a deep and unacknowledged well of shame. We all get triggered when we are being confronted with harm we’ve done, but being in relationships requires a willingness to be humble, to be vulnerable, and to be wrong from time to time. It’s an important and necessary part of growing, of loving, and of being loved.

We are most susceptible to ego flare-ups when we are triggered. Someone coming to us and explaining harm we’ve cause can definitely cause a shame spiral. But the shame spiral passes!! That’s when the best course of action would be to take a step back, engage in self-compassion, and use this information to learn and do better in the future.

Sometimes we are too wrapped up in our own experience to see how we could have hurt someone. Sometimes we lose sight of the light within. Sometimes the mirror of another is exactly what we need—even if it feels harsh in the moment.

Why do Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervaise, and JK Rowling feel the need to go after trans people (one of the most marginalized communities throughout the world) despite having massive platforms, money, success, and no stake in the gender game? Why does Johnny Depp feel the need to sue a woman he (~allegedly~) (i hate that you have to say “allegedly” or you could get sued, but everyone takes that word to mean not guilty) horrifically abused for many years and sick his rabid stans on her by publicizing a trial that should have been private (if it even needed to happen at all)!? How was a victim speaking on her experience with abuse (and not even naming him directly) equal to this public shaming he’s subjected her to. He could have seen the disillusion of yet another relationship as a Rock-Bottom-Come-to-Jesus-Moment regarding his addictions. He could have taken responsibility for himself and gone in a new direction. He could have made the choice to stop causing harm. JK, Ricky, and Dave could have reframed their ego flare-ups as just an experience of the shame that can come from feeling the sharp edges of waning relevance and no longer being hip to the cultural zeitgeist. I’m sure it hurts to no longer be on the leading edge of the conversation (literally, I’m an aging millennial, I know the feeling intimately). But a mature person doesn’t go Right, I’m irrelevant, my time as the bad boy of *checks notes* children’s fantasy novels is coming to an end, time to attack a marginalized community!!! No no no, Joanne. A mature person goes fuck I have a lot to learn! Or I am so embarrassed at how ignorant I am… maybe it’s time to……. read a book?! Or WOW!! I have a room full of money like Scrooge McDuck, I guess I can delete my twitter now because my life is pretty good, actually.

But no, they see their waning 15 minutes as the fault of some scapegoat monolith “Woke Culture” and go on bigoted tirades that would feel right at home in the mouth of everyone’s Cue Anon Uncle that doesn’t get invited to holidays anymore.

“The Victim Mentality” is a form of gaslighting that perpetrators of harm tend to project onto the people that they are harming in order to silence or discredit them. But it is just a projection. It is a direct line to the truth about themselves. It is the wizard pulling back the curtain.

I have never met an abuser who didn’t have a victim complex.

I have never met an actual victim who didn’t have to muster every ounce of bravery and self-love in their being to speak on the ways they’ve been hurt.

Speaking your truth is inherently empowering. It is the moment a victim becomes a survivor. It is the moment that wounds turn toward healing. It’s so courageous, it’s strength incarnate. It’s so beautiful. And it’s inspiring— it causes a ripple effect.

This is how we got to the cultural reckoning of the past 10 years. By people sharing the ways they’ve been hurt and empowering others to embrace their own vulnerability in the same way. Communicating from a place of empathy and open-heartedness That’s how we got here.

and the backlash is the diametric opposite.

It’s not “blame” to give the responsibility of harm caused to the person who caused it. It’s not being “stuck in the past” to acknowledge what you’ve been through.

It’s necessary. It’s what healing is.

Don’t allow yourself to be gaslit by someone who can’t own their actions calling your honesty a “victim complex.”

Instead, ask yourself…

who’s really

“playing”

the victim here?

Listen here // watch here

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Co-Creating a Better World

Like most goals and dreams, the life of an activist requires one foot be planted firmly in the land of delusion. It makes me think of the Star card. The figure kneels naked in nature, one knee in the water of a gentle stream, one knee on the shore. They pour water up from one cup to another, a symbol for alchemy. Activists fight for a future they may never see, and that’s love.

To manifest something, you must live with it in your energy as if it already exists. Dress for the job you want is a great metaphor for the practice. The mind does not understand the distinction between fantasy and reality—that’s why it’s possible to fall in love with someone you don’t know and who doesn’t love you back, that’s why it’s possible to work yourself up into a panic from simply imagining a stressful situation.

Use this programming error for your benefit.

Visualize the life you want. Visualize the collapse of the systems we’ve been playing out like the macrocosmic cycles of generational trauma they are—bound to the insanity of repeating, repeating, repeating history, never learning, never changing, until we have to.

Well, now we have to.

Consider the kind of forest fire

that gives way to new growth.

Anyone who flows with change knows the beauty of the rebirth that follows a death of the old. What would we have missed out on if we had refused to change? What beauty? What luck? What wisdom? What grace?

How many times have the worst things that have ever happened to you, through the clarity of retrospect, turned out to be the best?

Let go.

Flow.

Unburden yourself with the futile task of holding up a falling wall. Embrace the inevitable. Dream bigger. Undo the fixation on individual financial accumulation, on unchecked consumption, on superficial “success” —it has no place in the new world.

Imagine community. Imagine simplicity, Imagine freedom, not gained through a hoarding of resources and power, exploiting everyone beneath you on the hierarchy of having, but freedom from every distraction, every illusion we forgot we (at some point in history) arbitrarily decided to uphold.

We can change course any time we’d like.

It just takes numbers.

It just takes focus.

It just takes faith.

Love is a verb. Love thy neighbor. You don’t need to walk in someone else’s shoes to take up the cause of fighting for their liberation in the struggle, just walk next to them. Be loving to your neighbor.

Whether you know it or not, we are all in this together. Whether you accept it or not, the powers that be are the enemy of our survival. They will run this ship right into an iceberg and commandeer the lifeboats before we even notice we’re sinking.

Co-creating is a conversation between you and God, and you and your fellow beings. Listen like you care. Share yourself like you aren’t afraid to be seen. Engage compassion like your life depends on it. It kind of does. Stop fixating on your individual experiences—the shows you aren’t playing, the money you aren’t making, the normal you aren’t getting back to, and CARE.

Dream 👏 fucking 👏 bigger.👏

Imagine a world founded on justice, equity, non-hierarchical communities. Imagine a life of abundance, not scarcity. Imagine everyone’s needs being met. Imagine undoing the traps and systems of oppression that capitalism needs in order to continue existing. Imagine embracing our interdependence in a way that honors the sacredness of all life on earth. Imagine being in loving gratitude with the planet we call home, never taking more than you need. Imagine a world without fossil fuel dependence, without billionaires or famine or wage slavery. Imagine a world without the white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy.

We might have to do without the creature comforts we’ve become accustomed to. But we might have to, regardless. Let’s do so by choice, listening to the not-so-gentle nudges the Universe is giving us before they become screams. Let’s do so in solidarity, in respect, in openness, and in love.

If you find yourself thinking Britt, you’re talkin’ gibberish!! There’s no way! This is how things have always been done, this is how they will always be done, we aren’t powerful enough to accomplish this, you are presenting an impossible goal!!

I would say,

if that’s your attitude,

then you’re right.

Successful manifestation requires a little bit of delusion. Look at all the unbelievable things that human beings have accomplished. We've manifested fire and languages and several Real Housewives series. We invented gender and then drag to fuck gender and then figured out how to transcend the whole thing entirely. We created printing presses and art and music. We manifested fried chicken and chocolate lava cake!!!!! Electricity!!! Those giant pool floats shaped like unicorns!!! Three-way kisses and telescopes and tattoos and bread and roller skates and ice cream and rock n roll.

We are incredible.

We built it all.

We can tear it down.

Believe it and it will become.

Listen here // watch here

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Law of Attraction

Magic

When you feel the warm wind

on your fingertips,

passing through

on its way elsewhere.

When you feel the sun

on your face

and you tilt back and smile

at its golden embrace.

When you look out

your bedroom window

and the moon is

perfectly framed

in the gaps of the

barely budding branches

of the old oak trees.

The way it feels to float

in the cold, ocean water

on your back;

the endless liquid beneath,

the endless gas above.

The way it feels to fall in love—

slow and steady,

or all at once.

The quiet of a forest,

a long country drive.

Moments of bliss or heartbreak

that let you know you’re alive.

Failure and fucking,

rebirth and being kind.

Shedding old selves

and leaving them behind.

Gratitude and quiet.

Peace and time.

The simple magic of life is lost on the distracted mind.

If you don’t stop to notice the little miracles, the big ones will pass you by.

How have your wishes already come true?

Have you noticed?

I remember when what I have now was once just an item on a list of things I didn’t believe were available to me. When I remember that, I am humbled by awe at the generosity of the Universe. I am overcome with gratitude. Tears fall down my cheeks as I throw my arms up in the air and say

“thank you THANK you THANK YOU!!!”

How many times have I been stuck but gotten free? How many times have I found myself chronically optimistic even when no proof that better was around the corner was anywhere to be found?

But it turned out to be

just around the next corner.

Aligning yourself with what you desire starts with clarification of those desires. Make a list. Get specific but don’t get too attached to how it will all unfold. Let your feelings guide you. Is it freedom you want? Stability? Partnership? Community? A deeper spirituality? More self-love? Simply to feel better? A more equitable world?

Don’t be a nay-sayer to your own dreams.

Don’t poop your own party!!

Think of your dreamatorium in your brain space as a sacred zone where no one outside of you is allowed to say anything about what you are calling in.

You don’t have to tell anyone what you’re wishing for!

If you can think of it, in some capacity, it can be yours.

I will say, however, that there is an aspect of surrender that must also be incorporated in order to combat frustration and that wish-killer, resistance.

What’s meant to be, will be

is a great affirmation to add to the list so you don’t forget that we, as flawed humans, don’t always know what’s best for us. Holding on too tightly to something that isn’t meant to be can distract you from something better. Although, manifestations are like trolley cars…

there’s plenty of ‘em in the sea.

Write your list out and carry it around with you. Pull it out and read it from time to time. Close your eyes and visualize what life would be like if you were living the way your heart felt called to. How would you feel? How would you spend your days? What would you smell, touch, taste, hear, and feel? Make it real to you.

Imagination has a power that we forget once we grow up. But this only happens because some bitter old fogies convinced us it was frivolous to play, to dream, to imagine. But it isn’t!!

Meditation is imagination and it’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever experienced.

All art starts out as imagination.

In fact!!!!

Every single thing that exists as matter in this world was once just a thought.

You were once just a thought.

And yet here you are,

realer than real.

Allow yourself to play, to grow, to flow, to change, to be and be magic. Honor the every day miracle of breath in your lungs and your heart beating blood through your body. Honor the beauty of a beautiful birdsong, or crepuscular rays of sun through cumulus clouds! Honor your nos and yes-es. Think about the things you’ve already co-created and walk this earth like you know your power.

And don’t forget to shine some of that light on someone who needs it.

The Universe loves a generous spirit.

Be grateful, be delusional, dream big.

The secret of magic, of manifestation,

of the Law of Attraction is to

ask for what you want,

and then let yourself have it.

Listen here // watch here

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All We Have is Each Other

Activism was my doorway into healing. Fighting for justice was the first fight I felt fearless in the face of after I, unfortunately, allowed myself to be conditioned into losing my nerve.

I was a very unafraid little heathen from the ages of maybe 9 until 11 and then something happened. I started hearing the voice of the patriarchy out of the mouths of my friends, family, and the media I consumed.

“no boys are going to like you if you’re ______________ like that”

(bossy)

(fat)

(butch)

The me that had stood up on my twin bed so I could scream in the face of my grown man abuser, that laughed at spankings and shot lasers from my death stare after slaps across my cheek got tucked away deep inside me. They were replaced with someone who skipped meals, who prioritized “sweet” over safety, who got along to get along.

I was a lot more liked, I was a lot less me.

But politics brought it out in me. A high school classroom discussion about abortion where I surprised everyone by raising my voice. Storming out of a church dinner at the pastor’s home when someone said you couldn’t be a democrat and a Christian. Walking away from a long-term partnership after seeing the misogyny in the way I was viewed by the man who was supposed to really love me.

When I was a child the speeches of Patrick Henry and Soujourner Truth would get me all fired up and make tears come out of my eyes. They caused the same sensation in me as hearing beautiful music or watching a good dancer dance. It’s art. It’s something deeper than writing or speaking or church.

It’s truth.

I started turning from someone who didn’t say boo to anybody to someone who fought, who argued, who discerned who I allowed close to me. Then, through activism I started to love my body, to understand my gender and queerness, to see that there were things I could do, ways I could live and learn to think and be that would cause less harm to people of color. I am in deep study now about the ways I can live in harmony with our planet, doing as little damage as possible.

It’s like the gift that keeps on giving. The more I learn the more loving I become, the more aware I become, the more conscious I become. The more I learn, the more there is to learn. The more information I have, the more impassioned I become, the more action I want to take.

I am dreaming of a better world.

I am wishing for a better world.

The way things are set up now requires a certain amount of isolation, of individualism. Hell, one trip on the Q train at rush hour would be enough to make Ramm Dass lose faith in humanity. Everyone is so self-involved. This is by necessity. We don’t even enjoy food because we don’t think we have time. We don’t even enjoy each other because we don’t think we have time.

Building community is a meditation on vulnerability, authenticity, trust, and love. Other people show you the mirror of yourself— either they reflect the wounds you carry or the beautiful glow of your loving spirit. Sometimes it’s both at the same time.

We’ve lost our way.

But all hope is not lost.

How you do one thing tends to be how you do everything. Internal healing is necessary in order to be in conscious community. If you’re walking around projecting all your bullshit onto everyone around you, expecting everyone to put up with your lack of self-awareness, you probably aren’t a very good community member. If you haven’t unpacked capitalism and find yourself in constant (often one-sided) competition with the people you love to such an extent that you find yourself harboring animosity instead of appreciation towards them, you may not be a very good community member. If you haven’t addressed your internalized ableism, you may forget to make community accessible to your disabled loved ones and that’s not really all that loving, is it??

Doing the internal work is just part of it. Community can also teach you how to have conscious relationships, which many of us are experiencing for the first time in our lives, because healthy connection isn’t modeled anywhere in our culture. The ego cannot be present in a conscious connection, because loving another fully, engaging vulnerably, and being honest requires transcending the ego, if only momentarily, in order to come to a satisfying conclusion. This is beautiful, meaningful, and life-changing work.

Asking the individuals and institutions who are clearly working with some sociopathic level of empathy deficit, who are obsessed with and completely preoccupied by material greed and nothing more—begging them to make the right choice by us, when they are supposed to work for us is getting tiresome. Most people have so far surpassed the two-party fairy tale that they vote blue begrudgingly even though party leaders are deeply out-of-touch with their constituents and seem to have little interest in changing with the times.

Stokely Carmichael said

“In order for passive resistance to work, your opponent must have a conscience.”

Things are getting dire. Climate action needs to happen, like, before you finish reading this blog post and it just isn’t going to. Policymakers are in Two of Swords mode, they got their eyes and ears closed so tight that can’t hear the drum of the approaching apocalypse. For fuck’s sake, they haven’t even solved Covid!!!

It is becoming more and more clear with every passing moment

All we have is each other

I’m still learning, still in the process of stepping into my own courage, planning for what I can plan for, and limited by the energetic bear trap that is capitalism. I don’t have the answers. But I know I feel best when I care for others, when I am cared for, when I see people doing good, being helpers, hearts open and full of hope.

I know that my God, my Mother Universe empowers me in knowing that things could be so simple if we let them. I know that there are people creating a slower, self-sustaining, beautiful life that is completely in line with their values.

I know that there is more to life than struggle, than isolation, than oppression, than loss. I know time is our most precious resource. I know we have more power than we’re aware of.

Any change, whether internal healing or political change, whether being the change you wish to see in the world, or being inspired by someone else’s authenticity, happens one step at a time.

We build a life, brick by brick.

Our dreams, our lifestyles, our ways of viewing the world may have to change drastically in the next few years. Who do you want to be in the world? At your core, who are you? If you could spend the rest of your days in the company of a handful of people, who would they be? How would you live?

Take a gardening class, learn self-defense, carry some Narcan around, share your story, nurture your close relationships, work on yourself.

All we have is each other,

but if you think about it,

that’s actually kind of a lot.

Listen here // Watch here

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Toxic Loyalty

Pouring Love Into a Bottomless Cup

Maybe the stone cracked in the firing.

Maybe the walls were too thin or

too wet maybe.

Maybe the hands that made it were

too strong or not strong enough.

Maybe the faucet rusted,

maybe the water had too much

oxygen in it or hydrogen,

maybe it evaporated before it hit

the drain, maybe the drain was

fitted wrong.

Start with patience.

Start with compassion.

Start with benefit of the doubt.

Start with second chances.

Start with rumination.

Go round and round and round and round

til you dry out.

Toxic loyalty starts with enmeshment. Toxic relationships require enmeshment because if you don’t know where you start and the other person begins, their joy becomes your joy and their joy is louder than the fact that they’re hurting you.

Ride-or-die is so romanticized in our culture that you have to wonder if we don’t all have an enmeshment wound. Maybe that’s why everyone’s so passive aggressive and afraid of conflict. Maybe that’s why no one can even admit a fondness for someone, or even a kind thought.

Maybe that’s why everyone runs from vulnerability.

I used to think my toxic loyalty was my best character trait. My bottomless capacity to stick around was a rarity in a human being—it’s what inspired people who couldn’t seem to love anyone to love me…

or so I thought.

The balance of give and take always seemed equal right up until I needed something. Sometimes it was as simple as a listening ear, or as heavy as a big favor. It didn’t matter. I was often left dripping wet, hanging out to dry.

I made over-giving an art form.

Every relationship I ever took part in was either Thelma and Louise or True Romance in my mind. I was Lady Macbeth. I was Samwise following Frodo to the ends or Mordor, man, and I was happy to be there. Limerence was a ways of life for me and it spread out in every single direction.

The blueprint of the toxic loyalty of my family of origin “blood is thicker than water” “what happens in the family stays in the family” and the way that I was shunned or punished any time I told the truth taught me that this was the highest virtue—the ability to keep my truth a secret, the strength to endure any mistreatment and still stick around, the oscar-worthy performance of keeping up appearances.

I got good at it.

I developed a dogmatic level of attachment to my toxic family. Though the enmeshment was heavy and cumbersome, though it caused me to go slow and fall often, I carried it through my life without complaint.

I was the emotional backbone of most of my relationships. I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I thought that was how I earned love.

The first time I ever asked for help was often the final straw in my relationships. The effort and trust and build up it took to make myself vulnerable and ask for what I need and the rejection that followed have amounted to some of the most painful moments of my life. But they have also been the greatest teachers.

Being a people-pleaser, codependent, an over-giver (however you look at it) is hard to heal, because in order to heal it you have to face your greatest fear. You think that you earn love by over-giving, and then you lay one little boundary and everyone you love leaves you.

It’s a nightmare.

But those who really love you will stick around. Won’t ask so much of you. Will love you for who you are and not what you can do or be for them.

Dr. Maya Angelou said

Love liberates, it doesn’t bind

Where are you bound in love?

And where are you free?

There is no virtue in harming yourself through another person. Release yourself from this paradigm and be loved for who you are, even if it feels like you’re the only one doing it. You loving you is better than 1000 people loving you for the wrong reasons. The road to authenticity is paved with many goodbyes. Loyalty in the face of harm is just another expression of emotional self-harm and self-abandonment. Love, loyalty, showing up, building community should feel more joyful than it does difficult, it should enrich you, inspire you, support you—not exhaust you, not disappoint you, not tear you down.

In a healthy attachment loyalty isn’t demanded, it isn’t shouted from the rooftops, it isn’t a chore or an expectation and it looks a lot different than in storybook romances. Everyone fights their own battles. Everyone is responsible for themselves. Grown ups don’t need a Brienne of Tarth or an Adriana La Cerva.

When you meet as equals,

the give and take need not be measured,

it just is.

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