"...make yourself fierce, break in:
then your great transforming will happen to me,
and my great grief cry will happen to you."
Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated by Robert Bly)
Self portraits are fun, executive dysfunction is not. I named the first photo "The Mountain's Final Resting Place". One of the things I'm most excited for going forward in my life is the continued relinquishing of my hoarding/purging tendency. What a battle. My heart goes out to yuns that struggle with that too. You can do ittt <3
Last photo is from GLF taken by the amazing @hitedesign :))
As a vocal advocate for decriminalization & ending the “war on drugs”, and as a continuing participant in my own recovery from addiction to people and to a variety of substances:
Addiction is a hell of a thing.
We chase our demons with spirits and cloak our pain in smoke, trying to outrun a weight that the abandoned children inside us carry no matter how many tracks we run around in circles that ultimately function as traps, forcing us to betray our selves & others again and again.
Addiction to anything is a hell that starts out lined with soft things which feel like comfort, and so often end in the tragedy of cognitive dissonance living in the mycelial network of our fascia.
It anchors us, in all our disbelief and unwillingness, to sticky floors that keep us from freedom.
If this reaches you, I hope you’ll be kind to yourself today. I hope that through this kindness to yourself, you’ll see the people you’ve hurt along your way. Instead of lashing out in defense of your actions, I hope you’ll listen to those people, try to right the ship, and lift that anchor from the floor so you can enjoy the breeze caused by the waves of what it is to be human.
🐌🌱🎶✨
🍃Incoming✨
I just stumbled onto something you may find useful, especially If you’re neurodivergent or experience harm from the (🫨GASP🫣) pAtrIArChY&ytSupRemACy fever dream that many of us have or are medicating ourselves in order to escape. I figured I’d share.
If you fit the description above it’s likely you’ve been labeled as defensive, argumentative, or passive aggressive for allowing your voice/expression to relax, making a good point that disrupts a narrative, or opted out of sucking a metaphorical dick.
🏃♀️💨 Quick context 🌬️🏃🏻♀️➡️
The steady evolution of my conviction to practice actions/habits that provide spiritual, psychological, and somatic protection for myself and others has been going so incredibly well lately.
My rapidly expanding understanding of the ways I both contribute to and experience harm caused by miscommunication and self preservation are improving my quality of life and relationships so much. The catharsis is real, y’all.
I’m realizing more each day how important it is (and interestingly how fun and exciting it can be) to do the things required to preserve relational hygiene in both my intimate and professional connections.
After having some conversations recently that left me feeling drained, agitated, misunderstood, and even disgusted/queasy at the amount of precious energy I’m unable to regenerate as quickly as I’d like, I landed on a phrase I will likely be using regularly from here on out when I sense I am being undermined, limited, interrupted, or otherwise undesirably treated during a discussion:
“I understand where you’re coming from. It seems to me that my lived experience provides me with a nuanced perspective concerning this discussion which I don’t currently have the bandwidth to share with you. I’d like to shift away from talking about this now to preserve my limited and precious energy. What would you like to do?”
🙌As always, credit where it’s due👀
@pixielighthorse will forever be one of my favorite authors and I can not emphasize enough how revolutionary her books are”Boundaries and Protection” and “The Wound Makes The Medicine” have been and continue to be for my life. Must reads. 🐌🪱🦋
You know that deep, often suppressed part of us we’ve lost touch with? The one we need in order to guard ourselves from being lured into traps disguised as opportunities? Tune into that depth.
You can trust your intuition. We sometimes forget this.
When you are grieving, it’s harder to see that many people who claim to be safe don’t know the meaning of that word.
When your eyes are blurry from crying, it’s harder to see people extracting whatever resources you may provide them while they comfort you under the guise of concern and leveraged care.
In my experiences and observation over many years, it seems that the eyes of people who behave this way are often so clouded with shame, rage, and denial that they can’t see it either.
It’s so clarifying to spend time alone. It’s so important to spend time cultivating and tending to non-sexual relationships with friends of different genders, orientations, and lived experiences, whether or not you have a partner.
It’s wildly difficult to break through the need to assign ourselves to a “rescuer” or to hide behind “rescuees”. But once this cycle of scarcity and fear is interrupted long enough to dry your eyes and turn your energy towards generosity, self reflection, and curiosity, things become so much more beautiful and rewarding than ever before.
Here’s hoping for the cultivation of awareness & accountability for all in 2026. 🫣🌤️✨
My lil’ heart can’t take it! 🥹✨🎶
Hit up @adamstone_music for your recording needs
Big thank you to him and @danimal4444
Two of my best friends and most favorite musicians
For breathing life into such a special song.
🐌🌱🌈🍯
Oh, this man. About 4 years ago, he reached into one of the deepest ocean trenches I’ve ever found myself in, due to my own inability and unwillingness to be honest with myself and others.
When I met Brandon, I told him I felt like an empty shell of a human. With tears in his eyes, and without knowing me pretty much at all, he set his sites on doing what he could to change that.
Now, if you know him at all, you know that this human digs his teeth in harder to a challenge than a pitbull. And boy, was I a challenge at that point. And if you know me at all, you know the extent I will go to defend my agency, autonomy, and beliefs around relationship anarchy.
I wasn’t ready for a partnership. I was anti-ready for a partnership. So a year and some change after the moment he picked up my empty shell, and about 1,000 conversations around how to talk about our relationship, Brandon called me up and said “so… are we partners yet?” And I smiled real big and said “yes”.
Through all our passion, growing pains, shared joy, dissolution, separation, and our current re-emergence into the second iteration of a slowly and steadily blooming partnership, this man has been my rock.
Last year after I’d reached the end of my rope, I devolved into my own psychosis-fueled dark comedy and needed to traverse to the bottom of the well without him.
I threw him, with all the child-like might I had left, into a river of my rage and heartache, and he respected my demand for him to go away and to stay away.
But you know what he did, despite all that? Instead of allowing himself to tumble aimlessly into the dark corners of that river, or bumping out into the ocean to find a new chapter without me, he prayed for me.
He dug his little rocky-horror-picture-show-lookin-ass heels into the river bed. He worked on himself. He held hands with his own shadow. He started listening in a new way.
Through it all I’ve learned that sometimes the most precious thing we can learn to be is an empty shell. Because empty shells are the only ones in which we can hear the ocean sing.
Got to celebrate the most incredible woman on Earth this week for her bday! 🤩✨🦎
Sitting in awe, honor, and gratitude for my beautiful momma today. To be actually loved unconditionally, and actionably, by the people who brought me into the world is my most cherished gift. And to have a mother who blazed a trail for her children to a brighter future than she inherited, modeled to me what true care for others looks like, and never scorned me over the years I tried in vain to fill her shoes while insisting I was walking in them just fine, is a rarity no person could ever deserve by the merit of their own action.
My momma taught me that all humans inherently deserve love, care, and safety no matter where they come from. She showed me how to love and forgive others along the way. She showed me grace. All without saying much. She is truly a woman of action who I strive to be more like each day.
I’m too long winded and tangled in thoughts & ideas to keep my words to myself, and I have my dad to thank for that, but I’m still learnin’ and always will be.
Love you more, Big Chick❤️ 🐥💜🐣🧡
Stuck the landing. ✨🤓✨I wrote you a song so now you’re obligated to come to @whiskeythiefchattanooga at 7PM so I can become your problem IRL. Or stay home. I will still love you. 🥹🫠🧡☀️
