Sometimes people will tell me how amazing it is that I have pushed through so many obstacles or conditions (CPTSD, OCD, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, religious abuse, narcissistic, emotional abuse) in my life to become “successful.”

What they don’t see is how my over-functioning is made up of layers and layers of masks I’ve worn to earn love, to feel that I deserve to exist, to feel like I am not a failure, to prove that I’m not weak, or stupid, or helpless. That is not success. This drive comes from expectation and fear, and I have no idea anymore what I look like beneath all of these masks. I fantasize a lot lately about taking a quarter off from work to live near the ocean, to see if my nervous system can stabilize long enough for me to find out.

Pushing through has caused massive cognitive decline. It leaves me with no emotional regulation so I react more than I respond. It has led me to isolation and agoraphobia. It leaves me crying every day in my office, my bed, at my kitchen table, in my car, at coffee shops, and even in my dreams. It makes me feel like I will never, ever, get better.

But, if I hadn’t pushed through all these years I wouldn’t have had the privilege of cutting my grandson’s umbilical cord. I wouldn’t have fostered nine dogs, and adopted four, giving them the life they deserve. I wouldn’t have experience of watching an abused, neglected kitty transformed by love and care into the beautiful cat she is today. I wouldn’t have met all of you. Everyone who has held me, or listened, or even those who have taught me the harsh lessons I needed to learn to become someone who can alchemize darkness most of the time.

With all of the damage that pushing through has done it is also laced with moments I never would have had and for that I am thankful, even when I’m in pieces.

White Knuckles

Push through even when your mouth is a desert sand.

Push through when your thoughts are spinning like a rogue ferris wheel with no end in sight.

Push through when there’s no one to talk to without feeling like you're a burden.

Push through because if you don’t you’re called: lazy, dramatic, attention-seeking, entitled, over-sensitive, over-reactive, manipulative, needy, and worst of all, weak.

Push through when you wake up with your heart racing, panicked for no nameable reason.

Push through when you’ve run out of Wellbutrin or Xanax and you’re suddenly raw and skinless again.

Push through when you're met with silence, dismissal, and invalidation.

Push through because if you don’t they will say you’re not trying hard enough–even though you’ve pushed so hard you’ve got gravel stuck to your knees.

Push through because you have no safety net, no arms to catch you, no back up plan. You are your back up plan.

Push through because everyone’s life is hard enough without you on their backs.

Push through the walls of fire, the walls of ice, the walls made of daggers, because no one is coming to save you.

Push through because you have no proof on your skin of the damage he did to you.

Push through when someone says, “Time heals!” or “Everything happens for a reason!” or “Think positive!” even when you want to punch them in the face.

Push, and push, and push. Even when your tires are flat and you’ve run out of gas.

But also...

Push through for the people who see you, the students who thank you, the daughter who cherishes you, the sister who always makes time for you, and the grandchildren who cheer when they see you. 

Push through for the friend who needs to be seen and supported, so you can make their day with flowers or donuts. 

Push through for the three dogs who lose their minds when you come home and compete for the first pet, for the cat who waits patiently and sits on your chest when your heart is racing. 

Push through for the good days you haven't had yet, the next dog or cat who needs you, your granddaughter's graduation, and your grandson's first day of kindergarten.

Push through so you're there for your daughter the day she wakes up to her first morning without her soul-cat.

Push through for all the poems you haven't written, the stories you haven't put down on paper.

Push through for everyone who believed in you enough to publish your work.

Push through because you have to. 

Push through because one day you'll be doing it for you, too.

Anyone who met her found her just as unforgettable as I do. Her sass. Her intelligence. Her unapologetic nature. Her commanding presence. I’m talking of course about my soul-dog Schatzi, a Miniature Dachshund who left this often rotten world for greener pastures five years ago this past March.

Every Dia de Los Muertos, I create an ofrenda not only for Schatzi but for Suzi, Jaime, and most recently, Biscuit. But it started with Schatzi because well, everything started with her.

It was 2013 and my niece’s grandfather had passed leaving behind a local celebrity: Schatzi, the girl who saved and blessed his life for seven years. I’ll never forget the first time I took her to the beach, how someone recognized her and immediately asked, “Is that Larry’s dog?!”

After Larry died his son initially planned to keep her. But he asked me go dog sit for a long weekend while he went out of town. In the first fifteen minutes I knew we belonged together and so did she. I can’t explain it. I would call it mind reading, but I think the closest I can get is soul knowing, or spirit speak. We both just knew she wasn’t going back.

Sure enough, when the son arrived to pick her up, he admitted that he wasn’t in a position to care for her and asked if I wanted to keep her. I’ll never forget that feeling. That year I was recovering from a series of a events that turned my life upside down and not in a good way. I had just moved back to my chosen home, having left behind a job and community I loved. But in that moment I felt a reconnection to myself, to my intuition. Meanwhile, Schatzi looked at me from the passenger seat of the car with an expression that said, “Well, duh, bitch. Of course I’m coming home with you. Where’s my cheese?”

I took Schatzi with me everywhere. To work. Into stores. On trips. People just assumed if I was visiting, so was Schatzi. A friend of mine reminded me of how one time I picked her up and told her she had to sit in the back seat because Schatzi INSISTED on riding shotgun. (God, I’m so embarrassed!)

Schatzi hated kids and other dogs. She loved cats. She loved me most of all. But her love came with bite and I don’t mean literally. Schatzi treated me like a puppy who needed correction and boundaries. She modeled confidence and self-assurance. Two things I have never really had and still struggle with.

While living near Port Towsend (I’ll be writing about “home” later), our favorite thing to do was to go to a local beach together. Schatzi climbed all over the driftwood sniffing and investigating and if I caught her looking out for me as I waded in the freezing Puget Sound water, she looked away, as if, she didn’t want me to know.

One time at the beach I was sitting cross legged with her on my lap when a woman showed up with two unleashed, large pitbulls. They ran straight towards us and I froze…Schatzi however did not. I am a freezer and a fawner, and that day I found out what I should have already known: She was a fighter.

I don’t think I can ever mimic the sound that came out of her tiny 10lb body. It was gutteral and primal. All this to say, the moment the two dogs were within a foot of us, she went ape shit and they went running back to their mom, literally with their tails between their legs and crying. Their mom said, “Oh yeah, watch out for my viscious pitbulls.” And maybe I should have been embarrassed. But I wasn’t. I was in awe. To be so little and so fierceless. It was just one of dozens of examples of her courage, strength, and protective nature.

Schatzi was full of surprises. Like, the time we had a mouse in our trailer and it ran over my daughter’s cat’s paws (now THAT was embarrassing) and Schatzi immediately chased it, shook it, and sent it to its next incarnation. She looked at all of us as if to say, “Want something done you gotta do it yourself.”

I don’t want to write about the day I lost her. All I’ll say is that she lived to be almost fifteen, I held her in arms till her last breath, and I have missed her every single day since.

The last couple of years have been so brutal. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like with her. I think she would have been disappointed in me a lot, as I have disappointed myself in devastating ways. But, I also know she would never stop steering me in the right direction, one towards self-respect and self-love, even if it eluded me every single time.

Schatzi’s been on mind the last couple of days because on Monday, before the end of March, the same month she died, I was finally able to go back to our beach. Before that I had sat up above a grocery shop and written a poem for her, sobbing in front of a room full of strangers. I wrote about what I was going to do at the beach: write our names in the sand, “Schatzi and Kristy were here.”

When I actually went to the beach and started writing a dog came out of nowhere, trampling over my name. The owner follow behind. I told her what I was doing and I instantly got choked up. “We will leave you be,” she said. And I wondered if this was another stick it to you moment from Schatzi since it was my name that got erased.

But later, as I sat on the driftwood on the part of the beach we so often spent time, I read her poem out loud and to the sea, and the sky. A man with a dog walked past and I thought about stopping, but I didn’t. I kept reading the poem out loud with tears streaming down my face.

The man’s dog, a Husky mix with piercing blue eys, started to pull hard towards me. I asked, “Can I say hi?” The dog dad seemed hesitant, “He’s not really good with strangers. He’s very timid. He doesn’t go up to people.” He said this as his dog pulled so hard he finally got to me, wagged his tail and sniffed me.

“He never, ever does that. He doesn’t like strangers,” the man said, “there must be something about you that makes him feel comfortable.

I told the man what I was doing. We both agreed Schatzi sent his dog, Tosh, to let me know she could hear me.

His dog had saved him too, after his friend died of cancer.

“Love is a four legged word,” he said, then, “Take care of yourself, okay?”

I nodded. It was time to go.

I know there are people who will never, ever understand what it is like to love a soul like this, one that just happens to come in stocky, feisty little mini dachshund. There are people who don’t understand the love of a dog, or any other animal, and how it changes you for the better. This is not for those people. This is for you. The reader who knows soulmates come in all shapes, sizes, and species.

Here is my poem to Schatzi and some pictures:

Here Again

I can’t say that you were glued to my ankles,
but I can write that you never left my side.

I can’t say that you didn’t scold me when I
got home late, that you didn’t stand in the doorway
not letting me in until I heard all about it.

But I can write about how you let me wipe 
the tears off my face with the velvet of your
ears, and even though minutes later you’d
let out a heavy sigh, as you plopped down a 
sharp distance from me, you also knew 
when to stay close.

I can write about the beach that was just ours,
it was just ours because you watched from the
driftwood while I waded in the near freezing
waters of the Puget Sound, pretending you weren’t,
until I called your name and you shed your aloofness.

I can’t write about how often you visit me 
in my dreams, because you don’t visit often
enough, and when you do, you’re always in such
a hurry, rushing back, I think to the old man
whose life you blessed for seven years.

But I can write about how I hold onto 
the image of your silhouette as you leave me
once more and when I wake, I hold the dog
beside me closer to my chest. 

I can tell you how I’ve made room on my
lap for a Pekingese, a Pomeranian, a YorkiePoo,
a Doberman and even several cats.

I can’t say that any of them have replaced
you, no matter how much I carry them like
children, no matter how often I kiss them,
curl my body against them, and sob, 
imagining the day I will lose them, too. 

You were never my child, but my mother.

Your soul has never come back to me, 
dressed in a different breed. 

Lately though, I think about the blonde dog 
of my youth, the one my parents cruelly ripped
from my arms.

Maybe she came back to me, through you,
older, wiser, strong enough to nurture me 
back into myself, so I could forgive the little girl 
powerless to save her. 

Maybe she wanted me to know I was
worth returning to.

Maybe. 

Or maybe you were just you:
bossy, intolerant, moaning at the
insult of being called more human than
dog, knowing full well who wins
at that game.

But today I stand on our beach again.
I pick up rocks and driftwood.
I let the tears fall for you, as
they have for years, as they will forever.

I tattoo our names in the wet sand:
Schatzi and Kristy were here.
We still are. 

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows this story.

In 2010, a social worker told me that I would someday become a burden to my children. She said with the level of my disabilities, I would never be successful or contribute to society in any way.

She said, “Kristy, you’re one of those people who will never …

Read more

Recently, my daughter asked me if I had received the literary magazine I’d been waiting for, the one that features my latest essay.

“It should be here by Friday,” I told her, then I added, “I can’t believe I’m still writing.”

I recited some of the worst things people, especially men, have said about my writing.

Her eyes widened. And again I said to her, “I can’t believe I’m still doing this.”

I told her how proud I was of this particular piece about my mother and how excited I’d been to share it with my now ex-partner. I thought he would be proud, too, and that he would appreciate how I wrote about him in a positive light.

He read it and said nothing. I finally asked him what he thought and he all but rolled his eyes.

“How long are you going to process this stuff, huh? When are you going to write about something different? How much validation do you need?”

I was nothing short of devastated. I told him I had actually never written about it in this form, where I also recognize all the beautiful things about my mother. He said I should write more about the good stuff.

Without telling him, I submitted my essay to a magazine I thought would be a good fit. I got the quickest rejection ever. The editor, a man, told me he just couldn’t get past the essay’s second-person point of view.

For a moment, I thought my partner was right. Because it wasn’t so much the editor’s rejection that hurt, I have enough rejections to wall paper my entire apartment and then some. It was that feeling that this essay somehow didn’t deserve a home, that I was delusional for thinking this piece was something to be proud of.

I thought that…for a moment. I looked for more calls for submissions and submitted to a few more places. When I saw the editor’s email in my inbox, I took a deep breath, prepared to read that yet another editor couldn’t make the leap of accepting a piece written from that point of view.

Instead, I opened the email and found that the editor, a woman, had written, “We would like to accept your essay for publication.”

I was gleeful. I shared the good news with my then partner and he appeared almost disappointed. I think he was hoping to prove himself right.

There’s a reason why I’ve made it a point to mention whether the editor was a man or a woman. Much of the harshest criticism, the kind that could have destroyed my confidence and motivation to write, has come from men. But that doesn’t mean all of my experiences were negative.

In fact, it was my first college English teacher, Wes, who took me aside after the final day of class and encouraged me to pursue writing. I was shocked.

I was twenty-five at the time with a two-year old and five-year old. The rest of the class was mostly made up of teens, sixteen to eighteen, who were in the Running Start program. I wasn’t well-read. I grew up in a cult, married young, and I had become a mother by the time I was nineteen. Reading wasn’t at the top of my list of priorities. I felt terribly behind and deeply embarrassed.

Week after week, Wes would come in and slap down a book by some writer I’d never heard of. This straight, white, cisgender man, who resembled Thor, happened to be the first person to introduce me to Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Banana Yoshimoto, and Yasunari Kawabata.

Wes didn’t hold back and he could be unflinching at times. But it came from a place of wanting me to succeed. I could feel that.

Later, I transferred to a four-year college and took my first class focused on poetry only. It was in this class where I experienced the words I continued to hear for years from men:

“This would be interesting if it wasn’t about you.”

“Write more about your redheaded girlfriend. She sounds more interesting.”

“I wish your story focused more on your kids and less about you.”

Or, in all capitals, “I DON’T GET IT.”

The next year, I took a class from a well-known author, Bill Ransom. Like my first teacher, he was honest, but not harsh. He was encouraging, not dismissive. He gave me a list of publishers he thought would be a good fit for my writing. I submitted and got rejected from all of them. But, it didn’t stop me.

After graduating from Evergreen State College, I got the nerve to enter an MFA program. Most of our mentors were semi-famous, successful writers, and authors. We attended workshops, lectures, and readings. The workshops were merciless.

When I first arrived on campus for the ten-day residency, the first thing I noticed was the lack of ethnic and racial diversity. I believe I was one of only three students who brought that kind of diversity to the program.

The second thing that grabbed my attention was a woman asking, “Who wrote Coco?”

I raised my hand, unsure what type of response awaited me. Originally, Coco was a short story about a little girl with a sentient third arm. It eventually became a novella featured in my first book. I was pleasantly surprised when she told me how much she loved it and that it was the most original story she read from students in the program.

Then came the day when “Coco” would be workshopped. If you’ve been in a writer’s workshop you’re probably familiar with the traditional format. The group reads your work and then each participant goes around sharing their thoughts and critiques. Meanwhile, the writer must remain completely silent. The critique doesn’t happen in collaboration or dialogue with you; it happens at you, or to you.

In her book, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, Felicia Rose Chavez explains this model in the following manner:

The traditional model silences the author during the workshop while participants compete over what’s “right” and “wrong” with the text. (Chavez 11)

So, I sat there while two men tore apart my story and insisted it was about penis envy. They laughed about it, like I wasn’t even there. Meanwhile, I swallowed down the lump in my throat, not able to defend my writing, or challenge their ridiculous interpretation. One of these men would go on to write a series of vampire books, striking a multi-million dollar contract, while the other, my first year mentor, became frustrated because I wanted to focus on Latinx writers and encouraged me to read more, “North American authors.” He would eventually write me a scathing email because I wanted to write fiction as well as poetry. He completely tore me down and behaved as if I’d killed a kitten in front of him. The email was very much, “After ALL I have done for you and your poetry?!” But in reality, 90% of his feedback was, “I don’t get it,” and “What is this even about?”

How I kept writing after all of this still baffles me. Luckily, I had reaffirming experiences that counteracted the negative responses. I discovered A Word With You Press, founded by Thornton Sully. He became my biggest supporter and cheerleader. I won two of his writing contests and he eventually published my first book, The Gift of an Imaginary Girl, which included Coco, a novella about generational trauma and harmful family secrets, not penises.

While publication brought joy, it also brought a whole new category of reactions, some surprising, some humbling, some unintentionally hilarious. For instance, a friend of mine loved The Gift of an Imaginary Girl so much she suggested it for her monthly book club. At the end of the month she planned to have me over to her house for an author’s reception and a Q & A. I was working at the local indie bookstore at the time and watched as members of the book club stopped by and picked up the book.

One day my friend walked in, her head down looking apologetic. Turns out the rest of the women didn’t dislike my book, they hated it. She asked me if I would still come over and talk to them about how to get published. I politely declined.

Other criticism, all these specifically from men included:

“Do you really think your book is good enough to be published?”

“I hate the cover of your book.”

“You should have had more people proofread your book.”

“Isn’t that just a vanity press? You’re not really published, are you?”

Most recently, I was at a wedding reception sitting next to a relative. We were talking about what was going on in our lives. I told her that Beyond the Veil Press, the same press that published my book of poems Heretic, was publishing my second collection, Shapeshifters, early next year. She smiled and asked what it was about.

“It’s a love letter to maligned identities and marginalized communities, mostly focused on transgender, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA.”

Her smile faded instantly.

“I want happy books. Only happy books! The world is way, way too serious. Let’s all just be happy!”

After a few minutes of shoveling wedding cake into my mouth, I moved to a different table. Talk about on the nose!

I will never be a commercial success. I’m not a particularly prolific writer. I don’t have regular writing practice and my writing is definitely not for everyone. I am however audacious in my desire to continue to express myself even when no one is listening or reading what I have to say, or just doesn’t like it. Maybe even hates it.

There are countless stories of now renowned, famous, award winning writers whose writing was rejected repeatedly. Rejection and criticism can be a gift. You learn to discern between dialogue that helps to hone and reveal your voice and criticism that’s meant to silence you. It takes a lot of nerve not only to write, but to be vulnerable enough to share it with the world.

Everyone’s reason for writing and sharing their work is different. What you write about doesn’t have to be deep and heavy. It doesn’t have to save the world, or sell millions.

I write to understand who I am, what I believe, and finally, to connect with others: the weirdos, the outcasts, the unpopular, and the misunderstood. I write because for me writing is an act of freedom.

This is hard to admit, but it’s the truth. If you suffer from any of the following conditions, you can expect to lose friends:

• Depression

• CPTSD

• Panic disorder

• Chronic pain or chronic illness

• Disabilities, including “invisible” disabilities

“Due to a lack of information, the average friend does not know how to support their depressed friend. On the contrary, the average friend may suggest that the latter become strong and positive no matter what. This kind of advice hurts us because depression is an illness, not a weakness. And then, we tend to avoid such friends because we don’t need to feel worse about ourselves.” Mahevash Shaikh, “Losing Friends Is Normal if You Live with Depression,” Healthy Place.

What some might call self-pitying, a victim mentality, or attention-seeking behavior is actually a way of processing trauma, re-evaluating, cocooning, feeling the aftershocks of a painful loss, and hypervigilance. Ruminating out loud might be a part of the process. It can also be driven by the need to feel seen, heard, and validated. It’s a purging of the mental and emotional “bacteria” that continues to spread through their nervous system. They are trying to make sense of it all, vacillating between anger, regret, self-loathing, self-blame, depression and rage. It’s exhausting and being alone with it feels like an endless fall into darkness.

There are very few people who can handle, understand, or hold space for someone battling deep depression. I remind myself constantly that that is okay. Maybe it triggers their own experiences with trauma, depression, or grief. Maybe they don’t know how to help. Maybe they don’t have the emotional bandwidth because they are dealing with their own struggles. Maybe they just don’t understand that it is more than being sad. Mabye they wonder why you can’t flip the switch and just “think positive thoughts.”

I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to be around me when I’m at my worst, feeling my losses the hardest. But it doesn’t make it hurt any less. All I know is that it’s unfair of me to expect everyone to get it, especially those if they have no experience with things like clinical depression, complex PTSD, and serious anxiety disorder.

Some days I sit deeply steeped in my grief. I want a way out. I want to see a hand reaching towards me, strong enough to pull me out. But that hand belongs to only one person: my Higher Self. I ask myself what I’m doing wrong and what I’m doing that keeps her at bay. I grow impatient and frustrated. I always hear how I can’t become this version of me until I “let go” of the past. I think what I need to accept is that this same pain has changed me, irrevocably. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

My nervous system is still in tatters. My hypervigilance and anxiety cause me to jump to conclusions, seeing danger everywhere, even in the slightest change in someone’s body language and tone. My mind spirals and before I know it, I am convinced that I am unlovable, that all my friends and family think I’m a burden, a loser, a liability. Time and time again, I am proven wrong about my assumptions. But I still can’t seem to break this line of thinking until I discover something to prove otherwise.

Lately, both the chronic back pain and the impending holidays have isolated me even more. I watch all the videos of my grandchildren, create gift lists even though I know I won’t see them. I feel like a prisoner of both my mind and my home, terrified to run into people in a town where I have zero support system. My daughter, my dogs, and cats, are my heroes, my catalysts for healing.

Sometimes I stew in darkness instead of trying to numb it. I feel it. I feel it. I feel it. And hopefully, it changes me in the best way possible. Hopefully, it won’t be for nothing.

SNAP benefits are set to end on Saturday, November 1. I’m angry and devastated on behalf of all the families, the children, who will be affected. Those who lack compassion, decency, or understanding for the suffering this will cause, must not know what it feels like to go hungry. And if they do, maybe they’ve forgotten. Maybe they should start to remember, because I sure as hell do.

This is my story.

My father didn’t believe in things like food stamps or any kind of government assistance. He believed in God. But that winter when the last of the apples disappeared, and we finished every can of Western Family chicken noodle soup, and 99-cent Totino’s pizzas, both split four ways, my mother took God out of the equation and made a call to the Salvation Army. A few hours later, two visibly drunk men in Santa suits showed up at our door with several bags of groceries.

My sister and I tore into the paper bags, grabbed slices of bread and stuffed them into our mouths, barely chewing. We opened a canister of pulpy orange juice, which I usually hated, and took turns drinking straight from the container. We were so hungry that we didn’t notice our mother crying in the corner. She had broken multiple rules: one, she asked for assistance from the Salvation Army, which was a huge no-no for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Two, the men came dressed as Santa, an even bigger transgression as we also weren’t allowed to celebrate holidays, especially Halloween and Christmas. And third, she did it all behind our father’s back. To top it all off, one of the drunken Santas made a pass at her.

When we noticed our mother in despair, we didn’t stop to comfort her. We were hungry and couldn’t get the food into our bellies fast enough. Our mother wailed and we dug through the bags of donations, finding margarine and cheese and peanut butter. We couldn’t contain ourselves. We were animals. Hunger will do that.

During my high school history class, the one right before lunch, my stomach growled so loud kids turned and stared at me. I’d fake cough to try and cover it up. I would go to the bathroom and cry, pressing on my stomach to try to make it stop. Getting my free lunch was the highlight of my day, but I only ate half of it, saving the rest for later, because I knew there would be very little at home.

When I got married at eighteen, my husband and I got on food stamps while we tried to find our footing. We lived in a trailer we paid for in cash with my tax refund. We worked for his dad four days a week, but it wasn’t much. Back then, food stamps came in packets that resembled a checkbook of Monopoly money. Each time I stood in line, I looked down, avoiding eye contact with the cashier. If I got anything “special” like ice cream or a candy bar or chips, I could count on chastisement from someone behind me. I learned fast that if you’re poor, you fall under a different set of rules. Guilty pleasures were more than that, they were disdainful and shameful. Pure thievery. We were considered “bottom feeders.”

Within a couple of years, my husband started his own business out of pure grit. We saved up for a pressure washer and he made his own fliers, and walked around neighborhoods knocking on doors and leaving leaflets on their porches. In the last couple of years of our marriage, we bought a house and we were making a decent living.

The marriage ended after six years, and I found myself lost. Before I left the religious cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses, pursuing higher education was strictly prohibited. At twenty-five, I found myself divorced with primary custody of our two children, no community, and no education or skill set.

I waited tables five nights a week and started attending community college. I managed to stay off of food stamps for three years, until the summer before I started my bachelor’s degree. I was between jobs, waiting on my work study to start, while getting just enough in unemployment and child support to barely disqualify me from food stamps.

It was a hot August in Olympia, Washington as I stood in line at a food bank with my son and daughter, who were five and eight at the time. The whole parking lot stunk of urine. My son pinched his nose. After an hour, it was our turn to go in. I stocked up on canned and boxed food, mostly, and I grabbed one of the “special” items, an expired box of donuts.

When we got back to our apartment, my son went straight for a donut, took a bite, and immediately spit it out. The donuts were hard as rocks. They were about a week old. I dumped the box in the garbage, took a breath, and opened a generic box of blueberry muffin mix. I almost screamed when several moths flew out of the box. My son started to cry.

We went through the McDonald’s drive thru later that afternoon, ordering a few things off the dollar menu. That was the best I could do at that moment, and I imagined all of the co-op shopping, strident, future classmates I would have, judging me for buying my kids a four piece chicken nugget meal and a plain cheeseburger. I wondered how many other families had sat in parking lots of fast food chains feeling utterly defeated.

Throughout the years, I was on and off of assistance. Even when I worked full time and made minimum wage, I would often qualify for food stamps. But sometimes I wouldn’t bother. The process for getting SNAP benefits, especially back then, was humiliating and dehumanizing.

In 2007, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. At the same time, my daughter, who was in fourth grade at the time, became chronically ill. I couldn’t work and I ended up relying on my second husband, who turned out to be an abusive alcoholic, financially. Throughout all of this, I was also in a low residency MFA program that I hoped would later get me at least an adjunct position at a local community college to start. I knew I needed to get out of my situation and I found a place that provided transitional housing and a stepping stones program to help families get on their feet again.

My daughter’s illness was finally getting under control, but I developed a condition where my periods were so severe that I would wake up in pools of blood and barely be able to stand. I worked at a school part time, not being able to make it during the weeks I bled so heavily that I was almost forced to have a blood transfusion. Between serious mental and physical health issues, I struggled to make a living, and I was lucky to be in the program I had found.

Finally, after having surgery, regaining my stamina, going to therapy multiple times a week, and trying out cocktail after cocktail of medications, I was well enough to work a full time job. I still qualified for a small amount of food stamps which helped. When I got a small raise, I lost SNAP benefits again, but I felt proud of myself.

For a total of five years, I worked full time at two different indie bookstores. I loved both jobs, but I only brought home somewhere between $1200 - $1500 a month. Even with a master’s degree, I could not find work that paid much more than minimum wage.

In my final year working at the second bookstore, my rent was more than 50% of my income. I had a car payment, too. I was down to $250 - $300 a month in child support because my son turned eighteen. But I was still supporting him financially while he continued to live at home for three more years.

Even in this situation, I didn’t qualify for food stamps. It brought back all the trauma of my childhood, plus the times I struggled to put food on the table when the kids were younger. I relied on a local church for food donations, and I carefully rationed every cent I made.

Then, in 2016, my father began to die and I moved back home. I found a cheap apartment for my daughter and I, that turned out to be cockroach infested, and flooded with sewage multiple times.

I got a job as a paraeducator that only paid $1000 a month. However, while working at the school, the principal noticed that I had an MFA. She told me that I could work at the school as a teacher with a conditional teaching certificate if I enrolled in a program. She recommended me for an accelerated master’s program that allowed me to teach third grade, while getting a master’s degree in teaching in nine months, instead of two years.

Then, three years later, in 2019, I finally got my dream job: college English instructor.

It has only been in the last nine years that I’ve made any kind of living. I’m fifty years old. The best part is that now I’m in a position to buy groceries to donate to the food pantry at the college where I work, or cook something for my neighbors, or send a friend or two a little bit of money. Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly not rolling in it. But compared to how I lived for four decades, it’s a huge honor to help out when I can.

Hunger does something to a person, not just physically, but psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. I still struggle with a scarcity mindset. So, what I ask is this: please, check in on your neighbors, your friends, anyone in your orbit who might be struggling. Do what you can. What might be pocket change to you, could be a few days worth of groceries for a family in need. We have to look out for each other, because if not us, who?

Lately, I’ve been thinking there are multitudes of loneliness. Each one comes with its own shade and sound and texture, its own flavor even. Each one collects something different from us.

For instance, I remember the inner world of my childhood. Galaxies upon galaxies, my belly full of stars. I wanted to speak, but what planets would I let loose from my mouth and who could possibly understand?

Some loneliness is lyrical, easy to romanticize, to marry with melancholy until we dissolve into its chorus, forgetting how it started.

I think of the loneliness that comes with having no visitors. What it feels like to clean your home, everything in its spot even though you’re not expecting guests. It’s a restless sort of loneliness, that keeps you fluffing pillows and straightening out knicknacks.

Then there’s the loneliness you feel when you’re surrounded by people, but they aren’t your people. This is a damp, cold loneliness. The loneliness of not belonging or feeling understood.

I think about the loneliness of motherhood. One moment your children want to sleep with you after having a nightmare, they write you misspelled mother’s day cards about how you’re the best mother in the world, and they mean it. Later they hate you, and blame you for everything. Eventually, maybe they forgive you, but they still leave you and your house and your silence and your empty table and empty arms. This though, is a loneliness I can learn to live with because it’s devastating but complete.

There’s the loneliness of being in a toxic relationship, not being able to tell anyone how bad things are because you’ve convinced yourself this is love, and if you say the words to your friends, your sister, your therapist, all the spinning plates will fall to the ground and shatter and you’ll want to carve yourself with their sharp edges.

I know the loneliness of creatives who spend days and nights pouring themselves into their poems and songs and paintings and plays hoping to reach someone, to connect through vulnerability and self-expression, only to be met with silence or apathy or judgment. This loneliness reminds me of the time I touched an electric fence and even as it shocked me, I couldn’t let go. I didn’t know my body was a conduit. I didn’t know that I’d be electric all of my life, reaching for a hand to share the voltage.

Someone will try to tell me the difference between aloneness and loneliness as if I don’t already know. As if I don’t love the peace of aloneness, the grace of aloneness, the necessity and nature of a chosen solitude. We can be alone for so long, we think we’ve healed ourselves, by ourselves.

I spent so many years in self-imposed isolation, sure that I was healing. Only to realize what I was really doing was hiding. It’s as if I sprained my ankle and convinced myself it had mended because the pain had disappeared. But really I had just stopped walking altogether.

Tonight, I met with my people, my new community over Zoom. Afterwards, we sent each other photos of our homes to feel a little less alone. We shared our walls and bookshelves, our posters and our choice of lighting. We visited each other’s homes even though we live on opposite coasts. We saw and we felt seen.

This is loneliness recalibrated. This is the transmutation of aloneness. This is connection.

The following poem will be featured in my next book which is due to be published by Beyond the Veil Press sometime next year.

I’m proud of this manuscript because it’s a love letter to maligned and targeted identities.

My last book, Heretic, was a journey through a history of religious trauma and emancipation from abusive dogma. It was about my own pain, but a way to reach out to others who’ve had similar experiences.

This upcoming collection is a departure from all of that. Because I want to move on from my pain and my story to giving attention to what others are going through.

I teach at a school where the majority of students are first-generation college students, immigrants or children of immigrants. Just recently I had them write a paper on what it means to be an American and I’ve been thinking a lot about that myself.

This poem is response to those who believe the only ones who get to claim they are Americans are those who happen to be, by no merit of their own, born here.

Sending out love to those who need it the most in these frightening times.

Birthright

Tell me,
how did you choose
your mother’s womb?

Did you sit among 
angels and gods, flipping 
through manila folders for
neurotypical brains, 
and healthy hearts?

Did you graph income 
brackets? Did you dog tag 
stock portfolios before
conception?

How did you earn the
colors of your flag,
the stars and stripes?
What did you pay for
your birth country?

When did you hear
the anthem calling you?
Was it as your nails grew
in utero, or right as they cut
the cord?

I wonder too, about the
color of your skin. How long
did you peruse the swatches
before settling on ivory
or strawberries and cream?

What sorcery ensured you’d
be born a man who only loves
and desires women? A man
whose sex aligns with his spirit?

I marvel at your body.
As if it has been cut from 
dominant and sought after
cloth, every organ designed
with precision, free of disease,
and every limb and digit, in its 
default position.

Because the rest of us 
want to know your secret.
The rest of us, who’ve 
crossed borders to 
save children.

The rest of us who have
dodged bombs but not
bullets, the rest of us who
hold up signs asking 
you to spare us.

The rest of us 
who wave our flags once 
a year, still it feels
one month too long.

The rest of us 
who fear being disappeared,
or imprisoned, discarded
or maligned, rejected
or vilified. 

We want to know 
what more you have inherited and
what else you take for granted.

About a year and a half after I left the patriarchal, oppressive cult I was raised in, the Goddess Isis visited me in a dream. I knew very little about her at the time, but I recognized her immediately. She looked exactly as she’s portrayed in paintings and sculptures. But she also presented herself in a very human way. Her energy was warm, inviting and friendly. She wanted me to know that we belonged to each other, and for years and years I claimed her as my goddess. I wore a necklace around my neck, I created an altar with a beautiful figure of her in the center. She was trying to bring me into her embrace, her wings. I remember knowing that without a doubt. But I wasn’t ready.

I had given myself no time to heal or to process what I had just experienced. Leaving a cult. Being shunned. Being a newly divorced, single mother of two. Starting college. Having new sexual experiences, most of them impulsive and high risk. I thought I was being brave and bold. Maybe I was to an extent. But my energy was scattered. The closer I got to my own divine, ,spiritual path, I self sabotaged. I always felt…haunted.

Right before I left the cult, I was living with my parents. After an eight day stay in a psychiatric ward with a roommate who introduced me to astrology, I bought a big fat book that blended both western and eastern astrology. My father saw it and told me to burn it immediately. After I left, I got into tarot. But just as my practice was deepening, I had an experience with a family member that brought me a lot of shame around it. So, I abandoned my study.

I’ve abandoned my path and myself repeatedly. At times I’ve been so lost that I don’t know who I am or what I want. This has never been more true as it has been the last few months. I tried to ground myself. I tried pushing through. I tried “surrendering to the process,” whatever the hell that means. I tried reaching out, only to find everyone was too busy, apathetic, or uncomfortable with the situation. Community was non-existent and so was emotional safety.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have just recently started building a sense of community in two sacred spaces: the Self Love Club–a generative writing workshop hosted by my dear friend Sage, and a tarot class that I make a three hour roundtrip drive to every week. It is so, so worth it.

Little by little, my higher self takes up more space in my body. She alerts me when I spin out over a work situation and let my social anxiety believe everyone hates me or is angry with me. It takes a while for me to listen, but I am finally finding some grounding. As hard as it is, I’m also trying to move from judging and feeling shame over my reactiveness to witnessing it. I’m nowhere close to this right now. It is going to take lots of practice, time, and self-forgiveness which is new to me.

Through a crisis, a manic episode, days and nights on end of panic attacks and insomnia, one thing remained: I stayed committed to my path and the ways it reveals itself to me. I am committed to finding or building an intentional community.

That’s when she came back to me. Isis. Isis is known as the goddess of magic and healing, the mother, a protector of children. She appears to me in dreams and symbols. For instance, for years I’ve owned a pair of Isis earrings. I’m absolutely terrible with my jewelry, constantly losing earrings. I remember seeing one of the earrings while I was moving and noticed that the brass Isis figure had broken off from the rest of the earring. When I decided to start working with Isis again, I just happened to find the Isis figure. I went to my tarot class last week, and there was a figure of Isis which had never been there before, looking down at me. I bought an Isis oracle deck which I’ve been using every single day and the message is always on point.

I painted a picture of Isis and added it to her altar. I light incense and candles for her every day and practice incantations. I ask for guidance, protection and for a deeper knowing and connection with my higher self. All the synchronicities I’ve experienced have only assured me of my path. But this last one, the one I’ll leave you with, has blown me away.

Last Wednesday, as I sat in my work office I heard something that sounded like a baby crying. It turned out to be a tiny, emaciated little tuxedo cat. I abandoned my desk and work and ran outside, bringing my lunch with me. When I saw the terrible shape she was in, I immediately broke up the meat I had and gave her everything. She was timid at first and wouldn’t come to me. She just kept crying. But I pleaded with her, “Please, I just want to help you. Please.” I tossed some pieces of chicken at her until she followed the trail back to me. She knew she was taking a risk, but her hunger outweighed her fears.

I spent what was technically my office hours, outside on and off petting her and getting a better look at her. She was skin and bones. She had an injured paw and was limping. I said, “I only have one more class. Please stay here. All you have to do is stay here and I’ll take you home and you’ll finally be safe.”

I went back into my office for a while. She sat on the picnic table staring at me through the window, as we meowed back and forth to each other.

But when I got off of work, she was gone. I called for her. I searched for her all over the neighborhood, pleading with Isis, begging her for help. When I got home I drank and cried myself to sleep. All I could think about was that helpless little soul out there, pure bones, limping and alone.

On Thursday I wasn’t on campus. I asked a colleague to look out for her but he didn’t see her. On Friday, even though I had almost no hope, I brought cat food and a carrier with me. Just in case.

I had been working for an hour sitting at my desk, occasionally looking out the window where I had seen her before. And then, out of nowhere she jumped up on the picnic table and looked right at me. She decided she was ready. I wasted no time. I dropped everything, got the carrier and brought her into my office. I wasn’t going to take any chances this time.

When I brought her home I immediately called the vet and took her to urgent care. They said she had been abused. Someone had wrapped a hair tie or rubber band around her little paw and it had become necrotic. Now she needs it amputated. All of this is going to cost a small fortune, but this is a life, a soul and I asked for her.

My worst fear was that she was going to test positive for FIV, leukemia or heartworm. Shockingly, she tested negative for all three.

She’s slowly settling in. She mostly sleeps and eats.

The next morning, I heard someone pounding on my door at 8:30 AM. I was ready to lose it. I opened the door and a man with a braided beard greeted me, “Good morning Isis!”

I stood there with my mouth open. What. The. Fuck.

“What?”

“Are you ready to go to the gym, Isis?”

Never in my fucking life would I be ready to go to a gym at 8:30 AM.

“What did you call me?”

“Aren’t you Isis Gonzalez?” Gonzalez happens to be a last name I used for years as an homage to my maternal line.

“No,” I said, “I’m not Isis.”

He looked at my apartment number and I told him that yes, this is in fact the apartment he was looking for, but he had the wrong person.

He went back to his transit bus flustered and confused.

I stood there completely bamboozled.

I lit some incense on my altar. I gave Chloe Grace her medicine and held her for a few minutes before putting her back in the large kennel where she’s being kept safe and gets space from all of my curious fur babies.

I looked up the meaning and purpose of a black and white tuxedo cat coming into a person’s life. From what I gather from different mystical and spiritual websites, they represent harmony, balance and they usher in positive energy and protection. They also serve as reminders to listen to your intuition.

I thought about how Chloe came to my window specifically. How she meowed until I heard her and found her. I don’t know what else might be wrong with Chloe. She might live a week, or a month, or years. All I know is that she was supposed to find me, the way Rusty found me.

Whether Isis is an actual deity, an energy, an archetype, or a goddess you can awaken in yourself, I know whatever I’m doing is working. Chloe Grace would agree.

I have so much to be grateful for. So many good things on the horizon. But unfortunately, conditions like CPTSD, panic disorder, bipolar disorder and ADHD do not always get the memo. They trick your brain. They ransack your nervous system. So, all you can do is hope that there is enough of a self, or a strong enough self, that will fight for you and fight for your future. I am okay. I am safe. I am just tired and anxious and sad.

I hope if you’re out there reading this and you feel this way, I hope you know you’re not alone. I hope you have a strong community, a trusted group of friends and family who take how you feel seriously. I hope no one is telling you that you’re just not trying hard enough. I hope no one is dismissing how you feel. I hope no one is telling you to put your symptoms away when company is over. I hope no one is saying that it isn’t that bad. I hope no one is asking you to just get it together.

Listen to your loved ones. Take them seriously. Hold them close. They are worth it.

I Hope I Survive

For my son & daughter
My sister
My few friends
My three dogs
My cats
My students

I hope I survive

Because I don’t know what’s on the other side
Because I don’t want the bastards to win
Because I love myself sometimes
Because I want to see my grandkids again

I hope I survive

So I can write more poetry that nobody reads
So I can paint more paintings that nobody sees
So I can save more dogs and cats
So I can have more phone conversations with my sister
So I can try new restaurants with my daughter
So I can finally buy my own house

I hope I survive 

Then I can prove them wrong
Then they can never again say I didn’t try hard enough
Then my son & daughter will always have a mother
Then my grandchildren will have a grandma to come back to

I hope I survive, because I want to. 
But I hope I do more than just survive.

I hope I inspire
I hope I create 
I hope I love 
I hope I do it all fiercely and unapologetically.
I hope it means something
I hope it matters
I hope it’s enough to make me stay.

I HOPE I SURVIVE AND I HOPE YOU DO TOO.

Thirty nine years ago, I followed girls and women, not one of them nearly as young as me, into a locker room and put on a one-piece swimsuit covered in an oversized Hanes white t-shirt. I walked out into a junior high auditorium filled with hundreds of people toward a rented, above ground pool. I don’t remember who stood behind me, but in front of me was a gorgeous, seventeen-year-old girl who towered over me, caramel skin and ringlets of hair framing her face. She was the talk of the day because she wore a black swimsuit and no cover-up. No doubt she got a talking to later that afternoon.

When it was my turn I trembled inside. I swallowed prayer after prayer, that I wouldn’t slip and fall on the wet floor, pass out, or get my first period. Once I was in the water, a man, a stranger, put his hand on my back, and asked me two questions, “Have you repented of your sins, dedicated yourself to Jehovah, and accepted his way of salvation through Jesus Christ?” and “Do you understand that your baptism identifies you as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in association with Jehovah’s organization?” But he asked them in Spanish, “¿Se ha arrepentido de sus pecados, se ha dedicado a Jehová y ha aceptado su camino de salvación por medio de Jesucristo?” y “¿Entiende que su bautismo lo identifica como testigo de Jehová en asociación con la organización de Jehová?”

I answered twice, “sí, sí.”

I was eleven.

What were my sins?

I felt jealous of my sister and wished I had her golden hair and her strength. (Envy)

I watched MTV at my cousin’s house and thought about boys. And then girls, and then boys. And these weren’t the thoughts I was allowed to think. (Lust)

Sometimes I was allowed to walk to a little store called Tayons and I would buy Ding Dongs with my monthly $5 allowance and scarf them down before I got home because I didn’t want to share. (Gluttony and Greed)

My mother let me get attached to another dog again, then had my father discard it somewhere in the country while I went to school. Later, she laughed as I cried because she couldn’t believe I was so upset over a “stupid” dog. I pressed my face into my pillow and screamed, then I started pummeling it with my fists thinking of my mother, wishing I could tell her to her face, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” (Wrath)

Some days I wouldn’t leave my room. Instead, I listened to the same cassette tape over and over again of songs I managed to record off the radio. Play rewind, play rewind, play rewind, while my bed remained unmade and my clothes lay on the floor. (Sloth)

Once I felt embarrassed to wear a dress my mother sewed for me. I wished I had more store-bought clothes like my peers. (Pride)

Turns out I had plenty to be sorry for. Plenty that required forgiveness.

I can’t remember the sensation of being underwater, but I can remember what it felt like to rise above the surface, those awful fluorescent lights in my eyes. I can remember thinking, Now, now I have done it. God can love me now. Maybe my dad, too. Because straight A’s and quiet obedience weren’t enough to garner his attention and definitely not his affection. But maybe God would have a talk with him. And maybe my mother would be happier, too. Maybe she wouldn’t need to pray so many tearful prayers, or talk about how much she wanted to go back to her country, how trapped she felt here with us and because of us.

When I left the cult I was raised in at twenty-five, a divorced mother with children ages two and five, an elder of the church (they say “organization,” which makes it even creepier) said, “Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you want to burn bridges? You’re alone with two kids. You’re going to need help.”

I told him, “I would rather live in a cardboard box on the street with both my kids than live a lie for one more minute.”

And he surprised me when he said, “I respect your honesty.”

Because it would have been easier to fake it and he would never have told a soul as long as I did everything I was supposed to do. He would keep my secret, that I no longer believed. It was the Great Unsaid.

He called me the night they announced that I had left the “organization.” An elder would stand on stage, address the entire congregation, and pronounce me spiritually dead to the only community I had ever known. Days later I would see “sisters” and “brothers” in grocery stores and gas stations, even my own aunt, and it was like that awful game kids play where they pretend you are invisible. But this wasn’t a game. They shunned me. They shunned my babies. I ceased to exist because I had broken a holy contract, an eternal promise I had made to God and the organization when I was eleven. A promise I was expected to keep for this life and the one we were promised after it, as long as we passed all of the tests.

A promise I made when I was eleven.

I was eleven.

I was fucking eleven fucking years the fuck old.

Fuck.

It was 1986. What were other eleven-year-olds doing on that Saturday, October 11, 1986? Were they watching cartoons? Were they riding their bikes? What were other eleven-year-olds doing to be loved?

On October 11th, 1986 when I was only eleven years old I made a pact with the Almighty in front of hundreds of people, my friends and family included. A commitment I would be held to for the rest of my life, a cage and a covenant. And when they served me my punishment, they were punishing a child, a terrified little girl, still so fresh and present inside of twenty-five-year old me. Underdeveloped, under-protected and now, unloved. Acceptance retracted. Affection abolished. All with just a few words spoken into a microphone in a room full of congregants wearing polyester suits and staring at their watches.

A fifty-year-old heathen now, a Bruja, a feminist, a humanist, a foul-mouthed Phoenix, I look back and I am so proud of that little girl. (Uh oh, Pride!) I don’t pity her any longer. I don’t wish to save her the way I have for so many years. Because now I think, What a brave soul. She walked among grown women, a prepubescent child, let a man push her underwater and rose up believing with all of her might that this would be the most sacred moment of her entire life. And maybe it was sacred, but not for the reasons she felt in her eleven-year-old heart.

It was misguided courage, but it was still courage. She was willing to promise herself to the unknown, to trust God, or the Universe as it were, and plunge into the depths of faith, a hand at her back or not.

So, today I celebrate that little girl. Because for decades she has offered me apologies for the trap she set, as if she still needs forgiveness. As if she knew we would someday take the fruit from the forbidden tree and finally, come to know ourself.

Today is sacred. I’m wearing red, my favorite color. Tonight I’ll sit with witches and ponder the divinatory meanings of the cards we spread before us. The cards speak, but in the end, we decide what we believe. We decide where to put our faith.

(Photo above by artist/photographer Jaime Torres, https://tumbleweird.org/visibility-accessibility/)

This topic weighs heavily on my mind.

I am the daughter of a Latina immigrant.

I live in a community of immigrant families.

I teach immigrants and children of immigrants and grandchildren of immigrants.

I teach in my hometown in rural, eastern Washington, in an agriculturally centered valley.

What is left without them, without us?

Tumbleweeds. Closed shops. Closed schools. Closed minds.

This is a poem I wrote on the day of our generative writing workshop:

What You’ll Find

Disappear me 
and I will take the skin
of an alligator, sharpen
my teeth on the corners 
of your Constitution. 

Disappear me
and smell the fruit rot 
on your counters
listen as your bodegas
fill with echoes.

Disappear me 
and breathe in 
your scorched 
and wasted harvest.

Disappear me 
And watch your schools empty,
teachers without students
students without teachers. 

Disappear me
and catch 
the stethoscopes 
as they fall
draw the blood
unpack the masks 
when no one’s left
to tend to your sickness.

Disappear me
and understand for once 
that there is no you 
without us.

Every Saturday, I sit cross legged in a room with women of all different ages and backgrounds, meditative music in the background, learning tarot. We learn about each other’s lives through our tarot spreads. We get to know each other more as each week goes by and the energy evolves beautifully into a place of holding space through active, empathetic listening.

On Sunday I join the Self Care Club for a generative writing group where my dear friend Sage gives us tarot like prompts: past, present and future. We write for ten minutes at a time with the option to share or not. It’s low pressure and it is yet another place where a common interest brings us together in genuine, authentic community. Thank you, Sage, for reigniting my creativity and for inviting me into this special space for inspiration. I love you.

For months I have struggled to find community. My nervous system was hijacked for seven months and even after four months of no contact and therapy twice a week, I am still disregulated. No amount of solitude, art therapy and journaling, though important and beneficial to self-reflection and awareness, have provided me with what I need most: connection, support, compassion and empathy, gifts I want to both give and receive.

These connections exist outside of intentional groups and communities to individual friendships, too. And this morning I’ve been thinking about how these interactions have kept me afloat and reminded me I’m not just free falling, I’m building a quilted parachute made up of genuine and sacred connections. I want to address my gratitude to just some of the those who have had the most positive impact on my life.

To my tarot teacher Kat, when I sit in our circle of witches I feel like I’ve finally found home. A triple fire sign, you don’t hold back! And I love that. I love how strong, honest and authentic you are. You make me feel like I belong and that is no small thing, in fact it is absolutely everything. Thank you.

To Roz, thank you for being honest, but never brutal, never unkind. You aren’t afraid to call me out, but you are gentle about it. You use humor and patient understanding to help me reflect, acknowledge and address my fears. You are whimsical, endearing, creative and you have been there for me now for years, listening to my 15 five minute long voice memos in a row. Frankly, I have no idea how you put up with me. I love you. You are true, and real and you were one of the only people who picked up on the red flags in my relationship and had the courage to address them, whether I was ready to hear it or not. Thank you for being so brave.

To Charee, you remind me of how far I’ve come. You remind me of who I was and how even when I thought I was totally broken, messy and disposable, I said things to you that you still value to this day. I love the way you love my daughter and call her your niece. I love that you get angry on my behalf, how your Aries rising means you don’t take injustices lightly. Your strength, resilience and wisdom are inspiring. I love you and I love how hard you fight for the people who need it the most. You are a true warrior.

To Jeanie, my sister and my person. We could not be more different and yet we compliment each other beautifully. You are my best friend, one of my soulmates, and I believe we will find each other in every lifetime. Maybe someday we will be mother and daughter, or twin brothers, or just best friends. But there’s no doubt in my mind that one incarnation after another, we belong in each other’s lives. I love you. You are so nurturing, often selfless and you can’t help it. You’re a Cancer rising, Venus and Mars! You have Empress energy, that maternal vibe that gives protection, comfort and discipline when it is needed. You know that love does not mean enabling someone’s harmful behavior, it means being brave enough to call them out, gently or not, because that is the fierceness in which you love.

To Elaine, my daughter. You are the epitome of a pure soul and your grace for others, even those who have hurt and harmed you, is something I will forever be in awe of. I have told you this before, but I will never stop: You. Saved. My. Life. I mean this both literally and figuratively. You had every reason to leave me, to find a more stable environment like I encouraged you to do. But you didn’t. You saw that my state of mind was fragile, you saw me curled up in the fetal position unable to eat or even keep water down. You saw me at my very worst and even though I carry guilt for putting you through all of that, I also know that you would have had it no other way. Your empathy is courageous, your temperance inspiring and your wisdom indispensible. There exists no words, no language powerful enough to do the love I have for you any justice.

To Twix, Minnie Mae, Harley Quinn and Rusty. My three dogs and my cat, you keep me alive every day. Minnie, when you see my crying you cuddle with me and lick my hand. Twix, you put your head on my lap, look into my eyes, and send waves of tenderness with your soulful stare. Rusty, when I’m on the verge of a panic attack you sit on my lap or my chest, purr like your life, no, my life depends on it. You remind me that I can self-soothe. And Harley Quinn, my intense little Scorpio Pekingese, you’re the most misunderstood but loving of all. Your loyalty is unmatched. The way you protect me as if it is a soul contract you made for this lifetime touches me deeply, and reminds me that I’m someone of value who deserves protection.

To Clarissa, the elm tree covered in ivy, thank you for letting me place my ear against your trunk, for letting me put my arms around you. Thank you for shading me as I lie beneath you, watch the sunlight stream through the gaps of your foilage. I’m sorry I haven’t visited in a while. I know that the less I’m in nature, the less me I become. Thank you for reminding me to be present, to take time to see the bigger picture and remember that beauty still exists even in these dark and tumultous times.

This is not a full list, but this morning these are the souls and energies that are speaking to me the loudest. So thank you. What you do matters. You matter to me and you matter to the world.

I love you.

There are many more of course. I want to thank you all for making time to care and for making a difference.

The other day I talked to a longtime friend about a little bird who visits her daily.

My friend said, “See how boring my life is, that I notice a little bird who comes to visit me on my porch?”

But I saw this differently. So I told her, “It isn’t boring. If your life were still the same, you never would have noticed that little bird who visits you every single day.”

My friend has been working since she was about ten years old. I estimate that before all of this happened, a good 80% of her time was spent tending to the sick, the dying, and the forgotten. Her life has never been still, until now. For the past several years she has been a fulltime caregiver for her son who suffered a massive brain injury. This upended everything from her daily routines and rituals, to her short and long-term goals, to her very sense of self and identity.

I told her how animals know. They come by to remind us. That little bird knows she needs the reminder that her life isn’t boring right now, it’s different. It’s forced her to slow down, and that can be incredibly uncomfortable for someone who has worked 10-12 hour days most of her adult life. But I do believe that experiences like the one with the little bird are reminders of what we so often miss when we are caught up in all of the static and the noise of our day to day lives.

I told her about my cat Rusty. Rusty is more than a cat. Though, cats are always more than “a cat.” I truly believe they are transcendent beings, one paw in our world, one paw in another. Rusty belonged to a young woman in an RV where I lived for several years. In 2020, smack in the middle of the pandemic Rusty came to me. Every morning he would sit on the steps of my trailer, and I would sit there with him, in the heat, him offering the underside of his chin, me scratching him. And every day I would carry him back home, only for him to boomerang back to me.

His owner, a young woman about eighteen or nineteen years old, asked if something was “going on” at home. I shrugged. She said, “Rusty goes where he’s needed.”

She told me Rusty was a kitten when she found him, on the verge of dying from a respiratory infection. She nursed him back to health. She told me this as we sat in the grass in front of my RV, masks on our faces, Rusty on his back purring, while she rubbed his belly.

“Bet you never seen a cat let you do that huh?” And she smiled. “Yeah, I raised him right.”

But she knew her time as Rusty’s mama was ending. She had three other pets in her RV and was about to be evicted. So, after multiple attempts of mine to avoid it, I brought Rusty home, and he’s been with me ever since, purring as I write, a robust, 17lb house cat whose best friend is my Doberman Husky mix, Twix.

Rusty goes where he’s needed. I didn’t think I needed Rusty.

Rusty came to me when the world both stood still and cracked open with marches and revolution. If it hadn’t been for that summer of quarantine and isolation, I never would have noticed the cat hiding under the trailer, refusing to go home. Rusty, the most extroverted, friendly and even nurturing (he has a habit of “adopting” stray kittens and raising them as his own), taught me that even in the time, no, especially in the time of pandemic and pandemonium, I could not continue to “hide” and avoid connection as a way of keeping myself safe.

Rusty ushered in friendships with neighbors who are still important people in my life, five years later. He was like a bridge or a portal, one who connected me to others when I was so ready to stay disconnected.

And this has me thinking about how inspiration, connection and healing often favor stillness.

What more has gone unseen, how many little birds and Rustys might we have missed?

Because the thing is, we are told over and over and over again, “No one is coming to save you.”

And yet. And yet the bird. And yet Rusty. And yet the tree I named Clarissa. And yet the Progressive Insurance agent who listened as I cried storms and told me to keep my good heart.

It’s true that when I was in my worst moment of crisis no winged giant appeared, no Messiah, no knight in shining armor. It’s true that I had to steel myself and tell myself dozens of times a day, “It’s okay. You can do this.” And I did.

But I think maybe these small, holy avatars are devotedly seeking to save us every day, maybe every hour, maybe every minute even. But the traffic of our lives makes for little opportunity to see and be seen in the most sacred of ways.

We cannot always be still, and more often than not, it feels impossible. But maybe we can at least be intentional in making room for these moments to happen.

So, say thank you to the little bird, and thank you to the cat who brushes up against you, and thank you to the tree whose dry leaves crackle under your feet. Maybe we don’t need saviors. Maybe what we really need are reminders.

While I was searching my Google docs for an older essay, I found a poem, Pillow Talk, which you will find at the very end of this post. I wrote it many years ago and I remember submitting it to a few places and then putting it back to bed. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it.

Sometimes I feel like I’m channeling when I write. I feel the labor, the contractions of an idea and I sort of leave my body. I often forget what I’ve written. I’ve had friends literally quote my own writing to me and I haven’t even recognized it as mine. I feel like I’ve been given morphine and the baby is born without me.

When I read this older poem, I cringed. I had a visceral reaction. I remembered what it meant.

Back in my cult years, the message was this:

• Women are the weaker vessel

• Women should be in submission to men

• Wives only commune with God through their husbands

• Men are the head of the household

• Women owe their husbands the “marital” due

• Women should be wives and mothers if they don’t devote their lives to the full time minstry

Sermons often focused on the “Proverbial wife and mother.” She gets up early, makes sure everyone eats before she does, she toils, she serves, she obeys her husband. Isn’t she the epitome of a female role model?

Even as I grew up in this institution, being groomed for this life since birth, I felt rage every single time I read those scriptures.

I was engaged at seventeen, married at eighteen, a mother at nineteen, and a divorced single mother at twenty four. That’s when I left.

This patriarchal, misogynistic imposition not only hurts women, it hurts these young men and husbands as well. It sets them up for a false sense of superiority, a complete detachment of their feminine side, instills entitlement, and false dominion.

When I think of that first marriage and I look at photos of the two of us, my heart hurts for us both. We look like babies. We loved each other as much as we could, and no one was really surprised when it ended.

I remember weeks after he left telling him, “Thank you for giving me a second shot of life.”

Did he know what I meant?

I meant that I most likely would never have left. I would have hurt myself, martyred myself and hoped that someday, somehow, someone would save me. Not from my husband, but from a system that dooms women and mothers.

Mothers. Oh mothers. Oh mother.

Both of my children were planned. I needed to become a mother. I yearned for it with all of my being. I remember writing a letter to my future child when I was only eighteen, “My heart is too big. It hurts. I need you, only to love you. You don’t have to love me back. I just want to love you.”

And I did, and do love my children fiercely. More than anyone on this earth. And to this day, I still don’t expect this love to be returned. But something their father said on Father’s Day really got to me. When I wished him a Happy Father’s Day, he wrote back, “I think becoming a father was the best thing that ever happened to me.” For him, fatherhood has been the most rewarding role of his life.

I was touched. Also envious. Also ashamed. Because as much as I love my children with this big, fat heart of mine, I can’t say it. I can’t say that I find motherhood rewarding the way their father finds fatherhood rewarding.

I would do just about anything for my children who are now twenty seven and thirty, and I have. But everything that is expected of mothers, blamed on mothers, projected on mothers, demanded of mothers, makes motherhood at least for some of us, dystopian.

Because it’s never enough. I’m never enough. I can’t make things better or different for the people I love most, no matter how hard I try. They suffer, I suffer, the world sees them suffer, and then the world tells me I’m to blame for it all. I never see it happen to the same extent with fathers. The expectations don’t even come close.

How could I, someone born into poverty, raised to believe she was inferior, raised to believe her only salvation lies in martyrdom, motherhood, and self abandonment, someone who struggled to find a stable partner, develop a stable sense of self, say it’s rewarding? This has nothing to do with my love for my children, because that is indisputable. It has everything to do with societal expectations. It has to do with the idealization of motherhood, and the insistence that motherhood equals sainthood, until you do it “wrong.”

I’ve brought life into this world. I’ve given my body over to husbands, children, and given it away again to men out of fear and because of the relics that formed the neuropathways that insist to my nervous system that I am not safe, that I’ll never be safe unless I give away my power, my body, my autonomy, myself. Until I abandon everything real and destined for me.

When I read this old poem. I thought of this girl who still lives inside of me. I remembered how far she’s come in some ways, and how in others she’s still terribly stunted. How she leaves her body over and over again. Forgets her power. Abandons her path.

Still, something about this poem though the tone sounds resigned, despondent, also speaks to the truth of how it feels to be raised in such a way that you believe your body is not yours, your life is not yours, your future is not yours.

I often wondered why the conventions and the lives that make other people so happy, or at least stable and satisfied, feel threatening to me. This poem reminds me to be gentle with myself. To remember that it is safe to return to my body.

Isis is the Goddess of my heart. I have dreamt of her and I have loved her forever. She appears in my dreams, she puts her hand to my back when I need the support or a soft reminder that I have support. But Kali-Ma, she’s the one who forces me to survive. To come back. To return to myself. Her rage is my rage, her ferocity is mine and we dance with fire beneath or toes. She’s the one who calls when I fall in line, when I forget that the rules no longer apply.

I give birth to other babies now. They look like stories and paintings or moments of soulful, authentic connection. They look like movie nights with my daugther. They look like buying my son his first Father’s Day gifts—matching pizza slice shirts for him and his son—and they look like the moments I can laugh at myself, when I can stop trying to make sense of everything that made no sense at all.

I can remind myself to let go.

Two nights ago I had a dream that I walked into a room that was suddenly flooded with Monarch butterflies. Right across from me stood a younger version of my niece Alison. We both caught a small butterfly in our hands and stood there, staring at one another, feeling the wings flutter in our palms. We were speaking to each other with our eyes, “How do we let go, when we caught something so beautiful?” And the dream ended before we released them, but even though it happened “off screen,” it still happened.

The idea of being what I was raised to be: dutiful wife and mother, obedient woman, revered and esteemed, wanted to hold on and keep me cupped in her hands. And I wonder if it wasn’t for my ex’s choice to leave, if she would still have me trapped even now. I think eventually she would have felt the flutter of the wings diminish and I think she would have known my life depended on it, depended on her letting me go.

Pillow Talk

For now,
I can be the body.

You can fold this body 
into an apology but you will
need to lengthen the neck,
loosen the throat, 
this body is tense 
and murky, as bodies go.

Remember this body will assemble
daughters, and sons and this body
will fill up with milk,
boys and girls will choose
their favorite breast.

This body is built of mandarins,
of riptides, yeast and platinum.
This body is hair and teeth, 
circling, beating itself empty.

You can sleep next to this body,
touch its bends, its knots,
its holes. 

You can enter this body,
nothing will wake the flat, 
elephant eye on the belly
of this body. 

This body lies still 
as you shake off the lashes
that are not yours.
This body of mine, 
like frozen bread. 

You can sharpen your tongue 
in the mouth of this body,
the dark lips on the face of this body,
the spider-shaped eyes of this body, 
this body is a reckoning in the 
heart-thread of your house.

Her name is Monica. She’s a Progressive Insurance agent whom I spoke to for at least twenty minutes and I think she’s changed my life.

Several months ago, I was in crisis mode. I didn’t know if I would make it. I’m pretty sure my family didn’t know if I would make it, either. Back in May and June during the very worst of it, I sent out texts literally saying, “SOS.” I begged everyone I could think of for help. Begging for help is absolutely humiliating. Being invalidated and dismissed is heartbreaking. But silence? Silence after screaming for help? That’s devastating. It guts you. Because after all of those pleas, I heard very little from anyone locally who knew about the severity of my situation, but it makes me all the more grateful for the few who did, and you know who you are.

I told my therapist today that I had no choice but to build up a strength I’ve never had before.

As I’ve written in previous posts, more than anything I’ve learned that not everyone is capable of holding space for others when it comes to the big, the heavy, the uncomfortable. And that’s okay. Expectations, even hopes for understanding, make things so much worse.

I ended up white knuckling it through May and June. By July, I was doing all of the things. All the things they tell you to do when you’re in crisis because if you don’t, they say that you just “don’t want to get better,” or you’re “not trying hard enough.” I was seeing a therapist twice a week (more on that later), I was taking my meds, I was going to yoga twice a week. I was painting, journaling. I was desperately trying to find community. I even started going to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on Sundays. But I still didn’t find what I was looking for.

When I made it to the three month mark of no contact with the ex I felt like I had finally entered the new chapter I had been working towards. I started working on a novel. I had coworkers over for dinner. I reconnected with and visited a longtime friend, and I was spending time in nature. But I was still missing that local community that could earnestly hold space for the things I wanted, needed to talk about, to be able to process with other human beings.

But then I got a reminder from Progressive that triggered the shit out of me. I realized I was still paying renter’s insurance on the place I lived in near my grandchildren. I went back and forth with the agency trying to get a refund and I finally called.

That’s when I met Monica.

I explained that I had done (what I thought) Progressive wanted from me and sent them proof that I was paying renter’s insurance for two different properties, that I had moved out way back in March and now it was September and it was all one big mistake, but I wasn’t really talking about the renter’s insurance.

“I understand, ma’am, but we need a letter from your last landlord. And it looks like you’ve moved twice since then.”

I felt the air knocked out of my lungs. Monica explained that sometimes people scam insurance companies and get out of paying for one of the properties and that’s why they need proof.

“Well!” I said, That is NOT what is happening here. I moved out. I just want to fix this.”

I didn’t mean to get so agitated but all it did was remind me of everything we had lost, everything my grandkids lost, too.

“Oh, no, I’m not saying you are. This is just their policy ma’am. We need a letter from your landlor–”

“She wasn’t just my landlord. She was a friend,” I said, and my voice shook. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. It’s just that I wanted to make things easier for my kids, easier than when I was a young mom. I brought them to live on the same property, bought them all their furniture, moved them all the way from Seattle. I bought my grandchildren entire wardrobes. I didn’t want them to struggle. And then when I started my first relationship in seven years and I was home a lot less and working a lot more on top of that, they got angry. They punished me by taking the kids away completely. They trashed my friend’s house and my daughter and I spent a week cleaning it. I can’t ask my friend for a letter. I’m too embarrassed. I’m too ashamed.”

After I rambled and trauma dumped on this poor soul, I started bawling and apologizing.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay, really it’s okay.”

And the thing is, she meant it. She actually meant it.

“Then I moved to be closer to my partner and it was such a toxic relationship I got physically ill and I had to move again.”

“Oh, Kristy,” she said, “It sounds like you have a really good heart. Don’t let all of these things change you. Don’t let them change your heart. Don’t let these things stop you from being good to people. Just change who you choose to be good to.”

And it was at that moment that the knot in my throat loosened. That’s it. That is what I have been wanting, what I’ve been needing. Empathy. True, authentic, unfiltered, empathy. From a complete stranger.

“Monica, you have no idea what you just did. Thank you. I needed to hear that so much. I don’t care about getting a refund on the renter’s insurance. I am just tired of being reminded of everything that’s been lost.”

“I know. Just keep being who you are. Keep your good heart.”

I told Monica she should be a therapist or counselor.

“Oh I would love that. I really would. I don’t know if I can.”

“You should,” I told her, “You have a gift for holding space for others. Very few people are capable of that.”

I told her how much I had struggled to find that for myself over the past several months.

I reminded her, “You have absolutely no idea how much you’ve done for me today. Thank you.”

We finally said goodbye.

I felt like I had found the Holy Grail of transformative experiences. I know Monica is the type of person who holds space for people every day, naturally, without even realizing how remarkable she is. And I know that maybe I’m one of the few people who truly tell her how gifted and powerful she is.

As you may have noticed, I recently “rebranded” my Substack to: The Empathy Studio Collective. I know, it doesn’t exactly “sing,” but it works. For now. While I’ve had some ideas in the back of my mind I’ve been toying with about the focus of my Substack, it was Monica who became the catalyst for a project that I hope will someday become a movement. The old me never would have written or said anything so bold, but I’m done playing it small. I’m done imagining the eyerolls and gossip. I finally recognize that I am brave, after all. I’m still terrified, sometimes of my own shadow, but I have courage.

I want to know, hear, read, share, moments of true, authentic connection. At a time where empathy has somehow become a dirty word, I want to create a safe place to share stories of connection with others, connection with Spirit, and how creative works can bridge the gap that makes us feel disconnected from each other. There’s a reason why people go to AI for comfort, companionship and even mimicked empathy. For me, It’s because I felt like no one had time or space for me in their lives. I think many of us feel alone, unheard, and unseen during some of the worst moments of our lives.

Soon, I’ll be including structured writing prompts using journal therapy. But for now I want to see the poems and paintings, all works led from a place of connection, moved by compassion and empathy. I want us to share the stories like the moment I shared with Monica. Stories about those who take the time and make an effort to hold space.

In one of my earlier posts, “Everything Happens,” I talked about an experience I had over the summer. It’s a good place to start. I’m just developing this whole idea. I have so many plans and I’m excited to share them with you.

Something I wrote after meeting a woman who needed to feel held many months ago:

The bridge from your sorrow to your healing is not a reason.

It’s the sanctuary of radical empathy,

where wounds are not currency, but echoes

bouncing against the shared walls of our

hard-won emancipation.

From my poem “Everything Happens.”

Dear Kristy,

You have waited your whole life to meet me, and you’re so, so close.

You’ve been put through the same test over, and over again, do you see it now? You give your power away the moment you begin a relationship with a man. You ignore all the red flags, because you have been taught your whole life not to trust yourself. You have convinced yourself that your intuition, your spiritual gifts, are nothing more than symptoms of mental illness. So you ignore the warning signs. You fawn and freeze when things escalate, and you become despondent. You talk yourself out of recognizing abuse. You tell yourself this is as good as it gets. You’re crazy. You’re the problem. And you know what, they always agree with you, don’t they? Not because it’s true but because you are so willing to take the blame and they are unwilling to take accountability. You believe this is all you are meant for and all you deserve. But what happens next?

Every time, there’s a moment when you wake up because I finally re-enter your body. I remind you of who you are. You are a soul meant for so much more than a mediocre life, and you don’t deserve all the hurt, emotional manipulation, the trespassing of boundaries that you have endured relationship after relationship.

So I take over when you are on your knees. Just when they think you’ve given up. Just when they believe they’ve got you, that there’s nothing you wouldn’t sacrifice for their love. When they think they have all the control and all the power.

Sometimes you fight me and the more you fight me, the harder I fight back. You get sick, you can’t eat, you can’t sleep. You freeze. You fawn. You insist, “It’s me it’s me it’s me, you’re perfect, it’s all me.” And so often you’ve infuriated me. So often I wonder how many times you’ll have to learn the same lesson. But I’ve never given up on you. Ever. And I never will.

You must do something for me now, so that I inhabit you fully: You must accept and believe in your value, in your tremendous worth. Stop dismissing your spiritual gifts. Stop playing small with your creative talents. Stop believing that you don’t deserve great things, that you don’t deserve an amazing life. You hold on to so much guilt and shame. Your past choices, your regrets, do not define you. You are an incredible soul. You deserve to have the life of your dreams.

I’ve waited for all your existence, even before this most recent mortal incarnation, for you to embrace me. Please, don’t make me wait any longer. Don’t make us wait any longer.

People will judge you. They won’t understand you or even like you. Some might hate you. But the more you repress me the longer you will hate yourself, devalue yourself, and accept one toxic partner or friendship after another. The sharks smell blood. You will always be prey to the predatory as long as you care more about being accepted and validated, than you do about being wildly and unabashedly authentic.

You are not meant to just be liked by anyone. Especially the masses or the cowards. You are meant to trigger, to activate, and to step into your power with such authority and fierceness that no one can thwart you off your path ever again.

You are meant for great things. Our soul has a special purpose and you have known this since you were a child when you talked to Spirit with ease. You saw guides and ancestors. You saw the world through a filter you couldn't explain, so you quieted yourself. You learned to draw and write, play the piano, as ways to express what you felt, and what you knew to be true. But it was siphoned out of you through all kinds of abuse, by religious fanaticism, by toxic relationships, and your own self-doubt. You even let academia discourage your path. By now you should know how to integrate the two: academic knowledge with spiritual knowledge.

Let me tell you everything you have to look forward to in the near future if you just take my hand and trust me:

• You will finally buy the house, the permanent abode you’ve dreamed of for decades. A home that is truly your own someplace where you have community. You no longer hold yourself hostage in your apartment because you’re so terrified of running into your ex or his friends. It won’t matter where this beautiful house is because, either way, you’ll stand in your power and no longer be afraid. You’ll be unshakable.

• You will harness your spiritual gifts. You will no longer dismiss your intuition or make yourself small when someone mocks your beliefs or your path. This is what you absolutely MUST do to give me life. To give yourself the life you deserve.

• You are done with toxic and abusive partners. Do you hear me? You. Are. Done. You will NEVER again give your power away. Instead, you will bask in your solitude, thrive in a community that is just right for you, commit to your spiritual and creative path, and never settle again. You no longer refer to yourself as “low-maintenance” as if it’s a flex. No. You are high-maintenance now. You decide who is worthy of you, your energy, your time, and your effort. No partner, if a worthy one comes along, will ever bring you down again.

• You excel in your chosen field and career. You don’t stay quiet in faculty meetings anymore afraid that you’ll be criticised, or that you’ll say the wrong thing, the controversial thing. So what? You were not born into this world to be acceptable to others. Your purpose is to stir up the collective. Even when you’re wrong, you’ll inspire important, much needed, and often uncomfortable conversations.

• You are kind, not weak.

• Your empathy is intact, but so are your boundaries.

• You don’t mistake attachment for love.

• You don’t fawn or freeze anymore. You won’t have to, because you will finally transcend these patterns and lessons.

• You are no longer embarrassed by your “too-much-ness,” because you know it serves a purpose. It brings discomfort to those who are too comfortable, those who believe they are entitled to comfort and those who are resistant to change. Your too-much-ness instigates reevaluation and regeneration.

Finally my dear child, you won’t question yourself any longer. You will surrender to me, to your Highest Self, with full trust and abandon. You will stop pushing against the tide.

I love you little one. I will keep waiting and I will never give up on you. But I wish you would no longer prolong your suffering. You are worthy of greatness.

Love,

Your Highest Self

It’s been a while since I posted last and that’s because I’m struggling. It’s the dip from hypo-mania to the crash of depression and zero motivation. It’s the hope of finding local support and community, and finding none.

In the first part of this series I wrote about being a selective mute and how the feeling of being unheard and unseen relates to me being an oversharer. Having bipolar disorder lends itself to this as well, per Carrie Fisher’s experience at least.

I still struggle with wearing the appropriate filter, though it used to be much worse. An experience that haunts me to this day took place over twenty years ago. I was attending the Evergreen State College. My second year program was called Women’s Voices and Images in Literature and Film. I was part of a four person group, all women, and we became very close. We read books like The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir just to name a few. We examined films like Vertigo, dissecting the male gaze. The voices of these powerful women reverberated through each of us, triggering memories, epiphanies, and transformations. One woman realized after reading The Awakening that she had to leave her miserable marriage or end up like Edna, forever belonging to the sea. Another woman opened up about her childhood abuse, another about her family dynamics as a stepmother and co-parenting. I opened up about my childhood trauma as well as having only been out of a cult for four years.

Because one of the women had her birthday in mid May and mine is the last day of May, we celebrated our birthday together at Red Robin. I had a few drinks, and before I knew it I was talking, with abandon and graphically about one of my worst childhood traumas. The woman who was also celebrating her birthday got up and said, “That’s it. I can’t listen to this anymore.”

At first I was hurt and devastated. We talked later that night and she reminded me what she had been through and how similar our experiences were. I came from a place of, “But I have a right to share my story,” and she responded with, “And I have a right not to listen to it if it is triggering me.”

Of course she was right. And of course I felt terribly ashamed of my thoughtlessness, selfishness and lack of self awareness.

Things were never the same after that. Over the years I have replayed this moment many times. I had spent the first twenty-five years of my life being rewarded for my silence and punished for trying to set boundaries. My mother taught me that setting boundaries is unkind and unsafe, and people pleasing is the only way to survive this mad world. She taught me that when others set boundaries for me, they were being cruel and hateful. It has literally taken me decades to unlearn this conditioning and to find the right balance between authentic discourse, and traumatizing or triggering my listener.

Maybe it’s due to my neurodivergence, but I have always felt most comfortable in the uncomfortable spaces, and difficult conversations. Meaning, the deeper the dive, the murkier the water, the more at home I feel. It’s why I spend so much time alone. If I find myself in a group setting and the conversation remains surface level for an extended period of time, I feel like my soul is dying. Insanely dramatic, I know, but I can’t come up with a more accurate description. It’s not a judgement on how others relate, in fact, I wish I could remain on the surface instead of divulging and oversharing my thoughts and feelings. Sometimes I blurt something out, some traumatic childhood memory, or something dark and taboo and the table or the room goes silent, and I want to ooze out of my own skin, I want to disappear into the cosmos and reinvent myself into something palatable and acceptable. I do this on social media at times as well, and the silence is devastating.

I’m also a student of astrology. I find that it often if not always coincides not only with a person’s personality and behavior, but also physical and mental health conditions. I am a Scorpio rising and I have two major placements in the 8th house. If you aren’t familiar with astrology that means nothing to you, so let me explain in my own words (links also available).

You have the big three placements: your sun, your moon, and your rising. In basic terms, your sun sign is your ego, your moon sign your inner being, what you need emotionally, and your rising is the way you move through the world. Scorpio is known for being mysterious, dark, think Wednesday Addams or Lydia Deetz if you need an archetypal example. The 8th house is associated with sex, death, rebirth, and all things taboo. It represents what is beneath the surface, what is kept hidden. Both my sun and Mercury, planet of communication, are in the 8th house. This brings me comfort, to a degree.

I have learned just over the past five or six years to ask first. I take into account what someone else might be dealing with and before I take a deep dive into a psychological abyss, I ask the listener if they have the bandwidth to hear it or not. I appreciate how honest people have been with me. Sometimes they will even recommend someone else for me to talk to. I was getting pretty good at this until the last few months of traumatic events that no doubt triggered mania and depression. Then that anxiousness, that desperation for someone to understand overwhelmed everything else.

I’m in the midst of it. Some days I feel so hurt, disappointed and angry by the lack of support. It sends me deeper into the abyss. But when I catch even a sliver of light, I remind myself of this Rumi quote, “If everything around you seems dark, look again, you may be the light.” Because in all of the shame and aloneness and confusion I have felt, I have also discovered that I have a gift.

In one of my first posts, the one about how much I hate when people say that everything happens for a reason, I wrote about how I walked into a shop at a beachtown this summer, and the woman managing the store broke down when I went over to ask her about her dog. She told me it was her son’s birthday, or would have been, because he was murdered three years ago. Customers came and went, visibly uncomfortable. I listened to her a good thirty minutes or so, and she kept apologizing. I told her, “You chose the right person to share this with.” I comforted her as much as I could, as well as I could, and when I left I hoped that just having someone to witness her pain and hold space for her would be enough if even for the end of her shift.

I had similar experience weeks later. A woman was in crisis, she apologized too, and I also told her, “You chose the right person to talk to. Believe me, it’s okay.” And it was okay. Because the very thing that makes some people deeply uncomfortable when it comes to my nature, is also the same quality that invites others to share their pain. I can go below the surface, into daunting and unknowable territory, and this is where I am most aware of what I am made for.

It never feels like too much. Often the person will apologize for oversharing or trauma dumping, but I remind them that I can take it. I’m terribly sensitive, and this often gives the impression that one must be careful with me, as if the fact that I can emit intense and sometimes overwhelming emotions, must mean that I am fragile, or unstable. But I have realized, just recently, that I am the right person. I am someone who can take it without absorbing it. I listen and I can cry with you, and hold a judgement free space.

I remember my mother telling me when I was very young that it was my job to make her feel better, my job to cheer her up and listen to her when she was sad and when she cried. Obviously, this is a terribly toxic, if not downright abusive thing to do to a child, to make me responsible for managing a parent’s emotions. But I also wonder if without realizing it, I alchemized this emotionally abusive trauma into a purpose. I know I’m not responsible for managing anyone else’s emotions. I know that it is not my job to keep another human being from escalating. I know that boundaries are both crucial, and loving. And I also know as a Scorpio rising, as a woman who has had to die and be reborn hundreds of times, that I know the magic and the power of transformation. I know that witnessing them process their pain and heal out loud, that dark, jagged rock inside of them can dislodge itself, if even for just a moment.

I am very sad these days. I struggle to find this support in my community. So I go back to Rumi’s quote. If I’m surrounded by darkness, aloneness, isolation, then maybe it is up to me to be the light for someone else. This after all, is my territory. If I can’t find that for myself, at least I can invite others to share it with the right person.

So that’s what I’ll do. And maybe that is the healing journey I’m meant to be on after all. Wading in the dark waters, hoping I can keep someone else from drowning.

This is a poem I wrote several months ago that I hope will bring someone comfort.

Carry On

I am halfway through my life, and still
I can think of nothing else to offer
than these paltry words, 
“Friend, I’m sorry, for what
has been done to your heart.”

Your love so clearly an unbroken song
in the throat of a warbler, digging its wings
into each note because you believe
in what you have to offer. 

If I could, I would break the pain in half, 
like a chalky tablet, taper its dosage, and 
spare you from its full potency.

Instead, I offer you a soft landing
to a brutal crash from an almost-forever, 
the lesson we elbow in the face when it repeats,
and repeats, buttons pushed by the 
fingers of our grief.

Friend, I am halfway through my life and
no one, and nothing, has taught me how to potion
away the heartache, to satisfy the yawn-wide “why’s”
of endings savage as these.

So, think of me as a branch and not a tree, 
a limb to catch you mid fall, 
think of me not as a cure, but an interruption,
a moment of respite from the dark 
chorus of your anthem. 

These poems were originally published in Open Minds Quarterly.

Manic
 
She was a walking apology
desperately seeking to justify
each breath she took.
 
As if she owed the world
her deepest pain.
 
As if only through
her own devastation
she could finally
 
earn a space for herself
in this lonely desert of a world.

A Lever in the Darkness
 
It all comes down to trying.
Apparently, we don’t try
hard enough.
 
We can’t work ourselves
out of these jagged holes.
 
It doesn’t matter if our brain
chemistry is twisted and our hearts,
branded with trauma
trade beats
for pill shaped bullets.
 
It doesn’t matter
how hard we try.
We cannot try ourselves
out of these meat suits.
 
We cannot love
without suffering.
 
We are told
we are not trying
hard enough for this
mountain of grief to implode.
 
We should be ashamed.
--But,
you put enough damage on us
that we
skip
the shame,
 
We trip over
your misguidance.
 
We aren’t trying, you say,
to shake the layers
of ghosts from our flesh.
 
We should know:
How to love ourselves,
And think good thoughts.
 
 Why aren’t you trying?
The last hideous echo of
their gruesome reproach.
 
If we are breathing,
trust me
we are trying.
 
By Kristy Webster