Ironic, but one of the most intimate acts of our body is death.
So beautiful appeared my death, knowing who then I would kiss, I died a thousand times before I died.
“Die before you die,” said the Prophet Muhammad.
Have wings that feared him ever touched the Sun?
I was born when all I once feared, I could love.

—Rabia al Basri

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Ah yes, pull up a chair, ladies and gentlemen. We’re going to talk about one of my favorite topics as of late: Death. And its cousin, Grief.

And if this brought up discomfort reading that, I ask for your curiosity. Just notice your own resistance to this. And as you notice this, what are you afraid of?

I also want to take a second to honor Rabia al Basri. She was one of the earliest and most significant figures in the history of Sufism, known for rejecting worldly possessions in favor of a fierce, unrelenting devotion to God. She never sanitized that hunger for the divine. She just said it, plainly, with her whole chest. After a life of hardship, she spontaneously achieved a state of self-realization. When asked by Hasan al-Basri how she discovered the secret, she responded by saying, “you know of the how, but I know of the how-less.”

The “how” is intellectual knowledge and theological rules. The “how-less” is the direct, effortless experience of truth that drove her connection to the divine through pure love and inner realization.

In my own interpretation of her words above, there’s a rebirth that comes when you start to love what you fear. I’ve been surrounded by a lot of death recently, in all different forms and conversations. It’s been so omnipresent that I finally thought: okay, I get it!! It’s time to take my fingers to the keyboard.

A friend recently shared Rabia’s mystical verse with me in a synchronistic moment. She didn’t know how fascinated I’ve been with death and our human tendency to avoid it. When I read Rabia’s words and looked into who she was, I resonated with a collective message, especially as it pertains to being a woman.

To be an integrated feminine woman means to be messy, sensual, fierce with boundaries, intuitive, nurturing, wild, playful, and innocent, all in equal parts. Like Mother Nature, the feminine soul moves in cycles that symbolize death and rebirth. These same cycles are reflected in the maiden, the mother, and, my favorite, the crone archetype.

I loved Rabia’s words because they remind me that we will die many deaths before we actually die, and that’s a good thing. Through life transitions, ego deaths, and transformations that are often quite messy, I believe we’re meant to be here to evolve, and that comes with shedding.

And in life, death is one of the few certainties. So why don’t we talk about it?

Each day, babies are born, new jobs get created, and new plants spring from the soil. We have rituals to celebrate births, engagements, weddings, and yet, death is nipping at our heels. Ego deaths, orgasms (la petite mort), losses that feel like death, transformations that mimic the physical act of dying, fires and floods, and then the slow rebirth that comes from the rich, fertile ground of decomposition. But many of us avoid these conversations until we’re already in the death portal, at a point that often feels like it wasn’t a choice before we really start thinking about it. So why do we rush past honoring it?

Maybe because it’s scary to think about what’s after this. Maybe we don’t want to feel the discomfort of finality, the stark reminder that nothing is forever. For most humans who like control, death is chaotic by nature. No one knows when their time is up, and that begs a lot of questions. Is there a void? Heaven or hell, if you believe in that? What will it be like to be away from everyone I love, from everything I still haven’t done? Too scary. Let me distract and numb.

And the cycle continues.

But to fear death is to fear life.

Stripping Down

I love Substack because it strips away the aesthetic for the most part. Words don’t need animation, filters, or thirst traps to hit. It’s made me think about how brave it is to share your voice in a world coached to search for manufactured perfection, or the right word choice - an unfortunate sanitization of the mess that is being human. Show me the butterfly, but don’t even think about showing me the goop that got you there, or the aftermath of a failure.

But what if the goop is where the magic and the relatedness lie?

In my own lived experience, I’ve never felt more alive than when I was closest to death. Sounds odd, but let me explain.

I sat down with some close friends the other night and we stripped down - in conversation - around death, grief, and uncertainty. We didn’t linger in rebirth, because when do we actually get to discuss the crunchy bits of life in a safe space?

For me, death has been my greatest teacher. And it might be yours too.

We talked about:

• prolonged grief

• the death of estranged family members

• anticipatory grief

• grieving what you never had but wanted

• grieving a certainty that was never really there to begin with

It reminded me that most people are afraid of losing someone, or something about themselves, to the unknown. Sharing grief can feel like a burden to even voice. As we went around, deep exhales started emerging, and each of our loads lessened. There were also strange commonalities, phrases we’d each scribbled down in some form about our different grief stories. The pain we thought we had to hold back, instead got shared in safety, with no attempt at fixing it.

I don’t know of anything more healing.

It made me wonder how many more people are yearning for exactly this kind of connection. Death and grief come in various shades, and yet they often come coupled with a belief that it’s a burden to express. So we suppress, and suffer in silence.

Existential Kink

Carolyn Elliott, author of Existential Kink, one of the OG books on shadow work, passed away two weeks ago. This news stuck with me. People flipping through my bookshelf would often look at me wide-eyed when they came across it, assuming it was some kind of provocation. It’s actually much gentler than that: part of us can get off on our sad story, and how important it is to love our shadows instead of exiling them, so we can reach a more congruent self. Carolyn’s book was my gateway into shadow work, and it shaped how I’ve viewed my own life experiences since I began healing after my sister’s death. It was never about bypassing the pain so much as examining one’s relationship to it.

My grief story was intermingled with guilt and shame, and took a long time to even express itself because of my programming and the way my body and mind had internalized the loss and exiled those feelings. This led me down a path of deep shadow work.

I don’t think we’ve carved out enough space or pause to allow those grieving to grieve. Carolyn’s passing reminded me of this, and I feel immensely grateful for the legacy she left behind: a starting point for lessening the shame around the stories we tell ourselves that end up shaping our realities.

And her death reminded me of another one that was closer to home.

Near Death

About a year ago today, I had a near-death experience.

To say it was complex is an understatement. It was tied to a lot of different things that had happened in my life.

I won’t catalogue everything that happened, but the discomfort of shedding skin, of being viewed as unstable as suppressed emotions finally flowed through me, led to a deep examination of myself, of what I’d actually lived through, and of the lifestyle I’d need to adopt in order to truly thrive as a sensitive being in this lifetime. It was also a brutal surrender to the process of unbecoming.

I became a deeper, more real version of me, but I lost the innocent self who had fallen back into a more surface-level way of living - the one with the safe corporate job, the nonreciprocal friendships, the one who was afraid to have the hard conversation even though it was well deserved, and to the one who forgot what “no” sounded and felt like. Living that way was on the surface, smooth as butter, while quietly killing me.

The near-death experience brought cutting awareness to this.

During a mental health crisis, I had an adverse reaction to a medication the hospital gave me, and it dropped my heart rate so low that I almost died. I remember the doctors swirling around me, what felt like an electric current moving through my heart space, and then nothing. I could hear the doctors talking, but I wasn’t quite there anymore.

When I finally came to, I felt deep despair. I was happy to still be alive, but I knew I was never going to be the same again. All I wanted was to see the sky, to feel the sun on my face, to actually be heard as a human struggling against something deeply painful and complex, who had held a lot that wasn’t hers to hold anymore.

From that day forward, I knew I was never going to give in the same way, never going to live at the same speed. Turns out healing trauma is more of a cyclical journey. I knew that on a cerebral level, but I had to regress to understand it as lived experience.

I remember being judged by those closest to me for wanting to stay horizontal, for being anti-social, for changing my mind when I got overwhelmed as I tried to reenter my old life. I understand now that I was in a functional state of nervous system collapse. My system just wanted to curl into itself and recover. Grateful to still be alive, yes, but reeling from a brush with death that reminded me, once again, that all of it could disappear one day.

And not to slap a silver lining on it, but in a weird way, I’m actually glad the old me died. Because it made me a thousand times more present to the gift of today, to the lifestyle I care more about than any achievement, and it gave me a sharper north star for the kind of care I want to provide, for those who might find themselves in similar shoes one day.

What It Means to Live

Near death was the mirror that showed me all the ways I was living unsustainably. By the end of it, I wanted less: less chaos, less busyness, fewer inbound requests requiring me to show up as an old version of myself I no longer fit into, fewer tasks I committed to without actually asking my body how it felt.

And the less I do, the more space I have to just be.

I’m not saying you have to kill all of your passion projects, but if this were your last season, would you still be waiting for permission to feel joy? To rest? To say the true thing out loud? Trauma gets in the way of a lot of this. My hope is that someone reading this doesn’t wait for a crisis to remind them to live in the now at a pace that feels true to them. To build a lifestyle that actually supports your system and what your body needs, because every body is different.

I don’t think living well means chasing peak experiences or forcing gratitude on a dime either. To me, it means being humble enough to let yourself be interrupted, and to hold that nothing matters and everything matters, at the same time.

Touch grass. Pick up a flower and marvel at something so beautiful that will also die one day, just like you. And do your best to harbor less judgment of those in the goop.

There’s an old story many women have inherited about what a “good” woman looks like: the Madonna, pure and self-sacrificing, endlessly giving without hunger of her own. Her shadow twin is too much, too sexual, too messy, too wanting. Most of us inherited the Madonna blueprint from our ancestors.

But these days, I’m taking the strengths I’ve gleaned from my lineage and breaking the patterns I don’t want anymore. I find myself drawn to the mystics, the crones, and the artists. The ones writing from the edge of their own near-deaths.

They aren’t asking for a half life.

They are asking for one hundred percent of what they desire, and they are building their lives from that place, not from what is expected of them.

This human existence is wrapped in polarity. The highlight reel is only possible because a lowlight reel exists, and one day there won’t be a reel at all. I’m committed to being the feminine soul who refuses to be split in two because I know I deserve it all. Sometimes the old patterns still show up, but I’m leaning into owning my own complexity, and what I’ve made it through. Remembering what it’s like to do more with less.

When I zoom out of all of this, I come back to the crone: the older woman with battle scars, who is actually celebrated for them. She’s died more lives than a cat, but she’s been initiated and integrated into humble, grounded wisdom from lived experience.

And for me, I’m going to keep sucking the marrow out of the bone, and getting messy in the process of my own life of becoming and unbecoming, over and over again. Because today, I am alive, and my heart is still beating.

And yours is too.

Start Spreading the News:

[Side note: This post is not going to include any detailed sportz play by plays]

I was in NYC last week, which just so happened to fall on the week of the NBA finals. Let’s just say this was highly unplanned! Even though I’m originally from NY and hail from a die-hard Knicks family, I didn’t plan to be there when this magic went down, but I’m so glad I was.

The city was buzzing differently. And when I say differently, I mean it was alive. I was finishing my grad school finals, moving through the city with my head half-buried in final assignments, when I started noticing the shift.

Strangers were talking to each other. More than ever. Like Chatty Cathy and Talkative Tom, getting it on, everywhere I turned. The city was covered in blue and orange, and every doorman/woman, barista, and neighbor could not stop babbling about the games. I could sense the anticipation, joy, and camaraderie in a city that can sometimes feel like a mixed bag of nuts depending on the season, street block, and subway car. And I love New York! But there was something beautifully contagious going on, and it was such a joy to take in as an observer.

What I witnessed was the kind of community engagement and connection I’ve only witnessed and felt myself after an intense yoga class with an instructor who knows how to get conversation flowing amongst the students (shoutout to Kalli Gillmer!!), in post-retreat conversations, or at large-scale concerts where the music and energy are immaculate, blending the crowd into one dancing organism. But here, I saw it in delis, on corner stoops, through phone screens held up toward anyone who’d look. I was staying with a friend who was feverishly refreshing her browser to catch the score late into the night during one of the semi-finals as we got ready to go to sleep. We were giggling, listening for car horns as the signal that victory had been secured. I hadn’t been that invested in results, since awaiting my COVID test in 2020. And I know I’m not alone in that!

I hadn’t witnessed anything like this, on a collective level, in potentially a lifetime. I think it’s pointing at something we desperately need, and mostly don’t know how to recreate on purpose.

What We Can Learn From Sports

I’m not a die-hard sports gal, but a good game with a real story behind it is uniting in a way few things are. We’ve had collective moments before, but may I say they are typically, quite bleak?! 9/11 united the city in grief; political campaigns manufacture belonging by pedestaling saviors, while smearing their opponents personal and political views. Neither comes close to what I saw on the streets of Manhattan. This was easssssssy joy, strangers turning into gametime friends, and a local pride that felt innocent and uncomplicated.

Sports are low-stakes enough to stay “pure”, accessible enough to reach everyone, and especially with an underdog like the Knicks, they pull on something most of us carry: the hope for a comeback. Nobody’s lying to you about the score. You can surrender to it completely without it being life or death. And with fifty-three years since the last title, that’s giving Rudy and Seabiscuit energy! This Knicks win breathed fresh life into the city, giving everyone something to be proud of at the same time.

People have been calling this collective effervescence online - a term from sociologist Émile Durkheim, describing the feeling of the individual self dissolving into something larger. Ancient humans knew it through ritual. Some people find it in nature, in meditation or a regular spiritual practice, or a near-death experience. Modern life has mostly diluted the channel for it, with algorithms and AI chopping up our attention spans.

Regardless, for a few weeks, the Knicks handed a feeling of “oneness” back to New York in its simplest form. The city remembered what it felt like to be a we, instead of a “get out of my way, you’re walking too slow!”

What This Looks Like in the Body and Why It Matters

Watching the city move through this resembled tracking a client through a somatic therapy session: the grounding start, the building anticipation, the peak, the release, the quiet integration after. Beautiful to witness in one person.

Watching it happen across an entire city at once was something else entirely. It made me wonder if this was the first time, in a long time, this many people felt connected to something bigger than themselves, at this scale.

Sure, this happens every year somewhere for the Super Bowl, but a 53-year wait, mass viewership, and people in the streets, adds significance. That feeling of awe, fulfillment, connection to total strangers in an authentic way, is exactly what the nervous system is starved for. And we need more of that!

What Would It Look Like to Build This on Purpose?

The World Cup and Olympics chase a similar high but stay tethered to nations and athletics. The Knicks run pulled in lifelong fans, bandwagoners, and anyone who loves a comeback. What else could carry that same emotional charge more sustainably? Music, art, comedy, sure, but how?

Or stretch it further: what if we gamified causes worth rallying around? Better storytelling for scientific research (scientists are endearing as hell and working for everyone’s benefit). Easier ways to actually know our neighbors, and make small acts of community visible. I used to work with the XPRIZE Foundation back in the day, which ran contests, sometimes with million-dollar prizes, for completing tasks that moved humanity forward (ex: creating technology that 3D-prints homes in underdeveloped areas). It looks like they’ve shifted more toward film competitions lately, but the original ethos was gamifying for social good.

The Architecture Underneath

The real gift of the Knicks win was a shared structure for joy - one that cut across zip codes, even through a screen! The ingredients seem to be:

• An underdog with a real obstacle

• A visible scoreboard

• A shared language strangers could use to connect

• Low barriers to witness

• A finish line where all that emotion could discharge at once

• Social networks that amplify the energy outward

This recipe doesn’t seem unique to basketball though, but if keeps bumping up against a feeling of belonging that so many of us desire - to a neighborhood, a passion, a cause, even a cult! (jk).

How do we do that more sustainably, while also bring FUN?

Collective Wellness

Social connection is consistently linked to lower addiction and better mental health outcomes. We’re tribal beings, however disconnected modern life makes us feel at times. The Knicks win brought people out of their homes and into the streets, connecting them to strangers and collective joy. And isn’t collective joy, the same thing as collective wellness? Why aren’t governments fostering more initiatives to enable and then measure, collective wellness on dimensions like:

1.) How well do you know your neighbors

2.) Do you feel connected to your local community?

3). Do you feel connected to something bigger than yourself?

Durkheim ties collective effervescence to ritual, something periodic and bounded, not summoned at will. So - it appears that repetition is the key here as well.

Parting Thoughts

Collective joy is a real, renewable resource, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of what it can do when pointed at something beyond sports and entertainment, even though I do see the value in both. From what I hear from my friends living in the city, the energy hasn’t fully faded, which is intriguing.

I know I also may have more questions than concrete ideas, but this experience gave me a bit of hope around the human condition. Maybe the fact that it wasn’t engineered was the magic, BUT what if we can have more say in making this collective feeling more accessible and visible, in ways we haven’t quite cracked yet?

I don’t think a win of this proportion, on the score board AND the emotional field, is meant to live in a vacuum, sealed away and forgotten. Rather than waiting for the next big sports game, my hope is that we can find other opportunities with similar ingredients, and more comeback stories/wins that let us keep tapping into this collective pool of joy.

Suppression is expensive.

I learned that in Kindergarten, walking silently in a straight line down the hallway at PS162 (yes, like the show Hey Arnold!), index finger pressed up against my mouth, hands in a peace sign, a five year-old already being taught to make herself smaller, quieter, and to follow the leader.

Jesus christ, just typing that out feels constricting! I know it was simply being done to keep us in order and for safety reasons because we were so young in the school system, but deep down, I know I didn’t want to do that! We are wild, animalistic beings at the end of the day, and I wanted to burn off my energy on the playground for more than an hour, but I didn’t know I could do that yet. Or maybe I did, but I just followed the rules because I was told to. Our brains have evolved far beyond honoring what our bodies and souls need sometimes. I don’t want to go back to being a cave woman, but I do wonder when did we got away from our more playful and primal nature, for the sake of control and order? And when do so many of us find it dangerous to feel and express the true range of our emotions?

Suppression costs you your truth and your authentic expression.

I say that as someone who felt very in touch with my warmth and friendliness for a long time (I get it from my mama!), but also equally bummed at how much I shunned the other end of the emotional spectrum, until dark circumstances pulled it out of me. These experiences have led to more integration and wholeness which I am grateful for, BUT I wish I had learned to welcome these parts in earlier, as valid responses to life.

I know this initial avoidance, comes from societal conditioning, parental influences with people who were also parenting for the first time and had their own traumas(grace, grace, grace), cultural norms, and my job choices that required a lot of buttoning up. And it wasn’t that I didn’t feel those negative emotions per se, I just didn’t feel safe to express them.

But what about being human? Anger, jealousy, grief, sadness, disappointment - all of it, it’s just part of the life package. I felt like I spent so much of my life rushing past those emotions, because I internalized early on that they were “bad” or not welcomed.

But how do we define what’s “bad”? Bad is subjective. Bad to me, means that I clocked that when I did express those feelings, I got in trouble. Or that they were too much for whatever else was going on at the time, for those who were not resourced to attune to it. And for those that view emotions like that as “bad” from the outside, it’s like you aren’t comfortable with what I’m experiencing in my felt senses and lived experience, and perceive them as a threat.

I have a lot of thoughts on this. There were a few sessions in a row where my fellow somatic experiencing students working with me, were angry as hell. This was such a mirror moment. I had to feel within my body how that made me feel to witness that, while not making it about me, and then later unpacking it. Growing up, I learned to fold into myself like an origami to keep things kosher and cool. Well, that takes a lot of undoing when I realized how fiery and passionate I actually was inside, after all those years of suppressing how I really felt. I thought I had to be tamed, quiet, and a good, even though I wanted to rebel and just be a loud, fully expressed kid.

That’s the cost of suppression.

In those sessions when students were moving into fight mode, I had to hold the space, and not budge in fear. People think holding space is a passive term, but it actually requires a whole framework of your nervous system, attention, and intention. That takes a lot of earned capacity and it’s been the arc of my own journey to be able to welcome those emotions within myself, without immediately coining them as bad or scary.

I will be honest and say that sometimes I do notice that it scares my body when anger comes up in others for the first few seconds, even though this work is done remote! I know that’s my animalistic self coming online, and protecting me, and that I don’t need to get stuck there. I have to resource myself to know someone isn’t going to barge into my house like the Kool-Aid man and tear something up when I see that familiar look in someone’s eyes. That’s the art of noticing and self resourcing, and it’s cool to know I can do that in any situation that presents now.

One of my favorite sayings is “expression is the opposite of depression.” I am not sure who said it first, but it really stuck with me. Writing poetry has been one of my favorite assets in my own toolbox. It allows me to get things out that I may have intellectually closed out, but didn’t get to express in the moment because it wasn’t safe to say or feel those things out loud. That’s the power of writing from your authentic expression, even if it comes delayed. And for some reason, mine tends to flow through as lyrical songs that I call poetry. Now, I will write in real time when I’m activated. It is certainly the antidote to shame for me, and shame is such a cloaking energy that will block you from following your dreams, the love you deserve (we all deserve!!), and living a life that truly lights you up.

From what I’m learning in grad school and my own lived experiences, I think mental illness might just be a very human and biological response to environments and situations that prevented full expression and authenticity. I want to reframe mental health struggles, away from pathology and personal failure, to instead adaptive intelligence that can be renegotiated. Where choice may have been stripped due to circumstance, mixed in with our early body imprints as they relate to love, attachment, and loss. It takes so much bravery to actually face the music, and let our bodies reorganize themselves so our life force energy can flow right through.

The mind and body could be intelligently responding to what they see, and are simply caught in a loop trying to remain safe, even though the initial threat that caused this pattern, is gone. Can we really fault someone for struggling mentally or staying small, when we don’t really know what their foundations looked like, and how their body internalized it? Compassion and empathy enter the chat.

Today, I want to go back in time to my little self, and tell her she can make a mess. And that she doesn’t need to cover her mouth when she wants to speak, or that it’s very much okay to loudly say that I want to go outside and do cartwheels in the sun without having to be quiet, contained, logical, and good. Not out of regression, but out of expression.

So today, I’m rollerblading before I get back to the grind of grad school finals, and that feels like a little rebellion in and of itself. I like to put on nostalgic music and just drop into what freedom feels like in my body when I’m just breezing past the beach and taking in the multi-sensory experience that is the Venice boardwalk (sometimes really stunning, and sometimes incredibly overstimmy). I like polarity. When you can give your adult self what you wish you had more of when you were younger, a piece of you wiggles in harmony with your inner child.

It feels like a natural way of melding past and present, that doesn’t cost a thing.

I just finished a somatic experiencing session with a fellow student who lives in New York, that I connected with from my cohort (I’m going to call her L for privacy reasons). To become certified in Somatic Experiencing, you go through a 3-year intensive program, and you meet some amazing people along the way. L is a trauma practitioner, author, yoga teacher, and a certified bad azz human being. We are meeting weekly now to run sessions, and then we chat about what came up for us. The beauty of this work continues to baffle me. I had been churning over something for a few days in my head, and the second we dropped into session, I could sense my body saying FINALLY!!

I’m fun-employed right now, which has given me a lot of privilege when it comes to free time and creating my days to have as much joy as possible, while also just noticing the joy of doing nothing at all. I’m still busy though, in 2 study programs (1 full time, and 1 quarterly), but trying to be very intentional with my time. This means moving my body daily in ways that feel good, cooking meals for the people I love, making playlists again to match whatever I’m feeling, signing up for more trainings that stretch my mind (I can’t stop!!), and making space for coffee chats and new connections in business and purpose. I have met some really interesting folks lately from random uber drives, my somatic program, and just actively engaging with strangers I meet in public spaces when I’m present enough to.

It is not lost on me how grateful I am to have more space to actually listen to myself. To treat my body like the temple it is, even on the days I’m doing absolutely nothing, incense smoke curling through the air, music simmering in the background, back pressed into the couch, breeze flowing through my apartment, wondering if there’s actually a better feeling than this. I have a tendency to want to fill my calendar up, but I’m also realizing that when I do less, I have way more energy and clarity in my life. A constant battle of following my passions, but also needing to rest.

And while this has been nourishing, my eye is still fixed on this work. There is a quiet devotion I am learning to love, when it comes to my relationship to somatic experiencing and my path to becoming an SEP (somatic experiencing practitioner!). I am an absolute nerd for the body. My dream growing up was to become a physical therapist and I always found myself contorting into yoga poses before I even knew what they were. Regardless, I made a responsible decision to get a business degree when my Mom told me grad school was never going to be in the financial cards for us (undergrad barely was!). My Dad also wanted me to go to community college or become a park ranger. That’s another story!

But I found my way back to the body.

We’ve kind of been lied to our whole lives about what’s most important in this lived experience as it relates to our felt senses. Society and all it’s influences has brought our attention outside of ourselves and away from our senses, as a way of proving our worth and achieving success in a modern world that demands physical proof of “making it”. But when I am really here, feet planted, eyes on what’s in front of me, leaning BACK instead of forward, colors are more vibrant, my intuition gets sharper, and scents have a more grounding effect on me. I can see beauty everywhere. My resources are the bright green trees outside my window, the Buddha that quietly hits a sound gong when the light hits him long enough, the smell of Rose essential oil on my desk, a card from a best friend who just moved that reminds me that I’m a f*cking goddess (miss you Nat!), and the cold iced matcha condensing on the table while I lean back.

And I am learning to lean back. In all aspects of my life. Overefforting is slowly leaving the building, despite how much I am still in study/build mode. L gave me guidance to spend 30 minutes just leaning back in my chair after one of our sessions. I did it, and it was heaven on earth. I blame my unbridled curiosity and a lifetime of people pleasing for why I constantly want to lean fully forward into every conversation I’m in (though I gotta say, some of these convos have been hitting different lately). But the cycle is breaking, and so is my grip on needing to know how everything turns out. I’ve been giving the universe space to fill the gaps, and laughing at how fun this experiment has been for me when I receive a little curveball I didn’t know I needed, bumping me back into alignment.

When I’m in the practitioner seat, I love tracking people while gently inviting them to move through internal and external binds they aren’t aware of in their bodies or word choice, but begin flashing like neon signs as we move through this work. The body doesn’t lie, and when it opens up, it usually has a lot to say. It takes real bravery to show up and feel the nitty gritty parts of being human that the intellect likes to shield us from.

Talk therapy has its place though! It’s gives space to intellectualize the “why” and challenge stories we’ve held onto, as well as allows a third party to call out blind spots or offer compassionate dialogue around tough situations. I’ve come to realize that from my lived experience though, real lasting change comes from embodiment, once that awareness has been talked through. Actually walking the walk. Turning towards, instead of away from the feelings that take me back to my default factory settings, and letting them finally complete, so more life force can move through me. Trauma freezes us in our past, and as I continue to thaw these parts of myself, I am learning to welcome the justified grief and even the rage that comes with it, as uninvited guests who it turns out, just needed somewhere to sit (welcome to the party ya’ll !!).

What I love most about these sessions is when truth rises to the surface after the body finally has a chance to express what it’s been holding. It’s not my job to tell someone what their truth is, but when someone arrives at meaning making that rings true for them, I feel beyond grateful to witness it. And sometimes it doesn’t happen at all which is its own kind of permission slip to just let that person feel what they’ve been carrying, in a safe place, without needing to mine it to death for meaning. I am also learning that I can sense truth in my body now, and I believe this has arrived after tapping out of relational dating for a long stretch, and spending more time in solitude to tune into how MY body senses the world. When you are sensitive being, it takes time to learn what is yours, and what is someone else’s.

In my most recent session, grief and love came up for both L and I, just in different ways. Mine showed up in a hand bind over a belief I’ve been wrestling with. Hers surfaced around a very tough decision she made that is still causing her heartburn. We got to hold and track each other in both, and watch as our bodies stopped bracing and relaxed into their own simple truths. Parallel tracks, but trains in different states.

I think sometimes we reach for understanding as a subconscious grab for control. If I can understand XYZ, then maybe I have some means of influencing the outcome. And sometimes, the insight just naturally floats up and frees us to simply BE. I don’t know of another practice that shifts your system so fundamentally, but I’m staying curious, open, and continuing to learn as I deepen my knowledge of this modality. I’m devoted to clearing what needs to be cleared within my own system, while also being mindful of the careful balance of not seeing myself as a project that needs constant improvement. I am learning to honor the natural intelligence of the body, which is, for the record, far more interesting to me than anything AI has got going on!! (RIP to my past life as a techie).

Do you ever just think about the fact that your heart beats from day one and never stops? Through heartbreak and sickness and the most ordinary Tuesday afternoon?That never ceases to amaze me. And in somatic sessions, I cannot get over how resourceful people are. A hand that intuitively rises to the heart when we touch into pain? The body is always trying to protect us and give us what we need, if we slow down enough to allow it to be heard and expressed.

We are so much more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. And in that same breath, we don’t have to do this all by ourselves. Our world has become so damn fragmented, it’s not lost on me that many people feel disconnected from their bodies, as well as to each other. Sometimes we just need a healing experience to restore our agency, to reclaim our power, and to collect the parts of ourselves that have been fragmented along the way. Soul recovery work.

The field of resonance between two people in a somatic session reminds me that we are always connecting in ways that logic alone will never explain. We talk a lot about not “merging” with clients in session and putting space between what is unwinding for them, versus how our system responds to it. The thing I’m toying with, is the fact that grief is universal. And so is love. When L exhaled and I felt something release in my own body too, I can point to mirror neurons - sure. But what about the invisible thread that made it feel like she was offering me something just as healing, right when I needed it too?

Hmmm food for thought indeed! Maybe that’s what we gave each other today. No concrete meaning making, but just company in the feeling from two very different experiences with similar, overlapping themes, just expressed differently in the body. A bridge of shared humanity between New York and California thanks to the Zoom gods. And that is something that freed my bind, and allowed me to lean back into my joy.

Wow...time flies. I’m learning to be a bit more honest with my grief because I used to overly compartmentalize it, and it did me dirty. So now, I am both celebrating my sister, and feeling the feels.

Katie was the queen of glitter, googly eyes that she’d apply to basically everything, wildflowers, road trips, and punk-rock style. Today I’m trying to celebrate her while sitting in the goo that is grief, which oscillates across a whole messy spectrum of emotions. And today, I’m in good company.

I planned a trip to clear my head this week and headed to Amsterdam to spend time with my friend Julia, who lives here. The timing wasn’t meant to align with Katie’s birthday, but it feels like a little wink from the universe that it did. Julia also lost her sister a year after I did, under different circumstances. Today we’re honoring both of them, which feels like a beautiful tribute to sisterhood.

Back in the day, Katie, Julia, and I used to frolic around Northern California on road trips, pulling off Highway 1 for ocean dips, hiking the redwoods in Santa Cruz, and trying to shush the famously loud Scottish bagpipes that would pop off during sunset at the famous Half Moon Bay Ritz Carlton.

Today Julia scooped me up from the train by bike (yes, luggage and all strapped in!!), and the adventures began. Katie would have loved it. We biked around Utrecht, had lunch on the canals, saunaed (is that a word?), swapped stories about her, went to a pastry shop she would’ve adored, and sang happy birthday over cupcakes while Julia’s two little boys blew out the candles.

I’m grateful for this day, and to spend it with a dear friend who understands such a parallel loss. Today, my grief has been both emotional, and somatic. Heavy in the heart space, but lightened by the ways we honored her today.

It’s deeply healing for me to share about Katie and what she meant to me.

Katherine Marie Nemec was a quintessential Pisces, deep feelings, sensitivities, intuition, wildly creative, with a love for comedy, stand-up, fashion, makeup, florals, moody girl music, and good design.

We were 18 months apart (Irish twins) and unofficially assigned colors growing up, me pink, her purple (notice the sequin-trimmed sleeves below!!). One time, in true 90s fashion, she accidentally got a bowl cut and looked like a boy for two years until it grew out. She survived it, and I think that experience helped launch the infamous sense of humor people later loved her for.

We spent summers chewing Big League bubble gum, roasting in the Virginia heat, riding roller coasters at King’s Dominion, rotating computer time so our crushes would see our ~*AIM away messages*~, swimming like fish in our neighborhood pool, getting way too competitive at laser tag, and playing double-header softball games in the grassy fields of Richmond. Katie always stole bases at the most unexpected moments just to keep everyone on their toes. That energy followed her through life.

She introduced me to bands like Juliana Theory, Copeland, The Cardigans, and to what it felt like riding to school every morning in the cigarette-smoke box that was our shared neon 2003 neon blue, Mazda Protege. I walked into class 15 minutes late pretty much every day thanks to our lively commute, giving off the vibe that I was secretly a smoker despite my clean-girl aesthetic. She was a rebel from the jump. We were yin and yang, her the rule breaker, me the straight-edge counter, but we loved each other immensely.

Sisterhood is special if you do it right, and are born with an awesome sibling. It’s like having a hilarious, loyal ride or die baddie best friend who knows almost everything about you and your family, and still loves you anyway. It requires a lot of love and forgiveness because there are a ton of emotions in the mix, and plenty of tap dancing on each other’s nerves. We shared a room for most of our childhood, so the late-night convos, secrets, and fights were epic.

Katie had celiac disease and a raging sweet tooth, so I was always hunting down gluten-free desserts for her. I still order them when I miss her, even though she’d probably yell at me for wasting my non-celiac privilege!!

One time she brought her third-grade journal on a family road trip to the Outer Banks and read entries out loud between pit stops at fruit stands and sunflower fields. In her eight-year-old scribbles she declared her dream of becoming either a professional softball player or a model. We cracked up at the range. She ended up modeling, so she hit 50 percent. She also made TV appearances on New Girl, Community, and Arrested Development!

We both adopted very old rescue pups in the Bay Area, Pickle and Ruby, and constantly sent each other updates about their upgraded new lives with us (old dog gang rise up!!). Katie loved celebrating people and dogs, especially on birthdays. One year she threw me a surprise party in San Francisco. She put so much effort into planning that party, from decorations to secretly inviting everyone I loved. She showed up 100p for the people she cared about. That was just her.

I recently heard someone describe grief as a glitter bomb.It explodes and scatters glitter everywhere. Even when you try to clean it up, tiny flecks keep showing up later in corners, on clothes, and in places you didn’t expect.

You can’t completely get rid of it, and you truth is, you shouldn’t.

Because as much as it SUCKS, it still shines when the light hits it. The awareness of how deeply someone impacted your life, long after they’re gone, is part of the strange gift inside loss. Glitter can also hurt if it gets in your eyes!! The paradox of grief.

And yeah, I think about her every day. I also want to talk about her.

Most people who are grieving do. There’s a misconception that bringing up someone who died will hurt the person grieving. We’re already thinking about them constantly. If anything, hearing their name keeps them alive in the room, and makes grief feel a little less isolating. So if you’re reading this, check on your friends in the grief club. It’s a place we’ll all visit eventually. Some of us just arrived earlier.

The rituals we create to honor the people we’ve lost become buoys in the sea of grief. My friends and family help keep me afloat. One of my best friends gave me a ladybug charm because I used to call Katie “Katie Bugg.” I carry it everywhere now. I talk to my sister often in meditation, and sometimes I swear I hear her answers - always spicy, honest, and hilarious, just like she always was.

Maybe it’s because we shared the same parents and I felt like I knew her like the back of my hand. Maybe some part of us is still connected in ways I don’t fully understand. Or maybeeeeee, just maybe, I’m learning I don’t need to understand everything. I just need to feel it.

It’s a blessing to take the time out to honor how deeply I loved her. In a strange way, she gave me one of the hardest and most important lessons of my life thus far, the cruel lesson of impermanence wrapped in the gift of sisterhood that had pain, humor, love, and adventure, all-in-one. More than anything, I wish I could have told her and thanked her for how much she shaped me, but I believe in my heart of hearts, she already knew.

Nothing and no one is truly ours forever. We will lose everyone we love someday. And that’s both liberating and terrifying. So when you can, Love more.

Grief really is like a glitter bomb. And Katie was the queen of glitter afterall (exhibit A below!)

Pieces of her keep showing up everywhere. In songs, in road trips I recreate now without her, in gluten-free desserts, in IG accounts I go to follow and already see her little icon already there, and in the strange corners where memories appear when I least expect them.

More glitter.

So today I’ll keep ordering gluten-free sweets, making the kinds of adventures she would’ve loved, trusting that my life has its own divine path, and finding ways to honor her in my day to day life. (let’s just say, it definitely won’t involve me becoming a professional softball player. I’ll let her keep that dream :) )

I love you, Katie.

Happy birthday.

Hello Rock Bottom, My Old Friend

This post is experimental for me as it touches the most sensitive part of my story. I’ve avoided saying much of this out loud unless it was with my boy Peter, or a small group of friends I knew could truly hold it (a tricky test of discernment I’ve come to learn). I’ve thought carefully about my intentions in sharing this now, and why it finally feels time.

I guess I’m just tired of cutting out such a large part of my life that has largely shaped so much of who I’ve become. I also want to create more awareness around what trauma does to the body and mind - and to help others feel less ashamed for having very human reactions, to terrible things.

Toward the end of 2025, I hit rock bottom, not solely because of the loss of my sister, but because I was pushing myself too hard mentally and physically, trying to outrun the shame and guilt I still carried from her passing, while trying to build a life of meaning for myself.

I was spinning too many plates: being social, being a good partner in a new relationship, traveling back east to see my family, keeping full time work and grad school moving, while also doing deep nervous system work in a somatic training program.

As painful as it was, that breakdown forced me to learn that slow living is not optional for me.

Neither is self-forgiveness.

Maybe I had to go through some hard experiences, to embody what it means to go through hell and back, and come out the other side more integrated, grounded, and real. I think the world needs more of that (and less hollow influencers with access to podcast equipment).

My complicated relationship to labels

I was diagnosed with C-PTSD in 2022. I have a complicated relationship with diagnoses and pathologizing. I think they can sometimes box people in, creating the belief that you’ll never fully get better. But the language and framework actually helped me understand what was going on, and made me take my care seriously.

Besides a handful of close friends and my family, most people in my orbit had no idea I was struggling, or what this diagnosis actually meant for me.

So what does it mean?

The “C” in C-PTSD stands for complex, and living with it has been exactly that. For me, it showed up as panic attacks, nightmares, and flashbacks, in visceral memories from trying to care for my sister and navigating the darkness of her depression. After her passing, those symptoms also began pulling up other traumatic experiences I hadn’t yet processed. Suddenly, everything hard felt closer to the surface, and I had no choice but to start chipping away at them. I also learned that these instances, had created a lot of shame in my body, that needed to make it’s way out.

Identity Collapse & Nervous System Reality

As someone with perfectionist tendencies, this diagnosis conflicted with how I saw myself. People would sometimes nicely describe me as “sunshine,” the one who held it all together, even in chaos.

But that’s a heavy identity to carry, and it leaves little room for the full spectrum of being human!

I’m deeply grateful for a therapist who helped me understand my symptoms and guided me toward the right care, while also reflecting something I couldn’t see at the time. I had been through experiences that severely impacted my nervous system, even if I couldn’t yet name how much I was hurting or understand what was happening in my body.

This sparked a deep curiosity in me about the neurobiology of trauma and grief, how overwhelming emotions trigger chemical cascades that affect sleep, avoidance, and how we show up in relationships. There has to be a more integrated care approach for those who have been through hard things, one that gives the body, mind, and emotions equal consideration.

When Grieving Carries Shame

When my body started showing clear physiological and psychological signs of trauma, I tried to mask them. I white-knuckled my way through the worst of it, compartmentalizing my grief with surgical precision, and saving it for therapy sessions. I talked about it from time to time outside of that, but not enough.

But the truth is - I’m a deep feeler. And when those therapy sessions ended, the grief didn’t disappear. It was the quiet elephant in the room, following me everywhere. What made it even harder for me, was at the root of it, was an inner judge that believed I should have been stronger - that I failed my sister. One of the most common markers of C-PTSD is shame.

Letting go of that voice has been some of the hardest work of my life.

It still shows up sometimes, and when it does, I gently have to remind myself that it’s trying to control something that was never controllable. I did the best I could.

Functioning Isn’t the Same as Healing

During this stretch of time, I held a full-time job, received strong work reviews, made new friends, went to wellness retreats, hosted supper clubs, had romantic relationships, traveled, moved my body in healthy ways, practiced self-care, and completed a year of grad school. From the outside, things looked fine.

And still, the curveballs came.

What I hate most about C-PTSD is its unpredictability. But I’m learning now, it takes time to understand my triggers, to work through them, with the right care. Neuroplasticity is real, and I’m getting better at recognizing overwhelm, at slowing down, and leaning into aligned support.

My sister was hospitalized often, sometimes in life-or-death situations. I spent countless hours in sterile, unforgiving hospital settings, trying to fix the crisis unfolding at the time. What I didn’t realize then, was how deeply this constant taking on of responsibility would wire itself into me, becoming a knee-jerk survival response that would later cost me my own health. When you spend a lot of time taking care of others, you forget to take care of yourself.

And that goes beyond massages or baths. It’s a daily practice, and knowing when to rest. My body finally grabbed the microphone and said, “DO LESS”, and now, I’m really listening.

If any of this resonates with you, my hope is that you take a beat and slow down too. I’m practicing right alongside you.

Self-Forgiveness in the Aftermath

I’ve had to forgive myself, for the romantic choices I made at the height of grief, for the breakdowns that came when “holding it all together” stopped working, and for the beliefs I carried about what made me worthy of being alive. And for guilt I carried from Katie’s passing.

Turns out, productivity and an overfilled plate does not equal to worthiness.

I’m not sharing this to be performative. I simply don’t see enough honest conversations about what it’s like to live with C-PTSD or even grief, especially when suicide is part of the story.

If my story feels extreme or unrelatable, I guess I just hope you learn to give yourself a little bit more wiggle room in being messy in your emotions. I wish I had, and I’m grateful that I’m learning to be now.

Sharing all of this feels strangely freeing. This is my truth. And it feels freaking good to say it out loud. And I’m finally okay with owning my sensitivity, because it was there before Katie passed, and it’s gone up since. I know now, that sensitivity is my superpower, and I can use it to help others one day.

I’m slowly finding the courage to speak about my sister more openly, as I never wanted the way she left this world, to be her legacy. That will come later.

When Healing Isn’t Aesthetic

A lot of healing is performed through woo woo language, aesthetic Instagram feeds, and ice baths, made to look glamorous while rarely touching on REAL pain. I don’t feel drawn to that world anymore, and I’m on an IG tear trying to unfollow hollow accounts like these!

I’m sorry, Kimberly, but I don’t need to hear about the colostrum you’re pushing from an ice bath in your Venice mansion. I want to know who you are without the mask. What’s your story? Are you actually okay?

Real healing is messy - and yet, it’s also beautiful.

• It’s the quiet acts behind closed doors that no one will ever see, but you.

• It’s in the daily conversations where you offer yourself the same kindness you’d give a friend, when you mess up.

• It’s in the rituals that help you slow your breath, in a body used to rushing.

• It’s in the “no” you give without explanation, especially to those who have weaponized your kindness

• It’s in the contraction after you act differently from an old pattern, when your body is feeling scared in the new way of being, but you return it back to safety based on new techniques.

These acts return you to self-love. And more importantly, to self-truth.

Messy grief

On my grief journey (see part 1), I’ve been shedding and evolving in ways that still surprise me. Anyone who’s been inside real healing knows this already: it isn’t linear, clean, or methodical. It’s messy!!

I’m realizing that the mess might be the point. Because you can’t control a mess, nor are you supposed to. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying not to make a mess, so for me, my healing process has actually required that I make a mess, which at moments, has absolutely sucked.

When real internal shifts are underway, there’s no bypassing honesty. You’re asked (and unfortunately, sometimes demanded) to feel what’s been buried deep underground. This includes:

• the emotions we don’t post about

• the emotions we don’t know how to explain

• the emotions that rarely see daylight, but NEED to come out of the shadows to be integrated.

That’s how it happened for me in the year of the snake, which I guess is still happening till mid-feb (thoughts and prayers to all!).

I hit a breaking point physically and mentally, where all of my suppressed grief, fears, and residual pain came up to be confronted. It was so deeply uncomfortable that I wanted to crawl out of my skin. And I had been doing “the work”, but still had managed to push away some things that very much wanted to be felt, until burnout got the best of me and forced them out.

Let’s also be honest about this: humans are wired to avoid pain! In modern life, we’re often running on the hedonic treadmill, chasing the next hit of dopamine via social media, caffeine, or achievement. Basically, anything that keeps us buzzing, and from turning inward.Until, of course, something knocks us off entirely. Some of us don’t step off the treadmill. We get launched! What’s important at that point, is finding the right safety net.

The safety net of trauma-informed care

Trauma cracks the psyche(and gets stored in the body) and repairing it often requires trauma‑informed support. That sentence sounds simple but the reality is anything but! People who haven’t experienced something deeply destabilizing - or who haven’t come face to face with their own anxiety, grief, or nervous system overwhelm - often don’t understand the urgency to feel better and how important feeling emotionally safe in someone’s presence is.

For the people who have seen some shit, it’s important that you have agency over your choices AND the discernment to seek the right kind of care. Finding a practitioner who is skilled, curious, and willing to see you as a full human - not a diagnosis, is its own journey.

Our healthcare systems aren’t exactly designed for gentleness. Too often, medication is offered first, without recognizing that what’s actually happening is a nervous system response that needs space and the right kind of support to complete it’s loop. I am hopeful for a world where somatic therapists/nervous system specialists are embedded in hospitals and care teams - where people are supported in restoring safety, not just suppressing symptoms.

I don’t believe trauma makes us broken. But it breaks something open. It initiates a new pathway, one that asks for commitment, discipline, courage, and most importantly, grace. And it also requires a witness, before healing can unfold.

Healing Begins Relationally

I believe healing begins in relationship to others.

Nature shows us that regulation happens in connection. Elephants are famously empathetic! They physically nudge, wrap trunks around, and vocalize to calm distressed herd members. Baby elephants are soothed by adult elephants during stress. We were never meant to carry pain entirely alone, though there is a time when solitude becomes part of the work.

But first, we need to be witnessed. From lived experience, non‑judgmental witnessing is what cracks the shell. It is the shared resonance of:

I see you, and I’m not going anywhere while you move through this!

That’s what creates enough safety to descend beneath the surface and feel what’s lurking underneath.

Peter enters the chat!

I was lucky enough to be referred out to a somatic psychologist named Peter. Peter shares a similar loss (his father), and - by chance - we’re both from the same hometown in NY. He’s a Marriage and Family Therapist, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, a practicing Buddhist, and one of the most grounded, compassionate souls I’ve ever crossed paths with. I try not to pedestal him, but I will say this: our work together has fundamentally changed my life.

This work has reconnected me to the wisdom of my body, and allowed me to see that healing is always possible, when you are brave enough to feel, in safety. From our first Zoom call (yes you can do somatic work over zoom!), my body softened and I felt real ease.

He offered me the gentleness required, to tell the truth.

Our work blends talk therapy with Somatics, layered with insight that actually has a fundamental impact on me, because it lands while the nervous system is shifting. The work takes time, but it is sneaky transformative. And he’s also funny. Which for me, goes a long way!! Humor is one of the best salves in my opinion, when you are facing your own gremlins.

Stay tuned for more in Part 3.

The Year of the Snake

Like many people digesting 2025, the Year of the Snake, the shedding for me was diabolical.

I don’t say that with even a hint of victimhood - just brutal honesty. I’ll write more about what that entailed later. For now, I want to sit with what it feels like to step back and actually feel what 2025 was, and to name a few of the lessons I’m holding as I look, hopefully, toward 2026 (with a slight white-knuckle grip around the hope that it’s a good one)!! I brained dumped a lot of this, and will be spacing this out in a few posts because I think they require their own little containers.

Meaning-making can crush healing when it’s done too soon. So I waited. I’ve been moving between accepting what was and wondering what it all meant. Sharing from this in-between place feels oddly soothing because it isn’t polished yet, and that feels important.

In true Scorpio fashion, I value my mf privacy. But after a crash landing, another reminder that time is fleeting, and a quiet sense that there may be lessons worth sharing, it feels like time to speak out loud. So here it goes.

Grief, shame, and survival

I’ve been private about my healing journey, because it’s been messy as hell. I carried a lot of shame about showing my darker parts, even to myself. But if even one person finds relief in my words, then I’ve done my part.

The truth is, parts of my past have been very dark. I lost my sister to suicide in 2021, and that loss struck my heart in ways I’m still learning to live with.

From the time she was 14, I became hyper-vigilant, quietly reversing roles from younger sister to the older one as she showed signs of deep depression. When she left this earth, I remember falling to my knees and then immediately comforting my mom on the phone. No one asked me to do that. It was instinctive. A reflex to make things better however I could, because my worst fear had just come true.

I didn’t realize then that this protection mechanism would later come back to bite me.

Beyond losing her, I lost a version of myself that day. Someone lighter, more carefree, and dare I say, blissfully more naïve? I mourn her too, even as I try to appreciate the deeper, more stoic parts of me that emerged from that loss.

I’ve come to see shame as a survival mechanism, something my body used to protect me from feeling the full depth of my grief before I was ready. Releasing shame and going deeper into pain were tangled together for me. Over time, I’m learning to metabolize both with people who can hold them carefully.

Healing, I’ve learned, begins relationally. More on that in part 2.

3 roses on the water.
It’s winter time,
dropped by loved ones,
for one no longer earth side.

Between presents
and full tables,
grief pulls up an empty chair.

Do you welcome it with open arms,
or turn away in fear?

I’m learning now
to pour it a drink.
It’s a familiar visitor,
always asking the same:
to pause,
to consider,
and think.

So I offer it a softer glance,
instead of pushing it away—
proof of love,
in another form,
but love all the same.

“Look at how much you loved,”
it tells me.

What a gift to know that feeling.

“Look at how much you lived,
for another human being.”

Take that heart,
and all those intentions.
Pour that love back
into yourself now.

Grief is like a glacier.
It thaws in its own time -
a lesson in slowing down,
to finally feel
the depth of life.