Obviously there is a call from my body to lean into the silence. Obviously a tending that needs to be felt.

Sometimes this is more accessible to me, but sometimes it’s very far away.

I write a lot about pausing, feeling, allowing. unlocking stillness as an alchemist.

I write about not forcing. Just being, and opening to the stillness that shifts you.

I write about grind culture and resisting the persistence of the machine of capitalism.

I write about these things because I am not so great at doing them, perhaps I used to be, maybe there is a part of me still inside my body that is able to touch the edges of that stillness through writing about it. Right now it feels like a fantasy novel.

Maybe the fantasy novel is the closest I can get to it, real stillness.

The truth is, I haven’t been able to settle, in years. I am not sure if that has ever existed for an extended period of time.

The truth is.. there is a persistent frenetic energy in my body that seldom sleeps.

I can imagine most reading this would encourage me to just take a break If they new I am getting married next week. Anyone would encourage me under the circumstances to give myself some space.

However, space doesn’t always feel spacious. My body has learned to adapt to holding commitments. And when I break them, a part of me feels it’s coming apart at the seems.

I try to think back to a time I could ever relax and enjoy my life… I suppose in my early twenties during the summers smoking a lot of weed before the phones took over everything.. But even then there was a sporadic hum of anxiety of when the next shoe was going to drop. When I would have to force my body into machine like performance again.

Art and writing then was where I was able to rest.

I’ve always felt this.. type of friction with existence. The push to continue momentum and also the pull to pause.

Lately, being awake most days truthfully feels like a challenge to overcome. I don’t know if its the state of the modern world, our economic challenges, climate crisis or just navigating years of over functioning to survive various forms of collapse in my personal life.

I am getting married next week, and this is the first day I am touching what that really means, the power of that, the importance of that.

I want to be present for that, not online, at all. Not writing, not compulsively creating.

Yet the push is there to maintain the many routines and rituals I have used as ways to keep myself together under stress. Including writing on a schedule.

Meditation, exercise, yoga, mantra, clean diet to name a few more.

I was told several times this last week that “I look like I have a great credit score.” (I do). Or “I seem really put together.” Maybe I am, but I don’t feel that way on the inside.

Then on occasion, with all of these rituals completed and just the right amount of protein, sleep, not eating anything outside of my safe foods, hydration, exercise, harmony and connection with my relationships, public life, financial health, time off, structure and freedom.

I can take a breath.

I can feel safe.. in my body, in the present moment.. for a moment.

“That’s a lot of conditions that have to perfectly be in place to feel okay, you need to meditate more.”

I can hear my inner monitor start beeping. “Correct that too.” It seems to say.

I just noticed my legs start jiggling with nervousness.

This summer has been exceptionally stressful and exhausting. So I do know a lot of these thoughts are being filtered through my hyperactive hyper vigilant mind.

The many that have called me very “put together,” don’t know the persistent neurotic anxiety that keeps me in check, they don’t understand that most of the time the motivation is the feeling of not enoughness, and shame I will feel if I am not “put together.”

I know consciously it’s not what you do it’s how you do it. However my body is taking a while to register that.

Be it yoga, running, writing, or working. I don’t give these rituals up for a few reasons. 1. Because of the glass half full mentality, doing them probably leaves me better off than not, and to be fair I have become less rigid over the years.

2. These rituals represent my inner fire, my resilience, my ability to commit to managing my life even when I’m coming apart on the inside.

This is the one area of my life I have felt I have maintained resilience, that I have “survived” seemingly unsurvival events by still showing up and doing the thing.

I am writing now from that place, perhaps in a week from now when I post this article. I will be on my honeymoon and this state of being will become irrelevant to me.

There are times I allow myself that spaciousness. It’s just few and far between.

Perhaps I fear if I abandon my routines, it will be impossible to push past the resistance to start them again.

On one hand I am writing for the sheer act of movement, of processing the energy inside so it doesn’t become a bottleneck of panic.

This might carry an air of neuroticism but also I realize the need for the compulsive behaviors as a level of protection. It also literally does carry the same benefit as exercise. If you don’t use the muscle it does atrophy to point.

Writing for me has become a form of regulation from the overwhelming push pull sensations inside my own body. However, if you overwork muscles without proper recovery they tear.

I came up on a question today relevant to this that I posted a note about.

What’s more important in a nourishing a creative life?

1. Consistency in the means of water the garden and tilling the soil (no matter what life changes or obstacles present). Keeping your promise to show up do the thing no matter what? push through.

2. Alignment, ｓｐａｃｉｏｕｓｎｅｓｓ allowing creativity to come as a conduit not a scheduled task, waiting until the fruit is ripe? allow.

I think I just answered my own question.

It’s both. but consistency not from a place of force and ridity.

It’s a question of devotion, rather than going through the motions.

If you don’t weed the garden for a week, sure it will have some weeds, but if you were tending to something else in your life, taking a break doesn’t mean you are not dedicated.

Before capitalism carved its neural pathways. I always returned to my creativity. weather is was painting or writing, the idea of “consistency” wasn’t relevant. I would just paint when I felt the desire to, and stop when I needed a break.

It’s as simple as eat when you’re hungry and stop when your full.

I think where I feel burnout in my creative process is when I began to co-oped it for a professional one making myself create all the time on schedule.

Since writing for substack I have gone through many phases of how I have wanted to approach my writing, one being for creative expression only, poetry, explorative inquiry, and cathartic expression of the human experience. The other is bringing it into more of coaching advice, and lived experience wisdom with practical application. This approach has been intended to build my profession as a somatic coach, offering methods to manage stress and ways to create connection with your body.

Both approaches I do enjoy in certain seasons.

It could be too that my life has just hit an extremely busy season, and writing is how I touch the edges of remembering rest.

What I have needed a genuine break from is the constant feeling of pressure I have put on myself to always have answers or leave on a note of hope, when inside I frequently feel hopeless.

Admitting this merges the gap, I feel energy return as I name it.

More than anything writing always for me has been a way to move the energy and chaos inside. This article was more so like a journal rant. Instead of something polished and cohesive.

I am writing this thursday the week before my wedding, I am scheduling it for Monday, the day before. The notes I always schedule on sunday.

I am going to experiment with fully disengaging from structured creation while on vacation and allowing my body to meet the waves in mexico.

To see what grows when I leave the force behind. To see the cycles of the waves of natural gathering of energy then release of it. To meet myself in the pause. I will see you on the other side.

Anyhow. If you made it this far thank you for reading. If you can relate or have anything you’d like to share id love to hear it!

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Car-ma.

This last week, my car, Luna Eclipse had what I call one of it’s blowups. I am lucky I made it home safely, as it seized up at a stoplight and all sorts of weird lights came on before it jolted to life and propelled me forward onto the highway ramp. So long as I didn’t press the breaks, It stayed alive and by luck of the draw green lights and rolling through stop signs I arrived home safely.

The car has been a total esoteric fucking conundrum ever since I bought the thing five years ago in California when my last car shit the bed as soon as I had arrived and had spent all of my savings to move there.

I bought it on an eclipse, my mother told me it would be cursed, and I ignored her. I just needed a car. However one would argue that, it in fact was in ways. I was highly dysregulated, out of money, and out of time, so needless to say I did not have the bandwidth to make the most educated decision in the moment I bought it.

I don’t want to gloss you over with the grueling details of this car’s repair needs, highway oil leaks, a blind mechanic, blown head gaskets driving through the mojave desert alone, power steering going out, and catalytic converter issues, all happening at extremely impossible times to get a new car, for example a year later when I was moving back from california without a job. The complete insanity I have endured while having this car could fill a book. Needless to say, it nearly not making it down the canyon on the solar eclipse the other day does not even remotely surprise me.

It did not cease to put me in a total security tailspin and scarcity loop however.

Cars going wrong, feel like a big blow to my foundation. Cars have been my only constant place of safety since I was 18, I always had a place to sleep, always had a way to get to where I am going, if all else has failed, I have had my car. I would even argue that at times in abusive relationships my car has been a place that has saved my life.

In this scenario, I am finally in a safe relationship, and circumstances are much different. The main area of my life that feels unsustainable is my spa work as a massage therapist. I have had frequent nerve impingements this whole last year and no longer can rely on long hours of massage to supplement income. I was just about to get ready to leap into entrepreneurship entirely again, and a car payment was the last thing I needed to add to my already raising bills with my lack of trust in my own body to perform.

So much shame filled me as I felt this “setback” smashed into my perceived progress like a wrecking ball. I blamed myself for not being more adamant about saving for it, with taking the second job at the spa up the canyon that would likely cause it to need repairs, etc. I had saved for repairs, and a few weeks ago I used what I had saved, on repairs..

The truth is, life happens, cars break down, bodies break down, jobs get lost, and this loss was not something I caused.

Given my developmental years of continual loss and chaos, and constant astrological predictions from my mother as to why this chaos was happening, normal life events don’t just feel like mild stressors to me, they are 7.2 earthquakes for my nervous system.

I realize especially most every waking moment of my life is still oriented around making up for lost time. Around alleviating this constant sense that I am behind, that my life was stolen from me, and I must reclaim it.

I feel on some level perpetually devastated I am not more financially secure, not further ahead in my career. What ever “ahead” even actually is.

What Gets Lost in the Chasing.

We all feel it, we’ve always felt it to one degree or another. It’s the result of what late stage Capitalism has bestowed upon us. The insatiable thirst to “improve” our life circumstances, our body image, our health, our relationships, our content, our numbers, our status, our false sense of security.

For me at this point I just wanna be vitamin rich.. like if I could afford my vitamins consistently I would feel secure… possibly? And maybe one day, even healthcare that actually takes care of my body as it ages, and maybe one day cars breaking down won’t feel like my life is threatened.

We all desire to protect ourselves from the various storms life inevitably has. Trying to always hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Maybe you’ve worked with this wound, maybe you frequently do feel you have enough, you are enough, and your life is what it should be.

But from my experience I have not met a single person that does not have this sense that something isn’t quite right leaking into one corner of their life or another.

The not quite right thing is the game we are all playing.

From the time we were young and the magazines or television sold us the idea we could always have more.

To your parents telling you to save for retirement, get a good corporate job, buy a house, have children, etc.

The various milestones not many people in the modern age are able to meet with ease anymore.

Or maybe you decided to design your life by your terms and decided you’d like to make art, write, and travel the world, but you realize how hard of an end game that can become when you already don’t have something working in the background for you generating income.

Being an independent artist is a privilege. I believe we are all artists until the soul is beaten into submission to pay the bills.

Now with social media at our fingertips, we are constantly met with every idea we have ever had, everything we have ever thought, every desire that maybe wasn’t even a strong one, blasted at our eyes 247 if you allow it to be.

Also the world is changing, more rapidly than we could have ever predicted. As the world changes, so do your priorities. Our climate, politics, an entire foundation is shifting and breaking down. So I believe its a challenge for anyone to feel truly “secure” right now.

The truth is very few people know who they want to be when they grow up, then when they do grow up, who they want to be tends to change, as who they are changes as they age. What you want to do changes, where you want to live, or social circles might change as you discover more interests, passions, or desires. As well as your desire for security.

On one hand it’s beautiful the level of connection and opportunity we have access to. Yet on another level, something gets lost there.

What gets lost is elusive, we can’t claim it, or define it. Why ? Because it lies in where our attention is being directed.

When our attention is fragmented we lose the slow drip of really putting our whole heart and soul into something because we stay long enough to bring the one dream to fulfillment.

We also lose the natural grieving period of the death of the other dreams or desires or timelines that could have played out had we made different choices. I think it this point it is difficult to know the “right choice” with so many options we all have decision fatigue.

Before we had access to everything the entire world is doing all of the time, the death of other possibilities I feel was a bit more normalized or at least neutralized.

Scrolling through social media platforms are affecting our subconscious.

And with growing economic pressures and inflation, in a lot of ways the only sensible path I have found for myself is to create my own business through an online platform?

Because of this interest in building a online career myself, my algorithm is marketing to me thousands of coaching packages of how you “live your dream life.” All of them giving contradictions and quick hit advice.

It’s like changing the song or the tv channel on what you would like you life be like, sounds like, or feel like, constantly.

Sometimes it’s not the song; it’s you not stilling yourself enough to hear it. I know when I am in flow state, because I don’t need to change the song and look for a better one.

Arriving means realizing there is no where else to get to. That right here, right now is enough.

The Influencer Era.

So when did natural life setbacks become perceived personal failure? When did we stop realizing that ordinary life is actually just enough?

Twenty years ago famous people were only a select few, we admired them, were fascinated by actors and pop stars, we were influenced by them but not everyone wanted to be like them or actually have their life.

You could get by with a “normal job” and be just fine. You had time for your hobbies that had nothing to do with monetization. But it seems a normal 9-5 isn’t enough to pay the bills much of the time and if you want time for your passions you must make your work your passion.

Also now everyone has a perceive chance at being top of their field, of influencing their peers just with whatever any and everything you’re into.

For a creative type this is extra tempting, because none of us want a normal 9-5 deadening job, even if it could pay the bills.

Chances are if your are creative you are extra sensitive, and likely struggle to find a niche, let alone a posting schedule that keeps up with the algorithms demands, and as well all know, once you make the transition of your art making you money, it changes the experience of it. It is much less nourishing.

What is extra wild, as I am learning that “Influencers” particularly on TikTok and Instagram actually, don’t make much money. I just learned this information from a podcast, but what I learned is Instagram doesn’t actually pay it’s content creators. It is the sponsors within Instagram that pay the content creators. The pay is sporadic, unpredictable, and completely inconsistent.

So even if you get a deal that pays you a lot in one month you have to make that spread out over the course of month, such as any type of freelancing or contractor position. For some reason, we are under the illusion that more followers means more money, when that couldn’t be further from the case. You could have 1 million followers and still make zero dollars off Instagram.

This leaves an impression of wealth or status this isn’t actually real, and if you attempt to create content as a creative you might be under this illusion in the ways I have been.

And in my mind, I’m realizing that I am spending more of my time, energy and focus creating content to promote my art than I am making the actual art.

You’d have better luck connecting with your local communities and promoting your products at farmers markets then you put on Instagram.

Before influencers there were influences, our neighbors, and local communities, so how can we select and relate to influences around us and in our modern world that create that sense of nourishment vs comparison and distraction?

What I’ve been finding in myself is a lot of illusion around what success really looks like or even means to me.

More more I’m realizing that nothing on the external can fill the part of me seeking and striving.

So Where Do We Find Room to Breathe?

I don’t have the answers for this one. It is a constant conundrum for me. No nice neat list of practices to apply for this one. I am just here, in this, no conclusion, no direction, just noticing.

I do know to find breath in life it takes the cultivation of relationship to the present moment, to the underwhelming, understimulating, real time here and now to realize how full and divine life it’s self truly is.

It is in this reclamation of our life as it is unfolding perfectly in front of us that we access the next step forward. In this we claim our divinity, we remember our body is not a machine for cost production, our worth is not tied to how we climb the numbers ladders. That true security comes from our trust in the earth, our heart wisdom, and our communities that are trying to change this for the better.

We all can guide ourselves home to this, but we have to fight the hypnotism of powers at be that do not have our best interest in mind. We have to meet those wounds of inadequacy again and again and realize this is Mara, this is illusion.

The only time we can truly find the security we seek is realizing that we are always in a state of transition. Everything in life is borrowed, including our time, so where we put our attention and how we choose to relate to what is unfolding is what dictates the level of security we feel. No one can sell this to us, and outer circumstances will always be rugs that can be ripped out from under us.

I am learning this over and over.

Eclipses are known as a period of going inward, and understanding that all that is not yours will be stripped away. Let go or be dragged in the message.

Eclipses are times of reflection, pause and ability to see what’s hidden beneath the shadows.

If you enjoyed this read I would love to know your thoughts.

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Growth

what is strived for
  what encompasses
     the human condition
relentless ambition
taken to break limits

dressed in diseased
 broke the body
  instead to please
   insatiable desire

          Growth 
           at the cost of the world
           more is more
       dehydrating the lakes
evaporating from my pores

children starve 
    as the fed are throned
       never enough power 
                    they can own

Greed
 breeds the most ravenous thirst
    foaming at the mouth
  vampirous slurping
bloated and burping

 licking blood off bleeding backs
        please can't we embody 
            the reflection of trees
       rooted, yet always reaching

    growing but not leeching
 gently bending with the breeze
rings of time
  interwoven through the underworld
    sending resources to the weary

           carry the unity
         the perseverance 
       pushing through 
     the blackest of mud

birthing as we are buried
  let growth be our breath
    organic expansion
   then collapse of the chest

Then free of 
 the poison of possession
   deranged obsession 
     no longer searching..
 
         or seeking
         connection.




 

By Olivia.

So much of healing is found in waking up from our greed fed delirium, remember what you have, and that connection is the most valuable currency. If you resonated with this poem please let me know your thoughts, like, or subscribe. Or DM me. It would truly mean the world to me!

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Exposure Therapy?

I was hesitant when she asked me to be a model for her photography portfolio. I am still recovering from a decade long eating disorder and have frequent bouts of body dysmorphia. Photoshoots tend to be high danger zone for relapse. Either because I wouldn’t like the photos, or I would like them. Then do everything I can to stay that size. I explained to her my fears, but also my desires to own where I am in my current body and find a sense of confidence in my own skin even as I fluctuate.

That’s the thing, I have hardly ever felt confident just being myself, I’ve always shape shifted to appease the environment I am in, mostly with clothes and style, but also with social acceptance rules and striving to squeeze into beauty standards. My body has always felt foreign to me, separate, like a empty room I decorate, It’s always felt wide for it’s height, as I like many girls my age were hit early on with the “skinny” beauty standards on MTV.

I had several different outfits and this was my favorite photo taken of the whole shoot. I did not share it until now.

How would it land? Lacy made me feel comfortable in my own skin, beautiful even. I felt the way my eating disorder always promises I will if I just obey. Washed of my shame, like the way you feel when you put clothing on that fits just right. For a moment, I could be free, fluent, embodying all my parts. I could be light and flowy in one outfit, then dark and rebellious the next. Was this a sign of healing?

Inside of all of us we always have these different archetypes of self in our subconscious. They are parts of us, but never the whole picture. I loved the outfit in the photo above, it was completely thrifted and I felt like I was embodying my inner rebel goth. After seeing this photo, in my own eyes I possibly even looked sexy? Which I am very uncomfortable with.

So many questions run through my mind with this. Growing up in Utah, even if you are not Mormon, (which I have never been) has an effect on you.

I remember when I was a little girl going over to my neighbors house to play in the middle of July as an eight year old. It was 100 degrees outside and I was wearing a tank top. The mother stopped me as I came inside the house and startled me by picking me up and carrying me outside rather swiftly. She told me to “wait here,” while she grabbed and oversized baggy- t shirt and told me to hold up my arms. I did as I was told as she threw the shirt over my head, then pointing her finger at me and scorning, “don’t you ever set foot in our house like that again, your sleeves must be to your elbows!”

I was shocked, I felt as if I had done something wrong. Being seen was not okay. showing skin was not okay, I learned to hide from a very young age.

As I grew older I actively rebelled against the Mormon religion, wearing what I wanted, swearing more than I needed, and beginning to just identify with being “different.”

But I shrunk in other ways, if there was someone I liked, or a group I desired to be friends with, my opinions then shifted to mirror theirs.

I would swallow my anger, social time after school was of the utmost importance and if I expressed anger it was a fast pass to getting grounded.

I hid my distrust in the systems, I hated school, didn’t trust doctors, but I didn’t want people assuming I was crazy. So I pretended to agree.

I hid my body, I would expose but only under the right conditions, as I would often hear- you don’t want men getting the wrong idea.

I would expose my body under the right conditions because I also heard I needed to make sure it was always appealing to men. Sexy, not slutty.

I have never been one to not focus on my appearance, however shrinking my body and following trends even if they are “edgy” has alway been a form of hiding.

Very many requirements of my roles and how I was expected to present in any given context became quickly internalized and memesmorized.

I knew what to say when, and how to modify my appearance to appeal to the audience in front of me. Who I could swear in front of, who I couldn’t, when it was safe to share my true feelings and when it wasn’t.

But even if you did not grow up being affected by religious trauma, we are all affected by the social hierarchy whether we choose to realize it or not. We strive to be accepted by our peers and we all to some degree wonder what people think of us, even if that person holds relatively low stakes in our lives.

There is a vulnerability and authenticity movement I have seen on instagram that I feel I could easily slide into.

This last month I experimented with posting regularly on Instagram to see if I could begin to neutralize my reactions to whether I received engagement or not. Every single time it felt like jumping off a cliff. I braced for the impact, and being a sensitive person with a fragile sense of self having to navigate the intense inner critic of C-ptsd, I don’t take rejection lightly.

In my experiment I questioned, how can I show up online authentically? If I could be just fringe enough, without being cringe, maybe this would win me the social acceptance and approval I so crave?

If I am doing something through the act of craving doesn’t it defeat the purpose of just being fully authentically myself?

Could it be that both parts are true, a part that is unapologetically me wanting to be seen, healing her fear of visibility, and a part that still craves the validation?

Can I show up online, as different parts of me and still be perceived as acceptable, human, and cohesive?

Evolved for Social Acceptance

What I have learned is, I still have this need for acceptance, and so far in my journey, more views = more anxiety. This is why.

We all have an inner cringe, a part of us that we would hate for the world to see, or perhaps a way someone views us that feels shameful. And as much as my chameleon self would like to believe so, you just are not everyone’s cup of tea no matter how much you shape shift or attempt “authenticity.”

We authentically want to be liked.

Social media brings a whole other level to this dynamic.

When we were in our hunter gather days as a species, our social circles were relatively small, no more that 150 people could view us at any given time.

Also the expectations of our roles were relatively narrow. We were expected to hunt, gather, nurture, and survive weather together. There was not the vast dynamic digital and physically dramatic difference in roles, social status, and expectation of output that we face now as a species.

When now, often our work may blend with our online social platforms, the competitive craze to appear like we really have it all together and are doing really well in all aspects of our life can create exponential social pressure as well as survival stress in the body.

Constant exposure online creates an overhaul in the nervous system activating the amygdala creating a limbic hijack. We are then in a perpetual state of what is called active status threat and social ranking safety scanning.

From an ancestral standpoint, social ranking was really life or death. If our tribe did not approve of us, we would literally die in most cases.

So the brain evolved to have this hypervigilance embedded.

However when this is on all the time, it creates serious detriment to our health. Especially when most our socialization becomes localized to algorithms.

I am currently reading Scarcity Brain by Micheal Easter. As the author highlights the information above as well as brings light to the current “gamification” of our times, were somehow, even though contrary to our literal survival needs, everything in our modern world has become quantified. Numbers give us the illusion of certainty, and survival, they also keep us addicted to chasing more and more, and in our mammalian brain, equated numbers as fact for our social ranking keeps us stuck in a scarcity loop that never leaves us feeling safe or satisfied.

Then there is the issue of uncapped comparison, the entire world now the audience instead of our close circles. Our bodies naturally orchestrate themselves to find acceptance in social roles, and when we are encouraged by algorithms to share and to expose every role all the time this completely depletes our resources. We are always on when is the time to rest?

I myself have had a pattern with social media over the decades of consistently using it, and then after about four weeks of posting, I get what I have labeled “exposure exhaustion.” Where I just completely burn out, and feel very far from myself. No matter how “authentic” I attempt to be, the self that is being puppeteered for my audience and the real me become very far away from each other, especially when despite my efforts, my views and engagement only decrease. I am specifically speaking to instagram’s algo, however every algo has a element of this.

Even though it’s not logical, constantly exposing myself then receiving crickets feels as though that lack of engagement is confirmation of my inadequacies.

Come to find out there is a science to this experience called HPA-Axis Exhaustion. The chronic stress with the subconscious feelings of low status continually leaks cortisol into the body.

Funny enough I took a week off instagram this last week and I truly was feeling my self esteem just boosted 97%.

So is it that we have a fragile sense of self and rejection sensitivity? Or is this a wild numbers game that is not natural for the human nervous system and bypasses our biological social safety capacity?

How to Find Safety in Being Visible

I do think that some level of challenging yourself to get out there in front of people as you are is healthy and arguably beneficial. One thing that is so wonderful about being real and showing up exposing your true self, is that others will connect to you more deeply. You will find your tribe.

The beautiful thing about the internet is it can connect you with people all over world! that think and feel so similarly to you. It can help you find acceptance with individuals globally, where before you may not find anyone that understands you within your own neighborhood.

The biggest way to find safety isn’t a complex mystery, yet it is so much easier said than done. Listen to your body, take breaks as needed.

1. Hiding, for me, and I am sure for others, gives me a relative level of safety. If I can hide I don’t have to risk being exposed to judgements of other people, the rejection, or the idealization that will inevitably drop or change with time. Hiding, or resting, and not posting, is essential for your health.

2. Listen to your capacity. Sometimes my nervous system doesn’t have capacity for it, and I can tell when I feel that puppeteer feeling. I can tell when the exhaustion is all pervasive, and when my dominant mood is depressed. I can tell when I catch myself doomscrolling or refreshing the feed as I numbly wander throughout my day. I can tell, when I keep opening the app for notifications. This tells me my capacity is low and I am creating from scarcity.

3. Delete the apps, as long as you need to, to feel better. Ignore algorithm rules, ignore how it “lowers your engagement/ growth.” The only growth that really matters is the growth inside yourself. Having less, only creates space to expand and breath in better ways.

4. Experiment with being visible in person. Poetry slams, art festivals, maybe eve n public speaking at an event. If you feel this comes more naturally, challenge yourself in this way.

5. Have your close people that you don’t have to hide around. This is likely only one or two people. They are gold.

6. Honor your season. No human being is ever in a constant creative expression cycle, if it is not your season to bloom listen to that, the most profound nurturance comes from the quiet if we allow it.

At the end of the day how we connect with our environment and social circumstances has a profound effect on our health and well being. No internet guru can tell you what is right for you. There is no one size fits all. Honor your rhythms and find your flow.

I am slowly learning to be comfortable in my own skin, recovery is slow and ever unraveling.

When we move into self acceptance, the reaction from the outside world holds much less weight. I am still working on this.

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Sympathetic Activation.

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It had been about six weeks since I broke my pattern of leaving one partner for the next. This time, after six years of domestic abuse, I had finally left for myself.

In the early stages of meeting myself for the first time without the distraction of a romantic partner, and chaos of a tumultuous situation, there instead was constant gaping hole in my solar plexus of all consuming emptiness.

This was the emptiness I had been avoiding feeling my whole life. Coupled with the emptiness was static charge, a type of plague that lived in my body infected with the narrative that I myself was the empty void and black hole. That I belonged nowhere, to no one, and it was truly better that way. The belief that I was inherently flawed, unlovable, and that I was insignificant.

I knew I had to face this wound head on, that the only way to feel whole again was to find all the ways in which I could see my own light, worth, and value. I knew I had to create a relationship with myself that had my best interest in mind, and challenged this narrative directly.

I first had learned to cope by movement, hiking was one of my main therapeutic strategies. I had just survived a winter of literally freezing over during our fights while it was a blizzard outside, I was full of charged energy that couldn’t go anywhere for that time.

Somehow propelling myself forward up mountains helped me thaw.

The emptiness would alchemize in to possibility, into freedom; and it gave me direction when I felt I had none, it gave me purpose when I felt meaningless.

On this particular hike, on a sunny afternoon rage ran through my veins like wildfire after receiving another denial text from Flint, (my ex) begging me back.

As I pushed myself up the trail my thoughts burned hot, What the fuck was actually wrong with him?! We still had one month until our lease ended, after that, I could block him.

I knew I needed to continue leaning into the void; the emptiness. Painful as it was, I had to embrace the unknown; which included the possibly that one day once fully acquainted with it, I would no longer fear it. I would be free of his vortex and happy on my own. I was angry, because I felt he had already taken so much from me, and he was attempting to interrupt this process of me coming back to my center again.

I made it five miles up to Lake Desolation. Beginning to note it was time to turn around. The light was turning gold as the sun was setting. I hope I don’t run into a moose on the way down, I thought. I sensed suddenly, that one would appear, as urgency spread to my muscles. I continued down the trail faster as the light faded quickly over the western horizon.

Closer to the end of the trail, I heard a grunt, and I looked up from my feet. Gazing back at me there she was, with her large brown eyes chewing some grass–mother moose, and her calf, my heart stopped.

She began to grunt again and stomp her feet, scraping the dirt with her hooves. Clearly she was agitated. A mother moose is nothing to mess around with.

My heart began to pound and I began backing up the trail. She began to stomp toward me, I began to run, coming around a corner I slowed and gazed behind me over my shoulder hoping she had stopped following me. No, still a couple of yards away.

Out of her sight, I instinctively ducked into the bush just above the trail. Dust and sweat dripped down my neck; frozen with my heart beating in my head, I laid down and played dead. I waited for her to pass, maybe she wouldn’t sense me in this bush, maybe she would keep moving up the trail?

After about five minutes, I couldn’t hear her footsteps anymore. Either she was waiting for me to appear or had forgotten me entirely.

My mind frozen in fear, my heart still pounding in my head. I asked my body to lead me into solving the situation. I had no idea what to do, I had to trust my body, and in the unknown.

I felt myself move down back toward the trail out of the bush. Could I trust my body? This seemed entirely illogical. As I got out of the bush onto the trail I was able to see that the moose had actually navigated up above the trail into the bush as well. I took long deep breaths to slow my heart. Surely they are used to seeing hikers pass by—I will just walk under her and not make eye contact, I thought.

I began to walk the trail under her. I heard intense rustling and the sound of branches snapping. My muscles tensed as I looked up, and breathed a sigh of relief. She was running away from me.

I later searched moose medicine for animal totems.

Moose medicine synchronistically means leaning into the void, knowing when to hide, when to charge ahead, and how to discover your autonomy, trusting your intuition and leaning in the unknown.

Sometimes when we make huge changes in our lives or have any sort of major loss, it can leave you in a completely shattered place where your sense of self and who you are has to completely recalibrate.

It’s part of the reason it is so hard to leave toxic or abusive situations in the first place. Even though we know the health of the relationship isn’t there. We cling, because it’s the only reality we know.

Somehow, the unknown is much scarier, and being in that liminal space even if it feels relatively benign seems to be the most threatening circumstance to us. We desperately grasp for anything to give us a sense of definition, ground, and structure.

This is partially due to our caregivers and how we were shaped in our developmental years 0-7. Our attachment wounds and how we learned how to be loved and the meaning of intimacy or closeness.

We seek environments familiar to what our nervous system was originally acclimated to. If we knew love as chaos, then we choose chaos. Even if it is damaging for us.

Beyond human relationships, even in loss of career, burnout, a loss of meaning, purpose, direction or identity. The same wound of reaching to rush out of the emptiness plagues us all in some way. It’s the ego’s sense of protection, it’s the desperate thirst for value, meaning, and preservation.

Our culture curates us to run the race of this game, on a societal level we are groomed for the chase of the carrot, to devalue the liminal spaces. We are taught that our value is at the “achievement” or end goal.

So when current structures that once were useful for us go through their natural process of breaking apart, we then feel our sense of belonging and safety is threatened.

Trusting the void is a practice, it doesn’t come overnight. When we are bombarded with messages from our world completely rooted in self perseveration. We have to actively resist this messaging through strengthening that muscle of trust.

It requires surrendering control, and understanding that you are a part of something much larger than the human mind can conceive.

We are all that black hole on some level. However not in the way the mind perceives this as a bad thing.

The void is the center of creation, possibility, expansion, and truth. It’s in the liminal that we can follow the voices of our wise body, of the land and all of it’s creatures. It’s in this spaciousness we can feel the magic interwoven within all beings.

I believe the moose was a message for me. By no means now am I completely comfortable with the void. However this was one of the moments I stretched myself further, I expanded my capacity to trust where my body was leading me, and I trusted in the wildness within and around me.

I am currently entering another time like this again with my career. And drawing upon this experience has helped me trust my body is wise, and the void holds the answers I am seeking.

Can you think of a time you were terrified of the unknown and leaned into the void?

Was there a moment you listen to your body and set your mind aside?

I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

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Depression.

The word can hold such a heavy weight. It makes you think of being stuck, cemented, immobilized, all the opposite feelings summer is thought to bring.

It carries the weight of being crushed by your own mind, and your body becomes cinder blocks. It carries the air of disfunction, disease, separation, isolation, and collapse.

For a long time the word held a stigma, and that stigma still slightly tints the edges on my tongue when I speak it.

Lumped into the category of being mentally ill. It carries the air of shame. Depression was not a word you would dare mutter even twenty years ago. Not if you wanted acceptance, praise, or social inclusion.

Depression is a direct threat to capitalism. So in our culture, it’s almost a swearword. Yet I believe it’s a symptom of a society that is ill, not an individual.

The word also implies a need for pause, an interruption of the production machine, a need for spaciousness, for an emptying. It implies a need for deep rest. I love the phrase deep-rest-on. As it rhymes with depression.

When I was a kid, summer was always said with a tone of fun. Something to long for, something to look forward to.

In my early years I would always enjoy the first month of not being in school, but being eleven years younger than my half siblings, and primarily living with my father who was also mentally ill and not well off financially. I would spend most of my summer dialling my friends numbers on the landline, hoping, or praying that one of them could play. Often met with a “no we are going to Disney Land, or no we are going on some other vacation, or no my mom won’t let me because you are not a part of the church ( a common occurrence growing up in Utah.)”

I was often left alone with myself in the summers, playing in my room or outside in the back yard with imaginary friends. Often my dad would spend time with me when he was off work and take me to the local park where I would force myself to boldly ask the kids at the playground to play.

Also I did have two friends that could occasionally hang out, their names were Hope, and Joy… I’m being serious, literally Hope and Joy.

My mother was often preoccupied with work or my sister, or other relationships. She gave me art projects to do to pass the time. I learned this was the best way to not disturb anyone or ask for too much.

Needless to say I couldn’t name the emptiness I felt then, but it was profound loneliness.

When I was about fourteen years old, after my father died I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) as well as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) in 2007. This meant that I go through episodes of extreme hopelessness, disinterest or loss of interest in activities I once enjoyed, I have trouble concentrating, low energy, social withdrawal, and stifled motivation. Sometimes thoughts of suicide, these symptoms tend to get worse durning a particular season.

My father committed suicide in November 2006. For a long time, every time winter would begin, the heaviness would set in as the snow threatened to bury me with it. For a long time, I only associated winter with my darkness.

Although the summers as I got older, began to carry the grief too. Breakups, moves across the country, the hollowing of my stomach to cope, the protruding of my bones as I stripped myself of sustenance.

There was a time in my late teens and early twenties it became lighter; late nights with friends, hiking during the days, and a time to truly just turn off and explore, relax, and just be. I was moving through heavy things then, but the world at large felt lighter, more stable, and more predictable.

That time seems to have passed. It seems that summers the past few years have felt extra heavy, like an engine overheating.

Slowly but surely the wildfires collected condensation of the ashes of my losses, and now it seems as the world gets hotter, my tears bring rain to cool it, as my body remembers.

So there might be dare say, many reasons one would feel depressed in the summer. I would like to address this on a more collective level.

The need for deep rest.

In the past few years we cannot deny the rapid rate in which the world has changed. I hate to admit because I know how terrible, isolating, and scary the pandemic felt for most people.

However, for me, not much changed. I had always felt isolated, I had always felt my life was limited and I was on a level of lock down, due to socioeconomic stress, as well as my formative years stifling my confidence a bit.

I spent most of my time in the pandemic doing what I always do, slowing down, connecting with nature, making art. Except this time.. I wasn’t alone. The world was pausing with me.

It felt like such a relief to not be alone in that. To not making production, performance, work, and accomplishing the center focus.

Many would say “I just can’t wait for things to go back to normal.” I couldn’t relate then. I didn’t like that normal, however the speed of this current state does now make me long for it a bit, (the pre-covid era.)

It seems we’ve enter’d a reality of some sort of boomerang effect from that pause. The speed in which most of us are demanded to operated is absolutely unsustainable.

In my real life and online, I hear from my communities.. “I am so tired, I just need to slow down, I need to rest.”

Depression is one of the most debilitating feelings.

It can be feeling as though you must constantly fight for your life and fight to survive this world and then not have the energy to do so.

The other day when I was in a depression I sludged through the cement of my heavy thoughts and began my walk listening to some binaural beats.

I heard my inner child, and felt her in my body. She began to wail, “I am just so tired, I am so tired!! and I am so scared I won’t be able to keep up with this world.” Soon a well of grief surfaced as I felt her needs move through my solar plexus.

I cried and cried and cried.. as the depression melted into grief, then the grief, turned into compassion. For myself, and for humanity.

I thought, what if depression wasn’t a mental illness at all?

What if it was a signal from our bodies that we’ve been under too much pressure, too much demand, too much weight we are carrying for too long?

What if it was a signal from your nervous system that your current environment was not supporting you ?

What if your body is signalling you for rest?

What if depression was a natural reaction the body has to all the internal demands you create from expectations induced by external programming?

What if depression was a natural reaction to the environmental destruction the earth is undergoing?

Depression is literally as physiological response to stress creating inflammation in the brain; the brain is actually swelling and pressing up against the edges of the skull. No wonder your thoughts turn on you, your body is turning on it’s self.

Being isolated creates stress, overriding your bodies capacity creates stress, staring into screens all day creates stress, constantly subjecting yourself to evaluation creates stress, having to work many hours away from your loved ones creates stress, not having access to whole and organic foods creates stress, and not having time or energy to cook it at that.. It all creates inflammation in the body and a constant sense of needing to survive.

Is depression not a natural reaction to the modern age? Is depression not the bodies cry for help, for change, to pay attention that something is imbalanced in the way we are living?

Whether you feel you have a valid reason for being depressed or not, we have to wake up to the fact humanity is in a major transition.

We are all feeling it, and we are desiring a different life, and we are coping the best we can in all the ways we know how.

So if summertime isn’t making you feel fun and you are feeling the summer blues, you are so valid in that experience.

How to support yourself or someone you love in depression.

Depression tells us a story, that nothing will ever work out, that we are worthless, that life is pointless, that nothing will ever get better.

It can and does feel completely crippling, and utterly debilitating.

It can feel like a part of you is frozen under ice, pounding under the surface, hoping someone above will see you, hear you, and break through the ice to grab your hand.

It can feel like a part of you just wants to not grab the hand, to stop moving, stop fighting, and sink deeper into the coldness.

It can steal the color from the most beautiful day, the flavor from your food, the sensation from your body. It can suck the life out of everything. It can create an emptiness that is indescribable.

So how do you open to that?

I will say first hand I am no expert at this, but I do know what does help, and it’s helped me for years. Especially for those of you that maybe don’t have depression but would like to know how to support. These tips are for you.

1. Have compassion, don’t try to force yourself or loved one to be different, or shake yourself out of it.

2. Do less, treat yourself as if you are sick. Let yourself lay in bed, sleep, or just shut your eyes for a while. Find a soft and comforting sensation to connect to.

3. Allow the space for any emotion to rise up. For me it’s very highly coupled with grief, but I have to give myself space to allow it to come through.

4. Do your best to find your blanket people. I saw this meme years ago that showed a cartoon of someone supporting depression by asking if the person that was depressed if they would like a blanket and then asking them if they would like to be joined under the blanket. We need safe connections, we need co-regulation with others. I would dare say this is number one in importance.

5. Try some gentle movement if accessible, a walk around the block or some gentle stretching can start bringing you out of the disassociation and into the present moment.

6. Remember it will pass, as much as your mind will try to tell you this is permanent, it won’t be. Trust it will pass and tell yourself this repeatedly while you ride through the storm.

7. Validate what you are feeling, listen to podcasts, audiobooks, or join a support group for mental health struggles and you will realize you are not alone.

8. Put your feet on the earth, reconnect to source. I promise it will help.

The Hope

What I do see that is beautiful is more and more people waking up to this reality, there are people that realize the dysfuction in our world and are doing their best to change it.

To create connection, community, and spaces for people to rest and exist in a more natural way.

There are environmental movements, social- political movements, a fight against racism, sexism, and systemic oppression.

We have agriculturists tilling new soil.

There are artists, and if you don’t think your art is an act of protest think again.

Through our art we create feeling, we awaken the sleeping heart.

Through art we wake up, and help others remember their humanity.

Through our words we create, through our images we keep our dream world alive, through our dance we transmute, through our song we breathe life back into the body.

These are the lights that don’t go out even in the darkest of times.

And sometimes, there has to be a dramatic burn for the Phoenix to rise from the ashes again.

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Early Etching’s; Behind the Stage

I remember never wanting to order my own food at fast food joints as a little kid. The cashiers tone was always fast and robotic, the smile seemed artificial and forced and disconnected from their vacant eyes.

I remember feeling uncomfortable, as I didn’t understand the interaction, it felt odd, forced, and phoney. It made me fear the day I would have to work too, the day I would have to act that way.

I remember kicking and screaming when I realized I would have to attend school. It felt like a jail for my natural rhythms, I wanted autonomy over my time and who I spent my time with. It felt unnatural to have to pretend I was interested in the subjects they were teaching us. I soon learned I wasn’t allowed to urn to move my body, to play outside, for connection with other kids (talking in class), or to appear distracted.

I learned to change my face to look interested and attentive, even though I was anything but. I learned manners, that if someone did something for me, I was expected to thank them, and then do something nice for them back even if I didn’t feel like it.

I learned to say yes when I felt a no in my body, so that I wouldn’t upset anyone else. I learned to obey, hold still, hold my pee, wait my turn, raise my hand, only speak when spoken to.

I learned that the little girls around me with the nice looking brand name clothes and perfectly braided hair, and nice homes, were treated better then me. I learned the rules of approval quickly.

I learned in first grade math class that making mistakes would get you made fun of, and would take away the only thing you actually enjoy, recess. So it’s best to keep quiet, and say you understand when you don’t so that you don’t upset the teacher and make them frustrated.

In the second grade, I learned that no amount of good behavior was enough for some teachers, and even when you use your only skill (art) to try to win their approval of you back, your creation gets thrown in the trash.

I learned in the third grade that when you slip into daydreaming enough, your grades slips, and you can’t hide behind your curated expression. I learned that not caring about subjects that don’t interest you now will lose not only your teachers approval, but your parents.

I learned to track facial expressions very keenly, I learned when what I did or didn’t do kept me safe, and when it didn’t.

I watched other kids perform in the school plays, my parents being divorced I was never encouraged. I also never had the desire, I was already so exhausted with the current act I was putting on, I couldn’t imagine more. I watched them receive the praise and acceptance I always craved.

In the fourth grade I learned to experiment, to rebel against all the things I had learned, to skip class, fail my subjects, and talk back to the teachers.

I learned quickly this would lose me access to the only parts I enjoyed about being alive, having time at recess, time with friends after school, and time to do art or make things. Now all my time had to go to making up for my lack of performance.

By the sixth grade I lost all desire to be approved of by teachers, parents, or peers. I knew I was lousy at school and a new interest of approval took over my mind, boys.

I wore all black and began to wear make up, searching for a new boyfriend every week. I identified as an outcast, and kept it that way until after we moved to New York State.

Through my teen yearsWhen we moved back to Utah, I thought I had escaped the performance and approval trap. I did not join sports, extra circular activities. After my father died, i did not have the emotional bandwidth for it. I did what I could to stay out of trouble pass my classes, hide my drinking, and continue to focus on the only thing that now mattered, approval from men.

I learned that appearing sexy was the number one thing that would gain me the praise I was seeking, soon developing and eating disorder to cope with the loss of my father I had experienced as a teen.

In my early twenties my appearance endeavours took on another level. As appearing as thin and fit as possible became my main focus.

Eventually transferring in my mid-twenties to a career obsession, wanting to gain years of my life back I felt I lost, and not being able to cope with the lack of milestones I knew I wasn’t likely to hit by age thirty.

Social media became my escape; appearing online that I had a full and exciting life full of travel and adventures as well as a thriving career became my main focus for the last eight years until now. And for a long time there was a large gap between who I was presenting myself to be online, and how I actually felt in my daily life.

I am working now to merge that gap, as I present this information to you.

Compensating for the Worth Wound

This was a short version of my story, If you relate at all to what I said, I am sure you can understand we all have muti-facet reasons and ways we mask for others approval.

You could have been the good kid, that always obeyed, never tried to stand out, always put others needs before your own, and never rebelled.

You could have been top of your class, striving for success and recognition for your academic achievements.

You could have been the popular athlete that gained approval through the stage of the games on the field.

Or maybe it was literally performing arts, and you were the lead act.

Either way the story unfolds the same, there was something in us early on that learned what behavior would give us reward, and what would give us punishment. We knew keenly what would connect us to others, and what would result in rejection.

We learned that performing, a-lotted us a certain level of protection from rejection.

We learned that our authentic needs were not worthy. We learned somewhere in there, that if we were only ourselves, we would not be enough.

We learned that setting boundaries doesn’t get the promotion, that not conforming to group norms loses us friends, and connections.

We learned talking back to authority only creates trouble.

We learned to deny our needs and disconnect from our bodies early on, to keep our sense of self in the social hierarchy intact, to avoid isolation at all costs. And rightfully so.

The Physiological effect of Loneliness.

Loneliness is different than solitude. Solitude is feeling at home in your own company, full without anyone else around, and peace in the stillness. People in solitude usually have healthy connections with other humans outside of their time alone.

You may or may not have heard that chronic loneliness is akin to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day and has a profound effect on cortisol.

These elevated cortisol levels creates a fight or flight response in the body feeling it is under threat.

Existing in this state long enough can create neurological and cognitive decline, raises blood pressure, creates chronic inflammation lowering immune function, and sleep disturbance adding to poor mental health.

So when it comes to the reflex to perform our way to safe and social approval. It is not only instinctual, it is survival.

The Cost of Masking

However, going against ourselves for too long has an equal cost too. The need to perform these roles to keep our relationships intact signals to our body if we do not mask we are not safe, so the behavior is essentially driven by the same fight or flight energy.

This can manifest as taking on the role of a caretaker when we don’t have much time or energy to give, because we want to feel needed.

Taking on the promotion that will provide us more financial gain and social recognition but it demands we work odd and excessive hours in a role that is very far from who we really are.

It means denying the boundaries of our bodies, the need for rest, mental and emotional space, time to prepare and digest nourishing food etc.

Maybe we are the friend that is always there but when we need something the energy is not reciprocated.

On a celluar level, our body is asking us to listen to our needs, to slow down, to honor our boundaries. The more we go against ourselves, the more the body mirrors that.

On the outside we appear strong, resilient, like we are doing it all. The performance is compensating for how unlovable we feel on the inside.

The strong parts protect us, but one can only hold the weight for so long before it atrophies and collapses, the mask has to fall off.

This can come in an accident, illness, or major loss. Something that humbles us and crumbles our very fragile house of cards we have been hiding in for years.

This isn’t to scare you, it’s to bring you back into alignment.

The Power of the Authentic Self

I know this might be hard to believe, but each of us is born worthy. We are born whole, adequate, and beautifully designed to make mistakes, to learn, be curious, grow, to love, and be loved for who we really are.

When you meet yourself without the mask, when you uncover who you are under the adaptive behaviors, when you are truly able to see yourself; you will understand that there is nothing you need to change, fix, hide, or shape shift. To be loved by the right people.

This is not something that happens overnight, this is not something I have perfectly cultivated.

This is a tending to, a tilling the soil, a moment by moment choice.

Your needs are worthy, your truth is worthy, your ideas are worth sharing, your boundaries are valid.

There are more than enough moments I choose the automated reflexive action before I make a choice from my authentic center.

The point is I notice, my body tells me, through the tightness in my throat, the constriction in my abdomen, through the fatigue I feel when I continue to people please.

And the more I listen to my body relentlessly the more whole and connected I feel. The more I act in accordance to this guidance, the more others are able to feel it.

And they are either triggered by it, or inspired by it.

Over the last five years I have had nearly a total relationship turnover, and yes, partners, friends, jobs, have all either become stronger, or completely dissolved. There were many moments I questioned, can I do this? Who would I be without this person, place, or circumstance.

But I had to come to the realization that if I was staying in the relationship because of a need to be approved of, or due to a role I played that compromised my boundaries, it had to go.

Now, most all of my personal relationships reflect this authentic. Still working on the career aspect but I know and trust, I will continue to move through this.

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If you are a creative, a sensitive, and or anyone that desires a life full of expression, you surely have experience the perfectionism prison in one polarity or another.

I had the realisation last week that I seem to swing from two polarities in my own creative process. They are connected to different parts of me trying to keep me peddling towards my dreams diligently and other parts conserving me. One clings, and the other purges. One shuts down the other expands. One keeps everything out and the other takes too much in.

I find that these two polarities are distinctly different, yet at the core they are the same.

The first state is:

Being stuck in a paralysis

showing up as:

• Never truly feeling “ready” to begin because all the ducks have to be perfectly in a row but they never are.

• Not being able to start, due to fear of failure or “lack of attention or anyone noticing.

• Fear of rejection, or the creation it’s self not turning out the way you’ve envisioned.

• The fear of not being able to carry the commitment of the project to the end result.

• It can hold the weight of heavy conditions you create for yourself based on beliefs you’ve adopted from the outer world messaging, E.G. its not worth it because it won’t result in X

• You can be paralysed by not just the result of how the world receives it, but of how you receive it conditioning the creative expression to be a certain way for yourself.

• Underlying worth wounds, feeling your message, your voice, or expression isn’t good enough comparisionitis “someone had my idea but already has created it better than I would have.”

• Not feeling you have the correct combination of resources, of uninterrupted time, financially, energetically, or physically.

  I like to equate this to a dorsal vagal shutdown In the nervous system. Referring to the down regulation branch of the vagus nerve responsible for protecting you by conserving energy. It’s a type of depression when you want to withdrawal from the world, nothing is flowing, you feel disconnected and numb. You are so unsure of your capacity and your energy levels are generally low. You have a hard time committing to goals, planning, there is brain fog, and social engagement feels exhausting.

  I am using this knowledge directly from my own experience of this state. It could be that you don’t feel this way but just have too much on your plate to really prioritise your creative life and have some deeper wounding to work through around being seen for your creative expression.

  ---

The second state is:

Being stuck in performance

Showing up is:

• Feeling like you must stick to a strict schedule, algorithm, or production module at all costs regardless of how you feel.

• You are producing art, content, writing, in a conveyor belt machine like fashion yet you often do not feel connected to what you are producing. It feels as though you are moving through the motions for the sake of consistency and “building an audience.”

• Stopping or pausing feels like death, you feel your output is a direct reflection of your worth.

• You create conditions about how, where, and what you are producing. It must fit a certain pillar or category, it must be shared at a certain time, it must appeal to the audience rather than speaking from your heart.

• You don’t feel you ever can rest, the only thing worse than stopping the freight train of action is being run over by the momentum of your inner critic running you over and then falling into the paralysis.

• You fear what it would mean if the show did not go on, your identity directly intertwined with the performance and content you deliver.

• You feel you will fall behind, or become irrelevant if you pause.

I like to think of this state as being tied to the sympathetic overdrive in the nervous system. This is referring to the sympathetic branch of the Vagus nerve, responsible for our flight or fight response as means of defense. When this is kicked on by a threat in our environment we feel hyper-vigilance, scanning our surroundings for threats, and we can’t relax or down regulate. We don’t feel safe enough to connect, we feel we must compete because resources may be scarce. We don’t understand how to work with each other instead of against.

I once again am using this example of my own experience going in and out of this state. It could be that it’s relatively easy for you to keep a schedule. I think the imbalance here in lies with if you’re able to break away without feeling a threat in your nervous system. Without fear of “falling behind” or guilt of not delivering what you feel you have promised.

Outside of the body based perspective, what is interesting about both these states is both are driven from the ego-center. They are both attached to the results of the process and conditions rather than the essence of creation as points out so beautifully in his article I read today. You can read it here if interested.

This is a concept that deeply touched me. As I realize on some level we creatives all suffer from the crushing feeling of our work not being of value at one point or another. Especially the pieces and projects we give our entire soul to.

Specifically referring to process of trying to make your craft or your art your life’s work. I see my writing as an extension of myself, same with my paintings, and healing practice. It is my souls expression, and when you deliver your all and then receive are crickets, and can be so disheartening and fling you into all the self doubt and inner criticism.

It’s a paradox as well, because being someone who suffers from complex ptsd there is a term called “toxic shame” coined by Pete Walker. The belief that you are inherently flawed, unlovable, and defective. My art has been the single most powerful tool that has helped me alchemise this shame through sheer expression of the feeling.

And yet the inherent nature of being an artist and trying to “make it” in the competitive world of creators perpetuates this belief with the thousands of times your creation is either silently or directly rejected.

Obviously there is deeper work to do here. Soul work, trusting in the divine. I do my best to repeat the mantra, my art and writing will reach who it’s meant to reach, the clients will come that are meant to work with me.

Yet it’s one thing to write it, another to live it. It’s a practice, something that has to reach the levels of your body, subconscious, and heart space.

So what if we were to take the two polarities and join them in the middle?

I am not one to claim I have anything totally figured out. I have over the years seen myself go in and out of both polarities. But this is currently what I am experimenting with and I believe this is where I am training myself to be at least some of the time. like Stephen said above, "I can’t not create,” so I am always experimenting with ways that feel more harmonious.

This starts with connecting to your why. Which can be hard to detect when stuck in either polarity. If your in the performing or paralysis you could be feeling a bit of disassociation around your why, it’s high-jacked by the wounded ego either way or dysregulated nervous system. The belief that you are not enough.

To connect to your deeper why- you have to at least begin to reach for more balance in your nervous system; and this isn’t from a lens of perfectionism, but rather support. I rarely do anything from a completely balanced nervous system. I often start something in one state or another, today I was in a dorsal vagal shutdown and it was extremely hard to get moving on this article. However I moved myself through the process and thats why I would like to share with you what has worked for me in either polarity.

I have found with the accompanying of the following exercises, the energy shifts.

Stuck in Paralysis tools:

Somatic movements:

Stand with feet shoulder width apart, sway arms side to side, letting your hands slap the edges of your hips. You can also jump up and down, shake, and rotated joints. Maybe go for a short 20 min walk outside if you can muster it. Anything to create circulation, flow, and Qi (energy moving).

Connect to your why:

You don’t have to know, pause for five minutes, and ask your heart what it’s dying to express, not what you think you should deliver, but exactly where you are and what wants to be shown to you. If it still doesn’t come just move to the next exercise.

Building capacity:

Journal with the free flow concept, just whatever comes to mind, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it can be a total mess, and you don’t have to share it with anyone.

If it’s content, art, video, writing, music recording these are what rough drafts are for. Keep in mind your making this for you. Begin to feel the freeze in your body thaw with the lack of pressure for it to become the perfect thing.

If you feel unthawed enough, perhaps put together something small, tangible, and low commitment to share with the world. If you find yourself too triggered, you can always delete it.

You can also pause and hold your heart, repeating “I am enough, my expression deserves to be shared, peoples reactions or lack of have nothing to do with the essence of my work or expression.” Even if you don’t believe your own words, (I often don’t) this action of holding yourself and giving yourself compassion can shift something at least subtly. Rinse and repeat.

Stuck in Performance tools:

Somatic movements:

If restless and or agitated, I suggest doing an bilateral exercise that will help release that energy and balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Running, hiking, biking, walking, or roller blading.

Followed by long deep breaths into the belly to calm and soothe the nervous system. If accessible try taking off your shoes and touching the earth with your bare feet.

Connect to your why:

Take five minutes and pause asking yourself the real reason you are wanting to create or move through XYZ. Often times there is a wired but tired feeling in this state. If you find the answer is due to the above reasons like falling behind, disappointing, or not meeting your own or others expectations then we need to build capacity in the opposite direction.

Building capacity:

Especially if feeling exhausted, try lying down and closing your eyes for at least 20 mins, then move through the motions of what you had intended to do. If you feel like you don’t have that 20, make it 10, or even 5. We are dipping our toes into stillness.

If it helps you, you can journal what comes up for you.

You can also try creating at just a slightly slower pace, taking one thing off the to-do list. This for me often creates an immediate shame spiral and I have to meet that.

If you find yourself in a shame spiral notice the inner narrative, what it is telling you? How is it affecting your body? Do you best to tell yourself the opposite script. “You are enough as you are, there is nothing you need to prove, no where you need to be but here” even if you don’t believe it, your cells are listening.

Also co-regulation is key here, connect with loved ones if you can coming from either state. Animals, plants, and the earth counts too.

I hope this article was helpful, relatable, and clarifying.

I am on this journey with you.

-Olivia

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I have uncovered a lot within myself the last few weeks around how I see myself when feeling triggered. How I easily outsource my energy and take on the worlds perceptions of what is acceptable.

It is a self perpetuating cycle, even the awareness of that pattern dominos my inclination to rush to a conclusion of action to correct said pattern.

I would like to believe based on my conversations with others within the healing/wellness, healthcare, and coaching industry, that we all suffer to some degree from this urgency and hyper vigilance to improve our habits, correct ourselves, and become someone better.

We give advice, we offer our presence, support, and often protocols filled with tools that can help our clients ground and regulate their own nervous systems as well as take charge of their health and wellbeing. All the while watching ourselves diligently and obsessively for how we can improve, be the best version of ourselves, and nip any problem in the bud before it develops into something we cannot control. This works in tandem with what we believe is being a competent wellness practitioner.

We practice our own protocols, we have a checklist of well-to do actions to perform to ensure we are walking our walk. All the while, often feeling barely connected to our own body, needs, boundaries, and signals for rest.

It’s only when these sensations grow loud enough to inhibit the progress outwardly through fatigue, illness, or depression, do we then turn towards them, and look to correct theses signals.

It is in the energy of thinking we need to correct ourselves rather than support ourselves that we lose the plot.

So I of course, last week, feeling the stress of the summer slump in bodywork, both my business and the spa I work for exceptionally slow; I then get sucked in by an Instagram ad telling me all the ways I am missing this untapped gold mine of information on how to improve my income, business and stop struggling. Essentially if I buy this book, I will learn all the marketing tactics that have all my desire’s met, and all my mistakes corrected by just getting involved in their sales funnel program.

I read the book they offered and I am fairly convinced. I am the problem, I am the thing standing in the way of my own success and all I need to do is get over my fear of investment and believe in myself. This gives me for a moment the ultimate sense of control and I ride the psychotic wave of success in self mastery these wellness guru’s painted for me.

I immediately recognize my blocks, my limitations, and fears. I was overzealous about getting on with improving myself one last time. Defining my message, my brand, and my mission. Seeing this weird hypnosis of a utopian life that could exist if I just paid theses fools money and solved the problem that clearly is me. This would the fast track to removing these problematic parts of myself, so I can then reach a more aligned way of living.

Luckily, I caught myself. I’ve been in this cycle many times and I saw that the high felt too high, the offer too shiny, the pace too fast.

I paused, and I allowed my body to unravel the frenetic energy of needing to solve.

I questioned what my life would look like if I didn’t take this offer. Which they literally told me that I would be broke and stuck forever If I didn’t.

I went through the worst case scenarios of each. If I continued on financially struggling fumbling my way forward in human messiness, and finding my reach organically, or if I took their fast track to success and put pressure my body to perform a role that it wasn’t ready for.

My body clenched as I felt the weight of the pressure, then it relaxed when I let go of the need to do this.

I then felt the shame come up, why can’t I ever just pull the trigger? Why can’t I sustain trust and confidence in myself? I watched my mind clench onto the need to “figure it out” the need to solve, the despair in not knowing, then I let myself rest there.

I realized what they were asking of me is to essentially run a marathon when I had not trained for it, and just hope I cross the finish line with no injury. I declined the offer.

A culture of correction.

Obviously I have to give credit where credit is due. Our culture of capitalism demands growth at all costs, and from a linear time material plane perspective. A+B=C. You have a problem, you find a solution, then you get the desired results.

I WISH I COULD LIVE IN THAT SIMPLE OF A PARADIGM.

but I can’t.

There is a part if my mind that is on board with that thinking. Yes, if you continue to dedicate your time, focus, and energy to something the fruits of your labor do tend to grow. You can’t just jump from garden to garden watering inconsistently the seeds you planted and expect anything worth while to cultivate.

However, you can’t force a seed to produce flower before it’s season is ripe.

There is a reoccurring feeling of being planted my body is moving through right now.

This is not a process to be corrected, it is the natural rhythm of the earth asking me to slow down.

Grind culture seeded in capitalism tells us we can get fast results, that the whole issue is our lack of focus, dedication, or grit. Wellness culture reinforces this belief, because we didn’t adopt the new diet, breath work trend, or protocol. Then wellness gurus tell us our work is not impactful because we don’t have a seven figure income.

Real life doesn’t work based on numbers, schedules or predicted and prescribed amounts of effort.

We move through life in cycles, we experience regulation not just through consistency but through emotional attunement, flexibility, and safety.

Human life internally is emotional and nuanced, there are variants, there is fluidity and everything is liquid. Once something takes form it changes into something else.

There needs to be spaciousness to feel that transition is taking place.

The power of the liminal

I have lived my entire life in state of question and wonder. Which sounds poetic, and I suppose it is, but truly off paper it’s really challenging.

It means I never find any true ground to stand on, any one perspective to adopt and keep as mine. It means I frequently desire to switch jobs, identities, area’s of study, places to live, and ways of living my life.

helped me immensely last week recognize these tendencies through my not self theme in human design. He’s incredible. Thank you Reko!

The beauty in this is the natural flow of expansion and creation. Creative energy never truly settles, it’s always on to something else, and that is the core of it’s nature.

This again, doesn’t need correction, it needs supportive direction and transmutation.

Modern culture does not support this.

Let me be clear, devotion, is different than mechanical operation.

Devotion is watering the garden not because you have to, but because you get to. You are consistent not through force, but through nature flow, through the burning desire in your body to bring something potent inside you to fruition.

Devotion is intrinsically driven, while operation is results driven, only caring about outcomes not process.

Our culture based on capital and action taken to reacher higher capital demands constant out put, productivity, demands consistency at the compromise of wellbeing, it demands improvement, and believe me I have parts of me that have tried my entire life to prove I can participate in the parade.

The Show Must Go On. That means override your body, override your signals to slow down, to take a break, to connect with something else. It means don’t allow any room in your life to dream, drift, and imagine. It means your commitment to consistency is more important that the life that wants to unfold through you.

So how does this translate to our lives?

In short, we have impulses, creative callings, sudden sparks, and we tend to chose to not listen or follow them, due to practical obligation and circumstances.

We end up drained, confused, and depleted, forgetting our own creative power in our natural rhythms then we outsource to what ever is being sold to use will fix our exhaustion.

So how do we break the cycle?

I truly believe that rest is the greatest form of resistance.

With rest comes surrender, it creates a somatic experience in your body of letting go, of leaning in, of allowing.

We find slowing down terrifying, because we fear what will rise up in the stillness.

Often it’s painful, often it’s grief, anger, overwhelm, and exhaustion. Often the body will cry, or feel as though it’s in sinking sand. As though the sensation of a freight train of all we have been carrying crushes us.

Yet this is the gateway. If we don’t stop; something will come along and stop us.

However it looks, however it’s possible for you. It doesn’t have to be a large expansive luxurious retreat, in fact it’s better interwoven into your daily moments.

Rest comes in very many versions, and it’s not a one size fits all. I find it helpful to define what kind of rest I need.

Is it mental? —take time alone, and move your body.

Is it physical?— lay down, my favorite is on the earth under trees.

Is it emotional?— spend time with supportive relationships, and or pets.

Is it spiritual?— create art, of any form, dance, sing, weave, write, paint, or weld.

Is it existential ?—spend time in nature remembering the vastness of existence.

It could be just sitting in your car after your commute and shutting your eyes. It could be not checking your phone in traffic or at the grocery store. It could be taking thirty minutes in your day just to lay down. It could be taking an extra five minutes in the shower.

Weaving these moments of pause into your daily life begins poking holes in the compulsive conveyor belt of pressured activity and demands on your energy.

It is in these moments we reclaim ourselves, we remember our center and we are able to then make more grounded and aligned choices for futures that are aligned with our authenticity.

It’s resting in this way of being that creates our becoming. The more we can lean into the unknown, the more our body begins to trust it, the more our body trusts, the more centered are our actions, the more centered the actions and choices, the more our life begins to unfold with results that mirror that.

Trusting your body in it’s pause will lead you to the greatest expansion. It’s in the space we give ourselves that we get to discover what we are meant to become, what wants to move through us and be created from the essence rather than the striving.

Thank you for reading.

-Olivia

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This time, I could feel my body resonate with the land. There was a stillness that entered that I have been searching for inside my self for years. A remembering, I am not just my body, there are many possibilities, and this life has so much more in store for me.

On the way down I was agitated, anxious, and completely consumed with how I was going to continue to build my career and transition from bodywork to somatic coaching.

Running on a treadmill of tasks I had chained myself too to hopefully alleviate just a smidge of the constant plague of internal feelings of not being enough.

When I arrived in Sedona, I set the intention to unplug, go inward, and speak with the land. I exhaled, and I finally landed in my own body.

I am wise enough to know that a person, place, or thing cannot absolve us from our pain or imbalances. The mechanisms my body and mind have adopted in Salt Lake are not a result from the city it’s self, but and adaptation my body has acquired based on socioeconomic and geocentric landscape.

It’s really hard for a cactus to thrive in the cold. It can, but the environment may not be fertile for it’s goals. I am literally cactus attempting to thrive in the cold, and knowing that at least half the year it’s warm so I am settling for it.

That being said, I do try my best to slow down in the city, but I am a hypersensitive person, and very affected by my environment. Salt Lake maybe once was but is no longer a place for slowing down.

Here, in Sedona, time moved slower.

Waking up with the sunrise, hiking, moving, sweating, and then scrambling the burnt sienna cliffs at sunset reset my body in ways I couldn’t have imagined. The combination of the intention I set to allow my body to be present, with the rocks themselves supporting that goal, allowed me to reach a place inside I thought had dissolved completely.

There was something shifting in me, settling me, and redirecting me.

The land spoke to me, in my meditations I received clear messages about how I have been orienting my body to hold a shape that was not meant for me. That I need that slowness, and spaciousness is not a selfish desire. I have been dog paddling in Salt Lake the past five years since I returned from moving to San Diego. Knowing that even though it’s my home town it is not my forever place. Knowing, but still not being called in any particular direction.

I need time to pause, talk to God, source, the universe whatever you want to call it. That my repetitive motions of compulsive productivity and being a slave to rules of algorithms were not leading me further towards my aligned path. I knew this in Salt Lake, but it had become only a conceptual understanding, I knew that it was only conceptual too, but somehow just couldn’t reach my body there.

In these moments my body dialed into experiencing this knowing. The embodiment of it then became effortless.

Here, in Sedona, the direction folded forward into a path. I recalled in several meditations previously this year, I had a vision of myself in Sedona with my partner.

On our last day, we explored the shops and art galleries at Tlaquepaque. There we many artists that carried an energy about them of living in their alignment. Their smiles genuine, and their hearts open. I saw a potential of myself here. Then my body felt it’s familiar shrinking. A contraction, as the storyline echoed. “But they’ve got something you never will.” “You don’t have what it takes.” “You are not good enough.” I felt tired, I wanted to hide.

The Formative Years

When I was about eight years old, I almost lived in Sedona, AZ. My mother, after divorcing my father was then married to a surgeon who owned a beautiful house with tons of natural light on the cliff side of Rocky Road. I would spend parts of the summer down there in that house, it was immaculate, and I fell love with exploring the sandstone cliffs of our property as well as the red rock hikes my mother and her husband would take me on.

Sedona, as well as Zion National park is where I first fell in love with the desert.

The days with my mother and previous step father were filled with tension. They did not get along well. At night I would hear atrocious screaming matches where he would call her derogatory names I don’t feel the desire to repeat. She divorced him when I was eleven to marry my current stepfather.

My father and I never visited the desert together, although I lived primarily with him and his mother, and my grandmother until I was eight. Where I then split the time with my mother and father.

When I was with my father, he was always very present with me. It felt like just me and him. My favorite memories of him were when we would play frisbee at the park together, watch clouds on the grassy hill, or go sledding in the winter.

There was a time that we would walk to the dollar store just a few blocks down the road and he would buy me a new piece of jewelry. Where I at one point had such a collection I probably looked like a christmas tree covered in ornaments. I would at night then take each item off and hang them on his buddha statue before falling asleep.

He was fascinated with spirituality, death, and other dimensions. In the summer we would set up the hammock in the backyard and stare at the stars together, contemplating aliens, spaceships, and other planets.

He was never afraid of the big questions, I would ask him frequently about death, and where he thought we went when we died. He firmly believed in spirits, ghosts, and re-incarnation. He would take me into different rooms in his house and ask me what I could sense. Every room felt slightly different, and I could always feel certain rooms carried a type of presence, where others did not. He believed I had extra-sensory capabilities.

He was introverted, and when he wasn’t relating to me, he would read book after book. Mainly on spirituality and buddhism. He had an entire room full of books he called his library. He was very willing and able to go within himself. A very private person, I don’t recall him having many friends, except one, who lived in the desert of southern Utah.

What he struggled with was being out in the world. He was not an assertive man, very shy and full of anxiety. With every interaction he was short and quick to end it. I noticed this when I was very young. He rarely managed to make it to any of my parent teacher conferences, school events, sing-alongs, or field days. It was always my grandmother and occasionally my mother if she wasn’t too depleted from her work or managing my older sister Bre, that would step in.

He always seemed to fade into the shadows when it came to anything that required a lot of social energy.

By the time I was eleven my grandmother passed away from a six year battle with breast cancer following her death he began to quickly deteriorate.

Two years later, he died.

I was thirteen, and a void began to open that nothing could fill.

The procedural pattern

Like I mentioned above, I am not under the illusion that a person, place, or thing will be a solution to the problems within. So I asked my inner guidance through oracle cards to show me the work that possibility relocating to Sedona would bring me. Immediately I got one on divine masculine energy and fatherhood. How I parent myself.. my Father Wound.

Until this moment I never connected the dots that my feelings of inadequacy were directly tied to this wound.

My father lives in my mind a legend that could do no harm, although he chose to take his own life I do not hold any feelings against him.

My bodies memories of my father surfaced to my eyes as they filled with tears.

This is the pattern I come up against. There is a effortless creative energy inside me, it needs to express itself like my body needs to breathe. I can’t stop the creative force within. It’s always there tapping me on the shoulder, making art out of every moment.

Following this feeling is the need to show what I create to the world. The desire for more applause, recognition, and validation. Yet this aspect of creative drive is extrinsically driven. I look to the outside to validate whats within. I find there is nothing inherently wrong with this; it is simply the need for relational symbiotic connection.

However, I feel shame around this need, as i know it is rooted in my wounds. Where it can turn is when my entire creative process turns on me and hinges on if I do, or don’t get that validation or connection I seek.

The next stage for me, is the minute I do expose myself, share an article, a painting, a post. I clench, I brace for the impact. And I feel shame of the wound of needing that recognition or result. Sometimes it’s more sometimes less, but there is a consistent questioning of my worth.

A spiral, how could I have done it better, perhaps it’s too much, maybe it’s not enough. I analyze, pick it apart, and question everything I am. All of it hanging on wether what I created lands or not in my audience. I haven’t had much criticism thank god for my poor little fragile ego, but I am bracing for the day it happens. Even now, I know so many of us go through this, but it feels extra cringe to admit.

If you want to be truth to yourself you have to be ready and willing for those that are not for you to reject you. I understand this, and I still brace for the impact.

Once I get the validation, I feel relief, not subtle, the kind of relief I’d imagine you feel when you get tested for cancer and the results are negative.

Then comes the part of cycle where I crash. I begin to compare; innocently looking for inspiration and inevitably finding proof of why my version of what ever it is I am creating isn’t good enough.

What I realize this the comparison is the part of myself seeking in others what I don’t recognize in myself.

It’s also the part of me that was never modeled by my own father how to handle being seen, and assertive in the way I move through the world. The part of me that never learned how to protect myself with inner assurance, confidence, and conviction that I am enough.

After my father died, I felt like I was missing an invisible limb. Not only did my biology organize it’s self to mirror my fathers example, where he was very meek, shy, and not strong in putting himself out into the world, but my body registered the death as a type of internal handicap, one that no one could see, which made it even more maddening.

And still I carry this handicap. It has become more manageable with the psychosocial prosthetic leg I’ve trained my biology to respond to social scenarios in the appropriate way, my body has practiced diligently to not be like him in as many ways as I have capacity for. To not let the negative voices stop me from going after my dreams. I throw myself off the cliffs of exposing myself through my paintings, my writing, and my work constantly.

However It still shows up and leaks through.

The narrative that others have what I am missing, that I am defective, and I don’t deserve to live my dream of painting and making art in the desert, that I don’t deserve spaciousness, to rest, or a house that feels expansive and restorative. That I must prove my worth through excessive action.

What’s wild about this; is the layer of it that holds delusional desire that to be worthy I must be enough for everyone I encounter.

This presents in the over functioning, perfectionism, and over compensation patterns. The psychological treadmill of productivity I have handcuffed myself to. The exhausting shape shifting dance I still do on some level in certain social dynamics.

However I will say, I have worked with this wound for a while, and I have made progress. That’s why I am here today, sharing with you.

The reframe

For anyone who can relate to my story in anyway this part is for you.

I know that recognizing these patterns is just one stage of rewriting the narrative and creating a new embodiment of my experience here.

But I do feel every time we uncover a new layer, we cannot go back to our original dimension of behavioral patterns.

This posture of internal collapsing, shutting down, and both needing and fearing to be seen may be woven into my ancestral and cellular memory, as well as my early psychological and somatic imprint.

However, just like wind, water, and earth. We slowly shape shift over time. To a degree, we have the power to direct our internal winds. And like the Yucca or the cactus, we have an ability to grow in even the harshest conditions.

Part of this is recognizing our inherent worth, that we are a part of the earth, and even if you are not working with a father wound, the programming of the modern world likely has effected your confidence on some level.

Shame is a story we tell ourselves, and the feeling that we are inadequate is fed by this story.

If you really sit with yourself, and pause in stillness, you will find a new sensation as you ask your body if that story is true.

If it’s truly your body your speaking with I doubt it will say no, you are not inadequate or defective.

We are symbiotic with the earth and her patterns, like tectonic plates we are always shifting. The mountains, deserts, rivers, trees, bugs, and bee’s don’t ask for permission to exist, to be seen, they just are. They belong, and there is nothing to prove.

You and I are the same way, and it’s just a matter of noticing when we are caught in that storyline, how our body is responding, and then remembering. I am enough.

From here we create

When you tell yourself enough times you are enough, you do begin to believe it, and your cells begin organizing to make that, the truth of your reality.

It’s not that the old programs don’t cycle through, it’s never a one and done. If you have spent years carving the belief that you are not enough, your body knows that story much better than the new one.

It will take time for your body to resonate with the new truth. Have patience, trust the process.

We create most authentically when we connect to a space of wholeness, meaning total acceptance of all parts of us. This is inclusive of the perceived limitations.

Healing is never about perfection, it’s about expression, allowance and acceptance. Space for yourself to fluctuate, expand, and contract.

I don’t know if I will be relocating to Sedona right away, but I do feel the call.

Stay tuned.

Thank you for reading!

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From my heart to yours, until next time.

-Olivia

Sacred sandstone

Crystalline skies

Grounding earth

Root my feet

~

Land of quartz

Focus my vision

Mesa of mystics

Collective conscious

Perception of precision.

~

Infinite starlight

Warmth of the golden hour

Wraps me in relief

Recalling my birthright

~

Wandering with wisdom

Along sienna cliffs

Cathedrals of clarity

Amethyst clouds

Occupy the prism

Decoding the myths

~

Stillness provides

Auspicious alchemy

Wisdom of warriors

Stories to tell

Bells of sincerity

All will be well.

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The Runners High.

I could feel my feet thudding and hitting the ground, as I consciously tried to slow my breath and allow it to become even and rhythmic. I tried to be aware of my feet, not to heal strike, and forward lean so that most of my weight lands on the top of the ball of my foot.

The others were pacing fast in front of me. I could feel the pressure to keep up and then the need to reserve my energy to make it to the end of the thirteen miles. I had trained for this, and I was better prepared this time than last. I knew my endurance level, I knew what my body could handle. This was my run, I didn’t need to match the speed of anyone else.

I let my gaze rest on the glowing mountains in the horizon in front of me. I let my breath synchronize with my music, inhaling rushing rivers and fresh pine. I became the movement, I became the music, like a rhythmic dance my body dissolved into the moment, my mind centered, almost thoughtless, as bliss filled my heart. This wasn’t painful, this was a reclamation, a return to home. Nothing but my heartbeat, breath, and beautiful scenery. My body filled up with the sweet ecstasy of my oxygenated blood and the feeling of being truly alive.

I wish I could say the rest of the run was like this, but it never is, especially not in a race. Thats the thing about running. That runners high, I’d imagine is on par to heroin. There’s nothing better, but like any drug, it doesn’t last, and there is a come down.

I am pretty certain that after all the trauma in my life this is how I didn’t end up on drugs.

On a physiological level what is happening to the brain and body during a runners high is quite interesting.

First there is an Endocannabinoid surge. Which is basically a fat molecule that crosses the blood brain barrier and mimic’s the effects of THC, producing feelings of calm and euphoria.

Then there is the Endorphin release where the pituitary and hypothalamus gland work to produce natural painkillers as they bind to opioid receptors to dull the physical stress and pain of running. (Literally your own heroin).

Then lastly there is a Dopamine spike, so for those individuals with ADHD like myself, this is a great antidote to naturally low levels of Dopamine.

The runners high, is why we psychos keep running.

Running also has numerous mental and physical health benefits, improving cardiovascular health, metabolism, improving stress resilience, improved cognitive function, better sleep, and mood enhancement.

However if taken too far all the opposite can occur. It also is allegedly hard on the joints, as well as puts you at high repetitive strain injury risk. It can create higher cortisol, and lower immune function if proper recovery is bypassed.

Usually people do not have a neutral attitude about running. It seems to be a sore spot, they hate it, or they intensely love it. I have heard many people say that they have never experienced the runners high. And I have a pretty strong theory as to why.

I am about to to walk you through my relationship and experience with running, from beginning to current. The way it can become a weapon of destruction, or a fabulous somatic tool to go deeply into your body. How running can be an outlet for processing trauma, as well as a trap for it. I will also offer suggestions of how to approach running if you want to start, realistic expectations, and mental hurdles to overcome.

Running on Empty.

As some of you may or may not know, I have suffered from an eating disorder for the better half of my adult and late adolescent life.

One may ask, how does someone with an eating disorder distance run safely?

Firstly, you’d be surprised how many runners struggle with their relationship with food and exercise.

And, I will honestly answer; I am still figuring that question out myself. If you are in the throws of an eating disorder I highly do not recommend doing what I did.

However, I believe I am in the most positive relationship with running now than ever. It has taken years of inner work to get here.

When I was nineteen years old, a boyfriend I was in love with left me for a tall skinny girl and told me he wasn’t attracted to me because I was fat. That if I lost weight I would be attractive and maybe he would consider being with me.

Already ridden with self esteem and abandonment issues I took his advice seriously and immediately began to starve myself all day and go on night runs after work.

Back then, my inner voice was angry, cruel, and only destructive.

Running was punishment for feeling so inadequate. I didn’t have a watch, or app on my phone, or ring. This was 2012. I wasn’t training for anything, I had one goal and one goal only, shrink as small as possible. I enjoyed the pain, I believed I deserved it. Turning all my rage towards my life and how it wasn’t going the way I wanted, now into myself.

There was no negetive consequence then, only compliments from strangers and acquaintances alike. With every gasp of “oh wow you lost so much weight, you look so good.” My inner shame felt like it was showered off. I loved my collar bones and hip bones protruding. Running, along with starving became my best and most toxic relationship.

After winning the shitty boyfriend back then eventually leaving him, my relationship with running fell to the background. I could achieve the desired results through calorie restriction, hiking, and yoga. My goal was never to be fit, only thin. I would use running as a transition exercise between winter and summer or snowboarding to hiking season. For a few years there I didn’t even view myself as a “runner.”

When I began dating my second super toxic guy, Flint, he was really into running. Wanting to impress him, I pretended to be more into it than I actually was. My procedural memory in my body only held a experience of hatred and punishment. So when I would run, I would run at the hottest part of the day, fast, hard, and make it hurt.

There was a constant static and charge in my body from the abuse in the relationship with Flint. We would have fights that would quite literally freeze me in place. After all that charge would build up in my body, it was almost effortless to want to purge it out through running.

One summer I began running a 5k every day at a 9 min mile pace (fast for me, I am only five foot tall), on an empty stomach, and only eat about 1,000 calories per day.

Oh yes and I had the body. I looked like a fitness Ad, and yet I was actually killing myself. The rage I had for him and my situation was once again turned against me.

You can believe that routine couldn’t last very long. I lost muscle mass, likely bone density, my period, and I was struck with my first bout of autoimmune.

My lymph nodes swelled, I was shitting blood, and I had a constant low grade fever and extreme fatigue for about six months. Eventually I restored some weight and the fevers reduced.

Running as Nourishment.

Beginning to realize my eating disorder had real consequence. As I began to feed myself in a more balanced way. Over the next few years I seemed to oscillate between running intuitively and then for general “fitness.” I wanted to feel strong. And I also did not want to gain too much weight.

I would mostly trail run then. I purchased some Merrill trail glove shoes with light padding so my feet could grip the earth easily. I would intend the run to be a hike, and if I felt like running part of it, then I would.

This is when I began to feel my first runners highs. With no tracker, agenda, or metrics, I was able to just listen to what my body felt like doing that day. I began to feel what pushing myself to my edge but not over the edge felt like. I enjoyed these runs, and they felt free, creative, and flexible. I noticed my feet closely contacting the earth felt energizing and expansive. I would mostly run in the evening hours of the summer, where the soft light would paint the mountains in a beautiful pink.

I carried this relationship with it for the next few years, unto the time I finally left my abusive relationship with Flint. Running, as it does for many of us then became my main coping mechanism.

I used it once again intuitively, except I was living at the time in a neighborhood close to trails but beautiful enough I liked walking in it. I began night walks in the same way I would night run before. I never required anything of myself, I never had an agenda, I would just ask my body what it felt like doing. More so than not, I began to run further and further as my body dispelled the charge of what I had just survived.

I had been in fight or flight for years, and this was the way my body was releasing the pent up energy. I enjoyed pushing my edge, but I always made a point to listen and slow my roll if I felt too fatigued. As a result, these runners highs became a regular occurrence. It also became a way to feel safe eating a normal amount of food. I was still tracking calories, but at least it was now so I was fueling “enough” and I was not starving myself to the degree I had been.

Running as Resistance.

Naturally the friends I was staying with noticed how much I was running and asked if I would ever consider running a race. I explained to them the history of my eating disorder and prosed that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. However as I sat with this seed growing in my brain. Eventually after having a conversation with my friends babysitter she convinced me to sign up for my first half marathon.

For me, this was something I would never consider on my own. I hated competitive sports in highschool, I never wanted to have to measure what I was doing, and I certainly hated the pressure of performing.

None the less. I was up for the challenge. I had changed the narrative in my head from one of punishment to one of encouragement. I had become my own positive coach on my night runs. So I wasn’t worried about going “too hard.” I had built a trust within my self and knowing my limits.

It was about two weeks before the race, and I began tracking my miles with my Strava App. My pace was pretty good, but something seemed to shift in my energy around it. It now felt like a requirement rather than enjoyment, and there were a few runs where I began to push myself over the edge to meet the metric.

I noted this mentally, but I resisted listening, everyone who runs seriously ignores their body to a point right? I kept going.

On race day, I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. I paid over 100$ to freeze my ass in the cold for two hours, to run thirteen miles down a canyon with a bunch of sweaty strangers.

Regardless, it was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life.

I had never experienced that level of runners high, using the run as a type of meditation, watching my inner reactivity to what I was doing rise and fall. Sticking with it, resisting the voice telling me to stop, give up, and that I couldn’t handle it. Allowing my self to expand my tolerance for discomfort and intense sensation, and discover I could do what I thought was impossible and come out the other side.

When I completed the race I had never felt more resilient, capable, and strong. This was a testament to all I had survived and how I could move through difficult situations and even thrive. How I could resist the pressure to fold under my minds doubts.

Matrix of Metrics.

I wish I could say this high lasted, and didn’t morph into something once again toxic. However my ego gripped on to my new identity as a runner, and began to suck the marrow out of my bones.

Running was no longer an intuitive thing, it became an addiction. A requirement again for me to meet some strange idealized version of myself that would run through anything, run through blizzards, through rain, through wind, through whatever life threw at me, as long as I had running. I would be okay.

Heading into the winter months I began to track my mileage obsessively, and as it would a lot me permission to continue eating, or permission to rest. Only once I completed my weekly mileage of course. The metrics, how fast and how far, became the only goal, never mind how my body felt. Soon the relationship to running became conditional again, maybe even transactional. And thus, the conditions of my body took a downswing.

November came along with a torn calf and wicked illness. I am not sure to this day if it was a variation of covid, over training, or the grief from my entire life finally surfacing, or all three.

I became extremely weak, inflamed, and nerve pain shooting all over my body. I could hardly work or function. When you over train and under fuel, this is what can result. This illness lasted months again, and I had to quit running all together. My cortisol very high, and my progesterone very low. Little did I realize I had relapsed into my eating disorder in a different form. I was eating your standard caloric intake, but definitely not enough to fuel those miles of running. This is why I say if you have an active eating disorder please consult with a professional about exercise of any kind especially running. I hope you can learn from my mistakes.

So this then set me into a place of beginning to realize what I was running from, stillness, loving myself unconditionally— which who knows how to do that flawlessly but at least I could recognize where I didn’t. I was also running from my grief, and the crushing weight of what it means to exist on planet earth right now. Running gave me something tangible I could control, until it didn’t.

Running as Resilience.

For the next year or so after the illness and injury I realized If I was to continue to run I would need to approach it with caution, take fueling seriously, and not abuse it.

But something was different now. I realized that I no longer wanted to run to be thin.. I wanted to run to feel strong, capable, and resilient. I wanted to run because I loved to run. Because it made me feel the most alive I have ever felt.

I wanted to use running as a way to somatically move through my pain, not run from it or create more of it.

So I did begin eating more, taking fueling more seriously, and I did gain quite a bit of weight, muscle, and strength. Runners that fuel properly are not always your typical lean super thin body. Runners come in all shapes and sizes.

I trained that year more intuitively, yet still battling mentally with the weight gain. Running became my form of resilience against my eating disorder and slowly, the voice of anger, conditions, and punishment diminished.

By the time I ran my second half marathon, my speed was quicker but I didn’t need it to be, and my interoceptive and proprioceptive awareness had deepened. I told my body it was incredible for being able to do what it was doing, and that I was so proud of it’s abilities.

And unfortunately I did come out of that one with an over use strain injury in my hip. (Resting after a race is still not my strong suit.) This injury set me back another four months or so without being able to run.

Running as a Relationship.

Today I still struggle with balancing fuel and exercise, as well as body image. I am still working with the inner critic to build a more compassionate narrative. Yet if I need a direct mirror to wear I am at that day, running is the fast track to it.

Rather then spending all my free time only running I decided to not oversaturate my time spent with it. I use running now as a tool to drop into my body, my breath being the ancor. I have learned that if I don’t fuel I won’t have energy. And that overexercising usually results in hormone imbalance which leads to low quality of life and weight gain.

Over the past two years I have gradually shifted my relationship with running back to a casual and more intuitive one. I currently do not train for races, I do not require X amount of mileage every week, I do not require any specific speed. I simply approach myself with encouragement and curiosity, and if I find the negative punishing voice comes in, I realize I am running for the wrong reasons.

My sweet spot currently is about four miles, and at an 11min mile. Slower, shorter distance, yet the runners high lasts almost the whole time. I have been able to work my long runs up to about eight miles, but I don’t like to do that often, because then i’ll need more recovery days to not over strain my body.

Running has taught me so many things,

It taught me where I was limitless, and yet it also showed me my limits.

It taught me how to be an escape artist, and how enter my body.

It taught me how to ignore hunger pains and to feel my hunger again.

It taught me relapse and it taught me resilience.

What I recommend if you plan to take up running.

1. Don’t track (at least at first)

   If you want to take up running as a form of therapy I highly encourage trail running through the woods and not to get too caught in the metrics. It’s fun to push yourself but if you have a tendency to put too much weight on numbers I highly recommend not tracking anything at first. Use running as a tool to listen to how your body is responding, and expand your threshold for focus and enduring discomfort.

2. Be patient (the runners high awaits)

   When you first start running, it does suck. It doesn’t feel good, and that is the game you get to play with your mind. Every cell in your body is going to tell you to quit, but trust me, lightly stressing your body is actually good for it. Like yoga, let your body expand a bit into that discomfort, the more you stay with it, the less reactive your mind becomes. You widen your window of tolerance for stress. You will know the difference of “this is uncomfortable I don’t want to do this,” and “ this is actually hurting me.” Eventually it won’t be uncomfortable and actually enjoyable. Running increases gray matter in the brain and rewires long term reward centers.

3. Use it as a somatic tool; notice the inner narrative.

   This is the most profound reason I think people quit running. The inner critic is likely to get very loud even if you don’t have an eating disorder, running puts you really in your body if you allow it, and with that drudges up many ways we talk to ourselves negatively. Use this as a tool to see all the ways in which you are talking to yourself, and try softening and shifting the voice inside. The more compassionate you can be towards yourself the more energy your body will receive as you run.

4. Don’t skip strength training or recovery.

   Boring and basic, yet this is essential. One of the most rookie mistakes I made over and over. Properly fuel and hydrate with electrolytes, eat enough carbs, and protien.

   Stretch quads, calves, feet, and hips, as well as strengthen these areas with weights or machines 2-3x per week. Think of it as an oil change, the engine won’t run well if you don’t do it. Wait after your run until you are not significantly sore. You cannot run away soreness. It’s not like drinking off a hangover.

5. Do strive to push yourself (within reason)

   If you follow all of the above, I believe running can be an incredible tool of emotional and mental alchemy and transformation. Pushing yourself can show you your strength, resilience, and give you confidence in yourself that you have the capacity to move through life and it’s many challenges. I have a client with an autoimmune condition called POTS. Running, has been the thing that has helped her feel capable and strong in her body again. But she had to get over those mental hurdles of her brain telling her she was destined to live in a body that couldn’t handle stress. She doesn’t push herself beyond her limits, she listens to her body, and she found a new love in life; running.

6. Use it as a form of breath-work. Running if given the intention can be an incredible tool for oxygenating the body and focusing of the breath. In fact the two work in tandem. The more you focus on the breath, the better you are able to run, and the more you run the better able you are to focus on your breathing. You can use several of the following techniques.

   -Nasal breathing in Zone 2; supports stamina building, also indicates if you are running too quickly while training.

   -Rhythmic breathing; coordinate your inhales and exhales with your foot strike. It helps prevent injury, always exhaling on the same side can actually create repetitive strain. So oscillating the inhale and exhale can help with the foot strike.

   -Diaphragmatic breathing - best to do pre-run to engage the full capacity of your lungs and prevent shoulder tension.

   I would like to thank for the prompt. As he asked me last week about running. I started writing a lengthy reply then asked him if I should just make an article instead.

   Thank you for reading, If you enjoyed this article please share it with someone you love, consider becoming a subscriber, or have any insights you would like to add I would love to hear them.

   Leave a comment

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Time has always been something that has haunted me. Ever since I was a little girl and I learned of death it’s self, the idea that everyone I know, and everything I experience will inevitably be lost would make me cry instantaneously when ever I would think of, and it continues to plague me to this day on some level.

Perhaps because death met me so young, my childhood painted in the open caskets of my grandparents, and family friends. My closest grandmother was diagnosed with cancer when I was six. It was haunting and terrifying to watch her hair fall out and her mind turn to mush from the chemo. She eventually passed away when I was eleven, a slow corrosive death. Then my father also suddenly when I turned thirteen. I don’t know which is better.

When I was eight my mother took me to see a guru, which gave me a spiritual name Akalcar (Ahh-call-car) Conquer of death and time, or the power beyond time and space.

Time, was always deeply sacred to me, people were precious, every moment something to caress with reverence and care. I rarely took any moment for granted. I have always had a keen awareness that our time here is finite, limited, and I never wanted to waste a second of it.

This reverence for time I believe is what formed my vivid memories of my entire life. Journaling of course helped, as well as meditation and practices of presence early on. But the awareness of death at any turn has kept me close to it.

I believe this is also the driving force for why I am neurotically intentional with my time, every hour is accounted for. I don’t have much free time; meaning unintended for time, even my free time I schedule as drift time. Where I will use it to walk or daydream, and allow my mind to reset.

Mind you this comes with it’s own costs, which is pretty severe anxiety when I do have free time and nothing I intended it for. Which I, like everyone else have a tendency to reach in my pocket for my little dopamine box to distract me from the hourglass of life draining faster than I can conceive.

The importance of the space in between

Since deleting the Instagram app from my phone, I have switched to Substack as primary dopamine, which is by far so much better, due to the most of it being long form content. I am no longer as tempted to reach for it in line at the grocery store, or in traffic.

However I still notice in idle moments, instead of entering myself, I reach for the light box, when I want to leave myself. I check my email, texts, whatsapp, Substack, and so forth. I see that there is still a type of disruption that occurs from this. An interruption of the pause between stimulus.

It’s in this pause that our brain is able to recalibrate, integrate the information we are taking in. This daydreaming time, is one of the most valuable functions our brain can have aside from sleep.

Not only does this time in between allow our brain to digest the overload of stimulus we are constantly exposed to, it also is essential for creativity, problem solving, and reduced stress and anxiety.

Our mind was not designed to take in this much information and constant input all the time. Johann Hari author of Stolen Focus highlights this point perfectly as he explains that constant glorification of busying corrodes our actual ability to focus.

What happens when we lose focus?

This isn’t just about task managing and being able to check off your to-do list with effortless efficiency. This is about your actual ability to sip the sweet nectar of your life. The ability to stay in your body and connected to your present moment sensory awareness.

It is your proprioceptive cognition of life as it’s happening in real time, and here and now. It’s flow state, but also a settling in the nervous system. It’s what allow our body to enter the safe and social balance of curiosity, connection, and creative thought.

If we are able to enter this state, we connect truly with our love ones, we are able to access heart coherence with our endeavors infused with intrinsic motivation— the process oriented desire to act through love of the journey, not from attaining results or an end point.

When we are primarily results oriented we are not present with our process.

Yet this is exactly what filling our gaps of time with billions of distractions on our phones results in. It slowly sips our soul into a vaccum of dull complacency. Prefrontal cortex atrophies, limbic system is highjacked, we cannot find our ground. And of course, we are social creatures, we crave meaning, connection, and creativity. With the phones it is sold to us that it is all offered at our fingertips, all the time.

However when we don’t give ourselves these gaps, these moments to be embodied in our own lived experience. Another program starts to implant it’s self into our very hardware.

The anti aging ads, the reels of unrealistic bodies women on vacation, the dudes that lift 10/7 days a week, the products of capitalism being pumped through feed.

If we are not creating but primarily consuming, we feel so spread thin in our lives from not giving our brain a break that we reach for the phone for exactly that numbing effect.

If we are creating online, and don’t take breaks, soon the very thing we are grasping so tightly too slips away. The irony of capturing moments in our lives dehydrates them.

Numerous studies have shown the corrosion of the prefrontal cortex experiencing constant interruption. It takes an average of twenty five minutes to regain focus after on interruption has occurred, and this has detrimental impairments to working memory, as well as impulse control. Cal Newport highlights these points in his book Deep Work.

What’s worse is the illusion that somewhere out there is better than here. This is the most invasive corrosive programming I believe. The idea that every moment can be optimized. If you are a creator, the physical world becomes a stage for online performance, or an exit point to objectify our digital icon rather than feel our body in real time.

I have not met many people that genuinely enjoy their 9-5 and feel that there lives are fulfilled, I do believe most people desire autonomy over their time. So what a better gateway to freedom then to work from anywhere through becoming an online entrepreneur. Which actually means you work from everywhere if you don’t create boundaries with your time. Nothing wrong inherently with this, I am trying this route myself, but I wanted to speak to the limitations and risks.

Further more the invention of employee communication platforms such as Slack, Homebase, or Connectteam. Now more than ever our very survival is based in being connected, distracted, and interrupted, all of the time. As we speak I am on call for my massage position in Park City, at any moment I could receive a slack message interrupting my focus.

Also if you are genuinely trying to escape the grind like myself, what is rewarded by platforms, is time spent on platforms. And I am not critiquing spending time on platforms, It makes sense if you are trying to build something you must spend time creating it and engaging with community surrounding it. However, what I am more speaking to is the amount of time spent, and the reason why you are doing it. Is the time spent intentionally? And can you feel when your body and nervous system is overloaded, because for me, that line is very fine, and I have to watch it vigilantly.

I speak this because I have lived it. Because it has disturbed me.

At first,

we can’t feel our hunger cues,

we lose our sex drive,

our sleep is disrupted,

we can’t taste our partners lips,

And then,

our dopamine levels are so depleted we can’t even enjoy the slowness of reading a book.

We internally check out and subconsciously try to scroll past our friend sitting across from us sharing with us their most recent impactful experiences.

We forget our loved ones birthdays, we forget to check in when they are going through a hardship, we feel perpetually exhausted and our memory is fragmented.

We claim to have attention deficit but really our brain is taking in levels of input it can’t compute and is shutting down.

This isn’t the natural way to be human, and slowly with all the stimulation we become desensitized, and our finite focus and energy to be intentional with our time dissolves.

How to stay connected to your body in a world of distraction.

Obviously the internet is not going away. It truly is a wonderful tool of connection and creative expression if we allow it to be. Yet we have to realize the power it holds, how it a effects our consciousness and how it is shaping our lives.

We cannot deny if we are not conscious of what we consume, it consumes us. Smartphone addiction is worse than cigarettes because you didn’t need cigarettes to live in society.

By no means do I not fall victim to this addiction frequently. But it’s disturbance has given me fuel to educate myself, to self inquire, and formulate methods that have been effective in creating more balance in my life.

I refuse to let my time be controlled completely by tech, I refuse to let my present life slip away while I melt into the screen.

I believe firstly creating friction between yourself and the device is so incredibly helpful, and I have a few practical tips for this as well as cognitive and somatic rewiring strategies.

1. It begins with the awareness of time being the most precious resource we have, discovering the weight of what that is in your own terms. Asking yourself questions frequently when you find yourself caught. “Is there something more meaningful I could be doing with my time right now?” “Is there a feeling I am trying to avoid by checking my phone.” “What am I noticing in my body right at this moment.”

2. The second is recognizing when the messaging is leaking into your body. I notice a frantic agitation, an inability to settle, and feeling of shame or disgust take over. This is one of the hardest experiences to move through, because it makes you want to crawl out of your own skin, you’ll do anything to leave your body and distract yourself. But what you have to remember is that the illusion that you can escape discomfort in life is exactly what perpetuates more pain. By setting the phone down you are building capacity to experience your own sacred and authentic life experience. By this action, your body begins to refuse to accept the programming telling you that your are not enough as you are.

3. There are practical friction steps you can take to make your phone less addictive.

   -The most effective one I have found is physical distance. Buy an alarm clock, get the phone out of your room. Do not keep it in the same space you sleep. I have found that once I put it on the charger in the other room that is just enough friction for me to not auto-pilot into intruding my most important time in the day which is right before I sleep and as I wake up.

   -Further more you can download apps like dumbphone, or blank spaces to make your phone less visually enticing.

   -You can also use app blockers like ScreenZen that truly limit your time of specific apps. However, I have found that even with this friction on my phone, I tend to go extra hard in my time blocks where I have access to the addictive apps. So I’ve just found deleting the addictive apps is enough to signal to my brain that it isn’t time to use it.

4. Indulge in activities that increase gray matter and long term reward. Build tolerance for stress.

   -Meditation is a great activity for learning to be with your own thoughts, and create space between your reactivity and what you internally experience.

   -Endurance sports or long distance cardio like hiking, walking, running, or cycling. There is so much research to show how this balances the left and right sides of the brain. It also teaches you to maintain focus or tolerance on a slightly difficult task. It not only helps the body experience this, but it gives you spacious time to day dream which is essential for mental health.

   -Yoga, perfect for building interoceptive somatic awareness, unity within body and mind.

5. I won’t have to convince any of you of this one. Engage with and create long form content. Read articles that are meaningful to you, or leave your phone at home and read a book under a tree in the park. I cannot stress enough the importance of this.

Remember your why

The why will be a slightly different shade for everyone but at the end of the day it’s truly all the same. Time is all we have, and weather it’s sipping that cup of coffee in the morning, spending time in nature, looking into your child’s eyes, painting, sculpting, dancing, singing, cooking, or making love.

Remember thats truly what makes you feel alive. It’s your essence underneath the noise.

Nothing and no one can sell this to you, no one can steal this from you. Regardless of the oppressive systems at hand. They do all they can to control time, yet true time is only in the presence, it’s not what you are doing, it’s how you inhabit yourself. It’s what you give your attention to, and in that your intention of how you want to stay connected to what is.

I remind myself of this everyday. I am walking this path with you.

If this article woke something up in you, or it struck a cord, I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

If you enjoyed the images in this article, check out at

https://www.justbehumanphoto.com/

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Murky waters,
threaten my competency,
steal whats affluent,

The mud mangles me,
my limbs become cinder blocks,
cementing inertia,  
as I am jailed to where I am rooting,

suffocated in the stillness,
with no where to rise, and only to sink
down down down,
into the seed of myself,
Is this what it feels like to be planted?  

Suddenly I stop the self imposed strangle,
instead I let the vines of time hold me in place,
slowing me down,
allowing me the space,
to just rest here.

I open my eyes, 
my body pushing upwards towards the sky,
the medicine is in the mud,
nourishing me for whats to come.

I am discorded and carried along,
by an unstoppable force,
who knew,
by only turning towards,
I'd find the key,
choosing me, as it unlocks doors.
to all possibilities.  

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Here I sit, once again editing, editing, editing.

It oddly doesn’t trigger me to read the content anymore. It is a Trauma Memoir. So that means, every single time I have had to edit this book, I would have to on some level, relive what happened to me.

Now, surprisingly, the charge has dissipated. I read the content, and I am actually unflinching. That means I’ve either on some level, healed what I went through or i’ve become desensitized.

At this point I am more concerned about disturbing the receiver of the story and if they actually have capacity to let it land, then I am about feeling the weight of my own story. I know it’s weight, I’ve carried it my whole life.

I have edited this book far too many times to count now. I don’t know the regular round of editing but I began the book with a burning passion and no awareness of the process of writing or publishing a book. It took me two years to write the first draft, then only started working with an editor after the first draft was written.

The first editor was new in the field as well and did not give me direct or accurate feedback. We got about six months through then after she had no feedback for me after reading the climax of the book, I reassessed if I wanted to work with her and I discovered through my own research that my memoir was one hundred thousand words too long.

This resulted in searching frantically for a new editor. As I spent two weeks straight completely butchering and cutting out half of the books content.

Which in writing the initial draft, it felt like discovering, uncovering, and bringing fragments of myself back to life through the writing, mending and blending all of these experiences together and reclaiming those fragments of myself that were frozen in my body.

Chopping it up, felt like taking part of myself, and telling it— “Sorry, your act was good but you didn’t make the cut.” In a sense, I felt I was shrinking myself again.

I changed the narrative inside my mind to “refining.” Like what you do with a painting, sculpture, or art piece. The refining process is necessary, and instead of choosing to view this process as parts that didn’t make the cut, I chose to view it as enhancing key points, and giving those other parts a different job. Perhaps they can be stories for Substack.

When I found another editor, she gave me a lot of really valuable insights into what was working and what wasn’t. Including the entire timeline and structure of the book, which in my mind, was artistic beautiful chaos. Invoking the feeling of what I went through as you read it.

She felt it was unreadable. So I butchered it again, putting my artistic splatter of events back in chronological order. I could see her point where not many people would want to be tossed around a timeline that chaotically. It works for movies but may not for my book, the story it’s self is intense enough. I didn’t want to wear out my readers, and I wanted them to be able to absorb the story I was giving them.

I had a few close friends read it, as well as some acquaintances. All giving me positive feedback, they were able to see me in a different light, and even my closest friend reported knowing all these things about me hit different when she experienced these moments through my eyes. It shifted my readers and touched them in ways i would have never expected.

An average memoir is less than 90 thousand words, I still have 700 to delete and the feedback I received mostly asked me to explain more, not less. So this last edit has been quite the challenge.

More or less, it’s coming up on publishing time soon, and I have been uncertain which process I should take, self publishing or traditional.

I have wanted to keep my integrity to my work intact, and I don’t think I can handle one more request to shrink the story to make it more “marketable.” Yet in the same sense, a part of me really wants it to do well in the market place.

What I am uncovering in this process is my need to please.

Please everyone that reads it, to meet every need of every reader. Which I know is insane. That in and of it’s self is trauma response.

More adaptations uncovered.

My fear of disappointing, confusing, or agitating readers. The “not enough, or too much” wound flaring up in me.

Yet, I have a small quiet voice that is growing louder. That has been molded and shifted by many circumstances of being shut down, squashed or mangled in my speech.

I get to choose now. What I say and what I don’t.

Of course there is the general guidelines for “good writing” vs “bad writing”—does the story unfold at a tasteful pace, does it arc correctly, is it easy to follow, does it hook you in, are there redundancies that make the story lose potency, are there overused words etc?

I know these guidelines and do my best to use them as a template. However, there is something about a persons story that is there essence. If you really read someones words there is a resonance in your own soul. An attunement, a feeling of congruence that can only come from honest writing.

The beauty of writing a memoir is no one gets to decide what is relevant or not for me to share, that is my decision, my knowing, and my journey. This is part of the soul reclamation process.

The extraordinary thing I love about this journey of the memoir is I finally was given the opportunity to be fully and completely honest. When for many years I had to live a half life, a partial self, snipped, cropped, and edited to fit my abusers desired version of me, which he then would reject anyways, because he could sense it wasn’t the totality of me. He could never handle the truth of who I was.

I get to carve my own path forward now, I get the chance to describe the texture of my experiences that have shaped me in detail with my soul guiding the way. I get to let the rivers of words run through my scorched earth and hydrate it again. I get to sing the song of my life into an art piece.

I’ve decided to begin writing my proposal, and even if I end up self publishing. The act of writing a proposal is proof to myself, that I am worth it. Weather a publisher resonates with my work or not, is up to the universe to decide. The fate of my book is not up to me. I have to trust that at the right time, it will be ready to enter the world, and to meet the right people.

My largest fear is of course, cruel critics that do not understand my story, that lack compassion and live to rip people apart. On some level, if that happened, I fear it would validate shadows of my own wounding that lurk inside me. There is a part of me that even fears the success of my book, because the larger the reach the higher the risk to be burned at the stake.

Yet, I question isn’t this a significant reason why I wrote my story? To both stir and shake those that need the earth to quake a bit in their paradigm, and to serve the individuals that are navigating trauma in real time, provide hope, perspective, lived resonance and empathy.

That is the surrender of exposure, many will oppose you, but it’s a risk that is necessary to gain connection to those that you touch with your words. For even the few friends that have read the draft of my book, it moved them in ways I would have never expected. I have to trust that spark, and let it light a fire.

I know ultimately that writing my memoir was the most cathartic experience along my healing journey I could have found.

There is an unraveling every time we write, we enter ourselves from a new angle, because like a river, you never step into the same river twice. As you tell your story, each moment you re-read it, you see another layer of dimensionality reveal itself. You understand yourself in ways you never could before, and others see you in a new light as well.

Perhaps this is why reading it now I don’t feel a charge in my body. The writing carved a path through the pain.

So write something about your experience today, let it unravel you.

Thank you for reading.

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When we arrived, it felt different, or I felt different. Perhaps it was the significant shift I’ve had in screen time, since following the path of becoming a writer and diligently working to finish my book. I felt my usual level of over-stimulation, a bit tired but wired, and a strange new sense of fearing being unplugged.

We arrived mid day and spent some time in town. I found it odd that the first thing I felt like doing was shopping, I bought a nice cactus hat and way too expensive beach towel. I was putting off actually having to face myself in the silence of the sandstone which is exactly what I had come to do.

The desert has a cleansing quality to it, it tends to strip you of everything you are not if you allow it.

I wasn’t allowing it. I was distracted. Moving from my baseline frenetic energy of task managing. I briefly became aware of my state of being- or rather not being in contrast to the wild times in my twenties using plant medicine in the desert when I had days here, not one day. I remember then, my body felt resilient, and I could handle hours of the beating sun on my back. Then, I wasn’t worried about sleep, or aging, or skin cancer, work emails, or who I was becoming. I felt like I had time.

Eventually we made it to our campground positioned by the Colorado river. We were not able to find a spot easily the way I always had in the past, and ended up in a parking lot with no shade, side by side many other people car camping. Instead of silence there was noise. I don’t know why this surprised me, Utah has blown up to be a major travel destination post 2020, especially places like Moab. I felt exposed under the desert sun, which in the past has felt comforting. Now it felt as if it was going to burn me alive.

As we sat on the beach by the river, I stared down at my body and suddenly felt complete disgust.

Agitating, nauseating, shame. How did I let myself get like this? I wanted to crawl out of my skin and into another body entirely.

Where there once was visible ribs, and protruding hip bones there now was a soft looking belly and layer of subcutaneous fat that will not dissipate despite my 100% organic whole food, sugar free, dairy free, gluten free, low carb, high protien diet, and continual daily ab workouts, weekly strength training, and cardio. Triple the effort of my twenties.

I can’t believe this is my body now. Frustration and despair began to grip me.

This was the insanity loop underlying inside that I could feel when I was in town. The thoughts I wanted to keep myself distracted from, this is why I did not want to be still with myself. Truthfully since I have restored my weight and stopped starving myself, this feeling is always humming in the background. Healed “looking” on the outside, still static invasive corrosive thoughts on the inside. It’s not always like this, but when it flares up, it burns.

Knowing my cells are listening, despair washed over me at my realization that all my current efforts to control anything including my thoughts, fall short.

No matter the diet, or exercise regimens, my body will not let go—because my mind will not let go. At this point the only other option to lose weight would to be to starve myself or relapse. With the idea that this would alleviate the cyclic thoughts of how to essentially eliminate myself as I am.

This is a thought cycle I have been stuck in for over a decade, programming from a patriarchal consumer culture that wants you small, weak, and compliant. Internalized beliefs by various comments I have received over the years of how my body should look. Even dumped once for being “too fat.” Followed by the euphoric praise I received when I weighed in double digit pounds- and my efforts of control were working.

Embedded in the cells of my mother line, both my own mother, and grandmother rejected their bodies and focused on purification and shrinking. There was constant chatter of this food or that food being “toxic” and regular commentary on my weight, diet, and those of my siblings.

I always felt I was being “watched” in this way. So now as my soft belly protruded, hips threatened to spill over my waistband of my bathing suit, I watched myself vigilantly. From a far, judging, objectifying, and planning “corrections.” Completely deserting myself.

The cyclic thoughts swirling like a whirlwind. Maybe my posture is just shit, maybe it’s too many blueberries, maybe too much protien, maybe I need to cut carbs entirely again.

I will say I am in a much healthier phase with my body then I have been these past two years since restoring weight and focusing on strength and athletic goals based in ability not aesthetic.

I have spent time in my recovery carving new neuro-pathways into the sandstone of my mind. I have trained my brain to realize food isn’t an option, and hormone health is everything. Low calories and high intensity exercise wreaks havoc on cortisol, and suppresses hormone production, while lowering thyroid function. I cognitively understand, that I can’t do it anymore.

However, the programming still is installed, it’s just taken on a different form of neurosis. Weather it’s tweaking my diet to be even cleaner or just cutting certain foods out all together. There is still a quiet desperation to just have my bones protrude again. To know I am in control.

Since restoring my weight, I have found dissolving into creative projects has helped immensely— as it gives me something else I can carve, manipulate, and create. Although there is a positive aspect of channeling energy and focus into creative endeavors, I believe it is equally important to allow yourself to drop into these uncomfortable feelings. It’s part of the stripping process the desert embodies. I had a backlog, that was now flooding me.

There are periods of time when the ED voice is quieter. It tends to surface when a major change and transition is happening, it gives me something more “manageable” to think about, though the actual ability to manage at this point is elusive. It also flares up whenever I enter a gym or competitive environment where everyone is working out, or when I have to wear a bathing suit, in public.

What I realized sitting on this beach, under the sun, in my bathing suit, as I felt like an ant under a magnifying glass, is number one: I have to move out of the sun. And number two: I was in it again. The same cycle, a new layer.

Later in the day we set out on a hike to Corona Arch, a hike I took at age twenty five. I watched my body the same way then, as I do now, but then with more extreme vigilance for what was acceptable. I would hike all day in the desert sun and eat only cucumber, celery, and hummus. Vegan then, my body was light, lean, flexible and resilient to my abuse. I also had cystic acne, as my body rebelled in some way early on.

As my Fiancé and I walked amongst the sandstone, amongst the ED chatter, the stillness from the rocks actually became a source of anxiety. I realized the level of desertion from my body I had entered. These thoughts were always there, I had just created enough distraction in my daily life I wouldn’t have to hear them. My limbs felt heavy and my heart constricted. My body leading me to feel all the pressure I put on myself to perform, create, and make it all happen now in my thirties.

This was new to me, the desert had historically always been the place I felt my best, spacious, expansive, and dissolving into the delicious stillness.

The desert was the first place I fell in love with the earth, the first place my mother took me on trips. It was in the desert, I learned to be in silence, to embrace the idea of death, to be stripped of distraction, to enter the emptiness.

What I realized here now, is I have deserted myself for some time. I have not allowed myself to still the muddy water inside, and my tolerance for stillness has atrophied.

I’ve deserted my body because there is still a wound where I so deeply reject it.

If I go a layer deeper..

I never knew how I would embrace aging, and I always hoped I would enter it gracefully, but with years of wellness programming, there is still some distorted belief that my body changing is a personal failure, and that disease is a manifestation of something I lacked the ability to notice or correct, or afford. Like a failed test of life.

Thats whats so ironic though, is I know this wellness charade is a multi-billion dollar industry that dresses up as spirituality and purity but is actually just capitalism masquerading as “health.” Why do I comply?

Even one layer deeper.

Somatically, there is a part of me that does not want to let anything in, due to fear of more loss. It’s the same part of me that disengages in intimacy, if I leave before I am left. Then, I won’t have to feel the gaping hole in my chest, If I have already deserted the situation.

Somatically my body learned in childhood receiving something means owing something back. Weather it’s calories in or calories out, or having to maintain a relationship that puts sudden demands on my energy. I feel burdened by having to give when I don’t know how of if I will have the capacity. If I am always in a deficit, then I can afford to receive without debt.

So the voice of the disorder is an adaptation created long ago for a level of protection. In this numb, empty place inside, I am safe from feeling. I am safe from touching the texture of my life slipping through my fingers. If I am not present, then I don’t have to “lose” those moments because I was never there in the first place.

I realize this is the wound embedded in society, of the conditioning around the obsession with youth, patriarchal power, and control. We become so “youth obsessed" That we never really stop to take in the preciousness of life passing us by. I am deeply disturbed that I can realize this, and write about it, yet the coding in my cellular memory still runs me to some degree.

I know I have to find a way to meet that part of me that is so deeply scared and that protects me through various forms of deserting my body and therefore life as it unfolds. From entering my body, I can take the armor off and truly bloom.

We all desert ourselves in some way, because the dissipation of life is often too painful. The very core of any addiction, is fear of loss, fear of change, fear of death, fear of no control. We all have this wound to some degree, and we all have our various mechanisms of numbing out and leaving ourselves behind. What ever it is, it is an avoidance of the absolute shattering grief that this all ends.

But in contrast, if we can allow that grief to crack us open to the preciousness of life, even the most mundane landscapes become extraordinary, there is a flood of presence, magic, and luscious rivers of aliveness when we surrender.

The desert truly does have a way of stripping you with it’s silence of all that is not you.

I am walking this path along side you.

Let this be a reminder to slow down, allow yourself to take in everything rising inside you. None of this life is truly ours anyways, so let it in.

Thanks for reading.

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