​A village they could rely on. People to lean on who could help bear the load and make them feel safe in this world. Just having something to hold them, physically and emotionally.

​Instead, we are all so sequestered from each other that we're forced to rely on corporations, subscriptions, and broken government safety nets just to survive. Some people manage to be successful on their own, but that doesn't mean they're happy and thriving, they're just not drowning.

​So I decided I'm going to build the space we're all missing. A real third space. Focused on messy human connection, good food, and sharing whatever we can.

​If you walked into this place on a random Tuesday, here is what it would look and feel like:

• ​People wandering in on a lunch break or meeting up for a book club.

• ​Someone sipping something warm and cozy in a comfy chair by the window while they read.

• ​A play space for kids with climbing equipment for busy bodies (and good soundproofing!), opening out to a fenced yard, alongside a quiet room for Legos and reading.

• ​A big, open main room for hosting gatherings, yoga, craft skill-shares, talks from local experts, and pop-up markets.

• ​A simple deli counter with local ingredients, good tea and coffee.

• ​Real noise: laughing, singing, and even heated, civil debate.

• ​It smells like dried herbs, firewood, and home.

​I picture myself in a rocking chair in the corner, working on crochet and just listening to the life in the room—available for deeper philosophical conversations, or just quiet company.

​If that vision sounds too big, I agree. That’s why I'm starting small… with a market table.

​I’m starting with a Little Free Library on a table, fresh eggs, homegrown herbs and teas, handcrafted fiber art, jewelry, whatever crafts my kids are making, and eventually alpaca wool. It’s a way for people to find me, learn about the vision, and become part of the process. It lets me build community and capital at the same time so this isn't resting entirely on my shoulders.

​Let’s be honest: making friends as an adult in 2026 is brutally hard if you don't already have deep roots. If you’ve never had a permanent place to land and you've felt like a misfit everywhere you go, putting yourself out there feels terrifyingly vulnerable. I don't have generational wealth to throw at this to make it easy. It's going to take a lot of social labor, and starting from scratch is scary.

​I'm documenting the messy, imperfect reality of this because finding your people is necessary work, even when it's hard.

​You don’t have to build an entire community hub from scratch to start. But I hope watching my process inspires you to reach out to your own small corner of the world. We all deserve spaces where we can exist as our full selves without every single interaction having to be controlled and transactional.

​What that looks like in daily life is:

• ​Migraines 3+ times a week, lasting hours/days at a time

• ​Not just headaches: dizziness, photosensitivity that feels like the sun is attacking me, visual disturbances

• ​Cognitive fog that makes me struggle to remember things

• ​Irritability and mood swings

• ​Language processing issues like difficulty understanding what someone is saying or trouble finding simple everyday words like banana or truck

• ​Dizzy spells that mean no driving or standing, sometimes for hours or even days

• ​Multiple breaks lying in bed needed every day

• No direct sun exposure, I'm basically a vampire now without any of the perks

​I've been dealing with unexpected and worsening health issues since January 2025. At that point I started getting dizzy spells, and then my body went into hyperthyroidism even though I'd never had thyroid problems before.

I lost 40+ pounds in 2+ months without trying because I couldn't eat anything without feeling nauseous. I learned that I was deficient in a few vitamins, so I started taking supplements.

​Next, I chose to start lowering my caseload and adding more breaks into my schedule. I was frequently rescheduling on people and realized that seeing more than two people in a row had become a challenge for me.

Nothing was making a drastic change in my daily functioning. But I’ve always been able to pivot, so I kept trying to pivot.

I didn't want to give up.

​Then earlier this year, in 2026, I had a massive flare. I'd had flares before, but nothing like this. I was basically bedridden for 2 weeks after that massive snowstorm we had. I learned later that the snow amplifies sunlight in a dangerous way for photosensitive people like me. I took a 2-week medical leave from work, communicating with my clients to reschedule for when I hoped to return.

​During that flare, my baseline changed.

After the break, I could still work and do my job, but only for a couple hours a day and I frequently had to cancel. Even with adding 30-minute breaks between each session, I was struggling to make my brain do what it was supposed to, and my language processing started to fail after an hour or two of intense cognitive effort (like therapy sessions) every time.

A couple weeks after returning from that brief medical leave, ​I realized continuing as a therapist was no longer a viable option. 

I decided to close my practice.

It broke my heart, but I knew my inconsistency was becoming a liability for the people I worked with. I couldn't fully show up for them anymore, and that wasn't fair to them—it could have become harmful had I let it continue. 

So I decided to bow out before it got any worse.

​I filed for SSDI around that same time, because if I can't stand for long periods of time and I can't think for long periods of time, I can't work.

​I just got denied today.

Not because I’m not sick enough. But because the agency forgot to communicate critical information about my consultative exam, and rather than fixing their own mistake and rescheduling, they simply stamped a denial so their internal timeline looked clean.

I did everything they asked.

​It's a humiliating, dehumanizing, exhausting process, and I complied with every request. But none of it mattered because they screwed up and didn't want to mess up their timelines. And I'm left with no recourse but to appeal and wait another 6–8 months to see if that person will do things differently.

No accountability for the caseworker who shoved me aside.

No accountability for the agency that drags this process out to get rid of as many applicants as possible.

​I once had a cop tell me “I can find probable cause to pull anybody over if I follow them long enough." That doesn't speak to good police work or public safety. It speaks to the exploitation of natural human error.

The SSDI process is much the same. 

Demand flawless compliance in a long, redundant, complicated process with unrealistic expectations for applicants already managing complicated chronic illness and the nightmare that is the healthcare industrial complex. All so they can deny us when we inevitably miss a deadline, misunderstand some requirement, or are not given the information needed to complete a requested task.

​The goal is to prevent as many people from accessing our benefits (they are OUR benefits after all; we paid into them with our paycheck taxes) as possible.

And then on the other side, there is no recourse for the time wasted, no interest given for holding my money for years. Even if they wrongfully denied me, there is no compensation for missed opportunities or debt accumulated. I give the government a free loan and lose money on inflation. And there's nothing I can do about it.

​This system sucks…

​Somewhere along the way, we bought into the illusion that a frictionless life is the ultimate goal. We’ve optimized our environments to such an extreme degree that we have forgotten how to be uncomfortable and survive. If a room is too warm, if a line is too long, if an interaction is slightly awkward, our modern nervous systems register it not as a passing sensation, but as a systemic failure. We believe that if we are uncomfortable, someone has done something wrong.

​But comfort isn't safety. Comfort is a drug.

​I know this because I spent the first part of my life locked in that cage, chasing that high.

​I grew up in upper-middle-class suburbia, where indoor climate control is treated like a birthright. In my childhood home, my dad kept the air conditioning so cold that it was practically freezing inside during the peak of summer. I grew up expecting—demanding, really—that my physical environment adapt to me, never the other way around.

​Then, I moved to an old, poorly insulated apartment in West Texas.

​That summer, the thermometer outside hit 115 degrees. Inside, our struggling AC and swamp cooler couldn’t drag the temperature below 85, period. We spent our afternoons sitting around in the heat, fanning ourselves, waiting for the hours to tick by until the sun finally went down, or driving to the grocery store just to stand in the dairy aisle for relief.

​And I remember being so incredibly angry about it.

​I didn’t just feel hot; I felt attacked. I felt like the heat was a personal affront, an act of aggression being committed against me by the universe. My brain was spiraling into an existential panic:

What do you mean I can't control my environment? What do you mean I don’t get to make this choice? What do you mean life is happening to me in a way I cannot stop?

​Looking back, the absurdity of that anger is glaring. It was 115 degrees outside. An indoor temperature of 85 degrees was actually a vast, life-saving improvement. But because I was conditioned to believe that total control was the baseline of a good life, a completely normal environmental reality felt like an emergency.

​This is how comfort becomes an addiction.

​Just because we can block out the world doesn't mean we should. When we treat every minor physical or emotional friction as an enemy to be optimized away, we pull the shades down. We put blinders on. We create a cozy, climate-controlled bubble that keeps us from seeing what the world really is, and worse, keeps us from connecting with the people around us.

​We trap ourselves in a state of perpetual emotional childhood. We mistake our frantic attempts at control for safety, unaware that the walls we’re building to keep out the heat—or the awkwardness, or the grief, or the effort—are actually just the bars of our own cage.

To be clear, this isn’t a call for pointless masochism. I’m not suggesting we throw away our air conditioners because they’re "tools of the machine." AC is a tool, and heat can be genuinely dangerous. Like any potent drug, comfort can be life-saving when we need it, but dangerously addictive when we abuse it to numb ourselves to the world.

​I don't mean we should suffer forever. I just mean we need to learn how to accept that discomfort is a natural, baseline part of being alive.

​Learning to tolerate discomfort doesn't restrict your life; it frees you.

I have major sensory issues, and for a long time, I let those boundaries dictate my world. But I chose to train myself not to let my sensory triggers control my capacity for experiencing life.

​Because I practiced letting go of that frantic need for control, my world got bigger. Now, on a sweltering summer day, I can sit outside, feel the humidity, be sticky, and just watch my kids play. I don't spiral into an anxious rage. I don't feel attacked by the season. I can just exist in the moment and think, Oh, I feel sticky. I’ll take a shower in a little while.

​I can choose to be uncomfortable for a moment because I know I will survive it. And on the other side of that survival is the whole beautiful, unfiltered world, waiting for us to finally step out of the cage.

Tennessee just criminalized being unhoused and made it a felony to sleep in public places with a punishment of up to 6 years in prison… for sleeping.

A Class E felony virtually guarantees a person can never rebuild their life. With severe barriers to employment and housing, the state effectively ensures that prison becomes their mandatory, taxpayer-funded permanent address. 

This isn't just bad for the unhoused person. When someone is arrested, it costs citizens money in multiple ways: police, courts, jails, etc.

• First, we pay the cop to find them and arrest them, plus we have to pay for the cop to go to the hearing and do paperwork. 

• Then we pay the courts to do more paperwork and run through the proceedings, including a lawyer for the state and a public defender for the accused side this demographic usually can't afford one. 

• Then after all that, we pay for their housing anyway… but it's almost double what independent housing would be and they have no freedom to improve their lives or better their community.

Once that person is finally released, they are often in a worse position than before they were arrested. They have nearly zero chance at a job, much less a good one, and minimal housing options since almost no landlords will rent to felons. This means there is a higher chance they will end up homeless again or committing crimes to try to support themselves. 

It drives me crazy that we know, empirically, that poverty drives crime rates way up yet we refuse to help those living in the actual statistics.

For example, programs for housing assistance to help veterans actually prove this point. Veterans used to represent 20-30% of the homeless population but in the last couple decades that number has dropped to 10-20%. 

Guess what changed? 

Programs encouraging case management and direct funding for permanent housing improved… that's what changed. Imagine what we could do for our society if we applied that to the rest of the population. What if we could save money and no one had to fear homelessness? I think it's worth it to help people and pay less… don't you?

This isn't about public safety or fiscal responsibility. It's about punishment. We are paying more to punish everyone who is in this position than we would to give them a chance to do better, for themselves and their community. 

We talk about criminals 'paying a debt to society,' so why is the state paying a premium to keep people trapped in the system? Especially when we could break the cycle simply by being pragmatic.

It seems that kindness is the frugal option. Looks like my bleeding heart could actually help the economy, who knew?

​As a former therapist who spent a decade in the field, my initial instinct—the one bred into us by years of defending the integrity of our profession—was to look for the nuance. But as I watched the comment section unfold, my heart sank. Several licensed professionals had descended on the post. They were snarky, condescending, and defensive. “We aren’t all like that!” they shouted in unison. “You must have just had a bad one!”

​Admittedly, my first thought was about how harmful that statement could be to a field that already struggles to convince people to take the leap into healing. But I tried to post from a place of curiosity, offering what was intended as gentle education about the field. When the OP responded in good faith about their own personal negative experiences in therapy, I was reminded of my own former clients coming to me with horror stories from their past. I realized the post was not meant as an attack; it was about the scars of being dismissed or misunderstood in the one place that isn’t supposed to happen.

​Watching a community of healers respond to that raw, defensive pain with systemic mockery didn’t protect our field. It actively damaged it. It proved the original poster’s worst fears right in real-time: “My pain, my experiences will never be validated” even by those who are literally trained to hold it.

​When someone yells into the void that a dominant system is inherently predatory, it is rarely an academic critique. It is almost always a cry for help. It means they have been deeply, systematically, and intimately failed by the very people who promised to keep them safe. And when the therapy community responds by circling the wagons, it looks like we were never truly safe to begin with.

​I’m not saying we are responsible for being clinicians in every situation. Therapists are allowed to be off the clock and be human as much as anyone else. But that doesn’t make it less disheartening to see so many in the field resort to the dismissal of this type of pain and anger. If this post was the first and only time I’d seen this behavior, maybe this essay wouldn’t feel so necessary.

​The “Not All Men” of Mental Health

​The defensive uproar in that comment section reminded me of another cultural battleground. It sounded exactly like the reactive responses from men in comment sections when women speak out about systemic unsafety: “Not all men.”

​When a person speaks out about harm caused by systems that give power and authority to certain people, they are not asking for a roll-call of the “good ones” in that system. They are describing a lived reality of survival. When a therapist jumps into a thread to whine, “But what about ME? I’m one of the good ones!” they are centering their own professional ego over a client’s trauma. They are using their authority to shut down a conversation about real problems in the field. They are demanding comfort and validation from the very person who was crushed by the system they represent.

They are trying to have it both ways: they want the authority of the “Licensed Professional” title to win an internet argument but none of the clinical discipline or emotional maturity that is supposed to come with it. They treat the public space like a lawless wasteland where they can dump their unexamined countertransference, using a title that stands for safety to inflict a digital slap in the face.

To be clear: therapists are allowed to be messy, vibrant humans outside of the therapy room. I often encourage it because it helps us stay connected to our humanity, which makes us better providers and people. But if you are going to jump into a public space explicitly wearing your professional badge, you cannot use your credentials to say, “I am objectively right and your trauma is wrong because I have a degree.”

If these clinicians were actually acting from a place of honest humanity, they would say: “Ouch, as a therapist who cares deeply about this work, it’s really painful to hear that’s how we’re perceived.”

That is human. It owns the feeling without weaponizing the title. But coming at a hurting person as if they are the problem because they don’t understand the inner workings of our industry doesn’t protect the profession. It completely ignores the very training we claim makes us professionals.

​Let’s be honest about the power dynamic: If a profession holds structural, legal, and emotional power over vulnerable populations, the burden of proof is entirely on the professionals to act trustworthy. It is not the job of a wounded client to exhaust themselves trying to guess who the “good ones” are.

​Yes, there are rigorous licensing standards, intensive supervision, and mandatory ethics boards. I know this firsthand—I lived it for ten years. But bad actors exist. Ruptures result from a bad fit. Ego gets in the way. And when a client encounters that, the institutional protections they were promised feel like a lie.

​Dismantling the Closed Doors

​During my conversation with the OP on that Thread, she attempted to walk back her critique by sharing a personal observation: she had heard about her roommate’s experience of practicing therapy during graduate school, and it felt irresponsible to her that a training therapist was allowed to be without a supervisor in the therapy room during each and every session. She noted that it felt unsafe for clinicians to practice behind closed doors at that stage of training.

​From a clinical standpoint, it’s easy to dismiss that observation. We therapists know about client confidentiality. We know supervision happens behind the scenes through intensive case reviews, audio recordings, and grueling oversight. A supervisor sitting in the corner of the room like a chaperone would destroy the clinical rapport and make the client intensely uncomfortable.

​But if we stop playing defense for a second, we can see the deeper truth in her discomfort:

​Therapy does happen behind closed doors.

​It requires a terrifying leap of blind faith from the client. When that trust is broken behind those closed doors, it feels like an invisible trap.

​Our job as a professional community is not to police the coping mechanisms or the sweeping generalizations of hurting people. Our job is to show them what safety actually looks like. If someone has been burned repeatedly by the mental health complex, they don’t need a lecture on the bureaucratic fortress of state licensing laws. They need to hear: “Your pain is valid. It was never supposed to be that way. And you have the absolute right to walk away from any helper who makes you feel unseen or unsafe.”

​A Call for Better

​We have to do better. We cannot expect the public to trust a system that berates them the moment they speak about their wounds.

​To the clients who have been burned: You have permission to reclaim your power. You have the right to interview your therapist before you ever share your soul with them.

​Ask them direct questions during your consultation:

• ​How do you handle feedback?

• ​What do you do when a rupture happens in the relationship?

• ​How do you check your own blind spots?

• I felt uncomfortable with this treatment/response/dynamic in the past, what’s your take on that?

​A safe, self-reflective practitioner will welcome those questions with open arms. A defensive one will give you all the red flags you need to walk away. It’s completely okay to challenge them to explain how they will keep you safe as you expose your vulnerability.

​To my former colleagues still in the field: Let’s stop fighting the people who are hurting.

The next time you see a post blasting our profession, put down the ethics code, quiet your ego, and remember the first rule of the room: Meet the panic with presence, not a defense attorney. It’s also okay to walk away and not comment if you find yourself triggered.

​Let’s focus less on defending the castle walls, and more on actually being the safe spaces the public deserves.

The suburban mom “American Dream” life was killing me, so I dug up my suffocating roots and am building a new way to plant myself.

My clinical practice is officially closed, and I’m done editing my voice to fit polite, institutional boxes. Out here, we look at the scaffolding of society instead of just the paint job. Expect sharp critiques on systemic hypocrisy, deconstructing old timelines, and a lot of dark wit. We talk about boundaries, reclaiming our finite energy, and treating emotions as information…not irrationality.

I’m incredibly neurospicy, and my nervous system is on a hair-trigger thanks to perimenopause and decades of hiding myself. Don’t worry, we’re going to talk about real ways to navigate those things here, too. I’m currently transforming into an RV nomad to save myself and my kids from further nervous system collapse.

I’m building a mutual aid-based community hub called The Rooted Tangle. I’m focused on rebooting old-school analog connection, sustainable living, interconnected humanity, and rewilding.

Mostly, this is all based on a good old-fashioned refusal to trust or rely on a failing government, corporations, or partisan bullshit.

If you like your hippie love with a side of ‘fuck you’ punk, stick around. We are learning to express the rage, sadness, and joy the world told us to bury.We don’t mask here, and we definitely don’t second-guess our own worth anymore. Drop a comment and tell me what brought you out of the shadows. Let’s find each other. 👇🏼

How did we go from a part time, per diem job that expected ‘politician’ to be a side note in your career while you lived and worked in the actual community you represented to a political ruling class of multi-millionaires most of whom have never had a job that would have qualified as ‘essential work’ during the pandemic? 

Don't look at me… I don't actually have the answer… But I do think it's important for us to discuss what the job was intended to be versus what it is. I believe that gap explains the corruption that we all know and see throughout the government, at all levels and on both sides. 

This is not a ‘both sides’ essay. This is a systemic essay intended to remind all of us that these people are supposed to work for us. It's a challenge for all of us to reflect on the current reality of government. 

Somewhere along the way the focus of our government officials, elected and otherwise, became working for corporate sponsors and working for themselves. 

They started using their positions to manipulate the institution and their focus shifted… to control the masses and maintain wealth and power. 

How many times have you heard of a politician not showing up for work because they didn't want to do a particular vote or because they were busy campaigning? What would happen if you did something like that at your job?

‘Politician’ wasn't always a career. In the beginning of this country, a congressional seat was paid a strict daily rate. If you didn't show up, you didn't get paid. In 1816, when Congress tried to give themselves a flat annual salary instead, the public outrage was so fierce it was called the 'Salary Storm' — voters aggressively threw them out of office because they knew a guaranteed paycheck would breed an insulated ruling class. Sadly, we can see today that they were right.

How do we demand better from the people who are supposed to make our country work?

Have you ever actually seen a politician in your local area or a federal government employee in the wild? Or do you just see them giving promises on TV or in sanitized events or town halls? 

How often do they seem like real everyday people to you? To me they seem like actors playing a part, always auditioning for the next role, always maintaining more than one opportunity in the background.

We have been swept up into their dog and pony show. 

We buy the inflammatory rhetoric that our fellow neighbors are to blame for everything happening. We believe them when they say one side is better than the other.

We let them manipulate us into choosing them over…

and over…

and over again. 

What happens when we stop following the misdirection and look at what they're really doing? 

I truly believe there are a handful of people who work in the government that would continue to show up the same way even if we looked at them with eyes wide open. But unfortunately the vast gaping majority would have masks ripped away to show the ugly truth of their motivations underneath.

So what do we do about it? 

We can vote, sure. But they have codified things that keep us from holding them accountable so it will likely take more than voting or at least many, many years… possibly generations… of slow policy changes to make a real difference. 

I'm open to alternative suggestions... 

But still I encourage everyone… keep reading and keep learning and keep fighting for each other instead of for them.

Change over generations is not ideal but isn't it better than staying the same? 

I don't know about everybody else but I'd like to see it move in a positive direction, even if the movement is miniscule. 

Even if I don't see the fruits of that labor. 

I want my kids to have a better existence than I do. I want them to have representation that actually knows who they are, who actually understands what it feels like to exist as a human being under the policies they put into place. 

There is nothing easy about looking at this massive system and realizing that we're being tasked with stopping a runaway train.

It's devastating to think about the pain of the long, exhausting transition that may be necessary to turn it around. 

Either way, it's time for us to open our eyes and realize that the people around us are not the problem. 

The problem is unchecked power. 

The problem is accepting the status quo.

The problem is scapegoating and blame with no real plan to solve anything. 

The problem is corporate sponsors and big money in politics. 

The problems are endless and vast and yet I believe solvable with tenacity and patience. 

As should:

• Roger Fortson

• Sonya Massey

• Ta'Kiya Young

• D’Vontaye Mitchell

• Eric Garner

• Michael Brown

• Tamir Rice

• Breonna Taylor

• George Floyd

• Tyre Nichols

The list goes on… and on… and on…

It shouldn't be this way.

Police shouldn't be so quick to kill. Training could be better… but mostly they need to be held accountable for mistakes just like any other citizen.

The Illusion of Justice

Why is this acceptable in our society? Thankfully more and more people don't think it is, but the ‘laws of the land’ still protect police over people.

Just because something is illegal doesn't make it a death sentence. And just because something is legal doesn't make it right or moral.

The police aren't the moral authority. They do not get to decide guilt or innocence. It's not their job to carry out a sentence. It is their job to apprehend people suspected of crimes so they can have due process and a chance to tell their side of the story.

That's the whole point of our legal system. Supposedly…

Here's my concern: the justice department has lost any sense of morality (if it had one to begin with) and is now focused on maintaining the status quo. Maintaining ‘order’ is the primary goal, not ‘to serve and protect’.

The Myth of Needed Immunity

Fine. Maybe we need a police force (I think people like social workers, therapists, crisis interventionists, and others could do 90% of the job police currently do) but why do they need immunity?

I didn't have immunity as a therapist. Doctors don't have immunity. Lawyers, teachers — no other job has immunity written in the books to my knowledge. Yet we all manage to do our jobs just fine.

Why do we allow people to have deadly weapons with minimal training and oversight and then not demand they be held accountable?

The law has been used against the people since its inception. I don't doubt that police have helped some people, but their job is mostly about protecting stuff. And historically, the law has not aligned with morality (slavery was legal in its time, for example).

My point is that if police were actually held accountable for mistakes like the devastating loss of Kohen Wiley, maybe they would be a little less reactive and consider the consequences of their actions.

Maybe they could avoid murdering babies.

The "Grace" Gap

Last week, the US government almost wiped out $2 billion in mental health and addiction grants overnight. While they did backtrack after public outrage, the fact that "suicide prevention" and "trauma-informed care" were the first things on the chopping block shows that empathy is now viewed as an optional luxury.

The Hardline Alternative: While those grants were being cut, the administration called for a $1.5 TRILLION military budget… that's a 50% increase on an already bloated budget to build what they call a "Dream Military" in a department that can't pass an audit.

In other words…

We are being told we have…

$1.5 TRILLION!!!

…for new weapons, but we can't afford to help prevent 22 veterans a day from taking their own lives. We have money to send them to war, but no empathy for them when they come home with the scars. This isn't 'fiscal responsibility’ it's a fucking betrayal of the people who sacrificed the most, the ones who get thanked for their service to their face but forgotten… or used by policy.

We are choosing the power to destroy over the power to heal and it should piss you off.

What strikes me again and again is how many of them arrive carrying a kind of emotional poverty… not a lack of feeling, but a lack of adults who could meet those feelings with steadiness. They come in starving for presence, for someone who doesn’t panic at their intensity, for a space where their inner weather is not treated like a threat.

And the truth is… that kind of space is rare.

I’ve been told there’s something different about my therapy room… a place where intensity isn’t treated as danger, and I’m not afraid of the storm. I can sit with someone unraveling… trembling, sobbing, shouting, even screaming about wanting to die… and I don’t see them as fragile or broken. I let the wave rise and fall. I always check in on safety but I don’t treat emotion itself as the emergency.

Adults forget what it feels like to have emotions that large. We forget that we once had that same fire. We forget how quickly we were taught to smother it for the comfort of others. And somewhere in that forgetting, a generational hunger forms… a famine of emotional nourishment that spreads quietly through families, schools, communities.

That’s the tragedy we don’t name:

so many people grow up emotionally underfed.

Not unloved.

Not untouched.

Simply never met in the place where their feelings lived.

Psychology tells us emotional expression is essential.

Society tells us it’s a problem to be fixed.

So people learn to fear the very thing that makes them human.

Most of us never had someone who could sit beside us and say:

“Feel it. I’m right here. You won’t disappear.”

And when I sit with a young person shaking under the weight of their own emotion, I can feel the depth of that poverty… not just theirs, but the adults who raised them, and the adults who raised those adults. A lineage of people who were never shown how to feel without shame.

It makes me wonder how many people have ever truly known emotional abundance… a life where feelings aren’t rationed, hidden, apologized for, or punished. A life where we are taught not just how to behave, but how to feel.

Big emotions can be overwhelming, yes.

They can shake you.

They can sound like a storm tearing through the body.

But they are not the enemy.

They are the proof that you are alive.

And none of them last forever.

The storm passes.

The body settles.

We return to ourselves.

Maybe emotional poverty persists because we think emotions must be controlled, managed, silenced.

Maybe emotional abundance begins the moment someone finally says,

“Feel it. I can sit with you in the storm.”

Let’s talk about what would actually happen if America followed that advice… not the fantasy version, but the real-world consequences.

First off: I am literally in the demographic they’re targeting (women 15–44). When they say “let them go,” they’re talking about me and millions of others who keep this country running every single day.

And here’s the first thing they didn’t think through:

Women don’t exist in isolation.

The author talks about “cats” and “battery-operated appliances” like every woman in this age group is single, childless, friendless, loveless, and utterly unattached. As if 40% of reproductive-age women would just silently disappear with a suitcase and a plane ticket.

Reality:

Most women have families. Partners. Children. Community ties. If we leave, we aren’t going alone.

If even a fraction of those women actually took the government up on their offer, the U.S. wouldn’t lose just “some women.”

It would lose entire households.

👋Spouses go with them.

👋🏻Kids go with them.

👋🏼Teens go with them.

👋🏽Queer partners go with them.

👋🏾Multigenerational families go with them.

👋🏿Breadwinners go with them.

👋Caregivers go with them.

👋🏻Workers go with them.

We’re not talking about a niche slice of the population.

That could mean 70+ million people leaving the country.

That alone would be the largest coordinated migration in modern history.

But that’s only the beginning of the fallout.

What happens to America if tens of millions of women (and their families) actually leave?

1. The birth rate doesn’t just decline… it collapses.

Women 15–44 are the birth rate.

Remove millions of them from the population 👉🏻 the country enters a demographic winter it cannot recover from.

The U.S. already has a declining fertility rate.

This would drop it below recovery levels… think Japan, but with no social safety net to absorb the shock.

There is no America without women.

There is especially no America without young women.

2. The workforce implodes

Women make up:

🖕The majority of healthcare

🖕🏼The majority of education

🖕🏽The majority of caregiving

🖕🏾Over half of the entire labor force

🖕🏿60% of college degree holders

Remove half of that… plus all the families attached to them… and the economy can’t function.

3. The U.S. enters an instant economic depression.

Not “a recession.”

A depression.

Like… a real one.

Here’s why:

📉 A sudden drop of tens of millions of workers = labor shortages in every sector

📉 A massive reduction in consumers = demand collapse

📉 A dramatic increase in elderly dependents with no caregivers = healthcare system failure

📉 A drop in tax revenue = state and federal insolvency

📉 A shrinking population = loss of global economic standing

You can’t remove one-third of your productive population and expect the country to hum along.

4. America loses its future.

❌Birth rates gone✖️

✖️Workforce gutted❌

❌Families fragmented✖️

✖️Social systems collapsed❌

This is how civilizations ☠️☠️

And it’s remarkable that the people championing “family values” are the same ones cheering for a fantasy that would erase families on a national scale.

The most revealing part?

The people who push ideas like this don’t actually believe women have:

❤️partners

🧡children

💛families

💚communities

🩵responsibilities

💙economic power

💜social influence

🤎cultural importance

🖤literal demographic necessity

They imagine us as disposable, unconnected burdens.

What they fail to understand…what they cannot seem to understand… is that women are the connective tissue holding this country together.

We are the…

✊Workers

✊🏻Caregivers

✊🏼Educators

✊🏽Innovators

✊🏾Stability

✊🏿Future population

If America paid us all to leave, it wouldn’t be saving money.

It would be ending itself.

And the fact that this even had to be explained says everything about the people who can't understand the value of women…

…until we’re gone 🖕🏻

• Kids have always created meaningless little rituals to annoy adults.

• It’s not demonic. It’s not a secret cult. It’s not a psyop.

• It’s literally just… kids being kids.

In the 90s, annoying adults was basically a team sport.

We had entire rituals devoted to it:

• That “S” symbol we drew on everything

• “Talk to the hand,” complete with the dramatic head swivel

• Chanting “U-S-A” in class for absolutely no reason (or whatever else came to mind)

• Slamming slap bracelets

• The phase where everyone tried to invent a fad by repeating nonsense

• Tormenting substitute teachers with synchronized coughing, pencil-dropping, or pretending we all suddenly forgot how to read

None of it meant anything. That was the whole point.

When kids don’t have power, they create tiny moments of autonomy… and it often shows up as ridiculous behaviors adults don’t understand.

Developmentally, this is normal.

Psychologically, it’s healthy.

Socially, it’s bonding.

Adults tend to panic because they forget what it felt like to be twelve and stuck in a system where everyone tells you when to sit, when to speak, when to pee, and when to think.

Of course kids invent nonsense.

Of course they chant things just to disrupt the monotony.

And of course adults get uncomfortable when they can’t interpret it…

That’s the dance we’ve always done.

The only difference now is that instead of rolling our eyes like normal adults, people sprint to “demonic,” “deviant,” or whatever “4 D” label from psychology feels dramatic enough. That’s not about kids… that’s about grown-ups panicking because “If I can’t understand it, I better shut it down.”

So no… 6-7 isn’t summoning spirits.

It’s summoning childhood… which is usually safer.

Let the kids be weird. They’re supposed to be.

America glorifies what makes it lonely, and women silently pay the price | Opinion by Paulina Barahona Noseda

I’ve been trying to articulate this for a while now… the way America glorifies the exact conditions that make people lonely, and then pretends the fallout is a personal problem. This piece puts words to something I’ve seen in therapy, in my own life, and in the stories women carry around like “it’s just how things work”

The cultural story is always the same: keep going, don’t complain, don’t need anything, and if you’re falling apart it’s because you’re weak or “not managing well.” Meanwhile, the entire system is designed to produce disconnection. It’s designed to make caregiving invisible. It’s designed to convince women they’re “burned out” instead of acknowledging the problem is structural.

The article names it clearly:

“Mothers’ loneliness is largely ignored, because they keep performing the unpaid labor that holds the system together.”

That’s the sentence that hooked me.

Because that’s the truth under everything… women’s loneliness is convenient. As long as we’re the ones holding the emotional, logistical, and relational infrastructure together, nothing has to change. Men’s loneliness gets headlines. Women’s loneliness gets absorbed into the unpaid labor we were already doing.

This piece connects the dots: loneliness isn’t a character flaw. It’s cultural design. And if we’re going to talk about an epidemic, we need to stop pretending the solution is “self-care” 🙄and start talking about the systems that make connection impossible in the first place.

If we’re ever going to build something better, we have to start by naming this for what it is: not individual failure, but intentional design. And once you see the design, you can choose to step outside of it. That’s what I’m doing here… imagining a culture where connection isn’t the exception, but the foundation.

The other day I was waiting in line at a fall carnival for my daughter’s school because she wanted her face painted, of course. I haven’t talked about my kids much here, but my daughter is a little ball of fire and energy…and a lot of love…but mostly energy. So she was bouncing around, talking to friends, orbiting me like a bright star. Most of the kids around us were familiar faces from school. I just kept a vague awareness that she was safe nearby.

It was a long line.

And in those kinds of situations, I need something to keep my hands occupied or I will start attacking my own body through a stimming behavior called picking. I pick at my nails and cuticles when I’m uncomfortable (boredom, social overwhelm, sensory overload) and I’ve spent my entire 40 years trying to find ways to stop.

So I pulled out my crochet.

And yes, I am here to explain how crocheting is resistance.

2. The first spark of curiosity

The little boy in line with his parents in front of me kept watching what I was doing. One time when we made eye contact, I asked if he was curious. He smiled. His mom looked up and said her mother crochets, then showed me photos of a couple things she’d made. They were beautiful. She told me her mother had been crocheting for 30 years. I said, well, that explains it.

As I crocheted, that mom and I chatted occasionally. Other children wandered up to watch, ask questions, or just stare fascinated.

Kids haven’t yet learned to fear authenticity. They’re still drawn to the people who are visibly alive in the world, the ones whose nervous systems broadcast safety and curiosity. They feel truth before they understand it.

I kept thinking: this is what community is supposed to feel like. Easy. Safe. Comfortable. Accepting. Real.

3. The silent boy

Reflecting later, I realized the little boy never said a word to me. But he smiled and engaged through presence and curiosity. We communicated simply by existing together. I spoke, he responded without speaking, and it worked.

We’re getting better as a society at accepting nonverbal communication as valid and layered. Still, we often forget that in adult-child dynamics especially. Adults cling to the idea that spoken language is the most reliable communication method. Yet with children, behavior is often the clearest truth. Words can be faked. Actions rarely are.

Many neurodivergent folks learn to watch for behavior because the spoken social rules are often loaded with hidden meanings we are expected to decode. When someone’s behavior and words align, it’s a relief. When someone doesn’t use words, but their actions are honest, it can feel even clearer.

That little boy and I both understood: we could just exist as we were.

So I crocheted.

He watched.

And slowly, others joined us.

4. My internal monologue

The classic neurodivergent post-event analysis.

After overwhelming social moments, I tend to dissect them. Partly because my behaviors have not always been read as benign. I’ve been punished for simply existing as myself. Many neurodivergent people know this story.

It has taken me years to choose to be myself anyway. The crochet was me grounding, stimming, preventing harm to my body.

And still, I wondered what others thought.

For context: I live in rural, very homogenous, conservative Northeast Tennessee. I stand out. So instead of trying not to, I try to brace myself. I try to understand what other perspectives might have been present in that space.

5. The revelation

I briefly thought about the possibility that someone in the crowd glared at me for being weird or imperfectly adult. Then I realized something.

Not one moment of real connection in that line was changed by whether someone else disapproved. If anyone did judge me, it didn’t matter. The ones who wanted connection came forward.

And then I thought about that little boy’s family. His mother told me they were from India. They’d been here more than a decade. He’s four and has only visited family in India once. That is a lonely migration story, even if surrounded by people.

If my visible weirdness made that mother feel even a tiny bit safer or more seen in this place, that is enough. I hope others felt that warmth too.

6. The takeaway

We can ground ourselves in public, model presence, and invite others to be human with us.

So why is crochet resistance?

Because sometimes resistance is simply not doing what’s expected.

Sometimes resistance is being visibly flawed in public.

Sometimes resistance is letting connection happen.

Maybe part of resisting the system is refusing to hide the qualities children still recognize as human. Maybe the world would be kinder if more of us kept that instinct intact.

People in power want us sanitized, disconnected, scared.

Resistance is everything that prevents that: warmth, connection, silliness, joy, love…

And messy imperfect crochet.

#CrochetAsResistance

It’s not because I believe I can protect them from pain… it’s because I know I can’t.

As a therapist, I see every day that everyone has their own trauma. Not everyone calls it that— sometimes it’s “drama,” sometimes it’s “the thing that changed me” — but everyone has at least one. It’s part of being a whole human. So when I think about my kids, I’m not afraid they might get hurt; I’m bracing because I know they will. I just don’t know when, or how, or what shape it’ll take. I can’t prepare for it… and that’s what makes the waiting so hard.

It’s a strange kind of awareness that comes from therapy work: you can see pain as inevitable, survivable, even transformative. But when it’s your own children, that awareness doesn’t soothe you. It just makes you hyper-aware of what’s coming.

The alchemy of adult therapy

I think that’s why I love working with adults and older teens. They hand me their trauma clay — the stuff life has already given shape — and ask me to help them make sense of it. They come in tangled, cracked, half-formed, and say, “Can you help me see what this was supposed to be?” There’s already material to work with. There’s something to alchemize — something that has weight and story and history.

With kids… it’s different. It’s not that their clay hasn’t hardened; honestly, none of ours ever fully does. We’re always being reshaped by what happens to us. But kids just don’t have all their clay yet. They haven’t collected enough experience, enough friction, enough mistakes to start seeing their own outline. The clay comes from living — from disappointment, from love, from getting hurt and learning what that hurt means.

That’s why it’s hard for me to work with kids (and why I admire play therapists so much… that's a tough job). I don’t know who they are yet without their pain lenses, without that defining contrast. I can’t see the shape of their becoming… and I think that same discomfort shows up in my parenting too.

The parental mirror

When my kids struggle — when they’re frustrated, when they don’t get what they want, when life is just unfair — part of me wants to fix it. But the other part knows that this is the work. These are their micro-traumas, the small moments that teach endurance, perspective, and patience. Sometimes they have to eat food they don’t like. Sometimes they have to lose. Sometimes they have to sit in feelings that don’t have tidy endings.

I can’t give them resilience without giving them the space to suffer a little… and that’s a brutal truth to hold as both a therapist and a mom. Because I know how necessary the pain is, but I also feel how much it hurts to watch.

The unbearable knowing

So I brace.

Not because I’m naive, but because I’m informed.

Because I know what comes next for every human being, and I love mine too much to pretend otherwise.

What makes it bearable (ish) is the reminder that pain is part of the clay we all gather. Every hard thing they face will eventually become part of their form. And when they’re older, when they bring that clay to me and say, “Help me understand who I became,” I’ll be ready to sit beside them… not to shape them, but to help them see the beauty in the sculpture they made.

But today I fell into a little rabbit hole of random research, and I just wanted to share:

She wasn’t just a badass.

She was a revolutionary, feminist, pioneering, industry-redefining badass.

She didn’t just star in I Love Lucy.

She:

• Co-founded a major TV studio

• Became the first woman to run one after buying out Desi

• Greenlit Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and a bunch of other iconic shows

• Invented the sitcom format as we know it

• Said things like “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than the things I haven’t” and meant it

• Rewrote the rules for what women could do on screen and off

And she did it all while being hilariously weird, chaotic, and completely herself.

So yeah. Lucille Ball wasn’t just funny.

She was a quiet cultural wrecking ball with great comedic timing.

Just thought everyone should know.

Photo credit: Lucille Ball in the iconic Vitameatavegamin scene from I Love Lucy (CBS, 1952). Used here under fair use for commentary.

Note: *This is a personal reflection on perimenopause, not medical advice. For clinical guidance, consult a trusted healthcare provider.*

I grew up watching midlife crisis tropes play out on screen… if you don't remember, let me remind you: men buying sports cars and swapping their wives for younger models, women losing their shit in public over hot flashes and being labeled “hysterical.”

These were always punchlines.

Midlife, as we’ve been shown, is something to mock.

Now that I’m in it, I want to burn those tropes to the ground.

Because perimenopause is not a punchline.

It’s a reckoning.

And honestly? A fucking ignition.

It’s Not a Breakdown-It’s a Becoming

I won’t lie… this part of life is exhausting. It’s terrifying. I often feel like I’ve lost control of my own emotions. But when I really sit with it, I realize: I’ve never felt more like myself than I do right now. And I think that’s what scares people. Not the hormones. Not the hot flashes. The clarity.

Yes, sometimes I want to scream because my kid is making a noise that feels like it’s cutting through my brainstem. Yes, sometimes my emotions spiral out in ways I know are hormonal. But more often than not? I’m reacting to things that deserve rage.

Like the unnecessary suffering in a world with abundant resources. Like the dehumanization built into our systems. Like the relentless expectation that I stay polite while the world burns.

And when I don’t hold it in? When I stop pretending it doesn’t matter?

I get called “dramatic.”

I get told I’m overreacting.

I get labeled as hormonal or unstable.

Well.

Fuck you.

I see what I see.

I feel what I feel.

And I’m not apologizing for it anymore.

Midlife Isn’t the End… It’s the Forge

This part of life is not about fading away.

It’s about burning off everything that was never real to begin with.

The chaos. The grief. The rage. The bone-deep exhaustion of having lived inside systems that were never designed for our wellness. We’ve spent decades contorting ourselves, working jobs that drained us, raising kids in impossible conditions, surviving trauma, surviving expectation.

And now? Now our minds and bodies are done pretending.

This isn’t a collapse… it’s a combustion.

Midlife isn’t where the story ends.

It’s where we get to decide what was ours, what wasn’t, and what the hell we want to do with what’s left.

We already have the perfect metaphor: the phoenix.

What else is midlife but that?

I’m not here to reproduce.

I’m here to clear the way.

To burn down the systems keeping others from thriving.

To leave behind resources, wisdom, and truth like kindling for those coming after me.

The Real Fear? There’s No Going Back

Once you step into this fire, once you let the layers burn off, you can’t return to who you were.

And that’s the part no one talks about.

This isn’t puberty. It’s not growth through biology. It’s growth through choice. Through reflection. Through reckoning. Through grief.

This is the moment where you realize:

If I don’t change, I calcify.

If I don’t choose the life I want, no one’s going to hand it to me.

And if I keep waiting for permission, I’ll die waiting.

But most people don’t do that reckoning.

They blame. They spiral. They double down on the roles that robbed them of themselves.

Or they implode in quiet, self-destructive ways… because it hurts too much to name what they lost.

And they were never taught how to grieve the life they didn’t get to live.

This Is the Fire. Not the Fade.

Perimenopause isn’t the end. It’s not a slow slipping away. It’s a full-bodied uprising.

It’s the voice that finally says:

“Why is it always my fault?”

“Why do my emotions offend you when yours have always ruled the room?”

“Why is it crazy when I speak the truth, but normal when I’m quiet?”

This isn’t new. This is who I’ve always been.

The only difference now is that my hormones make it harder to fake it for you.

You’re Not Too Late. You’re Just Arriving.

This isn’t about falling apart.

This is about becoming who you actually are—without apology.

This is about loving the parts of you the world never could.

Listening to the voice you used to mute.

Letting the fire come, because maybe the fire is where you finally feel alive.

I’m building something. Or at least, I want to. I have no idea how to make it happen. I don’t have a nonprofit. I don’t have a building. I don’t have investors or even a formal business plan beyond what I’m about to show you.

But I do have this vision. And I know I’m not the only one who needs it.

So I’m sharing it here.

Raw, incomplete, messy, and real. If this speaks to you, I’m asking for your help.

The Vision

The Rooted Tangle Community Center is a third space for people who feel left out, left behind, or burnt out by the systems that were supposed to support them.

It will be a flexible, community-led hub for healing, connection, and shared resources. Think: part wellness center, part public library, part co-op, part community garden, part hangout spot where nobody expects anything from you.

It’s designed to be open-ended, adaptable, and rooted in care.

The Business Plan (very rough draft)

1. Mission

To create an inclusive, accessible third space where members of the community can connect, rest, learn, receive support, and build resilience—without needing to prove worthiness or pay beyond their means.

2. What It Offers

• Mental health services (drop-in support, referrals, short-term therapy)

• Basic medical care (cold/flu support, preventative care, education)

• Nutrition & small business mentorship (from volunteer professionals)

• Workshops & community classes on everything from budgeting to foraging

• A cozy café/deli where members eat for free and others can pay what they can

• Weekly community events (social & educational)

• Healing garden & food forest (wild, edible, medicinal, and peaceful)

• Volunteer-led services with a decentralized model (you offer what you can)

• Open office hours for connection, support, and resource-sharing

3. Location Dreams

Ideally? An old country club, school, warehouse, or church. Something with outdoor space that we can turn into a massive, wild healing garden.

If no ideal space exists, maybe we build it. But the goal is flexibility and beauty, not perfection. It should feel lived-in and real.

4. How It Works

• A donate-what-you-can membership model

• Recurring annual or monthly donations

• Sponsorships available for those in need

• Non-members can pay for food, events, or classes as they go

• Rentable spaces for local use (low frequency, high impact)

• Transparent accounting and reinvestment in the space and staff

5. Funding Phase One

We probably need between $250,000 to $1 million+ depending on location.

The first $250k would go toward:

• Hiring a core team (admin, accountant, legal, logistics)

• Securing and renovating a building

• Launching basic services and community events

• Paying early staff upfront with year-long stipends to reduce burnout

6. Long-Term Sustainability

• Membership fees (tiered)

• Paid food service and classes

• Consulting/speaking contracts

• Rental revenue (limited)

• Grant funding and private donors

Who This Is For

This is for the people the system forgot. This is for the ones who never had a community… or had to leave theirs behind. This is for the neurodivergent, the deconstructed, the caregivers, the burnt-out and the brave. This is for anyone who wants to rebuild something that feels real.

What I Need From You

Honestly? I don’t know. I need a team. I need a space. I need legal help and funding and encouragement and probably a million other things.

But mostly, I need to know if this speaks to you. If it does, here’s what you can do:

• Share this post with people who might understand

• Reach out if you have knowledge or skills to offer

• Tell me what you think I should do next

• Tell me who else I should talk to

I’m wide open to ideas, collaboration, support, critique, and next steps. I’m not trying to build a perfect nonprofit. I’m trying to build a place. One that feels like home for the people who’ve never had one.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Let’s root down. Let’s tangle in. Let’s build something real.

Welcome to Revolutionary Crone

I’m Liza (aka Revolutionary Crone) and I created this space to talk about what I see in the world as a full human with a therapist’s lens.

My hope is to bring validation, awareness, self-compassion, community, and a little satire and dark humor to the table. Because after 7 years as a therapist, I can say this:

Therapy has taught me more about humanity than any degree or textbook ever could

And it’s challenged everything I thought I knew.

A professor once told my grad school cohort:

“Whatever you avoid in yourself will walk into the therapy room and sit across from you.”

He was not wrong.

Every session, my clients show up… messy, brave, human… and they trust me not to judge them. And every session, they challenge me to look inward. To notice my reactions. To reflect. To grow.
And I don’t take that lightly.
When something stirs a reaction in me, I don’t dump it into the session. I hold it, honor it, and unpack it later… because that’s the work. Not just for clients, but for therapists too.

I’ve learned more about myself in these rooms than I ever expected.
And I’m deeply, genuinely grateful to every client who made that possible.

But I digress.

The point is that being a therapist has given me access to so many inner worlds, and after years of witnessing the full, messy, contradictory truth of people’s lives, it’s hard to see anything as black and white anymore.

Why Revolutionary Crone Exists:

I created this space to share the insights I’ve gained — and the questions I still carry — with more people than I could ever reach one-on-one. Because the things that are making us sick?
They’re not just in our heads.
They’re in our culture.
Our systems.
Our assumptions.
Our inherited beliefs about what’s “normal.”

And I believe we deserve better conversations about all of it.

So this space will be a mix of:

• Reflections on therapy, healing, and emotional truth

• Critiques of the systems that shape our distress

• Notes from the inside of the mental health field

• Satirical fiction, dark humor, and narrative rebellion

• And reminders that you’re not broken… you’re responding to the unbearable with the only tools you were given

If that speaks to you then welcome.
You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Start Here: A Few Posts to Introduce You

If you’re new here, this space is equal parts therapeutic rebellion, emotional survival, and existential honesty. These posts are a good place to start:

Therapy Reimagined

What if therapy wasn’t just about coping in a broken world?

• Therapy Can Heal... But Can It Also Control?
  On the quiet ways therapy sometimes reinforces the very systems that harm us.

• What if Mental Health Was Designed for Real People?
  A short piece on how the current model doesn't fit actual human needs.

Systemic Gaslighting, Cultural Mindfuckery & Manufactured Burnout

• The Great American Mindfuck
  A breakdown of how “freedom” is sold to us as compliance with corporate values.

• They Want Us to Disappear
  A response to the MAHA report and the stigmatizing and minimizing of ADHD within it.

• Work. Obey. Conform.
  Emotional regulation is not rebellion — unless it’s self-directed.

Grief, Burnout & Inner Worlds

• I'm Not Meant to Hold it Alone
  On collective grief, emotional overload, and how we’ve been abandoned by every structure that promised support.

• Held Hostage by Hormones
  The collision of biology, burnout, and emotional survival.

Satirical Shards from the Crone Multiverse

• Raised on Villains
  How media shaped our sense of morality — and weaponized our emotions against us.

• Coming Soon: MIMS the Word (Pilot)
  A satirical family drama where dysfunction isn’t the exception — it’s the mission.

🧱 Philosophy & Core Ideas

• Yes, Patriarchy Is Real — AND It's in Your Head
  How internalized power structures shape what we think is “ours.”

• The Stillness That Broke Us
  Reflections on the pandemic, cognitive dissonance, and how calm was never neutral.

Or just poke around — everything here is connected, even when it’s weird.

Welcome

🚩 Please don’t fall for hype like this 🚩

There’s a moment.

Right before someone joins a hustle cult or conspiracy spiral.

Where what they really need is someone who’s been to the edge and came back with a map.

Where they can be seen and not judged.

Where they can unravel and find themselves.

That’s where I come in. And I’m not the only one.

We listen, we witness, we only guide after we confirm the direction.

Because growth and healing are completely individual and completely unique to each of us.

There is no one size fits all.

And there are serious accessibility issues in this country for real holistic help.

But real self-help exists. It doesn’t treat you like a broken productivity bot who just hasn’t read the right tech-evangelism books.

This list? Just one example of the kind of predatory clickbait self-help I'm talking about.

Even the article itself is part of the grift—it's just a promo funnel for their paid service, using big names and tech bro bait to reel people in.

It’s not about healing. It’s not about growth. It’s about selling you fear, hustle, and billionaire logic.

✨ Human Compatible – “How to align AI with human values so it doesn’t murder us.”

✨ Life 3.0 – “The AI apocalypse is coming, maybe… but in a sexy sci-fi way.”

✨ The Master Algorithm – “Let’s find the one algorithm to rule them all.”

✨ Superintelligence – “What if AI becomes a god and we’re ants?”

✨ Zero to One – “Step one to being a billionaire: monopolize and crush competition.” (Thanks, Peter Thiel 🙃)

What they’re really saying:

“Forget systemic change. Just optimize yourself for a collapse.” or “You just haven't been smart/strong/aggressive/visionary/etc ENOUGH.”

Because then it's not their fault you're suffering, then it's yours.

You don’t need to read about AI gods or corporate dominance to feel better.

You need books (or tools, or support) that actually care about your humanity.

🧠 Want something better than billionaire hustle bait?
Here are a few books I have read and genuinely recommend—because they don’t try to “fix” you. They help you understand yourself, reconnect with your power, and sometimes laugh a little while you're at it.

✨ The Body Keeps the Score – Trauma science, nervous system truths, and how our bodies remember what we try to forget.
✨ Women Who Run With the Wolves – Myth, wildness, and reclaiming the parts of yourself patriarchy tried to bury.
✨ Anarchy Works – Real-world examples of mutual aid, cooperation, and how people actually organize without oppressive systems.
✨ Existential Kink – Shadow work meets liberation. For when you’re ready to admit your unconscious mind might be kinky.
✨ The Tao of Pooh – Yes, that Pooh. A beautifully simple introduction to Taoist wisdom through the eyes of a bear with no brain but endless calm.
✨ Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics – For those of us who hate sitting still and don’t want to join a monastery just to feel less like we’re losing our minds.

This isn’t a “fix your life in 5 steps” list.
It’s a handful of things that helped me come home to myself.

And if y’all like these, I’m glad to recommend more as I find them.
Really good self-help books aren’t always easy to find—trust me.