Today was one of the hardest days I’ve had in a long while. I’ve been up since 2am - heart pounding like it’s going to explode out of my chest. I can’t really eat because my anxiety is giving me nausea. I can’t think straight because my mind is racing a million miles an hour.

Today every point of action was met with a friction. Every attempt to close a loop actually pulled the loop wider. I spent most of my day crying. Tears run down my face as I force myself into some kind of therapy to type out these words in attempt to clean out and calm my insides.

I need to dance. And scream. I need to run through the woods and literally somehow find the strength to forget.

I started a new part time job. It’s reminding me how soft I really am. How much my perfectionism is ruled by my survivalism. How many hours and days of my life have been spent doing things that didn’t really empowering or encourage me to be myself. And how so much of my life has been spent straddled surviving by masking and overcompensating to hide imperfections that threatened failing in ways of not being able to take care of myself or live in ways that felt fully aligned.

One of my best friend’s dad is dying.

He’s at the end of his journey in this lifetime. And with cancer.

I am realizing I am angry. And sad. Grieving. And feeling helpless. Not only in my own shit storm of a life. But in this whole dying thing.

Today was hard. And it doesn’t matter, I still have to show up tomorrow to grind for a dollar and figure out how to give grief a voice that can be felt.

I haven’t really been feeling too much about anything out loud because there’s also not space for the unknown to be felt. The world seems like it’s rapidly self-combusting and everything around me is falling away in ways that feel terrifying and invigorating somehow.

It’s certain we will all transition at some point throughout our life. Sometimes those transitions are from one season or chapter to the next. And at some point that transition is from this life to the next.

It sucks when it’s met with elongated suffering. Just sucks.

And it’s humbling to face another’s death daily and all the ways it makes you ponder about your own self.

I see myself dying and I feel myself running away from it all. I moved to the mountains to have space to myself. I was met with the grief of the world I’ve held together for so long. And the grief of so many that I’ve just met.

I sat on the porch watching the sunset today. Smoking to shift my nervous system and find a permission to feel my feelings and disconnect from all the things that have been sending my system into haywire. My roommate asked if I was okay. I said no. And she asked if I wanted a hug. She held me and didn’t pull away. Just held me in that moment and let me melt into myself.

I couldn’t tell her I was sad about my friend’s dad because she’s in her own grief portal of her dad passing recently. I feel guilty. Like I can’t share or shed. Logically, I know this is silly. And I realized as I pulled back again today from saying the words out loud. That it’s not really about her. That it’s about me and fearing creating the space to face what I’m feeling - both the anger and frustration and the fear of facing the honesty that this chapter in life is coming to an end.

The transition of someone I love.
The pain that they’ve felt.
The closing out of another year of my life to hesitantly welcome the next.
The surrender to the unknown of my own existence.
The humbling of imperfection that is stirring the pot.

I fear writing sometimes. Because words feel so permanent. And they hold power. I filter and curate my sentences to protect the vulnerability of those around me and the tender parts of myself. I never knew how to say the right things out loud without a pen in my hand. And the moment some read them and told me what they felt - I started to find myself.

Nothing feels more important to me than to write. To create. To feel.

Fred reads my writing. He always encouraged me to chase my dreams. He is a thinker. And sharer. He cared.

And i think this is part of what has made writing today hard - but also necessary. Because all too often we wait until there’s no space to say the things that put holes in our hearts out loud. We wait till the ones we want to hear them are no longer listening for one reason or another. We live for regret. And center longing because we fear vulnerability, softness, and love.

For much of my life the men I loved most made me feel invisible. Not intentionally - I don’t think it ever is. But because they didn’t understand me. They didn’t see the tenderness that I needed. My dad never read my writing willingly. His mind always moves. His hands are always fumbling and fiddling with things. He’s one of the most incredible examples of love in action I’ve ever known. But he never understood the ways in which the artist needs to be held.

Fred has always had time and a thought for me. Not from a place of teaching me a lesson per say - although that’s always the intention of a dad. But from a place and heart of an artist. Someone who understands the agony and devotion it takes to truly create.

I have been sad lately about the truth that so much of my time in this life has been trying to figure shit out. Trying to learn a task to make a buck to somehow try to teleport to another moment in time so I can enjoy and be present for what comes next. Trying to understand and strive to be someone people could depend on - even though I some how couldn’t really depend on myself.

So much of how I’ve always made my money made me mute myself. It hurt my heart and held me hostage - a prisoner to the agony of not fully knowing myself. Every moment of every day right now is holding two contrasting mirrors. Showing me the consequences of dulling and the possibilities of creating. It hurts. Deeply. Not only because it’s hard. But because it’s tender. Because it has the opportunity to become anything. Showing me the fears that linger beneath the surface of survivalism and rule my existence in ways that continue to overshadow the depths and truths of myself.

I check in with my friends who are there with Fred weekly. I think about him every day. I am sending him little messages trying to be a light in his day from a far somehow. I feel torn on if I should go to be with them or if I should stay the course. My human is tired. Broken. Broke. And I don’t know if a man finding peace needs another exhausted sad girl to remind him that he’s confronting his own internal mortality. But I know that no matter what - I have to write.

I saw him last Christmas and spent some time in conversation talking about spiritual things. My memory has become shit for some of the things that feel most important. The stressed state I’ve been healing through these couple of decades has reshaped my brain in a way that I often have trouble accessing the small and important things. But as I sat at the kitchen table with him during the holiday - watching him eat slowly and with focused intentionality - it felt nostalgic. It felt important. Not just because we all knew at that time the state of his existence. But because it felt honest. Connective. Like a moment I would remember with the passing of my own time.

He listens when I speak. And asks questions about what I think. I sent him my Substack a few days after I saw him so he could read it if he wanted to. He sent me a note on Valentines Day telling me he was reading what I wrote. He felt connection to things I said. And it gave us something to talk about.

A little over a month ago he replied to an email with my latest post and said he would FaceTime me soon because he had things to tell me about life and this moment I’m in. And I think even without this conversation, I’m hearing the things he has to say.

I never really felt grief until a few years ago. I felt attachment from breakups with lovers. And codependency from separation. Anger and shame from the inability to fix addiction. And rage from betraying myself.

But grief only came to me when I started to learn opening to vulnerability. When I started to learn love from deep wells and not deficit. When I started to discover all the relationships that were connected to me that were paying attention to the way I moved through the world - purely because I exist.

This is when I became too soft for this world.

And softness is where I’ll stay.

I think this is what the ending of anything teaches you. That it doesn’t matter how much how hard you become. The softness will always settle in at some point or another. And then you’ll be in the trenches, forced to surrender or be swallowed and drown. Endings show you that surrender isn’t really the same thing as submission. And it doesn’t mean that you’re quitting. It just means that you’re leaning into listening. And giving space for what needs to be felt.

I feel surrender.
In my body.
In my breath.

I’ve been bracing for so long.
Begging for transition.
For the discomfort and pain to numb.

I feel tender.
In ways that make me want to crumble.
And that feel like they’re shaping me into more of myself.

I’m so tired of fighting to survive.
Shielding the stories that live within myself.

To create is to destroy.
To make art is to not fear love.

To shape stories out of one’s life is a gift and a luxury we too often erase
By chasing the survival of a life that we no longer want.

As I write these words and shed deep tears. I feel a peace that I needed to know. I think of how my best friend called my today on her way to go see Fred and help him document what he wanted to leave behind. I close my eyes between lines and smile - feeling into how I can imagine this version of Fred is existing in the world. Not too differently than the Fred who used to sit with me and tell me his thoughts when I’d go visit. Because I think that’s the greatest gift a lifetime gives us. Not only the invitation to become ourselves. But the courage to face our life by sharing our wisdom with whoever will listen as a legacy of the journey it took to soften in a world that demands we be hard.

I know that the closing to this chapter in my life is not only an invitation, but a demand to stop being so damn scared of being tender. To take the risk of losing it all - and letting go of everything I've ever known to show me what it is that I am meant to uncover, to create, to share with the world.

This is a permission, or perhaps a reminder, that the softness that is shaping me is the legacy of those who I know and have known who are showing me the depths of vulnerability and what matters beyond the moment when it comes to living and dying.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

The forever with a lover. The immortality of a parent. The belief that youth has an ending. And that the story we once believed in is the only one where we’ll have a happy ending.

There’s a way that we too often refuse to clear out, burn down, shed - to reshape into new form. Too often we spend time straddling the fence of our past and present, looking behind like it’s a compass that will guide us through where we’ve never been.

For those who follow and pay attention to astrology - there’s an intensity that can’t be ignored moving us into and through a portal of time. A rapid fire of transformations by way of shedding, grieving, confronting, and whether we like it or not - deep deep releasing.

I’ve watched every person near me slowly peel off - layer after layer - of what and who they thought the were. Including myself. Literally revealing new, seamlessly unrecognizable, but somehow familiar parts of self.

I went hiking last week with a new friend. I trusted this human without hesitation. Probably because I can deeply feel how much they trust themselves. I can feel the authenticity in their excitement and curiosity for the lessons they are discovering in what is currently making them feel alive. I can feel myself reawakening in my intuition to trust what is unfolding in front of me - in my trusting of my own way of moving through the world.

My heart holds so much love. There’s a way that I feel so deeply that sometimes I can’t deny my body and mind’s begging to tune out and go numb. But when it comes to love, there’s a way that I can’t seem to find the depths of it - no matter how much I open my heart. And every time I feel satisfied in love, something comes along to reflect to me how much sweeter it gets when you let down your guard and stop trying so hard.

I often think about how we know love when we don’t fear knowing pain. And we know pain, when we don’t fear too much of anytime. True pain is not in the clinging to - but in the releasing and letting go. It’s in the gap that lives between reality and what has yet to come.

Grief isn’t loss, it’s love unfolding in every single form. What we knew. What we have yet to understand. What we remember. What we are afraid to forget. What we fantasize about. And how we say the right things the wrong ways and feel deep regret. How we feel frustrated because we don’t understand parts of life that were only designed to form calluses over the wounded parts of our insides as a way of strengthening the pulse of our own hearts.

Every day I walk the hills of this mountain town. And I imagined that I’d be stronger, but I currently feel softer. Not weaker. But like a feather. Durable, fluid, interesting, freeing.

I feel like I’m floating. Carrying a million stories inside. Looking for the right place to land. Curious about the earth around me, that’s holding me, and how it has the invitation to let me hide in plain site. How sometimes I just blend in without anyone noticing my existence. But the ones who seem to pay attention, feel something significant.

Like a feather, I am a collection of patterns that are designing a beautiful portrait of parts of my life. How even if I wonder away from what was comfortable and once felt like home - I can take new shapes and discover what else I can become.

The owl has been a powerful presence in my life - directly and adjacently to others over the last month. It’s been a messenger for me for a while now, but as I count down towards the last days of this chapter of my life, I become more sentimental. Patience fits a little differently. Need has a truth that can’t be ignored. But with this, necessity is taking the lead and leaving me hungry for building something new that leads to something more. And this seems to give every symbolism a deeper meaning.

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A few years ago I started to get the message that I needed to make something more of my life. And I kept dragging my feet - mostly because I didn’t really know what more meant. And probably because I had no idea how to see what was on the other side and beyond this place of void that you must sit with in between what was and what is becoming.

I think one of the most beautiful things I’ve been learning about birds is that they’re not afraid to fly. They trust the wind. And they know the importance of shedding. Leaving beautiful gifts that are parts of themselves behind for others to find.

They don’t cling to what they’ve always known - even if and as they visit familiar places. They approach every moment with a curiosity that rewards them with that they need.

Food. Something curious to see. Water to bath and play in. A new song to sing. The excitement of taking flight to both discover something new - but also to save their own life. The reward of nourishment and a meal that was gifted from the diligence to commit to what they saw and intuitively move at the pace needed in that exact moment.

I have known the owl for some time. And each time she appears, a different lesson, wisdom, and strength grows within me. Right now I feel the understanding of the necessity of seeing without shifting the truth in any form. Allowing what is to be exactly as it is - and to let go of the ways in which I have chosen to see or center what felt right or good. Leaning into and learning the depths of honesty that are necessary to form a rich life. To form a life that is truly one’s own. To understanding the ways in which seeing - and moving with discernment and precision - really shape the realities of one’s entire world. How greed is detrimental. How there’s a necessity to the full cycle and circle of life. And how perching - sitting, waiting, listening, observing - gives you the information you need to understand what is and why it is in your own world.

The potency of feather medicine expands in a way that says - one is enough to shape the way you seek and stay open to being present in the moment and engulfing in your reality. Because it only takes the reward of finding the one feather- the one beautiful feather that was left just to the side of the path - to ignite joy, pleasure, and connection within you. It only takes the one feather to shape a story of the life that it held and the places it had been. The body that gave it a home before. And the ways in which you’ll hold onto it or release it for someone else to create meaning with.

As I balance letting go and creating space for new things to form. I feel myself discovering peace and ease in the softening of my body. And the ways my resistance to the unknown is changing. With each breath, I hope the exhale leaves my lungs at the pace of a gentle summer breeze. And each inhale comes with an aroma of something I’ve never taken in before - like the pattern of a bird’s feather fallen.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

08.17.26 | 8:11A

There are moments in life where life strips everything away from you. Little by little slowly, so that you can have the space to release what’s ready to be let go. And to feel what it is to fall apart, but not break.

Sometimes things happen so suddenly that it’s tragic and traumatic, and these moments shape us too.

But I’m not talking about the tragedies. I’m talking about the moments when things continually fall apart over time.

A break up, then a loss of a job.
A hardship.
A struggle.
Another.
Over and over again.

It seems like it’ll never end. One by one.
Little by little.
One thing after another after another.

It fucks with your head. It feels like you’re losing your mind.

But I think more so than losing your mind, you’re losing your grip.
The thing and the things that you’ve been clinging to so hard that you can’t see who you are.

It comes in the moments when we start to dull. Dim. Stifle our own magic. I think it comes in the moments when we lose ourselves in the world outside of us.

It comes at times when we think we know who we are and what we’re doing and everything seems to perfectly fit together.

When we almost have it all.

Because I don’t think that the journey of life is about having it all. I think it’s about learning to live and leaning into love over and over again.

And I don’t think that we can really know love until we know loss. And we can’t really understand what it is to live, if we don’t get challenged with what it is to fall apart.

Our heart only beats as steadily as the ground that we stand upon. And sometimes we feel rocky and shaky. And our heartbeat feels chaotic. And it’s in these moments that we must move, move our feet, move our hips, move our body, move our lips. We must shake and tremor and remember what it is that we hold in our own insides.

Not the mirrors that we see externally. Not the ways that we mimic everyone around us or conform to the standards of society.

But it’s in these moments that we really learn our own courage.
Our own strength.
Our own truths.
Because no one can save you from yourself.

And no one can shape who you are.
It is you that knows.
And the knowing comes from the living,
the loving,
the losing,
the seeking,
the discovering.
The taking,.
The receiving
The holding.
The clinging.
The shattering and releasing.

Falling apart to find the pieces to put back together.
And build something new that is meant to be discovered.

I want to know. If this is what life is, what is the point of living so rigidly. Of collecting so many things if even with all the luxury and comfort, we must be uncomfortable, and continually face discomfort.

I wonder how much do we really need?
In this moment, I hold so many things.

Belongings, people, places, memories, data on my computer, emotions, feelings.

I feel. tired and anxious.
I feel afraid and hopeless.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel, because the tunnel feels foggy.
It feels like a mystery.

And not in a way that is fully exciting. But often in a way, that is exhausting.

There are many days that I cry. I just let the tears run down my cheeks and spill over from my eyes. There are many days that my insides feel so fluttery. I feel sick, and I know that it’s just a sensation to fuck with my mind.

This is where resilience is built, and these moments where it feels like there’s nothing that can be controlled, that everything is out of my control.

These are the moments where tenacity sets in, where you can focus on everything external.
Misconstrue the sensation.
Misuse, the feeling.
Fold to the pressure.

There are moments when I forget how strong I really am. Where I lose myself. And I lose my mind. But these moments have intent and intention. I know that I am strong enough to face my own darkness and come out on the other side.

I know because I’ve tried.
I’ve tried to end my own life.
I’ve tried to quit.
And to give into the pain.
But even in the moment of my deepest despair, I knew that there was something there that was for me. That was shaping me.

So, as I monotonously walk these mountain roads daily, seeking connection to something that’s close to myself. Looking for a remembrance of who I am and why I’m here. Not in this mountain town, but on this earth, in this moment in time.

And I rewrite the way that I exist. Not to be a savior of someone else. But to surrender, to the deep well of love that exists within myself. To hold truth and to transform what it is that I feel something beautiful, memorable, impactful. If for no one else but myself. If for nothing else other than two settle my breath and give me ease to exist within my skin.

This is what I’m doing.
This is who I am becoming.

I shift over and over again, and I look for ease. I look for ease. I look for ease in the moments that are shaping me. It feels like the messages of pottery. Something, too, that I’ve been avoiding for so long, is currently calling me again. For the first time, perhaps, but it seems so known.

I’m here looking for what it is that each day holds. And I’m discovering that the meaning of life often is given because we want life to mean something. And the hopelessness that we feel in life exist often because we fixate on what we cannot control.

If the world becomes so small, just for a moment, then all that exists within it is myself, I wonder. I wonder. What will my world be, if it is just me? euni - here - living - breathing - existing.

Is this the world I want to live within?
Because if it’s not, that’s where my work begins.

There’s no one that will save me. No one that will love me. No one that will hold me or shape me, or show me. There’s no one but me. And if I surrender to myself, what will I see? Who will I be? What is there waiting for me?

How long does it take to discover the depths of one’s own self?
It doesn’t seem to pace with what’s needed in the time of life.
It seems to move too slow or too fast all the time.

But if I can forget and I can surrender what will my life become?

What is it being in this moment?
And if I look out into the world and I let myself be seen, what is it that my pure existence is shaping for those that get the opportunity to witness me.

I think that that is the point, not to be, not to do, not to try, but to allow the shaping of my insides to translate to the outside.

And some may call this art.
Some may call it living with my heart on my sleeve.

It doesn’t matter the language that you put to the feeling. What matters is what do you want to do with what you feel inside and how do you want to allow this to shift you? And to push you towards who you are, not what you’ve been.

To open the walls, to what is possible when you create space and make room for your own becoming. These are the questions I’m asking myself daily. These are the things I discovered to ponder today.

So if these words land - if they reach you - wherever you are, I hope that they hold medicine that helps you settle a little more easy and open your heart.

End of September, I’ll be opening a new offering, MIRROR + MUSE a creative incubator for artists who want to make work that feels. Curious? Ready to create work that’s truly your own? Submit your application to join us.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

I don’t think we fear vulnerability. I think we fear being fully seen. The ways in which someone can not only see the best parts of us. But how they will discover the things we like the least. The messy parts. The under slept, hungry, angry, sad, needy, unhinged versions that are hard to deal with, and something challenge the ways are perceived.

Everyone has an ugly side. And what I’ve learned living in a city that centers good vibes only for far too long, is that when we reach our edges of yuck, there’s very few who will stick around and see us all the way through. In places like this, where being pleasant and likable is worth more than being honest and real, even having the tiniest of personality variances will get you canceled. But not in a way of exiling you publicly. Just slowly withdrawing your access to the parties. Having too much individuality can be a problem when you’re surrounded by people who’s identities are built upon group think.

There are places and reasons for group think that are needed. That are positive, beneficial, even progressive. And there are times when they are contracting. Limiting, controlling, even cult-ish and cause harm. It’s unfair to dissect the behaviors of any specific person or group - because truly, the moment you get a few people together, group think sets in. It’s inevitable. It’s natural. We bond over the ways we find familiarity. We form friendships from commonality. Alignment. Likeness. Similarities. In the ways we think, move, speak. In the activities we are into and the experiences we’ve endured in a lifetime.

It’s beautiful to find likeness outside of ourselves. It gives a sense of peace and connection in a world where we often feel isolated and alone. It’s part of the human path to both find ourselves, and to find others who make us feel safe to be ourselves to build and shape chapters of life with.

But in this, I wonder. How often are we thinking about what it is to truly be known well. What is it to unmask in the moments when we feel like we need to perform. To dearmour, unprompted, because we feel safe enough to hold ourselves well.

I wonder, how long does it take for us to become courageous enough to be messy in a room full of people we barely know. But even more so, how long does it take for us to have the courage to show our complexities to those we desire to hold close?

I’m 11 days into a semi-sabbatical. Currently sitting on the porch of staring out into the trees with my pup sitting close by me. In my new daily process of finding ways to let my mind wonder and open my thinking up to new ways of understanding familiar things.

I spent my time yesterday roaming around this town I’m staying in. Dropping into deep conversations with several people I just met. Asking questions about their life and how they spent their time. Learning their perspectives and what values shaped their lives. Receiving advice formed by the wisdom living many years upon this earth. Accepting encouragement and affirmations, acknowledging the hardships that life holds.

I felt the joys of, specifically, many women who had reached the ages to be in the era of crone. Saw the lightness and sparkles in their eyes as they looked into mine. Remembering their youth. Remembering their hardships. Remembering their lessons learned. And gifting me nuggets of stories that reignited within me inspiration to choose to carry on through a moment that has felt heavy and hard.

There was no reason for any of these people to choose to devote time in their day to being present with me. But in these moments, I believe we gifted one another beautiful things. The magic of intimacy that comes only when we are present in a moment. And the medicine of remembrance that only soothes our souls when we take the time to hold the layers of the good, joyous, sad, and bad.

I have learned that depth unfolds over time. And that there’s a trust that must be given space to bloom that only becomes available when one let’s down their guard long enough to hold space for their own emotions to exist as well another’s emotions to take up space in the same room. Not in a way that we have to even understand, relate, soothe, or fix them. But just exist. To be witnessed and held in a moment in time.

When we center good vibes only - we suck the oxygen we need to breath deeply out of the room. It puts us in a place of holding. And minimizes the ability for fluidity to move. It prioritizes performance. And puts us in a place of only speaking half truths.

I don’t say this to say that we need to center hardship. Or negativity. But I think we need to center realness. And find ease with all the layers of honesty.

All emotions exist - all at once - at any given time. All of our memories live within us - hold us - shape us - break us open - mend us over and over again at any given time. What I’ve learned is important, is building strength and endurance for holding the depths of everything at all times. We don’t have to dive in, or even dip our toes in at every given moment. But when we embody the ability to not deny the contrasting realities that are who we are and what is shaping our insides, we find and create peace. We radiate strength.

What I learned listening to the people I’ve met over the last week is that through age, you can become hard and bitter. See life through the lens of tragedy - because there’s much to endure in the world. Or you can take your battles and find the reasoning, name the fuckery, admit the grief, and return to the present moment and let the intimacy of what it is to be here, right now, continue to gift you many beautiful things.

The gift of the moment is that you remember and realize that this is the most precious thing. And I think this is also what those who preach “good vibes only” think. That when we’re in the moment, the moment is good. And when we’re in a moment that is hard, there’s good to be found. So we don’t need to center the negativity - even as we acknowledge and give space for the rage, anger, hurt, and grief. There is purpose in the pleasantry. And it’s to help us find faith in the resilience that our experiences create. It gives us language to relate to others, and form a purpose in merging, bonding, and forming alliances from group think.

As I sit with the new moments in front of me and compare the memories that I am reflecting on right now. I hope that I can look back on the life I’ve lived with a fondness I felt in the eyes of the women I met yesterday, knowing that every moment, celebrated or endured, was a moment that was meant for me, and a moment that I can celebrate.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

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My human holds so many stories. Many I’ve shared orally. More I’ve hoarded within the walls of my mind. There comes a point when we’ve reached the brim of the barrel and nothing more can be held.

I am an artist. A writer. This is the gift that was given to me through both devotion of time and perhaps the placements of the planets in my chart aligning to form both poetry and precision with the ways I weave words together in writing and in real time. My heart seeks depth and connection. And with this, I navigate the world with my emotions demanding full expressions and my body forcing me to feel. It’s taken me decades to learn how to unlearn the ways I numbed to fit into parts of society that were never designed for a powerful soul such as mine.

As AI continues to grow and technology rapidly reshapes, I find more examples of how so many moments in my life have asked me, demanded that I mute my greatest strengths. Feeling is the foundation of creation. It’s what gives art emotion and the possibility to provoke exactly what the one who discovers it what they need.

It gives space for finding language to the parts of ourselves that we couldn’t find the right fit for, to help us tell, hold, and unfold the stories that we are needing to see. It gives us permission to become deeper parts of ourselves. And to open up towards more connectivity to our spirituality and the true purpose and journey that our life was created to unfold.

Most of our pains come from the internal conflicts of clinging to things that become outdated or that need to change. Much of life is experimentation, and through this we create habits of comfort that sometimes get confused with rituals of rhythmic alignment. I often straddle the contemplations of “how long do I cling to this because it’s teaching me what I need” and “when do I let go because it’s no longer serving, supporting, loving, or growing me.”

These questions can only be answered by the one who’s experience is being lived. So I can ask, process, reflect, dissect as much as I want to externally with the humans that surround me, but at the end of the day, the decisions to be made are mine alone to unfold. And it’s a journey that in moments in time must be walked completely alone.

When we become familiar with interconnection, returning to our own solitude takes devotion. Both are necessary for the processing of life and the expanding of self. And without intentionality in each, we sink into comforts that control and contract how we shape our impacts in the world and distort our perception of reality.

What I’ve noticed in those who achieve something great is a level of selfishness that centers taking the time to hear and know deeper parts of oneself. The art of knowing only comes when one takes the time to explore intimacy. When one opens towards the vulnerability of honesty in the things we’d rather not be seen. It holds us in process of unfolding and molds us through the ways we manipulate the theoretical putty of our own human form.

In this season of life ahead of me, I am ready to discover new shapes that I’ve never formed. Much of my existence has been loosely following the guidelines of what I’ve discovered to work well for others and trying to translate it into my own user manual for becoming who I am destined to be. This serves us well in the ways we must find connection to the world in order to also learn about and discover what is true for who we are and what we want to know. It helps create a healthy dose of comparison and discernment for discovering what is the language of our existence and what we care to shape into our own.

Creation is a messy process. It takes a level of fearlessness to imperfection and a humility in allowing one’s own ignorance to be seen to develop incredible things.

I’m staying with a musician. An artist who has talents across many avenues and creative things. I’m discovering more proof of concepts in how in order for a mind to freely think creatively, a mind must have space to wonder and shape what sometimes can appear to be unthinkable things. Imagination is simply a combination of flow state and grasping ideas and turning them into a translatable thing. Fantasy happens because we release control and allow our emotions to take the lead.

I don’t think we can create magic if we cannot allow ourselves to surrender to feeling complex things. I don’t think we can evolve into our own greatness if we cannot find stillness in solitude to unravel our own pleasure and misery.

My heart aches to sing. To find and form words into songs that transform my emotions into beautiful, sensory things. My body begs to dance. To find flows and shapes that stop viewer in their tracks. My mind longs to write. To translate stories that have shaped my life. My spirit beckons to create art with devotion, as if it’s the only purpose for being alive.

What’s ahead of me is this. There’s a mystery in this process because creation only unfolds in real time. But this chapter of my existence is for the deepening of my own artistry and developing the mastery of my own life. Not the life that I’ve been told I am to live. But this life that I get the opportunity to design. The uncovering of the impacts I am determined to leave behind. The shaping of what has the potency to empower and to gift inspiration to those I encounter in this life.

I have spent the the last few years pouring out my energy into holding space to be here with you. Sharing, processing, devoting to guiding those around me into different layers of understanding intimacy in real time. What I want to invite you into is the creations I am developing as a gift to you.

The days ahead of me I’ll be committed to shaping new ways of survival and carving out significant amounts of time to giving my art it’s own breath of life. I want to touch the world in a way that moves those who discover what I put out to go deeper inward and unfold what is true for them too.

So as I reset how I spend my time. How I show up here online and with those physically in my day to day life. I want. you to know that the ebbs and flows of forming something one can be proud of only comes when one takes the time to define what pride means to them alone. And through this lens, we uncover what is calling us creatively, finding our own footsteps upon our own windy road.

I labeled this post Chapter 1 because I wanted to timestamp a place where I will start. This post is a devotion to what I am creating and sharing with you. I’ll spend the months ahead with hours dedicated to writing the book that holds chapters of my life within. I’m not clear just yet as to what I want that time to look like or how I will stay connected to the things that have formed and shaped my life. But I look forward to the option to share with you what is true in real time.

My next post will be invitations. But for now, I close this one out with a bit of space that feels incomplete. With an abundance of gratitude for the option to find my footing and chase my internalized dreams. I hope that I will commit to what my soul seeks. And in this union, I hope that what is birthed is worthy of the space it needs to become a beautiful thing.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

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One of my greatest fears with transition is losing it all. Not the material things. Not the ease and comforts of city luxuries. But the ways in which relationships seemed to hold weight. How I felt in a moment that my existence mattered. How the ones I spent my time with mattered to me.

I said to my dad once when I was trying to sort out the many layers of this living and life thing, “you only exist in my life because I choose for you to.” It was a weird thing to say, but it’s honest. Relationships, in part, exist because we make them matter. They deepen because we pour into them and hope that they continue to pour back into us too.

And when they do, proximity doesn’t matter. Love can withstand physical distance greater than any form of expression. It can mold the ways in which we reshape our body-mind-heart-soul to lead with hope and belief in the unknown. It holds us in honesty - not because we need to tell the truth - but because in order for us to continue to shape a container that is not easily accessible - it requires a specific type of glue.

Familiarity is often the most common form of intimacy. It’s what tricks us into thinking lust is love and love is more complicated than anything. It’s what keeps us small when we desire to bloom. And stunts our dialog when we have the power to shift an entire room.

There’s nothing special about not choosing to grow. It’s comfortable. But even in this comfort - there’s a discomfort that eventually takes up so much space we no longer feel in control.

We age because we are destined to grow. And growing means disrupting the peace that we have created in order to form new shapes of ourselves and discover different layers of who we are to become. It is a medicine and a poison that we will only know if we choose to take a sip. And in the ingestion, we open up towards allowing the potency of our own humanity to take the lead.

I was stuck in the clinging to what I had created in San Diego. To the relationships I had formed. The person I had become through them. The reliability. The demand to conform to community. The ways in which others felt safe being near me because of the ways in which I created space for them to find trust in what I was able to give, exchange, and see.

There was a beauty in the ways in which I came to know myself through the lenses of so many. A blessing that was gifted because of my trust and commitment to building many layers of intimacy. A beauty that was powerful, so powerful it began to become a bit toxic the longer I let it take the lead. And in this awareness, I found myself stuck, with the only one option - which was to leave.

I spent 11 years in San Diego, regurgitating one thing, “What happens if I stay? What will I discover if I commit to the discomfort of not leaving?”

So I did. And i journeyed through the depths of my own hell to uncover the pendulum swing. I climbed the peaks towards my own heavens. And discovered pleasure that existed without pain. I learned more about my honesty. And what my choice in craft and creation could be. I learned to hold myself accountable, and to really uncover my needs. I formed boundaries - that I needed to hold myself to. And cut off relationships that I came to realize were not true to most authentic parts of me.

When I came to a head with do I continue to fight to stay in a place I had fought with my everything to make a home. A place that grew me into the woman I longed to become. I fought to know myself and found myself despite all the hardship I navigated day after day. And I came to love myself - in every imperfection - in every possible way.

And in this, I found love outside of me in friendships that were so rich and deep. Found humans who reflected the depth that my heart and soul continually ask for and seek. I found support that didn’t take away my agency. And love that didn’t make me feel less than for being all of me.

I found people who cared for me by giving me a stage to shine. Who saw my visions and helped me build them in real time. They gifted me places to practice my confidence and express my weird. Removed judgement and held me in compassion that reflected how much more I could soften and reveal deeper layers of myself.

When I made the choice to leave, I wasn’t leaving a city. This was not the grief I felt. The tugging that kept me stuck for longer than what I perhaps needed to be was the relationships that showed me all the most intimate parts of myself. The humans who have come along and who have held me - even when I felt like I was falling apart perhaps indefinitely. And the ones who brought joy into my life - in the depths of my most darkest thoughts and hardest personal fights.

I think about all that I am loosing by choosing myself. And I hope that in this - even beyond this moment - what was gifted will be remembered, and even more so, always felt. I hope that my existence has left impacts, not just by the literalness of my presence. But by the depth of connection that I felt with the people who I have come to know and grow with. I hope that the memories that linger are ones that inspire. And that any longing that surfaces encourages effort to continue pouring into our connection.

There’s a special kind of tragedy that ties love and intimacy together. It’s something that we all have the option to know in a lifetime should we choose to open our hearts towards the unknown. It’s something that grows should we choose to continue to persevere through the pressure pain puts upon us. And commit to knowing love at all costs.

I’m not sure how deep life can get. But I know that I have discovered richness. I have felt wholeness. And I have uncovered an unwavering honesty when I stopped stifling my own inner truths.

I’m not sure what relationships will endure the distance. Or which ones were meant to last beyond the joys of party and play. I’m uncertain which will deepen. But I know that I am willing to continue extending a level of intimacy for many of them to see which ones strengthen, which ones remain.

As I create silence in my days, listening to the sounds of the animals and bugs nearby. Feeling the heat and the breeze on my skin as I stare off into the distance at the trees and the sky. I hope that I can leave behind what I outgrew. The ways I let relationships take from me. And that I can move forward with my own truths. Weaving more into the relationship I have come to know that hold me well. And forming new connections from the wisdom that I have discovered over time through the growing of myself.

As I close out the weekend and prepare to finalize my closing out of this chapter in my life in the week ahead. I sit in semi-silence with my pup, watching the last light of the day sink behind the mountains in front of me. And feel grateful to know that regardless of the longevity, the relationships I have known until now, no matter the outcome, have been filled with abundance and have truly transformed me.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

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I have always been destined to be amongst the trees. Living life outside of the bustle of the city. Breathing fresher air. Taking time and space to think without the sounds of sledgehammers and leaf blowers rocking my nervous system day in and day out. The city began to become intolerable for me at least a year ago, longer if I really dug in. But this vision that I had created and advocated for with my whole being wouldn’t let me commit to failing in a way that looked like bailing out.

So I stuck it out. And the sticking it out sucked ever ounce of energy from my body. It stole my creativity - not completely - but in the freedom and pleasure that comes from the energy that exists within creation. It left me living in a loop of survival and limiting beliefs. Blocked from being seen and the abundance that I needed to follow through with my own vision and dreams.

I left San Diego on Friday. Running on empty. Feeling tattered, scattered, heartbroken, disappointed in my inability to achieve what I wanted to see. But there was a bigger part of me that knew - I don’t belong to a city like San Diego. It was merely a place meant to transform me in such a way that I could speak my deeper truths.

Every moment, even the one’s that were great - were hard and exhausting. I rarely had enough energy to function in my day to day tasks. And even more rarely had enough resources - financially, spiritually, emotionally, economically, communally, or physically - to see my visions through.

But one does not understand through simplicity.
Wisdom is achieved through hardship.
Strength through endurance and perseverance
Class through struggle.
Integrity through the confrontation of evil and greed.

My human is weary. Tattered. Swollen.
Literally from the output of doing the most over the last few months physically and emotionally. From the heat waves of late summer and the sleepless nights from anxiety and stress stealing my sleep at night. And figuratively from the hypothetical hope that has carried me through the last 36 months as I clung to the physical space I made my home and the people who healed the wounds in my heart through showing me new versions of how I want and need to be loved.

I spent today sleeping, walking, and lying. I didn’t listen to one single song. I heard the language of the wind and the trees and the birds speaking as I struggled to sit with myself and the space that is existing in this mystery that is now my present life.

I landed in a small mountain town in the San Bernardino area. The demand from my soul and the asking from my heart was deeper connection with nature. More space to think and feel my own truth and thoughts. Openness in my heart-mind-body-soul. Connection to Mother Earth. And a spaciousness and safety to return to my first art form - writing - and find the priority to make more things with my hands and heart.

So I sit here - at this little desk that lives in the room I’m staying in for the unforseeable future inside of a woman’s home who I recently met. Writing words to you - trying to make sense of something that, in parts, will only make sense as time unfolds.

My future is cloudy. But my commitment is clear. I will spend these days ahead writing. And discovering what is ready to unfold and what is here to be known. I’m not sure what this will look like. But when I have more - I’ll leave an update in the comments so that you can find me if you want to. And you can digest the parts of my sharing, shedding, and creating that resonate with you. Because I don’t have an interest in being a brand. But mostly in the continual metamorphosis of expressing honestly and embodying the most authentic expressions of my deeper self. If and as I share this with you - what does that leave for you to discover about these parts that exist within you, too?

with love. euni

I’m often told that being around me gives people ease, peace, safety. That I am trustworthy. That I bring calm. Non-judgement. Compassion. Care.

I am curious. I move from questioning - not to challenge one’s truth, but to understand. I love. Not because I need to be loved, but because it expands within me. It is uncontainable. Effortless. In the ways with which I breathe, it pulses to the same beat. This is how I move through the world.

A tender heart is often loving and hurting simultaneously. Feeling deeply, connecting freely. Trusting the process - even when the path is hurtful or hard. Beating, vibrating, creating a melody to be felt and heard, without pause.

Last year broke me. I loved two people who ripped me apart. I shared my body-mind-heart-soul with them abundantly. I lost friendships that were dear to me due to formalities of growing in different directions and strengthening my own sense of safety with holding my boundaries. I decreased my financial stability in devotion to no longer selling my body or sacrificing my mind or well being to build someone else’s self-centered-capitalistic dreams.

And left these connections damaged, feeling defeated and in ways broken in my previous form. I don’t regret destroying the human I used to be. It’s actually saving me in the ways of reshaping me into a wholer more honest version of me. It’s rooting me into nonconformity, anti-performance, authenticity that isn’t dependent on validation, comfort, or safety. It’s rewriting not only my story, but the ways in which I put pen to paper and form words to the poetry of my own life’s story.

Many people refuse to put themselves out there for fear of not only being hurt, but being seen in their imperfections and as someone incompetent, unloveable, or incomplete. We fear that another will take advantage of our generosity. That they will manipulate our mind and body. That they will use us up and leave us behind. And that they will see the ugly parts of us and say that they’re far too much to to like, much less love unconditionally.

This has been parts of my stories. Experiences I have not only been given, but co-created with another to feed the fire that burned inside of me saying I was not enough. Sometimes this still holds true. Sometimes I meet people who remind me of the experiences I have had. That mirror the pain I reject and crave out of the familiarity of chasing what it is to just feel something - even if the feeling is a little wrong. Sometimes I am reminded that love is not enough. And that the best parts of someone are not their full truths. That in the seeing, I have the invitation to also see myself and choose my own love above everything else.


I struggle to feel connection to this world. Depth with others in ways that make me want to stay and feel alive in the ways I see others moving through their days. There’s a lingering and longing for more - a chasing for something greater because the surface encounters that are frequent exchanges are not enough.

I find it hard to feel inspired when conversations are about other people, bucketlists, troubles of the world, fears that contract the heart. I find it numbing to be witnessed and consumed. To be a product of someone’s desire and a conquest to overcome. So as I feel this “take” energy coming towards me, I contract. I freeze. I fawn. I fold. I hide my light. And in this motion, I create waves of being that show me who I am and who I can become.

Music saves me over and over again. Movement inspires the song that sits within my heart. Art translates what I am unable to say into forms that can communicate delicate stories of the body. Intimacy is my art.

I spend much of my time in devotion to the medicine that these artforms unfold. I create rituals daily to help me understand, open, expand, and be in deep connection with my own body. Music isn’t something I hear, it’s something that is deeply felt. Dancing isn’t something I do to be witnessed, but something that is demanded as a translation of my insides to the environments that lie outside of me. An art that isn’t to be understood - but to be witnessed, remembered, and known.

I have had concerns arise with the choices I make to center not only exploring, but teaching how to build a relationship with the body and create connections that are deeply embodied between the mind-body-heart. But there’s a magic that lives in between the breaths where fear cannot settle. A power that brews within the makeup of those who do not fear turning inward and turning on the silenced parts of their own body and hearts.

I’ve spent the last 6 months deeply diving into parts of me that have been numbed. Committed weekly to dance as not only a discipline, but as a form of expressive art. I’ve decentered the ways in which I let my desire to be in the portal of romance and love rule my actions, thoughts, and presence. And amplified the ways in which romance is a tool for telling the stories that my body and heart long for and often hide.

I am still learning.
I am unfolding.
I am becoming.
I am embodying my knowing.

I spent this last weekend being held by the trees, the hearts of others who are also tenderly trudging through this lifetime and exploring dismantling misconceptions and outdated stories. In deep conversations with existing friends. Long eye contact with strangers who desired to see and hold space with and alongside me. In the medicine of music and movement and trusting the information that oozed from the essence of my body. Shedding tears to pay respect to the damages I have known. Speaking prayers to pay honor to the requests and asks I am ready to know. Laughing and loving freely and fluidly - not because it is trendy, but because it is true to me. Because it is human.

It’s hard to form words around what it is to feel. And it’s impossible to gift to another the salve your soul receives when you settle into being present with the energy that is right in front of you. It’s a deep surrender to what you’re ready to know. And a truth that holds you in the decision to stay comfortable and shallow or deepen and transform.

Often the gift of the medicine my work holds is hard to form into words because it’s not something that is created on it’s own. It’s not designed to live online or to be marketed to a busy and noisy world. It’s made from presence. From depth. From care. And from the ability to tell the truth beyond the ways in which we are encouraged to perform. To be spoken without words. To provoke a new connection to what it is to be witnessed, seen, held, and felt.

I’m not sure what the future will hold exactly quite yet. But I know that this work is taking new shapes and this reshaping is transforming me quickly in real time. I’ll be devoting time in the upcoming weeks to sharing more with you hear in my integration and processing as I find new language and invitations to share with you around the roots of what is truest to me.

Intimacy is the art of living.
Movement is the medicine of aliveness.
Connection is the language of the body.
Presence is the root of the soul.
And living in relationship one’s own body-mind-heart-soul is the truest form of love.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

Instagram:
@intimatelyeuni

So many people have lost their spark. There’s a dullness, a lack of glow to be discovered when you look deeply into so many other’s eyes. I’ve noticed with the more space I take from the corporate life, the happier I am and the more I understand the true value of choosing to be alive. But I also notice an internal battle that is never ending that continually makes me challenge and question, why am I fighting so hard to live this life?

It’s been 7 years of choosing to work with intimacy and publicly share my discoveries. To intimately explore my internal landscapes and the human body that is mine. And to devote my closeness to other’s who say they want to also know how to experience depth, pleasure, love, and agency in their own lives. The journey of rewriting projections, beliefs, traditions, traumas, fantasies, anxieties, and societal pleasantries is brutal. It rips you apart and leaves you raw and feeling like you ingested some kind of bad cocktail crafted from the bottom of some cowboys boot after he’s walked 1000 miles.

What I’ve discovered is the harsh reality of how many people want life to be easy. Pretty. Safe. And there’s admiration in this. It’s necessary to chase this escape. But It’s not infinite. It’s often surface. And it’s not something that can be sustained. Eventually, we all have demons to face and a price to pay if we want to expand, elevate, and liberate. Or we numb to soothe the aching pains of denying ourselves of becoming our own greatness and designing our own lives.

Intimacy isn’t for the surface. And the challenges I have come to know because of this have threatened my life. They’ve wrecked havoc on my mind-body-heart-soul. And have left me cornered. Feeling like a coward. Acting meek. And spiraling or paralyzed with anxiety, fear, and anger from having a lack of control. I have felt deep fear for being alive. But not for the same reasons as some. I don’t fear the state of the world or the rising gas prices. I don’t fear men or the one’s who claim power through harm.

I deeply fear losing myself. Conforming and going back to the places I fought to overcome. The versions of me that were weakened from naivety, that’s beliefs were discovered through rose colored lenses and an over emphasis of niceness. I fear returning to a state of existing that made me want to die daily because I couldn’t stand to stay connected to myself.

There’s a way we enter into rebellion. It’s often chaotic and jarring. It frequently gives us a rush that is fleeting, and when the dust settles, we’re still left staring in the mirror, looking for the most authentic version of ourselves.

This is where we oscillate. Retract. Shrink. Settle. Conform to our comforts. Deny our truths. Refuse to become, uncover, discover, and create our own life. And this is the challenge that we cycle year after year. Growth isn’t stagnate. It’s infinite. And as long as we water and nourish it, it will continue to flourish. But what I’ve also learned from neglecting my potted plants on my porch is that even if we stop paying attention or pouring into what needs to grow - it will find a way to sink into the soil and break through the surface and force new life.

Intimacy is teaching me that imperfection is necessary. That messy is truth. That love withstands the pain of seeing the darkest parts of one’s own mind. And that creation only takes place when we surrender to vulnerability.

What are we living for if not to impact and inspire in this life?
What are we fighting to stay alive for if not to love?
What are we seeking connection for if not to go deeply?
What are we looking for if we’re not desiring to be seen?
What are we speaking for if we don’t listen?
What are we holding so tightly onto if we are actually unhappy with the ways we spend our time?

It’s brave to be curious. To question and challenge. To find one’s own definitions for what we’re told. And to curate one’s own experiences that formulate one’s own life. It’s courageous to not only contemplate change, but to trek through the trenches to find the voice of one’s own soul and form the language to speak one’s own words aloud. To live life boldly, even when the world tells you that you are wrong. That you cannot, should not, or will not succeed because you are devoted to living life in ways that defy what has been curated to control society.

So, do you want to be brave.
Or do you want to be comfortable?

Because bravery will never be conformed to the standards of the general world. It will never live within the lines of safety. And it will always demand that we let go of half truths and define, discover, and explore the depths of our own life.

So, will you look into the lens of your own mirror?
Intimately explore, question, challenge, uncover all that you are.
Intimately share your heart with the world?
Vulnerably open up to your own self.
Can you create a standard of your own?

If one wants to know intimacy, one wants to know what it is to be sensitive. Soft. Tender. Raw. If one wants to feel intimacy, one is ready to devote their life first and foremost to their own self. And not from a place of disregarding care for anyone or anything else. But from a depth of longing that can only be soothed when we refuse to deny our deepest, darkest, most potent truths. From a place of strength and dedication to loving every inch of our own selves. Not as a performance. But from a place of purity. As a remedy to thaw out what has been numbed.

I can’t promise you anything. But I can see you. And in the seeing of you, I can reflect back to you truths that awaken and reunite you with your truest self through the ways I take up space in the world. Next month I’ll be moving into new ways to share and explore intimacy with you. If you like the things I say, create, or share and want to dive deeper and experience more, message me + let’s find the right alignment to move you towards what you’re ready to see and embody.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

It’s fascinating to me to know that some people spend their entire lives designing and building one version of self. This is a commitment to mastery in a form that doesn’t sit close to my personal truths. But it’s a decision that is marketable, holds certain types of privilege and is often easier to follow, understand, and digest.

Success has been told to me as an alignment in societal safety. A statement in conformity to playing the games that deem responses tied to money. Praises rewarded in likability. A rejection of disruption and a mimicking and mirroring of what “gets the most reach.”

This is something I have always clearly seen. It was easier for me to walk comfortable in the refusals of being a sheep and stay true to my lone wolf before social media became the daily digest and before I understood the inevitable longing for connection, community, and belonging.

There are many moments throughout one’s lifetime that the confrontation of self vs. the ways of the world is challenged. There are many moments where we see how our selves have been defined by the world outside of us. How we have molded, contracted, rejected, or even rewrote our truths to make them more digestible to the viewers in our world. When we were being watched and influenced only by those in our immediate community - the ones who we see in person semi-daily - there was a different type of strength we needed to embody. As one’s personal world has become global - with the reach of the internet being a normalized shaper of our psyche, there’s a non-stop-challenge to individuality and an instant reward system that taps the way conforming triggers the release of dopamine.

Audio: The Intimacy of Art, voice memo (click to listen)

I’ve been reflecting on how I spend my time. What feels true to me. What things I do on the daily that feel like lies. I don’t spend my time comparing myself to others. Although I often look to others to mirror what feels true for me and to see what feels like something that is not part of my personal story. See how I choose or abandon the most tender parts of me. I live curiously out loud and question everything. Not from a place of challenging authority or because I think I’m better than another. But from a space of wanting to know more. To understand. To relate. But most importantly - to have the details to choose to freely think.

I’ve been holding, creating, and programming spaces since I was in elementary school. Impacting individual lives and inspiring growth, acceptance, healing, community, belonging, and creativity in very intimate ways. I have lead bible studies, girls circles, women’s circles, creative labs + workshops, somatic classes workshops, experiences + intensives, healing circles, pleasure practices, relationship rituals, full-service reproductive education + community spaces, parties and events for pleasure, play + exploration of consensual and ethical sexual expression, grief circles, creative collaborations, art installations, and community festivals. I’m sure there’s at least 100+ other ways I have taken the wisdom my soul holds and translated it into digestible, experiences to help humans become more human. To connect. And to find ease, excitement, and freedom to allow their own inner world to be known.

I keep coming back to what it is to experience.
What it is to create.
What it is to feel.
To be connected.
To express.
To know.
To love.
To be loved.
To be curious.
To have stories to share.
To share stories that need to be known.

I have spent my entire existence living multiple lives. I use to pride myself on being chameleon, on being a jack of all trades and master of none. This was how I learned to survive from early childhood navigating and experiencing many traumatic things. Some things were early childhood tragedies. Others were embodied patterned behaviors that I’ve spent many years labeling and mistaking as my identity. When you dig deep enough, at some point it doesn’t matter where things began. What matters is the way our experiences lives within and directs the narratives and realties of our life. And the only thing that continues to hold relevance at some point along the healing journey is finding the truth that is your own that has been buried deep within.

I’ve been reshaping the way I see the ways I’ve lived my life and the world that I know. Feeling curious about my own journey - the given and the chosen - and the ways they’ve shaped all the parts of me. I have been falling in love with the curiosity of uncovering more of me. In this I’ve been looking through a microscope at the work I have put out into this world. How I’ve served, inspired, and guided people through the skill of shaping and designing space and experience. I’ve worked in hospitality, sales, marketing, event production, gardening, project management, design, strategy, nonprofit advocacy, education, facilitation, wellness + healing, amongst a large handful of quite a few other things. In the periods of reflection and introspecting to discover what I want to experience and achieve in this chapter of euni, I’ve uncovered Intimacy Design. The ways in which I see, create, and experience the world.

I’ve spent most of my life selling to the financial controllers. Making my survival and sometimes funding my pleasure off of playing it safe and letting my creativity take the back stage. Last year I said I was ready to figure out how to take full charge of my life and let my artistry drive. This feels scary. Unsafe. Silly. Crazy. Especially in this moment in time. When the world feels chaotic. When the city of San Diego decided that they wanted to attack the arts in their budget cuts. When what we see on the daily that’s labeled as art is actually just sales strategies shaped by capitalistic minds.

I spent the last few years healing deep deep wounds. Failing epically. Pouring my love into places that badly needed it and as a blessing, learning lessons that forced me to destroy my people pleasing persona and find my true self. It’s made me feel crazy. And make decisions that challenged everyone in my life to wonder if I’m going to be alright. I question this too. Because the things that have been normalized as the way also rule the actions and the dialog in my mind.

But it doesn’t really matter all that much to me any more. Not in a reckless - I’m done with this human existence kind of way. But in a fuck it - I’m gonna jump off the high board and take a chance with my own fucking life. Believe in my ideas and say the things that make me feel shocked in the hearing of the words coming out of my own mouth. Feel my feelings in real time, in my body, and let that guide the thinking-mind.

I’m thinking about Intimacy Design.
Experience.
How the ways we feel shape the ways we think and the ways we create and tell story.
How the spaces we move into, choose, and feel connection with activate memories that are tied to these deep stories designed by our feels.

With these ponderings, I’ve found courage to pull up my bootstraps and start paving a new path. I’m currently still in process of burning down the past one, but the work there is almost done. The year ahead is for the artistry. The offerings within it are intimately shaped to give the connection to the things that ones greatest vision, desires, and truths hold. It’s visceral. It’s palpable. It’s curious. And thought provoking. And it’s something that only those willing to commit to being present, brave, and innovative will understand or know.

I’ve learned, and even more importantly accepted and am excited to embody that I’m not here for everyone. My work isn’t for those who want to be comfortable or who don’t have the courage to freely think. It’s not for the ones who seek comfort or who don’t want to be curious. It’s not for the people who want to be told what to do or how to think. And it’s not for the ones who don’t have the devotion to discovering what it is that they want to say or the impact they want to feel, share, and leave on this world.

I’m here for the ones that are here to create.

My next few letters to you will share more about what I’m doing and what I want to do with you. What this space is redesigning as and what we are becoming. But for today, I wanted to share with you some raw thoughts and some contemplations that are provoking the release of the parts of me that have died and a wearing of the newest layers of my skin as a new ode to own life.

Come drop in with me:

slowdeep.co
@intimatelyeuni

It has also deepened the ways I understand how I love and long to love myself. I think most people won’t and can’t admit all the ways they hate themselves. Because it’s so hard to form the words of how we hold our own hurting and how we cope. I spend a significant amount of time trying. To release the habits I cling to that give me a temporary relief from what is uncomfortable. Some of them are just distractive. Some are more toxic. I don’t think any of them are uncontainable for me at this point. But some are so deeply rooted in the ways I have not only learned to navigate my own sense of survival. But are also so deeply entangled in the ways in which we socialize. The ways in which we learn how to give, receive, exchange, and expect love.

Like many who are tuning into the chatter of trending topics, I have been shedding deep deep layers of myself - ignited by the “year of the snake” and all that this powerful venom holds. Unlike past years of growth, healing, and confronting what I am ready to face and let go, the last year was a kind of breaking me down in a way that also lifted me up in the same motion. Ever challenge was also a reward. Every hurt was also a holding of my heart in a way it had never been handled before. It was care that was transparent and direct. Comfort that was also meant to be intensely uncomfortable. It was what I needed to know.

I don’t think we can live in our own life while holding the depths of someone else’s so close. It’s suffocating to know yourself so intricately. Much less to know someone else better than they are currently seeing themselves. To know the necessity of holding. Not as a way of clinging, but as a spaciousness that allows time to unfold. To heal. To cleanse. To naturally let go.

As I’ve gotten to grow more into myself, I have found a softness towards the ways in which I love. An understanding of the pains I’ve felt in the ways I feel disconnection from others. And a self-compassion for the ways in which my heart knows love. I am finding more ease in being and less pressure to perform. With this is an inner turbulence that some will say is nervous system regulation. I think it’s a resetting that is leading to a new way of settling for the standards that my soul deeply holds.

I want to write about all the things I see in the world. The ways in which I navigate spaciousness and the lack of depth within the world. How I see into another so penetratively that it makes us both uncomfortable and confused with what it is to be seen and how it is to feel close. I want to tell the stories of how my heart has been broken over and over again. To share the lessons that I have unfolded through my choosing to continue to dig and deepen what hurting holds.

I want to gift love. Not just the fluffy-feel-good kind that takes us outside of ourselves in the whimsical, sometimes unsustainable ways. But also the kind that tastes like bitter medicine that burns our insides just right and brings us back home. Because love holds all sides of truth. And it chooses to move with them without trying to manipulate what will unfold.

This is tough to not only understand, but to allow to be experienced. It’s a delicate dance that always breaks us apart. Ourselves, and the ones we love. The toughest part isn’t the facing of the truths - but the ways in which see discover how deeply we cling to the ways we have conformed to our habits, hurts, comforts, and community standards and called them who we are. How we fall into they patterns that take us away from truly knowing our own selves.

As I surrendered to agreeing to shed, I also have increased the ways in which I am being challenged to feel fear. It’s intense. It’s intimate. It’s uniquely one’s own. The ways in which the body transforms sensations, tension, disconnection, freeze, and motion to communicate how it feels about the unknown. To show you where you need to submit to stillness. And where you need to find motion in order to let go and grow.

Perfectionism rules too many of us. But most of us are so caught up in our own ego that we refuse to give our ways of self sabotaging the name that it truly holds. We find fault outside of ourselves as a way to avoid the things we choose within ourselves that keep us contracted into a mold we have outgrown. To be seen demands insecurity - even, and especially when we choose to lean into seeing ourselves.

I’ve learned that my love is infinite. It carries over - beyond and through - any turbulence that the journey of life may hold. I discovered that my clinging often comes to the ways in which I want to ensure that the one’s I have given a piece of my heart to never feel unloved. I am still searching for deeper understanding of what it is to feel depth - deeply connected - to something outside of myself. To myself in ways I continue to long for. To the things larger than myself. To the unknown. To my body. To another’s heart-mind-body-soul.

I don’t think I ever settle for love. Although many will tell me that’s what I have done. I think I love. And I discover what the language of love another holds. How it can engulf me. If there’s a commonality in the ways in which we not only see - but in how we allow ourselves to be seen. This is intimacy. This is how love unfolds.

It’s never a linear path. It’s always a circling-cycling-zig zagging. It’s something that pulses to penetrate and dissipate the fears that our truths unfold. Theres’s so much of my truth that knows and believes love is infinite. That intimacy isn’t exclusive to or for those who return it in the ways we think we want to know. This is what lead me to practicing and exploring romantic love and relationship through polyamory. This is what taught me how to love without centering control. It’s what showed me how to see another and their efforts with curiosity, compassion, and grace. It’s what healed my heart and allowed me to welcome in more depth with exchanging intimacy, acts that are intimate, and love.

Failing in love has given me insecurity. It’s created stories that say I’m bad at love. It’s told me that the one’s I loved - love - don’t love me. That those surrounding me see my failures and hold them against me. It’s opened waves of pressure that I have also discovered I am placing upon me. It has given me barriers built buy attempts to guard my own heart. And has taken me into tunnels that torment and torture myself as a tribute to the ways in which I attempted to give and allow myself to receive love.

I still don’t quite understand all the ways in which boundaries work. How to use my voice and speak the things I need to say so others can know. I am still learning how to feel my feelings and not let my emotions become my entire world. How to pour them out into something outside of me as an expression, creation, and tribute to the ways in which I have the honor of navigating the world.

What many don’t know is that to be an artist is a choice as much as it is a calling and an identity that we come to embody as our truths unfold. It’s an active exploring of expression and connection of our internal landscapes to the universe outside and beyond. It’s a decision that intimacy through vulnerability is not only what one wants to experience, but what one wants to create for the world. It’s a bravery to choose honesty - even, and especially when it is hard.

As I’ve moved more towards choosing, and accepting, my calling as an artist. I have discovered so many ways in which I avoid vulnerability. How I don’t fully understand it. How it hurts in ways I cannot express with words, actions or even visuals. How the only way to know it is to move more into it. And to sit with the discomforts that it unfolds.

I have felt myself letting go of the things that lack depth. That loosely hold my heart and the hearts of the things and people I love. I am finding understanding of how the depth I ache for is also a deep need for intimacy through the translation of what I am understanding of life, love, and vulnerability into expressions and experiences that give others a language for experiencing and reciprocating love.

I struggle with the identity of teacher or healer or even coach. I don’t really relate to the ways in which others want to be guided into knowing themselves. It’s in some parts foreign to me. As I navigate understanding through a foundation of curiosity - even in the times that I am clinging to any particular pattern or belief. So it’s been harder for me to understand how to break down the barriers of understanding oneself that exist within someone else through motivating or even scripting their growth. It has been more authentic and perhaps impactful for me to do this through avenues of inspiring. Focusing on what is true in any moment within my life and sharing my contemplations and experimentations with whomever is listening and witnessing the most delicate and honest parts of myself moment to moment.

This is intimacy.
This is love.

I don’t know what the future holds. To many times we try to control the outcome to soothe our insides from the turbulence change unfolds. I am trying to be easy with the insecurities I feel - not only from an inconsistency in my own stability with money, work, connections with others, and the parts of myself that continue to be remolded. But also with the insecurities that come to surface when I move from places of assuming and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I hope that the days ahead of me will gift me more comfort in the transitions that each day demand. And that in the moments I need to soothe any discomfort - I can understand what the purpose of my escapes command. How to hold my complexities with fluidity rather than force or contraction. How to embody joy and learn more about what it is to be at peace with myself. When I speak of intimacy, I am uncovering all the ways in which I not only am learning to deepen my curiosity, compassion, and connection with myself. But also how I am rewriting all the ways in which I expand love - even when it’s challenged or my heart has been hurt. Especially when it’s entangled in conversations that leave lingering and and longing without commanding resolve. I am, despite what may be considered to be wise or unwilling - allowing intimacy to hold me in the unfolding and becoming of the softest, strongest, and most unraveled versions of myself. I am allowing intimacy to lead me into deeper knowings of love.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

Instagram:

@intimatelyeuni

Betrayal is something that feels fresh to me - although if I look through the magnifying glass with my most honest eyes I can find points of pain that reveal that this is something familiar and navigating this type of hurt is nothing new. Loyalty is a complex devotion that needs fluidity. But even so, there are parts of this that are steered with integrity or are stirred by fear, shame, and pettiness, and a seeking to alleviate one’s own pain above all else.

I never see relationship as a space to control someone’s heart. But rather a place to open it wider with tenderness, curiosity and care. A dance of learning the language of another’s vulnerability by deepening the understandings of your own. A container to hold, heal, reflect, dream, feel, empower, and grow. Never have I felt like relationships should be “work” even though they require commitments that take us out of comfort zones.

As I have continued to transform my relationship with me - I have been confronted with changing and letting go of relationships with things outside of myself. It’s confusing to consider change. It brings up shame, fear, and rejection. An anxiety that challenges one to consider shrinking for the sake of comfort in the known - as a partial avoidance of the discomforts of the unknown.

I have moved through the greatest majority of my life directed by my values and integrity. As the states of the world continue to shift and change, I find myself needing to slow down and settle into my own body-mind-heart-soul a little more authentically. Intentionally. Discerningly. The pace at which life moves often feels too quick to give space to unfold the depths of truth my comfort wants to speak in order for me to leap into my decisions with full confidence or certainty. But it’s not solely the state of the world - it’s also the state of my own inner being that is changing.

What do we do when we are confronted with truth. It’s hard to say - because truth is perspective based and it is informed, influenced, and often convoluted by how an individual is experiencing from their connection to the past, present, and future. All I know to be true is love. And in this - I tune my compass towards this as frequently as I can. Because if moving with love were the only guide I could be given, it seems to be the one that not only makes the most sense, but also the one that has the most unbiased influence.

Loving means holding complexities and not reacting or responding to pain in ways that distribute our hurts to spill over into what we encounter. It centers holding space for the discomforts that are demanded in order for things to change. Loving means considering oneself while also considering - in thought - and in action - the world and the people within it that exist outside of ourselves. It request that we do not move from the stresses of survival - but slow down to settle into the abundance that is when we pan out far enough to see from another perspective and take in any given thing from a wider lens.

I’ve been in an examination of how does one hold their integrity - boundaries - needs without sacrificing or centering fears driven by insecurities, fear, shame, or suffering. In the noise of the world - it sometimes feels hard to find examples to study. And I continue to be given this answer that says - I must slow down, tune inward, and uncover my own truths. Which often feels like too much to understand. To determine on my own. And to take ownership of much less put into action, authority, and command.

I’ve faced a lot of grief in growth through relationships. Especially over the last few years. As I uncover truer parts of myself - I am also being held in accountability to the parts of myself that I have spent my whole life silencing, minimizing, shape-shifting, and ignoring for a sense of safety or acceptance from places that I didn’t actually want to be.

Because when I find my most honest points - my deepest truths - I can form words that speak of how I want to pour into what is pouring into me. Not as a tit-for-tat or gesture to move at the pace of ensuring I’m always settling the score. But more so as a way of living in full alignment with my integrity. Which desires - commands - needs relationships to have reciprocity. This at some point felt foreign and selfish to me. Like something that was too much to ask. But the more I create space for me to know who I am deep down inside - the more permission I am giving to myself to let my tender parts come to surface and release my sense of safety that says that my vulnerability must hide.

Holding betrayal has given me fuel to want to shame myself for sharing my heart and vulnerability with people who did not have the capacity, care, or integrity to understand the complexities of what my tenderness truly means. It’s given me a reflex of wanting to over explain my pain as a way to control the narrative of what others might say when they experience the grief I am moving through around these sensitive things that hurt me. It shows me a dagger and pen and asks me if I want to puncture more holes in my own heart - if I want to write the words for only me to read that speak cruelly to and about me.

Betrayal is intimate.
It is personal.
It is heavy.
It is harmful.

It isn’t something that “just happens.” It comes with a level of strategy that says - the ones I will break trust with are not worthy enough of my time, care, or consideration to slow down in my actions and create space for conversations, curiosity or self control.

The pattern that I have seen - and am examining - is how when we choose actions that activate betrayal - we are choosing to also be curators of our own self sabotage. How when we take the sensitivities of others and handle them with carelessness - we not only hurt them, but also hurt ourselves. And how when we are in deep pockets of personal transformation and pain - we have great potential to choose actions that pull others into our chaos so that we can find soothing and alleviation of the discomforts that come as a result of transition, transformation, and change.

Love requires consciousness. It requires active commitment to holding nuances and holding hearts. It’s not about control. Boxes. Or limitations. It’s an expansion of discernment, choice, and choosing what in best for self - and the parts of the world we impact - especially the ones we know, are connected to, and have cultivated a level of intimacy, vulnerability, and love with.

It seems that many moments of mistranslated stories spoken after betrayal - because the feelings are hard to name. They are layered and leave us at a loss - not only with the ways in which we can articulate - but also in the security we once felt when sharing tender and intimate parts of ourselves.

When we dig deeply - boundaries placed to help navigate us away from betrayal are never about controlling someone else. They’re never about wishing unhappiness or pain on the ones we know and love. They’re about respect, honoring, and care. They allow spaciousness for time to move us through complexities that are existing within human emotions. And give room for trust to transform into new territories as one’s heart is hurting. And finding waves of healing.

What I’ve discovered when I have felt betrayed, it’s not about how someone acts in a way that is centering their own happiness or what’s best for them. It’s always been in moments when someone chooses whatever is lazy, quick, responsive, and speaking to the soothing or numbing of their own self depreciation and pains. It comes from a place of pettiness. And it comes from a place of justifying doing unto others as another has done unto us. It’s is a tit-for-tat energy that casts shadows on the sunny spots that once were filled with freedom, creativity, connection, and love. It is a rejection and violence curated towards intimacy.

The pain that follows isn’t like the pain of losing something we once held dear. But it’s a combination of new understandings of the layers of deception and mistrust that everyone holds. Of how they entangle. And the parts we also play in the relationships that have gone astray. It’s a rage that needs to be suffocated so that it doesn’t lose control or become another expression of the very thing that lead us to feeling betrayed. It’s a sadness in understanding how someone we loved could unlove us so well. And it’s an isolation that we are held within as we process the many pockets and perspectives of the truths of the situations and the ones within them.

My integrity demands that I move slowly and asks me to speak, act, and exist consciously. I am not always in flow with this and at times have moved too quickly. Getting to places where I eat my own words or have deep regrets for the ways I have behaved. These feelings of remorse have always come when I can see that ways in which I show up are hurting someone else. Not as a responsibility for another’s feelings. But as a truth that I know I did not move or act with kindness, consideration, curiosity or care.

Repair is possible. But it also often comes with stitches that will remain surface. Time can soften any hardening that becomes a shield to protect a hurting heart when betrayals have taken priority over love or care. Intimacy is a salve that can soothe and activate healing. But not without genuine authenticity that is only tied to deep vulnerability, transparency, humility, and desire for connection above the preservation of self medicating.

When I first began writing, I promised I would never share from an open wound. But as I’ve strengthened my ability to form words into sentences to share with the world - I have moved the needle to a new place of self protection in my revealing of vulnerability and the intimacy of my internal landscapes. I will hold true to the value I hold in doing my best to create pathways towards liberation and healing and to minimize my participation in curating more chaos and activating pain. Especially towards those who have given me glimpses of their tender parts - especially when those who have spent time with me intimately show me the parts of them that are pulling them into destructive spaces and I am receiving blows from the debris. I won’t always do this perfectly. But I will continue to practice my agency in speaking the truths I am living - surviving - holding - releasing - and growing through while also finding a pace to move at that allows me to act lovingly.

As I sit with what needs to be known today I can admit that I don’t hold expectations for others to do as I would. Or to meet my depth or expression of integrity. But I do feel a trust in the parts of me that requests I show up for myself in ways that keep closeness with what pours into me with consideration, care, and a level of integrity that values my intimacy in such a way that results in building closeness through actions rather than confusion or separateness. And I will prioritize repositioning access to my vulnerability, intimacy, and attention of that which builds bridges for divisiveness or lack of care of the world outside of and closest to oneself.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

Instagram:
@intimatelyeuni

I’ve been slowly making my way back towards using my voice and the audio land. Partially hesitating on the relaunch of the podcast - somewhat perfectionism, somewhat clarity chasing. I really wanted this to make sense for me with my devotion to carving out chunks of my time, resisting moving without intention and polluting the internet with more “content.”

I don’t know if I’ll always be able to do that. I’m sure some of the stuff I’ll share I’ll look back on and be like - WTF was that. That was a “trying to stay relevant” reach. But, I’m gonna try my best to do what feels honest. Even if it doesn’t feel popular. I mean, honestly, my digital life feels quite reflective of my offline one. People know me, they like what I’m saying or doing. They often forget me, but if they engage, they’re left with some layer of inspiration that impacts, expands, or changes their life. And I don’t know if I need much more than that I’m realizing.

So as I move into playing with learning audio and also decentering perfect “content” - I will dedicate some of my podcast airspace to my mindspins and ponderings. Intimately speaking, this is one of my top favorite things to do with people in real time. I love spending time with my roommate, friends, new acquaintances thinking out loud. Contemplating. Dissecting. Analyzing. Fantasizing. Dreaming. Discussing. Letting our minds dance and play and feel aliveness through thinking. And I like challenging and inspiring thinking.

So perhaps - this is what SLOW/DEEP is all about. It’s going to be at least for the upcoming episodes. I want to ponder with you - in my own energy. And invite you to ponder with me and others who I find pleasure in talking and contemplating with. And share candidly our conversations. Nothing too programmed or structured. Nothing too polished or devoted to editing and post production. But more raw - at times messy or glitchy. I want to keep the humanity in connection.

So even if I’ve never met you - there’s an invitation to authentically exist and use the beautiful parts of technology to explore intimacy. Through the ways we remember what it is to freely think. To create. To choose love in our existing. To hold humanity. To lead with and believe in art.

Take a listen and leave me a note in whatever way feels true to you and let’s keep deepening and expanding experiencing - through the most human lens - creating - art expressively.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

Instagram:
@intimatelyeuni

Questions, comments or topic requests/suggestions: Leave a comment below / DM euni to connect.

There’s a guilt in knowing more than just the struggles of life. A fear of pleasure that is not entangled with pain. Intimacy has been teaching me that the life we live is layered and the loyalty we hold is often to our own shame. The shame that develops from the way the world outside of us influences what we feel inside. The mirror that others hurt holds up to us keeps us contracted, controlled, numb, afraid to discover what it is to feel fully alive.

There’s a selfishness that must co-exist alongside selflessness in order for us to understand what it is to be both. We must journey into and through our own darkness and sit within our own light in order to understand what it is exactly that we are fighting for.

Last night I attended a writing club. A group of humans who came together to write, contemplate, converse, explore. A room filled with warmth and curiosity. A challenge to be present with what lives within our own personal worlds. What we are facing internally. Where our fears and hold lie. What gives us hope to continue living life. How we feel motivation, what fuels our souls.

Many don’t notice the subtleties that live within the space in between. But I do. This is what gives me context to the complexities that charge the actions of the majority of society. That drive the stress that we all collect and hold within our bodies.

There’s something that is to be known in everything. When we slow down and settle into a space, it can be felt. This is the roots of intimacy. This is what gives us truth. What carries us through any extreme.

I have felt numbed lately. Not numb - not disconnected. Not because I have been numbing in ways I used to before. I haven’t been escaping the pain. But rather, filtering - redirecting it into different places - encouraging it to find and take new shapes. Giving it permission to leave my body. And to free my mind. Holding it with tenderness - asking it to loosen it’s grip on how it navigates my life.

The thing is when we choose growth - our world changes - the whole world changes. Not things out of our control - but the ways in which we seek to control things we cannot change. The ways in which we respond to everything - how we seek action and the ways in which we move reactively. How we feel compassion, how we understand rage. The range with which we know the world grows.

I feel so deeply that it often takes me away from feeling my feet beneath me. This is why I write. This is why I create. Not only to freeze a moment in time, but to remind myself - and those around me - what it is to freely think.

We are influenced by what we consume. And we consume what we see. We used to go out into the world to know it - now we simple sit and stare at our screens. Seeking to know more - without experiencing anything. Filling our minds with words and images - somehow becoming experts of everything without really knowing anything.

Our body holds wisdom that our mind will never know. It cannot. It’s too easy to control. Our body is our true compass. It shows us what we learned. It holds us in our humanity - it ties our soul to this world.

So if we do not know the language of our own body - what do we really know? If we cannot listen to the secrets it shares with us to teach us the truths of our own souls.

Intimacy lives within the body. It connects us to this earth. It is an entanglement of unfolding every thought we hold. It plays a symphony that speaks so beautifully - even when it’s hurt. It binds us to others - expands our strength, love, compassion, worth.

We gather not just to celebrate, but to remember. This is something I am learning more and more. About my passion and resilience for shaping togetherness. For creating experiences with others - in the flesh. I’ve fought the internalization of judgement, guilt, shame as I’ve made my way to knowing what’s true.

That in a lifetime where we are growing apart - not by physical distance - but through the addictions to seeking stimulation for instant gratification rather than feeling into growing the knowing and depth through the purity of experiencing what exists right in front of you.

I’ve been thinking about the purpose. The purpose of anything. Not from a lens of judgement. But from a truth and depth of what it is to contemplate. Which is a practice of discovery. A commitment to honesty that also holds truth. To something greater than what we’ve already known. Something more beautiful than what we’ve seen before. Grander than the demands we face when we fight to find our voice and take up space in a crowded room.

No matter what is happening - purpose will drive us. It charges change. It is fuel for finding. A driver of seeking. A demander of energetic exchange. It is our debt for entry into this world. And it will take our life if we choose to avoid it. Slowly, or subtly, a purposeless life will drive aliveness away.

When I speak of intimacy, I speak of truth. I speak of passion. I speak of purpose. I speak of connection. Compassion. Grace. Care. To the humanity that lives inside of me and you. Separately. Together. Collectively. This is what gives us reasoning behind our lives - our why - our oxygen - our breath of life.

We gather not only to celebrate - but to remember what we need. What there is to celebrate. It’s not only in the grandness - but especially in the little things. The lighting within a room. The dishes we create and share. The fruit plates and tea cups. The ink blots and popcorn we make. It’s in the music made by the ways in which our pens dance across a page. In the deep contemplations our furrowed brows shape. In the warmth that rises within is to turn the corners of our mouth into a tiny “u.” In the laughters that make our bellies ache when we relate to one another’s point of view.

There’s a perfect storm of selfishness and selflessness that must coexist in connection. Because only with both will we discover deep truths. The reasoning that brought each of us here, into a room is personal. But the purpose that keeps us here is collective. And this is what molds the piece of society we shape that will live beyond these mere moments - that will expand beyond the walls of living rooms.

As the weight of the world continues to sink into new layers of hurt and heavy - we must remember. What intimacy means to truth. And how truth lives in intimacy. How it shapes the ways we hold humanness. And how it is the medicine for interconnectedness - in the real world.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

What would it hurt if we took time to think about what we feel, believe, move through within the world.

Who would we lose.
What would be created.
What would be destroyed.

It always becomes heavy when the weight of the world makes us feel as if we don’t have a choice. When it challenges us to confront and question our morals and our values. Demands that we proclaim what we are living for. Finds ways to curate fear so we find reason to fight, freeze, or flee. Often as an attempt to show us how easy it is to point fingers at one another and away from the injustice that we see and feel.

Control is no stranger to any of us. Many just have less understanding of what it is to be separate from it. To truly choose to have choice. And many, when authentically given the opportunity to take the lead, shy away and return to the comforts of what it is to conform.

Human behavior is more than just how we act. It’s an embodiment of what we believe. It’s a conformity to what we fear. A controlling to create group think as an act of containment. A mirroring of what we hear and see.

What does it take for one to feel brave enough to act honestly? Our values or morals aren’t reliable compasses. They’re often emotionally charged and easy to manipulate - especially through group think. They lead us into reactivity. And disrupted our ability to clearly think.

Honesty isn’t steady. It’s something that moves at the pulse of life. It is shaped by it’s environment. And is layers deep. It is a combination of everything we encounter and an analysis of truth, presence, and curiosity. It is only revealed when we move at the pace in which our actions align with what we think.

What’s hard to hear and accept as true is that if the above holds any level of possibility to be correct - that means we - individually - have much to assess and accept. It means we have to learn to look at the world contemplatively and not filtered through the lenses of what we are encouraged - or demanded to believe or accept.

Many have an internal compass that navigates how they move through the world. A direction towards “rightness” and a repulsion towards steering clear of what is deemed “wrong.” This is personal although influenced by the general standards of society. But in “times like these” - that are quite honestly not much different from times of the past at the root of it all - yet are also perhaps a different level of exhaustive and scary because media and technology makes it unavoidable to consume the stories in every second that passes.

I don’t challenge if people have morals or values. A heart that beats or bleeds, a pulse of their own. I instead wonder what is true when we’re not driven by the fear of rejection or isolation for choosing to think or act differently than the masses reactions to the complexities of the world. What are the morals and values that we hold and that lead our lives when we are living within what is right in front of us and not driven by the stories we read online. Not as a bypassing or dismissal of the harsh realities of injustices, violence, or the raw realities of harm happening within the world. But as a reclamation an armoring through a decision to lead rather than conform by getting control of ones own mind.

I wonder what conversations sound like when people form sentences from their own thoughts and not neatly packaged catch phrases that are easy to say and easy to repeat. What would we discover if we were less polite - and more honest. If we were less enraged as a formality and more angry as an action that came from a place of demanding change.

I see many moving with a desire to embody both. But I don’t know if we can say the sentence we were taught would get us attention or likability AND create deeply impactful change. I don’t know if we can move millions by simply agreeing or disagreeing with what others say.

Change doesn’t happen quickly. It unfolds over time. It is a repetition of similar statements, actions, and emotions that curate beliefs - that form mentalities - that contract or expand life. Right now we are challenging change. And it feels massive, quick, hard, exhaustive, and necessary. There’s a war we are all facing. Not just politically. But spiritually. Mentally. Emotionally.

We’re being challenged to be broken - and to break one another - through the conformity of group think. Through the manipulation of technology. Through the ways in which we form beliefs from fear. From the moving quickly without curiosity - without questioning - without consideration of what it is that we personally want to change.

Many move with judgements and don’t consider the nuances that live within everything. When we slow down and find a steady that comes from trusting honesty - not just truth - not just fact - not only what we are told to or have come to believe that also holds a level of value for us individually … we evoke and embody change.

Why do we gather.
Converse.
Protest.
Rage.

Why do we tell the stories of those who we feel have no voice.
Why do we demand the change.

The questioning isn’t a conformity to empowering wrongness to take the lead. Rather, it’s an expansion of unveiling the deeper truths that motivate and drive us individually to seek and take action for change.

I wonder, if we, individually, were the only one standing - what would we fight for in the face of injustices that we see? This is what forms our levels of integrity. When we know this - we know why we fight - and what commands our attention. What drives our actions - what moves us towards, through, or away from the crowd. And this holds us in the formation of our own power - which can withstand the ebbs and flows - the inconsistencies and control that is the formation of and detriment of group think.

We must find commonalities in order to create containers for connection. But relationships cannot be controlled by either/or mentalities. This is dictatorship. This is how we create these ripples that pull people together to form bonds with layers of dishonesty. And when relationships are formed from dishonesty - control is the container that they actually live within.

What I wonder is what is the price we, individually, are willing to pay to move through the world with our own personal integrity intact. What would we sacrifice if we could have whatever level of world peace we personally ask for - what is the cost of freedom individually.

Collectively?

There is a necessity and a right to have a voice that is deserving of everyone individually. But I think that with a voice, there also comes the responsibility of being able to hold the ability to introspect and find individuality and honesty in the ways in which we think, act, and influence. When we don’t center this - we discover the harsh realities of what will unfold collectively through the extremes of all the layers of life - not just the things we agree or disagree with. An amplification of each side of the pendulum and the repercussions and results of what unfolds.

When the world begins to waiver and the pressure, stress, and grief thickens - I feel pull towards action - not as a reactivity - but as a choice to continue to center my choice, necessity, and honesty that I must live in alignment with and be guided by my integrity. What does this look and feel like to me. What actions not only align with the impacts that I want to give to the world - but also expand sustainability.

There are moments when we must act quickly - because there is a demand to challenge what is happening right in front of us. And there are moments when we have the space to think and form actions strategically. Not only for the sake of surviving - but driven from the desire to live the life with which we have chosen. To inspire those who are watching us to find their own values, voice, and integrity. To take action for the changes that we seek to experience within a lifetime. And to feel deeply.

One of the greatest acts of healing is intimacy. It’s a foundational necessity for not only pleasure - but also for finding our integrity. It holds us in our own personal honesties. And shapes what we believe, value and put into action. It forms compassion and curiosity. Expands grace and forgiveness. And teaches us our own unique language for connection and love.

Intimacy lives within the body. It’s a language that we learn - and amplify - by time spent reflecting - above reacting. It requires that we take action - and explore the results of what we do. It teaches us how to feel - and through feeling - how to hold, release, and move our emotions with truth. It demands depth - not as an escape - but as a pathway for connection through truth.

A challenge that exists in the complexities of the ways in which we are in conflicts across all the parts of society is that we have a disconnection from intimacy. And when I say intimacy - I don’t center or even mean sex. I mean our ability to go deep. To think. To feel. And to form our realities from the honesty of what it is to hold humanity and our guidance from our internal compasses within the same breaths.

So if we are to contribute to the chaos of the world we live within, we must filter and dissect - what is the contribution that you are devoted to making? What is the message that you are translating. And what truth does this hold. If there’s uncertainty - practices of intimacy with self will guide you there.

Intimacy through the breath.
Through the introspection.
Release.
The space living within solitude to mute the noise of the world.

Not as an avoidance.
But as a permission to allow your own truth to be known.

And through this - your integrity will form.
A compass created from intuition.
And a strength to endure.
To create.
To inspire.
To hold space.
To listen.
And learn.
To speak honestly.
To love.
To move wisely.
And act compassionately.
To feel.
Express.
Emote.
Expand.
Lead.

Through this, you’ll find - and form - community. Not from a place of conformity. But from a place of integrity. And from sustainability of holding the role with which you are playing in society. A consistency in actions and a clarity in the words with which we say. A devotion to the changes we not only need - but the ways in which we contribute to how they are created.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

What if I stopped teaching and leading and just experienced and expressed all the tender, beautiful, expansive parts of my life?

Ponderings…

My heart aches to feel deeply. But to also be connected vastly. To experience and be a part of many things. I fear getting older and not having lived my life fully. Whatever that means. I feel like I’ve wasted too many years holding and processing pain and wondering if I’ll ever find myself. I find pieces, and I continue to look deeper - picking apart the things I have yet to confront or challenges as truths of myself.

The seeking seems never ending.

I don’t know if you ever settle fully into being - I feel like so much of life is a pursuit - or even just an unavoidable path of becoming. Even when one is not trying so hard - existing demands that we contemplate all the layers of life. And in this excavation, we discover and destroy ourselves.

We are forced - either as eager participants - or as hostages with resistance - to confront the truths we hold within.

The more I socialize - the less I ponder. The more I pretend perfection - the more I realize my motivation for flawlessness is purely pick me energy.

And in, because of, this - I continually feel empty.
Even when I am entangled in too many things.
Especially when I am pulled into too many places.

I am still shaping the most honest parts of myself.
Reframing the ways in which I see and exist within my realities.

Remembering and discovering - that my cup is full - only when I pour into myself. This is a compass. Continually rearranging the ways in which I let others in. How I experience intimacy. What it is to be close. And to be closest with myself.

Love is all encompassing - and accompanying of every singular thing.
It rejects nothing.

And the truth of love unveils all the ways in which we can continue to discover the undiscovered parts of ourselves.

I wonder.
I ponder.
I contemplate.
Dissect.
Escavate.
I seek.
I search.
I desire.
I long.
I break.
I am strong.

To feel fearlessness - we must continually release the fear of holding the power we possess. We must face the fear of being powerful. And we must become relentless in the pursuit of becoming strong enough to stand in solitude - confronting, becoming, and holding all the parts of ourselves.

The body gives, and it demands. It holds everything we’ve ever encountered. Sometimes as a cruel diary - pulling to surface all the things that hurt - all the things we’ve chosen to neglect. It commands we confront all the lies we tell ourselves. It challenges our minds calculations and pushes our false sense of boundaries. It leads from the language of our heart. And speaks tender poetry when we feel seen. It weeps without tears. And shakes to reset all that brings us anger, stress, fear. The body is the keeper of our power. Our power-house. It is home for what is true and it is the cup that overflows when we pour into it beyond simple, surface level ponderings.

How long does it take for change to settle into ones bones? Only one will know. It happens subtly. We notice when we stop seeking and reach moments of purely being. We take a sip, a breath, a blink and discover - the things we were grasping for exist within our lives. They - either in parts - or in whole - have become bits and pieces of our daily existence. They have shaped the ways we reveal, feel, and uncover the depths of our own soul.

Not everyone will chase a life lived so intricately. Not everyone seeks from the lens of longing to feel deeply. Not everyone will break over and over again purely to uncover what happens each time you crack yourself open. Not everyone will.

But, what will you do.
I do.
What will this life gift to me.
If I don’t continue to ponder.
Seek.
Wonder.
What will life be.
If I - we - never evolve beyond this moment.
And this is what I am - we are -
If this is the truest expression of oneself.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO
IG: @INTIMATELYEUNI

Living requires performance. It demands we learn how to play the role presented to us by family - society - our own internal interpretation of expectations asked of us and of expectations we’ve formed on our own. With this - we are continually reshaping the ways in which we take up space. The ways we form our words into sentences. The dialect and dialog with which we use to engage. We move through the world with calculations - part strategy, part fear - to ensure that we are welcomed to some degree. To maintain what it is to belong.

But does belonging have to come at a sacrifice to our own humanity? Not the layers of love that are given within conditions of conformity. But the ways in which we love unconditionally in every form of self. The ways we look at the ugly and say, yes, this is me too. The ways we choose to not deny the things that tug at our heels - begging us to be unhinged in our own unique form. The ways we numb and hurt ourselves to remember that we are actually the curators of our own pain.

What is it to love.
What is it to belong?

If we don’t have belonging within - how is it possible to find belonging outside of ourselves?

I’ve spent decades seeking. And I’m not sure if I’m done. Observing and being a culprit to others searching. Experimenting with walking the lines between pleasure and pain. Discovering that these feelings and expressions are not too different and that when we stop numbing, feeling - at first - no matter what it is that w’re feeling all feels the same. Too intense to embody - too powerful to control. Too significant to ignore anymore.

So when we move from a life navigated to escape feeling without manufacturing through external stimulations, substances, spaces, and people into a life demanding aliveness activated from the demand to figure out how to live before we die -there’s an intensity of overwhelm.

But I wonder - if we can live so many years numbing. Controlling. Contorting. Conforming. Bullying ourselves out of our truths and shaping our entire existence into neatly-packaged-digestible-lies…. can we not figure out how to find the fight to take the reigns of our own lives?

Every stroke, I write for me.
Often times I write for you too.
Either way, I write to release the thoughts that are taking up space inside my mind that feel curious and true.

I write to reveal what I see, feel, and am ready to move through.

I spent many years writing from a lens of never sharing from an open wound. Filtering to a point of muffling my own voice. Minimizing my articulation. Calculating what it is that I allowed myself to say. To protect myself and the people who I thought loved me deeply too. But as time went on, I realized that the people who I was protecting rarely read what I wrote - much less listened to what I said. They hardly looked at me - lacked curiosity for what they could have saw. They didn’t appreciate the mirror I was holding or the care I extended with my own two hands.

Most people are so tunnel visioned through the lens of their own pursuit of coping that they rarely can see the potential, possibilities, or purpose of the connections that have been brought into their own lives. They frequently appreciate only once they feel validated in what they receive.

But what if we changed the prescription of our lenses. And looked at the world we move through in new ways. Gave grace and the benefit of the doubt when someone is feeling low. Watched and witnessed patterns in someone’s existence before we labeled them anything at all. Moved with more love - starting with the ways in which we loved ourselves. Expected less, needed less, and gave with pleasure, not to validate ourselves. But because to release our greatness into the world ties us to the world - shows us that we don’t have to be validated externally in order to take up space.

What if we created.
Created to create.
Created to share.
Created to express.
Created to inspire.
Created instead of numbing.
Created to become.
Created what it is that we are becoming.
Created as a foundation for belonging.

I think that art is the greatest expression of healing. It shows us how we can not only feel - see - experience the reality of anything. But how we can create beauty - expression - connection - story out of everything. It is the language of belonging that timestamps our existence upon the world. It is the ways in which we can deeply impact any-and-every-thing without losing ourselves. It is the degree at which we can rebel and conform to a society that asks us to simultaneously abandon and become ourselves all at once.

What if healing wasn’t this performative practice that we went to like rehearsals for another play that looks just the same as all the ones we’ve already seen before. What is healing was simply feeling and transforming what was embodied into a million expressions of art.

What if healing was purely
Music.
Movement.
Dance.
Shape.
Colors on a pallet.
Pictures within a frame.
Strokes upon a canvas.
Words coming together as a poem.
The ways we layout a room.
Mix ingredients to make a meal.
The purity of how we speak conversationally.
Seeds planted in soil.
Aromas designed by mixing different things.
The shapes we discover hidden upon every inch of the earth.

What if….

What if we stopped being afraid to fantasize.

What if…

What if we remembered, or learned, what it is to dream.

To live courageously.

Not for the sake of being seen - or labeled - brave.

But because it was what we needed to do.

To live a life.

To be.

To belong.

To stop performing.

And to reshape what it is to understand, know, and settle into belonging.

Belonging is artistry. It’s a collective of experiences that come together to form something powerfully moving - like a symphony. It gives us vitality. And shapes the ways in which we believe.

Belonging built upon seeking guides us towards what takes us away from ourselves. Leaving us feeling empty in a crowded room. It hurts our heart more than any form of heartbreak ever will. It teaches us how to conform and to manipulate as a false-promise that we will be rewarded in recognition for a job well done.

But belonging - as an artistry - crafted - created - from the depths of ones own soul demands more. It’s a pursuit of truth. A thirst unquenchable by the tap waters that the world provides so easily within reach. It requires us to dismantle every lie we tell ourselves to keep surface level peace. It requires us to go deep. Deeper. And to dismantle the things that we created to keep us safe. To look at the pieces of our existence and determine - what is it that I want to know, experience, feel, and create.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO
IG: @INTIMATELYEUNI

It’s something I’d thought very little about - as I’ve always felt most at home being on my own. But as I was sharing what I had been exploring, contemplating, and experiencing - we arrive to a new pondering - what is it to seek belonging.

At that time, I didn’t think it would mean all that much - to begin contemplating what is belonging to me. But honestly, I think it transformed my entire way of experiencing the world. It cracked a new layer of my heart open and put new lenses for me to take in the view. The shift implanted what I had been practicing for years now. It pulled me into genuine vulnerability that I never before understood how to experience without performing to some degree.

This year taught me that vulnerability requires honesty. Not just the kind that isn’t telling a lie. But the kind that digs deep into your guts and pulls out the messiest truths - even the one’s you didn’t think you could take. But when they surface, you realize that you really can. Which moves you deeper into intimacy. Seeking to know and share and unfold closeness in a way that you’ve never known before.

You find that everything breaks your heart - because it’s all so beautiful and chaotic. Exhilarating, grounding. You seek how wonderful it is to be alive - even, and despite - the never-ending tragedies.

This pulled me deeper into desire. The pursuit of not just mentally processing belonging. But a reoccurring loop of a dress rehearsal for acting, performing, and candidly being in the skits of belonging. The more I was within it - the more it began to make sense. All the layers of human behavior. All the exchanges with others that hurt, confused, enraged, inspired or enlightened me. All the ways I could feel - but not find words - for the sensations that move through my body with every human exchange. The simplicity of pleasure. And the inescapable necessity for play. The demand of grief, stress, betrayal. The vitality of love, compassion, release.

My distance from belonging never really lived within the ways in which I have often felt alien in society. But more so from the distance of getting to deeply know, accept, like, and love myself. I have always had pieces of these at any given time. But never consistently embodied all the layers of love at the same time.

To write poetry to me is a testament that one knows how to and is committed to staying alive. Is a weaver of magic in the form of sweet story. Not contextually always. But definitely in the ways one can shape sentences and pull the feeling to the surface of any individuals skin. The ways in which one can close their eyes - or fix their gaze - and imagine an whole fantasy into a significant part of their life.

I discovered that belong for me is the merging and emergence of beautiful things. Not necessarily those things that are receivable to the common eye. But really the angles that reveal beauty in the places many dare to never look at. The ways in which hardened hearts soften just like the rest when something terrible happens to someone they love. How even in the bravest - fear brings them into a moment of freeze. In the ways one who has given too much finally breaks - and can find their own expression of rage.

As I’ve been tasting the flavors of belonging, I’ve come to believe that we really start to not just have it, but feel it with ease, when we realize the real reason why forgiveness is the glue to everything. Even those that have done the most heinous of things have something that connects them to life - to the world. And in this - they are also tied to us too. I started to see things that disgusted me outside of myself. And felt rage flowing throughout my body. In these moments I also saw the most grotesque parts of myself. The ways I felt anger and the thoughts my mind could make. I saw the ways in which I needed to release so I wouldn’t explode. And discovered how at some point we all choose self preservation over the collective - it’s inevitable.

I felt confusion for how we could be so individualistic and yet still so entangled. How belonging still is the root of existence - even when we’ve curated the experiences we move through day after day after day to be centered on being the best and most powerful individual. I find myself confused by the softening and expanding of my mind. Finding new pigments of black and white.

I don’t know honestly if I understand belonging any better than I did this time last year. But I do know that I have gotten to experience belonging in so many ways this year through the views of belonging that others hold. Witnessing their motivation for others. How they sacrifice and abandon. How they cling to and release. How one loves. How one lies. How one people-pleases.

The actions are fragments of a formula for belonging. A blueprint for each individual. Their own self-paved-path to walk upon. This year I discovered, at least once a week I’m contemplating and digesting the ways I act out my desires to belong. Challenging what is a performance and what is my truths unfolding. Both have hurt me. Both have shaped me. Every layer is showing me more of what it is to belong.

To myself.

To my truth.

To my heart.

To my desire.

To my soul.

To my creativity.

To my love.

Belonging - I am examining intimately. As it intimately dissects, picks apart, and taxidermy’s the most tender and powerful parts of me. Belonging isn’t simply an act or acceptance. It’s a memoir - pages of one’s diary - a devotional to an individuals life.

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO
IG: @INTIMATELYEUNI

Power is in the embodiment of the being. And is validated by the witnessing and experiencing of the beholder. We confuse the origin often as we articulate about how we observe those who have achieved a level of social recognition and knowing of power. And in this we compress or expand the ways we create our own perception of power.

What I am discovering is how we choose to reshape our power as we fall more into alignment of what we discover about ourselves that translates our truths. We lower the standards we’ve held upon ourselves that demonize or shame our imperfections. And we devote to celebrating our sense of curiosity and wonder. We hold love in every inch, every cell, every breath. And we move through the world with a lightness, even on the days that life is hard.

Power is so subtle we frequently overlook how many tiny moments are given to build out our resilience, courage, strength, and steadiness in holding the discomfort of how power pulses at a cadence needed for us to find our way to the path that paves our own unique yellow brick road.

I’ve found so much power in control. Controlling my behavior, emotions, reactions, language, movement, body. I’ve discovered and am uncovering so much power in softening, surrender, messiness, and pleasure. Power must shift. Take new forms. That is the very essence of power - to grow. To expand. There’s no way we can contain a force that gives life to all of the world. There’s only room for us to know more by the ways in which we stay in the ever-changing-flow.

I have been trying to think less about power and drop into the witnessing-while-feeling what is existing within my body moment to moment. Where I fidget and clench. Where I breathe into - belly or chest. How I hold or release my breath. The ways I cross my legs. How my shoulders, back, and pelvic floor is sitting. What emotions am I hoarding. In which ways does my body release what it’s no longer able to store.

Power used to feel scary for me. Not only others holding power over me. But me having power within myself. I spent so much of my life in this tug-a-war with committing all my energy and attention to seeing and seeking protection of the ways people could disempower me and then voluntarily - sometimes consciously, sometimes not - handing my power over to others.

One of the things you can learn in talk therapy is the practice of parts work which will give you an understanding of how awareness of anything gives you the possibility of change. It’s not in the acknowledgement in a way of action - it’s at the point of being able to observe and witness any singular that that allows you to choose familiarity or change. This is a power that only you can hold, determine, and take away. And in this we have an way of being able to transform our reality.

I’ve learned how to be in my body. And I’m still deepening that learning every day. It’s been being near people who are closer to the entry of discovery, within the avoidance of the sensation, or chasing the fear of intimacy or pain that have given me a confirmation that even though it’s still a conscious effort - I have grown. Every time I disconnect from my body to live through the lens of my mind, I reach a new point of recognition of how important it is to me to make this container I exist within a home.

When I first began writing this series, power was feeling a kind of way. And as the weeks have passed and my intense devouring of the information I am discovering in relation to how I am experiencing and witnessing power has shifted significantly. There’s a depth of understanding that has moved beyond words and is living within my body. And with this currently, writing - translating - even expressing with the agenda to evoke feeling from another is dissipating. There’s a tiny tingle that holds the truth of what power is for me. And this is something that I think we must discover on our own. No matter what an external mirror reveals - the formula for power within each of us is deeply our own.

Reflections part 4 of 4 - of rewiring what it is to hold power, pleasure, play, connection + love. (read part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4).

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
SLOWDEEP.CO

Not because you don’t try.
Not because you don’t believe that they can be.
Not because you don’t want peace, harmony, and to share great things with the world you’ve come to know.

But some things won’t be repaired because they were simply meant to destroy the comfortable parts that contain you. To disrupt the walls you built to try to keep yourself safe.

Safety is an internal perception. Sense of safety comes from our capacity to feel - to hold - to explore to expand - to know the deepest parts of the complexities that exist around and within you. But will we ever find safe if we don’t allow ourselves to fully feel.

Rage is an emotion we fear. That we avoid. It’s an outward projection of the pain we can no longer take. The release isn’t what terrifies - its the stories, shame, and traumas that are tied to the ways in which our rage transforms us into new shapes.

We become…
A monster.
Violent.
Unpredicitable.
Uncontainable.

But what if these forms are shapes we need to know. Masks we need to wear. Confrontations we need to face, transform, embody, and let go.

The breath reminds me of my power. How deeply I can receive.
How long I can hold.
How wide I can expand.
How easy it is to release.

Letting go isn’t weak.
It’s a returning home to oneself.

There’s a magic in the release. A medicine in the ways we surrender to finding the strength to submit to facing our fears, our insecurities, our internal bully, our deepest pains. The heart pulses to the pace it also beats. It gives us a new vision of living that we previously were unable to see.

To feel alive means we must look into the mirror of our greatest shadows and we must soften into loving the ugliest things we see. The ways we lie, manipulate, judge, shame. We must speak with words of honey to the parts of ourselves that hurt us just to prove that we can bleed.

I used to have high social anxiety that was so loud that I couldn’t sit comfortable in a room of people I didn’t know if I didn’t have a task or a role. I found my soothing through doing - producing - hosting - curating - space holding. This year I’ve been entering rooms without authority, blending in to take up space. Watching myself from the outside to see who I would be in that moment if I couldn’t busy myself as a way to hide. Silencing the nervous chatter that pulled me into volunteering my energy, heart, and time. Standing with a steadiness of facing my ways of feeling unworthy if I wasn’t producing or contributing to the space in a directly tangible way. Sitting with the unfolding and unknowing of who I am if I am not what I do and what value do I add if I refuse to devote my time to giving my whole self away to stand in the shadows of everyone else’s stage.

I don’t quite know yet. But I don’t think that the knowing is what makes the being. It’s not what leads us into the becoming. It’s not what plants the seed of power within.

It’s the unknowing and the trust in letting go of control.

Everyone builds relationships in the ways that they understand how to filter the vulnerable parts of themselves. Hiding what makes us feel raw, tender, exposed. We tip toe towards opening at the pace of whatever is outside of ourselves. We mirror the courage that we see another projecting upon ourselves. And this keeps us disempowered - sheltered - contorted - muted versions of ourselves.

I’ve been fighting to find what it means for me to fly. To take up the most significant space in my own life. To feel in full spectrum. To destroy the parts of me that numb and filter my complexities. That tell me to silence my truths and to turn away from what’s hard for me to see. I’ve been in a rage to release the ways I’ve bound myself to contain the power that lives within me.

Rope bondage has given me a depth of facing myself that nothing else can. My relationship with rope has put me into a containment that forced me to look at what I didn’t want to see. To rewrite and rewire the way my body feels - how it is seen. To listen deeper to it’s expression - to give it permission to speak. It’s entangled me in emotions that I buried deep. Brought to surface expressions that never before had a name.

My relationship with rope has been intentional. Slow. Powerful. Deep. I’ve spent most of my time with rope performing - to protect myself from being exposed. Sure that most who are able to tie knots were not able to handle the turbulence that would also stir around me with dropping into my body in such a way gave me permission to start dearmoring my heart.

Some things don’t need words. They just need space to be felt and seen. Some things don’t need silence. They need permission to scream. Some things don’t need control, they need imperfection and release.

To be perceived is terrifying. Especially if the one who is seeing doesn’t understand what it is to look deep. If the one who is studying you never skims beyond the surface - this will not only hold us in a way of actually feeling more muted - but it pulls us into contracting because we come to believe the deepest, most honest, most powerful parts of us are too much to be see. That if they were to know the things they haven’t taken the time to observe - they might find repulsion in what is revealed.

I think about this often when I think about my relationship rope. How I used to never let myself go because I was often also judging the things that I thought others could see in me. The bulges of my skin where the rope pulled tight. The dents in my thighs from years of deeply buried grief. The stretch marks from the expanding and shrinking I went through physically trying to control the discomfort of being seen for who I was not and rejecting the possibilities of who I could be. The releasing of pain. The fear of pleasure. The shame. The ways I feared judgement for being weird, wild, sexualized, sexual, primal, uncontained.

I held on in rope to hold it in. For fear of being too much. For being too seen. For all that surfaced and spilled over being used against me. Distrusting of my capacity to confront the depths of me. Protecting another from the responsibility of witnessing the falling apart of my false perception of self.

My relationship with rope has been a slow burn. Like my relationship with drugs. A medicine for my soul. A permission to build stability within myself and to come back home. It’s given me power to unfold everything I didn’t know I needed to know in order to over and over again become whole.

To give another the honor to witness this process is sharing a piece of your power with trust. It’s mirroring to them their power as a permission for them to confront the stories that they also hold. It’s a delicate entanglement that can entrap us in deepening codependency or set us free. My relationship with rope has never been about my relationship with anyone else outside of myself. And with this - the power of discernment has brought me into bonding with the parts of me that need to be most deeply seen and most compassionately held.

My relationship with rope has gifted me friendships that were potent, ones that have dissolved. And friendships that have transformed. It’s held me in a place of being respected and trusted by many. And given me teachers and mentors who I also love deeply as friends. As well as deeper understandings of all the parts needed to deeply trust someone else and let them in. The power that I have come to know through rope has nothing to do with the patterns or predicaments that each hank creates. But the unraveling of the patterns and predicaments that my surrendering to the intimacy of being witnessed, perceived, and imperfectly out of control has lead me to release.

Reflections part 3 of 4 - of rewiring what it is to hold power, pleasure, play, connection + love. (read part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4).

LET’S GO SLOW.
LET’S GET DEEP.
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