I had checked this pile of books out on a high from listening to a podcast about how important library spaces are (and they are) 9 months ago. But someone like me, with my particular affinity to being well intentioned but distracted, might do better just reading the books in the library. Because taking them home is a risk I don’t think they should take.

After shoving them on the return pile and dashing away, I found myself leaning on my hot car and relishing in, for a brief second, being the kind of person that is all good with the library.

I never knew that, at 40, I would feel so unsteady. My body holds so many versions of self I can barely keep track. Right beside “get right with the library” I have “buy red pasties” and then “sign the chromebook agreement for middleschool” and then “sit in the sun and do nothing because you’re going to die one day”.

Sexually, I am a horny teenage boy. Nervous system wise I am in my 90s. I love taking my clothes off, I love going to church, I love smoking what I call half pot (cbd) and looking at the stars until I can’t even tell where I start and they end.

I’m working for teeth cleaning and lap dance lessons

Peaches and trauma work

Days to do nothing and tires to get me to the next adventure

Art. Art. Art.

I’m working for tables of friends eating with their eyes closed as they taste something new

Treats at the gas station and flowy thrifted skirts

Generational healing and cocktails with punny names

I’m wondering if that place on my chin that grows the longest hair in under 24 hours holds the key to Amazon forest regrown.

If I will ever hang a photo in fancy gallery.

If my kids even want to know me.

If I’m the kind of person who returns library books, what else the world will expect from me.

Once in a while I have to get some dark stuff out of my soul before I can go back to my whimsical, quirky, hopeful self. . .today is that day.

(Good news is the star people are saying that Friday morning we should all feel better after the eclipse—-and I am taking their word for it).

I married a narcissist when I was 19. I had no idea what a narcissist was—hell I didn’t even know how penises fit in vaginas, or what a kitchen aide was, or that I had free choice in this world so it’s not surprising. All I knew was I was always the one who was wrong, even if I had his wrong caught on video tape. He could convince me very easily that I just saw it wrong.

And you know what I did to make it better? I made some babies with him.

That is a generous term for what happened. There was little to no collaboration. In fact, I will admit I forced it out of desperation after months of being strung along that we would start trying for a family and then being told no like I was a puppy being trained. My strong thighs prevented our birth control method and 2 weeks later I was sobbing in a bathroom because despite my well intentions. . .he was not excited about the stick I peed on, or the baby we made.

I thought being married to him was awful before? Being married to him and trying to raise babies 93.7% by myself was awful-er.

He did not wake up.

He did not see my worth.

He did not suddenly get on the same page as me.

He did blame me for everything.

He did withhold any compassion in postpartum.

He did make fun of me.

He did take every single damn opportunity to twist normal parenting situations where I was the bad guy and he was the hero.

Currently I am going through some fucking brutal heartbreak regarding parenting. When I tell you that trying to parent children with a narcissist when you have fled that abuse yourself is kind of the worst pain ever. . .believe me.

I feel like I’m a caged animal sometimes. And unless I want to cut my children out of my life-I just have to figure it out.

The current situation is set up perfectly for me to fail every single day, in every single way. And my poor, precious kids (who are nearing adulthood) just are being kids-choosing the easiest path, with the most take out and freedom. The one without parenting. The one void of extreme emotion or attunement to others.

Not only did this man steal MY childhood, he’s stealing my last years of their childhood. And I will never not hate every bone in his body for it.

And I can’t get away from it.

I’m watching the Lindsay Clancy trial and it is SO obvious that he killed their children and tried to kill her (and framed her for it). I’ve read her journals and found the same self penance language as I had for so many years. The gaslighting and abuse via negligence are STARK. And here he is a million dollars richer with a whole new family telling the world that it was her.

I know what it is like to be slowly killed by a person. To be gutted and told it was you. In fact, if I were to have died before I left I would 100% have said it was murder.

Our president, the billionaire men who take and take and take while not even paying their employees enough to go to the doctor, pastors of SO many churches—-narcissists run this world, on the bones of the people they’ve crushed. And I’m pissed about it.

Once you get out of situations like I was in, you can’t help but scream from the roof top—-”get the fuck out”

***this substack was written in a perimenopausal rage, days away from an eclipse, after a shit day where I didn’t eat a good lunch.

I see you.

I see you taking moments out of your full life to make a homemade bouquet of flowers for me on the anniversary of leaving my marriage.

I see you waking up every day and pouring your heart and soul into your magic. I see your sparkly star gown that makes you throw your head back like 4 year old as you dance around your living room. I see you choosing to gather instead of wither.

I see you embracing your bigger body. Learning to love the multitude of scars and dips in its surface like it is a new and exotic land (because it is).

It’s not easy.

Damn it’s not easy.

And yet you are dancing, laughing, telling stories, wearing outrageous outfits that you never would have felt safe in before, and you are turning heads when you walk because you’re oozing with life.

I see you leaving marriages. I see you staying in them. I see you reaching for more.

I see you caring for your parents and caring for your children and caring for your little girl self who is the neediest of all.

I see you spending the evenings dancing in the dewy grass and watching the sky for shooting stars even though your bones creak when you stand sometimes.

I see you fiercely protesting and changing worlds from your van. I see you (well not really see you but you know. . .doing liberated things and leaning into kink and letting your pleasure lead the way.

I see your flushed cheeks and I think you look like girls in the prime of life even though your hair is flecked with silver.

You also see me.

You have told me it gets better, that this is a death and birth. You have listened to my voice messages that sound like a complete and total different woman every day, because I am a different woman every day, and you don’t even falter to cheer me on.

It’s so damn hard here in this place, but it isn’t fucking lonely here.

Things feel really dire lately in the human experience and I am a little bit depressed according to my calculations (and my psychiatrist’s).

Everyone I know is feeling disconnected and it seems like most people are just running around in circles powered by capitalism, buying their way to an early grave of human connection. There’s a frozen sort of feel, like our society is an iceberg with a few brave sludging up to their waist to find each other. I love these brave people who aren’t falling asleep in the cold. (Shout out to the most recent beautiful human connection invite-my friend Eliza hosting a share a few favorite images you took on her porch. . .with muffins. And the pictures have to be printed).

As I’m sludging and bemoaning the fact that we could melt this mother fucker of an iceberg—I have realized that I can have a little treat—a slight shopping addiction that doesn’t feed the beast. Even though I still have not recovered from my mid life divorce/start over yet (aka I do not have a savings account). I can’t stop myself from buying little bits of art. It feels like active, radical, life changing shit to buy a sticker from a human that created it, printed it, and is selling it for $6. It feels beyond important to spend my Christmas money on that photo and poem subscription. I feel like the baddest bitch to rescue an original artwork from the dump by finding and purchasing it from the local thrift bins.

It’s my way of saying, “art matters, beauty matters, weird ideas, matter” and also “wow, what a brave human you are to let us see, please keep going.”

Dollars are little votes, little mircro aggressions, little f you corrupt people who think you rule the land.

So lets wallpaper our homes with all our little treats and lets not give up yet, shall we?

PS-subscribing to substacks are a lovely way treat yourself. Recently someone gifted me a subscription to one and it felt more delicious than a spa day.

I’m writing a book.

It’s about my body.

I’ve got the first part down.

How it felt being so tiny and having people constantly cut you off from your body.

You’re dirty

Men are lusting after you

Cover your thighs, and arms, and knees

I’ve got the middle down. When my body, so much wiser than I gave her credit for, started trying to die—because I was very much unsafe and didn’t even know it.

I’ve got the redemptive part.

The leaving, the blossoming, the dancing and clicking back into the body.

The exploratory sex. The good sex. The funny sex that I think of whenever I see cucumbers at the grocery store sex.

But this part I’m living. This part is weird.

I feel like I am 19 years old in so many ways. My desire is through the roof. I get delighted by everything. I prioritize things many women my age have long since abandoned.

And the physical shell of my spirit, my nervous system, my body, my organs. . .have been working triple time since I was born. I have lived a full century of things.

I wanna make out with pop rocks and my body is like “fuck you, I have lived through 4 world wars.”

As I’m sinking into my body, writing poems about my thighs, admiring how it feels to smear dirt on my collarbone, I’m starting to feel like this body is a breathe away from being air. That my longings for sex are a forcing down of a kite that is just about to sail into the clouds.

I’m at the end of a lemon squeeze and I am squeezing just one more time, trying to gather the seeds with my other hand.

I have not been able to focus, my work has taken me 20 times as long as usual, I feel alone and confused while spreading my arms around me to graze any and every connection I can get.

I feel free, but in that kite-like way, instead of a tree-like way I thought it was going to feel like.

Me and my 90 year old body, getting all we can while we can.

While I can’t quite pin point which neurodivergent category triggered me on Tuesday, I was triggered.

Triggered to me feels like being sucked out of my body like I am the last drop of a capri sun, and being thrown in the absolute vast and endless inkiness of a black hole.

I cannot grab onto anything.

I don’t know if it’s healthy, but the way I get out of this place, is hyperfixating on something outside of myself.

Wednesday I woke up and instantly wished I was still sleeping. I had a lot of things to do, some things pretty time sensitive but I was still in that black place.

I was scrolling on my phone, my thumb searching for a little groove to sink my fingers into, and I had the idea to check how many saved videos I had on Tik tok; a little more than 1500. As I scrolled through a collage of my best intentions I felt such an twinge in my belly. I hate saving these on a digital place that is 1.distracting, 2.sells you stuff. So I had the bright idea to take notes, on actual paper, of the things I wanted to keep.

I started, just scribbling out whatever stuck out to me: recipes, books to read, documentaries to watch, ways to breathe better, stretch better, f&*$ better.

One by one I either wrote it down or released it back into the wild by the click of the little button. I filled half of a notebook. I saw patterns. I realized how ambitious I was for my one tiny, wild and precious life. I realized that even if I didn’t have the myriad of jobs I have, I could not have possibly done all of those things.

I realized that when you’re so busy buying the latest miracle supplement that will 100% cure your raging adhd, doing THE ULTIMATE SOMATIC RELEASE, and cooking 500 things with butter beans you really are letting life pass you by. You’re not hanging out with your friend, you’re not sitting on your porch and feeling the breeze. . .you’re not living.

Is this how they get us? To rope us into believing that we are building the best life while our life is literally passing us by?

I’ve gone through my notebook of scribbles and crossed off things that I don’t even want to think about again. I ordered a slew of cool new books from Thriftbooks and I listened to some new songs in the most simple stretches.

I also signed up for an online course and made some art with the quotes I loved.

That’s it. I just wanted to share.

And if you have any of my offerings off on a little tab of “one day”, I encourage you to un-tab it into reality.

• www.yourbodyisart.co

• www.helenjoy.com

• Books by Helen Joy George

Stolen land held hostage by takers

Perpetuated by takers

Inhabited by people disconnected from the land and each other

We are mostly all one mishap from a Go Fund Me-doing our best to hold eachothers’ burdens of health and home and burial

I lay the altar linens I clean on the scorched earth of the hottest day of the year and know they will soon be crispy dry

I’ve shuttered all day and pounced like a hurt cat as GOD and COUNTRY are used like they are the same

I burn with embarrassment—like somehow growing up in that is my fault

This week I held a brand new baby, laid on the ground next to a tree 500 years old, and wept because it feels like no one is waking up

I sneak out of the overworked AC to sit at the foot of my favorite tree and smoke the CBD that gives me a hint of relief

I hear the neighbors at their party next door, knowing full well I’ve been way too bold to be asked to share in the celebration

I love celebrations, I celebrate everything—my god we have to

But it’s unbalanced, this holding on to nostalgia and home and the way we let them take everything, including blood and we just let it happen

There are such good people here.

I’ve been held as I miscarried, carried as I left pain, given 50 dollar bills at just the right time.

I’ve been given fat tomatoes, relief from a toddler, my home at a price far lower than market value

I’ve been listened to, pushed up a hill in my failing car, welcomed where I was strange

I’ve danced till I was wet with sweat with people who take off their work clothes at the door and huddled with people when we had few resources after the hurricane

There is good here. So much good.

As there is good everywhere.

I’ll never forget the look on his kind, weathered face when I told him, of all things, I was not patriotic.

I had been dating this man for six months. He was 19 years my senior, a veteran, and loved every inch of me.

But when I told him I wasn’t patriotic, I could see how surprised he was, how disappointed in me he was.

I suppose I could seem like the kind of girl who would be patriotic. I come across wholesome and traditional. I grew up Christian. I wear long skirts and wear aprons.

If you know me, you know that having no allegiance to the flag, or the government, or the history of how we got here actually lines up a lot better with who I am.

Despite being a birthday freak and being a people pleasing recovering good girl, I do NOT say the pledge of allegiance. I do not celebrate independence day. And I do not feel pride in my country.

Despite having heard my grandfather’s and uncle’s war stories as their twinkly eyes grew dark, watching my friend bury her husband of a year, and having great respect for people who are in the military, I am frequently angry about the blood our land holds. The sweat from black and brown brows that has built what is presented as prosperity, with little to no recognition of it. The visual I have of the terrain that makes up the USA being infiltrated by takers who made up their own story to make what they did right, patriotic.

And yet today when my teenagers were blasting patriotic songs to get under my skin, I started repeating that line of American the Beautiful “land that I love” in my head and I was thinking about how true that part is.

Land that has delighted me with river bends, fireflies at dusk, and hills that roll. Land that holds trees so big you can’t see around them, trees you want to lay in the roots of and feel infinite. Land I have traveled across many times, land I have watched the sun rise and set over its shores.

Land that holds the people I love.

If anything, on the day we celebrate this country, we should put down the showy red white and blue outfits, fireworks that scare the animals for weeks, and glitzy bedazzling of what we are to lay the feet of giant trees, hold a neighbor in an embrace, eat the food we grow and share.

The United States has been built on taking. Taking resources, dignity, land (that at its core is not own able), and power from the most vulnerable.

Our children are not free

Our elderly are not free

Our queer and disabled and people who have not finished their papers are not free

Even full time workers who never stop, who get one medical issue that ruins their life are not free.

There is much that needs renewal, much that needs change.

Because freedom is not an Old Navy commercial or a chance to flex your nuclear family on the socials. Free is when all the people can have their basic needs met AND enjoy the land they live on with the people they live with.

So until then I will hold off my love of navy red and white in the summer, I will still thank every veteran for their service, I will still vote the best I can manage, and I will still wish for a day, when I can be proud, not of our history, but of our present.

Because if I, or my children, or my neighbors have anything to do with it, this land will live on with our children, and they will take their children to the roots of trees and tell of how in 2026 every one stopped stepping into the preordained “way of things” and how land was preserved for delight, an neighbors learned they are at core the same, that there is no particular sounds quite like summer sounds out my window tonight

Every walk on the land shows me how.

At first it was fun and casual. I shudder to think about my first wedding and how I showed up with ONE battery, ONE 8 gb memory card, and no back up anything. Just an artist with a vision and all the hope in the world. I remember charging my battery during a lull and having no qualms with how that felt.

Photography was fun, I was obsessed with finding unique locations and tilting my camera into weird. Work was fun and easy and honestly, I did a lot of it for free.

Then I had the photos from my Grandparents’ 50th anniversary get corrupted when I had told our whole family to just enjoy because I would get the photos. I was devistated.

The reality of how much weight I held as a photographer started setting in.

As unique locations started to fade in my work, I was drawn to very complex situations. People who were mourning, celebrations after loss, new chapters. And suddenly I was holding even more weight, not only the actual physical photos and protecting them, but the weight of holding space to make them.

As my marriage at the time was becoming so painful and I started moving away from weddings and into birth photography I started holding EVEN more.

Days away from my children, loss of sleep, body weariness were secondary to the way in which I had to/got to approach my work with both the brutal nature of birth and the absolute miracle of it. I photographed babies that never took a breath in this world, and families who went home from the hospital without a baby too in between births where I got to hear a first cry.

This deep work poured into all my other work. Suddenly I was capable of holding so many things during a simple family session that, in the beginning, had no recovery time. Even if it was all happy, the layers of meaning I was discovering and capturing felt like it encroached on my body—sometimes overtaking it for days.

As I’ve aged my recovery time has been harder and harder. This next week I am attending my last birth for the foreseeable future. Although I cherish being with families as they bring new life into the world, I don’t get paid enough for the 2 weeks it takes to start to recover.

And so this year I raised my prices to a place where I should be able to rest inbetween making the photos I am good at making, the photos I LOVE making; truly letting my body come to a place of balance more times than not.

Because I CAN do this work for less, but probably not for much longer.

I WANT to make photos work for EVERYONE, not just people with extra, but my body is telling me absolutely not.

I have people ask me all the time “how many hours do we get for our session?” and I’ve started replying (instead of “as long as your husband can not be grumpy”) with “I have only so much of me to give and you can spread that creativity and energy however you want.”

Working for so many years for a price that doesn’t reflect the ammount of heart, soul, and energy I put into my photography has put my nervous system into ruin.

As I’ve reclaimed it with acupunture and more rest than usual, I’ve decided to risk losing beloved clients at the gain of my own sanity and longevity.

I now visualize doing what I do now, but doing it with a reserve instead of a deficit. Of having many days between to ponder, cry, and have my soul shifted—while reading poetry on my porch and renewing for the next time.

I thought I was so terribly broken up until 4 years ago.

I knew I was not normal at a very young age and every year since it has been more and more obvious that my spirit cannot live within the confines of being a successful, routine oriented, modern American citizen.

Every year I have also learned more about the earth, the cycles, seasons, tides, rituals, and neurodivergent brains. . .and so in turn, I have found that I am actually quite beautifully and on purpose-ly created.

I remember telling an organization specialist I was trying to work with 10 years ago,

“I want to be a river, but I am an ocean.”

I create in giant tidal waves that threaten to drown those around me.

I FEEL so deeply every full moon, every seasonal change, every time planets get lined up—or mixed up—or whatever else they do.

And I cannot for the life of me wash my face two nights in a row. Hell, I can only wash my face if I have enough hot water in my nightly baths. . .so maybe 3 times a month.

I long for routine and steady but it feels out of my control, this cyclical ebb and flow of me.

My own cycle, the time I bleed, has been really scattered the last year and has brought me to my KNEES in a way I have never felt before.

4 days ago I was the happiest and most lighthearted I’ve been in a year, on a little adventure to the coast with some dear friends and my precious husband. Today someone accidentally ended their text with two ?? and I was plotting out my funeral for several hours. That is not an exaggeration.

My period which used to cause me little to no trouble, has brought me to a place of absolute crisis whenever the fuck she decides to show up.

For 3 days I am hostage to feelings of

Who the fuck do I think I am?

How the fuck can I exit this unbelievably painful life.

Why the fuck are you chewing, asking me questions, or asking me what I want to eat.

I feel powerless to a bitchiness I have have avoided my entire life accompanied with a “we’re all about to die while flying through the galaxy on this shitty rock so why does it even matter” mentality.

Give me a creative tidal wave any time. This cycle is for the mf birds.

And yet I swam through freezing cold river water today and found a patch of sunlight and for a moment was reminded that it all is connected and important and that there is beauty after the bleeding.

I know, deep down, there’s some kind of deep lesson here in this place. Not a manipulative lesson but one that will help me know my purpose more.

I just was so damn near close to that face routine. I’ve got 13-97 days to try again.

There are worse things than death.

When the grief is so thick but you are wandering the earth without a grave to weep on.

I first felt this kind of grief when I was 13 and my father, in an attempt to leave this world, shot a nail gun through his brain—from one temple to the other.

We spent months praying, rehabilitating, and hoping only to be stuck living with a man who was nothing like my dad—more like an empty child. 25 years later and I still care for him, and he still feels like a stranger.

I never got closure. I never buried his body.

The next summer at camp I stood up during camp fire and said “my dad died.” and then after a silence ". . .but not really”. The pause felt so good, so true.

How weird it has been to be jealous of friends who got to have funerals for their parents.

Then it was my mother I lost. I could still catch a wiff of her hovering over Bible studies and bringing pots of soup to sick elderly. She’s so sweet. She’s so good.

And yet I had to say no for several years to letting her know me. I still can’t be alone with her, for fear of letting my grief spill out and hurt her.

I ached for her. I still ache for her. The mother I wish she could have been if it weren’t for trauma that infiltrated her bones and makes it impossible for her to be in reality.

And now, my oldest child, the baby and child and teen I have loved and fought for since I knew of their existence has in so many words cut me out of their own lives. There has been no reasons, just a general wanting to live their own life with no rules and no accountability. He lives 10 miles away but it might as well be continents.

I’ve been feeling for a year that he is dead. Lost at sea, nowhere to be found. The kind of death wartime widows felt when no body was ever recovered but maybe they always hoped.

When people ask how I am-no matter how good everything else is-I want to whisper “my son is lost and I’ll never be ok until he’s found”.

A friend did die this past year. Unexpectedly and horrifically. They buried her on the coldest day I have ever felt in my whole life. I didn’t know we would be invited to the graveside so I didn’t bring a jacket in all the chaos of trying to live life alongside grief that day. So I sat in my car and wailed with grief instead of going-the way grief is supposed to be.

Is it my lot in life to grieve people when they’re still alive? To never have a grave to keep, to never write an account of it all to put in the newspaper?

To never have an end to the hoping?

I love bodies. All bodies.

I’ve always been drawn to the naked form in a very non sexual way, more in a sunset or a mountain range kind of way.

As a young girl I was raised in a purity cult where bodies were dangerous and should be hidden. Our skirts went well past our knees, our shirts up past our collar bones, so I found the human form in the dusty encyclopedias in the basement of my grandparents’ house. I would look up ancient Rome or Greece and look at the statues carved out of marble photographed on the pages: Aphrodite’s stomach rolls, David’s round butt, the voluptuous fertility statues of before we even kept track of history.

There was something holy about the human form. It seemed like the ultimate form of freedom to me.

Even though I grew up with rigorous rules, I still spent a lot of time on the beach in a modest one piece bathing suit. I saw my great aunts on the beach with their soft, translucent skin and their ivy like varicose veins on their legs. I peeked at men that windsurfed and noticed how their back rippled like when the tide changed. I noticed that some breasts were so small the swimsuit covering them gaped and some were so large they spilled out like the yeast of the my cousin’s sourdough starter.

I was always searching bodies for God, for meaning, for a sense of belonging.

When I got to high school I started collecting small statues, or tearing out nude art from magazines at the doctor’s office. In college during my oil painting classes I always tried to turn our assignment into a nude. Lemons? BORING. But the way a back swayed? The way a collar bone dipped? Now that was something I wanted to detail with my paints (though I could never even quite grasp painting).

Today I find myself unchanged.

I still see any and every body with the same wonder was that little girl pouring over the encyclopedia. And I find that when people are in the presence of my wonder and my lens, and glimpse their own bodies with that same wonder, that liberation comes quickly.

Liberation from capitalism, consumerism, discontent, and apathy.

No one (who is selling you things) wants you to know that you’re a work of art right now, as you are.

If you follow fashion or art, you know that what’s in right now is the pendulum swing from the perfection and fakeness of AI.

Handmade, repaired, upcycled. The high fashion designers of the world are including things like patches, darning, and holes in their work.

The more human, the better.

After all, those holes, those patches tell stories.

Same goes for our bodies. Our precious bodies that are one of a kind and have inevitably been through some shit, have marks of love, loss, growing, aging, as well as the literal scars we hold.

Like the tiny little marks on my right pointer finger where you can see where they reattached it when I was a baby and got it caught under the door frame. I have scars on my arms like many deep feelers, of times I didn’t want to be there anymore. Mostly faded, they still tell stories when people meet me and I don’t have to say word.

Years ago, a beloved friend who is no longer with us, glued my daughter’s cheek where she fell and needed stitches. I touch it sometimes and think of him. That scar is his handywork on her precious little face.

So babe, if you wanna let it all hang out, THIS IS THE SUMMER TO DO IT!

We are all starting to feel nauseous over the fake images AI has created of perfect people and we are craving pear shapes, bums that jiggle, sparkly eyes on a balding man. We wanna see the beauty of now in everyone.

I turned 40 this past year (when I feel like a lot of women start hiding themselves) so I challenged myself to taking a self portrait every week, a practice in enjoying whatever is, whatever makes me me..

It’s been glorious. I’m on week 22 and every portrait I have made has made me see myself as art.

I started this substack with a photo of me in my bath, where I usually write. My self portrait from the prompt “from above”

Though, at first, I might think my thighs look like 2 rolls of ciabatta from that angle, I can say

“Yep. That’s me. Wow, I work so hard, I love so hard, I’m strong. Look at how my thighs look like hunks of marble, look at my funny little feet all tucked. Look at her determined face. Man, that woman is art.”

That woman is me.

That art is you.

And friends I have chills as I write that I am launching a new web site into the world that feels incredibly aligned with who I am.

I really challenge you to look around, look at the portraits of imperfect people who let me see them, let themselves see them. And regardless if you ever book a session with me, I hope you see yourself as the priceless work of art you are.

www.yourbodyisart.co

And that sums up the past few weeks for me.

I truly don’t know how I always find myself in these pickles but the situations are numerous. In fact, I realized today the second memoir I’m writing and hopefully publishing next year will have a whole new chapter based on this May 2026.

Last week I found myself in the ER with my 17 year old who drove me there because I could no longer feel my right leg after 5 days of pretty horrible aches and pains. Looking back it was way more than aches and pains but one of my kids was recovering from major surgery and I was in nurse mom mode, sleeping on the couch, and just generally thinking I was weak and unflexible.

Right before they told me what was up, they came in after 7 hours of waiting and just injected me with fentanyl. . .because somehow I had an avulsion fracture to my pelvis and I think they felt bad I’d been writhing in pain for so long.

The only way I could have gotten this was literally dancing my ass off at Miss Vee’s Freak Show when I performed two acts of burlesque 5 nights earlier. Truly some of the best moments of my life— bringing my art alive through my body.

Was it humping the apple?

Reclining and painting my back side with a paint brush?

Squatting as I squeezed pears and grapes and peaches?

We will never know.

The funny thing about this injury is that it is pretty much only seen in teenage athletes. Primarily teenage gymnasts and pitchers. Even though that is weird as hell, I’m taking the compliment.

Maybe they’ll add in the texts books . . .and middle aged baddies who twerk.

It’s a great story to tell the grandkids but I have to admit that this level of pain mixed with having to slow down and say no and not perform my pole solo in 2 weeks is killing me. Especially because prior to this I’ve been debilitated and I was JUST feeling like my body was mine again.

Last year at this exact time I started plummeting into perimenopause (and other body shut downs-like adrenals, digestion, and thyroid ). As a woman who lives with Bipolar 1, this was also devastating to my homeostasis I had worked so hard to achieve with a close working relationship with my psychiatrist.

I also got on HRT (but maybe not the right kind but the kind I could afford) and this helped briefly.

And then my body got so freaking inflamed that it started FOR REAL shutting down. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t move without hurting. I couldn’t function. They thought it was my thyroid, I needed surgery, they thought it was my blood sugar.

Turns out my body hated HRT and was peacing out.

So I started acupuncture weekly and it started healing me but it was clear I needed to come off of HRT to really feel better long term.

And that made me have the worst manic episode.

So then I had to be sedated and get on sleeping meds for the first time in 10 years. And then I had to wean off those.

And then my first period in 9 months.

All this time I am parenting, advocating for one of my kids to have a much needed surgery, building a new business, teaching, dancing, writing, trying so desperately hard to not just exist.

And it felt like I had MADE IT that night I got to perform.

But I broke my freaking pelvis.

Why aren’t we starting meal trains for middle aged women?

“Bridgett is about to have her period after not being able to sleep for 8 weeks. Please send tacos.”

I’m trying to stay positive and chipper and grateful, but

fuck this shit.

A beautiful, meaningful, full-to-the-brim reality. . .that is anything but.

It’s how I stayed 17 year with a man who detested me.

It’s how I sustain myself in times of. . .fucking horrible shit.

It’s how I make detours, adventures and mistakes, happy mistakes.

Today, at 17 mins till Mother’s Day is finally over (praise be), I realized that my skill of making things beautiful was birthed because of Mother’s Day.

Being the oldest of 7 and feeling the crippling weight of my mother’s unhappiness-I took it upon myself to create a reality that wasn’t.

All mothers hurt their kids. It’s just part of the deal. But what I experienced as a child in regards to my mother was soul crushing. It was gutting. It hurt every fiber of my whole being and it was constant. And yet she rocked me at nights and read me books. And that was all I needed. That wasn’t enough for me, but I made it enough for me.

I built from those little glimmers a world where I was loved always, where I was safe, where I allowed to rest. And I wrote the fuck out of those Mother’s Day cards and paired them with horribly flavored plain yogurt mixed with blue food coloring on a tray.

An offering.

I could always feel the disappointment as the day waned. It wasn’t even close to enough.

And here I am, the same. Closing out the day feeling like, how could there ever be a gift, a card, a moment to convey the understanding that is motherhood. The complete and utter violence, death, and chaos it brings to body and mind. The way it consumes you to the core to make sure your babies KNOW they can’t fuck up too much, that they can be messes and you’ll still love them. That you have poured out every last bit of your life into them and you just know (deep down) it wasn’t enough.

There is no card in the world that can hold the magnitude of that.

And so here I am weeping, knowing my mother did her best and it still hurt me so damn bad. And that even in her own stunted way, her love and motherhood could not be contained or measured.

In a way this year I feel the most tender to my mom. My oldest is in a place of wanting to be anywhere but near. He brought me flowers today. I noticed he left the plastic wrap on-even though he’s known to take it off and wrap his past three girlfriends’ with brown paper. He said nothing of meaning to me, nothing past acknowledging the day. I know I should be grateful but they felt offensive to me and yet here I am, again, begging for crumbs for which to build my kingdom from. My kingdom of beautiful memories and healthy mothers.

One time it was an affordable letter opener with an embracing nude couple (never found one less than 5 grand)

One time it was organic lounge clothes for toddlers (also never found—but this was 10 years ago)

Once it was a high chair (check)

Another time the PERFECT pair of boots. (check check)

This time around (because it has been a while) has been different in the way that I am sifting through absolute oceans full of absolute ai/scammy/fake shit. It’s on web sites, on poshmark, advertised on Facebook and it is so rampant that it has become white noise. I notice certain things will be under ten dollars on amazon and 95 on poshmark. Same dress, same model, same photo.

I can sniff out a fake easily. I’ve been scammed twice in the past 10 years and so I am hypervigilant to keep my money going to safe places.

But just because I know what is fake doesn’t mean it doesn’t wear the ever living shit out of me to have to mine the web for real offers, real items, real companies.

I’m sorry, if your butt is a size 18 and your waist is a size 2. Fake.

AI generated people wearing the clothes. FAKE.

Gorgeous hand embroidered gowns for under 30 new? FAKE

At one point I set my phone down after feeling like I was SO CLOSE to finding what I needed in my budget (and sustainably) and just YELLED OUT, “WHAT IN THE WORLD IS WRONG WITH THE INTERNET?”

I would pay good subscription money to filter this out. To only show what’s real. To again, see my friends on social media and not random people and groups I have no interest in.

It’s becoming a full time job to mine the good shit. And the web weariness is apparent in interaction, connection, and for me, being hired for my photography work.

I like it here on substack. A secret, non colonized space for lots of pure, real, good stuff.

And if anyone has a size xxl gold chain tunic with high thigh slits they wanna sell me. . .

I don’t care if the most hacker of hacker knows I am still deficient in vitamin d. . .I cannot sign into another medical portal.

Texting.

I reply to 2 texts, I get 10 texts. I LIKE texting people but it can not ever, ever be finished. I have 663 unread messages and struggle with the (lovely) people who heart or react to every message I send. That kind of over achieving is just too much for me.

Finding out that quiz you took for fun on Christmas evening was some sort of sign up to an AI program that charges you a tiny bit every month (but not enough you notice).

Big, harsh lights should be illegal.

Telling people “I just don’t want to” (which I did for the first time the other day). The rant is that it took me so long.

The various writers attempts at name genitals in smut. WHAT THE HECK with “her intimate pot” or “his stiff rod”

STI testing taking a dinosaur’s amount of time.

NO HOT PLUS SIZE LINGERIE. Truly, just make it bigger! We want it.

Mail. Unless it’s from a friend or has money it in. . .get the fuck away.

Poshmark’s “inspirational notifications”

Having to eat three times a day.

Taxes. It’s like play settler’s of Catan blind.

The fact that now when I stream music I can’t tell what is AI sometimes.

Passwords. I mean in 2 years what the heck are they gonna ad to the rules?

Click on the bridge shit. You know to prove you’re not a robot.

Phones that on purpose don’t last.

Capitalism.

People who never irresponsibly leave their families or pets for an adventure.

You are too.

Some days I feel that death will come sooner for me. I find that everything that is as intense as me, can’t stick around long. They burn out.

Some days I’m weeping over the beauty of nature and then minutes later I am wishing for a meteor to end it all.

Since life seems so fleeting to me this is the “to do lists” I want to have:

-notice the new blooms on our street

-lay in the sun and listen to the birds

-tell Dean his poem made me cry

-read my book in the bath

-do puzzles with Ellie, make travel plans with Taylor, drink tea till it’s cold with Hannah.

-dance till I want to stop

-eat cheese and tomatoes and herbs slowly to the music of my heart

-order burlesque costumes for all my shows coming up

What my to do list is:

-fill out and pay taxes (can I pay towards teachers, mental health, and road repair and not bombs, extravagance, and corruption?)

-reply to the never ending text messages I receive

-sign in to 3 different doctor portals

-fight our health insurance so we can all go to therapy (they used to pay and now they’re being bitches)

-wipe up the rice I spilled last night

-figure out why my car is stalling

It’s like the closer I get to understanding what a blip in the universe life is, the more I don’t want to do anything that doesn’t align.

And easter for a lot of years was rushing around town to find new shoes. As a little girl easter = looking our best. So we would spend Good Friday and Silent Saturday dragging our gaggle of girls (5 in total) around Charleston SC trying to find affordable shoes that fit us all so that come easter morn we would all look perfect. My wide feet were shoved into a parade of shoes until one could semi house my foot. I knew there would be blisters and blood by lunch the next day.

I grew up in a legalistic evangelical cult so you would think holy week would be extra intense but oddly it became even less about Jesus and more about everyone posing in floral dresses in front of the azaleas. Tight lipped and forced smiles because there had been yelling and crying on the way to church. We didn’t have social media back then but similar to yesterday I know our photo would have been posted with “he is risen” under it.

When I moved to NC in high school and discovered that the mountain people were a tad less. . .vain about easter, I started viewing easter with much guilt—imagining my sin of fantasizing about french kissing literally nailing Christ to the cross. My feet were free here but my spirit was not.

Then there came the church I attended that had a Good Friday service the same time I was in absolute hell mentally. It honestly felt fantastic to be in a space that talked about suffering out loud. I wanted to sit there for forever, but easter came and the sugar sweet parade of it all. I tried to get that azalea photo with my own family while demonizing having to do it as a child.

And then I didn’t go to church for a while and easter was free of my own tortured thoughts about Jesus and the whole crucifixion thing. I even very much dismissed the whole thing as “a good story” for a while.

It’s weird that this first holy week in the episcopal church coincides with my calling to burlesque, my writing my 6th book about sex, and my desire for social justice in the front part of my brain. Thinking about Jesus as much as I have lately seems SO off brand for me.

But you have to understand that for someone like me who has been taught this:

My nasty sins killed Jesus. God murdered his own son. This story is going to be used to manipulate the masses in order to gain power, money, and unfulfilling sex.

Learning that this is fact wrong and unBiblical is BLOWING MY MIND.

With the power of social media and my easy access to many theologians and Bible scholars AND safety in a small, safe church a mile from my house I am figuring out there is another story out there that changes EVERYTHING.

A story of social injustice, of a divine feminine version of Jesus who had a mother’s love. A literal acting out of death and rebirth that is necessary for all good things (flowers, babies, mothers, growth, seasons, etc).

One reason my church feels safe is they just read long passages of the Bible and no (narcissitc) man tells us his version. When read in its entireity this story echos our exact culture right now. Rule following religious zealots missing the actual point, even coming to murder.

My studies, readings, findings of Jesus this year show that:

Jesus fully encompasses both bianaries and everything in between male and female. Born a human male but often described with female characteristics—-and definitely an intimate friend of women.

Jesus came to snap us out of our obsession with being God’s favorite and following rules to look good. Jesus wants us caring for everyone in the margins.

Foreigners

Queer folk

Poor and sick and lost

Outcasts

I feel its aliveness as I shift to this new story. I realize why evil men don’t want it known. Why mega churches spend millions on drone shows, why poor families in the Bible belt spend their last few dollars on tight patent leather shoes, why Easter has become a Christian show off on Facebook.

Because if this story is true, we are being called to radical love and care. And it would upturn everything. . .including your polished up family photos.

Next year I think I will skip Easter Sunday. Maybe go out in the woods and float in the river. I prefer the quiet holy week services that lead up to it. Sitting with a dozen others in a dark sanctuary watching the candles being lit in rows until the darkness is gone.

I love the river. It has become a ritual for me, especially in the warm months to go often. But every single time, even when I know how good I feel after, I have to work myself up to going under the cold mountain water.

Every. Single. Time.

I have been this way for forever. Always the first to start out on an adventure and always the last to jump.

I remember standing on the high tower at The Wilds camp in Brevard (0/10 stars to that legalistic, manipulative place). I wore boy jean shorts to my knee and a baggy t shirt over my one piece WITH all girls and I stood at the top of the tower people jumped off for the entire swim time. I was 10 and brave. I was brave all the time. But something about stepping off and then not getting to take it back had me in a grip. No one else got to do it and I do think a lifeguard had to come get me eventually (I can’t remember).

Today as I did my little dance of

I want to SO bad!

I’m so embarassed I started this with such fevor and now I’m paralized.

I know I like this. I know this will be good for me. I know I want to do this.

And usually I eventually let go and let my head go under the water. Or I step off the ledge, click send, make the call, leave.

Today I realized I am great starter. I’ll start anything without a second thought, it’s when it really comes down to the last step that makes me panic. The vision of myself stepping off of a tower and not being able to stop.

I did go under today and giggled so hard in the aftermath. It made me feel alive as it always does.

I really feel like my jumping off work right now is actually making steady money with my business. I am holding back ya’ll. And when I do share things it’s reduced for consumer comfort.

What if I jump? What if I really put out my actual art into the world and asked to be paid well for it?