A trait I see often in highly sensitive people is that of the high achiever. Yes, being highly skilled, and also having very high expectations of ourselves. The shadow side of which is...perfectionism. Being unbearably hard on ourselves. When young, many of us were taught—through a variety of events or circumstances—that there was no room for error. We developed the belief, "If I do well, I'll be safe. I'll get my needs met. I'll be loved." And we developed self-protective mechanisms accordingly.
As highly sensitives, we see everything. We pick up on nuances, have rich inner lives. We can analyze and deconstruct patterns, situations, and dynamics until the cows come home. While this ability to see and hold such intricacy is one of the superpowers of being highly sensitive, it comes with a grave pitfall: it widens the gap between what we cognitively understand and what we are often actually living; what our minds comprehend and where our bodies are stuck. This gap creates a wealth of opportunity for self-recrimination: I see what is happening here, so why am I still showing up in the same ways? Engaging the same behaviors? Choosing a thing that I thought was different but turns out is actually the same—and then staying?
We can be hard on ourselves for perceived failures: a job not gotten, deliverables or outcomes not met. And, in my experience, the most cruel manners of self-relating emerge when we find ourselves aware of our undesired patterns and stuck in them anyway.
From a somatic (nervous system) lens, this circumstance makes so much sense. There are two main reasons why it happens.
1. We go to what we know. One of the main jobs of the nervous system is to detect safety and threat, and then to protect us according to what it perceives. The thing is, once our primary nervous system blueprint is formed, we are wired to go to what is familiar—not what is actually safe or good for us. This results in our repeating relational patterns and dynamics across time: relationships where love is conditional or unstable; where you feel like you can't take up space or be your authentic self; where you are hyper-responsible and holding everything together; where you are controlled or criticized; where you feel inaccurately seen. Finding yourself in these pattens over and over—even when you can see them clearly—is not indicative of a fault, defect, or lack of worthiness on your part. It is your nervous system doing what it is designed to do, which it will continue to do until it learns and grows capacity to do otherwise. (This is where somatic work and reparative relationships come in.)
2. Our bodies seek resolution. The other primary reason that we find ourselves looping in undesired relational dynamics is that our bodies seek out the same harmful thing in an attempt to experience a different result. In what is clinically referred to as 'trauma recapitulation,' we subconsciously move towards experiences that re-trigger our initial wound in order to have a different outcome. We go into unsafe places trying to make them safe—in order to give our nervous systems the opportunity to complete the cycle of survival response-to-safety that they were not previously able to complete. This is actually such a beautiful human instinct: the impulse to right for ourselves what has been wronged; to heal what has been hurt. But here's the rub: you cannot heal within the same dynamic that harmed you. However subconsciously well-intentioned, it will only reinforce your wounds.
While all intimate relationships will trigger our core wounds (sorry! none of us can escape this, especially with attachment wounding), the good news is this: some people will also be able to show up for you in ways that foster repair and healing. It takes discernment and honesty with yourself to know who these people are, and it may feel scary and uncomfortable letting the reparative experience in. But it is possible. And this is how we heal.
In the meantime, be gentle with yourself when you find yourself caught in a hall of mirrors, reenacting the same dynamics across time. Remember it is your system fighting for a different outcome. You are allowed to be self-compassionate while you're looping and move towards new ways of being at the same time.
When you change, the relationship changes
I have been obsessed with relationships my entire life. I considered changing the word "obsessed" there, but that is the immediate and genuine way that sentence came out, and who am I to placate for perception's sake? It's true. Ever since I was a kid, I have loved discussing and processing and analyzing relational dynamics and the human psyche with my friends; I heavily gravitate towards character- and relationship-driven books and TV and films (My So-Called Life, anyone??); I have diary entry upon diary entry from age 10 onwards, mining the circumstancial and emotional landscape of whatever relational situation I was in at the time. Platonic and romantic relationships—investing in them, tending to them, psychoananlyzing them, and yeah, stressing about or grieving them—have been a if not the most primary focus of my life.
Relationships have also been the most painful realm of my life. Where my most primary wounds were created and reinforced and, in ways, still lie. For some, personal growth through difficulty comes in the container of negative work situations, or health crises, or identity-hinged systemic oppression. While we all encounter challenges across the spectrum of life, there is typically a concentrated realm in which our most recurring and transformational pain patterns lie—the primary channel through which we are forced to confront our histories and ourselves.
It comes as no surprise then that what sent me to therapy for the first time in my life—at age 24 and only as a result of the dogged imploration of a friend—was extreme difficulty and emotional distress within two significant relationships: my then-partner and my dad.
Working through relational dysfunction with family is so hard, for so many reasons. Everything is unbelievably charged; patterns and dynamics are so deeply ingrained; and there is often a feeling that parents, being...the parents, should know better. Be able to do better. And more often than not, that is not the case.
I did a lot of angry blaming my first year+ in therapy. To be fair, it's not that the people I felt hurt by were not to blame. And. Blaming others gets you literally nowhere but stuck and looping in your own frustration and distress. Back then, I was adamant that it was my dad's responsibility to show up differently. To take accountability. To do better. To change.
One of the harsh realities that I had to confront in those early days of therapy was this: you cannot change anyone but yourself.
Here's the key though—the glimmer of light in that seemingly bleak and often frustrating truth, which my then-therapist spoke to me like a beacon in the night: when you change, a relationship changes.
When you change how you show up in a relationship, the relationship changes.
Was I resentful that the work of maturing and becoming better to shift the dyamic between me and my father was on me? Sure was! My 24 year-old self was super pissed about it, thought it was ridiculously imbalanced and unfair. And, if I wanted things to change (which I did), it benefitted me to integrate this key—this thing that would unlock a better path forward. If I committed to changing, my relationship with my dad would change. De facto. Full stop. Without him self-reflecting or healing or doing literally anything.
Relationships are created moment by moment through an exchange of energy. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. One nervous system attuning to and responding to the other.
When I stopped escalating my tone to match my dad's, the moment changed.
When I took a breath and disengaged instead of getting defensive and continuing the argument, the moment changed.
When I explicitly and kindly named what I was and was not available for and then stuck to it, the relationship changed.
I am not going to lie and tell you this was an easy process, or quick. Change is slow, both internally and relationally. It takes effort and repetition and time. It is also often wildly uncomfortable because the new behaviors/responses we are implementing are unfamiliar and don't feel viable or safe to our nervous systems. Sometimes, you asserting new boundaries or ceasing to devolve into historic dynamics can also make the other person more triggered. This is all part of the shape-shifting process.
All relationships have unique dynamics. In some, you may be triggered and become the instigator, the chaos-maker, the reactive or explosive one. In others, you may be the avoidant, the one who becomes passive aggressive or shuts down and retreats completely. All of these responses make sense from a nervous system and trauma perspective, and, we are all ultimately responsible for ourselves. For choosing how we want to show up for ourselves and for those we love. For consciously and gently stretching ourselves into new choices, moment-by-moment, to create the relationships we want for ourselves in this life. Not everyone will be able to meet us there. There will be grief in that. And. Even with the people who cannot rise to the occasion, you changing how you show up to be in greater service to wellbeing rather than dysfunction will create a shift. And there is both immense love and immense power in that.
• // • // •
Questions to contemplate:
~ What does showing up as my best self in my relationships look like?
~ If there are relationships in my life that feel dysfunctional, problematic, or out of balance — what is my role in creating or perpetuating that?
~ What is one behavior, reaction, or way of engaging I can shift in one relationship that will help it feel better to me?
Life Lessons We (Used to) Hate, Vol. 1
Performative installation by Malin Bülow
As I was wrapping up my last newsletter—about how even though we are not at fault for the bad things that happen to us, what we do with them is entirely our responsibility—I was laughing to myself remembering how genuinely frustrated I was when I first came across that concept. Like, UGHHH, WHYYY.
I roll my eyes a lot. Still, even as an adult. My acupuncturist told me recently that in the first year of seeing me, she used to get a little offended by it, until she realized that it is actually a signal of something she said striking a chord—like the teenage part of me that is like, UGHHHH FIIIIINE. I know you're right and that annoys the hell out of me. Sigh.
The thing about being human is that oftentimes, parts of ourselves resist what we know is good for us, or have other strong reactions to it. Sometimes, we learn concepts that feel like relief. This was how I felt in my mid-20s, when my first ever therapist explained to me that people's reactions and behaviors are entirely a reflection of them—their relational skills, self-awareness or lack thereof, protective mechanisms, patterns—and not about me (or you). Learning and integrating that was the first major thing that helped me stop taking everything so personally and stop seeing how people treated me as a reflection of my worth. Other times, we learn lessons or concepts that contain wisdom and some part of us is immediately like, NOPE.
We'll get into a discussion about why this is another time (hint: the parts that protest are trying to protect us), but for now, I'm so curious to know: what is the most irritating life lesson that you've ever learned? What perspective shift have you encountered that was pivotal and also brought up a lot of resistance, annoyance, and ultimately begrudging acceptance within you?
In a month's time, I will be launching a series called Life Lessons We (Used to) Hate—sharing submissions from you! All shares from the group will be anonymous. Simply email me describing an impactful lesson that you really didn't want to have to learn but was really helpful or transformative in the end.
Emotional maturity is hugely important. It is what makes healthy, effective, loving relationships possible (including our relationship with ourself). And sometimes, having to be emotionally mature is such a drag. To parts of us (or, me) anyway. To parts that are comfortable in and attached to being in suffering, or being in petulance or indignance or victimhood. Those parts exist, and are valid. With this series, my hope is for us to validate the full spectrum of our humanness and to learn from each other's unique journeys and the wisdom we've gained through them.
Again, simply email me with your lesson or story! Can't wait to hear what you've been through and what it taught you.
On Fault vs. Responsibility
Sometime during the extended pit of darkness that was my (and many of our) 2020, I read the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson. It was not a book I would naturally gravitate towards, but it had been enthusiastically recommended by my ex's octogenarian stepfather, who was...a pastor. All of which was enough to make me curious to read it—especially later, at a point of extreme distress in my life.
I was unimpressed by and critical of the book on the whole (have you read it?? Send me your thoughts!), but Manson made one point that struck a piercing chord, particularly at that time: you are not responsible for what happened to you, but you are responsible for what you do with it. How you handle, heal, move on, and rebuild from it.
Ugh...so annoying.
In my late 20s, a few years into our work together, my first ever therapist called me out on being self-victimizing. For being overly and incessantly "woe-is-me."
As hard as it was to hear that, and as much as I may have protested...she was right. I feel things so deeply, and I also have a tendency to sink. To bottom out. To drown.
Let me be clear: many of us, in many circumstances, are victims. The damaging, hurtful, harmful, disrespectful, and traumatic things that happened to us were not our fault. We didn't deserve it, we didn't cause it, we didn't create the conditions to make it happen. And. Having a victim mentality in relation to what happened (that "woe-is-me" vibe) absolves us from any responsibility to the sanctity and care of our own selves; to our agency in the aftermath; and to our power.
It is so much easier to feel like a victim than it is to change your life.
I say this with loads of compassion, as it is a state I know well. Firstly, it relinquishes you of any effort, which is a super cozy place to be. Secondly, it eliminates risk of failure. It is wildly vulnerable to try. To try anything. And especially to try to heal—because that is so personal, and what if it doesn’t work out? What if our efforts fail and then show us that we actually aren’t lovable, or deserving, or capable of happiness, or wellness, or growth? What if we try and nothing changes—proving our story that we deserved those bad things all along?
We are afraid of who we might become when we heal, because that person isn’t someone we’ve known. That person doesn’t have our well-worn defenses, our safety in smallness or masking or posturing, our limiting beliefs. Doesn’t buy into the stories that our past consistently tells. That person believes in possibility. And goodness. And that we are sacred enough to be caretaken, to be valued, to be loved—by others, and even moreso, by ourselves. And that is fucking terrifying.
And. That is what life asks of us.
To hold the unfairness of life and the hand we are sometimes dealt with awareness that we did not cause nor deserve it, and still to rise into the grudging requirement of our responsibility to ourselves in its wake.
You don't need fixing.
I have spent much of my life wishing I were different than I am. Less sensitive. Less emotional. Less serious. Since my teenage years, these traits felt like they separated me from the majority of my peers. They made life feel unbearably painful and relationships exceedingly hard.
Over time, I began to crack myself open and let myself fall apart with the support of containers that could hold me, could accurately reflect the beauty and implicit rightness of everything I contain—spaces including therapy, yoga, meditation, astrology, ritual, and kindred mentors and friends. Slowly, my relationship with myself began to shift, and I grew able to meet these traits that seemed to cause me so much pain with compassion and tenderness. Eventually, I began to view and love them as gifts. This sensitivity, my system's motherboard, wired to notice everything—a beckoning pattern of light, a bug in the far corner of the room, the most subtle shift in someone's facial expression or tone or mood. My ability to so effortlessly attune—to my environment, to other people. My depth of feeling, inviting me into the fullest spectrum of the human emotional experience; this emotional fearlessness that gives others permission to crack open, too.
Even still, I struggle with myself sometimes. Parts of my psyche remain judgmental and self-incriminating. They experience situations in my life play out differently than I would like or hope, and blame myself for them. If only I could have held this relationship more lightly, could be more "chill." If only my attachment system were different. But I don't hold relationships lightly. And my attachment system isn't different.
Some of how we are is our personality. Some is our soul expressing itself. And a lot of it is our nervous system. These pieces are interwoven. The more we work with our nervous systems to address protective patterns, the more we can move through life in alignment with the highest expression of our personality, our values, our needs, our wants, our soul. And the better able we are to discern which is which.
In Sacred Circle for Girls last week, we talked about boundaries. It came up that it can sometimes feel impossible to assert a boundary for fear of hurting the other person's feelings. This is an infinitely intelligent self-protective mechanism; it is the nervous system saying, "I know how to keep myself safe." If upsetting a parent or primary caregiver in early childhood resulted in loss of love or safety (physical or emotional), our systems take in that information and integrate it into our foundational blueprint. As we grow, we find it difficult to assert ourselves or prioritize our needs over what we perceive another's needs/wants to be, because the potential of upsetting them does not feel safe at a subconscious and autonomic nervous system level.
Dynamics like this imprint within all of us and show up in our lives repeatedly until we heal the root of them. These loops may feel exceptionally painful for those of us who are sensitive. When we feel more, everything is amplified. When we think more complexly and deeply, we can be that much harder on ourselves. Especially when the same hurtful dynamics recur through different people, different scenarios over time. It can feel endlessly frustrating as we develop greater self-awareness and understanding of our needs and our values. This is not what I want, so why do I keep encountering it? Why can't I change?
Carl Jung said, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." The unconscious is as much about our psyche as it is about what imprinted itself into our nervous systems in our formative early life. Until you create safety and capacity within your nervous system, you will not be able to choose differently—even if you are aware of a pattern. It will still feel impossible to breathe through your system's instinct to shut down and open into vulnerability with someone, even if they have earned your trust. Or to soothe your system's primal fear of separation end a relationship that is not serving you—whether romantic, professional, etc. Or to honor your boundary over another person's comfort.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about what parts of how I am are rooted in wounds and what parts are innate—and don't need "fixing," even if they've felt like they've made life impossible, at times.
There are still moments when I feel so broken. When I believe I am too sensitive, too intense; when the depth and profundity of that which I seek feels impossible and wrong to want. And, in my regulated state, I know that those are not the parts that need fixing. There is no healing or changing or transforming to be done there; only loving. And honoring. And, alongside that, compassionately working with the wounds and nervous system wiring that get in the way of that embrace.
On Staying Soft in a Hard New Year
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
Hello, dear being. Here we are. At the start of 2025.
I have been experiencing a lot of physical and cognitive dissonance over the past few days. Los Angeles, the city in which I grew up and where my parents still live, is burning. Asheville has settled into winter, barren and still ravaged by the flood, but now quiet and serene. Utilities restored, life is out of survival mode and back to being more normally lived. And. I unlock my phone and open the news and I see image after image of this place that holds all of the formative experiences of my development and in which my parents and some dear friends reside, engulfed in flames.
I am sitting with the question: how do we tend to what is in front of us when the world beyond us is collapsing? How do we maintain hope and stay connected to positive possibility—in this moment of now as well as for the future—when there is so much to grieve and feel enraged about and fear?
After Helene, I did not volunteer. I did not distribute supplies or clean up debris or make calls to locate missing persons. My nervous system couldn’t handle it. All I could do was tend to myself and provide physical and emotional support for my people.
Truth be told, I did not fully escape self-judgment around that. Did not avoid the internal recrimination that I “should” have been doing more. And. If I know anything, I know this: we need to learn to lovingly accept and meet ourselves where we are. You can’t stretch farther than your nervous system will allow you to go.
And so, here we are. At the start of 2025. How is your nervous system in this moment? If you’re able, please pause, take a breath, and tune into your body. Notice what is present—physically, energetically, emotionally. Can you sit with what is alive in your system for even a moment and allow it to be okay?
Twenty twenty-five is likely going to be an unfathomable, devastating year; in ways, it already is. Some of us will be galvanizing and community organizing and lobbying and taking a political stand. Some of us will be stretched to our limits by our jobs and keeping our kids safe and healthy and engaged. Some of us will be navigating challenging relationships and doing deep work in therapy and healing core wounds. Some of us will be doing our best to simply get out of bed in the morning and feed ourselves. All of it matters, and we each need not do all of the things. We are all learning how to exist in a world of relentless horrors, while continuing to orient ourselves towards the sun. Towards connection and beauty and dare I even say, thriving. The both/and of being with what is while visioning—holding in our hearts and consciousness—what we yearn for reality to be. We are learning how to grieve and heal and care for the world at large while tending to our own selves and what is immediately in front of us at the same time.
It can be a disorienting dance. Here is what I have learned: at the end of the day, no matter how far outside of myself I have stretched, I must always come back to my body. My breath. This is where the witnessing, the homecoming, the transformation happens.
There is so much pressure at the start of the new calendar year to “reset” ourselves. To commit to new habits, mindsets, ways of being; to set grand ambitions and concrete plans for the year ahead. The irony and trouble is that, new calendar year or not, we are in the depths of winter. And our bodies are of the Earth. We are implicitly compelled to mirror nature; energetically, January is not a time for action. It is a time to strip down, scale back, lay bare. It is a time for slowness; for restoring our energy; for being with the emptiness of the void and all that it reveals to us about the core of ourselves. Please let this be your reminder that within the socioeconomic system in which we live, choosing rest is radical. It is okay if you are not yet feeling ready to make big changes or go and do. If you are still metabolizing events from last year, or years before that. Shedding, darkness, and gestation are all a natural and essential part of the cycle of life.
The past five years have been unbelievably intense, for each of us personally as well as on a collective scale—and the start of this year is brashly unfolding in kind. My invitation to you this January is to allow yourself to move slowly. To let yourself swim through the dream space. To ask your heart and body what they need, and to give yourself space to witness and honor that. In the stillness, ask your spirit what it feels ready to call in, to heal, to grow towards in this coming year. Listen to the whispers it shares without feeling the need to activate, create, or move towards those desires immediately—trusting that the thinking of it, the seed planting in the depths of your psyche and your energetic field, is initiating the doing in the most subtle yet no less real way.
I am still in the process of creating the calendar for my group workshops for the year. If you’re interested in being held in compassionate space and somatically processing grief, stress, anxiety, heartache, or uncertainty, I am available for one-on-one coaching, astrology, and breathwork sessions. It would be my honor to share space with and guide you.
The expansion/contraction; the both/and.
My world has gotten so small in the past two years. It has gotten small because the world shut down and it has gotten small because it needed to. Like many of us, I’ve found that processing the real-time trauma and grief caused by the pandemic and its resulting isolation alongside unrelated, personal, capital-T traumas have left me unable to field and ingest much of anything at all. I have little to no patience for or interest in Instagram or other social media. My scope of attention has narrowed, only able to receive what is immediately in front of me, and what feels truly worthwhile. Healing. Meaningful.
We are now nearly two years in. As adaptive beings, we have learned to cope. We are generally less afraid while still exerting caution. We are learning to effectively exist within with this new normal, however heartbreaking it may be. We are re-assessing our lives. Making changes. Slowing down. Scaling back. Creating new visions for our futures that are aligned with the truths and values we’ve unearthed through each of our personal hailstorms of the past two years.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about expansion and contraction. About the ways of the body during childbirth. That restriction and clenching give way to openness and release, and that it is the symbiosis of the two that brings new realities into being. We were all so contracted for so long. Then hope felt tenable, doors flew back open, connection and expansion seemed to reinvigorate our lives. Until the variants came, and we were all confronted with renewed shutdowns and a sudden, severe contraction once again.
This makes me think, too, of the upward spiral of growth. The nonlinear nature of healing. The two steps forward and one step back. The way we think we’ve made peace with something in our past, our hearts, our bodies, our behavior patterns, only to find ourselves eventually back in the throes of that same wound and its teachings once again.
This cycle is inevitable. And so the question becomes: how do we hold ourselves in the contractions, in the revisitations of those aspects of experience we thought we had handled and left behind? How do we help ourselves see the presence and truth of our growth and change, which always does exist alongside our ghosts?
The following is a piece of journaling I wrote in early May, 2020, six weeks into the first quarantine. It is a snapshot of a precise moment in time, conditions upon conditions and my wrestling with them. It is a portrait of a broken hearted woman in forced isolation during a global pandemic, trying to make sense of her life.
Life is so different now; and still, in moments, so much the same. I share it to share my experience, knowing that there is always something universal in that which is the most deeply personal. Hope you’re all doing okay out there. Sending love.
~*~
May 2, 2020
There is nothing to do but be still and notice. The locus of the feeling in my body. Tightness in the chest; tingling along the spine; a throat clenching back tears. I give the sensations names, words so they may fall into understanding, a safe home in which to dwell. Give them a right to exist so one day they may no longer need to.
In this inescapable stillness, the memories come flooding back. Ghosts that drop me to my knees in fits of tears because of their robust rightness, the yardstick they grew into; my barometer of seamless love. These ghosts of loss and grief, gnarled in my heart amongst such profound anger—and nowhere to put it.
The both/and is a profoundly difficult and uncomfortable place to be. To love someone deeply and know you are better off without them. To allow for the truth of grief nestled right next to anger. To forgive yourself for loving someone who was harmful to your spirit and forgive them for inflicting harm. To allow the truth of the immense beauty and light you made together alongside the truth of how you both tore each other apart. The whole mess of it.
Every morning, I awake to the same. A pandemic. Solo-quarantine. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but be still and notice.
So, I sit. On my couch, staring out the window at the Craftsman homes with their whimsical gardens, shelter for families living out their own dramas, loves and lives. Sit in the bathtub, staring at the concentric ripples of water caused by my sweating faucet; staring at my own feet. And I stare into screens throughout my eight hour workday and take walks into the hills and do bedroom push-ups and downward dog and on the rare occasion dance and allow myself to bake but not too much and watch shows on the computer and FaceTime with my parents and friends near and far. But at the end of it all, every damn time, the same singular thing persists: me. Alone, in this apartment. With my finitude and infinitude and fickleness and overly analytical mind and big feelings and able body and breath that keeps breathing me into life without my having to ask it to. So, I tend to what I have. This moment. This feeling. This thought. This allowing, if I can manage it. This compassion, if I can will it into being.
Some days the loneliness sits like an anvil in my chest, suffocating and immobilizing. I call a friend who reminds me: "Times are really hard right now. It’s okay. This is being human."
Some mornings, in the liminal spaces of sleep-addled cognition, in the ebbs toward waking, mind grasped by past damages and present salves, there are fissures, cognitive shifts, hopeful awakenings. A flicker of thought: I deserve healthy love.
A great teacher of mine once told me that all people are mirrors, simply reflecting back to us what we already believe to be true. We experience reality through the lens of our interpretations, our expectations, the meanings we impose and stories we spin of things. All life, aspects of our own consciousness. And as our mirrors, people become our teachers. Gifting us experiences from which to self-reflect, to learn and grow.
Sometimes we get lost. And we need people who, through shadow or light, remind us who we are. What we stand for. What we want. What feels transcendent and what feels unacceptable. What we’re afraid to believe we deserve. Who, in their involuntary ways, push us to rise into our light, our trust, our truth, our knowing. Our hearts begging us to return home to ourselves.
On Rest & Reemergence
In our own ways
we all break.
it is okay
to hold your heart outside of your body
for
days.
months.
years.
at a time.—heal
- nayyirah waheed
Hello, dear being. Hi.
It is late March, 2021. We have, at this juncture, spent a whole year sheltering-in-place. A whole year in the slipperiest relationship with time, with it passing and feeling utterly stagnant all at once. Endlessly. But now, in March of 2021, we are on the cusp of springtime and vaccines are being administered and for the first time in a long time, it feels like we can see the light at the end of this very strange and difficult tunnel.
I hope you have been managing okay.
Sometime in the early days of shelter-in-place, as I found myself collapsing under the weight of severe depression—triggered by events in my personal life and compounded by COVID and quarantine—I gave myself permission to not work on this blog. Gave myself permission to stop being hard on myself for my inability to show up to my passion-work. A creative get out of jail free card, with no expiration date.
It was the first time I had ever, in my adult life, granted myself this freedom. The freedom of judgment-free not-making.
Beginning in late autumn 2019 and for months upon months following, I felt inert. Hollow. My days were lived in a heavy lethargy and despair couched in mental frustration about my inability to move. Eventually, by mid-summer last year, my existential status morphed into a state that I best identified as “fallow.” I described myself as such to my therapist; to close friends. During this period, I was beginning to remember the foundation of who I was, but I remained preternaturally unable to bear fruit. To yield any seedlings, let alone bounty.
Some weeks after ruminating on my “fallow” state in therapy, I followed a random impulse to look up an artist whose work I had seen and loved in an exhibition in Vancouver a year and a half before. Scrolling through her Instagram feed, I was stunned to lay my eyes on a caption in which the artist described her experience of feeling creatively fallow—and included the definition of the word:
FAL.LOW /ˈfalō/
“(of farmland) plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility”
I stopped. Read again.
…in order to restore its fertility.
I took a breath, then broke down crying.
My self-permission to step away from my creative work—not to mention many other facets of life in which I felt I was failing—was not an act of resignation. It was an act of restoration.
Life in quarantine during a global pandemic has taught all of us a great many, varied, often harrowing lessons. Lessons we likely didn’t want or know we needed to learn. Realizing that rest is a necessary part of the cycle of production and that we are all valid, whole and worthy even when we are not producing anything has been a monumental lesson of mine.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you do:
You are allowed to give yourself permission. To stop. To fall apart. To rest. To move through your own unique process and timeline of holding your heart outside of your body, of laying your soil untilled—knowing that this stillness, this active not doing is a vital causeway along the journey of coming back into your bounty.
I have been engaged in so much deep personal work, this past year. Processing severe and acute emotional trauma. Noticing how the route to healing is, in so many ways, through my body. Getting real with myself about my shadows, my patterns, the behaviors I’ve needed to stop repeating and wounds I’ve needed to heal. To forgive others, to forgive myself, and to choose to evolve on from.
Last summer, I shared a candid snippet of what I have been healing from on Instagram. That decision was fueled by a part of me that needed to be witnessed; by my very deep conviction of wanting to contribute to a culture in which these experiences are not hidden or shamed; and by my burgeoning realization that this experience has changed me. That my work and its content would (will) be different moving forward.
In the tarot, suits correspond with the elements. Earth. Air. Fire. Water. Certain cards have a confluence of two; the earth of fire, for example, would be creating something material (earth) out of creative spark (fire). I think, at my essence, I am the air of water: the intelligence of emotion. I am a healer, a transmuter of feeling—in myself and in others. I want to be of service to this. Having been on a long, meandering journey of returning to my wholeness (which, to be frank, may be a lifelong process; a constant returning), I want to use my skills, my knowledge, and my ability to hold darkness with tenderness to help others do the same.
In many ways, food was my gateway to spirituality. It was my gateway to mindfulness; to sparking creative joy; to empowerment. To cultivating a connection with nature and its cycles. To being in deeper relationship with my body via what and how I feed it. I will always, always love food and have borderline obnoxious convictions (depending on who you ask) around it. And. It is not, I think, where my true creative work, spark, and gifts lie.
When we fall apart, we discover what strength lies within us. We discover what we pull forth from our depths that carries us along into our healing and into greater embodiment of our true selves. That inner knowing, that inner fire, that core belief or conviction that was possibly dormant, waiting patiently to be activated, propels us forth. You emerge, without consciously choosing it, fighting for your own life, for your evolution in the way you have always been meant to live it.
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And with that…an announcement!
During my year of solo-quarantine, of falling apart and putting myself back together, I spent many hours deepening my knowledge of astrology—which I have been a student and sometimes hyper-enthusiastic teacher of for three and a half years now. I began giving friends birth chart readings, and I adapted the Astrology 101 class that I taught in San Francisco in 2019 for Zoom and led the workshop for a few groups of friends. Teaching, speaking and connecting are activities that I hope and intend to grow in my return to Pollinate and my overall creative work. For those of you who are interested in spiritual growth, healing, and coming into greater self-love—stay tuned.
For now, it is my extreme pleasure to announce that I will be teaching Astrology 101: Fundamentals for Self-Knowing on Zoom next month!
Click HERE to learn more. I hope you’ll join me!
What Do You Worship?
Artist unknown
Last night, I dreamt that someone wove their way through a sea of people at a party to hand me a landline telephone. “Hello?” I asked. My grandmother was on the other end of the line. I knew it was her, even though my repeated “Hello?”s were met mostly with silence. Eventually, she tentatively murmured, “Hello?” back. Without the exchange of anything but those two words, I knew she knew it was me.
My grandmother died over 18 years ago. Although I’m sure I have, I can’t recall a specific time before this morning that I’ve dreamt about her.
I sit in my living room, watching the early morning sun cast its rose gold glow over the westernmost hills of Berkeley, thinking about those I have known and loved who have died. Grandma, Grandpa, Nana. Nick, who much of my world and heart revolved around during the latter half of college. Donna and Em, who brought lightness to my days after moving to the Bay. I think of my friend from high school and her husband, who—our age—died unexpectedly this year.
Today is Halloween. Samhain. The pagan festival of communing with and celebrating the dead. The day in the cycle of each year where the veil between worlds is thought to be most thin, to allow us to send and receive messages, connect with the spirits who have passed from this world onto the next. Evaporated in form but existent, still, as energy. Because, as shown in the Law of Conservation of Energy in physics, energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Only transformed.
I placed my mug of coffee down on the table. Instinctively began to gather candles of varying shapes and sizes and set them in a circle. Placed elemental totems inside the ring. A quartz crystal for air, third eye, highest consciousness, connection to the ethers. A sprig of fennel, now brittle and dried, that I picked years ago from an edge where the land meets the Bay. A dolphin ring I bought with my grandma at a truck stop restaurant halfway between LA and Arizona, once upon a time. An ornate metal koi fish that belonged to my Nana, its history and stories unknown to me, but of her nevertheless.
I lit the candles. Stared at the flames. And breathed.
•
Worship is an intense word. Steeped in religious connotations, evoking a level of extreme devotion that I think many of us are not accustomed to extending to anything these days. But this morning, because I’m off work on PTO and had the gift of time, because they say the veil is thin and even though I don’t know that to be true with any certainty I sure as hell don’t know with certainty that it isn’t true, I made a circle out of flames. To pause. To direct my attention. To remember. To mourn. To call in. To celebrate. To worship.
•
Earlier this year, while frustratedly spinning my wheels over the phone to a friend about a situation that did not deserve a modicum of the energy and attention I was giving it, my friend politely yet firmly interjected. She asked me, point blank: “What do you worship?”
I sat, in silence, stunned.
It’s a disarming question.
It’s a disarming question. And a vital one.
•
Many traditions of meditation talk about attention as our most precious commodity. I tend to agree with this thesis.
Where we direct our attention in each moment of each day—whether consciously or unconsciously; with intent or through habit—dictates how we spend our energy; what thoughts we radiate within ourselves and communicate to the world; and how we spend our time. The cumulative sum of our moment by moment attention determines what we grow in ourselves and the world through the simple yet impossibly complex act of living.
I am sitting in an airport. Over the phone, thousands of miles between us, Missy asks me this arresting question. What do you worship? I pause. Think about my answer. My values. What I effort to connect with, to create. To find reverie in. To actively devote my attention, the sum of the moments of my life.
Words emerged. Integrity. Vulnerability. Connection with nature. Community. Empowerment. Art. Love.
And then, a follow-up question. The moment of truth: Are you living in alignment with these devotions? Am I directing my attention and, by extension, my energies in ways that live into and live out these things?
•
Living an embodied existence is messy. Challenging. Impossibly complex. Some days we do better than others; this is true for each and every one of us. When we aim to live our lives honoring vulnerability, justice, nature, inclusion, art, listening, equanimity, beauty and love, friction often occurs because we don’t live in silos, separate from each other or from society at large. We are brought up and live within a system that worships its own set of deities.
Money. Power. Individualism. Whiteness. Masculinity. Heterosexuality. Competition. Dominance.
And so.
Worshipping love is an act of resistance. Worshipping quiet. Worshipping introspection. Worshipping the earth. Self-connection. Diverse voices. Collectivism. These are all active violators to the gods that are laid before us here, now, in 21st century America. Gods of power, of money, of personal gain at the expense of others and the earth. Gods of erasure and forward motion rather than reverie for the traditions and wisdom of our ancestors, of the past. Gods of separation over unification. Gods of greed and excess. Gods of the material over the spiritual. Satiation and worth found through what we can afford and acquire, not what we cultivate and offer that comes from within.
Shifting these devotions is an act of resistance. It shapes our culture. Shapes your life. Shapes collective consciousness.
•
And so, today, as the veil may or may not be thin, with time on my side I chose to devote my attention to honoring those who have touched my life and are no longer palpably in it. Who have moved on to their next iteration of existence, whatever that may be.
Cultures and people the world over are worshipping their ancestors today. The love, experiences and wisdom they shared. Living out their gifts and memories as best they are able. Worshipping connection, worshipping ancestry, worshipping love.
•
It is so easy to sleepwalk through life. To succumb to the pervasive distractions, insatiable desires, pressures as invisible as air yet heavy as tar. To give into our internalizations of the values imposed upon us by our contemporary culture, by the world at large.
With so many cards stacked against us, so many conveniences urging us to be passive receptors instead of active creators of our lives, I invite you to ask yourself: What do you worship? What do you devote your attention to? Are the two in alignment? What shifts can you make to live more fully into the values you genuinely want to embody, want to fill your life, want to light up the world?
•
Sending love to you all, then and now, here and in the ethers. May we choose to actively worship that which brings healing and growth, love and joy to us all.
Zucchini Noodle Lasagna with Oyster Mushrooms, Basil & Swiss Chard
Let’s be honest: food is contentious. It is personal, it is cultural, it is political, it is emotional.
We all have a diet (a general, baseline set of foods we do and don’t eat); we go on diets; and we can be very convicted about what foods we believe should or shouldn’t be included in a healthy diet.
Some people are purists. Give them a pizza made with a cauliflower crust and they’re like, EXCUSE ME THAT IS NOT PIZZA. Which is a fair stance to take. Some people are open to culinary interpretation, playing with new ways of iterating classics. Oftentimes, substitutions are made to accommodate dietary preferences or restrictions, which is how I came to use a lot of the ingredients I do (especially in sweets :).
So, zucchini noodle lasagna. Arguably not lasagna. But maybe it is lasagna! Call it whatever you want. Ultimately, it is freakin’ delicious (I made it four times before I finally dedicated time and effort to photographing it to share with you all) and—yes, I am going to go there—much healthier for you than traditional lasagna.
Modern nutritional science has evolved enough at this point to recognize that refined, white flour is not good for us. Yes, it makes dough light and elastic and taste divine. But it is massively inflammatory and our bodies do not like it, especially in excess.
Do I eat white flour? Yes. In fancy croissants and sourdough pizza, mostly. Am I conscious about the amount and quality of white flour I consume? I try to be.
We have to pick our battles. If we value health and value pleasure, both of which I believe are absolutely vital to life, we need to determine what percentage of each feels like balance for us and we must, at times, make some adjustments to keep those scales aligned. I bake cookies with whole grain flour and turn cauliflower into rice in service of health.
That being said, zucchini is a fantastic substitute for white flour in the form of pasta. Is it the exact same thing? No. Will it satiate the cravings steeped in familial memory of your Italian grandmother? Probably not. Is it still delicious and WAY healthier for you? Yes, 100%.
Funnily enough, my inspiration for this lasagna came not from wanting to have lasagna sans flour, but from an approach to food that I developed during the two weeks last year that I was hardcore Keto (…just to see what it would be like). A diet centered around foods with a high percentage of fat, Keto suddenly thrust a number of ingredients that were atypical for me into a primary position in my life—cheese among them. I ditched the diet pretty quickly (not because I didn’t feel good on it, but because I was bored AF with such a limited palette to choose from—especially as someone who doesn’t eat meat), but some of its key ingredients and general approach to macronutrients stuck. And so, this lasagna was born.
We can sit here and categorize this zucchini noodle lasagna however much we want: Keto, paleo, vegetarian, low-carb, gluten-free, grain-free, sugar-free (…and yes it is all of those things). We can debate about whether or not it’s actually lasagna. At the end of the day, it’s real food—90% or so from the earth—with diverse and dense nutrients and amazing flavor.
Food politics and preferences aside, my hope is that you will love the taste and the experience of eating it as much as your body will feel nourished from it afterwards. <3
Zucchini Noodle Lasagna with Oyster Mushrooms, Basil & Swiss Chard
Serves 3-4
Ingredients
1 large or 2 medium zucchini
1/2 tablespoon sea salt (to be drawn from at various points)
1 tablespoon ghee or avocado oil
1.5 ounces oyster mushrooms (basically two large handfuls)
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch Swiss chard, de-stemmed, rinsed and torn into 2”-ish pieces (okay to leave it a bit wet)
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes (organic if possible - tomatoes are heavily sprayed with pesticides)
1/4 cup tomato paste (same as above)
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
3 sprigs basil, leaves removed from stems
2 (8-ounce) fresh mozzarella balls, torn into thin pieces
Also:
4-5 sheets paper towels
Mesh strainer
A loaf pan
Tongs - helpful, but not essential
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Cut the knob off the end of the zucchini. With a very sharp knife or a mandolin slicer, slice the zucchini lengthwise into 1/4” thick strips. Lay the strips flat on a few paper towels (I lay the towels on a large cutting board) without overlapping and sprinkle generously with salt. (The salt draws out the water in the zucchini, which will make it less soggy when it bakes.) Set aside.
3. In a large skillet over medium high heat, warm the ghee or avocado oil until it sizzles when sprinkled with water. Add oyster mushrooms and a generous pinch of salt. Toss the mushrooms (with tongs if you have them!) until they’re well coated in the oil. Spread them out so as much of their surface area is in contact with the pan as possible and let sit, undisturbed, for a few minutes until golden. Flip and cook the other sides. When they’re nice and golden all around, transfer to a plate and set aside.
4. Reduce the heat to low and add the teaspoon of olive oil, followed by the minced garlic. Sauté garlic until browning, about one minute. Add chard and a generous pinch of salt. Sauté until wilted, about three minutes. You may need to cook it in batches depending on the size of your pan. When wilted, transfer to a plate and set aside.
5. Pour the crushed tomatoes into a mesh strainer and strain out most of the excess liquid. Transfer to a mixing bowl, add balsamic vinegar, tomato paste and 1/4 teaspoon salt, and stir to combine.
6. Return to your zucchini noodles. Using a paper towel, dab off any moisture that has beaded out of the zucchini until it looks relatively dry.
7. Assembly time! Spread a thin base layer of the crushed tomato mixture on the bottom of the loaf pan. Cover the surface area on top of the sauce with rows of zucchini (you will need to cut the strips into various lengths to make this work). Layer on chard, mushrooms, whole basil leaves, sauce and mozzarella, followed by the next layer of zucchini noodles and all the fillings again. (I like to put the mozzarella next to the zucchini because it acts kind of like glue, but you can layer them in whatever order you like!). Finish off with a layer of zucchini, followed by sauce and mozzarella.
8. Bake until bubbling and the cheese on top is golden, about 30 minutes. Enjoy!