Author: sambullington

Stumbling into Paradise

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Dreams really do come true. Just over 13 years ago, on July 6, 2012 (7 and a half years before we got together), my partner (who is a self-identified skeptic) posted on Facebook: “Dreaming of a small farm on Vancouver Island; goats, chickens, big garden, maybe even a cow, a stream running through it, people to share it with, and some forested land for Orrin to spend his days in. Let the manifestation begin!!”

On July 3, 2025, we got off the ferry in Powell River, BC—a small working class town along the Sunshine Coast on Tla’amin territory with a stellar view of the ocean and Vancouver Island—and moved into our new home on 5 acres of forest and farm land. We don’t have a stream, but we do have 3 ponds, host to herons, ducks, giant bullfrogs, and snakes. And we spent spring break last week working on a chicken coop. Next up on our project list: raised beds for a big garden. Across the street from our home is the entrance to a trail system through the forest and Orrin is here not only with his mom and I, but also his dad and little brother, and his sister and her mom!   

Abundance

It is easy to be in right relationship with Life here because abundance is everywhere! Every day is a fresh discovery, a new gift. For breakfast, I walk across the meadow to feast on ripe blueberries warm from the sun. For a sunset treat, we bring our bowls to the far corner of the land to our prized raspberry patch, taking me back to my childhood in northern California. Erin uses our bounty to make homemade raspberry vodka, a fun science project that sits on our counter for about 8 weeks, and we put bags of them in the freezer, imagining taking them out during the depths of winter to remember our first summer in Powell River.

On hikes, we scarf on abundant huckleberries, salmonberries, and salal, even finding the occasional thimbleberry—an even more delicate and decadent version of raspberries. After Erin bemoans the poor quality of the walnuts available in the grocery store in town, Orrin discovers we have 2 walnut trees—though the small feisty squirrels here control the harvest and guard them fiercely. Two hazelnut trees bear long elegant blooms that look like fluffy caterpillars.

The blackberries are so abundant that it becomes a problem. They will entirely consume the land if not given boundaries and containment. But they resist containment, entwining themselves in trees and reattaching their reaching arms into the soil, so setting boundaries with them can be daunting. They certainly have their own consciousness. Even as I think about chopping them back, they creep towards me, painfully sticking to my back, wrapping around my ankles, stabbing me in the hands and face to try to stop me. At times it feels like Little Shop of Horrors and I feel afraid of their wrath. My partner buys me double thick work pants and a denim jacket to be a blackberry warrior. I contemplate adding a face shield when I have to get a tetanus shot after a particularly painful encounter. The blackberries become my role models for determination and persistence, reflecting the strong survival instinct I’ve recently come to see in myself as I have fled the U.S. and taken myself to safety, just as I once fled my mom and moved across the country.

We miss the cherries entirely, as they ripen right when we arrive, exhausted and surrounded by boxes. The birds feast on them. We learn our lesson with the grapes, waiting one more day for them to fully ripen. When we awake the next morning, we find them all gone, devoured by bears, except for one small cluster. We set up a table along the road in front of our place with a scale, a box for cash, and a sign advertising yellow plums to try to manage the buckets and buckets of fruit that we frantically pick. A spindly bush along the wall of the garage suddenly sprouts the biggest, most gorgeous, lush looking peaches I’ve ever seen. Pears, apples, figs come and go while we are busy getting Orrin settled in school.

It is impossible to keep up. We have more than what we need—our true relationship to Life, not the toxic scarcity thinking we are trained to painfully believe. I try to mark on our calendar when things ripen so that we can be better prepared next year. The whole first year feels very Little House on the Prairie, learning what to expect from the seasons, how to take care of the land and be in right relationship with it, making rookie mistakes.

We are surrounded by the abundance of not only plant life here, but also wildlife. In the morning when we walk Orrin to the bus stop for school, we survey the latest piles of poop. Is it Bear or Elk or something else? Sitting on the back porch one fall morning sipping warm tea, we look up to see a juvenile black bear lumbering across the meadow, looking as startled to see us as we were to see the bear. Deer bed down overnight in the tall unruly grasses overgrown from years of neglect by the former owners. At night we must carry flashlights because of the omnipresent giant black slugs underfoot, reminding me of the bright yellow banana slugs from my days at UC Santa Cruz. 8 female ducks and a heron take residence on our ponds, immediately flying off at any sign of threat. A bald eagle sits in the tree above the meadow.

Our first day here, Orrin puts on his swimsuit and immediately wades into the murky pond, which is surprisingly deep. He comes back with a GIANT bullfrog that he names Jeremiah. Other friends quickly followed: Pickles and Limey, distinguishable by their bumpy texture and green complexion. The first time we see a heron in the pond Orrin is ashen, fearful for Jeremiah’s fate. After proudly proclaiming himself for weeks with a demanding croak that sounds more like an angry cow, Jeremiah goes silent for a few days and Orrin is certain that he is a goner. We all breathe a sigh of relief when, once again, we hear his booming proclamation echo around the land.

At the base of the grandmother cedar tree between the house and the barn is a garter snake den and Orrin becomes an expert snake catcher. He holds them while we play board games on the outdoor table where we have all our meals, our only furniture for weeks. He carries them in the pouch of his plush poncho that he wears to keep off the morning chill. Anytime we have a visitor to the land, Orrin plucks a snake from the grass with laser sharp precision to give guests a close up view. His favorite is a tiny baby snake he names Strudel.

The soundtrack for our new life is a combination of wild noises. The beating of Raven’s wings as they glide by overhead with a sassy croak. The screaming of the 2 donkeys who live down the road, Nemo and Forest, which sounds distinctly like they are being murdered. The rooster we nicknamed Midnight because he announces the dawn at all hours of the day and night. The hummingbirds that zing by with a sharp trill. Our neighbor’s dogs whose frenetic barking in the dark night announces the presence of some sort of wildlife.

Connecting to the Earth

All I want to do is be out on the land. I enjoy being physical in my body, endlessly carrying boxes back and forth to the barn. A lifelong late night person, I find myself rising early to get out on the land to battle blackberries. The hours pass quickly as I can’t resist the temptation of tackling just one more square patch. I feel like I could spend the rest of my life in this pursuit, as by the time I finally finish cutting back the last corner of the land, it would be time to start at the beginning again.

Most of my time is spent getting settled in my new life, unpacking, getting accustomed to living with a kid for the first time, learning how to steward 5 acres when I’ve never even had a garden before! I do have a couple of work gigs, social justice trainings for mostly U.S. based queer choruses. Doing educational and transformative work has been my main passion for my entire adult life, so I am surprised to find myself only impatient at having to sit down in front of my computer. I crave being outside, doing something that feels “real.” I never would have characterized my former life as not real, but I realize how much of my life has been spent sitting and thinking, buried in a book or a screen, and I feel a newfound sadness at what I have missed as a result.   

I also feel impatient to be solely located, physically and emotionally. Previously when I’ve moved somewhere, I spent so much time going back to my old life to maintain connections. When I got my job at University of Missouri, I drove 8 hours each way back and forth to Minneapolis every week for choir practice for an entire year! While previously I viewed this commitment as a strength, I begin to see some of the costs of my habit of being multiply located.

Since my relationship to the U.S. has always felt like a toxic marriage, I notice my desire to have a proper break up, to let that part of my life be done so that I can move on fully into my new life. After spending my entire adult life trying to create change in the U.S., with a culture that has stubbornly chosen to resist needed change (and even increasingly doubled down in the opposite direction), I reached my breaking point. Now, as in any toxic marriage, I stop caring whether they get therapy and change or not. I choose to control the only thing I can control: its impact on me. Much to my surprise, I decide to skip the 10th anniversary concert of the trans choir that I founded and left behind in Colorado.  

Consolidating

My new life needs my full attention. Everything I’m doing—parenting, home ownership, land stewardship—is entirely new to me, not things I’ve even thought about or prepared for because they weren’t what I ever expected to choose for myself. At this stage in my life, when many people feel like they’ve done and seen it all, what a gift to have a life that is totally new! What incredible personal growth and soul expansion!

In contemplating my current life, I am reminded of the Joseph Campbell quote: “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” This was not the life I’d planned for myself—this is the life of my parents in many ways, the life that I rejected—but the more I settle into it, surprisingly, the happier I become. It is funny to again be doing life stages out of order. I did adolescence in my 40’s when I went on testosterone, and now I’m doing marriage, family, and home—what most people do in their 30’s—during my retirement years. Maybe it’s developmental trauma, or maybe it’s just how I do life: out of order. It’s never too late, I guess.    

It always felt like having kids and a home would monopolize my time and attention, severely limiting my ability to serve the world. What a small focus and limited impact, I thought. It seemed like a trap most middle-class people fell for, and part of the reason our collective life was failing—no one invested in community because they were busy mowing their lawns and driving their kids to soccer practice.

But at this phase in my life, deeply investing in a couple people and a plot of land feels just right. I spent my adult life devoted to teaching/social justice work, burning myself out having a big impact on the world around me. This phase of life—initiated by the passing of my mom, allowing me to finally relax and have some space to exist—is about my own happiness. 

So much of my peace and happiness in my previous life came from my time in the natural world—shamanic retreats, music festivals, hot springs weekends with my partners, sunsets at the ocean, abundant camping and hiking. It was the reason I’d moved to Colorado after all, and the 100 miles I hiked with my former partner, Amanda, in Minnesota state parks defined our years in Minneapolis just as working and family vacationing in Yosemite National Park defined my early years in California.    

My previous relationship to the natural world had an overlay of anonymity to it, however. I had a strong relationship to the natural world, but it was like my relationship with the city. It was someplace that I went, outside of my everyday life, and, even though I had favorite places, I was a stranger there and my interactions were largely anonymous with beings I’d likely never encounter again. In a way it was more like having a relationship with a concept.

But here, I get to build an ongoing relationship with a specific piece of land, diverse enough to offer endless fascination, but contained enough to feel deep and meaningful, rooted in my everyday life. Here I get to cultivate ongoing connections with specific trees, specific frogs, specific ducks and notice things through our everyday relationship that I would miss as a visitor. Not unlike the familiarity and trust and intimacy that Erin and Orrin and I are cultivating by living together for the first time. I never felt like anything was lacking previously, but now that I’m experiencing it, I can see how much I was missing—in both the natural and human realms. 

And now I get to share that connection with others as well. The land has revealed to me its desire to be known and to be appreciated so part of my role as steward is to fulfill this conscious desire of the land—to bring people here and create healing experiences for them. Erin and I are planning to open a retreat center at our new home, so our projects here have centered around imagining people doing dyads in the barn, walking contemplation around the ponds, a labyrinth in the meadow, journal writing at the picnic table, camping under the stars in the Magical Forest. How can we best facilitate this healing and transformative experience of the sacred? I feel so moved to realize that this land may become sacred and important in the lives and stories of others in ways that Crow’s Nest (my shamanic community in Dowagiac, Michigan), Sunrise Ranch (where the Arise Music Festival was held in Colorado), Valley View (our favorite nudist hot springs), and “the land” at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival were for my healing and happiness.  

Rural Life

The pace of life here is also a good match for my less ambitious life phase and nervous system reset. There are just 6 stoplights in all of Powell River! In town, it is a 5 minute drive to any destination. The highway to town through the forest along the ocean is only 2 lanes, never exceeding 50mph. People aren’t in a hurry here, and they aren’t angry, traumatized, or dysregulated. What is most difficult to explain to my friends in the U.S. is that there is no end of the world feeling here. My nervous system takes a deep sigh of relief and starts to settle.

I discover the gift of limited options. People participate enthusiastically in community events here, as there aren’t as many of them, making each one special and a source of community engagement. I’ve only lived in cities and college towns, where there are 50 options for every moment, leading to overwhelm, anonymity, and less actual participation because events are more taken for granted. When Erin and Orrin and I search for a couch for our new living room, we don’t have to compare styles and prices at 10 stores because there’s only 2. The simplicity is a gift. I don’t need so many choices. More choices than I need actually feels burdensome and depleting.

Previously I never wanted to be tied down to one place for the rest of my life, so I’m surprised to discover the feelings of safety I experience from owning our own home. Nobody is going to police me or confront me or cast me out. After feeling as a trans person like the nuclear reactor nobody wanted in their neighborhood, I finally have a place in the world and it gives me a sense of security and stability. And it feels fun to build something together with Erin and Orrin.

I’m also surprised by the feelings of safety that emerge in community. People here are intact and relaxed and open and available in a way I’ve never experienced. The lack of safety people in the U.S. are experiencing currently is intense, but I realize, being here, the ways I never felt safe in the U.S.—and not just due to the obvious reasons of being trans and queer. The competitiveness and self absorption and left brain orientation of U.S. culture (valuing goals and success and achievement, assessment, control, and certainty) creates a lack of safety for everyone. People in the U.S. are so rarely content where they are—they always seem to be chasing something better, striving to be someone or someplace else. And as we step out of responsiveness in the moment into the need to act from our own disconnected sense of what should happen next [usually generated from our anxiety], we are no longer truly present with one another. Consider the loneliness we often feel when we share our feelings with another and, in their anxiety about our suffering, they jump into their left hemisphere and try to offer a fix it solution, abandoning us in the process and offering an invitation for us to disconnect from ourselves and join them in that disembodied left orientation.  

But people here feel present and happy, appreciative of simple pleasures. Probably the defining feature of all the events we’ve attended in Powell River is the notable intergenerational participation. Outdoor concerts are held next to playgrounds, so parents and kids can parallel play. We attend a sold out Family Dance at the Polish Hall, an evening of essentially square dancing with small children and grandparents side by side, where teen boys hold hands dancing together unself-consciously. Even the public lecture by a Truth and Reconciliation commissioner is filled with children. And there’s a sweetness to the vibe that is surprisingly touching to me, not being a kid person myself. It’s something I noticed in our very first visit here last year—how present parents and kids are with one another here, the absence of stress and dysregulation and distractions like technology and devices, the presence of spontaneous joy and relaxation. There’s an intactness and innocence here—in individuals and in the community—that I haven’t experienced in the U.S. in decades. It feels more like my childhood memories of the 70s than the contemporary dystopian nightmare my students in the U.S. find themselves in.  

In our first weeks, neighbors stop by endlessly. One does an oil change for us on our ride-on mower. Another teaches Orrin how to drive it. Another brings his forklift to help us move our hot tub. Doug comes with a tractor to clear a spot for Jade’s trailer. He also offers to help us build the chicken coop. Neil rescues us when Jade’s trailer accidentally ends up in the ditch. Kyle and Kaeli help us move a couple trees and teach us how to prune our fruit trees. Their generosity is extremely moving to us and we are humbled by their practical expertise that we clearly don’t have.

We learn different social expectations. Ask someone here for basic information and you are likely to get a 20 minute story lol. When we first move in, a friend from Seattle comes to visit us and she becomes overwhelmed by the neighbors, who feel intrusive according to her expectations. I recall my American socialization, oriented towards privacy and self sufficiency—and think of all the people I know who express how lonely they feel in the U.S. Here people just stop by rather than texting to schedule a coffee date 2 weeks from now.

Overall what I feel here is care. Living in a country that cares for its citizens. Living in a community where most of the people went to the same high school and seem to genuinely enjoy one another. Living in an area where neighbors look out for one another and where sharing of expertise and machinery is unceremoniously commonplace.

And this care is evident in people’s relationship with the world around them. So much of the disintegration of the commons in the U.S. is because nobody wants to take responsibility unless it directly benefits them. Here everything is so clean! You can feel the care and responsibility in people’s relationship to public spaces. There’s no garbage blowing in parking lots or left on the ground after the local music festival, the beaches are totally pristine and the water is so crystal clear you can see straight to the bottom while ocean kayaking. There’s not even any roadkill along the side of the highway.   

The results of all this care and lowered human footprint is remarkable. Every time I go to the ocean, within 5 minutes (literally) I have a close up major wildlife encounter: seals most commonly, but also orcas, jellyfish, herons, sea lions, otters, starfish. Ferries between Powell River and Vancouver Island are basically whale watching cruises. When the herring were spawning at the beginning of March, we went for a walk along the ocean and—in a quick scan along the beach—saw more bald eagles than all the bald eagles I’ve ever seen over my lifetime! In Colorado, major wildlife encounters might occur maybe a couple times a year, but here they are my weekly experience.

I have named these experiences remarkable, but really what they are is evidence of right relationship: the abundance reflective of right relationship with the natural world, the safety reflective of right relationship in the human community, the consolidation evidence of right relationship with self.

Parental Love

On By sambullington1 Comment

Today is my dad’s birthday. It is just incredible to me that this year he will have been gone for 20 YEARS (this year I am the same age he was when he collapsed in the middle of the night), yet he remains in regular contact with me! From everything I know from psychic channelers, it is unusual for a spirit to stay around even for a couple years! It’s not surprising that he would have wanted to stick around—leaving so early in life and so unexpectedly—but his devotion and loyalty, engagement, care, and continued communication touches me so deeply and I feel so incredibly grateful. Since he and my mom have joined forces on the other side, I have felt them strongly at my back, guiding me forward, and their power has been turbo boosted from their reunion. This recent cycle has brought an amazing turn of events, lots of incredible growth, and a deepening bond with my parents.

Inauguration Day

I had knee replacement surgery on Election Day in November. While I went unconscious fully expecting a Harris victory, when I learned that Trump would be the new President, my strong clear inner response was simply NO. This NO did not arise from my entire adult life being devoted to social justice. Instead, this strong NO arose in response to growing up with my mom. I spent my entire life in the shadow of someone else’s impactful mental illness. I had one precious year free of that to finally have some breathing room for my own life—and I’m not going back. Though I’m not great with boundaries, this one was loud and clear: NO, I’m done.

I’d approached January 20 with existential dread, but waking up that morning, I felt only clarity and strength. It is Inauguration Day and inauguration means the start of something new. I felt internally, and declared to myself, today is the day where the path to my future diverges from the path of my country. Here is where we part ways.

It was a big moment for me, breaking up with my country. In my interpersonal relationships, I’ve only ever been dumped—I’ve never broken up with someone before. The only break up I initiated was with the academic world—and that I had to do multiple times because, like many bad relationships, I kept going back.  

So the break up with my country was a first, but one that was long overdue. It had been a bad marriage from the start, a complete lack of alignment in our values and goals, but I had always stayed out of obligation. Since I am a healer, and this is the place most in need of healing (and the place that has the most impact on the rest of the world), I felt like I needed to be here, regardless of what it cost me personally. But my mom’s passing liberated me from so many of these self- harming obligations.

Once I was clear about my future path, things unfolded quite rapidly! Without trying to make anything happen, within a month my new course had been set! My partner Erin had been looking at properties in Canada online. When she came to the US in 2008, she’d only planned to be here for 3 years to complete her Masters and then return to British Columbia. She ended up having a baby and getting trapped in the US for over a decade because she didn’t want to take her kiddo Orrin away from his dad. She very nearly returned to Canada at the beginning of Covid, but ended up staying for all the US catastrophes of the past 5 years, and she too had had enough.  

One property in particular we’d seen online captured our imagination. It was 2 homes on 5 acres so a dream we could share with others needing to flee the US, including the eventual possibility that all the members of Erin’s kiddo’s complicated family (2 siblings with different moms) could stay together. But what really grabbed us was the gorgeous 3 story barn that would be a perfect retreat and workshop space! Individually and together, that barn started us dreaming.

Finally Erin said we needed to go look at it in person. She had a light week of work coming up at the beginning of February so she could arrange to be away. Since I’d never shopped for a home before (and had never planned to!), we set up appointments with realtors up the Sunshine Coast, en route to Powell River—the location of the property with the barn and where Erin had gone for the first time in September when she did a 2 week Enlightenment Intensive there—and then several more appointments on Vancouver Island across the water on the way back down to Seattle so we could get a sense of the range of options available.

Also, in preparation for our trip, we made arrangements to get legally married while we were in Powell River so that we could begin my immigration process.

Parental Communication: Miracles and More Miracles

My dad has 2 main ways of communicating with me: he leaves me dimes (and after 20 years I have literally thousands of dimes he’s left me in unusual places and uncanny situations!) and he DJ’s songs for me in public places (for instance, study parties with friends at Perkins in Minneapolis would just slide into a series of significant songs from my childhood). Even when my dad communicated with a psychic channeler after I went on testosterone, he gave her a song for me—“Whatta Man” by Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue—specifying that it was not his genre, but one he thought I would like lol.

When Erin and I arrived at the Denver airport for our trip to Powell River, as she was checking our bag, I became aware of a song playing—I’d never even noticed music at the Denver airport before! As I realized what song it was, I burst into tears. “I Can See Clearly Now” was not only a significant song from my childhood, and one that has recurred throughout my adult spiritual journey, but it was a significant song in my relationship with Erin. It was a special song of her dad’s—her dad who committed suicide when she was a kid—so much so that, after our first Enlightenment Intensive in 2023, I came home and learned “I Can See Clearly Now” on my guitar so that I could play it for Erin as a surprise. It also well captures the healing journey Erin and I have been on as a couple over the past few years.  

We rented a car in Seattle and headed towards the Canadian border to make the 6 hour drive—including 2 ferries—to Powell River. About an hour into our journey, Erin was looking for something on the passenger side floor and found a dime! When we stopped for gas, there was a cash register with a change cup and in the cup was exactly 2 dimes. When we got to Powell River, I was not feeling well so we went to a pharmacy to get some cold medicine. A young woman was checking us out and got very flustered because she didn’t have the right change so she called over her supervisor. The supervisor apologized and said to Erin, “Well we could just give you your change all in dimes if you don’t mind” and proceeded to fill Erin’s hands with dimes!

We saw the property for the first time on Feb 2, the same day we got legally married, and it was even more magical in person! From the photos online, we knew almost nothing about the 5 acres—but in addition to magical forest that made it feel like we’d be living at a campground, there turned out to be 2 ponds that we didn’t even know about! We decided we wanted to focus on this property and canceled our other realtor appointments to stay in Powell River.

After seeing it a couple more times, we decided we wanted to put in an offer on the place. I consulted my parents at every turn because after all it was their resources, their legacy, their sacrifice that we would be using in order to make this dream happen! Given the state of the world, it felt like a very sound plan to turn abstract financial resources (that could disappear overnight in an economy governed by Donald Trump!) into something real—a home, a manageably-sized intentional community, land we can grow food on, a refuge and community hub that will draw people to us, especially those interested in healing and transformation. In a place that is 2 ferry rides away from the noise and chaos of the United States. That sounded to me like investing in a secure future—at least as secure of a future as current circumstances would allow.

However, once we’d decided to move forward, I went into a full blown panic. Such a big financial commitment using resources I’d planned to use towards retirement (since I don’t have any other retirement options)! Living together with Erin and Orrin for the first time and stepping into parenting for the first time—in what would be a pretty small house. Caring for 5 acres when not only am I aging fast, but I’ve spent the last 5 years largely disabled from various physical breakdowns as a result of the lack of self-care I practiced during my academic career. Home ownership, parenting, legal marriage—these were all paths that I’d carefully rejected over my entire adult life! And who would we be sharing this dream with—it was too much for the 3 of us, but the rest of Orrin’s family had said no to moving to Canada.

We decided to head home and take a breath before putting in an offer on the property. We stayed at an Airbnb in Bellingham, Washington so we’d be near the airport for our flight the next day. When we got to the Airbnb, the room we’d booked was called the Aloha Room! My mom LOVED Hawaii (she and my dad traveled there frequently together and individually for work) and her whole house was decked out in Hawaiian décor. Every surface in the Aloha Room was covered in Hawaii-themed artifacts! We had to get gas the next morning en route to the airport and across the street from the gas station was Aloha BBQ—in Bellingham, Washington lol! On the other side of the street was a giant sign that said “JOANN” (my mom’s name!) because there was a Joann’s Fabrics in the strip mall. It was hard to ignore the unmistakable signs—this time coming from my mom!

When we arrived back at the Denver airport and were waiting for our bags, Erin called me over. This time she was hearing music! When I strained to hear, I realized the song was “Our House”! The next morning I walked down to the 7-11 by my house to get some caffeine, since I’d been out of town, and the song playing there was “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”

“Let ’em say we’re crazy, I don’t care about that
Put your hand in my hand baby, don’t ever look back
Let the world around us just fall apart
Baby, we can make it if we’re heart to heart

And we can build this thing together
Standing strong forever
Nothing’s gonna stop us now”

When we were deciding to put our offer in, I was freaking out and pacing around my studio space, up and down, up and down from the couch as I couldn’t settle. After about 30 minutes of this, I looked back to the couch where I’d been sitting and there was a shiny dime! Sitting below the pillow I’d made with my parents’ photo! I’d specifically asked them—tearfully implored actually, as I was really needing parental advice—to please give me a sign if I was on the right path and to shut doors if I was heading towards a mistake. The evening I found out our offer had been accepted, I walked into a Walgreens in search of sleep medicine for Erin and the song that was playing? “Walkin’ On Sunshine”! It felt like the heavens were celebrating with us! Truly a joint effort!

Conversation

So perhaps you are beginning to understand the ways that this parental guidance is not just abstract angel or animal signs, but is truly a conversation. I began speaking with my parents’ picture almost every night—sharing my fears and concerns, as well as my deep humility and gratitude for all of the incredible gifts they’ve shared with me. In our life together, my mom was overprotective of me. No doubt she responded this way because of her own trauma and the ways she wasn’t protected as a kid. Claudia, my mom’s caregiver and angel for her last 5 years, always tells me about how worried my mom was about me.

So it touches my heart so much to realize that my mom is still protecting me. She is giving us a path to safety from what is quickly becoming Nazi Germany. It is only because of her that any of this is possible! And I felt her happiness at getting to continue to play that role for me, the ways that creating safety for us is healing for her. And I saw that this journey to a secure future didn’t just begin in January. I remembered all the ways that my parents had orchestrated Erin and I finding our way back to one another (my dad left so many dimes for Erin, she finally had to say ok lol!), in a miraculous journey of faith that strongly paralleled the journey I was having about the house.

In my journey back to Erin, one of my main sustaining forces had been my Archangel Michael cards (which I’d gotten in Breckenridge on spring break when I still lived in Missouri and was coming out to Colorado for my mental health). So, as the journey with the property progressed (so many big scary decisions needing to be made in such a short period of time!), I found myself again turning to my Archangel Michael cards. Two things were different this time around: it felt like my parents started using my Archangel Michael cards to talk to me, and I started sharing the Divine conversation with Erin.

Erin self identifies as a skeptic lol, so she’d always found my reliance on otherworldly guidance to be a bit suspect, especially as an Earth sign (Virgo) who understands the reality of the senses and slow change. But after jaw droppingly apropos messages one after the other, she began to believe in miracles. I would never have known that I would want that, but it felt so lovely to get to share more of my inner world with her, to be seen and known. And it felt incredibly intimate for her to be seeing firsthand how I sustained myself during our 9 months broken up, when there wasn’t a lot of evidence that things would have a happy outcome.     

At every scary turn of the road, at the gate of every big decision, I would ask my parents for clear guidance and would get messages like this:

“You’ve drawn this card as validation that your thoughts and actions are in the right direction. You’ve been carefully listening to your guidance from within, and the angels applaud you for following it faithfully. Although you may not clearly see what’s up ahead, the angels want you to know that they’re guiding and protecting you every step of the way. Keep up the good work! Listen to your inner guidance, even if others don’t understand. Trust that you’ll be financially supported as you move forward with your plans.”

Two thirds of the times I sat down for counsel, I would get this card as my first card! It was extremely reassuring!!

Since there is so much UNKNOWN in our situation, I was continually reminded to step out on faith, holding fast to our destination. Before we left for Powell River, I chose out a couple angel cards and got Willingness and Adventure, so at every scary turn in this journey, when I might want to turn back, I have just asked myself: “Am I willing to have an adventure?” And every time the answer has been “Yes” and so I have chosen to proceed.

“Archangel Michael says that fear is the only thing interfering with your happiness and plans. He wants to show you how to release any worry or dread so you can feel safe and secure. This card indicates that you’re ready to let go of control issues and trust that everything ultimately works out for the best. You’re going in the right direction.”

“To resolve this situation, you must believe that everything is healed and whole right now. As your faith grows stronger, the doorway to Divine solutions will open. Your trust enables your mind and body to relax, which increases your creative energy and strength—two qualities that will prove especially helpful to you. This situation will have a happy outcome. Positive thinking will bring you your desired outcome more rapidly. Give worries to the angels.”  

There have been so many lessons in this journey for me, the culmination of so much of the healing I’ve been doing over the past decade. I began this journey afraid to want anything and unconfident about the trustworthiness of my decision making. And here I am now, being clear and decisive in naming and claiming the things I want. And the universe is responding by opening doors and organically unfolding the process. It has been like following water downhill! Though there were moments of paralysis, for the most part throughout this entire process I have bravely stayed in my adult self and matter of factly scaled mountains and slayed dragons on a daily basis.  

About halfway through the process, it felt like we were being asked to step into a new level of claiming our desired outcome. I got Keep Your Eyes on Your Targeted Intention and Make A Commitment. “This card is a signal that you’re on the right path—keep a steady eye on your goals. The path to making your intentions a reality may differ from your expectations, yet the outcome is likely to exceed your dreams. Fully commit to your desired outcome. Keep the faith… and keep going!”

It was good that we embraced our assignment because soon after we began to receive information about some potentially expensive problems with the 3 bedroom house, the one we’ll be living in. Erin and I proved to be an excellent team! When Erin gets anxious, she does research. When I get anxious, I turn to my guides. Sharing with each other the results of our inquiries was super helpful and offered great balance between material reality and spiritual reality. 

It was SO REASSURING to have continual messages that we were on the right path!!

“As one chapter of your life closes, another one is beginning to bloom. Right now you may only notice the first inklings of new growth in your life, so Archangel Michael sends this card to encourage you to keep going. There’s great goodness in store for you! Stay filled with faith and keep a positive outlook. A move to a new home may be forthcoming. Let the past go!”

“Have confidence in your plans and ideas. Tune into your intuition, as it’s right on target. Trust the person you’re inquiring about. Have faith that you’re on the right path. Know that your financial and other needs are being met now and in the future.”

Our final challenge was a big one: Erin’s brother, a real estate guy, advised us to walk away. Erin interpreted this through the lens of material reality, I interpreted this through the lens of spiritual reality. On any hero’s journey, the closer you get to the fiery portal leading to your liberation, the more challenges get thrown at you and your fears get mirrored back to you in a last-ditch effort to get you to turn back, to go back to safety and comfort and the known instead of allowing yourself to change and risking a step into the unknown. I saw it as a test: Will I listen to fear and give up or will I stay true to my commitment and step toward it, even if it isn’t perfect? In the end, both perspectives served us well. After sending out inspectors, we learned the problems in the house were not as extensive as we feared and Erin really grasped how the whole process was an aspect of the hero’s journey.

Miracles

Miraculous-feeling guidance was not the only miraculous going on. When we returned from Powell River, I was dreading seeing Orrin, unable to face his pain about having to leave his dad and siblings and his fears, especially as a neurodivergent queer-identifying kid, about having to start over in a new place. Instead—upon seeing photos of the property—he was filled with excitement, asking for chickens and to build a fort on the island of one of the ponds on our property.

He sent photos to his dad and, by the time I arrived, both his dad and his dad’s partner were suddenly texting us they were potentially in! They found the pictures stunning and wanted to get together over the weekend to talk more with us about it! WOW!! That was unexpected! All of a sudden, there was potentially a way for Orrin’s dad and siblings to join us! And we wouldn’t be parenting or stewarding the land alone! That changed everything!

Our enthusiasm was short lived, however. Orrin’s sister’s mom was still a no, and Orrin’s dad was clear that he was a no as well unless everyone agreed to go.   

The following weekend Erin and I were in Las Vegas, on a work trip of mine for GALA Choruses, having an impromptu honeymoon (or “marrymoon” as I named it, since we will have a proper wedding for friends and family at the end of summer at the barn on our new property!). We were there over Valentine’s Day no less—which also happens to be my mom’s birthday! Unable to really relax, our biggest fear/challenge around the property purchase was will the money from my mom’s estate be available in time for our mid-June closing, since most of her resources were still tied up in probate, over which we had no control.

On Valentine’s Day, my mom’s birthday, we received 2 big miracles—before lunch even! I got an email from the lawyer for my mom’s estate saying that she could arrange access to the money I needed, AND we got a text from the mom of Orrin’s sister saying that she was now in and wanting to move with us!! It was actually shocking to have our 2 biggest stresses/challenges just instantly removed at the same time! We later learned that the third thing that we needed in order for our plans to become reality was also accomplished on my mom’s birthday. When we received our marriage certificate in the mail, it was registered on Feb 14.

Going Home

The theme for this Pisces New Moon is grounding inspiration into reality. We signed the paperwork for the property on Feb 28 so it’s official! It’s apparently “a time to trust what’s unfolding, even if you can’t see the full picture yet. Endings and beginnings are woven together and you are reminded to have faith.” That has definitely been the theme of this cycle for sure!  

In addition to being a faith person, I am also a process person, so—although I am currently WITH EASE manifesting the biggest outcome I’ve ever manifested for myself—I am also noticing and appreciating the growth our situation is bringing already. That itself is worth the journey.

Erin leveled up in ways that made this situation possible—identifying and breaking old contracts with her ex husband and her child that were at her expense. And she continues to level up daily, holding so much capacity as she spends every moment between working and parenting scheduling with plumbers, electricians, building inspectors, the realtor. I am also leveling up in ways that make this situation possible—talking with financial people, being willing to make big risky decisions, stepping into parenting and cohabitation, trusting the journey even when it’s really scary. And Orrin has even spontaneously leveled up as well! He has been showing up in such buoyant and cheerful ways, full of excitement and optimism, and talking about feeling more mature. As we level up, we inspire and invite those around us to level up as well and we are starting to see that too, not only with Orrin’s extended family but in our friend circles as well.

In the big picture, there is nothing but gratitude. Erin’s Canadian citizenship offers me a path out of a dangerous situation, and I am the one to finally bring her back home. From the beyond, my parents continue to exude the generosity and care that people talked so much about at my mom’s memorial service. We are setting out on a new adventure, one that will—despite whatever challenges come our way—likely exceed our wildest dreams! At Orrin’s new school, you can hear the sea lions barking from the parking lot! At our new house, my daily walks will be to the ocean! A way of life that has been impossible to access in the US during my lifetime except for the super rich. Although I still have some fears about whether my new life will meet my needs, I trust that I will grow in important ways through this experience that will take me to my most meaningful happiness and will make the journey most worthwhile.   

“Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for. It’s gonna be a bright, bright, bright sunshiny day!”

I Can See Clearly Now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cAWgTPiwM

Learning to Speak Up

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Growing up with my mom, it was definitely not safe to speak up. I learned all sorts of deflection and concealing behaviors in order to keep myself from harm. Over the years, I learned to conceal my real feelings even from myself. I stopped letting myself be aware of how I was really feeling, especially if it seemed to be in conflict with someone else’s needs.

But now all of a sudden I can see these deflection and concealing behaviors, and I’m starting to let myself not only be aware of how I’m really feeling, but even to speak it aloud to others and to take action from this awareness! And it has been life changing!

There’s one pattern I learned from growing up with my mom that now I’m recognizing myself doing all the time! When I’ve spoken something that feels risky (say I’ve said something strongly or revealed some potentially threatening information), rather than allow there to be space and silence afterwards, I will immediately jump in to try to distract us. Specifically I will point out something that is mundane, hence safe, and something that is shared (i.e. “That smells nice” or “Look at that neat bird”). 

When I told my partner my realization, she commented on what a creative and smart strategy it was for dealing with my mom! A way to minimize risk and maximize potential intimacy. It is a way of de-escalating, of defusing potential charge (including my anxiety and the other person’s). And it is a strategy I’ve seen other family members use, though with different flavors—basically fill all the space so that nothing unpredictable can happen.

I’m learning with my partner to be more authentic in my presence and more direct in my communication, noticing all my habitual ways of coming at things sideways. I’ve seen with her the ways it can undermine trust so I’m very motivated to notice and change those behaviors. And as I’m doing that, I’m noticing the freedom and clarity arising in my own being.

I’ve not just been practicing with my partner—I’ve been speaking my mind all over town in all my relationships! Whereas previously I would have a lot of anxiety in my body in anticipation and a lot of self doubt afterwards, now I am just meeting the moment with my truth every day without even really thinking about it. It has been very empowering!

In one of these situations, I needed to address a housemate who’d been eating my food. Doing so successfully and undramatically, I was prompted to write a (somewhat hilarious) list of other possible responses I would have used at other times in my life.

Options:

My housemate is eating my food. I can:

I can silently stew about it

I can make it ok by telling myself it’s not a big deal

I can avoid it by not leaving food in the kitchen

I can extremely avoid it by moving out

I can avoid my housemate

I can give my housemate the silent treatment and see if he figures out why

I can tell my friends what a jerk he is

I can talk to my landlord and hope she’ll say something to him

I can talk to my landlord and ask her if she’ll say something to him

I can explode at him after weeks/months of silently stewing

Or I can just say please stop eating my food! An act of love for us both!

Despite the humor of its ridiculousness, looking over this list was humbling and painful because these are all the strategies that I have used my whole life. Not even allowing myself to know how I was feeling, absorbing all the consequences inside myself without even telling the other person I was feeling distressed, siphoning off my anger and helplessness through utilizing others, feeling like a victim and wanting to be rescued, overriding my feelings and abandoning myself, wanting others to know and not wanting others to know how I was feeling, being afraid of creating rupture in the relationship (while creating rupture in the relationship by not speaking up), and feeling ashamed and unreasonable for even having feelings or preferences. My main survival strategy with my mom was to be like water and just flow around obstacles without ever confronting them directly so I have many clever means of practicing avoidance, internally and externally.

What my partner helped me to reflect upon was the consequences of all of these avoidance strategies. The consequences on me and my well being of internalizing so much about my own experience. The lack of trust inherent in that internalizing process, making it hard for me to feel met when others don’t know what’s going on for me. And the loneliness and frustration of not actually being known because of keeping so much inside. The consequences on others, as I make them into enemies and engage in silent, or not so silent, warfare. The erosion of my relationships with them as a result of my withholds. And the painful messages that get silently reinforced for us both: that my feelings and needs don’t matter, that relationships are unpredictable and unsafe. And the consequences on community and our collective life when we aren’t authentic or direct. The polarization that happens when we take sides or hold distorted views of one another based on incomplete information. The vomiting of our negative emotional states onto one another. The messiness that results from being triangulated into situations that aren’t ours.   

I am so grateful to be starting to recognize all of these survival strategies in myself and to suddenly have the inner tools to start making different choices. I know that the more I enact these new skills of direct communication, the more positive reinforcement I will have for stabilizing these new ways of being.

My Own Private Oracle

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My Own Private Oracle

In my spiritual community in Minneapolis in the 2000s, I learned about the joys and helpfulness of divination tools. My very favorite oracle is the online oracle created by my spiritual teacher in Minneapolis, Lynn Woodland, called The Community Oracle. (https://lynnwoodland.com/the-community-oracle/) It is comprised of 3×5 cards with intuitive messages composed during her workshops by participants, including me, so it is extra meaningful when I get one in my own handwriting!  

About 8 years ago I intuitively created my own private oracle. It is basically a Yes/No oracle, though often it manifests with little slips of paper in which I write various statements or scenarios to see whether they are true or not (depending on which side they land). This oracle of mine is something that has been a secret until this week, something that I wasn’t sure whether it was genius or psychosis lol. But last weekend I was guided to begin sharing about it.  

I do often get important and true information from my oracle, but even if it is total crap and just random chance, it takes me through a psychospiritual journey of considering various perspectives and possibilities that is really valuable. 

For instance, if there’s a scenario in my life and I feel like I have good insight into what’s going on, I will ask if I am correct. If I get a Yes, it feels reassuring that my intuition is right on track—because often my oracle will affirm for me a truth that is not apparently obvious in the situation, even one that contradicts my read of the situation from my everyday mind. If I get a No, it will stop me in my tracks and cause me to question my assumptions. “Huh, I thought I knew what was going on.”

Then another possible explanation will come to me and I’ll ask about that. If I get a Yes, I’m filled with surprise and curiosity. “Well, if that’s true, what are the implications of that?” And it changes my whole worldview in ways that open me up beyond my habitual limited perceptions.

No’s prompt me to dig deeper: if what I was assuming to be true isn’t actually true, then what else could it be? And I’ll ask about another scenario. If I get a Yes, I will feel humbled—”Oh! That’s what’s going on! Not what I thought at all!” And if I get a No, I have to go even deeper to find other possible options—”huh, if it’s not either of those explanations, what else could it be??” With each step, I’m prompted to consider perspectives I hadn’t been considering, which really opens up my thinking generally. And it reminds me not to be too overconfident in my apparent perceptions and interpretations.

Sometimes if I say “Well, it can’t possibly be this” and then I get a Yes, I will feel a charge of electricity from my paradigm totally being shattered, usually accompanied by some giddiness or elation.

My oracle helps me put puzzle pieces together: “if this is true and this is true, but this is not, what should I ask about now?” And so slowly a picture will begin to emerge, usually different from what I was expecting. The process is nourishing because it is an extended conversation with my guides, one that grows trust in their presence and their counsel. Their responses often feel comforting and reassuring, but they can just as easily feel humbling and bracing when—like any good spiritual teacher—they tell me a truth I don’t want to hear.

Seeing my emotional reactions to various scenarios and possible truths reveals to me my own often hidden preferences. And with every scenario visited, it helps me to identify and work with the various aversions and passions aroused by the situation.

And the process helps me plan for an appropriate course of action. While I know that all my information could be totally wrong, I feel grounded in the moment because I’ve already gone through so many potential possibilities that there are few I haven’t processed already. It definitely helps me have more empathy for people when I have deeply pondered what might be going on for them, so it causes me to be kinder and gentler in my approach to people.

My oracle often helps me to weather a storm, holding onto faith in something that I can’t yet see (and I’m inclined to believe that my faith has something to do with it being made manifest—though it’s obviously not a tool to try to control reality!).

Sometimes my oracle will lead me to believe something in the moment that isn’t actually true and even this is incredibly valuable. Believing it in that moment takes me through a whole healing process that usually turns out to be a crucial step in the unfolding of things. For instance, if my heart is closed to someone, my oracle may affirm statements or scenarios that demonstrate their vulnerability, causing me to soften my perspective and open my heart. In this way, my oracle can have a bit of Coyote trickster energy lol.  

I will often consult my oracle before sending communications, especially if it is something that I am worried about communicating. My oracle will give me feedback on the content, whether I have landed on what feels right to send. And it will also give me feedback on the timing of the communication. Sometimes the content can be exactly right, but it is not the right time for the other person to receive it. Sometimes the content can be just right, but it’s not the time to send it because I haven’t fully energetically aligned with the message and so there is internal work for me to do before I’m ready to send it. 

I think I will ask my oracle about whether this blog is ready to publish. 😊

Turning 18

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It was just my testosterone anniversary and I turned 18! It felt like a big milestone, so I asked a former student—one much closer to 18 than I—about the significance of turning 18. Especially since I was completely numb and dissociated during my original teenage years. 18 is of course when we are able to vote, an achievement that feels significant just before perhaps the most important election in the history of the United States. But 18 is apparently also the age at which you can legally get a piercing or tattoo. It is when you can first buy a lottery ticket. And of course it is the age at which you can be drafted into the military. And sure enough, for Halloween I was recruited into the Viking army led by my sweetie’s 13 year old. 😊

One of my big revelations at Sufi Camp, over the anniversary of my mom’s death, was realizing that my relationship with Allah contains a rupture and broken trust. One that arose during my first turn at 18. Unpacking that has been the gift of getting another chance at 18.

At this Sufi Camp, the Saturday night zikr was in silence—which was so powerful! During the zikr, I felt led to carry an intention for a closer relationship with the Divine, in particular in the realm of devotion.

About 15 minutes after setting this intention, I was invited into the circle to turn in the tradition of the whirling dervishes. I initially declined—turning practice is a serious discipline, one that I have not been trained in, and so I wanted to respect the practice. But immediately after declining, I realized that I’d just set an intention to have a closer relationship with the Divine, particularly in the realm of devotion, and at my first opportunity I had said no! So I awkwardly got the attention of the one who had invited me and asked for a redo. This time I said yes and entered the circle, awkward and unpracticed, but full of innocence and open heartedness. I spun in the way that made sense to me, and let myself enter the practice with abandon.

As I rejoined the circle, I had a flash of insight—a true aha moment! I realized that my relationship with God was one of broken trust. And that broken trust was preventing me from truly surrendering my heart. And that broken trust occurred around my first time as an 18 year old.

Though I’d found refuge in nature since I was a kid, my first real stop on my spiritual path was Christianity. It began in high school, when my grandma came to live with us, and I started going to Mass with her to get to know her better. Although I was confirmed my senior year in high school, I quickly became disillusioned with Catholicism when the most popular priest in our local parish was arrested for child molestation, including the young son of my high school English teacher, who was one of my closest friends at the time.

When I entered college, Christianity again found me. The first people I met at UC Santa Cruz belonged to Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship, a fundamentalist student group which is where I unfortunately ended up coming out. After being an outcast in high school, I was thrilled to find people who walked with me to class, invited me to social gatherings, and genuinely seemed to want to be my friend. After the dusty rituals of Catholicism, it was so exciting to find a God who was so relevant to my life as a student! I fell in love with that God. IVCF became my world, I was on fire with passionate devotion, and I set my path to become a missionary.  

Lola was my Bible study leader and through our spiritual collaboration, we fell in love and became lovers—my first time having consensual sex. Lola was wracked with guilt about what we were doing, believing she was compromising her salvation, so she begged us to talk to one of the IVCF leaders. That fateful choice dramatically changed my life.

We were required to go through a humiliating public confession of everything we’d done sexually, we were both removed from IVCF leadership, and we were told we could never speak to one another again, something Lola took quite seriously. “If your right hand causes you to sin, you must cut it off,” is what we were told. I was blamed for our transgression, as I’d had “those feelings” in high school, and was eventually driven out of the fellowship entirely, being told that I was “unteachable” and that my questions undermined the faith of the younger fellowship members. I lost God and I lost Lola at the same time, my 2 first loves.  

I was devastated and my heart was broken in numerous betrayals. The betrayal of Lola who sat there silently during our public confession and allowed me to take all the blame and who never stood up for our relationship. The betrayal of my IVCF friends who rejected me and subjected me to continual scrutiny and surveillance (for instance, telling me I wasn’t allowed to study alone at night with any of the women from the fellowship). And the betrayal of God, who had given me my first love and who had then ripped it away so harshly. The imprint was laid down: Love leads to devastating loss, God is not on my side, and God is not to be trusted. God is a God of hard things who takes away what you most love. Allowing God to know me would only encourage God to use this information to strip me of whatever I loved or wanted.

In response to all of this, I wandered campus aimlessly in a trauma fog, unable to go to class or function. Lola and I had been roommates and were no longer allowed to live together so I had been moved to the apartment of a friend, one of the worship leaders who started changing clothes in the bathroom because she newly felt threatened by me. I would walk the cliffs along the ocean late at night, pondering just stepping off into the abyss. I called my parents late from a nearby pay phone, unable to tell them what was happening when they asked me what was wrong. I began seeing a therapist for the first time, a Christian man who—when I told him I might be suicidal—asked me if I really wanted to lose my salvation over one person. I felt totally alone. 

Not unlike how I’d felt when I’d started college. The summer before college I’d worked at Yosemite National Park, a childhood dream come true until I was raped by a co-worker who’d preyed on my vulnerability being away from home for the first time. Fleeing his cabin in the early morning hours, I called the employee health clinic who—when I asked what I could do—told me that I should’ve thought of that before I went to my co-worker’s cabin. My innocence and trust doubly violated, it happened to be Sunday morning and, not knowing what else to do, I rode my bike to the little chapel on the valley floor and sobbed my way through the service. I felt totally alone.

I started college terrified that I was pregnant, having the only late period ever in my life, no doubt due to the incredible stress that I was carrying in isolation. It was in this numbness and dissociation that I found the Christian fellowship, what I imagined to be a safe and platonic home with other students who were interested in making the world a better place.

So that was 18 my first time through. Finally leaving the unsafety of growing up in my mom’s house only to have back to back to back devastating injuries to my innocence. I was earnestly trying to make God my orienting point, but learned that God was not a safe place to land either. This caused me to wander alone in the wilderness for decades, not coming into my true spiritual awakening until 2000.  

So it was sobering, but also really really helpful and illuminating, to realize that I still carry these traumas in my relationship with the Divine. My spiritual path has always been one of devotion (from Christian “praise” to Sufi zikrs to ecstatic dance to my relationship to the natural world), but I experienced something missing. I couldn’t fully let go because my heart was blocked from the pain of broken trust from long ago. Now, being aware of that, I can attend to and heal that broken trust, and my 18 year old self who has carried that pain over all these years. 

New Sam

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It was just the first anniversary of my mom’s death. It is amazing and beautiful to me that her presence now is a deep source of comfort and refuge and safety, of guidance and companionship, the kind of relationship I’d always longed to have with her which was impossible due to the ways her trauma made her unavailable, harsh, and unpredictable. What an incredible gift to finally feel close and safe and nurtured with my mom, truly worth waiting for.  

This entire last year has been a process of disentangling from my mom, watching dissolve the cloud of fear and self-protection and defensiveness that I’ve lived in all my life, often without realizing it. As I mentioned in my last blog, I’m only slowly noticing its existence by noticing its absence. As I also mentioned in my last blog, the most painful aspect of dealing with my mom’s death has been the way that my partner has had difficulty being able to show up for it, so while my partner was out of town for 2 weeks for a silent retreat, I took myself to Ozark Sufi Camp to grieve and honor my mom with spiritual family. It was the perfect place for me to be.

The camp theme–No Part Left Out–was incredibly resonant for me in looking at the legacy of my mom in my life, all the distortions built into my personality structure as I learned to contort myself in life to try to stay safe. And the theme was a healing framework to hold the significance and complexity of my mom’s passing in my life—the deep honoring of her, the sorrow of losing her, and the tragedy of missed opportunities, as well as the relief and liberation resulting from her absence. 

My camp experience felt like an initiation, a big leveling up resulting from the momentum of the transformative work I began soon after my partner left. I am now a person who sets boundaries! It began with saying no to a spiritual retreat leader but quickly spread to family members, friends, even total strangers. I tend to continually let people overstep—and often don’t even notice when it happens–because I could never stop my mom, but now I am someone who pushes back on that. Throughout my life I never expected people to be able to show up to do their work because my mom wasn’t able or willing to, but now I am someone who does only my 50% and expects others to do their share. I previously would work really hard internally and externally to make it all ok, but now I can see that it is not mine to make ok. And my little girl is everything to me now—my loyalty goes to her. And she is learning to trust me more not to abandon her over and over as I chase after unavailable others and squash myself to try to keep everyone happy in all the ways my mom trained me to be. It is only the beginning sprouts of these new ways of being, but they are manifesting into form rapidly. 

Interestingly, my mom has become my biggest guide and ally in this work. She came to me at Sufi Camp in the form of Armadillo, whose medicine is boundaries—offering her loving support and help with this important work I’m doing, knowing as a soul that it was her personality wounds that created my need to do this important work. While I will never know what would have been possible with my mom if I’d ever said to her that I didn’t like how she was showing up and wanted it to change, I can practice that with my partner and others and see what happens.

So this has been a time of deep and accelerated growth, insight, empowerment, and clarity, learning about my limits and withholds, freeing myself to speak, saying no more often than ok, taking truly unprecedented action in my life with courage and consistency, becoming a new person in front of my eyes (as my testosterone self turns 18!). While one friend tearfully confessed that she missed Old Sam, the placater and bridge builder, it is clear to me that there is no going back from here, even if it creates some significant disruption in my life. 

I returned home from Sufi Camp with a stomach virus that felled half the camp on the last day. Spending 2 days in bed puking my guts out was a sacred death ritual to my old self, born into my mom’s trauma and conditioned to serve her rather than my soul. It allowed me to purge that residue from my body, just as smashing the clay sculpture I did at Sufi Camp in a parts workshop helped me purge that residue from my emotions.     

On the eve of my partner’s arrival back in town, the stars really seemed to be lining up for a spectacular culminating experience: seeing the Northern Lights for the first time, something that’s long been on my list of desired experiences! It seemed like such a fitting conclusion to the 2 weeks I’d just had, of appropriate magnitude and a whisper from Spirit acknowledging the important deep inner work I’d faithfully done. Well, the Northern Lights literally came to my door, but I missed seeing them lol! Realizing this felt sad and confusing at first and made going back into the darkness (and letting go of the hope of light) feel like a defeat somehow. I felt my spirit start to sink.  

But then I remembered I like the darkness—I am a creature of the night so it is my element—and so going back to the darkness felt comforting and surprisingly like the affirmation of myself that I thought the Northern Lights would provide. And the darkness didn’t have to feel sad or scary or alone—because I think there was something about it that perhaps tapped into my fears of the void. But then I remembered that the void is the womb—the place where new beginnings are generated, the East. Which was just perfect for me because I had just completed a fierce and vigorous ritual of release to the West, the place of letting go of what no longer serves us. Which is why I had turned my back to the west when the Northern Lights came.

And just as I wouldn’t have experienced the beginnings of that comfort and refuge with my mom if my partner hadn’t broken up with me for a time last year, if my partner had been here this year, I wouldn’t have had all this accelerated growth, nor written this blog about my journey. Nor would I have been inspired tonight to write this blog if I’d seen the Northern Lights.

All the puzzle pieces that align this way and that for us to have our particular journeys of healing and awakening and emergence. The unfolding is just fascinating, and I’m learning to trust that each experience that I’m having is exactly the right one for me. The new views you can see around each new corner often makes me speechless with surprise and wonder, and often make me laugh with both hilarity and humility. All I can wonder is where will I be taken next?

The Northern Lights from my driveway (taken by my housemate)

New Beginnings

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2023 was a year of extraordinary loss for me. By the end of the year, I had lost my Mom, my romantic partner, my job/academic career, and a choir community that had been home to me for 10 years. To say that 2023 was completely life altering is not an overstatement.

2023 was also a year of extraordinary liberation. I left my academic career for good. I learned to give voice to what wasn’t working for me. And I healed my relationship with my mom, something that had haunted me and had a dampening effect on my life for as long as I’ve been alive. 

In mid-January last year, my sweetheart and I were in a bad car accident en route to a show in Colorado Springs. We walked away totally unscathed, which seemed quite miraculous given the sad state of the car, so initially the accident really reaffirmed my self-confidence and my trust in the world. Look how protected we were!

However, the nature of the accident—hitting black ice and losing control of the car, getting blindsided from behind—awoke my childhood trauma from growing up with a borderline mom. Such a familiar feeling: Everything was great, but now everything feels scary. It reactivated the hypervigilance from knowing that any situation could turn dangerous at any time without warning so always needing to be on guard.  

This feeling was reinforced in me a week later when I was attending a community meeting for the program that I teach for at University of Colorado. During the meeting I learned that the program was on administrative pause for the year, as the university decided its fate. Nobody had informed me of this, so I learned during a public meeting that a major source of my livelihood, and identity, had now disappeared. Blindside.

It was as though an alarm went off inside me. Some part of me knew that this would be the year that my mom would pass away, so dealing with the impact of growing up with her rose to the top of my priority list and my entire 2023 ended up being devoted to full time trauma healing.

Growing Up with Mom

My attachment wounds from my mom are twofold: intrusion and abandonment. When my sweetheart first met my mom—early on during Covid—my mom was bedbound from Parkinson’s and my sweetie marveled at the psychic control she was able to exert over the whole house even in her weakened state (even exerting pressure in people’s psyches when they were away from the house). In thinking about the impact my mom had on me, it has been very illuminating watching my mom’s caregiver heal after my mom’s passing. Months later, Claudia still rushes while in the bathroom or out on errands, and still nervously continuously checks her phone, in anticipation of upset from my mom. And this is a grown adult who only knew my mom for 40 hours a week for 5 years so it gave me great compassion for my kid self being raised in that stressful environment.

There was no having your own experience with my mom. My grandma told me that when I was a baby, if I was on the floor playing by myself, my mom would get jealous and come interrupt me to monopolize my attention. Growing up, if I was on the phone, my mom would just come stand in front of me until I got off the phone. She would regularly stand in the kitchen and scream my name—it didn’t matter whether I was in the bathroom, asleep, or even in the house! When I would run to see what she needed, body surging with panic and adrenaline, she would quietly ask me to get her a pan from a cabinet 2 feet away from her. Loyalty tested, readiness tested.   

Once having your attention, however, proving you were on call for her, then my mom would ignore you, the abandonment side of the cycle. My mom’s inability/unwillingness to face her childhood trauma meant she wasn’t able to actually be present with someone else very often. When she was, it was so delightful, the intermittent reinforcement kept you hooked, working hard to please to try to get that mom to show up again.

Her inner pain, and trying to keep it at bay, was very preoccupying (and managing it required a lot of frantic control) so being around her often felt quite lonely, stressful, unsafe, and unpredictable. Once I bought her a get to know your Mom book for Mother’s Day and sat down to ask her the first question: Where did you grow up? Without acknowledging my question, she got up and left the room—something that happened on a regular basis—closed her bedroom door, put on the tv, and disappeared for a couple days. Connection and intimacy rejected. Message conveyed—don’t try that again. And be perfect because if you say the wrong thing, people will abandon you (a theme that has repeated painfully over my life).

When I was a kid, at the grocery store with my mom, if I got absorbed looking at something based on my own interest, she would leave not just the aisle but the entire store. My sister and I regularly had to seek out store employees to make a lost child announcement. I learned clearly that if I did not keep my full attention on my mom at all times, something bad would happen.    

The Impact of Complex PTSD

Over 2023 I began to see all the ways this trained hypervigilance impacted my life: difficulty sleeping, difficulty settling (whether putting myself to bed or landing on the right task for the day), difficulty energetically leaving the room when on a shamanic or psychedelic journey. Any small sound or disruption would immediately pop me out of my own experience, and I’d be wide awake and sober, at the ready to cope with impending disaster. I noticed the ways I neglect self-care to prioritize attending to the needs of others.

I saw the ways I could be both slow to react—needing time for my emotions and my experience to register internally—and quick to react, whenever a present moment experience overlapped with the unprocessed pain from my upbringing. I saw the ways I could lose myself in intimacy with another, and the ways I could keep others at bay in my attempts to not lose myself in connection. When my partner got an exciting new job and I feared being left behind, I saw the ongoing impact of all those times being left in the grocery store. And I saw how I’d replicated in my professional life the painful experience of not being received that I’d had with my mom, and the devastating impact of this misattunement, most acutely faced every day as a nonbinary person living in a binary world.

When my sweetheart brought me to my first Enlightenment Intensive in the spring, I was asked 40 times a day to give my full undivided attention to my own experience—something I’d never done before. What I discovered were things in my life that didn’t work for me, needs that were going unmet—things that for my entire life had been far too threatening to allow myself even to be aware of, much less to say out loud. My main coping strategy in life was simply to not have needs and wants—they could only lead to disappointment—so I engaged in a lot of spiritual bypass to override even basic needs like eating and sleeping, ignoring the underlying unconscious belief that I somehow don’t deserve to have my needs met.

So throughout 2023 I struggled to combat this internal belief and to free myself from my coping strategies by practicing with my partner, my secure attachment context where I felt safe and valued. It was hard for me to stay aware of my childhood trauma because of the ways I had buried it to have a decently functional life, but I could notice it when my partner would act in ways that overlapped with my childhood wounds. And with my partner I felt safe enough to say how it impacted me, something that could never be uttered to my mom.    

Initially this was welcomed, but as the months of tumultuousness dragged on, as my childhood trauma continued to surface and the impact of a lifetime of misattunement revealed itself more and more, I exhausted my partner. Sharing what wasn’t working for me understandably became experienced as critique. Asserting that my needs deserved to be met understandably became read as entitlement and demand. I was legitimately self-absorbed as it was hard for me to hang on to my own experience and I couldn’t really maintain that awareness while holding another’s experience at the same time. I was practicing very new awarenesses and vulnerable choices, ones that were deeply taboo in my psychology and so carried a great deal of charge, and so I was not very skillful in utilizing them.  

The Path to Healing

I spent much of the spring and summer feeling all those submerged feelings: laying awake in the middle of the night feeling the agony of my former self in her 20s, lost and alone wandering in the wilderness without community or even the language to understand herself; feeling my baby self for the first time and the utter despair of the familiar giving up place, the resignation that I won’t be met and my needs will go unattended, and the isolated self-reliance I cultivated as a result.  

I spent a lot of 2023 disentangling myself from my mom, sorting out what was simply her that I had carried for my whole life, what was the version of her that lived within me, what was the me that had been shaped and impacted by growing up with her, and what was the essential me that was whole and intact separate from my mom’s influence. My second ketamine journey helped to clarify those boundaries. The journey itself consisted of floating around in my mom’s tortured psyche, which was quite distressing, but when I was coming back to the room, my guide asked me “Who’s here?” and I said “Sam’s here and Sam is good.”

After that journey, during an online enlightenment intensive over the summer, I had a vision of dredging up an old car covered in gunk from my solar plexis which felt like my mom. Once that was removed, I could feel the energy of my solar plexis, my will center, for the first time! And the channel that had once contained the old car became a bubbling well of nourishment replenishing me. Currently I feel myself being led forward in life from my solar plexis, pulled ahead as though there were a hook in my belly button—an odd sensation when I’m so accustomed to being led by my heart.

During this same enlightenment intensive, I allowed myself to really feel and to grieve the 30 years of my life that I lost—as a transgender person—not being in my body. And it gave me a sense of conviction to take action regarding my academic career. I received my Ph.D. just days before my 40th birthday—and went on testosterone 9 months later—so I saw clearly the way that my Ph.D. was the culmination—and the reward—for living all those years disconnected from my body. And so I must now close that door for good and not reopen it (I left the academic world twice already, but always went back due to my love for teaching).

I found my boundaries and self-respect also in the fall when I was suddenly exiled from the gospel choir I’d sung with for the past 10 years. After another nonbinary singer and I had noticed misgendering and unconscious gendered language habits intruding in rehearsals, I’d offered to do a trans awareness training with them (something I do professionally with choirs all over the country through my work with GALA Choruses). While the broader community was very responsive and appreciative, the leadership became very defensive and hostile, even sending me personal attacks over text after rehearsals. I was reminded of all the experiences I’d had in groups as a trans person where I’d felt harmed and unsafe, but had to extend myself to create repair and build bridges with the very people who had harmed me (while nobody created repair with me, even accusing me of being the aggressor while I was the one being attacked). When the leadership pointedly decided to make my offering specifically a non choir sanctioned event, I decided not to go back.

All this happened over 3 short weeks, in the midst of my mom dying, so it felt very surreal. This community that had been stable home and family to me for a decade, and a big part of my joy in life, suddenly gone, swept away as I began the descent into the underworld with my mom. I was reminded again of the impermanence of everything when, a week before my mom’s memorial, my sweetheart broke up with me, my Beloved spiritual ally and spiritual playmate. I felt myself being stripped down, my life further emptied out, at the time I most needed support.  

Transformation

Immediately after my mom passed in October, I learned of a heartbreaking family secret she took to her grave. I’d always felt that the reason my mom was borderline was because she’d been molested by her father. Though it was NEVER something that could be spoken aloud, all the signs were there: childhood kidney infections, being the “special” one who escaped the emotional and physical abuse her father inflicted on her siblings, my mom’s refusal to see her father when he was dying and her absence at his funeral, my own weirdness about sex that I’d absorbed from all the unspoken undercurrents of my childhood.

After my mom’s passing I learned from her sister that my mom had gotten pregnant in high school (presumably by her father) and had been rejected by the family and sent away to a Catholic girl’s home to have the baby and give it up for adoption. This was about 2 years before I was born and so during my birth my mom would have been reliving her very worst trauma, a secret I’m certain she kept even from my dad. It explains a lot about why she had trouble attaching to me and how her psyche got shattered. I wish I could have a final conversation with her now to tell her how sorry I am that that happened to her, how it wasn’t her fault, and how much I respect and appreciate her for her ability to survive all that.  

It’s amazing how a little piece of information can change the whole entire context for your life, making you revisit and rethink even the most basic aspects of your identity (I strongly identify as a first born, for instance, but apparently I am technically a middle child). I felt so struck by the ways that my mom and I had been swimming in sexual shame our entire lives: my mom in the sexual shame common for her era and me in the sexual shame common for mine—being queer. When I came out in college—in the midst of a fundamentalist Christian fellowship—my very first lover (unfortunately my Bible study leader) and I had to go through a very humiliating confession and were told that what we’d done was so shameful we couldn’t talk to anyone about it. It made me wonder how that landed for my mom, watching me go through something that had so much resonance with her own traumatic experience.

Initially when my mom passed, I wasn’t sure if I’d want to remain connected with her. I have a very strong spiritual connection with my dad (he leaves me dimes on a regular basis), but I didn’t trust my mom and mostly I just wanted to be finally free of her disruptive influence. However, that dramatically shifted after her memorial. I’d spent the entire year deeply immersed in the trauma of my upbringing; the gathering for the memorial reminded me of the incredible beauty and goodness of my family, and all the ways the love, warmth, and generosity of my family had impacted me and others. It allowed me to really turn towards family, instead of the habitual turning away from family I’d cultivated as a defensive strategy. I saw in my parent’s delightful marriage the beautiful role modeling I’d had of the joys of long-term partnership. Feeling my parents reunited (my dad passed unexpectedly in 2005) has been immensely stabilizing for me, feeling them again as a unit fulfilling a need in me I didn’t know I had. I feel them both with me now, at my shoulder blades like wings—offering support and stability, giving me strength and lifting me up, and enfolding me in love and protection.  

As the defensiveness I’d cultivated to protect myself from my mom began to recede, I started to have greater access to the positive memories of my mom, of which there were so many. In many ways the positive memories were the most buried and deeply threatening because within them was interwoven so much longing and hopefulness that had become too painful to allow myself. Releasing this inner barrier has been so incredibly healing and I marvel at the companionship and comfort that I can now feel so easily with my mom.   

Now—as I embark on a new year and a new life—my mom feels like an amazing ally and friend and resource. I have a framed photo of her in my bedroom (welcoming her into my inner sanctuary in ways that never would have felt safe or advisable previously) that feels immensely comforting, especially as I go through this break up. As I wrap myself up in a comforter that she’d gotten me the last time she was physically able to go shopping, I can really feel what it feels like to have a mother’s support around me. Unlike with my choir, I did stay in process with my sweetheart–when she broke up with me for a second time last month, the next morning I got a text from my mom’s caregiver saying that my mom had come to her in a dream saying that I wasn’t ok and showing her my eyes. When I got that text I wept because it was concrete evidence of our new spiritual connection and I felt so incredibly cared for.

When I look into her eyes, now I just see the kindness and deep care that has always been there. I feel safe with my mom, something I never could have imagined at the opening of 2023!! I remember the painful stuff, but it is not active in my nervous system in the same way. I feel a sense of peaceful resolution and inner order, an intactness and wholeness I’ve never felt before. And she is free as well, free from the anguish and torment that haunted her personality and created so many barriers between us.

I feel anxious about publishing this, as my mom was so very protective of her secrets. I don’t want to disrespect her in any way, or break the mirage that she so carefully constructed. I feel again that familiar pull and tension: will I choose to be loyal to my mom or to myself? This year I embarked on a new path of choosing loyalty to myself, of choosing truth over and over and over again in each enlightenment intensive, knowing that this choice not only frees me but my entire family.

I’ve recently been watching the Oprah produced show Black Cake, about a brother and sister who learn of their mother’s secrets after her death. The similarities are eerie: a child conceived in sexual assault, given away for adoption in a Catholic girl’s home, a secret first sibling—and an explanation for the remoteness of the mother, unable to free herself of her grief and her secrets. The brother is even dumped by his partner just before their mom’s memorial! Like the siblings in the miniseries, my sister and I are tentatively forging new bonds of family with one another, without the dominant presence of my mom. Foundational is our agreement: no more secrets.

The path to enlightenment, to a direct experience of reality, involves clearing anything that is not truth out of the way. So I spent most of 2023 scooping the inner boulders impeding my flow. It was very exhausting at times, but at this point I’ve developed some serious spiritual muscle from again and again pulling myself out of the inner quicksand, hand over fist, powered by sheer determination and commitment. It’s been empowering to see the degree to which I have control over my own inner experience and the ways I can change my energy due to my own focus.

I’m very optimistic about where I will go next, what will unfold for me, having so many obstacles—inner and external—removed from my path. Being laid bare this year—as I entered my second Saturn return (the day before our accident last January!)—has freed me and from this place of lightness, self love, and empowerment, the possibilities do seem endless. I still have to do the actual labor of rebuilding my life, but the path is clear now so the way will be a lot easier.

*I asked my mom for her consent in publishing this and she said yes!

Enlightenment Intensives

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One of the gifts of an otherwise very challenging year was discovering enlightenment intensives. My sweetheart introduced me to the practice/community (it’s been her spiritual path for the past 20 years) and I attended my first—a 6 day in person retreat—back in April, did 2 online intensives over the summer, and then another in person gathering in October and they have been absolutely life changing.  

The methodology is quite simple—a structured dyad practice; the rest is in silence. Each dyad lasts 40 minutes, during which you are paired with a partner. Every 5 minutes the gong rings and one partner receives their instruction from the other—“tell me who you are” or “tell me what life is” or “tell me what love is.” This partner goes within to contemplate and then shares anything that arises as a result of their contemplation—it could be a bodily sensation, an emotion, a memory, an insight. Then they get across to their partner whatever has arisen for them, while their partner simply listens—without comment, without nodding, without smiling even. When the gong rings, the listening partner simply says “thank you” and then the speaking partner gives the listening partner their instruction and the roles shift as the second partner goes within to contemplate and then get across to their partner whatever has arisen as a result of their contemplation. There are 10 dyads per day—interspersed with walking contemplation, eating contemplation, sleeping contemplation where you stay with your inquiry in silence—so imagine being asked who you are 40 times a day for 6 days! For such a simple practice, the results are phenomenal.

Each round of the dyads serves to clear the mind of its clutter. Each time a communication is really received, it is then cleared so you can imagine how much unprocessed experience you can move through in 6 days! It is like doing 10 years of therapy in a weekend! Once the mind is uncluttered, one is more able to have a direct experience of the object of inquiry—the self, life, another, love. Having a direct experience is like the difference between thinking about myself, talking about myself—as though I were separate from myself—and being myself. Consider how much of our lives are experienced indirectly—mediated by the voice in our head because, as Michael Singer describes in The Untethered Soul, we are terrified of having an unbuffered experience of reality. But by steadfastly intending to have a direct experience of reality, and clearing anything that is not that, we can break through and finally see ourselves and life clearly. And this aha of awakening is completely transformative. Though the emotional state of bliss or aliveness may fade, once you’ve had a direct experience–I know who I am—that knowingness never leaves you.

For me personally, just the process is very transformational, regardless of the outcome. As someone who grew up with a borderline mom and didn’t really get to be with my own experience much, being invited to pay attention to my own experience over and over and over again is very healing. As someone who is nonbinary in a binary world and frequently seen by others as unintelligible, getting across to my partner whatever is arising in me and being received is very healing. The methodology is quite effective, I think, in working with trauma—as most of 2023 for me was full time trauma healing, perhaps my soul sensing that this would be the year that my mom would pass away. For 5 minutes you are deeply immersed in your own process—then the bell rings and whatever you were in the middle of comes to a close and you resource yourself to hold space for another. In the process of listening, your empathy is awakened and you can see your own experience with greater perspective through the sharing of another. And then you return to your own process, generally starting from a really different place—and back and forth, back and forth, raw then resourced, raw then resourced, truly witnessing how each moment is a new moment. 

It is a form of spiritual practice and spiritual community that is immensely appealing to me in part because it completely aligns with all my values. It is very accessible—you can do a weekend online intensive for a couple hundred bucks (around the cost of 2 therapy sessions!). And there are numerous weekly online dyad groups, offered free of charge, where you can continue the practice and find community after an intensive. There’s no dogma that you have to accept. The teachings consist of spiritual encouragement in the form of Rumi poems and instruction on the contemplation/dyad technique. The simplicity of the practice is beautiful, as is its depth. It is egalitarian—fellow humans holding space for one another, each doing their own work, taking responsibility for their own experience, finding their own inner wisdom. And, as a Truth and Freedom loving individual, the practice is rooted in my core values: the process is about aligning yourself with Truth and the outcome of that is Freedom!  

I’m currently in the training program for those who would like to lead such retreats and I look forward to my first opportunity to be of service hopefully sometime in 2024! 

If you’d like to learn more about Enlightenment Intensives, check out these resources:

Enlightenment Intensives – “Who am I?” “What is Life” “Self Inquiry and contemplation with Murray Kennedy (murintensive.com)

Self & Other (sandoth.com)

The Enlightenment Intensive: The Power of Dyad Communication for Self-Realization: Amazon.co.uk: Lawrence Noyes, Julian Daizan Skinner: 9780993198120: Books

Graduation Address

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This was my graduation address at today’s graduation ceremony for INVST, the peace and social justice leadership certificate program where I teach at the University of Colorado. I hope you will find it thought provoking and inspiring.

It is a daunting time to be graduating! The problems we collectively face are immense and intense. But it’s also one of the most important and exciting times to be alive! While I have had to spend most of my adult life working to help people see how dysfunctional and toxic our society is, the last 2 years have made that fact quite apparent to a broader segment of the population than perhaps any other time in history. The rigidity and relentlessness of “normal” has been quite broken down, so you all are incredibly poised to powerfully shape what our future “normal” will look like. That is exciting and makes me feel quite hopeful.        

So today is a day of celebration—a pinnacle of achievement, a moment of relief, a time to acknowledge all of your hard work, your growth, your mastery. You have survived years of non-stop challenges and have emerged victorious! Congratulations! Graduation can also be a day of sadness as you reminisce about your memories of this place, say goodbye to friends with whom you are accustomed to sharing your everyday life, and bring to a close a chapter of your life that has likely been one of the most significant periods of your entire existence. And graduation can also be a day of anxiety, even terror, as you begin to move from this validation of success into whatever’s next—the great unknown!  Every “graduation” in life, scholarly or not, represents both an ending and a beginning, a movement from the comfort of mastery to the vulnerable place of starting anew as a beginner. 

But the gift of any liminal period—when you are between what has been and what will be—is that it offers time and space for reflection, in this instance contemplation of who you are and who you wish to become, how you understand success, and what constitutes a meaningful life. And these are questions that we must ask ourselves collectively as well as individually: who are we as a society and who do we wish to become, how do we understand success, and what constitutes a meaningful existence.  In my consideration of these questions, two writers have been particularly salient and inspiring: first, Black poet and activist, Audre Lorde, in particular her piece “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” and second, trans legal scholar and activist Dean Spade, in particular his book Normal Life. 

In describing what she means by “the erotic,” Lorde refers to the “internal requirement toward excellence.”  But this excellence is not the same kind of excellence generally celebrated on college campuses—grades and academic awards, sporting victories, college rankings.  Instead she explains that excellence is “not a question only of what we do…[but] a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing.”—in other words, our degree of presence and of passion.  And, she writes, “once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.”  She calls this a “grave responsibility…not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.” I would say this is the essence of Radical Self Love.

As you leave college, you will be bombarded with expectations and advice—from well-meaning relatives, teachers, friends, the media—all trying to tell you who you should be, what you should care about, what success and happiness should look like, including what social justice looks like and how it can be accomplished.  Through your time with INVST you have developed a healthy skepticism about what our culture teaches about happiness and success, while cultivating the courage and resilience and creativity to forge your own path in life, regardless of consequences. 

But it can be tempting when leaving college—a place where idealism and self-exploration are frequently encouraged—to think “ok, now I have to join the ‘real world’” and slowly let go of those things that set your heart on fire, that resonate with your own sense of integrity, in order to find your place in a system that, as Audre Lorde reminds us, “defines good in terms of profit and conformity rather than in terms of human well-being.” 

Though it might be tempting to take the highest paying job, the most conventionally attractive spouse, the highest ranking grad school, the opportunities that look great on paper, I promise you that what will be most rewarding and satisfying is to choose those things that are the best match for you, regardless of how they look on paper.  That is where you will find your joy, something that no amount of money or societal acceptance or worldly success or material comfort can provide.

In our collective life, we have created an unstable human community whereby the majority are dehumanized and burdened with unbearable suffering while a tiny percentage of its members are swollen with greed and an inflated sense of self-importance, bringing our entire planet to the verge of collapse.  Our primary framework for power is power over—dominance and control—and even our models for social justice are often based on militarized notions of winning. 

Rather than seeking inclusion into such systems, Dean Spade argues that “What we need instead is a critical and discerning politics that rejects invitations to inclusion in systems, institutions, and arrangements that are deadly and monstrous.”  Instead we must build alternatives to the systems that exist, to build a world that we actually want.  To do this, he says that we must create new ways of working together, “practicing how we want the world to be right now: democratic, collaborative, horizontal, care-based, not competitive, hierarchical, or cutthroat.”   

As you graduate, you will be invited to participate in and justify and legitimize those societal systems Dean Spade has identified as deadly and monstrous.  Maybe that will seem like the only option.  I had my first midlife crisis when I graduated from college, as I looked out in the world to find my place and, much like my experience of gender, found that none of the available options suited me.  But what I’ve found since then is that if you need something that does not exist in the world, it’s because you are meant to create it.  That’s how my chorus–Phoenix, Colorado’s Trans Community Choir–came into being. 

So what is your vision?  What is your gift, your passion, your unique contribution?  As John Cabot Zinn says, “Regardless of how absurd our inner calling might seem, it’s authentically ours and doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else.”  I believe that success is simply honoring your unique life path, and happiness more often comes from taking a risk than being comfortable.  Our dignity derives not from our claims of respectability and normalcy, but from standing in our truth and integrity and refusing to believe that our humanity can be dampened by other peoples’ fears and judgments. 

Although we are taught to seek the “destination” (whether that be the ideal job, the perfect relationship, financial security, societal acceptance) where we can just kick back and be comfortable, we are meant to be always expanding and evolving, seeking out new discoveries in ourselves and in our worlds, being transformed and surprised by life.  We are meant to individuate, to move beyond our conditioning, beyond the limits of our parents, our teachers, our culture into new territory, to follow our own inner directives to create our best, most exciting, most authentic lives.  I can’t wait to see what you all create.  Congratulations and my sincerest best wishes for your glorious futures.  

More Than A Statement

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Many organizations and businesses, including many GALA choruses, released official statements condemning racism in the wake of the public execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Some of these statements were heartfelt, some were painfully missing the point—filled with trivializing clichés about “how similar we are despite our differences,” invalidating the specific anguish being articulated by Black people currently. Phoenix, Colorado’s Trans Community Choir believes that statements are largely meaningless unless they are followed up by fervent and consistent action.

Therefore, rather than releasing an organizational statement, Phoenix shared our concrete action plan.

Rather than going on our usual summer break, Phoenix commits to this 3-pronged plan for summer.

LISTENING AND LEARNING:  Wherever we are in our lifelong journeys of educating ourselves about racial inequality, we recognize the urgent need to listen to Black voices. So this summer we are prioritizing reading and discussing books by Black thinkers and activists so that we can further educate ourselves about the experiences and insights of Black people, as well as the complex and insidious ways that racism structures our society. In addition to reading books by Black authors, beginning with Ibram Kendi’s How To Be An Anti-Racist (https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist-1), we are using our rehearsal time to together watch and discuss similarly themed documentaries (beginning with 13th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8). White people are accustomed to being at the center, being the “expert,” and hearing mostly white voices and white viewpoints, so we are intentionally interrupting that dynamic.

REFLECTING AND HEALING:  We see white privilege as a harmful deficit—one possessed by all white people—that we are intent on working to heal and transform. The invisibility of whiteness is one manifestation of white privilege, as whiteness is seen by many as equivalent to “normal.” Therefore, we are holding whiteness under scrutiny and exploring our dysfunctional white training and the ways that it limits us in our humanity, especially in our ability to take action to support and co-create with people of color. In Phoenix, we talk a lot about transgressing norms—which usually means gender and sexual norms. Transgressing norms is a big aspect of Phoenix culture. Currently we are doing the exciting work of recognizing, challenging, and breaking racial norms, encouraging ourselves to be as feisty and non-compliant in our relationship to the norms of whiteness as we are to the expectations of the gender binary. Rather than using our trans identities as an excuse to opt out from racial transformation work, we are utilizing what we’ve learned from our trans journeys to actively work to liberate ourselves from the teachings and practices of a toxic and dysfunctional white culture and we are learning how to co-create a world based on different values.   

ACTION:  We move beyond merely cultivating awareness by taking specific local actions in alignment with the demands of Black activists. Currently that is expressing itself in three ways. Choir members are gathering with signs daily from 4-6pm around the corner from where Phoenix rehearses. Our ongoing daily protest has been transforming our local community in measurable ways—making it safer for people to care and more uncomfortable to not care—as well as providing a profound learning experience for choir members, many of whom have never engaged in street protests before. Since our protests are in alignment with social distancing guidelines as well, they have given people empowering opportunities to take concrete collective action in support of Black lives. Secondly, since the main action being called for nationally right now is to defund the police, we are advocating for the removal of SROs (police officers who work in schools) from our local school district. This is a particularly appropriate project of action for our choir since we have longstanding ties with the school district due to our performances of our Raven play in local elementary schools over the last several years. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/11/colorado-school-fire-allowing-trans-choir-performance/ Finally, members of our choir are organizing a livestream fundraising concert to raise money for Black Lives Matter.   

Justice for Elijah McClain march

White people are not spectators in the struggle against racism. Racism is a dysfunction of white people and it is the responsibility of white communities to heal and transform it. For most of us, this requires facing discomfort and cultivating endurance. But as Robin DiAngelo—author of White Fragility (http://www.beacon.org/White-Fragility-P1631.aspx)—writes, “Rather than retreat in the face of that discomfort, we can practice building our stamina for the critical examination of white identity.”

Many GALA members consider their choruses to be crucial safe spaces in an unsafe world. Unfortunately, this feeling is what can keep LGBT spaces white. When we come together to bond around one identity, we often unconsciously believe that this identity is the only or most important identity that is in play, ignoring other identities—such as race—that are equally salient. Rather than being a safe space, Phoenix is a brave space. Phoenix is not a place where we collapse into comfortable homogeneity, but instead a place of leadership and capacity building where we lean into discomfort to remain on our growth edge. This is what gives Phoenix its vitality.

As a community, whether we realize it or not, trans people expect and demand a LOT of cisgender people and can be harsh when cisgender people don’t get it or can’t keep up. We expect cisgender people to skillfully adjust as the whole framework for their experience of life (the gender binary) is shattered. We expect cisgender people (friends, family, colleagues, the general public) to not only recognize and understand our ever-changing gender identities—which most have never even heard of and which are completely counterintuitive and unintelligible to them—we also expect cisgender people to name their own pronouns, requiring them to think of themselves as gendered beings in ways they aren’t accustomed to. White people are not accustomed to seeing themselves as racialized beings and doing so now—and really grappling with what that has meant for us individually and collectively—is a big part of what is being asked of us right now. Since trans communities expect cisgender people to work very hard emotionally and practically in order to help make the world safer and more welcoming for us, I feel strongly that white trans people need to be ready and willing to work equally hard to help make the world safer and more welcoming for people of color.

In thinking about those who are most impacted by the physical and structural violence targeting trans people, racism is the biggest danger facing trans communities. What would it look like for trans communities to make addressing racism our top priority? Every November, around the U.S., largely white trans communities come together to mourn the loss of those largely Black, generally feminine-presenting transgender people who have been killed in the previous year. There’s always an air of awkwardness and uncertainty in the room to be claiming people for “our” community that may or may not have felt a sense of “us-ness” with white trans communities. This year we have the opportunity to change that.

While thousands of people around the world have taken to the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd and others such as Colorado’s Elijah McClain, such hate crimes are just the extreme tip of the iceberg. White LGBTQIA communities have the particular tools to understand racism better than most whites because we have lived experience of the difference between homophobia (the emotional reaction of fear, intolerance, and hatred that can lead to acts of discrimination or hate crimes) and heterosexism (the even more damaging ways that our entire society is organized from a heterosexual frame that advantages heterosexuals and makes LGBTQIA people feel unwelcome).

Especially during this time of rights being given (by the Supreme Court) and rights being taken away (by the President), I hope that LGBTQIA communities will lend our sustained attention to the liberation of Black people in this country and add our best energy to the historic transformation happening in this country. The Stonewall Riots were started by trans women of color. All LGBTQ people owe their liberation to people of color. Stand up for theirs.

Phoenix protests