Flight Mode on Crack

“I tried to drink it away

I tried to put one in the air

I tried to dance it away

I tried to change it with my hair

I ran my credit card bill up

Thought a new dress make it better

I tried to work it away

But that just made me even sadder

I tried to keep myself busy

I ran around circles

Think I made myself dizzy

I slept it away, I sexed it away

I read it away

Away, away, away, away, away, away

Away, away, away, away, away” - Cranes in The Sky, Solange

When I turned 31, fresh out of my lowest rock bottom yet… no job, no friends, no family… I started to believe there was something wrong with me. From my perspective, at that time, I felt like I had given life my all and had nothing left to offer. And so I gave up. I didn’t want to live anymore. I stopped trusting in my guidance because it just kept leading me to pain, pain I felt I was not equipped to manage. The Truth is, if people feel they cannot handle something, they protect themselves from it. This is called Cognitive Dissonance. Selectively choosing what and what not to accept. Everyone does this. Everyone has blindspots to knowledge that feels like it’s going to destabilize our system. This is a safety mechanism. You cannot force anyone to be ready for change including yourself and I was not ready. My system did not have the inner support it needed.

My herbalism teacher, Michelle, offered me respite after my nervous breakdown. She and her husband restored a Gypsy Wagon on their property and they let me stay there while I got back on my feet. I was a total mess- completely lost and unsure of what I needed. My motivation for living was slight. Rage was the force that kept me going. Michelle and her husband facilitated an emotional healing workshop called Naka Ima and invited me to participate. When I read the welcome email I could feel this was exaclty what I was needing. At this point in my journey I had never experienced any kind of group therapy or done any kind of emotional work at all for that matter. It was overwhelming. People screaming and crying and sharing their most intimate stories… I was sneaking kratom in the bathroom. Group therapy, I decided, was not for me. I found a nanny job with a family who lived nearby. On the way back from a great time with the kids at the Sebastopol farmers market, while wearing my pink wig, the kids’ faces painted in the back seat, I got pulled over and subsequently arrested & taken to jail. This whole experience is going to get it’s own essay because it deserves it but for now let’s just say it threw me even more off track. When I got out I weighed probably 95 lbs. My nervous system was annihilated. I didn’t have my period for six months.

Michelle asked me to be an assistant at another Naka Ima she was facilitating and I felt like I couldn’t do it. Rather than have a conversation with her about it, I abruptly moved out. I was having a hard time with receiving and sharing how I felt and stating my needs and slipped right back into my nearly two-decade-long, deeply ingrained flight response. I didn’t want to assist the group, I felt like I couldn’t even assist myself… but I couldn’t say it. I didn’t feel group therapy was supportive for me… but I couldn’t say it. I felt guilty for saying no to Michelle, I wanted to be able to help her because she was helping me, and at the same time I felt like I was in no place to be supporting other people in emotional distress… but I couldn’t say it. And so I fled.

Savannah and I met at Cafe Aquatica. She was a barista there and we had a special connection. We kept running into each other around town and became friends. Savannah had just moved into a new studio space in Cazadero and said I could come stay with her. When I moved in I could tell immediately she regretted her offer. It was only one room and it was the first time she had her own place and I totally understood. I recognized she had fallen into her old patterning of over-giving. It was a very uncomfortable situation. Not only was it a small space but Savannah and I had very different daily rhythms. I was a morning person and she was a night person. I didn’t want to be a burden and asked Joe, the landlord, who lived in the separate house upstairs, if I could camp out on the land. The house lived on a mountain side in the middle of a Redwood Forest. Joe told me he had a big walk in closet with a window and that I could stay there. So I moved into Joe’s Closet. This was my Harry Potter Cupboard under the Stairs moment. Joe cleared out as much as he could and put his old army cot in the back of the closet, next to the window. He moved his clothes to the front, and told me he would knock before coming in. I placed a garment rack in front of the cot to create some privacy for myself. My side table was one of Joe’s cardboard boxes. The closet was big enough and there was a beautiful forest right out the window. What I remember most is Joe’s kindness. I put up a flyer to be a “Weeding Queen” in the Sebastopol Community Market hoping to find some garden work. A man named John called the day after I put up the flyer. He was the only one who ever called. John and his family lived in Guerneville which was only 15 minutes away from Caz. It was perfect. I was back in the world of gardening. Their garden was huge and beautiful and their kids were like little garden fairy angels. I was happy. A few weeks in John asked me if I would be interested in taking over their indoor cannabis grow. It was a dream come true. I was grateful for the opportunity to work with a plant I heavily used but had never actually grown. It was one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever had. John was encouraging and kind. He let me use essential oils as pest control. He taught me how to clone. I felt valued. Savannah and Joe weren’t getting along (Savannah was having people over late at night to play music) and she moved out only a few months after she moved in. When Savannah moved out I moved myself and my two bags downstairs. Rent was only $500/month and I could afford it now with my new ganja job. A psychic I was working with at the time gifted me her sons old twin bed frame and mattress. The kids, the garden, the ganja grow and having my own little studio space brought me back to life.

John was a fellow Aquarian and we got along swimmingly. I was coming over nearly every morning to take care of the grow and the kids would come down and say hi. We all became friends. John and his wife were always fighting. She would come down to the grow and complain to me about how horrible he was and he would complain to me about her. I mediated a fight between them one time and they gifted me a Bose portable speaker in return. One day I went to the beach with John and the kids and when we got back he told me he loved me. I won’t go into the details but we told his wife what was happening and she lost it. She was screaming at us and blaming me and it was awful and messy and the whole thing fell apart.

After nearly starting an affair with the father of the kids I had been nannying for it was time for yet another fresh start. I started working as a barista and sandwich maker at Cafe Aquatica. The cafe sits right on the coast of the Russian River and from the tables outside you can see where the river meets the Pacific Ocean. It was a very special place and I felt lucky to work there. Closing clean up took about two hours and while cleaning I would listen podcasts. One of my favorites was called ‘Almost 30’ and it was through this podcast that I was introduced to a woman named Lacy Phillips who had created a body of work called To Be Magnetic. I was drawn to it like a magnet and immediately signed up for TBM’s year-long membership portal. The work was all about inner child healing and facing your trauma’s so that you can create the life of your dreams. As I started to do the work I could tell this was going to be a very long fucking road. I sternly told God what I needed if I was going to do this (I had gotten better at asking for what I needed). I told God I needed HELP. This is the first time I really admitted I needed help. I was so used to going it alone. I told God I wanted an old man. I didn’t want it to be sexual and felt the support of a grandfather energy was just what I needed to do all this gruesome emotional work. I told God I wanted a man who would cook for me and clean and do all the house things so that I could fully focus on healing. I told God I needed someone who was able to love me unconditionally, without needing anything from me in return, because at the time I felt I had absolutely nothing to give (I was deeply depressed and terribly depleted). There was an old man named Chris who came into the cafe and doted on me. He was building a deck for the wine bar next door and would ambush me as I walked to my car when I got off work. I was still in my lack of boundaries phase and overly friendly because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings so I started hiding from him (hello, avoidant). I could feel he was harmless but I was tired after work and didn’t want to deal with having to talk to anyone. One time he caught me hiding in my car and said he just wanted to bring me some food. Along with being a carpenter he was a chef and the food he made for me was really good. I felt bad. During one of our talks I told him I missed the sun (a rarity in the Redwoods) and was planning a move to Joshua Tree. I told him he could come if he wanted to. I thought why not? He made me food and I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Maybe it would be helpful to have a nice old man with me (who would probably pay for things). I had asked the Universe for a grandfather as my helper and thought maybe this man was the answer to my prayer. He told me he lived on a property with tons of sunshine and that I should go check it out one day while he was working. So I did. The property was gorgeous- four acres of full sun with two enormous, ancient Live Oaks and quite a few smaller, yet just as majestic, ones. I felt at home there. Weeks later I moved into the house on the property with Chris. Another sudden move.

As soon as I moved in I crashed and stayed in my room for days. I felt like I had made a huge mistake. Like I had fallen into yet another relationship with a man. Even though there was no romance or sex or drugs it still felt like a mistake. It all happened so fast. Summer had come and the cafe had gone from extra slow to extra busy and I had taken on extra shifts trying to make extra money and so I was depleted and using extra kratom to get through. I was exhausted and saw this offer from the old man as an out. I felt I had taken the escape route, yet again. And yet again, I was stuck with another man. It was confusing for me because he did all the cooking and all the cleaning and paid all the rent and didn’t seem to need anything from me. He left me alone as much as I wanted. Which is literally exactly what I asked God for. So I thought, Ok God. I see you. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake. I really did need some serious help. So I committed to doing the work. It was hard for me to receive all that was being given to me and I struggled with believing that this man’s intentions were pure but I just went with it as best as I could. I was still taking the kratom every day but I was also doing my TBM work (journaling prompts and hypnosis), meditations, studying esoteric traditions, writing & making videos every day. What I was missing was the emotional aspect… The kratom allowed me to intellectually understand what had happened without me feeling the emotions behind it (Aquarius Sun, Moon & Mercury).

ADDICTION

Jupiter in Pisces in the 12th House

“At times discreetly, at times disgustingly, I yielded to the most fatal temptation whenever I could no longer bear it: as a result of impatience, Orpheus lost Eurydice; as a result of impatience, I lost myself.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

When you carry Ancestral trauma on both sides that goes back multiple generations it takes a long fucking time to heal. Patience wasn’t my thing. I was used to things happening fast… with this kind of healing work, it was slow. It was subtle. It felt like nothing I was doing was really working. (What I’ve learned is you cant rush the healing process & also part of why it wasn’t working is because I still wasn’t allowing myself to fully FEEL) I was using my mind to understand, thinking, if I understand it then why do I need to feel it? Your nervous system can only take on so much at a time and at this point my tools for emotionally caretaking myself were still very sub-par so it makes sense that I was suppressing emotion. Mostly I was just pushing through with the help of kratom & my sheer determination and will power to move on.

Now, for a while, my addiction issues were a very sensitive subject for me. I would just skim over the idea that I was an addict because I believed the substances are what saved me, I believed they were helping me (and I mean, that’s not 100% untrue). I felt close to them, like they were my ride or dies, like I couldn’t have made it without them. For the majority of my life, using some kind of substance was my only source of self-regulation. Because I started using so young, the drugs were weaved into my identity. There was an attachment. My core wounding is all around attachment. There came a time when I knew the substances were no longer keeping me afloat but causing me to sink. I knew I had to find another way. Letting go has been my hardest lesson.

KUNDALINI

Chris’s cousin Gabe came to stay with us for a while and she introduced me to Kundalini Yoga with Guru Jagat. Kundalini was a game changer for me and I know a lot of people have issues with her but I loved (and still love) Guru Jagat. She motivated me. Kundalini with Guru Jagat carried me into my sobriety.

SOBRIETY

For the first time in my life, since I was 14 years old, I was sober. When you’ve been high for the better part of two decades sobriety is it’s own kind of drug. It felt good. Two years had gone by and my time at the house with the Ancient Oaks and with Chris was coming to an end. I blew through most of my Covid unemployment money on Ancestral healing courses and psychic development classes and one on one sessions with healers & psychics and Astrology readings. I bought myself the absolute highest quality foods and plant medicines (non psychoactive) around in an effort to kick my addiction to kratom. Whenever I look back I feel like what I should have done is start some kind of business… but I was still deeply afraid of being seen and putting myself out in the world. I look back on this time a lot and think of all I could have done differently. I feel regret but … coulda, woulda, shoulda. When the time came to move I was down to my last few thousand dollars, which wasn’t enough to last long in Sonoma County, and so I decided to move to Costa Rica. The sobriety didn’t override the flight response.

COSTA RICA

I stayed in Costa Rica for three months. It was pretty lackluster. I was exhausted and scared and lost and didn’t really know what I was doing. I was just a feather in the wind. Years earlier, during my first trip to Costa Rica, I went straight into the middle of the jungle to live on a farm and wished I had spent more time traveling around. This time around I booked an Airbnb in San Jose, because it was central, but I rarely left the apartment. I didn’t have the energy to do much. The best thing that happened in San Jose was finding organic food delivery. I took a weekend trip out to Playa Jaco and rented a little studio right by the ocean. It was in heaven. I decided what I needed was to swim in the ocean. After San Jose I took a Didi (Costa Rican Uber) to Guanacaste and stayed in a tiny little surf town called Los Pargos. Guanacaste is a Blue Zone and the land was truly magic. I immediately felt held. My mornings were spent at the local cafe and then every afternoon I went for a long, brisk walk. My Airbnb was about a mile and a half from the beach and I would walk to and from the ocean every day. By the time I’d get home I’d be dripping in sweat and take a cold shower. Sweat and cold showers work wonders on the body. I found three tiny kittens on a walk one day and took them home with me. I called them “mi pequena gatitos”. The kittens helped me soften and connect with my heart. I would lie naked on my bed and they would curl up on me and I would cry. After a couple of months my tourist visa was up and I hadn’t sorted out a way to make my finances last so that I could stay so I got on a plane back to California. Chris picked me up from SFO and we went directly to Good Earth Natural Foods. It’s such a trip coming back to the US, especially coming back to a place like San Francisco, from a place like Los Pargos… from a place that has barely anything to a place that has an abundance of everything… I have to admit, I missed Northern California. I stayed with Chris for a week in Petaluma. A book I pre-ordered before I left had been delivered when I was in CR and waiting for me upon my return…

Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel. This book changed everything for me. On my first morning back in California I read the entire thing and cried for two days. This is the first time I really let myself feel sad for myself without guilt or judgement or shame. This book gave me the permission and the validation my mind needed to allow my body to let go and just cry. I sobbed, freely.