Love and Disillusionment

It started with a cult.

Though I suppose at this point, it's hard to say for sure if that was the true impetus for the questions to come.

At the very least, it was the final blow in a long series of well-intentioned experiences that soured into steady defeats. As varied as they were deep, united only in the depths of disillusionment that they unearthed within me.

So perhaps it’s more accurate to say, it started with the echos of a heartbreaking realization:

Even the most beautiful dreams, sung by the most beautiful dreamers, could traverse the wide ocean and still crash unceremoniously into the shore. Those waves could then melt back into the ocean, to gather and learn and try something new, only to face the same end. Never getting anywhere other than the edge.

I started wondering if that’s what love amounted to. A lot of great effort, great intentions, good ideas, beautiful dreams, that couldn’t help but enter and end in the same cycles.

My faith was shaken but even so, it was faith that encouraged me to meet this moment with something other than the cynical conclusions that felt most obvious.

It was faith that stirred up something within me, something that looked at the mess I had just witnessed and asked:

What the fuck is going on?

I felt betrayed.

It wasn’t the first time, and something about that fact made it sting all the worse.

No, the first time I unknowingly gave my power to a charismatic leader who disappointed me was in 2008 when a much more naive version of myself thew my heart and soul into Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign.

The Change That We Believed In

I was 20 years old and it was my first real call to action - my first sincere encounter with a vision that asked more from me than I even knew how to give. But it was big enough, and bold enough, and loving enough to make me want to try to find it.

The compass pointed towards hope, towards something ephemeral and personal and immeasurable.

Which meant that everyone who joined the swell arrived with their own expectations, their own projections, their own definitions. It was a movement where everyone was seemingly pulling in a different direction. And yet for a time, we coalesced and moved through the ocean, traversing the sea towards a destination that promised infinite possibilities.

Hindsight would have me believe that it was all just politics, it was all just manipulative and cynical forces pulling the strings on the gullible. But I was there. I met the people. I heard the stories. Stories of those who marched in the 60s and saw the echoes of a dream that first awakened them to the possibilities of their power.

I was there.

I knocked on doors in Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and Maryland. I still remember the older woman I met in Baltimore we grabbed me by the hand and insisted that I come inside to look at her scrapbook. She proudly showcased an album of newspaper clippings and photos carefully laid out, as if the candidate was more kin than option.

Over the course of that campaign, I walked into a number of campaign offices and every time I saw us. People across demographics, backgrounds, across a spectrum of political leanings all coming together because we heard an invitation to be part of something that might make this world better.

And for all the ways that things have played out, nothing changes what was there.

We were brought together by a person, and yet what always stood out to me was that he seemed to understand that what brought us together was bigger than him. He articulated a vision but the only reason the campaign gained steam is because that vision resonated with truth.

“There is an empathy deficit in this country… where we can't see ourselves in the eyes of one another.”

He called us to see ourselves, to see our power, to see our capacity to make a difference.

“If one voice can change a room, it can change a city, if it can change a city, it can change a state, if it can change a state it can change a country, if it can change a country, it can change the world.”

By this logic, that one voice could come from any one of us. Every single person had the ability to walk into a room and evoke change.To be the voice that confronted stagnation, that sparked about a of events that reverberated across the globe.

Just one voice was all it would take.

I met Barack Obama sometime in 2007 really briefly in a rope line at a fundraiser I volunteered for. He gave a speech probably referencing some of the sentiments I’m quoting from memory, and I just remember standing in the audience and feeling capable. Feeling like I personally had the ability to make a difference. When the speech ended I ran up to the rope line and I shook his hand yelling over the crowd as I did;

“Senator, I'm going to help!”

And in the months to come I did. For me, it was always about more than an election and it seemed like he knew this.

When he got elected, he acknowledged as much;

“I know you didn't do this for me… you did this because you believe, that people who love their country can change it."

So often when he spoke, he sounded reasonable.

It didn't feel like soundbites, it felt like clarity.

There was a vision for change and unlike times before, unlike previous administrations, there was a call to action that matched, and there was an infrastructure built throughout the campaign to direct that action as needed. Barack Obama only won the election because millions of people organized, and volunteered, and made it so. It stood to reason that the administration that followed would take those principles to heart.

People who love their country, can change it.

I watched as something once deemed impossible had been made inevitable because of us.

We, the people.

I never for a second imagined that the rhetoric that formed the campaign was just that, rhetoric. I thought it was vision.

In the years to come, I saw that vision unceremoniously crash into the shore. I saw that call to action get replaced with smaller ambitions. I saw the very organizers, and volunteers, who helped elect Barack Obama get relegated to cleaning up democratic party phone banking lists. I saw the logic and clarity that formed campaign positions, give way to hand waving and scolding.

How dare we think he meant what he said. Change isn’t meant to be childish and directed, it has to be incremental and measured and polite.

It didn’t happen overnight, but I watched as this beautiful dream began to split at the seams. I had the benefit of watching fairly up close.

A year after the election, I graduated from college and moved to Washington DC where I worked at a nonprofit that specialized in youth advocacy and engagement.

This was my attempt to deliver on my end of the bargain. I had been given a glimpse of my power, of our power, by what we had made possible. And I was genuinely excited to see what else we could do.

I was in for a rude awakening.

Fairly I quickly, I learned that every great idea I had ever come up with, had probably already been attempted by the brilliant people I would briefly call colleagues.

There was a lot of heart, a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of resilience. And there was also a lot of rejection, a lot of red-tape, a lot of structural scarcity, a lot of politicking that made progress feel glacial.

Everything happened at a speed that would discourage even the truest of believers.

And more often than not doing what felt right, or even just provocative, got shut down for fear of pissing powerful people off.

Not only that, I noticed how much the system set us up for failure. You see in the nonprofit world; your output, your impact, is what ultimately earns you funding.

Because of this collaboration across organizations is highly dissuaded. There isn’t room to work together because building collective power might mean rendering your particular organization obsolete. If you try to confront this dynamic, your motives get questioned.

I know this, because that’s what happened to me.

In fairness, I was asked to help lead a coalition around the 2010 midterm elections working with a wide range of organizations. What I did not understand is that a coalition does not necessarily mean a collaboration. You can be in a coalition and not actually work together in any kind of meaningful way.

Still, every instinct I had looked at all the passionate people working across a range of organizations and thought - how much stronger would we be if we worked together?

And so I tried to organize, I tried to meet the challenges that had been brought to my attention, I tried to leverage my creativity, my gift for communicating, my ability to think outside the box on behalf of a collective that seemed so obviously aligned. I came up with ideas, I made videos and campaigns with other really talented people, I did press and gave speeches. I was throwing everything I had into trying to do my part, even as I kept coming against cynicism and disinterest. There were moments where it felt possible, and there were moments of friction.

It wasn't like the Obama campaign where everyone was unified around a common objective. In this case, everyone had different ideas of what should be done and not only that but working together could ultimately be counterproductive. If you contribute the thing that makes your organization valuable in the eyes of funders, then what happens next time you need to raise money? How do you stand out? What if someone takes credit for your effort?

We were not setup to be successful.

In the end, the coalition didn’t do a whole lot of substance. We made some noise, but youth turnout in that election cycle was really low. And frankly, I pissed people off by trying at all.

In pushing against the status quo, I felt the force of the status quo as it pushed back. It was all subtle, comments in passing, concerned questions and comments passed on. It was presented as feedback, as something I should watch, but it wasn’t really actionable in any real way.

So and so says you're only doing this for yourself.

People are starting to think you're only doing this for yourself.

While this was happening, I was also discovering the intensity that comes with being an outspoken woman in public. The visibility that I gained throughout all of these experiences was attracting the wrong kind of attention. Strangers on the Internet decided that I was the daughter of a genocidal Ethiopian dictator. The reality was the regime of this dictator victimized members of my family directly.

Reality didn’t matter though.

In the years to come I would continue getting messages attempting to hold me accountable for genocide by proxy. I didn't know how to explain that my father wasn't a dictator he worked at a bank. And not only that, he was probably giving me the silent treatment.

He didn't approve of me moving to DC. He bragged about it later though.

These people weren’t debating me on merit or substance, they weren’t engaging with my ideas, they just made something up.

If you had asked me at the time, I would have told you that none of their comments bothered me. The internet lie, the nonprofit gossip, didn’t phase me at all. But in recent years, I've had to confront how injured it left me.

I didn't have the support system to navigate this level of criticism. I didn’t have people around me who could help me separate what was contempt and what was constructive. All I had was myself and my own attempts at making sense of it.

At this point in my life, I didn't know who I was. I didn't know that I was an Artist. The signs were always there! Whenever I thought to help, to make a difference, I always moved to create something. A poem, a song, an essay, a video. And in creating those things, I got attention. My hope was to leverage that attention for the things I cared about. But in DC I learned that attention was dangerous. It could cost me connection. It could spiral in ways I couldn't fathom.

I didn’t know it at the time but this confluence of events ruptured my relationship with my own creativity. There is a natural order to creating. When I make something I connect with myself, when I share it I have a chance to connect with other people. If the latter part of the cycle is associated with being self-interested, or unprincipled, then the cycle as a whole is broken.

In the midst of it all, I quietly internalized the belief that my creativity was shameful. That it was shameful to use my gifts in ways that garnered visibility. That it was shameful to leverage my creativity in ways that might benefit me, even inadvertently.

To be clear, I was young and messy too! I absolutely would have been supported by direction and support and feedback. But the idea that I was “only doing things for myself” wasn't really feedback… it was just shame.

It set up a dynamic where by showing up and being myself: opinionated, vivacious, determined, long-winded, prolific, resourceful, and ambitious; I was at odds with a dream we all shared.

The only way to resolve the problem, was to make myself smaller. And that’s what I did.

I quietly learned to dull those aspects of myself in public. To err on the side of obscurity. To fear attention. To only show my brightest self to a select few, and to do even that with my guard up prepared to fight back as needed. I never stopped creating, or trying to share, but there was a strong reluctance present that I didn't have before.

To this day, I’m not entirely sure what motivations the people who accused me of being self-interested thought I had. If I wanted to be rich and famous, surely there was a more straightforward path then going into debt to work at a nonprofit and be on C-Span one time.

Visibility can mean power. It can give you the ability to shed light, to share your perspective, to shape discourse, to make culture. But visibility is not power in and of itself. Think about how many elected officials are out there right now, unable to tell you what they really think. Think about how many Artists are performing on the world stage, unable to tell you how they really feel.

I realized that if I stayed in DC, I would lose hold of my clarity.

So I left.

And like many before me, I decided Washington was the problem. The nonprofit sector, politics, the system - it was all rigged.

I didn’t even make it a full year in DC before I moved back to New York where I spent the next few years working freelance gigs and partying with friends.

We might not have been changing the world, but we were having fun, we were living honestly. I didn’t know what I wanted with my life - but I knew that I had learned some important things. I learned the power of my voice and the need to find the right outlets to use it. I learned the power of a vision, and the pitfalls of tying that vision to a particular person.

I was frustrated with Barack Obama because I felt lied to. I felt like the vision that galvanized “millions of voices calling for change” was a vision that his administration didn’t take seriously. It felt like marketing quickly discarded when the rubber hit the road.

We were asked to believe in something enduring, a system that required our active participation, a system that we could meaningfully contribute to changing. And we believed. But when reality set in, when Senators blocked legislation, when special interests flexed their power; our power, the power of the people who elected him in the first place, was deemed unimportant. It wasn’t taken seriously, it wasn’t directed meaningfully.

There’s obviously a lot of nuance here - there are competing interests, competing ideas, competing visions for America. But my disillusionment stemmed from feeling like we never tried to change the system. We didn't try to bridge those differences. The progress achieved is the same progress now being dismantled. The system is self-correcting, because it wasn’t built to include all of us. And there was a moment back there where it felt like we were going to try to face that.

But we didn’t. And the wave that hit the shore shook the Earth.

It was painful to feel like we had been galvanized for nothing of note. The reality that transpired was but a shadow of the dream that called us forth.

I didn’t recognize all of this back then, I only recognized that the system, and the people in it, weren’t actually accountable to me.

Barack Obama didn’t know who I was. He never took any of my phone calls. When I took issue with things being done by his administration, those feelings were not taken into account. The same can’t be said for AIG, or Sally Mae, or any of the many corporations who did have a direct line to him and who did impact policy as a result.

We weren’t the same, and I felt foolish for believing that we were.

I realized that there were limits to what could be done within the system, and I didn't want to spend my life beholden to them. Ultimately, without confronting the values that built the system, change will always feel meager. It would always be crumbs.

I moved on from DC committed to building a life that felt more like the truth to me. I wouldn’t know what that meant for another year still, when in 2012, a night with edibles, a quick lesson in chord shapes, and a guitar; introduced me to myself.

The Crux Of My Revolution

We were just a few miles away from the house I grew up in but at this point I was a few years removed from college. I was with high school friends who became college friends who I ultimately lost touch with. But this was before that. This was the night that it happened.

We took some edibles and when everyone else left to watch a movie, I hung back with that guitar. I learned a few chords earlier that night; C, G and E. They were all that I needed.

There was a brief moment, where I moved from strumming them slowly, to playing a song. The lyrics poured out of me chasing down notes that I couldn't name. In the midst of it all, something happened that could not be undone. It was like the lights turned on.

I had music in me.

I didn't know it but the signs had always been there! And once I knew, it was the only thing that made sense. It felt like an encounter with God, with ultimate truth, a burning bush that abruptly ripped the haze from my eyes and left me trying to explain the unexplainable with words that could never suffice.

There was music in me.

What I played probably didn't sound particularly good… but it felt like everything.

The next day I went out and bought a guitar of my own.

The year that followed was difficult in a lot of ways. Finding music also coincided with encounters with magic, mystery, and trauma.

It was a really intense year and at the end of it I was starting over. I had this knowing now, and yet my life had crumbled in the aftermath of discovering it. When my life crumbled, there were a lot of people who loved me who thought I was completely delusional. They told me so.

There were times I believed them, times I felt regret and dismay, times I thought I was crazy, times I would have done anything to go back to the life I had before, the life before that night.

But through it all, the memory of that night, and the feeling it awakened, persisted through the rubble. I just had to keep coming back to it. I had to be willing to trust it. The knowing came before the proof.

It took a leap of faith to try again. In so many ways, nothing that followed was guaranteed. The tiniest bit of courage launched the next chapter of my life. But that’s all it took… a tiny bit of courage, and a willingness to put one foot in front of the other.

In 2013, I met Mike and we started Music Bones.

Mike is my husband, but when we met he was a stranger on Craigslist who I was going to try to make music with. One thing led to another, the music led to a band, the band led to a romance, and the romance led to a life. Over the course of the next few years I picked up the drums and we started to rock and roll.

In finding music I found something fundamental - a key to who I was that I didn't have before. I can look back now and see how every job I had before that, every opportunity, inevitably became a vehicle to express myself creatively. I was always coming up with ideas, always being tapped for my gift with words, always pushing up against constraints, always side eyeing rules that didn't make sense, always wanting to collaborate.

I was an Artist.

In finding music, I found a freedom that infiltrated all the things I was already doing. I could now do these things with less trepidation, because something about music felt like permission. I now saw myself in a way that freed me to be more of who I had always been.

In Mike I found a friend who confirmed so many of my idealistic suspicions. When you team up with the right people, you create space for magic to take root. You create the conditions to make things you would not otherwise be able to make on your own. I met someone who helped me be better in every way. And the music we started making became the fuel that kept us going. We had something special, and we knew it.

In 2015 we moved to Los Angeles and simultaneously several beginnings began to take root. I started to explore spirituality, I started to develop consciousness around white supremacy, and I started to embrace my gift as an Artist.

Those three aspects of my life weren’t compartmentalized at all. In fact, they were braided. Two steps forward, one step back. Move in this direction, pause and redirect. Try something here, watch how it changes things over there. It was all connected. There was no separating my Art from my life and no separating my life from the life that surrounded me.

Around that same time, I found a spiritual teacher on Yelp. She was a psychic but I saw her weekly like a therapist.

The first time I went to see her I was nervous and second-guessing myself. I rambled about what I was there for, probably even admitting I wasn’t sure. She stayed grounded. She looked at me in a way that suggested she was really examining me, really seeing me, and then she spoke.

“You’re a Revolutionary.”

She was talking to me.

On the one hand, I felt like she had just said something ridiculous. On the other hand, I knew that she had just said something true. She was speaking to a feeling that had brought me this far. A feeling I first found in childhood. A knowing that I was here with purpose.

And while the particulars weren’t always clear, that knowing is what moved me from one trajectory to the next. That knowing is what compelled me to move on when truth felt absent. To pick up a guitar. To believe that the songs that were mine to sing weren’t trivial they were the life in me making themselves known.

In a lot of ways, sitting across from that psychic and having her so quickly locate me; was life changing.

I didn’t have a lot of experiences of feeling seen like that… and at the time, there was hardly anything to justify what she was seeing. I had written some poems and some essays and some songs. But she didn’t know any of that. She was just, present in the room with me. So much of who I was, was still underground - unknown to even me. Like a seed planted by the hands of my wildest imagination, buried deeply in the dark.

Over the next few years, she mentored me in that place of darkness. She showed me what it looked like to be a Black Woman unafraid of herself and her power. To know my worth. To listen for my Ancestors. To feel the Earth. She taught me to make friends with my anger, to trust in my art, to notice how consistently my intuition hit the mark.

I would go in to see her wailing about what wasn’t working, pointing to frustrations I had, hopeful and adamant about something I was working on, in utter despair over some feeling I was wallowing in, riding the waves of some new plan I was pursuing.

She would stay grounded, smile knowingly, and speak.

“I see the Artist in you.”

It didn’t occur to me that all my messiness had meaning. But in her reflection, I found a new way to relate to my complexity. A new way to begin embracing the chaos inherent to my creativity. I new way to embrace things previously shamed, I was no longer too much, I was just… me.

Through it all I kept returning to my art. To my drums. To my lyrics. To developing my voice. Emboldened by clarity, I started to understand that I wrote poetry prolifically, and I started to show up to the page with that knowing. I stopped resigning my poems to scraps of paper, backs of envelopes, and began writing them in journals and word documents. I knew that if I listened, they would come, and my job was to write them when they did. Mike and I wrote songs through it all. We played shows. We met other musicians. We did the Artist Way together, several times. We dreamed of albums. We visited the Ocean.

But it was also an intense time. The 2016 election came and went, and there was a newfound urgency around racial consciousness that a lot of people were trying to understand and speak to. I was no different, I was trying to make sense of it all.

Nothing had changed. The world hadn't suddenly become more unjust, but in a profound way the state of injustice become impossible to ignore. Things previously lurking in the shadows, were increasingly dragged into the light.

It was a painful and confusing time. I grew up in a predominantly white town. Everything I was realizing and writing about white supremacy was born from a history of self-betrayal and self-abandonment. That was a difficult fact to reconcile.

As things emerged from the shadows, I was left to re-examine my assumptions, my beliefs, my impulses.

Did they hold up?

Most of them didn’t.

I started to realize that white supremacy and patriarchy were paradigms constructed to protect pain. To shield against shame. To create power. But that power is rooted in the powerlessness of others which meant it is not a power in itself. It’s entirely made up and because of that, it is remarkably inconsistent.

How else do you explain how a nation of immigrants has the audacity to target immigrants as some sort of deviant other. It is illogical because it isn't rooted in truth.

It's rooted in pain.

Who are you without us?

Became the question that I kept returning to.

And who I am without this?

Became the crux of my revolution.

The system wasn’t broken, not exactly. It was operating as it had been designed to operate. It was shepherding the beliefs that gave it birth.

I wasn’t conscious of any of this until I was. And once I was, I saw it everywhere.

We all deserve to exist. We all have a right to belong. But what these paradigms do is convince us that this right must be earned.

And so even with all my awareness, I began to fight for my place.

I didn’t know what I deserved. Not in a felt sense. Not in my body. I just knew how to fight, and I sought out others who would fight alongside me.

In the months and years to come I found other people online who were also attempting to understand and heal from the impact of white supremacy and patriarchy. I largely met them through Instagram and Facebook. This was a time when those places felt more free. Where if you posted your art and opinions they found people who might resonate with them. It didn’t feel like you were fighting with an algorithm, it felt like you were sharing in an open space full of possibility. There weren’t bots and weird AI gimmicks, it was just a place where people could convene.

So during that time I was creating, and sharing, pretty consistently. It helped that I was connected to other people who shared my values specifically around truth-telling. They inspired me. Seeing their moments of clarity, their acts of courage, their attempts at love and justice; encouraged me to find my own.

For a while these online spaces formed my context for building community and power.

A lot of what we had in common was rage. So many of us were angry and trying to channel that anger into provoking change. None of us trusted the system. A lot of us were Artists or spiritual practitioners or coaches of some sort. We were trying to find new ways to locate, and leverage, our power.

In a lot of ways, it felt different than the movement building I had experienced before. In this case, we didn’t always feel like an Ocean, or a wave moving in particular direction. More often than not, we felt like a flame.

Dynamic, explosive, unyielding, chaotic, generative, and threatening all at once. In the best moments, that flame would motivate, and direct attention, casting a light on the truth that we needed. But in the worst moments, that flame would burn. If you lit the match, you couldn’t guarantee what would happen next. And if you added enough kindling, that flame became an indiscriminate fire. Impersonal, hungry, harmful and quick.

In one moment, an attempt to point out wrongdoing quickly turned into a bandwagon. At times, it wasn’t clear if that bandwagon was bullying but it didn't feel like love. It had the motivation of love pulling it along, but you knew that it was unsustainable because of how quickly it changed course. At any moment, a person doing the calling out, could become the person being called out. Connection was weaponized. Belonging was tenuous.

There were so many times, when I watched good intentions, noble ideas, a thirst for justice and accountability became something destructive. There were so many times where justified, beautiful, righteous rage turned into harm. There are times when I was convinced I was right, and I put my pen to the page, in ways that were careless.

There is a tone that I associate with that period of time. A general taste to the conversation that permeated every meal. There wasn’t much patience, the world was black and white, most of us including myself, were writing from trauma. Everything felt sharp. Words cut. We couldn’t see each other. We couldn’t see past the urgency and pain of the moment itself.

We were witnessing collective trauma. There was urgency, and there was also chronic dysregulation. None of us felt safe. We were writing for our lives, for our loved ones, for the world. There were beautiful intentions, beautiful dreams, underlining all of it; and yet that did not stop us from crumbling under the weight of what we were trying to face.

We were mad at white people.

And we told them so. We told them what they were doing wrong. We told them how they were letting us down. We were angry and it was because Black People were dying and nobody was doing enough.

Everything fed the flame.

There was no shortage of microaggressions, of genuine harm, to get riled up about.

And yet, I started to see how an indiscriminate flame was not a fuel that would allow us to traverse the sea. Conflict in one of the community spaces I was in ruptured that space irreparably. The same allies who felt like people I could build with, became sides to choose.

At one point, one writer accused another writer of plagiarism, and the accused writer sent a lawyer after the first writer, and that writer wrote an essay sounding the alarm and everything was on fire. All the while, none of us had a hose.

We barely fell apart, we didn’t reach the shore. We just dissipated.

And in that, I saw something unsettling.

I started to notice that all of our energy, all of our attention, all of our effort was focused on what white people needed to do to heal from white supremacy… but in that work, our wounds were left grossly unattended.

Surely love dreamed of more for us than that.

There were a lot of beautiful things happening in the midst of all this. A lot of beautiful attempts at creating something. A lot of brilliant people attempting to connect and co-create. And I watched it collapse.

We weren’t attached to the system. We all shared similar values. And it wasn't enough.

I didn’t know what to do with it. So I turned my attentions to my own art, my own life.

Yet it wasn’t any different. I didn’t know how to navigate conflict. I didn’t know how to advocate for my needs. I didn’t know how to navigate the landscape of making music in the midst of everything happening in the world.

But focusing on music felt like the only reasonable choice to make.

Pretty quickly, Mike and I realized that we were out of our depths. It only took on person, offering “help”, when help was a contract that would claim use to our likeness “across the Universe”, “forever in perpetuity” to set my guards up emphatically.

Suddenly I was up against forces I’d only heard about in passing. I grew up in a time of Prince, and Lauryn Hill, and Janet Jackson. I am in the business of rock and roll, a genre that has exploited and forgotten many of the people who gave birth to it in the first place; Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Little Richie, Chuck Berry.

I had seen what this world had done to Black brilliance.

I knew that the system was incompatible with what I wanted to build. But I didn't know how to build something without it. I was already seeing how social media, one of the tools presented as a way to maintain your independence outside of the system, didn’t grant independence at all. It just created a new thing to be reliant on. Now a change in the algorithm, a post that got censored, a terms of service update, all became reminders that those spaces weren't granting real autonomy.

I felt vulnerable.

I knew that I needed to protect myself and the art I was making.

But I didn't know how to ask for that, how to ask for help, who to trust — so I resorted to a well-practiced strategy that I developed in childhood; hypervigilance.

I was on high alert for any threats, trying to think five steps ahead, trying to protect myself against all possible outcomes. I was ready to fight anybody who tried me and I was also quick to assume that everybody was trying me.

Many of the collaborations we attempted during this time period got thwarted by my own flame. In some cases, it was warranted, and in some cases it probably wasn’t. In those cases, I lashed out. It didn't help that the evidence of extractive and misaligned ways of relating to Artists was everywhere. The venues that asked us pay them before we could perform. The music syncing class that devolved into an expensive lesson in “how to make music for Target”. The sense that one mistake could cost you all of it. When all of it is the art and the art is you.

For me, the Art will always be the point. I’m not interested in making art in ways that lose sight of that.

So Mike and I did the only thing that felt sensible at the time:

We tried to do it all ourselves.

It was 2018, and we set our sights on making an EP. For most of our time in Los Angeles we were working with sessions musicians, people we paid to rehearse and perform with us, one of who became a good friend.

We saved up some money and decided to invest in studio time and all the things that came with it; mixing, mastering, production, paying musicians. We set out to make four songs that would show the range of what we could do. We were excited about the music we were making, but we also didn't know how to do much beyond making music. The amount of times Mike and I sat down to talk band strategy only to realize neither of us wanted to run our social media… was a lot. So we resorted to what had worked in the past, we went back to Craigslist.

We found a someone who had moved to LA on a dream. According to their Craigslist Ad, they were looking to become an Artist manager in exchange for a place to live. They were living in a hostel at the time. We met up with them and they moved in pretty quickly. Throughout that whole process I wasn’t thinking about the practicalities of inviting a stranger to live on the couch of our one bedroom apartment - I was thinking about how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started their business in a garage. I was thinking of the many times that I had struggled and someone had helped. When Mike and I first moved to Los Angeles we spent two months sleeping on a friend’s floor. It was easy to want to pay it forward, to bet on someone who in turn was betting on us.

But this was a bit different than helping a friend. Boundaries were immediately blurred. This person became a roommate, a collaborator, and someone we were in a power dynamic with all at once. But we didn't see that. We just saw an opportunity to try something different, to do something brave, to assume the best and figure it out along the way. We thought we found a way to get around the system, to try and build something that better reflected our values. Plus, this person was really smart and talented. It was easy to believe in them.

The three of us dove in without setting real parameters or shared expectations or goals, there was no contract, no nothing. I don’t even think we explicitly told this person that we were doing what they asked for in the ad - offering them a place to live in exchange for management. We got a lot of things wrong, and it happened very quickly.

Simultaneously we were also trying to figure out how to keep building with our band. The musicians we played with weren’t technically members of the band and we wanted to change that.

As we looked towards an EP release, we were looking at more rehearsals, shooting music videos, playing shows; all of which had costs associated with them. All of these expenses were adding up and we knew our current trajectory wasn't sustainable.

We knew we had a good thing going. But did other people think so?

It felt vulnerable to be direct, to layout our limits and priorities and see who wanted to come on board. So we went about it pretty clumsily.

We needed to know: did the musicians we were playing with want to be in the band more formally?

Rather than paying for time spent as it happened, could we all explore profit sharing or splitting publishing or some other way of doing things that made us more of a team. Could we be equal partners building this thing together? If not, that clarity would still be helpful! But it would also mean we needed to change how we thought about things. Up until that point, we often had rehearsals for the sake of playing together regularly. That wouldn't make as much sense if this was more of a passing collaboration.

We attempted to have these conversations but they were really informal, generally during rehearsal, and there wasn't a ton of follow up. We never put anything in writing, we didn’t ask questions or make sure everyone was clear and comfortable.

At first, it felt like a few of us were moving forward on the same page. But the truth is, we hadn’t done the work to get on the same page. The band members, the manager, we were building our dreams on a shaky foundation. So while for a brief window of time, it felt like we had a team, within a month that team had fallen apart.

A lot of what we experienced at this time revealed that we didn’t know how to lead a team. It was one thing to fight the power, it was an entirely different thing to have it.

I can look back now and see that the situation with the manager in particular was messy. To have someone work for you, even informally, and simultaneously live with you, is muddying waters that need to be clear. They weren't set up to be honest with us, not with their housing on the line. And being in such closer quarters made it really hard to navigate disagreement and confusion, and work-life balance. There were also times I did try and set boundaries and they weren’t respected. I had no idea what to do when that happened.

With the band it was a lot of vibes, a lot of let’s just move forward and figure it out later. I’m not sure it would have ended any differently had we been more direct a lot sooner. But I do think that it would have been less confusing and hurtful for everyone involved.

These experiences showed Mike and I that we had some skills missing, and we had some insecurities driving our indirectness.Those mistakes were invaluable but at the time we didn’t face them right away because they were overwhelming. We were speeding towards the shore and it wasn’t looking good.

Mike and I tried to salvage the moment, we put out the EP but we were running on fumes.

Making music, writing books and essays - it’s all a very different skillset than writing contracts, or developing a marketing plan, or financing an album, or promoting an album successfully. It’s a different skillset than leading a team with inclusivity, directness, and clarity.

If anything, music has taught me that with attention, focus and practice, I can learn how to do anything. I can approach new skills with determination and I can always keep growing.

But it’s hard to build skills if you don’t know that they’re lacking or if there’s judgement around not having them in the first place.

I think this world teaches us that if you are a creative enough person, that it will be easy to build a creative life. And I think this belief sets us up to fail, and to feel shame in light of those failures. But playing drums doesn’t mean that I know how to play the trombone. It would be ridiculous to assume that it did. So why would writing essays mean I know how to do social media?

At some point our world normalized that Artists could, and should, do it all. I think the culture has lost a lot because of this. I don’t think being an Artist guarantees knowing how to do anything outside of making Art. When we come back to the practice of art making, the truth is made clear; beautiful things come from collaborating with the right people.

But trusting people is terrifying. It’s vulnerable. We live in an era where we're simultaneously more connected and yet more isolated than ever. We live in a time where there are a plethora of tools that can empower you to do it yourself. But while there's something beautiful about being self-sufficient in bringing your dreams to life, I wonder if there’s something that gets lost too.

I wasn’t thinking about all of this back then. Back then I was just feeling disappointed and more unsure than ever.

I had all this awareness, all these new realizations about power and love and justice; and yet my mistakes revealed how little I actually knew. It was all just theory, I didn’t know how to put it into practice.

Mike and I tried to do things differently but ultimately what we made was a mess.

That mess wasn’t just a result of that moment, it stemmed from years of being under-resourced, years of trying to make something out of nothing, years of disappointment, years of being invalidated, years of failing, years of pushing through pain.

The EP didn't immediately amount to much. So we kind of gave up on it.

At a certain point, it hurt too much to push. We had no choice, but to pause.

The Cult That Cried Community

I’m not sure I encountered silence until that first winter.

The snow covered hill tops so often green and lush took on a distinctly different tone once the storms passed through. They were haunting and spectacular. Holy in a way.

You stepped outside and there was nothing. No one.

Even the neighbors, who at that point were mostly fawn and foxes, coyotes and bears, rodents who burrowed in the dirt and hawks who patrolled the skies, were no where to be found.

But inevitably, life slowly returned. If you paid attention you could watch it unfold.

Icicles that lined the windows, and hung from the trees, snow mountains that barricaded the road, all found the glare of a newly returned sun and in its presence they began to melt. As they did, life returned. First came the birds, they were the ones to break the silence with their songs. But if you stepped outside you would find evidence of the others through the prints in the snow. We never saw the bears, but they made their presence known nonetheless.

It was 2019, and Mike and I were now living in remote mountain town just a few hours outside of Los Angeles.

For the next three years we lived among the trees, froze our trash from the bears, and fell asleep to the sounds of coyotes shrieking at the moon. We moved to the mountains with plans to record music, but we quickly realized that life had other things in store. Sure we wrote songs, we made art, but we mostly made life. We got married on Zoom. We adopted a dog. We faced things we wouldn’t have seen, had we not stopped to take in the scenery.

I loved living there.

And I went there with a lot of determination.

After everything that happened in LA, I couldn’t wholly blame the system. I wouldn’t blame the art. So the only thing left to blame was myself.

A few months before our move, I came across an Instagram account of a woman, a teacher, who talked about boundaries. She also ran an online spiritual school.

I signed up for her school the same month we moved to the mountains.

She held classes that covered topics like reparenting your inner child, plant medicine, and navigating life as a highly sensitive person.

In the mountains my sensitivity had never been more pronounced. The quiet there helped me hear myself better. And in the silence I found, I got to work.

I learned about visualization and using meditation and energy work to work with my emotions. I took classes and courses on things like raising your vibration, energetic sovereignty, and even liberation.

In this school, the system was still not to be trusted. But this time, the system was also the matrix. So there was another level of corruption to unpack. Now we weren’t just looking at the obvious, we were looking at the subtle, the unseen, the paw prints in the snow. We were looking at unconscious beliefs, collective paradigms, and unspoken agreements. All of this was being done with the hope of liberation.

Ultimately, being at the school inspired me to find a therapist

There were good things that happened there.

The school was host to a community and there were multiple ways to meet the people I studied alongside: community meetings, a Facebook group, dance classes.

But after my experiences in LA, I wasn’t in a rush to try and make friends. If anything, I was trying to fix myself to make sure my future attempts at connection were less dramatic. For nearly a year, I skipped around the curriculum looking for things that felt relevant and helpful. I didn't always resonate with the teacher’s way of doing things, but it felt like that was okay.

In those early classes especially, she made a point to say that she wasn’t the leader of the group because we were creating something together.

We all had medicine that the group needed. Knowing that made moments of dissonance feel like a sign, an opportunity, where my medicine might ultimately jump in.

There was a calm to this space, to this way of organizing and building power, that felt important. An awareness that you could only do so much if your nervous system was on fire.

There was an emphasis on self-care, and resourcing ourselves, that felt different to everything else I had tried before. The school was teaching us to reject people pleasing, to question self-righteousness, to notice the ways we were moving from trauma, to acknowledge power struggles and to find new ways of engaging with them.

Through it all, I started to believe in the vision. I started to believe that spirituality held the keys to everything that had previously gone wrong.

I started to engage with class topics that felt a bit more complicated; things like “minding your business” and “divine neutrality” and “detachment”— ways of engaging with the chaos in the world from a spiritual and enlightened place.

I struggled with those topics. But she always told us to trust ourselves. In fact, she told us not to trust her. Repeatedly. We all had blindspots, and together we would fill those gaps. She told us not to put her on a pedestal. Not to copy her. Over and over and over again, she emphasized that we all had medicine to share and that it was our job to protect it even from each other.

“You don’t know me,” she warned us.

“Trust your information.”

Eventually, I began joining community meetings. I started to contribute and speak up. I also joined other adjacent community spaces that were also focused on healing and liberation. When the pandemic happened, I was relieved to have a way to connect with other people. Mike and I were isolated in the mountains but online I was connecting with people from all over the world.

Every week I would sign onto zoom and no matter what was happening on the news, I saw other people who were relatively okay. Not only that, we were still dreaming.

The world was unstable, but it felt like we had built a sanctuary. She called it a garden. And in that place, everyone could be who they were. Having these community spaces helped me feel less alone. Pretty soon I was in some kind of class most days of the week.

Through it all I was also writing. I started to write and assemble poems, some of which were now inspired by the work we were doing and the hope that it gave me.

Like every time before, my hope was rooted in the people. We were all there because we wanted to help. We wanted to contribute to the world in a meaningful way. It’s hard for me to feel cynical about it, even now, when I think of how many people came to those classes. We all believed that by showing up, by doing our healing work, we were making the world a better place. I learned a lot from the people I met. I saw a lot of courage, and a lot of love. A lot of brilliance.

In 2022, our time in the mountains came to an abrupt end. Our landlord decided to sell the house we lived in and we took the opportunity to move to the Bay Area as I began the process of self-publishing my first book of poems.

Around the same time the teacher of the school recruited me and a handful of other people within the community to become “senior members”.

The timing felt significant. I was returning to society after years in the wilderness, preparing to share a body of work I had been working on for 7 years, and I was now also being asked to step up for my community. It felt like I was getting a chance to do the thing we had been talking about.

When the “senior member” role was announced, it was presented as a leadership opportunity. The idea was that we were all exemplary members of the community who were now being selected to take up more space, to help lead.

When I look back on it now, one of the things that stands out is how many people I talked to who believed that they were going to be selected. Just about everyone thought they might get the call to lead.

It made sense. We all had medicine to share. We all had unique things to contribute. The school encouraged us to honor and own that.

When the announcement was made about this new leadership role, the teacher made a point to say, of the people being selected;

“Your medicine is welcome here.”

Those words felt meaningful to me.

They also reassured me in light of the concerns I was starting to develop.

The teacher had a temper.

It was a known thing. People walked on eggshells around her. She called herself a “Sword, indicating that she was someone who cut through illusion.

We saw glimpses of her weapon in class. There were times she raised her voice. Times she was cutting and mean. Times that she shamed and ridiculed us. Times when a tranquil class was interrupted with a sudden spike in volume.

“If you aren't doing [energy work technique] right now, then why are you even here?”

It wasn't always like that, but by this point it was like that enough to notice.

There was still this idea of liberation and building collective power, but there were also hints of a more authoritarian type of leadership. The idea of being a leaderless community was replaced with a refrain we started to hear a lot:

“If you don’t like how I do things, then you can leave.”

Still, she said my medicine was welcome - and I suspected that this was where my medicine was needed. Red flags struck me as opportunities, as where I could help, of what I had to give to the group.

With my newfound responsibility as a “senior member” - I started to pay attention to things I had previously dismissed.

There was a community meeting in particular that stood out. The teacher was leading a group energy work session, and she kept saying we weren’t doing enough. We needed to step up. We needed to be more consistent. We needed to come to class, to speak up during community meetings. She was animated and raising her voice.

I was crying. I so badly wanted to get it right. I believed in the vision.

It suggested that we all had power to make things better. And with that power, came significant responsibility. We were tasked with meeting the times we were in. The marching orders were fairly simple - be yourself, be authentic, go out into the world and do your work. The vision suggested that if we all showed up as our brightest selves, the world would be better because of it.

I was committed to the vision because it resonated with truth. It wasn’t just her vision, it wasn't really about her at all. I believed in the vision, because I saw it too.

I saw the power and potential in us. I was committed to showing up in whatever ways I could. And I was willing to be the problem - because in some ways, by being the problem I had more power. If I was the problem, then I could also be the solution. Finding a solution to fix myself felt so much more manageable than finding a solution to fix the world.

During that community meeting where she was yelling and berating us, she was also complaining. She didn't want to be leading the meditation and she kept saying so. In the midst of her complaints, she let slip:

“Don’t worry. Mom’s here.”

It snapped my eyes open.

It felt out of place.

I didn’t really know what to make of it but it threw me off enough to change how I was relating to the school. From that point forward, I started listening not to what was being said, but to what was happening.

After all, she told us not to trust her.

Sometime after that, the teacher organized an introductory call with all the newly appointed “senior members”. On that call she asked us all to introduce ourselves and to share something about ourselves. I think maybe two people shared - I remember the second person talking about feeling anxious around the role and the teacher cut them off mid-sentence. She told us if anyone really felt the need to still introduce themselves, they could, but she had other things she wanted to cover. From there she did most of the talking.

You could feel how much everyone else, including myself, was struggling to get a word in. Struggling to be heard. Trying to contribute. Trying to be seen.

I told myself that this was something I could eventually bring up with her. Maybe she was just as excited as we were. Maybe it was an isolated incident. We all had spent hours upon hours listening to her talk in classes. This was her first opportunity to hear from us. Maybe it would get better.

In a class following that meeting, she made a point of sharing how someone in her personal life had given her feedback that she dominated conversations, and this wasn’t something she was willing to work on.

“If you don’t like it… then you can leave.”

I didn't know what to make of it.

In a lot of ways, the relationship with this teacher had always been parasocial. But I was now in a position where it could become real. In spite of that, I was getting feedback to feelings I hadn’t even voiced yet, in a classroom setting. I wasn’t sure how to navigate that but it introduced a dynamic that didn’t feel good to me.

In the beginning of the Summer I got an email asking me to get on a call with the teacher. During that call, she asked me to work at school as the Community Manager of a new membership tier. I was honored, and I was also busy. I had a book to put out. My medicine! I was a little thrown off because I didn't have ambitions to work at the school. But I assumed she knew something I didn’t. I expressed excitement but also hesitation. I was open to making it work but I needed to know more.

I wasn’t surprised that they wanted to hire me. I have a lot to contribute. But I was also a little confused on how this fit in to the big picture. I had my own dreams, my own life, my own medicine to tend to. In our initial conversation, she didn’t attempt to get to know me at all.

That theme only progressed when I started emailing with her staff about compensation.

I was trying to understand what the role actually entailed and I got a lot of vague replies. I was asked to set a rate for what I would charge to lead a monthly meditation, and group discussion, session. I based that rate, in part, on how ambiguous the role itself was. I knew I would have to prepare for those sessions, and that it wasn’t as straightforward as an hour of my time.

In response to the rate I set, I got a response from a staff member at the school saying they understood me to be a “beginner” and that they hoped I was also interested in the experience.

It felt familiar.

As an Artist, and someone who spent years freelancing, this was a dynamic I had encountered before. I know what it feels like to have someone pursue you and then knock you down a peg when you show up embodying your worth. They never asked me about myself, so I figured this was a chance to introduce myself.

I shared why I didn’t agree with that assessment in this particular context, and I shared what I needed, clarity. I shared the different ways I was open to working with them, and the things that were important to me. I even mentioned my book and the fact that I was comfortable with this not working out. If I wasn't a fit for what they needed, that was okay with me!

The response to that email, came from the teacher, who wasn’t on the email chain beforehand.

She gave me a bunch of energy work techniques to do, implying I was triggered or doing it wrong. She told me there were colors missing in my Aura. I was misunderstanding her, I didn’t have the colors in my Aura that indicated a certain level of experience. But… “You’re ready now.” She also told me the person I was emailing with was my “supervisor” which was odd because I hadn’t said yes to the role.

I was taken aback, but I was also a little brainwashed. And I was a little lonely.

I have a complicated history with mentors informed by the deep roots of a complicated wound I’m working to heal.

I’m not sure it’s okay to be my whole self.

Throughout my life I have had inconsistent experiences of being seen. I have felt largely misunderstood. I didn't grow up in an environment that celebrated what made me unique, I grew up in an environment that forced me to assimilate. Everything I am stems from a rebellion that started before I knew what to call it. An insistence on remaining true to the things that make me, me.

And it’s not the whole story because I haven’t gotten this far alone! And yet, those times of relief always felt short-lived. They ultimately ended, or soured, or I naturally outgrew them.

In retrospect, I think at this point in my life, I was looking for elders. I was looking for people who saw me. Who could tell me where I was missing the mark. Who could tell me about the pitfalls ahead. Who could tell me that I was doing enough. Who could encourage me when I wasn’t quite sure.

And this teacher did some of that for me! She did it from the front of a zoom classroom - but she told us that our only job was to be ourselves. She talked about the times she had failed. She was funny, and relatable, and raw. And she said she cared about creating a space where we could all be free.

So when she told me that I was doing something wrong, I was inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.

So, in a departure from everything I felt, I wrote back very agreeably.

I wanted the vision to be true. I wanted the love, the offer of help, to be real. But I didn’t neglect my hesitations. My eyes were wide open.

I was now over ten years removed from the Obama campaign and my first true taste of disillusionment. I knew better than to place my trust in a singular leader. I knew enough, to locate my power and keep it firmly in my grasp. Plus, this was different than Obama, right? She wrote back to my emails.

I told myself so. But in so many ways, it wasn’t different at all.

The word hope was now replaced with the word healing but we all had unique definitions and projections of what healing meant. It was easy to believe that what we were all building towards a shared vision, because we weren’t actually discussing what that vision entailed. We weren’t bridging difference. We weren’t building consensus. We weren’t practicing what was being preached.

So much of the school was a person on a soap box telling us what she thought. There were times to engage, but everything was informed by by her perspective. She was the leader who knew the right way to do things. If you didn’t like how she did things, you could leave.

But if I left, I’d be losing my community. 


And with that threat lingering in the air, community was never actually on the table.

The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming.

I learned energy work techniques to regulate my nervous system. The second they became a way to shut me down, those techniques stopped being for me.

The same became true of beautiful concepts like working with your Soul, or your Higher Self, or your spiritual guides. This teacher would tell stories in class about how someone was telling her no, but if she tuned in to their Higher Self than that person’s Higher Self was actually saying yes.

It set up a dynamic where we were learning not to trust ourselves. And it's a dynamic I watched this teacher exploit.

Around the time I was hired, the teacher taught a class where she went on a tangent about how everyone who worked for her quit because they weren’t willing to be “catalyzed”. They all claimed they were there to live their dharma, but they quit because they didn’t have what it takes. She was a catalyst, a sword, here to provoke us to be more of ourselves.

It sounded pretty. But in any other context, would it have held up? If any other boss said this? If any other community leader? If a therapist said this?

Wouldn’t it be scrutinized?

I started to question; was it cutting through illusion or was it just emotional abuse.

In my experience, if everyone is quitting a workplace, it’s probably for a good reason. And if the headline is they aren’t “willing to be catalyzed” - there’s a good chance, the subtext is that they weren’t willing to be mistreated.

To me, her willingness to recruit students for employment, and then use her authority as a teacher to set expectations for them as employees, felt like a huge breach of trust.

She told us not to trust her, and at this point I realized that I didn’t.

She claimed that we were doing something different than the “matrix” but this is one of the most corporate workspaces I’ve ever been a part of. The stories of past employees lingered in the space like ghosts as did the knowledge that at least some of them had signed NDAs.

Everyone seemed stressed out and walking on eggshells. A lot of my communications with her staff came with requests for urgency and immediacy. They needed answers right away, but if I asked questions they wouldn’t reply for weeks. It wasn’t an environment for a highly sensitive nervous system.

It wasn’t the right place for me.

I stayed beyond that knowing because a part of me could see the potential.

This place wasn't all bad. Far from it! But the question remained: was it willing?

I wanted to believe.

I went to one more small group gathering with the teacher and other senior members. On that call, she started joking about how former members were now going online and calling the school a cult.

She said this smiling:

“You guys know you’re all in a cult, right?”

I laughed nervously even as my head emphatically nodded no.

I was absolutely not in a cult.

After that call, I googled:

“What is a cult?”

“Signs that you’re in a cult.”

“How do you know if you’re in a cult?”

Well. I wasn’t not in a cult.

It turns out most members of a cult, have no idea they are in one. Generally, things start to breakdown the closer you get to the top of the hierarchy. For all of the talk of creating community, this institution was incredibly hierarchical. The closer you got to the top, the more you saw the dissonance.

The things we were being taught to help us come into our power, in a class setting, were the very things being used to disempower us once we were in a position to be powerful.

Had I not been asked to step into a leadership role I would have remained oblivious to all of it.

And even still, after all that, I stayed open to the possibility that my medicine could save the day. I could show up and explain to her how she was abusing her power.

But the truth is we didn't have the relationship to support that.

In the two months I was in this role as a “community manager” I was not meaningfully asked about the community I “managed” by this teacher or her staff, a single time. During the several months I spent as a “senior member”, the teacher or her staff didn’t meaningfully ask me about myself once. People in the community would have assumed otherwise based on what was being said and shared in classes. But the truth is, it was all a performance and it never got any better.

The breaking point for me came when they asked me to start writing for them. We did the same song and dance as before around expectations and compensation. But with writing, I wasn’t willing to assume. Would my words be in good hands?

I concluded that they wouldn’t be.

Despite all the window dressing, this wasn’t any different than any other institution matrix or not. I was fighting to be heard, and they weren’t listening.

The teacher was offering me proximity and visibility that did not have the makings of power or autonomy. The job was offering me experience and exposure.

It wasn’t liberation. If anything it was progressively making me smaller.

I had one other call with this teacher pretty early on in this whole process. During that call I made reference to a conversation I had with someone around doing healing work from a place of fun and play. She cut me off mid-sentence.

“No, no, no. See, this is what I’m talking about. It can't be about your preferences. You have to be neutral.”

She was scolding me.

And yet even as as she spoke with authority, I couldn't help but think that "neutrality" is just another preference. It only seems “spiritual" and “enlightened” because it's difficult. But maybe what makes it difficult, is the fact that it's also unnatural.

We are not just soul and spirit, we are humans too. We feel, and want, and need; that is part of what makes us. It's not the whole story, but when you shove it away I think you end up with the chaos that I witnessed. I got a glimpse behind the curtain.

If this is what “neutrality" and “detachment" and "minding your business” gets you? I wanted no part of it.

“Play” might be a preference but this life is still mine.

I am an Artist.

If I can't make something a good time, I’m probably not going to do it.

I realized that despite all the talk about embracing our uniqueness and our medicine, in practice she was teaching us to be exactly like her. I realized that a trustworthy person wouldn't warn you not to trust them, a trust worthy person would work to gain your trust. A trust worthy person would work to rebuild trust, once it was inevitably broken. I realized that having the ability to empathize with someone, did not mean I was required to let them harm me.

I quit the job but I planned to stay part of the community. I wanted to believe that maybe if I just stepped out of the power dynamics present, I could still show up for the vision.

In my final email exchange, I named how this experience had been for me. How frustrated it had been working to be heard, how odd it had been to never be asked about myself. I also shared that my work, my medicine, related, in part, to confronting the relationship between Artists and Institutions. That’s what I cared about.

The reply I received said it all; “That doesn't sound like it resonates.”

That was it.

No more projections. No more stories. No more red flags turned into opportunities. That was the truth. This place wasn’t for me. I quit the job, I quit the community, and I started the process of quitting the cult.

It was not an easy process.

Over the course of the years I spent at this school, I learned so much about this teacher. She shared her stories generously and it created a sense of intimacy because she was speaking to things that were relatable.

But real intimacy, is built one conversation at a time, in little moments of connection. In little moments where someone names their anxiety, and everyone listens.

Real intimacy, has to be attempted. She didn't try to get to know us. And so much of what she taught us, made us feel desperate and needy for wanting to be known.

Less than a year later I watched as another student turned employee was abruptly, and callously, fired from the school. In one sweeping motion that person lost her job, and her community. But the teacher didn't stop at that, she also smeared that student's reputation publicly.

She was publicly making an example of someone.

She was sending a message to everyone that remained.

Just like that, we weren't a garden at all. We were another wave, another series of best intentions, crashing into the shore.

I tried to make the most of it. I tried to push through.

A few months later, I self-published the book I had been writing in the mountains but I had no motivation to promote it. I didn’t trust it anymore. I didn’t trust anything for a while. I thanked that teacher in my acknowledgements. I wrote that book for my community. Everything had become complicated.

I was at a loss.

If I could so casually end up in a cult, what else was I missing?

Not only that, but the cult rhetoric had gotten into my head. In the immediate aftermath of leaving the school, I wondered if I had broke it. My purpose. My destiny. We had been building in community, and I had learned to identify my dreams as being part of this larger dream. Without that container, I was adrift.

It didn’t help that so much of the cult rhetoric emphasized this. We were being taught by people who claimed invulnerability. They knew something we didn’t know. They had answers we had yet to find. There were secret teachings we should be honored to receive. And yes, the matrix and everything in this world was terrifying; but proximity to these teachers was the very thing keeping us safe from the world and everything in it. At times, this was implied if not outright stated. Being part of these spaces, was what made us special.

In the adjacent community space I was in, there was another teacher. At one point he was talking about how important it was that we all work towards our purpose, but if we didn’t it was no big deal.

You’ll be replaced.

That sentiment rang loudly.

He wasn’t suggesting that he would replace us, he was suggesting that life would replace us.

Suddenly this beautiful dream, this beautiful vision, this beautiful collective working towards love and liberation was exposed and in the aftermath I felt disposable.

How could that be what we had created?

What did I miss?

What did I keep missing?

At this point I had tried just about everything.

It can’t be that all of us are doing it wrong. And if we are all doing it wrong, then we must have a pretty good reason because nobody has figured it out.

There is no shortage of good people, throwing themselves into good causes, only to end up traversing the Ocean, just to collide into another shore. Only to end up heartbroken and reluctant to try again. Only to end up feeling manipulated and lied to.

There is no shortage of movements, and collaborations, and creative ideas, and creative people, desperately trying to figure out how to create love.

And it’s not working!

And I think that this fact deserves our attention. It deserves a moment. Nobody has the answer that the rest of us is waiting for - but we must find an answer, because there’s more on the line than ever before.

So I did the only reasonable thing left to do.

I tried to get to the bottom of it.

Over the course of the next several years I went searching for answers. I sought out and read books about community and neutralizing power dynamics, bullying and neuroscience. I sought out podcasts on cults and coercive control. I read books on spiritual abuse, on Complex PTSD, on hierarchies of power and how they have roots in patriarchal ways of doing things. I sought out insights to help me navigate my own attachment trauma, YouTube channels to help me understand the complexities of toxic shame, and emotional neglect. I learned about the long-term effects of abuse and the subtle nuances of codependence.

But I didn't stop there, because something still felt missing.

So I sought out people who could speak to and normalize the need to be a human among humans. I learned about co-regulation, dysfunctional family dynamics, and how traumatized families adapt to survive. I learned about scapegoating in family systems and realized it was no different than scapegoating in societies. I learned about, and embraced my own neurodivergence, and I grieved how viscerally I had become accustomed to rebellion as a default way to be.

I learned that relationships are actually meant to be places where we get our needs met!

We are not meant to simply exist in imaginary gardens with imaginary walls that keep us isolated and removed from other people. We are not meant to shrink ourselves into group containers that systematically teach us to abandon everything that makes us unique, everything that brings us to life!

I did all of this while navigating an injury alongside some frightening health issues. So throughout this time I was forced to confront; what becomes of my worth when I'm not in a position to serve anyone? Who am I when I’m not brilliant or powerful or productive? Who am I when all of that falls away? What becomes of my faith when there's no proof in sight?

I sat with the fear that I wouldn’t be able to play drums again. I sat with the thought that my journey had ended. I leaned into the love in my life, I leaned on the love of my life, and I saw that it was possible to be helped without being hurt.

Through it all, I kept coming face to face with my shame. I kept coming face to face with the lies that have held me back. I kept coming back to all the ways I have been taught to dilute myself. All the ways I have been taught to smile agreeably on the surface while quietly orchestrating my spectacular rebellion behind closed doors.

And in the midst of all the chaos, in ways that were not straightforward or comfortable or calm; I kept finding my way back.

First came the birds, breaking the silence with their songs. The ice began to melt, and the evidence of life slowly returned. The thaw was breaking and with each day I simply decided to place one foot in front of the other. On days when I physically, and literally, couldn’t do even that? I simply decided to be with my pain.

I let my heart guide me, I let my feelings matter. I sought out help that actually helped me. I started to heal. It has taken a while. I have a way still to go, but I am on my way. Upheld by a power that needs no choosing, and a love that won't be shamed.

Throughout this time, I kept returning to my stories. I was examining them, writing with them, contextualizing them.

It is only shame that would have me keep them close. That would have me keep them secret.

And in exchange I could spend more years still… isolated and alone. Fighting to prove my worth, working to earn my light.

But love has more in store for me.

And those dreams now reside, on the other side of confronting the love that made me.

The Call To Rise

“Are you full, or are you a fool?”

I hated when he asked me that.

And he asked me that often.

I was a picky eater trying to communicate that I had eaten my fill.

He knew what I meant, but he asked me the question anyways.

When I was really young, I’d reply happily, singingly even, “No Daddy! I’m not a fool, I’m full!” F-U-L-L not F-O-O-L!”

As I grew older I grumbled and groaned.

Sometimes my response would grant me safe passage from the table. And other times, my response would fall on deaf ears.

Sometimes I’d be left at the table, all by myself, for hours on end.

Waiting.

There’s one time in particular where I didn’t finish my lunch and my happy song didn’t unlock the imaginary door that prevented this meal from being a vehicle to punish me. I hadn’t finished my food, and this time I was going to have to wait.

Finish your plate, or you can't leave the table.

The hours passed by.

I was probably singing. Or playing with the food on my plate. I was probably bored. It felt like torture.

But I knew better than to try to leave the table.

The threat of violence always loomed.

Eventually, the sun left the sky and darkness filled the room. I had been there all day. I didn't even bother to turn the light on.

I heard the door unlock. My Mom was home from work. I ran to the door pleading to be set free. Pleading that she open the imaginary door that my Dad had closed when he left me at the table, hours beforehand.

Maybe he forgot I was there?

It didn’t matter, she agreed I could leave. She was home and for some reason that fact alone meant my debt had been paid. I had not finished my meal, but I could now leave the table.

I did so with relief. And also dread.

There were more meals yet to come. And more hours yet to spend waiting.

I have a complicated relationship with my Father.

Not a dictator, but an authoritarian in his own way.

We aren't speaking at the moment. Not because he’s giving me the silent treatment, and not because I set out to give him the silent treatment. Not exactly anyways.

There was no real plan. I just knew that our interactions were drowning me, they were making me feel bad about myself, and I had to put some space between us so I could start to make sense of it all.

Because when I pulled on the thread that the cult left exposed; when I followed it through the wilderness I was then left to face, I kept finding that little girl alone in a darkened room.

Doing as she was told.

How did I end up in a cult?

Well. There’s a lot that went into it. But in short, and for now, I will say that I think it came down to the love that I got and the love that it taught me to expect.

When love and abuse are granted interchangeably, it distorts our sense of what distinguishes one from the other.

I learned really young to defer to authority.

I learned really young that love hurts.

Those lessons have stayed with me. And through the years, they represented a familiarity that I kept seeking out. In some ways, being in a space where I’m fighting to be seen and respected and known, comes naturally. It doesn't raise alarm bells, because at one point it couldn’t.

A world where kindness is laced with contempt, is the world I was raised in.

It's the love that I've known.

But something in me knew there must be more to it. And something in me embarked to the sea with nothing but that faith. With each experience I got a little closer, to unveiling what I missed. I got a little closer to understanding what I’ve seen. To finding a love, that feels like love, to me.

As angry as I am, and to be clear I am angry, I know that my initial definitions of love were granted to me by parents who were loved in the same way. Who were loved in the same world. And I know that if I go back far enough in my father's history, I will find someone not unlike me at all.

An idealist who believed he could change the world. Until life sent him crashing into the shore.

His disillusionment set the context for my upbringing. His pain, his anger, his shame, became the burdens that I learned to carry. They formed the lessons he began to pass on.

I don't believe he meant to hurt me, I think he sought to protect me. To love me in his way.

But the love I was given mostly scared me. It left me injured, and isolated, and lonely. It left me convinced that I could never be good enough.

At a certain point, I couldn’t carry those burdens any longer. I couldn't withstand my reflection through his gaze. Because when he sees me, in his words, he sees someone who is useless, and lazy, and weak.

With distance I've discovered, I am none of those things.

In fact, I am brave, and determined, and uncompromising on the things that matter most.

When I look at the cult, at those leading and following; I suspect we have some things that unite us.

A sense of love that is rooted in loss. A sense of innocence that was corrected, or corrupted, or confined. A fear that if we truly show up with vulnerability, we will be shamed and scapegoated and harmed.

But that fear is what stands in our way.

We cannot leave the future to assumptions. We have to define what we are creating.

Who do we fight for?

There is no love in a movement that abandons anyone of us. If anybody, any demographic, any race, any gender identity, any ethnicity, any religion; is being scapegoated then we have not yet arrived at love.

What would love do?

It would be a mistake to view these stories as failures. And it would be a mistake, to view the people as lost.

I don't believe we are. I believe that we are on our way.

That seems like a ridiculous thing to believe at the moment.

There is less reason for hope than there ever was, and there is more need for healing than I could ever say. But there are also more people trying than ever before.

At times my disillusionment fiercely takes hold, and freezes me in place. The more I know, the more I know I can get wrong. You can be wise and careful and thoughtful, and still get things horribly wrong. It is tempting to allow this fact to keep me from ever trying. Because if I’m not trying, I’m not making mistakes.

But the forces that face us aren’t afraid to make mistakes. They aren’t afraid to make messes. Their boldness is unconcerned with being right or worthy. They are simply living in accordance with values they refuse to question. And those values form the culture that has raised us. We will forget ourselves. How could we not? But in the right company, we will also remember.

What would love do?

When I look back on my stories, I see what love has done. What else could you call it? To show up so relentlessly with so much against us. The evidence of our effort is a miracle in itself.

While my weariness has ebbed and flowed, my commitment has never wavered. It is a commitment I saw echoed by the Souls I met along the way.

There are no guarantees from this point forth. But I find solace in the knowing that we are still here. And all those people I met? The ones who marched and organized, who theorized and created, who disrupted and provoked, who meditated and built altars that held dreams for a better world? They’re all out there, too.

Each time I retreat back into the ocean, I do so with more wisdom than before.

My gifts are a piece of a much bigger picture. My contributions are but a drop in an infinite sea. And that is not to trivialize who I am or what I bring, but to contextualize how much bigger love must be!

And that fact becomes known through the stories that we share, the shame we release, and the secrets we refuse to keep.

So yes. I am weary. And more often than not, I am afraid. I do not need to account for everything we find ourselves now facing, if you have come this far, you know as well as I do.

But I know too much to bet against us. I've seen too much to count us out.

There will be times yet when we feel like a wave. Where our best intentions, are flung wildly at the shore. Where we crash unceremoniously with so little to show for our time spent at sea.

But there will also be times, where we make the space to convene, and in our shared wisdom, find the heart to recall:

There are many ways to reach the shore.

Times where we pause the race and the rush, to rebuild and repair, to review and renew.

Times where we find each other, and through what we build find ourselves; strong enough to rise, long enough… to rain.