It’s time. I stopped myself as I was typing out “I’m ready,” because the truth is I’ve been ready to start using my voice for a quite some time now. I’ve been longing to speak my truth, the truth, because I know that’s what I’m here to do. To be a voice for my people. But every time I attempt to speak, write, or express myself through the art of stringing together words, I experience overwhelm, and then shutdown.
It’s as if there’s so much wanting to be spoken that the words all rush forward too fast and then I feel pressured to organize them in a purposeful way, with a beginning, middle and end, or at least with an arc that eventually culminates to a point, a lesson, or a takeaway of some sort. Nothing irks me more than meaningless drivel! Excessive noise in all its forms gets to me. In order to avoid such incoherence, I end up falling into a self-created trap of trying to plan and control everything passing through me, instead of allowing what wants to be expressed to just be. Inevitably, all the overthinking leads to freeze, shutdown, collapse, paralysis and sometimes meltdowns.
Funny, as I write this I realize this is one of the common themes and patterns I often get stuck in. It seems I’m always trying to use neurotypical systems of planning ahead, outlining, preparing, and using my head to think things through, as opposed to remaining present and trusting the process of allowing myself to speak from the heart. There is some sort of dissonance that sits here with me in this creative space – a lack of self-trust, maybe? A fear of failure? A penchant for perfectionism? Tick, tick, tick – that all checks out.
Perhaps the answer is to simply show up and allow whatever’s passing through to be spoken. To not judge, manipulate or overthink. To trust, practice, and allow myself creative exploration without the pressure of delivering a refined or finished product. I do intend to publish a memoir someday, I sense it would serve me well to create a daily commitment of showing up in service to whatever is passing through. That seems to be where the magic happens for me – when I relinquish control and trust intuition to lead the way. I had to learn how to do this with dance, and now it seems the same lesson applies for this form of creative expression as well… so here goes!
The story I sat down to write today has been moving through me for 2 days now. The language started coming together before I even understood the meaning or the message. The words were starting to speak themselves into existence, to string themselves together, before I could even grasp what was wanting to be expressed and brought to life through my voice. And then, like magic, the events playing out within these last 48 hours allowed for pieces to click together, and suddenly the big picture I’m meant to share with you has became clear.
We must start at the beginning, on Thursday night, when I finally broke and fell to my knees, begging, truly begging and praying, for mercy. It seems cliché to start the story this way, and yet it’s also the perfect homage to my memoir mentor, Miss Lizzie G. I’m still unsure if mercy is the right word to use here, because it insinuates punishment, judgement, or consequence for wrongdoing, and I don’t get the sense that’s what’s happening here. That said, if there’s anything I know for sure at this point in the game, it’s that I know nothing at all; I have been humbled by life far too many times to claim I have all the answers. I do believe this level of struggle is meant for me. There are lessons here inviting growth, no doubt. But for wrongdoing? I don’t know. I’ll let you be the judge.
I have to provide context here without beating around the bush, so let’s get straight into it. 3 years ago, in March of 2023, I started vibrating. Yep, you read that correctly – vibrating. From head to toe. I woke up in the middle of the night during a full moon and there was no doubt in my mind that everything suddenly felt… buzzy? I’ve experienced intensity during full moons before and went back to sleep without reading too much into it, but when I awoke it was hard not to notice the sensitivity was still there. More than just a physical sensation on the outside, there was a humming in the air, my already existing tinnitus (which similarly started out of the blue in 2020) amplified to a new, highly distracting level of intensity. I was living in a “conscious community” where people had all sorts of stories and beliefs to offer as explanation, mostly along the lines of Kundalini rising or a spiritual activation of some sort. I tend towards more grounded approaches and developed my own theory that I had been dissociated from my body my whole life and perhaps all the work I had been doing allowed me to drop back in and realize that maybe this is just how my being has always shown up in the world and I wasn’t ‘tuned in’ to it until now? I still really don’t know.
What I do know is that the amplification has been rising over time, and now, 3 years later, the sensitivity has become truly unbearable… to the point of not being able to leave my home. Which is especially challenging when one doesn’t have a home. I’ve been nomadic for almost 8 years now. Since 2024 I have been actively seeking to land somewhere safe – ideally within a community where I have space of my own and access to human connection. Instead, I keep finding myself in isolation because everywhere I find myself is surrounded by TOO MUCHness. Too many projections, feelings, sounds; too much energy, judgement, criticism and misunderstanding. I needed boundaries, walls, containment… being alone and away from everything was the only way to gain a sense of security and control over my environment. And yet, despite secluding myself, I still wasn’t safe. Noise found me everywhere. I left the last place, Costa Rica (forever ingrained in my mind as the land of lurid lawnmowers), and returned to the location I felt most aligned with over the last many years of searching. Bali, Indonesia.
My plan seemed so simple. I landed at the end of December determined to find something very basic, deep in the jungle, away from everything. I liked the idea of being able to jump on my scooter and rejoin civilization when my battery was fully charged up, ensuring strong energetic boundaries to protect me from overstimulation. My friends, I was so very wrong. It was not at all simple. I have spent the last 3 weeks traveling across this entire island, to EIGHT different accommodations in pursuit of peace. I have finally landed somewhere that feels promising, and I’ll remain here until my Vipassana (10-day silent meditation retreat) on February 18th, but there is still so much uncertainty in the air.
More tomorrow.