In our last episode, I announced the launch of my GoFundMe. The first few days of the fundraiser were quite exciting. About 70 people donated, raising around $5000. But then the activity tapered off. Of course, my anxiety loved this. My entire plan, Evergreen State College, Olympia, Squirrel dreams, unraveled before my anxious eyes.
So naturally I talked to Squirrel about it:
If my anxiety (or Worry Fox) were writing this letter, it would tell you in great detail how this isn’t going to work. There would be PowerPoints, downward-trending graphs, New Yorker think pieces.
The truth is that I’m trying to do a hard thing entirely by myself, which is very on-brand for me. And the truth is that despite my best efforts people are breaking through my walls to come help me.
One hundred and six people have donated. We’re hovering at $6000. Friends are introducing me to Olympia people. I have a couple leads on housing. And I can’t walk on my island without someone wishing me well (news travels fast here).
The truth is that things are shifting. I’ve raised enough to move to Olympia.
If I can raise more I can commit to full-time studies at Evergreen. I can buy a new camera for Squirrel. I can hire the designer and illustrators I have on standby to make Squirrel merch. I can replace the Standard Rainbow chromatic response vehicle (236,000 miles…)
If you’d like to help push things along, please share the GoFundMe with a friend. Or share it in one of your circles. Or share it with Oprah.
That Time My Heart Felt Just Like Overflowing
And now, an essay on my first experience with an empathogen, a guided encounter which occurred this spring (see the previous episode for context).
When the medicine comes on, I sink into my body with this new feeling. The feeling is Home.
Home is new to me. With Home, I belong. Home feels like a comfort in my whole body. Home feels like quiet (Where is the fear? The aches and pains?) Home feels like an irresistible smile on my face, like closed eyes, like warm hands on my belly.
For the first time in my life I am truly and fully home. Never in my life have I felt this good. And what’s more, I am not alone.
There is a person here, a loving presence, who feeds me apple slices and holds my body, and generally takes care of everything.
The medicine I will call Heart. The healer I will call Tender.
I am in a lovely little room. I am lying on a mattress that is heated, nest-like. A woodstove ticks and glows. Sweet music pours from a speaker by the altar.
And for hours my story pours out of my face. I tell Tender everything. I tell her how scared I was as a child, how I wanted my mommy and daddy, how they were there and they weren’t. I tell in the simple language of a child, and my body grieves like a baby, in the fetal position, while Tender holds me. Tears roll down my face in hot trails.
And then I take my grieving body, my inner child, and Tender down the family tree to the stories of my lineage:
The grandfather who went to hell three times, three wars, and left some essential and loving part of him on the beaches of Iwo Jima and a frozen lake in North Korea.
General Orders No. 37 - February 10, 1951
The President of the United States of America…takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Sergeant First Class Dale E. Wagoner…during the period 26 November 1950 to 5 December 1950…[Sergeant Wagoner] volunteered to remain and care for over sixty wounded men…no guards stationed for protection…he followed the unprotected convoy on foot through withering enemy fire…On several occasions, he carried wounded men upon his back…
And three months after my grandfather nearly froze to death at the Chosin Reservoir, his son (my father) was born. The baby boy having no idea that his dad was a kind of shade, a walking ghost, masquerading as a fifties dad, smiling dutifully for the Polaroids.
How my other grandfather, my namesake, brought a love of music and people to my lineage. And in 1967, he drove his car into a concrete wall, escaping whatever private pain he was carrying, and abandoning my 15-year-old mother and the rest of her (my) family.
How his wife, my sweet grandmother, was never hugged as a child. How she never remarried after her husband died, single for the next 55 years.
How my other grandmother, a petite Japanese girl, was taken from her family and country as a war bride after World War II. How in her final solitary years, she had a locksmith install locks on every door in her house, so a key was required to pass from room to room. Like a prison.
How my childhood hero, my honorary uncle, walked into the woods two years ago and took his own life. Just one month before we were to reunite after 25 years of absence. And I arrived in his mountain town, one month late, and met his partner and his teenage daughter instead. And at the memorial gathering, I was too scared to stand up and share what it was like to love him.
Stories upon stories, and for hours they spill out.
And for the first time, my ancestors stand up from their photographs, and I walk with them, and I grieve with them, and I fall in love with them.
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A body without fear feels wonderful. I can see why people like to live.
I tell Tender, as she massages my face, how good I feel.
And she asks, What parts of your body are quiet?
And I realize, my goodness, that even in this state of bliss, parts of my body are hiding. But without fear, all I can feel is tenderness and compassion. And so, as I lie in front of Tender, I begin to tell her the story of my body.
How my chest and belly are terrified. How my butt and genitals don’t feel welcome. How my sexuality and gender feel ashamed. And the stories spill out, from all the places where shame and trauma reside in me. And for the first time I can feel tenderness for myself, for my body, for my terrifying entry into this world. For this painful journey.
It is never too late to start loving yourself.
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The thought bubbles up, You should take off your clothes. And I know this is necessary, precisely because I would never do this sober. It’s a strange thing in this medicine, that without fear, the body knows how to heal itself.
And also, in the medicine, my empathy is hyper-attuned, so I am concerned how Tender will take this.
So I ask her and she says, Of course.
And so I peel of layers like coats of armor, until I am seated before her, in my underwear.
And I think, Why is this normally such a big deal? I sit before her in my long body. My eyes gaze into her eyes (they are soft, safe). I sit before her the culmination of war, striving, suffering, kindness, violence. Of Japan, Ireland, England, Germany. Of love flawed, refracted, battered, enduring. Of Donoch, Mitsukoshi, Jennifer, Dale, Stephen.
She tells me, There’s so much suffering in your lineage and in your body.
And I say through hot tears, I know.
She tells me, You did what you had to to survive.
And it’s so obvious in hindsight but in this moment it is a dawning, a realization. Because I’m so caught up in the story, the countless painful moments strung together into a life I never wanted. I want to weave in the complexity, the intergenerational trauma, the need for justice,
-You did what you had to to survive-
the complex post-traumatic stress disorder,
-You did what you had to to survive-
the history,
-You did what you had to to survive-
the systems of violence,
You did what you had to to survive.
…
What else needs saying?
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And so I encounter all the ways I’ve felt small. And Tender and I meet my smallness with absolute gentleness, with unlimited compassion. And those small parts unfold, and open, so that I can hold them like tiny hands.
And Tender asks, How do you hold your body when you feel strong?
And I rise to my full length, and I ground my legs like a krav maga fighter, and I throw my arms open and upward. And in my underwear I look like kid Superman.
And Tender says, Next time we should bring a cape.
And I tell her what strength feels like. That I am strongest when I am in love. When I am channeling and serving love. When I am a precision instrument for love, a sword, a violin…a thrift store puppet.
When I am loving I am huge, I am undeniable, I am beautiful, I am awe-some. I will not be moved, intimidated, or diverted. I will love.
I will love.
“And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I'm talking about a strong, demanding love.”
From the speech “Where do we go from here?”, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
When your heart has butterflies inside it,
Then your heart is full of love.
When your heart feels just like overflowing,
Then your heart is full of love.
From “Then Your Heart is Full of Love,” Josie Carey Franz & Fred Rogers
UPDATE: A note about family stories
In this piece I describe family stories that I shared with a guide during a medicine session. I share these stories with readers in the spirit of describing the medicine session, and in the spirit of describing the mechanism of intergenerational trauma. It is my hope that sharing these stories will help others with their own healing journeys.
My family stories are based on information I’ve assembled from family and from public sources. I carry beliefs around my family that are unprovable. They’re conjecture or they’re based on second-hand accounts (aka family lore). Particularly, the circumstances surrounding the death of my maternal grandfather are unclear. Based on what I have heard about him, I believe his death was a death of despair. However, the only official description of his death that I have found, from a 1967 newspaper article, describes his death as the result of a single-car auto accident.
A message from Squirrel
Links
I’ve been sending around this wonderful talk on communal ways of living, from the Ezra Klein podcast.
Dr. Ha Vinh Tho, an advisor to the Bhutanese government, talks about the gross national happiness program in this interview from Upstream.
And finally, another goddamn Orcas sunset:
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