Monsters

One of my favorite old pastimes was watching psychological thrillers, serial killers documentaries and local hauntings. Teaching small children, I have been slowly integrating psychology into my every day life and theirs. Watching them grow from tiny, angry psychopaths into beautiful, regulated children is an amazing reward of my job. When I was at WKU, I studied child psychology many times in different classes and it really just taught me more about myself. It's interesting when you focus outward, sometime you also tend to heal your inward. However, when we focus on the good, we mustn't forget the bad, the evil, the subhuman.

I've been delving into the Monster series on Netflix. It started with Dahmer a few months back; I've watched the Ed Gein story and currently watching the Lyle and Erik Menendez story. It's wild to see that monsters are not always born, that they can be created by neglect, abuse, war or a mix of all of the above. They are created by a series of unfortunate, traumatic events that can be chronic. At times, it's one thing that is the catapult to murder, but then sometimes it's continuous, ominous happenings that change your DNA and make you into someone bad, someone who uses their magic for evil.

We all have magic. We can use it for good or for evil. Money can be used for good or evil, so can weapons, and so can words. We create our reality, our lives and we put our boundaries up to feel safe. We use magic every day- whether we are manipulating an outcome or whether we are using intentional kindness and radical honesty is up to us. So if we are magic, we are medicine, we are intuitive, we are pure animals and we are still children. So I ask today, are you using your magic for good...or for evil? Are you intentionally lying and deceiving yourself, your partner, your people.. or are you using your words to create, to learn, to grow? Are you leaning more towards the psychosis of your life or the magic that you have within you that is weird, strange and wonderful?

How much of society are you making into the standard human response? Are you listening to yourself and making your kinks feel subhuman? Are you depending on social norms to tell you who you are and what you like? I, myself, am not a huge fan of the word "social norms" because who is to say what's normal? Normal is a setting on a dryer, not a human being. There are things that we all do like bleed, sexual desires and triggers and have flesh and meat suits but we are inherently all same, but different. How much of our differences really truly matter? I am full of questions lately as I am stepping into new territory by stepping into my feminine. It's awkward, it feels unsafe, I feel strange, loud and obnoxious all while I feel peaceful and like I am coming home. Weird. It's all strange. The Cheshire Cat said it best.

To date or not to date?

I am stepping out of my 3's into my 4's this year. I turn the big FOUR OH in November. It's been a big year- I have been so focused on releasing all that doesn't serve the woman I am growing into. 2025 has been a really hard year so far. I've mourned a 1 year death anniversary of a close friend, another old friend's cancer battle ending, my grandmother and Niko passing, as well as some health issues and a love life that keeps attracting unhealthy relationship patterns. The year has not been kind, but the strangest thing has happened. I've been able to face it all head on and stay standing. I am convinced that the last three years of hell with losing partners, jobs, friendships, family matters and health concerns prepared me for the moment where I lost my biggest cheerleader and didn't fall apart completely. It's really been life affirming for me that I am divinely protected. The last three years of handling life without a partner, has put me in a position to think hard about my future and where I would like to see myself in a year or five.

As a woman, when you consider your future there are many paths to think about. Do you want to be a mother and how much time is left for that? Would you like to get married? Would it matter if they have been married and had kids already? Do you want someone with small kids, grown kids or without any at all? Would you be okay partnered up and never married because at this point in your age range, people are working on their first, maybe even second divorce? Once you ask all of your questions and further examine where you are on those paths, then you can figure out what you want. It takes time, courage, passion and desire in order to experience life fully and learn about your human experience. It's been many years since I had the desire and now that I do, I am not sure where to start. I am open about wanting to spend life with a partner and I have been for a few years. I have experienced the fast life, the depressed life, the angry life and now all I want is a soft life with a safe person for me.

I don't shy away from vulnerabilities anymore. I don't mind being open to life anymore, radically honest, courageous, willing to compromise, and also willing to get my heart broken. As George Adair said "everything you want is on the other side of fear." Essentially, you are dating to either marry/partner up or dating to break up. I don't like starting something "to see where it goes". Having intention is important to me when it comes to dating. It's a choice. You are choosing that person each hour, each day, each week, month, year, decade. I want someone to choose me, even when I make it hard to. I want to be someone's only choice, not an option until the next one comes along or until the last one comes back. That is really hard to find in the "talking culture" nowadays. I'm either dating or not, coupling up or not, planning or not, all in or nothing at all. I don't want crumbs- I'm not settling for a slice- I want the whole damn pie.

I was told recently that this smells like desperation. I had to ponder on that statement to see if that's what this was. I decided it wasn't desperation, but a broken pattern of hoping some man chooses me yet again instead of releasing that story. It's time to find and let someone love me that actually wants to love me, build with me, share a life with me. Let me assure you if I was desperate, I would take any of the many men that would like my attention and love. Just because I don't have a main hitter doesn't mean I don't have a line-up.

Toodles!

Your brain

BRAAAAAINS!!! We all have them, not all of us use them, but its main function is to keep us alive, not happy. Because of my own struggles with my own brain, I have often read books on the wonder of our brain- how it thinks, what chemicals do what, where the secret doorways are and how to make more neurons! Because of my fascination with the brain, it always made me wonder what makes us great humans, but also what can make us go tick tick BOOM! I've been fascinated with serial killers, and the dark abyss of the world for a long time on the account of that curiosity. 

As we have all seen in Inside Out 1 and 2, our brain has chemicals which do certain things, and those little assholes can sometimes get their information wrong. When they do, they wreak havoc. We think thoughts that are not like us, we get super tired or scared for no reason, and we tend to blow up at the smallest situations because our bodies think they're at war. Fun. It's so much fun being a human being. Wow! And then to be a man or a woman. Our hormones cycle every 28ish days. As a cisgender man, your cycle is daily- how great for you all. We get to feel 34 feelings before breakfast and you get to press reset at night. Just genius. Our creator definitely had a tremendous fun time making us. Anyhoo, back to the brain.

I started researching and looking into neuroscience because I was tired of people telling me to just think positive. And the terrible diagnoses like MDD, anxiety, C-PTSD and ADHD just felt like tainted labels which the capitalist patriarchy was charging me for. Or worse yet- comparing whatever I was going through only to claim "it wasn't that bad". I was sick of feeling like something was constantly wrong with me. With a little bit of reading, I realized my nervous system was doing its job, but its job was only to keep me “safe”- whatever that means. In the meantime, my nervous system was so dysregulated and dysfunctional, it would make me complete all 7F trauma responses in a safe situation. I constantly have to soothe and talk myself down from a ledge; it's exhausting but it's getting better. Things like plant medicine, meditation, sound healing, yoga, Reiki, work for me in the healing space, among many others things. It's what helps me get by on a daily basis. Call me your witchy godmother.

In September of 2021, I discovered Buti yoga because I was plummeting into a depressive state, and needed a way to get energy out of my body. A friend suggested it, I went to a class and fell in love. In March of 2022, I became a Buti yoga instructor. In 2023, going further on my yoga journey and developing my personal practice, I started my 500 hour yoga teacher training including meditation, breathwork and somatic therapy which I graduated from in March of 2024. My YTT broke me open. It put me face first with some very uncomfortable situations, while going through a series of unfortunate events and just wanting to belong to a community was kicking in the fawn response like crazy.

As of last month, I was attuned as a Reiki 1 Practitioner. I have used these modalities to keep myself from going insane when life decides to life. I am also using these healing modalities to regulate my nervous system, develop healthy relationships with myself and others, and sink into shadow work to heal some traumas- one day at a time. Wish me luck!