This hit home. As a transracial adoptee who was sent to an abusive boarding school by my white parents, this news about the 215 children found buried at a reform school in BC triggers a lot. I remember fighting and being spanked by my mom for not wanting to have my hair cut as a little girl. They’ll never understand. It’s not about the hair. They think by putting a roof over our head and dressing us up in their clothes and teaching us their ways instead…
Sometimes it’s too hard to hear my own thoughts. I can’t tell what society wants of me, what’s a trauma response, what’s brainwashing and conditioning, and what my authentic self wants and needs. When it gets too convoluted to make the next move, I look for patterns in nature…
Sometimes I lay in bed for days and days and days…exhausted, frozen, unable to make a decision and too untrusting of humans to reach for support. Tired from filling my water, rationing my food, emptying tanks, surviving on my own, physically and mentally, I’ve learned to look to the Earth for wisdom and answers…for patterns, and metaphors, and pep talks…
The last desperate plea of the inner child is the rebellious teenager “acting out” before being put inside a box - a box full of children in the trauma cycle of freeze, fight, flight mode. We all eventually go in…always broken, sometimes drunk, sometimes willingly. But the cycle breakers do…
The biggest failures of today’s healthcare is how society treats physical injury with more aptitude and diligence than mental and emotional injury. The same part of the brain lights up from a broken bone as a broken heart. The body, the mind, and the spirit are all one and need to be treated together as such. They are all tied together on a string…
I developed eyes in the back of my head that day as soon as my parents dropped me off. That was the day I would never be able to trust my parents again. That was the day I lost trust in humans. Boarding school was a melting pot of hundreds of traumatized children stirred together by unlicensed and brainwashed adults that used gaslighting, sexual humiliation, and cult-mentality tactics to perform “therapy.” We were told we had to break…
It is in nature that both the negative and positive are accepted equally and are part of the wholeness of the universe - both serving an equal purpose…neither one better than the other…but necessary for the fluidity of life. Every light paints a shadow. Every end is a new beginning.
I know gaslighting when I see it, hear it, and feel it. As the brown skinned scapegoat of my own white family, growing up in a narcissistic, racist, and oppressive system on a micro and macro level, I stand with those who bear the weight of the system’s toxicity. I stand with the ones who are fighting to breathe...
All my senses feel pulled into the trees, noticing all the little leaves gently swaying with every tiny gust of wind.It’s like they’re communicating with each other…with the forest.Nodding.Waving.Giggling.Breathing.I feel a yearning in my chest…a sort of homesickness, but not for a home behind walls, under a roof, and smothered by humans.It’s more like a calling to return to the primal self…
The first day I came through Portland, I met a group of Couchsurfers who opened their house up to any and all travelers - offering them a couch, a shower, a kitchen, and lifelong friends. It was the most fearless and open hearted way of life I had ever witnessed or experienced, and never had I felt more welcome in my life. A group of us ran around the city exploring, saying “yes” to everything…
It is the walk along the ledge of my mind when I’m faced with the question, If you only had a little time left with your life, what would you want to be doing with it? I’ve walked this ledge a lot. It’s an excruciating place to be. But it’s at this ledge - the same one I’d leap from to end all the pain - that the leap is made toward something radically new. It’s at this ledge that I’ve jumped off of in order to make bracelets...
This hit home. As a transracial adoptee who was sent to an abusive boarding school by my white parents, this news about the 215 children found buried at a reform school in BC triggers a lot. I remember fighting and being spanked by my mom for not wanting to have my hair cut as a little girl. They’ll never understand. It’s not about the hair. They think by putting a roof over our head and dressing us up in their clothes and teaching us their ways instead…
Sometimes it’s too hard to hear my own thoughts. I can’t tell what society wants of me, what’s a trauma response, what’s brainwashing and conditioning, and what my authentic self wants and needs. When it gets too convoluted to make the next move, I look for patterns in nature…
Sometimes I lay in bed for days and days and days…exhausted, frozen, unable to make a decision and too untrusting of humans to reach for support. Tired from filling my water, rationing my food, emptying tanks, surviving on my own, physically and mentally, I’ve learned to look to the Earth for wisdom and answers…for patterns, and metaphors, and pep talks…
The last desperate plea of the inner child is the rebellious teenager “acting out” before being put inside a box - a box full of children in the trauma cycle of freeze, fight, flight mode.
The biggest failures of today’s healthcare is how society treats physical injury with more aptitude and diligence than mental and emotional injury. The same part of the brain lights up from a broken bone as a broken heart. The body, the mind, and the spirit are all one and need to be treated together as such. They are all tied together on a string…
I developed eyes in the back of my head that day as soon as my parents dropped me off. That was the day I would never be able to trust my parents again. That was the day I lost trust in humans. Boarding school was a melting pot of hundreds of traumatized children stirred together by unlicensed and brainwashed adults that used gaslighting, sexual humiliation, and cult-mentality tactics to perform “therapy.” We were told we had to break…
It is in nature that both the negative and positive are accepted equally and are part of the wholeness of the universe - both serving an equal purpose…neither one better than the other…but necessary for the fluidity of life. Every light paints a shadow. Every end is a new beginning.
I know gaslighting when I see it, hear it, and feel it. As the brown skinned scapegoat of my own white family, growing up in a narcissistic, racist, and oppressive system on a micro and macro level, I stand with those who bear the weight of the system’s toxicity. I stand with the ones who are fighting to breathe...
All my senses feel pulled into the trees, noticing all the little leaves gently swaying with every tiny gust of wind. It’s like they’re communicating with each other…with the forest. Nodding. Waving. Giggling. Breathing. I feel a yearning in my chest…a sort of homesickness, but not for a home behind walls, under a roof, and smothered by humans. It’s more like a calling to return to the primal self…
There’s this dark forest that I didn’t realize I was in. I didn’t know there was anything else. I’ve been in it my whole life. But I always felt so...
The first day I came through Portland, I met a group of Couchsurfers who opened their house up to any and all travelers - offering them a couch, a shower, a kitchen, and lifelong friends. It was the most fearless and open hearted way of life I had ever witnessed or experienced, and never had I felt more welcome in my life. A group of us ran around the city exploring, saying “yes” to everything…
It is the walk along the ledge of my mind when I’m faced with the question, If you only had a little time left with your life, what would you want to be doing with it? I’ve walked this ledge a lot. It’s an excruciating place to be. But it’s at this ledge - the same one I’d leap from to end all the pain - that the leap is made toward something radically new. It’s at this ledge that I’ve jumped off of in order to make bracelets...
