Hi! This is personal and therapeutic writing – heart on my sleeve, because that is how I operate.
Here, you will find tools to try, insights to reflect on, and hopefully some relatable content about moments of joy and success, as well as spectacularly falling flat on my face.
Carpe the diem and grab the bull by the horns, because as Jesse Reyez says “If my days are almost done and I’m the one going, I’ll be alright. (…) Nobody’s gonna say I didn’t give it all. Tiptoeing on the cliffs I think it’s worth the fall. If I get there and my tank’s on E, then I’ll be okay.
Destination’s like it’s about the journey anyway. Nobody’s gonna say I didn’t give it all.”
I hope that by reading this, you may find a sense of kinship or love, feel less alone, and see how someone else has hiked this terrain – someone who also helps others through their stuff and who studies the trails from all angles she can.
Maybe you like to work alone, maybe you are currently in some kind of therapy or have been in the past, maybe that kind of work is not accessible to you for any reason (there are many! Money, time, energy, cultural or familial considerations…), or maybe you’re just starting to think about what to do with the human experience. All are welcome.
If anything sits in a yucky way, please feel free to leave a comment or to scroll past. I know this messaging is not for everyone. I am situated in a very specific time and place and have no claim to having all the answers. We’re like the blind people with the elephant and we all have access to fragments of reality that can sound outrageous or unhelpful to others.
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This is dedicated to my dad, “the Great Cru”, as he was known in his interpreting circles and now in my heart. Before he died, I asked him why and how he was able to speak so confidently in any space – diplomatic, tv, radio, and so many more – despite high stakes such as an impending war or new rulings about big topics like cybersecurity or population-wide access to resources.
I shared my own anxieties about my voice being heard. They seemed so alien to him.
With not even an ounce of hesitation in his being, he said that he spoke the truth the best he could, with a high level of effort and lifelong-cultivated skill, and that he was there to do an important job. He knew this in his heart of hearts, and so he spoke freely.
My dad was an intense, beautiful, talented, and at times deeply flawed person. He was unflinchingly himself. Sometimes, that meant achieving at a level others could never dream of. Sometimes that meant stepping in it in equally remarkable ways. He could be so loving, so angry, so dedicated to his family, and so absent… A real icon of human idiosyncrasies and complexity.
For better and for worse, I am my father’s daughter.
I vow to work my hardest in this medium, in my work on myself as a person, in my work as a clinician. This channel is in your honor, dad, because it is spoken with honesty, with effort, and with everything that I am. It’s the best that I have to offer and all I can control in this universe is that I do my best.
Welcome.
