i careened through the fall into winter under my own mounting pressure - dealing with the upheavals of moving, the disruption of my finances, healthcare and support systems, the layers of disquiet/unease with my employment, income and my difficulty shifting them meaningfully, the passing of my last living grandparent, homesickness for places known and unknown, my gifts changing again...

the end of the year beat my ass and told me to stay down, not because i had lost, but because there are some things that cannot be outrun. in the months before i moved, even before i knew where i was going, all my readings told me that the change was going to be as difficult and revealing a transition as going home was, just in different ways. saturn in pisces (my 12th house) was not letting me go without some final lessons. typical. gotta stir it up to clean it up.

so i tried to listen (again), decided that the Journey i was building for an Equinox practice session was not going to happen because the idea was good but the spirit behind it was urgency not care, and did my best to not shame myself for not being able to build a full curriculum and multimedia experience in three months with no help (hah!).
(i did try to make a shorter test version, but the burnout is b u r n i n g, you hear me?)

that said, there has to be a middle ground between
‘ya boi needs about five years of decompression from e v e r y t h i n g’
and
‘in order to get myself to a literal/physical/mental/emotional place where i can decompress, i still have work to do’.

that’s what i’ve been focusing on - the hand i’ve been dealt.

--

as a child, i never imagined a life for myself as an adult - who i might be, what i might do, what joys and adventures i’d want to pursue - because by the time i was self-aware enough to think about those kinds of things, i was too busy attending to others, meeting their expectations (or pretending to), and protecting a self i didn’t know very well and wasn’t taught how to prioritize anyway.

to be honest, it’s only since the epilepsy onset that i have begun to see myself clearly, and i think that others have, too, if only because i no longer seem implacable and self-possessed the way i used to, and cannot mask anymore. not reliably, and not for long. it filters people out quickly when they cannot have you the way they want you, and shows you what’s real when you’re not constructing and curating contexts for relationships to inhabit.

about twice a year, i think about shutting down my Patreon because i feel like im wasting their time, and i keep reminding myself that they wouldn’t be there if they didn’t want to be, just like you. im consistently grateful for the people in my life who offer me grace compassion understanding for what it means to create, even (and perhaps especially) when the creation is a self, a life, in a society that does not want you to have one, whether it will admit it or not.

gotta (re)start somewhere. so.

i turned 36 last month. it’s a year 1 for me personally, and im a life path 1, too. this feels something like Seph 3.0, you feel me? especially because 28-33 is a haze.

when i think about 18yo Seph, how they were so devastated (i only realized recently that’s what they were because i understood that’s what i am) that they couldn’t understand the world of possibilities in their hands, i feel so sad for them. they didn’t know, couldn’t know, how much they innately mattered, just for existing. that the universe makes no accidents. that what they thought, felt, desired, needed, sought were all real and reasonable things, that they didn’t have to make choices that were only for other people - they could choose for themself, and it could still be beautiful and good.

36yo Seph isn’t as strong, agile, quick, or calm (numb) as 18yo Seph. they’re not even as functionally independent. but they have dreams now, ones that comfort them, mesmerize them, take them places they never thought could be, and even though they might share them with others, they know now they don’t have to until or unless they want to. this Seph belongs to themself first.

this unmasking may cause more loss, but there is so much to be found.

—

i have a couple applications to finish, but in the next few weeks, i’ll write about what it feels like to finally figure out what’s next not for survival, but for love. im looking forward to posting more poems, freewrites, and fiction as i start to improve :)

also, i’ll be doing a 30/30 in april (writing daily for Nat’l Poetry Month, but not strictly poetry bc i’m me lol). if you would like to join me and swap prompts, co-write, share gems, let me know. it’s good to build practices together.

happy spring, and stay brave,
seph

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Or, if it does,
if it must,
let it be the ache
of knowing one
becomes.

That each chasm
fills,
that at the end,
I will be
more
than we’ve ever
been.

i’ve been doing what i can to make a post for the new year, which has only emphasized my growing conviction that the new year is not a day, or even a series of days - it’s a season. a constant emergence full of fits and starts, rending and relief.

i have been so many selves since i began this post in the depths of December. hah! passed through so many portals of theory and understanding. something about the approach of my 36th birthday, a first profection year, and the impending pressure of Saturn and Neptune all over my face and in my bones has had me restless with a desire to shed as many self-sustained lies as possible. of course, i am always harsher than is necessary.

maybe we will cross paths here, or join each other.

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it’s the last week of february, and a couple of ‘new years’ have passed already:

the winter solstice
the gregorian calendar new year
the lunar new year
my birthday…

january also marked a year of living in a new space in a new city in a whole new part of the country. the strengths and limits of my choice have mostly revealed themselves, and i can see better why i’ve had the difficulties that i’ve had.
where am i in the pattern.

just like when i was home on st. croix, there are things only certain situations can show you. fear and doubt have shown themselves to be formidable opponents, not just in some interpersonal relationships, but also, simply within myself.

when you embark on a choice, a challenge, a change, you don’t get to choose what it will reveal to you, you only get to choose how you will/not show up to it. i have been focused on showing up to my new year milestones with as much integrity as i can in order to free myself of illusions that i have placed around myself for protection, and that have been placed around me in projection. i’m determined to self-sabotage less, or at least own what is mine and discard what is not.

there is so much that is not mine that i have still been carrying.

all i want is the truth. and clarity.

peace.

//

i am impatient with risk. can weather difficulty for far too long. but my tolerance for risk is shot. physically, chemically, emotionally.

i lived too long in a vat of fear, never knowing when it was safe to surface, and now i choke on air. am learning to breathe again, in regular and irregular rhythms. to tolerate change. to let things like love and trust permeate my surfaces, and to also let them take root inside me. to allow what i am to reach for what wants me and let myself be held.

there’s so much un/learning to do.

i wanted to be a different presence this winter. grounded, resourced, aware. maybe i was that. no one is the same all the time, though, too. i am only myself, the selves i have been and will be. still, patience has taken its time finding me, settling next to me with a gentle hand on my shoulder, and we have begun.

//

it is time to post. this whole post has been written out of order, whenever i can find myself able to focus on what might be worth committing to…you. since losing my memory, i’ve become so conscious of what i add back to it. what won’t leave. what never left.

mostly, it reminds me that i have a choice.

i swing between exhilaration/exhaustion and terror, but the lull of calm is becoming more familiar. last weekend, i even thought to myself ‘what if the worst thing doesn’t happen?’

who am i when i enjoy being myself?

//

many times, when i take a moment to breathe - because i stop to take breaks on purpose now - i envision a very minimalist, but steep, slope and a person steadily working their way up. it comes to me, a little more progress each time, and i sit with them as they climb.

i think it’s me, on my yearly upward Underworld trek, and watching myself feels like finally recognizing both what i need (in the depths), and the effort i put in (in the giving/descending and restoring/ascending).

//

late last december, it occurred to me - what if I am my own Great Thing? what if the life i cultivate is one that echoes out in color and care, in truth? can i create a life that loves me rather than drains me? i don’t know, but what I'm learning is that every choice leads to a new choice and it's okay to change.

around this time of year, at the edge of my saturn return, my life had started crumbling from the inside out. repeated heartbreaks had left me ragged and aching, but as the days got shorter, i met a beautiful human - a musician, poet, educator. a person made of art, with melancholy and earnestness that mirrored my own.

through the late fall, i would finish some combination of my three jobs and take the Jersey Transit to see her, a 45-minute ride that never passed quickly enough. i usually think of myself at some intersection of greyace and demisexual, which means it’s rare that i experience attraction to people, but the first time i saw her broke open a whole new spectrum of colors in me…once, she wrote ‘you are the softest part of black’, and i was happy to be where i was because how long had it been since someone had seen me like that? we made poetry and played, danced, took care of each other, made music, and laughed so much. i did not feel shame, did not have to feel less or be less, could be the one learning for once.

it ended. the why is sad, and the aftermath is messy. but we’re both better now, mA.

the thing on my mind tonight (it’s 3am) is what it means to be a custodian of the love the Universe has for a person.

our separation was abrupt and i had to watch them make choices that i knew would hurt them. sometimes we are our own biggest enemies. i remember that winter in an almost-greyscale, on autopilot without an escape to the warmth of house parties and living room studios, wrapped in a fog of my grief. i had not softened - the large pieces of paper from my walls show defiance, resentment, power with no purpose.

when i tried to take some of that raw, grief-fueled energy and put it toward things, use it…stained…everything. and yet, i could not bring myself to smother it, to pretend that i hadn’t become what i had, or learned what i knew. changed. i couldn’t bring myself to renounce the loving.

i decided to tell myself a different story:

there is love in the Universe for all of us. some of us are bearers of the love for others, and that love exists whether they interact with it or not. that bearing is real. the holding, growing, changing, protecting, even releasing, of that love, is real, whether they can appreciate it or not.

my love is inherently valuable.

a much different hue.

stay brave,
seph

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Growing up, I had a strange relationship to class, to my class, economically and socially, as it expressed itself in all these obvious and subtle ways. I experienced myself in this shifting, in between space as it changed over time, as I changed over time.

One thing that was always relatively constant once I could make choices for myself was aiming for a middle path, choosing to invest in myself and my life in more, mm, modest, ways. I felt that was what I deserved, and also in the world I lived in, was a more responsible way to be.

Looking back over the past 10 years, there were maybe 2.5 when I treated myself well, was able to do so. Granted, I was working a ft job and 2 side hustles, but I had time to spend with friends, invest in my hobbies, could write and make art, even traveled once to see a friend. I had a space that was my own and was growing and learning my spiritual practice, too. It was a good time for my inner life and learning about myself.

In the time since, my life has crumbled.

I don’t say that with sadness or to be consoled, it’s a result of many things – namely not understanding my own power and deservingness of space, care, respect, support, and failing to refuse to tolerate places and people who were not giving them. My low bar for what I could have in my life and my own hand in that creation led to the loss of what I did have.

Currently, I’m at a kind of ground zero – burnt out, no living space of my own, and in the process of rebuilding my health, Self, and eventually, my finances and the structure of practice as an Educator and Healer.

It’s a daily surrendering, remembering that I am the practice, the priority, offering myself grace when I don’t meet the standards I used to have – it just means the standards need to change as I do. As I learn what this new life will be, can be.

Lately, I’ve been looking at living spaces I never would have imagined for myself before, not just to admire, but as real possibilities. Lofts, houses, high ceilings and big windows, lots of space for comfort and making and gathering. A home. I deserve that. Everyone deserves that.

Something I have to consistently affirm for myself is that I am a part of the communities I serve and love. We all get to dream and manifest. No one should have to play small to meet some imaginary un-standard.

I will have the home I desire. It will be full of light and love. It will be mine. 🌑

thank you for reading! please tap the heart if this resonated with you - it helps boost my work in the ecosystem. take care <3

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I have a very specific memory of my maternal Abuela insisting that I refer to her as Brown, not Black. I don’t know if that was contextual, or how she would have referred to me, but I do know that our family on my mother’s side is multiracial, multiethnic, and multicutural over at least 6 generations, 4 continents, and hella islands, and that we all consider each other family, as much as the outside world might try to question it.

People used to ask if my mom, the darkest of her first 5 siblings, was a part of the family, and sometimes people (even Black people) ask me if I’m fully/Black because of my appearance or behavior, and my ability to code switch. My mom now has 12 siblings, some of whom are Native American. The amerindian group that we are descended from in Guyana is ‘unlisted’. Anyone who grew up in the in between spaces knows what it means to learn to shapeshift, and also to eventually have to learn where your core is. That’s been an important part of learning my craft – both education and healing. Understanding that these are things that can belong to me, that I can belong to. Just because they/we were taken doesn’t mean they/we have to remain lost. We can find each other.

Blackness and Indigeneity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are often intertwined in complicated, and what can be, beautiful ways. An important aspect of freedom and reclamation for Native and Black peoples is the understanding that we have so much more in common, so much more possibility together than apart, because we’re already here. May our companionship strengthen our craft. May we create freedom together.

Happy Indigenous People’s Day!

Stay Brave and Bright,
Seph 💛✊🏿

thank you for reading! please tap the heart if this resonates with you - it helps boost my work in the ecosystem. take care <3

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Now Playing (on repeat): Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party x Hayley Williams

this moon falls in my first house (the house of Self, how we act, express, are perceived and received, the way we show up in the world). it’s ruled by my mars in capricorn in the 10th, calling up questions of purpose, creation, legacy and time. many of the aries and scorpio (mars and mercury are visiting) placements i know are feeling the pressure and heat, and i am wondering if the moon pulls at the magma in our veins the way it pulls at the tides of our hearts…the earth is hot and heavy with change…

Apotheosis (noun, Greek): the process of ascension, deification, glorification, exaltation. can apply to any creation, human or otherwise.

see also: god complex, egotheism, self-actualization

it’s ironic for an aquarius to be writing about god complexes because people always think we have them, but is it so unreasonable to desire freedom to become in a society that thrives on our collective self-doubt? if i ascend, anyone can ascend - that is the cosmology underpinning Bodhisattvas, Orisha, and many other deities, guides, Masters, across cultures. it’s why they are powerful and imperfect, with a multitude of expressions, incarnations, and variants…power is not always raw and roaring, sometimes it is subtle, gentle, patient, un/kind. it is a tool, as useful as the skill and intent of the hand heart mind that wields it.

is it not better to master ourselves rather than be mastered by others?

i wish substack allowed me more formatting options like color and alignments…

i read recently about a deeper/alternative view of the 6th house and virgo. it’s usually summed up as ‘work habits, health, home life, etc’, but in the context of this pisces/virgo axis and eclipse season we are in, consider:

if 2nd house/taurus is the curated comfort fixed earth, and 10th house/capricorn is constructive cardinal earth, 6th house/virgo offers us the diligence of mutable earth as it builds and becomes. it’s the refining that finds gems in the ore, and figures out what can be created. the shifting of states from raw to practical, without losing that sense of beauty, because is the earth not always beautiful even as it changes?

the best examples i can think of are the virgos (suns, moons, risings, mars, mercury) in my life who put such care into everything they touch, no matter how temporary, because the practice is worth it, will teach them something, will offer some goodness to others. i also think of craftspeople - musicians, actors, leaders - who we recognize for the ways they hone(d) their discipline over time, reinventing themselves and showing up faithfully, even as they struggle(d), often quietly (12th house/pisces, its opposite, rules secrets, shame, and things awaiting transmutation), with the weight of the effort of change.

last night, i went to a full moon circle with and it was so good to be in a space held by a kind, diligent, skilled practitioner who understands my desire to grow without being forced to bend by a false ceiling. they are constantly creating, reaching out and in, deepening their own practice in order to meet others when they show up, even though practitioners like us are often undervalued, underresourced, unwilling to resort to gimmicks, and increasingly vulnerable to technological and social algorithms. that same fortitude is what will allow us to be here and ready when the collective catches up, and we know that it will, because change is constant and so are we. it is good to be seen, truly, to know what it feels like to have that particular warmth offered and reflected back to me. we are all capable of this, with time and love.

how does one become brave enough to embrace the target that has always been on them?

how do you choose to be fully yourself when only being partly yourself has already left you in pieces?

how do you make sense of choosing danger when you’ve only just begun to learn safety?

we are safest when we are whole, even when we are not safe at all.

nothing is served by us being anything less than our fullest selves.

there is space for all of us if we are brave enough to claim it.

i. want. more.

i just have to create it.

just.

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thank you for reading! please tap the heart if this resonates with you - it helps boost my work in the ecosystem. take care <3

it's (finally) my season.

i've been waiting, hoping for this. knowing that everything comes in its time, that critical mass takes time to build. you don't need it all, just

enough.

conversations interactions silence with the right people. watching, listening. even when it suffocates, overwhelms.

--

i glitched this morning. didn't even realize it had happened. just kept pushing thru prayers. my father called out to my partner and they held me as i wandered the lost space, unaware of myself repeating verses, refusing offers for guidance, only knowing the necessity of completion.

--

i knew i wanted to write this blog 9 years ago, but it wasn't time. there were too many habits to break, lies to unlearn. there's a difference between wanting to do something and being able to do it, having the skill, the discipline.

i was watching so many people around me being careless with themselves and each other. shit, one of my main flaws is being careless with myself.

there were ways i didn't value myself that i didn't want to amplify out into the world to possibly be absorbed by others. my bitterness, rigidity, resentment, insecurity. that's not what i wanted to send out to anyone that found any comfort, pleasure, guidance, companionship in my company.

in my wandering, an idea that has been a supportive root for me has been in the vein of how meaning changes over time, and remembering that many things can be true at once

one of my favorite examples - in common conversation, we tend to use 'perfect' to indicate flawlessness or being ideal, but that is only its latest Middle English incarnation.

its earliest Latin and Old French uses were to indicate consummation, completion, readiness, accomplishment. remembering this keeps me collecting, diligent, fluid, and my standards high. the space between done and done well.

both are true.

thank you for reading! please tap the heart if this resonated with you - it helps boost my work in the ecosystem. take care <3

fights against and for.
fights within and without.
fights against others, and ourselves. for ourselves. for each other.
fights we are no longer willing to engage, and the ones we know we must.

the question is, how will we show up to it?

at the end of this, you’ll find the inspiration for this post, the cover art, and how it all ties together.

ps - if you read my post(s) on substack, pls ‘like’ them. it lets the algo know that people are interested/engaging with my work. having dozens of reads and 1-2 likes keeps my work in the shadows of the platform. thank you!

i was born for battle. even my chart, with all its mars, saturn, moon, and pluto, says so.

while my mother was pregnant with me, one of the first superstorms, Hurricane Hugo, hit our island. Hugo was far beyond a Category 5, causing billions of dollars in damage across the islands and southern states it hit, sitting over us for 18 hours, windburning every branch raw and ruining 95% of the structures on our island. there is much to be said about climate change, capitalism, empire, and how even when we are free, they must fall because their existence, the way they operate, poisons everything that connects us, but that is another post.

my mother, she went from being a 39-year-old Commissioner of Energy, newly married and newly pregnant, to the Public Information Officer for the VI’s Emergency Operations Center, her skills as a Master City Planner and activist making her particularly well-suited to the monumental task of triaging three devastated islands and their people. she supported tens of thousands of people in the aftermath, creating and managing systems and programs so efficiently and relentlessly that it was only when she finally gave her notice that she would be evacuating to florida to give birth to me that the Adjutant General properly understood that she was 8.5 months pregnant and had been around two months when the storm hit.

that day, she had been sitting in front of the glass doors in a lounge chair watching the wind, when my father came up behind her and turned her around to face the wall. as Mom tells it, she began to fuss at him, but suddenly, the roof began to peel off the house ‘like a can of kippers’, shattering the wall of glass she had just been facing, and sending her, my father, and the friends and tenants sheltering with them into the darkness of the basement for the rest of the storm.

that was 37 years ago this month, and though she’ll talk about it freely, it’s always just the facts - she doesn’t really recount how she felt, and i wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t fully remember. what i do know is that when i was a baby, i used to cry so hard i’d stop breathing, and in 2017, after IrMaria wrecked our house again, my mom’s heart stopped. at first, she couldn’t even feel it.

a concept that i re-learned about recently is the origin of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. when Maslow spent time with the Siksika (the Blackfoot Nation, also their lands and language) in the 1930s, he intended to learn about their ways of understanding and enacting social hierarchies, and found “astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction”. he observed that ‘self-actualization’, defined as ‘the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming’, was a common state within their community, rather than the exception. in Siksika, the closest word is niita’pitapi, meaning ‘someone who is completely developed, or who has arrived’. there are so many compelling examples of how this works in their culture, and i could go down a rabbit-hole, but i encourage you to read and integrate this information yourself.1

the contrast that is most relevant here is the difference between a culture that believes you must prove your worth, and one that knows that you have arrived to them inherently valuable. under conditions of proving, one is always likely to come up short, with moving goalposts, hidden rules, and a fixed game setting most up for failure, or at least a beast of a match.

when you have not just a team, but an entire stadium - hell, even a fandom - that holds faith in your skills, wisdom, and ability to contribute to the league, on or off the field, it offers a light in your most difficult individual and collective moments. (similarly, in Buddhism we hold that everyone and every situation has a Buddha-nature - there is something positive/true/valuable to be revealed if we are willing and able to do so).

in a society that feeds on our forgetting, it is of the utmost importance that we assert truth for ourselves and each other. the universe does not forget us - we are never destroyed - and so we cannot and should not destroy ourselves or each other, only the beliefs, practices, and systems that seek to do so.

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last week, i was rejected again for another job that i really wanted, that i thought i could both contribute to and learn from. same response as usual - ‘you’re great, but…’, and this past summer, as i’ve become more and more myself again, i keep coming back to - ‘why am i asking people to want me when they obviously don’t?’

it’s a question i live by all the time - call me aloof or antisocial (neither is true), but i’m not particularly interested in trying to get people to like me.

do i do my best to be a good person to be around? yes. do i contort to make people want me? i didn’t, until i did. do i want to keep being a shadow of myself? hell no. does being myself come with repercussions? …in many contexts, yes.

this past weekend, i crashed out hard, full of disappointment in my past, present, and future. a friend said it well - “once lines are established, they will be tested”. i’m experiencing challenges to some core issues regarding family and career, watching old wounds get activated and knowing that my work is to manage myself in order to manage the situations, and also let go of what’s not mine (including the outcomes). i cannot force anyone to anything, and i do not want to.

after the crash, i was on the floor trying to get my body right - breathing, praying, moving energy. when i crawled over to the window for air, i found a book borrowed from my mother, ‘Black Grief and Soul Therapy’ by Dr. Nicholas Cooper-Lewter. it’s a small volume, and Dr. Cooper-Lewter’s reviews from his students are mixed, but he’s well aware of it, addressing the often-polarizing nature of his presence before you technically even get to page one. so far, Dr. C-L presents as a very skilled, empathetic multi-hyphenate who has dedicated his life work to the excavation and transmutation of the immense wells of grief carried by those of us who are being mined for our minds, bodies, and spirits and compelled to pretend that we’re okay, or worse, have not even realized the immensity of what is and has been continuously taken from - and forced into/onto - us.

he calls his work as a counselor, educator, mentor, and advocate ‘soul therapy’ and distinguishes it from common methods of grief work in that it is not meant to solely cope with grief, but to continuously free ourselves from it, to release it, an especially necessary practice while living in societies that heap heartbreaks, from environmental to existential, on us daily. i had never seen that term before, but after spending august reading notes and archives about my work and presence in the world, i am remembering in a way that i haven’t in quite some time. things really do find you when you need them.

he had me from the Foreword, where he states:

“...discomfort often accompanies certain kinds of discovery. In general, the degree of this discomfort correlates directly to the amount of energy that has been invested in a certain worldview, belief, or configuration of power and privilege. If people have put a great deal of energy into holding things the way they have been, and have done so for a long time, then much energy is needed to move what has been stable; and often the mover or healer bears the brunt of people’s anger when they are made to confront challenge and change.

We who are soul therapists will always be tempted to dilute the bitter cup of challenge and change so that it is palatable to the community we love, but we can be encouraged in that an indigenous tradition is coming down to us from the most courageous of our early forebears: soul therapists who did not simply cope with the immensity of the grief among their people, but who helped the community to process and overcome the grief.”

i realized i’ve lived this before - seeing a behavior or pattern, communicating it, and being disregarded. then watching the avalanche and being expected to save others and myself. in the past, when i’ve come up short, i’ve blamed myself for the harm i and those around me experienced. this cycle of my life has had me hard at work on that pattern, disengaging when my effort and insight will not be honored, when my emotional safety is at risk, when the integrity of my effort and presence will be put into question. it is difficult to recalibrate under the forces of others’ displeasure, guilt, and expectations, but it becomes easier when i assert who and what i do answer to, and name what is/not in my control.

applying this skill to the grand scheme of my life is an epiphany that changes the hues and textures of my choices, and allows me so much more possibility and grace. it also frees me from the grief of responsibility for things that were never mine to begin with so that i can more fully take up what is. i’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book and writing about it, but so far, what i’ve taken from it, and the experience of finding it, is that i’m not alone and it’s not unreasonable to refuse settling for coping and surviving. it is part of our collective dream to build and live a life that allows me to create and connect freely, and share that freedom with others.

also, the Siksika/Blackfoot Nation tells me that i came here complete, that the Universe manifested me as i am on purpose, and i’m inclined to believe them.

i’ve spent almost 20 years in relentless training.

schooling, apprenticeships, loss, study, practice, service, injuries, joy, connection, work, exhaustion, sadness, insults, friendship, loneliness, insecurity, poverty, violence, love, love, love, love, love. i have been so many selves, and yet, somehow, i can feel them all coming together, remembering themselves, bound by purpose.

when the spiral slipped through my fingers on friday, i watched myself triage my heartbreak. saw my many selves take care of each other, allowing each other to coexist, and noting how much better i am able to understand what’s happening in/to my bodymind and why, what to do about it, what definitely not to do about it. wonder at being able to remember that it always passes. (it always passes. i am always okay.) gratitude for the people who have held and loved me in my fullness, even when i overflow, and are learning on this journey with me.

this month has started off swinging, and there are many things i don’t know, but i do know that im not going to let it happen to me. i’m showing up to it and myself as truthfully and conscientiously as i can, not hiding from myself or things i don’t want to know, because if they’re going to come for me, i may as well be ready. all this is just preparation, anyway.

i think balance doesn't always feel good or leave you feeling good, but it can help create the difference between resolve and resignation, and that’s where you win or lose.

the lightning has taken things from me, but it has also made space for me to compose a new symphony of systems and interactions. the training can be a joy if i let it be, because purposeful effort is effort well-spent.

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war is not just about fighting, it’s strategy. when to move and hold. to negotiate. to be silent.

the space between the breath and the exhale.

i do it easily, even reflexively, on behalf of others, but now i need to do it for myself, with just as much skill and care.

back in May, i made agreements with myself around mastery of my mind. not in the sense of rigidity or ascetics, but to actively participate in the creation and interpretation of my reality. being deeply, relentlessly honest with myself meant admitting that somewhere along the way, i had become afraid to try, afraid to be seen, the audacity of my being compromised by the way it has been repeatedly received and rejected. i was settling for the sake of something that resembled safety.

it sucks to get kicked while you’re down. the waiting til you’ve recovered enough to get up sucks even more, especially when you don’t even know if it’s possible, and when you’ve been told it’s not worth it, or that you will be alone even if you do.

‘Fight’, for me, reflects the experience of choosing to be brave enough to seek the possibility of myself, despite what im told im supposed to be, or who i may have been before. my father consistently reminds me that i cannot make a bad decision, and that Allah knows my heart. this feels especially important as i chase the dream of The Constellation, and learn to trust people in my life when they say that they trust me.

doing the work of an internal reset has changed the ways i perceive myself in the world, created space for a new understanding of what i do/not have to be afraid of, what i am or could be capable of, and who i am fighting for and why. in the process of remembering, i am also purging the opinions and doubts of people who do not deserve to have an opinion of me.

i am choosing an active self rather than one frozen in time, and this is the self who will take us towards freedom, as all my previous selves have, too.

the picture i chose for this reflection is one that someone who cares for me said reminds them of me. it’s from the episode where Steven and the Gems (Connie included!) face The Diamonds. White Diamond, with her ability to take over the spirits and actions of the other Gems, but not Steven, has stripped him of his Gem instead, insisting that he cannot be his full, true self, that he is impossible, that his humanity and his power cannot coexist. that he must be a fraud.

the mistake is hers, because once separated from his humanity, GemSteven is pure power, ruthless and unapologetic, his HumanSelf weak, heartbroken at having to watch as his GemSelf defends against beings he knows he loves, has loved, could love. White Diamond rages against GemSteven’s defiance with the full force of herself through the bodies of his friends and protectors - ‘I only want you to be yourself. If you can’t do that, I’ll do it for you!’

it is with the help of his best friend Connie, probably the bravest of them all, her only magic what she has created with her mind, body, and heart, that he is able to reintegrate. he takes hold of his Power and lets his Power hold him, a most joyful reunion that is not focused on resisting the outside forces that seek to harm them all, but on embracing and protecting each other and everyone they love.

these actions - Connie’s refusal to abandon Steven, and Steven’s refusal to abandon his selves - catalyzes their collective freedom from the immense generational grief that has been dogging them all for centuries. the control that has been used to replace love and connection breaks, with White Diamond screaming at him for acting like a child. Steven laughs with Connie, replying cheekily, ‘I am a child. What’s your excuse?’

may we hold close our inner children, the ones who know, feel, see, and are complete before the world takes us apart. may this next world be full of together, ready for the children waiting to bloom. i’ll fight for that with you.

stay brave,
seph

i forgot to mention that there have been synchronicities everywhere all summer.

lyrics happening i type words (yesterday it was Cleo singing responsibilities as i finished typing ‘personal responsibility’ for the original outline of the post). knowings, feeling rhythms, and seeing cycles everywhere. i pick up the phone and it’s always the same time(s). a Monarch butterfly lolling by as a royal friend texts for the first time today.

sometimes i wonder if someone could see through my eyes, would they see what i see? would it matter? im light on the meaning assignation, but i have to admit, 2s, 5s, 7s, and 9s everywhere feels a bit…portentous. it makes me wonder what flow i have found myself in, where it is taking me, and what i will find along the way.

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Aight, let’s get into it.

Fasting is the act of refraining from a practice or habit, usually eating or drinking alcohol, but also behaviors. People choose to fast for reasons that are health-related (ex: for testing or weight loss), religious/spiritual (ex: Ramadan, Lent, or the Nineteen Day Fast), or political (hunger strike as protest/to raise awareness, or to develop discipline). A fast is usually begun on purpose and with a particular intention or goal in mind, however, one may find that they have begun fasting unintentionally.

The root of the word ‘fast’ is the Old English ‘fæstan’, and as you may know or have noticed, there are many uses of it in modern English. It can mean ‘quick’ (adjective or adverb), it can also mean ‘deeply’ (as in being ‘fast asleep’), or ‘tight’ (as in ‘holding fast’).

The meaning most relevant here is the way it is used in the word ‘steadfast’. Completing a fast takes consistency, groundedness, planning, and ultimately, the wherewithal to hold yourself to the value or goal that precipitated your decision to begin in the first place. It also asks you to be able to observe yourself and adjust based on needs and context. Many times, people are surprised when I tell them that Ramadan does not require fasting from food if it will be detrimental to your health - there are other ways to properly observe the month.

while last week’s post was challenging because of things outside of myself - work, travel, navigating various conversations/interactions and their outcomes - this one has been challenging because it’s internal. at first, i wondered if the things that i intermittently feel shame about, like my relationships with weed and food, were what i needed to write about. but i kept breathing and praying on it, and have been led to a connection that includes them, but doesn’t end with them. it took a while for it to all make sense, but i think i’m getting close.

(also, shame is something given, but not something we have to accept, and i work hard to not create from that space. this means i sometimes post things and then have thoughts after, like with this post, so i wrote an addendum.)

—

many people outside of my close circle don’t know that i moved away from st. croix in january. it was not something i wanted to do, but it was something i needed to do, which is a theme in my life that i’ll come back around to in a bit.

in the year or so before i left, the cards for sadness, disappointment, opportunity, change, and hard work kept chasing me, showing up whenever i asked about what else i needed to be doing. applications kept getting rejected, people kept offering me work and not following though, and i was living in a small space where it was all i could do to counter everything that dysregulated me. that is not to say that being back on my island was not a gift - my seizures and chronic pain finally abated after a while, i reconnected with many wonderful people who love me, and the sea and sky are a home all their own. but i hustled hard, and burned out all over again anyway.

you cannot get well in the conditions that made you ill in the first place.

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so when a friend generously offered me a space in their cozy cloud home, i packed up and moved again. i miss my island every day. and though i knew moving would also be a gift and an adventure, moving into a space where, on some level, you know that you can release what you’re not meant to carry, is a double-edged sword. i arrived here tender and vulnerable, quickly falling back into quiet, repetitive anxieties about what kind of person i am to live with and be around, what i needed to do to ‘prove’ that i was making good use of the time and space i’ve been offered, and everything i needed to catch up on because i’d been doing so much to manage others and their feelings about me. moving, among other things, has made my finances precarious again.

i have other friends in this new city, people who live here and have passed through, but i’ve been too wiped out, sad, and honestly, insecure, to let anyone see me like this except my roommate and the few folks i have pinned at the top of my chat app. im too proud, but also highly aware that im better than this…that something is coming, and i just needed time to get right without having to worry about anyone else for a while.

it’s been a time of letting go or shifting of habits, relationships with people, and desires that no longer suit me, which is often simultaneously freeing, confusing, and activating. it’s also been a time to observe where else do over or under-consumption, shame, the need to manage or escape dysregulation show up in my life? the many changes and losses that were not in my control in the past seven years makes choosing to rock the boat feel foolish to my Protector voice, but the Captain knows that it’s time to take the wheel again.

‘who feels it, knows it’.

when Maui of the nycpochealingcircle offered me my attunement as a gift of reparations in 2019, it opened up a whole new level of ability to take care of myself and my communities. it has also thrown my purpose into intergalactic complexity and clarity, and for the past six years, i’ve been trying to put it all together while coming completely apart.

today, when i was looking back at journal entries from this spring, i realized that i didn’t need to think hard about fasting and that it didn’t have to come from shame, because i had already made a decision last fall to stop offering Energy Healing and Intuitive Guidance sessions, even though they make me incredibly happy and i always feel a special kind of light afterwards. at the time, it was out of frustration and exhaustion. i was creating offerings that not enough people would show up for, making asks that no one answered, advertising in healing spaces and never hearing a thing, working hard to make art and resources that people would use but not credit or thank me for, and being shadowbanned on IG.

this is not to say that i have been unsupported. in fact, i would say the opposite - the true ride or dies have helped to keep my spirit alight, whether it’s a heart on a post, referring someone (whether they showed up or not), or becoming a Patron or subscriber. it makes my day when im thinking of someone and open up my phone to see something from or about them. it helps me to know im not doing this all for nothing, that what i know is my purpose and how im meant to be in the world matters to people who need it, and that my well-being is valued the way i value others’.

i’ve very deeply missed holding healing sessions, but have been reluctant to offer myself because i never wanted the Constellation to be motivated by 'lack’, and i certainly didn’t want to project my insecurities into its Spaces. for almost a year, i haven’t allowed myself to practice with others because i didn’t feel worthy to, not the quality of channel or container that i seek to be for the people who are brave enough to seek me.

a lot of the past 18 months has felt like sailing through the dark on a sea with no regard for my presence. at times, i have felt completely submerged, neither drowning nor floating, just lost. but when life condenses into just you and it, there are no places to hide, no places to run to but the next version of yourself. it has been exhausting, but becoming myself the the first time was exhausting, too. this time, im doing it on purpose, with purpose. i can’t say i know what i’ll become, but the quiet of the fast has forced me to look only at myself, to not lose myself in what i can do for others (again), and also to remember what i haven’t lost, what hasn’t changed, what will remain true.

being a practitioner is not just about the quality of mirror you are, it’s also about the light you shine, and i really haven’t felt very bright or clear at all. i haven’t wanted to bring the particular kind of not-quite-human i’ve been feeling to sessions, but the more i reckon and risk, the brighter and clearer i become. at healing. at journeying. at desiring and deciding. at rebuilding a self and supporting the people i love in being themselves, too.

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i’ve been clearing out my photo albums on my phone to make space, and considering the changes and challenges im facing alongside all the resources and wonderful people i have in my orbit. being able to delete photos i saved multiple times as i’ve retaught myself how to feel properly human: safer, more confident, better able to handle what comes, shows me that what comes next is only a matter of whether im truly willing to bet on myself like my stickers say. to ask for what i need and really show up in the fullness of myself, without all im not.

social media and distance connection can be really difficult for me because i shine best in person. i truly am moon-aligned. it’s difficult to catch me through a camera, but i know innately how to phase and reflect, which is what makes me good at what i do. this virgo moon cycle, i decided that i’m going to begin offering again - Energy Healing, Intuitive Guidance, and now, Peer Counseling - because i see people i care about, whether i know them or not - facing an increasingly difficult world without enough support, and i did that for so long that my body shorted out. that is not necessary when we have the skills and resources among ourselves to protect each other.

restriction and being forbidden shows us what we value most. what is absolutely necessary. i know unequivocally that we’re not supposed to do this alone, and this Earth, each of us, our future, will be better if we do more to take care of each other. i feel fear that i will not be received the way i need to be, but that doesn’t absolve me of the responsibility to show up for myself. it’s time to break fast and begin again.

Stay brave,
Seph

• If you would like to learn more about my healing practice, check out my profile on Queer Healers. If you have questions or need to access my sliding scale, dm me.

• If you’re interested in my practice, The Constellation, check out my website here, and the Patreon, here. (there is a free tier, too.)

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august is so full of so many things.

this post was supposed to go up on sunday, and today is thursday, but all things in their time. i am sorry for being late, but not sorry for what i’ve learned in the space in between, so i hope that this post is worth the wait. it was for me.

Practice(s)

when i needed knee surgery at 22, it was a long road of recovery. treks to rehab on foot despite the injury, sessions to restore my strength and agility, steroid shots, electricity to remind my muscles how to move, ice, bandages. my PT was kind and funny, even on my hard days, a balm in a life that was becoming increasingly isolated.

though i grew up training in ballet (7-13yo) and west african and diasporic dance (6-22), it was in spaces where i developed shame about my body and its darkness and curves, how i moved (or didn’t), and how people perceived my body and policed my movements based on those perceptions…still like Bob Marley sang in Trenchtown Rock, “one good thing about music/when it hits/you feel no pain”. that has always been true for me.

i love a good, sweaty party where the DJ knows how to guide the room through its paces, a concert where everyone is rocking bopping singing weeping together as the sound moves through us, being a person who brings someone who thinks they aren’t a dancer into circle and helps them remember that we are all dancers.

movement is medicine and music is power.

one of the affirmations in my college dance company, affectionately called ‘New Twerks’, was ‘Free your pelvis. Free your mind.’ (see also: ‘Throw dat ass in a prayer circle!’) we were visionaries, baby. *wink* 

my body has been my only constant home. i went my whole life never having broken a bone, then shattered my left shoulder at 28 and cracked my right one at 32. well, the seizures and dislocations did it. my body is strong, and under enough pressure, will crack itself apart. i also know that given enough time and care, it will weave itself back together.

this time, im rehabbing myself. i don’t know if my shoulders will ever move smoothly in their housings again, if my reach will even out, but i can move, remind my body of what else we are, might be, could be. i’ve been doing it by dancing.

spending years only being able to watch others because my balance was poor or my mind couldn’t always tell my right from my left, not being able to be in circle because the drums triggered my ascension symptoms, forgetting whole sections of my lexicon of song, rhythm, and meaning was heartbreaking, but it has also been an opportunity.

these past three years, dancing has been a way to decompress, get my energy and stamina up, remember, recreate, and get free. be less concerned with how im seen and more in tune with how i feel. whether it’s on the porch at night to songs that unlock parts of my body and ways of being that i’ve felt shame or shyness about, to trying new ways of movement that aren’t specific ‘styles’, just how my spirit understands the rhythm lyrics feeling - these are revelations. being unashamed to be imperfect when im alone allows me to show up as myself wherever i am because i have no doubts about what’s real.

am i still apprehensive about how i will be received? yes. but can i at least know i’m bringing a fuller self to bear and be at peace with that? also yes.

also, it’s fun to have become a person who forgets (or remembers) themselves and dances while walking down the street, scanning aisles in a store, or in a corner of a park with the trees. ^_^

Grace: A Lesson

it felt hard to be late with this post because i was really excited about the sundays. i’ve been taking notes, organizing, alladat, but the schedule scheduled, the feelings felt, the people peopled, and time is what it is. this year is literally for balancing the pressure between vision and execution, body and spirit, need and desire. as i noted at the beginning of this post, even not writing it on time taught me something, and that was the point of this practice, so i think we’re still on task. i’m still trying to offer myself the grace of remembering that i am not making excuses, i am simply bound by time and space, but there is a past me who would not have been able to see or do that at all, and that is progress.

between my Aquarius and Capricorn placements, i have eight planets/nodes/points in Saturn (karma, time, discipline/diligence). while i already have a chart characterized by patterns of power, loss, and trauma (mine and others’), Pluto (control, transformation, desire) moved into Capricorn in my senior year of high school, and into Aquarius last year.

it will be reverberating through my placements of core sense of self, communication, information, and purpose until i am 43 years old. that’s 25 years of traversing underworld pressure on the foundations of my life. they say pressure makes diamonds. it also makes red tiger’s eye (a stone i’ve worked with for years, and just learned is associated with Capricorn because ain’t no coincidences).

as i reflect on a trip that was both beautiful and difficult, i think about what it means to live in the domains of the Gods of Karma, Time, Destruction, and Transformation, to live out that inheritance. over the past 17 years, i’ve come so close to what i thought would be legitimacy, or mastery. stability. hope. and at the last mile, i have been injured or run my body into the ground, intent on outpacing the doubts, real and imagined, mine or others, at my heels.

i’ve been thinking about the difference between ‘Train’ and ‘Fight’, and i think its one of preparation/mindset, and strategy/execution. so as i train, whether it’s in the cultivation of my writing, healing, movement, or other disciplines, i wonder: how do i release standards and expectations that were literally beaten or forced into and through me, that do not serve the person i am and am becoming, and create new ways to live in this bodymind that respect both its strength and softness?

Motivation and Structure

i don’t know that the injuries and illnesses could have been avoided - we do the best we can with what we know. all i knew for many years was that i would get out what i put in. i was not offering myself care or credit, just pressure. the weight of ‘be great/but not too great/you’re still not good enough/people are counting on you’ didn’t leave space for any self-compassion. i didn’t know i needed more of it because that’s not how i was raised to understand myself. but there’s plenty of pressure on me and in me already. this quote from “Buddha’s Little Instruction Book” by Jack Kornfield cracked something open in me: “If your compassion does not include yourself it is incomplete.”

i have to bring something different to the journey if i want it to end differently.

this has looked like teaching myself new stories about myself. allowing myself to be, freely, and understand that i am great, effective, skilled, loved, because of how i am, not despite it. i am learning what it means to create structure not out of a dislike for myself, but in order to refine and include more of myself in my work, my practices, my connections. it’s the difference between anti-war and pro-peace, but within myself, and while they are both difficult, one includes celebrations, dancing under the stars, and understanding that i am just as deserving of the diligence and shine i used to reserve for others. i am also just as deserving of the grace.

there’s a lot of trial and error, starts and stops, but i begin again, anywhere, and am always further along than i was before. creating a way of being is an adventure, exhilarating and discouraging, terrifying and delightful, and it shows me to myself every day. i don’t always know what success looks like, but i’d like to believe it’s in persisting with purpose and clarity of heart, even when i am scared or uncertain.

Training for what?

my paternal great mamas and aunties, women from maryland, virginia, and jamaica, were all proud, brilliant women with tongues that cut as sharp as their knives and kitchens as warm as their hearts. women who were as likely to answer the door with a shotgun or machete as they were to let you in and feed you good advice or good food - likely both. larger than life and larger than the lives they were expected to live.

there is a Buddhist reminder about persistence that says the journey of 100 miles is long, but if you stop at the 99th, you’ll never get to see the moon rise over Mount Fuji.

having to relearn how to be in what, on many days, feels like a whole new body, is a challenge, but i decided early on that if i have the gift of a blank slate and can choose the relationship i build with this one - what messages i massage into my skin, what love i let hold me, how and when i release my lightning or allow myself to soften - then that is a gift, and a path to freedom.

and if i can make it from the underworld to Mt. Fuji, perhaps i can accompany others on their journey there, too.

i could never tire of dancing under the moon. especially not with you.

stay brave,
seph

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one of the things that agitates me most about not having a steady place to live is the way it disrupts my ability to develop and maintain a steady practice of study, or rather, to seek the depth of study that i feel i could in my own space with privacy, time, and uninterrupted energy.

that said, it has given me something to work towards, helped me to cultivate patience (im still doin my best with that…), and taught me to make do with what i have without resenting it. each time i embark on learning something new or revisit a discipline or concept, i remember how much i enjoy learning, make connections that i hadn’t before, and am reminded that i am always a student, even if i don’t feel like a ‘good’ one.

[these are some notes that may seem a bit scattered, but i’ll bring them back together in the end, promise. also, i limited the side-questing too much, but if there’s anything you’d like me to elaborate on, pls let me know. i love a ramble!]

in an alternate reality where academia is not a trashfire that would leave me in atrocious financial and emotional debt, and the world doesn’t have more pressing concerns than my self-indulgence, i imagine myself going back for a phd in something incredibly esoteric like world philosophies, mythology/folklore, and religion. my maternal grandmother had her doctorate in metaphysics like the Pisces baddie she was. when she started walking with me seven years ago, i felt my sidereal Pisces rising asserting itself - or maybe im just more open to noticing it. either way, living in her former home for the past three years, surrounded by her books and notes, really did something for my spirit. seeing that my curiosities, the connections i perceive in the world, my peculiarities that often set me apart from others - even, and sometimes especially others in my own family - she would have understood. she already did. she already does. nothing is an accident. i came from somewhere(s). and that led me to how i’d like to observe Black August this year.

—

one of my fellowship participants gently poked fun at me for my string of bookmark folders (named in order of increasing nonsensicality) when i shared my screen last week. one of the less strange folders is for things i want to learn or am learning about. despite my difficulty with language(s) since the epilepsy, i’ve been really drawn to how various cultures connect with and understand the nature of the universe and our place in it. experiencing years of seizures and altered consciousnesses, various kinds of anesthesia and medication, and exploring (willingly and not) the capabilities and boundaries of my mind and its paths pushes me to seek grounding at an intersection that doesn’t get too much traffic. or maybe im just looking for ways to be okay with the ungrounding.

kidseph loved swinging as hard and high as possible and then launching into the air, 
all awareness of the fast-approaching earth gone, no fighting the descent, no fear of landing. just me and the sky and the ground and my own power. 
i think they were on to something. 

so much of our current world is centered on post-colonial society because of how the European conquest and Christianization so thoroughly swallowed cultures, histories, and languages, but it’s absolutely necessary to remember that that’s only the past 600ish years (re: conquest) and 2000ish years (for Christianization) out of t h o u s a n d s of years of history across the world. we have to remember what freedom felt like across the world in order to cultivate it again.

the first place we are ever free is with ourselves.

—

august holds many memories, personal and collective. this august is the seventh anniversary of the onset of this seizure condition. it doesn’t feel quite right to call it an illness because of what it keeps teaching me, and offering me. i cannot diminish the buddha nature of my body stepping in to protect me when no one else would, even me. after almost two years of relief, i’ve been having breakthrough seizures since november, and they hurt like hell, but i know exactly why they’ve happened - work stress, grief - and (my) spirit has been stepping in to tell my mind to be kinder to me.

after the last one, due to a couple of coincidences, i acquired an oracle deck of Northern/Norse runes, and have begun reading about them. what initially drew me to them years ago was learning that the way they do divination is similar to how it’s done in Ifá/Yoruba and other ATRs - the 24 rune stones, associated with earthly and universal concepts, are cast in the circle and read in relationship to each other. there are other practices in many cultures where casting pieces - stones, shells, bones, sticks - is used to activate the Diviner’s skill and intuition, recognition of patterns, stories, numbers, shapes.

a Diviner’s relationship with their tools, space, and practice are deeply personal, developed over time through study, sacrifice, effort, and creation, with a healthy helping of patience and humility. i am literally at the very beginning, so i can’t speak in depth, but i am looking forward to the methods offered - incorporating art, embodied practice, and other creative and tangible methods to connect with the runes as i learn them, and bringing those methods to my other practices as well. it feels intuitive - i already pray to music and dance my affirmations.

the more i listen, the stronger my sense is that the universe is always on time, for better or for worse. im open to that being subjective, but my peace and strength of mind have been better for this understanding, even when others doubt me. i would rather that than doubt myself. that said, the reminders i’ve received this past week about sacrifice, patience, and humility are invaluable, because if i’ve received them, it’s for a reason. i can choose to ignore them and say ‘oh, those don’t apply to me’ or i can look for places where i can do a little more (or less!), be a little more, release a little more. they come to mind easily, so i know what the truth is. and that’s where i can begin.

—

the first ‘Aett’, or set, of runes, is Freyja’s, Norse Goddess of Love and War (put very simply). while Odin is the god who hanged from the world tree for nine days and nights (sacrifice) to receive the knowledge of the runes from the Universe, Freyja is the one who codified them, making them usable for language, influence, and earth-based magic, called ‘seidr’. she is also known for her shapeshifting, and teaching it to others in need. i find it interesting that Ogun, of the Yoruba pantheon, also holds dominion over war, transformation, function, and innovation.

one of the ideas i talk about with my dad is that of an inner guiding triad - a Warrior, A Craftsperson or Artisan, and A Priest. each with their own perspectives, skills, strengths, and challenges. each suited to a given context. we talk about the journey of learning to cultivate each of them as best we can, and how to develop our discernment around and between each of them, so that ultimately they can operate not as separate entities, but as facets of a Whole.

i wish i had my Orisha oracle deck with me (it’s in storage in Brooklyn) so that i could…not compare, but juxtapose the runes and the Orisha when i get to that point of understanding. there’s something about the way they both account for nature, the Universe, and humanity, things we all experience to one degree or another as beings on this plane. what connects us to concepts that both exceed and embrace us. the known, unknown, and unknowable. the Gohonzon, with its Bodhisattvas, deities, and other figures representing values, concepts, and parables, also does this in its own way, and im sure there are probably plenty of other parallels and complements that i’m unaware of…

i think its incredible that if we go back far enough, we all knew in these ways, regardless of where we were on the planet. everything swings, and i wonder if we are or will somehow swing back towards…variations on similar knowings?…it’s also 2am and i’m not going to edit this out. 

—

so, how does all of this relate back to Black August? well, there are some more abstract/esoteric ways (cause i bet some of y’all are like, why are they studying yt ppl rn?), and some more concrete ways, and also just some…reasons. a list feels easier.

• no effort is wasted and everything happens in its time. this was apparent to me as i soon as i opened the book i decided to read about runes. the encouragement to create, to take my time, the affirmation of integrity over speed - that’s right where im at.

• i wasn’t sure how to observe Black August for the Constellation without it feeling performative. i wanted it to be reflective of me as a person and practitioner, someone changing and learning alongside the other beings traveling through the sky with me. the connections and revelations i’ve been having feel so joyful and motivating, and led me to wanting to make these weekly posts. once i realized it, i knew exactly what they would be about because the Consciousness was just waiting for me to hear it.

• there’s an incomplete thought here about initiation. i’m currently and slowly reading ‘Of Water and the Spirit’ by Malidoma Patrice Somé, which he wrote as a way to archive his spiritual journey back home to himself and outward into the world. on the first page, he cites his name, Malidoma - ‘be friends with the stranger/enemy’ - as one of the guiding stars in his life. if you have read the notes i made on my names, you will see why i am already finding it encouraging, even as i often find myself training and teaching myself. some things are not meant to be learned alone, and while i have been offered/told that there are certain paths awaiting me, all i can do is wait until it is time. until then, we stay ready.

• while i have a real serious militant orientation regarding revolution - i am under no illusion that we will avoid major loss because what was created in violence will end violently - it drives me to learn what is necessary to win. this may be an unpopular or more rare insight, but my studies of history have shown me that suffering and loss are not a zero-sum game. if any of you came across my minimal notes on the movie ‘Sinners’, one of the subtle undercurrents is a story of europeans murdering their own selves and suffocating their own connections to spirit and the universe, which is why they are always hungry, and why they are always leeching from others with no regard for the sacred. of course, there are growing amounts of people who are waking up to the ugliness of what we have been socialized into, but that’s a truth that applies to all of us, just in different ways. none of us is getting out unscathed with clean hands. but like i said, there was a time before all this, and we have to remember that our history as people of the Diaspora, even People of the Global Majority, did not begin with violence forced upon us, even if becoming can sometimes be a violent process. we began with the rest of the Universe and we carry that knowledge and potential within us. i will study and practice whatever will bring me back to myself.

• studying languages and etymology is a wonderful practice because sound travels through time and bodies, across land, sea, and sky. how - or even whether - we choose to express ideas, feelings, and experiences can illuminate so much about what we value, what is necessary, where we are headed. every language i’ve ever had the opportunity to learn even a small bit about has shown me something beautiful.
  
  for instance, i’ve been casually studying Arabic for the past six years, i barely know any Hebrew, and i only really know Japanese and Sanskrit because of my Buddhist prayers and studies (def not conversational), so im not fluent and definitely miss more than i catch, but one of my favorite noticings is - hold steady with me here - a Surah (Arabic) and a Sutra (Sanskrit) are both ‘chapters’ or ‘teachings’ / in the Qu’ran, Surah 26 - Ash-Shu'ara is ‘The Poets’, and Surah 42 - Ash-Shuraa is ‘The Consultation’ / in Hebrew, the name Shira means ‘poem’ and also ‘song’.
  
  this similar collection of phonemes across three languages from cultures with strong traditions of oral storytelling, principled resistance, radical understandings of masculinity/femininity/the spaces in between, and deep embodied spirituality, all mean chapter / teaching / poet / consultation / poem / song.
  
  even if it wasn’t true for everyone, or isn’t always true, it once was. that can’t be a coincidence. and that’s why im studying runes, magic, and power for Black August.

stay brave,
Seph

Black August Playlists (ever changing):

• One: Music to Groove, Grieve, and Grow To

• Two: Books, Essays, and Speeches on Freedom & Healing

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—

saturn just moved into my rising sign, aries, and i can’t fight myself anymore, so, i won’t.

—

i’ve been trying to write this post for over a month, so sorry about the inconsistencies with tense. time is weird. anyway. i’ve got three different documents and voice/notes, too, with ideas that all seem scattered, but are somehow related and i couldn’t figure out how until i realized,

it was me.

i’ve always had a hard time seeing myself clearly. i think i’m getting better at it though. i tried to put the notes in an order that makes sense, and doesn’t side-quest too much. either way, i’m glad i’ve been writing because…it helps. i don’t feel great about the craft of this post, but im trying not to let perfect be the enemy of done. thanks for reading.

a few weeks ago, i was talking to my father, who i am certain is the source of my choosiness about language (that man is definitely some kind of neurosomething), and what he said to me cracked open an understanding that i hadn’t been able to put words to (i hadn’t known i needed to, not consciously)…he called what i have experienced this past seven years ‘devastating’.

and he’s absolutely right. i don’t know if i would have named it if someone hadn’t done it for me. i’ve been experiencing the grief of someone who has been devastated - i keep imagining a building in demolition slowly descending, the cloud of dust pushing away from it - and i have not consistently or adequately been able to offer myself the consolation of my own skills or crafts. it may not have been enough anyway. some things are not meant to be done alone. i didn’t realize that either. not really.

—

congruence is the idea of space between our real, ideal, and perceived selves. my perception of myself is always skewed, but one thing i do know is that my moral/ethical compass skews hard toward protection of others.

they say, ‘if you don’t like your life, change it’, and it’s empowering until you find yourself trying and trying and not really changing or only changing in ways that just hurt differently. then it just becomes proof that the common denominator is you.
- somewhere in my journal

i haven’t been practicing - doing guidance or healing sessions - because i haven’t felt able to healthily reflect others back to themselves. it’s important to have standards, and i needed to figure out what was happening with me without more responsibility. it felt awful. and some days taking care of myself didn’t feel good enough, a thing counter to learning to accept myself - my inner voice on loop…‘why am i all these things i hate? still? how am i so far displaced from my life?’

recently, though, something has begun to fall into place.

—

i’m finally back in therapy, and we’re starting with acceptance. even before i got back into sessions, that was something i knew i needed to sort out, but i didn’t know how. some things are so deeply embedded from the way i built myself the first time, before the onset. the only other people who understand the way ‘acceptance’ sounds like ‘settling’, ‘failure’, or even ‘danger’ are people who are (or have been) as deeply traumatized and chronically ill as i am. other folks comment about ‘so being hard on myself’, as if i haven’t lived with my own high standards and their internal cacophony my whole conscious life. i haven’t known how not to be this way.

many people are familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. it’s usually formatted as a triangle, with basic needs like food and shelter at the bottom, and complex needs like intellectual and creative pursuits at the top. unsurprisingly, Maslow learned about perspectives on self-actualization from the Blackfoot people, but totally missed the point - where his theory is individualistic and hierarchical, their worldview and practice - a cycle - sees each person holistically as part of and necessary to the collective, and each child as an already fully actualized being.

after spending three years at home, there are selves awake in me that i haven’t known in a long time, some, ever. who of them to set free, to indulge, to devote all the time they should or could have had, to be and be and be? i have so much less to give and so much more to lose, but this, this is about everything.

i try to tell myself that each day is not about the rest of my life, but each day could be the rest of my life. everything matters. it always has. what if we cared about ourselves and each other with the vehemence that keeps us apart? the desire to do better, to be better, to help anyone that wants that for themselves, that is not something about myself that i want to wipe away because it’s ‘easier’. i do not know how to view it in a more balanced way. sometimes, i don’t want to.

still, i’ve been finding ways to balance letting it out so that i don’t become an echo chamber for all this anger and insistence turned inward, the constant sadness that only ebbs just to flow again. it turns out that when you find the right people, they aren’t scared of you, won’t get tired of you, will appreciate and respect your effort, even when you can’t understand why. and out of respect for them, maybe you have to have a little more regard for yourself. it’s just that simple. at least for me. i know the friendships i have right now are ones i am going to devote myself to for as long as they last.

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i spent the transition from spring into summer putting out the bonfire that was my nervous system. there was a lot of laying on the floor in the dark, reading grandiose queer epic fantasy, walking around the neighborhood and watching the waves of flower blooms. lots of journaling. lots of crying. eventually less crying. more doing things i told myself i would do - making art, finishing books, starting to exercise again, cooking.

i’ve found that how i start the day makes a difference. i spent most of my life dissociating my way through my mornings until i ‘turned it on’. now, i journal, move, pray, sing. yes, cry, too. something to settle me into myself. on a hard day, being able to talk to, or even just be quiet with, someone who cares about me and understands that im struggling can make all the difference. i don’t have to hide or pretend and that safety pushes away the fear and anxiety. i think im getting better at asking for help, and maybe im teaching myself a new way to be.

—

in some philosophies where reincarnation is an aspect of the cycle, it serves as a site of opportunity, a chance to learn universal lessons step by step. it’s why, in each lifetime, we notice themes and patterns, gifts and challenges, places where we get to practice a skill and level up, maybe even help some others along the way, too.

nothing that guides me - buddhism, islam, physics, spirit - allows me to believe that my life is an accident. that i was not offered this path for a reason, for better or for worse. i just do not know what it is, and while i am busy feeling simultaneously adrift and backed against a wall, people are suffering. people need support. there needs to be more beauty love connection in the world.

previous me did most of this alone. they pushed through and only asked for help when it was really bad. otherwise, they handled it and kept hustling. even though i don’t always know what it means, im determined to do things differently. not everyone gets a chance to rebuild a self and a life, and i want to do it well. i just have to remember, devastation is different for everyone. there’s no one way to ‘get it right’.

it’s been about a week since i compiled the previous part of this post.

it’s strange how many selves i become, how i sink and emerge, cycles of all sizes and colors. i observe the change constantly, and am beginning to understand how to accept myself, even when an aspect of that self is ‘storm’.

—

although i’ve always loved astronomy - KidSeph had a telescope and a little planetarium projector - i only had a passing interest in astrology until my mid-twenties, when it became part of how i understood the rhythms of the universe. i started actively studying astrology in 2021, but it’s only now beginning to lift off the page and take shape in my mind. (shout out to the visual/kinesthetic learners)

i’ve been imagining my tropical chart (all saturn/mars/moon, big warrior/leadership/legacy/transformation/power energy) as a past life1, the me before the hard reboot of epilepsy, and my sidereal chart (all jupiter/venus/saturn, big expansion/imagination/abundance/beauty/connection energy) as my future2. if all mes exist simultaneously, the important thing is understanding which aspects of those selves will be able to love the me that exists in each now.3

yesterday, a friend asked me how my world is looking.

my very vivid, literal brain spun up the image of a rollercoaster, a reflection of the rapid recap it had done of the past two weeks. all the crying laughing praying thinking-about-doing-instead-of-doing conversations actual-doing ideas, finally, ideas. and so while my first thought might have been something about how rough it’s been, i side-quested, thought, ‘rollercoasters always come back up, don’t they?’ and immediately made the connection.

since then, the idea that im not ‘the kind of person who keeps having bad days’, im ‘the kind of person who keeps bouncing back from them’ has lit my heart up. it’s not an empty reassurance - it’s something i know to be true because i am here looking at myself. i feel proud for the first time in a long time, for a reason that matters.

Stay brave,
Seph

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and yes, these are the kinds of things that my mind wanders about. not the only things, but some of them. everything is connected.

(transcript below).

Kinzoku (noun, Japanese):
- Meaning in English: metal
- Definition: A substance defined by its physical and chemical properties, such as conductivity and brightness.

Transcript (lightly edited for readability. italics indicate additions for information/clarity/depth):

Okay, um, lil rant, ramble, postulation...I actually said the words, I was going to summarize it. Here we go.

*sigh* Kinzoku...Life Connections, um, that talks about character traits and karma, and your relationships between you and your family. the idea that we're placed with family that we're placed with or that we're all placed with each other because it allows us to carry out whatever lessons, purpose, are necessary in that lifetime.

The slides that I'm looking at here, um, summarize science down to Mendel. I mean, genes as playing central and manifesting inherent characteristics. That things are random, but it doesn't account for psychology. It doesn't account for nurture, and the environment. And so there are a couple of things that I'm thinking about when I think about, are we choosing the family or the life that we chose, right?

(This was so much clearer earlier when I was, like, zooming. Okay.)

So, if from a Soul Contract point of view, there's a higher self that has agreed that this configuration is what is necessary to the development of the spirit, right? then we also have what is possible to carry down in biological material, but what about like natural law when it comes to things like physics? so, understanding that 'matter is never created or destroyed, it just changes form', and that once something has come into contact with something else, it's more likely to be attracted to that thing (quantum physics + law of attraction).

It's also more likely to be affected by what happens to that thing, right, 'Butterfly Effect', things like that. So if we are constantly becoming more ourselves over time, because our atoms are becoming more and more attracted to each other, perhaps, over time, and new ones are mixing in as well, which is why we're always different - we're ever-changing, but we're always the same - and the same thing is happening at the level of family, and the relationships between the family (blood, but also chosen) members, right? how those relationships interact, and perhaps cancel each other out, or catalyze each other, or neutralize (or amplify) each other, or whatever it is that they may do to each other, right?

There are all of these things that we could think about on that kind of scientific level as well that I think are interesting. Which then takes us to like, the interesting phenomenon of signs running in families, like sign patterns running in families, and being able to see synastry between partners and parents and children and siblings, and how those things (relationships and patterns) change over time, and the karma that they carry along with them, and how those things manifest in relationships which brings us back around to the quality of the relationships of the people in those families (to themselves, each other, and the world).

And so if we have these giant vibrating bodies moving through the sky all affecting each other and us in ways that are familiar and unknown, then like, certainly there are going to be recognizable patterns, but then there's always going to be curveballs, and of course, there's always free will because we're always ourselves.

while i don’t know that i have any direct lineage there, we are the first and second nations of Africans who were taken across the sea to free ourselves from our enslavers, and we are still fighting to get our colonizers off our backs. there’s a kinship in that resistance, that determination, the unwillingness to bend as even the land breaks around us. living in a place where there are fault lines beneath us, the potential for worsening hurricanes above us half the year, and multiple empires surrounding us in persistent siege takes a certain kind of fortitude. it also begets a certain kind of grief. one that we must consistently transmute and alchemize so that it does not consume us the way everything else seeks to.

as a child of the in between spaces - in between languages, lands, genders, crafts - one who had parts of myself taken from me before i even knew i had them, let alone how to name them, one of the things i am consistently grateful for is my chosen family and how they reflect me back to myself. honor me with companionship and kindness, and show me things i’ve never known were true, or true enough. this post is for my friend Carol, who gifted me this book seven years ago, six months before i lost my ability to read it.

Carol is an incredible Taiwanese-American artist, and a work of art themself, if you ever get to experience them. In 2018, they sent me a box of Lunar New Year gifts that included sweets, a letter, a gorgeous bracelet of raw garnets, a portrait of myself that i carried for months, and the book, Create Dangerously: the immigrant artist at work by Edwidge Danticat. at the time, it felt like a sweet gift from a kind friend when i really needed it, and so as the years have passed, i have continued to engage with it in the ways that i can. in particular, it has felt very important to finish reading this book. i was finally able to this month, and im so grateful that i did.

i’d like to share some notes about the text and what i enjoyed and received from it, but really, i suggest reading it yourself. it’s a critical, beautiful text about the craft, necessity, and complications of storytelling, regardless of your medium.

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In 1957, Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Albert Camus gave a speech entitled "Create Dangerously”, which is referenced in the title of Ms. Danticat’s work. Camus, also an immigrant, spoke about the importance of artistic freedom and responsibility. One could say that is also the topic of Danticat’s work, however, with each essay, she delves deeply into specific themes and stories from her own life and the lives and histories of Haiti and Haitian artists, bringing their perspectives, considerations, strengths, and limitations to the fore. She tells each story the way it needs to be told, writing in Kreyol, English, and French, moving from more formal essay-style writing to a flow that feels like she could be sitting there talking to you.

The main questions explored include:
- what does it mean to be an artist? (through stories of artists’ lives, motivations, processes, and also their deaths)
- why do we devote ourselves to our craft(s)? what does craft require of us, seen and unseen? why is it often loss?
- what do we hope to leave behind? what resonance? what change?

I enjoyed and was heartened by the range of her skill, the unwillingness to be defined by previous work or ‘success’, and the clarity of her voice. Obviously, we don’t know Ms. Danticat, but her tone rings true to her subject(s) - gentle, yet firm. Creative, loving, and relentless. The thing that keeps Ayiti alight shines so brightly in her, even, and perhaps especially, as she finds ways to describe the many different textures of grief, heartbreak, and misunderstanding that come with the immigrant experience, with the necessity of living away from ‘where your navel string is buried’, as we say on my island.

One aspect of the text that continuously caught my eye is where she chooses not to translate, or say in her own words, but rather use the original language or source text, because there are ideas, feelings, and experiences that simply cannot be translated. If you don’t know, perhaps it is a blessing that you don’t, and if you do, perhaps it is a comfort to be understood. Some things, I think, are meant to be explored and felt. She knows when to show, not tell.

The slim, 193-page edition includes 12 essays, a postscript, acknowledgements, notes, and an index, allowing the reader to not only experience her perspective, but to continue to develop a perspective of their own if they so choose - an integral part of any interaction with art. In her notes for each essay, she cites inspirations, full quotes, translations, and even herself(!), something I found wondrous. (When I was self-publishing last fall, I found myself editing down my notes so that they wouldn’t take up too much space and because I thought others may not want/need the depth of thought and connection that went into each piece, but I deeply appreciated that she clearly does.)

The essays are not easy to read. There are gentlenesses in them, but ultimately the text is about an artists’ obligation to bear witness in the ways that they are able, and sometimes, until they are not. It contends with the concepts of home, ongoing mass suffering, how people cultivate resilience, and truths - making sure they are told well, and by the people most well-suited to tell them. It shows us many ways to be an artist, whether we are famous, or family. It speaks to those of us who live with the reality of compounded, lingering dangers, and how we may answer in collective force, power, and beauty knowing that we are in lineage with generations of artists and warriors who have preceded us, with whom we now illuminate and explore, and for whom we will leave hope, tools, and memory.

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in October 2018, i wrote….

[Carol] gave me these garnets during our birthday season this year. i always wear them, but i’ve been paying them particular attention lately. it’s a stone of warriors and healers, of love and protection, willpower and resilience. blood.

-

i feel myself becoming...not rigid, but more willing to be certain or direct in my communication. my wants and desires. my boundaries. i’m also more ready to withdraw and disengage. not out of fear, but as a choice of where to place my energy, attention.

-

it’s lonely, and difficult. i am constantly lost, occasionally finding. everything explodes into something else. but I need to be where i am. i need to listen to what my spirit has to say. i need the alone. and i can’t spend time seeking/asking people to join me here. it’s a choice. (i hope to be chosen. to belong, even as this version of myself. i do not know that it’s likely or even possible.)

but me, i have to choose this.
in fact, i think it, whatever it is, has chosen me.

-

i am (not) here.
it’s so disorienting to be two places at once, and also not at all. not at all.

earlier, i spoke of Carol’s gift being an ongoing kindness - i think some of the best gifts are, don’t you? :)

i have notes scattered all throughout this book, and am already plotting my second read, but i think the most meaningful gift has been in the giving itself. being able to look at this book cover, even when i couldn’t read it, and eventually coming to realize that Carol didn’t just give it to me because they thought i’d enjoy it - they gave it to me because they saw me in it. immigrant. artist. a child in between places struggling to create things that show my love for my people and my home no matter where they are, even when my homes or people can’t see or understand me. i am surrounded by friends who are artists, and i’ve always created art, but i never understood myself as an artist until someone i loved was kind enough to see it and help me name myself.

now, the imperative - and the loss - make sense. i understand their worth and necessity. there is less need to explain. it just is.

may you be loved and seen in the full spectrum of your Self, and may your creations be full of your love(s).

stay brave,
seph

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it doesn’t much matter. we do what must be done. and perfect can’t be the enemy of good, or complete.

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—

i’ve had three seizures since november, increasing in intensity and frequency, after 19 months of no events, and only three months of having my driver’s license back. i’m not alarmed - i know exactly why there is extra electricity in my body, why my synapses are overriding the sedatives, what my body is telling me.

‘you do not need to prove the quality and necessity of your work. that is not respect.’
’you do not need to have conversations with people who are committed to misunderstanding you. that is not love’
’you do not need to let yourself be taken advantage of to ensure you will have what you need. it will come.’

the epilepsy has a way of making what needs removing from my life very clear, whether i like it or not. it’s a quiet knowing that settles in after all the noise of the post-seizure state, when i am sitting and breathing through the pain, and it is ready to tell me what i need to know. i am not always ready to hear it, but i don’t have any choice but to be where i am. there is always a reason.

—

if i am kind to myself, i can see the space between the me that i am and the me that i am becoming. the me that i already am but am often too shy to be, especially when i am alone. they feel precious, like a spark on the kindling of one’s first fire in a new wilderness. thing is, i am not often as kind to myself as i could be. that’s the root of much of my sadness. i have a vivid, harsh inner wilderness that i am finding is beautiful, full of possibility and longing, and a wide river of melancholy flowing through it. it has always been there, but has mostly required some kind of containment or concealment, and when released or perceived, has resulted in my shunning or punishment. i spent many years pretending to be a garden.

i could not see myself, was stuck in others’ projections of me, onto me. there are times, like after the most recent seizure, when i flail against the sadness of needing others, how much i have needed to be loved or wanted, how lost that has left me. there’s a streak in me that hates that hunger and would excise it if i could, but who knows what else of me would be lost in that cutting? i still crave the quiet of it.

the kindness i can offer myself now is to at least see myself with more grace, if nothing else. i am too many, too vast, to be defined in any singular manner, and so the charge then becomes: know thyself.

this is where i understand now what i did not before, am able to observe myself and choose my way forward because fuck all this noise, Octavia Butler told us God is Change and Everything We Change Changes Us. though she said she wasn’t a prophet, she just studied the patterns, is that not what prophets do? Universal Law (Myoho) is cause and effect. it will happen and it will pass. the breathing will be easy and it will be hard. but if I am not willing to devote myself to myself, who will? I am my responsibility.

i’ve been wanting someone else to want to know me, but i have to figure out how to be more than enough because for now, no one is coming to be my companion in this becoming in the ways i hope for. i’ll let myself cry about it when i need to, and then i’ll get up and handle my shit.

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—

for the past 18 months, the cards had been telling me that i was going to have to make choices that would ache. it was challenge after challenge, and i had to throw all my weight at it, but damn if i didn’t get what i needed. im watching myself do things i’ve been practicing, grateful for the opportunities i’ve had to build the skill, the knowing, the awareness. i’m doing better than i thought i might, because i gave myself permission to hope for more, and because people who love me have wanted more for me, too. i think we’re always grieving. the trick is knowing that we can be bigger than our grief. sometimes we manage it, and then we get better at it, and not every day, but that’s okay. once you know how to do it, that’s a skill, a forging that can’t be taken.

i challenge myself to wonder, ‘what can i do with this gift of time, space, peace, safety?’ and what can i offer to myself as well as to my friends. even the luxury of privacy and steady service is a wonder, and when the waves of my friend’s grief break against me, and i am grateful for the tower i am remaking of myself and all my hurts. the softness i bring has backbone, a weight to it bought and paid for.

i am not everything yet, but i will be.

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last week, i told a secret i’ve been holding alone for 20 years.

—

i woke up after not enough hours of sleep, deeply, suddenly sad. perhaps not ‘suddenly’ - a conversation with a friend the night before had shaken some things up that i don’t think about often, but when disrupted, can take time and effort to put to rest again.

that rest is always temporary.

i’ve been asked by people who are wrapped in their own guilt, who are impatient, who are not also carrying this secret, too, why i don’t just ‘grow up’, ‘let it go’, why am i ‘still letting it affect’ me?

what they don’t understand is that once you know something, it can’t be unknown.

im not ‘letting’ it affect me. i’ve been trying not to let it infect anyone else.

—

there’s a common, dismissive stereotype that people who study psychology1 do it because we’re fucked up ourselves.

that sounds like an on-brand conclusion in a society that is obsessed with idealizing individuality and punishing aberration, one that is based on binaries like ‘right & wrong’ and ‘crime & punishment’, but is unwilling to look at the patterns and practices that lead to the outcomes we supposedly hate so much, let alone truly devote ourselves to changed behavior. it’s too scary or difficult. not our responsibility. or even worse, it infringes on our ‘individuality’.

but the people who want to study what to do when harm comes to pass, or even how it happens so it can be prevented or so we can be prepared, those people get ridiculed. (in many fields and about many topics. see disabled/mad folks and healthcare…)

the reality is this: in a society built and sustained on trauma and violence (the ongoing g*noc*des of multiple groups of people, and attempts to eradicate the knowledge and practices we carry within our lineages), everyone has some degree of maladaptation that they have developed to survive.

none of us is getting out of this unscathed. and nothing stays hidden forever.

the sooner we realize this and get our emotional and interpersonal weight up, become proactive in taking care of ourselves and each other, the more ready we will be collectively as things continue to come to light.

ready to hold each other. ready to understand and carry out transformative processes. ready to have resources and refuge available. ready to process difficult, awful information…and continue forward.

but to ask people to do something that they’ve never learned how to do in a context that is ill-prepared, and in fact, actively discourages them from doing so, is unkind, isolating, and only exacerbates the harms we experience and believe must be borne alone. and we are never truly alone. that lie is just another illness spreading from one person to the next.

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my multiple chronic illnesses span my mind and body, and are directly connected to my trauma history. im no neurologist, but i paid enough attention in my cognitive psych courses to understand the areas of the brain and where things like mood, language, visual memory, fear, excitement, and other core aspects of personhood are, as well as developmental stages, basic neurology, etc.

i didn’t only study western conceptualizations, cause i was raised better than to limit myself to the baseline of a white man’s mind, but that’s another set of posts.

anyway, i have epilepsy in my frontal temporal lobe, and the point of origin is my mood and emotional regulation center. they spread, strangely, over to the left side of my brain, into my visual cortex. since my memory is partially eiditic (photographic), i have particular trouble with my language, memory, and communication. the doctors insist that my language and comprehension are still in the 96th percentile, which they think is miraculous, but that’s because they don’t know what my mind was like before it shorted out.

it took three years after onset to fully crash, and once i did, i spent nine months in bed sick, depressed, and unable to speak. people think i have epilepsy, but i don’t just have that:

i have epilepsy, and

i have c-ptsd, major depression, and anxiety, and

i have been housing unstable, underemployed, and working poor for most of my adult life, and

im a community worker who is has a rare skillset that is necessary and undervalued, and,

im a survivor of almost a decade of abuse, and before that…

the secrets.

it’s like my bodymind (and amygdala) tapped out from being on loud for so long. i was good at hiding, and since hyperproductivity was normal for me and convenient for everyone else…

—

i hadn’t planned on ever telling anyone my secret. mostly because it’s not just mine to tell, but also because i couldn’t see anything good coming from it. i could only imagine someone else feeling as increasingly confused and isolated as i have these past 20 years, and for what? so i won’t feel alone? seemed selfish.

but last week, i received my birthday gift from my best friend. she and i are side by side in the matrix vat. im the sailor pluto to her sailor saturn, and we’re basically in each other’s minds as much as we’re in each other’s hearts. we’ve loved each other through some rough shit.

she bought me something to make it easier to read, for us to read together, and as i was looking at it, i started getting brain foggy and remembered that i had been up early, and then why i had been up so early, and my mind started tumbling as i realized that i couldn’t do it alone anymore. i asked her if she had the capacity for something difficult and i whispered it out for the first time ever.

it was the most terrifying relief. i finally felt safe.

and then i felt terrified all over again.

—

i was so worried i had hurt her.

but she reassured me that i did my best, and i did the right things because i asked and she was able to check in with herself, too. she never lies to me. in fact, she is so gentle and clear with the most difficult truths that it’s hard for me to dismiss her.

she said that even if it had hurt, it’s okay because that’s what our friendship is for - for us to bear things together. to journey together. that’s why we found each other and will always have each other.

this is what choice is for. she would choose me again and again.

—

being a survivor is scary because you both know and don’t know what you’re capable of. when certain terrible things seem normal to you, it can feel like being made of sharp edges. even when people think im beautiful or interesting, i want to warn them before they get too close. (i am currently imagining myself as an obsidian construct…)

when i recorded this, it was early in the morning again, and my throat was raw. but it felt like something had passed through that needed to go. keeping that secret wasn’t doing me any good, and neither was expecting myself to eventually know what to do with it when no one else before me had. i did figure it out, though. we did it.2

im the last one to carry this thing, and im not just ‘letting it go’.

i’ve released it into love.

may it never hurt anyone ever again.

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—

on the new moon in aquarius, i woke up feeling as though there were a beam of unlight through my chest. a sense of nothingness, unmooring, distance. only myself. all i could do was breathe and pray as tears streamed down my face in the lobby of a hotel.

it was not so different from me a decade ago. i used to find myself this way, crying in some public corner of the city, except unable to breathe and too close to everything. everything too close to me.

i am not who i was then. i am not even who i was a year ago.
i keep shifting myself to meet the unsteadinesses.

what i really want is for the unsteady to break against me.

does a star in fall ever hit the ground?

—

thanks to a friend, i have a room again.

(thanks to my mom, i had a bed for the past 3 years. but also less and less of myself, you know?)

now i get to figure out who i’ve become.

my life crashed to a halt at 28 and i have been adapting constantly ever since.
what will allow me to keep my home(s)?
what will efficiently make money?
what will help me keep my mind? stay alive?
be at some kind of peace? connect? let go?

i can already feel the ways that having my own space in a home made to be quiet and cozy is allowing my (actually) nervous system to chill out, believe that it is safe, that it has time, and is free. what a gift i have managed to uncover for myself, and what fortune it is to have chosen family.

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my 34th year ended on sunday, a 11th house year of friendships, connections, and communication.

i’ve been reflecting on a couple things:

• my friendships remind me of the power of choice. that we can choose each other and ourselves, we can make new choices, we can make choices together or alone, we can make scary, new choices. it’s all okay. we’re all trying. the people who love you will stick with you and be good to you.

• my friendships remind me of quality. we do not have to settle. there are people who can hear, see, feel, hold, speak to us. we just also need to have the discernment to know who those people are/not.

• my friendships remind me of effort. we prioritize the things that are important to us, including how we show care and appreciation for each other and our world.

• my friendships are sites of safety. we know the layered unsafety of being our selves each day. together we are brave.

• my friendships sprout joy. nothing is wasted or taken for granted.
  

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in 2024, i was also tending the seeds of 33/house 10, which holds career, foundations, power, and ambition. this was a rough one - i have 5 planets and a midheaven in my 10th house, and one of those planets is my rising sign. tl;dr, me at my most competitive with myself, hard on myself, and on fire. if we’re talking force of nature, it’s giving volcano.

even when dormant, always venting, burning, catalyzing, seeking alternative forms of release because the pressure, the fucking pressure. sure, some comes from outside, but really, it’s all inside, and you can’t blame it for being anything other than what it is, and all it can do is try harder (no, that’s not the answer. dance it out, write, or go the fuck to sleep, seph.)

under stress, im bad at resting, and developing a(nother) chronic illness has made me aware of it, but hasn’t suddenly bestowed me with a skill that is diametrically opposed to my core programming. still, im working on it.

i will say that i’ve re-learned a lot about what it means to have to practice something im not good at (negotiating and interacting in work environments). i have to be better about giving myself credit because i checked, and i did everything i set out to do last year, plus a bunch of side quests, and that matters! i even accomplished something at my job that feels like finally beating a video game level that has been w o r k i n g y o u o u t.

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SN: I’ve been following annual profections for the past four years now, experiencing them in real time, and taking notes on what i can remember about previous years. what i’m noticing is that, at least for me, the previous year sets up whatever groundwork needs doing so that you can actually do/practice/become whatever is called for in the next year.

the spiritual work i did during 32/9th house got me ready for the demands of 33/10th house. the skill work i did at 33/10th house got me ready to weather 34/11th house, and i know the friendships i began and watered during 34/11th house will support me while i go through the midnight of this 35th/9/12th house year and 18month pisces/virgo eclipse axis…

there’s a sense of relief in knowing that my current responsibility to the universe is actually to myself. a friend reposted something in their story about reframing ‘have i worked enough to rest?’ as ‘have i rested enough to do the work well?’ and oolawd i needed to see that. because im gonna keep it 100, my rough days are still solid, but do i have to put myself through them? probably not. is it sustainable? definitely not.

i spent many weeks in bed, breathing, taking notes, thinking about possible paths and what i could reasonably offer through The Constellation this year. what to ~Announce~, how to get people ~Engaged~, but that was stressconformmask brain trying to survive, not the life i want for myself or anyone who connects to this practice. we’re meant to thrive.

i don’t want to make merch, i want to make art. i want to write, to be wrapped in words, weaving them for and with myself and others.

i have a life to build and i have a chance to do that this year. this year is for building myself up, not beating myself up. may it be sweet, despite it all, and may we journey far together. :)

a post that feels helpful by alice sparkly kat about what it means to have an aquarius north node. “they don’t have to be a golden and brilliant and shiny person to deserve to be loved.”

—

a gift for you who read to the end: a loverboi playlist i’ve been struggling with and have finally come to peace with. will still be adjusting here and there, but i hope you enjoy it. as usual, meant to be shuffled. <3

stay brave,
seph

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when i returned to my island, it wasn’t by choice.

i had become severely ill three years prior. the epilepsy took friendships, the job, healthcare, and stable home i had just gained, memories, language, movement. it took my body from me and left me with pain, loneliness, scars, uncertainty, and ever decreasing options.

i did my best. i wasn’t always good at it. for every way i knew i was limited, i knew there were others i couldn’t understand, perceive, control for. but i tried.

i was scared. not of the epilepsy. i couldn’t control that or predict it. the seizures came went changed regardless of whether i was happy sad safe stressed. they just were. but watching my life crumble. watching myself decrease - literally becoming small and weak in body, limited in mind, isolated in community - that terrified me. it hurt. but i tried.

and people continued to give up on me. it felt like my life was giving up on me.

my illness was too scary. the force of my spirit - the one thing that was intact and getting stronger - was too much. my needs were too much, though i was still not very skilled at asking for anything that really mattered.

when i thought love had come back to me, a blessing, an eye in the middle of all this storm…no one wants to live in risk. to surrender to something bigger than themselves if they don’t have to. it’s easier to watch in awe from afar than to weather it with you.

the past six years has been very lonely. i have also spent a lot of time alone.

—

this month is the six year anniversary of my mind deciding to say ‘fuck this noise’ and do a defrag purge reset of the memory, trauma, stress, stories it had been running on for the past 21 years.

i was four years deep into weekly DBT sessions and was finally getting a grip on the c-ptsd/depression/anxiety that had been dogging me like a damn Cerberus in the hell of my mindscape. i had committed to my writing and gotten my first publishing, went to my first writing retreat in the woods, made friends who weren’t playin in my face, and got a job that was still below my skill level but would allow me to only have to work one of them, regular hours, doing something that felt like it mattered for a city i love. i signed a lease in an apartment that someone had offered to me with people i thought it would be good to make a home with for a while.

it lasted for six weeks.

when i called my mother after our reading after the retreat, i remember telling her that i had been having strange visions, like seeing faces reflected back at me in water, ones i had never seen, and was losing time, having a hard time focusing. 48hrs later, i had my first seizure, and within a week, my mind and body started breaking down. the first three seizures took months of immediate memory, shattered my left shoulder, and left me unconscious for 3 days.

but when i woke up, a new sense had kicked in - self-preservation. the first thing i said was not to let that damn doctor touch me, but everyone assumed i was delirious.

he mismedicated me for months and now he’s dead so i can’t even sue his ass.

after having been frustratingly indestructible for most of my life, i finally had proof that i wasn’t, and it was almost a relief, having a reason to defend myself.

the truth is, i never needed one. i was just too scared to hurt anyone else as badly as i had been hurt, had been hurting, was afraid i would always hurt.

—

when a time bomb is living in your head, it puts a lot of things in perspective.

not excuses. reasons. purpose.

one of my earliest memories, one im infinitely glad i retained, is my father taking me out during the eye of a hurricane when i was maybe five years old. it was silent and still in the daytime, such a strange, curious thing. as we moved slowly away from the front door, he pointed up, to show me the sky through the spiraling cylinder of clouds and wind.

throughout my life, i have often felt like i am in that tunnel, ricocheting off the sides and rarely riding the middle path toward the sky, despite my best efforts. i wonder when i entered this tunnel, or was i always in it, my father simply teaching me a skill i would need to navigate: perspective.

but when each person’s perspective is their own, and is made up of so many different parts, how do you find the one(s) that will look you in the eye and not flinch? falter? fade away?

returning home has been many things, but one thing i can definitely name it is opportunity. there have been things i have learned and experienced here in the past three years of my recovery that could not have happened anywhere else.

last night, i was talking to a new friend who has quickly become a dear friend, someone who can see hear feel appreciate understand me, and it felt so wonderful to be reached out to because xe heard me thinking of xym. we talked all kinds of shit, and about the anger that has been dogging us for the past six weeks, about people who really don’t get it and are not ready to get their weight up, to do what needs to be done for what’s coming, what some of us have been known, been living.

we spoke of ancestor Harriet Tubman, who i uplift in even higher regard in our shared illness - something in me understands even more her resolve, the resolute cast of her face, the way the iron that struck her must have somehow embedded itself, or simply resonated with what she already consisted of. a woman of her time who said, fuck this, im done, i want what i want, do you want it too? yes or no.
i wonder about the protection of Ogun i am offered, the affinity for iron, lightning, dogs, navigation, loyalty, and war. refuge in the forest and how we would not have innovation and freedom without these determined, difficult to approach, flawed, fearless spirits. i have a deep sense of never-aloneness, and i sometimes wonder if it’s arrogance or ego, but then i remember who benefits from my smallness, and who, my evolution. i also see power, god, in the pantheon of friends who surround me.

at some point, i have to start knowing that i belong.

my star chart has saturn with its earthy ass boots on my neck for 18 years - i’m not in the clear til my early 40s - and for a time, i felt resentful of my ‘best years’, 18-36, being preoccupied with illness, poverty, instability, and houselessness, but it occurred to me that had this shit dropped on me before my Return, i would not have had the skills or awareness to handle it, and if it had dropped on me later on in life, i may not have had the physical stamina to handle the onslaught.

everything happens in its time.

this post has been sitting, waiting for me to finish it, for almost three weeks, but yesterday, i was ruthless in my dreams, and i woke and wrote out all that anger - another post, possibly. today, here i am, completing this one, and other things that are necessary. (there are so many necessary things). maybe the connections i have are not what i wanted or expected, but i am more and more sure that they are what i need.

each time i refuse to reject a version of myself that may push others away, i become closer to myself. and this isn’t even my final form.

stay brave.

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