This Lucky Fool

One year ago today my memoir was released into the ether. The one thing I have been asked in every conversation I have had since is how it feels to write something so candid and personal about people I love?

It’s interesting, though unsurprising that everyone wants to know what would happen if they spoke their truth. Everyone. And it comes with a kind of  voyeuristic excitement/anxiety of seeing me right at the edge of that roller coaster, thrusting myself off.

Well, the answer is: shocking. And terrifying. There’s no way around it. But mostly shocking. And not in the way you might think.

There’s no way to prepare for it. And however you think it will land, it will land differently. There will be challenges, but they won’t be what you thought. But mostly, for those of you who are writers, artists, gluttons for punishment, sado-mascochists, fools, or simply truth tellers tasked for whatever reason in life to put a wrench in those old undisturbed patterns of generational trauma, I have found it to be a life giving fountain of profound healing. And I think it’s fair to say after what I have been through, that the healing hasn’t just been on my end.

We all have stories, write stories and make stories around what happens to us. Those stories fuel who we are and who we become in the world. When we are able to hold curiosity around those stories, we  open up other pockets of understanding, things we hadn’t yet thought of or couldn’t see at the time, we can expand them and open up those boxes we have compartmentalized them into to signify this or that. They can grow and change and we can heal in retrospect.

I knew from my yoga practice of 25 years and from the practice of writing myself Letters From Love, alongside Elizabeth Gilbert and her Lovelettes, that truth, just for the sake of truth, is a sharper and deadlier weapon than lies. And that just speaking it for the sake of speaking it is overrated.

So, I was aware that the stories I wanted to explore were those that directly impacted my understanding of my Self. I chose to frame them around my learning and my perspective as much as possible as a way to take responsibility for my limited vantage point, and as a way to respect my humanity and slant throughout all of it. Of course there were stories that I chose to tell that involved family members or friends that I was not directly in. But I deemed them essential anyway,  because they formed the lore and scaffolding that directly shaped who I was in the world. From yoga, I knew that truth must always begin and end with ahimsa—the least amount of harming. So when I told those stories, I didn’t exactly soften them, the telling was honest, but I did insist on telling them with compassion— for  myself and to those in them.

Now, just because I felt that was what I was doing doesn’t mean it’s what was felt by everyone when reading. But I think for the most part, those who have cared to read the whole story, and mull over my words, can at least feel that in the text. This has made all the difference in the outcome, which has been an incredibly healing journey. From myself to myself, for sure, shedding light on other ways of seeing myself, sometimes through others’ eyes, but also I have found, for many of those who partnered me in those pages. Whether they completely agreed with my take or not didn’t seem to matter. Attempting to write with compassion, space and respect for our shared experience made them feel safe enough to open up conversations for further understanding and learning, and in most cases, has surprisingly re-ignited our trust, intimacy and connection. It has moved the stories from hard fast memories, given them air, and made them alive in a way that can shift and mend them. And it has allowed some of the people in those stories to feel seen, too. Which was most surprising. I had no idea that in some cases they needed the telling of those stories as much as I did, the acknowledgement that they happened, that they existed and were real and that we traveled through them together. They needed to be able to look and see and heal whatever they needed to heal from them too. We are all products of the external cultural forces that scaffold our lives, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, patriarchy. We have all suffered under their weight. And my opening up helped them explore that too. It has been humbling, infinitely tender and incredibly heartwarming. It has given me so much hope around the past and the future.

I’m not going to say I walked away completely unscathed. It didn’t go that way with everyone. But the astonishing healing that has taken place with so many has way outweighed the grief of those who have not met me. And to be fair, in most cases where things went awry, people didn’t actually read what I wrote, they just read a few pages and fell down their own rabbit hole of assumptions. And now that it’s all been said and done. I survived! And feel healthier and more loved than I ever before.

It’s not easy to be a disruptor. It is also not for everyone. I might not have chosen this for myself had I had a choice, but it is why I am here and who I am in the world and there is no use fighting it. Better to be myself since everyone else is taken. And it sure is rewarding when that tiny ember of connection grows. Not everyone will meet you, but you know the people that do are yours. So go out and write that story, or that play, or make that art piece or sculpture you’ve been wanting to make, sing that song. Our stories are the glue that binds.

And a deep, heartfelt thank you to all who have cared to travel with me on this incredible journey. I truly believe we have made the world a little bit softer for people like me. So thank you. Now go out there and get those ballots in their boxes. Make a plan and stick to it. It’s all hands on deck time. Let’s do this!

***I will slowly be migrating my writing to substack over the next couple of months and keep this as an information newsletter, so for those of you who substack or would like to, bellow is the link to follow me there.