If it was as simple as letting go, wouldn't we all have let go by now?

I’m sure a lot of us can relate to this one. Working with a practitioner who seems to think it’s as easy as loosening our grip. Seeking support from someone who tries not-so-gently to unfurl our fingers. Sharing our story with someone whose words roll their eyes at us - why aren’t we over it, by now?

(See also: what’s specifically wrong with us that we aren’t over it by now? And you can bet folks have some ideas about that, and maybe even a solution they could sell us. See also also: We should really be over it by now, by yesterday, by months ago.)

And here’s the thing. Our beings are so fucking wise. We let go when we can, and not a moment sooner.

Our choices are powerful, mindset can matter, and so too does the nervous system woven through our body - and this world we’re living in. These things often dictate our choices, help us to know when it’s safest to let go, and also when it’s safer to hold on.

In this world we are living in, safety can be hard to come by and letting go isn’t as easy as just deciding to do it. We are powerful, yes, and so are the systems we live in.

Being rushed to just let go can bypass the wisdom in holding on.

Being rushed to just let go might assume we can make this choice in a vacuum.

Being rushed to let go can assume a level of safety that may not exist yet.

Today I’m wondering if we can hold space for the brilliance in grasping as well as the release, not rushing either one, just trusting that ebbs eventually flow, and flows might stand still at an ebb every so often.

And what if there is wisdom in the tide going both ways?

And what if there is wisdom in us going both ways, too?

And what if the letting go is a thing we grow towards, all the while holding tender the parts of us that are holding on?

What might it feel like not to be rushed?

What might it feel like to be trusted in our timing, our holding, our grasping and the slow unfurl of releasing?

Asking the big questions gently,

Jess

Gratitude is not required on your chronic pain journey

Gratitude is not required in your journey with chronic pain.

Sure, folks will foist it upon you.

Tell you your pain is a gift.

And it might be.

But the truth, as with most things, is that you get to decide.

And often it’s not as simple as a gift with no sharp edges.

Perhaps it’s easier for someone else to declare your experience a gift when it isn’t theirs to hold.

Your gratitude is welcome. Same as everything other feeling (and there can be so many).

But it’s not required, even if you’re repeatedly told otherwise.

There can be glimmers of gifts and beams of gratitude and even the occasional appreciation for a lesson, but folks often paste these bright spots over the intensity and immensity of the pain you might experience.

Today, I’m here to say that wherever you are in your experience is okay.

You need not fastforward or find the silver lining in the storm cloud that threatens a flare.

Sometimes we just sit on our front porch as the clouds hang low, limbs restless and heart thudding deep, and whatever we feel is not a thing to usher in or push away, it’s just a thing that’s there and true because our bones sing of it. Maybe it’s a cloud, and it might float on or stick around. We might not know yet. And whatever we see in it or make of it is ours, a thing that can’t be lassoed by someone else’s hollow words because they’re not the ones on the porch in the weather, eyes toward the storm.

Sending care though the clouds,

Jess

Dear Coaches: Mindset Isn't Everything

I am beyond tired of healing and coaching models boiling complex circumstances down to mindset work & emotional/mental/healing blocks. There is no way this is the full picture. However, this is a great business model if you want someone to believe they are the problem and they can only change themselves and their circumstances via your program or services.

If a client feels aligned with and inspired by mindset work, breaking through blocks, and doing inner work - yahoo, go for it!

But I’m not talking about that.

I’m talking about mindset work that doesn’t acknowledge systemic oppression, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, try harder, get out of your own way, don’t be a victim of your circumstance language and approaches.

I’m talking about reducing a complex, holistic, messy situation into a wholly personal problem.

I’m talking about a client bringing a coach (business, healing, life, whatever!) a criticism (of the coach, a methodology, life, whatever!) & the critique being turned right back around onto the client as a block they need to clear/work through/whatever!

I’m talking about where we are pointing our fucking fingers, and can we please be more thoughtful and careful & intentional about it?

This narrow approach of “you are the problem/I am the problem” can feel empowering, sometimes! We often turn to this when we feel out of control in a situation we need to survive. If I am the problem, then maybe I can solve the problem, and things will get better. Seems easier than changing all these shitty external out-of-our-hands things.

When we look at our selves, we are powerful - yes. When we look at our world and the systems we live in, they are powerful too.

I will not rally behind coaches distilling complex issues into client’s personal problems. It is gross, it is negligent, it is misinformed, and it is harmful.

So what can we do as folks in healing and helping spaces?

Can we follow our clients’ lead on the approaches that best serve them?
Can we strive to be anti-oppressive & learn about systemic injustice?
Can we stop teaching & preaching mindset as a way of bypassing tough realities & collective states?
Can we? Please?

Love/I’ve had it,
Jess

How can traumaversaries impact us?

Hi friends,

I am writing to you today about traumaversaries. Did I make up that word? Maybe. It’s just trauma + anniversary, gently smushed together. These tricky little beasts (I say that mostly lovingly) can affect many spheres of our lives. As a survivor, writer, and trauma-informed educator, I am honored to share a bit about how traumaversaries can touch us. This is my world in many ways. And maybe it’s yours too.

If you have ever experienced an uptick of emotions, intrusive thoughts, sudden memories, flashbacks, weird (or maybe familiar but in an “ugh why are you back I thought I was done with you?” kind of way) bodily sensations, and disturbed sleep or freaky dreams -- you might be processing an upcoming traumaversary.

A whole slew of other things could also be happening, but for today, I’m going to focus on traumaversaries and what might come up when one is coming around.

We might experience:

⁍ Intrusive thoughts

⁍ Fixated, cyclical or obsessive thoughts

⁍ Memories and flashbacks

⁍ Big swells of feeling, including (but not limited to) grief, depression, irritation, and rage; feelings that overwhelm us; and feelings that change quickly

We might experience things on a body level because trauma can hang around in our body. We might experience anxiety and more busy-ness in our brains as we scramble to make sense of what’s happening, or outsmart danger. We might re-experience traumatic experiences in present time.

If you’re like: “yeah yeah, I already live with all that.” — I get it. For many survivors and folks living with complex trauma, these things can be the norm. And, when a trauma anniversary is around the corner, we might notice more of these things, an increase in intensity, and (everyone’s favorite): The Things We Thought We Were Done With.

Big sigh, and a moment of silence for every time we thought we were done with something and then it came back around to visit.

Here’s what can make Hard Things™️ even harder: we might not be conscious of an upcoming traumaversary when these things come up, and so it can feel not only shitty, but also overwhelming and confusing.

Friends, I want to support you in navigating these traumaversaries with as much care, grit, and grace as you can. And with a good plan - I am a Capricorn with Virgo placements, after all. (And the pandemic has made me plannier - so much feels out of my control and I do. not. like. it.)

I’ve been hinting at my latest project, and this is it! I wrote us 30+ pages all about traumaversaries, coping, and guidance for creating your own care plan. It’s validating and fiercely gentle, it’s psychoeducational with trauma-informed breaks, it’s part journal and part dear-friend-who-gets-it-because-they’ve-been-there. I tried my best to speak from my heart and hold space for your unique experience.

If this guide can make a shitty day even a little bit more bearable? I will be so happy. Because I have had these shitty days too, and I have needed a resource like this. And as usual, it doesn’t exist. And as usual, I stayed up way too late making it.

So here it is, for you, if you’d like to add Tending to Traumaversaries to your library.

Love you lots,

Jess

Climate grief is valid grief

I wrote a whole post about grief last night and on the surface it had nothing to do with climate collapse. But living on Chumash and Micqanaqa’n land in California, climate collapse has been on my mind. And today I am present to the grief that can come with it, and that you might be feeling, so I’m checking in.

These times are asking us to adapt, and that is no small thing. I’ve been thinking a lot about how situations we live through require us to adapt and adjust. This is part of my lived experience and woven into my working framework: adaptive coping mechanisms, survival strategies, compensation patterns and funky workarounds that reach for their own makeshift balance in the body. There can be a brilliance here in our survival.

It might be that this living world needs something similar from us. Our willingness to listen, to get present to what is happening, to hear and hold the grief, carry it as our own and everyone else’s too. It might be that this living world needs us to adapt and find new ways (and old ways) so that we can keep surviving. To act from this place of truth-full witnessing. And we might be, right-in-this-very-moment, living into these adaptations, which can be both crucial and taxing.

I don’t have a tidy ending today. I know there is more to say, and so many intersections of oppression and privilege present in the subject of climate collapse. We can keep discussing and exploring. For now, I want to send so much gentleness and care to anyone navigating fires, smokey air, power outages, evacuation, climate grief, and oppression in all forms. There can be a lot to be present to, impacted by, sitting with, living through and adapting to.

So many of us are in this woven web. May we be both strong and gentle with every thread. May we honor this grief.

I want a world we don't have to recover from

I want to world we don’t have to recover from.

I want a world where crying doesn’t only happen 50 minutes a week in therapy and in the middle of a sleepless night.

I want a world where caregivers are supported and children are safe and loved.

I want a world where we check on each other, not as a transaction but because we have the capacity to see a wilting sunflower in our neighbor’s garden, offer water.

I want a world with clear air and reparations.

I want a world where emotional literacy, anti-racism, and nervous system nourishment are core teachings.

I want a world where we have space to lick our wounds in every iteration our being deems necessary and tend gently to others’.

I want a world where we trust our bodies, and trust others not to trespass them.

I want a world where empathy and accountability hold hands; where we seek to understand why humans hurt one another and also hold ourselves accountable for the harm we cause.

A world where we are supported to grow and do better, and to repair after our very human mistakes.

I want a world where we can cry or dance or sing at a stoplight. Where we can pull over to absolutely lose it and not be afraid of who might come to call.

I want a world where we can knock on doors.

I want a world where emotions aren’t relegated to the knitting of eyebrows and banished to hip bones, the darkness of muscle swaddling tears and grief.

I want a world where we can live out in the open and be received like falling into ten different warm and outstretched arms.

I want a world that isn’t here yet, the one I hope we’re building.

What kind of world do you want?