Here’s Hamza being cool on stage.

But if you want to know him more just reach out and I’ll find a way to connect the dots.

You can engage with Chetna more at The Midwifing Change Summit or take her class on Embodying Shakti (I will likely be there!)

Bless you all!

I continued entering into dynamics where I felt it impossibly hard to not try and save my intimate partner when I sensed they were in distress. I instinctually made up stories about their neediness and my ability to swoop in and save the day. At times, this was true: I was able to help them. In fact, I have an entire career and skillset based on helping others. But when I do so while ignoring my own needs, or when the other person is not actually asking for my help, resentment grows in our relationship. Conflict festers.

In an earlier phase of life, I didn’t know how to receive and learn from this conflict. I regret deeply that I left many of those relationships with neither ceremony nor reverence

I am going through an unweaving process with the person I have been calling partner for the last 18 months. We are starting to to re-shape and re-carve our puzzle pieces, while also wanting to stay close. I’m aware that if we do this, our pieces may not fit anymore, and that’s terrifying, because of how close we have come to one another’s hearts. However, I’m also holding that one reason we came together into this relationship was to learn how to notice and accept the ways we were conditioned not to love ourselves. I want to practice relating — to this person and everyone else — from the foundation of self-love.

Though we’re no longer partners, I find solace in knowing that we have accepted a role as sacred triggers for one other.

In the culture that I come from, it is believed that the soul chooses the family, place of birth, age of development, and culture that is best fit for the kind of learning that it’s meant to have in that lifetime. It’s a particular belief that’s tied to a collection of other beliefs: reincarnation, karma, (vedic) astrology.

The particular belief that has served me the most in this lifetime is the belief that I am meant to learn from and overcome the situations I find myself in. Ram Dass has referred to this as the curriculum of life: we become who we are meant to be specifically through the journey of these life experiences. Sometimes, they are affirming. Often, they kick our asses.

As an addict in recovery, as a man raised in patriarchy, as a person with caste privilege, I grieve all of the ways I have unknowingly wrought harm. It might be seen as self-aggrandizing for me to simply state that these were learning experiences for me. I have participated in systems of domination that contribute to the traumatization of people I love, and part of my curriculum is learning how to take accountability and serve the healing of all beings of life.

Yet, there is something about the darkness I’ve experienced in my life that I find incredibly rewarding. Frankly, I am not who I am without my addiction. It has shaped me, taught me to feel, given me the gifts of community, presence, and resilience. It has charged me with the task of savoring this precious life and taking charge with it.

I am eternally grateful for my curriculum, the addiction stuff and everything else.

Whenever someone is going through relational strife, I am quick to recommend the book Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. One of the ideas that has come to me from that book is that every relationship is some kind of mirror for one to learn how to better understand and love one's self.

This can be a tough pill to swallow, sometimes, and it sure doesn’t always mean “we have to learn how to stay in relationships even when they suck.” In situations of abuse or power imbalance, the lesson might actually be to learn how to leave!

But I do think staying is important. I might argue that the point of the book, the point of relationships, the point of our life’s curriculum is to learn how to stay with one’s self in all situations.

Staying with one’s self might open up more compassion for the other person. It might make it obvious that a boundary or exit is necessary. Staying with one’s self might help reveal that the conflict that’s playing out today is actually about something completely different. It opens up space for an entirely new relationship with the situation.

I think of addiction as self-abandonment, repeatedly, in the face of situations where it’s difficult to stay. Whether it’s doomscrolling, porn, alcohol, work, sex & intimacy, eating, the thing that marks addiction is not the activity but rather the role that activity has in one’s relationship with their inner world. I remember a time when I used to put on a tv show in the background and scroll on reddit the entire time I was watching. I must have learned that the feelings I was having in those moments were “too unbearable” to engage with directly.

The thing I believe about relationships is this: we really only enter into them because of the ways that they mirror our deepest patterns of self-abandonment. I used to fall into the trap of externalizing and blaming the other person for relational strife: they were the one who made things hard for me, because of course I was trying my best! I was living into my utmost virtue and effort.

Sometimes it’s exactly the way that I was trying overly hard to enact my savior role that created and reinforced the patterns of conflict that I ended up in with these loved ones. And I did that to avoid facing the sensations and experiences that I felt being in intimacy with them. I couldn’t handle the uncertainty, or the experience of seeing someone I loved in distress. I couldn’t stay with my own feelings around that.

If you’re feeling that you’re in a relationship that’s rife with conflict or codependency or tension, just take a moment, maybe a few breaths, to see what’s happening in your body as you read this right now. What are the parts of you that can accept what I’m proposing, and what parts are resisting it?

There are no universal answers to life, and I cannot promise medicine that has served me is guaranteed to resonate with you.

But yes, I have started to see every relationship my soul has placed me in as medicine. Since I was sixteen and learned the definition of “abusive relationship,” I have secretly harbored resentment towards my mom; every characteristic that my teacher shared about abuse was present in our relationship.

When I got sober (a month after my parents finalized their divorce) I was enraged with her. I realized just how much I give of my own life force to feed hers, a pattern that continued to persist in most relationships. I started saying “no” in more and more radical ways, including refusing to go to India to take care of her after my grandmother passed away. I kept learning to stay with my anger instead of abandoning it, and boy did I have a lot of anger.

A little under two years ago, my brother stopped talking to me. He has shared some of his anger with me, and I still feel at times entirely confused about what led him to cut me out. The first year and a half of our estrangement, I was grasping for him to explain, to share a moment of reconciliation, to just express his emotions towards me out loud. Eventually, I realized that here, too, I was leaving myself. As I have started to let myself be more and more at peace with his decision, with his sacred no, I can recognize the deep healing that he is facilitating on behalf of our entire family.

I have forgiven my mom. It wasn’t an easy road. But as I continued on my journey of recovery — which I feel in many ways is just recovery of the self — I am able to see with clear eyes the person she is becoming, the way she’s grown. Ultimately, our growth trajectories mirror one another. She, too, is learning not to self-abandon. She, too, is finding softness towards her full emotional world.

Just this week, as she visited me in my home, we cried together, went on long walks, enjoyed each other’s company. I fully consent to her being a large part of my life and I am immensely grateful for all of the lessons we’ve learned just by being mirrors for each other, sometimes with love and grace, sometimes with rage, sometimes with sorrow and longing.

I’m grateful to my soul for choosing her as a mother, and for choosing my father, my brother, my lineage, my upbringing between the US and India, this particular period of time we are sharing, all of it. Thank you, soul, for choosing this curriculum.

I am grateful to everyone I have ever been in deep intimacy with: partners, companions, friends, roommates, co-workers, clients. I have not always been in my full integrity, but I am growing up and am always available to talk about it.

I hope that your relationships also bring you into deeper awareness of your own puzzle-piece-shape. I hope you find ways to acknowledge and accept any self-abandonment that’s enacted when you come into intimacy, and that there’s permission for you to choose to re-shape. I sincerely hope that life feels more and more like your chosen curriculum, rather than a slog of pain and unwelcome experiences.

Ultimately, I hope that we collectively find our way towards healing and love. That those in power who are playing out their addictions of war, institutional grasping, blaming the other, and denial can soften into the truth that we’re actually all in this together. Our souls chose to do this work, and we cannot run away from it.

The external world often mirrors the internal one. I am committed to softening with myself and staying through all the experiences of life in my body, holding the conviction that this presence will spread outwards into the world. Just like my family is going through a healing process together, all of us alive on this planet, human and non-human, are going through a collective healing process. We all have our part to play. I hope you’ll join hands with me on it.

If you wish to explore doing coaching together, feel free to book a call or send an email to rishter@gmail.com.

My mother and I are collaborating on a new workshop offering that she will be leading weekly starting next Tuesday, called Befriend Your Emotions with Art. She is a dancer, well known for her style of expression. You can see her invitation here, and join the workshop here.

Even though I see a therapist weekly (and a coach every other week), I have not been too invested in the western diagnostic model. I am aware that many have received an incredibly uplifting boost through the support of psychiatry, medication, and diagnosis. People close to me report their lives were saved by formal diagnosis of mental illness or neurodivergence. I’m observing a friend of mine open up to the world since receiving a formal autism diagnosis: a lot of subconscious self-image stuff just gets to proudly exist at the surface now.

And yet I also know that I have never needed to be diagnosed. Most people who know me know that I don’t exactly fit in as normal. A friend suggests I check out Intergifted, which relates to what we call “neurodivergence” through the lens of gifts. Rather than a diagnosis, they offer an assessment that gives each individual a unique “giftedness” profile. Perhaps some will read this and groan, lamenting the perpetuation of “snowflake culture.” For me, it is exactly the sort of reinforcement that my self-critical mind needed in order to be open to the diagnosis in the first place.

I resist diagnosis because of the fear that something about me will be revealed as wrong. I have lived much of my life in the paradigm of right or wrong. This kind of simplistic, binary thinking indicates an adolescence living inside me. And I see it pretty much everywhere. It points to exactly the kind of diagnosis that I had been avoiding.

Maté would argue that in North America, we are living in an entire ADHD culture, because of the institutional and cultural frameworks that inform how we receive attunement in our early childhood. Perhaps you have seen the claim that the behavioral characteristics of certain unhealed traumas are indistinguishable from neurodivergence. Each of us that carries trauma (perhaps this is all of us) reaches a sort of fulcrum, an inflection point in our lives, where we ask the question: Am I going to keep living from my trauma in this lifetime, or am I going to devote myself to healing?

For all my interest in healing, clearing karma, becoming self-actualized, etc. I put off checking out Scattered Minds until I saw that Hasan Minhaj did a video interview with Gabor Maté. Hasan is quite annoying to me in this video: he basically takes the role of “immigrant dad strawman,” resisting the idea of working through his own healing process because he doesn’t know how to navigate his own needs against the expectations of his family and culture. In a different stage of my journey, I may have related to him. But I found Gabor’s arguments fascinating. After many years of working on radical self-acceptance, letting myself have all of my feelings, tantrums, scattered interests, non-traditional this and that… here is somebody who is willing to say “you are totally valid as you are, and you still need to grow up.”

It was the sort of firm yet gentle parenting that I wish I’d received. Most of my parenting I remember existed in the binary. “This is good. This is bad.” Suddenly, life became about trying to avoid being or feeling bad. If I study hard and get into a top university, I will be good. If I date the right person, I will be good. Oh shit, everything feels bad! That’s wrong! Maybe if I drink, then I’ll feel good. Oh yeah, that works. Scrolling doesn’t always feel good but it helps me from feeling bad!

The whole thing has been a mess.

Learning how to savor the complex range of life experiences is a form of growing up. Taking responsibility for one’s own emotional landscape is a form of growing up. Accepting one’s role as parent and providing a safe container for a child to come into these overlapping complexities at the right stage of development is a form of growing up. Learning to parent yourself in the absence of parents who have the resources to understand what “growing up is” is a form of growing up.

My journey with this isn’t glamorous in any way. It has looked like journaling when I’m angry to get to the heart of things, instead of lashing out. It has looked like taking steps to be in charge of my own economic stability, especially when I left the world of careerism. It has looked like being patient with myself and others, and learning to see the world as it is.

One of the ideas that has stuck with me from Scattered Minds is “unconditional positive regard.” Maté argues that this is a primary quality of parenting that provides a safe environment to nurture a child’s healthy ego, their ability to have an authentic yes and no, their capacity to hold complexity beyond the good / bad binary.

This doesn’t mean to parent permissively. This doesn’t mean the parent doesn’t have boundaries. All it means is that a young child, learning to develop emotional range and secure attachment, is constantly searching for attunement and presence from their primary caregivers. The book has many great examples of how young children, even at the pre-verbal stage, are able to notice when their attachment figure is present with them. And of course, they’re able to notice when their attachment figure is distant, distressed, or distracted. Actually, we adults have that attunement awareness too.

Some of you may have seen the ways that children have an almost endless need for attention. Maté argues that at certain developmental stages, this is simply unavoidable. As the child grows older, it becomes important for the parents to be able to say “no, I’m not available at this moment” and perhaps to receive the disappointment and hurt of the child.

No, it’s not about acquiescing to the child at all times. But there is something to being able to offer “unconditional positive regard” even when the parent and child disagree. To be able to provide containment, letting the child know that the parent is not an emotional punching bag, that they too have needs, without diminishing the quality of attunement, presence, or affirmation.

No one can be happy all the time. Even now, I see how my parents get squirmy when I express a negative emotion. When I indicate that I’m sad, scared, grieving, angry, upset, irritated. I have been practicing sharing my genuine emotions with my parents for some time now, but it has been a journey. As a child, if I expressed irritation or anger, my parents would give me some food, my body would settle, the emotion would be suppressed, and then they’d say “oh, he was just hungry!”

No wonder I learned to sedate myself with food whenever I feel strong emotions.

But something in me persisted, and I realized the only way out was to let myself have the feeling. This whole blog is a sort of documentation of me coming into more and more acceptance of my own complex emotional landscape. At first, bringing these emotions up with my parents would induce a sort of denial in them. “You’re not angry.” “Don’t be sad.” “Why are you making things difficult?” These responses would just stoke my anger.

Later, I came to realize that my strong feelings simply evoked strong feelings in them, feelings that they didn’t know how to welcome without suppression. My anger brought up their shame. My fear, their sadness. My grief, their heartbreak and helplessness. Their own feelings were not acceptable, so they had to make my feelings unacceptable.

Rather than “unconditional positive regard,” I experienced positive regard when my parents were comfortable or knew what was going on, and otherwise the attunement channel between me and them was severed. So I learned that in order to receive attunement — which is just as important for the child as food — I had to show “good” feelings, perform “good” behavior, achieve “good” results.

Maybe you have your own similar version of this experience. Were all emotions fully accepted in your early childhood? Did you get the sense that some were “preferred”? Even now, do you notice those preferences for some feelings and experiences over others?

I’m not saying this is a sign of ADHD. I’m saying that the culture we operate in at this time of history is riddled with this sense of preferential treatment. We are taught to prefer happiness over sadness. Success over failure. Intimacy over longing. Contentment over grief. Like neurodivergent experiences, feelings labeled as “negative” are pushed to the side, sequestered, left out of many narratives.

And yet we are fascinated with the shadow. We love watching movies where people experience catharsis. We get out the popcorn when conflict erupts and read out long, emotionally charged group texts to our friends. We are fascinated with rage, grief, denial, loss, sexuality, tension, heartbreak.

There is a sort of release when suppressed emotion is allowed to be expressed.

My own fascination with these things was a sort of compass to my deep suppressed emotions that I was desperate to experience and express. Something big changed for me when I stopped drinking — my system started to be flooded with all of the emotions I was avoiding, primarily at the time anger.

I am grateful to have one close person who was able to provide positive regard for me as I was wielding this anger for the very first time. They affirmed my right to my anger, set healthy boundaries, and provided a space where I could experience my connection to myself while at the same time feeling connection to another.

Of course, that positive regard couldn’t be unconditional. I have learned (thanks to the aforementioned therapy / coaching and friendship) that no one is actually going to be able to provide the unconditional positive regard that I have longed for from my parents.

Scratch that, there is one person who can provide it. Me.

In fact, I am the only person who can provide unconditional positive regard to myself. This means the buck stops with me. I’m allowed to be angry, but I’m the only one who might celebrate it. And I have to take responsibility for the impacts of that. If I’m grieving, I might be the only one who says it’s okay to rest, Rishi. Take a pause and let yourself feel.

I’m not saying we should be doing any of this alone. In the jam world, we make time for the exquisiteness of each person being able to receive positive regard for exactly whatever experience is moving through them. In fact, it is far more satisfying to co-create space where people feel safe enough to let their suppressed stuff come out. In groups where positive regard for all emotional expressions is valued, there is capacity for some to hold that space while others rest. Each person gets to choose how they show up and what they have the capacity for. And there are no wrong answers.

All I’m saying is that no one else is going to be able to provide unconditional positive regard for you, but you. Some people will come close, and will help you find your own self-love and self-acceptance. But ultimately it’s gonna have to be you. I think cultivating that self-authority is a part of growing up, too.

Lately I’ve been practicing slowing down so my inner parent can witness my inner child, unconditionally. I will say to myself “oh.. I see that you’re feeling hurt. I’m sorry you’re having a tough time.” Saying sorry to myself is doing wonders. Everyone should try it.

The more I accept my own inner experience, unconditionally, the more layers to it I discover. I learn the ways that I hide my true nature, preferences, feelings, and desires, and this hiding costs me energy. I am learning how to soften into my true nature and put down the routine of working so hard to hide.

And as I soften, I see how others become more open to me and my feelings. I think it has something to do with not being so at odds with myself. Being at odds with myself is an experience of tension; it generates tension in others. Accepting and unconditionally loving myself is magnetic and contagious; it makes space for others to love themself, too.

Just other day, I was sitting in the car with my dad, who was visiting me from out of town. I expressed that I was feeling fear about a dispersed camping trip I’m taking later in the year. He immediately took my hand, and I asked “what’s happening for you?” He replied: “the thought of you feeling fear makes me feel sad.” Neither of us made ourselves wrong for those feelings. We just basked together in a rare and cherished moment of intimacy.

I am beyond grateful for the journey just far. I’m aware that I’m in some kind of “Act 2” of my life, and the richness of my experience in my body, my relationships, and my emotional world is deeper and more profound than ever. I truly wish this kind of experience for all of us. And I know that I’m still growing up, still coming into more openness to myself and to others, more acceptance of the fullness of the human experience, more ability to create spaces where people can experience positive regard, more accountability for myself and my needs. I look forward to the journey.

As always, I am willing to talk more about these things. If you end up reading Scattered Minds, send me an email (rishter@gmail.com) or leave a comment. If you want to explore doing some coaching, let’s have a call.

The very first time we met (in a group with other coaches), I was drawn to his warm and calm demeanor and knew that we’d end up talking more.

In this conversation we touch on transitions, uncertainty, navigating different expectations from our parents, and how all of that might show up in the workplace.

Enjoy!

my teacher says that the closer we get to the experience of death, the more intense our fear and resistance will be. i start to see resistance as a measure of how “big” the shadow thing is, and also how much healing is possible if i actually face it.

not that the point is to constantly fight resistance, though.

our blocks naturally melt when we enter into an environment that’s safe enough to feel the feeling. when it’s safe to be angry, i can feel the anger and move through it. when it’s safe to grieve, i can cry and discover what’s on the other side. at first, i searched for safety through retreats, practitioners, friends, deep conversations & slow-down moments, connection with trees, dancing with the ocean, beautiful songs.

as i grow up, though — and i am finally growing up — i am able to add “presence with myself” to the list. when a big feeling comes up, one of the first things i do is ask how might i hold you so i can understand what’s happening? what kind of safety do you need to express yourself?

last night, it was a deep sadness that i was struggling to comprehend. i released a couple of tears here and there, but ultimately the thing that opened me up happened while i dreamed.

this isn’t about that feeling, though. this is about learning to practice holding that my feelings are not about anyone else but me. the way i start to notice i’m in my old pattern is that i start to feel a ton of “fuck you” energy. fuck you to other people, fuck you to myself. on the compass of reactions, this fits the the attack other / self axis.

or my habituation towards distraction says “big feeling alert! where’s the video games? where’s the food? where’s the cuddles? go swipe on a dating app!” and grown up me has to notice that’s happening and remind all the other parts to slow it way down.

then i take five (or ten, or twenty). i notice all of the charge that’s been building up in my body, and find a way to release all that’s not mine back into the earth. sometimes i take the help of a nearby tree who’s agreed to this exchange.

and then, when the dust settles, i get to look at the part of it that’s more explicitly mine. and then, i get to take accountability for my own feelings, and if i did accidentally express some of those “fuck you”s then i get to share my accountability with other people, and ask for forgiveness or help or both.

i’m getting a lot of practice with this. and the thing about practice is that it just builds the muscle for me to take on bigger and bigger things. so, every so often i get hit with a sensation or emotion that makes no sense to me at all. and i get to decide if i’m going to stay, stay, stay.

i don’t always do it. hollow knight’s sequel just came out and video games have always been a delightful escape for me.

but the truth is, i’m obsessed with interiority: mine, yours, the world’s. it’s why i read so much fiction. it’s why i became a coach. so of course i have to know what’s really going on.

as my capacity grows, i see how my presence (whether we’re in session or not) provides that sense of safety for other people’s resistance to melt away. i’m learning not to judge it as much, anymore. by that, i mean: when it happens, it happens. it wasn’t meant to happen otherwise. i’m not a good coach just because my client worked through their resistance, and i’m not a bad friend if you don’t wanna share your deeper feelings with me.

things like this happen when we are ready to receive them. our bodies know how and when to heal.

at this stage, i’m just along for the ride.

if you or someone you know is interested to learn more about 1:1 coaching, to talk about healing trauma, or is also navigating ancestral emotions, let’s talk.

Lakshman and I will both be in Berkeley on Saturday for The Creative Field. If you’re resonating with this convo and want to come join, you are welcome!

And yet, I am doing it. I have many, many beautiful conversations with people who are just incredible and evoke a sense of wonder from me. I want there to be some kind of record for this, because I think it creates space for more wonder. Here’s Aerin and me having some fun with the space we create together.

The next one will be on Friday, September 12 2025. Let me know if you wanna join :)

I have long believed that in order to change the world, we must be wiling to change ourselves. I think I first encountered the idea in my late teens. Back then, “changing my world” meant finding a way out of the culture of shame and blame that pervaded much of my childhood. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to state that I was “gifted with a difficult childhood.” Today, I state that I was intimately forced to confront domination in my daily life, and that has influenced pretty much every choice I’ve made since.

My early liberatory praxis was escape. It involved taking refuge in fantasy fiction, in video games. It led to a habituated use of pornography that still continues to haunt me1. It led to a strategy of “running away” when things got too complex (aka when my nervous system was flooded) so that I could find the “next great thing”.

It cost me many growth opportunities, and opened many other doors to growth.

Later in life, “changing my world” meant getting sober. Making more space for my anger, my grief, my disappointment. Learning what it meant to disappoint loved ones. Learning what it meant to step up to how they saw me and be accountable. Discovering that my emotional world was its own psychedelic experience, and usually it led me towards more intimacy and trust, not shame and discouragement.

Being an addict, one becomes very close to the concept of forgiveness. We engage with what it means to forgive those who have hurt us, and the stimulus that has pushed us closer to our addiction. With what it means to forgive ourselves. With what it means to accept that we will not receive all the forgiveness we long for from others.

The first time you said “I forgive you” to me, I had forgotten that it was something I was longing for. Turns out, the process of accountability is its own reward. We don’t need to search for forgiveness from each other; we earn our own forgiveness by turning towards the transformation that comes alive when we fuck up.

Boy, have I fucked up in this lifetime.

Conflict only feels easier with time. Two things make this possible for me, I think:

One, my capacity is ever-growing. Doing a hard thing makes that thing easier next time. Doing a hard thing repeatedly helps my nervous system know that vulnerability and defenselessness2 is safe. Facing my own emotions keeps me from projecting that I am unsafe when in actuality, I am very safe.

Two, I am not masking as much as I used to. I let people see me, as I really am. When I am angry, I say “I am angry.” When I feel desire, I say “I feel desire.” When I need space, I say “I need space.” Maybe this comes across as obvious. But it has taken me years of active self-inquiry to even notice when these things are happening.

Today, I am aware of how much unmasking I still have left to do.

Today, “changing myself to change the world” feels like letting someone I love witness me, even when it means excavating the deeper shadow stuff that makes it so easy for me to mask. Putting away the part of me that wants everything to “be harmonious” so we can build a different kind of relationship.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how easy it has been for me fawn. You know, “fight flight freeze (fawn)!” It’s something I learned at an incredibly young age. One of the well-known dictionaries says that to fawn is “to court favor by a cringing or flattering manner”. I say that to fawn is “to manipulate by hiding information, whether knowingly or otherwise”.

Sure, this is not the most generous framing for what is a highly pervasive survival strategy. But I really mean to talk about my own fawning without shame. It’s just something that happens. And when it happens, I’m not just manipulating another, I’m deceiving myself. Fawning might mean I don’t exactly exactly know how I truly feel! It takes me days, weeks, months to realize “oh shit, I was so focused on that other person feeling good that I didn’t see my own anger”

It’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to me.

Growing up, I learned that if I could “manage information” such that authority figures were happy, I could keep myself from feeling hurt, or shame, or sadness. I fawned with all kinds of authority figures: my parents, with teachers, bullies. With my college roommate, with romantic partners, with managers at work. Anyone who I felt sufficiently close to could be made into an authority figure.

I don’t fawn like I used to - in fact, I have a reputation for saying “far out” shit. But oh yeah, I still do this! I want people to feel good around me. I want to be a “good boy3.” I want to be in control, and my ego knows that managing others’s feelings is a way to get there.

I’m starting to see how our need for validation from external sources is one of the ways that we reinforce systems of domination. My ancestors fawned with the British in order to receive concessions and benefits under the colonial rule, and to avoid being killed or imprisoned4. Many of us fawn with police in order to feel safe during everyday encounters. I fawned to get jobs. I fawned to get laid. I fawned to get grades.

It’s sad to me how much that shit works. And… maybe it’s a sort of necessary coping strategy under conditions of domination, too.

There is a deep intimacy to being in uncertainty together. There is a difference between fawning to keep myself alive and fawning because I am scared of showing you who I am. What’s really sad is the way my body clings to the memory of fawning as a way of avoiding being hit, being screamed at, being punished.

Today, I am really working so hard to let my truer self be seen. When you asked me to gift you with my honest feedback, I said: “sure, let me sit with it first.” And I woke up with a frog in my throat and knew that if I didn’t share with you, it’d be with me all day. But in order to do so I had to excavate all the pain that lives inside me for the ways I was mistreated as a young person. My gift to you wasn’t the feedback, it was the excavation of my own pain, and instead of the frog in my throat all day I sat with the fear of retribution for not being good enough, obedient enough, accommodating enough.

I walked into the ocean, praying for the courage to be truly defenseless, and as the waves rose, at times above my head, I knew that I could hold myself enough through the experience of terror so that we could sit together across the still waters again.

Truly, none of this has to do with you, with any of you. You couldn’t strip me of my dignity - I’m an adult now, and I have agreed to guardianship of my own self-worth. But in order to show you more of myself, I needed to face the fear and pain that is inherent to taking risks. The risk that allows me to gift you my authenticity, truth, clarity, intimacy, my heart.

The space left from my shadow excavation was instead filled with courage. I can see the big, big risk it takes to break a deep-seated pattern over and over and over, again. I can see what it takes to love myself and love you and say “this is worth it for us, because the impact of this is going to reach far further than us.” And to not feel like it’s too small, too insignificant, or too mediocre to champion and fight for.

When I was really, really ready to get sober, my coach encouraged me to say goodbye to the part of me that drinks with a thank you letter. This morning, I wrote a thank you letter to the part of me that fawns.

Thanks for taking good care of me for so much of my life. You helped me feel connection when I was terrified of the world. You helped find access to resources. You helped me from getting beaten when I was younger. I really owe you for how you kept me in the world.

I am ready to try something different now. I wanna feel more safe to be true to myself. I want to be brave to share my authentic experiences with more people in my world. I wan to be witnessed and loved for exactly who I am, and not because I make other people “feel good.”

Will you give me the chance to try this?

As I continue to unmask, I learn more and more about the gifts of forgiveness. I see how much we are wounded, hiding from each other, scared to be really seen. I see how much our systems of domination tell us to pretend we have our shit together as a way to feel “worthy.” And as someone who used to feel safe by running away, today I all I want is to feel the safety - in myself and in us - to stay, stay stay through the excavations.

There is such a deep need for forgiveness. I will choose to forgive myself. I will choose to forgive you. I will choose to forgive the hurt I endured in my developmental years. I will choose to forgive.

For me, it’s an easy way to settle into the kind of presence that I most enjoy with other people. Folks have a way of quickly and effortlessly allowing their truest questions and emotions to the surface when they feel they’ll be supported and reflected by a card pull. There’s a charge in the atmosphere that’s both intimate and ephemeral, and with that charge we get to look closely together at something important.

In recent readings, I’ve been hearing the same refrain over and over again from folks.

I feel lost.

I’m not sure what my purpose is.

A sort of unifying thread is revealed through many of these readings. A certain phase in life, or maybe the times we are living in. Surely, there are many reasons to feel lost even without leaving one’s home.

And, I think it’s just a human experience to ask: what is my purpose? Why did I come here? How do I feel fully aligned with the things that I do? What is liberation? Is it a worthwhile to search for my calling, or is that just a fantasy?

I don’t read tarot in such a way that the cards answer these questions, because I don’t think anyone will be truly satisfied by an answer that comes from an external source. We all have to reckon with questions of purpose on our own.

I have, however, been cultivating the tools1 to nourish and guide that question in someone else.

The results vary.

It’s 3:30am as I stumble out of bed, jet lagged, and head to my laptop to write, furiously. All of a sudden I am writing again, words spilling out of me like splashed water as I stumble in the dark, trying to see the screen yet keep my eyes from dilating.

I am still getting used to this bedroom of mine. I may live here for a month or many years, and likely something in between. I’ve only slept here a handful of times so far, having moved just a week before I went on my trip.

In my dream I am holding council with a variety of other intelligences; we come together to interrogate if we have free will or if we were programmed to carry the stories and perspectives that we do. I am the witness: I listen to and enter each person’s story, allowing myself to live as them the way a crisp novel or video might feel.

In my dream I start to notice that maybe every council member’s story is the exact same, with different window dressing. It seems like each of us is having the exact same experience. A sense of panic settles on the council, and as we reckon with the revelation the entire fabric of our shared reality comes apart.

Maybe you had to be there to get the full thing.

I think of dreaming like swimming through raw consciousness. It’s my brain improvising memories. It’s the source code of me. Sometimes absolutely coherent and direct — I had a very vivid dream that sent me on a four month India trip — and sometimes a jumble of interweaving images that befuddle my reason-hungry waking mind.

I think it’s funny that we use the word dream both for this weird, mystical idea highway, this portal into the weird, and for the experience of projecting that things will be different in one’s waking life, the seed of conviction that leads people towards transformation.

The question: “what are your dreams?” yields entirely different responses based on how one is relating to the word. One friend of mine will go into their five-year-plan and how they’re gonna get there, and another will launch into a meandering exploration of what they remember from last night.

I wonder a lot about what our dreams tell us about our purpose. In a way, they provide raw material with which we shape our stories and experiences. They offer pertinent, if sometimes vague, guidance on whether or not we are walking in alignment with ourselves.

Anyone else have the experience of waking up after a big moment and having entirely new insights about it? I’ve started calling this “6am insights” because I don’t know fully how I feel about something until 6am the morning after full night’s sleep. And this is why I tell everyone who’s considering working with me to sleep on the decision: I want to how their dreams respond to the possibility.

But what are we meant to do with all this raw material?

I don’t claim to have any answers. But I do know that it’s in my dreams that I am composing my favorite music. It’s my dream that got me out of bed to write. It’s my dreams that inspire new pathways through which I might settle into a feeling of purposefulness.

I don’t think purpose is an equation to be solved. It’s a road to walk. Much like our dreams, we can decide that the message is clear and see a finely paved path, or we can treat it as trudging through a series of entangled jungle vines. More important to me than purpose is choice.

And when I hear people repeatedly ask about purpose, yearning to find a way of being in this world that feels like home, I want to scream at them “Trust that inner knowing! It’ll be worth it”

I’m taking a stand for people to come into a particualr kind of intimacy with themselves: one where purpose is not a faraway goal, but available in each moment. I believe that this is our birthright.

What is something you just genuinely love doing? Where is your favorite place to go to be with yourself? Which of your friends helps you feel most seen?

My guess is that answers to these might already point you in the direction of your purpose. The only way to get there is to keep walking.

I’ll see you on the road.

A little over a year ago, I started calling myself a “leadership coach.” By and large, these labels don’t really matter to me, because much of what coaching delivers has to do with intangibles: interpersonal chemistry, instinct, energy. But I wanted to take a stand for leadership in particular. I wanted to take a stand for the leadership potential of every individual I come into contact with.

Sure, some of my clients are what you might typically call “leaders” in a traditional or organizational paradigm: managers, founders, executives. But I didn’t choose that label because I wanted to exclusively serve folks sitting at the top of a hierarchy. I wanted (and want) people to see themselves from the perspective of permission, impact, and creativity.

The concept of hierarchy brings up very interesting things for folks. Especially those of us who grew up in the cult of individualism1. Our world really seems to privilege one particular type of leader: the sole figurehead, the savior, the savant. The founders I work with are navigating this paradigm. Children of immigrants are caught in it. I have been caught in it.

When we live within the frame of individualism, we search for safety through of our one sole leader. We look to this person to protect us from violence, or we seek to hold them accountable for all of the harm committed in the system. This leadership model indicates that our leader is responsible for all of the friction and ailments in our society. And then it’s easy to overlook the culture of power, domination, and dissociation that surrounds these people — and that surrounds us, too.

Our dreams seemingly live and die on the premise of our relationship with this leader.

It works similarly on the flip side. As I’ve come into supporting more and more leaders, I see how individuals are often unequipped to resource from their own collective. Individualism strikes again.

I’m in charge, therefore it’s all on my shoulders. If I don’t do it, then who will? I can’t trust anyone like I can trust me.

Shadows (like shame, fear of losing power, tight grip on control, perfectionism, discomfort with uncertainty) keep us from leveraging the full creative potential of our people, whether they’re employees, collaborators, or communities of practice. Many of us burn out, become lonely & disillusioned, and abandon our dreams.

I have seen this play out in startups and corporations. I have seen it in organizing and politics. I have seen it in creative collaboration and the art world. It doesn't work. At least, it doesn't work for me.

When we project all of our hopes and all of our disdain on the same target, we are not as attuned to the ways that we actively create the environment that we live in. In order to live such that we dismantle structures of dominance, we must be building awareness of how we reinforce that dominance, and perhaps be actively looking into alternatives.

A general sense of panic has permeated the atmosphere. Rising fears of collective crisis / collapse. I experience more desperation, dissociation, and despair from my loved ones than ever.

This desperation is calling us towards new models of operating in groups. Towards listening together to the land. Towards collective stewardship and buy-in at all organizational levels.

This is what I have always oriented towards addressing through my work. How can those of us at the top of a hierarchical structure invite folks at other altitudes into their leadership potential? How can those of us looking “up” at a person in power actively shift our perspective and participation so that we relate differently to that individual and their surrounding power?

In corporate terms I’ve seen this practice called supporting leaders at all levels. But I’m here to explore beyond that. I’m talking about the youngest child in a family who opens the door for everyone’s transformation and healing. I’m talking about the first person in a generational line to get sober. I’m talking about organizers who tirelessly weave webs of community so that everyone has a place, and knows it.

We need more prophets, and fewer messiahs2.

If you’re reading this, you are a leader, whether or not you buy that. At least, you have the capacity to exhibit leadership in your environment.

Co-Active, where I trained as a coach, defines a leader thus:

One who grows their capacity to take responsibility for their / our world

By this frame, leadership isn’t a static position or action. It’s motion, expansion. It’s about participating in the world. It represents one’s inner self and outer expression. And it doesn’t require global scale.

Augusto Boal3 called this osmosis, or interprenetation.

The smallest cells of social organization (the couple, the family, the neighborhood, the school, the office, the factory, etc) and equally the smallest incidents of our social life (an accident at hte corner of the street, the checking of identity papers in the metro, a visit to the doctor, etc.) contain all the moral and political values of society, all its structures of domination and power, all its mechanisms of oppression.

Interested in large scale organizing? You can experiment with the people you live with, your friends, your family. Discover acts of resistance and worldbuilding in the everyday, and notice how these have ripple effects out into the world!

For me, this has looked like slowing down with the existing relationships in my life. It means sitting with the unknown far more than I am comfortable with when conflict arises. It means continually being humbled by new ideas and perspectives that challenge me. It means trusting my instinct when I do have something to offer, and letting my gifts flow freely outward. It means noticing when I’m touching a boundary or need for space, and respecting my own needs with reverence.

I’m wanting to bring these practices to more and more people. So, I started working on…

The Creative Field

It’s a culmination of a few years of practice with alternative organizational models, coaching & facilitation, and listening to the quiet unknown. And I’m so fucking excited about it, I want to shout about it from the rooftops!

If you’re in the bay area, come join us at our practice sessions in July and August. And, as always, if something in here struck a chord with you, drop me an email or let’s get on the phone.

As always, I wish you moments of peace, stability, togetherness and solid ground during these times. Everything is impermanent. And we will all likely be asked to step into the ring to co-create what happens next. I look forward to standing beside you.

With love and in solidarity,
Rishi

Life started to bloom in February, and I begrudgingly accepted it, because I saw the tree outside my window flowering. This is how spring works in California. Though in many ways my spirit was not yet done with winter. I redoubled efforts into growing and shaping my business. I started powerlifting again after three years. I reached out to old friends and colleagues to check in and see where the road had taken us. I came out into the world in a way that had become uncomfortable for me.

Something bizarre started to happen — for the first time in over a year I started finding it hard to sleep at the end of the day. Usually, for me, I’m able to knock out between 9 and 10pm, simply because I’m so worn out from the day and I need it. It’s a struggle to keep me up, in large part because my system simply cannot sleep in (I’m currently writing this at 630am, that part remains true). But these last few months I noticed myself avoiding sleep, avoiding my body’s call to sleep. I caught myself eating later than usual, playing extra rounds of Balatro, socializing or making phone calls when I could be shutting my eyes.

What was I avoiding?

On the day of the spring equinox I attended an InterPlay gathering with some friends. Most of the other play practitioners were older white-bodied folk. I remember being surprised by how welcome I felt in the space. Men with huge heart-smiles would walk up to me and offer big bear hugs, introducing themselves. They would affirm my presence in the space. Something about InterPlay makes everyone a human, and much more, all at once.

I was paired with an older French gentleman to babble on the idea of the “end of the day”. Pierre was invited to speak for 2 minutes on the topic without any discrimination or thought. He told me that the nighttime is his favorite part of the day because he can finally let go and go to sleep. It struck me that for months I had been feeling my own practice of letting go fall through my fingers. I had found, instead, a tighter grip on my life, on outcomes, on daily tasks and ideations.

I started playing with a new bedtime routine. I would say goodnight to the various things I was holding with a tight grip during the day.

Good night coaching practice
Good night difficult conversation
Good night longing for touch
Good night uncertainty
Good night rage against the machine

It became a sort of prayer to my future self: will you pick this up again for me so I can put it down now?

But the real prayer has been deeper than that: can I genuinely let this go and feel okay?

Of course, my bigger insight is that it’s not just me holding the grip. Some of these are collective forces that I feel are gripping me, gripping many of us right back. After returning from a week in the redwoods at the Asian Diaspora Jam, I felt like I was walking through a curtain of intensity. Almost everyone in my vicinity is carrying some degree of heaviness, fatigue, stress, and grief. I don’t need to rehash the news here, but you likely know what I’m talking about.

There really is no avoiding global climate conditions. The forecast indicates many more days of tight grip.

In moments I’ve been able to find some deeper sense of release and cry out some of the emotion that’s welling up inside of me. But there are entire weeks where it feels like I’m digging this small hole in the earth, waiting for a small puddle of groundwater to seep into in. For almost a full year crying would come easy to me — I’d put on a favorite Sufi song and the tears would flow abundantly. But this season? Congestion, and a second arrow of sorrow.

I don’t know what all of this means, or why I’m sharing with you. I expect I will put this out there and my parents will read it and both of them will call me concerned, as though something is wrong. Nothing is wrong!!! Despite the season of fatigue I’ve had many experiences of pure radiance: singing with the trees, hearty meals with loved ones, full-belly laughter, profoundly being of service to leaders and teams and people who inspire me. But something needs to be said for this moment, not just on at the level of “current events.”

The moment is eating me.

Some people look at me with relief and recognition when I mention that we’re all currently surviving through a Great Depression. Others are more skeptical. I don’t know… I hope to be wrong about this one. But when we look back on World War Three, when will they say it started? When Russia invaded Ukraine? On October 7th, 2023? Or January 6th, 2021?

We’re living in history, and history has its grip on us.

Inspired by my friend and role-model Kazu and Robin Wall Kimmerer, I’ve started playing with gift economics for all of my work. I’m tired of my work being accessible to some people and not others. Instead, I want to collaborate exclusively in relationships where we can establish a sense of reciprocity prior to any money exchange. I don’t have much to say on this — it’s too nascent — but I do feel like our times are demanding us to continue finding new ways to relate to one other, our purpose, our work, our systems, and our resources.

It’s a time for renewal. In Tamil culture (and in accordance with the rhythms of the land of Tamil Nadu), the new year isn’t in January. It was just this week, on Monday. For the last few years I’ve been using Puthandu as my new year, no matter where I’m living. It just makes more sense. January I’m still letting my body decompose and find new fertility. February and March I’m coming back together and finding the shape of myself. And now, here we are. The new year.

I still don’t know who I’m going to be this year. But I do know this: I want to continue practice loosening my grip and letting go. Another moment to practice arises:

Good night to my text editor
Good night to rumination about self
Good night to concerns about how others will receive my writing
Good night to all the things I wanted to say that I never got to

I think I will try to go back to sleep. Sweet dreams.

In my dream my Thatha becomes the president. And all of a sudden I have a secret service

detail. And in this dream he’s not a benevolent, thoughtful president. He’s “the bad guy”. The one everyone’s scared. Thatha, in reality, is a kind and thoughtful person. But I also see the ways he’s a kid. He refuses to surrender, to learn, to follow. He is very set in his ways and his ideas. If he wasn’t so far away, he would be more of a patriarch, more in charge and more forceful on everyone. Even now, he has that kind of power over his kids.

My mom agrees about the kind of work we can do together to take care of others. It’s kind of a relief, realizing that I don’t have to be the only one holding healing on behalf of my family. But it’s also scary to admit that I won’t be the only one. Amma and I will keep growing together. There will be more and more opportunities for learning and development and settling and discovering who we are. And in those opportunities, life blooms. Healing is blooming in my family. Perhaps it’s fair to say that while things are awful around the world, healing is blooming. Collective care is blooming. Tenderness is blooming.

I yearn to be an agent of tenderness. To sit at the feet of sweetness and massage its legs. To prostrate myself to unconditional love. To witness beautiful and ugly demonstrations alike and say… I choose to open my heart. I yearn to honor my own shadow. To make space for the anger and violence brewing in my deepest regions of pain. To offer unconditional love back to myself and release judgement. To hold, with care and firmness, the inner child that didn’t have all his needs met.

I miss when things were more simple. When we used to hang out at Bicentennial park, playing volleyball and shooting the shit. The many picnics and hangouts we used to have. The ways that when people came together, they said “I see you” and left it at that. The difficulty integrating the shadow led to my family being shunned and discarded. We were a cancerous tumor, fully disallowed from being seen as a whole part of the whole. We were to be excised.

I wouldn’t have it. I excised myself. I pushed out of the amniotic sac of dissociation and moved across the country. I refused to be a prop in someone else’s narrative. I am worthy of my own self-determination.

Even now, as I consider sharing this writing, I feel a shadow fall over me. The desire to be seen. The difficulty with imperfection. Is it my place to reveal my family’s shadow? But doesn’t every family have a shadow? I couldn’t have gotten sober without integrating more with my shadow. I couldn’t have moved from rage to forgiveness without looking more deeply at the ways that what I hate about my mother is in me, and may be the exact thing my kids hate about me.

I choose to love my hatred. My grief. My longing. My grasping. I am a complexity, filled with strife and joy alike. I am sovereign to love how and where I choose, and I choose peace. No more war with myself. No more dissociation. No more pretending things are better or worse than they are. Everything Is.

I’m learning to breathe more in conversation. I’m learning to ask people to slow down with me, and be present to exactly what’s alive in each moment. To interrupt and redirect flows and make space for what is unsaid, unseen, or marginalized. I am finding joy in integration with myself.

In all the coming periods of pain and difficulty, hardship, sadness, confusion, loss, heartbreak, you might consider it important to do something. To fix and fight and forge a new way. You might ask others to meet you where you are and hold your vision with you and you might feel rage and disappointment when they cannot or will not do so.

I insist, in those moments there is only one thing you must do. The only thing you have to do is feel everything.

Feel everything. Surrender to the experience of helplessness. Admit that you’re lonely. Find the bottomless well of grief and get to know the texture and temperature of its waters intimately. Discover what’s got you stuck. Is it unexpressed anger? Grief? Whatever it is, let yourself have it.

Slow down. Honor that life is happening all around us. New growth emerges from each single crack. There is so much aliveness in decomposition. Let go and become mulch.

There is no shame in feeling everything. Right relationship and right action stems directly from this. Wield your rage and your disgust both as guidance towards your noble cause. Let your defenselessness be your gift and your strength.

Take a breath and witness all the ways that the new world is already here. There is nothing to do but to nurture it. You carry in you both the new way and the old one. In each moment, you get to choose which future is being born.

The sun rises on all children of life. There may be cold days ahead, but there will also be moments of unconditional love. You are worthy of both.

I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to my inner parents. They’re actually very lovely people. And in order for you to understand and love me, you will have to get to know them better. You might end up meeting one or both of them, and although they’re a little embarrassing, I really do cherish them.

critical parent, loving parent1

This is the image that arises as I consider which inner parent is often critical of my inner child. Focus not much on the cups, the river, or the castle, but instead the tallness of the figure, the hair pulled tightly back. The downward-sloped posture, draped in lengthy black. The air of gloom.

Five is the fearful one. The one attuning to shame and loss. Five reminds the child that there is, in fact, such a thing as good and bad. And you better not be bad. He’s always a little stressed about how things landed for other people. Were they comfortable with that joke? Was I a good enough host? Are they going to want to hang out again?

While Five reminds me of all the ways I am “doing it wrong,” the truth is that he really just wants me to feel in connection. He wants the child to have friends, to experience gratitude and appreciation. He is so aware of the dangers of loneliness, and it’s okay to be a little bit of a chameleon if it helps you ward off loneliness, right?

Ever since I got sober, I have struggled with Five. I am angry with him, for all the times he told me not to ask for help with my addiction or with my difficult relationships with my family. I wish he would let me be more free. But I am also learning how crucial he has been to my development. He’s helped me be of service to so many people. He attunes to my physical needs: having a home, being fed, learning difficult skills.

I want to tell him: “you are a good parent. Especially when you remind me of my love for other people and let me find my own way to grace for our shared messiness.”

Here’s a brief aside to talk about a workshop I’m hosting next week on Generational Activism. You can read more about it here.

This is the parent of mine that unconditionally loves and celebrates the child, regardless of what is happening. Consider the eclectic attire, the flirting with edges and danger, the attention towards a delicate, beautiful flower. The energy of possibility and freedom.

Joker loves chaos. Fly your freak flag, kid. You only got this life, and it’s not for others to tell you what to do with it. It’s your circus, and sincerity is all that matters. Joker loves a good laugh, and if the humor is a little hurtful, that’s okay; they’ll stick around for the repair too. Because they really, really care.

On the inside, Joker’s insecure they might lose access to a core, creative spirit — something that’s innately true but somehow fragile. They’re not always the best at receiving critical feedback, because they truly believe that what the child feels about themself is what’s most important, and if they disagree with your critique, you’ll definitely hear about it.

Joker’s deepest wish is that I’m in connection with myself. That I know my boundaries, my priorities, my gifts. That I don’t squander my effusiveness in a space where it’s not appreciated or welcomed. They’re the reason I started making art publicly, and they’re the one who helped me claim the role of coach. They have helped me advocate for myself with my family, especially in earlier years when I needed to rage at everything.

Frankly, we’re on good terms, Joker and I. That said, they can get excited about being in charge and go overboard. At times, they wanna burn the whole world down and start anew, but they get bored in the building phase and lose steam.

I want to tell them: “you’ve brought me so far. There is still a lot we are learning together, and I hope you stick around even when I’m not leaning on you as much. I have to be stand on my own two legs.”

The child is not really concerned with any of this. Just playing, rolling around the floor, goo goo ga ga. You’ve met a baby, right?

But these two are constantly fussing over the kid’s well-being. With good reason — it’s scary out there! The world requires us to navigate complexities of survival, relationships, moralities, and each of us has our own blueprint.

When I imagine my inner parents at odds, I think of one of them wresting control over the child’s life. I think of Five’s shame spirals, overt people pleasing, self-attack and paralysis. Fearful of conflict and difficulty advocating for myself. I think of Joker’s unwillingness to yield, rejection of social codes. The proclivity to break all the rules, no matter how it affects others.

Neither of them truly wants these out-of-balance expressions of woundedness. No, they want to work in concert!

Earlier this week, I found myself once again facing difficult rupture and conflict: someone dear to me was feeling hurt by my unskillful behavior. The emotions this brought me were so strong — the situation left me crying uncontrollably in pain and confusion when it first came up, because I didn’t understand how the actions I were taking could lead to such a strong response in them. Crucially, I was afraid of losing our connection, and didn’t know how to respond.

As I’ve been learning to do, I took a long pause and got in deeper connection with myself. I started to explore and develop these archetypes. And when it was time to talk again, when both of us mutually felt ready to explore our conflict and the possibility of repair, I imagined my inner parents deciding to hold hands, each of them attuning to the needs of the child, offering the other support.

Five, saying to Joker: I know it’s important to advocate for yourself. I’m not gonna let you go unheard.

Joker, saying to Five: It’s important we take accountability and honor how they were wronged. I’m not gonna let you go unheard.

The child, of course, shrieking and ejecting spittle, happy to be supported and loved and feeling connection.

The conversation was effortless. I acknowledge the hurt that this person felt and my part in it. And I also advocated for my own needs, suggesting that our conflict was made by a series of complex dynamics that I wasn’t willing to take full responsibility for. I felt grounded in my own integrity and we left that dialogue laughing and grateful for the power of repair.

When these two come together as a team, I feel alive to the power of my own defenselessness. I feel the grace of love and all that I’m able to offer that to the world. I feel Five’s humility and Joker’s humor. And when I let them take care of each other, I am taken care of.

Whatever little water seeps out of the dry, cracked earth is taken for cultivation and harvest. I have been trying to write all summer. I wanted to write about my early days traveling in India, being again in a hostel and meeting eclectic people. I wanted to write about new experiences with intimacy I was having and how they reflected my earliest childhood experiences. I wanted to write about my breakup, my rupture and repair cycle with my mom. I wanted to write about studying tantra and finding nourishment and ground amidst personal and collective chaos.

Out of the ever-hardening clay of this riverbed, a small sprout grows. Light green, and supple, as I look more closely this is not a baby plant but the very youngest growth of a sturdy, twisting vine. I follow it underground into a cavern lit by luminescent fungi. Here, finally, is the flowing water, an overwhelming force of flow and energy. I want to swim, to receive the gift of fresh ideas and unbridled emotion. But it’s too strong. I dip one leg in and the water threatens to pull me in.

I will sit here and do my (w)rites.

The crashing of the furious river is a soft yet ever-present cleansing noise. I can barely hear the clamoring of the villagers above, demanding that the water be brought above ground. Sweet relief. The fungus produces aromas that remind me of a childhood spent in the mud. Biking around, discovering new roads and paths. Getting scolded for curiosity and a sense of wonder.

I ask the ancestors what they would do here. Eyes closed, I sing with the river, learning to listen for her choreography and instruction. My body thrums along with low tones, chest vibrating no longer from the shiver of cold but instead the feeling of oneness with earth, a sensation passing through my sacrum and belly until the very top of my head is the summit on which salt and stone collect each other.

I realize that I am not alone in this dimly lit passage, not nearly the first to search for meaning and nourishment here. Mounds of sand and rock line the pathway alongside the river. Anthills and cairns and fleshy fungal bushes. I start walking, my hand idly brushing against each unique sit-spot, each texture telling its own story.

I don’t know where this is going. If you’re here with me, I can’t promise any kind of resolution or ending. The light is dimmer here, and the path slopes downwards. Despite the rushing water to my side my face feels cool and dry. At moments I get tired, looking back at the crack in the earth through which some sunlight has escaped into the passage. As the heat of the outer dry land fades, so does the meager warmth it offered.

Let’s pause here and stretch for a moment. I want to ask you a question. Why did you come here with me? I feel your presence, your attention. Are you here because you want to connect? Are here because you want something from me? What do I, who has struggled to offer anything “of value”, have left to give?

My tears are close now. I am yearning for a reason to put myself out here that goes beyond merely being seen. I’m yearning for connection and commiseration. Fully aware of how much easier it is to express myself when I’m sitting next to someone, I actually have so much to say. But lately I have found it excruciating to write. Who am I writing for?

Maybe I need to invite you into the room more. I want to feel your presence. I want a hug. I want to offer you tea and ask you how you’re doing before we get into it. I want to know who you are and how you are?

Writing for an audience feels like writing into the void. I don’t know if you actually care. I don’t know if you’re going to judge me or exile me or simply stop reading and never tell me you did so. I don’t want this kind of relationship.

But here I am, writing about writing. Making sense of sense making. I want to unburden this from being a place where I have to be perfect, or even where I have to be good. I just want the water to flow freely, and if it’s got a stench and the music is weird and uncomfortable, so be it. I think that might be why you came down here with me anyways.

The tunnel opens out into a wide cavern. Flowers of all colors sprawl out into the space. There is a new aroma here, the smell of butter and onions and shiitake mushrooms. A cauldron sits in the center of the space, kept warm by a small fire.

Let’s sit here for a while. There’s some food for all of us. It’s a long road ahead and we may as well cherish this moment, too.