Burnt Sage & Blunt Truths

  I'm getting real tired of hearing people tell me to "slow down." Slow down? My life has been moving at a glacier's pace for almost five years. Five years of appointments. Five years of waiting rooms. Five years of scans and bloodwork and "let's wait and see." Five years of putting things off. Five years of being too tired, too sore, too busy surviving to actually live. I've spent years watching everyone else move forward while I learned how to schedule my life around medical appointments, side effects, and recovery. I've learned how to cancel plans. How to sleep sitting up. How to measure my energy like it's a precious resource. And now, when I finally have a little fire in my belly, when I want to write, create, list vintage stamps at midnight, start projects, dream about the future, and maybe—just maybe—run toward something instead of merely crawling away from disaster— People tell me to slow down. No. Respectfully, fuck that. I have slow...

  A few days ago, I found a yarrow plant on the side of the road outside Oak Harbor. Not in a nursery. Not in a carefully curated garden center. Not with a cute little tag telling me how much sun it needed. On the side of the road. Traffic had backed up, and there it was. Dakota reached out, yanked the thing out of the ground by its roots, wrapped it in a wet paper towel, and tossed it into the car. That should have been the end of the story. Any gardening expert worth their salt would probably tell you that being ripped out of the earth, hauled around in a vehicle all day, and stuffed into a temporary pot with a snake plant is not ideal growing conditions. Yet here we are, and tell that to the yarrow.  The yarrow is thriving. Not surviving. Thriving. New growth. Upright stems. No dramatic wilting. No passive-aggressive yellowing of leaves. No plant version of filing a complaint with management. Just growth. And honestly, I can't stop thinking about it. Because some things are...

 People really need to learn the difference between protecting a tradition and performing authority online because it makes them feel spiritually important . Because those are not the same thing. Not even close. There is a particular kind of modern spiritual busybody that has emerged over the last decade — the self-appointed gatekeeper who was never initiated, never trained, never recognized by elders, never entrusted with actual responsibility… yet somehow speaks with the confidence of an oracle sitting on a flaming mountain. And the moment they see someone outside a tradition engaging with anything remotely adjacent to that path, they leap out of the bushes screaming: “You can’t do that!” “That’s closed!” “That’s forbidden!” “That’s disrespectful!” According to who, exactly? TikTok University? Three infographics and a trauma response? A Discord server moderated by someone named MoonPup420? Here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to say out loud: If you are not ...

  There comes a point in prolonged suffering where “You’ve got this” stops sounding encouraging and starts sounding dismissive. Not because the person saying it is evil. Usually they mean well. Usually they care. But when someone has been carrying the weight of survival for months — or years — those three words can land like another brick on an already collapsing spine. Especially with looming hospitalization for a condition.  “You’ve got this.” Do they? Because from where they’re standing, they barely have themselves. People say “You’ve got this” because it’s clean. Efficient. Optimistic. It lets them exit the conversation quickly while still feeling supportive. It’s the motivational poster version of compassion. Spray-painted sunshine over a structural crack. What nobody talks about is how exhausting it becomes to constantly be viewed as “strong.” The woman juggling cancer treatments, a TBI, paperwork, exhaustion, bills, appointments, fear, grief, work obligations, and the p...

  Take her out. Let her order the second drink without making a joke about it. Let her laugh too loud for a minute. Let her loosen the death grip she keeps on herself every hour of every day just trying to function in a world that constantly asks women to give more than they have. Then ask her how she’s really doing. Not the polite version. Not the grocery store version. Not the “hanging in there” version. Ask her the kind of question that requires you to sit still long enough to hear something uncomfortable. Because you are probably not prepared for that conversation. When the drink settles in and the armor finally cracks open just enough to breathe, she’s going to start telling you about the woman she buried to survive. The version of herself that used to dream bigger. The one who had plans before responsibility ate them alive. The one who used to create, wander, dance, rest, laugh from her stomach instead of performing happiness from her throat. She’s going to tell you about the...

 There comes a point where your life starts to feel less like living and more like long-haul emotional freight work. You wake up already tired. Not “I stayed up too late watching documentaries and scrolling Etsy” tired. Bone tired. Spirit tired. The kind of exhaustion that settles into your joints and starts paying rent. And yet somehow, the bills still need paid. The phone still rings. People still need answers. Work still expects performance. Laundry still multiplies like a cursed spell gone wrong. The world does not pause because your soul is limping. That’s the part nobody talks about. People love resilience when they’re watching it from the outside. They’ll call you strong because they don’t see the cost. They see you functioning. They see you showing up. They see you cracking jokes, answering emails, making appointments, handling crises, carrying responsibilities that would flatten half the population like a possum on the interstate. What they don’t see is the private col...

  There she is. Frozen in time, in good lighting, with a softness the world hadn’t taken a bite out of yet. The woman in that photograph is composed. Intentional. She looks like someone who knows where she’s going—even if she doesn’t. There’s a kind of quiet confidence in her, the kind that hasn’t been tested yet. The kind that still believes effort equals outcome. She is curated. And I don’t mean fake—I mean assembled . Every part of her chosen with care. Hair done, expression controlled, posture held like a promise. She is presenting herself to the world with the understanding that if she does it right—if she gets the formula correct—things will line up. She still believes in the formula. She believes that if she works hard enough, loves hard enough, shows up enough, bends just enough… things will eventually make sense. That people will meet her where she stands. That systems will function the way they’re supposed to. That fairness is a real thing and not just a bedtime story for...