earnestly, yours

There were no healthy models of movement around me growing up. Safety in my family meant staying still: sitting, drinking, smoking, numbing. Fixed bodies. Stationary presences. Sedentary. I was raised by people who anchored themselves to the sofa as if the world outside might swallow them whole. I absorbed that atmosphere like a climate. And I did something extraordinary with it, still: all my movement went inward.

This is my truth: standards are standards. Integrity is not optional. Education should not bend for sentiment or convenience. It should teach resilience, accountability, stamina, the capacity to find solutions for yourself: how to live, truly live, fully, as an adult with a brain in your head and blood in your veins. You learn not by comfort, but by facing the field, by navigating the terrain, by figuring out how to get from A to B, and not whining because the path is hard.

This is why I say that therapy is not “helping”. Therapy done in this way costs weight in my bones, loneliness in my psyche, and a lot of misunderstanding. This is why when I say that I know, it is because I know. In that state, I don’t observe, I become the conduit. There, the soul speaks.

... therapy is not always enough > Years of Person-Centred counselling gave me reflection. But it didn't hand me the tiller. It mirrored my story but didn’t help me write the next chapter. It validated my feelings and deposited me on a sandbank.

I am no longer waiting. I am leaning into the wind. This vessel, vast and trembling with power, is mine to command. She is alive, and she has called me to hold her steady; not by hiding from the storm, but by entering it, bending my body into its truth, anchoring the keel through my own spine. I ask for a crew: not of polished saints or clean-cut sailors, but of misfits, outlaws of the soul.

Stay tuned. Or don’t. I’ll be here. Watching the sugar dissolve.

The Land of Tranquillity is safe, silent, beige. But we are not here to stay safe. We are not here to settle. Happy After Easter!

Okay, Buddha, I get that you’re amazing and your teachings are supreme, but can you just tell me what these teachings are?

He watched his son with the same dread a man watches a ship sinking into the sea, knowing he couldn’t swim fast enough.

I needed to look higher, to think higher — not focus solely on what was right in front of me...

As words that are trying to rush in, to tell me something, but it's just a concoction of fricatives and affricates and I make no sense...

I sat next to him, and he handed me an empty glass and the bottle. I poured myself some, leaned back, and closed my eyes.

I just need to remember that the Greek Minotaur, the beast at the centre of the labyrinth, was known by the name of Ἀστερίων, star.

Instead, my F's, H's, and R's look like something a 4-year-old would do, on a heavy dose of Calpol...

Learning to stay, to sit at the centre of the lemniscate is all that it requested of me, right now.

My body aches, my lungs burn. I fear one of my ankles will give way, and that will be the end for me.

That boat was in the still waters. Floating and not going anywhere. The moorings I knew I left behind me could barely be seen...

I am sitting at a café. It’s a very hot morning in La Havana. I can feel my eyes checking the surroundings, a prey looking for her next...

Thank you for being here, for reading, and for being part of this evolving story. I’m so glad you’ve found your way to this space.