an unplanned midnight live that moved from silly and personal into something bigger. it started with an old friendship that never felt equal, opened into grief and comparison, and landed on masking, neurodivergence, and what authenticity actually costs to build.
min 0 - spontaneously go live with no plan, just needed to talk out loud.
min 4 - get emotional about a longtime friendship that has never felt equal, and connect it to a recent breakup in my daughter’s life. reflect on how it feels when someone shows you something completely different than who you thought they were, and how walking away from people who can’t love themselves reopens old wounds.
min 9 - name the real thing underneath it all: substack numbers dropping and comparing myself to writers doing better. reframe negative comparison as sadness in disguise, with the fix being turning guilt into gratitude.
min 19 - lighter tangent with my dog on camera, noticing that several of us independently woke up heavy that same morning, and sharing a dream from two nights before about legos, darth vader, and possibly my late husband and my parents.
min 24 - open up about head shaving as a ritual through hard chapters starting with my husband’s cancer diagnosis, then about my neuro spicy household (my likely adhd, my son’s autism diagnosis, my daughter’s dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and adhd), then tell a retreat story about a kid’s memory of a glass of orange juice as the origin point of masking, tying it to authenticity and why spaces like this exist.
a question for you:
do you have a similar type of memory, or a moment where you first felt like you couldn’t be yourself?
i find that most early memories like this are tied to a strong emotion, so if something just came to mind while reading this, that’s probably it.
if you feel called, i’d love to hear your thoughts, even a like tells me it landed.
i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i would love to walk this path with you.
