Systems and Power

I’m hoping this month, this year, is kinder than the last two. Earlier today I read a post from a therapist about affirming therapy. They wrote about how, when a client from a population you don’t belong to tells you how they feel, you can’t respond from defensiveness. Reading it brought something back to the surface that I thought had settled. I felt angry. My first instinct was to let that anger rewrite my own story, to make the post about what happened between my former th

My session went well. Unfortunately, taking medication pulled me out of the state I was in, which made it harder to access all of the thoughts I had been holding. Still, the session was productive, and I left with two question marks to chew on. Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make sense of everything in a way that doesn’t feel chaotic. Right now, I’m holding the edge of the rope, but it’s tangled. And if I don’t plan at least some structure, I know I’ll get lost

The shelter we found Lyndsey at is a non-profit that has never posted their political or spiritual/religious alignments before. Yesterday, that changed. Someone else in a group brought up their post and it started a conversation that ultimately led to me sending the organization an email. Now I’m pretty activated. I know it’s because the last time I spoke up about something I felt strongly about, a shit storm happened after. It’s like I’m bracing for the worst. I know the wor

At the end of my last two therapy sessions, I asked a question. The first time it was, “Do you feel comfortable so far?” The second time it was, “Did any of that freak you out?” She asked me if I expected it to. I said yes. She told me she wasn’t freaked out. That she felt comfortable. That she could hold her role and was competent to work with what I bring in. And that she would let me know if that changes. That’s not a direct quote, I can’t remember the exact wording, but t

I am not sure how to metabolize the state our country is in right now. How to witness people being murdered and treated inhumanely. To witness a singular group’s values being forced onto an entire country. To see speaking up treated as a crime. To think about how scared so many people must be just to leave their homes. To go to work. To try to live a life while knowing it isn’t safe for them here. My heart wishes there were an easy way to stop this. My mind wonders why so muc

It’s strange how two experiences can both hurt you and still feel nothing alike in your body. I’ve been thinking about that, the difference between a wound and a trauma. The difference between someone who harms you and owns it, and someone who harms you and then lies about it to protect themselves. My first therapist made mistakes. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. Things happened that left me with pain I still carry, and probably more trauma than either of us knew how to hold

Vulnerability has always been hard for me. I’ve always been able to push myself to be vulnerable because I know that’s what it takes in therapy to get anywhere. But it’s always been hard. And now, it’s amplified. After opening up, I have to move through all the defenses that immediately pop up afterward. I’m exhausted. I’m angry. And with everything in me, I hope the board makes my second therapist take courses on ethical care so she has to hold herself accountable to better

I’ve been in my head about the termination I went through this year (the one that happened by email), and every time I try to write about it, I end up drowning in shame and deleting everything. Not just shame, honestly. It’s also this feeling that my thoughts start spilling out in ways that feel unaligned with who I am. Even when everything I type is true, it feels mean, and it feels like I’m shit-talking, and that’s just not something I like to do. I keep telling myself I’ll

Watching the community come together when our government has failed them and still finding a way to make sure people are fed has filled my heart with so much warmth. There’s something about seeing people show up for each other that just gets to me. It’s a kind of care that reminds me of what we’re capable of when compassion leads the way. My heart still hurts for the people impacted, though. Even with all the help being offered, I know the stress of it all doesn’t just disapp

Can we take a moment to talk about the ballroom? The $250 million dollar ballroom… The first defense I hear is people saying, “It’s privately funded.” And my thoughts are… how sad. How sad that, when so many people are struggling both within our country and around the world, some would choose to fund a ballroom instead of a food drive, or housing, or healthcare, or emergency aid. I know it’s their money to do with as they please, but that doesn’t make it free from reflection.

What I hate the most isn’t that Trump is our president. It’s that the mindset of America is so toxic that people want him there. That even people within systems of oppression have been so deeply brainwashed that they’ll proudly vote for someone who would take their rights away in a heartbeat. That patriarchy is so normalized (how could it not be, when our country was founded on it?) that people can’t see past their own privilege, past their own lived experience. That we’ve be

I’m laying here trying to go to sleep and finding myself angry about the termination I experienced this year. And I’m just tired of being angry about it. I know the anger is covering up the hurt . The hurt of never really getting to process it with anyone. What I can’t wrap my head around is how a trained trauma professional can justify something like that in their mind. Because I can’t. I’m feeling the harm that someone else’s ego won’t let them see, and it deeply upsets me.

Patriotism asks you to love something that was never built for everyone. It asks you to overlook the harm in its foundation, to drape yourself in the illusion that the system just needs a little fixing not a reckoning. Anti-racism asks for the opposite. It asks for truth. It asks for dismantling. It asks for sitting with the discomfort that this country was built on stolen land and stolen lives and that the same systems still feed off that history today. You can’t hold pride

Why This Project Matters Some days, the world feels unbearably heavy. I scroll through headlines and see one crisis after another — genocide, starvation, governments that seem to forget their humanity — and I feel helpless. It’s hard to make sense of how so many can look away, how comfort and privilege can become blindfolds that keep people from seeing what others are living through. And yet, I keep asking myself what I can actually do. What’s within reach? The Beginning If I

I grew up Catholic. Every Sunday morning meant pews, sermons, and ritual. For a long time, I didn’t question it—faith was something you inherited, not something you chose. It was part of who we were, part of what made a “good person.” But as I got older—and as I started realizing who I was—things shifted. Slowly, painfully. When I came out as gay, I wasn’t directly told I didn’t belong. Nobody said the words to my face. Instead, it came in softer daggers—phrases like, “It’s n

Freedom for Whom There’s a heaviness that settles in my body in July. The country fills with talk of freedom — fireworks, flags, words like “liberty” and “independence.” But for many of us, those words don’t land as celebration. They land as reminders — of who that freedom was built for, and who it wasn’t. The Myth of Freedom They call it Independence Day, but independence built on captivity is not freedom. It’s a myth dressed in red, white, and blue — one that asks the oppre

Therapy, Power, and the Weight of Systems Therapy is often described as a safe haven — a place where you can finally exhale, where your story is supposed to be held without judgment. But for many of us, especially those living inside marginalized identities, that “safe” space doesn’t always feel safe. Therapy exists inside the same systems that shape the rest of the world. And when those systems are built on inequality, the same harm can quietly echo in the therapy room. This