Why I Broke My Vow of Silence (And not for the reason you think).

** Trigger warning: discusses mental illness, anxiety and depression **


Today is the day I would have started my 10-day long vipassana course. For those of you that don't know, Vipassana is essentially meditation bootcamp; you spend 10 days with several other people in silent meditation all day, every day. I have been planning to go to one for a few years now, but the timing has never lined up. I recently cancelled my course I had signed up for due to scheduling conflicts with the next thing I had planned for the summer. I was disappointed about not being able to make it to the course, so as a compromise, I decided I would spend a week in silence. My plan was a bit different from Vipassana's; I wouldn't just meditate. I would read, write, make medicine (I'm a herbalist), go for bike rides, hikes. I would turn off facebook and not watch TV. Get up early and do yoga. Be with myself for a week, allowing myself to be present with everything that comes up, including all the uncomfortable feelings.

Sounds great, right? Yes, except that halfway through my first day, I realized there was a flaw in what I was doing. Essentially, I was dieting. You know when you've really outdone yourself over Christmas Break, and then for New Years you decide you're going to be a NEW PERSON and lose a bunch of weight, eat healthily, climb Mt. Everest, learn Spanish, and learn how to juggle? And then you never do those things? Well, what I was doing was more or less the same for me. There is a problem with this kind of deprivation: it isn't kind to yourself, and it doesn't last.

I'll let you in on a secret. This secret became blaringly clear during my one day of silence; it is something I have known almost my whole life but had never been fully upfront about, even with myself. I suffer from mental illness. I may appear to function in daily life, but take away my crutches, take away the busyness I occupy myself with, and my mind goes haywire in a mess of anxiety, overwhelm and depression. I'll let you in on some more secrets. What I suffer from doesn't necessarily have a formal name or diagnosis. I call it overwhelm. Extreme overwhelm. I suffer because to do most things takes a certain degree of fighting with myself to do it, because the thought of doing it makes me overwhelmed. The overwhelm largely comes from unbelievable amounts of pressure I put on myself. To sit down and read, or get up and do yoga, or practice the guitar, or write this blog post; for me to get myself to do anything on a regular basis takes an extraordinary amount of energy. I recognize a degree of this is true for most people; to do anything on a regular basis takes discipline and perseverance. Yep, I get that. But for me it is different because I can't just do the thing; I fight with myself that I'm not doing it right, that I need to be doing more, that really I should be doing this other thing. And to do most things requires me to get over a messy hurdle of anxiety, overwhelm, and sometimes depression. Some days, for me to pick up a book and begin reading it is a victory; it means I've managed to overcome a storm of overwhelm before actually opening the book to Page 1.

As I mention in my previous blogpost, I also suffer on a daily basis from a highly overactive sympathetic nervous system, that was hardwired that way as a baby. Undoing this hardwired behaviour will be a lifelong struggle for me.

So there's my secret. How do I deal with this, usually? Well, a number of different ways. The first one is school; it's one of the reasons why I have stayed in it for so long and keep going back. To have a structured system of learning, to have assignments and tests that have to get done, takes some of the overwhelm away. When the pressure comes externally, I seem to be fine, most of the time (depending on what it is). But otherwise, I deal with this by turning my brain off and numbing it out. I do this by looking on Facebook, scrolling my news feed, watching re-runs of familiar shows. These are not just crutches. They're my Xanax, my Ativan, my Prozac. Sure, they may not be the 'healthiest' ways of dealing with my struggles, and yes, I would like different ones, but they take the edge off, and sometimes, that's what's needed.

So how does this relate to my vow of silence? I begun to realize that what I was doing was actually likely to make my situation worse rather than better. By removing all of my crutches, I was alone with myself and my thoughts. This is kind of the whole purpose of that type of exercise; to be present with oneself and one's thoughts. While its true that I can see that exercise as valuable for many, for people who struggle with anxiety, depression, or other forms of mental illness, I would avoid it with a ten-foot pole, unless you have it more or less under "control". To tell a depressed or anxious person to be alone with their thoughts can be a very bad move, if not dangerous. And actually, in the end, not necessarily helpful or necessary. While there is definitely value  in being able to be alone with oneself, one must also be kind; its great to learn to be alone with oneself, if one can treat oneself well while alone. As someone who has lived with anxiety my whole life, and depression as well to a certain degree, what helps more than anything else is human connection, whether that's in the form of friends or TV characters (or occasionally book characters). In the frenzied anxious state, what you need is something to take the edge off, something to calm you down, before you can deal with your thoughts. For me, that's very often human connection that I trust. To remove that from the equation is like taking away a depressed person's Effexor before they're capable of withdrawing safely. It's cruel, and also follows a highly addictive binge-purge cycle.

Our culture lives in a perpetual binge-purge cycle. We live in a culture of excess, and yet many of us have become enamoured with states of deprivation. Due to a guilt complex over the excesses and indulgences, be that with food, TV, or what have you, we want to then 'purge' those from our system (hence the New Years resolutions after pigging out on Christmas dinner). As a result, we label certain items or behaviours as bad and others as good, and 'clean' ourselves up. As much as we love our donuts, French fries and slurpies, we also love our liver detox cleanses (please don't do this ~ whole other blog post), hard core meditation retreats, and Buddhist and Yogic teachings which, in some interpretations, emphasize a degree of deprivation. But the problem is, we in this culture run to these things having no lead up at all. We run from one extreme to the other, which, if you think about it, is unhealthy and ridiculous. Would you, for example, run a marathon having no physical training? Or play Hamlet after never having read a word of Shakespeare previously? No? So why do we want to put our livers through a detox after drinking and eating terribly only days beforehand? Or put our minds and hearts through a meditation and yoga retreat after only having meditated or done yoga once or twice before? If we want to change our old patterns and create new ones, we must do so slowly and with compassion; most people can't learn to swim by being pushed off the diving board into a pool of sharks.

This cycle is actually addictive, and perpetuates itself; we go really far to one extreme, then as a result bounce back to the other, and back and forth we go. Ironically, one of the most important tenants of Buddhism is the middle path; to live on the extreme of indulgence is unhealthy, but to deprive yourself of all the comforts of life is also that way. The best way is to find the middle ground; to not have too much, but also make sure you're being nice to yourself and giving yourself what you want (and need!).

Through my one day of silence, I realized something that I kind of knew all along: that many advocates of these spiritual or new age practices (for lack of a better word), while having their place, are often ableist in their approach. I was actually being ableist towards myself in my suggestion to remain silent and alone with my thoughts. In a group such as vipassana, you are with a bunch of people, and while difficult, you are also going through your difficulty surrounded by others, and are also able to engage in discussions with the teachers there. I was doing my vow of silence on my own. Mental illness is stigmatized heavily in our culture; those living with it are frequently told to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and carry on, to 'get over it'. In the spiritual, new age world, it sounds different, but has the same outcome; we are all told to 'face our demons', to sit and be alone with our thoughts, to feel the fear and run towards it anyway. This is great, unless you suffer from mental illness, and proclaiming those adages to someone who is, is disrespectful and discounting of their experience. Why? Well. Telling someone who suffers from depression to face their demons without adequate and professional support could be a fatal mistake. Telling someone with chronic anxiety and panic disorder to be alone with their thoughts or to run towards their fear is like tying a mouse to the end of a cat's tail. It would not end well. Those of us living with mental illness do not necessarily need to "face our demons"; we live with them every day. For some, these are great tools and in many cases, can help tremendously. But be careful who you suggest these tools to (including yourself), for to the obsessive mind and/or someone suggestible to these philosophies, it is not always the right solution. Its essentially a fluffier way of telling someone to keep their chin up, to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, or to 'get their shit together'. I'm not 'weak' if I can't go through with it because I need human connection. We are not meant to be alone; it's good to know we can be if we need to, but ultimately we need human connection and that's okay.

I swing to extremes in either direction very easily. It is really difficult for me to promise any kind of significant change in my life without becoming obsessive about it. And, if I'm not careful, what begins as a very easeful transition snowballs into a series of expectations I can't possibly live up to. I wanted to get to the root of my pain, to be present with the scorpions of my mind, and to be able to be alone with myself and be okay with it. While this is a worthwhile endeavour to some degree, to do this very suddenly, removing all of one's crutches at once, which I've labelled as 'bad', and do all of these things which I've labelled "good" (all of which are things which overwhelm me to do), is not actually being nice to oneself at all. In fact, I'd put it in the category of cruel. And there is a very fine line between challenge and cruelty. Thus, I decided to back out of my vow of silence, and instead, remove the things I don't want in my life, and add the things I do, slowly and gently, with grace and kindness. And I still want to challenge myself with a vipassana retreat; but trying to be silent for a week, on my own, was too difficult for me at this time. And that's okay.

May we all find peace and happiness on the middle path. Let's all be nice to ourselves.

**I will say, that if these extreme measures work for you, that's awesome. Keep doing what you're doing. My point here is only saying to be careful what adages and philosophies we've internalized, and that they're not for everyone in every circumstance. **

Birthday Beats: Reflections on My Birth, Neurodiversity, and the Highly Sensitive Person.

I began writing this post more than two months ago, but given the content it seems beautifully appropriate that I post this a few days after my birthday. I will kick off my new year by sharing this story with all of you.

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In the last few months I have become more and more clear about the different way in which I experience this life, loving myself for that, learning to identify with it and work with it. I have had many conversations with friends this year about how knowing your limitations can set you free. Rather than trying to conform yourself to how others are, to how you think you should be in the world, accept how you really are and learn what you really need. Then you can truly live from your centre, because you have truly accepted and loved yourself for who you are, and not for what the world wants you to be.

We are taught in this culture to squash differences, whether it be with regards to body type, gender, or neurology. We are taught that there is a ‘normal’, and then there is ‘deviation’, and the deviations are often pathologized or plainly not understood. But really, what actually IS normal? Who sets this standard, and who actually fits into that category? Do people actually fit into those ways of being, or are they based on structures endorsed by capitalism to make us work harder, faster, and be more effective at making profit? Well that was your conspiracy theory lesson for today, but I think a lot of it is true. We expect ourselves to be either skinny (good) or fat (bad), male or female, smart or stupid, 'well-adjusted' or mentally ill. But as Krishnamurti’s quote goes, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

In reality, we are all a little bit deviant. We all learn differently, we all have different bodies, different ways of expressing sexuality and gender. It is true that some are more capable of conforming than others, and we are not all created equally according to this structurally oppressive mess we have been born into. Some clearly have it easier than others in terms of how well they can pretend to ‘function’ in this profoundly sick society. But a lot of us, whether we know it or not, are faking it, in our small ways. It just may not be as obvious as others’ experiences. I am certainly not saying we are all suffering equally; that is certainly not the case. But the extent to which we are all slightly deviant is I think something we need to explore in our culture, and ultimately accept. We need to stop placing binaries on everything and begin to see our experiences on more of a scale. Someone who has trouble focussing because they cannot learn in the way our education system teaches is labelled as ‘hyperactive’ or has ‘ADHD.’ Someone who experiences anxiety, depression, or differing neurology in any way is considered ‘mentally ill.’ In a way, labels help, because we can identify with something that gives us some kind of ‘opt out’ ticket from having to keep up with the mainstream. But in other ways it pathologizes, which assumes that there IS a normal, a standard, rather than recognizing that everything, whether it be our bodies, gender, or neurology, has natural fluctuations and differences within it.

It is a popular theme in some New Age circles to say things like “you can do anything” and “don’t identify with your story.” I lived by these adages for a long time, until I came to realize that they don’t help, because it’s simply not true. First of all, you cannot tell someone who is quadriplegic that they can walk if they believe they can. So, why would you tell someone with paralysing social anxiety that if they believe in themselves enough, they can go to the party? New Agers I have known have been quick to say things like “you’re dwelling in negativity” or “you’re identifying too much with your story” when, in fact, I’m just being realistic about what I need. Of course, there are people who identify too much with their story and do limit themselves, perhaps. But denying your story completely, and trying to pretend that you’re capable of anything when you’re actually not—trying to quash your social anxiety and feel miserable at the party—makes the situation much worse, and, in the end, limits you and encourages self-loathing ultimately. Accepting your limitations is a radical and self-loving act, because from there you are able to identify and communicate your needs in your life.

One of my herbal teachers, Sean Donahue, has been speaking in our classes quite a bit to the concept of allostasis. In conventional medicine, and to a large extent even in alternative medicine, we hear a lot about homeostasis, which implies that all body processes should be working at fixed levels, and that the body is constantly trying to return itself to that standard. In reality, it is much more the concept of allostasis that is at work, where the body is constantly fluctuating and responding to its environment. Take the heart, for example. If the heart was beating at a steady, ‘regular’, even pace, the person is either in an advanced stage heart condition, or is on medication or has an implanted pacemaker. In reality, the heart is a sensory organ, that is constantly shifting and changing in response to its environment; so an irregular heartbeat is not always the sign of pathology. In fact, it often signals a healthy heart.

Allostasis is a perfect concept to apply to other spheres and experiences in the world, not just that of anatomy and physiology. Once again, I reference my inspired teacher, Sean, who in his blog discusses the idea of neurodiversity. This relates to someone who, for whatever reason, thinks differently or experiences the world in a different way due to differences in brain processes. This could be something that is conventionally labelled such as Autism or ADHD, or could describe an undefined situation which has left the person experiencing the world in a different way than most. In the latter situation, you could be talking about most people. Everyone, possibly. Everyone does think differently from each other, and we have all had experiences in this life that provide us with unique challenges and therefore, needs. Learning each other’s unique needs, whether pathologized or not, and treating them on a scale rather than a binary, is essential to understanding each other and ultimately acceptance. It is by no means easy, but ultimately an extremely satisfying task if done properly. I think we would all be a lot happier if we, first, understood our needs, and second, learned how to communicate them to our loved ones.

So with that lengthy preamble, I am writing today to do just that: communicate to all of you lovely people about my own neurodivergence (seriously, thank you, Sean, for that word), and therefore, my needs in this life, whether it be in work, sex, love, or what have you. This has been a powerful, necessary process for me, and though it is challenging I will do my best to explain it to you.

It all begins on a cool spring day in early March, 1987, in Toronto. And by 'all', I mean my life. I mean, the day I was born. It may seem ridiculous to peg anything that happens in your life to your birth story, that that one event could shape the way you are. But if you think about it, it makes sense. Birth is by nature a profoundly unsettling event.  It's exciting and necessary, but its a massive transformation of experience. You can do everything you can to make the transition as smooth as possible, but it's still going to be a tad unsettling, even if its only for a few moments. It is also your first ever experience of the world. So it makes sense that your experience during birth could have a significant hand in how you see the world for the rest of your life. I have denied my birth story for years, dismissing its effect on my life, and I thus went through my life with experiences and feelings that I could not explain. When I really began to look at the events surrounding my birth, I began to understand that they are very clearly the root of many experiences in my life.

My mother was older when she had me, and, in between my sister and I, had had several unsuccessful pregnancies, so when it came around to my due date, her doctor was understandably concerned about my survival. When I still wasn't showing any signs of budging, the doctor begrudgingly decided to induce my mother with labour using Pitocin (a pharmaceutical form of oxytocin to stimulate contractions).  I came out all in one piece at my birth, and everything was fine, until they took me home, and I began having seizures. My parents actually have video footage of one of my seizures. Essentially, I'm just doing my thing, being a baby, present in this new world, then all of a sudden, I would go completely still and zone out. It looks a little bit like I leave the planet for a few minutes, then come back, then go out again. In my pathophysiology class last semester, we talked about what is actually going on during a seizure. Basically, it is the nervous system going on a rampage; what you would call an excess firing of neurons. They can present in different ways, the most well-known being the 'grand-mal' seizures where the person flails and thrashes about. But there is another common type, called the 'petit-mal', where the person does what I did as a baby: just zone out for a few minutes, leave the planet, as a reaction to the nervous system firing excessively. I have never had a seizure since the first week of my life, but have been thinking a lot about how those seizures, as well as my induced birth, have had a massive impact on several aspects of my life since then. And it makes sense why, given that they were my first experiences in life, and they lay the neurological foundation for how I will cope with the world for the rest of my life.

The experience of my birth and subsequent seizures is a perfect little metaphor for the course of many events in my life. I can name a handful of experiences in my life that you could say are easily grown-up, non-physiological versions of the same story. I am either too cautious and stuck in indecision, or find myself in a situation without knowing how I got there, and freak out (which is, while not physiologically a seizure, following the same neurological map as one). It is unclear, from a physiological perspective, why I had the seizures. Other than the induction, I had an otherwise normal birth and my mother had a healthy pregnancy. My theory, given my knowledge of my birth experience and my understanding of seizures, is that my week-long epileptic state was a reaction to a traumatic event, that being my birth. Remember, seizures occur because the nervous system is firing excessively; it is a state of heightened adrenaline, norepinepherine, and fight, flight or freeze response. It is as though the body is under the impression that a grizzly bear is right behind it and is going to eat it alive. So essentially, my seizures were a response to trauma.

So why was my birth traumatic? From an outside perspective, it doesn't seem like it would be. I didn't have my umbilical cord wrapped around my head, and I came out physically healthy (minus the seizures). But remember what I was saying before about birth being a naturally traumatic experience? If you think about it, birth must be terrifying. You've spent the past nine months safe and warm in your mother's womb, totally oblivious to anything outside of it. All of a sudden, it's time to leave and enter the world, where it's cold, unprotected, and unfamiliar. To a vulnerable new person, who has no context for its surroundings or ability to communicate with language, I would imagine that birth is akin to riding a hundred-foot-high rollercoaster through a thunderstorm. However, in a "normal" birth, the baby kind of starts the whole process. They work together with the mother to essentially say "hey, this has been fun, but it's getting a little small in here": oxytocin, the love hormone, stimulates contractions and helps the mom and babe out in their first "bonding project", leaving the womb! In my case, drugs initiated the whole process. In short, I was pushed. Imagine the difference between willingly climbing into your seat on that stormy rollercoaster, and being forced to go on it from some scary looking guy you've never met, who had been lurking about in the theme park. I obviously don't remember my birth, but I would imagine that that's what it felt like. No wonder my nervous system fired up after that.

My first ever experience of the world was not in any way under my control. I was thrust, unbeknownst to me, into a completely different experience. I had no say. So how has this manifested in my life in the last 28 years? Well, first of all, I have lived with anxiety my entire life. When I was about 3-4 years old, I had a lot of fears. I grew up in a large city, where there were lots of things to be afraid of for a young child, but I was an extreme case. I was afraid of cars, trucks, cats, dogs, elevators, escalators, subways, and buses—essentially anything that moved. My mother toured me around the city of Toronto, helping me to face and eventually overcome each one of these fears. Another significant influence around the same time in life was that during my first few years of school, I didn’t speak in class. I was very timid and quiet, and terrified both of the teachers and of other kids in the class. This didn’t stop me from having amazing friends, but I was “diagnosed” with a condition called Selective Mutism, which is now considered to be an anxiety disorder. Essentially what it meant was that under certain circumstances—in my case, at school—I was too afraid and so shut down and didn’t speak. I had a teacher in Grade One that recognized that I what I was experiencing was fear (other teachers had dismissed me as ‘rude’), and really helped me to overcome this situation. She took me aside during class, and would tape me (yes, cassette, I was doing it before it was cool) reading stories, which she would later play for the class so the other kids could hear my voice. She gently encouraged me, without ever pushing, and eventually I came out of my shell and overcame my condition. I went from being totally silent in class to being called Ms. Chatterbox by the end of Grade One.

Those were the main instances in my early childhood where I exhibited uncharacteristically fearful behaviour. I say uncharacteristically because I was otherwise a very happy child. I had loving, supportive parents, good friends, I wasn't bullied. And at home I was quite happy and exuberant (and talked a LOT!) But in the outside world I behaved as though I had suffered a deep psychological trauma. And perhaps I did; perhaps many of my anxieties and fears through my childhood and into my adult life are a reaction to being pushed out into the world before I was ready. It certainly makes sense to me. In somatic therapy, it is believed that traumatic experiences in our lives are stored in our bodies. I have felt my entire life that there has been something in my body trying to find its way out, as my body has responded in ways that my logical mind cannot explain.

Though I have dealt with most-- if not all-- of my irrational fears from my childhood, some things have worked their way into my adulthood as well. Only this past year did I begin to deal with one of these fears that had followed me around my whole life, and have come a long way in a relatively short amount of time, but it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears. In some ways I have been lead to believe, though this process, that my body has been, in certain situations, perpetually locked into fight, flight or freeze. Every time I get acupuncture I am treated for yin deficiency, and this is likely because I have been in hyper-reactive mode my whole life.

After a whole slew of events, experiences and feelings last year, I began to more deeply realize how my birth and early life has affected me, and have subsequently begun to understand what this has meant for me and what I need as a result.  As I said near the beginning, radical self-care is about recognizing who you are and what you need, and communicating those needs to others. The first step is recognizing that you have these needs; for me, it took many years and many confusing fits of anxiety, before I realized that I just hadn't accepted who I was and what I need. So here I go:

1) I hate classifying myself, but I fit pretty well into the label of "highly sensitive person": in other words, I am someone who reacts with great emotional vulnerability and fragility to the world around me, who is extremely sensitive to physical stimuli, and who gets overwhelmed very easily. It is a profound gift in many ways, as it makes me a receptive and compassionate person, and provides me with great tools to thrive as someone who works with people. However, the boundary between self and other can sometimes be as paper-thin as walls in a college dorm. If you see me in this state, I am probably okay, I may just need a hug, or a lot of alone time.

2) I have suffered in my life from crippling indecision, mostly due to feeling overwhelmed by decisions, as well as being chronically worried that whatever my decision is will not be the right one, ever. Even if I feel like a decision is the right one, I will often experience several episodes of horrible self-doubt, as though wherever I am is not where I am supposed to be. This experience can make it very difficult to know if what I am experiencing is my 'intution' or debilitating and constant self-inquiry. If I am in one of these bouts of self-doubt, I may need just to be left alone, or I may need to be reminded of where I am and what is happening, and that it is not necessarily the truth of the matter.

3) The feeling I get that where I am is not where I am supposed to be frequently comes from an underlying need to feel in charge. Which makes sense, because I was not in charge of coming into this world. In many circumstances in my life, I felt like I have just ended up there, that the decision to be there, though technically made by me, did not feel like it was coming from my core of self-agency. It takes me perhaps a bit longer than most people to really know something, to make something my own, to be in the driver's seat and take charge. It might then take me longer to know what I really think or feel about a situation in my life, whether that's a relationship, a career move, how to structure a sentence, or what to put in a formula for a patient. I may need a few extra minutes to think about it.

4) All of these patterns come down to an inability to feel safe and settled in the world. I have struggled with this my whole life. A deep-seated unsettled feeling has followed me around since I was a baby. I have come a long way with this, but still deal with it on a regular basis. The place where I notice this happening the most is in romantic relationships. Being a highly sensitive person, plus my crippling indecision, combined with a general lack of feeling in charge or safe in the world, can make the emotional intensity of intimate relationships seem unbearably overwhelming. I have noticed that very often the only people I have fully developed feelings for are those who are (for whatever reason) unavailable to me, or who are actually physically absent or who are not even a significant presence in my life. When I was younger this would manifest as just a lot of unrequited crushes that were ultimately based on fantasy. As I got older, they became less fantasy, but still rooted in my heart chasing something it could never have. I fall in love, pure and chaste, from afar. After a while, this began to bother me, as it made no logical sense, until I realized that it did. When the person is clearly unavailable, or they are not present, the pressure for decision-making is taken away from me, there is no immediate emotional intensity, and my heart feels safe enough to explore feelings. The amount of hurt I will experience from that situation is already a measurable value; even though I know it will suck, my heart somehow figures that it's better than experiencing the emotional intensity of true intimacy, and then the massively uncontrollable unknown variable of hurt involved if that connection dissolves. All this made me understand what it is in relationships that I truly need: I need space to feel safe. It's not that I wanted to hurt myself in those situations, but that I needed the space to feel safe enough for my heart to unravel itself, even if it was for the wrong person. If you are a potential future partner, take note. I may be too utterly terrified to approach you. We may have had an exciting minute of conversation, but I had to quickly wrap it up because I felt too emotionally overwhelmed. I am working with this, trying to sit with that emotional intensity and open myself up to people I feel attraction towards, rather than curl up into a tiny ball and roll away. If we are actually dating, just know that I may need to take it slow. Establishing true consent may take a while. Historically, it has taken situations of no-pressure to allow for my feelings to grow. I need to feel my own power and agency to feel safe enough with you to allow feelings to develop. I need some breathing room.

Really, this whole post is a long-winded journey to radical self-care, where I state my need mostly for one thing: space. Space to breathe. Space to know what I want to do with my day. Space to know what I want to do with my year, or with the next five years. Space to know if what I am doing is my true calling. Space to see how I feel about being touched by you. Space was what was not given to me on my birthday, 28 years ago. And in my life as an adult, very often the person who has least given me this space is myself. Space to close my eyes, let go of the emotional overwhelm and ask myself,

"What is it that you really want, Lisi? Breathe. Take your time. Come out when you're ready."

Happy birthday to me. Thanks for reading.