Human life is about scarcity. In spirit we live in infinite abundance. In the flesh, though, we live in finite reality. Choices must be made about how to use our limited resources. We may be able to have it all, but not all at the same time. While the unconscious effects of scarcity may capture … Continue reading The Joy Of Scarcity
Scarcity captures the mind. The experience of living with scarcity doesn’t just affect the decisions we make, it actually alters the way we think in time frames much, much faster than it takes for conscious thought. Scarcity isn’t something we can overcome with willpower; scarcity captures the mind. Scarcity consumes bandwidth in the brain, reprogramming … Continue reading Scarcity Captures The Mind
I opened my last 90 day bottle of statins this morning. I couldn’t get the paperwork done on the new health plans, so my insurance expired on January 1. And the six months before that I was on a crappy plan that kept me avoiding the doctor. It’s possible, I suppose, that somehow I will … Continue reading Scarcity Experience
So this is the gift I wish transpeople would give to each other: Take care of each other. Help each other grow, help each other heal, help each other find their own unique power. When I look at the struggles of other marginalized people, it is clear to me that it is only when they … Continue reading Beyond Scarcity
I can’t go on like this. I am burnt-out and exhausted. This, I have read, is common in autistic people, particularly those who have struggled for years to ‘pass’. It is called the cost of passing. It is essentially exhaustion brought on by the extra strain of pretending to be something one is not. Tony … Continue reading The Cost Of Adaptive Behaviour
“I have to watch myself because I often put other people off by being too _________.” What do you believe that you have to tamp down, to keep small and hide for other people not to find you off-putting? It’s those aspects you have been told that you have to police which form much of … Continue reading Too Much, Too Little
Having the zest to really commit to a performance — from a turn on-stage to chairing a business meeting to just being a mommy — depends a great deal on how safe, understood, affirmed, mirrored and protected you feel when you are backstage. A place where you are out of the spotlight, the pressure off, … Continue reading Backstage Meta
I grew up living inside the question rather than in the answer. Doubt was the only tool I had to move between the sliding slabs that tore at me, from the Aspergers views of my parents to the conventionality of the schools, from the lovely conflicting truths of science to the power of religious belief, … Continue reading Loss Liminal Life
My doctor is changing their patient portal, so it was suggested I download my charts for archiving. One diagnosis in the list caught my eye. Grief. It’s on there because they know I directly cared for my parents in their last decade. I don’t think, though, my doctor understands how grief is part of the … Continue reading Good Grief
A piece of my mind is also a piece of my heart. Years and years and years ago, a counsellor with an HMO made me an offer. “We are a full service organization,” he said. “If you want, I can just check a box on this form and get you a lobotomy. Is that something … Continue reading A Piece Of My Mind
For the last two weeks I have spent my days to the sound of a robin throwing himself against the windows. It’s spring and the sap is running, so this bird feels the call of nature. To him, that means defending his territory against other males, making sure that all female robins see him as … Continue reading Glorious Noise
“Save Me! Save Me!” I have heard that cry from many over the decades as they desperately wanted someone or something to ease their pain, assuage their loss, focus their energy, unlock their possibilities and heal their tortured soul. Like any healer, though, the best I could do is offer some comfort, clear away some … Continue reading Salvation
This came through on my podcast feed recently and I started to listen. I have talked about Dr. van der Kolk and his book, “The Body Keeps The Score” before. Now, though, scraping bottom, I realize how fundamental my experience of trauma is, how it forms the flinty bedrock of who I am. For good … Continue reading Flinty Trauma
Do I eat my feelings? Of course I do. What are the other choices? I have tried to share my feelings for my entire life and ended up being told that I was too intense, too overwhelming, too queer, too confusing, too challenging, too weird. Sometimes that meant people just walking away and sometimes it … Continue reading Eat It
Helen Madden, the licensed joyologist played by Molly Shannon on Saturday Night Live, understood the key for moving from shame to joy. You have to “Love it, love it, love it!“ Helen was joyously exuberant in her love, over the top and unable to sit still as she delighted in very single part of her … Continue reading Love It, Love It, Love It!
It’s beautiful here in these crisp October days in a way that no one who hasn’t lived with deep seasonality can understand. The leaves drop their green frosting to reveal their natural colours as the sun drops in the sky to illuminate them with magical, dappled, oblique light. Shadows lengthen, rewarding you with flashes of … Continue reading Falling Away
Our life only really exists for us in the way that we remember it. We are the story that we shape from our memories. They carry the values we choose to express, the beliefs & understandings which shape our choices in the moment. Reshaping our actions requires reshaping our stories, applying a new context to … Continue reading Movie Moments
If you know that you can’t easily get what you want and need, you have two choices. You can suffer, always feeling hurt and deprived, using your own awareness of what you don’t have to justify whatever actions you take, even if they are grasping or vindictive. At one point in college, I was in … Continue reading Denial As Life
While I have supported any changes transpeople choose to make to their bodies, when I first came out I looked into the mirror and decided that I would never be able to female my own body to my liking, to anything that would make my passage though male puberty less than visible. Bones don’t lie. … Continue reading Present Callan
The last few years have stripped away my momentum, the steely will that drove my service in the world. Being so deeply immersed in scarcity, my pellicle has been washed away, leaving me raw and exposed. In that process, the micro terrors I have held all my life came to the surface. My experience, from … Continue reading Micro Terrors
Callan 