As someone who works around wellness and care and social justice, I hear a lot of rhetoric about what we “deserve”.

• You deserve to live life on your terms.

• I deserve respect and care.

• We deserve healthcare and housing and basic human rights!

I even use it in one of my subject lines for those who opt-in to receive for my new free resource, 7 Tools to Cultivate Revolutionary Relationships in a Dystopian World (get it, it’s awesome!) 

I had never questioned the use of this word until one of my teachers, James-Olivia Chu Hillman, told me “deserve implies merit”.

🤯🤯🤯

Do you have to earn the right to live life on your terms? Do I need to earn respect and care? Do we have to work/earn/achieve to have our basic needs yet?

Whether it’s not being able to reach my car brakes as I’m driving out of control like I’m in a cartoon or trying to find my house or car or anything that can get me to safety, not enoughness is a theme of my dreams. It isn’t surprising that it’s at the core of my mother wound as well…and yet! I’ve had these dreams for years, and it wasn’t until a few months ago that I put these two themes together 🤦🏾‍♀️ I assumed my anxiety was about the anxieties of daily life and not being able to get what I wanted done, like so many of us in the throes of capitalistic and patriarchal productivity demands.

I wrote what I didn’t realize would be a love poem, what I didn’t realize would help me redefine the erotic, what I didn’t realize could be so healing…

The other night, Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End” came up on my Spotify, and I was IMMERSED. This song has been covered by many artists including Beck, Wilco, The Flaming Lips, Crybaby, and Headless Heroes.

I just started playing the song while I’m writing now because I love to cry when I write (lolsob).

“What was your first memory of self-judgment?” the healer asked. The answer came to me so quickly. I was in Sedona, AZ for a retreat when I was received this question. I sat in a circle with three other people and the healer. He worked with us one-on-one, and I was last. After witnessing his power and intuition with the others, I was excited, but a bit scared, about what he had for me.

I have new grief. My dad died 10 years ago today in his ancestral home of India. Ten years later, my tears escalate when I think of his sudden death. This new grief surprises me, and it reminds me that my healing story is a love story.

Welcome to my new blog: Your Healing Story is a Love Story…

Can you just sit with this blog name for a moment? How does this name feel in your heart? Your bones? Your flesh?