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.

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).

My myth begins with reflection of ritual, family, and the land through my story. I’ve shifted from not having an altar to creating my own. From having no daily ritual to feeling “off” if I didn’t remember to revere my ancestors, and myself, in the morning.

My healing story is a love story, and, really, so is everyone’s. I love to think about it in this way because it show how, at the core, there is always love in the bell of humanity: love for ourselves, love for others, love of the Earth, even when it doesn’t seem like it.