Damn the man! Save the empire!

AKA Venture Capital doesn't give a fuck about your recovery.

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Do any of you remember this movie?

Cast of Empire Records (1995)

Here’s the synopsis:

Joe runs Empire Records, an independent Delaware store that employs a tight-knit group of music-savvy youths. Hearing that the shop may be sold to a big chain, slacker employee Lucas bets a chunk of the store's money, hoping to get a big return. When this plan fails, Empire Records falls into serious trouble, and the various other clerks must deal with the problem, among many other issues.

In the late-nineties I wanted nothing more than to be part of a “tight-knit group of music-savvy youths.” In high-school, I got there. My best friends and I were super into music, and every weekend—and occasionally on a weeknight when we could coordinate with our parents for pickup and drop off—there we’d be, earnest and bright-faced in the front row of every all-ages show, saving all the set lists from the shitty garage bands made up of people we idolized who were most of the time barely older than us.

I grew up in a strange place, and by junior high I was confused by the fact that not only did I not fit in, but also, I didn’t want what was in front of me. I wanted art, and culture, and depth; I wanted to be around big ideas and people who were creating beauty in the world; I wanted to rebel against the rules and culture of my hometown; I wanted to be having different conversations. I didn’t know what to do with all the Big Feeling, I didn’t know where to channel my desires, I didn’t see any role models. There was so much inside me I didn’t know what to do with. The music scene was a window into a world I wanted to enter, and for a time—before pot and then booze came for me, anesthetizing my inner punk-ass—music was where I’d go to feel belonging. In a crowd of other baby misfit weirdos, away from the girls at school who all wore the same sandals, carried the same handbag, and drove the same cars, I could be myself.

I befriended the other strange birds who also cut their own hair, shopped at thrift stores, and were disinterested in “fitting in.” I was the first one to get my license, and we spent so much time in my car, driving the same right angles back and forth between beach, canyon, and the pseudo-privacy of each others’ bedrooms, smoking cigarettes and eating Del Taco, talking about sex, and art, and music, and school, and all the places we would go once we could go.

Watching Empire Records was like watching a movie about my friends. I loved the hijinks and drama that drives the narrative, but what moved me most about these disparate misfits drawn together by their shared love of music was how, even though each of the characters are troubled or struggling in some way, they loved each other for these things, they were seen and celebrated and supported, and they were not asked to be any different than who they were—even when they clashed with each other. I also loved the way they flipped the bird to the corporate interlopers who sought to homogenize the sacred space of the record store, how they understood that who they were and what they loved would absolutely be diminished if and when Music Town took over the Empire.

I blame (appreciate?) the 80’s-90’s “Because I said so!” brand of parenting for my innate aversion to authority. I’ve always loathed and questioned all rules, particularly those that felt arbitrary or went against my own inner sense of right and wrong. I’m never not in the underdog’s corner. In high school, I regularly got kicked out of class for speaking my opinions and questioning the ones being served to me, particularly after 9/11. Though it’s caused me plenty of friction, my anti-authoritarian nature is also one of the qualities I love most about myself. Today, it’s the engine that compels the most important conversation I have, the one that commits me to both continually dismantling the ways white supremacist heterocisnormative ableist patriarchy lives inside me, and also, how I might forever focus on centering the margins over the middle in the work I do in the world.

🤘🏾

When I first quit drinking, before I even knew that ultimately, that was what was happening, that was what I was doing, that it would be a permanent practice and not yet another extended break, I ached for support.

Like so many of us, I thought that admitting that something was fucked up with my drinking meant that I was headed for a certain, very specific track: A book full of rules. The admission that I had a disease. A forever line between who I was, and “normies.” Staying close to and rehashing all the things I’d done that I was dying to put behind me. And of course, there was The Label that Nobody Wants*. This track felt heavy, and hard, and life already felt heavy and hard, and also, I had a deep aversion to all things 12-Step based on what I’d witnessed around my dad’s issues with alcohol use in my teens.

It was also true that this cultural narrative felt extraordinarily counter to what I was experiencing in my soul, and what would soon become a new normal. Those early days of sensing “Wow, something is different this time,” were nothing short of magic. I felt an inner transformation that shocked me. I didn’t have language for it yet—that would come soon after—but in retrospect, it was the beginnings of the revelatory reframe: It wasn’t that I didn’t *get* to drink alcohol, but that I didn’t *have* to.

I never had to drink again. I never had to feel that terrible, cold-slick of morning after shame. I never had to be hungover again! I could wake up in the morning and remember my nights. I could make choices that reflected my values rather than spiral me into regret.

Not drinking was like eating a salad full of fresh local vegetables prepared with love after spending decades gnawing on a convenience store shit-burger. If I had known there were other options—alternatives that guided me toward freedom rather than persistently reminding me of how I was being deprived, alternatives that might support me in shedding my unhelpful narratives instead of reinforcing them—I might have sought support earlier.

I needed a different option, and in the fall of 2017, I Googled “alternatives to AA,” subsequently stumbling upon a recovery community that changed the course of my life. I learned so much. In many ways, finding and integrating myself into that community is what finally grew me up. It taught me that no one knew better than me what I needed, and actively encouraged me to make my own rules (this is another way of saying, it taught me agency, by far the best high of my life). It was a space that actually centered marginalized folks as a priority—complete with processes in place to decenter dominant narratives and people—instead of only giving lip-service to it, like I’d seen so often in the yoga “communities” I’d been frustrated with for years. It was where I learned how to deal with the Big Feeling in ways that caused less and less harm. It was a space where, upon saying the hardest things out loud, I experienced the great healing of discovering I was not alone in my pain, and of receiving the hand of compassion from my peers, other extraordinary humans who were also fighting to heal themselves and to create lives that felt good more often than shitty. I was loved, and equally deliciously, forgiven, not in spite of my past, but because of it, and even though it took a long time, it was participating in those spaces that had me eventually offer compassion, love and forgiveness to myself, which, if you’re anything like me, which I’m guessing if you’re reading this, you at least kind-of-sort-of-are, was a fucking miracle.

This community was another window into a new world that called to me, another world where I belonged. It felt similar to how I felt at fifteen, swaying in a crowd, experiencing belonging in my body rather than only as a vague concept. This is all I ever wanted, all those years I drifted, feeling out of place in my body, in my family, in my hometown, in adulthood, believing the myth that alcohol would deliver me, believing something was wrong with me when it didn’t. The anchor lodged between sternum and navel finally lifted and I threw the shit-burger in the garbage for good.

I started volunteering in the organization, leading in-person groups here in San Francisco. I begged to be hired, sending in emails every six months or so, sniffing out any opportunities. Finally, in the winter of 2021, I got brought on as a coach. The work was—is— the work of my life. To say it was a dream come true? A profound understatement. I was so excited to learn from people who were the most incredible people I had ever met. I was so humbled to be in service to something so revolutionary. I had never in my life worked for a business whose mission I believed in so completely, and I was thrilled to be on the frontlines of the “movement.”

And then the organization that saved my life morphed into a different beast entirely.

🤘🏾

Toward the end of my tenure with my previous employer, this scene of the movie ran continually behind my eyelids:

That thing that I loved about Empire Records—that thing of being seen and celebrated rather than asked to be someone other that who I was, that thing about flipping the bird to the man and fighting for art and beauty and justice and friendship and healing and goodness and freedom—was the same thing that called me to devote myself to this organization. Even when the venture capitalists got involved, I thought, OK, we have a chance here, we can continue to shift culture, we can stay true to our values and prove that it is possible to run a huge company in a way that doesn’t perpetuate the same fucking bonkers systems that keep so many of us sick.

I no longer believe this is possible.

Between operating inside of a structure that is ultimately beholden to the bottom line, and the profound work of healing recovery invites in, there is a discrepancy. During the time at the company, despite heroic efforts on the parts of employees to close this gap, I witnessed it grow into a chasm. Many, countless carrots were dangled in front of us, and I wanted more than anything to believe that this thing that had been such an essential part of my healing was not actually now asking me to burnout and put my well-being at risk. By the end of my time, those carrots had grown hella moldy and though it took me a long ass time (and my god, so much heartbreak), I realized I was finally done chasing.

“I am not trying to win the awards of a system built to fail, but I am trying to love myself through the process of dismantling it, keeping generativity at the center of my days and ways of being in relationship to myself and my life.”

Pisces July 2020 horoscope, Chani Nicholas

In my outpouring, there is so much beyond. Solar systems, moons, entire fucking galaxies. “I am not trying to win the awards of a system built to fail, but I am trying to love myself through the process of dismantling it…” Recovery urges me to live in the beyond. I got fucking sober, I threw the shit-burger in the garbage (sorry I just love the shit-burger so much): I will not be asked to play small nor to perpetuate all the shitty systems I am—we are—working to blow the fuck up.

The longer I’m in this work the more expansive my view of recovery becomes. This is such a bigger game, if we want it. In this game, no one can tell us we are doing it wrong. No one outside of our incredibly powerful selves has any authority when it comes to our legitimacy. In recovery, we are moving with life, we are partnering with her; we are relinquishing control and unfettering ourselves from all the social conditioning that would seek to keep us small, numbed out, lonely, distracted, cut-off from our precious interdependence; we are learning to feel good more often than bad, to perpetuate increasingly less harm; to heal ourselves and take responsibility for the design of our lives; and to be awake and alive to the vast mystery of our messy, gorgeous, precious, meaningless, miraculous humanity, and to do so with other beloveds.

I have swum out of the familiar structure. My feet no longer touch bottom.

This coming Monday, August 1st, the experiment begins.

Come swim with me. Let’s create the most gorgeous school of fish the world has ever seen. Look at us, iridescent and shimmering, moving with the currents, with each other, adapting and shifting and evolving in ways that call forward ever more life. Let’s surround each other through the struggles, let’s leap above the surface in joy and delight every chance we get. Let’s confuse the interlopers with the exquisite way we turn and shift in tandem, let the chaos reveal an order we could have never imagined, one that allows each of us to emerge every day more ourselves.

We’ll be living into the questions. We’ll be learning, adapting, healing. We’ll be HAVING FUN. We’ll be accountable to each other. We’ll be making friends. We’ll be fucking up the status quo. We’ll be creating beauty and joy and delight.

Life is so hard. It is also a total miracle. And I am unspeakably grateful to live into this miracle with all of you.

See you next week 🤘🏾

xxoo
dani

*I always am compelled to caveat statements like these with “I know AA works for many people” etc etc which is true, and, it doesn’t work for many of us, and that’s totally ok.

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SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and step boldly into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, coach, and recovery advocate based in San Francisco, CA. 

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