Fault Lines and Mindfucks
Making my way through the desert
Hello and good morning! As of last week I have been 100% self-employed for seven months. The lessons! There are so many, and in the coming weeks I’ll be sharing a whole lot about my preliminary findings from this entrepreneurship experiment.
What I’ll say today: so far, the biggest and most front-of-mind “a-ha” was the recent realization that despite the sincerest of intentions, I have fallen right back into a “hustle and grind” mode of operating. And I did *not* step outside of the corporate world to perpetuate the same fuckery that made me miserable.
Soon, I’ll be announcing some updates to this newsletter and my business—letting you in on my process, and on the things I’ve been noodling and ideating. I’m looking forward to sharing. In the meantime, I’m putting the finishing touches on a reader survey I’ll be asking you to complete—keep your eyes peeled for that and know that in addition to my sincere thanks and appreciation, by filling out the survey you’ll also have the chance to win some rad prizes.
As ever, I am sending out my love and care, and I thank you for your eyes on my words.
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✍🏽 February Writing Workshop: Grab your spot here (Sunday, February 26, 10am - 12pm PST). These generative writing workshops are based off the Amherst Writer's Method. Workshops feature two writing prompts // opportunities to write, and a zero-obligation opportunity to read allowed and have your fresh work be received by kind and generous feedback: we only share what we like and what we remember; there’s no critical feedback (critique is great and definitely has its place! It’s just not at this workshop).
This workshop is appropriate for all levels and I hope you'll join me. If you have questions, let me know—I'm happy to answer.
Fee: $33
Come write!
🙋🏻♀️Ask Us Anything…About Sobriety and Recovery! (Monday, 2/27, 5:30pm PST -7pm PST). I’m collaborating with two of my favorite comrades, fellow Recovery Coaches Anne Marie Cribbin and Christina Hanks for a sliding scale, virtual Q&A answering your questions about sobriety // recovery // sobercuriosity // whatever the hell label/word/term you like. This will be a safe and brave space to ask the questions on your heart.
This is for you if you’re wondering things like:
How do I know if I have a drinking problem?
Can I just moderate instead of going alcohol free?
Where do I begin?
How do I keep going?
Why the fuck isn’t my skin luminous and my sleep as deep as the sea and my attitude less, um, grumpy (OK that’s my question but maybe you have a similar one)?
If you prefer to ask your questions anonymously, we got you: Click here to submit your questions prior to the event.
We are here for you and can't wait to share this space, our experience, and our hearts.
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Suggested donation: $5-$25
Come through! There is no pressure to ask a question or to even have your camera on, and I promise that however you choose to participate this will be a meaningful experience.
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❣️Mucho amor y cariño
❓Questions? Ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.
This is not a dark forest, this is an open plain, and I am exposed, sunburned, wind worn and dry. I seek cover, but the saguaros are too skinny, and besides, the sun is a sped-up sundial and I can’t follow the shade fast enough. I stumble, and sweat, eyes casting about horizons and periphery, ever on the lookout for the cool blue calm that runs softer than the unforgiving sky. You know, water. I want to be quenched, I want to float on my back for a while, I want to fill up my hat and smack it over my head, let the coolness drip down my face, under my shirt. Basically, I’m looking for a break.
Or a map. A map would be nice. I seek instructions, a how-to manual, the wisdom of plants and beasts and stars and rocks to help me traverse this open plain. Someone must have come before, I tell myself. Someone must know the way. I’m not stubborn or proud, I say to the jackrabbits—I’ll take your advice! I don’t know how to be still on top of a shifting underfoot so I slither, I hop, I dream of the steadiness of tortoises, and all the while I’m keeping on the lookout for breadcrumbs, for makeshift signs pointing the way toward warm beds, clean water, safe people who will provide nourishment and care along the way.
It’s exhausting, looking everywhere but here.
No one has come before, because I’m the only one who’s ever been here. Maybe I am stubborn, because one thing I can say, is that I don’t want to do this alone. Fuck a map, I’ll take another person, any person, as long as they will tell me what to do. TELL ME WHAT TO DO! I spit into the ground, I scream into the sky. I’m just so tired. I want to lie down. I want to swap brains. I want to change places with my dog, I want to not worry so much, or, if I must worry, let it be about nothing more than what’s in front of my nose. I don’t want to think about that impending fork in the road, the one that looks ruefully familiar but that I’m too proud or too clueless to acknowledge or admit.
I shuffle along, I cover some distance, and new tools become available. Basic ass tools. You know, like a compass. Like, the North Star. None of it is very showy or fancy or exciting, but I’ll admit it—ok, fine, whatever—the tools are working. I am learning how to live in the desert.
Suddenly and on cue, a spindly little beast sneaks out of her secret burrow to bite my ankle. The effects of the venom lay me out for days, months, millennia. My drama and preciousness notwithstanding, I’ll give myself this: at least I know I’m not unique. I know not to fight the venom. I know that the venom can also be medicine. I know that despite every available physiological system in fight, on the other side there is a lesson. So I let it’s holy potency thrum and pulse.
So many lessons! I’m sick of this shit. But then I shut the hell up, because I also know that the day the lessons stop is also the day that death comes, and despite my tantrums, ugh, I want to stay and see this through. I want to get to where I’m going.
*
I resist the lessons. I let the beast bite me over and over.
And here’s what I’m not supposed to say: sometimes, the bite feels so good.
It goes like this: I feel the memory of the venom pounding it’s pattern in my pulse, so I go searching for the beast, exposing my ankles, calling out her song to which only I know the words.
Slow down, wait, no. If I’m honest—and that’s what we’re doing here, right?—if I’m honest, out here in the desert, it is I who am the beast. I am craving. I am desire. I am full of unabashed want. I am longing, I am sex, I am rushing water in a dry riverbed, I am an iris in dank purple bloom there in the dark mud, and in these moments, I don’t care what you think. I cast spells and conjure ghosts. My vision clears, and I can see all the way back to the beginning, trace the fault line of neglect that connects me to a rosary of women who came before, I can see them now, quaking, tired of pretense, tectonic with their demands, no longer settling for anything less than satisfaction, diciéndome: “ya!”
*
I know that to transform the venom, I must take care not to become it, even as it’s distilled, singularly focused essence transforms me. Too many bites, and the ankle grows weak, necrotic, gangrenous, and leads to other ailments if I ignore it, threatens me with impending amputation. I don’t ignore anything anymore. I don’t cut anything off anymore.
I take the tools—compass, North Star—and I place them inside my body, and they hover about, floating more often than not in that soft and tender space between sternum and navel. I am learning to trust their span and spin, the way they urge me to give over to desire with as much care and attention as I give to the things that keep my feet on the ground, my head on straight. When the venom wears off, and everything in me is urging me to cast everything out—to exorcise my desires, to buzz my skull down to the skin, to delete, to reorganize, to exfoliate my face too hard, to track, to count, to scrape away at the wound of lack, to pine for a nonexistent map—the lesson, again, goddammit, is to stay. To make my home in the fault line (the metaphors, they’re too literal sometimes). To let myself be rearranged, as ever, as I must.
Not all the beasts you meet in the desert will bite you. Some of them will walk alongside you, sharing snacks and sips of drinks and other simple tools, and even better, some of them will make you laugh like a child. Some of these beasts are the most loyal animals in the kingdom. They’ll be the ones to suck the venom out of your ankle, spit it out into the dirt, help you make some sense, even though this shit is never not going to be absurd as hell. They will love the wild, messy beast of you. And your beast will love their beasts, and fuck a map, for you have found your place amidst the prickle and the heat and all the other spindly beasts, and in the desert you all are free.
SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and boldly step into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, Integral coach, and recovery guide based in San Francisco, CA.
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Thank you.
Dani!! What a powerful, beautifully explored metaphor. Your words give me chills. I’m grateful to be somewhere in the same desert as you. 🫶🏼