A Beautiful New Life - Happy New Year! 2023 ✨

Today, WE RISE.

This year, we rise. 

Become a human bat signal by the end of the year. 

Give the ones you love something to hold onto, something to remember, something that will outlive you. 

LEGACY.

I’ll be honest, 2022 was… unlike any other year.

Just about everyone I know has been through the wringer since 2020, and this last year wasn’t much different, our entire worlds have changed.

There is so much noise, confusion, anger and grief.

Yet this is a necessary experience to cultivate the vision toward building something better, to build an empire from every brick that has hit you square in the face.

In 2022 I said goodbye to seven people that I loved very dearly as they passed away. Most of them suddenly. One of them, though, showed me something I had never seen before, and it was so beautiful. I’ll get to that after a brief 2022 recap that I haven’t shown to anyone on the surface:

This year was the year I packed my honda and drove from my hometown in Oregon to start a new life in Nashville, Tennessee.

I was terrified. Thoughts of past traumas, betrayals, trusting the wrong people, even struggling with trusting myself and whether or not I could “make it” in what I sought out to do, overwhelmed me.

I stared out my window into the beautiful trees I’d soon bid goodbye to, and I thought to myself:

“What if you are about to experience something so good, it’s beyond anything your mind can conceive?”

This was necessary, because all the things my mind were currently conceiving were repetitions of the past. This is how we repeat cycles we are unhappy with, and why finding fulfillment and breaking patterns can be so hard. Our brain becomes addicted to thought patterns, and this keeps us generating a future by having a magickal mind that projects nothing but past experiences. This is why so many of us feel like it’s the “same shit, different day.”

I needed to give myself permission to NOT KNOW, and to have faith that something could be so good that it was beyond anything I could think of, because I genuinely could not think of anything good.

I was bound by my own internal blocks, and in these times, “manifesting” doesn’t work (other than manifesting what you don’t want), because you can’t hold the vision and embody the frequency attached to it if all you see are shadows.

I sure as shit didn’t want more of that, so my way of manifesting something better was to excuse my mind from the process entirely, and trusting the flow of something greater than my own mental matrix.

So I turned that thought into a prayer. I repeated to myself often, “Things are about to become so good, it’s beyond anything you’ve ever experienced.”

This came true.

I’m not saying I didn’t encounter some heavy blows that left me in a depression for months, because I did. I’m not saying I didn’t deal with betrayal and people who broke my heart, because I absolutely did. HOWEVER…

There was a lot of good, like this:

I headlined a festival and performed a set over an hour long, for the first time. It was also the first year I began getting paid tangible amounts of money for my music. I got hired to write, sing and rap songs for other brands and content creators who needed theme music for their businesses. The styles ranged from bluegrass, experimental, to what my main domain is, hip hop and rap. I was honored to take on these projects alongside Cris Cordero, the audio engineer and producer I have been working with since 2020. We even submitted music for sync placements in TV/Film, which I had never done before.

I also met so many people, from all over the country and world, that I call friends today. I even started a podcast and this substack, and released a few tunes. I started vlogging as well, and that led to me connecting with many like minded people. I also finally got legitimate firearms defense training, and bought myself my first pistol. The training continues indefinitely, but as a woman who has experienced a lot of violence and shady shit, this was tremendous for me. I remember I cried tears of happiness when I left the place I got my first gun at. I bought it with the money I had made off of one of my first music commissions. I cried because I thought to myself, “I will never get raped again!”. Yo I know that might seem dark to some people, but this is actually a positive thing. I feel safe in my home now. I am much less likely to allow a man into my life for the sake of “protection”, while tolerating abuse and toxicity as an exchange, because that is a big part of my past. But it is no longer the case today. So don’t let that get you down! Happy endings here. ✨

Like many others, I also experienced extreme sadness and grief. Undoubtedly due to the loss of the people I’ve loved most in this world, compounded with the years past of everyone we’ve lost in the last 13 years. I’d look at pictures of me and my once community in disbelief, because none of those people are here anymore.

Leaving home felt like emancipating myself from a graveyard, and it left me with a strange feeling once I had been in Tennessee for a while, because I realized if this wasn’t the “fit” for me here, I had no home to go back to. Everything had been erased. It is easy to feel as though ones life has been completely etch-a-sketched, which sounds freeing, and it is in a strange way— but it’s also terrifying.

I experienced loss of people that are still alive as well. I had to end several relationships that were toxic, even though I loved the person(s). It felt like everything was falling off.

I was alone a lot, and noticed I had a hard time staying in one place. Even in moving to Nashville, I’m just now starting to get connected with people who live in actual Nashville, because I have been all over the place geographically since I’ve moved to the Southeast. I had many experiences and opportunities, and have a large network of associates and friends, but the thing about developing community is that these relationships need to be cultivated into something beyond surface level, and that requires one to stay in the same place, or rather, to not be “all over the place”.

I began to notice my own emotional unavailability and avoidance, my own avoidance and fear of closeness to others, even to geographical locations. I didn’t used to be this way, but somehow I have developed these tendencies, so I am working on actively resisting the urge to always be on the move.

One morning I casted a few runes as a way to gain some clarity. I drew the rune of Isa, which is the Arabic name for Jesus. This rune spoke of a season of loss, of “emptying out”. It also cautioned in relying upon the current connections/relationships I had, as they would not be dependable. I didn’t understand this rune, and thought “this must not be working.” This occured about a month before many of the current relationships in my life came to an end, before I saw them clearly for what they were: NOT authentic. So the rune was actually on point.

I saw that these relationships were centered around a convenience, or a transactional nature. Many were formed around shared fears and traumas, which keeps one anchored in the past. I noticed how my body felt when I’d be in conversations with certain people. I am just as guilty for sure, but I didn’t like being in these conversations that were once normal to me. I began to feel negatively affected, because there was so much focus on what was going “wrong” in life, as opposed to what we could create to go “right”.

I knew I was better off not having them and being “alone”, than engaging in cycles that kept me anchored in the past, as I mentioned before with leaving behind that thought process in Oregon. I also began to see how I had been “that person” or “that friend” in so many peoples lives, whereas before I had no idea. So I made sure to change that too.

Then another lesson, which I’ll elaborate on later: the relationship I have with myself is mirrored in the relationships I have with other people. If I wanted to change the dynamics in my life, I had to change the dynamic I had with myself, which was very toxic. It can look nice and pretty on the outside, because we judge how someone is doing based on their “success” in worldly pursuits. Those things are not indicators of mental health.

I wanted to isolate. I had dark thoughts. I wanted to be with my friends on the other side. Yet I am here, and I did not want to end my life in such an emotional state.

I also knew that my friends who are gone would NEVER want me giving up. When they were alive, they were the greatest champions for me getting over the things that held me back, usually all my own self-sabotaging behaviors. The addiction to suicidal thoughts was certainly one of them, and I do see it as somewhat of an addiction, because it’s a back door. Escapism, if you will. It’s that last reservation of “if things get too bad, I can just check out.” I suppose that might have helped me when I was much younger, maybe, but doubtful. They certainly don’t help me as an adult.

So I said, “No more of this. I am DONE.” I said that out loud in front of another person, and she smiled. I asked her why. She told me, “You just said that you were done, but normally when you say that, you mean you don’t want to live anymore and you’re done with life. But this time, you’re saying it because you want to live, and you refuse to live a life where you are unhappy.” She heard the same level of intensity in my once suicidal thoughts transform into thoughts where I was ready and willing to go to ANY lengths to live a life where happiness and fulfillment was the name of the game. I was dead serious on this, no pun intended, and that’s what happened.

That wasn’t too long ago. I won’t get into “all the things” that I began to focus on and change, but I will say that when you spend enough time in the void, in despair, in grief, this rubber-band effect will eventually take place, and it gives you an unbelievable amount of ambition and fuel for whatever you set your sights on. This is an example of alchemy, how despair and suicidal ideation can turn into a relentless drive to LIVE - not just survive, but THRIVE.

Time is also a factor here. When you reflect on your mortality, and you reflect on how you’ve been living, and are truly honest with yourself — I don’t know about you, but when I got really honest, I was horrified with what I saw.

This is a huge reason why we have the tendency to make excuses or blame external circumstances for our unhappiness. It is horrifying, when you can remove yourself enough from your ego to observe it. I can’t express how necessary it is though, if you follow it up with immediate action.

This is why I love Memento Mori - Remember, you will die. So when I remember this, I think: It’s time to move. It’s time to LIVE. It’s time to make a plan and put it on paper. It’s time to design a system where I am reaching tangible goals and able to track them, finding out what does and doesn’t work. It’s time to find out where I have been neglecting myself and others, and where I have been wasting my years on this earth.

It’s time to simplify, then execute.

So that’s where I am now, and I am so excited about 2023.

As the year neared its end, I wasn’t excited. I was still in a mental sea of fog, barely knowing what the hell I was doing, trying to do a million different things - make enough money to not be homeless or starve, make enough money to actually be financially free, exit the matrix, form communities, make music, finish the debut album, release unreleased music, get a better marketing strategy (highly necessary when your “against the narrative” activity online results in censorship and shadowbanning) and on top of that start a podcast, learn how to do that without rambling (still working on that), learn content strategies, get your spiritual and mental health in order, get your physical health in order, cut out toxic relationships and heal from the damage it caused, finish the commissioned songs I’d been tasked with, heal vocal chord damage from overuse, rehearse for performances, find new ways to generate income, sell merch and concealed knives, the list goes on.

It was a lot, and it still is. I came to realize that although it’s great that I’m passionate about many things, if I’m spread too thin, nothing really gets done. The amount of mental energy I expend was not reflective in my output. That needed to stop.

I had no clarity and had strayed from my original objective, one that was actually spoken to me in a dream after Dylan passed.

What the fuck happened?

Still sorting that out, but the reality is, I don’t want to waste much time in morbid reflection. So I got a 13-week goal planner and after I send this off, I will begin planning out 2023 in segments of quarters, ya know, how the successful business people do 😆 I’d never done that before, but Joel from Fortress K9 was on instagram live a few weeks ago and was sharing how he was using the same method, and he has built a very successful business, so I followed suit.

***By the way, if you’re interested, the 13 week goal book and planning material/course I got was from BestSelf.Co and it was only $30.***

I also enrolled in Nick Zei’s week long content creation masterclass, for those of us who want to turn our content creation into a full time business. I’ll be honest, I’ve been waiting tables for 18 years, I’m kinda tired of it.

Time slows for no one. You can be in a state of “I will” forever, and that “I did” never comes.

When looking back on my life and seeing how long I’ve been “making music” but how little I’ve truly given it my all, it’s unbelievable seeing the amount of years I have wasted. So I use that as fuel, and try to avoid descending into shame, because that helps no one. This is where truly squaring up with where we have fallen short, and being aware of the passing of time and the finite nature of our existences, can become a fertile ground for a beautiful new life.

(Cont’d below)

I felt that energy last night. I was so grateful, and I still am today.

Now I will share briefly what I experienced in the passing of my Aunt Rosalie, who died the day before Christmas Eve.

I knew she was dying, she had been in and out of the hospital for a long time. Although it hit me as a shock, I got the text she had passed when I was on a plane getting ready to take off, stuck in the middle seat between two strangers as I silently let a few tears go down my face, but it wasn’t “out of nowhere”, so it hit differently for that reason and a few others.

My aunt got to live out a full life, she was in her 80s when she passed. This was the first “natural” death I had experienced, because the norm for me is people dying of overdoses, suicide and murder. I know that’s grim but it is what it is. Needless to say, it was really powerful to see someone die DIFFERENTLY.

She also knew she was going to die, and had the chance to say goodbye to everyone she loved. Luckily, I also had the chance to say goodbye to her. That is such a blessing. I said exactly what I needed to say, to make sure she knew the truth: she WON at life dude! She did. She loved unconditionally. She was the greatest aunt ever. She loved SO many people, and she died surrounded by them. If that isn’t a win, I don’t know what is.

The other thing that amazed me and taught me another lesson was the importance of family, love and relationships. This was especially important for me to see, as I am a very career and goal minded individual. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there is a shadow side. When you are so focused on achieving certain goals in your life, things like family, children, marriage, relationships, etc. will get neglected, or they fall much lower on the scale of importance. Yet time waits for no one.

Aunt Rosalie was surrounded by her husband, her children, and her siblings as she passed away. It made me realize yet again that LOVE is the most important thing in life, because that is all anyone would think of on their death bed, and she was surrounded by it. She seemed to be at peace with her passing. She was as ready as one could ever be. That was a beautiful thing to see.

It also taught me that I needed to pay more attention to those aspects of life and make more space for them. It reinforced the need for greater discernment and higher standards of what I’ll allow into my life, and to not waste time in luke-warm or “confusing” and “undefined” intimate dynamics. What the hell is the point of any of that? The people she was surrounded by when she died loved her FULLY, and I know she knew that. So many women (and men) I know will waste their time in relationships that are halfway fulfilling, not really consistent, and I can guarantee whoever that person is that we invest our time into in those dynamics, they sure as shit won’t be by our side when we transition to the next life. You can barely count on them to show up consistently when you’re alive.

Sometimes people enter relationships like that because they have low self worth, other times it’s because they live in scarcity and feel like they HAVE to make something work so they can settle down, or they are somehow inadequate and won’t find “love” anywhere else. I understand that fear, but you damn sure won’t find Love somewhere that it never existed in the first place. You won’t find love with people who use you to soothe their own inability to be alone, you won’t find love with placeholder relationships and distractions.

These things are the biggest obstacles to success in my opinion, and we can also have these toxic relationships with ourselves.

I examined the relationship I had with myself and saw the toxicity in that - do I consistently show up for myself? Do I make myself a priority? Do I listen to my needs? Am I kind to myself in my inner dialogue? Do I take care of my body? If the answer is no to any of those questions, who am I to assume anyone else would be a “yes” in those areas?

We attract what we are, not what we want. People call that the law of attraction but I feel like the law of frequency is more fitting, because we radiate the FREQUENCY at which we are at, and human beings are like little radio transmitters/antennas, we gravitate toward the same frequencies we are on.

Water seeks its own level.

So a few lessons there. The relationship we have with ourselves is mirrored back to us with the relationships we have in our lives. That’s true for me without a doubt.

The next lesson again was that love is the real gold in this life. Grief and loss are a guarantee when it comes to love, because nothing is permanent. But when you have real love, it IS worth it. I would so much rather have loved my whole life and then lost, but still be left with the memories of those experiences, as opposed to having lived a life with blinders on, and never really getting close to people.

What I can tell you is the accolades, success, money, even our artistic creations, none of those things people chase are going to be with you in your time of dying.

But love will. Memories will. People will, if you lived wisely enough to cultivate relationships with the right ones. If you lived wisely enough to not take them for granted, to not let things like ego and pride and past traumas sabotage them. If you lived wisely enough to be just as dedicated to the people you loved as one is with individual ambitions and pursuits.

That was a beautiful thing, and I’m glad I got that message before I wind up way older with nothing to show for it except worldly achievements.

It’s part of the game, and everyone needs a purpose, we all have a mission here. But it doesn’t end with that. The experiences we co-create with other people on this planet are, in my opinion, where the real magick is at. The same could be said for the experiences you choose to create for yourself. We are all our own magicians, living in a universe of divine magick, in my opinion.

When I say magick, I am not referring to “sorcery” or “witch craft” or whatever satanic accusation certain religious groups like to throw at me when I say that. Magick is in our thoughts, our words, our actions, things like “energy manipulation” isn’t just a thing of occult sciences, you manipulate and change your energy by doing things like resting when you need to, going on a run to clear your mind, spending time in nature, it’s done in everything. Yet people in this culture really like to sensationalize the shit out of everything and make it into something they can panic over, or create an entire avatar around.

We are a desensitized group, living in a technocracy of overstimulation and spin, so it’s quite the journey to untangle that mess, but it’s a worthy endeavor.

Either you live free and die, or you live insane and die.

I often say magick because there are some things so unbelievably miraculous and flawless and divine about this universe that I simply do not know any other word to use.

So this year, 2023, and THIS DAY especially, is a time where we can orchestrate and map out the lives we want to live, and create a system where, step by step, we can get there. We have a plan, and now we can set out into action. The mind and human energy bodies are extremely powerful things, and when harnessed can achieve anything, but without structure or direction, we can be scattered marbles indefinitely. I have lived that narrative for years, and it’s time for a narrative change, so that’s how I am spending the rest of my day.

I hope some of these thoughts and shared experiences were helpful to you. If you like, I’d love to hear how you are doing, and where you are setting your sights as far as the “reset” energy goes along with a new calendar year. Yes I realize the concept is man made, but it’s something we all participate in and give energy to, so there is much energy there to catapult yourself further in the direction you want to go.

Much love to everyone.

If you’re still telling yourself that you can’t do “the thing” or you have to wait to do “the thing”, I have this to say:

Memento Mori - Remember, you die. 

SO STOP WASTING TIME. 

Stop WAITING TO BE READY. 

The only way to be “ready” is to START. You learn as you go in life. The “ready” moment NEVER comes.

Don’t wait on someone else to do it with you or for you either, or you’ll wait forever. The greatest risks and greatest rewards I’ve taken and yielded in this life, were all ones I did alone. Yes it is terrifying, walking through the fear is how one cultivates courage.

Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s doing “the thing” regardless of the fear.

When I did my first hour+ set and headlined a festival, I was in no way “prepared” for that. I had never performed for longer than 20 minutes until that point. I also hadn’t performed a set of original material since 2019, due to pandemic closures and living in areas where you needed to “show your papers” to get into a venue. It had literally been 3 years since I had performed my music, and I was then asked to do an hour long set at a festival. I had never even performed at a festival! But I did it, and the experience was so incredible it brought tears to my eyes. No video footage or pictures can possibly capture the energy I felt with the people who did me the honor of showing up and listening to me sing and rap (with my voice halfway fried btw) for over an hour.

We slap the dead in the face when we waste our lives with procrastination and unaddressed fears that create blockages to our best selves. We also keep our spirit in chains.

The pain of “not taking the risk” will decay your soul and leave you in such a dark depression, you’ll forget how you even got there (speaking from experience).

It may sound harsh, but reality is harsh when you’re wasting it - the rudest of awakenings are when you realize it after decades have passed. 

It is this artificial womb-like matrix of distractions and pleasure-seeking that has made us incapable of facing reality.

It has made us soft in the places we should be strong, and desensitized in the areas we should be sensitive. 

There’s an easy solution to this. Stop making excuses and get some clarity. Journal and meditate if you need to. Find out your WHY for being here. Then take a fucking swing. Take an action, one action. Do it again the next day. Whatever “the thing” is for you, just start. Not tomorrow, today. START. 

Can you imagine if we all were able to tap into our highest selves, embodied the energy of our highest good, and radiated that out toward all? 

Our world would be unrecognizable. 

With the way things have been going, I can’t think of anything more beautiful than that 😆 

We all want to shatter and exit the matrix, but the greatest prison is our own mental matrix, not the banking cartel sorcery bread and circus fuckery around us. Once you see clearly within, you shall see clearly without. 

As within, so without. As above, so below. 

Memento Mori - Remember, you die, so turn the sense of urgency that naturally hits when you truly contemplate that, into taking the next right action in being your most authentic self.

The world NEEDS your authenticity and bravery. The world NEEDS your love. You are here to fulfill a purpose only you can discover and only you can fulfill.

I believe in you, and after years of being ashamed at the mere fact that I existed, I actually believe in me too- to a relentless extent. I believe in US. So lets fucking do this. It’s 2023, New Years Day, a Sunday. Perfect day to clear your mind, gather your thoughts, plan out the next year. Or do it by quarters, 13 week cycles, it is a bit easier to break down tasks. Set a routine for each week, set a goal, find the why, stay in touch with your gratitudes. The smallest changes lead to staggering results. 

This isn’t death related, but a book that has been helping me greatly is called Atomic Habits by James Clear. This talks about how to completely change your life NOT by having goals or manifesting, but by developing a working SYSTEM of small habits that add up to the result you’re looking for.

Having a goal with no plan will lead to failure. Having a plan, even if the overall goal isn’t entirely clear to you, (for example, let’s just say you want to become healthier, or you want to become a more emotionally available person, or a more disciplined person) this will actually lead to more victories for you as opposed to having a really clearly defined vision, but no daily system for how you’re going to get there. 

Okay loves, I’m off to doing exactly what I just mentioned above. Enjoy this beautiful day, a sigh of peace before we really kick shit into high gear! 

-Tess

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