Memento Mori Alchemy

Death has taught me lessons and shaped my values in a way that nothing else could, so I decided to write about it. I do this so the Medicine I found can be shared.

I’ve experienced an abnormal amount of death in my life for someone who does not live in an active war zone. 

Death has taught me lessons and shaped my values in a way that nothing else could, so I decided to write about it. 

I do this so the Medicine I found can be shared. 

The grief, the love, the void, the slightly supernatural experiences, and most of all, the lessons each persons legacy leaves behind- it all becomes a tattoo on our soul. 

I’ve spoken multiple times on these subjects before, but I began writing again to process the death of a loved one who passed away three days ago. This is the seventh person I have lost this year alone, but in total, I lost count a long time ago. 

As I was in the shower tonight, the idea to start a substack for this purpose came to my mind, as did the title, Memento Mori Alchemy. There are THREE distinct reasons for this, and if you don’t know What Memento Mori means, or what Alchemy is, I’ll explain that. 

The first of three reasons is this: our culture has a strange aversion to the experience of grief and death. When I’d go through losing certain people, if it wasn’t a person everyone else also knew, it was an incredibly lonely road- because there was no one to talk to about it. People tend to avoid the mere acknowledgement of death unless it’s someone they also lost- but even then, there will always be the ones who refuse to face it.

If they didn’t know the person, I often experienced people avoiding me as if I had a contagious disease. It was too much for them, too triggering to see someone go through that, because if they faced the reality I was currently in, it meant it one day had to be true for them as well- because everyone dies. 

Hence the saying - Memento Mori - Remember, You Die.

This type of cowardice is dangerous on many levels. It fractures the connectivity we all need in society, and it also keeps people living in a state of reality-denial, which leads to unfulfilled lives and wasted time. 

So I write to create a space for those going through the grief process to find something they can relate to, and help make sense of their situation. 

Too many people go through this alone, and the opportunities for someone to go completely off the rails, or miss the power and great Love there is in death, are endless. I want to try to prevent that from happening, I don’t think anyone should have to go through this alone. 

The second reason I choose to write about this is because death has been the most powerful teacher to me; it has taught me more about how to live life (and how NOT to) than anything else. Ironic, isn’t it? 

So these lessons, learned the hard way, revealed great truths about our existence here. I intend on sharing what I have discovered, because if someone could realize these things without having to lose people they love as a precursor, that’s a win in my book. 

The third reason is this: I see a lot of people, and I myself have been guilty of this more times than I can count, completely wasting our time in this incarnation with meaningless, trivial, hamster wheel bullshit. 

Chasing accolades, consumed with drama, in relationships that are toxic and draining, in jobs or careers we hate, not being who we truly are or doing what we really want because we fear what others may think, the list goes on. 

I often see people freeze up from the overstimulating world we refer to as “modern society” and become stagnant for years. They’re always talking about how they’re going to change, they’re almost always miserable, but something prevents them from actually coming into contact with their true purpose, something prevents them from taking the leap into authentic LIVING. 

I have wasted years of my life in these predicaments. How did I change? A combination of brushes with death and a survival instinct kicking in on a level I’d never experienced. 

When you go through certain “Tower Moments”, or earth-shattering experiences, you become much more willing to jump into the unknown than ever before. 

Not because you finally “figured it out” or “worked up the courage” or were “finally ready”— no, those moments never come— it’s because something shocks you into action and a state of mind where you no longer give a fuck about whether or not it’s comfortable, whether or not you fail, whether or not it works out, whether or not you’ll be rejected; NOTHING else matters. 

When you are fully aware that you are about to die- or that you will die if you do not change- you fucking take the leap. You waste not a single second with a clarity like that. Memento Mori - “Remember, you will die.”

It’s like being electrocuted into action, a blind bull in a rage that refuses to let the fact that he can’t see what’s in front of him stop the instinct to charge. That is some of the incredible transformational power that experiences with death, whether death of a loved one or a near death experience of your own, can bring about. 

These writings are in no way intended to be dark and depressing- death and the process after the fact will obviously be discussed, as will loss in general. The flip side to these subjects are, inevitably, their counterparts: love, legacy, and the true meaning in LIFE. 

The stories I will share with you are my own, and I share them candidly in hopes that it can be useful to someone else, because the experiences have changed me for the better, even if they were the most painful things I’ve ever experienced. 

Memento Mori simply means “remember that you die”. We need this reminder so we act accordingly and stop wasting our time on this planet doing anything other than what our spirit came here to do. 

(Continued below)

So much noise and distraction is cut away when we truly touch this clarity. The alchemy part? Some of that has already been explained, but it does go further. When truly seeing into the nature of death, and also looking at the people who died, what they left behind in regards to their legacy, as well as the impact they had on you while they were alive— this is where the sharp side of Love comes in. 

We call it Grief. 

Years ago I remember coming to the conclusion that grief was the highest expression of love- I remember writing a song called “Grief is Love” that I still have yet to publish. However, there are two instances where this first stood out to me: 

The first was when one of my best friends, Kaitlyn, died. In the days following her passing, I felt a connection with her spirit and a profound love for her in a way I cannot describe with words; it was like I got even closer to her in death. What I’m saying to you is that our relationship did not end when her life in the physical body did. 

That’s because we don’t just disappear into nothingness when we die. 

I felt her spirit with me the week after she passed, and then I distinctly felt it leave after the celebration of life/memorial service ended. I connected with her energy in the days following her passing with so much pain and so many tears, but there was also a strange peace, love and beauty within that.

I can still see those nights when I felt her spirit hovering above me, as if it was a movie playing in front of my minds eye- I cried, listened to the music we both loved, and tried my best to organize a slideshow of pictures of her throughout her life to be displayed at her memorial service. 

I must emphasize the part about the pictures of Kaitlyn. When Kaitlyn died, it taught me many things, the biggest one was to SLOW DOWN and never take a moment with anyone for granted, to treat every experience with people as a living work of art, and most of all, to take lots of pictures. 

(One of my favorite pictures of me and Kaitlyn, taken in the summer of 2014. This was one of the greatest time periods of my life.)

If you’re my friend, you know I take a lot of pictures. Kaitlyn is the reason for that. When she left, she left behind not only her own photography and art, but SO many pictures, and I can’t tell you how priceless those pictures still are to this day. That, along with the music we shared, was the bridge between worlds- that was how I was able to connect so deeply with her energy after she died. 

So I always take tons of pictures when I’m with my friends, because those moments I know will one day be all that is left, and they will be worth more to me than anything else. If you ever notice me NOT taking pictures- something is either brewing, or shits gone strange— I’ll just tell you that much. 

The other time I had the “Grief is Love” message distinctly come into my head is when I was separated from a group of people that I found safety and salvation with, after going through the most horrific experience of my life. 

They didn’t die, and I didn’t die, but being separated from them after dealing with near death experiences on a daily basis for over a year, and THEM being the ones who helped bring me out of it- that was a brutal separation. 

The issue that brought all of us together was a health issue, let’s leave it at that for now. I thought I was going to die, and I’m pretty sure most people who knew me did as well. I know it scared the shit out of my boyfriend, God bless him for holding strong through that situation, I can’t imagine how hard that would have been to watch someone you love suffer for that long to that degree. He had a fear of coming home “to a dead girlfriend” as he put it, and his fear was not unjustified or manufactured. That was a real world possibility given what was going on. I was fighting as hard as I could to stay alive, but each day things progressively got worse, and neither one of us really knew what to do, so it felt like a matter of time to be honest. 

What wound up saving me from the condition I was suffering from was a community of people I wound up with in New Mexico. Obviously there were medical professionals there as well, but it wasn’t them who saved me. It wasn’t fixed by a procedure or a medication. It was the other people who were there, and the experiences we shared. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. There is also much to be said about the energy of the land of New Mexico, and the Indigenous cultures who have lived there since long before that area was referred to as “New Mexico”. 

I stayed with them for some time, and when I was there- everything changed. To say I had a rebirth or a spiritual awakening would be accurate, but it would also feel like a wild understatement. 

Nevertheless, when I came back from that place, totally reborn and driven with purpose, no longer going toe to toe with death on the regular, I was in shock. Coming back to my home in Oregon felt like the most foreign thing in the world to me- I don’t know if I was ready to come back to the ashes of my old life, but there I was- disassociated as fuck, and all I could think about were the people in New Mexico that I just shared one of the most powerful experiences of my life with. 

I wanted to be back with them still. I think I associated this resurrection-like experience so much with them, that it felt like I couldn’t live without them. I hadn’t felt alive in so long, and they helped bring me back. Now I had to maintain that fire on my own again, back in my old (and not so healthy) environment, which was not easy. 

EVERYONE in New Mexico that I was living with was going through their own rebirth and dark night of the soul. We were all going through the wormhole together, and that binds you in a way that is very hard to describe. Being separated from them had me in a constant state of grief. I could not readjust to my home, I felt like I was a spectator watching my life on autopilot, completely detached and numb. 

I did not die physically, but everything about the old me did die, and when I came home, nothing of my old life resonated with me. 

I embarked on a new life mission, by myself. Many relationships ended, and I eventually moved a few thousand miles away to pursue music. Life has taken on a whole new meaning ever since. It was far from easy, years later I’m still adjusting to the person I’ve become, but I cannot imagine how unfulfilled and “small” my life would be had I not gone through that brutal process and found a new reason to live, when I was on deaths door practically begging for it to open. 

So I just detailed two examples of Death, one being a physical death of a loved one, the other dealing with my own mortality and going through a paradigm/mental death. Both of these things resulted in a rebirth, and I am who I am today because of these experiences. The result of what I did with that rebirth is the alchemy piece at work. It’s taking the most painful shit you’ve ever experienced and turning it into the building blocks of the life you’ve always dreamed of. 

With Kaitlyn, with Dylan, with Shane, with SO MANY people that I loved with everything I had in me who have passed, their deaths have all motivated me, taught me, changed me, in different ways. 

Dylans death was the most significant, because he was my first true love. I spent about a third of my time on this earth with him, living with him, spending every day with him, and he was my fiancé. 

However, I am about to get into very deep waters with that story, so I will save it for the next entry.

I thought I was experienced with people dying in my life when he passed away last year, but let me tell you this now: I never knew that level of pain existed. EVER. I knew it would be brutal, so I made the conscious choice to fully surrender to the experience and let the grief take me away. That wish was granted… so be careful what you wish for, but wow. What I experienced in the following days, weeks, months, was nothing short of supernatural, and nothing short of fully experiencing a glitch in the matrix.

My entire life changed once again, and we’ll get to what happened and what I learned in the next post, because this was probably the heaviest experience I’ve had to date. It also yielded the most “in your face” revelations, because when something is so extreme to where it feels as though half of your soul was torn from your body and thrown in another dimension, let’s just say you cannot ignore that. Things become VERY clear, very fucking fast, in regards to what matters in life, and what does NOT. 

Funny thing? Most of us, myself included, saturate ourselves in the shit that means NOTHING in the end. We have all been programmed (BY DESIGN, I would argue) to put these things before the ONE THING that actually does matter, and we wonder why there is so much misery on this planet. 

I’ll leave you with this before I wrap up: 

The only thing in this life that matters is love. 

Love, the relationships you have with others, your LEGACY, how you treated other people, the memories you made, how present you were. That is all that matters. 

EVERYTHING else is noise. 

Fuck your career, your money, your status, that shit does not matter. People may remember you for it, sure, but that is not what becomes immortalized via the impact you left on them that they hold in their hearts. 

The bells and whistles are things that may live on in the minds of those who outlive you, but not the heart or spirit. It’s not what actually matters. 

When you’re on your death bed, if you’re lucky enough to die like that, would you rather be surrounded by federal reserve notes, all the likes and comments you got on social media, the opinions of strangers regarding your worldly achievements? Or would you rather be surrounded by people you LOVE, who LOVE YOU in return, as you prepare for your initiation into death? 

The choice is yours. You make it every day, with every action and inaction- you likely just don’t know it yet. 

Wrapping up with this: 

This publication is a new thing I started. I will be writing on the stories and the lessons learned and the alchemical medicine in grief/death, so it can be shared with others who need it. 

I will also include podcasts, vlogs and songs, when they pertain to this subject. These will be available only to paid subscribers, but the majority of my written posts (not all) will be available to those who subscribe for free.

Some podcasts and videos on this subject I already have, so to the ones I already have,  I will upload those for both free and paid subscribers. 

I do this so that way I can give this venture the time and effort I believe it deserves, and in order to pour a lot of time into something, you need to be able to generate income, because it costs money to stay alive, feed yourself and keep a roof over your head. 

If you want to contact me, you can do so on my website through the contact form here.

- if you want access to my podcast, my music (blues, hip hop, dark trap, lofi and r&b) or any of my social media accounts, here’s the link to all of that: https://linktr.ee/tesstamona 💜 

my podcast can be found on all platforms under “The Great Silencing with Tesstamona” and my music is on all platforms under the artist name “Tesstamona”. 

I also set up a new instagram account for this publication, you can find it at https://www.instagram.com/memento.mori.alchemy

Alright, so here’s me signing off to my first entry on the substack platform, with this new venture, Memento Mori Alchemy - the life changing gold we can attain from some of life’s greatest pains and initiations, and a reminder that our time on this planet is FINITE- so how are we living, what are we doing, what needs an overhaul, what needs a change, what needs less energy, and what needs more? 

This entire thing, ultimately, is a reality check and a transformation experience. Join if you like, and if you have questions or want something in particular addressed, leave a comment or contact me directly. I will also enable the community chat option, so if anyone is struggling with grief/loss and needs a space to process or share some of their wisdom/experience, please do so! 

-Tess AKA Tesstamona 

P.S. I do have a telegram group, it’s used for the sharing of uncensored information regarding current events, but if you’d like to join and feel that starting a group chat for a topic like this would be a good idea, let us know. Https://t.me/TheGreatSilencingUncensored