Saying Yes to Life

Frens, we've got ourselves a story:

Where does one start?

On saying yes to life after years of isolation, grief, avoidance of connection, and being so entrenched in the inner-matrix / algorithm that you don’t realize you’re not living…

until you do.

The realization came some time ago, but it took a while to start doing something about it. 

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The Gift of Desperation

Doing the opposite of what we’ve become addicted to (or hypnotized by) is something that requires this gift.

To seize something with the fervor of drowning men — this is what it takes to get yourself out of this dumpster fire trinity: The self-imposed prison where you are both inmate, judge, and warden.

We’ve all been there. We’d hardly be human if we hadn’t.

How else would we learn to live hard and live free, if we didn’t know what it is to live dead and enslaved?

Everything is medicine. Even the stuff that feels like poison. 

But now, to taste the medicine that feels like love, freedom, answered prayers, God, magic, and the moments of “I cant believe this is happening. Finally. This.” 

A few months ago I was in a dark place. I decided to start doing one new thing every day to break my algorithm, so I could expand and break the boundaries I’d placed on myself.

These are not the good boundaries that provide dignity, respect and safety, these are the confines that choke the life out of you.

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A flash of today’s current beauty, before we get into what it took to get here:

Tree house studio, present day Florida. Took a while to find a safe place to live, then a place to live within that area, then the ability to start being creative and making music again.

That guitar has been with me on my travels for over a decade. Those keys? Lord they made it out of a house I nearly didn’t. That audio technica mic? I was just blessed with it when my other one finally laid itself to rest, so I begin a new album with a new mic, and love it.

That vinyl record collaged with magazine cut outs? I made that when I was 16 and had just gotten released from being locked up, my first time starting to express myself with art, outside of writing. It’s the only vinyl art of mine I still have, all the others sold.

The trees outside? This place is so beautiful. There’s a lake and an ocean nearby too. Those trees, seeing them every day, those friends have been with us always. They remind us we are connected to something we cannot describe, but innately understand.

Basking in Nature’s Glory is always enhanced when shared with friends. Remember the importance of the analog interactions. There is no substitution. 🙏

Speaking of Analog > Digital, guess who this is?

Blessed Warrior Reina

! A friendship that started here on SUBSTACK now is IN REAL LIFE. We share the same stomping grounds now. Welcome to Florida, Miss Reina 👑 ❤️

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Flash back to a year ago.

I wanted to end my life.

I was at work that night and prayed. I said, “God, if you want me to live, I need a sign right now, otherwise I am going to go home and put the gun to my head. If you want me here, then I need you now.” 

Shortly after I got off my shift and was driving home, my uncle called. I knew immediately that was God’s sign. I was in Tennessee at the time, and he was in Florida, where I now reside.

He was calling to chat. I never told him how low I was mentally, but I did express a general dissatisfaction and feeling of being lost in Nashville. Sure I was making music and shit, but I was completely isolated.

I focused so much on a goal that I neglected every other area of life. And suddenly, the thing I loved so much felt like a curse.

This is no fault of music, this is the fault of an obsessive mind that constricts the joy out of anything it tries to control.

My uncle told me many things of Florida. It was always attractive to me because they never did the lockdowns and they didn’t mandate the jab like they did in the blue states (where I lived before Tennessee). Thats why I left those states. 

But he told me other things.

He told me of my cousin/his son, who had started a business. He told me about him and his friends and all these beautiful things they were doing with their lives.

I had no idea that one year later, I’d be living in Florida, and working for that very same business my cousin and his friends started. 

My uncle said to me, “Why don’t you come to Florida and try this out and just, have a nice life?” He emphasized “Nice Life” — and I actually had internal resistance towards it. 

A nice life? What does that mean? 

Does that mean I give up on everything and I’m just dead? 

This should give insight into how warped my thinking was.

The thought of joy and happiness sounded like a death sentence. Aren’t I supposed to be fighting the fight 25/8? Don’t I still have all these things I have to accomplish so I can justify my existence?

I could never enjoy life until I had done all the things, because deep down I didn’t think I deserved it.

It’s funny, because I actually am experiencing this nice life, and it’s the furthest thing from dead or boring. My God, it is everything.

Turns out, starting to truly live again enhances the shit out of everything, including whatever your mission is, and the quality of whatever you’re working on.

But if I would have had my will and way in things, I would have been too stubborn to experience it.

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So, I had to suffer a bit more first. 

That night after the phone call, I had a dream.

I had a dream that I was in Florida, and I remember the feeling in the dream. It was happiness. I remember the scenario too. What’s funny is, that exact scenario would later become reality, as would the feeling.

I never had the “plan” of moving to Florida, but knowing it was a potential alternative to ending my life in Tennessee stayed in the back of my mind. 

There would come a day, in late September of 2023, where it would save my life. 

Shortly after that phone call with my uncle, I got into a relationship. 

Those of you who have been reading this Substack for a while, you likely know some of it. I don’t say specifics, other than it was abusive and I almost lost my life.

There came a time when I had to stop hiding my situation and ask for help. 

So, I reached out to my uncle. 

Within 72 hours, I was in Florida. I packed my Honda with my music gear and some clothes and drove my ass down here from Nashville.

Had no idea I was going to live here, the original plan was to get away and let the smoke clear for a few days. I had no idea where I’d go after those few days, but anything was better than where I was. 

Funny thing, I almost turned around and drove back to Tennessee on the way down here. I was in Georgia and thought I was receiving “signs” to go back.

Sometimes you do receive signs, but they aren’t from anything you should be listening to, if you catch my drift.

Deceptive forces run high when you start walking toward the light. It can be easy to turn back. Hell has a way of wanting to keep you captive, and our egos only feel safe in what is familiar, even if what is familiar is pain and death itself.

The ego cannot go where it has not gone before. This is why we think we fear the unknown. But really, we don’t fear the unknown, it is the ego’s attachment to losing what it knows, that creates the fear. 

Luckily, one of my best friends talked me out of that dumbass idea, and I continued my drive south. 

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Moving Forward:

Within a week I had a job. Then, suddenly, I wound up interviewing at my cousins company.

They weren’t hiring. They didn’t think they’d hire until January. It was October 2nd. I figured I could wait tables and if they still needed someone in January, switch over then.

I left the interview, and within ten minutes of being on the road, my cousin called me. He said they wanted to offer me the job, and I started the next week. 

That dream I had that night I talked to my uncle all those months prior became reality. 

As did much more.

Talking about a job doesn’t seem significant, but when you’ve been a struggling musician / artist and have had to wait tables to make your income for 18 years (started when I was 16) it’s easy to get in your head that you aren’t capable of anything else. 

I needed to experience that. I needed to see that I was capable of more, and I didn’t have to live hand to mouth, constantly on the verge of wanting to stab the next rude customer.

Other bonus: It requires SO MUCH of your mental faculties to do that job, it saved me from returning to my ex.

Anyone who has left an abusive relationship knows it’s very similar to quitting a drug addiction (almost identical actually) - there is a detox period, and a huge window of vulnerability regarding relapse.

That job, being as demanding and high stakes as it is, kept my mind so busy that I didn’t have the energy or time to do what I normally do, which is spaz on impulse and self-destruct.

I had something I’d never had before, meaning I had something to lose. I was not going to be the cause of my undoing again.

I also wasn’t going to let the people who took a chance on me down. Whether that be my aunt and uncle who let me stay with them, or my cousin and his friends who hired me. The odds of a woman who just left an abusive relationship two weeks prior actually staying the course are astronomically low.

Rates of recidivism back to abusers and addictions are extremely high. Everyone took a risk with allowing me into their lives and lending a helping hand.

This did not go unnoticed, and I wasn’t about to fuck that up.

Nobody can save anyone.

What people can do, is help those who are ALSO willing to help themselves, and are actively doing so.

You can’t help someone who won’t help themselves. But if you combine the two? Then yes, a lot of really good shit can happen.

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Fast forward to now:

Many things have happened since I’ve lived in Florida. I’ve been here nearly 9 months now. Some good, some hard, some tragic, it is life.

However, you still gotta fight like hell, because wherever you go, there you are.

Doing geographics (relocating) doesn’t do shit if you don’t move your consciousness and behavior patterns along with it.

So, you still gotta put heavy work in. And when you’re starting over in a new place, you gotta make sure you go with the momentum and don’t get stuck in that isolation place again. 

Ah, and I did get stuck in it. But we’re not gonna go there, we’re gonna talk about when things changed. 

March 2024.

Thats when the inner-algorithm and doing a new thing every day to break it came to mind.

I started. I started slowly sorta putting myself out there. It wasn’t enough to make the change needed, but it was a start. 

Then, I met a new friend in early April.

I was in the middle of some shit. Going through a lot at that time. The lights were not on, so to speak. I was fighting my way out of the darkness, but I wasn’t out. 

Suddenly I met another kindred spirit, and all the lights went on.

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I was reminded of why I choose to be on Earth.

Poetry, Music, Art, LIFE, love, adventure, connection, performing, sharing, experiencing, nature, ALL OF IT. But especially the poetry and the music and the art. I cannot tell you how badly I needed that. 

Long story short, I decided to take a risk, and that risk continues paying dividends in real time.

I decided to open up. I decided to share unfinished art (never EVER do I do that. That person is still the only person who has heard the album I’m creating, other than the person I’m creating it with).

I started saying yes to everything, and I started realizing shit. When I’d go spend time with this person, they would show me all these cool things around the city I had been living in for half a year at that point, never noticed.

I drove past them all the time, but never SAW them. 

Why? 

Too blinded by being inside the confines of my own mind. The inner algorithm.

It blinded me to the beauty literally right in front of me. So this was great news, the snow globe was breaking.

If I felt fear in letting someone in close or seeing certain parts of me, I noticed it and took the fear as a cue to PROCEED in that exact direction, because that is where I knew I needed to be free.

Normally I’d always hold back or hide, but I was done with that shit. Done. 

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So, I continued saying yes to life. 

New actions = new experiences. New actions = new freedom.

I started saying yes to more and more shit. Started going to events and things where I either didn’t know anyone, or only knew one person. Then you start meeting people, then they invite you to more things, the whole thing cascades. 

Now, there is an album. Now, there are shows. Now, there are yoga retreats. Now, there are boat days, pool parties, beach days and amazing women I’ve met here to walk the road of recovery and life with. 

I have not lived like this since 2014. In 2015, things started to slip. 2016, my struggle with PTSD became severe. In 2017, I thought I would never come back from that. 2018, I started climbing out, but I’ve never felt the same since 2014.

There are many “side quests” and wrong turns you can take when climbing your way out of a level of hell you’d never known before. It’s a steep process. However, I didn’t forget 2014. I was truly happy that year, and I’ve been trying to get back to that ever since. 

That was ten fucking years ago. I’d felt like a ghost in the machine since then. A shell of who I used to be.

I’m back motherfucker. 

I wish this for all beings, because the fear is doing nothing but blocking everything we’ve ever wanted. It’s useless.

The thing you are afraid of is your CUE to proceed towards, because your freedom and the life you’ve always wanted lies on the other side of that mirage.

Angkor Watt, Siem Reap, Cambodia, taken in 2013. The last time I took a big risk and said yes to a new life after hitting a low point, I wound up here. Things like this are what is on the other side of the mirage of fear.

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Tonight, and Building Resilience: 

I had already been to multiple meetings, had a full days work, was exhausted, but my focus now is on building resilience. 

This means being totally dedicated to healing and building community and friendships.

That’s what always saved my life back in Oregon, where I was sober for my first 9 years of recovery. Yes, there has been a lot of loss. Some to the sands of time, most of it to death, and it has been tragic as fuck.

I became very isolated as a coping mechanism for the grief.. and I just couldn’t rebuild that community because, I don’t know.

I became aversive to getting close to people because one day they’re there, the next day they’re gone.

You get used to being afraid of the phone ringing because you’re like, fuck, who died this time.

It’s a problem not enough people are addressing, the lethality of shame and isolation, which leads to drug overdose and suicide, and in a some cases, homicides.

It affects everyone, whether you are an addict or not.

So now..

Today. I was tired as hell. I got a text from a girl asking if I wanted to go to a yoga/recovery thing. What? A recovery meeting mixed in with Yoga? That sounds fucking epic.

Truth be told, I didn’t want to go. But something in me said… GO. The body may be tired, but your spirit needs this. GO. 

I have been reading a book from the Bible the last few days. Judge if you will, but it’s been helping me. I thought about the story and example of Yeshua, or commonly referred to today as Jesus, even though the letter J didn’t exist until 200 years ago, but whatever, we’re talking about The Christ.

I thought about that example. Not once have I read that he was asked to go somewhere and was like, “fuck it I’m tired I wanna go home and go to bed”. I feel like he was pretty productive with his time, so I had a little extra inspiration from that and made myself go. 

This is the magic part. 

I cannot believe how incredible that experience was. 

Everyone was my age (all in either their 30s or 40s, I count that as my age, I’m 35) everyone was in recovery, and everyone got down with yoga, in a real way.

I saw multiple people wearing mala necklaces. I have never seen people (other than Jai Dev) wearing mala beads — I have some of my own, although I rarely wear them in public, but to see that!? Yo. 

It hit me. It had been so long since I’ve felt like I’ve been around kindred spirits. There’s a reason for that.

When SHTF in 2016/2017, I felt like everything I knew, including myself, died. I was frozen in that quicksand molasses wasteland for a long fucking time.

The reason it’s been forever since I’ve felt like I’ve been around kindred energies is because MY energy changed. The old me died. The new me took a hot minute to formulate.

That’s fucking why things never felt like they aligned — until they did.

I had to change, and then I had to emerge. Those are two different processes.

I went to many blessed places in that experience tonight, and got to experience it with 30 other really dope people. 

Other bonus? The girl I met there wasn’t the only one I knew. I recognized many others and greeted them with hugs — no longer feeling like everywhere I went I was the stranger. Haven’t felt that in a long time. This is the cascading result of showing up.

I know it is so hard to do! But I’ve noticed I’m not the only one having this experience, a lot of people I’ve been meeting are coming out of self-imposed isolation, various traumas, etc. — something is clearly going on right now.

People are being called. And I don’t mean with a phone.

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This kind of stuff is happening here every day. Every fucking day. and I had NO IDEA, because I was in my inner-algorithm and saying NO to life, not YES. 

It’s really scary to change up your entire everything and go against your instincts that tell you: hide, protect yourself, don’t get close to anyone, keep telling yourself all the lies to keep you safe in prison, stay low. Even though you dream of freedom, you just aren’t ready to let go. 

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You aren’t ready up until the point where you just fucking are.

What makes a person ready?

We have to be in enough pain to just fucking do something about it.

You never feel READY. You just do it, because the pain of staying where you are outweighs the fear of anything else.

Healing isn’t just a selfish pursuit. One must heal so we can heal others, one must heal so we can truly connect with others. One must learn to forgive and love themselves, or we can never truly Love anyone else.

Until then, we have life experiences that are “repeats” and they keep getting worse until we learn what we’re supposed to learn.

They trigger us because they show us the parts of us that we need to work on and show love to.

Even the parts of ourselves that we’d like to bury at the bottom of the ocean, those parts need us to say yes to them too — by facing them, and allowing the ghosts to tell their stories, so they may move on. So the abandoned haunted house that our bodies once were, can become inhabited fully by us again. 

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Have the experiences. Open your heart. Share.

If you are not ready, it’s okay. Do what you need to do.

I had to take my time in a bit of a retreat for most of this past year just to bounce back from the year prior. And I did that intentionally.

But you’ll know when it’s time to move out of that, because it’ll stop feeling like recovering and it’ll start feeling like decaying and dying.

So, allow both joy and pain and fear and bliss to be your navigators. All of our emotions are CUES, they are our bodies way of communicating with the mind.

Just listen.

And to those ready to say yes to life, yo, it’s dope as fuck and I cant wait to see you out here.

And to those who still need time, yo, can’t wait for when you join, and reach out if you need something.

You are so loved, no matter what. And no matter what, if you are alive and reading this, your purpose on this earth is NOT done.

You are here for a reason. You have gifts only you can give. The voice inside your head is a liar when it tells you otherwise.

Everything in nature has a purpose. How delusional are we to think we are the exception to that? WE ARE NATURE. Anything breathing fucking oxygen is a carbon-based life form, you’re a tree motherfucker, you just talk and likely cause more excitement and drama - run with it.

You are needed. You are loved. You are love. Remember who you are. 

The mind doesn’t tell the truth. Inner dialogue is not to be trusted. Dialogue involves MULTIPLE voices, a conversation. Do you ever wonder who you’re talking to?

Do you ever wonder which voice is you? Do you ever wonder whose voices those are? The chatter of the mind? It isn’t YOU. 

The world needs your story. The world needs your art. The world needs your voice. YOU.

There aren’t any other versions of you.

Im sharing because I want to share the joy of living again with you. I will try not to attach anything else to it. But maaaaan, if someone is encouraged to help themselves because of it, holy shit, please share your story and share yourself.

You will soon see why it is that I say, you are needed here.