Category Archives: personal

Pablo

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I was going to have lunch with Pablo and Janot in two weeks.

I met Pablo through John Crowley, as a part of the Boston area humanitarian and disaster response gang. He was instantaneously one of my favorite people – intense, warm, and utterly fixated on making things Better. He had somehow landed a gig with the International Red Cross Red Crescent teaching about climate science and probability through game mechanics.

He taught me that I didn’t need to be so serious in my approaches. He taught me people are willing to be vulnerable if you provide them some scaffolding and simply ask them to dive in, assuring them that uncertainty is a part of all that we do and that not knowing how to play the game couldn’t prevent you from playing it.

He helped me, the anxious, risk-averse, hermit that I am, not only take risks, but ask others to do so as well, and to make the whole thing playful. Of COURSE you strike out sometimes, that’s how probability works. Of COURSE it’s not a reflection on your moral character when you strike out in a game or on a project, that just means you’re trying new things.

He died unexpectedly weekend before last. There are now nearly 500 of us in a wide-ranging international WhatsApp group trading stories of how he touched us and changed the world for the better.

For me, there are four main times that stand out.

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Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) for the scientifically inclined

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As mentioned in this post back in April, I’ve been doing Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy, or KAP. While it started as a way to address birthing parent trauma, it has rapidly turned into a powerful tool for me. My anxiety levels are way lower, I’m having difficult conversations at home and at work with more confidence, and I feel more engaged in life in general. You can even tell my how much more often I’m blogging that I’m feeling myself again. This is so effective for me that I wanted to share my setup as a person mostly invested in science, as the KAP practice tends to be quite woo.

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A subtweet from a small town queer

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So, I help produce an art and music campout that happens in California every summer. I’m on the People team (dealing with conflict, consent violations, etc) and am a general coordinator for the overall event. I’ve done this on and off for about 5 years of the 18 years it’s been running. And after this year, I have to say: are the straights and younguns ok? This entire entry is a subtweet to both straight people and young people who seem to think they can’t be in community with their exes.

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Swim out of the Fishbowl

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This is part of a series on my Santa Perpetua tattoos. You can read the rest in the tattoo category on this blog.

The next one came up about one of my great loves, made manifest in a phase of my life. I have always loved the concept of liminal1 space. I first became aware of it as a concept at the Ann Arbor Film Festival2, spending 3 minutes with the audience watching a minute hand move from just after one marker to just before another on a watch face, the movement so slow it was imperceptible until they showed where it had started. The idea of being between things intrigued me. I cherished it when traveling constantly, always in airports and rarely anywhere at all. It was good to have a name for a space that can be so exhausting when I was between work, before I had realized that work didn’t need to be my identity.

When Reed and I started trying to get pregnant, I realized the roller coaster of waiting, then not knowing, and then of one moment of clarity followed by the same cycle every month might break me. Given how much Santa Perpetua and I had talked about liminal space in previous rounds, I figured it was time to go all-in on that topic.

Willow rides a bike. Towards the top of their left arm is a circle with the numbers 39 40 on it, a city scape above it, and a forest with a ship below it. Blue water color streaks down the arm, with numbers alongside it, down to the wrist. At the wrist is a cute little fish.
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Killing ants

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This is part of a series on my Santa Perpetua tattoos. You can read the rest in the tattoo category on this blog.

Now that Santa Perpetua and I had started our collaboration and set up for future work, it was time to dig in and really explore some existential angst. The next one was about my political ideology, the tension I feel behind nearly every act I take, and was one of the originating conversations behind Jigsaw Renaissance1. And that is – what is the responsibility of the individual, and what is the responsibility of society? When one is out of alignment with the other, which course corrects, how, and how much? If they’re both doing ok, should more attention and intent be paid to further progressing the individual or society? I tend to lean towards societal progress, but I also deeply respect and acknowledge individual autonomy and inclusion in that as necessary but insufficient.

Tilde and Willow's right thighs are nestled together, with Tilde's tattoo of purples and greens with a mirrored person as posable figure on one side and a more realistic human on the other. Behind the realistic person, water color and shapes. Beyond the model, simpler shapes and more contained colors. On Willow's thigh, a circle surrounds two children poking at an ant hill. Outside the circle, a child's sillouette looks at plants in orbit. Another small circle holds an ant. There is blue and black water color around it all.
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My “I 💙 Mom” tattoo

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This is part of a series on my Santa Perpetua tattoos. You can read the rest in the tattoo category on this blog.

I loved my first tattoo from Santa Perpetua so much I knew I wanted to get more, and that we had just started a long journey together1. So the next thing I wanted to do was to find a way to find a cohesive visual story across my existing tattoos, to pull the new style in with. This felt like a mildly bold thing to ask a tattooist to do – connect their work to existing work, without a live collaboration with the other artist(s).

This is my shortest entry in this series because it is the most private one for me.

Looking at Willow's back, reflected in a mirror. We see blue water color tattoos with a bit of purple, plus some black circuit lines going to the ASCII hex code already on their back. There is some blue hardy on their shoulders from run-off during a bike ride.
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Maze of existence

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I want to tell you the story of some of the art I carry with me. I want to tell you about Santa Perpetua.

I first got started getting tattoo’d back in maybe 2014, despite my parents’ best intentions. The first thing I ever got tattoo’d was “Death is the road to awe”1 in ASCII hexadecimal down my spine because 1/ I couldn’t get the phase out of my head2, 2/ “death” is change in the tarot, and what is wrong with that, anyway, and 2/ encoding it in ASCII hex would mean that even if my feelings on the quote changed over time, no one could really call me on it.

It was, it ends up, the beginning of a long journey.

The first couple tattoos of hex code were from a total weirdo in my college town I’ll always remember fondly. The ensuing few were from a generally lovely gent in Seattle who was exceptional and exact about lettering and numbers. But I wanted something more – our few forays into creativity left something lacking. At some point I realized I had been following Santa Perpetua online via tattoo blogs for a handful of years, and that I could just, you know, go get a tattoo from her if I was willing to travel for it. 

The backs of some very pale legs with blue shoes, and a watercolor tattoo with a tree, a maze, and skeletons on it on the back of the left leg from ankle to disappearing under a dress.
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Trauma without regret

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We have a tendency, at least in this culture, to celebrate the shit we had to go through if we like where we ended up. Or we’re happy with where we are if it was hard to arrive at. This seems to be slipping – pushback against “I had to pay off my student loans, so you should have to, too” as an example – but it’s still tempting to do when making sense of a personal journey.

Being a birthing parent has left me with my own little bundle of trauma. While I won’t go into details (if you want them, ask for the password to this entry), in short: being nonbinary while interacting with a medical system that insists on calling me “mama” in every interaction, delivering 2 months early via emergency c-section while alone because of covid restrictions, spending a month in the NICU, not bonding for the first LONG while, and then surviving Reed’s PPD was a Bad Time. I was exhausted. My career was set back significantly. My relationship with Reed was damaged. It was hard to not think about those things when trying to care for Locke.

Slowly, through Reed’s and my commitment to each other, an understanding leadership team at work, and my own tenacity for making things different even if I’m not always sure it will be better, things are back on track. Home life is excellent. Locke is in preschool and thriving. I’m being given interesting challenges at work again and rising to the occasion.

Now that things are predictably good on most axes of my life, I decided it was time to look into that trauma. I’ve been seeing a specialist in birthing parent trauma for ketamine-assisted therapy. It’s an effective setup and I’m making gains into understanding myself, the trauma, and how to meet moments and people as what they are rather than the baggage previously associated with them.

Doing the work has NOT been fun. I am sad and testy again. Reed and I are having long, heart-felt conversations about topics that had seemed resolved. I’m having to own up to which parts of the traumatic experiences could have been avoided if I, say, advocated harder for myself; and which are really circumstantial and not an area of growth for me. I am both finding my power and being made painfully aware of how little in this world I control.

While I love my life and my child and my family now, what we went through to get here was not ok and I don’t have to say it was ok or worth it. I do not regret where I have ended up, and also the journey to get here was untenable. I don’t think I’m a better person for it.

2023 in review

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This will be my ninth year in a row doing these, so you can also read about the years since 2015 if so desired. They are inspired by Tilde, who has taught me that it can be a Good Thing to remember what the last year has been like. Many of the headers in this post are based on my goals for 2022.

The phrase for this year was consistency. I like my life, and I’d like to continue making small improvements but holding steady on the things I’ve figured out. I did an ok job at this – with some slip-ups, but also needing to appreciate where I did a good job.

This year had some extreme ups and some extreme downs. It also felt like it was a solid foray into what life looks like with a kid – traveling some (but not as much as I used to), reengaging with work after a rough restart, and really getting into spending time with the family.

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