The Joy Revolution

So, the government shut down. People are not working; the future is uncertain. So I heard.

A part of me says, “Carly, you really need to look at the news and see what is happening in the world,” and the other part says, “Why do you need to know?”

I’ve made it part of my strict diet to avoid the intake of toxic information, negative news, misaligned situations, people that drain my energy, and doing anything that doesn’t support well-being.

Why? Multiple reasons.

I really want to preserve my state of wellness and bandwidth for my somatic therapy clients that I work with. I also want to focus on what is positive in life. Outside my window and in my little planet, everything appears normal.

I get to empathize with my friend whose job working with environmental conservation is on hold until the government comes back. In the meantime, he’s spearfishing and enjoying his days off. I imagine he may have a lingering sense of concern, asking himself, “How long will my money hold out?”

But besides that, and potential delays in flights due to lack of air traffic control, my life is still brilliantly wonderful.

I also write this with a tiny voice that says, “Carly, you’re going to get criticized by people who do care and are affected by this. They’re going to say you’re selfish and should open your eyes to the tragedies going on around you.”

I do question my potential ignorance and am blatantly stating this here. I might be completely narcissistic by only thinking of myself and my clients.

Yes, I also teach my clients to learn to focus on what does work in their lives. You can notice the dead palm frond and the lively green one just perking its pretty head over the top of the trunk. We can see both and not judge either one. It just is what it is right now.

I know that I feel everything, and when I begin to immerse myself in world news, I will most surely feel multiple pangs of pain as I connect to everyone experiencing hardships right now. But I also do that individually with each person I work with.

We used to live in villages, and the news we knew about was what came to the village or a neighboring village. Our expansion of world awareness remained local. We still worshiped the stars and the sun and considered everything else divine or a mystery. Now we know more than ever—millions of bits of information at our fingertips at all times.

It’s scary and miraculous. No longer do we need to sit around a dinner table and philosophize about the meaning of the world, pelagic creatures in the sea, or what Africa is like. We can just ask ChatGBT, and it tells us everything we need to know and more.

No more space for the question, the critical thinking, the dreaming and fantasizing. It is all revealed—instantly. The unknown becomes a thing of the past. We can now know everything about everyone all the time.

You know what? That’s too much for my brain to handle. Rather, my brain might read the info and compartmentalize it somewhere, but my body has to digest this info. When I open my phone to scroll (which I basically stopped doing), I get an overload of body sensations from scrolling for one minute.

I really do want to choose what I decide to bring in, process, digest, integrate, and poop out the rest.

I don’t want to binge on news that doesn’t support life—and the expansion of life.

I want to feel amazing in my body. I want to look at the world as a beautiful place. I want to see random small acts of kindness and let them fill up my sphere with goodness so that I can sleep in peace every night.

It might be selfish.

What would not selfish look like?

Scroll. Watch the news, repeat the same information, and let myself get appalled and heartbroken multiple times. I can read the stories of hundreds of people I have never met—how they lost their jobs and are struggling to stay afloat, going to the food bank, and trying to feed their hungry kids.

I can add to it by ingesting some more junk between some random influencer doing a stupid dance and then the war—all in the same gulp.

Then I can talk about it with my friends and make them see the reality of the world we live in so that they too can feel hopeless and experience the sense of impending doom.

Then we can all reminisce and drink alcohol to wash away the reality of the world we live in, feeling hopeless to do anything about changing it.

Is that what not being selfish looks like?

For now, I’m choosing to continue nourishing my mind with life, beauty, and health. As I come across people who are experiencing hardship, I can experience the joy of connection through empathy and understanding.

I choose to surround myself with beauty every day. I choose to wake up and, instead of thinking of my to-do list, I list ten new things I’m grateful for.

I choose to filter out my thoughts. Each time an energy-depleting thought arises (“The world is collapsing,” “I don’t have enough of this or that,” “This person is mean,” etc.), I send it away as fast as I can become aware of it.

We really do have the capacity to step into an incredibly beautiful life—like the chord of a guitar playing a note and another instrument resonating with the same chord across the room, without even touching it.

I want to play a chord that resonates joy, delight, and gratitude. I know that I attract more and more situations in my life to support that, and together we build a pool of overflowing joy, delight, and gratitude through perpetuating it daily.

That’s the news I am choosing to follow today.

The aftermath of near death in the Pyrenees Mountains...

After an intense near-death experience, the fear begins to recede—smaller and smaller each time you recount the story. It becomes almost just a string of words. The feeling dims into a distant image, no longer present in the body—so you think.

About ten days ago, I found myself in a near-disaster in the Pyrenees Mountains in the south of France. (Full story here.)

I was with my 15-year-old son, chasing the idea of adventure: summit the mountain, then descend to a lake on the other side where a barren refuge with only a roof awaited us. No fire. No comforts. Just sleeping bags. We were going to rough it.

We were excited—and inexperienced.

To make a long story short and jump to the lessons learned:
Don’t follow Google GPS.
Don’t bring a crappy battery pack that fails when you need it most.
Do bring at least four extra pairs of socks.
Bring a tent.
Don’t follow an unmarked trail through snow and fog, watching Google Maps shave off just one minute every twenty.
Don’t wait until sunset to realize you might need to dig a hole in the snow to sleep—or try escaping back to abandoned buildings you may not even reach in time.

Do trust your intuition—especially after your foot sinks thigh-deep in the snow and there's water underneath, and you think, Maybe this isn’t a good idea.
Don’t follow the 15-year-old who’s seen it all on YouTube and thinks he knows best.

The moment that remains etched in my mind is this one:

We had just hiked 6.5 hours over a summit and found ourselves surrounded by blinding white snow, perched on a steep incline that disappeared into a foggy abyss. Visibility was nearly zero.
Ahead: another summit.
Below: who knows what.
The general map said we were supposed to descend toward a lake. This whole hike was supposed to take four hours. Now it was almost sunset.

We were standing on the only dry patch of rock with a tuft of grass. Shaking and trembling. Our feet soaked. Pants soaked from falling and sliding repeatedly.
We dug our feet into the snow to form a mini-ledge, bracing ourselves from sliding backward.

The choices:
Keep going into the white void and hope to reach the refuge—wherever it was—before nightfall.
Or retrace the perilous route we barely survived to get here. Hike two more hours back to the old, abandoned mining buildings and hope:

1. We make it before sunset.

2. They’re open.

Then came the flash: my son began to cry. He was shaking. I still see that moment—his fear, the nothingness around us, and the shared terror that we might actually die that night.
I had to stifle the wave of heat—panic—rising in my chest, threatening to take over.

But something inside me snapped into focus:
No. We must survive.
We have to move now. Fast.
We retrace every single step.
We reach those buildings before dark.
No stopping.
We will survive.

We barely made it.
We found an open building, made it through the night, and lived to tell the tale.

Followed the whole series of letting people know we were alive and driving 5 hours back to my little tiny home near Bordeaux in France. Collapsing into bed after the sleepless night before.

The next morning, I savored my warm bed like never before—immense gratitude for the heater, for running water, for food.

Later that day, we went to help a friend dealing with health issues. The task? Move two tons of wood—logs large and small—from one side of a fence to the other.
No entryway.
We had to launch each log over the fence by hand.

The pile looked endless.
The work was grueling: bend, pick up, adjust, throw—again and again.
I found myself fine-tuning my calisthenics: engaging the hips, using momentum, focusing deeply with each toss.

My son and I both got in the rhythm.
Hundreds of throws, and the pile barely shrank.
I listened to my audiobook and went into engine mode. Just keep going.

I felt the sweat.
My abs.
My muscles burning—and it was familiar.
Since the hike, I now knew what my body was capable of.

And then, something shifted.
I started to enjoy the movement: the muscle contraction, the twist, the propulsion.
I became a perfectly tuned machine—and it felt good.

After what felt like a thousand throws, we finished.
I thought: I climbed the Pyrenees and survived. I can do this too.
And we did. Every last branch.

That night, in bed, I felt everything: abs, obliques, thighs, shoulders, chest. Every inch of my body was alive and strong.

The following days were filled with intense work on my property in France. I’d decided to list my land and tiny house as an Airbnb before heading out just a few days later.

I cleaned, repaired, painted, weed-whacked, negotiated with locals, bought sheets, soap, towels, and all the little amenities you never think about for yourself.
I found a property manager.
Checked every item off a never-ending list to get the place guest-ready.

In two days, I pulled off a Herculean task—while still spending evenings with my son and holding client therapy sessions online.

On the last day, I peeled off my filthy overalls and boots, hands scraped and shredded.
These hands had worked.

I took a two-minute shower, threw on my white clothes, brushed my hair, and we drove to a local fine-dining restaurant.
I sank into my seat, ordered a wide chalice of Bergerac Pecharmant red, and savored every bite of the three-course meal.

Done.
We did it.

The next day, I left France: a 30-hour journey to Hawaii, including a short overnight in LA.

The plane felt like a luxury.
Coffee in hand.
Time to write.
My body had hit its limits—and now, we rest.

Hawaii welcomed me with her warm winds and endless blues of ocean and sky.
She exhaled ease, and my body melted.

Saturday evening, I danced.
Still jet-lagged from waking at 4 a.m., I moved—feeling the ground, the beat, the release of expression.
Suddenly, a flash: the top of the white mountain.
Terror. Lost.
My body curled into a ball.

Carly, you were Supermom there. But now—you can be the little girl.
That was scary, wasn’t it?
You survived.
You’re safe now.

I put on my shoes, drove home, and slept—wrapped in white sheets and comforter.

The next day, I hit my personal free-diving record: 27 meters.
90 feet.
1 breath.

It felt easy.

I often wonder about human capacity.
What we’re really made of.
I’ve always thought I had strength and endurance, but now I know—
I have a gold mine inside me that hasn’t even been tapped.

What we think we’re capable of is just conditioning.

This past week, five people have asked about retreats with me in Hawaii.
Three new clients have signed up for somatic therapy.
I can’t help but notice the connection.

It’s as if the universe saw that I can.
I can.

And it’s offering me ways to put that into action.

And just because I can doesn’t mean I have to all the time.
But now?
It takes less effort.

And for that, I thank our Pyrenees adventure—and the unleashing of life force it stirred awake.

I don’t recommend trying to find a near death adventure to prove you have buried resources within you~
but sometimes it’s the trials that we surpass that makes us realize we are much more capable than we could ever imagine.

If you haven’t read the full adventure check it out here:

Near death in the Pyrenees Mountains.

and follow my blogs on substack for free CARLY KO

Click on Image to read full story.

·

MAY 11

Summary: ❄️ Near-Death in the Pyrenees ❄️

Move fast slowly – The trick to stress management and getting shit done

There is a form of danger that demands immediate response. Cortisol injects into the system, adrenaline pulses through the veins. The heart pounds, eyes dilate, muscles tense—ready for action.

If a tiger popped up in the room, it would make sense to react instantly—no overthinking, no strategizing, no contemplating feelings. Just move.

Of course, today’s tigers look different. Like an Audi driver texting his girlfriend, oblivious to you on the sidewalk as he nearly runs you over.

Yes, that’s a good time for quick action.

Or when you turn the supermarket aisle for your favorite ice cream and spot your ex, lost in the freezer section with his long-haired, perfectly sculpted new girlfriend from the gym.

Immediate turn-around.

Or that adrenaline jolt as you clutch your purse, walking through a sketchy street in the Tenderloin. A black man approaches—baggy pants, a limp, a marked face.

Yeah, that last one gets uncomfortable. Because I wrote "black guy," and that triggers the racism alarm. But let’s be real—when we’re in fight-or-flight, ingrained biases emerge. It could just as easily be a white dude in ripped jeans, but centuries of inherited fear responses don’t always check themselves at the door.

What about moving slowly in the face of danger? What about intentionally slowing the nervous system, acting with precision, breathing?

Because today’s low growl in the bush looks more like an upcoming deadline, or a meeting where you admit to the guy you’re dating that it’s not a good fit.

Or the morning firefighter routine—alarm, snooze, snooze, shit, late. Throw on clothes, slap on makeup, pour coffee into a to-go mug, dress the kids, pour their cereal, grab backpacks, sack lunches.

Kiss your hubby goodbye while already planning a Sprouts run for dinner ingredients.

Go, cortisol and adrenaline. Get that heart rate up. Hello, high blood pressure, immune depletion, and exhaustion. Not to mention the wrinkles between your eyebrows didn’t come from smiling.

Of course, all this sounds a bit binary. If you’re anything like me, you don’t have a 9-to-5 or a hubby you make dinner for.

But time itself is a cause for stress, right? No deadlines, no appointments, no flight times, no Zoom meetings—sounds like bliss.

But what if we could move fast without the cortisol spike?

Can we move quickly in the external world while staying internally slow?

Think of HIIT workouts—burpees, squats, boxing, push-ups. Fast, intense, and oddly satisfying. Maybe not during, but afterward? Endorphins flood in. That feel-good high.

What if we approached obligations—school drop-offs, reports, family reunions, lost Amazon packages—like a workout?

Stress isn’t about the task itself but the story we attach to it.

Let’s go back to the tiger. What happens if it pounces?

Go ahead, guess.

Yep. Head ripped off. Limbs licked clean. Death, in a pretty gory fashion.

Now, contrast that with being late to your Zoom meeting about the latest HeartRipple yoga pant designs.

Is your boss going to rip your head off?

The issue isn’t the task—it’s the projection.

We don’t even know what’s going to happen. The boss might scold us, we might lose our team lead position, the plane might leave, we might have to buy a bikini in Hawaii while waiting for our lost suitcase.

How bad can it really be? Are you actually going to die?

Most failures aren’t fatal. But our minds pile up every possible catastrophe, distracting us from what’s actually happening: right here, right now.

If I weren’t obsessing about my missed flight, my insurance oversight, the security line, and whether they’ll confiscate my hummus—

I could just breathe.

Calculate my speed. Ask myself, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Trust that I’ll handle it.

Then, move with focus. Approach the security line, ask the first person if I can go ahead. They smile, nod. Faith in humanity, restored.

Ditch the hummus. Buy an over priced sandwich. Enjoy the free pretzels.

Slide into my seat, heart rate up but never stressed. Because I was present.

Sometimes it’s not one thing—it’s a million. And you, the self-appointed superhero, are carrying a giant fat ogre on your head, convinced only you can handle it.

That’s the moment to pause. Breathe. Put the ogre aside to have a good bird’s eye view of it. Breathe again.

What keeps a fire burning? Not compressed logs—but air.

Breathe. Make space. Fire needs air to burn bright, not a suffocating pile of logs.

Same with the nervous system. It’s meant to undulate, not swing from Everest highs to Grand Canyon crashes. Not go-go-go, then collapse into Netflix and TikTok oblivion.

Economy of energy. Let’s go for a bunch of E’s. Not the E for ecstasy (although that could be fun—kissing your kids, prepping heart-shaped sandwiches, gushing over your boss’s earrings, squeezing your hubby’s love handles and a sweet slap one the butt on his way out the door).

No, let’s stick with these 4 E’s:

Economy—What do you ACTUALLY need to do today? Write it down.

Economize—Stay present. Stop predicting every possible outcome. It’s exhausting.

Energy—How do you get the job done with the least wasted effort?

Energetics—What energy do you bring? Can you choose joyful, grateful, or at least neutral?

As I’m elaborating on economy of energy, I find myself writing this during my layover in the Amsterdam airport, sipping my hot chocolate at ease, realizing, I may need to meander over to my next flight.

I get to the passport control line I had previously scoped out as a safe 5 min line, transformed into an endless line of hundreds of irritated travelers.

I have 7 mins. before my plane boards.

I stop. Assess. This line will take at least 30 mins.

I approach the guard, “Excuse me, do you think I’m going to be late? “ as I show him my boarding pass. “You might be able to make the flight” he says as he looks at the line.

I picture the plan of action once I am liberated from the 30 min. line. At the sound of the stamp in my passport, I break for it. Expertly weaving my way through the crowds, suitcases, wheel chairs, and incoming traffic, arriving to the gate as the doors are closing, my passport in hand, dripping sweat and collapsing in my seat as the captain announces, “ready for takeoff.”

I keep calm. The guard looks at me again. “Hold on, I’ll help you.” he says. He lifts the barrier, then another one.

A couple run up to the guard as he’s escorting me to the front, “We’re never going to make it in time!” – they frantically wave their tickets in the air.  Their anger, frustration and stress is palpable. He turns frankly and says “Sorry, you have to wait” and continues to escort me to the front of the line.

I breeze past the officer as I’m smiling to myself. Not only did I get to handle the situation majestically, I proved to myself the art of staying cool in times of pressure.

I arrive to the gate with extra time to use the restroom and saunter onto the plane.

Economy of Energy is a beautiful thing.

Life isn’t about removing stressors. It’s about shifting how you move through them. Fast on the outside, calm on the inside. Dare to take an alternative route to destination.

Be Present. Focused. Unshakable.

The path to truth runs through shame

um chronic shyness…

Most of my life was run by shame and guilt. I suffered from the shame of existing, from my own thoughts, my incapacity to be like everyone else, my inability to easily open my mouth, joke, say something witty or smart.

My mind took 400 years to process things and ultimately by the time I was ready to respond or throw in a comment, the discussion had moved miles down the road. So I was silent.

I questioned everything. There wasn’t an impulse that wouldn’t’ be flipped around on it’s head, analyzed and weighed out all the potential outcomes before it was put into action.

So, by the time the impulse was allowed to move, it was awkward, a bit unnatural, my words came out wrong, my actions didn’t give me the joy I thought they might.

I began forcing myself to listen to my impulse by the time I was in my 20’s and 30’s, I’d have these urges to run or to feel the drive to let the energy exploding in me to reveal itself.

It might be the desire to walk on a handrail, do a cartwheel, run up and down the beach, scream out loud. I would still calculate the potential outcomes, the people who may watch me, and the whole time doing it I would have their eyes glued onto the back of my head like curlers, but I’d do it.

I wouldn’t necessarily get the feeling I was striving for or that I needed to express, but at least I let myself push past the freeze response in my body that couldn’t move or speak.

With performing it was easier, I had a circle of permission. The audience was there to see me be impulsive, spontaneous, weird and quirky. I could delight in this, and my audience would give me that permission.

I could make faces, scream, fall all over the place, run and do cartwheels, take people’s shirts off, pull men’s ears, crawl on the ground, steal peoples’s hats, pretend like I’m drunk, tell everyone to be quiet, so that I, I, I, could speak.

Yes, performing gave me a public permission slip to be heard, no shame in my impulses or words, they paid for this.

It was different around a dinner table though, if I was to share an honest opinion, a tuning fork accessing my emotional and mental state and mold that into a word baby. Wow, that was a feat.

I attempted to converse. How do you have conversations? Foreign to me. Firstly, eye contact was excruciatingly challenging. I would have to hide and push down the nervous quiver to the lower floors. How far down could I hide it?

Words. What do you say to someone new? What kind of decent responses, wit and light intelligent responses would have to be invented on the spot just to keep them interested?

How to keep them interested? Maybe, I should share about myself. Yes, I can attempt to create a conversation by sharing about my life. I would talk about myself, the things I did, opinions, hoping not to have that awful silence. I wasn’t really interested in what I shared, I had heard it a million times, but how do I remain interesting to them?

I was always thrown into a state of disbelief if a few people at the table would stop to listen to anything I might share. Their eyes, all looking at me, the pressure, the pressure!

I had an audience, I have to maintain their interest, how do I get out of this as quickly as possible? Their eyes permeated me like microscopes. They could see everything. I cannot let them see how nervous I am. Hide it. Hide it.

I recall a shift. One day, sitting on a chair opposite a man facing me on another chair in a large empty theater hall. I recall he was important in my mind. It may have been regarding my show, perhaps a theater agent. My heart was beating so loud I could barely hear him speak. The heat was rising in my face as I attempted to smile, laugh and appear amusing and smart.

My mind was spinning, his words were a blur. I’m supposed to listen and respond intelligently.

“Carly, listen. Think of a response.” My inner dialogue is talking louder than he is. I readjust my posture to seem even more at ease on the outside.

Then I realize. “Carly, slow down. Just notice what’s happening in your body. Can you feel your heart palpitating? Can you feel the heat? Where are your feet, ah they’re there. Ok, can you feel the ground underneath them? Good.”

I manage to anchor my body to the seat. The seat becomes my stable point, my grounding.

“Carly, can you just be present? Focus on his words. Feel your body. Feel your body. Don’t let the mind go crazy.”

“Listen deeper.”

I managed to make it through that conversation.

Over time, I realized that pretending to be anything I wasn’t in conversation would create such an intense amount of stress that the discomfort exhausted me by the end of the evening.

I needed alone time to relax, to not have to be someone I thought they wanted to see. To release the pressure valve.

I had to spend a lot of recuperation time.

Finally, I decided to just name it.

I would teach yoga retreats, and as I would hold the opening circle, feeling the terror of not meeting up to the expectations of the people who signed up.

I start out “I’m feeling super nervous, my heart is pounding, I’m worried about your expectations, but I’m attempting anyway.”

They would all listen, and something about that blatant truth freed me.

Phew, I could start, my body relaxed and I’d take my power back. And for them, well, they could also stop with whatever narrative they had in their head to be the perfect yoga student. They had MY PERMISSION because I gave myself the PERMISSION to not be more than who I was in that moment.

I used that a lot. I still felt terribly nervous before speaking, even when I would want to respond to a group question. I would raise my hand and when it was my turn to speak, consistently, my heart would pound, my face would flush, my body would shake.

I’d say it. “I’m feeling nervous right now, but here I go.” And I’d make it through.

I haven’t been able to make that feeling completely go away every time I have the attention of a group audience ready to listen to my words.

I have to remember feeling my body. It anchors me in what’s present. I don’t always have to admit it to them, but I admit it to myself. And I give myself permission to feel nervous and still let my voice come out.

I was always a good writer. I could really let it rip, let my emotions, words, imaginations pour onto a page. Letting those come up and hit my vocal cords demanded another pathway, the pathway to concretization, manifesting of a thought into palpable audible form. Concretizing it into existence, not to be taken back or hidden in a notebook.

The stakes are much higher. Now, I feel, I formulate, as if it is a focused meditation. What wants to converge inside of myself and shape itself into the weight of a word? Yes, and when that word can be uttered and it hits the same feeling and image of that which is within me, the channel is open.

…as if the divine within is allowed to come pouring fourth like liquid.

Writing for me is god’s permission slip. You can write your soul onto the page. And when I share it, woah, there is the hot feeling in my body, the tremble before clicking the button “publish”. The after publishing rise of potential shame and vulnerability. And then something inside that releases, one more piece of me, I don’t have to keep hidden in my recesses.

One more validation to myself that every part of me is allowed to exist and express itself.

Then, once it is released. Said, read, heard. I can move on.

I can read it aloud if needed, I have released my heart, emotion, mind into the world to let them do as they wish with it. I have offered up the gift of me, my inner worlds, it is no longer mine to hoard over, to self masturbate over. It is for all to use, be inspired, ridicule or cry over. It is a permission slip.

Memory Hijacker- the true-ish story of trauma

trauma can affect your memory, but your body can remember….

Write about 8th grade is the writing prompt today, as if that was easy. Let’s imagine I’m like everybody else who remembers their adolescence. My mind shut down years ago, the cognitive memory took a vacation. Guess it was under flight mode?

My 8th grade. My slight panic arises, I don’t remember anything. Or barely. I have a face in mind, a balustrade, a girl I so wished she would be friends with me, who never was.

Rita, the girl with long blond straight puffy hair. She would sit in front of me in class and brush her hair constantly. I wished I had her hair.

What was I doing? Did we have a uniform? It was a christian junior high.

Was I in California? I didn’t know anybody.

Part of me is freaking out. How could I zap an entire section of existence out of my life?

I have a vague memory of a class room to the right in the back, did we eat there?

What was happening at that time in my life? I must have been 13 or 14. Where was my brother? My adopted sister would have been 3 at the time. I have a flash of us playing a practical joke on her and putting her in the basketball net. I wonder if she’s traumatized from that, she still remembers.

It’s all blended.

I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. The first time I kissed a boy I was in California, I must have been that age. Must have been when mom took us to California from Arizona to see our dad. They had broken up, she went back, to try to save the family.

He lived in a little apartment building. Basic. We used to spend our days in the hollowed out area of a giant bush in the complex, we loved forts. They were our safe space.

My brother and I would make forts in the living room, from the plastic fold out table to the chair, we would drape sleeping bags over it and hang out in there.

When our parents were gone, we would whip each other with wet towels. We fought brutally or maybe we were just letting out our pent up emotions from all that was happening in the family.

Did it not even concern my parents that changing schools 13 times in the span of my 10 years of schooling was a bit much for a chronically shy hyper sensitive child?

Did it not even occur to them?

One night, a woman arrived at my dad’s door, knocking, banging to see him. He finally went out. We were supposed to be sleeping. I think we slept in the living room.

They were talking, no idea what they were saying under their muffled voices, guess that was Dad’s new girlfriend while he and Mom were separated.

Why did my mother go back? Why do women go back to their abuser? He was changed, I think that was what she believed. Things would be different, she must have been struggling. 3 kids, working at night as a nurse.

As kids, we have no clue what our parents do to make sure we survive. I had no idea.

We used to throw snails on our neighbors giant windows overlooking the common green area. We would watch them slowly smear their way down the window to their final crash on the ground.

Things kids do.

Not to mention using magnifying glasses to roast ants.

That boy… I barely remember him. I think he had glasses, we played together. I remember a kiss, a quick one, then never seeing him again. Name? No idea.

I wonder was I really in junior high? All this sounds so immature. To think, 2 years later I would be going to bars with a fake ID.

This must have been earlier, I wouldn’t have been hiding in forts at 13.

It’s all a mess and part of me reaches out to my younger self and says, damn girl, you must have been going through it not to remember a single thing.

I recall slamming my finger in the car trunk.

I recall getting pneumonia and coughing until almost threw up by a car in a parking lot.

My lungs, need for air, sense of compression? I always felt like I had a cage around my chest. One day, I would break free. But I couldn’t back then.

I don’t think I was still spanked at that age. The church wouldn’t have allowed it.

At that time we were probably in the new punishment phase of writing bible verses 100’s of times repeating the same one again and again. Verses about sinning. How could I forget them now, after writing, sleeping, dreaming the constant hammer of guilt into my body?

Or maybe it was the soap mouthwash? Laying on the bathroom floor with a giant bar of fresh new square soap lodged into our mouths after being carefully grated into our teeth. We would lay their for what seemed interminable, letting the soap drip down our throats, our mouths cocked open like a pig with an apple.

That was for white washing. Little white lies had to be cleaned out of our system.

That must have been younger.

At 13 I lived with my mother. Yes, that must have been it. I was into Metallica, Skid Row, Kiss, I had posters on my walls. I had a black and white polka dotted bedspread. We lived in a house I loved, an open floor plan with bedrooms on the sides. I could easily get out without my mother knowing.

One of the nights she was at work, my friends came over, I pierced their ears with ice and a needle.

I rode the bus, I liked a boy. I was too shy to speak to him. My emotions had no idea how to let themselves out. One day, he sat close to me, I slapped him. His face was red, he was stunned.

I liked him. Why did I do that?

My first fight with a girl happened in that time, we pulled each others hair, that’s all I remember.

I must have been a churning ocean of hormones, emotions, trauma and survival mechanisms. The world was a vicious place that I never felt at home in.

What was I like? I must have been a pain in the ass. I reproach my mother for not being there for me emotionally. She was probably just dealing with her own PTSD from being with my father and working to raise 3 children.

I had no idea. I just criticized her. She slapped me once. I was 16 already.

I had no idea. No idea what went on for her, I was removed, distant, in my own mind bubble, protecting myself and surviving in a world that I had no idea how to navigate.

You want me to talk about 8th grade? Well, you know what, it’s not that fucking easy.