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I wake up in the sea. I don’t know how I got here. Who am I?The sky is blue, spotted with white fluffy clouds.I feel scared.Turning my head to the left, I see a feathery creature. A waterbird.I feel light, yet rooted in wet sand and foamy saltwater.Looking more carefully at this creature, I see… Read more: Freedom: a vision; a vignette

Until recently, in my practice of aikido, I have been focusing on refining my ukemi. My previous essay, “The Art of Falling,” describes this journey. In my life, I have spent a lot of time clinging onto people and ideas that do not suit me. My anxious attachment relationship style means that I seek validation… Read more: The Art of Throwing

Humanity is inherently violent, I’ve come to realize. People act out this violence in various ways. Through domestic violence, war, emotional manipulation, doing donuts on the freeway, and poisoning themselves with addiction. There is a desperate need to address these violent impulses, to find an outlet for them that does not irrevocably harm oneself or… Read more: The Art of Falling

RIDING THE WAVES // DYNAMISMThe sea was the backdrop of our romance.Eureka, Fort Bragg, Point Pinole, Half Moon Bay, Pacifica. Driving up and down the coast on Highway One for recreation. Staying in chemical cleaner-filled hotel rooms (I put up with them for him—for love) near the water. A couple blocks away, maybe.He told me… Read more: An Oceanic Love Story

“You’re so feminine,” my lover exclaimed at me, suddenly, in the shower. I was a sophomore in college, and he was one year my senior. He was also my first serious boyfriend. I have always been a late bloomer.When he said this to me, I felt a wave of shame and guilt wash over me.… Read more: Fear and Femininity

Magic, people & dirt. Aikido reminds me of the firein my heart, in my belly.In my throat, my voice.I have the power.I’ve come up from the depthsTime and Time again.I come back full of bright fireContained within me.Occasionally lashing out, branching outTo touch or whip those around me.I am holy.My breaks have been filled with… Read more: Honoring Hearth, Home, and Body

As former “gifted children” (i.e. neurodivergent children who grew up with privilege), we have been told since we were young that we should never settle. We deserve the world. Leave when it gets boring. Leave when it gets hard. Get something, someone, better. You deserve better. A better job, a better partner. Grind. Find a… Read more: On Staying

i watch the Bee get caught in the web a predator becoming prey struggling, buzzing stuck the Spider emerges, and approaches a dance transpires how can you love honey, and hate Bees. well, i did. as a child, i would get those little honey tubes at the farmer’s market on the weekends, relishing in the… Read more: the Spider and the Bee

This is something I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time. I have a deep, visceral connection to eating meat, something that is a product of the specific trials I’ve been through. A big struggle of mine throughout the past decade has been coming to terms with my need for meat – in other… Read more: An Animist Politics of Meat-Eating

We all experience our bodies and minds differently. Most people who are neurodivergent also experience, to an extent, bodied otherings. What I mean by that, is that our somatic landscapes often differ materially and conceptually from those that are put forth by the dominant paradigm of illness and pathology, in which we are embedded, as… Read more: Statement on Somadivergence