My new amazing therapist has already come and gone. For affordability reasons I found a student therapist and she just graduated! Her new workplace has a specific clientele and I’m unable to follow with her. Though we only met 9 times it was an incredibly rich experience that shifted a lot for me. The real game changer was learning to work with “my lion.”

My lion first came to me as the first visual I saw at my first ayahuasca ceremony. The room was black and then a million dots of light appeared before me like the stars at night. They rearranged and shuffled themselves into the form of a lion and then dispersed as quickly as they came. The lion appeared in every ceremony after that as well.

My old therapist would often ask me if I could “bring anyone into the memory” whenever I recalled a traumatic story. My go-to was my Grammy Velma. Often when I’d imagine her coming into the memory the little me would feel comforted and the memory would shift a bit and become less charged.

Similarly my new therapist asked me, “Is there maybe a person or animal you could bring into the memory?” This addition of “animal” to the question changed everything. Sheepishly I admitted “This is a little weird but I have a lion,” to which she seemed excited. For weeks now, both in and out of therapy, I have been working with my lion.

The moment I imagine this massive full-sized male lion walking into any traumatic memory everything shifts. For example, a traumatic memory of me being frozen in my elementary classroom? Now I imagine a massive lion at my side. It throws the memory upside down. The me in the memory is comforted immediately; the others in the memory are bemused, scared, or excited as needed. The memory’s charge deflates like a balloon. Often I laugh. It’s the wildest trick.

Sometimes I actively imagine the lion doing something. Sometimes the lion has its own agency and I simply observe it as it does its thing.

On the daily now, if I’m feeling anxious at any point, I just imagine the lion is walking at my side like some kind of massive imaginary service animal. Levels of comfort go up immediately.

There doesn’t seem to be limits on the ways I can work with my lion.

I feel close with my Grammy Velma, who died when I was 11. She comes up so often in therapy that I can objectively say she had an enormous impact on me. In the past two years, therapy and mental health challenges have revealed within me an even closer connection with my gram. In my saddest moments, when I take time and ask the sadness its origin, my gram’s image immediately appears in my mind’s eye. I know the sadness is her sadness; I know it in from my gut.

In one treasured family photo my gram stands the tallest at the head of a sibling lineup. The children stand in a field. It’s gloomy. My gram’s just 10-years-old and the oldest. She looks sad. Some of the others wear strong emotions and for good reason—that day was likely the last time they were all together before being split up and sent to live in different families. Just days earlier my gram found her mom, Ruth Anna Blair, dying or dead from trying to abort her 9th or 10th pregnancy by herself at home. Her death certificate states she used a bicycle pump. My great-grandmother was 27.

I often reflect on this sadness that lives in my body and I ponder its origin. Did it begin the day my Gram saw her dead mom’s body? Did it take root when her family was smashed, as she watched her siblings taken away? Did the sadness grow like wildfire in her motherless teen years and then simmer on a low boil for the rest of her life? I think about genes, DNA, and epigenetics. I contemplate “nature vs. nurture,” souls, and ancestral spirits. I consider all the theories we humans put forward to explain the knowing that some intangible part of ourselves is somehow older than we are. I think about the heart-wrenching my grandmothers experienced, about their anguish, and the impact of it on their bodies, their children, and the generations that came after them and will continue to come. I think about the lines of sadness I see run through certain relatives. I think about the alcoholism in my family and the feelings and memories it covers. I think about the ways it may have played out differently for all of us if my great-grandmother had had access to a safe, legal abortion. And if my gram was able to keep her mom.

For the last couple years I’ve contemplated on and off how remarkably my dad pieced together a living for our family. As a self-employed logger he and his brother made it work month after month, year after year. Sometimes they logged another person’s land; other times they bought land and then logged it and sold it. Sometimes they sold logs to sawmills, sometimes they turned trees into firewood, sometimes they made fenceposts and sold them to farmers. His work was a hustle and it supported our family.

Today I was sitting in my Quaker meeting and contemplating this again. I thought also of my mom and how she hustled too. Sometimes she painted, sometimes she wallpapered, sometimes she cleaned summer cabins, and later she worked at the hospital.

My dad’s family and ancestors – also hustlers! When farming in Quebec became unsustainable they moved to Connecticut and worked in the wool mills. Later my grandfather moved to Vermont and took up dairy farming. To supplement the small farming income, he logged in the fall, he sold Christmas trees, he made maple syrup in the spring.

As I contemplated these images my own hustle came into clear focus. How have I gotten by these unemployed months? It seems almost miraculous to me how it keeps working out. First I got a little severance pay. Then I joined medical studies. Then I got three months of unemployment insurance. Lately I’ve been painting and doing personal assistant work. Piecing together this living as I continue looking for “the right job” has been stressful as hell. I can’t afford new clothes or entertainment, but I pay my rent each month. As I considered my hustle, and these ways that I take after my father, my mother, and my ancestors, my body was flooded with warm feelings. I recognized how my parents and grandparents had gifted me the gumption to get by.

And so there I was, sitting in the back of the Quaker meeting, going on this whole journey and being warmed up by it all. And then it hit me! Somehow I had forgotten that a few months back I had said a little prayer. I had asked simply, “Help me to know my ancestors,” and then I had forgotten all about it. Yet with this remembering my skin goosebumped and a knowing came. My prayer, my intention, my desire, however you wish to name it, it was being answered.

Once more I felt the stress throughout my body that I’ve been feeling these past few months. The stress of moneylessness, the stress of unknowing, the stress of the hustle. I thought about how stressed my dad must have been throughout his working life. And how stressed his father must have been. And how stressed any farmer must be. Then I saw an image in my mind of a farmer standing in a field, staring dejectedly at the ground. I could see the farmer was at his lowest moment; the moment when he knew it was all lost. And with this image I came to see that my stress is my ancestors’ stress. That its purpose was to guide me, to teach me how to hustle. It was love, all along, misunderstood. It was ancestral wisdom, misunderstood.

I opened my eyes and came back to the room. Before me sat a couple dozen Friends in silence, each with their eyes closed, each on their own journeys. On the wall yet more Friends were being projected, each in their homes and attending the meeting via Zoom. Observing the projection on the wall I was once again reminded of the poor condition of the wall’s paint. Since meeting in person again the paint’s been bothering me. I keep imagining the positive transformation the space would have from a fresh coat. I had even thought several times that I should approach the Property and Finance Committee to propose that I paint the meetinghouse for a reasonable price. Fear held me back.

Yet when the meeting ended, I thought about something my dad told me a couple years back. He said that sometimes when he drove down the road and came across a good stretch of trees he’d simply pull into the next driveway, knock on the door of a house, and make his pitch to whomever answered that he’d like to log those trees. Guided by what my dad would do, armed with ancestral gumption, I stresslessly approached someone on the Property and Finance Committee and I made my pitch.

It’s premature to state this before my death, but I feel fairly certain this week has been one of the most important weeks of my life. Puzzle pieces from so many areas of my life have fallen into place within myself and in the moment I’m writing this I feel like a new man.

On Friday night I stayed up too late. To be more accurate it was Saturday morning. It was 1 or 2 am and I was scrolling through Facebook feeling ashamed of myself for scrolling through Facebook at 1 or 2 am. Scrolling, scrolling, I came across a video from my hometown in Vermont. A local guy, someone I knew since I was very young, was being interviewed by the staff of the recovery center where he found his sobriety. I started watching the video and found his vulnerability really moving. In my core I could sense the impact this interview was going to have on other local men. As I watched I thought to myself, “I want the skill to reach folks like this man is reaching folks.” Simultaneously I sensed an internal block keeping me from it. I then asked myself, “What is it that’s holding me back?”

Asking that question of myself immediately transported me back to being on the stage of my kindergarten Christmas pageant. There I was, with my class, all of us dressed in green and red and wearing bells and elfin themed clothes. I was filled with terror. An uncountable audience sprawled before me and I sat terrified and frozen. I couldn’t open my mouth and sing and I couldn’t remember any lyrics anyway. I felt embarrassed and I believed the audience was laughing at me. My gaze was locked on the floor; too afraid to look for my parents in that crowd.

I’ve never forgotten this Christmas pageant memory. I’ve thought about it many times over the years and have wondered what use I had with it. What changed this Saturday morning is that I stayed in the memory a little longer. I stayed sitting on that stage and feeling frozen. I located the source of the terror. And then, within the memory, I made that young-me look up from the floor and find my parents sitting in the audience. Making eye contact with my mom, I saw her smiling, glowing face—she was very proud! And then I began crying very deeply. I resisted the urges to open my eyes and to stop the memory. I kept myself on that stage longer, I maintained the eye contact with my mom, and I cried more and more deeply. After a couple minutes I felt great relief.

On Monday I sat in my therapist’s office and I told him all about the Christmas pageant and the big cry. I described it as “one of the top three cries of my entire life.” I can’t remember what happened next, but he asked me a few questions, and suddenly the Big Cry returned. That terror that I had isolated while sitting on the stage of that memory—I saw it again in other memories. Like an arrow shot through the Rolodex of my life I could see the terror play out throughout my childhood. It was there when I was 5, and 7, and 12 years old. I cried even more deeply. And then I thought to do the same trick I had just learned. I stayed in each memory a little longer, and one by one, I undid the terror in them all.

My therapist sat patiently as I went through this process wordlessly. He watched me sitting there crying. After a few minutes I started to tell him about everything I had just witnessed in my mind and how I had undone the terror in several memories. Yet when I started to speak new mental images came in. I started remembering a new memory, one from before the age of five. In it I was happy and comfortable. I was with my mom and a great aunt, and they were having coffee, and I was carefree. It felt very nice.

Then the therapist interrupted my process. He instructed me to open my eyes, to “come back into the room,” and to get out of my head. He said I needed to “feel more” and “think less.” I couldn’t disagree more—the new memory was pleasing and the work I did with the other memories brought it to me. I didn’t want to leave the new memory. I wanted to watch it, explore within it, and see what the trauma had caused me to forget for 35 years. I felt completely certain he was misdirecting me and overstepping.

This is where things became very weird. There was a back and forth between my therapist and me. He acted very defensively. He disrespected my process and did not listen to what I was saying. I left the session feeling very uneasy despite just having the biggest breakthrough in two years of therapy. Today I spoke with a therapist friend and she helped me come to the conclusion that I need to find a new therapist.

This story ends at tonight’s mid-week Quaker meeting. But I need to set that up with a few words about my relationship with Quakerism.

Four things—

* Firstly—I’m not a Quaker. I’m an “attender.” Traditionally Quakers are meant to be “convinced” before joining, and I’ve never experienced Quaker convincement.

* Secondly—Having read the words of early Quakers I wholeheartedly believe that many of them, while sitting in their meetings, employed some kind of mental therapeutic process. It’s clear to me that a good number of them were spiritually advanced.

* Thirdly—For years I’ve been trying to figure out what the early Quakers were doing. None of them clearly explained the process. And what they did write is in an older form of English that’s hard for the modern reader to comprehend. What’s clear is that one is meant to “mind the light,” but exactly how one’s meant to mind the light remains extremely vague. Naturally modern Quakers all seem to have differing opinions on it. Old Quakers were clear in its importance: mind the light, mind the light, mind the light. It’s practically all they wrote about!

* Lastly—Quakerism has come up in almost every psychedelic experience I’ve had. As with everything psychedelic-related I know the following will sound absolutely crazy to folks who haven’t worked with these medicines, but on one journey I heard a voice say, “Walter, you do not need to work with psychedelic plants for healing for you have the Quaker method and it is just as effective.” This somewhat-reassuring message left me MORE CONFUSED THAN EVER because ***I still didn’t know what the heck the Quaker method was!***

So tonight I headed to the 6pm meeting and I sat down with the other two people present and a computer sat before us with another five folks attending via Zoom. The meeting starts and we all sit quietly. After a little while of “centering down,” I decided to mentally revisit my therapy session. I went back into those same memories that came up recently and I continued the work of “correcting” the terror within them. Essentially, I was hanging out in each memory, watching what happened as objectively as possible, reaching the stuck point where the memory becomes frozen, and then waiting until I was guided on how to proceed. The relief with this technique was immediate and I cried quietly as I worked. And as I sat there working, three words came into my mind with all the certainly of an absolute Truth and they applied themselves to that process I was doing. They labeled it: “Minding the Light.”

And in that moment I realized that what I’ve been doing in my therapist’s office all along is the process of MINDING THE LIGHT. For the last seven or so years, all the memories I’ve been observing in my mind, and all the catharsis and crying they’ve unleashed; this whole time I’ve been minding the light. While I was searching for what the early Quakers were doing I unknowingly was using the process the whole time!

After these realizations I spoke in the meeting tonight. I told the others about the cry on Saturday morning. I told them about the therapy session, the continuation of the cry, and the confusion with my therapist when he instructed me to stop the process. And then I told them how I continued the process just now and how “Mind the Light” came into my mind and applied itself to the process so very clearly. And quite naturally—the Big Cry continued and I cried in front of them all.

My body feels so loose now. My mind feels clearer than it has in over two years. After tonight’s meeting I left feeling so good. I don’t plan to explain exactly what the “terror” was that I experienced in those memories and how I corrected it, but I do want to say that it’s directly related to all the stress and insecurities I’ve been experiencing while being unemployed for the last half a year. I’ve been living a stuck life; stuck like on that kindergarten Christmas pageant stage. Frozen. I don’t know if it’s over now, but I can say that the “stuck” energy has shifted a great deal. The impulse to keep my eyes looking downward has greatly lifted. My sense of self-assurance feels quite high right now. And whatever job I end up doing I know I will feel happier doing it now than I would have months ago, even if it’s something simply to pay the bills.

And now I’m left feeling fairly certain that after all these years I may have experienced “convincement” in tonight’s meeting. And I will keep sitting with this thought for a little while.

Some people’ve asked if I have any lingering covid symptoms. It’s odd but I’m more sweaty than before. If I walk half a mile on a cool San Francisco day my tshirt is wet and I don’t stop sweating for 15 minutes after I stop walking. I’m not physically exhausted in any way. It’s just embarrassing and weird. So today I took the $75 I made from this afternoon’s covid study appointment and went to Macy’s to buy a sleeveless jacket to help regulate my body temperature better. It feels nice to have something new to wear. I haven’t bought clothing in a year!

I finally had an appointment with a Psychiatrist last week. Dr Singh was incredible. We talked on the phone for an hour. I didn’t want to just have drugs pushed on me—I wanted to talk about my mind and hear a professional’s opinion. She was fully versed in spiritual/mental paths, meditation, over-the-counter supplements, ayahuasca and mushrooms, and how everything interacts with each other. She gave me tips and yellow flags to look for. And she said she’d keep my file open for four months and I could call her directly if I need to. So good.

My mind’s been much better. I definitely have a little mental health PTSD from two months ago when I had my breakdown. (We’re talking classic midlife crisis here.) I get sudden waves of anxiety and sadness but I’m mostly able to ride it out now and it passes in a minute or two.

The money stress has passed now that I’m finally getting Unemployment Insurance money. I’m feeling more directed job search-wise. My friends and family have been incredibly kind and supportive. I spent a fantastic Thanksgiving with my old friend Kiwee and saw several old SF friends. I spent a week with my friends Sarah and Eignh in Sudbury, Mass. I saw several friends in NYC. I spent a lovely couple days with my friend Javier in Vermont. I feel very fortunate and supported in many ways.

Lastly, I’m dogsitting for an old housemate in Sonoma this week so I’m pretty stoked to get out of the City already and spend some time in such a nice historic town. Looking forward to it.

Big thanks to everyone for your love and support. 💕

A friend contacted me a few days ago, having heard that I “needed some grounding,” and offered to do a hapé ritual with me. Hapé is an Indigenous ceremonial snuff made with wild tobacco, various sacred plants, and ashes from tree barks, etc. I had never worked with it before, nor had I ever used snuff in general. I was just reading about the history of snuff on Wikipedia and was surprised to learn that snuff was the main form of upper-class European tobacco use in the 1500 through 1700s. But I don’t think that use mirrored what I experienced this morning other than it also brought one to a sense of calmness. I’ve never used tobacco/nicotine so I can’t compare the way I felt after to how someone feels having used tobacco.

My friend and I slowly walked to the top of Corona Heights (a nice hilltop park in San Francisco) and chatted along the way. Once in the park he told me about the Central American woman he knows who made the hapé blends for him. He had several to choose from, made with different sacred plants, and he asked me a few questions before deciding on which to work with. He said some prayers and helped me feel very safe in his care. He guided me to set an intention and after thinking for a moment I decided it was to “feel peaceful.” When I told him I was ready he used a tepi, a kind of ceremonial pipe, to blow the snuff up my first nostril.

The sensation was of fire entering my head. There was a sense of burning across the whole of my head, but especially through my nose and the top of my throat. It brought tears to my eyes and I coughed a few times. I also had to spit a bunch. I kept my eyes closed and breathed through my mouth as directed. As it continued to burn it came to me that the burning sensation wasn’t new to me. It was the same burning sensation I experienced as a child when I had a drowning episode in my hometown lake when I was very young. I slipped into the water, breathed water into my body, and was carried back to the beach by my cousin and sister. In my mind’s eye I rewatched that experience. I was brought to my mom and I was coughing a lot and my throat and lungs burned hot with pain. In that moment as a child I felt scared and embarrassed. In that moment today I felt the love of my family and my mother who helped me. I felt the love for my beach in my hometown and how safe I felt there as I grew up.

I kept my eyes closed for a few minutes and cried. I waited until the intensity of the sensations calmed. I kept my attention on my mind’s eye to see if the mind had anything else it wanted to show me. When I finally opened my eyes I felt very relaxed and very grounded. The funny thing about the last few weeks is that several people including my therapist have asked me to “visit a calm place in my mind” and I didn’t have one that came to mind. That mental trick never had much meaning for me. Moving forward, I can definitely see that my hometown beach is a peaceful place in my mind that I can return to as needed.

Much appreciation for my friend and to the Indigenous people of these continents.

For the last four days I felt nearly back to normal. I hadn’t taken any anxiety medication. The gym and walking definitely helped. Maybe my new supplements have been helping too. Two days ago when I visited my Quaker friend, who had been a social worker, she said to me after the visit, “You know, I was very worried about you before but now I’m not. You have got this. I can just tell.” Tho nice to hear, I wasn’t so sure. I explained that I was feeling fine in that moment and in fine moments I’m fine. And then in other moments my mind spins out of control.

Yesterday’s terrible Unemployment Insurance information sent me into a bad spiral. I canceled my weekly volunteer shift at Martin’s and laid in bed for hours. I eventually got up, went for a several mile walk, hit the gym, drank a chocolate shake, and then headed to my friends’ house so they could show me what to do when I watch their dog for a few days later this week.

When I arrived I told my friend that I was feeling anxious. It was 6pm, the usual nightly time for its arrival, and it was definitely feeling stronger than it had in days. He made dinner and I drank a can of sparkly water. The anxiety started growing and growing and eventually I had to take anti-anxiety medication, and then MORE medication, and it continued to grow even bigger. At this point I had never had that amount of medication not do the trick and I even had to take a third dose. I couldn’t focus on the TV show we were watching and asked if I could lay on their bed. My mind was spinning and my fear was completely overpowering and out of control. I asked my friend if he could hold me and he did. I texted my closest three friends who’ve experienced anxiety of this level and texted with them a bit and they were helpful also.

Eventually the third dose finally got me out of that mental hell and I began to feel normalish again, though quite shaky from the experience and my heart felt very sore. Back in the livingroom I looked at the can of sparkling water I drank and realized it was CAFFEINATED. Additionally the chocolate shake I had before I arrived would have also had some caffeine. I have no idea how much that death spiral was due to caffeine but it was certainly not a small amount.

Three weeks ago I drank a mason jar of coffee a day. Now I barely survive 35mg in a can of sparkling water and some chocolate. One of my friends told me that after his year of panic attacks he will never drink coffee to this day, limits his chocolate considerably, and drinks a little bit of kombucha here and there. He warned me that I may never be able to use caffeine again in the same way. I pooh-poohed that until yesterday.

I’m so incredibly thankful for all of my friends’ support. It’s everything.

I stopped taking the antidepressant I was prescribed after just two tries because the side effects were so horrendous. I joined the gym two days ago and worked out for 2 hours on each of the last two days. I’ve been feeling so much better. I haven’t needed any anti-anxiety medication since going to the gym. Today my body was too sore to go to the gym, so I went on a 6 mile walk instead but it didn’t do the trick. The anxiety returned tonight and was really strong. After struggling through it for an hour or so I decided to take some medication. I was feeling really down on myself for taking it.

I’ve had this fear that if the medications suppress the emotions and sensations then it’ll block me from being able to work out the trauma. And if the trauma’s simply suppressed, it’s just going to come back another time. For me it’s a reality that “the body doesn’t forgot” and “the only way out is through.” But damn if the “through” isn’t kicking my ass.

I started to feel much better about an hour after I took the medication. While waiting for it to kick in I started watching an episode of The Voice—one of my mom’s favorite shows—and that was also helping me feel more relaxed. And gosh, I’m very happy to report that I now have some hard data that the medication won’t stop me from processing trauma. Seemingly out of nowhere I began crying really deeply and recalling more about my childhood fear of the dark.

In the last two weeks I’ve cried twice already recalling my fear of the dark but tonight it was almost the flip of the story. Tonight I relived how safe I felt when I watched television with my family at night. I saw how much I loved them and loved sitting together and watching a show and laughing together. As the youngest I was sent to bed first. I’d lay alone in bed in the dark of my room, see the livingroom and television lights glow in the gap around my door, and I’d hear my family out there having fun together. Specifically, one night I remember listening as they watched the Cosby Show, and I loved that show so much. I felt so distant from them. In the previous cries I recalled how scary the dark was for me, and tonight I recalled how deeply I loved my family and how badly I wanted to be with them.

After crying my chest felt totally relieved of anxiety and just moments later a strong sense of anxiety returned to my chest. I know there’s still more in there to process. It’s never ending! Part of me is so over the healing process. It doesn’t seem like it gets any easier as time goes on. I wish I could just cry for days or months straight until the process concluded, but maybe it’s a fallacy I’m holding that there’s even a conclusion to the process.

I’m going to keep being open about my mental health situation–because my mind’s a mess right now and when I write about it people message me and say nice things.

I had been dealing with wildly intense anxiety for two weeks and on Monday I had an amazing therapy session and that flavor of anxiety has been off the table since. My therapist helped me identify the voice in my head with being the voice of another person from my childhood, and once that connection was made that inner voice no longer felt like “my” voice. I was suddenly able to find compassion for the source of that mean voice and compassion for myself.

In the peace that followed that therapy session swept in a crippling depression that’s lasted the past two days and honestly it seems just as intense as the anxiety. It makes me feel crazy. Oddly, and thankfully, the anti-anxiety medication seems to be pretty effective at knocking out the depression and I’m realizing just how related the two must be to one another.

What I know for sure is that my mind is way too messy now to be looking for work. I unsquirreled the small savings I had and have decided to do a full stop to job searching for now. I need to get my head in order and the job searching anxiety is crippling me. Tomorrow I am going to join the gym for the first time in years and I’m going to focus on working out and walking and whatever else will move me back towards a stable mind. Hopefully I will be in a better place in a few weeks.

Thank you to everyone for your kind words and support. I really appreciate it. One thing I’m grateful for for this experience is that already my sense of compassion for other folks has grown considerably, and that may not have happened if I didn’t get this chance to work through this myself.