It’s famously, famously difficult for me to write about myself.

Not that I’m famous. But in my own head, I am famed for not being able to write about myself. Possibly because it comes up so much in my inner dialogue.

It’s ironic, because I love to write. I love sharing deep parts of myself.

But when it comes to explaining myself to others in some pithy, memorable way…

Nothing’s really good enough.

I’m a writer? Yes. And, no.

I have been writing since childhood, and I wrote academically in formal higher education settings for 11 years. I even published a few things while in undergrad. I write in my Penzu online diary semi-religiously. I’ve dipped my toes into creative writing. The one, favorite piece of mine I’m thinking about, I would describe as prophetic prosody. IS IT A GOOD PHRASE OR DOES IT MAKE ME WANT TO VOMIT LMAO IT CAN BE BOTH 🤣🤣🤣

Virtual notes litter my devices, many of which I never come back to. I published some small things. I wrote a dissertation. Maybe that’s enough to call myself a writer.

Yet I can probably count on my hands how many pieces of writing I’m truly, meaningfully, long-lastingly proud of. That doesn’t feel like enough to hang an artistic-professional identity on.

If someone asked me, “Show me some of your writing?” I would show them… what?

OK, I’m a teacher? Yes. And, no.

There are subjects I have studied for over ten years, yes, that still deeply move me and that I’m still studying —

white supremacy and racial capitalism; feminism and social justice movements; online activism, network-creation, and community-building

trauma and the body;

various healing systems, mostly not of my own ancestry, such as Hellenistic/Greek astrology (at its foundations, Babylonian astrology), yoga (India - Hinduism and Jainism), the chakra system (India - Hinduism), Reiki (Japan), and some useful Western models such as the Enneagram and Internal Family Systems.

That’s what I’ve all been studying, and more. That’s what I’ve been learning and synthesizing for the last decade and change. I owe my life to many of these systems.

And my self-education continues with every year I’m blessed to be on our little “garden in space” (ShuNahSii Rose). I’m turning my attention to herbal plant medicine, shamanic and ancestral healing, indigenous-lead environmental justice, and healing traditions closer to home, such as curanderismo and chámanismo.

But my incipient or null formal training in most of them makes me hesitate to “teach” anything in any capacity other than with my friends, in confidence and informally. And all those online $5,000 sPirITuAl cErTIFicaTioNs are nonsense. (Sorry, not sorry.)

Yet self-study can only go so far. When I left academia, I left the fields that I studied, trained, and was mentored to teach in. Now, how do I do it?

Alright, so… still, all the academic training… maybe I’m a scholar? Not quite, not in any academic sense - though I retain that essence, training, and way of moving through the world.

So out of all these pieces, maybe I can safely say that I’m an… earth…… walker? I’m an earth walker. I walk the earth with purpose and eyes open. That seems right.

So I made this on Canva:

And then I quit Instagram.

GREAT, this new self-definition graphic is already outdated. 😅

And that’s how it tends to go!

I’m a nomad. That’s what a Human Design site told me a few hours ago.

Today, this person. Tomorrow, that. In this company, one person. In different company, a different person.

Really the same person in each situation and crowd, but also…

Different.

Refracted by the light of the particular place — often unconsciously, sometimes strategically, illuminating parts of my life to other people and tucking others temporarily away, as the emotional and physical safety of the situation warrants.

The world created by those who forgot love — the world of colonialism, disrespect of the earth and the human and non-human beings, rape culture and hateful “resource” extraction from our home planet, hoarding and accumulation, patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, white supremacy and racism, ableism, and every single other evil that foments hate and the personal and collective weapons to act on it…

Does not make it safe to fully show our faces.

Yet, it demands constant performance of our faces — not as they are, but as others would like them to be. (Employers, prospective clients, patriarchal beauty standards, the government.)

This central irony and dissonance is one of the most important questions and long-standing questions I have ever walked — what to reveal, what to conceal, what is safe to show, what is unsafe to be.

The answer is not simple. The decision, over a million moments across a lifetime, shapes our entire trajectories in this lifetime.

What I really care to be is deeply human.

If what you’re looking for is my professional persona, I’m happy to redirect you to my LinkedIn.

But if you’re interested in knowing the whole me, and knowing the whole you, join below for the writing I intend to share, and the co-learning communities I pray to one day curate.