In the 38 years I have been a bodyworker, I’ve become very good at noticing patterns in people.
I see and feel the way the body changes to hold fear, grief, stress and anxiety and how emotions find certain places in the body to reside.
Knees, for instance hold the energy of forgiveness and forward movement. The pelvis holds the energy of survival and basic needs. Shoulders can become heavy with worry. The belly and throat can tighten with swallowed feelings or words.
Right now in my practice, I’m noticing the patterns of fear, worry and anxiety in my clients.
I believe we are experiencing a collective trauma like never before.
There have been 4 mass shootings in Minneapolis in the last 30 days.
There have been 362 mass shootings so far in the US this year.
On top of that, we are watching the ongoing chaos in America and around the world.
We have images bombarding our eyes and our brains, and there are just some things a person can’t unsee.
But the more we see them, the more the algorithm sends us more of the same image.
The archons are feasting.
I think it’s more important, now than ever, to make time to find peacefulness. To stand barefoot on the earth. To fully inhale and exhale breath. To seek healing for the body, mind and spirit. It’s important to take a break from the screens and the scrolling.
I admit that I’ve been doom scrolling too much. It’s my trauma response. I scroll so know where the danger is, and how close I am to it. I think living so close to the occupation these past 5 years has made me hyper aware of surroundings and sounds. I’m almost always on high alert.
But when I realize I’m dooming, I find my feet and my breath and I remind myself that in this moment I’m safe. In this moment I’m ok.
Sometimes I go from one moment to the next reminding myself that I’m in the present moment and not the future that I can’t control or the past that I can’t change.
I think I learned this from my years of recovery. To take life one moment at a time. To find some kind of peace and acceptance in the things I have no control over. To find the fortitude to take action in the things I can influence. And to have the knowledge to know the difference between them, which is often the hardest part.
So if you’ve made it this far, inhale slowly and deeply. Hold that breath for a moment. Long enough to feel chest expand fully. And then exhale completely.
And then do it again.
Take a moment to look at this image. If it’s moving quickly, you are anxious. Take some deep breaths and relax your mind, and you will see the image slow down. If you can center yourself, the image will stop moving all together.
It’s been a really long time since I put anything new on this page. I have sat down at my desk and fired up my laptop multiple times, but no words have come forth.
It’s been maddening, but I’ve been feeling a need to reemerge from my self-imposed exile and I want to pick up the pieces that I had to let go.
It’s been a long 5 years. I’ll quickly try to catch you up on the major events that lead to me pulling back from writing, hosting the monthly gatherings and book club.
One of the main reasons I stopped writing, was a feeling of complete and utter overwhelm. So much happened all at once. The world suffered an epic pandemic that was mismanaged from the very beginning. While trying to learn to maneuver my way through covid, I found myself living in the literal epicenter of a global revolution.
I feel like I’ve faded
I live 1 1/2 blocks from the intersection where George Floyd was murdered, and needless to say, the face of my neighborhood changed dramatically. I can literally stand in my front yard and see the large metal statue of a giant fist that marks the entrance to the ongoing occupation that is George Floyd Square.
During the uprising in Minneapolis, I had a front row seat to the protests, many which marched in the street in front of my house. While a barricade of pallets, couches and garbage cans was going up a block away from my house, the smoke from two burning police stations and other buildings on the four mile stretch of Lake Street floated into my neighborhood. Three helicopters circled my neighborhood around the clock for months. At one point, I allowed 16 of my friends and a few kind hearted strangers to board up my house and I took refuge in a hotel in an outer ring suburb of Minneapolis in order to clear my head, sleep without noise canceling headphones, and come up with a plan to postpone my yoga teacher training I was supposed to start the day after the riots broke out and to figure out how to reopen my studio after lockdown was lifted.
National Guard vehicle parked in front of Hope
When I finally made it back to my house five days later, I had to learn to live with an armed militia patrolling the “Free State of George Floyd which still encompasses four square blocks of my neighborhood. I had to get used to the 540% increase in violent crime that came with living on the boarder of a no-police zone. I don’t want to get into the gory details of what I experienced, for my sake as well as for my readers. I’ll just say that it was a very intense time in my life that left some deep scars on my soul.
One of the many marches that passed in front of my homeGeorge Floyd Square in winter
The Square became a bittersweet part of my life. I understood the protest, and I did what I could to support it by donating water and firewood to the People’s Way which formed under the awning of the abandoned Speedway gas station. I hugged complete strangers as I stood in a huge crowd there and heard Chauvin’s guilty verdict announced. I listened to speakers central to the Civil Rights Movement when they appeared at The Square, and I attended covid cautious neighborhood gatherings that taught us about the historical significance of my Southside Minneapolis neighborhood and it’s place in the fight for civil rights. However, the occupation came with a lot of very frightening experiences that I am still learning to come to terms with as I explore them with the guidance of my therapist under the diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
The uprising in Minneapolis was my third riot. I escaped Los Angeles with my infant son as the worst of the rioting hit the city after the police beating of Rodney King. Sixteen years later I was caught up in the RNC riots in Saint Paul. I never imagined that fourteen years later I’d be boarding up my house to escape Minneapolis as it burned.
Then I caught covid.
In July of 2021 I went to an outdoor music festival with my boyfriend to celebrate our birthday weekend. Knowing that I work so closely with clients, we were careful to maintain our covid protocol. The motorcycle trip to South Dakota was beautiful, but we rode home through thick smoke from Canadian wildfires that had drifted southward. I made an appointment to get a covid test before returning to work, just to make sure my stuffy head and watery eyes were from the smoke and not the virus, and received a positive covid test result on my birthday.
Caught sleeping with my puppy
While I didn’t require hospitalization, I rode through the delta wave infection with some pretty rough symptoms. I remember walking through my house all night long during the worst of it, because I feared I would drown in my congested lungs if I allowed myself to sleep. My quarantine lasted 21 days as I was still showing symptoms and testing positive at the 15-day mark.
I never felt like I fully recovered from covid.
The photo I sent my boyfriend when I found out I was sick
I found myself needing extreme amounts of sleep. I struggled to make it through a day of work and had to drastically cut my schedule of clients in order to nap in between sessions. On multiple occasions I would pull into a parking lot on my 40- minute commute home from the studio just to sleep for half an hour because I was so exhausted. I found myself searching for words that used to flow so easily. I couldn’t walk a flight of stairs without having to rest half way up because I would become so dizzy and breathless. My hands and feet would swell and my entire spine burned.
I asked my doctor to test me for mono and Lyme’s disease, but received negative results. Finally, after suffering for months, I was admitted into the long haul covid clinic at my county hospital. I spent 8 months working with a respiratory therapist and a year and a half with a neuro-cardiac therapist learning how to manage my many symptoms.
My journey with long haul covid is still on going. Since October of 2021, I have been poked, prodded, tested, evaluated and reviewed multiple times. Covid caused dysautonomia, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, syncope and mast cell activation syndrome. I can’t stand for long periods of time, because I get very dizzy. My heart rate will soar or plumet for no reason. I can’t regulate my body temperature anymore, especially in very hot or very cold temperatures. Sometimes I pass out if I stand too long or if I get too hot or too cold. My skin erupts with tiny blisters seemingly for no reason. Sometimes my throat forgets how to swallow. My spine often feels like it’s on fire. Sometimes my joints swell up. Sometimes I have tremors. My optic nerve is inflamed and my left eye shakes and often refuses to come into focus. I’m easily overwhelmed and my foggy brain often can’t handle simple tasks. I use a roller walker now, when I used to walk my dogs 5 miles each day. This is just a short list on-going symptoms that make every day a new adventure.
When it gets really tough, I remind myself that I survived a virus that has killed over six million people world-wide, but there are still days I mourn the person I was before I got sick. It’s not been easy to learn to live with a damaged autonomic nervous system.
The day I probably contracted covid
At this point, I’m doing my best to learn to live with my symptoms. The medical community is still shaking their heads at those of us who never fully recovered from covid. If I had a dollar for every time a doctor told me that they just don’t know enough about covid, I’d probably be able to pay off some of my ever-looming medical bills that I’ve incurred since I got sick. I’ve taken part in four studies on long covid and the dysautonomia it caused, and I keep searching for more.
I found my way back to art during the pandemic. I needed a way to ground myself during the chaos of the uprising amidst the lockdown and began sculpting, beading again and doing metal work again. My artwork has been supplementing my income since I’ve had to cut back on my hours of doing bodywork. I’m often seen at local art shows and maker markets, and I opened an Etsy store. I’m looking forward to writing about the work I’m creating here in the future.
The yoga studio I built before I got sick
I completed my Kriya yoga teacher training that I began the week the uprising started, but because of my dysautonomia, I had to adjust my yoga practice so I don’t get too dizzy or pass out. I’m not taking my long walks with the dogs anymore because I’ve passed out while walking them. Luckily, I wear a cross-body harness that I clipped their leashes onto, and they were still attached to me when I woke up. Even simple tasks can cause syncope, and my neighbors are caring enough to peek over the fence when they know I’m gardening or shoveling snow, because they have either witnessed my syncope or heard about the experience through the neighborhood grapevine. I’m so lucky to have such good friends around me.
Many of those good friends have been asking when I’ll be bringing back my blog.
Honestly, writing has been hard. Brain fog and brain fatigue have been some of the most challenging symptoms of long covid. My words used to come to me so easily. Now, finding the right ones is challenging and sometimes, very frustrating. I miss getting my ideas out on paper though. I always felt better when I sat back and read what I wrote, and from the emails I’ve received since starting this blog, quite a few of you have felt better after reading my work too.
So, I’m making a promise to myself, with you as my witness, that I will sit down and write more often. I’ll allow myself some grace when it gets overwhelming, but I won’t let being uncomfortable keep me from expression. I’ve already tucked a new notebook into my backpack so I have a place to scribble ideas and inspiration.
So, in the words of John Wick, “People keep asking if I’m back, and I haven’t really had an answer. But now yeah, I’m thinking I’m back”
If you have found me on Facebook or if you know me from Minnesota’s Left Hand Path Community, you will know that I am an addict and an alcoholic living a life of recovery. I have created a meeting structure that supports a Left Hand Path approach to addiction recovery in Minneapolis, and now meetings are beginning to form in Rochester, New York and Saint Louis, Missouri.
If you have spent any time in the traditional recovery meeting rooms, you know the mantra of the 12 Step program is that it is a “spiritual but not religious” organization. If you have paid attention to the meetings while you were in those rooms, you know that this mantra is not often followed. The meetings may be “spiritual”, however many of the members of the meetings are “religious” and feel the need to spread their message of how their God rescued them in their darkest hours. Many meetings begin to resemble church services, and often Big Book study groups become like Bible study as trusted servants of these meetings let them run unchecked.
I realized the importance of a Left Hand Path based recovery meeting when I was harassed after attending an AA meeting. I went alone to a large meeting in Minneapolis one Saturday night. When the group stood to say the Serenity Prayer, I stood as well. When the group began reciting the Lord’s Prayer, I sat down. As a Satanist and someone who believes that Alcoholics Anonymous should be a spiritual program and not a religious one, I took my seat in protest to what I felt was a religious statement. I endured the stares and looks of judgement during the recitation of the prayer, and then gathered up my belongings once the meeting ended.
I was walking through the dark parking lot when I was approached by three men who wanted to inform me that sitting during the Lord’s Prayer was unacceptable behavior. Luckily for me, and unfortunately for them, I am not easily intimidated, even in a situation like this where I felt threatened. I let them know my feelings on the matter of their prayer. I told them that the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer was an endorsement of one religious path over many. When they pressed the issue, I told them to fuck off, got in my car and drove away. When I got home I emailed my local occult book store, Magus Books and Herbs, and asked if I could host a recovery meeting in their classroom that would be welcoming to those of us who walk the Path of the Left. Their response was an overwhelming “yes”.
I posted the announcement of the Left Hand Path Addiction Recovery meeting on our Minnesota’s Left Hand Path Community Facebook Page and within 4 days we had over 25,000 post views and messages from around the world. Most of the messages were positive.
I didn’t know what to expect that cold Wednesday evening in January, 2017 when I walked into Magus Books for our first meeting. The staff at Magus helped me set up 10 chairs. We all had a feeling that we were being wishful in thinking that we would fill them. We ended up having to find more chairs as 18 grateful addicts and alcoholics joined us that night. Each one of them was incredibly relieved that they had found a meeting where they could say the name of their higher power out loud without fear, ridicule or judgement. Now we offer two meetings. We meet Wednesday evenings at 7PM and Monday afternoons at 12:30 in the gallery space at Magus Books and Herbs.
I am currently writing a book outlining the theory behind the meeting. The book covers how to get a Left Hand Path Addiction Recovery meeting started and how to run it effectively.
Recently I was interviewed on a podcast called Witches and Wine, hosted by the beautiful and talented Chaweon Koo.
In the interview, we talked about Satanic and Left Hand Path philosophy and how the approach taken in the addiction recovery meetings I started resonates with those of us living within these paradigms. I posted the link to the interview in an addiction recovery room on Facebook and received this comment.
This person believed that they couldn’t be in recovery and be a Satanist at the same time. Seriously! They felt that in order to find recovery they needed to change their religious views and accept the G-O-D named repeatedly in the Big Book. Someone may argue that this was a misinterpretation of the verbiage of the Big Book and that it is not the intent of 12 Step programs to come across in this manner. However, the truth is many people avoid these meetings because of the religious message so prevalent in the rooms and in the pages of the Big Book.
Now these people have another option in their recovery.
The following is my recovery statement I read on the 6th anniversary of my sobriety. I shared it at the Wednesday night Left Hand Path Addiction Recovery meeting, where I felt safe saying the names of the higher powers that influenced my journey of recovery.
Six years ago, on May 31, 2013 I hit bottom, again. I walked into my kitchen and picked up a bottle of bourbon, and as I was about to pour it into my glass for the fifth time that night, I realized I was an alcoholic. In that moment I was frozen with fear. I knew recovery. I had done my time in treatment in the late 80’s as a drug addict. 1986 was the last time I used heroin. I had a one night relapse in 1998 with cocaine, but I never realized I was an alcoholic until May 31, 2013 when I went to pour bourbon in my glass.
What do you do when you realize that your life is out of control and that you are slowly destroying yourself? You call your best friend. She came to my house that night and helped me take every bottle of wine and spirits out of my cabinet and she listened to me.
I knew what I had to do. It didn’t make peeling off every emotional scab I had ever formed to get to the root of my addiction any easier. I began going to meetings again. I found a sponsor and started doing step work again. I found a therapist and with her help I began to go through a deep inner journey to the depths of my soul.
The week before I had my realization in the kitchen that night, I had been dreaming of huge figures moving under water. I could see their shapes underneath the waves and I could hear them calling me. It was clear some message was trying to get through.
I called another friend who had interpreted my dreams before and she told me of La Baleine and La Sirene. “They want to show you something deep inside yourself” was what she told me. This is when I stepped into the dark waters of my soul and gave myself permission to allow La Baleine to bring me down to La Sirene so I could look into Her mirror and see what was under the surface of my soul that was causing me so much pain.
La Baleine carries the messages held deep inside our darkest places up to the surface where they can be seen in the light. I saw Her messages reflected in the mirror of La Sirene, a liminal goddess, and the mirror She held up to me was a threshold. To cross that threshold would mean stepping into my darkness in order to reignite that light inside myself. It had burned vividly before but somehow I had lost its brilliance and that flame had gone cold. I allowed these two Lwa, who had been so persistent in my dreams, to come into my life and hold my hand through my recovery. Combining Their healing energy with the understanding that Satan, as I know Them wants nothing more for us than to live to our highest potential, I embarked upon my journey of recovery with these powerful forces to guide me.
I am grateful to everyone who has walked this journey by my side. I am especially grateful for the ones who picked me up, held me up and let me lean on them when I felt I couldn’t go forward on my own. I could list you all, but that list would be miles long.
I do want to thank that special friend of mine who came to me at my darkest hour. She shall remain nameless as to protect her identity. I also want to thank my son, Jakob, who was often the only thing in my life that I felt the need to go on living for. Without your love I wouldn’t be here today.
If any of you struggle with recovery, and believe that you must sacrifice your spiritual paradigm in order to find healing, I stand as proof that there are many paths to recovery. Mine is on the Left Hand Path.
Jezebel Pride 