I came through this work through crisis.

How does a Bipolar II diagnosis shapeshift into a walk with two wolves?

I came through this work through crisis. There is no other way to say it-- because if I said it in any other way, it wouldn’t be true. 

The things I loved as a child, the things I loved for my whole life-- stories, creativity, imagination, questing, extraordinary beings-- returned to me in my late twenties/early thirties, literally to save my life.

I come from a family lineage interwoven with “mental illness.” A cleaving to the biomedical model that, for me, meant suppression and constriction. The idea that I was broken like my similarly diagnosed family members, and needed to be fixed. That I was a danger to myself and others. That my options were medication, quitting my job and going on disability; whatever I needed to “take the edge off” and “not die.”

Maybe I never fully realized until that night and day in late April 2018 that life is rife with Choice Points. That the feeling of entrapment, of wanting to leave this world entirely, comes from feeling there isn’t a choice, or any choices left-- when in actuality, There Always Are. Especially when it seems most impossible. Especially when it seems most hopeless.

This seems to be Exactly the place for the miraculous, the mythic, to flood in. Into this exact space of the world-ending-ness, of this Wound.

A wolf taught me all of this. A wolf taught me the work I now do with groups and individuals. A wolf that arrived in the exact place where it seemed nothing could reach me-- two did, actually. I will never stop telling this story. It is the most important one of my whole life.

How does a Bipolar II diagnosis shapeshift into a walk with two wolves? How did I find myself on a rope bridge suspended between two worlds, with a black wolf come to take me Further Down, and Further In? 

I had a background in this-- in poetry, in stories, in creative expression. I had a familiarity with ritual and mysticism and The Wild. The wonderful thing, though, is that you don’t necessarily Have To-- because if you walk with someone who helps you Remember, you’ll see these beings, these landscapes, this personal and yet collective mythos-- exists in you, too.

I said to myself in what felt like full surrender, I lack the discipline necessary to save my own life. I kept going up to the bridge, up to the bridge I ruminated on throwing myself from-- but never did it. I realize now the metaphor that no one else could perceive or read, in horror at me constantly hanging out in the exact place I fantasized my demise-- I realize now I was Living it. Living what I was asked to do. To be As A Bridge-- to hold the generative tension between the two poles of my diagnosed polarity. And not to leap off of it, because the tension was too great. But to Stay Long Enough. To take a different kind of Leap. One into the work and the revelation of the rest of my life.

I will never stop telling this story. It is the Beginning and Ending of everything that has come before and come after. It has been the greatest and most harrowing journey; leading of course, and Always, to Greater and More Harrowing journeys.

It has led into the underworld and back. Into the beating heart of All Things. Into the Deepest Truth of who I am, my grounding, my Peace, my Ease, my increased capacity to See, to Be With.

I would not be this storyteller, this medial being and messenger, carrying out and up and through, in my own body-- the primordial energies, the mystery sang Alive, as the gospel says-- The Good News.

Somehow, somehow-- the more you trust your Otherness. The more you trust the very thing, the very perceived wounding that prevents you from Belonging-- you Find your Belonging. A more strongly rooted, a more joyous, a more depth-full kind of Belonging-- that No One Can Take From You. That Can Never Be Lost.

The more we consent to embody our bodies on This bloodied dancing ground, the more the world is dreamed through us, the more we are dreamed into fuller life. 

This is the story I’ve come to live into. A little girl who loved stories now living into the wondrous wildness, the Fantastickal Crookedness, of her own. 

I can’t tell you Why these things are the way they are. 

They Just Are.

I’m one who moves between, who listens to the Deep Deeps, who can trail the harkening call of the Lost Things, because I have been, So Many Times, a Lost Thing. 

A wolf taught me how. Taught me how to Trust the Is-Ness of my own life. Taught me how to reimagine the life sentence of my diagnosis and suicidality as the Exact Kind of dangerous gift that would lead me up, and out, and through, and down, Again and Again. And Again.

That’s what they told me. 

That’s what they say.

And that-- is All I Know.

** hilariously, i did not mean to write ‘i came through this work through crisis.’ i meant to write i came To this work through crisis. but i guess i can’t change it now; i wrote, if i said it any other way it wouldn’t be true ;)

*** ‘dangerous gift’ is a concept that comes from sascha dubrul. <3

**** i never write on this substack but/and this came through just now and i wanted some place to put it. it’s been almost a month since stopping writing on instagram, after a decade-plus of tracking my life there. this came out after re-watching the recording of my lesson for IDHA’s forthcoming transformative mental health core curriculum, from earlier this year. Who Knows what will come of this space-- interestingly it all still feels Too Intimate to share; either way, everytime i open this i see my last post [now removed], my recording from the utter pain-scape that was the winter holidays at the end of last year. and i’ve Been wanting to share Something Else.

and another edit //// from way in the Future 10/8/24 — i have no idea why i wrote this in regular caps. i feel pressure to do that sometimes; writing in lowercase is My thing; it’s been my thing for literally Ever. maybe because i was still in school at the time and writing in lowercase was my way to unconsciously differentiate— my poetry, my online journal entries, O.G. website. either way; you won’t see any posts written in that way again, lol; i’m still debating future books written like this, or not. <3