CraigJustCraig

Tag: relationships

  • The Price of Staying Close

    Sometimes being close to someone costs more than it’s worth. That isn’t just romance. It shows up in families, friendships, jobs, groups you thought were “yours.” The pattern’s simple: things shift, and staying the same stops making sense.

    Family is the hardest to walk from. Blood is supposed to mean unbreakable. But some family members don’t change. They repeat. Same fight. Same bullshit cycle. You hope the next holiday will be different, but it isn’t. At some point, you realize the only move is stepping out of the role they keep shoving you in. That doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means you’re done paying the toll with your sanity.

    Friendships rot quieter. Somebody leans too hard, or you’re the one chasing. Either way, the balance slips. You notice the weight. You carry it anyway until resentment eats the bond. Stepping back isn’t drama. It’s silence. Less calls, less texts, more space. Not exile—just not letting yourself bleed out alone on the rope.

    Work plays its own game. You become the reliable one, the fixer, the mule. People learn fast: dump it on you. Not always out of malice, just because it’s easy. The day you stop, the day you say no, suddenly you’re the bad guy. But nothing sacred broke. It was never sacred. It was just convenience, and it served them better than you.

    Stepping back here looks small. Closing the laptop. Saying no. Letting the phone ring. It’s not rebellion—it’s survival.

    Romance? That’s the stickiest trap. Love blinds. Attachment begs. You tell yourself loyalty is holy. You wait for “better.” But sometimes the most loving thing you can do—for them, for you—is distance. Enough space to see what’s real and what’s just wish.

    we’re wired to bond, and wired to protect. Those two instincts crash, and the crash feels like guilt, grief, relief—all tangled at once. No clean clarity. Just mess.

    Stepping back isn’t cruelty. It’s the line where you stop bleeding yourself dry. Ignore it too long and you’ll burn out everywhere else too. Distance gives you breath. Breath gives you sight.

    People won’t always get it. They’ll call it selfish. Cold. But stepping back is often the only way to keep something from rotting into bitterness. It’s not perfect, not painless. It’s just healthier.

  • Embodied Rituals

    Not all kink is equal.

    Some of it is performance.

    The hitting of beats. The following of scripts. The meticulous choreography of boxes to check.
    It can be hot. It can be filthy. It can be fun, even theatrical. But it is a stage. And the stage does not hunger.

    Other kink is alive. It is embodied. Rooted in want. Saturated with presence. Hungry—not for the kink, but for you. Your body, your being, your vulnerability.

    Performative kink can burn the skin. But embodied kink scorches the soul.

    It makes you feel chosen. Desired. Unfolding in the heat of someone else’s craving. It is a hunger that scripts cannot imitate.

    I have been fetishized. Revered. Placed on pedestals and props.
    I could feel the roles being enacted, the taboos being performed, but the desire? Missing. Absent.

    It was “stunt cock” energy: my body present, my touch real, my skill undeniable—but never devoured, never wanted. I was a mirror, a vessel, a necessary instrument in another’s story.
    The scene was precise. The intensity, unfiltered. And yet… hollow.

    Connection is not desire. Safety is not craving. Respect is not want.
    Love can exist. Curiosity can abound. But if someone does not ache for you, the kink is empty, no matter the brilliance of the performance.

    Then there are other moments.
    When hands grab me not to pose, but because they cannot resist.
    When teeth claim me like a ripe fruit split open.
    When mouths trail my flesh and whisper, “I want all of this.”

    This is not performance. This is possession.

    When the belly is kissed without hesitation.
    When hands press into softness—not as compromise, but as craving.
    When touch is reverence, and reverence is hunger.
    This is kink becoming revelation.

    desire is never guaranteed.

    Connection can be given. Curiosity can be shown. But being wanted, truly wanted, is rare—a cosmic accident.
    Many have loved me. Many have respected me. Few have unraveled me. Few have made undressing me feel like a privilege, not a given.

    When it happens, when desire flows through the kink, it is a high that lingers:
    After the ropes fall. After the body relaxes.
    The hunger remains. In them. In me.

    This is the difference. Not performing fantasy—but being the fantasy.

    Performative kink can leave bruises and satisfaction.
    It can leave breathless bodies and flushed skin.
    But it also leaves an emptiness: a quiet knowing that you were instrument, not object of desire.

    Embodied kink hits differently.
    It is personal, not just physical. It feels like being chosen.
    The hands on you speak in your language, not the language of the act.
    It is not what they want to do—it is who they want to do it to.
    You. Fully. Nakedly. Unavoidably.

    For me, this is seismic.

    In scenes of performance, I was the faceless one:
    The skilled instrument. The body delivering pleasure. The actor in someone else’s story.
    Emotionally invested, yes. Connected, yes. But the desire was not for me. Only for what I could produce.

    Connection is not desire. It never guarantees want.
    I was present, essential, appreciated—but not held. Not craved. Not devoured.

    Embodied kink rewrites that truth.

    It tells me: you are wanted. Not just used. Not just admired. Not just consented to. Wanted.

    As someone aromantic, romance rarely ignites me. Attachment rarely lands.
    But desire—raw, pulsing, unfiltered—lights me on fire.
    It bypasses calculation, masks, mirrors, and analysis.
    It forces me to feel, not observe.

    Embodied kink grounds me:
    In my body. In my breath. In my skin.
    It is intimacy sharper than any love.
    It is hunger, attention, recognition, and surrender all at once.

    Now, I do not seek mere kink.
    I crave kink saturated with desire.
    Roles are sacred, yes—but they are held in want, in need, in uncontainable hunger.
    I want to be chosen. I want to be craved.

    Because what moves me most is not skillful execution.
    Not the scene perfectly done.
    It is being wanted while I play the role.
    Not the stage. Not the script. Not the story. Me.

  • No One Breathes for You

    The tension between responsibility for oneself and the creeping trend of infantilization, “safety-ism,” and universalizing one’s own perspective over another’s consent and choice

    There’s a troubling trend I keep noticing: the desire to treat others as if they are incapable of making their own decisions, as if they are children who must be protected at all costs.

    I watch as people step in and supplant another’s desires, another’s wishes, with their own judgments — robbing them of agency, interfering in their path of self-discovery.

    I spoke recently about responsibility — that I am responsible for my existence, my choices, my actions, my happiness, my relationships, the values I live by. No one can breathe for me; no one can give me self-esteem; no one can rescue me from the consequences of my choices. That is the work of my life alone.

    So why do so many now insist on “protecting” others by stripping them of this responsibility? Why pretend that people are victims of choices they themselves have made?

    When someone consents, when someone desires, when someone says yes — who are you to override them with your own discomfort, your own morals, your own standards? Why is your universalized perspective supposed to count for more than the actual will of the person in question?

    I see it over and over: loud voices declaring “safety,” when in truth what they create is suffocation. They destroy the spaces we’ve built in the name of protection, but protection from what? From being fully human? From tasting risk? From living by our own choices?

    And worse — the arrogance of it. To presume that your personal discomfort invalidates another’s freedom. To insert yourself as savior when no rescue was asked for. To yuck someone else’s yum, and then call it morality.

    There are no victims here — only people who choose. We each walk our path. We each live the consequences of our own decisions. To deny that is to deny our dignity. To rob people of their responsibility is to rob them of their humanity.

    So I return to what I know:
    I am responsible for my life.
    I am responsible for my choices.
    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to everything I do.

    No one else can do that for me.

  • Unbound and Untamed

    They only crave what they cannot taste. They only hunger for what does not beg to be devoured. The moment you stop offering yourself as their feast, they circle your absence like starving pilgrims, desperate for one more sip of the nectar you’ll never pour again.

    People are trained to prey on your longing—the soft tremor of needing to be desired, the ache for approval, the moan for validation. They smell it on you like sex. Like sweat. Like blood. But once you strip yourself of that hunger, once you tear out the root of needing to be chosen—you stop being food.

    Your silence is lethal. Your detachment is a mercy. No longer a body bent into shapes for their comfort, you become an altar of your own making. They’ll call you selfish. They’ll call you heartless. There’s nothing more suffocating than hands that held you only to keep you down.

    They raise you on the lie that being needed is the same as being loved. When you no longer need anyone, you become the only one they all need. Love without reverence is just hunger, and hunger will always drain you dry. Your absence becomes louder than their presence. They whisper your name when you’re not there because silence has made you a legend.

    Most beg for a seat at poisoned tables. When you no longer need their touch, their approval, their lips at your ear, you become the very thing they worship in secret. They tremble, they whisper your name in their sleep, because the one who no longer kneels becomes the only one worth kneeling to. You’ve met your monsters, made them dance, and came back free of every leash.

    They’ll call you ruthless when you stop explaining. Arrogant when you stop apologizing for your hungers, your fire, your divinity. But their accusations are burning on your altar. Their words feed your legend. Mystery is power. Secrecy is survival. To withhold your body, your secrets, your energy—this is sovereignty.

    A world addicted to taming wildness will call you a monster when you bare your fangs instead of your throat. But it is not monstrosity they fear—it is your refusal to be owned. They want your submission as proof they still matter. But you’ve tasted your own darkness, your own lust, your own silence. You are no longer theirs to tame.

    The old you—the one who apologized for existing, who begged for scraps—is gone. You buried that ghost and wear its ashes as war paint. Your indifference is not emptiness, it’s fullness. Your withdrawal is not cruelty, it’s clarity.

    Now, you choose where your loyalty goes. You choose who earns your presence. That choice is your crown. That choice is sovereignty.

    They will circle your silence like worshippers around a forbidden shrine. They will ache for the doors of your temple to open again. But they no longer understand: you are not waiting to be claimed. You are not starving for their presence. You are nourished in the sacred garden of your own solitude, fed by rivers no hand can touch.

    Let them gossip. Let them rage. You are not theirs to own, never were. You don’t need their applause, their tables, their love offered as ransom. You are the ocean—vast, ungraspable, answering to no one.

    You are not stone—you are iron. Not cruel, but sovereign. Not cold, but untouchable. You stand as proof that freedom is possible. That is what makes you dangerous. That is what makes you unforgettable.

    Everybody wants you when you don’t need anyone.

  • Reimagining Sexuality

    I don’t buy the lie that sexuality has to fit in somebody else’s box. Gay, straight, queer—those labels don’t define the truth of you. Who you’re attracted to, who you touch, who you love, how you build relationships] none of that has to be handed over for outside approval.

    I’ve watched too many people fold themselves small to fit a script they never wrote. That script was built by the same systems that police bodies, police desire, and control the words we’re “allowed” to use to name ourselves.

    We’ve been trained to measure our worth by scarcity. To treat love like a market and desire like a commodity. To swipe and shop for “the best” and buy all we can afford. And then we’re told, quietly but constantly: You’ll never really belong.

    That’s not truth. That’s training.
    Training that says love is rationed. Pleasure is conditional. Sexuality is a permission slip someone else has the power to tear up.

    Fuck that.
    My sexuality is yes.

    Audre Lorde taught me that the erotic isn’t just sex that’s where most people get it wrong. It’s a well of power. A resource for living fully. It’s joy as resistance. It’s connection that bows to your deepest yes. And when you start from abundance, that well doesn’t run dry.

    In abundance, there’s no hierarchy of who’s “allowed” to feel whole. No ranking of relationships or people. No performance for an audience that isn’t even watching. Sexuality is fluid. Self-defined. Alive.

    Desire stops being a shield.
    It becomes a mirror.
    And you finally see yourself—unapologetic, unshaken, untamed.

  • Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Review

    seriously this book is casting out spirits disguised as a communication manual.

    Marshall Rosenberg didn’t just hand me a tool, he handed me a mirror, and a scalpel. and said get to work.

    This book is not about how to “communicate better.” It’s about how to stop speaking like a colonizer. and how to stop letting the colonizer speak through you.

    This was a wake up call to how much of our everyday speech is laced with violence, shame, and guilt. This book really pulled back the veil of socially acceptable manipulation and all the ways we’ve learned to control, manipulate, and people.

    Most of what we call “communication” is a poorly disguised threat without even realizing it.

    Judgement, blame and guilt are expressions of our own unmet needs.””survival stragtegies” we us to avoid facing fact we dont know what we need and hoping someone else can figure it out for us.

    The book said “All criticism, attack, and insult vanish when we listen for feelings and needs.”

    How everytime you hear the word “should” or “I have to,” you’re handing your agency to the abyss. and saying Fuck it. you’re outsourcing your power. you’re kicking your inner child on your way out the door…. again

    When you been taught to that sacrifice = love, when actually… your just neglecting your needs and Wearing your pain like it’s a badge of honor.

    What sucked and was heard to swallow was “Nobody makes you feel anything.” The way I interpret what someone says or does is on me. “Anger isn’t about anyone else. It’s about your unmet needs.” see that one i need a minute ….

    “The difference between a request and a demand is what happens when someone says no.” Ouch. you see what i mean?

    This man said : “Depression is your reward, for being good.” like wtf!!!!!!!

    That we are taught to be good, be obedient, be productive, and above all be quiet your actual needs.

    What the real struggle is: Don’t label. Don’t judge. Just say what’s happening, say what you feel, say what you need, and clearly, concisly, ask. Language is a spell to liberate, not to control. Guilt, shame, blame? Just masks to avoid your needs.

    This book is not gentle. But it will help you grow.

    Rosenberg is calling for a revolution dismantling the internalized systems of domination that keep us distant from ourselves and each other. He teaches you how to get real and get in touch with your needs. He’s asking us to speak in a language of life. A language of need. A language of choice.

    And honestly? That shit slaps.
    Highly recommend

  • Romance, Brought to You by Late-Stage Capitalism: Fromm, Freud, and the Marketplace

    Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving critiques several prevailing—yet deeply flawed—conceptions of love in contemporary Western society, often presenting them in a satirical or critical light by contrasting them with the idea of genuine love.

    He argues that these modern understandings actually represent a “disintegration of love.”

    He writes:

    “No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love is rare, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love, which are in reality are many forms of the disintegration of love.”

    He says we often treat love like a commodity, focusing only on two things: being loved and being lovable

    This leads men to chase success, power, and wealth, while women cultivate attractiveness. But these are STRATEGIES!!!!!! (I’m going to write about strategies one day)

    Fromm sharply points out how capitalism has influences our character:

    The owner of capital can buy labor and command it.
    The owner of labor must sell it or starve.

    He says this mindset is tied to the idea that finding love is simple—that the hard part is finding the right OBJECT
    He argues our entire culture is built on capitalism, and our idea of love follows it. We emphasize the importance of the OBJECT against the importance of the function. Our culture revolves around mutually favorable exchange.

    Happiness?
    Fromm says it lies in the thrill of looking for the best and buying all that you can afford. In dating, this translates to a neatly packaged “attractive” set of qualities sought after on the personality market. And what makes a person attractive? That depends entirely on the fashion of the time both physically and mentally.

    In the 20s, a drinking, smoking, tough, and sexy woman was attractive.
    Today? The fashion demands domestic coyness.
    At the turn of the 20th century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious.
    Today? Social and tolerant.

    But either way, the sense of “falling in love” is just people feeling like they’ve found the best object available on the market, given the limitations of their own exchange value.

    We’re out here marketing ourselves. And the OBJECT must be desirable, socially valuable, complete with hidden assets and future potential.

    This was written in 1956. My grandmother was 4. My grandfather was 6. And yet it feels like he could have written this yesterday. We’re still following the same tired pattern of exchange that governs the commodity and labor market—and we’re still calling it love.

    Then Fromm drags another contradiction:
    The idea that love is just a spontaneous feeling or an “irresistible emotion,” especially when it’s mixed with sexual attraction. He says this mindset completely neglects the importance of WILL.

    Love, he insists, is a decision, a judgment, a promise.
    If love were only a feeling, then loving someone forever would be impossible.
    The only forever is an ACT.

    Love is an act of will. A commitment.
    And fundamentally? It does not matter to who.

    Let me bring up another contradiction that caught me:
    Fromm breaks down different kinds of love—Love of God, Mother, Father, Brother, Erotic Love.

    What stopped me in my tracks was his take on Mother Love vs Father Love:

    • Mother Love is unconditional love. Love for the helpless.
    • Father Love is earned. Conditional. Merit-based.

    He even shows this in how religious systems reflect it.
    Matriarchal religion? That’s Mother Love: all-protective, all-enveloping, unconditional. We are all equal before Mother Earth.
    Patriarchal religion? Father Love: making demands, setting rules, establishing laws.

    Then he speaks on Brotherly Love—love among equals. He writes:

    “If I love my brother, I love all my brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no, beyond that, I love all children.”

    Each kind of love is different, but by their very nature, they aren’t meant to be limited to one person.

    Erotic love, though? That’s the craving for complete fusion with ONE other person. It’s exclusive—not universal. Why?

    Fromm directly challenges the belief that love is just the byproduct of sexual pleasure. He says just because two people learn to sexually satisfy each other doesn’t mean they love each other. Sexual desire is often mistaken for love. People think they love someone when really, they just want other.

    But fusion isn’t just physical.
    He says love is not the result of good sex—what we’re really seeking is relief from the painful tension and anxiety of separateness.

    Without love, physical union never leads to true connection. It remains orgiastic and transitory, leaving two people “as far apart as they were before.” So we keep chasing the high with a new person. A new stranger. Over and over again. Because closeness, like novelty, fades.

    Yo!!! Like… are you feeling that in your chest too?
    I damn near cried.

    Then Fromm goes in on Freud. Freud claimed:

    “Man, having found that genital love offered him his greatest gratification, made it the central point of his life.”

    That idea was revolutionary in the 1890s—but Fromm calls it conformist. It completely misses the mystical essence of love: the root of intense union with another person—the feeling of fusion, of oneness—the “oceanic feeling.”(im definitely going to write about the oceanic feeling or the sea of orgasmic bliss)

    To Freud, love was irrational. And the thinkers of the time?
    They were busy trying to prove capitalism matched the natural state of man:

    • That we are naturally competitive, insatiable, hostile.
    • That we’re driven by limitless desire for sexual conquest.
    • And that only society prevents us from going full feral. ( and they have the nerve to call anyone savage)

    So love, hate, ambition, jealousy?
    Freud chalked them all up to variations of the sexual instinct.

    Sound familiar?
    I’ve been trying to tell y’all—you only think the way you think because you live here, and some old fuck told you to.
    This brings me back to Yurugu (which I will write about one day).

    Freud didn’t see that the key to understanding life is not the body, or hunger, or sex, or possessions—it’s the totality of human existence. That’s a very Eastern thought, one that echoes in the Tao and ATR.

    Fromm ties this all together and says:

    Our character (in capitalism) is shaped by the need to exchange, to barter, to consume.
    Everything—material and spiritual—becomes an object of exchange.

    We are automatons with personality packages who have forgotten how to love. We seek security in the herd—and in not being different: not in thought, not in feeling, not in action. Everyone tries to remain as same as possible while remaining utterly alone—racked by insecurity, anxiety, and guilt.

    Our palliatives? A strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work—where you remain unaware of your desires, unaware of transcendence, unaware of unity. You overcome your unconscious despair with the routine of amusement, passive consumption, and the hollow satisfaction of buying new things—then exchanging them for others. You are sedated, compliant, obedient—and you like it. Hoping for a fair bargain.

    This shows up nowhere more clearly than in marriage—a union structured like a corporate team.

    In the Victorian age and in many other cultures: love was not a spontaneous personal experience that might lead to marriage. Marriage was contracted by convention, and love was expected to follow after the paperwork was signed. This is the background of what we call marriage: a contract to exchange objects.

    The ideal partner is well-functioning employee: independent, cooperative, and tolerant, and yet ambitious, and aggressive. Intimacy is but as a refuge from unbearable loneliness. We enhance “collaboration,” by adjusting our behaviors for mutual satisfaction, pooling common interests, and teaming up against a hostile world.

    But this, Fromm argues, is pseudo-love.

    It’s the disintegration of love. True love, he says, is an art—one that requires discipline, concentration, patience, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

    And it is completely incompatible with the consumerist, market-driven, alienated society we live in.

  • Accountability is messy.

    Anyone who tells you it’s simple probably hasn’t lived through the complexity of it. The truth is, two people can live through the same exact moment and walk away with two completely different truths. And , both of them are real.

    harm doesn’t care about intent. It doesn’t wait for your perspective to catch up. And the second you start defending instead of listening, you close the door to the one thing that could have saved everyone: curiosity.

    we builds walls where bridges could’ve been.

    That lack of curiosity escalated everything.

    People’s feelings are real.
    Their pain is real.
    Even if it came from a misunderstanding.
    Even if it came from perception.
    Even if it came from something I didn’t know I did.

    When someone says they’re hurt by you, you have three choices:

    1. Get defensive.
    2. Get dismissive.
    3. Get curious.

    There are only a few possibilities when someone says you hurt them:

    • You did, whether you meant to or not.
    • They misunderstood something you said or did.
    • Something got lost in translation, emotionally or otherwise.
    • Someone influenced how they saw you, fairly or not.

    But in all cases, their pain is still real. And you can’t brain your way into a matter of the heart

    I used to think that my intent should carry more weight. That if I meant well, I couldn’t possibly be the villain in someone’s story. But that’s not how harm works. That’s not how people work.

    When someone is in pain, your job is to stop talking and start listening. Because until their pain is acknowledged, they will not — cannot — hear you.

    Impact is the measure. Not intent.

    leading with curiosity,

    don’t define yourself by my worst moment. But do let it teach you .
    hope others can learn from it, too.

    When someone says you’ve caused harm

    Get curious.
    Ask questions.
    Open your heart.
    Because even if you disagree, even if you feel falsely accused, even if you don’t understand — that curiosity might save everything

    We can’t always fix what’s broken. But we can stop breaking more.
    We can show up differently next time.
    And if we’re lucky, we’ll be given a second chance.

    But sometimes, you only get one.

  • Sometimes Leaders Make It Worse

    the ones meant to protect—end up causing even more damage.

    So let’s talk about it.

    Let’s talk about the fact that, in a lot of cases, it’s not random community members who are fumbling the ball—it’s the leaders. And when they fumble, it’s not a dropped ball. It’s people’s lives.

    We’ve all heard it before: “Listen to the victim.”
    Sounds good. Feels right. But what happens when the people we’re supposed to turn to were never trained to hold those stories? What happens when leadership is built on logistics, not care? When someone can throw a good party, but can’t hold space for someone’s pain?

    most leaders didn’t sign up to be therapists, mediators, or emergency responders. They signed up to run events. To teach classes. To build spaces. And over time, the community starts expecting them to do more , make decisions, take sides.

    But many of them aren’t ready. when someone unprepared tries to carry something that heavy, people get crushed underneath.

    Right now, we’ve got “leaders” who don’t listen. Who jump to conclusions before even sitting down with the people involved.

    Who ban folks from learning or growing. Who confuse neutrality with silence, and silence with safety. Who perform justice publicly, not to repair, but to prove something—to their peers, their audiences, or their egos.

    Some of it’s ignorance. Some of it’s pressure. Some of it is absolutely intentional.

    Being an event host doesn’t make you qualified to handle trauma.
    It means you had the time and energy to plan something. That’s it. That’s not a credential. That’s not a qualification.

    But because people don’t know where else to go, they go to the ones with the mic or the clipboard. And when those people aren’t trained or supported, they end up hurting the very people they claim to care about.

    Worse—some leaders are scared.
    Scared of being sued. Scared of losing clout. Scared of losing access to their favorite violators. And so they scramble. They cover their asses. They ignore the problem or slap a band-aid on a bullet wound.

    I’ve seen leaders spread misinformation.
    I’ve seen them silence people.
    I’ve seen them protect abusers, ostracize victims, escalate situations, and weaponize their influence like a damn sword.

    They say they care, but what they really care about is control.

    They call it safety.
    But it’s safety for them, not for the people who are hurting.

    Let’s be real. Not all leaders are built the same.

    Some want the title. Some want the power.
    But some actually want to be of service—and they’ve done the work.

    leaders ask questions. They pause.
    They know that gossip is not truth.
    They understand that harm and healing are complex.
    They’re not scared to admit when they’re wrong.
    They make space—for the victim, for the context, for the process.

    They don’t just punish.
    They repair.
    They educate.
    They act with care, not spectacle.

    They don’t need to blast everything on the internet to prove they’re “doing something.” They do the work in quiet ways, and the community feels the difference. In those spaces, people aren’t walking on eggshells. They’re walking toward something better.

    Not Everyone Is Built like that

    that’s okay. Not everyone should be mediating conflicts.
    This isn’t about forcing people into roles they’re not built for.
    But if you’re not built for it—say that. Be honest.

    Don’t pretend you’ve got it covered while secretly ducking behind a wall of favoritism, silence, or shame.

    Most leaders are volunteers.
    And a lot of y’all are trying your best with no support and no backup. I get that.

    But that means we need to stop pretending that all leaders are qualified.
    We need to stop handing our deepest wounds to people just because they made a event.

    Questions to Sit With

    If you’re in leadership right now, ask yourself:

    • Who do you actually trust to hold your truth?
    • If someone disclosed harm to you tomorrow, would you know what to do?
    • Have you trained for that?
    • Do you have support for that?
    • Are you willing to hold that weight, or are you just hoping it never lands on your lap?

    And for the rest of us:

    • Are we vetting our leaders like we vet our play partners?
    • Are we asking the right questions?
    • Are we just assuming safety, or are we building it?

    This isn’t about blame. This is about maturity. About integrity.
    About knowing when to lead—and when to step aside.

    If this made you uncomfortable, that’s good. Sit with it. That discomfort might be the door to something

    Let’s stop letting fear dictate our leadership.

    Let’s stop mistaking silence for neutrality, and spectacle for justice.

    Let’s stop acting like harm is something we can ignore, manage, or gossip our way around.

    And let’s start asking the harder questions.

  • What Are We Doing Wrong?

    We talk about building community like it’s host the play party, hold a few consent classes, add a Discord server, and boom

    But let’s be honest: most of our “communities” are just clusters of trauma-bonded strangers orbiting ego, secrecy, and unmet needs.

    And we wonder why they keep exploding.

    This isn’t a takedown. Not a defense. Not even a manifesto. This is a reflection. A spiral through the wreckage we keep calling community—and a challenge to ask if we’ve been building it on sand.

    Every time harm happens, we fall into a pattern that feels more like reflex than care. Someone speaks. Someone is named. Screenshots are taken. Events drop names. Reputations scatter like ashes in the wind. All under the banner of safety, but rooted in something else—fear, shame, power, confusion, grief.

    We get what we’re living through now: collapse, betrayal, shame, power struggles masked as consent violations, and intimacy weaponized into control.

    This piece is about what happens when we confuse harm with evil, accountability with exile, and community with containment. And what we might do instead, if we remembered who we are.

    The Cascade of Silence Someone trembles and speaks their truth

    They name their experience. And everything erupts.

    The accused disappears

    People whisper. Screenshots circle like wolves. Social capital bleeds out like a wound. Groups back away. Educators go quiet. And in the empty space where dialogue could live, silence hardens into strategy.

    This is not justice. It’s reaction.

    The pain is real. The fear is real. But how we move through it determines whether we are a village or a battlefield.

    Two People, Two Nervous Systems, One Wound Most harm doesn’t come from monsters. It comes from mismatch—two bodies not attuned, two stories with different beginnings, two people unprepared for the depth they were stepping into.

    Consent wasn’t fully navigated. Boundaries were spoken, but not tended. Silence was misread as agreement. Someone fawned. Someone froze. Someone thought things were okay. But they weren’t.

    No one is lying. No one is a villain. But harm happened.

    We don’t need exile. We need curiosity. We need slowness. We need repair

    Bandwagons Are Not Accountability We say we believe survivors, but often what we believe are posts, not people. Often, the social response isn’t about care—it’s about positioning. About showing we’re “safe.” That we “stand with.”

    But standing with someone doesn’t mean erasing someone else.

    We’ve turned harm into a currency. Trauma into a status symbol. Support into spectacle. We ghost the accused, but call that justice. We erase nuance to feel safe. But safety built on destruction is a shaky house

    When Trauma Echoes and Becomes Contagion One post reopens a dozen old wounds. Not because of what happened—but because of what resonates. Collective pain rushes in. Everyone bleeds at once. And now we’re not holding one story—we’re drowning in many.

    This is called vicarious trauma. And when a community isn’t trained to hold it, it reacts. It expels. It purges. It isolates. Not to heal—but to survive.

    Misaligned People harm others while trying to connect.

    They were scared. They were socially awkward. They didn’t know how to read cues. They thought silence meant consent. They panicked. They froze when confronted. Trauma met trauma and neither had the tools to hold the charge.

    This doesn’t excuse. It explains. And understanding gives us the chance to interrupt the cycle.

    We don’t ask the person harmed to teach. But someone must. Someone must hold up the mirror. Offer tools. Walk the path

    Most survivors don’t want a head on a stick. They want acknowledgment. Transformation. Assurance that the harm won’t happen again. That something shifted. That the pain wasn’t meaningless.

    But when our culture offers only silence or war, survivors lose too.

    What if we gave more options:

    • ~

    The Bias in Our Vision A big, awkward dangerous person. A bubbly soft-spoken unserious person. A dominan aggressive person.

    We don’t just misread—we misjudge. And in trauma-saturated communities, our fear projects shadows onto others.

    Being trauma-informed means knowing when the voice in your head is your past—not the person in front of you.

    A Better Pattern Let’s imagine a new way:

    • ~

    Healing Is a Communal Act This is where it gets spiritual.

    Unresolved wounds don’t vanish when we walk away. They reappear under new names, in new spaces. Every time we “move on,” we take the wound with us.

    And community? It isn’t just “people we hang with.” It’s the supposed to be the net that holds us together when we fall apart.

    Real intimacy cannot exist outside spirituality. It’s not an “I” relationship—it’s a “we” relationship, where the “we” includes ancestors, nature, spirit, and the village.

    We’ve lost the ritual of community. The wisdom of circles. The shrine as conflict resolution. The sacred as container for grief, desire, and misunderstanding.

    Rituals That Can Hold the Ache Imagine a space where:

    • A circle of men sits with a husband in conflict.
    • A women’s circle carries a wife’s grief.
    • The couple steps back. The village steps in.
    • Conflict is held, not hidden.

    We must stop separating the erotic from the sacred. Stop treating intimacy as a private contract and start treating it as a public covenant.

    Every relationship, especially the intimate ones, must be blessed, witnessed, nourished, completed. Even when they end, there must be ritual. There must be release.

    There is power in saying: “This is what’s aching me.” In letting the village hold the ache. In speaking the trouble out loud, until the problem becomes afraid of your voice.

    Community isn’t optional. Intimacy isn’t trivial. Harm isn’t a death sentence. Accountability isn’t exile.

    We must:

    • Call people in, not just call them out.
    • Use ritual, not reaction.
    • Center spirit, not spectacle.
    • Reaffirm that harm is a call to gather, not a reason to scatter.

    Let’s build communities where harm becomes the beginning of healing. Where closure happens through ritual. Where we listen—to each other, to spirit, to the trees. Where we remember: we belong to each other.

    Let’s do it differently. Let’s do it sacredly. Let’s do it together.