by Bridgett Hart | TRUTH
Sometimes, knowing the truth hurts so bad we try to survive it by blissing out in denial. When the absolute truth of a situation is crushing, we look for something else to hold instead: shopping, social media, destructive behaviors, substances, or a thin layer of "love and light."
But sometimes we just need to feel everything the truth makes us feel. Angry. Betrayed. Scared. Afraid. Sometimes we have to embrace the shitty part before we can actually move through it and heal. And we owe our friends the same thing.
When "Everything Happens for a Reason" Falls Flat
Have you ever told someone you love that something felt wrong, and they answered with "I'm sure it's nothing" or "just keep thinking positive, everything will be okay"?
It's well intended. It also lands completely flat, and worse, it can feel like they're ignoring the actual words that just came out of your mouth. It's isolating. It can feel like nobody has ever felt what you're feeling right now.
Let me assure you: so many of us have been through the devastating thing you're going through, or sensing is coming. Miscarriage. Rape. Losing a big client. Divorce. Death. Bankruptcy. Chronic illness. Cheating. Abuse. We know. We feel you. And here's something more useful than a platitude.
Feel It
Whatever you're feeling, lean into it and name it. Angry? Betrayed? Ignored? Powerless? Afraid? Acknowledge it. Validate it. It's okay that you feel it, and there's a real reason you do. That reason is valid, no matter what it's rooted in, deep childhood stuff, the hard truth of the situation itself, or hormones. It's valid because you feel it. Full stop.
Observe It
While you're feeling it, try to also observe it. Look at what's coming up and think about what it might be trying to show you, teach you, or leave behind once it passes. You don't have to understand it yet. Just pay attention.
Document It
One way to observe it is to document it. Write, paint, type, scribble, color, dress, dance, stretch, swing - any of these can help you get a feeling out of your head and into something tangible. There's nothing wrong with any of them. Letting a feeling take physical form gives you a new angle to actually look at it from. I've written before about using art journaling this same way, and this is the same underlying practice applied to grief and hard truths specifically. It doesn't need to be shared or shown to anyone. It's not for anyone else's eyes, but it can truly help your brain process what you're going through in one more solid way.
Treat It
We go through genuinely difficult things in life, and we deserve the time and grace to move through them at our own pace. Healing isn't overnight.
So if you're angry, feel it first. Then, once you've actually processed it and you're ready, do something that helps release it. A rage room, throwing electronics against concrete. A boxing class. Playing with your kids. A massage. Lighting a candle. Whatever actually works for you.
And remember, therapy isn't for "crazy" people. It's for humans with complicated, layered realities who could use a little informed help navigating them without doing more damage to themselves or anyone else along the way. With the right therapist, therapy is always worth it as you move through the harsh truths life keeps handing you.
Question of the day: What's something well-meaning someone said to you that landed completely wrong, and what would you have wanted to hear instead?
by Bridgett Hart | SELF
Have you ever wondered how connecting with your inner spirit might help you manifest more in your life?
The connection you build with your inner spirit is the freeway to the life you actually want. Does that mean you can pray about it and get whatever you ask for? Of course not. But it does mean that as you learn to listen and learn from your inner spirit, you get in alignment with your most authentic self, and with the actual steps that turn your dreams into something real.
What Even Is "Spirit"?
We have a lot of names for the same idea across different societies: Jesus, God, Buddha, the Universe, Krishna, Jehovah. What you call it matters less than whether you take the time to connect.
My own background is Christianity. In that tradition, we believe we can get saved by praying and asking Jesus to live in our hearts. To me, that means Jesus lives inside me, which makes me capable of everything Jesus, living in me, is capable of. So what I'm describing here isn't new-agey, and it isn't anti-Christian. It's right in line with what the Bible has always said.
Get Intentional
Spirit is always there, but it won't push its way into your life. It won't force a particular path or force good choices on you. It's there, constantly sharing love and wisdom, but you have to pay attention to actually receive any of it.
Get intentional about wanting to connect. Think about how you've connected with Spirit in the past, how your ancestors connected. How do the people around you deepen their own relationship to it now? Just because you learned one way as a kid doesn't mean it's the only way, or the right way for you now. If it still fits, great. If it doesn't, that's okay too. Maybe it's ten minutes of meditation each morning, or a weekly trip to the mountains or the ocean to pray and write. There are countless ways to connect. Figure out which ones actually fit you, then make the adjustments, the plans, the space, to do it on purpose.
Meditation and rest, learning more about yourself, your ancestry, where you come from, all of this is crucial to building the kind of world where everyone is cared for and able to live fully. Getting our own internal work done is what makes it possible to have genuinely healthy, productive relationships with each other and with the planet, and right now, we're not doing a great job of either. The more intentional you get about what you want from Spirit, what you want to give it, and what communion with it actually looks like for you, the better this goes.
Get Quiet
I sometimes describe Spirit as the quietest voice in my head. It's the persistent whisper underneath all the other, louder voices trying to drown it out. Often it's telling me to do the hard thing. Sometimes it's shouting: stop and rest, the way it did before I ended up hospitalized for a week with diabetic ketoacidosis.
Meditation is one of my favorite ways to get quiet. I recommend the Calm app. But there are plenty of paths there: yoga, hiking, driving, gardening, working out, anything that quiets the mind enough for Spirit to actually be heard.
If you don't have any specific practices, rituals, or spiritual background at all, start here. Go into a quiet space and just be quiet. This isn't about praying or telling God what you want. It's not about throwing out requests. It's about shutting down, focusing on your breath, on the movement of blood through your body. If you know nothing else, you can learn this. Spirit comes to a quiet mind. And if your mind genuinely won't quiet down, therapy is a real and valid option too, not a failure of this practice.
Get Community
One of my favorite things about the divine is its duality. Truth can be false, false can be true, there's very little absolute truth beyond the fact that we are love, and we are loved. Your spiritual walk is deeply personal, and your relationship with God is yours alone. However. Your existence on this planet is not yours alone. It exists in relation to everything else here too. You're solely responsible for your own journey, and inextricably connected to everyone and everything around you.
One of the best ways to connect with your inner spirit is to spend time with people who share your values, people trying to produce the same kind of good energy. That might be a church, as long as it honors your authentic self, a monastery, a temple, a friend group, family. We're connected, and Spirit is stronger when we're together.
I've wondered before whether you have to go to church or formally meditate to hear Spirit. The answer is no. Spirit communicates with you at all times, in every way. The real skill is learning to see and hear the messages.
Whatever kind of spirituality or community works for you is fine, as long as it isn't a cult, nobody should be asking you to drink the Kool-Aid, or asking you to leave your family and friends behind. If it's genuinely helping you connect, and it isn't isolating you, it's good. A lot of people assume I dislike church because I left mine years ago. I love the church. I love people in churches, plenty of them, and I have real friends across a lot of different kinds of congregations. I just don't personally attend that type of church anymore, because it's a disconnect for me on my own spiritual path. That's okay. I have a different kind of community now, built around connecting to Spirit in the way that actually works for me.
I heard a good analogy recently, from Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God, an older book I still recommend. We tend to say Spirit inhabits our body. I've said it that way myself. But really, Spirit envelops the body. The spirit that is me surrounds my body; my body is part of how that spirit moves through the world, but the spirit itself is bigger than just this physical being. Once you think of it that way, you realize that if Spirit envelops you, then your spirit is also what connects with, bumps into, the spirits and energy of the people around you. Get in community with people trying to move in the same direction, because other energies are going to affect yours whether you like it or not, unless yours is strong enough to affect theirs instead. The more connected you get, the more depth you have access to, and the more your own energy is able to shift what's around it.
Being Intentional and Quiet Are the Training Ground
Being intentional and getting quiet are what train you to walk around talking with Spirit all day long, not just in dedicated moments.
I used to wonder why anyone would choose to become a monk or a nun. It seemed extreme. But once I understood what intentionality and quiet actually do for your ability to communicate with Spirit, and how good it feels to live at that level of connection regularly, I got it. Being present with the divine is its own kind of ecstasy. Choosing it as a full lifestyle makes sense.
That said, I'm still pretty connected to some of my more human desires too. Wild sex with my husband. Decadent vacations to tropical islands. Sue me, I'm human. I love you.
Recommended resources:
Calm
Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch
Question of the day: How do you connect to Spirit, and what do you call it?
by Bridgett Hart | SELF
Rest is necessary, and it's regenerative. Our bodies rejuvenate while we're at rest. That's why you feel so great on vacation. But rest shouldn't only happen on vacation. Can you imagine how your car would run if you only checked the oil and added gas once a year?
There's real danger in the fact that we do this to ourselves. The devastation is that we keep teaching it to our children too, that "working hard," "doing something important," and hustling from dawn until the middle of the night is what it means to be good.
The idea that hard work alone is the path to riches is a myth. The truth is, we're all connected, to each other and to this planet we share. We have enough resources to care for every human being on earth. The value you bring simply because you exist is already shared and real. You don't have to do anything else, ever, to be massively valuable. Your presence here is priceless. Everything beyond that is icing on an already good cake.
We treat rest like a luxury, but it's a necessity, and the only reason it looks like a luxury is that capitalism has spent its entire existence convincing us otherwise. Rest is a luxury for something that exists only as a cog in a wheel. Oil it up, keep it spinning. But you are not a cog. You are a unique, perfectly imperfect, priceless human being, and you deserve rest.
Where This Teaching Comes From
This is a teaching I've learned from, not one I invented. Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry and author of the New York Times bestseller Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, built this framework specifically for Black women and Black people, out of Black liberation theology, somatics, and a direct historical reckoning with what capitalism and slavery did, and still do, to Black bodies specifically. Rest, in her work, is resistance to a system that was built on the theft of Black labor and Black rest in the first place. That context matters, and it's not mine to flatten into something generic.
It's also true, as Hersey herself teaches, that this message extends to all of us, white folks included. But I want to be honest about what that means for me specifically, as a white woman. In some real ways, white people have been resting too long. Politically. Comfortably. While other people did the work of showing up.
Look at the 2024 election. Roughly nine in ten Black women, some exit polls put it as high as 92%, voted for Harris. That's about as close to unified political labor as an entire demographic can get. And the outcome still wasn't what that labor deserved. That's not a reason to despair. It's a reason to notice who's been doing the work, and who hasn't been.
So: follow Black women. Learn from Black women. Rest, when you actually need it, the way Hersey teaches. But also, especially right now, especially politically, some of us have work to do. Rest and labor aren't opposites here; they're both part of the same practice of showing up honestly for what's ours to carry.
How to Actually Get the Rest You Need
Rest is the most foundational boundary you can set, because if you can't properly rest, you can't actually do whatever it is you're here to do. Here's how to build it, in four real steps.
1. Define what rest means to you. For me, rest definitely includes sleep, and it should. Physiologically, our bodies need it, we need deep sleep specifically, our body does real repair work in that state, and if you want to stay connected to your purpose, you need those hours. But define it beyond that too. Does it mean eight hours a night? Bed at 9pm, up at 5, 7, or 9? A day off every week instead of saving it all for one big vacation? Leaving work at 3pm and turning your phone off? A real vacation, once or twice or four times a year? Take a moment. Think about what your body needs, what your mind needs, what your spirit needs. Write it down.
2. Believe you deserve it. Your body needs rest whether you believe you deserve it or not, but you have to value it enough to actually make the decisions and sacrifices that protect it. If you can't believe it yet, fake it until you do. Give yourself the rest anyway, and let your brain catch up to believing you're allowed to have it.
3. Get your schedule together. Figure out what needs to change to protect the rest you defined in step one. That might mean cutting off work at a certain hour, getting kids to bed on a schedule that lets you actually wind down, telling your job you're not available past a certain time, or asking for time off. It might mean quitting a job that won't allow you to protect your own boundaries, or building something new instead. That's not easy, and nobody else can do it for you.
If it comes down to it, downsize. Move into a smaller life if that's what real rest requires, because a heart attack doesn't care how big your house is. It doesn't care that you were successful. Your family will still miss you, and whatever your purpose was will stop dead in its tracks either way. I'm not saying it's easy to let go of everything capitalism has told us we need. It isn't. It's genuinely hard to trust that you'll still be cared for once you stop over-functioning to earn it. But caring for yourself is one of the real ways the universe cares for all of us, together.
4. Don't try to go it alone. There's real help out there. I have a brain that clicks and clicks and doesn't stop easily, so I understand insomnia. A few things that help me: start with your environment. If the TV runs all day and night in your room, that might need to change, or at least get a hard cutoff time. The Calm app has good sleep meditations and sleep music, especially paired with a decent set of headphones. I use an inexpensive sleep aid from Costco some nights, and it works. There's no shame in using tools. We're not meant to be superhuman, and tools exist for a reason.
I also use a diffuser with essential oils, lavender especially, which is calming and genuinely aids sleep. And I use cannabis, CBD and THC, at night. If that's something you're considering, know your strains, since different ones have very different effects, and know your own dosage. Buy from a source that provides real, verifiable lab testing. There are a lot of people selling products that aren't what they claim to be.
Wrap Up
That's four steps to get more rest in your life, because rest is your birthright, and it's the most foundational boundary you can set. Once that boundary is in place, your mind, your body, and your spirit are actually ready to access the divinity that's already in you. There's a lot in there worth discovering. But you need your rest first, to actually get to it.
Recommended resources:
The Nap Ministry, founded by Tricia Hersey
Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey
Calm
Question of the day: What does rest actually look like for you, and what's standing in the way of it right now?
by Bridgett Hart | SELF
I spent a lot of my 20s thinking about what I wanted in my future. A husband, kids, a big house. Not the picket fence, but you know what I mean. Everything felt transitional back then, like I was waiting for life to happen.
In my 30s, I spent a lot of time thinking about my past, and how it had shaped who I was, even while I was actively building my future: marriage, a kid, a mortgage.
Now, in my 40s, I'm finally starting to understand the present of the present. Not just the season my life is in, but the actual physical and spiritual experience of inhabiting this exact moment, regardless of the circumstances I happen to be in.
What I'd Tell My 27-Year-Old Self
A lot happened along the way to teach me a few things: I can never be "enough" for "them." The path I plan is lovely, but it can change, die, explode, or shift in one minute, with or without much help from me. I'm always either going to be okay, or I'm going to die. Even then, it will be okay.
If I could give one gift to my 27-year-old self, it would be stillness. Being fully in the present, on a consistent, reliable basis. There's nothing as powerful as what Eckhart Tolle called the power of now, and I wrote this originally with her specifically in mind: I'd just come out of a very unhealthy, abusive relationship, several years of it, and I was in a daze. What did I do? How did I end up there? I was putting my life back together, finally starting on my own path, but everything still felt transitional.
Throughout that week, people kept reaching out to me about similar situations, their own or someone they loved. So this message is for you too, whatever you're going through, but especially if you're in something hard right now. An abusive relationship. A toxic workplace with an abusive boss. Abusive parents or siblings. Anyone can be abusive, whether they're blood family or not.
It's not as easy as it sounds. My mind runs a million miles a minute: lists, shortcomings, family, money. The secret is, you're already perfect for all of it. There's nothing you need to do first. Everything that brought you to this moment, everything still coming from you, everything your ancestors and legacy hoped for, is already in you, exactly as it needs to be. All you have to do is be.
Why Being Present Matters
Being connects you to everything else that is, and everything that isn't. When you pause and actually notice your blood moving through your body, carrying oxygen from the trees to your heart, you remember something. And as you remember, you connect wider and deeper than you'd expect.
It's part of why people become monks and nuns. Once you feel the divinity that's accessible in stillness, in just experiencing being you, nothing else really compares, and definitely not whatever capitalism insists we need to be chasing instead.
Seven Ways to Practice Being Present
Meditation. Prayer and meditation are related, but praying is usually an output, meditation is a state of internal silence, openness, and receptiveness. We should've learned this in kindergarten. We didn't. It's simple and genuinely hard, because we're conditioned to constantly be doing something. Apps like Calm and Brain.fm offer guided meditations that help get my mind and body into that state. It usually starts with focusing intensely on my breath, my body, and my surroundings. Deepak Chopra also has a lot of good guided meditations if you want a specific practitioner to start with.
Nature. Being in nature is its own form of meditation, you don't need to lie down or go still to engage with it. Connecting to this part of ourselves makes it easier to be present everywhere else too. The natural world is full of examples of divinity, if you're paying attention.
Art. Letting art flow through you while you're in a meditative state gives you a tangible representation of the experience of being present. It looks different for everyone. That's the beauty of it.
Movement. Yoga and dance teach you to focus on your breath and the flow of your body. Feeling how your breath and thoughts affect your physical body is one of the genuinely fun side effects of yoga.
Sound. Sound has measurable frequencies, and so do our bodies, which means sound can help shift us toward a state we're aiming for. There's early research suggesting that 528 Hz music, sometimes called the "love frequency," can lower cortisol and reduce measured anxiety in small studies. I want to be honest about what that does and doesn't mean: it's not proof of DNA repair or of some ancient, handed-down healing tradition, those specific claims aren't supported by what's actually been studied. What I do believe is that just because Western science hasn't fully mapped something yet doesn't mean it isn't real or working. I hold both of those at once: stay honest about what's actually been measured, and stay open to what hasn't been studied closely, or at all, yet.
Smell. Essential oils can help you focus and block out distraction while you're learning to be present. Different oils carry different effects too, lavender for calm, lemon or orange for energy.
Ritual. Different cultures carry rituals built around connecting to this moment, to breath, to the physical form our spirit inhabits. These can function as meditation when you focus on the intent and meaning behind the symbolic act. They also connect you to what was, what is, and what will always be true about the experience of being present.
A Guided Exercise
If you want to try this with me, find a safe, comfortable spot. Seated or lying down is fine, just not driving, and not somewhere you could fall if you get too relaxed.
Close your eyes. I like to have my palms touching, that's just me feeling my own energy, you don't have to do that. Get safe, get comfortable, close your eyes.
Clear your mind. Take a few deep breaths, and blow out all the stale air. Then take a few intentional breaths: in deeply through your nose, out through your mouth. Sigh if you want to, or keep it silent.
On your next breath, follow the air. Notice it entering your body, passing through your nose, down into your passages, into your diaphragm, all the way to the lowest part of your belly. Follow it back out through your mouth. If your mind wanders, don't worry, just bring it back. Let the thought pass. Hello, thank you, thought. Let it fly away. Back to the breath.
That alone is enough to give you a real moment of presence. If you want to go deeper, keep breathing slow and easy, and start scanning your body. Begin at the top of your head. Scan your face, notice any tension, relax it. Your ears, your neck. Deep breath in, release whatever you're holding. Keep moving down your body the same way.
As you go, you might start to notice a tingling, blood moving through your fingers and arms, the quiet, ongoing magic of your body simply working. Take one more deep breath.
I'm not a meditation guru, so I'll let you find what works best for you from here. But the point is, with five or ten minutes, you can access the present of being, no matter what your outside circumstances look like right now. And as you do, you'll start to hear the voice inside you that gives clear guidance. I've been there. I know what that guidance sounds like. The more present you get, the more you'll be able to distinguish it: what your next step should be, how to move, what to do, where to go, who to seek out, what kind of help to get.
Recommended resources:
Calm
Brain.fm
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Question of the day: How do you get still and engage with the present moment? What gets in the way?
by Bridgett Hart | SELF
I'm so glad to have you here again today. As promised, here's part two of my deepest, darkest secret.
Part one was that I've used cannabis most days for the last 25 years. I quit during pregnancy, breastfeeding, and through a few jobs along the way, but generally speaking, it's been part of my life for a long time.
Part two is harder to talk about. Harder to admit to. Harder for other people to hear. At the end of the last post, I asked if you'd still love me after hearing that first secret. Some of you told me you would. Let me be honest: a lot of people don't. It's hard for people to accept, especially openly, because once someone says "that's okay with me," they start wondering: wait, is it okay for me? For the people I love? For that person I judged harshly, or treated poorly, because of that same thing? Do I still love them? It brings up a lot of questions.
An Interracial Family
Many of you know my husband is Black. Our daughter is Black (American from the 1600s and Nigerian) and white (Polish, German, British, and Scottish). We're an interracial family, married ten years next month, together for years before that.
But if you'd known me as a young person, especially through college, you'd probably have known me as someone with a lot of Black friends, maybe even more Black friends than white ones. I thought of myself as progressive. I liked Black folks, that's who I spent my time with, and I didn't think much more about it than that.
It wasn't until I started building The Hart Habits that I really began looking closely at everything I was carrying, everything I had shame around, everything I still needed to work through. One of those things, coming up both in the wider culture and in my own life as I became a soon-to-be mother to a young Black woman, was racism. Was I racist?
Starting From "I Am Racist"
I've told this story before: the way I started learning about racism in America was to begin with the premise that I am racist, and go looking to find out if that was true. Starting from that premise, not from "I'm probably not," but from "let's assume I am and see what I find."
Here's the deep, dark secret: it didn't take long at all. Within moments of saying, " Okay, I'll just say I'm racist and see what comes up", I knew for certain that I was.
A lot of you would ask more about that, because if you knew me, you wouldn't have thought of me as a racist person. I was the person you'd have described as liking Black people more than white people, and honestly, that was true for a lot of years of my life. I've since landed somewhere more nuanced: humanity is humanity, different cultures carry different strengths and weaknesses, and there's a lot going on underneath all of it.
Redefining What Racism Actually Is
When I said "I'm racist," I expected to find evidence that I wasn't. I grew up in North Idaho, home of the Aryan Nations. I was used to defining racists as the overt ones: the KKK, the skinheads, the ones with the regalia, talking about white pride and white Christian brotherhood and not wanting to be "diluted" by Black or brown blood.
I was around a lot of very overt racism, which made it easy to separate myself from it. Obviously I'm not one of them. I don't hate Black people, I love Black people, I thought.
What I found, over time, is that racism isn't an admission. It's not "I don't like Black people." It's not a confession of feeling negatively about a group based on their race. Racism is an omission.
Racism is redlining policies that kept Black people out of neighborhoods that were growing and succeeding. Racism is when Black Americans make up 13% of the population but average only about 1% of a white American's core social network, per research from the Public Religion Research Institute. Racism is when Black Americans are roughly 13% of the population but around 32% of the sentenced state and federal prison population, per the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics data. That's an omission. It's an omission of the people who should be at the table, consulted, listened to, advised with, on how to actually fix these problems, and instead, they're simply not there.
Racism is air blow dryers in public bathrooms that don't register dark skin, because nobody in the room designing them was Black, or in a position to say, this doesn't work for me. Racism is the school-to-prison pipeline for young Black kids. Racism is suspension and discipline rates 30 to 40 times higher for young Black girls than white or Asian girls.
That's racism. Omission. The omission of people from decision-making and power-holding in our own society. Bigotry and prejudice are their own separate things, and I found plenty of those too, in my own mind, my own heart, my own life, and ultimately in the society around me.
Deep Dark Secret Number Two
I am racist. I'm working actively to be anti-racist. But the only way to actually do that was to start in the mirror first: deal with my own prejudice, my own bias, my own defense mechanisms that would go up to keep me from hearing truths that were hard to hear.
There it is. My deepest, darkest secret. I am racist. I don't want to be anymore. I don't want you to be either.
If you're someone who's thought to yourself, well, I'm definitely not racist, drop a comment and say it out loud, or tell me you'd like to learn more. If you're ready to drop the defenses and see what might be under the surface, in your own mind, your own life, your own sphere of influence, either way, know that I love you, just like I love myself, just like I love my white father, my white brother, my white mom and sisters. We will create a new world together.
Question of the day: What would it take for you to start from the premise that you might be wrong about this, and see what you find?
by Bridgett Hart | SELF
Yesterday I talked about how our imperfections are part of what makes each of us perfect, in our own particular way. Today I want to show you how to actually move with those things, by sharing the deep, dark secret that kept me hidden and held back for years.
There are layers and nuance to this, so parts two and three are already brewing. But first: do you still love me after hearing my secret? Do you think the people around you would still love you, if you shared yours?
Doing Everything "Right"
Rewind to when I began the work that's now The Hart Habits. I was about 30. I'd done all the things I was supposed to do, and hadn't done the things I wasn't supposed to. College degree. Graduated high school first, then college. Never got pregnant. Stayed in church, wherever I was, for years. I wasn't an alcoholic. I'd checked every box.
By that point I'd also been through a lot of trauma. I'd been raped, and I spent the five years following it in an abusive relationship. I worked my way through those things. And in doing that work, I gave up one of the tools that had actually helped me survive them, in the way that made sense for the life I was living at the time: cannabis. It helped me work through the trauma of the rape, through the abusive relationship, through getting out of it.
A Decade of Believing It Was My Fault
Once I got to the other side of all that, I believed the bad things that happened to me were my own fault. I genuinely embraced that. I believed there was something else I wasn't doing right, and that was what kept bringing the bad things to me.
Around that same time, I started drifting from organized religion, from church. I'd been using cannabis the whole time, in and out of church, though it always had to be a secret part of my life, kept carefully put away. I'd quit for stretches, for different jobs, whenever it was worth quitting, and it was never a big deal to stop. But it was something I genuinely enjoyed, something that genuinely helped me. I liked having it in my life. And I felt a lot of shame around that, because of every message I'd absorbed about what it meant to use it.
Note: if this brings up shame for you around your own choices, on your own path, I'd point you to Brené Brown's work, especially Daring Greatly, for more on shame specifically. It helped me understand mine.
So I got to this point and decided: I need to put cannabis away for good. I also quit having sex outside marriage, because that was my other greatest sin, or so I believed at the time. That was it. My two deepest, darkest secrets, at 30: I smoked cannabis regularly, and I'd had premarital sex, though I already believed I'd been punished for that with the rape.
I want to be very clear: that belief was not true. It was the story I told myself for years. But it's what I believed at the time.
Four Years of Checking Every Box
Fast forward, and I was in complete ruin. Four years with no sexual contact with anyone. No cannabis in my daily life. Church, regularly. Checking every box there was to check. Good job. Good money. My own home.
And I was lonely. Devastatingly lonely. Every single person I'd ever been with had cheated on me, church or no church, it didn't matter. I felt broken. I was broken, honestly.
So I asked myself the real question: how could I have given up all of it, done everything by the book, exactly the way Christianity told me to, and still be suffering like this? Still struggling? Still, honestly, feeling suicidal?
If you're feeling suicidal right now, please reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can call or text 988, anytime. You matter, exactly as you are, right now.
The Love Chapter
I decided to dig into the one source I knew at the time: the love chapter. Love never fails, it said. I wanted to know how to actually get that. The next sixteen years were the journey that followed, though I didn't understand at the time how deeply the two threads, the cannabis and the church, were tangled together.
In that moment, I decided I was choosing cannabis. And since the church I'd known my whole life wasn't going to be sympathetic to that, wasn't going to be open to me being honest about it, I was going to have to move away from it. There was too much shame built into that environment, too much judgment placed on something I'd now had four full, sober years to actually, objectively evaluate. I understood what it did for me, what it meant in my life, by that point, better than I ever had using it thoughtlessly.
So I moved away from church. I moved toward love instead. Sixteen years later, here I am.
The Secret I Kept From Everyone
This was the thing I hid from almost everyone, including my employers. I worked in the education system, where getting caught meant real consequences. I wasn't doing drugs. I was using cannabis, for my own mental wellness. But the stigma around it was strong enough that I kept myself segregated from a lot of my life because of it, and missed real opportunities along the way. More on those stories another time.
That's my biggest secret. I've been using cannabis for 25 years now, just about every day. How does that land for you? You can be honest. Tell me how you feel, because we're going to need to actually talk about it. Not everyone's going to be fine with this. People have strong opinions. So tell me, what's yours?
