Wholesome Badass

A Work in Progress — Healing from All the Things

Black-and-white illustration of a girl saying, “What you said was hurtful,” facing a large shield covered by a receipt titled “Good Things I've Done.”

After All I’ve Done for You.

October 19, 2026

May I Remind You? Different people. Different circumstances. Continued familiar patterns. A few months ago, I said to my neighbor, “Hey, when you said X, it hurt my feelings.” Her response? “May I remind you…” followed by a list of ways she’d been helpful to me. I still don’t know why her response stunned me. It was entirely consistent with a familiar archetype: the person who expects things to automatically go their way and has no tolerance for frustration, disappointment, or anything that challenges their preferred version of themselves. And 100% of the time, with this archetype, my direct expression of hurt is received not as information about my experience or how our connection has been affected, but as an accusation to defend against or a claim to debate. I never responded. Interesting, though. We’d each been generous and helpful to one another. But I’d never considered my generosity protection against accountability. I’ve read about rejection sensitivity and narcissistic traits, particularly the need to be right, entitlement to having things their way, and the insistence on a narrative in which they can only be the hero or the victim. I’m increasingly interested in recognizing and understanding the patterns rather than proving anything about specific people. Since when does being helpful mean you can’t also have been hurtful? Both can be true. And similarly—Have you ever known someone who would only say “No” to a request along side listing all of the things they’d done for others or everything they “had” to do? Or who offered a reluctant yes or vague maybe when they already knew the answer was no?But with no thoguthful pause to genuinely ask, “Can we figure out a time that works for both of us?”Also, I do not discount that going to the gym and getting your hair done are legitimate needs. I find the long narrative that presents them as both the heroically generous and the overburdened victim to be unwholesome.

Two people sit apart on a couch. She imagines them steering a boat together. He imagines himself steering a boat labeled “MY PREFERENCE” along “THE FLOW,” dismissing her suggestion with, “Why can’t you just go with the flow?”

Expecting to Matter

October 17, 2026

In my family and marriage, my emotional and sensory sensitivities were treated as unreasonable burdens and acts of defiance. Rather than information worth considering, my preferences and limitations were interpreted as resistance. I struggled to navigate these relationships, which I experienced as structured around coercion and submission, where consideration wasn’t a shared value. Expressing individual needs was treated as not being a team player—a punishable offense. And when those needs were accommodated, they were logged as personal favors and evidence of fairness, further reinforcing the power imbalance. When a person can only tolerate having their way, even the possibility of not getting what they want can create considerable tension. Despite my best efforts, I found no way to remain under those rules of engagement. The only healthy option was to surrender the relationships rather than submit to unfavorable terms or keep fighting for better ones while being treated as though their proximity was a privilege, easily revoked. Fuck that. No, thank you.

A reflection on how appearances shape credibility, character judgments, and the recognition of harm.

The Art of Concealed Cruelty

October 17, 2026

The ability to engineer someone else’s downfall while appearing to have had nothing to do with it. I’m intimately familiar with calculated hostility. What I still cannot fathom is the level of executive function required to provoke someone, anticipate their reaction, and use it against them while presenting as entirely uninvolved. For someone as highly sensitive and reactive as I am, with my nervous system pretty much on the outside of my body, that kind of calculation is incomprehensible. My long game and executive function were scorched by ongoing unresolved trauma. As a child, I was frequently crying, throwing up, having meltdowns, and reacting intensely to things that seemed not to even register for others. In my family, my reactivity was met only with shame and punishment. I was judged ungrateful, negative, too sensitive, thin-skinned. I suppose the hope was that enough callousness might eventually toughen me. My skin never thickened, but I learned to be mean. Vicious even. Sometimes it offered a momentary release. The relief was fleeting. The guilt and shame were not. Contempt was standard fare, but some people (audibly clearing my throat) seemed instinctively savvy about rules and skills that eluded me. They could deliver a devastating strike with complete self-possession and have it pass for teasing, a misunderstanding, or a reasonable response to someone who had displeased them. My reactions were unmasked, unbridled. Obvious, undeniable, and punishable. And I was bewildered. Wasn’t I doing as my family does? My sister, seven years older, seemed to have mastered the poise I lacked. Provoking and baiting could pass as harmless while leaving me visibly distraught. Whatever provoked my distress— became secondary to my reaction. My emotional reaction could be counted on to steal the show and seal the case. Poise posed as evidence of good character; my reactivity, evidence of bad. I was innocent only of understanding the rules. Now, nearly 60, with language and recovery, I think the unspoken rule I couldn’t metabolize wasn’t that ridicule and belittling were wrong. Apparently, they were perfectly acceptable, even applauded, when directed at someone considered deserving, provided they were delivered with composure. Only recently have I begun to identify concealed hostility. Diminishing remarks disguised as observations. “Brutal honesty” that is more brutal than honest. Provocations. The ability to degrade or discredit someone while appearing calm, unaffected, reasonable. Have you ever been provoked into a reaction that was then used as evidence against you?

Split-screen illustration of a fish swimming in calm blue water and a girl surrounded by criticism, shame, and silent treatment. Both think, “just another day.”

What If It Was the Water?

October 15, 2026

I spent much of my life believing something was terribly wrong with me. In fact, I’m fairly certain that was suggested more than a handful of times. My struggle to exist harmoniously didn’t make me question my environment. It seemed only to confirm that I was the problem. It reminds me of the quote: “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” My failure to thrive was unmistakable. Overwhelmed by the intensity and confusion of the dynamic, I developed constant, involuntary, maladaptive behaviors. Rather than recognizing them as reactions to what I was experiencing, they were treated as evidence of my defectiveness. And that’s how I learned to see myself. And then, to add insult to injury, I was labeled as negative for my low self-esteem and the anger that came from living in constant turmoil without reprieve or guidance. It really was an inescapable loop. As a young adult, I began recognizing the consequences of directly expressing my needs or limits. I lacked both the understanding and the agency to respond in any useful way. I was essentially boxing with ghosts. I was taking hits, swinging blindly, and looking completely unhinged (which I was) to anyone watching. And so I relocated, first across the country and then out of the country, attempting to match the physical distance to the devastating emotional distance. Learning to identify the water hasn’t undone what living in it taught me—or made me an excellent swimmer. But I’m discovering who I am when I’m not constantly overwhelmed and reacting to what’s happening around me. And for the first time, I’m enjoying who I am. Engaging with life from a place of intention and agency is a far cry from living in reaction to something I couldn’t see or name.

Wholesome Badass girl draws a new relational blueprint based on nurturing, honest communication, accountability, and trust, while discarding an old blueprint of scapegoating, manipulation, and emotional neglect.

The Caller Was Inside the House

October 8, 2026

The people I relied on for protection were the same people I needed protection from. They were also the ones teaching lil baby Magda about herself, relationships, and the world. And so she gravitated toward relational patterns imprinted on her lil nervous system long before she could recognize or question them. Always reaching for the emotionally inaccessible archetype… She loved these people and wanted their approval, affection, and inclusion. They were her models for love, conflict, emotional regulation, and accountability. She mimicked some of their harmful behaviors, too. For how could she reject a model she hadn’t yet learned to recognize? I can share how Lil Baby Magda was harmed without asserting I, Big Magda, never caused harm. I own my unwholesome and misguided contributions without accepting responsibility for how others behaved. My first blueprint of the world was emotional instability, chaotic relationships, and illegible, amorphous rules and codes. My internal blueprint developed in response: my lens for perception, beliefs, vigilance, expectations, sense of worth, and capacity to care for myself, regulate my emotions and live with intention and dignity. Life might have been confusing even in a nurturing, steady family system. I might always have required more clarity, consistency, patience, and support. I lost decades tangled up in what the fuck had just happened and why, while forecasting what else would go wrong. What did I do? What did they mean? What did I miss? How do I keep it from happening again? Even when nothing was happening, I was still agonizing over things said and done years earlier. All that attention and energy spent trying to understand and prevent harm left no bandwidth to experience my own life. How much of what I’ve believed about my personality, character, worthiness, and lovability came from the people who taught me how to be a person? What might I have achieved if I hadn’t spent my life trying to figure out what was wrong with me? The messaging was consistent, collective, and insidious: Get different or be erased. If I was the designated problem and couldn’t correct myself, what was left? I couldn’t get different. I couldn’t get gone. I failed at both. And now I’m beginning to see a third way. Finally, I am getting different—not by correcting myself to fit the original blueprint, but by rejecting it.

A woman in Japan reacting with surprise and joy as a Japanese woman bows respectfully to her.

What I Thought Was Normal

October 5, 2026

I can’t help but laugh in disbelief as I recall my initial encounter of Japan. I seriously took the bowing personally. Not joking. I was 22, and not an all an adult. My understanding of respect, deference, and what people were entitled to take from one another was impossibly distorted. What I experienced as exceptional “kindness” was, in many ways, ordinary cultural respect. How could I have known? I do not recall behavioral models for respect and kindness. I was witness to only varied posturing, which was baffling and not at all intuitive for me. And no system with which to engage and demonstrate high regard for others. Just like weird reverence and what I would now call coercive abuse. A New Way to Relate For much of my life, the only familiar relational dynamic was binary: power over or be powered over. I saw rare others (like unicorns) living with more ease, mutuality, and peace, but that seemed remote. I knew only the system I had been brought up with. And if I had to choose from the menu of options I understood, I definitely believed it preferable to be on the giving end of the abuse because I equated that with authority and rightness. In recognizing and unlearning harmful patterns, I am also staring head-on at the ways I engaged and contributed. I had internalized the belief that how others treated me was information about who I was and what I deserved, and so learned to try and excuse my own harmful behavior by charging it to someone else…like my reaction to them was reflective of ONLY them. I could make no sense of why relationships hurt so much and why connection seemed synonymous with struggle. Looking back, of course it was miserable. If the only options were intimidation or submission, there was no room for flow, cohesion, or safety. And I am actually an avid fan of submission and surrender, but only with those who can be trusted on the other side of that dynamic—more harmony and collaboration than coercion. I have been utterly shocked to learn that some things can be familiar, common, and still symptomatic of unwellness. What feels pivotal is seeing both directions clearly: the harm done to me, and the harm I learned to repeat and then to end. I am deeply pained and regret the harm I learned to absorb, carry, and then offload onto other people. I understand more now, and I live differently, but understanding does not undo impact. Still—so much fkn unlearning. Reparenting yourself at 60 is a lot. What did you once think was normal and acceptable that you now view differently?

Black-and-white cartoon of Wholesome Badass in a jujutsu stance, holding up a glowing shield against dark arrows and scribbles. A speech bubble says, “But here’s what also happened.”

The Power of an Incomplete Truth

September 27, 2026

In my tagline, I reveal myself as navigating the storm of neurodivergence, trauma, and toxic family systems. For the archetypes with whom I have navigated strife or rupture, I imagine this perspective may feel unwelcome because it adds context to a much simpler explanation: I was just bad. Difficult. Crazy. Selfish. Unreasonable. Context provides nuance that the simpler explanation leaves out. Whatever may have been said or done to diminish me was charged to me: I caused it, deserved it, exaggerated it, or imagined it. The tagline isn’t an attempt to excuse myself, but the closest language I have found for an experience I spent decades unable to articulate. Naming neurodivergence, trauma, and a dysfunctional family system does not make every choice I have ever made harmless, good, or right. It allows nuance into a story where my context was effectively disregarded. And I can’t help but ask, in all earnestness: if my “craziness” was the explanation for every instance of hardship for me, why wasn’t anyone’s response concern, curiosity, or support? What I am chasing is not agreement but a fuller record. More of what actually happened allowed into the room. Other people’s explanations have passed for the complete story, while mine were categorically rejected as inadmissible. If I asked questions, I was manufacturing chaos. If I offered context, I was making excuses. If I remembered something differently, I was rewriting history. I was seeking a clean signal—clarity, cohesion, some way to sew the pieces together for a story that makes sense, even if what emerged was painful or unflattering to me. Apparently, asking clarifying questions seems to threaten the prescribed narrative. Providing context is recieved as equally troublesome. So I am left trying to make sense of a story I was expected to accept, while relevant context was not allowed into consideration. Have you ever realized that what seemed like the only obvious conclusion was actually inaccurate and deeply unfair — once you had a more complete account of the story? One real-life example: I’m in a hurry and stuck behind a man in a posh new Jaguar, stopped in the road and holding up traffic for what I assume is no good reason—just entitled and inconsiderate. Then I SEE he has gotten out of his car to help a disabled elderly person with a heavy package cross the street. Nothing about the stopped car changed. The context did. I feel some of that same aha humbling energy when I think about people like Howard Stern, Monica Lewinsky, Stormy Daniels, Pamela Anderson, and others whom I experienced through a particular public narrative without bothering to question what might have been missing from it. Sometimes the framing was profitable. Sometimes powerful people had an enormous stake in which version prevailed. Either way, I accepted a conclusion before I had much interest in the fuller record. Just saaaaayin.

Black-and-white illustration of a girl facing a man whose right hand beckons her closer while his left hand signals stop.

The System with No Name

September 20, 2026

For most of my life, I could see the individual friction points but not the structure they shared. I experienced them as isolated interactions. A misunderstanding. A rupture. A person who was displeased with me (and seemingly intent on making me pay). A relationship I had somehow failed to navigate correctly. I explained. Apologized. Twisted myself. Worked harder. Questioned myself. Tried another approach (but still, tragically, as myself). There was the conviction that if I could just understand what I was missing, I could make myself fit. My life energy was wastefully consumed trying to navigate first my family of origin, then people and patterns that mimicked the dynamic where I was expected to want, feel, and need what I did not– and also agree to matter less. I realize nobody got handed the rules. For mainstream, untraumatized, neurotypical people, it seems to make sense and work. Expressing any version of no or ouch or confusion consistently resulted in friction. This was baffling to me, honestly. I seriously expected support or comfort, or maybe even some genuine interest. Now, after nearly six decades of swinging and missing by miles, I have begun to recognize patterns. Systems. Dynamics. Power imbalance. Coercion. All of it. I see now how easily familiarity masqueraded as normalcy. If a relational structure has been encoded deeply enough, it does not necessarily feel like a structure. It can simply feel like the way things, people, and relationships are—like water to a fish, not something experienced as a condition or even a variable, but simply the world as it is. And when the majority can function comfortably inside it, a person who cannot is what—a traitor, deviant, pariah? The person who does not go with THE FLOW is THE problem. Gosh—-That boxing-with-ghosts fucking energy- it was pure mind fuckery. I kept approaching each interaction as though there must be a successful response available to me. As though enough insight, enough humility, enough explanation, enough effort would eventually make the thing workable. It didn’t. What I am now able to do is name my experience of it—to take something that has remained amorphous and make it legible. Healing has helped me recognize systems that are damaging to me rather than inclusive or supportive, like FOR and not opposed to me. I can choose more carefully where I participate, what I adapt to, and what I no longer agree to organize myself around. Putting it into language demystifies it. Ideally, that helps someone else recognize the structure too—something that may have previously defied articulation andfelt like theirs alone. Like a shared truth. Are you also learning to recognize the systems and people who are for you—and those who are not?

Black-and-white illustration of a girl saying, “What you said was hurtful,” facing a large shield covered by a receipt titled “Good Things I've Done.”

After All I’ve Done for You.

October 19, 2026

May I Remind You? Different people. Different circumstances. Continued familiar patterns. A few months ago, I said to my neighbor, “Hey, when you said X, it hurt my feelings.” Her response? “May I remind you…” followed by a list of ways she’d been helpful to me. I still don’t know why her response stunned me. It was entirely consistent with a familiar archetype: the person who expects things to automatically go their way and has no tolerance for frustration, disappointment, or anything that challenges their preferred version of themselves. And 100% of the time, with this archetype, my direct expression of hurt is received not as information about my experience or how our connection has been affected, but as an accusation to defend against or a claim to debate. I never responded. Interesting, though. We’d each been generous and helpful to one another. But I’d never considered my generosity protection against accountability. I’ve read about rejection sensitivity and narcissistic traits, particularly the need to be right, entitlement to having things their way, and the insistence on a narrative in which they can only be the hero or the victim. I’m increasingly interested in recognizing and understanding the patterns rather than proving anything about specific people. Since when does being helpful mean you can’t also have been hurtful? Both can be true. And similarly—Have you ever known someone who would only say “No” to a request along side listing all of the things they’d done for others or everything they “had” to do? Or who offered a reluctant yes or vague maybe when they already knew the answer was no?But with no thoguthful pause to genuinely ask, “Can we figure out a time that works for both of us?”Also, I do not discount that going to the gym and getting your hair done are legitimate needs. I find the long narrative that presents them as both the heroically generous and the overburdened victim to be unwholesome.

Two people sit apart on a couch. She imagines them steering a boat together. He imagines himself steering a boat labeled “MY PREFERENCE” along “THE FLOW,” dismissing her suggestion with, “Why can’t you just go with the flow?”

Expecting to Matter

October 17, 2026

In my family and marriage, my emotional and sensory sensitivities were treated as unreasonable burdens and acts of defiance. Rather than information worth considering, my preferences and limitations were interpreted as resistance. I struggled to navigate these relationships, which I experienced as structured around coercion and submission, where consideration wasn’t a shared value. Expressing individual needs was treated as not being a team player—a punishable offense. And when those needs were accommodated, they were logged as personal favors and evidence of fairness, further reinforcing the power imbalance. When a person can only tolerate having their way, even the possibility of not getting what they want can create considerable tension. Despite my best efforts, I found no way to remain under those rules of engagement. The only healthy option was to surrender the relationships rather than submit to unfavorable terms or keep fighting for better ones while being treated as though their proximity was a privilege, easily revoked. Fuck that. No, thank you.

A reflection on how appearances shape credibility, character judgments, and the recognition of harm.

The Art of Concealed Cruelty

October 17, 2026

The ability to engineer someone else’s downfall while appearing to have had nothing to do with it. I’m intimately familiar with calculated hostility. What I still cannot fathom is the level of executive function required to provoke someone, anticipate their reaction, and use it against them while presenting as entirely uninvolved. For someone as highly sensitive and reactive as I am, with my nervous system pretty much on the outside of my body, that kind of calculation is incomprehensible. My long game and executive function were scorched by ongoing unresolved trauma. As a child, I was frequently crying, throwing up, having meltdowns, and reacting intensely to things that seemed not to even register for others. In my family, my reactivity was met only with shame and punishment. I was judged ungrateful, negative, too sensitive, thin-skinned. I suppose the hope was that enough callousness might eventually toughen me. My skin never thickened, but I learned to be mean. Vicious even. Sometimes it offered a momentary release. The relief was fleeting. The guilt and shame were not. Contempt was standard fare, but some people (audibly clearing my throat) seemed instinctively savvy about rules and skills that eluded me. They could deliver a devastating strike with complete self-possession and have it pass for teasing, a misunderstanding, or a reasonable response to someone who had displeased them. My reactions were unmasked, unbridled. Obvious, undeniable, and punishable. And I was bewildered. Wasn’t I doing as my family does? My sister, seven years older, seemed to have mastered the poise I lacked. Provoking and baiting could pass as harmless while leaving me visibly distraught. Whatever provoked my distress— became secondary to my reaction. My emotional reaction could be counted on to steal the show and seal the case. Poise posed as evidence of good character; my reactivity, evidence of bad. I was innocent only of understanding the rules. Now, nearly 60, with language and recovery, I think the unspoken rule I couldn’t metabolize wasn’t that ridicule and belittling were wrong. Apparently, they were perfectly acceptable, even applauded, when directed at someone considered deserving, provided they were delivered with composure. Only recently have I begun to identify concealed hostility. Diminishing remarks disguised as observations. “Brutal honesty” that is more brutal than honest. Provocations. The ability to degrade or discredit someone while appearing calm, unaffected, reasonable. Have you ever been provoked into a reaction that was then used as evidence against you?

Split-screen illustration of a fish swimming in calm blue water and a girl surrounded by criticism, shame, and silent treatment. Both think, “just another day.”

What If It Was the Water?

October 15, 2026

I spent much of my life believing something was terribly wrong with me. In fact, I’m fairly certain that was suggested more than a handful of times. My struggle to exist harmoniously didn’t make me question my environment. It seemed only to confirm that I was the problem. It reminds me of the quote: “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” My failure to thrive was unmistakable. Overwhelmed by the intensity and confusion of the dynamic, I developed constant, involuntary, maladaptive behaviors. Rather than recognizing them as reactions to what I was experiencing, they were treated as evidence of my defectiveness. And that’s how I learned to see myself. And then, to add insult to injury, I was labeled as negative for my low self-esteem and the anger that came from living in constant turmoil without reprieve or guidance. It really was an inescapable loop. As a young adult, I began recognizing the consequences of directly expressing my needs or limits. I lacked both the understanding and the agency to respond in any useful way. I was essentially boxing with ghosts. I was taking hits, swinging blindly, and looking completely unhinged (which I was) to anyone watching. And so I relocated, first across the country and then out of the country, attempting to match the physical distance to the devastating emotional distance. Learning to identify the water hasn’t undone what living in it taught me—or made me an excellent swimmer. But I’m discovering who I am when I’m not constantly overwhelmed and reacting to what’s happening around me. And for the first time, I’m enjoying who I am. Engaging with life from a place of intention and agency is a far cry from living in reaction to something I couldn’t see or name.

Wholesome Badass girl draws a new relational blueprint based on nurturing, honest communication, accountability, and trust, while discarding an old blueprint of scapegoating, manipulation, and emotional neglect.

The Caller Was Inside the House

October 8, 2026

The people I relied on for protection were the same people I needed protection from. They were also the ones teaching lil baby Magda about herself, relationships, and the world. And so she gravitated toward relational patterns imprinted on her lil nervous system long before she could recognize or question them. Always reaching for the emotionally inaccessible archetype… She loved these people and wanted their approval, affection, and inclusion. They were her models for love, conflict, emotional regulation, and accountability. She mimicked some of their harmful behaviors, too. For how could she reject a model she hadn’t yet learned to recognize? I can share how Lil Baby Magda was harmed without asserting I, Big Magda, never caused harm. I own my unwholesome and misguided contributions without accepting responsibility for how others behaved. My first blueprint of the world was emotional instability, chaotic relationships, and illegible, amorphous rules and codes. My internal blueprint developed in response: my lens for perception, beliefs, vigilance, expectations, sense of worth, and capacity to care for myself, regulate my emotions and live with intention and dignity. Life might have been confusing even in a nurturing, steady family system. I might always have required more clarity, consistency, patience, and support. I lost decades tangled up in what the fuck had just happened and why, while forecasting what else would go wrong. What did I do? What did they mean? What did I miss? How do I keep it from happening again? Even when nothing was happening, I was still agonizing over things said and done years earlier. All that attention and energy spent trying to understand and prevent harm left no bandwidth to experience my own life. How much of what I’ve believed about my personality, character, worthiness, and lovability came from the people who taught me how to be a person? What might I have achieved if I hadn’t spent my life trying to figure out what was wrong with me? The messaging was consistent, collective, and insidious: Get different or be erased. If I was the designated problem and couldn’t correct myself, what was left? I couldn’t get different. I couldn’t get gone. I failed at both. And now I’m beginning to see a third way. Finally, I am getting different—not by correcting myself to fit the original blueprint, but by rejecting it.

A woman in Japan reacting with surprise and joy as a Japanese woman bows respectfully to her.

What I Thought Was Normal

October 5, 2026

I can’t help but laugh in disbelief as I recall my initial encounter of Japan. I seriously took the bowing personally. Not joking. I was 22, and not an all an adult. My understanding of respect, deference, and what people were entitled to take from one another was impossibly distorted. What I experienced as exceptional “kindness” was, in many ways, ordinary cultural respect. How could I have known? I do not recall behavioral models for respect and kindness. I was witness to only varied posturing, which was baffling and not at all intuitive for me. And no system with which to engage and demonstrate high regard for others. Just like weird reverence and what I would now call coercive abuse. A New Way to Relate For much of my life, the only familiar relational dynamic was binary: power over or be powered over. I saw rare others (like unicorns) living with more ease, mutuality, and peace, but that seemed remote. I knew only the system I had been brought up with. And if I had to choose from the menu of options I understood, I definitely believed it preferable to be on the giving end of the abuse because I equated that with authority and rightness. In recognizing and unlearning harmful patterns, I am also staring head-on at the ways I engaged and contributed. I had internalized the belief that how others treated me was information about who I was and what I deserved, and so learned to try and excuse my own harmful behavior by charging it to someone else…like my reaction to them was reflective of ONLY them. I could make no sense of why relationships hurt so much and why connection seemed synonymous with struggle. Looking back, of course it was miserable. If the only options were intimidation or submission, there was no room for flow, cohesion, or safety. And I am actually an avid fan of submission and surrender, but only with those who can be trusted on the other side of that dynamic—more harmony and collaboration than coercion. I have been utterly shocked to learn that some things can be familiar, common, and still symptomatic of unwellness. What feels pivotal is seeing both directions clearly: the harm done to me, and the harm I learned to repeat and then to end. I am deeply pained and regret the harm I learned to absorb, carry, and then offload onto other people. I understand more now, and I live differently, but understanding does not undo impact. Still—so much fkn unlearning. Reparenting yourself at 60 is a lot. What did you once think was normal and acceptable that you now view differently?

Black-and-white cartoon of Wholesome Badass in a jujutsu stance, holding up a glowing shield against dark arrows and scribbles. A speech bubble says, “But here’s what also happened.”

The Power of an Incomplete Truth

September 27, 2026

In my tagline, I reveal myself as navigating the storm of neurodivergence, trauma, and toxic family systems. For the archetypes with whom I have navigated strife or rupture, I imagine this perspective may feel unwelcome because it adds context to a much simpler explanation: I was just bad. Difficult. Crazy. Selfish. Unreasonable. Context provides nuance that the simpler explanation leaves out. Whatever may have been said or done to diminish me was charged to me: I caused it, deserved it, exaggerated it, or imagined it. The tagline isn’t an attempt to excuse myself, but the closest language I have found for an experience I spent decades unable to articulate. Naming neurodivergence, trauma, and a dysfunctional family system does not make every choice I have ever made harmless, good, or right. It allows nuance into a story where my context was effectively disregarded. And I can’t help but ask, in all earnestness: if my “craziness” was the explanation for every instance of hardship for me, why wasn’t anyone’s response concern, curiosity, or support? What I am chasing is not agreement but a fuller record. More of what actually happened allowed into the room. Other people’s explanations have passed for the complete story, while mine were categorically rejected as inadmissible. If I asked questions, I was manufacturing chaos. If I offered context, I was making excuses. If I remembered something differently, I was rewriting history. I was seeking a clean signal—clarity, cohesion, some way to sew the pieces together for a story that makes sense, even if what emerged was painful or unflattering to me. Apparently, asking clarifying questions seems to threaten the prescribed narrative. Providing context is recieved as equally troublesome. So I am left trying to make sense of a story I was expected to accept, while relevant context was not allowed into consideration. Have you ever realized that what seemed like the only obvious conclusion was actually inaccurate and deeply unfair — once you had a more complete account of the story? One real-life example: I’m in a hurry and stuck behind a man in a posh new Jaguar, stopped in the road and holding up traffic for what I assume is no good reason—just entitled and inconsiderate. Then I SEE he has gotten out of his car to help a disabled elderly person with a heavy package cross the street. Nothing about the stopped car changed. The context did. I feel some of that same aha humbling energy when I think about people like Howard Stern, Monica Lewinsky, Stormy Daniels, Pamela Anderson, and others whom I experienced through a particular public narrative without bothering to question what might have been missing from it. Sometimes the framing was profitable. Sometimes powerful people had an enormous stake in which version prevailed. Either way, I accepted a conclusion before I had much interest in the fuller record. Just saaaaayin.

Black-and-white illustration of a girl facing a man whose right hand beckons her closer while his left hand signals stop.

The System with No Name

September 20, 2026

For most of my life, I could see the individual friction points but not the structure they shared. I experienced them as isolated interactions. A misunderstanding. A rupture. A person who was displeased with me (and seemingly intent on making me pay). A relationship I had somehow failed to navigate correctly. I explained. Apologized. Twisted myself. Worked harder. Questioned myself. Tried another approach (but still, tragically, as myself). There was the conviction that if I could just understand what I was missing, I could make myself fit. My life energy was wastefully consumed trying to navigate first my family of origin, then people and patterns that mimicked the dynamic where I was expected to want, feel, and need what I did not– and also agree to matter less. I realize nobody got handed the rules. For mainstream, untraumatized, neurotypical people, it seems to make sense and work. Expressing any version of no or ouch or confusion consistently resulted in friction. This was baffling to me, honestly. I seriously expected support or comfort, or maybe even some genuine interest. Now, after nearly six decades of swinging and missing by miles, I have begun to recognize patterns. Systems. Dynamics. Power imbalance. Coercion. All of it. I see now how easily familiarity masqueraded as normalcy. If a relational structure has been encoded deeply enough, it does not necessarily feel like a structure. It can simply feel like the way things, people, and relationships are—like water to a fish, not something experienced as a condition or even a variable, but simply the world as it is. And when the majority can function comfortably inside it, a person who cannot is what—a traitor, deviant, pariah? The person who does not go with THE FLOW is THE problem. Gosh—-That boxing-with-ghosts fucking energy- it was pure mind fuckery. I kept approaching each interaction as though there must be a successful response available to me. As though enough insight, enough humility, enough explanation, enough effort would eventually make the thing workable. It didn’t. What I am now able to do is name my experience of it—to take something that has remained amorphous and make it legible. Healing has helped me recognize systems that are damaging to me rather than inclusive or supportive, like FOR and not opposed to me. I can choose more carefully where I participate, what I adapt to, and what I no longer agree to organize myself around. Putting it into language demystifies it. Ideally, that helps someone else recognize the structure too—something that may have previously defied articulation andfelt like theirs alone. Like a shared truth. Are you also learning to recognize the systems and people who are for you—and those who are not?