Woo! SXSW starts tomorrow!

Pace and I will be going, along with many, many of our wonderful awesome friends that we rarely get to see. We’ve even got Nathalie Lussier and Johnny Truant staying with us for several days!

Also, with Nathalie’s kick-ass organizational assistance, we’re hosting a Freak Revolution meet and greet and hang-out. Click here to check out details and RSVP!

We’re going to be up to our eyeballs in awesome.

If you’re going to be there and you want to see us, text me (Kyeli) at 512-705-2144 – and specify who you are, because I’m far more likely to respond if I know to whom I’m responding.

SXSW last year was so much fun. This year, it’ll be even better! Hope to see you there!

This is our first Very Personal Ad, a lovely tradition started by the lovely Havi.

Here’s what we want:

A new friend who…

is compassionate, ambitious, peaceful, and idealistic.
is spiritual but not religious.
lives in or near Austin.
is passionate about making the world a better place.
has healthy boundaries and knows how to hold them.
enjoys communication theory and practice.
is passionately dedicated to personal growth.
is vegetarian and a non-smoker.
is an entrepreneur.
is money-positive.
is empowered and biggified.
is queer or queer-friendly.
is sensitive, but not a drama queen.
is generally sensual but not sexual in manner.
likes to live a TV-free, news-free, and politics-free life.
is happy to learn and speak our languages of friendship.
has their shit together.
is generally happy, cheerful, and positive.
loves themself — body, mind, and soul.

Our commitment:

We will do our darnedest to find you.
We will be good friends to you.
We will be open, honest, and kind with you.
We will enjoy your company thoroughly and be thoroughly good company for you.
We will make time for you.

How this could work:

As of today, we have started looking for you in earnest. We might meet you at the local UU church, on Triiibes, in our Coffee House, at a yoga gathering, a meditation group, a Zen meetup, a Feri gathering, an NVC class, at the Human Potential Center, through an advanced personal development course, a TV-free group, in a gaggle of queer geeks, on the Kitchen Table, in the Third Tribe, on Steve Pavlina’s forums, among raw foodists, through the Austin Small Business Association, or this week at SXSW.

We might realize that one of our existing friends is actually you, and we didn’t realize it until now.

We might meet you in an unexpected and serendipitous way.

Or you might read this and get in touch with us at paceandkyeli@freakrevolution.com or by leaving a comment right here.

In the Freak Revolution Manifesto, we talk about diversifying your monkeysphere as a way to change the world. In the manifesto, we’re talking about getting to know a diverse group of people.

Today, we’re talking about doing the exact same thing with imaginary people instead of real people.

Produce Imaginary Lesbians

If you’re an artist (author, screenwriter, painter, poet, whatever), create art that diversifies others’ monkeyspheres. Create art that broadens the mind. Create art that helps people connect with those who appear different, unfamiliar, or freaky.

Consume Imaginary Lesbians

Even if you didn’t have any lesbian friends, you might still have some lesbians in your monkeysphere from watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or even The L Word.

Can you think of books, movies, or TV shows that portray other types of freaks as actual human beings that you can relate to and empathize with? Bisexuals? Poly people? Transsexuals? Homeschoolers? Raw foodists? Pagans? Muslims?

Consume more of those. Stretch your boundaries a little. Learn about people who you’re not already comfortable and familiar with. It can be fiction or nonfiction — reading someone’s autobiography can certainly pull them into your monkeysphere.

Freak Revolution Book Club

What are your recommendations for monkeysphere-diversifying books (or any other kind of art), and why?

How about reading a book that someone else recommends?

On January 1st (01/01), I was in Brigid’s Well. My life changed.

On February 2nd (02/02), my uterus collapsed. My life changed.

Today is March 3rd (03/03).

Two weeks ago, I promised myself that today, I would pick up and move on. I will still honor the pain, I will still stop for hurting if I need to hurt. I will still cry when I need to cry and mourn when I need to mourn – and even mope when I need to mope.

But as of today, I will not default to mope. I will turn my face to the sun and step out of the shadow. I will make that terrifying appointment with the doctor that I’ve been avoiding for a month. I will give light to my new plans and new ideas; I will speak them and start working with them. I will make vision boards and plans.

I will stop hiding out of fear and pain.

I will move forward instead of standing still.

I’m ready. I’m finally ready.

Well, I decided not to wall off my heart.

That seems to be going well. Seems to have been the right decision.

So, now what?

I’ve started thinking.

Thinking is a big change from all the sitting around and hurting I’ve been doing. Progress.

I’ve been ruminating. Pondering. Wondering. Considering. Even weighing options and – get this – thinking about what to do next.

I’ve been tossing about ideas. I’ve gotten excited a few times. I’ve had conversations that didn’t revolve around what I’ve lost. I’ve even had a good day once or twice, mixed in among the days I lay in bed and ache. Ups have started appearing again, instead of the endless string of downs.

I’ve started stitching my heart back together, carefully this time. Scared, aching, unsure. Terrified. Emotional. Angry, sometimes. Sad. But slowly, slowly, slowly… moving again.

I’m not sure where I’m headed, but at least I’m starting to feel like I’m heading somewhere – and that it’s not an incredibly terribly horrible somewhere.

I’ve even started thinking about considering maybe possibly someday opening back up a little. Maybe. Possibly. Someday.

Then, Pace and I had a conversation in which she said spiritual things, and I stopped her. Flat held up my hand and said, “Okay, stop. Right now.” But it was too late, I’d already heard what I needed (but desperately didn’t want) to hear.

Now I’m walking around with a heavy shadow. An epiphany, this cloud of important vital Knowing haunting my steps. I can’t turn around, can’t move my head too fast, else I’ll fall into it. Then there’s no turning back. Some part of me already knows, but I’ll be damned before I let the rest of me know yet. I’m just not ready… which leaves me walking around like a hunted animal, being so very careful what I do or say or see or think so I won’t jump into this new place before I’m ready. Because I am so very not ready yet.

But I’m close.

And that’s progress, in my book. At least a little.

Last week, we watched “The Tale of Desperaux”. In it, the narrator says “There are those hearts that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman.”

I, in my broken-hearted state, nodded and wept.

The next morning, I decided to carelessly sew my heart back together and wall it off. I’ve been broken-hearted so many times before, I decided I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I’m tired of being heart-sick, so I’ll just whip some stitches in there and wall off my heart.

Then, I loaded up my current addiction, Sims 3. I decided – and I’m not proud of this – to make the meanest, heartless-est, cruelest sim I could, and play her so I could vent my anger and hurt and madness and test out my newfound heartlessness.

I named her Quinn.

But I don’t just play the Sims. I’m a storyteller, so I craft their stories. I weave emotion into their lives, give meaning to the little tasks they do at my whim. I love my Sims.

I’m already not doing so well at being heartless, eh?

Quinn was mean. She was evil and mean-spirited and hot-headed, she enjoyed making enemies and hurting people, and loved getting into fights.

But every time she’d walk away from a fight, in my story, she was really sad. Deep down, her broken-all-too-often, crooked, badly mended heart would hurt, just a little bit, every single time.

In her sub-terrain home, she would sit on her couch and just be angry.

In my beautiful home, I’ve been sitting on my couch and just being angry.

In her story, in my imagination, something tragic had happened to her, and she’d walled off her heart. She’d mended it too quickly, and wound up hurting too badly to bear, and, brick by brick, tragedy by tragedy, built the wall til she couldn’t feel anymore.

So tempting.

But I could see it in her lovely face – I could see every freak I know. I could see every kid who threw shoes at me, real or verbal. I could see every bully, every jerk, every tail-pulling, rock-throwing, finger-flipping asshole I’ve ever encountered. I could see their broken, crooked, badly-mended hearts, walled off to protect themselves from whatever pain finally did them in and built their walls.

In the end, I deleted her game. I couldn’t take it. I was weeping for her, for her poor broken, crooked, hurting and hurtful heart. I loved Quinn, and my own heart ached for hers, hardened though it was.

And in turn, my own heart ached for my own heart, hurting as it is. I was filled with compassion for myself. I sat there, starting at my computer screen, and let myself hurt.

And I do hurt. I ache. I long for the life I had a month ago, a life of preparation and blissful unawares, a life on the brink instead of in the mush.

But in the end, a wall isn’t the answer. Not for me, not for my sensitive, bared-to-the-world, broken, crooked, badly-mended heart.

I’m rather severely depressed.

I caught a cold this week from my kiddo. It gives me the excuse to sit around all day and do nothing, to take NyQuil to help me sleep – and then sleep til 1pm the next afternoon. But really, that’s all I want to do right now anyway. Sleep and do nothing.

I don’t want to see people, but I’m lonely. I don’t want to go out, but I’m feeling stir crazy. I hate my hair, I hate my glasses, I hate all my clothes, I hate my environment and my stuff. I wander around the house feeling empty and ghost-like, and even my reflection is haunted, my eyes dark and clouded.

I lay in bed at night and feel my heart beat. It’s still there, still beating, pouring life and energy through me. But I’m so detached. I feel like a visitor in this temple, left with only the vague memory of it once being important – and not all that long ago. But I’m so ravaged by the hurt, so caught up in betrayal and dismay and heartbreak, that this place seems long abandoned.

The eye of the hurricane has closed around me, and I’m caught here, spinning and spinning and lost, adrift in the ache, detached from the moorings that once could have guided, removed from the light that once held me steady – forcibly removed, by my own hand. Unsure, uncertain – and at the moment, unwilling – to find the way back.

I am a huge volcano of pain erupting and bubbling over at the most inconvenient of times. I am a raging river of anger, a tornado of swirling hurting emotions throwing trees at innocent bystanders and anyone who gets in the way. I’m dropping houses, so watch out.

Over the weekend, I burst into tears and cried ragged, broken sobs for long periods of time, and then I’d get furious. Raging hopping mad. I walk around the house floating on the rush of emotion as I rapidly swing from up to down to angry to sad to despair to fury, lightheaded and heavy-hearted.

I said to Pace, “I am too full. I can’t hold all this rage and grief; it’s too much for me. I’m too small to contain it all.”

She said, “Well, I can tell you something that will help, but you’re not going to like it.”

I braced myself.

She said, “Get down on your knees and ask for help. The help is there, but you have to ask for it, and you have to be open to it, and you have to really want it.”

I said, “Fuck no.”

I’m not open to it. The Divine, which I was so open to a month ago, can stuff itself. I want nothing to do with Spirit, nothing to do with God(s), nothing to do with any of it.

I had a spiritual epiphany in Ireland. I’ve been opening and growing spiritually since the new year. I’ve been excited and open and learning and reaching out, eager to grok my new-found spirituality. And now I’m slamming a Big Fat Fucking Door shut right in the Divine Face.

I was there before. When I lost my baby, I was on my knees, begging, praying, gasping, desperate, pleading not to lose her. I spent hours there, alone in my sanctuary – my holiest of spaces in my house – begging for help.

I was ignored. Regardless of whether or not anyone or anything heard me, I certainly felt ignored. I felt nothing – no compassion, no love, no assistance, not a damn iota of Grace. Nothing. Nothing for the entire duration of the hell I was in, nothing for over a year, nothing at all when I needed it most.

I spent two months bleeding out the life inside me. I recovered just enough to be devastated again when, two months after the initial loss, I had to go back in for a D&C. Alone, laying on a cold white sterile table, crying frantically til the gas took my consciousness and the doctors took what tiny little bit was left of my daughter-that-never-was.

I spent over a year recovering.

And then, five years and miles of healing later, I felt Divinely Called to be a surrogate. It hit me like a bolt of lightning, after a ritual and a healing session. I’ve never been so sure of my Purpose. I was full of light and joy and meaning. I’ve spent the last two years preparing my body, mind, and spirit to heed this Divine Call and have babies for other people.

Just to have my own body fall apart 6 weeks before I was to get started.

Fuck.

No.

I don’t know what I’m meant to do from here. I know there’s good in everything. I know everything happens for a reason. I know there are bigger and better things out there for me. I even know what I actually need to do, and I know I’ll get there and do it eventually.

But right now, I don’t fucking care.

I am devastated.

I’m going through the motions of my life, trying to pretend I’m okay when I’m in social situations. Trying not to let on how much I’m hurting, how deeply the pain is lodged. How broken my heart is.

When my uterus collapsed, my dream collapsed.

Two years ago, my body, mind, and spirit in wholeness was called to be a surrogate for alternative families.

And my birthday, five short weeks away, was to be my launch date – when I announced it and started family-finding.

I planned to spend this month writing copy, prepping my website, arranging things, planning contracts, and generally getting ready. I’ve spent the last two years getting in better shape, taking prenatal vitamins, changing my diet, and preparing my body for pregnancy. I’ve been reading books, learning about the process, getting to know the laws. I’ve even got a business name, a gorgeous header, and a url all ready to go.

But then, this.

I knew, going in, that finding a family would be challenging. I’m 33, which is just this side of the age danger zone. I’ve had a miscarriage, which means I’ve got a higher chance of future miscarriage. I’m fat.

But I was called, so I heeded. I never wavered. I knew in my heart I would find someone, I would bring a new life into the world for someone who couldn’t. I knew it, I believed it, I felt it.

And now, this.

And even if I manage to ease all the symptoms of my newfound disorder, it can take a very long time to get back in the right place for bearing children – and I might never be able to do it non-surgically. And, either way, the risks of miscarriage and premature birth skyrocket.

I can’t look a family in the eyes and assure them that my womb is a safe place for their baby. I can’t even look myself in the eye with that assurance.

Because it’s not true anymore.

My body isn’t a safe place to gestate.

I will never have another baby, for myself or for anyone else.

I am so devastated. Heart-sick. Sad to the core of my being, sad all the way to my bones, sad from the inside out and back again.

And, of course, on top of this heart-pain, there’s been a lot of physical pain. I’m cramping, and sometimes it’s quite severe. I’ve done so many Kegels that my Kegel muscle aches all the time. I’m afraid to poop, I’m afraid to sneeze, and sometimes I’m even afraid to pee. I can’t bear so much as the thought of having sex; I can’t even bear the thought of masturbating – I don’t want to be touched sexually whatsoever. I feel so afraid and broken and icky. And it’s been nearly two weeks and hasn’t gotten any better at all.

My body has become a place of fear and worry and heartache. I feel betrayed by my body and by my spirit and by Spirit. I’m not aligned with my self, and the dissonance that causes is as troubling as the heartache.

Hello again! Here’s a taste of what’s been going on lately with our community and around the internets.

How to be telepathic

This is an interesting article about how to avoid the usual error. The upshot is to imagine what the other person would think at some point far away in the future, rather than imagining what they would think right now. When it comes to guessing what others are thinking, our future-guessing is far more accurate (even for now!) than our now-guessing.

Taylor Muse

Our friend Taylor Muse shares his thoughts about religion, music, Daniel Quinn, and the control paradigm. It’s a moving post, and there’s some interesting discussion in the comments. You can read it here.

Idea Catalyst Kit

Our friend Megan at IdeaSchema (you may remember her as the talent behind the book design for The Usual Error, among many other things) has launched a new product called the Idea Catalyst Kit. It’s for entrepreneurs trying to figure out how to come up with a brilliant idea for a successful business, or entrepreneurs who already have brilliant ideas and don’t know what to do with them.

We don’t make any money if you click on these links; our only goal in sharing this with you is to help you get those ideas out of your head and into the world, any way you can. We’ve peeked inside the box, and it’s not just hype — there’s impressively good stuff in there! Megan is high quality. Click and see for yourself!

The Narcissist: A User’s Guide

Our friends Betsy and Lori have written a new e-book: The Narcissist – A User’s Guide. It teaches you how to recognize and deal with narcissists in your life.

What kind of people are we talking about here?

• Friends who sap you of energy.
• Co-workers who make your life miserable.
• Family members who criticize you, incessantly argue with you, and drive you crazy.
• People who demand lots of emotional maintenance but rarely reciprocate.

What they call narcissists, we might label "emotional manipulators", "codependent abusers", or "emotional vampires".

This is very important stuff here. If anyone in your life fits this description, then please give this e-book a read. Think of it as a troubleshooting appendix to The Usual Error.

It’s only 30 pages, but it’s packed with practical wisdom. It’s a great read and it’s also written in a way that’s easy to skim. And best of all, it’s free!

Here’s the link! Narcissist: A User’s Guide

Austin Makes a Book

Austin, TX residents: Check this out, it’s a crowdsourced book! 100 people, 100 pages. Kyeli and I just submitted our page (an essay about the monkeysphere), and now there are only 25 24 pages left. Hmm, since they let Kyeli and me share a page, I guess that makes it 101 people, 100 pages. Off-by-one error. (:

If you live in or around Austin and would like to submit a story, essay, photo, art, or whatever, check out Austin Makes a Book.

Pace and Kyeli are Retreating

How will Pace and Kyeli be spending our Valentine’s Day weekend? At Jen Louden’s Virtual Retreat, that’s how!

Oh my gosh, this is going to be so good. Jen is such a sweetheart, and we’re doing a bunch of lovely things with Patti Digh, Hiro Boga, Fabeku, and oodles of other shiny people. (:

We’re looking forward to it ridiculous lots. It’ll be like a huge emotional and spiritual sigh. The kind where you breath in deeply, let it out slowly, and you feel like your shoulders relax and sink all the way into the soft bouncy peat bog grass. Or maybe that’s just us. (;

The price goes up by $50 tonight at midnight, so if you feel inspired to join us at the Virtual Retreat, you might want to register soon.

Click here (affiliate link, direct link) to read more, and to see the whole list of interesting and fabulous people!