Blog: One Year Without My Boy

Today marks the one year anniversary of Harvey’s passing. If you are new to this blog, me, or just need a refresher, Harvey was my thirteen & a half year old Golden Retrieve. He was my first dog that I ever got for myself, that wasn't a family dog, & he & I were together from the summer of my nineteen year until this exact date last year. I don’t want this blog to be about that loss, or that story, so if you’re interested in that full rigamarole I will like it just below here so that you can have context if you so desire.

No, this blog won’t be about that loss, at least not in the immediate sense. This entry into my open journal that I broadcast across the internet will instead be about the year that followed & how that has presented itself in my day to day life.

I think it’s worth noting that I consider Harvey to be my ‘soul animal.’ If you are unaware of what that is, a soul animal is a pet that you have a bond so deep with that there’s no way they aren’t tied into you on a spiritual level. If you believe that sort of thing. Harvey was my guy, my furry rock for a large portion of my adolescent life, & losing him felt like losing a chunk of myself. Harvey was also a dog that so many bonded with over the thirteen & a half years of his life. He was a pinnacle of pupdom, if you will.

This last year without his was something I always knew I’d have to face one day, but was something that I had no clue would hit me nearly as hard as it did. You see, grief is a sneaky, shifty thing. It lays in wait for you to stumble upon a photo, or for a memory to come skittering back into your mind. It rips you back to a time or place that has long since passed & sinks longing into your bones. But I don’t want to sound like I think grief to be this dark looming figure that haunts you in the wee hours of the night. I think in my mind grief is an illusive figure that wraps a melancholic hug around your neck & whispers gently in your ear “I’m sorry.”

I think the thing that hit me hardest over the last year are the moments you don’t expect. The photos, the videos, the stories; you expect to have them in your life & to have them resurface from time to time, it’s the unexpected that gets you. What do I mean by that? Just a few weeks ago I was out walking Peter, our five year old blonde Golden Retriever. We rounded the corner & a couple hundred yards up the road there was a woman walking away from us with a red Golden. I suppose I should stop here & mention that Harvey was a red Golden with a burnt umber coat. Peter freaked out. He wanted nothing more than to run after the other dog, to meet up with them, in the small hope that her dog was in fact Harvey. It ripped my heart out & I turned him to walk the other way the whole time saying “I know bud, but it’s not him,” & having him insistently peering back in their direction & whining to turn back around. That’s what I mean by the unexpected.

I will say it gets easier, the heart begins to heal, but there are still times when even the expected will make me miss him so deeply that it brings me to tears. I simply step aside, acknowledge the hurt & the ache of loss, smile at the utter privilege it is to have loved so deeply that the absence still lingers on, & I continue on with living while missing him.

The other moments where I am brought to tears are those where I awaken from dreams where he is there. These are the worst because they often feel so utterly real. They feel like he’s back or like he’s visiting & I typically wake up sobbing into a pillow just fall back asleep, grateful for his visit in the dreamworld.

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss my dog with all of my being, but I’ve definitely gotten to the point where it’s just a part of me that I carry. I’m not holding onto that grief or letting it consume me by any means but I think his is a part of myself that I will spend the remainder of my days missing. He is a part of my soul that has flown this earth & that which remains of me aches from the separation.

Harvey passed on the morning of May 24th, 2024. It was a day I knew was coming but one that wasn't made any easier by its impending. I think I was a ghost of a human for about the two weeks following & definitely operated at less than full capacity for probably a month or so after. He still holds an empty bed in my home. He still has toys that live scattered amongst the furniture & tucked away in closets. I still find the signatures of the life he lived; a tuft of hair here, a nose smudge on a glass there, a hole in the back yard that he dug that I still have yet to fill. The corner of the kitchen where he used to lay & watch the world go by from the window no longer carries his soul but still bares the remainder of his physical being though in its altered form. No longer wrapped in warmth & fur, he is now but a cherry box of ashes that bares his name embroidered in gold letters.

I know I said this a year ago, but I miss my dog y’all. I miss my best friend, my silent confidant whose deep brown eyes never wavered from love & intuitive understanding. I miss his smile (yes, he smiled, & he did so near constantly), I miss when he was silly & clumsy, I miss his stinky breath in the morning from the side of the bed, I miss how much he loved, not just me but everyone who had the privilege of meeting him. I know that all of this will fade with time & distance but some days, like today, weight heavier than others.

It is my honest hope that all of you get to experience that kind of love at some point in your life. That non-judgemental, truly unconditional love that heals your soul & makes you feel truly seen. & though the pain of its eventual loss may feel like a consequence that outweighs the benefit, I promise you it isn’t. My heart only bleeds this much because of him, because he loved me as I am; through nights where I couldn’t imagine facing another morning, through break-ups, meltdowns, revelations, disappointments, trials, loss, depression, pain, & brokenness, he loved me. On the days where I was not a good owner, a good caregiver, a good friend, he loved me. Through the highest highs & the lowest lows, he loved me & wow, what a gift that is

If you are a pet owner I want you to hold your pets a little tighter today, give them a treat, take them on a longer walk, because they are special, they are sacred, & they give to us so very much for what amounts to so little in return.

I love you eternally Harv. Thanks for being all that you didn’t have to be. I’ll see you in my dreams my sweetest boy.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Wander On , Oh Wanderer

A few blogs back I talked about how I’ve come to this realization that “some of us are here to wander.” If I’m being honest, lately it has been a bit of my north star, my affirmation that the straight & narrow path isn’t for all of us & that those of us who drift hither & yon are doing just as much, if not more for society, than those who trek onwards through the conventional.

I know I’ve mentioned this sentiment outside of this blog space a couple of times, especially to those who are close to me, so much so that Evan got me a print made that says “some of us are here to wander” for my birthday. Clearly it’s been a bit of an all consuming idea for me. But what do I mean by that? What is the inner goo that makes up this mantra for me? What has driven me to have such an affinity for its assertion? I’m so glad I asked for you.

I have an undying hunger within me. It’s almost entirely insatiable. I want to know the far corners of the world, the depths of the ocean, the ways in which the people’s of the world live, the most intricate, taste bud stimulating combinations ever put to plate, bowl, or cup. I want to experience & then to share my findings with the world. Simply put, that is what I crave, daily. Novelty, discovery, adventure, experience, life in all of its many forms both human & not. But the thing that I think brings me the most interesting joy & satisfaction is the desire to be proven wrong.

We as human beings are cholkablock with opinions; what sports team is the best, what the best country is, what the best weather is, who makes the best food, what the best bands are, who deserves rights & who doesn’t…apparently…, some more boisterous & in your face than others. Some more deeply ingrained than others. A lot of the times, I have found, that humans also really don't like having their opinion of something changed. They don’t like to have new information put into their noggins that challenges the ideas they have hammered as hard as they can down into their core. Why? Well, to put it simply, change is scary.

From an evolutionary stand point, change is scary because it breaks the routine. We may have an ingrained set of beliefs that has led us to exist, to survive, & when something shifts that challenges the ‘this is the way things are done & have to be done so we can survive’ we get a lot of push back from the mind & the body. That’s why making or breaking habits is so very difficult for us, because it kicks us out of the coast through survival & forces something new upon us. That is why it is so hard to get through to people politically, religiously, personally, because telling someone that what they believe is incorrect with the new information to support that distinction is equivalent to telling someone that the rain comes because of precipitation, not because of whatever folk story or mythology has told them creates the rain.

Now I want to be abundantly clear that I am not here to discredit anyone’s spirituality or belief system, I consider myself a deeply spiritual person & I do believe sometimes the rain comes because there has been power put behind it, be it intention, prayer, whatever. That still doesn’t change the scientific reasoning behind why the clouds formed in the first place or why the water fell.

From an evolutionary stand point there is a part of me that is broken because I want that. I want the new information that blows my mind wide open & creates something new in the place of that which was out dated. I want to be mesmerized by the universe & its complexities. I want to be in awe of something simply because it showed me something different & new. I want to be made to feel as small as a drop of water in the ocean or as important as the human that dropped the strawberry that fed the ant colony for the summer. Because as human beings, that’s what we are; altogether entirely insignificant & a miracle. So I want to be shown that, made to feel that, thrust onto the universal stage & reduced to the atomic level to be an unsee member of something bigger & much more complex.

This, I think, is the key to my wanderers spirit. It’s the desire to see just how wrong the limited scope of existence I was taught is, but also to see the underlying threads of connectivity that bind us energetically, molecularly, socially, universally. It is glimpsing the divine through the lens of discovery. It is the art of noticing, but also the art of taking it all in. Big picture to small.

For some of you, this blog rings true all the way down through the marrow & tissue right to the soul. You see the world, the cosmos, everything through the eyes of a wanderer & you crave it in your bones. To you I say wander on, oh wanderer! For some of you, this idea is very foreign to you. Your lens is very direct & focused on that which is in front of you, on the steps you take, & the minutes of the days as they slip by. I would challenge you to embrace a bit of this. To dip your toes into the unknown & see what the ripples attract. You might be surprised at how much it intrigues you. You might find the next thing you know you are submerged in the great mystery, chomping at the bit to peek behind the curtain & see what lives there pulling the ropes. Life lives on the other side of fear, embrace the chaos of the storm & see where you end up & how much life it leads you through.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: The Buck That Falls Short Of The Ballot Box

I need to get something off of my chest & I want to do so in a way that is both delicate to those involved yet still holds space for the harsh reality of hurt that I feel. I also don’t want this to just be some “woe is me” dump, because I want to share all of this because there is a continuous conversation happening around me where the themes of this story are concerned. With that knowledge in mind I wanted to get on here & convey this feeling & this pit that eternally resides in my stomach because I know there are others out there coping with the same feelings & many of you have been for a while.

It’s hard to make people care. Flat out. It’s hard to get people to change any rigid expectation or opinions formed through life experience in favor of seeing something they’ve never seen before, or thought they would have to deal with. You cannot make someone be empathetic if the systems ingrained in their psyche tell them that you might just be deserving of any pain that they may cause you. Unfortunately, that kind of conditioning doesn't leave much room for authentic human, non-judgmental connection. This is how a lot of us are feeling right now, specifically those of us who belong to marginalized communities or stand firmly planted in the support of those being outwardly harmed by the current administration in the United States.

I want to relay a story to you all. I won’t be overly going into specifics nor am I here to publicly shame anyone, but I want to tell this like it is. This last Christmas I had a falling out with my family, it revolved around politics & I ended up leaving Christmas day to drive home to Nashville to be with Evan who bumped his flight up a day so he could be here to support me. A gem. Since that day I have felt an ever widening chasm between my family & I. Communication diminished or outright didn’t happen at all until my birthday last month & if I’m being entirely real with you all, I am still very hurt by the whole ordeal & the continued support they have for someone who is not just doing harm to those within my community, but ripping families apart across the nation. I’ve spent months mulling over this feeling, wondering if maybe I’m overreacting, if my hurt is justified, etc., but not matter how much I try to turn it over in my mind or release the hold it has on me, the ache doesn't seem to go away. It’s made it so that I actually feel very uncomfortable going back to Kansas. The idea of which immediately floods me with anxiety.

Now I am in a position where I have to face that anxiety & hurt head on. You see, annually, my parents are gracious enough to put together a family reunion. The location changes every year & they do so because so many of us live in so many different places around the country. It gives them the opportunity to see us all together & build an experience & memory around that. Cute. On paper I’m grateful for it. In reality the booking of the tickets the other night has sent me into an anxious spiral.

I’m going to divert for a second here & answer a question that may linger following the precious paragraph; then why not just back out? Because, I love these people. Genuinely. They are my family. So I show up over & over again with hope, with the desire to be seen or heard because I don’t want to be the loner that doesn’t talk to or see his family. I don’t want my nieces & nephew growing up thinking I abandoned them for something I’m sure will be explained away superficially because those conveying the information don’t understand. I want desperately to belong to them, whole heartedly, & without having to minimize the parts of myself that don’t fit into their ideal image, but on the other hand I’m having a really hard time being the ‘squeaky wheel.’

I’m having a really hard time with three things in particular. I’m having a hard time setting aside the hurt I still feel from them. I’m having a hard time with reuniting under the knowledge that some of these people, who claim to love & support me, still actively & fervently support a regime that seeks to do Evan & I & our friends harm. & if I’m being entirely real, I’m having a hard time seeing the principles they claim to embody reflected in them.

There’s dissonance, duality. God knows I am far from perfect but it is bringing up an impossible moral quandary within me. I don’t & cannot seem to understand how people who, for all intents & purposes, are ‘good people,’ who would give the shirt of their back to someone in need, can be in support of something so heinously hateful & damaging. Not only to this nation but also those within it. I don’t understand how people who claim they will do anything to support you out of ‘love’ find that ‘love’ to be in short order when it comes to casting a ballot. I cannot wrap my head around it & it’s killing me.

Let’s forget me for a second. Let’s put aside the LGBTQ of it all & just focus on some other people. How does the buck for loving your neighbor, for “treating the foreigner among you as native-born” stop when someone has crossed into this country out of desperation & fear? Stop when someone is brown or black? Stop when someone risks their life to come here in hopes for a better life for their family? How is that Godly? How do you sit in a pew praying to someone who advocated for the poor, the maligned, the outcast, the immigrant, the sex worker, the addict, the “least of these” & told them to “come as they are” just to cheer & speak favorably about people being ripped from their families or sent out of the country without due process or stripped of their rights as a human being? How is that Christ like?

I don’t understand the dissonance & it eats away at me because I know how these people feel about people like me. I have heard it my whole life. I know how these people persecute & judge people like me. I hear it now. I have the privilege of being CIS, white, male, & somedays ‘straight passing.’ I know how people talk about people like me because they talk about people like me TO me with a cross around their neck & “Jesus in their hearts.” Then they sell out their neighbors, their friends, their family members at the ballot box in favor of the lies of ‘less taxation’ or the promise of a return to when they had more white power & other people couldn’t annoy them with the sprinkles of equality this nation has given them over the years. You are called to walk by faith, to let people know you are Christian by your love, but when the curtain is drawn, when the selection is private, you sell anyone you can down the river for a spoon fed lie about egg prices. How is anyone supposed to feel supported & loved in that?

Maybe when they come for us then you’ll finally understand. Maybe when they decide we no longer can get married, no longer live together, slap us with a criminal charge, or just send us to El Salvador, Kenya, or Libya, then you’ll finally understand. But I’m not holding my breath on that one because you don’t seem to understand when it’s happening to nationalized citizens whose only crime was being born with a little more melanin.

If you are like me & so many that I know who find commonality in the feelings within this blog, I am truly sorry. I don’t have the answers for you, clearly. I just want you to know that there’s someone out here that understands, that feels for you. I want you to know that your frustrations, your pain, your rage, your anxiety, all of it is valid & justified. You deserve to live in a world that sees you for the amazingly unique & complex person that you are & celebrates that instead of expecting you to shrink yourself or inflicts physical or emotional harm because of it. My love & my broken heart go out to you. Take a piece if you need, I hope that it makes yours feel a little more full.

From one bleeding hearted liberal to another,

Much love & safety to you all,

-C

Blog: I Know About Me, & I'm Not Feelin' 33.

Hiya!

Welcome all, welcome all to this, my blog. I meant to post about this last week, seeing how my birthday was the 16th, but I was too busy doing birthday shenanigans to be sat long enough to create a post for you all to dig your teeth into. Apologies, but lemme live my life. Damn. Anywho, this here blog will be about my recent birthday, in which I turned the magical, super young age, of 33 years old. A third of a century as my father so delicately put it.

In the world of numerology 33 is considered a master number. Each number what repeats (11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99, 111, etc.) is considered as such, & with this ‘master number’ also comes an assigned meaning. 33 is the master teacher. It is a number all about altruistic service, unconditional love, compassion, spiritual uplifing, etc.. Not just internally, but also for the collective.

3s are often considered the strongest number, they lack the dependance of duality & structurally form the strongest construct with the triangle. 3s are often also associated with creativity, joy, communication, so when doubled up you get that energetic signature doubled as well. It is also the number associated with Christ Consciousness. Think Holy Trinity.

So we went a lot of different directions very quickly with that brief soirée into 33 & the breakdown around it, but how does the number make me feel? How does it feel to be Charlie Rogers, newly minted 33 year old? Well, I’m so glad you asked, let me write a whole entire blog as a response to tell you!

In short I too have broad & widely varied feelings about the whole ordeal. Yes, age is just a number & as our annual ticker climbs higher & higher it should be seen more & more as a gift. Not all of us have the privilege of age, much less healthy age, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that a part of me didn’t feel strangely old this year.

I’m not entirely sure why in previous years; 30, 31, 32, I don’t feel as though the weight of my 30s had really sunk in. There’s definitely another part of that we will get into in a couple more paragraphs, but for whatever reason this was the first year that number, 33, really sank in to me. I know to a handful of you reading this that will feel very young still & I think for all intents & purposes it is. I am still in the former half of the average life expectancy. I’m also not entirely sure if I can explain it properly either. There was just something about this birthday that came with a feeling of strange seniority, like I am one year away from joining AARP & retiring to the God forsaken land of Florida. Again, I know that’s hyperbolic, but it was a feeling I carried throughout the last week.

To be entirely frank, I had to ask myself the other night how old I was. Someone asked me which birthday had just passed & I couldn’t for the life of me remember. See! Check me into the facility, my memory is fading.

On the other side of that coin, most days, I feel entirely between the age of 25-27 still. Which is weird, because I haven’t been there for what is going on just short of a decade. Gross. Why did I say that?! I think a lot of my friends who are around the same age as I am would agree with that feeling. Maybe it’s a symptom of having lived through a pandemic where so many of our lives were put on hold. Or living in a world where the daily news is typically competing to try & out “end of the world” itself from the previous day. Whatever the root of it is, so many of us, myself included, find ourselves in this weird liminal space where we’re aging but feel stuck at a point in our lives that was over five years ago.

I definitely don’t think my body agrees with me most day. I find myself increasingly unable to do all of the things athletically that I could in my 20s & don’t get me started on alcohol. One drink in & I feel inflamed & the next day I feel straight up like I went on a several day bender. It’s forcing me to be much more selective with what I consume on a regular basis & where the ‘special occasion’ items are actually worth it or not.

So there in lies the trinity of my feelings towards this most recent birthday. I’m grateful that I’ve made it this far but I don’t feel my age, mentally, but on the other hand, I weirdly feel older than that at the same time. It’s complicated. I would also say that I think this was the first birthday I wasn’t overly looking forward to. It kind of snuck up on me & I really didn’t feel much like celebrating it. Incredibly unlike me. I just kind of wanted to watch it go past & wave at it from the window as it did. It didn’t feel like some pinnacle event or a landmark, it just felt like another day & that made it hard for me to get into the mood of celebration.

I’m thankful for the myriad of you that sent me birthday wishes or gifts. I am truly grateful for that. There was just something askew about this year’s anniversary of my first trip around the sun that felt distant & inauthentic for me that made getting into the ‘birthday spirit’ a near impossibility for me. Again, I’m so honored that so many of you sent your warmest wishes my way.

So yeah, there it is. My 33rd birthday blog. In a lot of ways very reminiscent of the event itself; a touch melancholic, a touch aloof, a touch detached.

As always I wish you all the best day/night/whatever in which you found your way to this page & gave it a read.

Much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Well...Now What?...

Hi, sorry, sorry. I know I’ve been a touch absent the last two weeks. My b, y’all. I’m gonna be real with you though, & yes this will play into this week’s topic, but I have been going through it mentally. Ya boy is not doing the hottest at the moment & while there are a couple of compounding reasons for that, we’re just going to focus on one.

Back in October I got the opportunity to audition for something rather major. They liked me & wanted to move me forward in the process, but part of that process included blocking off my calendar from about March of this year til at least end of June/July, if not farther. I wasn’t allowed to book anything that might compete with said opportunity & it was highly insinuated that I should limit, if not halt, my releases. I waited & waited with no final word on whether I was in or not until two weeks ago when I got the email that they had decided to pass on me & wouldn’t be going forward with me as an artist for said opportunity. In all honesty, I kind of felt like I saw it coming, which in turn may have then put that energy out into the world to have it come to be. A few people close to me, who knew about the opportunity, were blind sided. They were all sure that I was going to go on to be a part of it, but alas the stars did not align on this one & I set aside my time & energy & said no to many an other opportunity &/or show for nothing. Now I find myself sitting around, stuck in the question & feeling of ‘well….now what?…’

The annoying part is, aside from the 5 months I spent waiting for an answer & the hold for nothing I had in place, is that I also made space for this in my life outside of those two defining ways. I held hope in my heart & in my life that this ‘could be life changing’ opportunity would come to fruition & it didn’t. Unceremoniously. Via email on a Tuesday afternoon in March. & in all honesty, I didn’t know how to move on from that.

It was one of those things where the longer it went on the more I ended up getting excited for it. I took the occasional “please continue to wait” email as a sign that there was hope of this coming to fruition, just to be dropped so capriciously. It sank me y’all. I had spent so many months & so much energy thinking that finally, finally someone was going to see my potential, finally someone else saw my worth & that this door that I believed wide open to me was, only to find out that it had never even been unlocked. I felt ultimately defeated.

I know I shouldn’t have put as much stock in this as I did, it’s just this time something felt different, like this person that I know I am & that many of you know I am was finally going to blast into the spotlight. It hurt. I had a very hard time with it, it dug down deep in me & left a whole in the place where my self worth used to live. Again, I know I should never have let it get that deep or feel that important, but it felt like something that could have been a springboard for me career-wise. Now I’m left holding the space that I allotted, the energy I invested, & the opportunities that I turned down for nothing & I’m having a very hard time not only recalibrating myself but also getting excited about my future.

To be blunt I feel like the path has disappeared from before me & know I’m just wandering aimlessly, waiting for the next path to appear so that I can continue on down it. I’m feeling a bit lost in the woods at the moment. My motivation is shot, my creativity is shot, & I’m feeling rather jaded at the moment from the whole experience.

I’m not writing all of this for you all to take pity on me, if anything I want the opposite. I wish, so desperately, that I could say it didn’t phase me. That I got the news & immediately said “well, that’s fine, I’ve got better things to do anyway.” When in reality I don’t feel that I do. I want so badly to be the confident person who didn’t take the hit to my pride from this, but I’m not, so I wanted to get on here & be entirely honest & open with you all, because that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be as an artist.

Some days are harder than others. My birthday is rapidly approaching, usually a time that I get excited for & celebrate, but this year I just feel numb. Like what’s the point? On the other hand some days the “badass” who doesn’t give a shit about what happened comes out & he shows up hopefully & excited about a future that is full of question marks. I’m trying to learn to be more & more like that version of me with each day that passes.

I’m sorry if this blog was a downer, that wasn’t my intent. If anything today was one of those blogs that felt like pulling teeth to me, but I want to feed the side of myself that is motivated & persistent & not give into that side of me that is huffing “why even try?” I needed to get on here & write one, so I didn’t leave you all who so graciously extend your time to me & my thoughts & ideas hanging, & two, so I could get back behind the boulder & start pushing my way up the hill again. In a lot of ways this blog is for me to vent & for me to persist, but despite that, I hope you at least got a little something out of this. Even if that something is simply a thread of commonality or an understanding.

I wish you all the happiest of days/evenings wherever this blog finds you.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Selective Solidarity Is Just Disguised Oppression

I started out this blog under that notion of one having their cake & eating it too, but for me, I don’t think that hit hard enough. So, I scoured the web & found some more options, the one that punched the most, naturally, ended up as our title for today. I want to lay out a few other favorites of mine that may help convey what this blog is about & I’m sure get those of you who probably need to read it the most to check out immediately. Here they are (we’ll go light to heavy on this:

• You want your bread buttered on both sides.

• You can’t walk on both sides of the street.

• You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth.

• You can’t ride two horses with one ass.

• You can’t straddle the fence forever.

• You can’t dance with the devil & call it worship (I almost went with this one).

• You can’t say you love my while stabbing me in the back (another great one that I almost went with).

• Allyship isn’t a label, it’s a practice (allyship felt too affirming to me in the context for which this blog will be written, so it also didn’t make the cut.)

Anyway, if you haven’t guessed by now, this blog will be not too dissimilar from what continues to be my most popular blog of all time, No Hate Like Christian Love, in the sense that we are going to talk about those who claim to love or support marginalized friends, family members, coworkers, acquaintances, etc. while actively supporting those who would seek to do violence against the groups in question.

I can already hear the groans. Really? Violence? Don’t be hyperbolic. So let’s give a little vocabulary lesson right quick shall we? Violence, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary are actions that are intended to or likely to hurt people or cause damage. I specifically chose to use the word violence for this exact reason, because a lot of folks out there only think that an act of violence is physical & I think the word violence carries with it a connotation & an imagery that to most people is repulsive to a degree. We recoil from the idea. But the word violence also paints a beautifully tragic picture that I think helps nail in the point of all of this.

Now I want you to know that I will be getting specific in this here blog. I will be using exact names of individuals, exact events with sources, & will be mostly talking from my perspective as a queer individual, because that is where my lived experience lies, but naturally this point carries across to the many marginalized communities being affected by the executive orders, rhetoric, & laws being passed by the current admin. We would also be here for an eternity if I brought immigrants, veterans, impoverished people, racial minorities, women, etc. into this. I also need this blog to be an expression of the times we are living in, specifically in the United States of America under the second Trump administration. I can just hear the clicks on the ‘x’s’ at the top left for the screen continuing.

On March 9th, 2025 Donald Trump reposted a photo on his Truth Social account depicting a pink triangle crossed out with an opinion piece from the Washington Post praising him & AD Hegseth for their renewed ban of trans military members. Read more here. The Pink Triangle in question that adorns the image being that which gay individuals were forced to wear by the Nazi’s during WWII, specifically in concentration camps. Now, this is not the first time the administration has shared or sympathize directly with Nazi ideals. See Charlotte “Fine People,” Trump Praises Hitler, Elon Musk Salute/Holocaust Denial, Trump’s Continued Attempts At Trans Eradication, need I go on?…because sadly I can for a while… This post, naturally, sparked outrage amongst the LGBTQIA+ community who saw it for what it is, a blaring Dog Whistle.

You see many of us have been warning those we know who are shameless Trump voters of these coming threats for years, specifically when this past year’s election cycle came about, & we were all met with the same excuses or push back. “He’s not coming after anyone’s rights.” See here. “No one is coming for marriage equality.” See here. “But the economy.” See here. Or “the grocery prices” See here. Glad you sold your marginalized loved ones down the river just so you could hypothetically have cheaper groceries even though every major economist on the planet rightfully predicted that it would have the opposite effect.

And this is what gets me, election cycle after election cycle. The people who are in your life who profess to love you “unconditionally.” Time & time again, they are those who vote flagrantly against your rights as a member of a marginalized community & then when you get upset with them over it & over the things that are happening that you told them repeatedly would happen, they act like they didn’t know or that they are not partially at fault. They also don’t understand that even if they are 1 in 77,302,580ths responsible, that they still saw all of the ways this admin would damage your life & the lives of millions of others & signed off on it, put their literal stamp of approval on the man, his cronies in the cabinet, & their promised acts of retribution & violence against “the least of these.” Then they except you not to feel betrayed by that, to act as if nothing has happened, & that their brand of “unconditional love” doesn’t count when it comes to the voting booth. It’s gaslighting at its finest. Then, God forbid, they have the audacity to rub it in your face, to fly a MAGA flag or wear a MAGA hat or make jokes at your expense, all of which are signals to anyone who belongs to a minority that “you are not welcome here” & “I am not a safe person to be around.” They choose garish gloating &, a lovely german term, schadenfreude in place of compassion & empathy, both of which are much too late to be properly exhibited anyway.

You don’t get to stand on the grounds that you love or support someone & then turn around & blatantly vote their rights as a human being away without consequence. You don’t get to do that & expect them to treat you the same, to not feel entirely betrayed by you when you especially when they’ve wasted their breath trying to get you to understand the damage that will be done. Especially after witnessing the damage done from 2016-2020. I am so sick of the rhetoric or “but both sides” or “it’ll all change again in four years anyway” when clearly, clearly that is not the case. One side of the aisle, while they may be completely inefficient, does not actively seek to tear apart the lives of those who they have painted a target upon just because they can or just because it distracts from their inability or desire to fix the problems they perpetuate.

Naturally this is a hot button topic for me, as it seems to be for so many of my friends who find themselves on the receiving end of the Trump policies. So many of us who are openly LGBTQIA+, immigrants, environmentalists, non-evangelicals, non-white, are finding ourselves face to face with the heartbreak that is thinking the people you love, who you would do anything for, would do the same for you & quickly finding out they won’t even do something as simple as vote in your favor. It’s a terrible feeling, one I wouldn’t wish on anyone, & the worse part of it is, as I aforementioned, that they want you to continue on like they haven’t overtly committed acts of violence against you. They are fine being your oppressors if it gets them even the slightest perceived advantage in life & they will/have done so unapologetically. Not even unapologetically, but with outright disregard, deflecting any & all accountability & shifting blame or leaning into whataboutisms to avoid the reality & the harm of their actions. Then they wonder why we don’t want to be around them anymore.

I’m sorry if this was a tough read, I’m sorry if this was triggering for you. If you’re someone maybe not on the receiving end it might be time to look into the ‘why.’ I write this out of a desire to inform & with passion because it kills me. It kills me to experience it & it kills me to see so many beautiful human beings who are deserving of all of the love in the world have the same things happen to them. I write this to show you all what has been done & what continues to be done out of some, probably false, hope that someone will read this & finally understand & not continue making the same mistakes going forward. You cannot love your black, brown, white, immigrant, citizen, queer, trans, non-binary, etc., etc., etc. neighbor by voting against them. It is contradictory, hypocritical, & above all an act of violence against them. Where is the ‘love’ in that?

It’s tough out there, please be safe, take care of yourself & one another, & know that I love you.

Much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Shake Off The Snow

We’ve had a hard winter. There’s no denying that. Outside of my own personal rampant anxiety & seasonal depression, the geopolitical landscape is a cluster, The US is in the process of a full on hostile government takeover that nobody with the power to do so seems to want to stop, & I know a lot of us also went through dramatic moments around family, friends, & love. It was a long, cold couple of months but it seems to sun is finally peeking through.

Despite what the clairvoyant groundhog may have decided, it seems spring is gradually creeping in. I feel typically we have a little more ‘hard stop’ to winter, but this year it seems we’re just easing into spring. Honestly though, that makes sense to me. The sun is slowly hanging around longer, I think for the majority of The US we gained about 45 minutes more sunlight during the month of February, but it probably isn’t something that the majority of us noticed. I however have noticed the gradual return of my mental health, overall desire to live, & the steady dissipation of my ‘dark night of the soul.’

The world seems, quite literally, a little brighter, even though the news continues to grow more & more grave as each day passes. I think the reason for that is also a sense of the shifting energies. We as a society are upset, we’re anxious, we’re in distress but I think we’re also getting to a point where what was presenting as rage is now shifting to spite, to motion. You see rage is a very mobile emotion, it causes us to want to take action, to kick the door down, to scream & writhe & bear our teeth, & when aimed correctly, tuned, & distilled, rage can be an excellent tool & an excellent motivator. You see, I think a lot of us over the last couple of weeks have been riding the rage train out of the pits of despair into something more productive & proactive. We are beginning to see that the actions of those involved are not sustainable, nor are they backed by the populous & that shift in energy & the light screaming through the cracks feels like a weird shifting tide of hope.

I didn’t want to get overly political while writing this, I definitely have my share of blogs that veer heavily into that space, but I wanted to mention the above paragraph because it does play into this shift out of the cold into the warmth. Out of the darkness into the light. We are feeling the resurrection of the sun & the fires are starting to burn away the shadows that have drug us down & encased our hearts in fear & woe. I think that with the shift in the seasons, so too will we see a massive shift in the world & society around us.

So what are we to do? We’ve felt the call to emerge from our caves, to return to the world anew & grow once again towards the light, to unfurl our branches & put out new leaves & return from the ground where we’ve buried our necessities back to a place of expansion & vibrance. We embrace that. With every fiber of our beings we embrace it because that is where hope & change & progress are found. Not in the pitfalls of winter, but in the promise of brighter days to come. We crawl from our dins, shake off the snow, & give it permission to return to melt back into the earth so that it can be used to burst shining new fruits into existence. We continue the work, we adapt, & we continue chasing the sun because that is where our hope lies, in the promise of good conquering evil, of the many over the few, of life over decay. So hear the calling, shake off the snow, & answer with luminous hope radiating from your heart.

Much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Happy New Year! I'm Back!

Hiya folks,

How have we been? Don’t answer that, I know how most of us have been & will probably continue to be for the next foreseeable future. It’s getting rougher & rougher out there. I first want to welcome you all back, welcome you into 2025, & get all the pomp & circumstance out of the way. This blog will serve partially as a way of reigniting things here, partially as an update & where I’ve been, & partially as a “things to come” posting. So, if you’re into the idea of all of that, stick around & enjoy the read!

I initially planned today to be part one of my Australia blog, if you follow me at all on any of the socials out there you will know that I’ve been abroad for the last two plus weeks. I have about half of the first blog written out in its base form but it still needs another couple of days worth of content, editing, & photo integration. I will go ahead & let you know that it will be next week’s blog & it will cover Evan & my time in Sydney. I need you all to hold me to that. And yes, yes, I know, I know, I promised you all a New York City travel blog back in November on two separate occasions, but let’s be real & honest, shit hit the fan & it ended up being too much for me to handle mentally. Sorry if that upsets you or is a let down, but I have to prioritize my heath & well being first & foremost & November/December were truly a rough patch for me.

Diving farther into thaaaaaat I’m going to be entirely real with you all. The election gave me an ulcer. It stressed me out so bad that I developed a stomach ulcer & it got so bad that at one point I could only eat a couple of bites of food before I felt like I was going to vomit. The foods I could eat were mostly whole foods; fermented soy products (miso), veggies, fruits, fish, chicken, & sourdough bread. Because most food made me incredibly nauseous, I ended up being only able to consume about 1,000-1,500 calories a day, about half of my daily recommended for lil ole six foot, four me. I cut out alcohol as well as most fatty &/or processed foods as well as any medications or supplements that may have been inflammatory to my stomach. I even took omeprazole (Prilosec) to help minimize the effects of my stomach acid. For the most part that seemed to be helping, that is until Thanksgiving. At thanksgiving I decided to be indulgent & in addition to eating way too much of whatever, I also had two glasses of a nice red wine which I proceeded to throw up all night long that evening. Upon returning to Nashville I had a series of tests run just to cut out any other possibilities such as gallbladder or liver issues, which came back clear, & I restarted my progress & my forced sobriety. In addition to the stomach B.S. I was also struggling with general post election anxiety & stressed which quickly dipped me, full tilt, into my seasonal depression.

So yeah, that’s where I ended up for the past couple of months. I would sit down to write but all I felt was dread or apathy. I one night started at the flashing icon of the text indicator on my blog entry screen for about two to three hours. All that ever got written was the word “blog:” in the title section. Additionally the months of November & December were incredibly busy for me. I was in a wedding, went to two separate Thanksgivings on either side of the country, then had Christmas…which I ended up leaving early, then had to come home, pack, & get the house in order to depart two days later for our Australia trip, of which we got back from three days ago.

I kept my forced sobriety (I say that as if I drink like a fish, I probably have a drink or two max a week) until we went to Australia. My hope was to give my stomach the last week of November & all of December to recoup & see how it did. On the 30th we went out to dinner with friends (more on that in next week’s blog) & I got a spritz, just to see how I’d do. I was totally fine. In actuality, I ended up being totally find the entirely of Australia. I ate whatever I wanted, drank whatever I wanted, had fatty foods, coffee, alcohol, citrus, etc. & was totally fine…until I got back to The US at which point my stomach immediately started acting up again…

Australia aside, I’ve been going through it, but we’re back now, I’m pushing through to the best of my ability even though my ‘fight or flight’ is fairly constant for the time being & the jet lag is keeping me from properly sleeping, but I at least wanted to fill you all in. I know several of you have reached out to ask about the absence of posts & blogs & I felt I owed you an explanation, especially since so many of you come to this site week after week to read my ramblings & thoughts. I’m always incredibly grateful for that & I hope you don’t feel neglected, abandoned, or taken advantage of in any way. As I said though, I need some time off to regulate & recalibrate. While I don’t necessarily think I’m all the way there yet, life has to go on & sometimes you need to push through & reestablish the routing so that you can keep your head above water & get through it all one day at a time.

I hope the last two months were a joy for you all, I hope you feel refreshed & excited about your futures. I hope 2025 has treated you well thus far & I look forward to sharing this space with you all once again,.

As always, much love to you all,

-C