Pavini Moray's Blog

“But My Ancestors Were Assholes!"

“My ancestors were colonizer assholes. I don't want to be associated with them.”

“Chosen family is way more important to me than blood.”

These are actual statements I've heard from folks when I ask how they feel about their lineages.

And I get it.

Especially in a culture of broken families, colonization, extremism, and terribly poor relational skills, it makes total sense that you might want nothing to do with your blood.

But here's the thing: your blood is part of you, whether or not you associate yourself with it.

You share DNA, family traits, and history with those people.

As I wrote about in my ancestor series Part 1: Are the Ancestors Real? and Part 2: How Ritual Heals Trauma Stored in the Body and Passed Through Generations, I believe the elevated dead can be a source of support in our lives.

Let's explore the idea that not all your predecessors might be total assholes.

Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare Stories of Disconnection

I was speaking recently with a dear friend who is queer, kinky, radical, and has dedicated her work to supporting erotic freedom.

Over many decades, her parents never asked about her work, didn't care to know when she published books or offered much healing into the world.

Another dear elder in the sex education space said that his family wanted nothing to do with his gay liberation and erotic embodiment work.

As a result of their religious beliefs, his relationships with his siblings are superficial. He loves them, but they don't really know the beauty of this great man.

When my books were published, I told no one from my blood family in the generations behind me about my work.

I did tell my kids, with whom I've been able to disrupt the transgenerational patterns of silence.

The Grief of Disbelonging

When faced with the living family I know, my immediate question is: How on Earth did I land in the midst of this particular family?

How did my two queer friends and I emerge from bloodlines that do not support us, nor our work, in the least?

While this question may sound intellectual, let me provide more context.

Not being able to understand myself in the context of my ancestral lineages has had a harrowing somatic and emotional impact.

Of feeling deeply unmet and unheld by the very people supposed to love and accept you.

It's terribly lonely to be the misfit in your lineage.

The way I've come to belong to my ancestors is through who I am as a parent.

I look for belonging not in the past, but in how I show up now.

What I Know as a Parent I love and support my kids unconditionally to the best of my ability.

I heal the places in myself that need healing so I can be a good role model.

I apologize when I fuck up. I take accountability.

I pray for my children every day, for their good lives, their happiness, growth, prosperity, and health.

And I pray for their descendants.

I pray for those who did not come through my body, but are of my heart: students, clients, and trans kids.

Which is how I know that prayers have been said for me by those who came before.

Even when our parents, grandparents, or blood families could not show up, others in our lineages prayed for us.

Parenting draws me toward the future, and ancestral practices anchor me in the past.

Bypassing the Trouble

Let me reassure you that if you have a curiosity about your ancestors, or feel a call, but don't want to have to engage with all the muck, trauma, and dysfunction of living family, you don't have to.

My own ancestral reverence practice has taught me to circumvent the assholes.

There is no need to be in a relationship with spirits, embodied or not, who do not have respect or love for you.

You get to have a relationship with the elder ancestors who are well in spirit, who love you and only want the very best for you.

I go directly to the sources of goodness, kindness, and love in my ancestral lines, even if they lived generations back.

My queer, trans, witchy, radical, poetic, priestess, visionary clown self did not magickally incarnate with no context.

I come from gay uncles who penned poems at midnight, smoking furiously at their kitchen tables, and lesbian aunties who tended rose gardens like the beauty of their lives depended on it.

I am the descendant of trans and non-binary souls, those who walked between the worlds, deeply in relationship with Earth and Source, living at the village edge, casting spells and growing herb gardens, or who found solace in the monastery, their lives dedicated to the Divine.

The blood in my veins is from those who practiced pleasure, prayed to the River, and became students of a spider sitting in the center of her web.

Where are your true people?

Hidden in your bloodlines are those who resemble you.

You may never know their stories.

Genealogists don't have a special symbol to mark next to the really cool people.

But you must know, they were there.

They are still behind you, even if you don't see yourself represented in your recent family.

You come from:

the strange

the openhearted

the medicine makers

those who blurred the lines

those who loved more than one

the ones who stood up to oppression, in their hearts and bodies

the ones who had special relationships with animals

the ones who knew intimately what the flavors of wind meant

These rare gifts skip generations.

Sometimes ancestral gifts wait centuries, waiting for the right soul in which to unfurl their beauty.

Far downstream from their ancestral source, they manifest in you.

An Invitation

And so, if you, like my friends, feel disconnected from your family of origin, from your blood kin, I invite you to consider this idea:

You did not come from nowhere.

There are others in your lines, who you will never know, who not only prayed for you, but who were like you, in their times.

Some will come after you, who may look back at their bloodline, and long to feel met.

May you meet your descendants of blood and of heart now, with your prayers for them, and your uninhibited self-expression.

Say aloud to yourself and them, "I am here."

If you’re curious about building a relationship with ancestors who weren’t assholes, come tend the ones who prayed for you.

Tending the Bones is my 13-month ritual container for reclaiming love, pleasure, and belonging.

$100 Early bird discount available through Sept. 10.

Use Coupon Code TTB100

Explore Tending the Bones

Explore Tending the Bones

Replay: Tending the Bones Ancestral Ritual

Last night we gathered for an ancestral ritual and conversation about Tending the Bones.

In this session, I guide you through

a short ritual practice,

reflections on ancestral healing

live Q&A

And just a reminder:

Tomorrow Aug. 30 is the final day to register for Tending the Bones with the full $200 early bird discount.

After tomorrow, the discount drops to $100, and after Sept. 10 it will disappear completely.

Tending the Bones is a 13-month ritual container you can join anytime.

It supports you in reclaiming joy, embodiment, and choice in your intimate life through justice, somatics, and ancestral ritual.

"When I began, I identified as asexual from a place of fear. Now I feel an absolute wellspring of erotic energy — one I want to share with others and with myself."

-Water, New Mexico, TTB Graduate 2021

Register by tomorrow to save $200 Use Discount Code EarlybirdTTB200

Learn More about Tending the Bones

Last Chance | Free Ancestral Ritual | Register NOW

What: I am offering a free ritual honoring and connecting with your well, bright ancestors.

When: Tonight, Thursday Aug. 28 at 7 PM ET. Yes, it will be recorded.

If you have questions about my Tending the Bones 13-month ritual container to heal transgenerational sexual trauma, or any questions about the burdens and blessings of our ancestors sexuality, I invite you to join.

Register for Free

Photo by Adam Dutton

How Ritual Heals Trauma Stored in the Body and Passed Through Generations

Trauma in the Body, Ritual in the Bones

If you’ve ever felt a heaviness that doesn’t quite belong to you, this post might resonate.

When we work with ancestors, we are working with life expressed through generations, a lineage of time.

When we work with trauma, we are working with a mind-body that has gotten trapped in time. That stuckness gets passed down.

Trauma researcher Dr. Rob Baum writes: Trauma is an unwelcome guest lurking in the house, always present, a shadow in an open doorway, darkness at the corner of vision. There is a body that cannot be buried, because it is very much alive, but with an unendurable break, a tear in the fabric of time.

There has been much research on transgenerational trauma in the descendants of Holocaust survivors and other instances of profound cultural harm.

Through epigenetics, we know that the unresolved traumatic experiences of our forebearers impact our bodies and our DNA.

But not much has been studied about how to treat it.

What do you do with a heavy ancestral inheritance?

How do you treat sexual violence that your long-dead grandmother experienced that lives in you, negatively shaping your sexuality and relationships?

Much like the question of this recent post, “Are the ancestors real?” my work addresses a similar question:

Is this my ancestor’s trauma I experience in my body?Impacts of Ancestral Trauma on Sexuality

In terms of sexuality, I’d like to share a bit of the literature. Bear with me!

Researchers Devroede and Schutzenberger wrote about the somatic impact of unprocessed sexual abuse. They write:

The body remembers sexual abuse and keeping family secrets causes illness.

Unwittingly and unwillingly, our parents and grandparents and ancestors often leave us the legacy of their unfinished mourning, their “undigested” traumas, and the hidden shame of their secret family history.

Sexual abuse and other traumas experienced in the family’s past create insurmountable or unresolved emotional wounds that leave their mark on future generations.

If you’ve ever felt shame that doesn’t match your story, or fear around touch or intimacy that doesn’t quite make sense, it may be an ancestral inheritance.

The unresolved sexual trauma of our ancestors is a weight we may carry, in addition to our own wounds.

Sexual trauma can limit access to choice and free expression of sexuality.

When I was hearing stories in my office, listening to people name the impact of sexual trauma they experience that is not theirs—or is adjacent to theirs—I got curious. How could I help them heal?

This became my doctoral research.

I interviewed dozens of people across demographics.

I asked them how they experience transgenerational sexual trauma in their bodies and lives, and what had helped them heal.

They were quite articulate.

They named impacts like fear of sex, intimate partner violence, getting kicked out of the family home because of sexuality or pregnancy, shame, repression, and violation.

One person, a child of Holocaust survivors, said: “I do think that there is a repetition compulsion, and that kind of trauma is passed from generation to generation.”

According to therapist and sexologist Barnaby Barratt, repression of sexual expression leads to repression of our élan vital, less access to the healing resource of pleasure, and a restricted sense of who we are as erotic beings.

Barratt wrote:
The psychology of repression manifests as the inhibition of sensual and sexual expression... we see all around us people who have never danced naked in the sunlight, people who allow themselves to become severely deprived of touch, people who have never explored their genitals, people who have never laughed or cried with erotic exhilaration... repressed and inhibited, we soldier on, like the walking wounded.

Beyond Shame, Toward Gifts

Shame, repression, violence… but what’s the cure?

Something everyone I spoke with had was a relationship with their ancestors.

I wasn’t just researching the negative impacts of ancestral sexuality, but the positive blessings as well.

Many people named erotic gifts they had received through their lineages: queerness, pleasure-seeking, wildness, having healthy intimacy modeled for them, and access to embodiment.

Most of the people I spoke with were also carrying their own sexual trauma or complexities, and the ancestral piece was just one layer.

They described a range of practices: altars, singing to their ancestors, making different kinds of offerings, and invoking queer ancestors before hook-ups.

What I learned is that to heal transgenerational sexual trauma, you need transpersonal tools.

Individual tools like talk therapy aren’t enough.

Even somatics, as helpful as it is on the individual level, doesn’t fully address the symptoms we inherit from our ancestors.

Methodical, boundaried, ethical ritual—the kind that is well-held and effective—is the tool that has been used around the world, in traditional cultures, for as far back as I could find.

Photo by Greg Rakozy Ritual Heals

There are many instances across the literature, from many different cultures utilizing indigenous or shamanic healing practices, of the use of ritual for healing.

Scientific research supports that the use of transpersonal tools like ritual to address trauma is effective.

From child soldiers in Mozambique and Angola, to victims of war rape in Sierra Leone, to Australian Aboriginal people seeking to heal from forced attendance at boarding school and loss of culture, to supporting Native Americans with substance abuse issues, ritual is used to address trauma and transgenerational trauma.

Myron Eshowsky, a shamanic counselor and tender of international transgenerational trauma, wrote:

Healing transgenerational trauma requires the profound ability of symbolic ritual acts. They help to transform space, to communicate that which is invisible to our normal senses, to transform worldviews, identities and relationships.

Ritual acts can penetrate what often appears intransient and impenetrable in healing transgenerational trauma.

Ritual can overwhelm the defenses and convey complex messages, bringing a new consciousness, without saying a single word.

This is why I work with ritual.

It gives us a way to heal what words alone cannot.

It helps us stitch time back together, to integrate what happened in the past with our current lives, bodies, and relationships.

Ritual gives us a way to reclaim erotic freedom in the present.

Through ritual, we can lay down what was never ours, and inhabit fully our own sexual freedom.

Over the last ten years, I’ve noticed that many people are increasingly interested in relating with their ancestors.

I hope that in some small way, my work has contributed to that interest.

Bespoken Bones podcast was a labor of love. My book Tending the Bones, also written in deep service to personal and planetary healing.

My ritual container, also called Tending the Bones, has helped people reckon in their lineages and their bodies with sexual harm and violation, and opened doors to more erotic freedom and healthy relating.

To my knowledge, transgenerational sexual trauma has not been studied or treated this deeply in any other context.

If what I’ve written here lands for you, I’m sorry.

Perhaps it is time to address this layer of healing.

Lay down what was never yours.

Through ritual, we can stitch time back together and reclaim the freedom our ancestors could not.

Enter Tending the Bones, a container for healing and liberation.
✨ Save $200 with early bird pricing until Aug. 30.

Learn More about Tending the Bones

Are the Ancestors Real? A Somatic Guide to Reconnecting with Lineage

Are the Ancestors Real?

When I was spending a lot of time teaching about healing ancestors through somatic ritual, one of the questions I got all the time from my students was,

"How do I know the ancestors are real?"

Because I got that question so often, my teacher, Dr. Daniel Foor, helped me to develop a stock answer.

I would say,

"You did not grow up in a culture of ancestral reverence.

“Here in the West, we are disconnected from our lineages and our traditions.

“If you had grown up in a more intact culture, you would not think to ask that question because relating with your ancestors would have been woven into every day of your life.

“You would have made offerings, said their names, waited for dreams with information from your grandma.

“You would have had an ancestor altar in your home.

“You would have sung and prayed to them automatically, because that's what everyone around you did.

“I'm so sorry you did not get that.

“However, you can have that now.

“Ancestors are a human energy, and humans are relational.

“You can build a relationship with your ancestors just like with any other human. With care and attention over time.

“Start small.

“Make an offering and see what happens.

“Then take it a step further."

What is Ancestral Healing?

If my student was still listening and interested, I'd take it to the next level.

"There are many layers to healing, and ancestral healing is one layer.

“Getting reconnected with your well, bright, and elevated ancestors is your birthright.

“In many cultures, the shining ancestors are actively involved with their living descendants, offering advice, intuition, prayer, guidance, and love.

“Think about it, don't you want the very best for any descendants of heart or of blood that you have?

“Wouldn't you say prayers for their highest good and best possible lives?

“Your ancestors did the same for you, even if very far back."

Western Doubt

Anthropologists have noted that the question itself is a Western one.

Twentieth-century Western researchers were challenged to apply cultural relativism when faced with ancestor-worshipping cultures.

Some avoided the question altogether by focusing on what a culture believes.

In Family Constellations work, there is disagreement too, with some practitioners believing that ancestors truly exist, and some believing they are more like archetypes.

Francesca M. Boring, a Shoshone medicine woman and Family Constellation practitioner, said it directly:

“The Ancestors are real. Unlike the interpretation of constructivist constellations which may relegate Ancestors to allegory or metaphor, the Ancestors are viewed simply as ancestors.”

Photo by Bryan Goff A Personal Metaphysics

But Western minds need proof, not faith. We often come to faith through having positive experiences we cannot explain.

Stephen Jay Gould once said,

“Each of us has to have a personal metaphysics. There are questions that are formally unanswerable on which nonetheless every individual must take a position in order to integrate various pieces of his life.”

My Experience

I would say,

"Hey, you can always try it out and see what results you get.

“I know personally that when I engaged authentically in healing work with my ancestral lineages, my life dramatically improved in unexpected ways.

“Was that my ancestors?

“I believe so, but ultimately it does not matter to me if ancestral relationships are scientifically measurable.

“I feel more wholeness, more integral aliveness, because I am in good relationship with my ancestors.

“Because I know I have done the ritual work within my power to clean up any unresolved trauma and harm my ancestors experienced and/or committed.

“As a white person living in the so-called USA, that matters to me."

Looking Ahead

When we are working with ancestors, we are working with life expressed through generations, a lineage of time.

When we work with trauma, we work with a mind-body that has gotten trapped in time.

That stuckness gets passed down.

This is the threshold where my doctoral research on transgenerational sexual trauma began.

In Part Two of this post, I will share what I learned about the impacts of ancestral trauma on sexuality and how ritual helps us transform what has been passed to us.

My book “Tending the Bones” grew out of this research, and my ritual container Tending the Bones is open now for anyone ready to engage these questions in their own lineages and bodies. $200 Early Bird Discount until Aug. 30

Learn More and Join

Last Chance to Play with Camp LightHeart

If you’ve been meaning to join Camp LightHeart, this is your moment. Rosy Delight—our final week—is about to begin.

We’ll be exploring roses as a form of pleasure medicine and ancestral connection, and softening into beauty as a way to stay alive amidst chaos.

Roses are such an important ally in my life, reminding me to stay focused on beauty.

We start Monday, July 28 @ 7 PM Eastern.

I hope you'll join!

Register and Come Smell the Roses

The Honey of Roses: On Repairing What Feels Too Broken

Sometimes life asks you to tend things softly.Sometimes it explodes glass in your face.

You know that thing where people are coming for dinner, so you clean?

I'm in my dining room. I'm not in a rush; I planned plenty of time for the overhaul.

Wipe down the dusty windowsills, vacuum the chair seats covered in cat hair.

It's been a while since this room was last deep cleaned.

In the corner sits a floor lamp I inherited from my grandmother's house.

Tall as me, patinaed brass, smooth milk glass globe, open top.

I've had this lamp since I was 24, the year my sweet grandma died.

The light is intense because it uses old-fashioned light bulbs that are about twice the size of normal ones.

(Have you noticed that it's harder to find incandescent light bulbs? All LED, which I don't love.)

The light from this lamp is also old-fashioned; the warm cream milk glass throws a soft light across the whole room.

In the 30 years this lamp has lit my spaces, I've changed the bulb exactly once. That was 15 years ago.

It came with a spare, wrapped in faded blue cardboard.

The only problem with the glass lamp shade is that it flares out widely at the top and tends to get grimy.

When I turned the lamp on today, I almost heard it whine, "Clean me."

I use paper towels for some types of cleaning.

Wiping glass is one.

My hands are full of white stiff fresh paper towels.

As I touch the towel to the glass, I hear a loud gunshot.

Without a thought, my hands cover my face with paper towels, just as glass explodes violently.

Shards rain down on me, embed into my feet.

Later we'll find pieces across the room, diagonally, as far as you could get from that lamp.

I open my eyes to see blue flames shooting out of the lightbulb base.

The air crackles with electricity, acrid smoke filling the room.

My housemates come running at my loud expletive: one grabs the dogs, the other scrambles to unplug the lamp.

It was, to say the least, dramatic.

It shook me.

My heart raced for hours.

My hands trembled.

Not only because of the physical danger that could have been.

The moment of glass exploding and flame bursting in the middle of my house felt like a rupture in the membrane between worlds.

Thirty-six hours earlier, I'd awoken with a start from a dream.

I was in my grandmother's house.

She was alive, but the paint on the soffits of her house was badly peeling, the house in need of repair.

The house was sad and hurting. "I can help you," I'd murmured to her, thinking in the dream of who I could call.

Upon waking, I discussed it with Ari, and the message seemed clear: it was time to drop in with that line of grandmas ritually.

My ancestral reverence practice these days is more integrated and casual, following a decade of daily repair and worship.

I no longer feel it neccessary to hold the same ancestral awareness I once did.

After several years, my ancestral healing work was eventually complete.

Now my ancestors are more of a resource than a point of daily focus.

I feel their soft presence whenever I turn my attention toward them.

I still sing to them and say daily prayers, but they no longer require the same level of care they once did.

When I first began tending to my unwell ancestral lines, it felt like lifting a massive weight.

I was swimming in the grief of generations, and it almost drowned me. But over time, through years of practice, things have settled. Their pain softened, and my capacity grew.

That's the thing about tending. It changes you.

After the dream, I went to my rose garden and chose a beautiful salmon-colored rose to offer my grandmas.

I placed it in a small glass bowl filled with water and set it on the part of my altar dedicated to ancestors.

Struck a match, lit a candle, poured some whiskey, promised to come back to tend them later in the day.

But it was the weekend, full of fun activities, and I didn't make it back to my altar.

One of my activities was tending to my rose garden. Roses are so finicky. This spring, my children worked together, digging the earth and pouring compost and amendments into the soil before planting the rose bushes they had gifted me for Parents' Day.

I learned my love of roses from my grandma. Like many of us, I associate roses with grandmothers.

Lying in bed unable to sleep, it hit me: it was my grandmother's lamp that had exploded.

I'd named her in several conversations that day. I'd promised to tend, and I hadn't.

So, at 11:58 PM, I dragged my butt out of bed and lit candles at my altar.

I asked my well, bright grandmas what it was they needed.

Food, they said.

But I wasn't about to trek to the kitchen at midnight.

So I prayed and sang instead.

I imagined pink roses, like the one floating on my altar, cocooning our maternal line in scent and presence.

Pink light, from me and my children, from the garden they'd made, flowing toward our ancestors.

Every day, I engage with roses: I spritz rose water on my face, anoint my skin with rose oil, add tincture to my water, perfume myself with rose.

I love these flowers that bring so much beauty and goodness into my life. Last year I went to Grasse, France, to study perfuming during the rose harvest.

The roses that grow there are Rosa Centifolia. Not much to look at, but the scent is a thread of divinity.

The smell brings me immediately to presence: the kind that is animist, ancestral, pleasurable, and delighted.

Deep joy in the belly of the rose.

I've used rose oil to grow my capacity to feel love in real time. To soften my angry heart. To hold the container of reverence.

My dear friend, energy healer teacher Sâde Gryffin, taught me recently how to use roses to clear my energetic field. How to separate from enmeshment through visualizing a rose, and then exploding it into golden light that returns to the universe.

That's the funny part, right? I'm over here exploding roses into gold, and the ancestors are over there exploding lightbulbs into blue flame.

I have had very few experiences where my ancestors influence the physical world.

Once, I felt a gentle push in the right direction when trying to locate my ancestors' eroded graves in Cornwall, England.

But most of the weird ancestral coincidences have not occurred in the physical realm.

Changing my last name to Moray, for example, only to find out decades later while doing genealogy research that was the surname of one of my ancestral lines.

But exploding lightbulbs?

In general, I don't believe the dead have access to the physical amount of energy it takes to mess with stuff in our world.

It may be a coincidence that when I wasn't turning my attention to my ancestors, asking for help in my dreams, they increased the volume.

Could be.

But what if it's not?

What if the world is way more magickal than we acknowledge?

My ancestor teacher, Daniel Foor, taught me that it's rude to act surprised when things improve in your life once you start tending to your ancestors. It is my experience.

Healing transgenerational trauma has changed my life in significant, potent ways.

I never thought I'd be someone with the patience to tend roses.

To grow businesses.

To publish books.

To maintain long-term love.

To have a healthy, loving family.

Yet here I am.

The honey of roses, and the work of tending reaps rewards.

This is the last week of Camp LightHeart: Rosy Delight.

We’re working with roses as medicine.
For your too-hard heart
For your grief that feels endless
For your feel-good-ness that feels edgy but necessary.

Roses know how to hold both: the ache and the sweetness.
We’ll be learning and playing with them.

Dogma No. Ritual Yes.
We’ll be smelling, integrating, and opening hearts to more capacity for love!

Register for Camp LightHeart

P.S.
Some wounds live in the chest cavity as personal, quiet, solitary.
Some live in the space between two people, shared, relational, hurting.

If your heart work right now is about tending your grief and pleasure, the rose is waiting.

If your heart work is about tending a partnership that feels stuck but still precious, Ari and I are opening two spots for Kitchen Table Rebuild couples coaching.

I wrote about our relationship rebuild here.

It’s not too late to apply.

Apply for Relationship Rebuild

Kitchen Table Relationship Rebuild: How We’re Finding Our Way Back After Burnout

For the scrollers, the skimmers, and the “cut to the chase” folks—this part’s for you.

In a partnership where you love each other but are stuck?

My partner Ari and I are offering 2 couples the chance to rebuild with us in a beta coaching round.

Click the link to apply. Or scroll down for the full story.

Apply for Beta Rebuild

Ari comes in the front door from work.

I used to get up to greet him, but I don’t anymore. I know what I’ll be met with: a heavy face, unsmiling. A brief hug that feels tight and distant.

So I stay where I am, curled on the red sectional, scrolling my phone.

“Hey,” I say.

He sighs, collapses onto the couch, feet up, eyes closed.

Sometimes he gets up to cook with me. Sometimes he doesn’t. Tonight I didn’t wait to find out; I already ate. I’ve also learned not to push for conversation. It almost always ends in frustration.

Everyone in our circle has gently, repeatedly told Ari what I’ve been saying for years: the job is killing him. It’s draining the life out of him and out of us. But he won’t, or can’t, let it go.

We love each other. Truly. We’re kind. We want to be close. But sometimes that closeness gets buried under a thousand small distances. Like this one. Like the fucking job that’s slowly disintegrating his soul and dragging us down with it.

At this point, we were twelve years into our marriage. Ari was five years into the job.

I hit my wall. I felt unhappy, burned out, helpless. But I kept going.

I stayed in my marriage because I love Ari too much to leave, but it's killing me and us to stay.

I’m a relationship coach, after all. I’ve helped hundreds of couples find their way back to connection.

Now I’m the one who needs help.

That’s when we began a process we are now calling a Kitchen Table Relationship Rebuild.

It wasn’t an interpersonal issue destroying my marriage. It was two things: 

First, a part of my partner that craves financial security so bad he will sacrifice his own physical and mental health to achieve it.

Second, capitalism: we are stuck in jobs, a mortgage, and debt that trap us in systems we cannot sustain, but must endure.

Ari has an enduring shape. He could have continued like that, miserable, until he died young of a stress-related illness.

But I couldn't. And I couldn’t watch him do that, either.

Things had to change, or I was going to need to leave the relationship, regardless of how much we love each other.

Things were at a breaking point.

So we did what our couples therapist had repeatedly warned us never to do:

We put the relationship on the table.

Both literally and figuratively.

Literally, we took a huge piece of white paper, and spent ~80 hours mapping all areas of our relationship.

Sex, money, family, celebration, collaboration, household, creativity, community, spirituality… on and on it went. We assessed our vows and commitments we had made at our wedding.

We were both unhappy about what we saw: misalignment of values and practices, huge important relational areas being neglected, and especially that we were not having any fun!

A small section of our on-the-table relationship mapping project.

Figuratively, we decided to take a long break from our marriage.

Ari got a new job and moved back to California. I went to India for six months solo.

During the time apart, we each did our own internal work.

We learned how to exist on our own, after living as a couple for 14 years.

It was a hard, beautiful time.

We talked almost every day. We witnessed each other's rhythms like watching a stranger. How did he organize his days? How did I meet my own needs?

When I came back, we were so happy to reunite, but there was no map for how to be together again.

Love was still there. We care about each other deeply.

Willingness was there.

We were both rooted again in sovereignty, but needed to find our way back to connection.

The foundation we'd built together when we met 15 years ago had been strong and sufficient for then, for raising a family and making a cross-country move, and building several businesses.

But we are different people now. There had been some drift from our agreements. Some values had shifted.

We pulled out the white paper, and harvested what we wanted to keep.

We burned the rest.

Since then, we’ve been doing a Kitchen Table Relationship Rebuild.

Most couples in this situation either white-knuckle it, break up, or outsource repair to therapy, retreats, or date nights that feel like work.

We’re doing something different. We’re rebuilding at the kitchen table. Just us, together, at home.

Kitchen Table because it's D-I-T (Doing-It-Together) with the mindset that we can figure our way through together. Rather than being in therapy (don't get me wrong: I love couples therapy and we've done a lot of it), we meet twice a week to examine patterns, set up systems, dream, and inhabit a new way of being together.

Also, kitchen table because it's homey. We are choosing our process and making it comfortable and cozy for us.

We are aiming for a relationship that matches who we are now, 15 years after falling in love. We are building a new relationship where our practices align with our values NOW.

It's important to note that we’re not fixing a crisis. There wasn’t infidelity or a big relationship rupture. We are updating the agreements and values that are not current. It's like taking off clothes that no longer fit, and exchanging them for something that not only fits, but that feels extraordinary and sparkles too.

It's not a six-step plan, but hundreds of conversations, tweaks, small adjustments. For example, Ari is learning to be okay when I have feelings, and not move to fix them. I am coming down from the safety of my better-than position and not constantly critiquing. We’re both growing as individuals, which means the relationship has to stretch, too.

6 Things We’re Learning to Do Differently at the Kitchen Table

1. Speaking for our parts, not from our parts.
IFS (Internal Family Systems, AKA Parts Work) is having its moment in the sun, and we're into it. We each belong (separately) to an Authentic Communication Group (ACG), where the goal is to identify and give voice to the parts of ourselves that are emerging in response to other group members. It's arduous, beautiful work in honesty and self-awareness. When we are in harder conversations, IFS has been an incredibly useful framework to make sure the louder parts get airtime, but also the quieter parts. And when conveying a controversial opinion, it's helpful for the person listening to know that this is merely one part of a bigger whole.

2. Repairing after rupture, every single time.
Gottman studies indicate this is the biggest predictor of relationship longevity and success. In our wedding vows, Ari and I committed to repairing with each other, always. We know that repair can look lots of different ways; it doesn't mean going back to the way things were before the conflict. But this commitment, and the enactment of it, has built our secure attachment to each other over time. We know there is never going to be a conflict to end all conflicts.

3. Getting curious about our own needs and each other's needs.
We've agreed that everyone's needs matter. For folks who grew up in families where you had to compete for resources to get your needs met, knowing that both of you hold the value that everyone's needs are important is a game-changer, maybe even a life-changer.

4. Speaking what's true, even when it is hard.
Although I am typically averse to famous white guru ladies, Brene Brown's got something here. We have no secrets. We do have privacy, which is a different post. But the true things must be named for our relationship to be built with the strongest possible foundation.

5. Getting clear on what is mine and what is yours.
So much transference and projection happens in relationships. Ever had your partner tell you what you were feeling? As in, "You seem really pissed off right now." But you are feeling sad or hurt. How was that to receive? Or if they say, "I don't think you actually want to go see my family," when that’s what they are themselves feeling, but projecting it onto you as blame? Yeah, no. We've been lovingly handing back those projections. "That's not mine, thank you."

6. Disrupting downward spin cycles of anxiety.
This has been a hard one. One of us (not naming names) tends to channel anxiety into money worries. That means the person is feeling anxious, but blames their internal feelings on an external situation, like money. Then, because it is hard to win an argument against "the numbers," that person will spin out in a way that is never helpful. And when invited to consider that's what's happening, the spinning part gets angry and insists there is never room to be heard, although we have structures set up to talk about finances, and an agreement that we are grounded when we discuss money.

The other person has had to set and hold clear boundaries: we don't discuss money when you are spinning anxiously. There is a time and place for that. I am walking away now. And then bear the discomfort of walking away when their beloved is having a hard time.

And one bonus practice: Readjusting the power balance between us! (Lots of talking and naming.)

The Other Thing We’re Learning: More Joy.

We’re also learning how to have more fun again. We’re playing and gallivanting. There’s more laughter at the table these days, and that matters just as much as the tough conversations.

A Quiet Invitation

As part of this rebuild, Ari and I are exploring moving into somatic couples coaching private practice together. We’re training in Relational Life Therapy with Terry Real.

Ari and meStarting in August, we are offering a beta series of couples sessions.

We’ll be integrating Relational Life Therapy with somatic couples coaching. We are experimenting with working as a queer couple, holding space for other couples (of all varieties.) Session rates will be reduced as we explore.

We’re looking for two couples who feel a reflection of this post in your own relationship.

Couples who love each other but are stuck in patterns that no longer match who you are now.

Couples who want to stay together but know something has to change.

If you’re ready to rebuild, not from scratch but from this moment, we’re inviting you to walk this process with us.

We’ll meet for 5-8 sessions, get real about what’s working and what’s not, and build something new. More connection. More honesty. More laughter.

If this sparks something for you, you can learn more and apply here:

Apply for Relationship Rebuild Beta

The Joke That Got Me Cancelled (Again)

Play, Joy, Practice and Activism

Recently, I spent the weekend at a community gathering focused on singing. I had imagined attending all the sessions, learning lots of new songs to nourish my heart.

I thought I'd get really embodied through entraining by singing with others. I imagined embodiment would be the thing.

Instead, I played all weekend. A group of playful friends came too, including clowns who once non-consensually inducted me into their siblinghood.

The organizers of the event were clear: they are creating a new culture, which they call "the village," requiring great unlearning of patriarchy and supremacy culture, and new learning about how we fit together in life-affirming ways that honor collective good.

All of which I am firmly behind.

But after the fifth or sixth time hearing it, it became background noise.

Many of us had been in radical spaces before. We knew how to ask for consent, center marginalized voices, and uplift the edges.

So while important, some of us were, dare I say, a bit bored. Instead of attending singing circles, we respectfully gathered in meadows and forests and just played.

Play disrupts the mundane.

We didn’t use substances. No drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes. Minimal caffeine. But my experience, and that of my beloveds, was of being significantly altered. Higher than a kite.

There was no cell service, so we couldn't check out on our phones. We were far in the woods, away from businesses, stores, and theaters. All there was were the people and the nature.

We played across generations, made up our own rules, and welcomed everyone in. Some games were open to all. Other games required navigating the uncertainty of not knowing who was in charge or whether you were included.

Sometimes, we played organized games.

Sometimes, clowning and making up ridiculous scenarios with complicated rules that were constantly broken and reinvented.

On our last day, we ended with a spontaneous clown council set in the imaginary future, reflecting on everything that had happened.

A list of banned words emerged that could not be used in circles at all, ever, including: process, needs, village, love, sacred.

We laughed about the makeover of the registration booth into the cancellation station, where you got cancelled when you arrived.

We wrote on bits of paper how someone might have gotten cancelled, folded them up, put them in a hat, drew them out, and, without looking, licked the paper and stuck it to our own foreheads.

The emergent rules included walking around, encountering others, and trying to figure out why you were cancelled, while others avoided you and worked out why they were cancelled.

We laughed until snot ran down from our noses and our bellies ached with pain and delight.

Fun creates community.

The fun I had happened through collective practice.

We all decided our intention had shifted from singing to playing.

Play became the root of all our interactions.

Long discourses on the Enneagram were interrupted with jokes. We traded core wounds, made up new identities, and processed the amenities of the gathering.

How would I experience the food if I had a wound of not belonging?

What about the composting toilets through the lens of betrayal?

Joy restores our humanity.

Edgy play made jokes about where the line was. Is it here? What about here? The line is definitely aliens, right? Or fake science pretending to be real? Where is that line?

In deep play, the line blurs.

Where does funny start? Where does healing begin? Where do we mock the parts of us that are overly serious, deeply dogmatic? Can we get made fun of for the thing that is our line and stay connected? Can we trust that love for one another enables the kind of teasing we wouldn’t allow outside of friendship?

My friend, knowing I can be intimacy-averse, especially in tantra-esque settings, asked if I would eye-gaze for an hour with him. It was a joke at my expense, and it was funny. I returned the joke, poking fun at an eye defect he has, which he is a bit sensitive about. "Give me that good old droopy eye!" I spat.
Had I crossed the line?

A beat.

"How many times can I hear that and laugh?" he asked. "One, I think." And laughed.

The kind of play I’m talking about isn’t always sweet, but it does see us. It points at our wounds with clarity and gentleness. Hearing the line, I didn’t push it. Play isn’t fun when you’re being an asshole.

I tell this story because joy is not always gentle. It is not always light. But in cracked-open play, sometimes you can name the thing, and it's okay.

Lightheartedness is necessary.

Back in the day, during a messy, painful divorce, it became clear to me that I was the one responsible for the quality of my life. I remember standing outside the school bus I was living in, facing into the California January sun, breathing in the light and warmth.

Around this time, someone handed me the phrase, "the artist of my own life."

I was the artist of my own life, responsible for my happiness and satisfaction. No one was coming to save me.

I had to find joy in the midst of a terrible time, or not. It was on me.

To move forward, raising two kids on my own with no job and no permanent home, I needed to be resourced. I needed to feel light and joy inside my own heart. The other way, being angry, bitter, and resentful, had made me physically ill. There was no way I would get through intact without figuring out how to lighten up.

These days call for lightheartedness on a collective level.

This is not the worst it's ever been, even if it feels like it. Our ancestors survived similar times. Our forebears had skills of community and interdependency that we can relearn.

Without lightheartedness, we muddle through, but for the sake of what? The genocide in Palestine ends, or doesn’t end, but has our own heavy-heartedness contributed in any positive way?

I use that as an example, but the same is true for many crises.

How does heavy-heartedness serve the revolution? How does it create lasting change? Or does it just make us feel like we are doing our part by feeling the weight of the world in response to our powerlessness and smallness?

"We have to pay attention to joy. Otherwise, we will spiral into despair. The world does not need people in despair. Nothing is going to get better in despair." ~Leadership coach Karen Walrond

Joy is a temporary guesthouse you inhabit, not a destination you arrive at and never leave.

Think about all the ways you have felt just this morning. We have such a huge range of emotions. I believe it's important to feel all the feelings. Some are not better than others.

But most of us have habituated feelings. For some, anger. For others, fear. Others are joyful. What’s most important is having the capacity to feel the full range. Joy is not a goal as in "I will be a joyful human forever and always," but rather, "I am a person who sometimes feels joyful."

When was the last time you felt joyful?

Are you practicing?

Joy is a practice.

Sometimes, joy arrives unbidden. But not usually. Usually, I have to at least make the effort of opening the door for it to come in. So I practice.

I have many joy practices, including clowning, singing and dancing, moving my body, whispering to the mystery "I don't know," and seeing what happens next. I am a joy practitioner, maybe only because if I don't practice, I'm not joyful. And when I'm not joyful, everything feels sad and serious, and I don’t want to be here anymore.

Everything is a practice. You practice all the time, every day. But most of the time, you’re not consciously practicing. You’re just doing what you do.

Change becomes possible with practice over time. Choosing what to practice, which can be anything, is wonderful freedom.

You get to choose what you practice.

Joy can be one of your practices.

If you were going to practice joy today, what might you do? Looking at the clouds is a joy practice. Connecting with a friend. Singing in the shower. Practice is best when it is small and simple and doesn’t require special equipment or a lot of time.

I have a "wonderful list" practice I do sometimes. In the morning, I write a list of three to five things I will do that day that make my life more wonderful. At the top is often something like, "Look at my garden" or "Text Kendra."

Practice used to be hard for me. I used to resist it because I didn’t want to be accountable to myself. If I didn’t practice, I didn’t fail. I pre-failed.

For kids who had practice forced on them (mine was piano), I feel for you. It gives practice a bad rap. Something to resist. Something to define yourself in opposition to.

So, how do you build a practice of joy, because you know you need it, but you resist practicing?

Whenever I'm struggling to do a practice, I ask a series of questions:

Do I have enough structure?

Do I have enough support?

Is this the right practice for this time?

Usually, my difficulties with practice are about not having enough structure or support. Something wonderful about practice is that it builds on itself. The more you practice, the better you get.

No one likes sucking at a new thing, so there is a period of agreeing to suck. That is a wall you have to get over.

Once you do, practice reinforces itself. To get over that initial wall, community and other structures are huge.

Want to practice joy as activism in real time?

Join me for Joy as Activism Week at Camp LightHeart, starting Monday.

This week focuses on building a joyful practice in community. We’ll lean into silliness, connection, and showing up even when things feel heavy.

This week, we make joy a daily ritual, for ourselves, and the world we long to build.

We’ll build practices and routines that center what matters and create embodied play rituals we use to anchor our activism.

For people who crave a daily practice (spiritual or otherwise) but struggle to make it stick.

Camp is pay-what-you-can.

I wanna come to camp!

Joy is not a solo project. Let's practice it together.

All love,

How to be a Killer

It's hulking there by the mirror when I walk into the bathroom.

Both organic and industrial at the same time.

Dark hairy body, legs like tangled girders, twisted twigs, crab joints.

The shudder rips through me like the San Andreas fault.

I hesitate, but it's morning, and… I gotta pee. Like, now.

I tiptoe past the wildebeest clinging to the tile wall.

Flick a glance at the ventilation slats at the top of the bathroom wall, where it has certainly clambered in.

Eight sparkling eyes watch me make water. Eight legs, flexing and gyrating as I pee.

Photo by v2osk Let me back up and give you the context you need.

I’m pretty much a lifelong vegetarian.

I practice Non-Violent Communication.

I believe in resolving conflict in ways that support everyone involved.

I’ve never initiated a fist-fight.

I don’t use violence to solve my problems.

At the time this story takes place, I'm in India, in a rented room in a house in the jungle.

Mine is the only room with an attached indoor bathroom.

Technically, the house belongs to the jungle, pressing in on the outside of the windows.

Technically, I am in the spider's territory.

But.

This is my bathroom, and I just can't.

A frequent pee-er, I will never enter this bathroom at night with this guy just… hanging out. 

In my youth, I spent a year living in the forest in a tent.

I made my peace with spiders, especially the large wolf spiders that would inhabit the space between my tent and rainfly, their outlines visible through the translucent tent fabric.

Inches from my face but separated by a wall of fabric.

I admired that they navigated by the stars.

I knew I was in their space. 

However, I've lost some of my grit in the intervening years.

Part of going to India alone for six months is about earning it back. 

But I get to have limits, right?

It is a house, after all.

A house. A HOUSE.

I make a decision.

I will gently remove this fellow. Eyeing the red shower bucket, I make a plan. I’ll capture him quickly and return him to the outside. 

And get on with the day.

But in the process of this ‘simple’ maneuver, chaos ensues. 

Huntsman spiders, which is what I later discovered he is, have evolved an incredible movement strategy.

Doing research I learn they can travel extremely quickly, often using a springing jump while running.

They walk on walls and even on ceilings.

They also tend to exhibit a "cling" reflex when picked up, making them difficult to shake off and increasing the likelihood of a bite.

So you can imagine the scene in my rustic bathroom. 

The spider is running like it's trying to win an Olympic sprint.

I'm chasing it with the bucket until it turns and runs directly at me, hopping on my leg. 

Screaming and flailing, I knock it off. 

It flies up the wall and heads for my shampoo, like a vampire scaling a gothic castle wall. 

At this point, I am freaking out.

My skin is crawling in repulsion and terror. 

I grab the ubiquitous Indian toilet hand sprayer and aim it at my toiletry bottles.

The enormous spider (probably at least five inches) hurls itself out of the spray, retreating to the corner underneath the toilet, probably to plan its attack. 

Clearly, it is not trying to escape.

We are in a battle, and I'm starting to realize it is to the death.

One of us will make it out alive.

At that moment, I am not sure it will be me. 

No, fuck that.

It's going to be me. Indian bathrooms typically feature a shower on the wall without a tub or curtain.

Water goes all over the floor.

After your shower, you scrape the tiles with a huge squeegie to push the water down the drain.

But in that moment, the innocuous bathroom cleaning technology becomes a weapon. 

The spider has crept out from under the toilet, glowering at me from the corner. 

I grab mine like a spear and aim at the monster.

The edge of the squeegie catches it in the gut, and it falls, collapsing in on itself. 

It collapses in on itself, hinged legs curling into a ball.

I've killed it.

There is a moment of silence.

Guilt floods through me.

It is small, perversely crumpled, and now, deadly forlorn. I am huge, a giant.

I can't believe I've tossed away my non-violence toward such a small creature.

Sweat drips down my sides. I catch a glimpse of my red angry face in the mirror.

Part of me feels guilty, sure, but another part is relieved.

Tremendously relieved.

I’m powerful.

I've defeated the enemy.

Which is the precise moment it unfolds itself and tears ass straight at me.

The literal moment in the horror film the dead villian rises from the bloody tub, just when the hero thought they were safe.

I grab the abandoned squeegee.

Eventually, I prevail.

But in the process, I've reinjured an old shoulder injury.

The creature is a curled tangle on the floor.

Giving it another poke to make sure it’s really dead, I cannot bring myself to pick it up and flush it.

I am panting and crying. Disgust floods me, at the spider and at my violence. 

That's what I'm writing about today: despite our best attempts at being peaceful, inside each of us is a part that can choose violence if the stakes become high enough. 

Did I pause and reflect before going on the killing rampage?

No, I did not. 

I don't go in my bathroom for the rest of the day.

But when I do, I am confronted by a mystery: the arachnid corpse has vanished. 

That's when I figure it out: Huntsmen spiders have many defense strategies, and one is faking death. 

That spider pretended to be dead, and then, once I left, it got up, shook itself off, and proceeded to go… somewhere. 

Ugh.

The next morning, nature calls.

I just stick my head into the bathroom and take a look around.

No spider. 

(By the way: This is how I will enter this bathroom for the next three weeks. My heebie-jeebies never go away.)

I proceed with caution. 

I sit on the pot, ready to do my business. 

But when I turn to get the handheld, who do you think is sitting DIRECTLY BEHIND ME on the tank of the toilet? I call my landlord to plug the vents.

He stuffs Styrofoam in them and covers them with packing tape.

The next morning, a gecko casually races through the tape.  

The spider and his friends continue to torment me. 

One morning, I wake with three spider bites on my back.

We all know exactly who put them there. 

I set a boundary out loud. "If I see you, I will kill you. You cannot live here." 

Why didn't I just change rooms, you ask? Go stay somewhere else? Why keep feeding the violent part of me? 

Not sure. I didn't want to give up, I guess.

I wanted to stick it out and re-up my grit quotient. 

My injured shoulder comes with me back to the US, a reminder of the part that couldn’t bear to be with what I fear.

I spend a small fortune on Reiki, acupuncture, and massage.

Down bottles of anti-inflammatories.

It aches at night, reminding me of how I lost my shit over a spider.  

It reminds me of how fear makes us lose compassion for others. 

I am scared, therefore, you are terrifying. 

I am afraid, therefore, you are trying to hurt me. 

Even though I have all the institutional power, I still need to squash your life. 

I hate to say this next part, but I can really relate to the humans who are terrified by those of us who threaten the gender binary, or any other conservative value.

I can understand the impulse to exterminate that which gives us the heebie-jeebies, that which scares us, that which disturbs our peace. 

We never talk about the part of us that can (and often does) choose violence.

If we are loving, compassionate humans working on ourselves and our healing, it is challenging to be transparent about this part that wants to harm and destroy. 

That's for 'them,' not us, right?

We would never do that. 

Except that my spider knows otherwise.

That spider witnessed the part of me that just can't be with my fear and moved to destroy rather than settle my nervous system.

That spider knows I did not stop to consider the dignity and aliveness of others who I fear. 

I wish I had a bow to wrap around this package, handing you a nice story about how I overcame my own inner violence.

How I was able to access compassion.

But.

I found a spider in my bed last week.