The seeds become the flower, which becomes the seeds. You are transitioning into the bloom and you are spreading you seeds of wisdom so others may bloom too.
PS C:\> tar -xf Horns_Forward_v1.zip
Application_Install.exe
Buffaloes don’t run from storms. They charge straight into them. Head down. Horns forward. And because they run toward the storm instead of away from it, they get through it faster. That’s what this post is about. Not the storm. The charge.
This one is written for a specific “you.” If you are in recovery. If you are healing wounds you didn’t ask for. If you are questioning who you are and who you are becoming. If you are carrying guilt about your past and don’t know how to set it down. If you are losing people, losing old versions of yourself, losing lifestyles that used to feel like home. If you are doing the hard, unglamorous, invisible inner work that most people will never understand and never see. This is for you.
Everything I share here came out of real conversations with real people I mentor and support. About addiction and shame. About grief making space. About the people who leave us and why that’s actually the gift. About shedding the skin you’ve outgrown. About learning that being alone is freedom, not death. About unconditional love and what it actually looks like when it’s real. And about what happens when you stop running from the storm and start running at it.
Throughout the source code below, I speak directly to “you.” That you is anyone who recognized themselves in the paragraph above. You are not alone in this herd. Keep charging.
I have spent years living this. Learning it the hard way. Passing it on one conversation at a time. Something is taking shape. A way to bring the buffalo and everything it means to a much wider herd. I’m not ready to say more than that yet. But if you feel it when you read this, stay close.
🦬
That is the application. The rest is the source code.
Source_Code.txt
The open-source code below is free, for you to analyze, modify, and build your own application with.
> there is no shame in what kept you alive: protective_behaviors.log
Don’t go to a place of shame about the things you have used to survive. Substances, alcohol, drugs, cannabis, whatever it is: these things have been protective for you. They served a purpose. They did something for you that was to your benefit. You needed them at some point. Or you would have never used them to begin with.
I don’t know anybody who has a problem with celery and mayonnaise. Because celery and mayonnaise don’t do anything. They don’t make you feel better. They don’t serve a purpose. Cannabis. Alcohol. Drugs. Mushrooms. Kratom. Every single thing people struggle with and carry addictions to has served a purpose for them at some point. Or they would have never used it to begin with. There is nothing wrong with you for using it. There is nothing wrong with you for feeling like you’re addicted to it. Absolutely nothing wrong with any of it.
The problem is when it stops serving the purpose it once did. That’s the moment it becomes something to look at. Not a reason for shame. An invitation for awareness.
You cannot change anything in your life if you can’t see it. Awareness is the most important thing you can have when you want to make a change. When the time is right, you’ll make the change. And until the time is right, you won’t. Don’t put pressure on yourself. Don’t put a deadline on it. That said: there is never a good time. I chose to quit cannabis at the very worst possible time. I had no other choice. I had a really bad experience. That was the time. So keep in mind that the perfect moment probably doesn’t exist. You’ll feel it when it’s time. You’ll know.
And once you get free and clear of it, once it’s not controlling you, not costing you, not running your nervous system: you are going to look back and say: goddamnit, I am so glad I don’t have this anymore. You’re not there yet. And that’s OK. Getting free of a substance isn’t overnight. It’s months. It’s cellular. It’s nervous system level. It’s a process, not a switch.
Little steps. You’re taking them. That’s the whole thing.
No shame is coming from me. I completely understand where you’re at, what you’re doing, and where you want to be. You are not walking this journey alone. You don’t have to figure it out by yourself. If everything unravels, if the bottom drops out, I am here. All you have to do is say: I need some help. And we will figure it out together.
The buffalo doesn’t stop at the edge of the storm and ask if it deserves to get through it.
It just charges.
So do you.
🦬
> what grief is actually doing for you: space_created.sys
Three months ago I wrote in my journal that I was making space for the right people to enter my life. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what I was writing. I do now.
The people I have lost in this journey created a great amount of emotional space for me. Space I didn’t have before. Space the best and right people couldn’t fit into. Now they can. And they are arriving. Becoming part of the new life I am building.
Loss sucks, period. But it creates space for the new things we needed to enter our life and become part of it.
Loss and grief, including loss of our health, innocence, safety, trust, people, relationships, jobs, stability: these all create fears. Fears create anxiety. Anxiety puts us into protective patterns. These patterns eventually destroy things because they don’t integrate into present reality.
Fear of being alone drove every single bad decision I have ever made. And that fear was created by a loss. A loss of safety as a young child, perhaps even before I could speak. Alone meant death at some point. At one point that fear protected me and may have even saved my life. But in present reality, it is very destructive.
Until I began grieving and healing that loss, I was trapped in the patterns that once protected me from it. Patterns that now created what I was afraid of instead of protecting me from it.
Losing a partner has been brutal. But it gave me insane amounts of information I never had about where my wounds were. If I hadn’t experienced that devastating loss, I wouldn’t have had the awareness and visibility to see where I needed to heal and what patterns I was carrying from people who burdened me with them in the past.
Grief is information. It guides us. It shows us where our wounds are and where we need to focus our healing.
I also found another shadow recently. I used to be afraid I wasn’t enough, so I would go to extremes to prove that I was. I thought I wasn’t afraid of being abandoned or rejected. But that fear of not being enough has flipped. Because of all the people running away from me, my brain has started suggesting I should be afraid of being too much. It is trying to blame me for them leaving.
Tonight I am putting that to rest. Because I am not too much for the people who have stayed, and the people who have entered my world.
The storm took some people with it when it passed.
Good.
The herd that stays is the one worth running with.
Horns forward.
🦬
> the people who leave cannot witness your becoming: departure_log.txt
You may start to lose friends. And that’s OK.
If they leave, they weren’t really good friends after all. The right people will never leave your side or even threaten to. You will lose the wrong ones. People you believed with your entire soul would never leave. They will. It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them not being able to love unconditionally and witness you growing and healing. It makes them face the shadow they are avoiding. And they simply aren’t able to do the work you are doing right now. If they were able to do this work, they would be doing it. And they wouldn’t leave you.
Grief and loss is part of the healing. It’s part of the unraveling of the things that kept us living in patterns that weren’t good for us.
Their misery is theirs. What people say is theirs. Their guilt is theirs. Their avoidance is theirs. Their inability to see their shadow, also theirs. On and on.
You are owning what is yours. Keep doing that. People will talk. People will leave and run away screaming. People will ghost. You have to know and believe in your heart and soul that you are enough. That what you do with your life is your business and your love of yourself.
People hurt you. It has a consequence. Their behavior and the consequence is theirs. Their denial of their avoidance shadow, theirs. Their inability to match and reciprocate the love and effort you are putting in, also theirs. Their emotionally abusive choices, theirs.
Keep doing you. Keep being you. At the end of the day, anyone who loves you unconditionally will be standing next to you the entire way. All the other people who want you to own their stuff will lose you. And that’s a terrible loss because you are a good human. And that loss, is also theirs.
It makes us feel gross and icky sometimes. But that’s not our emotion. That’s their projection onto us. And that projection, also theirs.
Let them run from the storm.
You keep charging into it.
The ones who run with you are your herd.
🦬
> you don't have to hand anyone your resume of destruction: past_records.old
I know the impulse. You want people to have context. You want them to understand you are taking what you did seriously and living your amends by changing yourself permanently. It’s honorable. It makes sense. Don’t let it drag you into being defined by that moment.
I have a resume of destruction from my past and I often want to hand it to people because I feel like if they find out, they will leave me. There are times it’s important to disclose things so people don’t feel like you are hiding something or deceiving them. It’s a gray area. It’s hard.
But someone told me this a few months ago: do you ask the people in your life for their resume of bad decisions? Or do you accept, trust, and love them as they are in this moment, and believe who they are based on their actions and how they are living their lives today?
And I was like: I don’t do that with people. So why do I need to justify my present existence by preemptively telling people the horrors of my past?
It was trying to control or prevent the rejection because I was so afraid of it. At the end of the day, they love me and accept me unconditionally as I am, or they don’t. If I am afraid they are going to reject or abandon me, they are already giving me signs of conditionality. And I don’t do conditionality.
People from my past will probably talk about me forever. Will probably tell everyone forever how awful I am. I can waste my finite number of heartbeats trying to cage that monster, or I can go live my life freely. Knowing that no matter what anyone says or thinks, it is not who I actually am. I know in my heart that I am a changed person. I am spending my 100,000 heartbeats a day living in that truth. That’s all that matters.
You are enough. You never have to prove it to the right people. You never had to prove it to me.
The buffalo doesn’t stop mid-charge to explain itself to the storm.
Neither do you.
Keep moving.
🦬
> the nervous system doesn't lie: block_and_walk.exe
Saying no to people is hard. But it’s easier than we think when we actually decide to do it, then actually do it.
I had a friend who didn’t respect me saying no. Their last message was a classic pressure move: frame a simple “no” as either an opening for negotiation or a relationship problem, forcing you to either explain yourself or manage their feelings. They had done the same thing with an activity I cancelled and a manipulative favor request. When I declined the activity, Someone they brought along immediately left the group chat. That says a lot. Both of them were giving me signs they had hidden sexual agendas with me. That doesn’t make me feel safe. That doesn’t give me the opportunity to consent.
There were several other things that contributed. I couldn’t trust them. I couldn’t answer the question about what I was holding onto with them and why. I couldn’t let them continue the mind gaming. So I walked and blocked. No regrets.
My nervous system went from feeling gross and icky, to feeling free and clean. Which says everything I need to know.
Kicking the codependency habit. Shedding my skin. Watch me come dancing in.
They are friends with people I know. They told me they wanted to join a group I am in, which I think had ulterior motives. So it’s messy. Those people will either respect and support my boundaries, or they will be getting blocked too. I don’t settle, negotiate, or tolerate anyone being conditional with love or disrespecting how I protect my emotional health. I know I am enough. I know I am a catch. And if people want to side with someone I have left because they are unhealthy for me. Truly their loss. Not my people.
WATCH ME WALK. I literally love walking.
If I have to quit a group and lose more supposed friends to keep my nervous system from being activated and dysregulated, I will. There is literally nothing I am not willing to walk away from when it comes to protecting my nervous system. People. Activities. Places. Whatever.
It’s why I drive people nuts. They can’t get to me. They cannot make me give in to them. Because nothing is of higher value or priority to me than myself.
They will be playing whack-a-mole with me forever if they try. As soon as I identify the next thing, I will eliminate it. And they can waste their finite and unknown number of heartbeats trying to pull me into their stuff instead of working on themselves. Meanwhile, I am losing 100,000 heartbeats a day. And it is not going to be on their drama.
I would rather be alone for the rest of my life than to feel unnecessarily anxious, stressed, afraid, or have my nervous system dysregulated.
Freedom means not being controlled. I am free. I am not walking back into a cage of any kind.
Go be free of unhealthy people and the unnecessary anxiety, stress, fear, and nerves they give you. You know what to do. And when you are ready, face the raging storm head down and horns forward.
I’m in your herd.
I am running with you.
🦬
> solitude is not the enemy: alone_is_safe.cfg
All alone. And completely happy with that.
I’m no longer afraid of being alone.
My fear of being alone drove every single destructive pattern and decision I have ever made. It’s the root of my criminal charges. The root of my addictions. The reason my foot is scarred. The reason for my codependency. The reason for the avoidance that destroyed every special relationship I had.
I used to be absolutely terrified to be alone with myself. Terrified of the thoughts. The quiet. Every part of it. I have been afraid of being alone for as long as I can remember. I often wonder if I was left to cry in a crib as a baby.
Alone meant danger. It meant death as an infant. Not being alone meant survival.
The ironic thing I have learned is that being alone is freedom and the only truly safe thing I have as an adult.
My solitude is sacred now. I don’t give it away. I don’t need to give it away. I am very picky with who I share my time with.
Your time is yours. The access you give me to your time is a gift, a privilege, and an honor that I am not entitled to or expect. Having a connection doesn’t override your agency or autonomy with time, or anything for that matter. I am always grateful for when you choose to share your time with me. And gratefulness doesn’t expect or ask for more.
Society conditions us to believe everything and everyone has expectations and wants more of everything they already have. Society tells us the grass is greener. Society says whatever we have, we have to escalate it. Upgrade it. Improve it.
And I’m like: why would I ever ask anyone for more or expect anything at all from them?
My closest people have willingly and freely given and continue to give me so much. To not be grateful and happy with that would be absolutely disgusting and an insult to their heart.
My happiness and enjoyment with my connections doesn’t require them to do anything other than being themselves exactly as they are. It doesn’t require a number of minutes of their time. Or a reply to any of my texts. Or phone calls. Or hangouts. Or certain activities. Or gifts. Or touch. Or anything. I love them unconditionally regardless of any of this.
The buffalo stands alone on the plains and is completely unbothered by it.
Solitude isn’t a punishment.
It’s the open field before the charge.
🦬
> collective healing is the whole point: co_heal.sh
Most of the wisdom I share is distilled from my readings and teachings from others. They distilled it from their sources. You are distilling all of this information and sharing it with others. It becomes collective knowledge and consciousness. That turns into collective healing. Everyone co-heals as a result.
Co-healing isn’t for the weak. Or everyone would be doing it.
Lots of people I mentor and peer support apologize for leaning on me and not being there for me. And I remind them that their struggle and what I learn about life and myself through supporting them is the reciprocation. Not everything in life has a direct equal opposite.
You have had experiences I will never have. You sharing them helps me understand trauma through a different lens. This helps me be more trauma-informed and understand how other types of trauma occur and what they lead to. I then bring this into my support of others. You and I both may have fears of abandonment and know what that feels like and does to us, but the cause of it is completely different. Learning the root of your trauma helps me remove the biased thinking caused by my experience. That is a gift. You healed. I healed. Others will heal as a result.
What happens is going to happen whether we mind it or not. We can resist it, kick our feet, and scream. It doesn’t stop or reverse it. The storm is coming. The only question is which direction you run.
Sometimes our beliefs, biases, emotions, feelings, fears, and anxieties keep us from being open to something that is yet to be. And uncertainty is the sacred place where the light comes in. The uncertainty you are feeling is an indicator that the door to the pathway of transformation is open and happening. You could replace uncertainty with fear, anxiety, doubt, or pain. It all points to the same door.
The storm you’re running into is the door.
Charge through it.
The whole herd benefits when you do.
🦬
> do things that are delightful to you: alan_watts.wav
Alan Watts said it better than I ever could:
“To spread joy you have to have it. To impart delight you have to be more or less delightful. And to be delightful is not some factor of trying to make yourself look delightful. It is to do things that are delightful to you… people who are interesting are people who are interested… your engagement with the external world: the more you are involved, the more your personality is enriched.”
Do things that are delightful to you. You become thereby delightful to others. Do delightful things like healing yourself, and it turns into delightful things like healing others.
If you really start looking around you: the people who speak your language and immediately feel safe are teaching you big lessons and you are finding yourself healing things through them. Then look around and notice the ones that seemingly suck the life out of you and add nothing to your existence. The contrast is mind-blowing. Healers. And them. No in between.
The crazy thing about healers is how we naturally find others who are healers too. Everyone in my life today is definitely an extraterrestrial healer in a human body. Every single person. It’s really wild when I think about it. All the people who were in my life before were vampires sucking the healing energy out of me.
I can read a person’s vibe in seconds. I can feel a healer in my presence immediately. And once you start healing, you start attracting them like magnets. That’s when the delightfulness starts spreading like wildfire.
Do the things that delight you.
Charge toward the life that lights you up.
The right herd will find you there.
🦬
> the questions we don't want to ask ourselves: shadow_work.exe
I share these with people I care about, not because I have the answers, but because I think the right questions are the bravest thing we can give each other. These are the questions I ask myself about all of my connections, especially the challenging ones.
Is this relationship or connection draining or nourishing me? Am I staying in it just because this is what is most familiar and certain? Are fears of abandonment, rejection, loneliness, loss of love, or other fears and anxieties keeping me in it? Am I emotionally safe, healthy, and stable in it, or am I having difficult emotions and feelings more often than not? What am I ignoring just because I want it to work? Where am I abandoning or neglecting myself to keep it? Is the work I am doing to keep and maintain it being equally reciprocated on all levels?
You don’t have to answer them for me. Just ask them of yourself.
The buffalo doesn’t avoid the dark clouds.
It runs straight at them and asks questions on the way through.
🦬
> listen to what your body is already telling you: nervous_system.log
Last night I went to an improv gathering to watch a video of the show we just did. It was going to be a good learning opportunity and I was really excited. I walked there. When I sat down with the group, my nervous system started unraveling and was saying “Nope.” Five minutes later I took a fake phone call and Irish goodbyed the event.
My nervous system wanted to be outside and walking. So I walked from there to the pier. Caught a magnificent sunset. My nervous system wasn’t done, so I walked from there to downtown and then back to my home. I had been feeling emotional heaviness all day. I didn’t analyze it or make meaning out of it. I simply listened to the message: it wanted movement, space outside, and time to myself. That’s what I did. And I felt immensely better by the time I got home.
13.5 miles to walk it out of my system.
Your body and nervous system are telling you what they need. It may frustrate you or not make sense, but you are listening to it. That’s the whole thing. Keep listening.
Sometimes charging the storm looks like 13.5 miles on foot in the dark.
Whatever it looks like for you, do it.
Your body already knows the way.
🦬
> what happened the night I ran into the angel: cherish_returns.log
The day I am writing about here was the 5th best day of my life. And it got even better.
I went to the pier for sunset. And walking back to shore, ironically listening to the same song I was listening to on the pier crying in a moment of complete heartbreak and despair in February, while feeling really amazing tonight, I look up and the woman who called herself Cherish is walking toward me.
I got to give her a coin I have been carrying in my pocket every time I have been at the pier since February for the off chance that I might cross paths with her again. I got to tell her my gratitude for her kindness. I got to tell her how much hope she gave me that night and how much it meant to me to be witnessed and loved in that moment. I got to tell her all the ways my life changed because of that moment and where I am standing today. And she could see it in my smile and my body language, and hear it in my voice.
I’m not that guy she held on February 15th.
And she shared some big changes about her life too. Things that shifted for her that night. The last words she told me on February 15th were that I helped her more than I could ever know. She’s not the same woman she was then either.
Tonight I am walking off this pier feeling like a million bucks. This is my life now. Just when I think it can’t get any better, it does.
Little does she know, she is a reason I began several projects to spread joy and happiness in my community. I wanted her and everyone on the pier to have that joy and happiness happen to them that happened to me down there. And now that has turned into a really big thing.
What you are doing ripples into humanity. That one person you pay attention to and smile at is changed in some way. Keep going.
I charged into the storm on February 15th.
Look where I am standing now.
That’s what horns forward does.
🦬
> I had to lose everything to find myself: found_after_loss.txt
“May this be the year you learn to believe in yourself…you find the strength to change what you cannot accept…you start to see things differently and begin to let go…you’re guided to the souls who will see you, who will love you as you are…that the person you were at the beginning is not the person you will find at the end…that you do not give up on who you were meant to be.”
— Brianna Wiest
I almost lost my kids.
I have been so close to losing my life and leaving them without a dad. And having lost my own dad at 19, it hits me pretty hard to know that this devastation was almost imminent at one point. My tears of happiness and joy are heavy as hell because I know all the story behind them.
I had to lose everything, including myself, to finally find myself. I had to lose everything I have ever loved, to find love of myself.
And I share my experience with you and the world with the hopes that you never have to experience this loss and pain ever in your life. Through my healing, I am healing others.
I have always avoided calling myself a healer because my ego was too big. But I am one. So are most people I associate with. The pure, good, love-filled inner child deep in every soul I encounter is simply trying to protect itself. Even the ones who hurt me. It all makes sense when you trace the chain back far enough. The only person at fault is the first person who inflicted the suffering that started the chain. The people close to me are breaking the chain. I’m breaking the chain. There is no reason for it to continue.
Much like a snake that must shed its skin it has outgrown, we are facing similar moments. Outgrowing something doesn’t mean anything bad. Just like the snake, it’s a natural and normal part of the phenomena of evolving. The skin is taut, loosening, and starting to slip off. Let it.
When I had a pet snake and it shed its skin, the fresh skin underneath was so beautiful. I see the beauty under the skins you have been shedding.
“I hope that this is the year you find the boldest, bravest kind of courage. I hope that this is the year you walk fiercely into the life that was always meant to be yours.”
— Brianna Wiest
If fear is holding you back, keeping you stuck, or getting in the way of you living your best life, ask that fear where it came from to begin with. If you need help processing that fear, I am always here.
You are enough. You are pure, good, and love inside that beautiful brain of yours. You don’t ever have to change to keep someone’s love. You cannot change the way someone loves or cares about you. If they were capable of changing, they would have already.
I see you, your struggles, and the changes you are making to remove the burdens you never asked for and live the life you have always dreamed of and deserve. My love for you is unconditional, compassionate, without judgment or agenda, and without expectations. And always will be.
I am doing really well. It’s been a great week. Just like the weeks following a disruptive event from a person no longer in my life, I am feeling better and better. It hurts me as a human to know another human being is suffering so much. Their suffering makes sense knowing what I know about their history. If I was wearing their shoes, I would have done the same exact thing. It’s not OK. AND I can’t be mad at the pure, love-filled inner child deep in their soul that is simply trying to protect them. I’m not absolving their adult body and mind of wrongdoing. I’m not saying they haven’t earned their consequences. I’m simply saying that it all makes sense. I have empathy and compassion for their suffering and I have boundaries around my well-being to keep their suffering from harming me. No different than wearing a mask around a sick person.
At the end of the day, every single thing they have done that hurt me really has nothing to do with me. It’s not personal. It’s all a result of their suffering, which is a result of other people suffering, on and on forever. I can apply it to former partners, my mother, and every single person who has ever hurt me.
You are doing hard work. And sometimes it gets harder before it gets harder. But eventually you get to the other side of the storm. I’m in your herd running at it with you, and I’ll be in your herd when you reach the green sunny pastures. I see you. I witness you. I know the tenderness and the tears well. It’s part of the journey to be our best self. We have to experience all of this to unravel ourselves from the ways of our past. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. YOU are doing it.
Keep charging.
Horns forward.