# Tukayote Helianthus | Sobriety, Grief, and Healing Out Loud

> Tukayote Helianthus v2


## Posts

- [YOLO_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/07/24/yolo_v1-zip/): A spontaneous tattoo on Bourbon Street nearly killed me. What started as a tired, impulsive “YOLO” decision during a solo road trip turned into a severe infection and a real brush with sepsis. Years later, that same tattoo has become a daily reminder that time is finite and choices matter. I don’t read “You Only Live Once” as recklessness anymore. I read it as responsibility. One life. One body. One shot to spend my hours on what actually brings meaning, joy, and integrity.
- [From_Fragmented_to_Whole_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/06/16/from_fragmented_to_whole_v1-zip/): I was diagnosed with Bipolar I in 2007, but the truth is my war with myself started long before that, shaped by childhood trauma, military exposure, toxic relationships, and years of survival-mode coping. I lost jobs, housing, stability, and nearly my sense of self. What changed wasn’t a miracle cure. It was ownership. I got sober. I faced my history head-on. I learned my brain, my trauma, my patterns, and my parts. Recovery, for me, isn’t a finish line. It’s a daily practice of honesty, responsibility, and refusing to disappear. I’m not just what happened to me. I’m who I chose to become next.
- [Challenging_Three_Weeks_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/02/28/challenging_three_weeks_v1-zip/): The last three weeks have exhausted me. I’m exhausted, restless, anxious, and juggling consequences from years of medications that keep me alive while quietly wrecking my body. Akathisia, brutal side effects, diabetes, sleep apnea, and yet another possible med change, all while quitting cannabis, nicotine, caffeine, energy drinks, and everything else I used to lean on. This is what recovery actually looks like sometimes: choosing the least dangerous path forward when every option sucks. I’m not giving up. I’m adapting. My body finally said enough, and now I’m listening. It’s heavy, but I’m still here, and I’m not done.
- [Roxy_Is_On_My_Mind_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/01/23/roxy_is_on_my_mind_v1-zip/): Meet Roxy: my fiercest protector and most relentless firefighter. Her job is simple: keep me away from fear at any cost. Her weapon is dopamine. When alcohol and nicotine were taken off the table, she didn’t disappear; she adapted. Food became the new delivery system. What I’m learning is uncomfortable but crucial: addiction doesn’t vanish when you remove a substance, it shape-shifts. This year isn’t just about sobriety or blood sugar or weight. It’s about rebuilding trust with the part of me that learned to survive through stimulation. If I don’t understand why I chase dopamine, I’ll stay owned by it. Recovery, for me, is about taking that power back.
- [One_Year_Dry_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/01/13/one_year_dry_v1-zip/): Today marks a powerful turning point in my recovery. One year sober from alcohol, 90 days free from kratom, and nearly a full year without cigarettes. Recovery isn’t about perfection, it’s about honesty, intention, and choosing health over numbness. I’m stepping away from substances that no longer serve me, using harm reduction where needed, and committing to clarity, stability, and a life lived fully awake. This is not the end of a struggle, it’s the beginning of a cleaner, truer baseline.
- [2025_Discovering_My_Baseline_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2024/12/25/2025_discovering_my_baseline_v1-zip/): 2025 is the year I strip everything away to find my true mental health baseline. No alcohol. No cannabis. No kratom. No dopamine chasing. Just me, my brain, and the hard questions I've been avoiding for years. I want to know who I am without numbing, without escape, without outsourcing fear management to addiction. Alcohol nearly destroyed my life, my relationships, and my mind. Walking away from it wasn't moral or virtuous. It was necessary for survival. This isn't just sobriety. It's a deep investigation into fear, trauma, chemistry, and healing, and an open invitation to anyone who's tired of being ruled by their addictions to come walk this path with me.
- [Almost_8_Days_No_Weed_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2024/12/24/almost_8_days_no_weed_v1-zip/): Almost 8 days. Then anxiety won, Roxy showed up, and I burned one down. My body hated it. Pulse in the low 100s, miserable, high, and uncomfortable for hours. I also injured my ankle trying to walk the anxiety out beforehand. Cowboy talked me off the shame ledge and reminded me I'm doing my best. Today is a new day. Recovery was never about perfection.
- [Anxiety_And_Cravings_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2024/12/23/anxiety_and_cravings_v1-zip/): Anxiety waves, boundary violations, cravings. I walked 4.26mph tonight trying to get the war out of my system. Behind every craving I've ever had is the same thing: an anxiety/fear part that Roxy will do anything to protect. She's a dopamine girl, and she's exhausted. Part of my 2025 work is figuring out how to channel what she's got without burning us both down.
- [Three_Years_Ago_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2024/12/22/three_years_ago_v1-zip/): Three years ago, I publicly declared I was thriving: healthier than ever, fewer meds, solid friendships, my kids doing better. Four days later, I was drunk, high, manic, suicidal, psychotic, and locked in a psychiatric ward. That cycle repeated until I finally told myself the truth: sobriety wasn’t a preference, it was the only way forward. On January 13, 2024, I stopped drinking. Choosing sobriety, first from alcohol, then from kratom, became one of the deepest acts of self-love I’ve ever made. Now my goal is simple and radical: to understand my true baseline mental health, without substances distorting it. That clarity feels like freedom.
- [341st_Day_Without_Alcohol_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2024/12/20/341st_day_without_alcohol_v1-zip/): I was drunk, bleeding on the ground at 2AM after a 7 mile walk home from work. It took two more years and two more intoxicated ER psych visits before I fully understood the grip alcohol had on me. I'm still learning what the damage looks like. But today, I'm 341 days sober, and I'm not done yet. If you're struggling with booze, I see you. Reach out anytime.
- [Here_I_Am_Tonight_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2024/12/17/here_i_am_tonight_v1-zip/): Anxiety has been with me since childhood. I've used a lot of things to numb it. Cannabis was one of the better ones, until I stopped cold turkey to prep for brain scans, and found out it had a death grip on me I never saw coming. Now I'm in full withdrawals, feeling terrible, sitting in a VA ER. But here's the thing: this is the first time I've ever proactively asked for psychiatric help while completely sober. No substances, no fog. Just me, steering the wheel, advocating for myself. Tonight is a win.
- [What_We_Install_In_Children_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2023/12/22/what_we_install_in_children_v1-zip/): I grew up hearing "big boys don't cry" and "shut up or I'll give you something to cry about." Turns out, so did a guy with two professor parents and a "Leave it to Beaver" childhood. Same message, different delivery. Same result: shame baked in so deep it ran my life for decades. Tonight I found Internal Family Systems and something finally clicked. Vulnerability is the antidote to shame. Unconditional self love is the work. And all of your parts are good, even the ones currently failing you.
- [Let_People_Help_You_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2023/11/28/let_people_help_you_v1-zip/): I spent weeks brushing off the warning signs. By Saturday night I was drunk, paranoid, isolating, and convinced my life needed to end. Bipolar had full control and I refused every single person who tried to help. It took two syringes and a really long nap to slow me down. I'm out now, stable, sober, and safe. The lesson this time: vulnerability is the only way out of shame, and letting people in when they offer help isn't weakness. It's the whole game.
- [Been_A_Tad_Bumpy_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2023/11/19/been_a_tad_bumpy_v1-zip/): The last few weeks have been some of the best of my life and some of the hardest. New relationships, 17 mile walks, personal records, full heart. Also: a shame tornado, then a shame hurricane, then a second wave that took everything out. On my 199th day without smoking I had a lit cigarette in my hand. My tribe showed up anyway. They didn't wait for me to ask. That's the whole point. Storms come and go. We don't have to weather them alone.
- [Get_Scared_Get_Vulnerable_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2023/06/23/get_scared_get_vulnerable_v1-zip/): Do something every day that scares you. I mean it. Vulnerability isn't weakness. It's the whole engine. It's where love, intimacy, shame-death, and real change live. Brené Brown nailed it over and over, so I'm sharing my favorites here alongside what I know to be true from my own life: when you can open your heart, get scared, and tell the hardest truth to another human being in complete safety, it changes you forever. And it tells you exactly who's safe to keep around.
- [The_Power_And_Release_Of_Control_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2023/05/26/the_power_and_release_of_control_v1-zip/): Five months ago I wrote an affirmation about healing my inner child. Today I drafted a message to someone who has been causing me pain for over a year, then deleted it without sending. That's growth. That's the whole point. I can't control anyone else's path. The only thing I have ever had power over is myself. I made a list. It keeps growing. At the root of it is one word: me.
- [Today_Is_A_Gift_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2023/05/24/today_is_a_gift_v1-zip/): Every morning I wake up, I get a blank canvas. A day that hasn't been ruined yet. Full of potential. I can chase something, learn something, connect with someone, love myself a little better. Or I can waste it. Either way, I can't go back. So today feels like a good day to go after it.
- [Love_Yourself_For_Realz_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2023/05/22/love_yourself_for_realz_v1-zip/): For most of my life my answer to "how often do you practice self-love" was zero. I spent decades telling myself I was broken, unworthy, unlovable. Overweight, bipolar, estranged from my daughters, two failed marriages, nothing to show for my 30s. Then I tried something uncomfortable: I looked in the mirror and said "I love you, Tukayote." And I listened to every awful thing my brain fired back. Then I wrote it all down. Then I found gratitude in every single one of them. That's where it started.
- [No_Pill_For_This_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/11/01/no_pill_for_this_v1-zip/): Half a joint ended 25 years of numbing. Then my nervous system came back online like a fire alarm, and my therapist and psychiatrist said there was no pill for it. 300 days of sobriety later I'm sleeping without meds, I've accepted a job offer, and I'm happier than I've ever been. Here's everything I had to cut to get here, and the one cut that changed it all.
- [Hunting_Agates_Found_Closure_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/10/27/hunting_agates_found_closure_v1-zip/): Closure was never out there. After a year of begging people who hurt me for it, I found it on a beach. Here is how I stopped waiting and started healing myself.
- [Drunk_Nuclear_Plant_Operator_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/10/18/drunk_nuclear_power_plant_operator_v1-zip/): 286 days chemically sober, and the things I tell people in recovery every day: from the night I threw out my last joint to what emotional sobriety actually feels like.
- [Sharp_As_A_Thumbnail_Scratch_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/10/17/sharp_as_a_thumbnail_scratch_v1-zip/): Grief used to be the thing I ran from. Now it shows up sharp as a thumbnail scratch, I say hello out loud, and it passes. Grief isn't terrible. It's proof I have a real beating heart.
- [Gas_Station_Heroin_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/10/13/gas_station_heroin_v1-zip/): Two years clean from kratom, and a display of Feel Free shots at the gas station still told me one won't hurt. It will. This is the detox that felt like hell, the marketing nobody warns you about, the ban that finally hit Bellingham, and the guilt I carry for handing it to people I loved. No amount is safe. I'm still here to say it.
- [Good_Grief_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/10/08/good_grief_v1-zip/): For years I thought refusing to accept my bipolar made me strong. It was denial, and underneath it was grief I didn't want to feel. Acceptance isn't quitting treatment. It's quitting the fight against what's permanent, whether that's a diagnosis or a conflict that's never going to change. Sometimes no response is a response. Good grief is the kind you finally let yourself feel.
- [Living_On_Purpose_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/10/04/living_on_purpose_v1-zip/): A random poster led me to a tarot reader, and she told me to start setting intentions. Severing the last cord already brought my sleep, my appetite, and my grief back online. Now it's time to declare what I am living by from here forward. This is not an update. It is a declaration. Know what you don't want, know what you do, and live on purpose.
- [Off_The_Radar_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/09/20/off_the_radar_mp4-zip/): I went off the radar on September 20. I'm happy, sober, safe, and access to me is closed. I wish everyone involved less suffering and more peace. I'll be finding mine, out of reach and out of view.
- [Severed_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/09/08/severed_v1-zip/): It costs nothing to choose less suffering for yourself, and it will cost you everything if you don't. Today I made the hardest decision of my life, severing the last cord tied to a source of suffering I could not reduce any other way. I'm letting go so everyone on the other side of it can let go too, and I wish them love, peace, healing, and joy.
- [43_And_Better_Off_Alone_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/09/06/43_and_better_off_alone_mp4-zip/): I built an operating system named after myself, adopted a bison as a personality, A doctor also casually dropped the word cancer on me a month ago and then just moved on with her day, so I'm still waiting to find out if she meant it or was just testing my vocabulary. Happy birthday to me: stable, single, gray-haired, and self-diagnosed as finally the funniest person left in the room.
- [August_Of_43200_Twitches_JPG_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/08/31/august_of_43200_twitches_jpg_mp4-zip/): August was the month accountability stopped being a concept and became a daily habit. Five farmers markets, eighteen pier sunsets, two hundred sixty miles of walking, and 43,200 TMS pulses later, I held a boundary with people who had been increasing my suffering, did not flinch when they got angry, and came out the other side finally understanding how deep the damage had run. Two hundred thirty eight days sober. Zero patterns repeated. This is the whole receipt.
- [I_Am_Getting_Married_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/08/30/i_am_getting_married_v1-zip/): I have some big news. And I also want to share what gaslighting actually does to your grip on reality, why doubting yourself becomes a reflex, and why the research on it is a lot more serious than people realize.
- [It_Was_Never_Mania_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/08/23/it_was_never_mania_v1-zip/): I know what real mania looks like, and a lot of what got called mania wasn't it. Here's what real mania was for me, what recovery looks like now, and how I hold my boundaries.
- [No_Rest_For_224_Days_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/08/17/no_rest_for_224_days_mp4-zip/): 9 months ago I burned every bridge in my life to the ground. I filmed this dance a few weeks ago on the Whatcom Creek bridge with a train crossing behind me the whole time. The post today is about what 224 days of not giving in actually looks like from the inside, and why the title is not about what you think it is about.
- [Relapsed_At_Midnight_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/08/10/relapsed_at_midnight_mp4-zip/): Alone on the bridge over Whatcom Creek at midnight, the relapse happened. Thirty one years of buildup, no warning, nobody there to see it. I am not sorry, and honestly, I am proud of it.
- [I_Gave_Up_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/08/08/i_gave_up_mp4-zip/): Today I told someone I bought flowers for that the sunflower always faces the sun, a metaphor almost identical to that of the bison. Earlier this year, I deleted a song because it hurt too much to hear, then danced to it again and found out grief was never something you delete, only something you finally let speak. This is a story about giving up control, walking back into what I'd been avoiding, and a piece of Lakota wisdom that was given to me, not taken, by a woman who reminded me the bison does not run from the storm.
- [Sacred_Pain_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/08/04/sacred_pain_mp4-zip/): Pain means I still have a heart. It's better to feel it than to be indifferent. A song, a video, and the truth that love doesn't disappear when it changes, it just asks to be carried differently.
- [Hit_A_New_Low_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/08/01/hit_a_new_low_mp4-zip/): Liminality on the first day of August. The farmers market, an old friend, a hug that felt like glitter, a painting that looks like my insides, a poster of suffering hitting the curb, Bigfoot, a fellow multiple exposure freak, climbing shoes and chalk, mountain bikes, ice cream, and a dance nobody saw except the 360 camera. I hit an unexpected new low, in the best way possible.
- [July_2026_Liminality_JPG_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/07/31/july_2026_liminality_jpg_mp4-zip/): I almost walked past a footpath that changed my whole month. Same beach, same stairs, same everything, until one small path I'd never noticed dropped me into a ravine I didn't know existed. Turns out the dead end had the gold at the bottom of it the whole time, and so did the rest of July.
- [Captain_of_the_Vibe_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/07/25/captain_of_the_vibe_mp4-zip/): Farmers market cherries, a hug and sweet smiles from a sparkling ray of sunshine, a skirt that won in La Conner, and a twenty foot drop I didn't fall into at Clayton Beach. A silly, fearless, unmasked 201st day of sobriety, and I am the captain of it.
- [200_Days_Of_Clarity_And_Hell_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/07/24/200_days_of_clarity_and_hell_mp4-zip/): Two hundred days completely sober from every chemical, gotten in the hardest chapter of my life. Grief lodge, amends without asking forgiveness, months of nervous system hell, the manifesto that guided me, a peer support circle that never let me go it alone, and the word I didn’t have until June, autistic.
- [Faking_It_Not_Making_It_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/07/18/faking_it_not_making_it_v1-zip/): I’ve been performing again, not for other people this time, but for myself. Selfies, smiles, hand hearts, all real, all covering a grief I haven’t let myself feel. The mask is off.
- [Operation_Unmasked_Wonder_MP4_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/07/13/operation_unmasked_wonder_mp4_jpg-zip/): A 3,908.7 mile, thirteen day road trip through ten state crossings, two national parks, and one Ministry of Statistical Information Department worth of nerdy data. Also: astrophotography four years in the making, a photo recaptured after twenty two years, and the moment I chose to turn the car around 12 days earlier than originally intended.
- [Head_Spun_Around_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/07/10/head_spun_around_mp4-zip/): A month ago I found out I am autistic, and every pattern I spent this year naming suddenly had a different shape underneath it. I didn’t have language for any of it when I recorded this piece, so I let my body move through it instead. Kai Wachi said what I couldn’t, and I danced the grief because my mouth hadn’t caught up yet.
- [Kiss_Me_Then_Break_Me_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/07/02/kiss_me_then_break_me_mp4-zip/): There is no substance left standing between me and whatever I feel now. No drink, no chemical, nothing to soften the edges or buy me a night off. So when this song ripped open the way it does, quiet grief giving way to an explosive drop, I let my body do what it had to do. Weeks of stacked, unfinished grief moved out of my nervous system the only way it could. Not through numbing. Through movement.
- [June_2026_Life_MP4_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/06/30/june_2026_life_mp4_jpg-zip/): June 2026 was a month of exploration and wonder. Learning about being autistic while exploring dating with 3 different women. 176 days completely sober from drugs and alcohol. 161.4 miles walked on two feet that kept my nervous system regulated. I road tripped through 5 states and slept in 4 of them. I went no-contact with several people I used to be close to.
- [Interstate_42_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/06/30/interstate_42_v1-zip/): A year ago I walked off a 25 year IT career with no plan and no safety net. Since then I have lost nearly everything, including an identity, and people who had been part of my life for years, and found chemical and emotional sobriety, a personal operating system that actually works for how my brain runs, and the truth that I have been autistic and masking my entire life without knowing it. This is the full road from that exit, including the boundary that got tested within days of finally setting it, and the new connection I'm building without a mask on for the first time.
- [May_2026_Life_MP4_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/05/31/may_2026_life_mp4_jpg-zip/): May 2026 was a month of feeling everything, protecting everything, and losing nothing that actually mattered. 146 days completely sober. 71 days emotionally clean. 210.3 miles walked. Got hit by a mail truck and walked away. Felt the grief. Honored the nervous system. Held the boundaries. Said goodbye to what wasn't safe. Said hello to a bison Brotherhood, Lummi elders, new friendships, and a pier I danced off as a free man. This is what healing looks like when it's actually working.
- [Feel_The_Love_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/05/31/feel_the_love_mp4-zip/): For the first time in my life, I can actually feel the love. Not as a concept. As a felt thing. I danced it out.
- [Kindness_On_Trial_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/05/30/kindness_on_trial_v1-zip/): A stranger called me a creep in public while I was doing anonymous acts of kindness. I didn't react in the moment. I wrote him a letter, said what I needed to say once, and moved on. This is what I learned about shame and what I do with it.
- [A_Walk_To_Remember_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/05/21/a_walk_to_remember_v1-zip/): Your brain doesn't keep you stuck because it's afraid of what's ahead. It keeps you stuck because it's afraid of losing what it already knows. I walked 12 miles, got hit by a mail truck, and sat on a beach watching the tidal flats before I finally understood what my nervous system had been trying to tell me for months. Grief was behind all of it. Not one clean loss. A stack.
- [Horns_Forward_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/05/20/horns_forward_v1-zip/): Bison don’t run from storms. They charge straight into them. Head down. Horns forward. This is a collection of wisdom from real conversations with real people: about addiction and shame, grief making space, shedding the skin you’ve outgrown, learning that solitude is freedom, and what unconditional love actually looks like when it’s real. If you are in recovery, healing wounds you didn’t ask for, questioning who you are becoming, carrying guilt about your past, or losing people and old versions of yourself: this is for you. You are not alone in this herd. Keep charging.
- [Legacy_Fear_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/05/09/legacy_fear_v1-zip/): Fear of being alone drove every single destructive pattern and decision I ever made. I didn’t know that for most of my life. I just kept running the program. On May 6, 2026, a six year legal chapter closed at midnight and I walked to the pier alone, happy, sober, and left there completely free for the first time possibly since birth.
- [Grieving_Scars_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/05/01/grieving_scars_v1-zip/): A scar doesn’t erase what was there before it. It just marks where the wound used to be. Sitting on a log, missing someone, I found myself staring at a scar on my leg and remembering what it replaced. This is about loss, grief, and what it means to let a wave come in, move through you, and recede, without fighting it every step of the way.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
- [April_2026_MP4_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/04/30/april_2026_mp4_jpg-zip/): April 2026 was the best month of my life. Hands down. Church. Tulip fields. Engagement shoots. Dozens of sunsets on the pier. Agate hunting. Breathwork. My first skirt, worn in public. A gratefulness group that cracked something open. 360 videos. Veteran community. Boundaries held. Not a single identified pattern repeated. Not once. I ended the month 838 days sober from alcohol, 115 days clean from everything, and 40 days emotionally sober. And then I swam in the Salish Sea under a full moon with someone special. That's how April ended. I don't know how the hell I got so lucky.
- [Walking_In_The_Sun_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/04/26/walking_in_the_sun_mp4-zip/): I have spent years crawling my way through the darkness. In recent months, I finally began seeing the sun. Now I am out walking in it, literally and figuratively. It is the most wonderful feeling I have ever experienced. I am now living a life full of love, happiness, and joy, because of the painstakingly difficult internal work I have been doing every single day to eliminate my toxic patterns. I am also living this life of emotional freedom, stability, and security because of the sobriety I have chosen. Thank you to everyone who has been walking alongside me on this journey. Words cannot simply express how I am forever grateful for your love, support, and encouragement.
- [Nobody_Is_A_Bad_Person_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/04/23/nobody_is_a_bad_person_v1-zip/): I love everyone unconditionally. Including people who have hurt me. Including people who have done unforgivable things. Not because I’m noble. Because I understand that if you strip away every trauma and every adverse thing a person has ever experienced, nobody is actually a bad person. Nobody. Not one single person.
- [I_Found_God_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/04/06/i_found_god_v1-zip/): Six or seven years ago, three Bellingham Police Department units pulled into a parking lot behind my Jeep and I didn't even notice them following me. They didn't take me to jail. They took me to One Central. That psychiatric hospitalization was a single link in a chain of events that stretches back to the big bang and ends, on Easter Sunday 2026, with me sitting in a church crying for reasons I didn't expect, and finding my God in a way I never could have predicted. This is the story of collective consciousness, of how wisdom ripples forward through people, of what happens when your worst moments turn out to be the exact choreography that leads you somewhere sacred. It is also the story of how an agnostic who couldn't stomach the word "God" walked into a non-denominational Easter service and walked out understanding exactly who and what God is. Spoiler: my God was in the chairs all around me.
- [Wisdom_Mirrored_Back_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/04/04/wisdom_mirrored_back_v1-zip/): Nobody tells you that wisdom isn't something you accumulate alone. You crack open, you share everything you are figuring out, and then the people you thought you were teaching turn around and hand it all back in a completely different shape. More useful. More true. More yours than it ever was before. This is a full accounting of what we learned together, the paper folding, the pattern deaths, the safety that changes everything, the awareness that makes all of it possible, and the love that runs underneath all of it. You are somewhere in the middle of 103 folds right now. The universe is waiting on the other side. Keep going.
- [March_2026_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/31/march_2026_jpg-zip/): March 2026 was one of the most significant months of my life. Here's what I saw.
- [Closing_The_Circles_Of_Rock_Bottom_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/30/closing_the_circles_of_rock_bottom_jpg-zip/): November 2023, I stood at Heather Meadows the day before the last manic psychiatric crisis I have had and had no idea what was coming. Today I went back. Same mountain. Not even close to the same person. This is what closing circles actually looks like.
- [Time_To_Wake_Up_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/29/time_to_wake_up_v1-zip/): Standing in a sold out crowd of 10,000 people in Seattle on Saturday night, with lasers splitting the air above my head and bass moving through my chest and my platonic love wrapped around me and 82 days of complete sobriety underneath all of it, I started crying. Not the polite kind. The kind that comes from somewhere so deep in your body you don't know it's coming until it's already happening. It was a realization that arrived at a cellular level: I am really alive. This is the view from the top of the mountain I have been climbing for years. The next morning, a veteran in crisis reminded me exactly how close the margins have been, for him and for me both. This is about what those two things feel like living side by side. The weight and the beauty. Neither one canceling the other out.
- [State_Trooper_Asked_Me_A_Question_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/26/state_trooper_asked_me_a_question_v1-zip/): I have written a lot about what I burned down. The codependency. The enmeshment. The relationship decisions I kept making out of fear, not love. But here is the thing nobody really asks about: what survived? This is the inventory I never saw anyone else do. What the fire actually took. What it didn’t. What came back better than before. What showed up brand new. And what a state trooper on the side of a dark road at 11pm accidentally confirmed about all of it.
- [You_Werent_Ever_The_Problem_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/24/you_werent_ever_the_problem_v1-zip/): Awareness isn’t a step on the road to change. It is the entire road. Without it, you’re not on the road at all. You’re just in a field somewhere doing donuts in the dark. From peer support work to IFS parts work to a stormy Tuesday in Bellingham where I’m still processing a decision that cost me sixteen days of hard-won peace, this post is about the one thing that changes everything, and the one thing nobody can hand you. You have to earn the silence first. And then you have to let the silence show you the truth.
- [Geometry_Of_Becoming_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/22/geometry_of_becoming_v1-zip/): I spent three hours at the pier today. Pacing. Measuring. Flipping my camera completely upside down and taking eight shots to get one frame right. Deleting half of what I made and starting over without drama. And somewhere on that gravel beach with the tide out and the clouds doing their whole Pacific Northwest thing, I realized I was watching myself do exactly what I’ve been writing about for months. Same camera. Same pier. Completely different photographer. This is what it looks like when you stop shooting from the hip and actually do the work.
- [My_Pier_Rules_Mult_Exposures_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/21/my_pier_rules_mult_exposures_jpg-zip/): I took the Ricoh GR IIIx down to the Little Squalicum waterfront and spent a midday with the BNSF trestle, the tidal flats, and my favorite pier. Multiple exposure, 40mm, and the particular kind of thinking that only happens when you’re far enough out over the water that the shore stops mattering.
- [Unapologetically_Clean_Conscience_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/19/unapologetically_clean_conscience_v1-zip/): I need to tell you what healing actually looks like. Not the version people post about. The quiet, unglamorous, random-Tuesday version. This one is about the clean conscience, the cockroach energy, the freedom, and a guy who woke up one day and couldn't believe his own life.
- [Always_Walked_Home_Alone_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/15/always_walked_home_alone_v1-zip/): I went downtown last night. On a Saturday and stayed out until 1am with a platonic love. Not a drop of alcohol. Not a hit of anything. 26 months sober from alcohol. 67 days clean from cannabis and everything else. I woke up this morning with a clear head, a healthy body, zero hangxiety, and absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about. This is what unfiltered looks like. This is what “I am love” looks like in practice.
- [Ghosts_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/13/ghosts_v1-zip/): Every city has a haunted house. Mine is all of downtown Bellingham. The bars, the alleys, the breakfast tables, the blocked contacts, the empty chairs. I changed my name, got sober, lost almost everyone I knew, and I still have to walk through all of it. Here’s what it looks like when your whole former life becomes a ghost, and you realize you’re the one who got away.
- [My_Patterns_Are_Terrified_Of_Me_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/11/my_patterns_are_terrified_of_me_v1-zip/): Let me tell you a little story about a guy I used to know. Drunk. Psychotic. Angry. Drug fueled. The life of every party and the death of my mental health. In a two-year span of time, he attended 94 shows at the Wild Buffalo House of Music, high on drugs and alcohol every time. And even wilder is that the "Buff" was just one of several venues he frequented. Bartenders knew him by name. So did the drug dealers. So did the police. So did the St. Joe's ER and psych-ward staff. You could call him a "frequent-flyer" with all of these folks. He wore a mask so convincing that people called him a stellar human being while he was privately estranged from his kids and destroying everything he touched. He looked collected. Stable. Happy. He was dead inside. Rotting under the surface with self-hatred and resentment and shame so deep he had buried it so far down he couldn’t even find it anymore.
- [Note_In_Empty_Bedroom_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/08/note_in_empty_bedroom_v1-zip/): 3.5 years. Two hospitalizations. One note that said "Get help" on an empty bedroom door. This is the story of my estrangement from my daughters, what I had to burn down to become someone worth coming back to, and how I found my way back to them. This is not a highlight reel. This is the whole ugly house.
- [Bled_For_This_View_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/07/bled_for_this_view_v1-zip/): Three days of real peace. Then Thursday happened and my nervous system decided to manufacture a full-blown crisis out of thin air. This is what it looks like when your rational mind is miles ahead and your body is still running trauma drills. The view from up here is worth everything it cost.
- [Honest_With_Myself_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/05/honest_with_myself_v1-zip/): I spent months grieving what I lost. Then one Tuesday the grief shifted into something I didn't have a word for yet: bewilderment, and a deep, almost embarrassing "what was I tolerating?" I had been pouring everything into people, whether or not it ever came back, and calling it love when it was really fear. When I walked away from enough of it, the noise stopped. And in the quiet, I found him. For the first time in 42 years, I said out loud that I was proud of myself. I started crying before I finished the sentence.
- [Access_Denied_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/03/02/access_denied_v1-zip/): There's a moment in recovery where you stop making excuses for what you're seeing. I stopped explaining it away, gave it nothing, and kept living my life out loud. Then I found the light at the end of the tunnel, and it was me.
- [February_2026_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/28/february_2026_jpg-zip/): February was raw, demanding, and deeply transformative. I faced everything I used to numb, made real amends, held boundaries, and did not repeat a single toxic pattern. At 53 days sober off everything, I am clear, grounded, and learning how to live inside a nervous system I shut down for most of my adult life. The loneliness is intentional, peaceful, and earned. Staying changed everything.
- [Over_My_Head_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/28/over_my_head_mp4-zip/): I woke up crying with grief and confusion I still hadn't fully untangled. I had believed in something completely and poured everything into it, and then it ended in a way that took months to make sense of. Dancing to Over My Head at high tide became the only honest response. No resolution, no easy answers. Just grief, honesty, and the choice to keep moving forward.
- [Integrity_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/27/integrity_v1-zip/): These months did not break me. They refined me. I screamed into the ocean. I cried alone. I walked through rain and sunlight. I watched the sun set from the safety of the pier whenever I could. I wrote amends. I kept my boundaries. I stayed true when it would have been easier to disappear. This is a record of gratitude earned, integrity held, and love chosen again and again.
- [Pier_Mult_Exposures_2602_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/24/pier_mult_exposures_2602_jpg-zip/): Tonight I brought my favorite camera, the Ricoh GRIIIX down to the Little Squalicum Pier and played with multiple exposure photography. At 40mm of course. It was a lot of fun! I go to the pier as often as I can to catch sunsets and reflect on my life. It’s my safe, special place. ❤️​
- [Stuck_In_Bellingham_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/24/stuck_in_bellingham_jpg-zip/): A simple and fun mindfulness photowalk today collecting pictures of stickers I found on cars in Bellingham. Shot with the Ricoh GRIIIX at 40mm.​
- [Ego_Death_Torture_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/23/ego_death_torture_mp4-zip/): Ego death isn't a breakthrough or a glow-up. It's the collapse of an identity that was keeping me alive while quietly killing me. I ended patterns that were destroying me, stopped numbing, and stopped avoiding. Then came months of hypervigilance, grief, and screaming into the ocean in cold storms, sober and unarmored. Invisible. Brutal. Lonely. And I'm still here.
- [Amends_v2.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/21/amends_v2-zip/): I wrote my amends like a guilty verdict and believed it. Here is what still stands, what doesn't, and the original, word for word.
- [Being_Accountable_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/19/being_accountable_v1-zip/): I’m not interested in perfection or performative growth. I’m interested in staying honest with myself, choosing safer behaviors, and continuing forward even when it’s uncomfortable. Accountability is how I respect myself. It’s how I protect my healing. And it’s how I build a life that doesn’t require me to abandon myself to survive it.
- [Love_From_A_Stranger_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/15/love_from_a_stranger_v1-zip/): At sunset on the pier, in the middle of grief I didn’t know how to finish feeling, a complete stranger stepped into my life and quietly changed everything. She didn’t ask for details, explanations, or context. She offered warmth, presence, and long, steady hugs that held my nervous system when words couldn’t. For thirty minutes, the world stopped, grief softened, and I was reminded that kindness, safety, and love exist far beyond romance, history, or expectation.
- [Alone_On_Valentines_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/14/alone_on_valentines_v1-zip/): Twenty-six years in a row I had someone by my side. Someone to pour my love into. Someone to anchor the day. This year, I’m alone. Because I set a hard boundary. This Valentine’s Day almost swallowed me whole until I rewrote the story. I walked the city hand-hearting strangers, giving away balloons, trolling grumpy men, and letting love move freely through me. No rushing. No fear. No performance. Just emotional sobriety, a calm nervous system, and a big, unapologetic heart shared with the world.
- [Where_Am_I_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/13/where_am_i_mp4-zip/): Pure play downtown. A sober night dancing to Confusion. Improvised movement, loud bass, zero agenda. Just fun, presence, and creative freedom.
- [Time_Of_The_Revolution_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/12/time_of_the_revolution_mp4-zip/): I woke up anxious and didn’t run. I faced anxiety and didn’t spiral. Thirty-seven days sober in the hardest season of my life, I chose movement over meltdown and discipline over drama. This dance isn’t performance. It’s proof. Identity death cracked me open, and what came back is steadier, sharper, and done selling out.
- [Cornwall_Ave_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/11/cornwall_ave_jpg-zip/): A full-length exposure-therapy photowalk down Cornwall Ave with a 40mm lens and no agenda.
- [Devastate_Me_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/09/devastate_me_mp4-zip/): A feral meditation and interpretive dance about shadow, surrender, and radical love. “Devastate Me” is a vow to keep giving my heart, no armor, no regrets, even when it breaks.
- [Irish_Goodbye_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/08/irish_goodbye_v1-zip/): I’m living with an open heart and solid boundaries, and it feels really good. This piece is about choosing joy over fear, curiosity over conformity, and ethical connection over unhealthy attachment. It explores relationship anarchy, sobriety, self-trust, and the subtle art of the Irish goodbye as a way of protecting peace, staying aligned, and keeping the people who pull the magic out of you.
- [Circle_Logic_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/08/circle_logic_jpg-zip/): A 5.7-mile loop through Bellingham, chasing circles instead of destinations: abstract color, quiet focus, and the joy of noticing what’s been there all along.
- [True_Love_Glass_Museum_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/07/true_love_glass_museum_jpg-zip/): A black-and-white photo journey through the Tacoma glass museum with a very special woman I have loved for a very long time. We are reconnected and have a wonderful relationship.
- [Following_the_Lines_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/06/following_the_lines_jpg-zip/): A black and white photowalk through downtown and the Bellingham waterfront, chasing lines, contrast, and quiet geometry.
- [WHO_KAYOTE_MP4.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/06/who_kayote_mp4-zip/): After four years of silence, I took my body back, at night, on a downtown parkade, dancing without permission or apology. This wasn’t nostalgia. This was recovery in motion. A declaration that joy, movement, and instinct get to live here again. Free as a bird from my old patterns.
- [ColorStudy_Orange_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/05/colorstudy_orange_jpg-zip/): A 12.8-mile photo walk through Bellingham became more than a color study in orange, it became a marker of recovery. Long-distance walking helps regulate my nervous system and acts as somatic exposure therapy, keeping me engaged with the world instead of retreating from it. Thirty days ago I threw away my cannabis, and I’m about to cross the longest stretch I’ve been sober off everything in 24 years. One camera, one focal length, and forward motion. This wasn’t about chasing images. It was about clarity, presence, and recovery in real time.
- [Not_The_Villain_v2.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/02/03/not_the_villain_v2-zip/): I took all the blame and believed it. Here is what I still own, what I don't, and the original, word for word.
- [January_2026_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/01/31/january_2026_jpg-zip/): January 2026, was a very transformative and interesting month. I walked 216 miles. Traveled two states. And took a “few” selfies.
- [I_Beat_Things_Today_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/01/31/i_beat_things_today_v1-zip/): Today wasn’t about fixing anything. It was about feeling everything. I went offline and spent five hours in a grief lodge, moving anger, loss, and decades of trapped emotion through my body. What started as calm chanting turned into a powerful, collective release that cracked me wide open. I screamed, cried, and finally let my anger move for the first time in years. This wasn’t catharsis for show or insight for ego. It was grief, raw and embodied. I’m exhausted, sober, and deeply changed. Grief doesn’t just belong to death. It belongs to everything we lose. And I’m choosing to release it.
- [Be_A_Bison_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/01/26/be_a_bison_v1-zip/): Grief doesn’t disappear when you ignore it, it waits. Inspired by the way bison run straight into storms to get through them faster, this is a story about choosing to feel instead of numbing, crying instead of avoiding, and facing loss head-on. From a small, unexpected purchase to years of buried grief finally released, this is what it looks like to stop running away and start moving through.
- [Wish_You_Were_Here_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/01/24/wish_you_were_here_v1-zip/): A quiet moment on the beach turns into a reckoning with grief, not just for people lost, but for the version of myself that disappeared with sobriety. This is about mourning an old identity, honoring what it gave me, and choosing a truer life without pretending the grief ever fully ends.
- [Grateful_For_These_44_Things_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/01/23/grateful_for_these_44_things_v1-zip/): This is a snapshot of gratitude and awareness: 42 things I’m thankful for, unchanged over time, plus two additions that reflect where I am now. Standing at the edge of the water and examining fear itself, I explore how anxiety works, why fear isn’t always a threat, and how learning to observe it has brought more peace, curiosity, and presence into my life.
- [The_Big_Reset_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/01/21/the_big_reset_v1-zip/): I didn’t fade out. I didn’t take a break. I disappeared on purpose. I deleted everything. My websites, my social media, my personas, my performance. No announcement. No explanation. Just gone. A hard reset. I forward-deployed into a war with my own patterns, knowing full well it would cost me relationships, familiarity, and parts of my old life I once depended on. I burned bridges intentionally. Not to punish others, but to protect myself. The execution was messy. The impact was real. I own the harm, the confusion, and the collateral damage. What came after wasn’t collapse. It was freedom. This is the story of choosing zero return. Of knowing better and doing better. Of deciding, finally, how I live and how I operate.
- [Two_Years_Dry_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2026/01/13/two_years_dry_v1-zip/): I was handed addiction, trauma, and loss before I ever had a choice, and I’ve spent my life cleaning up wreckage I didn’t create. This is a reflection on sobriety, accountability, grief, and the brutal resilience required to keep choosing yourself after everything falls apart. I’m still here. Still standing. Still moving forward, one honest day at a time.
- [Year_End_2025_Final.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/12/31/year_end_2025_final-zip/): 2025 wasn’t just another year. It was the year I took my life back. I broke patterns that had been running me since childhood, stopped performing, and learned how to trust myself again. This wasn’t survival; it was reclamation. I found real freedom in boundaries, honesty, and showing up as my full self without apology. 2025 closed a lot of doors on purpose, and opened the ones that actually matter. I’m stepping into 2026 clear, grounded, and writing the next chapter on my own terms.
- [2025_All_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/12/31/2025_all_jpg-zip/): 2025 was a big year behind the lens. Astrophotography near Baker. Infrared at Point Whitehorn. The pier. Bees on fireweed. Hawaii. California. Here are the shots that stuck.
- [December_2025_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/12/31/december_2025_jpg-zip/): Took a 2400 mile solo road trip to Northern California. Worked my way up the Pacific Coast from San Francisco to the Oregon border. Cried a lot. Walked 150 miles. Went to the psych ward for two days. Kissed a beautiful stranger at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Took a couple selfies. A challenging and very transformative month with an amazing end!
- [November_2025_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/11/30/november_2025_jpg-zip/): A big life change happened this month, not going to go into it right now. I didn't take many pictures, so here are the few that I did.
- [October_2025_JPG.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/10/31/october_2025_jpg-zip/): All Hawaii. Didn’t take any other photos this month.
- [Fighting_Shadows_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/10/28/fighting_shadows_v1-zip/): For years, I thought my relentless dopamine chasing was a personal failure. Weak willpower. Poor discipline. Another addiction story. It turns out it was biology. Genetic testing confirmed what I’d long suspected: my brain is wired with significantly fewer dopamine receptors, making “normal” life feel chronically underpowered. That truth changed everything. Recovery stopped being a moral battle and became a survival strategy, one grounded in science, self-honesty, and compassion. I’m not trying to return to who I was before addiction. I’m building a new normal that actually fits my wiring, one quiet, sustainable dopamine hit at a time.
- [What_Is_IFS_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/10/19/what_is_ifs_v1-zip/): I didn’t fix myself. I learned how to drive my bus again. Internal Family Systems gave me a language for what was already happening inside: a system of parts, each trying to protect me the only way it knew how. Addiction, anger, fear, and chaos weren’t personal failures; they were passengers fighting for control because they didn’t trust the driver. IFS taught me how to rebuild trust, regulate my system, and show up sober, present, and grounded. This work helped me stop drinking, walk away from kratom, and transform rage into something useful. For me, IFS isn’t just therapy. It’s a self-love practice and a way of living.
- [Love_Your_Parts_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/10/10/love_your_parts_v1-zip/): This week, I finally stopped arguing with permanence. Not the things I can change, I know that dance well, but the things I can’t. Chronic conditions. Lifelong diagnoses. Bodies and brains that don’t magically “turn around” if I just try harder. In IFS terms, I hit a trailhead where perfection, fear, shame, and denial were all standing guard. Acceptance isn’t giving up. It’s making peace. Before I can walk forward and live meaningfully with what’s permanent, I have to befriend the parts that are terrified of imperfection and rejection. When those parts feel safe, they don’t block the path anymore. They offer wisdom, courage, and, finally, serenity.
- [Bipolar_Frustration_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/09/27/bipolar_frustration_v1-zip/): One of the cruelest parts of bipolar disorder is never fully trusting good feelings. Is this joy, or the start of hypomania? Is it real, or is it a glitter-bomb that’s about to explode into consequences? Right now, I can see that some recent “good” feelings were actually mild destabilization during a medication change. Not a crisis. Not euphoria. Just enough hypomania to make a mess. Awareness doesn’t erase the frustration, but it gives me a chance to course-correct, repair, and keep moving forward. This is the work: learning to hold joy carefully without letting fear, or denial, run the show.
- [Med_Change_Day_28_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/09/16/med_change_day_28_v1-zip/): On paper, I’m “stable.” My mood is steady. No swings. No spirals. But underneath that stability is a brutal reality: crushed energy, flat dopamine, and relentless akathisia. For years, one side effect quietly dictated my life and drove me to self-medicate with alcohol and kratom just to function. I finally named it for what it was, and chose a different path. This med change isn’t about chasing perfection; it’s about survival. I’ll take a few hard months of transition over another cycle of substance use, crisis, and hospitalization. Stability that destroys your body isn’t stability. It’s a trap.
- [Acceptance_And_Uncertainty_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/09/11/acceptance_and_uncertainty_v1-zip/): Today, I hit a trailhead I couldn’t ignore: my fear of uncertainty. In IFS, it showed up as a very young part, quiet, tense, always bracing, using denial as protection. I’ve spent years fighting diagnoses, circumstances, and history, thinking resistance was strength. It isn’t. Acceptance doesn’t mean approval or giving up; it means stopping the exhausting war with reality. Healing my childhood trauma is my responsibility now. I can’t rewrite the past, but I can learn to live with uncertainty, meet it with compassion, and move forward, one deliberate step at a time.
- [Thinning_Hair_Comment_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/08/31/thinning_hair_comment_v1-zip/): Jessica isn’t a bully. She’s a protector with a sharp tongue and outdated intel. For years, she roasted me in the mirror, commented on everything, and called it “help.” Ignoring her only made her louder. What changed wasn’t silencing the voice. It was listening to it. Jessica was frozen in time, using criticism as armor. Once I showed her I was grown, safe, and capable, the tone shifted. Less attack. More collaboration. Turns out the inner critic isn’t the enemy. It’s a scared part that never got the memo that we survived.
- [Uphill_With_A_Boulder_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/08/24/uphill_with_a_boulder_v1-zip/): Five days ago, I began a different kind of climb, not up a mountain, but through a medication change that could finally free me from akathisia. Years of medication-induced restlessness pushed my nervous system to the edge and drove me toward substances just to survive daily life. Now, with careful medical support, I’m starting a slower, steadier transition toward relief. It’s early, and I’m cautious, but so far the ground feels solid. This weekend alone at a lookout has given me the quiet space to listen to my body, trust the process, and hope for a future with fewer side effects and more clarity.
- [No_Glimmer_In_My_Eyes_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/08/19/no_glimmer_in_my_eyes_v1-zip/): Six years ago, that smile wasn’t real. I was flat, numb, and buried under a stack of psychiatric medications that dulled everything human in me. I was surviving, not living. Hospitalizations, psychosis, loss after loss followed. Then, unexpectedly, a research trial changed the trajectory. A Vagus Nerve Stimulator didn’t save me overnight, but it gave me a foothold. From there, I rebuilt slowly and painfully. Today, I’m present. I still live with Bipolar Disorder and PTSD, but they don’t own me. If you’re in the dark right now, hear this: hope can arrive quietly, sideways, and late, but it can still change everything.
- [Addiction_In_My_DNA_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/08/18/addiction_in_my_dna_v1-zip/): Most people don’t wake up thinking about dopamine. I do. For me, it isn’t a trendy neuroscience term. It’s the invisible force behind my focus, my addictions, and my long road to recovery. Living with a chronically low dopamine baseline feels like existing in grayscale while everyone else lives in color. Substances once felt like oxygen, not excess. Through brain scans, genetics, and IFS therapy, I’ve learned my addiction wasn’t a moral failure. It was a nervous system starving for relief. Recovery, for me, isn’t abstinence alone. It’s dopamine repair, self-compassion, and learning safer ways to feel alive.
- [Kratom_Uninstall_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/08/12/kratom_uninstall_v1-zip/): Three hundred days ago, I walked away from my drug dealer, and it came in a shiny, “natural” package. Kratom didn’t look dangerous. It promised relief, energy, healing. What it delivered was dependence. My opioid receptors didn’t care that it came from a plant. The withdrawals were brutal, the marketing still predatory, and the lie of “safe” continues to pull people in. This isn’t an anti-wellness rant. It’s lived truth. Kratom isn’t harmless. I’m grateful I got out when I did, and I’m speaking up because someone else deserves to know what they’re really signing up for.
- [Emotions_Hijacked_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/08/04/emotions_hijacked_v1-zip/): Emotional urges can hijack the wheel fast. You know the choice won’t help, you see the outcome coming, and sometimes you do it anyway. For me, that looks like food that spikes my blood sugar. Tonight, I didn’t use a skill I know works: Opposite Action. And I’m living with the consequence. But this isn’t about shame. It’s about agency. DBT skills don’t make urges disappear. They give you a moment of choice inside the chaos. That moment is power. And every moment after is another chance to use it.
- [Exit_41_New_Journey_v1.zip](https://tukayote.love/2025/08/01/exit_41_new_journey_v1-zip/): One month ago, I walked away from the IT industry, not impulsively, but out of necessity. What finally broke the spell wasn’t burnout or boredom, but a deeper realization: staying was costing me my emotional and physical health. This is the story of choosing emotional sobriety, radical self-love, and a different path forward, one rooted in recovery, integrity, and freedom. The road ahead is unknown, but it’s no longer the one that was slowly wearing me down.

## Pages

- [Syntax v1.2 Blattidae](https://tukayote.love/syntax/): The cockroach syntax is every crash, every corrupted file, every forced shutdown that thought it was the end.
- [TuOS v8.1 Bovidae](https://tukayote.love/tuos/): This manifesto is my personal Operating System named TuOS.
- [Apexis v2.1.2 Lavandula](https://tukayote.love/apexis/): Apexis is my programming language, based on self-truth and self-love, that starts interpreted and recompiles hot paths with progressively tighter optimizations as they prove themselves through repetition – the compiler witnesses before it commits.
- [Sitemap](https://tukayote.love/sitemap/)
- [Kinesis v1.0 Euglena](https://tukayote.love/kinesis/): The Runtime. The system, executing live.

## Optional

- [Agent (MCP protocol)](websites-agents.hostinger.com/tukayote.love/mcp)

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