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Tukayote Helianthus v2
Walking away from suffering.Walking towards love.With intention.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 them, their path, or their desire to pull me back in. 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.
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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.
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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.
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