Tag: peer support


  • The Problem Isn’t You. It Never Was.

    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…

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  • Ghosts

    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…

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  • I Became The Person My Patterns Were Terrified Of

    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 every relationship. 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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