Tukayote Helianthus: Unkillable
RECOVERY, EMOTION, DANCE, PHOTOS, AND TUNES.
NO ANESTHESIA. NO BULLSHIT.
Tag: control
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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.
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I’m living with an open heart and solid boundaries—and it feels really damn good. This piece is about choosing joy over fear, curiosity over conformity, and ethical connection over codependency. 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…
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I didn’t quit drinking and magically fix my life. I quit drinking and finally saw how overfurnished it was. Sobriety turned the lights on, and what I found was wall-to-wall clutter. Substances, work, relationships, patterns, identities, and coping strategies I had been stepping over for years. Clearing them out wasn’t graceful. It was slow, messy,…
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“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” For me, that punch was destabilization. Over the past year — and especially in recent months — my bipolar disorder stopped responding to insight, therapy, distance, routines, and sheer effort. Innocent moments triggered near-death levels of anxiety, sending my nervous system into overdrive while…
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For most of my life, I confused love with sacrifice and caretaking with connection. I believed that being useful, reliable, and endlessly patient was the price of intimacy—and I paid it without question. Over time, I lost my identity, my boundaries, and my sense of self. This piece is an honest examination of the patterns…
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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…
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Zero-Return Recovery isn’t a rebrand. It’s a controlled burn. I didn’t drift away or take a break, I deleted everything, cut the cords, and walked straight into the wreckage of my own patterns. On purpose. I burned bridges to stop myself from going back to what kept hurting me. No negotiating with addiction. No romanticizing…
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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.…
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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…
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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.…