As we regulate our own fires and nervous systems, we will be more helpful to a burning world.

We are going to burn. We get to decide whether it’s a helpful burn or a harmful burn. (8/8)

My nervous system requires that I accept my friends in their eccentricities.
My nervous system requires enough sleep. Etc.

Do you know what your nervous system needs?

We can’t control all the fires that are raging, but we can turn inward and determine how we are going to burn. (7/8)

My nervous system requires copious amounts of music.
My nervous system requires beauty around me.
My nervous system requires a neat and clean home.
My nervous system requires friends who let me be my eccentric, solitary self… without excluding me. (6/8)

My nervous system needs to cut back on the social media scrolling.
My nervous system needs to unfollow people who don’t contribute to the kind of fire I want to burn.
My nervous system requires long walks in the woods with Lucy.
My nervous system requires a lot of alone time. (5/8)

I was on Facebook last night for a moment and saw a post by an acquaintance that fanned my flames into a fury, so I unfollowed. I’m getting good at unfollowing, and I do it to protect my nervous system, not to make some sort of statement.

I ask what my nervous system needs often. (4/8)

Yes, to rise and give light, we must burn, but I find it helpful to be mindful about how I’m going to burn. Like the fire in my wood stove, my fire needs tending. (3/8)

It has an air damper that I can put in three different positions. If I leave the damper all the way open, it burns the wood too quickly. If I close the damper all the way, it puts the wonderful fire out. I want the wood to burn, but I want it to burn slowly. (2/8)

Maybe we should trust people who live in their own bodies to make decisions about their own bodies. That really shouldn’t be such a novel or threatening concept. (6/6)

After all, God didn’t decide for him, the surgeon did.

It’s complicated y’all. I don’t understand it all. I don’t pretend to. All I know is, it’s far more complex than many people make it. (5/6)

All through his life, he never felt comfortable in his body. A body that the doctor surgically manipulated, not God.

So when he was old enough to make an informed decision, he decided he felt most comfortable as a male. It should’ve been his decision all along. (4/6)

But then, I had an intersex client. Bravo for his vulnerability and sharing that with me. I had to learn fast.

He told me that his parents told him that at his birth, the doctor made a decision to “make him” into a girl because it would be easier. So the parents went along with it. (3/6)

Doctors are the ones who alter some of their bodies into male or female at the time of their birth if they are born intersex. They make the decision for these children without their consent.

I didn’t know all this until I was in my early 40s! I had no idea. (2/6)