Alicia Keys said it well,

“The people that are most in touch with their emotions… people that can just cry at the drop of a dime… those are the strongest people I know. I think you rob yourself of life, you rob yourself of your own experience when you don’t let yourself feel whatever it is that you feel.”

Crying easily and feeling deeply is not weakness.

It’s fluent nervous system.

It’s inner strength that’s been earned through honesty, vulnerability, and integration of the fear that lives in the edges.

Feeling your feelings isn’t about being fragile, weak, broken. It’s about access. It’s about giving your nervous system permission to calibrate before it spins out. To bring presence and truth forward, preventing the growth of disease from our survival patterns.

Let’s talk about something I see often in spiritual and healing circles:

“Lilith called me to face my shadows.”

“This tree asked me to climb her.”

“The devil tempted me.”

“The medicine took me where I needed to go.”

“My guides led me into this pattern.”

And while these are poetic and powerful ways to name our experiences…

They are also protective.

Subtle.

And sometimes… a little sidesteppy.

Seven years ago, Doug and I began the wild journey of choosing to live life together. And like most big choices, we had no way of knowing what was ahead of us.

We’ve laughed, cried, parented through sleepless nights, danced through celebrations, traveled and moved—a lot, navigated loss, and weathered hurts that tested not only our relationship, but who we are as humans. And through it all, we continue to not only be a team, but we are great friends.

This year marks seven years of marriage, but more than that—it marks seven years of devotion to a healthy family, to growth, and to doing the hard things with heart. It marks seven years of choosing to show up for one another, especially when life asked more of us than we expected.

In moments of heartbreak, it’s natural for the human heart to search for meaning.

We want to understand what happened.

We want to stop the pain.

We want somewhere to direct the rage and sorrow that feel too big to hold alone.

And often, in that reaching, we look for someone to blame.

But I want to invite a pause here.

A breath.

A zooming out.

Because sometimes the very act of blaming—of making someone the villain—is not the healing balm we think it will be.

It’s the survival response of grief searching for control in a moment where everything feels lost.

You may have heard it said that who you are in your most dysregulated state is the truest version of you.

But I want to offer another perspective—one that makes room for your nervous system and your wholeness.

That moment of disarray? That sharp tone, frozen shutdown, or panicked spiral?

It’s not your truest self.

It’s your survival system doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you.

It’s a part of you, not the whole picture.

Grief is one of our greatest paradoxes.

It’s raw, messy, and honest.

The wave that knocks us down, then pulls us deeper into ourselves than we’ve ever dared to go.

But here’s the part we often miss:

Grief doesn’t exist without love.

It is love — stretched beyond the edges of what we thought we could hold.

If you listen closely, you’ll feel it:

Under the heaviness, there’s a thread of warmth,

a glimmer that says: This ache only exists because I am so capable of love.

Today, we mark another Independence Day —

and I know for many of us, this feels conflicting

.

We’re watching freedoms chipped away.

We see families living in fear, rights threatened,

and our trust in each other frayed at the seams.

But under all that noise, I believe something softer is still here

I’m Kat.

A married mother of four.

A somatic sex educator.

A village revivalist.

A truth speaker.

A loving disruptor.

I stand for the safety of all bodies

For truth over convenience

For the protection and reverence of our Earth

For softness as power, and expression as medicine

For the beauty in everyday moments

and for joy as protest.

I stand for alchemy—for the transmutation of trauma into wisdom.

I stand for our collective evolution—beyond fear, beyond division.

I stand for the full spectrum of humanity—in all its mess, complexity, and brilliance.

I stand for diversity, for pleasure, and for a love that liberates.

In recent days, public discourse has labeled the conflict between Trump and Musk as “the girls are fighting.”

Let’s pause and examine why this matters.

Trump and Musk are not “girls.”

They are not women.

They are grown men—extremely wealthy, extremely powerful, and increasingly disconnected from the people their actions impact.

And yet, when two men in positions of influence behave poorly,

we reach for a gendered phrase

that reduces conflict to cattiness

and equates immaturity or drama with girlhood…

America is not becoming ‘Great Again’ it is being sold off.

And while we’re being told to look the other way, the price tag is being stapled to the roots of our democracy.

The headlines are filled with shiny distractions—lavish jets, celebrity feuds, and gold-plated ego—but underneath the noise, the foundation of our nation is being hollowed out by greed, power-lust, and betrayal.

Let’s take a breath and look clearly:

This isn’t about red vs. blue.

Democrat versus Republican.

This is beyond that bipartisan narrative.

It’s about the erosion of what we hold sacred.

Here’s what’s happening…

Embodiment has been so thoroughly commodified that people have begun to confuse it with aesthetics.

But embodiment is not a vibe—it’s a vow.

It is not found in curated Instagram grids.

It is not found in expensive retreats, brand deals, or a perfectly-filtered meditation selfie.

Embodiment is what you root into when no one is watching.

It’s what carries you through when the mission is bigger than your mood.

It’s the quiet promise to keep showing up—messy, magnificent, and raw…

Allyship is a beginning,

and co-conspiratorship is where the work gets real.

Being an ally often lives in language.

Being a co-conspirator lives in action.

Allyship says:

“I support you.”

(and yes—that matters)

Co-conspiratorship says:

“I will show up with you—loudly, visibly, and with something to lose.”…

In 2019, I saw it coming.

I felt it in my body first—anxiety that didn’t feel like mine alone. It was ancestral. It was alert. Something old and familiar was beginning to stir again, dressed in modern clothes and Christian language.

I remember speaking to my children,

naming the seeds that were being planted,

and naming the systemic dangers those seeds could become.

And today, the seeds which were stirring have broken ground into our reality—making news headlines…

Milestones don’t always arrive on schedule.

Sometimes they tiptoe in quietly, long after the expected due date.

Sometimes they don’t arrive at all in the form we imagined—

but they do arrive,

in the unique rhythms and sacred ways of each individual body.

My daughter Kora took her time.

She needed boosts—literal and figurative—

to meet her milestones.

Crawling didn’t come easy.

She wobbled, shifted, and eventually found a uniquely lopsided scoot

that got her where she needed to go…

This morning, I didn’t lecture.

I didn’t punish.

I didn’t try to control behavior with threats or shame.

I communicated—not to change my child,

but to connect with him.

To help him understand.

My 6-year-old has been sneaking into my room lately,

even after I’ve asked him not to.

He loves how nice I keep my space—

the calm, the order, the softness—

so he slips in quietly, invites the cats,

and plays despite my requests to stop.

With my husband home sick with the flu,

the kids and I have been sleeping downstairs,

making the best of it with couch sleepovers,

keeping the energy light

and the risk of spreading illness low.

But this morning,

I walked upstairs to discover my room soaked in cat pee—

on the shag rug, on my clothes,

all over the one space I go to ground

and feel like me…

So much of what we do each day isn’t born from our truth—

but from obedience.

Acceptance.

The deep, learned desire to be approved, to avoid rocking the boat, to not “make things harder.”

We’ve been taught to survive by staying in line,

yet this obedience does not come without cost.

Let’s reflect together:

How many of our choices are rooted not in desire, but in the quiet pressure to conform?…

When I was a little girl,

you could find me in my prettiest dress

—climbing to the tippy top of the tallest trees in the yard.

My skirt catching the breeze.

Knees scraped and dirty.

Leaves in my hair.

Giggles from my mouth.

I didn’t climb despite the dress.

I climbed because I could.

Because no part of me needed to be left behind—

not my joy, not my wildness, not my softness.

That freedom to be whole—

both tender and strong, both bold and beautiful—

stayed with me…

(A story of 10 years ago)

It’s easy to feel confused inside an abusive relationship.

One moment, things are fine.

The next, it’s like a switch flips—

and you’re watching someone charge at you

in the middle of an emotional storm.

I’ve been there.

I’ve watched a grown man slam doors,

throw objects at walls,

fall to the floor in tears,

scream so close I could feel his breath on my face,

shake me like a rag doll.

And here’s the hardest part…

We’ve all heard it:

🗣️ “Boys don’t cry.”

🗣️ “Be a man.”

🗣️ “Toughen up.”

🗣️ “Stop acting like a girl.”

And oh, how those words sink into the tender bones of our boys,

how they ripple across generations,

how they carve silence where there should be softness.

But here’s the truth…

Yesterday morning, Kora had her first seizure since February of 2024.

Fourteen months.

Fourteen months of no seizures.

Fourteen months of hope that maybe—just maybe—that had been her last seizure.

We let ourselves believe, cautiously, gently:

maybe we had crossed a threshold.

Maybe her little body was finally done with this.

But yesterday, we were back where no child or parent wants to be—riding in the ambulance to the hospital.

My fierce, funny, shining girl looked up at me

with that deep, quiet sadness—the sadness of a child who knows what it means

to be poked, monitored, measured again.

As her mother, I feel the ache rise in both of us…