Feb 11, 2025 |
I promised my clients I would post this publicly.
I would 100% be living with my parents if I weren’t married.
Whole-ass adults living with their parents is still the default in cultures outside of pathologically individualism-obsessed America.
Living alone is also just not financially feasible in many parts of the world where living spaces are much more cramped and expensive.
Fuck anyone who shames you about it. Literally tell them “why yes, I live with my parents. I’ve been lucky enough to escape dystopian individualism.”
If given a choice again between living alone (ew, I hate being lonely), living with roommates (ugh), and living with people who gave birth to me and love me (and getting to save on rent!), it’s a no-brainer choice.
Warm bodies of family members nearby is a good thing for humans and that doesn’t change because you’re a grown-up.
Big big caveat: I’m not talking about if you actually enjoy living alone, or don’t have a good relationship with your parents.
Like if you have crappy parents and want to be away from them, or you are truly living your best life on your own — Woohoo! I celebrate you and your badass independence!
Through this post, I am only attempting to explicitly address all the shaming around people who choose to live with parents for different reasons, especially when it really helps them to reduce their financial burden as an entrepreneur.
I also recognize that having parents you have a good relationship with, and having the choice of being able to live with them and have it be a positive experience and save on rent is a huge privilege. This is not true of everyone who has parents.
I recognize that some have the privilege due to sheer good luck, and others don’t due to no fault of their own. I’m saying: if you do have this unearned advantage, the least you could do is to not feel shame about it.
Generally, life is hard, and life is expensive — it seems like — pretty much everywhere nowadays. Everyone who is figuring out how to make life work for themselves in these crazy times is deserving of our respect and admiration.
Jan 21, 2025 |
Something that is super simple to do and underrated is gaslighting yourself into thinking you’re really hot.
If you haven’t done this, I highly recommend it.
I say to myself “you’re so cute” every time I pass by a mirror and always hype myself up about how good-looking I am.
The key here is to NOT connect it to specific features (“i have good legs”) or states (“i look good when …”) it’s an all-encompassing, unconditional, generalized “I’M SO CUTE IT’S NOT FAIR”.
Whenever anyone makes a less than flattering remark about my looks, I am literally confused because do you have eyes?
Literally (1) no one is stopping you from doing this, (2) it costs ZERO dollars to do this, and (3) the ROI is incredible.
Jan 10, 2025 |
Wanna know one of my secret weapons against shame?
It works like a charm.
And I almost never see it discussed.
It’s this.
Low expectations.
Wait what?
Let me explain.
I think, in the Western world — though this phenomenon is not unique to the West, I think it is particularly salient here — people are constantly fed a steady stream of “the myth of human perfectibility.”
I think it comes from Christianity — or the way Christianity has become distorted, depending on whom you ask — with all its obsession with goodness and purity and achieving salvation from our natural state of ‘sinfulness’.
The idea that the human being ought to be perfected, and that we can achieve this through doing enough of the right things, or believing enough in the right things… is one to question.
When you think perfection/purity is attainable, and that it must be attained by doing/believing “correctly,” life is a constant stressful battle.
Because we will always run into our own shortcomings, weaknesses, and failure.
No human being — save for psychopaths or narcissists — is immune from the constant experience of facing all that is imperfect about us.
But I have a very different view of humanity, and therefore myself.
I take it for granted that I’m not that great.
There are big parts of me that are insecure, angry, entitled, hypocritical, craven, selfish, resentful, greedy, and just plain stupid.
(Before you say “Simone don’t call yourself stupid!,” here’s a simple but good example: have I drunk-driven? Yes. Fucking stupid. I don’t do it anymore but I do other, maybe equally stupid things from time to time.)
And these parts of me are not going away no matter how hard I try because I am human.
Therefore, I have created, and will continue to create scenarios in which I’m the idiot, I’m the weak link, and I’m the cause of pain for myself and others.
If I forget or deny these aspects of myself for a long time, something will happen in life that remind me and humble me.
And I say NONE of this with shame, or out of self-hatred or smallness.
Humans are profoundly paradoxical. At the same time that I am all these unpleasant things, I am also brilliant, generous, kind, wise, delightful, an awe-inspiring spark of unspeakable love and beauty.
I believe in ALL OF THE ABOVE at the same time.
See? Paradox. Humans contain the entire mind-boggling complexity of the universe. That’s what’s so wonderful and terrible about us.
But because I embrace the full spectrum of the paradox of humanity, I am not surprised by all the shitty parts of me, and my life.
I have thought, felt, and done things in the past that are so unwise, short-sighted, immature, and/or hateful that they created enormous shame for myself which I’ve never talked about with any other human being, let alone the public.
The understanding that this is not a unique thing that is happening to ME and ME only, and that the searing burn of facing one’s own profound shortcoming is a universal HUMAN experience, is what allowed me to let go of the shame.
This is how low expectations (a.k.a. “i was never supposed to be that great anyway”) freed me.
Because shame says “YOU are bad.”
And the truth is, being human just includes a lot that feels really bad. Even that person who you think is so perfect and has all their shit together and just glides through life… has their own share of unspeakable pain about their own fallibility and shortcomings that you’ll never know about.
It’s not personal.
That is enormously important to know.
I’m not above profoundly hurting other people. Because that’s a feature of being human.
I’m not above humiliating, dirt-in-my-teeth failure. Because that’s a feature of being human.
I’m not above making stupendously bad decisions — like, again and again. Because that’s a feature of being human. (There’s never, ever a point in which you permanently graduate from that for as long as you’re alive.)
These are somber, sobering truths. But it’s much better to contend with somber, sobering truths than the life-annihilating lie of shame.
Also, it is vitally important to remind myself — aggressively and vigorously sometimes — of the full weight of the OPPOSITE truth, of my goodness, beauty, brilliance, preciousness, etc.
I do this specifically and insistently.
I seek out people and spaces that make it easy for me to embody that awareness.
If you don’t balance both ends of the paradox, not only do you just get depressed, you also move away from the fundamental truth of your existence.
Another important point: the drama of dealing with shame is intensified when you’re neurodivergent, sensitive, struggle with mental health, and/or have some kind of circumstance/identity that lands you in the margins of society (like being poor or trans, etc).
Though no one is immune to the pain of Being Alive While Imperfect, it certainly is easier to pad yourself against the full awareness or full consequences of your “crunchy” sides when you have a lot of unearned advantages. (Like… for example, making mistakes while being poor and Black is a lot more ‘expensive’ than making mistakes when you’re wealthy and white. Obviously.)
That’s another thing to factor in when you’re dealing with shame. There are structural, systemic forces that determine how much “raw material” of shit you’re given to work through.
I am a vagina-owner, a person of color and descendant of colonized people, and have an ADHD brain that is prone to anxiety and depression. That means I have a lot of easy shame-triggers.
It’s like, I got the “harder” level of the same video game that a lot of other people got. But I am acutely aware that also, many many other people have to play way, way harder levels because they don’t have the privileges i do.
I’m posting this because recently, I’ve been talking to some folks about the feeling of overwhelming shame they feel about their financial circumstances.
It’s not just the stress and grief of dealing with financial precariousness. It’s the shame of “IT’S MY FAULT, I BROUGHT THIS UPON MYSELF, I SHOULD HAVE ____ AND SHOULDN’T HAVE ____, HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID.”
That’s what really kills.
But, I offer you… why should you have “known”? Why should you have “done better”?
You are not superhuman or God. You do not have perfect foresight, knowledge or willpower. You do not have infinite reserves of energy, creativity and wisdom. NO ONE DOES. Those features don’t come installed in the human package.
You are fallible and the world isn’t necessarily set up to help everyone feel safe and secure. In fact, many would argue that it’s actively rigged to fuck a lot of people over.
It’s not you. It’s not you. It’s not you.
At least, it’s not uniquely you.
Having this awareness doesn’t solve everything. But it certainly helps to lighten the emotional load. And sometimes, that counts for a lot.
Because shame sucks.
And you deserve to have your load lightened.
I don’t even think it’s technically true to say that everyone is doing their best, and therefore YOU were doing your best…
But I also think NOT always having the capacity to “do your best” IS part of us trying to do our best.
Life is hard.
You deserve grace.
You deserve the most compassionate and affirming narratives about the painful stuff in your life.
You deserve infinite second chances.
You deserve to feel like your existence is deeply good and that you matter profoundly.
Because you are, and you do.
Jan 5, 2025 |
Let me first say that I don’t think avoiding depression is just a matter of having the right mindset and making the right choices.
Sometimes you can make a 200% effort to do your best to do the “right” things and still be at the mercy of relentlessly cruel brain chemicals.
I think it is both inaccurate, unscientific and unkind to suggest that you can just mindset and action your way out of depression.
Not only that, but external circumstances matter.
To be sure, positive external circumstances can’t 100% control depression. But it sure as hell helps when you’re in a physically comfortable environment, don’t have to worry about your own survival, have disposable income (so you can take a vacation to a warmer place or get a massage or hire a cleaner if that would be supportive) and are surrounded by people who love you and support you unconditionally.
Many of these aren’t only available to all.
So what I’m about to say isn’t some kind of prescriptive guide of what you “should” do to “beat depression”.
I’m way too humble about the reality of brains. Mine in particular. Even at my most upbeat, happy and energetic (which I often am), I always feel at a razor’s edge from mental illness because I am extremely sensitive and melancholy by nature.
So this is just one story of someone who is experiencing a dark season of life, and deduce that certain things have helped her to avoid depression this time.
The biggest thing for me has been this.
The way to cope with losing your sense of purpose, direction and ambition is to find out who you are outside of those things.
Because we humans are so much more than our so-called “purpose,” “direction” and “ambition” — as defined in an individualistic and capitalist sense (as they usually are.)
And this is a place of liberation.
When I don’t have some kind of grand “purpose in the world”, my purpose is to exist today.
To be alive. To breathe. To make my bed.
To order a sandwich and eat it. To notice snowflakes falling softly on trees.
To send memes to my bestie to make her laugh.
To cuddle with my sweetheart. To feel my emotions, to cry, to take walks, to read poems.
This is actually what real life mostly consists of. Our real purpose is to be alive, and here we are, beautifully and perfectly fulfilling it.
When I’ve lost connection to a capitalist-individualist sense of direction, then I get to…
… exist without direction, which gives me a great freedom.
Children don’t need direction to play. They just follow their own impulses (which often subvert adult “directions”) and have the best time.
Artists don’t need direction to create. Like, nobody was telling Picasso “mix this color with that color and put a brushstroke HERE.” Artists respond, once again, to their own inner creative impulse — moment by moment. Not unlike play.
When I no longer have ambition, I get to be free.
Free from the prison of my worldly identity and pursuits. Because, no matter how much value I find in work, I know I’m so much more than that.
I’m an animal. I am a dream-spark of my ancestors. I’m a river of sexual energy. I’m quantum potential in a meatsuit. I am one with soil, sap and sky. I am a tiny node in the sacred unbroken web of living beings.
All of these things are so much bigger and truer and deeper than anything I can do with “ambition.”
Let me be clear…
This doesn’t mean it’s been easy and delightful for me. It hasn’t.
Almost everyday is phenomenally uncomfortable and I’ll be VERY glad when some semblance of purpose, direction and ambition return to me. (And they will. Because life consists of cycles.)
But everything I’ve just mentioned has been the difference between “oh fuck, my life is just falling apart” and “I’m undergoing vitally important spiritual journey — one that is critical for my ability to come home to my true nature.”
This awareness has reminded me again and again… that shedding isn’t a loss.
It’s a revelation.
Disintegration isn’t a disaster.
It’s a cleansing.
“Unmoored” isn’t “lost”.
It’s a liberation.
And contrary to how it feels sometimes, the universe isn’t here to just fuck you.
When there is a night, it leads to day.
When there is a winter, it leads to spring.
When there is an uphill, there is a downhill.
Everything is unfolding for a reason, and there is a great unseen benevolent loving order behind it all.
This isn’t some kind of objective truth I’m proclaiming, but a personal belief I hold.
On purpose. By choice.
Deep rigorous optimism in the goodness of the universe is as close to something gets to a religious belief for me.
It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay.
Because we live in a universe that loves us. And how I know that is that I AM a microcosm of the universe, and I AM love.
And that is how, despite a ton of discomfort, I have not been depressed.
This time.
Spoken as someone who will never hesitate to go out and get some prescription drugs if I feel like that would be supportive.
Dec 16, 2024 |
Take a break from seeing yourself through others’ perceptions.
For too many of us, we barely have a relationship with ourselves outside of the stories, identities, judgments and standards that others — and society at large — have imposed on us.
Seriously, set apart some time — a week, a day, or even an hour — and tell yourself:
“For this time, I will BE instead of BE PERCEIVED. I will claim my freedom from the label, the descriptor, the box they tried to squeeze me into.”
Strike from problem-solving and “figuring it out”.
Yes, I realize that, in order to exist, we have to solve problems and figure shit out.
But believe me, neither your brain, nor your nervous system, nor your relationships, nor your business, nor your dreams benefit from being in default “problem-solving/figuring-it-out” mode 24/7.
Take a week, a day, or even an hour — and tell yourself, “For this time, I unplug from problem-solving. I am not a problem, and my life is not a problem. I am a miracle and my life is a poem.”
Oct 3, 2024 |
There’s a poison that kills your ability to grow, achieve your goals, and do good in the world…
… that I see almost no one talking about.
“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can” – Arthur Ashe
In order for this quote to have full impact, I need to give the corollary.
Don’t try to start from somewhere other than where you are.
Don’t try to make use of resources you don’t have.
Don’t try to do something you don’t know how to do.
This is SORELY underrated wisdom. In fact, our culture currently encourages AGAINST it.
Making $500 a month now? Why not go for six figs and try to quit your job next month? Why not you?
Shoot for the moon and land among the stars!
Want to make mental healthcare accessible to all who need it?
Sure, invest all your hopes and dreams and 401K in a national network of care providers, even though you’re behind on bills, have little organizing experience, and even less marketing skills.
Heartbroken about genocide happening in a continent you’ve never been to? Why not try to figure out how to end it NOW, even though the brightest minds who are native to the region have dedicated their lives to peace have failed for decades?
This isn’t a call for pessimism or resignation. This isn’t me saying, “sit down and be realistic.” Fuck that.
Instead, this is a call to be awake to our tendency to hold ourselves up to impossible, ill-informed standards buoyed only by the kind optimism that has never been tested by reality. The same kind that political opportunists and marketing hucksters are always gleeful to take advantage of.
Hear me. It is NOT a cop out or a laziness to “start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”
In fact, it is often the shrewdest, most courageous, sensible and HELPFUL thing you can do.
(Ever have an intern with zero experience come into your office? It takes way more work to TRAIN them before they can be useful in any way. Don’t be that intern to your own project.)
Do your research. Chances are, there are people who are better-resourced already doing something similar.
This doesn’t mean you should be discouraged. Learn from them. They can help you. In a community effort, there are no lone heroes.
Instead of jumping off a cliff and saying a Hail Mary, test out a small, workable version of your vision.
Learn from it and iterate.
Never, ever compare your work to those with bigger budgets and platforms.
Arthur Ashe’s words REQUIRE you to believe in the honor and dignity of your role, wherever you are.
I wouldn’t do shit with my money and so-called “platform” if I were over here comparing myself to Mackenzie freaking Scott.
Compared to the the “all or nothing”, “be the sole hero” approach, the “Starting where you are, using what you have, doing what you can” approach allows you to:
(1) cultivate an awareness of your current strengths and weaknesses,
(2) build capacity and learn what you need to know as you go,
and
(3) develop a sustainable infrastructure and the endurance you need in order to achieve your goals in the long run. (Critical.)
“I need to figure it all out and do it all NOW” is a disease of toxic, individualist capitalism.
It is more of a manifestation of our collective neurosis than it is a genuine statement of moral conviction.
It is also the principal disruptor of sustainable and equitable processes that can win at the end.
Whether your goal is building a community-nourishing business or fighting the climate crisis, keep Arthur Ashe’s words close to your heart.
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Where that takes you will surprise you.
