Devastate Me Baby
Planting the seeds of resilience this spring.
To my fellow 'let me opt out of this uncomfortable shit and be the cool girl' queens, this one is for you.
Last week I had one of my Hot & Healing sessions become a conversation about love and dating. This is always welcome because at the end of the day everything is connected.
It is very feminine core to accept interdependence in our lives. Acknowledging your relationships, your heart, and feelings of worthiness are parts of your whole health just as your estrogen and progesterone levels are.
On the call, I was painted a beautiful picture of a budding relationship but the narrator kept stopping to qualify and warn me of potential booby traps. On paper, he was everything she'd asked for but she couldn’t enjoy it, couldn’t sink in to the pleasure of her body, convinced treachery was lurking behind the next corner.
The closer she got to what she wanted the louder the internal doubt loops got. She even said at one point, “I wish I didn’t like him.”
I’ve said the same before, “The interactions would be so much more chill if I didn’t gaf about him.”
When somebody else is saying it, the logic feels off. How are you going to experience the mind bending, profound love you dream of if you’re not even comfortable liking somebody?
Said with 0 judgement because hey kettle, it’s me pot.
The Precious Tower
Throughout this conversation I was pulled back to summer 2017 where the only thing you’d hear coming out of my speakers was SZA’s Ctrl album. The opening lines;
That is my greatest fear. That if, if I lost control or did not have control, things would just, you know? I[t] would be, fatal.
Wake that upppppp.
Control will suck the life out of you before you’ve even lived it. Control is a cage that also goes by the name perfectionism.
As someone who leans type B, avoidant I wouldn’t have been quick to claim perfectionism. At any given time there is a sloping mountain of dishes in my sink.
However, if you were raised in capitalism, of course that dog lives in you. Perfectionism is the voice that tells you, you’re not good enough. It smiles when your big dreams float off like clouds because you were frozen in procrastination.
It doesn’t matter if your aesthetic isn’t squeaky clean. Needing to control how you are perceived, over qualifying your every thought and movement is perfectionism.
It takes many shapes. Not responding to texts, cutting out “bad” foods until your plate is very dull, only letting people see you when you are at your most sparkly. You build boundaries as tall as Rapunzel’s tower and disconnect from the world around you.
Safe from needing in front of others. Safe from not being the ideal human 24/7.
Perfectionism is obsessed with image. How will this look? What will they think? What if I try and fail and everyone sees?
Resilience is obsessed with feeling. Am I alive? Am I growing? Am I enjoying myself here or do I try something new?
Perfectionism says: Don’t try unless you’re sure you’ll succeed.
Resilience says: Try anyway. You can handle the outcome.
Perfectionism says: Protect your reputation at all costs.
Resilience says: Your reputation isn’t the point. Your aliveness is.
One keeps you safe. The other keeps you living.
Resilience requires trust and that trust doesn't appear out of nowhere. You have to practice it. You don't build resilience by reading a quote and feeling better. You build it in small, daily acts of choosing feeling over image.
Love is the Comeback Kid
When you’re feeling, you are living.
From 19-24 (in response to trauma) I “lived” in pursuit of the perfect image. I ran to get married, to move countries, to blow through my husband’s income hosting others.
When I left my marriage it was like I pressed eject with a straight face. It wasn’t until the following year that grief over that life grabbed at my legs like seaweed to pull me under. On the other side of the wailing cries I’d start giggling.
I’d choose the emotions, even the painful ones, over numbness every time now.
To be in your feelings, is to be alive.
For me, when it comes to being vulnerable in love that shit is a humiliation ritual. Maybe because I always felt left out and weird as a kid or because nobody ever looked at me until I was 17 and got a fat ass or because when I was 18 I was scream crying in the middle of a highway median over a loser drug dealer 10 years my senior that did not give a fuck about my feelings. I am a runner, I’m a track star at any inkling of somebody showing interest because it would feel more comfortable to be in a boiling pot of lobster.
And why is that?
Because I’d be out of control in the situation. I might be left looking less than or unwanted. And the idea of that is far more horrifying than a crustacean demise.
It’s devastating.
This is something I am still unraveling as we speak. I am determined to not only come to you in the image of healing. I want to live the shit I teach because I believe in it.
To be less devastated by devastation, I thought I’d practice being the needy-for-love that I am in this safe space.
Anyone mind if I yearn publicly for a sec?
Kiss me like the sun
Idc if it’s fleeting
I just want to know what your warmth feels like.
I don’t fully know what or who I want. I don’t know if what I want now will be what I want forever.
For right now I want big arms around me. I want Brent Faiyaz’s Butterflies. I want somebody to meet my eyes immediately before we fold over with laughter at an inside joke. I want to be challenged and pushed. I want to be given the space to be soft and powerful.
I want to be rooted for.
I want to be obsessed with and inspired by a man the same way I am about myself.
I don’t know if I’d be happy if it was one person. Then again, I don’t know if that’s a protective thing.
I don’t knows come from my mind. The clear demands come from my belly. The practice is to continue choosing the steadiness that lives in my body and give it the mic whenever possible. When it feels harder to come to this place I like to turn to my food.
The Emergency Crash Out’s Menu
Resilience doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It means you don't have to be ashamed that it hurts. Removing this shame makes it much easier to carry on.
We have places and people and experiences to meet. Breaking the chains of perfection and taking the steps forward (regardless of how ugly) are how we get to enjoy all these dreams.
That initial break out is where we may need to lean on others like our food choices. So the next time you are spiraling down the well, here are the food medicine orders:
Bowl of beans
Something warm to sip on (a mint tea, bone broth, warmed milk and honey)
An easy protein (like slurpy chicken or pan kebabs from the recipe library)
A beautiful life giving snack (like cheez it dupes, cucumber chili crisp salad, or berry crumble bars from the recipe library)
I have a rule for myself that I’m not allowed to cry crash out unless I still feel awky after having these things.
Yk that line, if you stay ready then you don’t have to get ready?
That’s what I feel like cycle syncing has done for me. There is a constant steadiness and thoughtfulness to the way I move these days because of it.
The women who build resilience aren’t the ones who read one newsletter and felt better. They’re the ones who build diverse support systems.
A library of recipes that meet your body’s needs in every phase. Ingredient breakdowns so you understand why. Weekly additions that move with the seasons. Monthly live cooking sessions in community and access to me for all your questions.
That’s the Cycle Syncing Library.
It won’t save you from being human. It will give you the space and grounding to be the person you want to be.
Right now, for the next few hours, it’s $40 for the whole year.
That’s the lowest price it will be in 2026.
If you’ve been wanting a way to feel more regulated, more secure, more in rhythm with yourself this is a beautiful place to start.
This is my spring vibe. Not detachment. Not perfection. Not isolation.
Resilience.
The equal parts trust in myself that I can handle whatever comes and trust in the universe that it is working in my highest good.
I will be needy. I will be vulnerable. I will be messy. I will get devastated, probably more than once.
And I will still be standing probably eating something hella good.
Not because I avoided the hurt. Because I let it move through me and lived from my heart anyways.
So go be needy. Go be messy. Go want things so badly it scares you.
And when you crash out? Eat the beans. Drink the broth. Come back to the library.
The return is the whole thing, not avoiding the slip.
Love u,
Katie Xx
GIRLLLLL