 A photo I took of a woman last December walking with her cup of tea in the snow, remarking that I wanted to be just like her by this time next year. This year untangled and unraveled me. The deeply embedded, subconscious patterns that cycled through my brain finally began to melt, like wax walls collapsing in on themselves. I think the greatest ego death for me came from my layoff in August. Before that, I felt like I was functioning at surface level, just trying to keep my head above the water of my own bad habits
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 I've been thinking a lot about shame lately as I navigate this next phase of my existence. Shame is an emotion I carry abundantly, for no reason at all. It’s like a warm, comfortable blanket with spikes—it hurts, but somehow it makes me feel safe. Shame is defined as “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.”
This definition doesn’t necessarily point to specific things that cause shame, which means it’s contextual, based on what each of us individually perceives as “wrong” or “foolish” behavior, likely guided by the larger compass of those around us, or ultimately, by society.  The person I am in this moment is the result of repetition. Along the way, my sense of self found comfort in certain patterns of being, even when they weren't the most joyful. The brain longs for safety and predictability, while the soul yearns for something deeper—something the mind can’t always make sense of. It feels almost absurd to realize that the person I’ve become is simply the most convenient version shaped by circumstance. This version of me is the one that knew how to survive best with the hand I was dealt — which begs the question: who am I really?
 Last year, I was told that I had a deconditioned nervous system. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what that meant—but I knew, instinctively, that it was going to start taking up space in my life. And it did. Behaviors I had long accepted as “just who I am” began to unravel, revealing the truth: I had become skilled at neglecting myself.
There are certain habits I now look back on with compassion, recognizing that I developed them as a way to feel safe. Ironically, the very rules and safety behaviors I clung to were quietly harming my nervous system—rippling into nearly every area of my life. I wasn't human-ing properly. I treated myself like a machine—something to be constantly monitored, managed, and optimized—rather than a fleshy, warm-blooded creature in need of care, softness, and rest. It’s hard to empathize with the effects of something you can’t see. A scrape on your knee is obvious; you instinctively know where to stop the bleeding. But healing your nervous system requires a different kind of attention—one that takes patience, practice, and a willingness to listen inward. After completely depleting my nervous system of any sense of balance, I made the necessary decision to become human again.  I had this wild idea to take photos of small moments throughout my day to capture the essence of how I was feeling that day. When I started this personal project, I was feeling very disassociated with myself - I totally had no idea who I was. I made a conscious effort to capture every emotion as truthfully as I could. This meant taking photos on days I was sick, days where my mental health felt compromised, and even days I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed.
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"You can only be afraid of what you think you know.”
― J. Krishnamurti
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