Dances with Scorpions

There’s a certain kind of person who is so concerned with their own needs, how they’re feeling, and what’s good for them, they really don’t have the capacity to take in much of anything else. You might know some people like this. They can be very charming and charismatic, but after a short time you’ll realize their favorite topic — and the one they circle back to again and again — is them.When they aren’t talking about what’s good for them or what they’re excited about or looking forward to (world dominance! ballroom-bunkers! the end of Obamacare!) — they’re talking about things that really upset them. A list of ways they’ve been wronged or people they loathe — and they can be very petty about it. These kind of people like to assert their dominance as a way of feeling better about themselves. No one feels the need to assert something when they feel confident it’s already understood, and only insecure, fearful people have the desire to dominate and control others. This week I wrote about a time I watched my dad strip my not-yet-stepmom of her power and joy right in front of me, teaching us both that he was the one who was going to call the shots. I was five, and I remember looking from him to her and back again, as the energy in the room shifted, and so did something in my mind. This wasn’t about a teddy bear, this was about permission. She’d done something without asking him if it was okay, and he wasn’t going to allow that.There was more to it — if she and I bonded, that threatened the relationship he’d set up with me. I was supposed to be his tiny confidante, his pocket therapist, his pint-sized affirmer and secret-keeper. If she started buying me teddy bears, who knew whether I’d keep his Extracurricular Olympic-Level Womanizing Activities to myself.My dad was fifty. His girlfriend (eventual third wife) was twenty-four. I was five. Those numbers feel significant. She’d bought me the bear with her own money, but he made us return it. We both got the lesson that she was not allowed any agency when it came to me. Only he was the grantor of joy if there was going to be any.What kind of man makes his tiny daughter return a teddy bear? What kind of man teaches his girlfriend she gets no respect, right in front of his child? She’s allowed to do the laundry, make the dinner, keep the house clean, work and pay half the bills, but she’s not allowed to buy a gift he wouldn’t have purchased … because, why?What kind of man gives $40 billion to Argentina, but won’t feed the most vulnerable people in his own country? What kind of man makes people choose between food and affordable healthcare? What kind of president doesn’t care that 20 million people are going to see a doubling of their healthcare premiums (mine are quadrupling) or that 15 million people will be thrown off Medicaid and the ACA?What kind of administration grants tax breaks to billionaires and huge corporations, but doesn’t care that hardworking people are struggling to buy groceries? What kind of people send ICE agents to daycare centers? In the midst of all these horrors, what kind of man pauses, looks around, and asks, “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” All this and more (including the very excellent special elections) in this week’s podcast episode. Love to all.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

“We see things not as they are, but as we are. Because it is the ‘I’ behind the ‘eye’ that does the seeing.”― Anaïs NinThis week’s essay and this podcast episode are about the “I” behind the “eye.” You, me, any of us — we are always walking out the door carrying our frames of reference with us, our perspectives, our ideas about how the world works, what we have to offer, whether anyone wants to hear from us. So much of what we’re seeing is influenced by what we expect to see, or by the way we perceive what we’re seeing. I had a rough week, but not as rough as a lot of people. I was reminded that at any time your phone can ring and it can change everything. A single moment on a random Tuesday morning can render most things meaningless, and remind you of what you cannot live without. If you’re smart, the “things” you can’t live without are the people who mean everything to you, and whatever ideals you hold close to your heart — kindness, compassion, the belief that everyone deserves dignity. It’s been a rough time for kindness and dignity. Every day I see things that hurt my heart and make me wonder what has happened to far too many people, and what will become of the country I love. People I once knew are supporting some of the most cruel and heartless acts of callousness I’ve seen in my lifetime, but want to agree to disagree. The government is being sold off for parts, and the people in power are willing to starve the most vulnerable members of our country for political leverage.But there are also people working hard to fight back, to say no, to make sure no one will go to sleep hungry. There are people throwing themselves in front of ICE agents, Attorneys General filing lawsuits, good human beings showing up for their neighbors. No matter what happens, we get to decide what it means when we say “I am here” — we get to decide who that “I” is, and what we expect to see from the people around us. What we will tolerate from our friends, and what we are not willing to accept.We get to look up on a starry night and be amazed, or sit by the ocean and recognize how tiny we are — and how utterly arrogant we’d have to be to think we know how other people should live. We get to be thankful for the chance to visit this pale blue dot of a planet, or ignorant enough to believe we own any of it. It isn’t ours, we’re just visiting, but we belong to each other. It’s really easy to spot the people who know that. They’re the people trying to help.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

One of the harder things about life right now is the constant onslaught of news that feels insane, impossible, heartbreaking, outrageous, mind-boggling, or fill-in-the-blank with your chosen word. We really aren’t built for this and it’s so incredibly sad, because it doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t be this way. It could be so beautiful.I hope you are taking care of yourself, consciously stepping away from the madness sometimes, putting your phone down, getting outside if you can, breathing deeply, connecting with people you love, reading good books, listening to music, and doing anything and everything you can to remind yourself that human beings can be incredible. We’ve been through tough times before, and the most important thing is not to lose hope. Sometimes that’s also the hardest thing, I know.This week, of course, we watched as the president took a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House with no congressional oversight or approval, and no public review. There are at least a dozen other things happening that need our attention – he is directing our military to strike alleged “drug boats” out of international waters based on his assertion that they are carrying drugs — with no evidence, and without congressional input.So we’re just shooting boats out of the water, now, and taking his word for it bad people are on those boats. The administration just approved more oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge which breaks my heart. This president wants to accept a $130 million donation from a friend, Timothy Mellon, to pay the military this month and there are going to be millions of people who think that’s a good thing. It is not a good thing at all, even for active duty service members. Obviously I want them to be paid, along with all federal workers being impacted by the shutdown.I do not think senators choosing not to come to work should be paid, however, nor do I think they should receive top-of-the-line healthcare when they can’t be bothered to to their jobs. I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for their vacation. It’s not good for any American if the president starts accepting anonymous donations or any donations to pay for our military, because we need Congress. We need a functioning Congress to ensure we have a functioning democracy. We, the people, need our representatives to work together to make sure we are being represented. That’s why they are called “representatives.” That’s why we get to vote for them (unless the president calls governors of states and tells them to redraw their maps so we don’t get to vote for them), that’s why our tax dollars pay their salaries.They are supposed to go to our state capitols and to Washington to work for us. If there is a shutdown because our senators cannot come to an agreement, and the party in the majority starts taking huge donations to pay for things, there is no need to negotiate anymore. This president is working to undermine the power of one of the three branches of government in broad daylight and I do not understand why this isn’t the top story everywhere. More on that later this week.For now, in case you (also) encounter people who try to compare Obama’s basketball court to the ballroom, allow me to help. He turned the existing White House tennis court into a court that could also be used to play basketball – so some lines were painted and hoops were added. Even that he did with congressional approval and oversight. It is freaking hilarious to compare these two projects. Like an ant versus an asteroid.When people start telling you the “South Lawn Expansion Project” began during Obama and, “Trump is just finishing what Obama started” that is misinformation. In addition to the tennis court/basketball court mashup, Michelle Obama planted The White House Kitchen Garden, which continues to provide 2000 pounds of produce to the White House annually. She understands the concept of leaving a place better than you found it.You may also hear about a $376 million dollar renovation that happened while Obama was president. It did! It’s so funny, because the people talking about it are so smug. They’re like, “Look you apoplectic liberals having seizures over the ballroom, look what Obama did!” As if he spent $376 million in taxpayer dollars doing upgrades to the White House for himself.What they don’t say is that the $376 million dollar renovation was approved by Congress in 2008 when BUSH was president, before Obama took office, because the Bush administration came to Congress with a Bush administration report, saying inspectors the Bush administration had hired found infrastructure systems that were continually failing and needed to be replaced. Not just HVAC systems but security systems. So yeah, those renovations happened while Obama was in office, but they were approved and put in motion before he was president.CNN later confirmed in a September 10, 2010, segment that Congress had approved the project’s funding in 2008, before Obama took office, following a Bush administration report that warned of periodic system failures in the White House. Bloomberg News further noted that several of the building’s systems were nearing the end of their “reliable productivity.”It is very tiring and disheartening to have just paid my federal taxes when the president of the country where I live hates people like me who did not vote for him. That is not how it’s supposed to work. He is in no hurry to open the government, he said so himself just a couple of days ago. He is happy about the shutdown, because it is “killing the Democrats.” It is giving his administration the opportunity to get rid of “Democrat programs” – meaning SNAP, ACA subsidies so Americans can have affordable healthcare, Medicaid benefits, funding for pediatric cancer research, and Special Education, to name a few. Last I checked, these were not “Democrat programs.”Anyway, I continue to hope more people will realize what is happening here. Congress is the branch of government most accessible to the people – that is by design. We are able to call and email our reps for a reason. We know when votes go to the House floor, and the way our representatives vote are in the public record so we can see if they are representing our interests, voice our feelings if not, and vote them out if we continue to feel that way. Without a functioning Congress, we skid ever closer to an Executive-run country. A CEO at the helm, calling the shots — which, if you’re paying attention, is exactly what they want. This is Project 2025, and we are seeing it play out. It’s time to smell the hostile takeover.Someone commented on another platform that I have so much anger and should do some yoga. I am angry sometimes — watching arrogant, bigoted, racist, misogynistic, violent people ruin everything tends to piss me off. Sometimes I am full of despair. Other times I am full of hope, gratitude and joy — more of the time, thankfully. I don’t practice yoga to avoid my feelings or to avoid reality, I practice so I can face it, try to show up with love, and see how I can help.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Saturday I went to a No Kings event with one of my closest friends. She’s more my sister than my friend, we’ve been making good trouble together since the 80s. I am so fortunate to have a few people in my life I’ve known since childhood, or maybe it isn’t good fortune, maybe it’s that I hate goodbyes and hold on hard to the people I love. I’m a lifer unless you’re an asshat. It’s such a wonderful thing to have people who can say, “Remember that time…?” And then mention a thing that happened back in elementary school or high school or college, or a night with details we shall take to our graves, a person someone dated or married or divorced, or an update about someone we knew back in the day — who just got spotted on a dating app. That is one of the wonderful things about long term friendships — you do not have to be the sole keeper of your memories. A lot of your memories overlap with other people’s past experiences, they’re intermingled and intertwined, but so are all of our histories, all of our present-day circumstances, and all of our futures, whether we know each other or not. Our fates are tied.This is a reality that was driven home to millions of people Saturday, in this country and around the world. We’re all connected, like it or not. Even if we don’t like it, there’s no way around it — we have to find a way through this, together. I’m not sure what’s happening with the people who are refusing to recognize that there are choices, but they’re limited - you can be a rat b*****d (a phrase my Dad used to use for people who weren’t kind) or a good neighbor — either way, you’re gonna die, and you don’t take anything with you. People remember how you made them feel, though. I dunno about you, but I move away from people who aren’t kind. I don’t want to spend time with anyone who thinks they know how other people should live, or who uses language I find abhorrent to describe people who look, love, speak, pray (or don’t pray), differently than they do, or anyone who thinks it’s okay for some people to be treated without empathy or dignity or decency. I don’t want to have lunch with a person who thinks it’s okay for other people’s children to be zip-tied and thrown into the back of a U-haul, as long as it isn’t their child, because it’s my belief that there’s no such thing as other people’s children. I don’t think it’s an “edgy joke” to say you “love Hitler” or that “rape is epic” or to call Black people names I will not repeat here. I don’t think a person who is somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-five years old can be called a “kid” and excused for saying things this despicable, and I think it’s insulting, embarrassing and far below the level of integrity I expect in a vice president to defend these people and call them “promising leaders.”After Saturday’s record-breaking turnout with more than 8 million people here in this country making it clear they are not okay with the policies of this White House — along with people from other countries who joined in solidarity — the POTUS and the VP took it upon themselves to post more AI garbage on Truth Social and BlueSky, respectively. The president posted a video featuring him — wearing a crown and manning a fighter jet (King BoneSpurs McDraftDodger I guess) dropping feces on protesting American citizens — with a special shoutout to Harry Sisson who got “covered” first. How classy and presidential. The VP’s contribution was a video featuring the president sitting on a throne wearing a crown, pulling out a sword — and then they cut to the footage of Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats kneeling for 8 minutes and 46 seconds at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall in tribute to George Floyd (performative, embarrassing af Kente cloth notwithstanding), as if they were kneeling down to King Trump. No one seems to be mentioning the George Floyd part, and how despicable it is to be using that footage in a gross AI video (it’s the second of the videos linked in the article above). There really is no bottom for these people.Funny thing, I saw the last speech President Reagan gave back in 1989 because Jimmy Kimmel posted it. I’m sure I saw it at the time. I was eighteen then, and no fan of a president who would not say the word “AIDS” for years while so many young men died. But watching the speech today, I find it amazing that his last words to the American people were about our immigrant community. It is worth watching if you haven’t seen it for thirty-some-odd years. It’s worth watching if you have.Then I saw the speech President George W. Bush gave the morning after President Barack Obama won the election. He congratulated President-elect Obama, and Vice President-elect Joe Biden on their “impressive victory” and promised his administration’s help in every way so he could guarantee a smooth and peaceful transition of power. Makes one think of January 6th.I didn’t agree with President Reagan or either of the presidents Bush on policy, but these were adults who did not defile the Oval Office with their presence, and did not fancy themselves kings. They did not violate the Constitution. They did not hate Democrats. They did not shut down the government and advise Republican senators to refuse to negotiate with their Democrat colleagues. I miss the days of John McCain telling people in his audience that he was not going to allow them to call President Obama’s decency or citizenship into question, back when President Obama was his opponent. I wish Republicans missed those days, too. I cannot for the life of me fathom why they are okay with the quality of people representing the GOP now. A president posting AI videos of himself dumping s**t on American citizens? Smh.I don’t think the two-party system is working here, but we can’t even have that conversation right now. The only conversation we can have is the one that is about who we want to be as a country. Millions of people answered that question on Saturday, and this administration didn’t like the answer. They’ve forgotten they work for us, too, and they’re supposed to be listening, not calling names like schoolyard bullies. What kind of leadership is that?This week’s podcast is not for little ears because I talked about Brainwaves — a film I saw when I was eleven, that I would find disturbing today. I laughed in the comments with some of y’all who also saw JAWS way too young (hi, Kate!), and Rosemary’s Baby (hi, Kendall!) and Manhattan (hi, Wendy!) - and generally commiserated with all my Gen X friends whose parents believed things that were too scary or grown-up for us to understand as children would somehow “go over our heads” instead of directly into them. Not so much! Maybe in some strange way it was good preparation for this very moment, when so many things are appalling and insane. We’re used to that. We’re grown now. We know what gaslighting is, and we know what boundaries are, too. It doesn’t make any of this easy, but at least we have each other and we can talk about it, we can laugh about it or cry about it or sit on the couch and stare into the middle distance until someone sends a meme or a text that reminds us people are freaking excellent and funny and wise. We don’t have to try to process these things alone. We have each other. Maybe no one “had us” when we were little (except for Mr. Rogers, obviously), but we have each other, now. We don’t need kings, but we do need to remember we are all neighbors. Sending you a lot of love.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

If you’re new, hi and welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. You might be wondering what’s happening. I don’t mean in this country - I wonder what’s happening in this country every day - I mean with this podcast. Every week I write an essay, and then a couple of days later I record a talk about the topics I wrote about - after I’ve had a chance to read the responses and be in conversations with people - and often commiserate about the insanity of existing right now. This week I wrote about my son, and the time he fell off the monkey bars at recess and broke his elbow. He was six. It turns out a lot of people have fallen off the monkey bars and broken bones. Mostly when they were kids. Also, I laugh when I think of the climbing structures I grew up with, because they were so huge. They were a good twenty feet off the ground. Sometimes I wonder how any of us are still here. Look at this:I fell off a rainbow-shaped metal climbing structure when I was five - right when I got to the highest point and was feeling proud of myself for overcoming my fear - and hit my nose on one of the bars on the way down. I didn’t break anything, but my nose bled like a geyser. It bled so much my friends thought I was going to die and I believed them, because we were five. One of my friends actually said, “Oh no! You’re definitely going to die. People always die when they bleed like that.” I did not die. Anyway, my teachers were very kind to me.Some of you had stories about how incredible your teachers or principals were, and some of you had experiences like we had with the principal at my son’s school, and the nurse, too - disappointing and really hard to forgive.Which brings me to the bigger topic of the essay and the podcast - basic common decency. One of the comments this week (hi, Paul) was that “common decency” is becoming an oxymoron. It is dizzying and heartbreaking to watch people twisting themselves in knots (or not twisting themselves at all) - shrugging off some of the horrific things happening in our country every day. We’re wired for compassion. We’re meant to care about each other because it feels good to care about other people, and because our fates are tied. Historically, when human beings do terrible things to one another, it’s because they’ve decided this person, or this group of people is “other” - they are not like us, they are a danger or a threat to the common good. When you start putting people outside your circle of compassion, you might think you’re dehumanizing them, but it’s your own humanity you’re sacrificing. When you hurt someone accidentally, but you don’t call to check on them because you’re worried about liability and culpability, you’ve already lost the battle for your soul. When you decide one man is more important than the Constitution, democracy, or your fellow country-people, something has gone very deeply awry. For so many of us, it feels like we are living in an episode of the Twilight Zone. I would give almost anything for Rod Serling to come around the corner. If he did, I’d be like “I freaking KNEW it!! I knew this couldn’t be real!” Because it does feel like we’re in the upside down. Like we slipped through a portal. I got into a conversation with a woman who was utterly convinced Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their dog Gilbert were assassinated by a “radical left-wing lunatic” and when I explained to her that was absolutely bonkers and that Vance Boelter is a Trump MAGA supporter and had registered in the Republican presidential primary (and that he had tried to kill state senator John Hoffman - also a Democrat - along with his wife Yvette and their daughter Hope), and that he had 45 more Democrats on a list in his car along with 35 abortion providers - she said I was listening to legacy media, and just because I said it didn’t make it true.Me saying doesn’t make it true - the facts of the case make it true. Just like children being pulled out of bed half naked, zip-tied together and thrown into the backs of U-hauls should horrify everyone. Just like people being attacked by their own government for protesting peacefully should upset everyone. Some things are easy to figure out. You have to work really hard to pretend they’re okay when they aren’t - and there’s a cost that comes along with doing that. The cost is your integrity, and I wouldn’t exchange that for anything in the world. Good people are easy to spot. When they make a mistake, they own it. They don’t say mean-spirited, terrible things. They don’t take healthcare away from hardworking people, or free lunches away from hungry kids. They don’t grab women by the pussy. Up isn’t down. Wrong isn’t right. Rod Serling isn’t coming around the corner, but we have each other. If you’re hurting, it’s okay, me, too. If you’re scared, anxious, angry, sad… it’s okay, me, too. We have each other. We fall together and we get back up together. If the monkey bars didn’t kill us, this won’t, either. Sending you love.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

I would imagine most of us have at least one childhood memory that has to do with cruelty - and feeling unsure about what to make of it. Being little in a big world is not always easy, especially if the situation at home is chaotic and uncertain. Sometimes kids are dealing with things that are hard to talk about, and the feelings come out sideways and twisted. Sometimes, heartbreaking as it is, kids are dealing with violence or neglect, and it makes them feel weak and small. Then, when they see weak and small beings in the world they lash out. They do unto others, even though they never wanted any of those things done unto them.I wrote (and talked) about a group of kids I came upon once as I was walking home from fourth grade - a group of kids and a tiny mouse and a tall boy with a broomstick. My guess is he and I both related to the mouse - scared and trapped and at the mercy of someone so much bigger - but his response was to stamp out the perceived weakness he saw, and mine was to save the mouse. The mouse was just being a mouse, after all. It hadn’t done anything wrong.There’s bystander syndrome and “groupthink” and fight, flight, freeze, collapse or fawn - all responses that might happen in the face of something traumatic and unexpected. Sometimes people are influenced by someone they consider to be an authority figure, and will obey orders that defy their own moral code. The Milgram Shock Experiment - led by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s - shocked even Milgram himself. I mention this because it is so painful and bewildering to see people we once considered close supporting an administration that thrives on making people suffer. Even children.The other day I responded under a social media post about the shutdown. I explained about the Affordable Care Act subsidies and the fact that we’re in this situation because Republicans are refusing to negotiate so Americans can have affordable health insurance premiums. For example, my premiums are going from $346/month to $1706/month January 1st if the subsidies are not extended.And here is an actual exchange I had with a real human being on social media after I explained about the staggering jump in my premiums and how I could not possibly manage that -Them: Stop using traditional medicine. There are other solutions, both preventative and palliative. Emergency medicine in times of immediate crisis is the only benefit Western medicine provides.Me: There are those of us who need mammograms/ultrasounds and skin cancer checks, but sure, no big deal, I’ll just have a green juice and hope for the best. Them: You can get affordable skin care checks - and for free at certain events. And affordable removal of pre-cancerous skin cells all for less than the cost of healthcare premiums.I go to a chiropractor, hot yoga, hike and do my best to eat healthy all for less than what healthcare premiums cost me. If it’s my time to leave this planet, that’s okay, too. We have such an irrational fear of dying. We fear it more than living boldly. Indigenous cultures are not like that. It’s the fear of death that allows the sick healthcare system to take full advantage of all of us.Me: I’ve been teaching yoga for 30+ years and I am healthy and eat well and all of the above. I don’t have an irrational fear of dying, but I do have children and I’d like to be here for them as long as I can. The point is this is a developed country and affordable healthcare should not be out of reach.Them:Maybe I should just loosen my grip on wanting to live. Adopt a more laissez faire attitude about breathing.Anyway, between the ICE agents macing protesters in the face in Portland (which was peaceful until the POTUS invaded with his thugs), and ICE agents in Chicago traumatizing children - paid for with our tax dollars - and now South Carolina Judge Diane Goodstein’s home burning to the ground after an apparent explosion (she’s the judge who just refused to give DJT access to voter information) we really have reached new heights of violence and mayhem here. People’s rights are being trampled. We just wanted healthcare, and for this administration to honor the rule of law.I’m waiting for his supporters to realize they’re in trouble, too. They are. This is not normal, and it’s not okay. At a certain point, everyone needs to understand these are the people who have no issue with cruelty - they get off on it. They shoot puppies with no remorse. They send Ghislaine Maxwell to “prison spa” with no regard for the survivors who gathered up so much courage to come forward. They’re the grown-up versions of the boys with the broomsticks, and we’re just mice in a bucket to them, but they’ve misjudged. We are not weak, they are. Cruelty is not a badge of honor, it’s an illness and you stop it by continually saying no. Hell no. You refuse to watch your neighbors be treated without compassion while you do nothing. You decide that is not acceptable and you resist and boycott and organize and protest in every way you can and you get loud, friends. You don’t give up. Do not give up. Check on the people who’ve gone quiet. Apple and Google removed ICE-tracking apps, but if ICE is in your neighborhood, you can go to Waze and tap the Report icon, then “bad weather” and “icy conditions” in the parking lot of the closest store. Get creative. See if there’s a Community Garden near you, and whether it’s big enough to feed people in your neighborhood who might be struggling. Maybe you can set up a Neighborhood Watch not just for ICE, but so you get to know your neighbors and they get to know you - and realize you care, and they’re safer than they think. Be kinder to everyone you meet. It’s time to get in the streets. Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Hello friends. I write to you from my couch, in my pajamas at 2 p.m. on a Saturday, under a blanket, with a migraine. It’s a beast - so far it has blasted through my daily medication Topamax, and the Rizatriptan I took yesterday because I could tell I had one breaking through - and even the Benadryl I took before bed because I could feel I still wasn’t okay. I was in agony all night and did the barely-sleeping “bed hustle” - then got up to drive my daughter to self-defense. In my pajamas. She did not mind, it’s not like I got out of the car. Maybe I should try a couple of Tylenol. Some guy on insta posted this very hilarious thing pretending to be the CEO of Auntie Faw which I’m splitting into two words and spelling weirdly because god knows if I’m already on lists somewhere (likely) - and he was telling everyone HQ was shutting down and they should come get their things. People in the comments were also funny, they were asking about what would happen to their 401k’s and if anyone had Janice-from-Accounting’s potato salad recipe. But part of me was worrying people were going to believe it, and think it was an actual organization, and not a word that means “being against fascism” which is a good thing to be against. My migraine is probably just the stress from the fall of democracy, I’m sure I’ll be fine soon. Or maybe it was the guy who messaged to tell me he was “unfollowing” from my fb yoga business page because I was talking about politics. I guess he didn’t get the memo that I am now responding to people who feel the need to tell me they are unfollowing with pithy remarks so I can create an anthology. “Okay, but I’m keeping that tapestry we bought in Mexico!” Let him ponder that for a minute.I was too tired to say that everything is politics - the way the food gets to your plate, whether you can afford health insurance, if your neighbors are afforded equal protection under the law - it’s all politics. Politics is another way of saying “your philosophy in action” - the way you think the world should be - that’s what you’re voting for when you cast your ballot. So yeah, if you’ve been practicing yoga for a while, I sure hope you care about whether people are being harmed, and if a person who engaged in a heck of a lot of hate speech is being lionized, and if the president is declaring war on states in his own country…and also comics, LOL! It’s not just a thing you do on your mat before you go eat a kale salad at a restaurant - where the person who puts the salad in front of you could be hauled off by an unidentified masked man, thrown into an unmarked van, and lost - as in vanished. Yeah, you should care, sorry if your yoga teacher forget to mention that part. I lost a treasured friend because he’s gone to the dark side, and I know I’m taking that hard because I don’t let people in easily, and I don’t let them go easily, either. Goodbyes are my least favorite thing, so my head is exploding and my heart is bruised and battered, but I’ve been through worse and I’ll be fine.I was just texting with my friend Kate, and I told her I started reading an article this morning about a medication-resistant fungus that’s sweeping the country and prevalent in California and can be fatal - and I stopped reading. As in, I couldn’t tell you the name or the symptoms or what to watch out for because there didn’t seem to be a way to avoid it except to try to stay out of the hospital, which yes - especially if you don’t know how or if you’ll be able to afford health insurance in January. I don’t need to know there’s a fungus among-us. Kate said the murder hornets must be queueing up about now, and I said frogs falling from the sky in 3…2…I missed the podcast recording that would have gone with The Devil’s in the Details last weekend because I was moving my son into his first apartment as he starts his second year of college. So, I did a mashup episode that combined themes from that essay, and this week’s essay, Escalation, thus - A Devilish Escalation. The themes work together, and this episode is about the events that shape us in early childhood.Those events affect the way we feel about our place in the world, our impact on the people around us, whether we feel free to express ourselves, the roles we play in the family system - and how all of that soil we grow in does not have to define us, but it does lend context if we’re trying to understand why we are the way we are. It’s also essential to consider if you’re trying to liberate yourself from thoughts, feelings and tendencies that lead to heartache. I shared about some of my own “origin stories” and also how I stopped repeating patterns that caused me a lot of pain.It’s about gaslighting and hypocrisy and how exhausting it is to be on the receiving end of that stuff, especially if you grew up with it. It’s about how scared I am about where we are right now, and how sad.In any case, I’m going to “take Rufus to the backyard” - I just remembered that’s what helped the last time I had a really bad migraine. That’s the problem with pain like this, it makes it hard to think. Sending you love, friends. Watch out for falling frogs.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Friends, this week’s podcast episode is not for kids - meaning please don’t listen if you have kids within earshot. I want to give you a content warning because I talked about SA and all kinds of current events that aren’t easy for any of us, so if you need to pass on this one, please take care of yourself. There’s nothing you can’t read below, however. I feel like I am in a world that is becoming harder to comprehend by the day. I know I am not alone in that experience, and I know this is painful for all of us. I don’t believe anyone wants a world full of this much chaos, violence and vitriol.There are a lot of enraged, volatile people out there, and a lot of hurting, exhausted people. I don’t particularly want to talk about Charlie Kirk anymore - I talked about him in the essay this week and in the podcast - but I will say this once more so it’s very clear: political violence is never okay, and no one should be assassinated for expressing their views. Ever. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about people whose views we agree with, or views we abhor. When it happens in our country - and it does - it is never a thing to celebrate. It is never a thing to take lightly. It makes all of us less safe. It is not the sign of a healthy republic.For those of you who feel devastated because you are in agreement with his views, perhaps you might be able to understand what it felt like when Melissa Hortman - Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita - her husband Mark, and their dog Gilbert were assassinated in their home back in June by a MAGA Trump supporter. Vance Boelter dressed up as a police officer and knocked on their door in the early hours of the morning on June 14th. When they answered, he shot and killed them in the doorway of their home. My heart hurts thinking about the last seconds of their lives - the terror, the panic, the confusion and the violence. He had already been to Senator John Hoffman’s house and shot him nine times, and also shot and wounded his wife, Yvette. Their grown daughter Hope was there as well. They survived, but Senator Hoffman has a long and difficult recovery ahead, and no doubt all three of them will be dealing with the trauma of what happened for a very long time. Boelter had a list of 45 additional Democratic politicians he intended to kill. This was premeditated and devastating. I am someone who agreed with Melissa Hortman’s feelings about the country and ways we can make things better. I was dismayed to see that her assassination - along with the other horrendous details of this man’s rampage that morning and his further murderous plans to wreak havoc - did not receive the attention they warranted. Not by a long shot. The President refused to call Governor Walz to express his condolences. “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” That’s what he said when a journalist asked if he’d spoken to the governor. He did not “waste his time” calling to express his condolences to the Hortmans’ grown children, either. Flags were not flown at half-staff, he did not attend the funeral, nor did the Vice President. Vance did not even acknowledge their deaths. Please try to remember the President and Vice President are supposed to be the leaders of the entire country. They are public servants and they work for the people - our tax dollars pay their salaries, whether they need the salaries or not. The job of President and Vice President is not to care only for the people who vote for them. It would seem that someone should let them know immediately, and the rest of the administration while they’re at it. Right after news of the Hortmans’ assassinations broke, Senator Mike Lee of Utah got on X and quipped “Nightmare on Walz Street” - a post he deleted only after Senators Tina Smith (D-MN) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) talked to him in person, and expressed their absolute horror at his callousness, and grief over losing a cherished friend. I’d like to think we can all agree no one should need to be told that is not funny - that it takes a shocking lack of empathy and decency to post a thing like that in the face of a tragedy of such enormous proportions. Melissa Hortman taught Sunday school by the way. She was a mom. Her children lost both parents and their dog in the front hall of their family home in the most unimaginable way possible. Please note, not a single Democrat got on the airwaves after all the details came to light and said, “THIS IS WAR! WE ARE AT WAR WITH THE RIGHT-WING LUNATICS WHO WANT US DEAD!” Not. One.The gaslighting is a lot, it really is. This will be hard for those of you who liked the man, but try to stay with me. It is a very strange experience to see people in the “spiritual community” and the yoga community praise a man who said things that were openly racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. I linked so many examples of words coming directly out of his mouth in the essay. People will say, “Oh, you’re taking clips out of context” - but there is no context where it is okay or legitimate to say, for example, that Michelle Obama does not “possess the brain-processing power to be taken seriously” and that she “stole a slot from a white person.” Or that “the Civil Rights Act was a mistake” - other than a racist one. That’s the only context.You can’t say women over thirty are not attractive in the dating pool, and young girls who want to go to college should really only bother if they’re going in order to meet a husband - without being a misogynist. That’s the only context.There is no context where you can say “gay people are an abomination” and not be homophobic and bigoted. If you want to say you’re just repeating what you learned in Leviticus, allow me to remind you - not everyone is Christian. Not everyone reads the Bible or believes in the same god or prays the same way, or at all - and that is okay. We don’t all have to believe the same things. That is why America was formed - our forepeople came here and stole this land from the Native Americans to avoid religious persecution in England. It’s ironic that they justified it by saying God told them to do it, but I know we don’t do irony anymore, so I’ll just sob quietly to myself. Also - they didn’t want to be ruled by a king. Funny, huh?Look, we can’t do this. This is not sustainable and it’s so wasteful. We get such a short amount of time here on earth and it’s the height of ingratitude to spend it telling other people how to live. Believe me, none of us are in any position to do that. None of us. You are not living your life well enough or perfectly enough or ethically enough or kindly enough to tell anyone else what to do. I promise I’m right about that. You have plenty of work to do just keeping your own side of the street clean, and when you feel like you’ve got that pretty well managed, then you can start thinking of ways to make things even better for other people.We don’t have to agree on everything, but we do have to be able to get along, and we do have to be able to agree on basic things. If we look up and the sky is blue, we have to be able to agree on that. We can’t have half the people saying, “The f**k it is, it’s chartreuse, open your eyes, a*****e!” That’s just not going to work. If someone says, “Men are smarter and better-equipped to run things than women so they should rule the world and women should just go pop out babies and submit to their husbands,” we have to be able to agree that’s not true and it’s not cool. These are not “differences of opinion” these are things that make people unsafe. Because if you don’t push back on that, then I lose my rights and so does my daughter and men can just grab you by the pussy. Some already do, so going backwards is a terrifying proposition. We need to agree that isn’t okay. Also, men have been running the world for a very long time and I don’t think it’s going all that well.We need to agree our children getting shot at school week after week is not okay, and do something about it, together. We need to take care of the planet. We need to take care of each other, and make sure we have affordable healthcare and a safety net. We can’t have media personalities talking about lethally injecting people experiencing homelessness in our country, and then apologizing, oops. We can’t have people who want to incite war. We need to stop this madness and realize we are not the enemy of one another. We may not like each other or agree about a lot of things and that’s fine, but I’m not trying to kill you, okay? And I don’t want open borders and rampant crime, that’s a b******t story. No one wants that. Please for the love of god stop watching Fox News. Please. They will be the death of us.You don’t have to like me, but your people may not be in power forever, you know? Maybe just care about your neighbors the way you hope they’ll care about you one day when the pendulum swings again. Or if you feel like you were neglected or dismissed when your neighbors were in power, be the better team. Lead the way. But let’s not destroy ourselves, because that’s what they want. “They” being the people pulling the strings here. The people who want us to hate each other so we don’t focus on what they’re doing. If bullets start flying, you never know who’s going to get hit. That’s the problem with war, no one wins. I don’t hate you, but I hate what’s happening to our country. I hate seeing some of my friends forget basic stuff. You can’t be a racist and a decent person at the same time. That’s just basic math. Okay, I did my best. Arithmetic from a broken heart. Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

There are things you can control, and things you can’t. About 98% of things go in the second column. As someone who used to try to manage or predict how other people were going to feel, and as someone who believed I could keep myself safe if I continuously scanned the environment for danger - I’ve given this a lot of thought. There are really only two things you can control - the way you respond to whatever is happening around you, and what you decide to focus on. Here in the states, everyone I know is having to employ a certain amount of intentional cognitive dissonance to get through the day. Intentional Cognitive Dissonance feels like a thing that is uniquely 2025. It’s not the old skool simple cognitive dissonance of yore - the kind of thing that happened outside of someone’s awareness, enabling them to be a pot calling a kettle black. No, friends, it is a survival tool for this particular moment in history. It’s what makes it possible to go grocery shopping while your government is attacking its own citizens. It’s bonkers, I know!You have to be able to turn away from all of the anxiety, outrage, fear and despair sometimes, or you won’t make it. Also, you don’t want to allow these people who could not care less about you and your worries and your kids and your family and your neighbors and the things that keep you up at night - like the fact that you have no idea how you’re going to afford health insurance in January (not normal!) - rob you of your joy, your poetry, your music, your magic. Maybe someday historians will study the unthinkable times we’re living through, and there will be a chapter about ICD. I’d feel certain historians would study this moment in time - because god knows we have made some wild choices - but who knows if we’ll have historians in the future? Maybe AI will be handling the archives, whitewashing history, running code to get rid of the more horrific things we’ve done. There are a lot, and now there are a whole lot more. For all our technological advances, and for all their money, the people in charge are morally and ethically bankrupt. The Supreme Court has decided corporations deserve the same rights as human beings. Corporations are certainly protected in our legal system with a lot more fervor than children or women. Come to think of it, so are guns.The knights of the round table are all pale white billionaires who kiss the ring and normalize an authoritarian who wears more makeup than Tammy Faye Baker, nominates a dangerous, unqualified, anti-science grifter as the HHS director, intimidates Republican senators to make sure he gets confirmed - and then questions his decision to make Covid vaccines harder to get, and says Florida should probably keep some vaccine mandates for school kids. Like polio. Ya think? It’s like he had nothing to do with the horror show he has rained down upon us - and people are going to die because of it. These awful people in the highest levels of our government are angry, vindictive, weak little men - and the women who carry water for them. Now we just blow up boats in international waters and say there were drugs present with no proof. Dang, skippy! Now this administration tries to deport children in the middle of the night over Labor Day Weekend. Now the president sends the National Guard to blue states he hates with governors who threaten him because he’s a child with too much power. Constitution be damned.These people don’t want to be regulated. The rules don’t apply to them. They want everything privatized because it’s never enough money. While inflation goes up and job numbers go down, while they gut Medicaid and the ACA and SNAP benefits and free lunches at school - the potus and his family get richer and richer, and so do all our billionaires. If you aren’t a billionaire, I don’t know why you like this. Do you?But you get to choose your own adventure, or you did, anyway. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen here. Maps are being redrawn, laws are being broken, the Constitution is being violated every day, and yes, there are some court cases being won, but there are a lot being lost, too. Maybe you want to be in a world full of humanoids and AI, where only these pathetic cosplaying tough guys have rights and women stay home churning butter, programmed for agreeability in every room of the house. It’s a choice, I’ll give you that. But it’s a really strange one. It’s the kind of thing that makes our kids wonder if they want to bring children into this world. You can’t control what other people do, but you can control the way you respond. You can decide who you want to be in the face of all this madness and how hard you want to fight for something different - and so much better - than the direction we’re heading. You can focus on all the beautiful people in your life, and all the things that bring you joy, and I hope you do, but I also hope you focus on how you can get your head and your heart in this battle. Who you want to be right now - and if you do have grandkids one day - what you want to tell them you did when awful people took over your government like a virus.We’re the cure, or we aren’t. Choose your adventure.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.If you missed the longer form essay this week, you can find it here… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

If you are a newer subscriber, you may be wondering what this is. I’m so happy you’re here, and I hope you’re going to love this as much as I do. Once in a while I do a Come As You Are Conversation where I go “off the page” with a writer I love. So far I have had absolutely incredible conversations with the fantastic Paul Crenshaw, my beloved soul sister Dani Shapiro and the phenomenal Kate Mapother. I could geek out all day talking to other writers about writing, and the conversations always lead to such vulnerable, fascinating, heartfelt, and sometimes very funny places. Because, writers. There are the “practical practice” questions I love to ask - do you write every day, do you have a time of day when you write, do you have certain rituals or things you need before you sit in the chair, do you try to hit a certain word-count, what do you do when the words aren’t coming…?* And then there are specific questions that have to do with the particular writer in the chat. Today I was so happy to be in conversation with the fabulous Dana DuBois. We decided to dive into the topic of: whose story is it? This is a question any writer of memoir or personal essays will grapple with, and the answers may change over time, depending upon the context, or who else is in the mix.Dana and I are both moms, we both have teenagers, we both have ex-husbands. We have aging parents (I’ve lost my mom and dad in the last few years, but my stepdad is still going strong - and Dana still has her parents, but had to put her dad in memory care recently) and know the tricky business of wanting to write about universal themes like grief, loss and feeling stretched in twenty-nine directions at once - in the context of specific events or personal anecdotes.Anne Lamott has a famous quote about this, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” I love that and I love her and I believe that to be true, but - I think sometimes life can be a little more complicated than that. I could never have written the memoir I’m finishing now while my mother was alive, which is why I didn’t. Funny thing, I have found the more truthful I am about what happened between us, the more loving it is, even though a lot of it was really painful. There’s a reason so many of our mothers were quietly or not so quietly enraged or resentful or not fully living the lives they wanted to live. There’s a way that river of feeling has been passed from mother to daughter for generations, and I could never have found that current without writing into the center of the wound.So Dana and I talked about how we navigate these waters, what our different “rules” are, when we break them or in what context, and what stories will die with us. If you haven’t discovered Dana yet, I’m so happy to introduce you. If I lived in Seattle I have no doubt we’d be hanging out. Thank you to the fantastic Kate Mapother, Lawrence Winnerman, Untrickled by Michelle Teheux, Wendy Gray and many more for tuning in. I look forward to the next conversation, whenever it happens. Sending you a lot of love, friends. I hope you’re remembering to find some joy, to read, to laugh, to get outside, and to connect with people who make you feel hopeful. I’m off to work on this week’s essay. See you soon.*For anyone looking for practical and potent writing support for days when the words aren’t coming, or help with establishing a writing habit, period - check out my amazing friend Paul Crenshaw. He kicked off these Come As You Are Conversations with me, he knows a thing or five about writing, and he has a whole ‘stack devoted to this very topic called Establish the Habit. Here’s the kind of gold you’ll get in your inbox - This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe