Once in a Lifetime: A Bird Without A Sky

My substance was not hidden from myself, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. ~Psalms 139:15

This week’s newsletter is random - a triptych. I walk, eat, take care of my physical body - only because my Soul has a purpose and I am the only means for her expression. I believe this is true for you, too. My story is as old as …well, Mary Magdalene, Joan of Arc, or Thecla’s — the early Christian saint whose lost story

Meggan Watterson

recovers in The Girl Who Baptized Herself (featured in READS ON FIRE below). Thecla’s tale of claiming spiritual authority despite having ‘no apparent power in the world’ is uncannily similar to my own.

Note: If you’re reading this in your inbox, the full post may be truncated. Be sure to click through to the full site to read the entire piece.

One

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?" ~ Talking Heads

I’m a slow learner. Or, rather, embedded in a system I’m intricately enmeshed with, given that the personal is political, given that I exist in the context of my environment - social, political, cultural…I’m a slow learner.

I became a mother at sixteen. By nineteen, I had two daughters, was single, lived in poverty, supplemented by food stamps, Medicaid, assistance with daycare, and I worked full time at King Soopers bagging groceries.

In the culture and family I was raised in, becoming a mother at sixteen was evidence I was morally flawed, sexually promiscuous, and made bad choices. Never mind no one educated me about birth control or protection. Never mind, I was born and raised in a cult, groomed to be chattel, taught to loathe myself and my gender as inferior, and given no options for a future outside the 2x2 cult. But while my circumstances seem a bit extreme, there are millions whose circumstances, based on race, class, geography, government, and religion, are much more extreme than mine were, and on the other end of the spectrum, even the most privileged female children in our patriarchal culture are groomed similarly - privilege simply expands the options while keeping the ceiling lowered. A select few go beyond that but of necessity only by adopting the master’s tools.

The ego’s tools will never dismantle the ego.

For most of my life, I carried shame for my circumstances and those residuals still arise today. It was a truly radical transformative moment when I grokked - I mean got it in my bones - that my circumstances were largely the result of factors outside of my control. I didn’t choose to get pregnant at sixteen anymore than I chose nonconsensual rape and blackmail at fourteen. This happens to kids via social media today. In 1968, it happened via a IRL setup and a camera. I didn’t choose to drop out of high school anymore than I chose hell versus a life in the cult. I didn’t choose drug and alcohol addiction anymore than I chose to run away from home seven times at fifteen. I didn’t choose, period. My life was shaped by conditions, beliefs, and extreme indoctrination.

When I got sober at thirty I began to take responsibility for a lot of things I had no control over. Recognizing my addiction was only the first step in awareness. The beginning layer of recovery removed my denial and pointed me in the direction of true agency. Now that is something to take responsibility for once we receive the gift of awareness. But I did not have the ability to see the difference between what I could’ve changed and what I couldn’t. The serenity prayer works backwards too.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I couldn’t change about my circumstances, the courage to change the things about my circumstances I can now and the wisdom to know the difference.

I could see where my “choices” took me but didn’t yet recognize I never had any choices. I was simply a product of my environment. I felt shame for getting pregnant out of wedlock; I didn’t even know the incident of nonconsensual sex in 9th grade was rape and blamed myself; I believed I was going to hell for leaving the cult even as I couldn’t intellectually reconcile with its beliefs; I loathed myself for not having more to give my children, even for not knowing enough to know what they - and I - were lacking and for being unable to transmit something I never had myself. I felt shame for being an alcoholic/addict and used the 12 steps to try to escape that shame - to become normal instead of finding self-acceptance for who I am. And I mistook my so-called choices, my self-diagnosis as addict/alcoholic, single motherhood, poverty, struggle, and depression as an identity - I let it define me.

Choice is an outcome of consciousness and agency.

Born and raised in a cult in the fifties, I had no consciousness or agency. Not only did I not have any consciousness or agency, they were taken from me.

It’s hard for many to grasp that coercion, control, and indoctrination - well-intended or otherwise - robs people of agency and choice. I believe it is the greatest soul violation of all. I rebelled against that coercion and control without any guidance, protection, or capacity to live beyond it. I only knew that what was presented to me as reality was wrong, and that there had to be something more. So I blindly reacted, flailing in the cage of my circumstances—like a bird without a sky who must fly.

Today I know the truth. There’s Nothing Wrong With Me (And There Never Was.) Except what I was told - all of it a lie. And you didn’t have to tell me - everything in the world reinforced the message that something was wrong with me and the only choice I was offered was to comply and twist myself into someone other than me - or die.

When I recognized the truth, I fell to my knees in awe of what I had accomplished in spite of being locked in the master’s house, and in the face of fundamentalist indoctrination, violation of body and spirit, and the lack of education or options. It was breathtaking. I bowed to the Self that brought me home to her against all odds; she enfolded me in her wings and carried me all the way to the river. My father said I was born without a soul, while my soul was the mirror he couldn’t face.

Two

Parables of Prison: A Cult Story

My tongue was cut out from the beginning.

My native tongue was silence—not saying what I was saying.

Parables of prison.

I left that land and entered a world entirely foreign.

I had to learn to speak without a tongue—

to shape strange words among strangers.

Survival depended on it.

And because I was born a writer,

I had to translate my story of no tongue

into a second language—

one that could carry silence,

even if the language felt inadequate.

Recently, a terrible truth surfaced from my homeland,

exposing the imprisonment of minds, souls, bodies—

the captivity I fled at the price of exile as a teen.

It split open the oldest wound:

family lost, freedom wrestled for, grief without end.

Now my tongue reminds me she was cut,

and whispers my story does not matter.

But my spirit knows otherwise.

I will not abandon the mute child,

the silenced girl.

I speak for her.

I write for her.

And others.

So I return to the page.

I listen for her words,

hard as they are to hear inside the silence.

I become her Anne Sullivan,

guiding her hands to water.

And when she finds language at last,

her joy is boundless.

There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was) —Dispatches from life after indoctrination — any kind.

Dedicated to my extubah peeps and all those trapped in a narrative they didn’t choose and seldom recognize as what stands between them and true liberation.

Three

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God.

My poetics live in that current—imperfect, but mine. This is where language isn’t about reality; it is reality, creating itself.

As I was writing, Vak—the Word speaking itself through me—led me to David Byrne’s music. Byrne’s music did not lead me to the Word. The current flowed from within, outward.

Vak¹ is not found in the mind. It comes from the place closest to creation itself. The Sanskrit calls this pratibhā: the sudden flash that arises when the poet’s mind touches the essential nature of Consciousness. In that moment there is no distance between what is and what is spoken, no filter. Word and reality are one.

Reality is essentially linguistic.

And you know it not just in words, but in the body. For me, Vak is a current I feel from the throat down to below the belly button — words that emanate from the body itself. It doesn’t involve thought.

Mind-language, by contrast, is thought only, an intellectual construct. Vak is transmission; mind-language is interpretive. One speaks reality into being —the other speaks about it.

Musicians sometimes describe writing a song as if it “came through them.” That, too, is Vak—the Word speaking itself.

Think of abracadabra². The Gnostics of Basilides used it as a magical formula, inscribed on amulets and Abraxas stones, invoking spirits against disease and misfortune. Whatever its true etymology, its function was clear: the word was meant to work, to make. Not description, but creation. That’s Vak.

Vak is the creative power (Shakti) of consciousness through which the absolute expresses itself in infinite forms.

Language within the mind is another matter. It does not speak reality into being, it shapes the structures we live inside. That language builds cages, and it can also dismantle them. The difference is everything.

Language builds cages. Language dismantles them. But the Word lives beyond them.

It was from within the current of Vak—where language and reality meet—that David Byrne’s Big Love Hymnal came to me: the fake hymns he composed for HBO’s Big Love. I hadn’t gone looking; the current itself carried it to me. Byrne was writing counterfeit hymns soaked in cult resonance, while I’d been repurposing psalms from the Bible. Hymns are psalms, after all. His were fabricated for television. Mine were re-envisioned out of creativity—transforming words once chained to original sin into words of original blessing: there’s nothing wrong with you, and there never was.

What for me began as an act of creativity might serve as invitation for others too—a paradigm shift, out of inherited belief and into a different reality altogether.

That convergence is not coincidence. It is revelation.

The interspiritual path is not for the faint of heart. ~ Mirabai Starr

And if you wonder how I came to this understanding, I did not arrive at Vak by seeking it, by studying Kashmir Shaivism, or by any planned effort of my own. Words and consciousness began to open up to me in early recovery. I was drawn into practices like contemplative prayer and meditation, and later, in the mid- to late-80s, breath work with Jacquelyn Small and Stanislav Grof ³.

This began as my direct experience —not the path not a belief system. With my history of being born and raised in a cult, I don’t affiliate with any one path. The 12 steps are my core practice—not as a closed system, but as an inter-spiritual ground that frees me to meet truth wherever it appears. My mention of particular traditions or teachers reflects what has served my journey and worked for me at specific moments, not endorsements of entire systems. What worked for my nervous system, my history, my particular form of wounding may not work for yours. But the principle underneath - that authentic voice emerges when we stop relying on secondhand thinking - appears universal.

Over years, this intuitive way of receiving words deepened until it became, with attention, more accessible. With practice, what begins as a gut feeling or fleeting inspiration gradually grows into something we can rely on, until our very thinking shifts to a higher plane, where word and reality meet.⁴

But it was only after 2008, when a relapse ended twenty-four years of sobriety, that the Word truly opened. That devastating personal failure anchored me in the truth of my nature—as both human and divine, though it was the human part I had been missing.

Jung put it this way:

A person has to be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation.

From there, I was led to Michael Singer’s Untethered Soul, which in turn led me to Amrit Desai and his daughter, Kamini Desai. The path wasn’t linear - retreats with Mirabai Starr on interspirituality, yoga nidra practice and training with Kamini, encounters with Michael Singer at his Temple of the Universe in Alachua, Florida - all wove together until I found myself reading Abhinavagupta and the Parātriśikā Vivaraṇan, where I finally found words for my experience., Mirabai’s interspirituality work - in retreat and in her book Wild Mercy— affirmed what I had come to know: these recognitions surface in every wisdom tradition, though each speaks them in its own cultural language.

Para Vak's experience has no separation between the experiencer and the experience—only pure, self-illuminating consciousness. This experience corresponds to what other traditions might call enlightenment, liberation, or the direct recognition of one's true nature.

Follow the breadcrumbs. God knows your native tongue.

---

One Thing: वाक्

A Pragmatic Application

Invent Your Own Poetics

Take any inherited spiritual language that once held power over you and rewrite it from Vak—that place where words rise fully formed from the body, alive, beyond thought.

Here’s an excerpt from my re-envisioning of Psalm 91:

You who live in the truth of your own being,

who rest in the spacious shelter of what’s always been whole—

you already know:

there’s nothing wrong with you, and there never was.

You don’t need to beg protection from some punishing sky-god.

You are already held—

by breath, by ground, by love that does not fail.

Start with whatever scripture, prayer, or cultural refrain still echoes in your head—“Honor thy father and mother,” “Turn the other cheek,” “Everything happens for a reason.” Keep the structure, but let it serve revelation instead of authority.

When those words are re-envisioned through contemplation, you often discover the paradox and the beauty within them. What was once a dead vehicle—a word-coffin—opens its treasure.

It’s not about crafting poetry. It’s about meeting language where it touches consciousness—where words carry recognition rather than borrowed concepts.

Notice what changes when you become the author of your own sacred text. That shift from external authority to inner knowing—that’s where your native tongue lives.

---

On Repeat:

Because where you look is where Love finds you

Shoutout

The Starfire Codes by Demi Pietchell is the bomb — honestly, the best thing since sliced bread on Substack. (And yes, I know sliced bread started the Industrial Revolution, but still.) Demi offers consciousness-expanding daily spiritual content, well-researched articles on forbidden but crucial topics, and one of my favorite features: The Scroll. It’s surprising, smart, and often hilarious. You never know what you’ll find — or if you’ll find yourself there. I did!

---

READS ON FIRE now a regular feature on TNWWY biweekly posts:

Get a taste of my approach through my author interviews:

Terese Mailhot: Truth Is My Aesthetic – Guernica

Currently Reading:

AI Makes You Stupid. Discuss.

Watch this space for further developments.

The W(HOLE)🕳️ Recovery (from anything) Recovery puts the W in the HOLE. Find submission guidelines and archives in the navigation menu. New essays launch September 2025 for National Recovery Month.

✨ Current subscribers: you can opt in to receive The W(hole) directly in your inbox, alongside TNWWY. Check your subscription settings to make sure you’re signed up for this feature.

19 more paid subscribers = $100 per published essay.

Formerly Voices on Addiction at The Rumpus

The Love Economy: How to Grow Your Substack

If you’ve read this far, you already know I don’t sell magic tricks. People keep asking how to “get ahead of the Substack curve” — pay to play, monetize your assets, find the hack.

Here’s my answer: a paywall has never felt consistent with what I consider my real assets. It’s all energy. The love you take is equal to the love you make. All my needs are met through love and service to others — and whether or not that translates into a specific kind of currency isn’t the measure of my value or success. Because everything is currency.

Energy has a way of circling back — often from directions you never expected. That’s the love economy. It’s how I grew to 5,000 subscribers in one year, without formulas or hacks.

Creativity is the key.

And if you upgrade to paid, you’ll get the real story. Spoiler: it isn’t really a formula. It’s simply the honest account of what worked for me — and it may spark something that works for you too.

Pressing the ❤️ lets me know you read this. I love your comments and shares❣️

“This above all: to thine own self be true.” —Hamlet

Wonderful work by a wonderful human. Always brings light to my day.~

Marya Hornbacher

Buy Kelly a cup of coffee ☕️✍️

1. https://abhigarg.com/kashmir-shaivism-four-levels-speech/

2. Hebrew: abra k'adabra (Alef-Bet-Resh Alef Kaph-Alef-Resh-Bet-Resh-Alef) and it literally means, "I will create as I speak."

3. Jacquelyn Small's practice is a direct outgrowth of her work with Stanislav Grof and his pioneering techniques. Her Integrative Breathwork represents an adaptation of Grof's method, with a specific focus on the psychospiritual dimension and group process. Both Small and Grof are prominent figures in transpersonal psychology, and both of their breathwork modalities utilize the power of altered states of consciousness for self-exploration and healing. For more, look for Small and Grof’s books.

4. Cf. Alcoholics Anonymous (the “Big Book”), 4th ed. (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 2001), p. 87