I’m in a place of feeling fulfilled and recognize this state as damn near opposite what I was just 2 months ago. My therapist helped me process some things and I share about that session and how hard it was to say out loud, AND how much growth I’ve had since starting therapy in 2020. Regardless how I can’t stand my therapist, he’s good at his job and helps me show up without using ya’ll to process TOO much rawness.

This episode I make a confession public about how I’ve been using AI to learn about the cosmos from the level of quantum physics. I’ve been teaching myself the language of spirituality in a way that makes sense to me. I reflect on how I’ve been using the nervous system in place of the solar system and I relate this to having had some of the best sex I’ve ever had most recently sharing intimacy in mutually present interactions. The pressure of performance has faded to the side and it’s now about the quality of the connection moreso than just for me to be out here catching bodies. A healthy and regulated nervous system in connection with another healthy and regulated nervous system has so much potential to become something more magnetic. I like my analogies because I envision 2 star systems syncing up and intensifying their gravity and impact. Relationships I enter feel more like that and the feeling of that presence is to me, what makes the sex great!

I liked the wordplay on this one as I speak to exercising the remembrance of the joy of curiosity and exploration! The Sex Down South Conference in 2023 was an incredible experience for me, 2024 was quite different and I wasn’t myself, and this year (2025) it was like I picked up from where I left off. I’ve been reminded by the Universe to just play, and I gave myself permission to do just that, and while it shouldn’t be a surprise, I was very surprised at how supported I was in my play.

Healing happened for me this weekend and I appreciate the space, and all the energy involved supporting that. I was reminded I can ask for what I want and that there are people enthusiastically willing to give me that, but I gotta get past the challenge of how uncomfortable it has been for me in the past. This was a healthy practice!

Sometimes as men, we mature emotionally at the expense of women’s emotional labor. Fortunately soon after a first date I caught that for myself. While she presented herself as a safe container for me to express these raw thoughts, it still felt like progressing forward would just be more of that.

2025 has been a long year and the first half I dealt with lots of compounding events that despite 7 months passing since my breakup, there’s still healing necessary n out just from my relationship ending and what came with that but the time I didn’t make for grief has come around and MADE me make time for it now.

I talk here about processing the avoidance while also looking to lean on to the safe spaces for me to practice existing in this identity that feels most aligned for me, but still I face internal resistance not to moving on but leaning in to this identity with people who can help me, and want to be there for me rather than trying to fill a blank space necessary for that self I thought I was to exist.

So what do you do with this into? Find out in this episode.

Yesterday’s therapy session gave hard language to my atomic living framework I’m operating from with us closing out our sessions on navigating the shaping of my identity through the end of my most recent relationship.

In this episode I process my most recent therapy session which came the day after a solid 30 minute joyful cry listening to Alicia Keys - Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart” which felt like an arrival for me. I recognize I’ve been hiding my joy in an overly humble way to mask my confidence to not be taken for arrogance because truly my life despite the first half of the year, become exactly what I saw for myself.

I’m in a book, I’m speaking at colleges, I’m traveling, I’m living polyamorously, taking dance classes, and focusing on being, and I’m happy. I cried initially because I had that “why couldn’t I have this with her?” Moment but my therapist got me to be real about the fact that I wouldn’t have had this with her.

I’ve concluded for myself there’s nothing I could’ve done to save my ex or the relationship. She came in metaphorically as a lesson to strip away aspects of myself I identified with: fixer, being liked by everyone, and always saying and doing the “right” thing.

So here’s me doin my thang and getting back in rhythm.

What if I told you our nervous system functions metaphorically the same way the solar system does? As I’m leaning into this Atomic Living model, I’m recognizing the world “out there” in space is quite synchronous to the world within us.

In this episode I process my last therapy session in a way that I can equate to wringing out a wet rag of emotional clean up from the aftermath of my relationship with my ex. I intend for this to be the last I need to speak about it because now 6 months after the breakup, nothing I say is reactive or in response to anything shared with me since and this is fully an expression of how I feel and naming things that happened to contribute to what I feel.

All that said, therapy and my people have held me beautifully through my lowest of lows as I’ve been witnessed through the rising to the sustained regulation I’m at now, finding my rhythm in New York City, living my life in a way that aligns rather than forcing myself to find out what’s “wrong” with me.

Reality is that who I was never aligned with who she wanted me to be and as painful as it is to say, I was emotionally manipulated . . . again and with recognition of that pattern, and the aftermath of how I saw her respond to the breakup led me to see the value of boundaries. If I had them, we wouldn’t have even been in the relationship and I’d have been on the trajectory I was on, but the lesson on this path was an invaluable side quest away from what I’m supposed to be doing and toward what I let myself be convinced I should do.

All of this was a choice and I take accountability for the path to get to this new center of gravity for my own nervous system, allowing aligned bodies of people and experiences to orbit by orienting themselves to my presence rather than me forcing myself into their orbit or them into mine. The important thing here is that I be myself and continue to transmute my trauma into healing the same way the sun transmutes hydrogen to helium and in the process radiates light and heat and gravity for other things to be born out of.

In this episode of Selfed, I reflect on what it means to be a straight Black man in queer spaces—without trying to fix, take, or define the room. I explore how anime characters like Tanjiro from Demon Slayer model a version of masculinity that isn’t about dominance or ego, but alignment, empathy, and rhythm. I talk about presence as an offering, about learning from queer communities and Black women, and about how I’m navigating my identity without trying to prove it. This is a raw stream of thought about challenge, liberation, performance, and how we create from the friction of opposites.

Some additional notes and quotes:

• On masculinity & ideals:

“I think that what society misses in terms of what it means to be a man is those intangible aspects of self—those virtues, values, those ideals, that drive consciousness forward.”

• On queerness & presence:

“I’ve become more comfortable being in the spaces, right? And it’s been practice for me to experience queerness without like making it mine or trying to like take it or take it over.”

• On anime & purpose (Tanjiro):

“Tanjiro’s purpose is so fucking clear—he wants to make his sister human again. He wants to save his sister, and that puts him in an environment that reinforces what his purpose is.”

• On identity & possibility:

“I think that a lot of us know who we are at the expense of being able to find out who we could be.”

• On emotional survival & performance:

“There wasn’t room for how like, that fucking hurt. Don’t do that again. It was ‘yo bitch ass up, get—walk it off,’ right? There wasn’t room for the intention behind things because everything was performed.”

• Shoutout to Dr. Donna Oriowo—sex therapist and author of Drink Water and Mind Your Business—whose AASECT presentation helped me name a lot of what I’ve been processing around identity, embodiment, and emotional honesty.

Hey hey! I read my journal entry this morning that began with me talking about how what I want doesn’t matter. I know I know, but hear me out, it’s really about what the moment calls for because what I want changes and as we know, a successful life calls for stability. The only stable force other than gravity that I’m aware of is presence.

But what is presence, how do we be present “with” or “for” ourselves and others? I’m learning through how atoms behave that it’s about the nurturing of natures through being. Atoms that are becoming what they’re becoming are stable attractors. These attractors call in experiences, people, environments, opportunities, challenges that test the stability and integrity of the atom. When an atom is susceptible to drift, it isn’t stable.

Consistent alignment of beliefs and behaviors reflect stability and that is solidified by presence. When we are present it’s like the undercurrent of living expresses itself through us and we experience it. It being that unifying essence of particles that make us up, protons, electrons, and neutrons just entangling together.

This episode speaks to hopefully something useful to you. I’ve learned a lot about presence from being in sex positive and queer spaces and hope brining it here is helpful to you.

In this episode, I reflect on the storms—both literal and emotional—that have been moving through my life. After the tornado hit St. Louis and forced me into displacement, I found myself back in the same room where my ex and I once stayed. For five days, I dreamt of her. Those dreams held pain, longing, and eventually, closure.

This wasn’t just about her, though. It was a cosmic nudge, reminding me of a path I once knew but had detoured from—my plan to move to New York and fully step into the mission of SPFPP. I didn’t honor my proton’s highest expression; I let the pull of comfort and proximity shift my orbit.

Now, I see the message clearly: alignment is everything. My shell 1 beliefs—freedom and safety—have to guide my shell 2 identity rhythms of curiosity, connection, and creativity. And from there, I can express in shell 3—through work, play, and rest—in ways that stay true to my purpose.

This episode is a reflection on what it means to stay aligned, to release attachments, and to trust the rhythm of your own atom, even when storms shake up your life.

I needed to just bitch about my feelings about my breakup. I'm grateful to the people who've heard me out, but I needed to really be able to let go of the energetic residue of that relationship. I've filtered my existence out of respect for her, and I realized that, while 'nice' is the exact thing that got me here in the first place.

I just say all the things that I have been holding onto that creep out unconsciously. This episode of Selfed is about me reconnecting with my intention of this space. The emotional safe space I created, neglected, transformed, neglected again and now I'm back to it more aligned with its original intention, to be my emotional safe space to exercise self-exploration.

The tornado that came through my home gave me something unexpected. While I had only been in my own space 2 months, there was a LOT of realigning and connecting to intention that occurred. Mother nature just came through and told me it's time to gone and move on. I don't know what this means, but I'm damn sure glad I have the space to not know so I can find out.