I’d like to thank everyone who stuck with me during a time when I haven’t shared or written much.

This is the sequel to the first two parts of “When Healing Means Losing Everything,” about my journey towards healing.

Today is my fifty-ninth birthday. It’s July 31st, 2026, and I thought this would be a wonderful occasion to give you an update.

It has been an intense and financially strenuous seven months since I recorded my last update at the beginning of January.

Meanwhile 2026 continued exactly the way 2025 had.

Leaving my home country behind had moved even further out of reach, and the unraveling of every thread in the wild, tangled jumble of my life just progressed.

Together with the events of early January in the US, in Venezuela, and in Greenland too, this pushed me into a six-week stretch full of pain and complete exhaustion.

There were days I basically just lay on the sofa. I could no longer manage grocery shopping, could barely manage my dishes or feed myself.

I had hardly any appetite anyway.

I had headaches and body aches. My skin was sensitive. I had to pee constantly. My temperature ran above what feels comfortable and normal to me. My pulse stayed far too high for my own sense of normal. I could barely sleep anymore.

This lasted almost six weeks in total.

My attempts to get support from the German healthcare system went nowhere. When I had the capacity, I researched what it might be apart from what I already knew and recorded everything I realized.

At the same time, the German Pension Insurance ordered me to attend an appointment for a psychological and physical assessment. Neither of the evaluators got in touch with me, so I followed up. Eventually, I got an evaluation appointment set for March.

My psychiatrist had told me that when he evaluates people for official assessments, it takes him about 60 to 90 minutes of contact.

This roughly matched what I had experienced with the three psychologists, two psychiatrists, and two pain specialists I had consulted independently over the past two years. Each first session had lasted at least 60 minutes, and in one case over 90 minutes.

In the rehab program I attended last year, the physical examination itself took about a quarter of an hour. That’s reasonable too, within range. It’s a standard exam, after all.

So I was quite baffled when I found myself back out on the street after a total of barely 20 minutes with two different people — and that 20 minutes covered the so called psychological interview and the physical exam all at once.

During the examination, I had to correct the medical doctor each time she addressed me as “Frau” (”Mrs.”) Siegmann. Every time, I told her, “Jay Siegmann, please — I am non-binary.” By the third time, I found myself having to explain what non-binary actually means.

I found this absurd: here I was, sitting across from a psychologist in Germany in the year 2026, someone officially appointed to produce a formal assessment. I had assumed that anyone in such a role, a doctor of psychology no less, would already be informed about this.

At the same time, her treatment of me was condescending, degrading, curt, authoritarian, and simply bad. What I regret now, maybe, is not filing a complaint right away, immediately, with the Hesse Medical Association and the Chamber of Psychotherapists against these two people.

I remember standing outside, fuming. I was so worked up and so angry about the way I had been treated.

Today I know that it retraumatized me — across all my traumas, right down to the core trauma. I didn’t know that at the time, though. I only tracked down the last two traumas in the past six weeks.

At the end of March, my brother and I had a notary appointment set up for the selling of my part of the real estate to him.

A week before, he told me he couldn’t make it, because the appraisal wouldn’t be ready yet. We had wrangled back and forth for two months just to land this appointment at all. At one point in between, he told me he hadn’t realized it was so urgent. His conduct, at the very least, weighed on me heavily too.

Then came the answer from the Pension Insurance: I should start a rehab program. But just last year I had broken off a rehab stay after one week, because my health condition deteriorated massively during it. Staying in rehab any longer would have posed a health risk.

This despite my psychiatrist having already assessed, back in February, that I’m neither fit for rehab nor fit for work. He had asked the German Pension Insurance to proceed with the pension application.

I then approached my psychologist. I asked her to issue a corresponding letter. In an email that once again sent me completely up the wall, she answered:

* She couldn’t do that.

* She saw no chance of continuing our work together, since she couldn’t identify sufficient motivation for change in me.

In her entire assessment, she left my body out completely — entirely. As if she had cut me off at the neck and evaluated only how I talk. She even said she thought it would be good for me to take on a new professional challenge. As if I had spent two years talking to her into thin air.

The assessment she reflected back to me lay miles apart from what I knew about myself and from what every other therapist had reflected back to me. It felt like two different continents.

Just as with my brother, though, I managed, through clarity about what my actual needs were and where exactly I felt hurt in that moment, to push back and lay out my position clearly and directly.

In that, I found an incredible sense of freedom.

For the first time, I managed not only to defend myself appropriately in a situation but to name the other person’s failing clearly, on a factual basis.

That was a real success.

Suddenly, a key to at least inner freedom lay right there.

I realized: I can generate my own agency with sufficient clarity about my own position. I can decide over my own life myself. I can and may say when something doesn’t sit right with me — and I have the ability to say it in a way that actually lands with the other person.

She then apologized and sent me a letter worded accordingly, one that ultimately confirmed my inability to attend rehab as well.

At the end of May, though, I got a letter about the rehab from the German Pension Insurance. The rehab measures could only be withdrawn by the employment office, because they had ordered them. A pension application wasn’t indicated.

I went into a tailspin again, right there.

Then I thought: okay. Maybe someone else can help.

In Germany there’s a patient advocacy association that supposedly offers support for cases like mine. My psychiatrist had explicitly recommended it to me.

That turned out completely fruitless, though — counterproductive, really. Telling me there’s nothing I can do isn’t something I count as support. So I fulfilled my civic duty and informed the employment office.

A week later I got a letter back: the employment office invalidated my chronic diagnoses — my chronic mental-health diagnoses as well as the fibromyalgia — as grounds for inability to work, for all time.

Not just for this case, but for every future case too.

Once again I was up the wall.

Going forward, I’m currently not allowed to report sick to the employment office citing these diagnoses. And, in fact, I’m not allowed to report sick at all anymore, because the evaluation and a so-called differential assessment by the employment office had now determined I’m 100 percent fit to work.

I found that very strange.

First, I contacted the patient advocacy association again, and once again I got the message that I had to accept it, that there was nothing I could do, and that they couldn’t help me. So I canceled my membership right there. I still have to pay for a full year, though.

Second, I arranged an emergency appointment with my psychiatrist. His jaw hit the table, literally. He said flat out he was so shocked he didn’t even know what to say about it. Yet he couldn’t think of any solution either.

In my distress, I asked my longtime coach for an emergency session. Everything suddenly felt pointless, and I needed a completely new perspective — while I was actually sitting right in the middle of a full trauma response.

I arrived there. We’ve known each other for over 20 years now, close to 30. We’ve worked intensively together for six years. Half an hour in, she said: Jay, in all the time we’ve worked together, I’ve never seen you fuming like this. What is this rage?

So we traced this root down to its root: the injustice running through my whole life.

I realized that a large part of this rage came from other people believing they can render a verdict on me and my condition — often after knowing me for only a short time. And that their opinion carries many times more weight for the rest of my life than my own does.

Take the case of that March evaluation: it catapulted me right back into a situation where my unemployment benefits were at risk. It’s sending me into basic welfare come October, with no chance at an early pension for incapacity to work. With one stroke of the pen, she essentially invalidated that pension for incapacity to work application right through to my old-age pension.

I’ve defined this as Verfügungsgewalt: when one person can determine another person’s movement and living circumstances, wholly or in part, through their own conduct.

The first trauma I hadn’t yet identified was the trauma of Deutungshoheit: when another person, on whatever qualification, holds the position to judge me in a way that makes their opinion count for more than my own voice and my own lived experience. That an interpretation gets handed to me that I’m required to accept, even though it stands in complete contradiction to what I actually live and experience.

Even though my coach herself didn’t have a direct key or a solution for how I might take this apart — including with the German Pension Insurance and the employment agency — she still pointed me toward a tool. Not handed to me, but pointed out: German bureaucracy already provides for this.

It’s called a Dienst- und Fachaufsichtsbeschwerde — a formal supervisory complaint.

Those are more about quality: were the guidelines followed? Did the staff actually make a genuine effort? Were all the internal guidelines observed, and so on? It’s about whether an internal review confirms the decision came about lawfully, within the guidelines, at all.

I came home and decided: I’m putting my work addiction to productive use for myself.

Over the following week, I researched and pulled the evaluation apart. It’s flawed and incomplete. It accounts for only half the picture and for nothing that would speak in favor of my pension.

All of it got waved off. My pain got downgraded to minor complaints. My trauma: after two years, I should apparently have wrapped it all up and processed it all already. That downgraded my traumas significantly too.

I sat down and challenged the quality of the evaluation and the whole procedure, hard. I filed an objection against the revocation notice, because it claimed that I had refused the rehab. That’s not true, since I had submitted two independent letters declaring me unfit for rehab by medical professionals. I also objected their decision that no pension case will be opened.

The whole matter now sits with an objections committee for further decision. At the same time, I’m continuing to pursue the formal supervisory complaints. They only connect to a decision in my favor indirectly, if serious quality issues are evaluated, which then might produce a reason for re-assessment.

Against both of the assessors — the psychotherapist and the physician — I also filed a very clear professional-conduct complaint with their respective chambers. Against the physician, I additionally filed a discrimination complaint.

I’m waiting on that now.

Alongside all this, I’ve reached clarity: over the course of the next half year, I’m leaving Germany, regardless of how the decision turns out. If the pension is declined, I’ll try to stay afloat with casual work. I hope that freedom from an environment that keeps triggering me will bring me back to myself, and ultimately bring more health: less pain, more creativity. Maybe then I’ll manage to draw on the potentiality I feel within myself in an entirely new way.

I know: I can’t keep working in the field I’ve worked in so far — administration. It just doesn’t work.

I have ideas, though I don’t know how realistic they are.

Right now, my energy reserves are still very low. My concentration isn’t fully there — sometimes sharply limited. And currently it still doesn’t take much to get me to a place where I can’t do anything at all, where I struggle to keep up with my household, and where the sofa beckons all the time.

Warmth is good for me and my body, very much opposed to cold, grey German winter.

In the meantime, one appraisal for the house has come in, within the range we had estimated. The second appraisal should be ready within the next two weeks, early August. Then I can set the appointment with my brother and the notary.

We’ve talked, and my brother is aware: I actually want everything settled by mid-September. He agreed.

So now it truly looks like I will be debt-free by mid-September. Then I will plan my life abroad, regardless of how the pension decision turns out.

That second appraisal is the one that will determine how much financial backing I will have, and how long I might be able to stay afloat without a job. If the pension comes through, everything will be fine. If not, I’ll at least know how much time I have to figure out what I am still able to do, work-wise.

The point is, I have many ideas, I simply cannot discern yet what will be possible with regards to my own capacity.

From my many times abroad, I know that leaving Germany behind almost instantly changed my well-being, my pain condition, and my introverted — and by now rather isolationist — tendencies. Many a person traveling with me remarked, “You are a totally different person,” wherever we went.

I hope that to be true, when I leave Germany somewhere between October and January.

Once the pension fund’s appeals committee decision is in, and if it is not in my favor, I still have the option of filing a lawsuit with the social court to have the decision reviewed. I would genuinely take that route too. I can handle that myself; I don’t need anyone for it. Only from the second instance onward would I need an attorney.

Most of that process would run mostly in writing and would therefore not affect my leaving Germany. Of course, I would have to return briefly if they scheduled another expert evaluation or if a hearing date were to be set. I am grateful for having this option left.

Right now I’m simply waiting on decisions and evaluations.

Since last week I have all my traumas identified. The deepest one I call a legitimacy trauma. It decides who is allowed to speak at all, in which order and who holds the right to exercise Deutungshoheit and Verfügungsgewalt in the first place.

By now, after two years of intensive research, I have the system, as I understand it, laid out in front of me. Once I’ve managed to put it into words the way I understand these systems, I’ll certainly write about it too. It’s what fills most of my days right now. And perhaps this is also where I have arrived for now.

There has always been some kind of restlessness in me. Restlessness and curiosity were probably among the driving forces behind much of what I have done, including the healing work of the past five and a half years.

They kept me moving, kept me asking, kept me looking behind what I had been told about myself, my life, and the systems surrounding me.

The restlessness to leave Germany behind, at least for parts of my life, was already there in January 2021, before I even became Jay. Already then, I was conjuring up ideas about how I might spend longer stretches of my life abroad without even truly knowing why.

By the spring of 2024, this wish to leave Germany and, in some way, leave everything behind had become quite manifest. At the same time, I knew that, even if I had possessed the means to leave there and then, I probably would not have done it. There were still so many traumas, so many things to unpack. Leaving at that point would have felt more like flight than agency.

Now the transformation has already happened.

I have somehow settled, at least for the time being. I have reached something I worked toward throughout these years of healing. One chapter of my life is closing, while the next one has not yet opened.

And already I can feel the restlessness again within me.

It is building toward the leaving. Toward finally arriving, at least for the time being, somewhere beyond the life I have known here. The opening is already there on the horizon, and it is creating a completely new form of restlessness.A very nice and exiting one.

Thank you for watching or reading and staying with me thorough this time. I truly appreciate your support more than I can express.

Lovexo Jay

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When Healing Means Losing Everything—and Finally Enables Freedom

A year inside a biological marathon where retraumatization moved in, and this community became my anchor.

Episode Description

A year ago, I sat in the same grey, snowy town of Einbeck, Germany, carrying an ache in my chest and a debt that was never mine.

Today, I am 58. And the reckoning has arrived.

This episode is a first-person account of 2025—a year where retraumatization did not pass through, but moved in and unpacked its bags. It traces assaults of blame, family betrayal, institutional stripping, medical collapse, bureaucratic exposure, and the slow return of sensation after decades of dissociation.

It is also a testimony to collective witnessing—how being seen at the right moment prevented another trauma from taking root.

I speak about language as a trigger, the body’s refusal to comply, the cost of obedience carried across generations, and what it means to stand inside uncertainty while two life-altering decisions remain unresolved: the sale of my home and the verdict of a disability pension.

This is a record from the threshold—between countries, between identities, between survival and whatever comes next.

In This Episode

- The physical reality of blame and betrayal

- Insolvency, debt, and the collapse of professional identity

- Language as a traumatic imprint- Leaving a medical rehab to protect one’s life

- Social Welfare and the experience of bureaucratic exposure

- Losing health insurance, banking access, and financial ground

- A medical assessment that confirms what the body already knows

- Severe retraumatization and prolonged dissociation

- A final Christmas in a house that remembers too much

- Collective witnessing as trauma prevention- Intergenerational obedience and the moment it ends Read it here

- Living inside uncertainty while waiting for institutional decisions

- Imagining a modest future shaped by food, creativity, and connection

Content Note

This episode contains discussions of trauma, retraumatization, institutional harm, medical and bureaucratic stress, family estrangement, and financial precarity. Please listen with care.

Where I Am Now

- Finalizing the sale of my home and real estate shares

- Paying off approximately €90,000 in debt

- Awaiting a disability pension decision with no guaranteed outcome

- Preparing to leave both the house and Germany

- Living inside a pause, listening to a body relearning presence

Closing Reflection

There is no map yet.

Only attention. Only movement. Only a body learning to stay.

Support My Work: Subscribe and Contribute

If this reading resonates with you, great! And if not, no worries. Take whatever may be helpful and leave the rest.

If my writing, art, and recipes resonate with you, I would be incredibly grateful if you would consider supporting my work with a paid subscription to Wild Lion*esses Pride.

Subscribe now

If a monthly or annual subscription isn’t feasible for you right now, you can also show your support with a one-time tip via my Tip Jar here.

Thank you for your kindness and generosity—it truly makes a difference. Together, we’re creating a space of reflection, creativity, and connection, and I’m so grateful you’re part of this journey

1 PM or Decoding a 120-Year Extraction

Einbeck, December 2025.

I’ve been sitting with it all day. Or rather, it has been sitting on me.

It started with a modern spark—a request for a resume to work as a cook. It seemed like a “nothing” task, but as I began to trace my path to the kitchen, I realized I wasn’t just writing a resume. I was performing an excavation. I was digging through layers of “proper” laundry and “yummy” dinners to find the 120-year-old transmission system that nearly erased me.

When I look at my journal, the words jump out like ghosts: Mangeln. Zockeln. The rhythmic, mechanical labor of the sewing machine. The budgeting. The “Hard Skills” of a household. And then it clicked: the housekeeping school. She had always praised it for her cookery skills.

Again, I started digging into my mother’s past.

I did the math. My mother, born in 1944. She was fourteen in ’58. Right at the dawn of the German “Economic Miracle.” I looked up the curriculum of the Hauswirtschaftsschule (Housekeeping School) from those years. They were called Bräuteschulen—Bride Schools. It wasn’t just about frosting cupcakes. I thought them to be more or less only about everything to do with the household. What I did not realize until yesterday — It was state-subsidized indoctrination.

The syllabus was a blueprint for the erasure of female agency. It was broken down into "Social Behavior and Etiquette," focusing on manners, proper conduct, and the art of hosting guests. It dictated table etiquette and, tellingly, "Communication within marriage and family." These lessons weren't just tips; they reflected the rigid expectations of women as social representatives of the family. Then there was the "Civics, Morals, and Life Guidance" section, which hammered home family roles and marital duties. It was a moral education shaped by Christian and conservative values, with only the occasional nod to basic civic education. The underlying message was a locked door: it reinforced traditional gender roles and social stability at any cost.

In North America, you talk about the “Stepford Wives,” in Germany, it was codified in the law. Until 1977, a husband could legally quit his wife’s job for her, without her consent, if he felt her “domestic duties” were suffering. Let that sink in. That was the law while I was playing in the dirt.

The Root — Wilhelminian Black Pedagogy

The term Black Pedagogy may sound like some obscure academic theory—but for me, it was the air I breathed.

I wrote about that air in this

It originated in the Wilhelminian era of the late 19th century—Germany’s equivalent to the Victorian age. Long before the World Wars, Kaiser Wilhelm II ruled an empire built on militarism, hierarchy, and discipline. He was, notably, a grandchild of Queen Victoria.

And this lineage of iron passed not just through bloodlines, yet through schools, families, and the bodies of children. It was a philosophy of child-rearing designed to produce the “hardened” German subject. Its core tenet? The child’s will is a weed to be pulled out by the root.

The “dragons” who taught my mother were the keepers of this 19th-century iron. At school, the teachers demanded order and total obedience. At home, it was her grandmother who took over the “formation” of the young ladies—because her own mother, a war widow, worked all day.

This generation was born between 1890 and 1925. Girls under the Kaiser, adolescents during Weimar’s instability, young adults under Nazi educational doctrine. They were not neutral teachers. They were survivors of an imperial and authoritarian system. Even after the Nazi slogans vanished, their bodies remembered the posture of authority.

This is the fault line: the curriculum changed, but the people didn’t. Discipline was transmitted as nervous reflex. Authority was embodied—absolute and morally justified. Discipline wore the mask of care. Hardness was seen as love. Emotional restraint was praised as strength. Shaming and moral humiliation weren’t experienced as violence—they were believed to be necessary formation.

I wrote about shame last year

The Drama of the Failing Student

This is the part that is a bit hard to convey. My mother wasn’t just a mom; she was my teacher and I didn’t know it at that time. For her I was a “renitent” student—defiant, stubborn. I was her living nightmare. I was a non-binary tomboy before we had the words. I refused the dresses at age three. I wanted the pirate ships, the cowboys, and the creative chaos.

Because she couldn’t “order” me, she felt she was failing the state, the church, and her own “Dragon” teachers. So she escalated. She turned into a “House Dragon” herself. She would take a blanket, bundle every single thing that was not stored away properly and in order —my toys, my books, my clothes, my soul—and throw the whole bundle out the second-story window onto the front lawn and sidewalk.

All the while screaming “I will teach you order!”

It was her “pedagogical duty” to break me. She saw herself as a total failure because I didn’t “Spur” (function). She lived in a permanent state of shame, and she projected that shame onto me until I believed I was the problem.

The Collision of the Estates

And my mother was only one half of the collapse. Then there was my partner, Connie.

Her mother was the daughter of a Gutsverwalter (Estate Administrator) in Vorpommern. She lost everything fleeing the Russians. She lost her status but kept the DNA of Entitlement. She was a “Gutsherrin” (Lady of the Manor) who couldn’t even cook. She was thrown into the post-war world and told to swim.

My partner grew up in that shadow. She became the “Oberärztin” (Lead Doctor) in Tanzania, managing 15,000 births a year in a post-colonial expat bubble where “White” people were served by an invisible staff.

When we met, the two lineages collapsed into me. My mother’s “White Slave” training met my partner’s “Colonial Entitlement.”

I became the “CEO-Foreman.” I worked 15-18 hours a day. I fixed the “messed-up” finances of “Doctors” who lived like royalty while I am now drowning in their debt. I was the “Scapegoat Hero”—the one who kept the “Gentry” afloat while being blamed for the very leaks I was plugging. Like I had learned during my formative years with my mother.

I logged 220,000 hours in 35 years. That is four lifetimes of extraction. My hourly rate? €5.05 net.

I see now that for 35 years, I was in a “School of inherited atonement”—a permanent loop of trying to “make up” for being a failure. I was the lightning rod. I was the scapegoat. If the family crashed, it was my fault. And because it was my fault, I had to be the one to fix it. I was trapped in a “reparation loop” that never ended. I also was the hero trying to keep every single system member in balance. Carrying everything they wouldn’t or couldn’t.

The tragedy?

My mother never apologized. She couldn’t. She lacked the sense of injustice (Unrechtsbewusstsein), because for her, all of it lived under the label “normal.” She died never forgiving me for being lesbian, for being non-binary, for “damaging the family reputation.” In her eyes, I was a defective product she couldn’t return to the factory. And yes—she carried her own trauma. She was taught a curriculum no one could fulfil. She saw herself as a failure from the start.

I think many of us grew up inside some version of this impossible social curriculum, written by men who only understand top-down hierarchy. It’s sold as “character education,” though at its core, it’s conditioned survival logic.

My grandmother? She was different. Maybe war carved that difference into her. She had lived through collapse. When I came out to her, she simply said, “Kindchen, I’ve known that for a long time.” She had escaped the Dragon infection. After you watch the world fall apart, “proper manners” lose their mythic power.

But my mother? She was infected. And I know—I have to be honest—I have acted like her at times. I have used the same entitlement my partner carried. I have used the same fixed hand. We embody the morals we are fed.

And my partner? She was as traumatized as I was. Two survivors dissolving into a codependent blur, boundaries erased. Her husband, an experienced doctor, misdiagnosed her three times at the end of her life—a professional failure no one questioned because of his status. That error ended her life, and it handed me my freedom.

The Final Audit

I am standing here now, looking at the shards of my old life.

I am paying back the final €90,000 (approx $106,000) of debt by selling my share of the inherited family real estate to my brother. For the first time since I was eighteen—since the day my father died—I will be debt-free. It is a radical, painful cut.

I’m liquidating the factory.

I am finally returning the behavior to history, not to myself. My mother didn’t invent her cruelty; she inherited it. She formed me, yes—and she nearly succeeded. My self was in exile for 47 years. My body and my psyche suffered for it, and now I have finally liberated myself.

I have stripped away her beliefs, her expectations, and her values. I am done with the conditioning, the “manners,” and the performance of “decency.”

I am the one who stops the transmission.

The 120-year-old curriculum has been shredded. The €90,000 is the final “Tax” on my exit. When the last bill is paid, the “CEO-Foreman” and the “Scapegoat-Hero” are walking off the estate forever.

And, what comes next?

Will it be scary? Oh, yes. I will tell where I am now in my next essay. The one word that looms over it: UNCERTAINTY.

Nothing is clear, everything unsettled. I have no idea where I’ll head, by which means of transport or if I might revert to living in my car, because it will give me independence and might to the most cost effective way to still have a roof over my head.

I don’t know.

Plans and ideas I have, if they will be feasible, I will see.

That’s why that dear friend, who had heard about a job offering for a cook, sent me her message. Honey, you did open a can of worms there ! Boah! And they have not been very tasty. Still I want to say “Thank You for everything”, because that can for sure nourished my psyche.

I spent 58 years following a manual I didn't know I was holding. Looking back at your own family tree—your parents, your grandparents, the schools they attended—can you see the 'Source Code' they tried to install in you?

What part of that curriculum are you still accidentally following today?

Thank you for reading and your support.

Would you be willing to support my work by subscribing or contributing? It would mean so much to me.

Your presence here means the world. Creating art, testing recipes, and sharing these reflections is a labor of love, a way to connect, a lifeline. But, as you know, love doesn’t pay the rent, or replace a car.

Since January 2024, my mental health has forced me onto sick leave, leaving Monty and me with a mere €300 a month. And, as I shared in ‘When Healing Means Losing Everything,’ the reality is, this isn’t sustainable.

In the next four weeks I am losing my home, and in the first quarter of 2026 I will leave the country that has caused so many trauma to me. I am set to build a new life, a new beginning, literally from the scratch and your support could be the bridge.

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For the Smooth glide Tomorrow, as the Germans purr it: Einen guten Rutsch. Monty recommends landing paws-first, with dignity, curiosity, and snacks nearby.

🎙️ A Stream of Consciousness on Nature, Power, and Belonging”

💭 In this meditative, free-flowing reflection, Jay follows an intuitive pull toward Central and South America — a region where rivers are granted rights and nature itself is written into the constitution. From the philosophies of Theravāda Buddhism to the Indigenous wisdoms of the Andes, Jay explores what it means to live with the living world rather than over it.

As the stream deepens, the essay turns toward a haunting recognition: the modern obsession with control — “subdue the earth” — is not just biblical inheritance but the backbone of Western and especially German authoritarian thought. Through the lens of The Limits to Growth, Jay traces how this command evolved into the neocapitalist logic that turns people, land, and even intelligence into resources.

This episode moves between the personal and planetary, between the ache of being used and the moment of awakening — the realization that to reclaim sovereignty means to stop being the host, to remove the parasites, and to stand again in one’s own ground.

🌎 Themes

Nature as a living being

The constitutional protection of ecosystems in Latin America

The Limits to Growth and the birth of neocapitalism

The transformation of people into “resources”

German authoritarian inheritance of “subdue the earth”

Spiritual sovereignty and re-belonging

Finding community in harmony rather than domination

💬 Host’s Note

“This is a stream of consciousness from my mind.A tracing of where the thought carries me — through rivers, roots, limits, and longings — toward a form of life that remembers its own aliveness.”

📣 Call to Listeners

Where does this reflection meet you?What thoughts surfaced while listening?Share your reflections or stories — Jay would love to hear your point of view.

Would you be willing to support my work by subscribing or contributing? It would mean so much to me.

Your presence here means the world. Creating art, testing recipes, and sharing these reflections is a labor of love, a way to connect, a lifeline. But, as you know, love doesn’t pay the rent, or replace a car.

Since January 2024, my mental health has forced me onto sick leave, leaving Monty and me with a mere €300 a month. And, as I shared in ‘When Healing Means Losing Everything,’ the reality is, this isn’t sustainable.

When Healing Means Losing Everything

By the end of 2025, I am losing my home, an need to leave a country that no longer feels like home. I’m will and need to be building a new life, a new beginning, and your support could be the bridge.

Tip Jar https://buymeacoffee.com/jaysiegmann

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If my words have touched you, if you believe in creating spaces of honest reflection, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your contribution directly fuels this work, allows me to keep sharing, and helps me build a future.

Liz Gilbert walks all the way to the river with her story whole

When what was called too much becomes the victory of wholeness

What culture once called “too much” is becoming the measure of victory. In this episode, Jay traces how Liz Gilbert carries her story whole, how rawness itself expands into triumph, and why living untrimmed is the real success we can all claim.

Episode Summary

What does it mean to succeed on your own terms? In this episode, Jay shares how a conversation with Gloria cracked open a deeper truth: the victory of authenticity. Not bestseller lists, not applause, not polish — but the raw story carried whole.

Through Liz Gilbert’s leap and Glennon Doyle’s ground-holding, through survivors who write their own ledger against silence, we find a new measure of triumph. This is not success in spite of imperfection — it is success through imperfection.

Jay takes us inside the stone carried in a pocket, the cloak molded to a body, and the moment of standing at the edge ready to jump. From there, the story widens: what culture once called “too much” is revealed as the exact ground of victory.

Key Themes

Redefining success beyond charts and trophies

The courage of Liz Gilbert, Glennon Doyle, and others who keep their stories whole

How “too much” becomes triumph when lived unapologetically

The leap into authenticity as a form of coming out, again and again

An invitation to listeners: What rules are you still playing by? What is the “this stays” in your own life?

Closing Note

Wholeness is not earned. It already lives in us. When we live it without apology, even in grief and chaos, the victory is undeniable.

Would you be willing to support my work by subscribing or contributing? It would mean so much to me.

Your presence here means the world. Creating art, testing recipes, and sharing these reflections is a labor of love, a way to connect, a lifeline. But, as you know, love doesn't pay the rent, or replace a car.

Since January 2024, my mental health has forced me onto sick leave, leaving Monty and me with a mere €300 a month. And, as I shared in 'When Healing Means Losing Everything,' the reality is, this isn't sustainable.

When Healing Means Losing Everything

By the end of 2025, I am losing my home, an need to leave a country that no longer feels like home. I'm will and need to be building a new life, a new beginning, and your support could be the bridge.

If my words have touched you, if you believe in creating spaces of honest reflection, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your contribution directly fuels this work, allows me to keep sharing, and helps me build a future.

Consider subcribing: https://wildlionessespride.substack.com/subscribe

I know times are tight. If a monthly subscription isn't feasible, a one-time tip, even the price of a coffee or a bag of cat food for Monty, makes a difference. You can contribute here.

And a big Thank You to every single one of you having contributed to this short boust of impermanent fame….

How to Stop Fighting and Start Understanding

My Personal Guide to Using Needs to Build Bridges Instead of Walls.

Today I am experimenting. This iisn’t some neat essay. Think of it as me talking from the middle of a rut. And here’s the thing about ruts: they don’t have clean edges. They’re muddy, uneven, and you can’t always tell if you’re climbing out or sinking deeper.

I'm in the middle of losing my old life. My brother will probably buy the house we both own. That’ll give me just enough to pay off my debts. And what’s left—maybe twenty, twenty-five thousand euros. I don’t know if I'll ever be able to work again, and the country I live in makes me feel sick and isolated. I'm not sure if any other money will be forthcoming. That this creates feelings and tensions within me is an understatement. And still that’s my starting point.

In the meantime, I’m living on unemployment money from the German state. I’m on medical leave. Trauma, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, and body pain are what I carry. The medical service is still deciding if I can work again or not. If they decide I can’t, I can apply for a disability pension. And here’s the important part: unemployment money ties me to Germany, but a disability pension I can take with me. That makes all the difference when I think about my future.

So here I am—debts, evaluations, not a lot of money, no clear plan. The ground keeps shifting.

Maybe you’ve had this, too: waking up and realizing the future is just a fog bank, and you can’t see what’s in it. I found out I can live with that fog. I don’t have another choice. Impermanence is always true, only now it shows itself clearly. So I try to stay with the moment and ask: what do I need right now? Some days it’s clarity. Some days it’s comfort. Sometimes just rest, without the guilt. Sometimes a voice, someone on the other end of the line. And sometimes—what I miss most—hugs. Shared dinners. Laughing together. A hand on my arm. Simple body contact.

When I started my healing process, I was completely checked out from myself. I couldn’t remember anything except what was written in certificates or shown in photographs. People would tell me, "You must remember, we were there together," and I'd just nod, pretend, and play along. But I didn’t remember. I just didn't know.

I lived like that for decades—a kind of ghost of myself, just walking through the world. I was flesh and bone, yeah, but hollow.

I played myself, acted my way through situations. I was there in body but not in being. No needs. No feelings. No memories, or only the most recent ones. My body needed to forget. Forgetting was survival. Forgetting was a need. Dissociation was a need. That was how I shielded myself.

And still—I refuse to give up. I refuse to let my life be defined by a state office, by a pension decision that may or may not come. My needs matter more to me than the safety they promise. I may not be sure yet where I will go or how I will do it, but I will try to make my life based on what I need for myself. That is the only ground I can stand on now.

But it wasn’t always this way, of course.

So how did I get here? How did I move from clinging to safety at any cost—the safety my little child-self built her whole life around—to saying out loud: my needs matter more than the safety anyone else might offer me?

It started in November 2020, when I began coaching. Right away it was about both: feelings and needs. My coach kept asking: "What do you feel, what do you need?" And I realized I didn’t know. I had lived so long without either. Safety had been everything. Survival had been everything. And naming? Naming was new. Naming was terrifying.

And yet—that’s what began to change me.

Right from the first session she asked me, "So what are you feeling right now?" And I just froze. Total blank. Nothing came. Then she asked, "And what’s the need beneath that?" Again—nothing. Blank.

She stayed with me. Patient. Gentle. Compassionate in a way I hadn’t known before. Every week the same two questions: what are you feeling, what do you need? And every week I stumbled. I thought, "I’ll never get it right. I’ll never get anywhere."

Those first two months felt endless. Just me, sitting there, with or without words. Sometimes I had them, sometimes I didn’t. And when I didn’t, it felt like standing in front of a wall.

She gave me lists. Lists of feelings. Lists of needs. Lists of what she called “fake feelings.” Even lists of violent words. Always lists. Because I didn’t have language for any of it.

Turns out my school taught me algebra, but skipped the whole ‘here’s how to name your feelings and needs’ part.

And In my world it was never about me, anyway. Wants? Needs? Those were off-limits. Any hint of ‘I want this’ or ‘I can’t do that’ got swatted down with, ‘Don’t make it about you.’ So the words went quiet. Mouth shut, radar off, vocabulary for feelings: deleted.

The lists opened up a possibility. They gave me a glimpse of how rich language could be. Not just six or eight words for feelings. So many. Layers, shades, subtleties. It was amazing. Totally amazing. To see that feelings could be described in dozens of ways, each carrying its own weight, its own color.

That was the beginning of me finding nuanced language again.

And then in January 2021—it happened. A quantum transformation. That’s the only way I can say it. I became Jay. It was direct. It came through naming. Naming feelings. Naming needs. Seeing how much of me was still tangled up in my mother’s script: obedience, compliance, silence. And when I finally said what I want, what I need, when I actually claimed it, Judith ended. Jay began.

So what happens after a moment like that?

Oh don’t misunderstand me, I was changed. I suddenly found something in me that was totally new to me. Confidence. Trust. And still, not everything changed in that second.

Still, you don't just float away in transformation. You sit down with yourself, and it’s practice, practice, practice. Over and over, like a drum you can’t turn off: what am I feeling, what’s the need underneath?

And needs?

Oh, nobody told me this—they don’t just disappear.

They don’t wander off when you ignore them. They pile up. Like bills you never opened, letters leaning in a messy stack until the whole table sags under the weight. And sooner or later, whether you read them or not, they shape every move you make.

That’s when the Navigators came along for the ride. Just two pages—feelings on one, needs on the other. Snapped photos, tucked them in my phone. Way easier than lugging around the eight-page starter pack. Whenever the fog closed in, out came the lists. Support? Care? Encouragement? Help? Each one had its own flavor, rolled differently in my mouth, felt different in my body. Still, half the time I was staring at the words like a tourist with a map upside down—clueless, clumsy, trying to figure out what the heck I was actually feeling.

And ease—that word kept tricking me. I’d circle it again and again, and almost every time what I actually meant was comfort. My life had been heavy, serious, too serious. Humor was never safety. Humor was pointed at me: queer jokes, fat jokes, smart-people jokes. Always the punchline, never the laugh. People said "harmless." It wasn’t. So ease, for me, meant comfort. A corner without ridicule. A seat where nobody sharpened their teeth on me.

And creativity? That one’s a whole meadow of its own. Do I mean adventure, a little kick, something to wake me up? Do I mean variety, just a change so the day doesn’t grind me flat? Do I mean making something, shaping it with my hands until it exists? Or maybe I mean just being entertained, setting the burden down for an hour. All of that fits under creativity. All of that is need

That’s why I took the Navigator into English. I hadn’t seen anything like it. I wanted others to have words too—to point at what’s missing, so it doesn’t just stay shapeless inside.

Hello my dear paid subscribers: you can grab my two Navigators—feelings + needs as PDF file—in English straight from the Download page. Everyone else can pick them up for about the price of a coffee. Links waiting for you at the end.

And then there were the "false feelings," as the lists called them. I knew them all too well. I feel disrespected. I feel not taken seriously. I feel ignored. I feel unseen. Those were the phrases that tripped me. "Not taken seriously"—that one is carved into me like a groove. Every time it happened, I blew up.

In Germany there was this old cigarette commercial. The HB Männchen — a little cartoon man who would suddenly explode in frustration, puff up, shoot to the ceiling. People used to say, “you’re like that HB person again.” That was me. Zero to blast-off in a second. And the worst part? I didn’t even know why. I just knew I was gone, up at the ceiling, out of reach. And that saying, it got me fuming all over again as I was now feeling ridiculed on top of it.

Coaching didn’t smooth me out. It pressed pause. Stop, look, listen. Why am I back at the ceiling again? What’s boiling underneath? Which need is throwing sparks, begging for air? The Navigator wasn’t what got me there—it only lent me words once I had a glimpse. What got me there was digging, descending, what I came to call subscendence: tracking the eruption back down inside, crawling along the fault lines, following each split until I reached the initial experience. I walked memory corridors, leafed through so cio lo gy, history, anything to make sense of why I blew like a volcano—lava spilling out of me, scorching conversations, burning trust, searing ground so badly I lost one employee, nearly two. My words smoked through the air, left a trail behind me. That was my fire. That was my fuming.

And what I found was that those so-called “false feelings” weren’t fake at all. They were signals. Red flashing lights. Behind not taken seriously were unmet needs for belonging, appreciation, connection, exchange. Add the anger, the rage that came with it, and the trail pointed to the unmet needs of justice, self-determination and authenticity.

Every blow-up became a clue. Every HB-moment was a map waiting to be read.

And then there was another big shift. I started to see how almost everything we say to each other isn’t about needs directly—it’s about strategies. That blew something wide open for me.

Take a hug. If I say to you, “can you please give me a hug?” it looks like I’m asking for arms around me. That’s the strategy. The need underneath? Connection. Warmth. To feel close.

Or take the kitchen. After cooking, I might say, “could you clean the kitchen?” On the surface, it’s about dishes, countertops, water running. But it’s not. It’s about order. Harmony. Maybe balance. I cooked, therefore you clean. It might be about peace, when I walk in the next morning and it isn’t chaos.

Or think about work. Asking a boss for a raise—sure, it looks like it’s about money. But really, it’s about appreciation. Recognition. Dignity. You want to know you matter, that your work carries weight. The money is only the wrapper.

And here’s the part that changed conversations for me: needs are never in conflict. Only strategies clash. The kitchen example makes that so clear. My need might be order. Your need might be relaxation—maybe connection if you want us to curl up and watch TV together. On the surface it looks like a fight: kitchen versus television. Underneath, it’s just two different needs speaking at the same time.

Once I saw that, I could change how I spoke. Instead of "you never help, you always watch TV"—which just makes things worse—I could say, "I want order. I see your need for rest. Let's watch first and clean together after." And suddenly there was room.

Needs aren’t just on or off switches. They live on scales. My need for order might sit at a four. Your need for relaxation might be an eight. That matters. Because once you see it like that, it’s not about winning. It’s about noticing the scales and finding space between them.

And it goes wider. Needs shape families, workplaces, even politics. One group may have security turned all the way up. Another may have individuality turned all the way up. At first it looks like opposition. Yet often, if you listen deeper, the unmet need underneath is the same. That is where bridges can be built. That is what Rosenberg showed: once you name the need beneath the strategy, you stop being enemies. You start being human with each other.

My future grows out of my needs. That’s the soil. Each time I name them, each time I live in ways that honor them, something steadies. When I don’t, the old patterns come tugging. I get pulled off my own ground. My little child is never far—ready to grab the wheel. She learned to keep me safe through compliance, through doing what was asked, through shrinking herself. That was her way of surviving. And she did it well. I thank her for that. I hold her close. She still tries. Now I can drive with her beside me—listening, caring—while guiding us forward.

Needs are also what that child never got. Appreciation. Being seen. Having an empathic witness. The lack of those is what left the deepest mark. Trauma is absence. Naming my needs now is how I give myself that witness. Each word brings something back that was missing.

So when I look forward, the questions rise: what do I need for a life that feeds me? What kind of ground lets me stand with ease? The first word that comes is belonging. Real belonging. A place where I don’t have to hide. A community that welcomes difference and celebrates it.

Here in Germany that feels hard. Belonging is tied to sameness, and I live otherwise. I speak otherwise. I carry expression that doesn’t fit. Too often that’s met with envy, mistrust, or the cold shoulder. My longing is for a culture where individuality isn’t punished. Where diversity is lived, not performed. Where dignity doesn’t mean blending in.

My search for a home is the same as my search for that culture. It may mean traveling, exploring, breathing in many places until one feels right. Until I can say: here I can stay.

Practical things matter—visas, money, laws. I may feel belonging and still face those barriers. Then the question shifts: what steps make it possible? Which path opens to meet the need? Because the need doesn’t vanish. And naming it keeps me moving closer to fulfillment.

That’s why my future and my needs aren’t two stories. They’re one thread. When I give voice to my needs, I set conditions for a future that holds me whole. When I listen, I give space to my child self, to the witness she never had. That is my choice. That is dignity.

Every day the question comes back: what do I need right now? Maybe clarity. Maybe comfort. Rest without shame. Connection. Sometimes the need is larger—a vision of community, a place to live, a ground for belonging. Each answer is a step.

That is the practice. One need at a time. Future and present bound together.

Thank you for walking this path with me.

And please let me know what you like or dislike in this essay. Your feedback is so valuable for me.

Paid subscribers grab your copy of the Navigators and more in my Download Page.

Buy the Feelings Navigator PDF for $5.90

Buy the Needs Navigator PDF for $5,90

If you find my essays & poems valuable and want to support me in living.

Tip Jar https://buymeacoffee.com/jaysiegmann

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Thank you — Monty and I truly appreciate your support.

Your Feelings Are Not the Enemy

They might feel all over the place, yet they are not your enemy. Feelings are information.

In this episode, Jay explores the first step toward building an unshakable foundation: practicing emotional self-awareness.

Drawing from personal experience and influences such as Nonviolent Communication, Buddhist psychology, Ubuntu philosophy, and the psychological clarity of Alfred Adler and Friedemann Schulz von Thun, Jay invites listeners to rethink their relationship with feelings.

Feelings are not enemies to conquer. They are signals—rooted in thoughts, needs, and embodied experience. When named with honesty, they become guides toward dignity, connection, and vision.

This essay-episode unfolds as:

Why feelings matter for dignity, hope, and vision

Authentic vs. inauthentic feelings (with a reference chart to explore in the companion essay)

How naming strengthens boundaries and creates a bridge to deeper connection

The first step toward change—naming as a radical act of dignity and hope

Jay also shares a visual reference chart and a list of common inauthentic feelings in the corresponding essay on Substack, along with access to the NVC Navigator and the Feelings & Needs Database for paid subscribers.

Key Quote

“Feelings are never the enemy. They are the ground of our becoming, the first breath of hope.”

Call to Action

💬 Join the conversation: add your hopes and visions in the anonymous form Shared Visions, Hopes & Dreams (link in the show notes).I invite you to add your own hopes, dreams, and ideas to the open, anonymous Google Form “Shared Visions, Hopes & Dreams”.

And if I may ask to please share this link: https://forms.gle/38GbirQKabv4CmCr8

If you ask five people directly (by email, in a DM, in a comment) to contribute and share it again with five people, you are going to build your vision together. The form is only the vehicle. All answers are openly visible. If you consider promoting it in essays, articles or notes I’d be thrilled.🌀 Paid subscribers: download the NVC Navigator – Feelings Cheatsheet and explore the full Feelings & Needs Database.Paid subscribers can download the NVC Navigator – Feelings Cheatsheet and access my personal Feelings & Needs Database—with over 400 feelings (each with a short description), 240+ needs, subcategories, categories, circle connections and matching needs. Available in English and Deutsch. Everything in one place, at your fingertips. As paid subscriber please proceed to my Download Page.

Thank you for reading and walking this path with me.

🐾 Support the writing (and Monty the cat): become a paid subscriber, donate, or simply share this episode.

If you find my essays & poems valuable and want to support me in living, here are a some suggestions:

* Become a paid subscriberor give a one-time donationor Buy Monty (my gorgeous cat) cat food

* All the writing on Wild Lion*esses Pride is freely offered, there are no paywalls here. Paid subscriptions and donations are a truly meaningful way to support my livelihood as a writer, and go a long way in sustaining my living after having lost almost everything.

* Read more here if you like: When Healing Means Losing Everything

* “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon, share it on Substack Notes or other social media, and/or send to a friend.

Thank you — Monty and I truly appreciate your support.

Find Your Unshakable Foundation

This episode begins with your personal journey from a life of "survival autopilot" to the discovery of self-loyalty. It details how this internal shift connected you to a sense of dignity that became a new, unshakeable foundation for your life.

The episode then expands on this personal experience by introducing the core metaphors of the wildfire, the trench, and the foam carpet. It explains how dignity acts as a defensive trench against the "wildfire" of societal and political pressures, while hope and vision form the "foam carpet" that creates space for new, healthy growth behind the line.

The narrative concludes by highlighting the crucial role of conscious communication. You explain that choosing to see others as human subjects, not objects, is a vital act of resistance and the foundation for building a new, dignifying culture. The episode ends with a clear call to action for the listener to apply these concepts in their own life to stand firm and build a better future.

How You Can Use Dignity to Stand Firm and Build a Better Future

I lived inside an authoritarian system long before I named it. It arose not from a government, yet from my mother’s house, with her rules, her tone, and her absolute control over the air I breathed.

That system moved inside me when I left home. For decades, I kept living as if she was still in the next room, measuring every decision against what would bring peace. I trained myself to anticipate other people’s needs before they spoke. I learned to read the smallest shift in a voice or expression. This felt like safety, or what I thought was safety.

The cost? My connection with myself was absent. I had no awareness of my wants. My understanding of how to care for my body was dim. My finances, mental health, friendships, and spiritual life—all of it ran on a survival autopilot. I told myself I was fine.

Then a question arrived, a key that unlocked everything: What is loyalty for you?

I asked it in passing, thinking about someone else’s choices. Her answer landed like a stone in deep water: "First of all, I am loyal to myself."

I had never heard anyone express it in that way. The idea exposed a vast space between how I lived and what I sensed was possible. That was the moment dignity transitioned from a word in the German constitution to a feeling I could sense in my own bones. This was a profound, quiet, yet powerful internal revolution. It was the feeling of a new foundation appearing where I had only known a void. Dignity was no longer an abstract concept or a political ideal; it became a tangible, personal reality. It was a warmth, a solid ground I could feel as deeply my own.

Seventeen days after that conversation, I stepped away from the 150-hour weeks that had shaped my life for years. I entered medical leave with a body that felt it had carried centuries and a mind still wired for constant motion. My days had been a rush of decisions, deadlines, and demands. I lived in a state of high functioning that looked strong from the outside yet felt like a slow internal erosion. My strength was the kind that came from constant effort, a tension I had held for so long I recognized it as my natural state. I had been operating at a pace I could not sustain, a rhythm of perpetual giving with minimal receiving. My energy went into a system that offered no true replenishment in return.

As the noise subsided, a new voice began to emerge—my own. Faint at first, then steadier. I noticed how I felt upon waking, what my body asked for, and which thoughts rose when I gave them space. It felt both unfamiliar and intimate, like meeting a long-lost friend whose face I remembered but whose voice I had forgotten. This process became a daily practice of listening. I listened to the quiet ache in my shoulders, a plea for rest. I gave attention to the subtle hunger of my body, a request for nourishment. I honored the thoughts that appeared when I slowed my pace, thoughts that were always present yet drowned out by the constant rush. I learned to say yes to rest, yes to nourishment, and yes to moments that held a purpose beyond giving me breath. This felt radical and necessary. I was giving myself permission to just be.

This was a discovery of a deeper responsibility: the responsibility to live in a way that honors my own dignity. My inner state and my capacity to meet the world evolved. My choices aligned with what I truly valued, and that alignment brought a quiet strength I had always sought. This new strength felt different; it was an energy that arose from an internal wellspring, a powerful departure from the constant feeling of depletion I had lived with for so long. I no longer moved through my days in a reactive state. Instead, my movements became intentional, my actions a reflection of my deepest values.

As I settled into this new way of living, I saw my own patterns reflected in a larger reality. The same forces that had shaped me—expectations handed down, loyalty directed outward, and worth measured through service—live in entire societies. They encourage people to stay busy, obedient, and distanced from their own agency. I began to see these threads everywhere: in the workplace, where productivity takes precedence over well-being; in social circles, where people prioritize external validation; in politics, where conformity is rewarded over genuine self-expression. I watched a culture that runs on a collective survival autopilot, a shared tension that mirrors the one I had carried for decades.

Like waves crashing against a rock, systems of control rely on persistence, on repetition, on conditioning. They constantly apply pressure, seeking to erode our sense of self. When silence is replaced with clarity, when you refuse to be eroded, something shifts. The water keeps coming, and the rock remains.

Around me, the social landscape shifted. Rights, laws, and personal freedoms lost their substance like dry grass in high heat. A spark, then another, until the air felt thick with smoke. The pace of it stunned me—how quickly these forces reached across borders, through courts, into schools, and into the most intimate spaces of people’s lives. It was as if the collective tension I had always felt was now manifesting on a larger scale, creating an environment where a small spark could ignite a wildfire. This was a rapid, consuming force that left me with a familiar feeling of disorientation.

In Germany, dignity stands in the first sentence of the Basic Law. It sounds unshakable. I, however, had lived decades before I understood how it feels in practice. When dignity is enshrined in a country’s foundation, I can still sense its vulnerability where it is not named. I saw this in how people navigated their daily lives, in the small concessions they made, and in the ways they gave their power to systems that sought to control them. A word on a page holds immense power, and yet it is the lived experience of that word that gives it true meaning.

Personal dignity changes more than how a person feels about themselves. It changes how they move through systems. It strengthens their capacity to question, to choose, and to stand firm in their own value. Dignity serves as a compass, guiding my way. It is a tool for self-governance, a constant reminder of my own worth and the worth of others. With dignity as my guide, I can navigate the complexities of systems with a clear sense of my own boundaries and my own truth. My actions are no longer a plea for acceptance or a reaction to a threat. They become a firm expression of my inherent value.

I see a similar urgency in the current political moment—in the United States, in Europe, and in so many places where fear is used as currency. A whole society can run at a high pace, delivering for structures that take and take, and still believe an alternative is out of reach. The constant stream of news, the political messaging, and the social pressure—it all encourages a state of perpetual activation and anxiety, a feeling of being busy yet always in a state of loss. This is the collective survival autopilot, the exact condition I experienced in my own life.

Hope begins where dignity takes root. It grows in the quiet recognition of worth, and from there it expands into action. A community grounded in dignity operates from care. It protects what matters because it recognizes its own value. Dignity is not a passive state. It is an active choice, a foundation from which we can build a better future. When a community embraces dignity, it moves with intentionality and compassion. It understands that the well-being of each member is a reflection of the whole.

When I picture the wildfire of rights and freedoms burning through entire societies, I know the trench must be deep, and the foam carpet must be wide. Dignity is the trench. Hope and vision are the foam carpet spread behind it. The trench holds the line — firm, visible, and alive with the choice to stand here. The foam seeps into every gap behind that line, coating the ground so the fire has no place to catch. This is how firefighters work when the flames run too close — first, stop the advance, then make the land safe to inhabit again. Every voice that speaks of a future worth building adds another layer to that carpet. Every shared vision makes the ground less willing to burn.

This is how we protect our communities from the political and social wildfires of our time. This protection is not just about physical safety, but about the conversations that happen within them. I’ve learned something over years of watching how people speak to one another and to themselves: dignity and objectification exist on separate ground. They bring different outcomes. We diminish dignity in an exchange when we point fingers, reduce someone to a label, or speak in ways that close a door.

This is why many campaigns that resist the fire end up feeding it. They work inside the very patterns that burn away the ground they mean to protect. The patterns of Thomas Gordon’s 12 communication barriers—commanding, warning, moralizing, diagnosing, mocking, avoiding—each one is a form of objectification. They reframe a person as an obstacle, a problem, or a type. These barriers are not simply poor communication; they are a manifestation of a deeper cultural pattern. This is a system designed to keep power right where it was, a system where questioning authority felt like rebellion. The act of seeing a person as a subject with their own dignity and agency is a direct challenge to that system.

When I see these barriers at work, I observe a deeper pattern than poor communication. I see a culture that has forgotten how to meet another human being as human. As we forget that, dignity recedes—in private life, in public discourse, and in politics. This is a quiet loss, a slow erosion of a foundational principle. It is the silent permission we give to systems that seek to control and divide us.

I am often told, "I feel so seen by you." I hold this as a muscle I build day by day. This looks like a series of small moments of refusal. For example, the first time I said, "That's not okay," and let the silence sit instead of rushing to soften it. It looks like the choice to address every person by their name and to speak about moments, rather than speaking about "someone" or "everybody." It is a constant effort to reduce exaggerations and minimize generalizations. It is a choice to see people as subjects with their own agency, a focus that moves beyond managing them as objects. This practice is a deliberate choice to see the full humanity in every interaction. It is a conscious act of dignity, both for myself and for the other person.

Building these new patterns takes effort. It asks for openness, for patience, for a willingness to unlearn and relearn. I once assumed it would be a slow process, yet it came faster than I expected—the moment dignity took root in me, everything shifted. The bedrock was there. The foam carpet began to spread. The air felt clearer.

That carpet is where shared vision grows. It is the layer that makes it harder for fear to spark, easier for trust to hold. It is what allows a community to breathe while the wildfire still rages beyond the line. The shared vision is a collective dream, a positive affirmation of what is possible. It is the space where ideas grow in safety and where people can move together with a shared purpose.

The wildfire of rights and freedoms still rages beyond the line of dignity we hold. The bedrock is firm, the foam carpet is spread. The work, however, continues. The personal shift from compliance to dignity is the beginning of a shared movement. It is a choice to operate from a different set of principles, recognizing that power requires compliance. This is where your vision takes hold, a new culture built on dialogue. A culture where we listen to understand, and where "presence is the most powerful response." The shared vision is one where kindness and empathy are the norm, where we "foster true community and belonging and that is inclusive of all as well as respectful." It is a future where basic needs for safety and security are met for all, where "fair treatment and equal rights" are upheld.

The path forward is in the small, deliberate steps we take every day. It is in our commitment to meet one another as humans, not as obstacles or labels. The bedrock of dignity holds the line. The carpet of hope and vision makes the ground safe for new life to grow. As one voice shared, "Indifference is erosion, and we are here to build, and fortify one another daily." We are here to build a new dream, where our dignity is a living, breathing reality that fortifies us all.

Thank you for reading and walking this path with me.

I invite you to add your own hopes, dreams, and ideas to the open, anonymous Google Form “Shared Visions, Hopes & Dreams”.

And if I may ask to please share this link: https://forms.gle/38GbirQKabv4CmCr8

If you ask five people directly (by email, in a DM, in a comment) to contribute and share it again with five people, you are going to build your vision together. The form is only the vehicle. All answers are openly visible. If you consider promoting it in essays, articles or notes I’d be thrilled.

How to appreciate a writer…

If you find my essays & poems valuable and want to support me in living, here are a some suggestions:

* Become a paid subscriberor give a one-time donationor Buy Monty (my gorgeous cat) cat food

* All the writing on Wild Lion*esses Pride is freely offered, there are no paywalls here. Paid subscriptions and donations are a truly meaningful way to support my livelihood as a writer, and go a long way in sustaining my living after having lost almost everything.

* Read more here if you like: When Healing Means Losing Everything

* “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon, share it on Substack Notes or other social media, and/or send to a friend.

Thank you — Monty and I truly appreciate your support.

This is a poem that has long been working within me. Yet I lacked its final arch, the bridge. I found it in Maya C. Popa latest share of August 11th.

I cannot afford her membership, and still can use her prompt. Therefore I am grateful as Maya gave me the last needed strand to weave my poem into a final shape. Her prompt is:

”The August theme is end of summer. It’s a feeling as much as anything. Feel free to interpret the theme broadly!”

This social justice poem ends with a vision for what could be. I invite you to add your own hopes, dreams, and ideas to the open, anonymous Google Form “Shared Visions, Hopes & Dreams”.

And if I may ask to please share this link: https://forms.gle/38GbirQKabv4CmCr8

If you ask five people directly (by email, in a DM, in a comment) to contribute and share it again with five people, you are going to build your vision together. The form is only the vehicle. All answers are openly visible. If you consider promoting it in essays, articles or notes I’d be thrilled.

False Harvest

The sun hangs low, swollen with heat,

How to appreciate a writer…

If you find my essays & poems valuable and want to support me in living, here are a some suggestions:

* Become a paid subscriberor give a one-time donation or Buy Monty (my gorgeous cat) cat food

* All the writing on Wild Lion*esses Pride is freely offered, there are no paywalls here. Paid subscriptions and donations are a truly meaningful way to support my livelihood as a writer, and go a long way in sustaining my living after having lost almost everything.

* Read more here if you like:

* “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon, share it on Substack Notes or other social media, and/or send to a friend.

Thank you — I truly appreciate your support

From Surviving to Rewilding the Truth of Who We AreA reflection for PrideOnThePage Day 14 Fierce on shedding the mask and reclaiming the untamed self

Episode Description

The shield wasn’t just an idea. It was structural.It lived in my fascia, my jaw, my voice that had gone missing. It lived in the silence I wore like armor and in the bracing that kept me safe—and kept me locked in. In this episode, I speak of the Maginot Line I carried in my body, built not from strength but necessity.

From the age of three, I began to disappear. Rejection taught me to retreat. What followed was decades of survival: a corrupted self performing strength, generosity, perfection. I became what others needed—until I vanished to myself entirely.

This episode is not a performance of healing. It’s a declaration.A return.

I share how meditation, systemic coaching, body scans, neurogenic shaking, and finally the full recognition of my Jay-self—my non-binary truth—opened the possibility of rewilding. Not as an aesthetic. As a life.

In This Episode You’ll Hear

How trauma shaped my body into a fortress

Why dissociation became the only way I could survive

What changed when I met my buried self again

The difference between fierceness that destroys and fierceness that remains

What rewilding means—somatically, politically, spiritually

A personal reflection on Buddhist inner rewilding

An invitation to slow down and return to what is alive

The affirmation I now live by: I am the wholeness I seek

Reflection Prompts for You

What parts of your life feel over-cultivated or constrained?

How might you allow more wildness, flow, or instinct into your daily rhythm?

What parts of yourself do you find hardest to accept—and what would happen if you met them with curiosity instead of judgment?

Affirmation from This Episode

I am the wholeness I seek. I no longer serve the self built to survive silence.

This Is Not the End

Rewilding asks for presence, not performance. It grows when left alone long enough. Just like I did.

Today I no longer walk in old shapes. The blade and shield are at rest. I walk as myself now—unapologetic, canyoned, whole. And while I walk mostly alone offline, I know my kin exist. People who meet me in the canyon, not on the battlefield.

Thank you for walking this path with me.

Wild Lion*esses Pride is a space for honest reflections and conversations that matter. Reflections on trauma healing, authenticity, and personal growth—grounded in mindfulness and self-compassion. If you connect with biographical essays that explore the complexity of identity and the journey toward wholeness, this space is for you. and would like to show your support, please consider becoming a valued patron for only $5 a month. Or a “Buy me a coffee” tip would be very generous. Thank you! 💚