Coming Home to the Dragon's Den

“Keep your mouth shut!” Mom rattles off a classic piece of advice before I head to my first water park adventure at the age of 30, cautioning me against ingesting the cesspool of human feces we all have to assume is Raging in those Waters. I find it hilarious that this is also exactly how she responded during my first standup show when the host asked, “What is the secret to a successful relationship?” She got the most laughs of the night. To this day people talk about it more than any of the jokes I made, with the possible exception of my pickle joke, which my brother thinks I stole from him. I’ve tried to explain there is a difference between stealing material (to be clear, he doesn’t do standup) and having a similar perspective because we were both raised in a family of picky eaters who find it offensive to have an unannounced free pickle plopped on your plate as if it’s a garnish, left there to leak and ruin every fry it touches, seeping into the sad corner of a bun. It’s more of a consent issue than a pickle issue. Why do restaurants assume we want a quartered cucumber soaked in brine on the same plate as the food we’ve actually ordered?! It’s a nightmare.

I just started living at home-home again after bopping around living in new homes around the world for the past 11 months. This feels more accurate than saying I was “traveling,” because was really “staying” in new places, getting rooted, learning something new about myself, building a community, and then leaving suddenly, hoping no one will take it personally. I’m braver about participating in new things, expanding my perspective when I know I have an out. Much like I agreed to going to a water park yesterday for the first time with my friend Evan, only because I told him beforehand I was fully expecting to hate everything about it. Writing this now I honestly can’t think of one thing that I “hated”—maybe the moment in the Dragon’s Den (rated “4” for “aggressive”) when we missed the hole we were supposed to enter in the swirling bowl of doom and our tandem inner tube got stuck facing "backwards" (I'm only realizing now in the process of looking up clips of the ride, that this is the way we were supposed to be facing.) “Evan, NO!” I shrieked when I saw him trying to maneuver us towards the final slide. “Trust me this is the only way!” he said gleefully. I was not smiling. I saw us like two babies crowning with the wrong body part and all of my fears flashed through my mind—“Why did I say yes to this adventure?! Is this how I die?! Let’s just get a C-section!” I wailed internally. I finally realized I had no choice but to surrender to the flow of the tube. Let it happen. We entered the final slide back-first and emerged safely in the pool at the bottom, laughing hysterically, exhilarated by having faced our* fears by riding them instead of doing everything in our* power to avoid them (*my). To quote Evan from my Instastory later, “Once you’re on the slide, you’ve gotta go down it. So…that’s life.” Any time I choose to be present for an experience, I tend to love it even if it scares me. Ahhh this is what commitment means. I get it. Cool.

Home is simultaneously the most comforting and triggering environment imaginable—it is designed to be that way. I remember talking with my Swedish friend Johan at the Ecstatic Dance festival on Koh Phangan. We had just finished participating in a tantra workshop that involved crawling around the floor like animals and doing about 15 minutes of heavy breathwork accompanied by vigorous pelvic thrusting into the air. He said, “Sometimes I wonder if a lot of this healing stuff could be accomplished if people were willing to call their parents and have an honest conversation.” And the award for the most uncomfortable truth bomb goes to Johan! How many of the stories that I tell myself are just stories? (All of them. Right now, this is a story! But in this moment it feels helpful and aligned with truth, so I’m going to keep telling it to myself until a truer-feeling truth comes along.)

One story I’ve often told myself is that “It hurts my parents when I tell the truth about my life.” Yikes! Not a very helpful story considering I feel deeply moved to share about my life and I also don’t want to hurt my parents. I can see moments where I internally confirmed this story was true. Two years ago, they saw me do a standup show where I made a joke about how being an overachiever is not always a good thing, e.g. I threw up during my first blowjob. (I’ve said this on stage so many times I no longer even feel what’s funny about it, but I certainly did when I wrote it!) I also questioned my Catholic school abstinence-only education, which utilized metaphors such as, “You are like a Post-It note—the more surfaces you stick yourself to, the more debris you collect, and the less sticky you become. No one wants a Post-It note that doesn’t stick!” As a wildly obedient individual, this imagery worked on me for a while until one day I realized that I am more resilient than a mildly adhesive notecard, and I don’t have to walk around with the fear of “ruining” my stickiness.

“You did great!” My parents said, but I could feel their hurt and disappointment underneath the sentiment. We all walked away from that show with separate, secret conclusions, “We didn’t plan on raising an individual who would talk about blowjobs onstage and then blog about them online later [i.e. right now—VERY meta]. Some things are meant to be kept private.” And my take-away, “My parents will never fully see or understand me for who I am.” We kept our mouths shut about these things, but also quietly, deliberately devoted ourselves to loving each other despite our deepest fears and disappointments “proving” to be true.

I knew that coming home would involve rewriting my story that “speaking my truth hurts my parents.” The most kind, loving thing I can do is to be honest about my experience and hold space for any feelings that come up in this process. Do my best to reveal myself. Not hide anything. Accept that the rough drafts will be rough. This is the real Dragon’s Den.

Last night I was sharing my experience around feeling both a deep fear of and longing to share myself more fully. My dad asked me the most thoughtful, simple, beautiful question, “Why do people share?”

His question touched me because it made me realize he simply doesn’t understand what is behind my desire to share myself. And by hiding myself in order to keep him comfortable, I’ve also been hiding the truth that my desire to share comes from love. To quote a song I started writing but never finished, “It’s more painful to be quiet than to use my voice” (saying this here to remind myself to finish writing it). I feel deeply called to express myself and tell the truth about my life. It’s my medicine. It seems to be my purpose on this planet, to experience things and then talk about them. Holding space for my own experience helps me to hold space for others’ experiences. The more I embody all of the parts of myself that I am, the more I implicitly offer that same permission for other people to do the same. So, the fact that I’ve been holding the belief that this process causes my parents great pain and suffering hurts my heart. It keeps me quiet and small.

Seeing this clearly felt like a rush of relief to me. Writing this out feels like a another rush of relief. And for the record, mom was right! Sometimes it is important to keep my mouth shut, like when plunging head first into a wading pool of chemicals and urine (I just smelled my hair remembering I haven’t even showered yet. I really am wild!!); and sometimes it’s important to keep my mouth open in spite of the fear of being misunderstood. When I trust my own intentions to share from a place of love, I have nothing to be afraid of. I can surrender to the process and enjoy the ride.