Dissociation, psychosis, creativity, and healing.

I was on set shooting a video about healing the morning I learned my grandmother had died.

Those who have been following along on my social media over the past 12 months, would know that the last year has been difficult. In a span of 12 months, our family lost 6 pets, I had a major surgery (for which I am still recovering), I started a new journey toward sobriety, and now my grandmother was dead. It had been a challenging year, to say the least.

The culture around work-life balance is such that it’s expected that people take a little time off, mentally, at least, when shit goes sour. However, the expectation is also that after a day, you’re back to the grind as normal—as if nothing happened. Not being ready to go back to work is never an option.

This past year has been a continuous bombardment of unfathomable grief and trauma. Hell. It was impossible to bounce back from the pain so quickly, so many times. It just became more intense, and harder to pick yourself up again, and again, and again.

Being surrounded by so much death in such a short period is atypical, but as humans, our bodies and our instincts fall into—or try to fall into—the recovery patterns that are most familiar to us. For me, this is dissociation.