Why You Think I'm a Bitch

Let’s just get this out of the way: I haven’t always spoken with softness. I haven’t always chosen or been capable of patience, discernment, or faking my way around hurting your feelings. Sometimes, I’ve spoken way too fucking directly. With a harshness that caught y’all off guard. What the fuck did she just say????

You think I’m a bitch because I call out your absolute bullshit. Because I don’t smile and play along when things are clearly fucking off. Because I never put up with the irate little men. Because when fight or flight got instilled in me—it was all fight, baby.

I remember, my mom would whisper to go get the keys, so we could escape, and instead, I’d come out of the garage at ten years old with a fucking metal baseball bat. Because fuck around and find out, Daddy. And you’ll see the little demon you’ve created with your cruelty.

I remember trying to teach large yoga trainings to mostly privileged white girls. (No hate thanks for helping me buy this condo.) But I didn’t relate to you. I didn’t relate when you complained about the mattresses or air conditioning or what the fuck ever. I remember the students that would love me but I also remember the others that would fucking hate me. One time, they formed a rebellion. The reason? I said, and I quote: "Do not fuck with my teachers."

I’m sure there was more. (Some of them remembered this later as being pissed we offered discounts to locals in Indonesia………………………) But I remember hearing that and thinking... what?

Did I threaten to kill you? Did I mock you until you cried? Did I unravel your sense of self on purpose? Berate you repeatedly? Or did I just tell you to shut the fuck up and stop disrespecting the young Indian woman I brought into this training to teach you something you clearly weren’t ready to receive? Or that you clearly didn’t practice before coming to a training to become a fucking teacher of something you barely understand? Because you’re entitled as fuck.

Because it was fucking disrespectful to begin with and you didn’t want to hear that side.

You think I’m a bitch because I said what needed to be said—out loud and without softening the blow to protect your delicate facade of bullshit. You think I’m a bitch because I didn’t play the part of whatever you thought I should be.

You think I’m a bitch because I don’t flinch when someone’s uncomfortable. Because I don’t care if your feelings got hurt when you got called out. Because I don’t sugarcoat things just to keep the peace. Because I’d rather speak the truth than be another fucking faker.

You think I’m a bitch because I’ve built something real without asking permission. Because I’ve survived shit you wouldn’t believe and still have the fucking audacity to show up and speak without shaking.

And if that makes me a bitch? Fine.

I’ll take the title. With fucking pride.

Because every time I speak up to protect someone who’s never been protected, every time I draw a hard line that stops people from trampling over what matters—I’m doing something that is more significant to me than being liked.

So honestly, call me a bitch. Because I do not give a singular fuck.

And honestly you’re probably right.

The Ashtanga Cult

When I first went to Mysore, I wasn’t chasing some big spiritual awakening—I just wanted to see where this practice came from. I’d been doing Ashtanga for a while and kept hearing people talk about Mysore like it was the holy land. Everyone made it sound like this magical place that would change everything. So I figured... why not? Let’s see what the hype is about.

But within days of arriving, I remember thinking vividly: these people are fucking crazy.

It wasn’t the asanas—they made sense. Strong, methodical, rhythmic. It was everything around them: the altars to Pattabhi Jois, the hush around questioning authority, the way people's eyes darted around when you asked uncomfortable questions. The yoga police—self-appointed guardians of purity who side-eyed you if they caught a hint you drank alcohol or, god forbid, ate meat. The whispery conversations about "Guruji," delivered with the solemn reverence reserved for saints.

It struck me immediately that even though Saraswathi was his daughter—and a truly remarkable teacher—her son took the throne. I saw how small her shala was in comparison to the anointed one’s. It already made no fucking sense to me. So I went back. Over and over. Maybe I’d fucking missed something? Are they really this far gone?

I’d traveled halfway around the world to practice yoga, but what I found felt a lot more like a well-dressed cult. Rigid rules. Idol worship. A kind of quiet obedience that made my skin crawl. Sharath Jois sat at the center of it all—benefiting immensely, both financially and culturally, from the system as it stood. When the Me Too movement finally cracked the surface, his response landed like a soft deflection—more about his own struggle than the people who had come forward.

And people praised it. Clapped. Sighed with relief. Because if they didn’t, they’d have to face the truth—that their practice, their teacher, their whole carefully curated identity might be built on top of something cracked. Something even dark and deeply fucked up.

It wasn’t just spiritual bypassing; it was collective delusion. The kind that protects power, punishes dissent, and wraps itself in incense and sanskrit to keep from being questioned. I stood in the middle of it thinking: how the fuck is this still happening?

Mysore was powerful, yes. But not because of the bullshit hierarchy or the inherited thrones. It was powerful because it showed me—up close—how quickly devotion turns into denial, and how easy it is to call something sacred just because everyone else does.

That lesson stuck.

For Luna

I wish so fucking badly I believed in heaven so I could convince myself that I would meet you finally.

Instead, I carry your ghost with me. Every day. In everything. You have never left me, even though you are nowhere to be found.

I felt you before anything showed up on a test. Before a line. Before I could even say it out loud. I just knew you were there. I was never scared to be your mom—I was certain. You were mine. We planned you. We named you. I had never wanted anything more. You were my fucking miracle.

When the lines started fading, I thought I would actually die. I went to the doctor over and over—blood tests, questions, silence. Then, finally, nothing. They couldn’t find you. You were just… gone. And I truly thought I might go with you. I’ve lived through so many atrocities, but nothing has ever devastated me like losing you.

I think my body gave out from all the pain I was already in. I think it failed us both. And I’m so sorry. I am so fucking sorry. I wish I could’ve saved you. I wish I had been stronger. I’ll think of you every day until I don’t have thoughts anymore.

People don’t know what to say when a pregnancy disappears, so they say nothing. They pretend you never existed. But I know you were real. You are real. You are my child.

So when Ryan came, I froze. Six different tests said she was still there, and I still couldn’t trust it. Because I was still so fucking broken. Still grieving you. And now I look into her eyes and I imagine you. I imagine you being together. Because you are sisters. You are. I imagine what it would be like to have you both here. I miss the version of life so fucking bad that had you in it.

You were my first miracle. My first experience with a love so big it terrified me—in the best way. You made me believe in something beyond survival. And even though Ryan is here now, even though she saved me in ways I didn’t know I needed saving, you were the beginning.

I will never regret you. You are the most unbearable, beautiful love I’ve ever lost.

And I carry you. In my every cell. In my silence. In the mother I am. Always.

You Don’t Get to Call It Love Now

The pull doesn’t make sense to you because you can't fathom the cruelty it took for me to remain this gentle. You don't know how many times the world gave me reasons to be anything but kind, and how many times I had to choose softness over survival, grace over revenge, forgiveness over bitterness.

You hurt me because I saw you—clearly, sharply, painfully. I saw the truths you hid from yourself, the parts you refused to face, and I held up a mirror even when it burned my own hands. And still, when I had every reason to cut you back, I stayed gentle. I gave you kindness you never earned, compassion you never returned, and love that demanded nothing from you.

And maybe that’s what haunts you. Not my anger, not my bitterness—because I left none. Instead, you are haunted by the way I never became your cruelty. By my refusal to become like you, to let pain make me less. By the gentleness I gave when you least deserved it, by the kindness you burned through believing there would always be more.

But people like me don't come twice. You carry me, you remember me, you ache in the empty spaces I left—not because I haunt you intentionally, but because I was devastatingly real in a way you'll never feel again.

They Tried to Fucking Kill Me

I was born to a man who didn’t want me.
But worse—he didn’t care.
Indifferent to knowing me,
to whether I was fed, warm, safe.
Indifferent to the fact that I even existed.

He saved his fire for my brother—
a boy raised on violence and praise,
taught that love was brutal,
that women are weak.

My mother—
she worked herself to exhaustion,
five jobs, five hundred worries,
no time for anything but keeping us alive.
She cared enough to try,
but survival doesn’t leave room for anything else.

I was was always alone.

Because they fucking hated me?
Like my father did,
like my brother did,
like every man after them.

They wanted me small.
Silent.
Grateful for the suffering they handed me.
They tried to kill every spark in me.

I should’ve known.
When the first man tore doors from their hinges,
drove 100 miles per hour just to watch me flinch.

When the next one—the gentle one—
made me believe I was actually loved.

Made me believe I was home.
Made me believe in a family that didn’t hurt.
Made me believe I was worth protecting—

But when I sat on the bathroom floor,
bleeding out alone,
sobbing for God to just take me too.
I knew he hated me too.
Or honestly, that I meant nothing at all.

Some lives are marked by pain and suffering.
And I didn’t know how to keep pretending.

Because even to him, I was just a body,
so fucking easily replaced.

So I ran.
Straight into the arms of a man I knew could destroy me.
I thought if I could create something whole,
it wouldn’t matter that I never had been.

And then I saw my own version of my father.
I had found him.

He took me from standing to flat on my back,
head against the wood,
pregnant.
his hands around my throat SQUEEZING,
his fist against my skull—again and again.

I carried his child and his rage at the same time,
eight months pregnant,
cleaning houses while hiding bruises,
a ghost of myself.

Days before our daughter was born,
he put me in the hospital.
Then totaled my car.

But the most hollowing act was:

Not when he threw me against the floor
Not when he punched me in the head.
Not even when he strangled me until I forgot how to breathe.

I knew when he spit in my fucking face.
Inches away, with our daughter still inside me.

Because to spit at something is to say:
You are nothing.
And if I was actually nothing,
then I was something that could be erased.

So I ran back to my father’s house,
a place where I was never a child
but still just a thing.

And it was just as brutal as I remember.

But there’s her.
And I would not let her know the childhood that I had run from.

So, I went home.

To the place I bought alone.
Just in case I needed to escape.
Not sure how I would survive,
but knowing I had to.

Because they fucking hated me.

They tried to kill me.
They tried to break me.
They tried to make me disappear.

But I am still here.

And my daughter?
She will never ask,
"Why does he fucking hate me?"

They tried to fucking kill me.
And they fucking failed.