What I did on my summer vacation
Or why I have kept my business closed and ignored literally every message clients sent me.
The short answer: I collapsed in late June.
I found the demands on my person were too many. My body couldn't keep up. But I'm not one easily defeated. I'm here, standing strong, ready to face the challenges ahead.
Painted Buffalo in Fargo, North Dakota
The long answer:
My family has dealt with chaos since I joined them in 2020. I became a parent at the request of the kids involved. Taking on the role of mom is never simple. Our particular complications included a maliciously uncooperative coparent, and an unhelpful school system. Pandemic-traumatized kids with emerging neurodivergences did not help.
The summer opened with the middle kiddo graduating from high school. For his graduation gift, he asked to come with Synty and me to the North Dakota Grand Sabbat. I tend to avoid sharing family photos on the Internet, but I might share some road trip pictures. The world needs to see Synty meeting an Ikea meatball for the first time!
the Famed Ikea Meatballs
I can't express enough my appreciation for the North Dakota Grand Sabbat community and its organizers. While camping may not be my cup of tea, I deeply respect the community, its mission, and the reasons behind it. The possibility of visiting the event again is a great motivation for us to fix up our camper. Musicians, you definitely need to check them out!
On our way back from the trip, our oldest kiddo told us he was coming to spend Father's Day with us. We returned on Tuesday. He arrived on Wednesday, in time for Pride AND Father's Day. Meanwhile, Synty and I had both picked up a tickle in the back of our throats from the trip.
A fact of life in our home: I do most of the day-to-day labor, especially the emotional labor. Synty works full time in community mental health. It takes a lot of energy to manage ADHD, and they spend most of their energy managing it for work.
Synty and I both acknowledge it's not fair at all: I have to pick up what they can't, especially for the kids. It does cost me income, and time, and energy. It also means I'm SOL if I get sick at the same time as someone else in the home. Feminism has pointed out the problem of emotional and domestic labor imbalance. But it's got a ways to go to factor in the many nuances of these situations. Certainly no one has come up with a solution beyond "don't," which doesn't help women with families that much.
I pivoted from making graduation special, to being The Diana Rajchel for NDGS, to organizing Father's Day, to including extended family that also showed up, to dealing with a suddenly sick partner at the same time as the youngest was having anxiety-driven insomnia and just plain needed DragonCat Mom.
In the middle of all this, the neighboring town was hit by a tornado. My kids were in that neighboring town when it happened. One kid told me he was hiding in a storage closet at the local mall. The other one was safely in a university building. There were a lot of pauses for care last summer: the thunderstorms were heavy, and the middle kiddo is absolutely phobic about weather conditions. My kids spent half their time in a housing crisis, and you could see it wearing on them.
That was just my family life - my career life had me getting pounded from all sides. I am and was writing a book, while my business partner wanted to know what's up with my part for Golden Apple, while I was trying to figure out where to teach yoga in a town with a good yoga market but limited options, and while my clients were trying - usually reasonably - to get their needs met.
Antique TV Shwoing Static
One day, around late June, while I attempted to unpack the bags piled in our bedroom finally, my vision turned into TV static. I have only had that happen a few times in my life. It's always bad, and it's always a warning I'm about to lose consciousness. I laid down for a minute. I didn't wake up until Synty returned from work and found me.
Thank the Gods I insisted on teaching the boys to cook during the lockdowns.
The rest of the summer has been a massive re-evaluation of everything I am doing and trying to do.
Synty put me on bed rest for two weeks. I had to completely give up on planting anything for a summer garden, drop the mini road trip plans I had made with our graduate, and bow out of teaching classes with Wicked Grounds because I couldn't sit up long enough to make a PowerPoint.
And no, I didn't have Covid. All of what I dealt with was from exhaustion.
I also realized, as I lay on my bed, processing depression, exhaustion, and the worst financial anxiety I've ever had in my life, that I was starting to resent my clients.
I had told my clients I planned to reopen after I returned from North Dakota. I didn't. I decided not to submit to teach at Convocation. It's mid-September and I am reopening, but under a lot of restrictions.
I don't get lightweight clients. I accept that. The majority of my clients are perfectly civilized, respectful people. But for some reason since the beginning of 2024 I've been getting a cluster of people that are...different. People who want 24/7 service and who will try to book me across multiple channels when I don't answer a voice message right away. People that want to “have a phone call” and think I don’t recognize it as code for attempting to get free intuitive services. People who saw I was closed and felt perfectly okay asking to be the exception. People who actually made disrespectful faces in front of me when I mentioned I had a commitment to my children, and could NOT give them extra time on their appointment. People that tried to substitute me for a mental health professional. People who were treating me as a form of entertainment. People texting me and pushing for appointments on the same nights that they knew I was working area psychic fairs. People pushing when I said no. People asking me to open up my schedule during hours clearly marked as closed.
The demand created a financial and time imbalance. I was showering maybe every 4-5 days. I was too exhausted for the gym, and I'm not sure I'd call my food intake nutrition. I'd fix food for everyone else, and because of my allergies, I'd just blow off eating for myself. Fun fact about large bodies: you have to feed them. Starving them causes them to gain more weight when they actually do eat. I had no work-life balance. At the rate most clients were paying me, with the level of their issues, I was losing money and unable to generate income through ways other than client work.
I had allowed my clients to become my worst boss.
Most of my clients are really decent people. But the handful of disrespectful people were causing me to resent all my clients. I had to step away for the good of everyone.
I experienced feelings of dread and a desire to procrastinate with all of my clients. That’s no space to work from.
I decided, in that wave of yikes, to step back. I'm not a nonplayer character in other people's stories. I am a real person who has to deal with my own hells. The reason people want to book me is my expertise in getting out of hell. I own the business, and this is a business. I am the boss.
My situation was a new kind of hell I had to figure out, and hopefully I can pass on the wisdom of my way out to the next Spiritual Assistance practitioner who gets overwhelmed.
I first started to feel like my energy levels returned in the beginning of August. I then had an 18th birthday to honor, paired with the usual bad coparenting, and had to deal with an energy sap again. In the background, I continued working on what was needed to open my own yoga practice in Kalamazoo.
While laid out, unable to function, cringing at the pileup of dishes, laundry, and pet dander, I did have time to think. I set some priorities. I've really set some hard boundaries. I will not be shifting these boundaries for anyone.
When it comes to my personal life, and to my business, I've made some big changes.
First, I am raising my prices. I need to earn enough to cover the days I can't work because of exhaustion. I am offering Klarna and Affirm in order to remain financially accessible.
Second, clients may only self-book general divination and diagnostic sessions. If I agree that more work needs done, I will send the follow-up appointment link.
Third, clients may only book me once every two weeks, and no session may last more than 90 minutes. Overbooking often comes from a lust for result, and results need time to happen.
For people who would like more frequent access, I have a Patreon.I am moving through these last months of 2024 with an eye to 2025 and the quality of life I want to live. Because spirituality is only healthy if it helps your life - and that includes my own. If I can't help my life with my work, then I need to do something different.
Some people may wonder if any of this is attributable to the f*ery that made Hex Twisting come to be. While I still have my fair share of Beckys and Chads trying to “put me in my place, - “ for the most part, no. The Beckys and Chads are learning that repeat hospitalization is a very real consequence of trying to force their rules and ways on me because when I played by the nice rules, I still got bullied. If the rules are only applied to me, then they don’t apply to me - because one sided rules are really bullying, and/or oppression. I’ve found ways to respond in exactly the way that is deserved to that nonsense, and most of it is just agreements with various justice deities tired of watching me endure crap when I’m down here trying to make a real difference.
I am grateful for all of you - Patrons, readers, dear friends, and my family. No matter how adept someone is spiritually, there's always more life learning to do. I hope I can take my life lessons about valuing myself the way I should be valued and share them with you, in a less "collapse on a pile of suitcases" way.
