“My story is filled with broken pieces, terrible choices, and ugly truths. It’s also filled with a major comeback, peace in my soul, and a grace that saved my life.” - Kathy Browne

When I was a kid, my father would sneak off to the bathroom for what felt like hours at a time. He called it his throne. It was the only place, between his family and those who worked for him, where he could find solitude. And in that solitude, he always had a stack of fantasy novels that he read to escape into faraway lands.

One time, my sister and I were playing hide and seek. She decided to hide in the bathroom closet, convinced that I wouldn’t think to find her there. Unfortunately for her, my father had decided to visit his “throne,” leaving her to question how long she could hold out before letting him know she was in there.

All I will say is that she learned that day that some mistakes are only meant to be made once in a lifetime.

Over the past few years, I have read an embarrassing number of fantasy novels. In truth, I am one of about one million single women and gay men across the world who can make that claim.

For someone who spends the majority of the day in my mind questioning how I can do more and be better, it has been a much-needed respite.

For the closeted tween inside of me who watched Buffy The Vampire Slayer and fantasized about having a two-hundred-year-old vampire soul mate, it has been comforting to return to a very familiar part of myself.

I look forward to my nights at home with a cup of tea, a soft blanket, and a book with a theme that matches all those I have previously read. The heroine grows up modestly, being overlooked by those around her, only to stumble into a dangerous situation that leads her to not only find her soulmate but also become the most powerful of all witches/fairies/dragon riders/whatever the woman writing the book calls them.

I love it every time. I love the twists and turns. I love the surprises that I am confident any twelve-year-old would catch, but my deep emotional involvement in the plot renders me completely off guard. I love looking at the pictures of the smug female authors with their power-posed headshots and signature lip color.

I then love to use the plot of the story to judge that same author’s marriage and wonder which parts of her life story she is projecting in the plot.

All of it is crack for someone wired the way I am, and I smile each time that I finish another book, knowing that I will finally get to see how it looks on the shelf with all of my old friends.

I spent most of my life wishing my life away. Wishing I had been born different than who I am, to a different family and circumstance. At every moment of struggle, I did everything I could to escape my life and blame the world around me for my pain.

And yet, if I look at it from the frame of a book that I would pick up off the shelf, it is one hell of a story.

As much as I hope the main characters in the books I read get happy endings, I would be bored if it all had been handed to them.

I love reading books filled with deeply complex characters who must confront every aspect of themselves to become who they are meant to be. I love it when an author can cause you to hate a character at first glance, only for you to be in their corner at the end of the series. And more than anything, I love it when love itself allows people to break through even their limits of what is possible, to show up for those they care for most.

To put it mildly, my life has been anything but boring.

I was born to a woman who spent decades being terrorized and mistreated by men. Who turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with the fact that her brain was constantly at war with itself, and yet, even at her lowest, she never gave up. She single-handedly got herself help.

Even when she couldn’t love herself, she found a way to love her children and granddaughter to the point where she would cry even at the slightest mention of how much they meant to her.

You want a complex character? How about someone who could quote Toni Morrison, was deeply passionate about politics and European soccer, who also, at one time, drove her car accidentally into a supermarket because she “parked incorrectly”?

Or my father, who grew up the son of a Portuguese Fisherman who had won a medal for sinking the most enemy ships in World War II. The same man who kicked my father off the boat as a child called him “the worst fisherman in history.” Instead of following in the family business, my father hitchhiked the country with his dog. He played guitar with strangers around campfires and later ran Inns with hundreds of guests on property each evening.

He preached “being cool”, and nothing made him laugh more than embarrassing his children. He was a shoulder for many to cry on, all while internally dreaming that he could show up in the world differently than he was. He was painfully stubborn yet gave himself permission to try to learn things far beyond his skill level, including the time he installed the plumbing for his shower without any experience. So what if the hot was cold and the cold was hot? It worked all the same.

If you want to know who he was, it wasn’t the house people fought over most, but instead a “Chicks That Rock” concert t-shirt and a tiny Buddha statue. Those were the items that those who loved him felt best represented him.

One of the greatest gifts of my parents’ passing has been getting to look back on it all differently and tell new stories.

There were a lot of hard days and even darker nights, but it all made the moments where laughter was shared hit each of us deeper. Our traditions were funky and all our own. My sister went from being in musicals to being a florist. I went from having tremors when surrounded by too many people to performing on stage in front of hundreds.

No part of it could have been predicted. In truth, a lot of it still doesn’t make sense, and yet that’s what I have learned to love most about it all.

I am grateful for everything. Every character. Every struggle. Every moment I wondered if it was even worth holding out hope.

Somehow, as I look back at everything that has come so far, it all feels oddly perfect; even the moments that I questioned the most.

My father died in the hospital I was born in. I watched his last breath in the exact same place he witnessed my first.

My mother passed away before witnessing an election and current events that would have broken her heart in a way that may not have been repairable.

Now my sister and I get to walk forward in our own lives carrying the best of each of them, sharing their lessons, and living in their honor.

In short, there is a lot of my life that I didn’t love living, but I would read the crap out of this book.

I don’t know what is to come, and that’s the best part.

No matter how many pages and chapters I have left, I find myself each day feeling more and more grateful that I get to call all of this mine.

With Love,
Clayton

Over the past few months, one quote has repeated in my head:

“Please don’t let me spend all my time focusing on a future finish line without realizing that I am already standing at one that my past self never could have even dreamt of reaching.”

I have repeated it to friends, coworkers, and on coaching calls, mostly so that it would sink in a little bit more each time.

It is not lost on me that I am proverbially standing at the culmination of thousands of steps, tears, and moments I couldn’t see my way through.

Yet, like every other person I know who, along the way, got addicted to improving themselves, I still too often look lovingly at my future instead of all the miracles in my present life.

I am the most myself I have ever been. I no longer hold resentment over what happened to me in the past. Instead, there is only gratitude. I have a list of hundreds of self-limiting beliefs and stories on my phone that I have actively disproven. But in the presence of others who reflect aspects that I still deem more lovable or worthy, I am quick to throw that all away with the renewed promise that I will work to further change myself to be what I am currently not.

The reasons why are more loving than they used to be, but the fact remains that my perspective on whether or not my current story is one of success or failure is up to me.

If I don’t remind myself of this daily, my old parts and patterns will ensure that my perspective is unfavorable. Which…is crazy and incredibly human.

And then you get to ask yourself the question, “Am I actually as unique as I believe myself to be, or do I just do the same things everyone else is doing while telling myself a story that I am the only one in the world who acts this way?”

That is for another newsletter and another day.

I grew up in a household where there was constant scarcity regarding the amount of food we had in our house. Even when our fridge was stocked, there was more concern about how long it would last than celebrating the fact that we weren’t in the tight position we previously were.

A lot of this stemmed from my mother’s mental illness, and the fact that weeks of my Dad making chicken seven different ways were hard not to complain about as a child.

Ironically, the one thing always on our shelves was some concoction that reflected my parents’ constant diets (most notably Slim Fast).

Even at times when food pantries were visited, our house revolved around each of my parents trying desperately, over and over again, to lose weight and become a version of themselves they so desperately wanted to be.

And yet, even when they hit the numbers on the scales that they starved themselves (or ate a gross amount of pork rinds) for, all they could see was how much further they had to go.

It’s not surprising that in times of insecurity, an old part of me clings to hope that somehow my voice will lower, my beard will grow fuller, and I will put on about 40 pounds of muscle, all while growing six inches in height.

I am a product of my parents, in their best days and their worst.

I love them for all of it.

My good friend, who I love and is undoubtedly reading this and rolling his eyes, pulled me aside over the holidays to share that he couldn’t wait until I let this constant chasing and doing go, but instead surrendered to all that my life is in this moment.

I immediately responded by listing all of the things I was working on and doing at that moment to achieve exactly that!

When it comes to self-work, I am that brown-nosing kid in class who raises his hand way too much and annoys everyone else by constantly reminding everyone that I did the reading.

My most recent realization regarding surrender was that clenching your fists and saying that you surrender out loud, while ensuring that no part of your body is relaxed or open, is not, in fact, surrendering.

Leave it to me to try to fully control even an act that is meant to be the opposition of control.

Baby steps…

I have learned in the last few years how two things can be true at the same time.

I am as present, surrendered, and myself that I have ever been. And yet, I am constantly striving to reach the next version of myself that will be even better.

But more than holding two contradicting truths, I have learned how much the progress that we seek is not in the actual transformation when we “arrive” at the imaginary finish line we seek.

Instead, it is in catching ourselves a little quicker each time when we inevitably fall back into the patterns of the past that no longer serve us.

So, when I catch myself marveling at how much hotter and accomplished my future self will be, I try not to simply look back but to “feel back.” I go back to moments from the past and try to remember as many details, sensations, and feelings as possible.

The more I remind myself exactly what my life and dreams were like at that time, the more I remember just how far I have come.

More importantly, there is no destination that I need to orient myself towards moving forward.

There never was.

I never thought half of what exists in my life was possible. Instead, I took one foot and put it in front of another, which is the only way I will continue to get to wherever I am meant to be.

So here is to honoring the journey and releasing the imaginary finish lines of the future so that someday, we can simply surrender instead of trying to solve for exactly how to surrender like an equation.

With Love (and more self-help books than I will ever read),

Clayton

"To My Kids, For All The Times My Answer Was 'I Don't Know.'" - Michael Maderia

Today would have been my father’s 74th birthday. February 10th was always one of the days we celebrated most in our household. We bought him gifts with his own money, usually a T-shirt with his favorite sports team on it, and ate German Chocolate Cake. I honestly don’t remember if that was his favorite or if I pushed for it each year, saying it was because it was what I wanted to eat.

In the last few weeks, I have been reading a few of his favorite books on Taoism. Each one gives me more of a window into the man he was and what he believed. His passing was a pivotal moment in my life and my growth, and yet, I still have moments where I wish he could have met the version of myself that I am today. I wish we could have talked about spirituality and philosophy because I started my journey on those subjects through his passing.

Most of all, even though I told him I loved him daily, I wish I could hug him and tell him how much I love him from where I am now. I believe the people in my life know that there is more meaning behind those words when I share them than there may have been in the past.

The current state of the world and unrest have really brought home the fact that I am, in fact, an adult in this world without parents to look to for advice on what to do. Instead, I am of the age where others look to me for advice and guidance. Luckily, as the quote states above, my father was someone who wasn’t afraid to share with those he loved that he did not have every answer and never pretended to know more than he did.

When I turned eighteen, he wrote me a book of life lessons. I treasure it and sometimes joke about it on stage since the lessons are in the form of the lyrics of 90s and early 2000s female pop singers. But as I shared during his eulogy almost seven years ago, my father did his best to live by the three R’s: Respect, Responsibility, and Re-Dedication.

So, in honor of his birthday, here is where I stand with all three of those themes.

Respect

For most of my life, I believed the world to be black and white. There was only right and wrong with no in-between. “Respect” was to be earned through struggle and proving oneself. It was not something that was readily given, especially for those who viewed the world differently than I did. Mainly because, for so much of my life, any view that opposed my own felt threatening to me. Not necessarily because the viewpoint threatened my survival but more because it threatened the shaky ground on which my “correct” belief stood. And my perceived safety was born from the idea that I was standing on the right side of the fence.

In the past few years, it has been abundantly clear how complicated humans are. As I have lived in different parts of our country, I have found that there is no way to properly depict how another person will feel at any given moment. We are a walking amalgamation of programming and contradictions.

More importantly, we are all doing this human thing for the first time, and no one actually knows the answers to all of life’s biggest questions. Sometimes, it feels like those trying to obtain and cling to the most power in this world are those desiring a sense of safety the most because even they have no idea what all of this means.

When I came out as a young teenager, I didn’t need everyone around me to understand it, especially since I barely understood what it meant for me and my life yet, either. All I asked was that they respect it enough to leave me be as I figured out what it all meant and walked my path. I felt lucky at that point in my life that, for the most part, people left me be, and I hoped to extend that courtesy to others in the future.

There are days when respecting those who view the world differently than I do is easier than others. But the one thing I have found to be most true is that the more I respect myself for all that I am (and especially for all that I am not), the more easily I can extend the same respect to others.

No matter who they are.

Responsibility

Growing up, society frames responsibility in terms of your role in the context of others. Children are quickly taught their responsibility towards those around them (family, friends, teachers) or institutions (school, church, etc.). But as you get older, you realize the person you are most responsible for and to is yourself.

It is a somewhat horrifying moment in one’s life when you realize that the problems in your life are not the fault of the world around you but instead, situations that, on some level, you created and put yourself through.

Although self-help books preach the need for everyone to take full accountability for their own lives, it becomes increasingly evident that many cultural messages push us to do the opposite. It is only on planes that it is truly reinforced that we put on our own masks first.

A few months ago, when I went to see Elizabeth Gilbert speak in person, she talked about how little we humans actually have control over. But what we do have control over is incredibly important for us to focus on, which means we can’t waste our time worrying about things outside our control.

I think of responsibility in this way. My life, my health (both mentally and physically), my happiness, and my fulfillment are all my responsibility. How I treat others, especially those closest to me, is my responsibility. How I will be received or viewed by others is not.

The less time I spend trying to prove to others who I am and the more time I spend giving myself permission to be my true self, the better off I will be.

Re-Dedication

One of my greatest sources of frustration is when I, as a human, fall back into old patterns or stop doing the things I know I should be doing.

Let me repeat this, one of the greatest sources of pain in my life is when I do what one could argue is the most basic human thing to do.

This is silly, but I know I am not the only one who holds themselves to standards that they would never hold those around them to, especially those they loved most.

One of the most significant teachings in my life was a simple phrase uttered by someone I admire most.

“Begin Again”

He used it to help him bring himself back into focus, but I have found it to be one of the most important ways to redirect myself with grace in the moments when I inevitably fall short.

Never once has tearing myself apart with judgment and shame helped me to re-dedicate myself to taking better care of myself or loving myself more in the future. Neither has the belief that I am somehow meant to be a machine that is perfectly consistent when I set my sights on a goal and aim for it.

I used to hold fear that if I let up and loosen the reigns, I would give up. But every aspect of the person I have grown into and continue to grow into is a product of side steps, diversions, and missteps along the way.

There has never been a straight route in my life that led to a destination that was worth getting to. Instead, the greatest lessons have been learned through repeated “re-dedication” to myself, my choices, and my path.

I am learning to set the parameters of my life by what I truly want, and that alone. When I give myself the space to think about where I want to be, I find that it is often not where I initially would have expected, but instead, it is just a slight amplification of the parts of my life that I have the deepest connection with.

More than anything, I am learning to value progress over perfection. In that hope for progress, I realize that I will inevitably fall off the proverbial horse hundreds of times. However, each time I re-dedicate myself to getting back up, I am even more secure in the responsibility I have to continue forward and the respect I have for being given the opportunity to live this life at all.

I am grateful every day that I had a man to teach me these lessons in his life and even more in his passing.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I miss and love you.

With Love,

Clayton

“Transitions are a time for reflection, and a time for looking forward.” - Roy Cooper

In the past two months, I have drafted over fifteen newsletters to share on my Substack. Each arrived with an initial spark of inspiration that quickly died out instead of building into a burning flame.

I planned to be more consistent with my writing this New Year. I even put pressure on myself by projecting all of my internal judgments onto the imaginary voices of my followers in my head. But each time I sat down, a gentle whisper inside of me said, “Not now. Don’t force it. Go towards what is warm.”

The last few years taught me the importance of putting down your creative work from time to time. The trust that it is for you is furthered only in the eventual return to the page.

Lately, what has been most warm has been evenings curled up with a good book or creating the things that are more alive in me. But most of all, it has been simply noticing all that is changing in my life and trying to go against my instincts to attempt to decipher where it all is headed or what it all means.

There is a freshwater pool in Austin called Barton Springs that is a staple of the community. It is the site of morning cold plunges in the Winter and a break from the oppressive heat in the Summer. As someone who feels most at home in water, it would seem like a natural fit for me as a part of my routine, but instead, I have only been there once.

I love the feeling of the ocean. It’s flowing water and waves. The ability to be within its wildness and, for a brief moment, if you time your jump right, to feel like you are a part of it.

I also love that, for the most part, I decide the depth at which I swim and whether my feet can touch the ground.

I have found that swimming in open water where my feet cannot touch the ground, like at Barton Springs, causes me to spend more time and effort focused on returning safely to “shore” than on enjoying the freedom of being untethered.

Historically, this is how I have viewed transitions in my life.

The discomfort of the unknown has caused my logical left-brained survival mode to kick into hyperdrive, leaving no room for noticing anything other than how to quickly and safely get to the other side.

I’ve often wondered if my adaptability was a product of my trauma. I have always been able to settle into new places without ever truly feeling the weight of the change. Whether it stemmed from actual physical moves or just work trips that lasted longer than a few days, some part of me has always kicked in and thought, “Okay, I guess I just live here now,” without regard to how drastic of a change it was.

But as I look back, I realize that more of the trauma response has been my overplanning at every turn that made it so that I never really had to integrate any disruption at all.

When I moved to Chicago, I was excited to take what I deemed “the greatest road trip of my life.” I couldn’t wait to experience the open road and reflect on my life. I planned to listen to inspiring books on tape and take in the scenery. Instead, I put the pedal to the metal as my cat shrieked from the backseat for the entirety of the two-day excursion.

Although it was at the height of the pandemic, my transition to the city was relatively smooth. This was partly because my roommate and I couldn’t really leave the house but more so because I had spent the previous months stress-planning every scenario on Google Maps.

Even before the lockdown, I spent my evenings before the move trying to figure out exactly how quickly I could get to a grocery store and what my top twenty gym options were. I was excited to finally move to the city that I had loved for so long, but I was more focused on how to control my surroundings so that nothing would catch me by surprise.

I lived so far into the future of my next step that when the time came to finally take it, the last thing I could do was be present and let it all sync in.

It wasn’t until a year or so later that it finally sank in that I did, in fact, live outside of New England for the first time in my life.

By then, I was already starting to plan my next possible step.

Although our lives are always in a state of transition, my current one feels more prominent than ever, as there is not an area of my life currently in some stage of flux.

My family is adapting to the loss of my mother less than a year ago and what that means for us moving forward.

My house is a little emptier without the animal I called my own for the past sixteen years.

My work life is inviting me to step into my worth and go out on a limb in ways I never have before.

My creative endeavors are asking me to step more firmly into them and take the next step in their growth.

Even when it comes to playing sports, a fixture of community in my life for the past decade, my body is asking me whether or not it is worth it to keep putting myself at risk after enduring so much stress and trauma.

And none of this even begins to share the transitions happening in society around me.

In response to all of the transitions in my life, I am learning to notice and trust that when it is time to take action, I will.

I don’t want to look back at this period of my life, as I have so many times before, and struggle to remember it because I wasn’t truly present for it.

In the moments when questions arise, I am trying to meet them with love. Although I know just how much a single step in a new direction can change the course of your life, I no longer want to allow resistance to determine how I experience it.

There is warmth in noticing and learning to embrace each present-day instead of trying to change the future.

I intend to write more frequently, but only when it is most alive in me, and I trust that the times when I hit send will be exactly as they are meant to be.

I am excited about all that is to come and the questions I am being asked now.

Here’s to learning how to swim in open water without the need to chart an immediate course back to safety.

With Love,

Clayton

“No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.” - Buddha

My favorite holiday has always been New Year’s Eve. I love the idea of turning the page and starting anew. I am a Virgo who is driven by goals and believes there are always ways to improve. More than anything, it is an excuse to dress up, make epic speeches, and drink champagne.

Over the past few years, I have started creating PowerPoint versions of my year-in-review. I track all the goals I previously set and try my best to celebrate every win, no matter how small. As I have gotten older, taking the time to honor the steps forward I am taking has gotten more challenging. If I don’t stop to look back at each area of my life, I won’t recognize the shifts that have occurred.

This tradition started a few years ago after I started doing Stand Up Comedy. I wanted a way to track how many shows I had booked and how my “comedy career” was progressing. From there, I branched out into all creative outlets, like writing and the coaching business I started a few years ago. I then tracked all the media/content I consumed, including a frightening amount of fantasy fairy-themed romance series over the past few years.

More than anything, this practice allows me the opportunity to go through all of my photos, notes on my phone, and social media to reflect on all that occurred in the past year. I know that I can’t capture all of it. Still, creating an online scrapbook allows me to hold onto as much as possible while heading toward a new beginning.

Plus, I barely drink anymore and like to be in bed by 10 p.m., so this helps me celebrate without necessarily having to be social—a.k.a. the dream scenario as I approach forty in a few years.

Throughout most of my twenties, my New Year’s Eve plans involved getting drunk with my friends, going to some club, and watching everyone around me kiss at midnight as I waited for it to “finally be my turn.” Nothing says starting the new year off right like drunkenly crying alone on a friend’s couch after spending the evening loudly exclaiming how much my life would change once the new year officially arrived.

My favorite was the year I proclaimed to my friends that I was finally done speaking to my ex, with whom I had spent the last half-decade in love. I had intentionally waited to say my goal last because, for a long time, I believed that public speeches were a great way to compete with other people. I wanted my speech to be the moment of the night. My words were met with rousing applause and a tear-filled speech from my best friend at the time. To them, it felt like a boundary and a turning of a corner that everyone had been waiting for.

Minutes later, after the clock struck zero, I snuck to the bathroom and left a voicemail on my ex’s phone telling him how much I still loved him. I then proceeded to re-enter the party as if nothing had happened and continued being celebrated by my friends.

It was like an episode of “True Life: I Am Living A Double Life” but was filled with my two favorite things at that stage in my life:

1. Getting Praise For Being Awesome

2. Making Toxic Choices

As French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

As I entered my thirties, I realized that changing to a new year could not only work to release all of the habits I had before but also to gaslight my friends into not having to take accountability for past actions. I loved telling everyone around me that I was suddenly a new person and that anything I did in the past was no longer a reflection of “my truth.”

It was a lot like the time as a teenager when my mother randomly went to church one Sunday and came home to declare to my sister and me that she had become “A full-blown Baptist.”

My New Year’s Gaslighting was most prominent at the beginning of 2019. I lived in Boston with two roommates and quickly told them how “2019 Clayton” was immediately different. No longer would I judge people or make fun of them behind their backs. In fact, every part of me had magically changed. I was kinder, more open, and more accepting of everyone around me.

Or at least that’s what I claimed. Every time they brought up stories from the past, I remarked that I barely even knew “2018 Clayton” anymore and how lucky they were to have witnessed such incredible growth.

Although it was in jest, I wanted to embody everything I was pretending to. I lived in a constant conflict between the person I knew myself to be inside and the ones I showed others.

One day in particular, my roommate came home excited to tell me how he pitched me to a guy he thought might be my type. When he retold the story, he described me as “sassy and would make fun of you until you questioned your entire life, but I was also really loyal.” It wasn’t exactly how I wanted to be portrayed to anyone, especially to a potential love interest, but the more sobering reality was that none of it was a lie.

Although my intentions were pure, the “2019 Clayton” charade lasted about two weeks until I was caught falling back into my old habits of tearing everyone around me down. My armor had been forged many years prior, and at that time, I had not experienced enough therapy, or life frankly, to learn how to put it down.

Still, it was joyful while it lasted, especially watching my roommates get increasingly exasperated as I continued to claim that I was different.

I have often thought of my life in terms of what I would name that specific chapter of my book. In this case, it would be “The Night I Changed Forever….well for 12 days at least.”

As I have grown older and experienced more loss, the ending of a year feels different and yet just as satisfying as it did when I celebrated it more outwardly. I find a lot more gratitude in the fact that I was lucky enough to see another year while simultaneously remarking to myself how time is an illusion because I live in Austin, Texas. I had to check off a box agreeing to that theory before they would give me my Driver’s License.

This past year was a rollercoaster but a really beautiful one. I experienced significant loss in my mother and my cat. I took significant steps forward in my creative and personal endeavors. I met stress with a lot more ease, joy with a lot more laughter, and the reflection in the mirror with a lot less judgment. Overall, I lived each day with far fewer expectations.

Most of all, I was lucky enough to spend time with everyone I love and tell them how much I care about them, especially over these past few weeks. As I head into this new year, I look forward to more presence. I aim to strive less for achievements and surrender more to what each moment brings.

My theme for the year is “Ownership.” I have been hesitant as I have started to put myself out there, especially through creative outlets like this one. I know I am allowed to take up space, but I still spend time at every turn making sure everyone else is aware of this fact and is okay with it.

I intend to write more, dance more, laugh more, cry more, and experience every part of myself without shame or resistance.

As I prepare to do my yearly PowerPoint, it is not lost on me that this Substack, and taking the next step in writing a book, will be one of my crowning achievements. I am eternally grateful to all who take the time to read these words. Time is precious, and in a world where everything around us is fighting for our attention, the fact that you give both is not lost on me.

I hope it was worth it, or at least that some part of it made you giggle.

Happy New Year.

With Love,

Clayton

Share Snapshots with Clayton Maderia

“Traditions remind us where we come from and help us carve out the path ahead.” - Unknown

There is a photo that hung proudly in my childhood home that always stuck out amongst the rest. It was a rare day when the joy inside each of my family members was depicted in their smiles. Even rare was that, for the only time in my family’s history, a photo was taken that no one complained about how they looked.

After years of being “robbed” by small-town politics and “biased judging,” my father (and his business) had won the local Chowder Festival. It was both a miracle and a momentous occasion. What was captured afterward was easily the best photo my family had ever taken and arguably our happiest moment.

Well, it was their happiest moment. I wasn’t in it; I wasn’t there at all. I can’t remember why I wasn’t involved that week, but I can remember the excitement when everyone returned home to re-tell the story of our glory and the big trophy that lived in our home.

For years, I stared at that photo on the wall with annoyance that I wasn’t included, but now I marvel at the fact that most families wouldn’t say that their happiest moments revolved around a bowl of chowder or a preteen girl (my sister) dressed in a handmade corn costume to help entice foot traffic to our booth.

My family was not traditional, and outside of moments of unnecessary comparison, we liked it that way.

For the entirety of my childhood, my father was an Innkeeper. My parents ran a series of small New England Inns, and our family lived “on property” until my fourth birthday. My father loved to tell the story that on the evening of our move, we stopped off at a hotel, and I, as a toddler, walked into the place as if I owned it because I immediately assumed that it was my new home.

Growing up in the Hospitality Industry shaped our family. Childhood tantrums were not acceptable in the presence of guests; my father was always on call, and our holidays always took a back seat since those were the busiest days at the Inn. We opened Christmas presents early in the morning before people were called into work and moved our extended family celebrations to days after.

Our main holiday tradition was ensuring that other families’ traditions went smoothly. My sister and mother helped seat guests, and I hung coats twice my size, all while my father orchestrated everything from the background. It was unconventional, but it was what we knew, and there was pride in coming together as a family to make special memories for others.

Through it all, I learned two important lessons:

1. It doesn’t matter what day you choose to celebrate; the company makes the holiday.

2. Old ladies love dimples. Even if I gave them the wrong coat, I knew one smile would ensure I left with cash in my pocket.

Years later, my sixth-grade teacher asked me, “What? Do you think you are going to be able to show people your dimples and get whatever you want in life? That’s not how the real world works, buddy.”

All I could think was, “It’s worked so far, lady.”

When it came to our family celebrations, my parents took pieces from their childhoods that they wanted to share with my sister and me. Over time, we started to find our way into what felt best for us and not necessarily what was expected.

Thanksgiving became a day when we enjoyed snacks throughout the day while family members (specifically my mother) lounged around instead of waiting all day for a formal meal. We enjoyed Christmas not only because it fit around my father’s work schedule but also because of the calm before the storm that came a few days later when we traveled to Connecticut to spend time with both sides of the family.

As time went on and family members passed away, our traditions changed. We gathered at different places and on different days each year. But the real beauty was in the small moments that emerged from our new circumstances.

In my twenties, my sister would come into town early before the holidays, and we would go out on the town. My friends quickly referred to us as the “trouble train” since there was almost an unwritten guarantee that everyone in attendance would have at least one more drink than they should. While the laughter and dancing were highlights, my favorite part was playing and enjoying life with someone I loved so much. After all, we had been through, it felt incredibly satisfying to let our hair down and be free for at least one evening.

My mother and I would spend holidays watching movies in her small apartment. For a woman who was especially anxious about the holidays, we always found the holidays that we had for ourselves most enjoyable. We would spend the whole day talking about life and the world and laughing inappropriately at things we shouldn’t have. After a rough stretch in my teens where our searches to find ourselves caused us to be at odds, there was a feeling each year of pride that we had gotten to the depth of our relationship.

In turn, my father would host one of the holidays with guarantees of wine and games. Although the food and wine were always tasty, my favorite moments were when my father would take my sister and me on walks in nature near where he lived. It allowed us to enjoy quality time with him and a nice change of pace from the shouting and furniture breaking of playing “Catchphrase” the night before.

None of the moments I hold dear to this day were complicated or required anyone to do anything out of the ordinary.

One of the most challenging parts of the grief process is that you try, especially on holidays, to recreate the feelings of the past. No matter how hard you try to recapture moments or make memories similar to those that came before, it isn’t possible when those who helped to create them are no longer around. You can only attempt to create new traditions and new memories.

Over the past few years, I have started to implement new traditions that put less stress on the holiday season and create more opportunities to celebrate with the people I love throughout the year. It helps to remind me how much of a family I have in my life instead of solely focusing on those who are missing.

The first tradition I installed was randomly surprising one friend a year with a day in their honor. Instead of waiting for a significant life event, I felt like it would be fun to celebrate someone I loved randomly in a big public way that I would despise if someone tried to do it for me. In addition to planning a day filled with events that only they would love, I also included a customary sash and public proclamation so that anyone around would know whose day it was.

I keep the pictures on my phone to remind me how good it feels to celebrate and embarrass the people you love.

Second, and most importantly, I have started creating singular holidays with the people who mean the most to me. In truth, it started with my best friend and me sending each other sex toys once a year since we were notoriously single. But over time, it has evolved as a chance to take one day out of the year to celebrate my relationship with someone I love in a way that we agree best represents our journey together.

The dates themselves don’t have to be set in stone, just the intention to celebrate each other at some point during the year.

A year ago, I flew home for Christmas to spend the holiday with my family, not knowing it would be the last time I would spend with my mom. Our family looks a little smaller this year as we build new traditions for the holidays going forward. It isn’t always easy, but I know that it is what those we love would have wanted.

It feels like a lifetime ago that my family celebrated the glory of chowder. As I head into this holiday season, I am doing my part to keep the memories of the past present in my mind.

I hope everyone who reads this can spend this time of year with those they love most, and if the holidays are challenging, I hope that you permit yourself to start new traditions that fill you up instead of taking from your cup.

More than anything, I wish you all presence. These moments are fleeting; none of us know who they are, our last, or which memories will live on in our hearts. The hope is that you are present enough to witness and hold onto as much as possible.

Looking back later in life, as your life and traditions have changed, your future self will be happy you did.

Happy Holidays.

With Love,

Clayton

“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” - Charlie Jones

A few years ago, I sat through a female sexuality workshop while at a retreat in Mexico. In truth, I almost skipped the whole thing because, as a gay man, I wasn’t sure that the information would be relevant to me, but I decided to join the audience in the hopes that one moment might catch my eye. About halfway through the workshop, a straight man in his late twenties raised his hand and spoke about how challenging dating apps were to navigate because all the women who hit him up wanted were surface-level physical connections.

Many women I knew shared this concern, which surprised me. I used to think this was an experience unique to women, never realizing that men could feel similarly.

The feeling I experienced in that moment was similar to how I felt early in the last election when it seemed like the only thing our country could agree on was that these were not the two best candidates our country could produce. No matter what side of the aisle you fell on, everyone I spoke to felt at least one (if not both) candidate(s) didn’t belong.

In each moment, my thought was the same, “How can both parties share this belief, and yet each one thinks they are alone? Is no one actually talking to each other?!”

I grew up in a very liberal town in Western Massachusetts full of well-intended people who often preached about the importance of considering others and ensuring everyone felt included. What was outwardly framed as a worldly view was, in fact, just a reflection of a five-college town that lacked diversity and featured predominantly upper-middle-class wealth.

No matter the intent, there was a correct belief and an incorrect one at every term regarding things like politics or religion. Even though the majority classified themselves as Liberal, their views were a direct reflection of their surroundings and seemingly just as narrow as those in other parts of the country, desperately holding on to oppositional beliefs.

I was lucky to be different, just enough to question if things were exactly as they seemed in front of my eyes. I had a Spanish Teacher in High School who loved to go off on rants about the existence of Aliens. As a class, we did our best to get her started down the rabbit hole each day to ensure that we wouldn’t have to do any work. My classmates thought she was crazy, their parents tried to get her fired, and I sat there each day thinking, “But can anyone prove that she is wrong?”

One of the things I have previously judged most harshly is other people who don’t hold their own beliefs and seemingly stand on soap boxes with proclamations made from the voices of everyone else but their own. I have always maintained that I don’t care what someone believes as long as it is theirs. But in actuality, we all are reflections more of our surroundings than our actual selves.

Psychologists call this the “Mere-Exposure Effect.” This idea centers around the fact that people prefer things not because of internal reasons but simply because they’ve been repeatedly exposed to them. This means most of your desires are not your own but reflections of what you have witnessed.

Most of us get the base of our belief system from our parents. We choose our faith practices based on those they previously chose and subjected us to. We vote the way they taught us to vote. We root for the teams they rooted for. From an early age, we are products of our environment and live in a society that does almost anything to teach us not to find our own opinions on everything we see.

More than that, in a world of algorithms designed to cater to us in the exact place that we are, it becomes easier and easier each day to think that everyone should have the same beliefs as we do or that there is a right and a wrong in every situation. Even though others have entirely different backgrounds and life experiences, we expect them to fall in line because that is the safest way to survive in the world, to make ourselves a reflection of those who hold power instead of finding our own.

It wasn’t until I moved out of my hometown that I started to meet people from different walks of life who helped me to begin to question my programming. My favorite example is a coworker I had at my old job. He was born and raised in Waco, Texas. Before he met me, he had never met a gay person (to his knowledge) and had limited interactions with people of other races. I was hesitant to meet him until I reflected that our likely difference in beliefs was less about how we treated other people and more about who we had been taught to believe was “the other.”

If you have never met a gay person and likely have heard one narrative for how we show up in the world your entire life, how are you not going to, on some level, be homophobic? If you grew up believing that someone like me is an “other” and a threat to your beliefs (and safety overall), of course, you are going to have reservations. More importantly, how could I judge him for it when I have held my own internalized homophobia throughout my life?

But the problem is, it is hard to ask ourselves these questions when we are too busy staying safely in our boxes surrounded by other people with the same world views. My old coworker ended up being one of the best guys I worked with, and this was the beginning of what has become the most triggering and critical reflection in my life: surrounding myself with people who hold opposing viewpoints is essential to not only my growth but also to establishing my own beliefs.

We are taught early on not to discuss politics, religion, and other hot-button issues for fear that it will inevitably lead to conflict. But our inability to discuss these things is the base of all the conflict we see in these areas.

Talking to people who have a different life view than you triggers the very core of your being. It requires you to reflect on how narrow your own viewpoint is, which threatens not only your sense of self and how you view the world but also, through that lens, your perceived safety.

If you believe that people who vote one way are wrong, it is easier not to know that someone you care about holds those beliefs than to hold that all that you love about them can exist simultaneously with their reasoning for voting the way they do.

This, of course, has been especially true over the last month.

Jim Rohn famously said, “You are the reflection of the five people you spend the most time with.”

In every area of your life, looking at whether the people around you can help you improve is essential. If you are trying to be successful in business, relationships, or any other area of life, you have to surround yourself with people who are successful in those ways.

We live in a world where people work every day to portray themselves outwardly without having access to themselves internally. If you want to grow and be more rooted in yourself, you need to ask yourself how willing you are to seek out others who are different from you, like those who come from various walks of life or hold oppositional beliefs.

The question is: Are you willing to seek discomfort to get to know yourself better? If you look around and only see reflections of your current self in the faces of those around you, then that is who you will be going forward.

I have resistance to it often. I hate the feeling when others stand firmly in beliefs that oppose my own, and even more fear when, in the end, some part of their argument ends up being right. I can’t count the number of times in my life that I have avoided speaking to ensure that I didn’t say something incorrectly. My fear of being judged by others surpassed my own desire to learn something new or to represent the way I felt at that moment.

But I grew up in a town where everyone shared the same beliefs because they were “the right ones.” It didn’t stop racism, homophobia, and other forms of “othering” from existing. Instead, it caused everyone to look away while holding onto a belief that the bubble they lived in couldn’t possibly have anything other than love inside of it.

I appreciate my hometown daily for challenging my perceptions of reality. I am thankful for my high school Spanish teacher, who believed in aliens, and the professor years later who expelled me from English class on the first day of college for rejecting a classmate’s opinion, which I considered close-minded.

Overall, I’m grateful for everyone I’ve encountered who held different views than mine throughout my journey.

At every oppositional turn, I have been forced to look inward, to question not only myself but also the solidity of the foundations of my current set of beliefs. All of this has made me more rooted in who I am and taught me how much our views are allowed to change as we experience more of the world.

As I move forward, I hope to be a bit more fluid with my identities and views, to judge others less for reflecting on what they have been exposed to, and to seek first to see their humanity. More than anything, I hope to give myself more permission to seek out the “opposition” to realize more and more that there is far more that unites us than initially perceived.

Or, at the very least, to be reminded that I somehow am not the center of the universe as I believe myself to be and that there are other viewpoints other than my own.

With Love,

Clayton

“We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are”

―Anaïs Nin

I was fifteen years old when my mother was diagnosed as bipolar. My father had moved to another state, and my sister was at college, leaving just the two of us in our household. Our relationship was strained from the aftermath of her finding God around the same time that I came out of the closet. Each of us sought something to hold onto as we could not steady ourselves.

The neighbor next door was a Social Worker who mentioned to my mother one day that she should have her therapist look into whether or not she fit the criteria for being bipolar. The diagnosis came as a relief for a woman who had been searching for so long for an answer to why she was the way she was. Others wondered if this was just another convenient excuse to overlook some of the pain of the past.

To explain my mother’s condition, the neighbor asked that I have my mother write me a note for school that was longer than a paragraph. Later that day, I watched the woman I loved cross out every fourth word, trying desperately to write something coherent while waging a war of internal cross-wiring.

As my neighbor said, “That paragraph is a depiction of her brain.”

From that point forward, I tried to remember that even in my most frustrated moments, all my mother was trying to do was the equivalent of writing a sentence in a letter that her brain wouldn’t allow her to.

My best friend’s favorite story to tell about my mother occurred on a ninety-eight-degree Summer evening in my late twenties. I had decided to take my mother to dinner, and my best friend tagged along.

At that time, I visited my mother weekly to take her shopping and run errands. It is said that all mothers worry, but my mother’s mental illness made it so that her consistent state was anxiety and worry about almost everything. Her concerns ran from not having enough food or money to politics to not being able to get rides to all of her appointments or random fears over her children’s livelihood.

Each week, I did my best to calmly counteract every one of her fears and set her up with enough resources so that she could make it through until I came back a week later.

On this particular evening, her anxiety was around the fact that she was almost out of Half and Half (a strange addiction that I debated submitting to that TV show to receive the payout I believed that I deserved for all I put up with).

As usual, I created a plan of attack that would allow us to make it to dinner on time and hit one of the five grocery stores on the way home so that my mother would not be without her prized possession. The plan was discussed and agreed to multiple times, as was customary.

We stopped briefly at a gas station on the way to the restaurant, where my mother walked out with a bottle of Half and Half in her hands. I will never forget the look my best friend gave me through the rearview mirror from the backseat.

No matter how many times we agreed to stop after dinner, nothing could counteract my mother’s fear that every grocery store would either be out of what she needed or randomly close early as if we all forgot a federal holiday that had just been rolled out nationwide.

We were late for dinner because we had to return to her apartment to put the Half and Half in the fridge. She had offered to hold it throughout dinner, but at that point in my life, I would rather be late than have to explain to a waiter why my mother was holding a bottle of dairy in her arm like a newborn baby at a restaurant.

Although my best friend and I laugh about it now, that moment at the gas station underlines the climate in which I was born.

Growing up, the greatest threat to our household, even more than the chaos inside, was the constant cloud of what could be coming around the corner. We had batteries, flashlights, and candles ready in case we lost power. Even after grocery shopping, the fridge was viewed from the perspective of all the food we didn’t have. For a single-income family of four, we had reason to feel scarcity, but no matter how much we had, there was always the threat that something in the future could take it from us.

But even with all of the prognosticating and catastrophizing, in the subconscious hope of gaining some semblance of control over what was to come, our house was foreclosed, and we started the long road of losing relatives we loved all of a sudden.

No matter how much you plan, the things that are out of your control will come to pass.

It was easy to laugh at the eccentricities that came along with my mother’s personality. It was even easier to judge the addictions and choices made to help her self-soothe. But in her absence, one thing has consistently struck me:

For a woman who was wired into constant uncertainty, we will never know how hard she worked to be as stable as she was so that she could still be our mother.

There is a grace that comes with a new perspective. I wish I could have reacted less in the moments when my mother’s anxiety and mental illness shone through. Everything in her was wired to worry, and no matter how exhausting it was to love, I can only imagine how much more exhausting it was to live in that state.

I found my grief for her passing the strongest around the election. She always taught my sister and me the importance of voting. She watched the news every day and worried, not just about our country but about people she would never meet and how they would be impacted by the decisions being made by those in power.

I cried in the voting booth when I voted, knowing that this was the first election she would not vote in. Voting gave her purpose even in the moments when she questioned whether to go on.

The past few weeks have been interesting for me to navigate. I have friends and loved ones who are terrified of what is to come. Others close to me feel reinforced in their safety and purpose due to recent results. And I sit in a place where I lose myself if I choose to look too far outside of myself or at anything that could come in the future.

But the difference is that I am now lucky enough to get to choose. Years of therapy and counteracting the effects that trauma left on my nervous system have made it so that my baseline is finally one of stability.

I used to look at the world from the perspective of all the horrors that lay in wait around the corner, believing that I would be safer on the day they finally arrived. If I could run every scenario, imagine everything that could go wrong, and tell myself all the ways I wasn’t enough, I would somehow be unaffected when the challenging moments came. But now I know that all I am doing when I live too far in the fear of what could happen in the future is robbing myself of all there is in the current moment.

When I look back on those I miss most, especially my mother, my one wish is that we could have been more present in every moment we had together. But unfortunately, we weren’t wired at that time to be able to.

My goal is presence. When I get too far ahead of myself, I try to remember that it is a Tuesday in November, and the sun is shining.

I have been through enough to know how little I have control over, and I don’t want to exhaust myself for essential moments that may come by worrying about all the possibilities of how they will arrive.

Only some people are awarded the luxury of this perspective. I know all too well that the world, especially now, is scary for those whose internal worlds reflect the same feeling.

No matter how you are wired, there is little to be sure of in this life. We know we were born, we know we will die, and all that is in between feels like a crap shoot.

It is easy to look back at the past, at “better times,” and wish we could jump back in time. But for many of us, our anxiety and uncertainty were even higher back then because those were the lenses we viewed the world through.

All we have is this moment. There is no way to tell what the future holds or adequately prepare. No feelings are forever. All we can do is take our next best step and trust that when the big moments come, we will navigate them as needed.

I spent a lot of time judging my mother for her uncertainty, and now I look back with appreciation for how well she navigated the hand she was dealt. She taught me more through her instability than in the moments when she felt most grounded.

I don't know what my future holds, but knowing that I am made from her makes me feel more confident that I can figure it out, no matter what comes my way.

With Love,

Clayton

“Go where it is warm, soft, and gentle. You already know what you love and who you love; it’s not complicated.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

It is the time of year when I am yet again reminded by the world around me that I am, in fact, not a sexy person.

Every Halloween, I watch as women and men of all ages create “costumes” out of singular strips of fabric and a set of cat ears or crowns. There is no need for a backstory when your six-pack abs and rippling muscles tell the world around you just how desirable you are.

I grew up grateful when family members called me “cute” or “handsome.” My grandmother even seemed convinced I was destined to break many women’s hearts while simultaneously selectively forgetting the time she lost me in a Macy’s because I was enamored with colorful, sparkly purses. There were signs, but if my dating life has taught me anything over the years, we as humans love to selectively ignore them to fit the best narrative for us.

But as I grew into adulthood and became a member of gay culture, I quickly realized that there was pressure to be more than I was. Sexy men had equally sexy boyfriends. They were worthy of love. They spent time on boats with lots of hot friends in Speedos. They were seen, heard, and respected.

Every year on Halloween, I traveled with friends to a gay vacation spot in the hopes of finally meeting the man of my dreams. Most years, I contorted myself to try to fit into a costume that would show those around me how hot I was, only to spend the evening in the back corner of a bar wondering why no one noticed me.

The few exceptions were the years I tried to play to my strengths. I was a Gaygusus Unicorn in an adorable pink onesie, and for multiple years, I went as Mighty Mouse. People on the streets remarked how cute I looked, but as I drunkenly stumbled home alone at the end of the night, all I could think was:

“I’d give this all away to finally just be Sexy Mario or Aladdin.”

Recently, I traveled to a retreat led by Elizabeth Gilbert, the Author of “Eat, Pray, Love” and “Big Magic”. In her main workshop, we were asked to write letters from different parts of ourselves include a specific part called our “Sense of Enchantment”.

This is the part of ourselves that appreciates the simple and sweet moments of life instead of constantly chasing the highest of highs. Or, as Liz called it, “that warm vanilla pudding hum of wellness,” and the moments that almost whisper to us, “The world may be crazy, but I don’t mind being here.”

In the letter's structure, we were asked to allow this part of ourselves to share everything it loves about our lives without judgment. I initially wondered how hard it would be for me to access this part of myself, but as my pen flew across the page, I realized just how present my Enchantment was.

Here is a bit of what it shared:

“I love small moments that the old versions of yourself would have missed.”

“I love silent walks in nature when we marvel at butterflies.”

“I love meeting beautiful people and learning their stories.”

“I love synchronicities and all of the moments you couldn’t even begin to explain if you tried.”

and lastly…

“I love love. I am fascinated by it. I love feeling it in every variation and degree. I love it when it lights you up. I love it when it hurts. I love it when it causes you to question everything. And above all else, I love that it is still possible to experience no matter how much darkness you/we have endured.”

After we were asked to share our letters with partners, where we discovered that almost all of us had the same themes. We loved spending time with loved ones and pets, solitude and silence, and nature.

At the end of our sharing, Liz stood on stage and asked us to raise our hands if we needed a million dollars to do anything on our list. Everyone laughed as we all realized the same lesson:

Chasing achievements and a life outside your own only causes you to deny yourself all you already love.

As the quote details above, we are the ones who make this complicated.

It is time that I accept that I am not a sexy person, and I don’t just mean physically.

I may have brief flashes of sexiness, but in general, that isn’t who I am. I am not a visionary; I am simple, pragmatic, and straightforward. I am not an imposing physical beast; I am compact, fast, and athletic, with the flexibility of a 94-year-old grandmother. And when it comes to costumes, the greatest serves of my life have not been when I attempted to be desirable but instead leaned into the parts of myself that had yet to be seen.

Denying the truth about how I show up in this world has been exhausting.

I do not have a sexy life, not just because I do not qualify for one by the standards of culture, but because I have carefully and selectively made choices throughout my life to avoid one.

I love to travel but am far more happy in the safety and warmth of my own home. I would rather spend the day reading a book than on a boat with a wedgie from a Speedo. I love to dance freely but would prefer to do so before 9pm. I love the feeling of being tipsy, but I would rather wake up the next day without voices in my head telling me that I am not enough.

Every time I visit my sister, she apologizes that we aren’t going out to eat every night at fancy restaurants or to sip cocktails in cute bars. But each time, I remark that I am exactly where I want to be: on the couch, sitting next to my sibling, watching my niece as she puts on random wigs and sings on top of a ladder.

I have spent a lifetime wishing I was different. I wanted to be taller, more masculine, and have a different eye color. I debated whether or not to get my body physically altered to fit this narrative and briefly considered getting fangs surgically installed in my mouth. I knew they wouldn’t be practical, but the idea that they would look cool was enough to intrigue me.

My point is that my life may not be some social media fantasy storybook, but it is my own.

When I look inside of myself instead of judging my life through the lens of how the outside world may perceive it, I am reminded over and over again of one simple truth:

It may not be sexy, but it sure is enchanting.

With Love,

Clayton

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” - Anatole France

Many called my father a close friend. He often said that his gift and curse were the ability to be someone with whom others felt a stronger bond than he did for them. But those who knew him most knew without a shadow of a doubt that his best friend and the love of his life was his dog, Jenny.

A different light came over him when he told stories of their adventures together. She was a Black Lab English Setter mix, so when they went for walks, Jenny would run miles ahead to scope out the path as my father walked freely, knowing she would always find her way back to him further down the path.

They hitchhiked the country together, and my father’s favorite story encapsulates the greatest depiction of their relationship. He and Jenny were on the side of the road in the Pacific Northwest. It was torrentially raining as they waited, hoping that someone would pity them and pick them up.

A woman hesitantly pulled her truck over in fear of picking up a strange man but not wanting to leave a stranger and his animal out in the cold. Since the truck only had room for one passenger up front, my father instantly decided to take the uncovered truck cab as Jenny sat up front.

In the story, he always laughed at the look that his dog gave him as if to say, “You dumb human.” But the woman became a lifelong friend of my father’s because, at that moment, she realized that any man sitting in the pouring rain to keep his dog warm was the kind of person you want to keep around.

I never met Jenny. Even six years after my father’s death, I have a statue and photos of her in my living room. It has never made sense to me or my sister to throw away the reminders of something that brought our father so much joy.

I was in First Grade when my family decided to buy a dog. My father made each of us swear we wouldn’t immediately fall in love when we went to “look” at a potential dog to adopt. As anyone could have predicted, my mother immediately became emotional, and it became clear to my father that we weren’t leaving without taking our new dog home. She was a half-black Lab, half-springer Spaniel Mix that we named Nellie.

Our family at that time was the picture of dysfunction. Nellie’s behavior didn’t take long to reflect the climate inside our house. She was wild and, most days, found herself wrapped around a tree at the end of her line, barking incessantly until one of us would eventually go outside to untie her. All for her to get overly excited again and end up in the same predicament an hour later.

In the months before each of my parents died, they separately shared their regrets from that period of their lives. One of the most significant sources of guilt they both held onto was that we never adequately trained Nellie and that although she had a beautiful life, each felt that she deserved more from us.

Nellie died suddenly when I was in sixth grade. I was in rehearsal for my school play, where I played the part of an elderly immigrant woman.  (Sidenote: I had been overconfident in my audition since my sister attended a performing arts high school and assumed that I didn’t need to learn the words since the acting gene ran in the family. I ended up with a role that had no dialogue. Still, I like to think that the audience was moved by actions on stage, most specifically the one show where I lost my cane and had to act as if I was using an imaginary one.)

My teacher escorted me out of the building without telling me what happened. As I walked to the car and saw the look on my sister’s face, I knew something was wrong and was immediately informed that Nellie had passed away. It was the first time in my life I had ever seen my father cry.

A few months earlier, I had shared with Nellie that I thought I was gay. I laid with her on her dog bed in front of our pellet stove and said out loud for the first time the secret that I had been holding in for a lifetime. She immediately licked my face, and I laid next to her as I shed a few tears, wondering if I would ever have the courage to tell anyone else.

We buried her in our yard and planted a Dogwood Tree above her in the hopes that we would be reminded of her every season when it bloomed. Unfortunately, we buried it in a spot that didn’t get enough sun, and the tree never really grew as we hoped it would.

This further proves that we couldn’t get it right back then.

After Nellie’s death, I swore I would never get another animal. It wasn’t until I was twenty years old and living with a roommate that I even considered it. My roommate wanted to get a cat, so I accompanied her to the shelter to ensure she didn’t bring anything too strange home. In truth, Jackson (whose name was Waland) was precisely the type of cat I wanted, but he was in a cage with a sign indicating that he had already been adopted.

As luck would have it, he was the only one of his siblings who hadn’t been. When we opened the cage, he immediately leaped into my roommate’s arms as if to say, “I have been waiting for you to find me. Please take me home.”

I didn’t know how to take care of a cat, but he immediately made a mark on our little home. A few months later, my roommate adopted a dog, and our little apartment became a little family. When it was time to move out, I offered Jackson to my roommate because, at that time, I wasn’t ready for the responsibility. If someone had to take on the emotional pain of parting, I would prefer it to be me.

I kissed him on his head, told him to be the good man we raised him to be, and expected our paths to part forever. Months later, after an incident, I received a phone call asking if I could come get him. Jackson heard a young boy cry, thought he was in pain on the other side of the door, and attacked the first thing he saw that came through (which was the dog). My roommate knew he wasn’t violent and that it was out of protection, but with a baby on the way, she couldn’t take the risk.

When we reunited, it was a hot summer day. My car had no air conditioning. I took Jackson out of his carrier, hoping it would calm his screams on the long ride down to my apartment in Connecticut. If anyone looked into my car on I-95 that day, they would have seen a black cat with his paws on the driver’s side window screaming out for release as his panic-stricken, sweat-drenched owner struggled to see through the cat hair covering his face.

Eventually, we both made it home and began our long road together.

My nervous system was beyond dysregulated at that time. I could barely take care of myself, let alone another living being. There was a stretch when I lived alone when my friends would have to come over once a month and throw out my mold-ridden dishes. My mattress was on the floor. My downstairs neighbors got in loud domestic disputes every evening, but we were told by the landlord not to call the cops.

It was a mess. I was a mess.

I resented the 3 a.m. trips to 7-11 to get cat food. I didn’t want to be responsible for anything other than myself. But looking back, I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without Jackson slowly teaching me how to care for something.

They say that black cats have the ability to ward off unwanted spirits while you sleep. At that time, I was overrun by nightmares, tremors, and other trauma responses. He had his work cut out for him, which is probably why, in the mornings, he snapped back at me when I would inevitably try to bite his head off verbally for cutting under my feet.

We were both incredibly cranky and although it often felt like an arranged marriage, we somehow made it through.

We moved every nine months or so because I couldn’t stay in one place too long. Each time, I felt the stress of having to put him in the car, disrupt his routine, and seemingly cause him pain as he yelped throughout the ride to our new home.

Throughout my twenties, I joked that I couldn’t wait for him to die. I never knew that cats lived so long, and all I wanted was my freedom to drop everything without any responsibility. I worried that someday I would be forty, with a twenty-year-old cat, and still single.

But with each passing day, Jackson became more of an anchor in my life. Our shared love languages of giving people judgmental looks, food, naps, and butt taps even made it feel at times like I had birthed him myself.

Neither of us was overly affectionate, but with each stop on our journey, we softened, and my heart slowly opened.

There were nights after each of my parents died that I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have him by my side. There were moments when I felt so unstable that I held onto him in the hopes that he somehow could share some of the burden. From the outside looking in, I moved through my grief courageously. Still, in the few moments when it all came flooding in, I will be forever grateful that I wasn’t alone.

After my mom died in March, I knew Jackson and I would also be parting at some point in the near future. He wasn’t showing any signs of decline, but something in me felt like part of our journey together was so that he could help me through the challenges of loss and teach me to stand on my own.

Over the past few months, it felt as though we finally found our way to each other. We cuddled every night before bed, and each morning, when my eyes opened, he bounded up the bed to immediately give me affection. Although it had taken us nearly seventeen years and two cross-country road trips, I felt so lucky that we got to experience the fruits of what our long partnership had changed in both of us.

Which made the events of last week all the more bittersweet.

Before I left for the weekend, I noticed that he was a little off balance, but I didn’t think anything of it other than making a mental note to take him to the vet. By the time Monday evening rolled around, he had fallen out of his litter box four times. He was happy and purring, but I knew we had reached the end of our road.

As I prepared us to go to the ER Vet, I thought back to the time that I had moved us to Boston eight years earlier. I was anxious to put him in the car, and my father said to me, “You’re the human. It’s your job to do the right thing for your animal, even when it’s hard. I know you love him; he will be okay.”

I repeated my father’s words, almost like a mantra, as I told everyone the news and packed him in his carrier one last time.

Even with all the jokes and all the years together, I didn’t feel ready to say goodbye. Somehow, along the way, he had become such an integral part of my life that I didn’t want to know what it would be like without him.

Through all the loss of my life, I have never cried as hard as I did holding him for the last time. I thanked him for choosing me, for being my friend for so many years, and promised always to love him.

As I walked out of the room, my heart shattered into a million pieces, knowing that I would never come home to him again.

There is a love and companionship that comes with owning an animal that cannot be described. It makes the pain of the loss feel worth it in the end because, on some level, pets change you.

I wouldn’t be the man I am today without the animals I have been lucky enough to love throughout my life, especially Jackson.

In the wake of his passing, I have found a new resolve to step forward with even more courage into the freedom I desperately sought a decade ago.

He stayed by my side when all I knew how to do was abandon myself.

He loved me when I couldn’t find a single aspect of myself that I believed to be lovable.

And he held me in all the nights I could barely hold myself up.

I spent so long being burdened by him, and now I look back filled with only tears of gratitude.

I am so grateful he was mine, and I got to be his.

It was one of the great honors of my life.

With Love,

Clayton

“The day you learn to identify solely as a person in progress will be the day you set yourself free.” - Advice From A Wise Soul.

One of my favorite things to laugh about is how impressive the future version of myself that lives in my head is. I have worked diligently over the past decade to learn how to love myself at any moment, but no matter how far I have come, there still exists a “next week version of me” in my mind. And let me tell you, that guy has it all figured out.

Don’t get me wrong—“Current Clayton” is great, but “Future Clayton” is where it’s at. He will easily remove all of the patterns that currently plague my life. I am currently unsure how you can get a six-pack in a week. Still, I am confident he will figure it out—even without Current Clayton having to do a single crunch.

Achieving future greatness without being inconvenienced in the present moment is where my internal delusions quickly approach grandeur.

And if, for some reason, he is not sure how to get there, he will have support from all of the past versions of himself. Each of them had a secret addiction that they never shared with the world: purchasing self-help workbooks and never even filling out a single page.

I have over twenty of them. They occupy their own section on my bookcase. I cannot throw them away because a future version of myself may finally feel a burst of inspiration and want to complete one of them.

Today isn’t that day.

Welcome to the cycle.

At the beginning of my healing journey, I completed one singular exercise from the first self-help workbook I purchased. In it, I was asked to list all of my identities individually and pair them together to see how they correlated.

At that time, almost every identity was rooted in who I was to the people around me, and there was nothing on there that I had given or claimed for myself.

What stuck out to me most was how every list started with my sexuality. Before I was a brother or son or even listed for what I did for a living, I was Gay. If I had to write my tombstone at that time, it likely would have said the following:

“Clayton Maderia

Born: 1987 - Died: (hopefully somewhere like 2587 because he figured out time travel or became the vampire he always hoped he would be)

GAY….and some other stuff too.”

At the beginning of my coming out journey, I was angry at the world for the fact that I would be known most for my sexuality, which I would never have chosen in the first place. Yet, as I stared at all of the lists and combinations of identities in the workbook, I realized that somewhere along the way, I had begun to define myself solely by the thing I resented most.

As I sat and wondered how it all came to be, I quickly realized that the reason I led off with gay had very little to do with pride (since I felt so little at that time) and everything to do with safety.

Of all of my identities, my sexuality was not only the most threatening to others but the most dangerous to my own life. Even to this day, no one has ever threatened to kill me for being “a boy,” but I can’t count the number of times that it has happened when someone found out that I was gay.

Additionally, I was taught early on by those I loved to lead with the things we believed were unlovable, as if to admit to those around you that you also acknowledged the elephant in the room. Even at her lightest, my mother would walk up to relatives we hadn’t seen in a while and say, “Hi, I know I look so fat; I’ve gained weight.”

It was a reflex of shame and embarrassment programmed into me early. So, while the world may have seen my proclamation of my sexuality as pride, the message underneath it was simple:

“Hi, my name is Clayton. I am Gay. I know that makes me unlovable. Please don’t hurt me for it, I promise I am already hurting myself enough.”

A few years ago, I started Nuerotherapy to help rewire my brain. I had recently found a therapist who was a trauma survivor himself who believed that not only could we use the modality to help reverse the effects of growing up in a violent home (and all of the other trauma that came after), but we would also be able to get a map of how my brain was actually working at that time.

I wasn’t hopeful that I could actually be healed, but at that point, I was willing to try anything. I had been in therapy for four years, and even though I had been diagnosed as having CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) by a previous therapist, I needed proof.

I needed proof that my brain actually was wired differently and that I wasn’t just a broken person with a sad backstory.

When I finally received it, I felt like the most significant weight of my life had been lifted off my shoulders.

Throughout our work together, my therapist and Neurofeedback Coach often said the same thing, “I need you to trust me because I know we can get you to a place that you don’t even believe is possible currently.” I didn’t once believe in his visions for me, but I couldn’t deny that I felt better mentally than ever before.

As I continued with my sessions and progress, it became clear to him that we were approaching a significant milestone: a day when my brain waves would no longer be within the classification limits for having CPTSD.

I had spent all of my life wishing I could undo the effects of what had been done to me, but I didn’t believe I ever actually would. Once the finish line became possible, I set a goal to celebrate it in the biggest way possible, even though I had no idea how to properly celebrate something I had previously deemed a miracle.

When the day finally came that my assessment returned all of the necessary markers well within the green limits, my therapist burst with pride, and I felt nothing.

My diagnosis had given me a lifeline and an explanation for so much I never thought I would be able to explain. Additionally, the identity of being someone who had endured pain but was actively working through it was not only celebrated in our culture but something that had become a crutch.

I expected to feel relief, but instead, I just felt lost.

I knew how to be a traumatized person trying to exist in a chaotic world. I didn’t know how to be a healthy one.

My “big celebration” was me telling a few friends that I had done it and then sobbing hysterically on the floor for an hour because the only identity I had ever felt validated by was gone.

I never fully grasped how greatly my attachment to identities had caused my own rigidity until I got the advice quoted above to learn to be a person in progress.

For most of my life, safety was colored only in black and white. I felt lucky that my sexuality and gender expression were clear to me because nothing in my life was set up to fall anywhere in the messy middle.

If there was an option to be claimed that clearly fell on one side of the line, I identified with it, especially if it could help promote the things that I believed to be more lovable, like masculinity, intelligence, and maturity.

What I missed along the way was that every time I checked off another identity box, I further segmented myself and restricted my freedom.

The problem wasn’t the world; it was me.

When a mentor suggested releasing my many identities and only identifying as someone in progress, I immediately looked forward to the challenge. I identified strongly as someone who loved a challenge.

In the weeks and months after, I went back through the list of the many identities I had claimed, but this time from a different perspective. I asked myself not only where the identity started but also whether or not it still applied to my life and if it felt in my body as truth.

What I found was that almost all of the things I claimed were the products of random moments from the past that I just took with me along the path without ever questioning why I was still carrying them.

The central theme I found was some version of, “This random person found this to be lovable/attractive/worthy, so I made it my personality.”

But the truth is that I am no longer the person that I was in those moments. I wouldn’t wear clothes from when I was a teenager, so why am I still trying to wear outdated costumes?

More than anything, I realized how much I was restricting myself from what I crave most: possibility.

By sitting rigidly and safely on one end of every spectrum, I miss the opportunity to experience all of its other facets. Although, at the end of my exploration, I may find myself in the exact same place, I will at least be sitting there with the knowledge that anything can change if I feel called to it.

When I view my life through the lens of progress, I release not only my identities but also the expectations, judgments, perfectionism, and immobility that come with them.

I named this newsletter “Snapshots” because that is what each of these newsletters is: a singular view of what I am learning about a specific topic each week. Since many of these are life themes, I am sure to revisit them repeatedly over time, each time with a slightly different view.

And that is the point. I no longer want to live in a world where the person who denies my freedom the most is myself. So, I am choosing progress and impermanence.

That is where I feel most free to be myself every moment without fear of doing it wrong. Each time that I allow myself to just be, I take a little bit more pressure off of “Future Clayton” to figure it all out.

Although, in full confidence, I really hope he makes the Vampire thing happen.

With Love,

Clayton

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“Only by owning who and what you are can you start to step into the fullness of life. Every year should be teaching you something valuable. Whether you get the lesson is really up to you.” - Oprah Winfrey

A year ago, I sat in the Emergency Room for the third time in two weeks, wondering if I would even make it to my birthday. As I waited alone in the hospital bed waiting for the doctor to return with the test results, two things circled repeatedly in my head:

1. My family has already been through so much; I can’t be the reason the people I love hurt even more.

2. I waited my entire life to start living it finally, this can’t be where my story ends.

When my birthday finally came around, I set an outrageous number of goals based on one thing: living. I promised myself I would no longer hold myself back in all the areas I had been so afraid to allow myself to want, let alone claim.

It took weeks to walk to the mailbox without my heart rate tripling. It took months before I felt like myself again without pain. And then, around the holidays, my health battle was quickly forgotten as my mother’s began. Months later, she was gone.

It wasn’t how I planned the first half of my year to go, but as I have learned from all the previous years, we have no control over the events of our lives but rather over how we react to them.

One of the greatest gifts in aging is perspective, especially regarding the people who raised you. Over time, you see their humanity more. You learn to honor their circumstances and begin to realize just how much they did the best they could with what they had available to them.

Especially in their absence, I see both of my parents in a completely different light while simultaneously seeing their faces in the mirror more and more with each passing day. When I was younger, if someone said I looked like one of them, I cringed, but now I smile at anything that reminds me of them.

The hardest part of losing them was not being able to tell them just how much I loved them once more. After my mother passed away in March, I stood in my apartment and stared at myself in the mirror. As the usual laundry list of insecurities and proof of my unlovability came flooding forward, I was suddenly taken aback, and another voice came to my mind.

“How can you be so desperate to love them yet so unwilling to love the product of them?”

And in that moment, everything changed.

My father was 37 years old when he had me. He once told me that after you turn thirty, "there aren't as many milestones to celebrate, and the years start to fly by." Ironically, the most significant milestone that occurred when I turned thirty was his sudden passing.

From the moment I said goodbye to him, I circled this upcoming year on a calendar. Since I could no longer ask him what it was like to have a child at this age, I figured I would wait to see what my life looked like and imagine what it must have been like for him.

So much has changed in his absence, and while I can't imagine what it would be like to add a child to my life right now, I am grateful to have reached this place in my life.

His words were true about time passing quickly. It's hard to believe that it has been over six years since his passing and over six months from my mother's. I think part of the reason why time passes so quickly as you age is that it isn't as precious to us. For a child, 8 hours of school is a lifetime compared to their short life span, whereas for an adult, it passes by like a nap.

Too often, I reflect on the week prior and have to actively remember what I did with my life. We are so accustomed to distraction and noise that it allows us to miss each moment that is in front of us. It feels as though the only way to counteract the speed at which our lives are moving is to be even more present in them, minute by minute.

There is no way to stop our lives from moving forward, like a train on a track, but it is ultimately our choice whether or not we miss it.

Even through all of the adversity, the last year of my life was one of the best yet. I try my best not to judge the success of my life based on the expectations of others or even my own. More than any other year that I have set goals on my birthday, I will leave this year with many of those boxes unchecked. And yet, I am incredibly proud of all that the last year taught me.

I felt more, including the good and the “bad,” than ever before. I judged myself less and worked consistently to catch myself when I judged others. I put myself out there creatively in new ways and focused only on the felt experience of creating instead of how it all was received. I gained a lot of gray hair and a small patch of hair on my back, which honestly felt offensive. I let go of old patterns, questioned myself less, and let others in more.  

All in all, I settled a bit more into myself while no longer defining exactly who my “self” is.

I know the road forward will not always be smooth, but I no longer approach it, waiting for the inevitable pain. Instead, I am hopeful. I believe in miracles and magic. The fact that I have no idea what is to come no longer scares me; it excites me. I have loved and lost people who would have done everything they could for another breath, so I am grateful for another year.

Traditionally, I set many goals on my birthday. Some years, I even set one for each year that I have lived. Last year, in the aftermath of my health issues, I set about fifty, ranging between eight different categories (is it any surprise that I didn’t complete them all?).

This year, I chose to simplify it down to five. Here is what I intend for myself in this new year:

1. To be myself everywhere that I am and only go where I am wanted.   I no longer want to play through scenarios in my mind of how I can prove myself to others or force my way into spaces that aren’t outwardly extending a hand.

2. To smile and laugh more.   I spent years in the mirror trying to keep my mouth as closed as possible when I smiled and spoke. My shame was more critical than my joy. The most challenging times in my life have taught me that none of this is as serious as we make it out to be. As I look at that photo of my younger self all I can see is his smile. It is time to let him out a bit more.

3. To allow myself to dream bigger and be open to possibility.   So much of my inaction has come from not knowing what I am allowed to want. I no longer want to limit myself in terms of whats possible, I have enough examples in my life of things that I never could have seen coming to know that anything is.

4. To lead with the love in my heart and not the byproducts of past pain.  Too often, the people I care about are surprised when I tell them how much they mean to me. I vividly remember people retracting from a hug because they couldn’t believe I would give them one. My judgment helped me stay alive; my release of it will help me live the life I survived for.

5. Be present (and put your phone away for the love of everything.)  My goal every year for almost a decade has been to give up my addiction to technology. So far, I have been incredibly unsuccessful. But to create, I have to live, and to live, I have to be present. There is no other way.

Here’s to page 1 of 365.

With Love,

Clayton

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“When you lose an Elder, you lose a Library.” - A play on an old African Proverb.

When my father died, I found a drawer in his house filled with hundreds of pictures.

Each had the face of a person who looked slightly like me, but no name was written on the back.

I invited family over daily to help identify the relatives depicted, but none of us could.

I knew by losing my father that, my family lost another generation, but I never could have known that in his passing, we lost all of the generations and stories that came before him.

My grandmother was a storyteller. She stood just over four feet nine inches, but her presence filled every room. After growing up an orphan and suffering loss on every level imaginable, she was determined never to take life too seriously. She had no time for people who were too sensitive to be able to laugh at a joke. She smoked under no-smoking signs, flipped off strangers, and was the perfect depiction of an adorable old lady who was an absolute terror to anyone who knew her.

Her favorite stories were about other people’s mishaps, including when family members got too drunk at Christmas and passed out in the yard. She also told of the time she grounded my father as a teen and told him he wasn’t allowed to come down the stairs. A few days later, he called her to let her know that he had hopped out the window and hitchhiked from Connecticut to Florida.

The story she told most often was about when my father, as a child, put his action figures in the oven, believing it to be the perfect secret hiding spot. That story even had a name: “Thomas Edison Boy Inventor.”

I must have heard her tell it over five hundred times, to the point where I assumed it was permanently burned in my brain. Except now, I question whether my father’s action figures or toy race cars melted the next time my grandmother preheated the oven after assuming it was empty inside.

The one thing they don’t tell you about grief is the stories you lose after those you love are gone. It’s like playing a game of telephone, but you’re the only one left holding the receiver at the end, and you have no way to find out how the story began.

At my father’s funeral, the Police Chief kindly mentioned how he knew my father and spoke kindly of him. Before he parted, he said, “By the way, I also knew your grandmother.  We still tell stories about her down at the station.”

When she died, we lost a library—one with some of my favorite stories forever left on the shelves. But knowing that her story lives on makes me smile.

I started sharing the stories of my life as a child out of necessity. I needed to speak the truth of what I was going through out loud to not invalidate it, as so many around me did. I learned early on that if I could find a way to make it funny enough, I could share anything.

Over time I realized that if I made myself the butt of the joke, then those around me would would laugh along. The honest reflections of my experience quickly took a backseat to my need to filter every story through a frame of self-deprecation.

What began as a way to share the truth of my feelings quickly became a way to further dissociate from them to be accepted.

Even in the privacy of a journal, I was afraid to share the actual feelings of my life. I told myself it was out of fear that someday, people I love would stumble upon them and be upset by what they read. But the truth was that I was afraid to acknowledge how I felt, the loneliness, fear, and brokenness that filled my life.

I hid my stories because I was afraid to face them.

We live in an exciting time when technology can allow humans to share their art in previously unimaginable ways. Yet, each day, we feel closer to a day when our stories are replaced by those written by an intelligence other than our own.

The need for honesty and vulnerability has never been higher, yet so many of us are programmed to continue holding ourselves back in fear of being seen for the first time.

No matter how we share our stories with the world, they will eventually be lost to time. Each one of us will be a photograph inside a drawer that no one can recognize.

Over the last few years, I started finding ways to retell the stories of my life as honestly as possible. I journaled in moments when my emotions had reached a peak. I shared newsletters publicly about the lessons that I was moving through. But along the way, I realized that no matter the format or audience, the stories I shared were for me.

Those journal entries became windows into the truths of my life that I wasn’t willing to honor and, eventually, the permission to make changes. Those newsletters became the space for me to sort things out that were within me and timestamps that I could look back on to see how I previously viewed the themes of my life.

At the end of the day, no matter the intended audience, we share our stories for ourselves so that we don’t lose access to our own libraries and the events of our lives do not become a game of telephone where years down the road, the images depicted are nothing like the actual events.

So why do I write?

I write the stories my younger self was too afraid to share and the truths my older self will need to remember.

While I still can.

While my library is still open to the public and, most importantly, myself.

With Love,
Clayton

“Decide what kind of life you want, then say no to everything that isn't that." - The Most Popular Quote on Pinterest.

Every person must ask themselves an important question on their healing journey: "What would my life look like if I honored all that I have been through instead of pretending it never happened?"

In times of struggle, our bodies and minds protect us from feeling the weight of what happened to us.

Our coping mechanisms kick in, and we dissociate, laugh inappropriately, and, in extreme cases, if we are lucky, we simply survive. 

We work to distance ourselves from the most challenging moments, whether in therapy to heal what happened or to move on with our lives as if nothing ever happened.

But even years later, when our surroundings have changed, and our lives appear safer, our bodies still hold onto the memory of our painful past. 

And when we are sent signals that remind us of all we have endured, we must face whether or not we make choices each day that honor or dishonor our history.

I was nineteen the first time another person physically assaulted me. Even though I had grown up around violence, it had never directed itself at me. 

I had broken up with my first-ever boyfriend weeks earlier. He was furious when he found out I went away for the weekend to celebrate my birthday with someone new. He stopped by my apartment under the guise that his autistic younger brother had gotten me a gift and asked me to meet him outside of my apartment to receive it.

I'll never forget thinking to myself as I strode to the door, "I shouldn't be wearing flip-flops; I should have sneakers on." I didn't know what would happen, but something inside knew enough to set off alarm bells.

There was no gift; my only "gift" was a punch across the face as his friend barely attempted to hold him back.

I knew instantly that if I hit him back, it would justify what he had done and that if I didn't retaliate, he would regret it for the rest of his life. He wasn't the genuine and kind-hearted guy I knew at that moment. Instead, he was the product of the pain others had caused him throughout his life. 

As I struggled to get the door open and inside the safety of my apartment, all I kept repeating to myself was, "How can people actually hurt others in this way?". 

Even though I had seen it with my own eyes enough times throughout my life.

I play on Saturdays in a local flag football league here in Austin. It is one of the three sports I play recreationally, and I absolutely love it. Sports, especially contact sports, have always allowed a part of myself that usually hides in the shadows to be expressed. It is the part of me that loves competition, a challenge, and when you have to dig deep to find something in yourself that you didn't think was there previously.

This past weekend, early in the game, I caught a pass and immediately had someone twice my size run through the side of my face. I knew immediately upon contact that it would leave a black eye. I spent the rest of the game thankful I somehow avoided a concussion. Overall, I chalked it up to an unfortunate accident I was lucky to have walked away from relatively unscathed. 

It wasn't until I got home that my emotions swelled, and the voices inside me started to speak up. My mind knew I had experienced contact from playing a sport, but my body couldn't tell the difference from the last time my right eye went black. Physically and emotionally, my system was brought back to standing outside of my apartment and being struck by someone I loved. 

I sat for hours alone in my apartment, holding back tears as the parts inside of me shared the pain they had been holding since that day at nineteen. No matter how many years have passed or how much therapy I have done, once the walls came down, the wound still felt fresh, and the message from my system was clear:

"Why would you put yourself in situations where this could happen when we have already been through so much?"

There was a period in my life where I identified with my trauma, almost as a crutch. Being diagnosed with CPTSD and getting to say that I was traumatized allowed me to account for all of the ways I couldn't show up in the world like everyone else.

The day I finally got a brain scan to show how differently wired I am was one of the most freeing of my life. It was the first time in my life that I realized I wasn't a broken person but instead someone whose past left marks that still needed healing.

Over the past six years, I have worked in therapy to heal the remnants of my trauma in every way possible. 

From talk therapy to CBT (Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy), EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), and Neurofeedback, the results have been life-changing. They have given me a future instead of living my life stuck in the past. 

But no amount of distance or healing can change what happened in the past. This week, I learned that just because it isn't my present doesn't mean that I didn't experience it or that my system still doesn't hold onto the pain of the past.

I no longer identify with my trauma in the ways that I used to, and in some ways, that has made it even harder to honor its existence.

I lost my mother suddenly in March; the fact that I have moved through the last six months without her in a relatively positive manner doesn't mean that I am not still grieving. Or that some parts inside me aren't constantly wondering how a world exists without my parents in it.

Yet, as with all of the other painful experiences that I have endured, they are quickly forgotten at the first moment of self-judgment and shame. 

I still compare myself to others and judge my output based on what others can do instead of what feels possible for me at the moment.

So, what would my life look like if I honored all I have been through?

Well, for one, I plan to stop playing contact sports in the next few months. I always expected there would be an age where my body told me that I needed to stop. Still, I expected it to be due to my body no longer being able to do what it used to athletically. Instead, it will be a choice made out of the risk no longer being worth it. There are other places to let my competitive parts come out without forcing other parts within me to re-experience the pain from the past.

And this is just the beginning of the changes I plan to make.

I used to think of my trauma as something that took my choices from me. Now, I want to make choices because I have been traumatized. And I know that each choice does not require me to explain its reasoning to anyone other than myself.

Too often, we get ourselves stuck in patterns built from the pain of our past. We grow up in unsettled households and are attracted to chaotic work environments. We suffer mistreatment in personal relationships and then subconsciously seek to recreate that dynamic in future romantic ones. 

Our pasts determine the patterns of our present. We cannot simply look toward the future and make different choices because, on some level, we will never be able to outrun what we have endured. Our patterns can only break by acknowledging our past and not running from it.

People with an addiction traditionally do not just quit their addictions cold turkey because they want a better future. Instead, it is the product of all that they have experienced combined with that vision that provides them the strength to break their addiction. 

So here is my proposal for an updated version of Pinterest's most famous quote:

"Decide what kind of life you want, and then say no to everything that isn't that. Acknowledge what kind of past you have endured, and only say yes to things that honor it."

This is my wish for myself and everyone I love.

With Love,

Clayton

“Where there is serious work punctuated by levity – that’s where we find meaning.” — Jennifer Aaker

I have spent almost my entire life believing that, at my core, I was only darkness. 

I marveled at those who could light up a room by walking into it and accepted that I would never know what that was like. The pain of my past was too deep, and the nights spent trembling alone in terror had left their mark permanently.

Only when substances entered my system was I able to know what it felt like for the walls to come down finally and to feel free momentarily. I reveled in the nights on the dance floor as I watched the lights above me blur as if nothing mattered. Until the harsh light of day brought me back into the dark even more heavily than before.

A year ago, a friend and mentor of mine remarked that in all the years we had known each other, he had never heard me laugh. Instantly, I was brought back to the shame of my past. No matter how many years of therapy and work I had done, I still wasn’t able to show those around me who I was. 

But unlike in the past, it wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. I was the one dimming my light, and in many ways, I still am.

My days feel different now. In a way that makes moments from my past almost seem surreal. Instead of sitting alone and waiting for the darkness to overtake me, I wake up each day with more mental clarity than I ever thought possible. I spend less time daydreaming about potential catastrophes and more time trying to be present with the world around me. 

I notice butterflies and sunsets. I listen to people’s laughter as they walk by. I try to feel the sun on my skin and each breeze that blows by.

The world around me is much lighter than before, yet something still holds me back from allowing myself to be the same.

Logically, I know that so much in this life doesn’t matter. Jobs will come and go, feelings aren’t permanent states, and we only have the present moment. I cannot control what others think of me, and I wouldn’t want to if I could. But I still can’t let go of the habits and patterns that cause me to hold myself back.

No matter how many challenging things I have survived, I still feel like I need to show the world how strong I am. Even in spaces where I have full permission to be playful, I almost hold onto an air of seriousness for protection. 

I judge my coworkers for telling jokes during meetings when there is work to be done. I worry more about proving my worth and masculinity while playing sports instead of enjoying the fact that I get to play. And on stage, while literallyperforming comedy, I care more about the structure of my performance than allowing myself to be in the moment.

Very few have seen who I am with the walls down. I make up silly dances and songs to make those around me laugh. I tell ridiculous stories and even more terrible jokes. I smile and laugh without fear of judgment because nothing else in the world matters more at that moment.

In the wake of the loss of each of my parents and others I have loved, it is hard not to wish I had allowed these parts of myself to be seen sooner. I wish I could have let down my guard more and showed them how much I truly loved them. But years ago, I didn’t even believe it possible to feel a moment of lightness, let alone be on the precipice of learning to allow it to experience that feeling regularly.

There comes a time in every person’s healing journey when they have to accept that they alone hold onto their own suffering and are unwilling to release it. Even after letting go of decades of stories and beliefs, I still feel myself holding back.

To get here, I first needed to learn grace, then permission, and now the challenge in front of me is the gift of levity. 

I know now that I wasn’t born or created to be darkness. Instead, I had to experience the dark in order to understand what it felt like to be light. 

I no longer want to refuse myself levity and joy out of fear that it may result in judgment or pain. I want to enjoy the freedom that I have fought so hard for.

In the words of one of my favorite songs, “Let me be lighter, I’m tired of being a fighter.” That is my wish for myself from now on.

With Love,

Clayton

“How would you move through the world differently if you knew you were easy to love?” - Trauma Therapist Morgan Pommels (in a recent post on Instagram sharing things she recently has said during therapy sessions)

Earlier today, I was sent the quote above from a friend who came upon it in her Instagram feed. The words hit her like a ton of bricks. Sometimes, the simple questions cause us to realize just how deep our wounds of unlovability are. 

It would be easy to reflect on this question solely in terms of self-worth, but the other piece is not only another view; it is the theme of perspective itself. 

My friend who sent me this post is one of the most worthy and easy-to-love people I have ever met. But often, our beliefs aren’t shaped by the views of those who support our greatness. Instead, it is those who were never able to see us fully who live rent-free in our minds and hearts.

At any given moment, we are surrounded by proof of how lovable we genuinely are, yet we choose to look only for the evidence that reinforces the opposite. 

It is easier to feel unlovable and unseen than to honor how much we are loved and realize how much we focus only on the stories that cause us to feel unworthy.

When I was thirty, my first therapist asked me point blank if I believed myself worthy of love. It felt like the most straightforward question I would ever answer because I knew what my response should be. But in the pausing seconds that passed before I could even form a word to speak out loud, I realized quickly that, in fact, I did not.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have people in my life who loved and supported me. I had two incredible parents, a beautiful family, and friends. But all I could do was look at my life from the perspective of what was missing. I compared myself to anyone and everyone in an attempt to prove that I wasn’t enough, especially those who were created in ways that I would never be able to resemble.

No amount of evidence could convince me that I was lovable because, at that time in my life, I didn’t believe that I was, nor did I know how to accept the love those around me wanted to give.

I truly believed that I needed to look outside of myself or to be something other than myself to find the love I so desperately sought. I spent days daydreaming of moving to different cities and finally being free to be who I was meant to be, even though I had no idea who that was.

I was right that I needed to move away from everything I knew to find myself, but I also learned that it wasn’t my surroundings that stopped me from seeing myself; it was me. 

I needed to move to multiple cities and still show up in the same patterns with the same results to realize that I was, in fact, the greatest barrier in my life. 

It wasn’t that every man in three different cities was not eligible for a lasting relationship; I wasn’t open to one. 

It wasn’t the salary I was making at my job but my own relationship with money and my inability to believe I was worth more than accepting a small piece of the pie. 

When it came to my family, it wasn’t that they would never be able to see me; it was that I needed to heal the stories that I was still holding onto from the past to be able to see them finally.

I still have moments where I fall into old stories of feeling unseen or patterns of feeling like I need to change parts of myself to be more worthy of love. Deep cuts take time to heal for a reason, and expecting them to magically go away is a disservice. In the moments where we meet our old patterns with a bit more love and understanding, the lessons finally start to allow themselves to sink in.

Recently, I have been doing my best to go only where I am wanted. Instead of trying to “prove myself” to make other people see me, I am going where I feel most able to be me. 

I chose to join a sports team because they were the only ones who offered me a spot instead of trying to get on a “better one” whose radar I wasn’t even on. I have a monthly comedy in Austin at a bar that isn’t set up as a prototypical comedy venue. Still, those who work there could not be more happy to host it. 

In fact, everything I am building creatively are all outlets that, over the past few years, I have done hundreds of reps for; it’s just that now I am putting things out under my own name.

Nothing I am currently choosing in my life is asking me to be something I am not, which has felt life-changing.

It has taken me a while to get here, and I know that everyone is lucky enough to have spaces where they feel wanted. But a beautiful part of the journey is learning to identify when you are finally in the right place and what it feels like inside to be there. In those moments (and spaces), you won’t feel anything other than ease and the freedom to be who you are at that moment without expectation or judgment. 

I am at a point in my life where I am grateful that I am surrounded by people who love me as I am and make it seem easy to do so. In my gratitude, I also realize just how many people throughout my life have attempted to do the same; it just took me time to see it. 

I have never lacked love; my defense mechanisms just viewed the world from the perspective that I did. The only disease in my lovability was my own inability to see and honor it. And now, I am learning what it feels like to move through the world without believing that loving me is a burden to anyone else.

I have learned that so much of our lives are determined by the filter with which we view the world around us. If we are addicted to chaos, we almost subconsciously seek more fires to put out. If we believe ourselves unworthy, we will only compile evidence that supports our belief.

It isn’t easy to magically change how we look at our lives, but we can start tracking it by noticing our patterns. How often do we tell stories about ourselves that aren’t flattering? How frequently do we fantasize about being something outside of ourselves to get what we want? How many people around us, especially those who raised us, are doing the same?

The beautiful thing about perspective is that we have evidence of how differently we can look at our lives at any moment. Looking back at our younger selves, we see things almost with new eyes due to the wisdom of age. So, we know the power of being able to look at any given moment differently.

Maybe the problem isn’t that you are unlovable; perhaps you need to zoom out and look at yourself for all you are instead of all you lack. It isn’t always easy, but the days where you honor all that you are sure feel a lot better than the ones spent wishing you could be anyone other than yourself.

With Love,

Clayton

“The progress comes from continuing when you’re not in crisis anymore.” - Anna Cockrell, Olympic Silver Medalist.

During the 2020 Olympics, Anna Cockrell qualified for the Final of the Women’s 400m Hurdles. Unfortunately, she was disqualified for a lane violation after finishing 7th. Last week, she returned to the Olympics, where she won the Silver Medal and finished with the fourth-fastest time in history.

Although many other athletes will be talked about for years to come, what Cockrell said in her post-race press conference sparked something deep within me. When asked what she would tell her younger self from the 2020 Olympics, Cockrell detailed how she would tell herself to go to therapy, become more consistent with her habits, and not quit whenever the parts inside her believed that she was healed. She ended her statement with the quote above detailing the importance of staying on the path even when there isn’t an immediate fire to put out. 

I spent many years telling myself the story of my reliability. I truly believed that when it came to love, supporting those around me, or showing up in challenging moments, I was as steady as they came. I believed myself to be a consistent person.

In truth, I was a runner. Unlike Cockrell, I ran at the first sign of discomfort, with my only goal being to protect myself no matter who it hurt or what it cost. Even in the moments where I did bravely show up for others, my internal monologue was always plotting escape routes to avoid having to hold up my share of the weight.

I never finished what I started; instead, I told myself stories of how the world was against me and standing in the way of my ability to be anything more than I was at that moment.

Part of this was a product of my past, and the other part reflected a culture that emphasizes quick fixes. 

It is better to apply the bandaid and wait for the wound to heal than to figure out how to avoid getting cut in the first place.

We take vitamins most when sick but don’t continue with them after returning to feeling better. We seek out intimacy when we are lonely but don’t do the work to create the foundation for healthy relationships in the future. We judge our bodies through unrealistic comparisons but don’t do anything to listen to what they actually need.

Or, if you’re like me, you spend your days seeking self-help tools to add to your arsenal but abandon all of them at the first sign of distress, let alone create a daily routine that enables you to avoid crises as much as possible.

For someone who spent so long in survival mode, I don’t judge myself for the inconsistencies of the past. This moment is the only one we are guaranteed, and each of the bandages of the past allowed me to reach it. But when I reflect back on the areas of my life where I have made the greatest progress, it has been the few things that I have not given up on that have been the most life-changing.

Society tells us to have the courage to be warriors in the arena, but no one tells us that real courage is staying in the arena long after the battle is over.

So why do we resist staying the course, telling ourselves that we no longer need what previously saved us from crisis? One answer is that it requires a level of self-love and trust to believe in the possibility that there could be more for us waiting on the horizon. 

Essentially, we must believe we are worthy of a life never modeled for us.

If I had never gone to therapy, I would have never realized that I wasn’t broken. 

But it was staying in therapy, even after I hit each and every plateau, that has allowed me to literally rewire my brain and feel like I am living my life as myself for the first time. 

The only reason I stayed the course was that I was lucky enough to have therapists who saw a vision of healing and who I could become that I didn’t believe was possible. So, I blindly trusted them, no matter how uncomfortable it made me at every turn.

And still, there are so many other areas of my life that I want and need more consistency in.

But now, instead of judging myself for my perceived failures, I ask myself the following: 

“Can I love myself enough to see this through, and can I believe myself worthy of something more beautiful on the other side?”

I have found consistency easier to maintain when the only barrier is my ability to pour into myself and no longer a product of the world around me.

Like everyone, I am a work in progress, but I am eternally grateful for the paths I didn’t allow myself to give up on. They are the main reason I sit here writing to you today.

With Love,

Clayton

One Brave Truth…

Lately, I have found myself feeling more happy than ever before. It scares me to admit it out loud or even allow myself to acknowledge it. No matter how hard I have worked to be where I am, I have found that the things I most want to keep inside of me these days are the moments where I feel as though my life is exactly where I want it to be.

So, thank you to all of you who take time out of your day to read my words. Your kindness has contributed significantly to my happiness, which immediately causes me to anxiously wonder if I somehow am missing all of the reasons I should not feel the way I do.

And so the cycle continues.

“We need to look back sometimes and realize the past taught us to appreciate our future.” - Simone Elkeles

I have spent the majority of my life stuck in the past, focused on specific moments.  The moments when I hurt another person or made a mistake that I quickly wished I could undo or had access to things I would do anything to have back again. Most of all, I replayed memories of all that happened to me, which I had no control over, and created versions of myself I never asked for.

I found it impossible to look forward at what my life could be when everything in me was addicted to the perceived “failures” of the past.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized that focusing only on moments disconnects me from what my life actually felt like in the past, especially since so much of my past was an effort by my body and mind to do nothing but feel.

I judged myself for the smile that reflected back at me in the mirror but never acknowledged how many days it felt impossible to get out of bed, let alone practice any level of self-care.

I felt shame for past outbursts where I hurt people that I cared about yet quickly omitted what it felt like each day to do everything I could, from allowing the fire inside of me to seep out or acknowledging how many times I avoided projecting my pain onto others.

I looked back on failed relationships, wondering how I still had not been successful in fully opening my heart to another person, but I never acknowledged what it felt like in my body to even hug another person, let alone be intimate.

I have learned that it is in the memories of shame and guilt that I tell myself a story about not repeating the past. But it is only in the recollection of the felt sensations of my past that I am able to see just how far I have come.  

Years ago, I stood in a crowded bar, trying desperately to stifle the growing terror coursing through my body.  The space was dark and loud, and drunk people kept repeatedly bumping into me from behind.  My attempt to be social and normal turned quickly into my nightmare.  I didn’t have words at that time to be able to express to those I was with what was happening in my body.  In fact, I could barely form words at all.  

As the back of my neck prickled and quickly tightened in a way that was all too familiar, I let out a silent prayer that my body would hold out long enough for me to get away from the world before the inevitable tremors took over.  I followed closely behind a friend as he made his way to the corner and quickly made an excuse to leave at first sight of the door.  

The relief came when I found my way home, locked myself in my dark room, and allowed my body to release everything built up inside as I waited for the shaking to end. 

At that time in my life, I spent every second of every day, consciously and unconsciously, identifying my surroundings for potential threats. I was triggered by seemingly everything, especially physical contact, random loud noises, and crowds where I couldn’t see every person in the room in front of me.  

I was a walking, talking, and violently shaking product of my past.  

But no matter how much terror coursed through my veins and caused me to tremble, my greatest fear was anyone in the outside world noticing.  I had long before decided that the only person who would ever bear witness to my pain would be me.

These days, I am lucky to be surrounded by incredible people with inspiring stories. More often than not, I marvel at how many of them have beaten the odds from the pain of their pasts and are, in many ways, miracles for even still being alive, let alone living the lives that they are so brightly.  

But the most fascinating thing about the people I care most about is that none of them can see the trajectory of how far they have come in the way that is so apparent to me. 

We live in a culture so focused on the next finish line that we are taught that looking backward prohibits us from getting where we need to go. Yet, when we look back at how the past actually felt, it allows us to sink into the awareness that we most need to focus on: the present.

I never thought I would see a day in my life where I didn’t fear a trauma response bubbling over, let alone one where I couldn’t even remember the last time my body shook violently in fear. It didn’t seem possible, yet here we are. 

I need to remember what it felt like to live within my body and not just focus on the moments. When I remember what it felt like inside and around me, I am able to notice how differently I feel today. I haven’t achieved every goal or let every part of myself be seen, but there is a different level of gratitude that comes with reflecting on the felt experiences of our pasts.

The simple thought of “I am so glad I don’t feel that way anymore” can be a victory that previous versions of you never thought possible.

I wish for all those I love to look back and see their journeys from the perspective of what it has been like to witness it from the outside: incredible.

With Love,

Clayton

"True feeling justifies whatever it may cost." - May Sarton

There are moments throughout my day when an image from the past suddenly comes to mind, and all that lies beneath the surface starts to bubble up. These moments don't feel as overwhelming as they used to, but my instinct is to resist them all the same.

When I was younger, the only time of day I began to witness the true experience of my life was in the evening. Only in the quiet isolation of my room, when the walls of my exhausted nervous system were down, did I start to allow myself to feel at all. And even then, I shoved those feelings away as quickly as they came forward.

In my family, feelings were restrained. I come from people, who came from people, whose challenges in life taught them from an early age never fully to surrender to their emotions. 

On my father's side, my grandfather won medals for his efforts during wars, and my grandmother spent her childhood separated from all of her siblings as an orphan. On my mother's side, my grandmother was a single mother of two who worked multiple jobs to support her family. All of them were loving, but each had a hardened exterior developed over time to survive. 

"Tough but loving" was the most common description for almost any family member.

Growing up, I noticed my family's resistance to feeling most in the stifled expressions I witnessed daily. I watched each of my parents hold back their tears, muffle their screams, and bite their tongues more times than I can remember. It wasn't until their emotions boiled over that I saw how much they had been holding deep within.

My favorite memories are the ones where each of my parents laughed deeply and freely.  It was rare, especially since most of the time, both covered their mouths almost immediately because their insecurity over their teeth outweighed their joy in the moment. 

But a few times throughout my life, I saw their genuine, uninhibited laughter. In those moments, I witnessed their freedom.

I have spent most of my life viewing the world through my mind, not my heart. 

Logically, I understood what a feeling was and how certain events would connect to specific emotions. But I never had access to them. It wasn't a conscious act of avoidance. Somewhere along the way, I just started to believe that I wasn't a sensitive person and that I wasn't built to feel.

I spent so much of my life focused on surviving that I never got around to the feeling part after the fact. 

I lived with a weight on my chest, a constant stress on my shoulders, and a belief that if I shed a single tear, I would never stop crying.

It wasn't until I started to lose the people I loved that I saw just how emotionally repressed I was. It was almost too easy to go on with my days as if nothing happened.  In an instant, a piece of my foundation was gone and I continued as if the ground I was standing on wasn't actively shaking.

My father's death was a turning point in my life. I realized that by not allowing myself to feel the pain of losing him I also wasn't allowing myself to feel the depth of how much I loved him. At any point in the grief process, if you asked me what I would do with even five more minutes with my father, I would immediately tell you that I would spend it sharing just how much I love him. And yet, that feeling was what I denied myself for fear of all the others that accompanied it.

Last night, as I lay in bed, images of my mother flashed suddenly in my mind. She passed away suddenly in March, and while I have enough experience with grief at this point to know that it is never logical, a part of me still hasn't fully realized that she is gone. 

Logically, I knew she was sick. Logically, there were about one hundred different ways that I could tell the story of her passing in a way that I held gratitude for. And yet, I knew her in a way that almost no one did. I knew her fears, especially around dying, and all of the hopes she had for the future.

So, it is messy and complicated, which is what most feelings are.

I don't want to live my life as a shell of a person out of fear that I might experience feelings that bring me to my knees. 

I don't want to restrain myself from loving people with everything inside me out of fear of losing them.

Most of all, I don't want to avoid the memories of those I have already lost because they remind me that a part of my heart will never be the same without them.

So as the feelings and images of my mother crept into my mind and body last night, I chose a different path. I allowed myself to feel them cautiously and intentionally. Until the images faded away and the signals within me stopped firing. It was uncomfortable and yet no worse than I would have initially imagined.

What I am learning is that I not only have the capacity to feel but also the need to—in every moment and in every way possible. 

I can't undo the past or bring my family members back, but I can choose my relationship with them as I move forward in life.

I am learning to hold myself in the moments that I feel the loss of those I love, and by allowing myself to do so, in a way that allows them to do what physically is no longer possible: to hold me back.

With Love,
Clayton

One Brave Truth…

As the theme of my first newsletter was "Bravery," I wanted to include a section where I admitted “One Brave Truth” each week. Something in addition to my newsletter that has been sitting within the privacy of my heart that I wouldn’t normally share publicly:

My brave truth this week is that the response to this newsletter has been overwhelming. For people to take the time to even submit an email to support something that I believe in is already challenging enough for me to acknowledge. One follower in particular was a friend of my parents, someone they spoke of with great admiration throughout their lives. I had no idea who this would reach, but having support from such an unexpected place reminded me how loved my parents were and the ripples they still remain even in their absence.

My eyes well up every time I think about it.

Something That Inspired Me This Week…

If you know me, you know that I love sports and everything beautiful they represent: the athleticism, the perseverance, the stories of people overcoming their circumstances and performing in the moments that matter most.

I recently started a playlist on YouTube called “Dharma Winks,” which is comprised of videos that inspire me creatively so that on the days I feel lost, I can see examples of people putting their art into the world.

Although the list mostly comprises musicians and comedians, I knew it wouldn’t be long until certain moments in athletics were added in. I have loved watching the Olympics over the past few weeks, and nothing stood out more than watching the Men’s 400M Final. I have never seen the embodiment of “refusing to lose” more in my entire life. This race is one that I am sure I will come back to for decades to come.

Men's 400 M Final Paris Olympics

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“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” - Brene Brown

I often tell a story on stage about the time I participated in a workshop with four other people. We stood in a circle and took turns stepping into the middle of the group, allowing the others to witness us for one minute silently. After that, those on the outside wrote what they saw inside the person in big black markers on their body. 

Some walked away from the exercise with words written on their arms and chest, like “beautiful” and “powerful.” Instead, I had the word “Brave” written by three of the four people in my group. The punchline I use on stage is that, apparently, just existing as I am is an act of bravery.

In truth, the description is one I have heard my entire life, especially after surviving things like childhood trauma, coming out at an early age, enduring the loss of almost every person that I have ever truly loved, and still choosing time and again to believe that the pain of my past does not predestine my life. Ironically, the fact that I even stand up on stage and tell jokes occasionally is something that most remark is the bravest of all.

However, as Brene Brown so often teaches, there is a great difference between disclosure and vulnerability. I have no problem sharing the darkness of my past because to survive it, I had to disconnect from the felt sensation of any of it. I learned early that by speaking the truth of my life out loud, I would appear to be letting others in vulnerably when, in reality, I was simply disclosing information I had no emotional connection to.

True bravery is telling our stories in the most honest, authentic, and vulnerable way possible. It means choosing the version of the story that gives us a feeling of unease instead of the one we have no reaction to. It is admitting all of the things we believe to be unworthy and unlovable so that we can face the possibility that we fear most, which is that we are the only ones creating the stories that we are not enough and instead, all that we believe to be inadequate is what is most worthy in us.

So, this is why I created this space: to share my story in the most honest way I know how at this moment in my life and to hopefully create a safe space for others to do the same.

On Mondays, you will receive a “snapshot” of my life each week. It will be a glimpse into the lessons and themes occurring in the present through storytelling from my past. 

Those of you who choose the paid subscription will receive guest newsletters from the people who inspire me most, an archive of previous works, and the opportunity to submit your own “snapshot” to the community.

I have no idea how this will go, but I do know that I intend to begin this journey with bravery, which I haven’t done before.

If I were to share the “brave truth,” it would be that I have wanted to be a writer my entire life. It was a dream I shared with my father, who once told me that he believed I had the skill he wished he had and that I could be a published author someday. We weren’t a family that dreamed big; in fact, my parent’s only real hope was that my sister and I would not work our entire lives in restaurants as they both did. The fact that I could have the potential to be something was terrifying.

My father died when I was 30, on Father’s Day, in the hospital that I was born in. He was there for my first breath, and I was lucky enough to hold his hand for his last. When I cleaned out his house, I found a plastic bucket in his office closet filled with decades of writing. From hand to typewritten, fantasy novels to books sharing life lessons through a love of wine. It was the physical manifestation of a lifetime of dreams he never allowed himself to fully pursue. At that moment, the pressure of honoring him by following our shared dream became crippling.

It has taken me years to write from a place of truth instead of worrying about how these words will be perceived. I needed to learn what the sensation in my body felt like when something was present and alive within me instead of logically trying to put a puzzle together that fit what I felt would be deemed worthy.

I am not often fearful, but I am terrified to hit submit. I know that even a single subscriber will bring me to tears and that this matters in a way that I used to never allow myself to feel, let alone acknowledge. 

I spent most of my life terrified, doing everything I could to hide from everything I feared. In the last few years, I have learned that fear is something to run towards in order to overcome all that we previously believed ourselves capable of. 

The fact that I am afraid and that this matters means that it is the right step to take.

It is time to be brave. Please join me on this journey.

With Love,

Clayton