I Love It Here
- Meredith
- Feb 20
- 6 min read
I'm where I'm meant to be. Finally.
The most unusual thing has happened as of late. I mean, besides the kleptocratic coup of our federal government.
To me, personally.
People have begun to understand my vision when I articulate it to them. And they don’t just understand it — they support it. They WANT to see me manifest this whole enterprise I’m intent on creating.
I’ve never experienced that before. I’m normally met with confusion, as though I’ve told people I want to test how well vibrators hold up in space.
Lately, however, people are receptive, appreciative, supportive and it feels… odd.
I’m simultaneously effervescent with excitement and tapped on the shoulder by the shadow of my unrealized dreams reminding me that no one ever believed in us before.
Oh, sweet girl, I know.
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Those familiar with me know I’m from South Louisiana and have spent most of my life in Texas. While almost everyone who knows and loves me wishes me wild success, they have never been able to grasp how starting a “women’s empowerment” company will deliver the kids and me to safety and stability — certainly not in a financially independent capacity. But maybe I’ll be able to hang on long enough until I marry again...
WHAT?! Over my godsdamned, desiccated, pierced and tattooed, c-sectioned, sterilized, auto-immune disordered, 47 year-old body.
People want an easy-to-understand, proven framework for how My Vision results in Dollah Bills In The Bank. Never being able to give that to myself, I certainly can’t give it to anyone else — though I honestly try and fake it.
What I’m doing now with The Agentic Feminine is a leap into uncharted territory, the heed of an undeniable calling — tugging me for decades, until I scream and give in. Until I agree to a terrifying trip into a nebulous fog that promises me only the ability to say I DID IT. Only the relief of the albatross finally flying away. Nothing else.
No one in my family or anyone I’m familiar with has pursued such an unusual career path and certainly not in the aftermath of divorce, solo-parenting three kids while plagued by an ex-husband who regularly accuses them of financially ruining him. Goddess give me strength.
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And who cares, right??
Who needs external validation when your Divine Calling won’t leave you alone??? Whooooo??
Me.
I do.
I don’t want to need it and maybe I don’t need to need it, but damn do I want it and damn doesn’t it help and damn isn’t it a slippery slope when you’re trying to accomplish something you, in your perhaps-limited worldview, haven’t seen anyone ***IRL*** do before??
I’ve listened to the memoiresque tales of ooooodles of successful people — especially creatives — and the vast majority of them report having a partner or supportive friend who believed in them — in many cases, from the jump.
I’ve toiled in abrupt fits and starts for decades in a solitary cave of wavering self-belief. Never before has anyone looked at what I’m doing or wanted to do and said:
I GET IT. THIS IS GREAT. KEEP GOING. I SEE WHY YOU’RE DOING THIS AND WHERE YOU’RE HEADED AND I’M BEHIND YOU 100%.
A few times, I’ve had someone tell me months or years after I had to grievously pause my writing that they really liked what I was writing and why did I quit?? I don’t know, Susan, maybe if you had told me IN THE MOMENT that you were picking up what I was putting down, I WOULD HAVE HAD THE TEENIEST MODICUM OF NECESSARY CONFIDENCE TO CONTINUE.
But, I’ve watched enough therapy TikToks and reels to know that is outsourcing the problem. And while people have always liked my content, the question "BuT hOw WiLl YoU mAkE mOnEy DoInG iT???" was perpetually unanswerable.
Oh well.
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In every heroine’s journey, they reach a point of no return.
Come hell or high-water (shaking fist in the air), I will do this!!
But I couldn’t do it in Texas.
My vision is inherently, filthily liberal. It’s nasty and feminist and discomforting and different. Ask Molly Ivins how that shit plays in Tejas next time the Ouija board makes an appearance. And while I applaud Karen Attiah, Andrea Grimes, Olivia Messer, Wendi Aarons, Jenny Lawson, Brené Brown, Ana Maria Cox and all the other phenomenal women MAKING IT HAPPEN in the Lonestar state, I had to leave.
Yes, for my children’s health and future.
But, also…
Y’all, the energy in Texas felt dead to me. D-E-D, ded.
Dead as Zed.
Rotten
Fetid
Broken
Moldered
Rancid.
When the 2016 election happened, a new wind blew through that state. A wind that smelled worse than any cattle yard outside of Lubbock right before the slaughter.
A wind that uprooted and reanimated the long-dead ghosts of an indescribably horrific, theocratic, white supremacy that Texas’s rewritten and mythologized history books could not erase.
Those ghosts were always lingering, hangin’ round, but Trump’s first inauguration gave them a new lease on life. It’s a theme in my work.
After Covid and the election of 2020, I couldn’t hack it anymore.
Brace yourselves or control your gag reflex, but I identify as a toxic-childhood-induced empath — meaning my neurons are on permanent overdrive trying to gauge what and how people are thinking about me so I can contort myself to stay likable and safe. (Yes, I’m in therapy and working on this. Gah.)
Having a staunch people-pleasing bent is inconvenient when you’re a woman who wants to REWILD and create space for other women to do so — to explore, talk about, play with, work toward dreams and creativity IN A STATE THAT IS GOOSE-STEPPING AT LIGHT SPEED TOWARD CHRISTO-NATIONALIST FASCISM.
And how was I ever going to be able to leave a state with three kids when their dad was job-bound to it?? Papa, can you hear me????
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Just then... A light came on.
Once I made the decision that I was walking toward my North Star regardless of fate or consequences, the end of my soul's Dark Night materialized.
The husband (now ex) was offered a job in… THE GREAT STATE OF CALIFORNIA… Holy Hellfire!! CALI-FORN-I-A???? Well, you got to be kiddn’ me. California. What a trip.
**TL;DR: I hoped to follow him out there at the end of the school year, legally separating, co-parenting and untangling our marriage gently, giving me a well-deserved runway to launch my career, but he decided to file for divorce, plunging us into financial tumult, leaving me alone with three kiddos, one dog, two elderly cats, one house that was falling apart, and no idea how to manage any of it AND navigate the Texas Family Court system. During the trial, he also asked the judge to limit the kids to residency in Dallas or Houston. While he was living in California. Knowing I wanted to move to THE SAME STATE HE WAS LIVING IN. Yeah.
However.(!!!) I managed to get through it all andddddddd
MOVE TO CALIFORNIA NEARLY TWO YEARS LATER!! WOOHOO! GO ME!
I. AM. HERE.
I. MADE. IT.
FUCK YOU BITCHESSSSSSSS.
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I • LOVE • IT • HERE.
I love it here.
I could write forevah about how much I prefer to California to Texas.
I can breathe without choking on the thick musk of oppression.
I feel reinvigorated. I feel legitimate possibility and potential again. I feel AGENTIC.
And(!), for the first time in my life, people look at me with understanding and hope when I say I’m building a women’s empowerment business…
Let me be clear -- When I say the words,
I want to create space to help women REWILD through the exploration of divestment from neoliberal capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchy,
people understand what that means and see value in it. The urgent necessity of it.
When I say white women are the lynchpin of white supremacy and patriarchy AND it is on US white women to bring action and solutions to that problem, people get me.
Some offer tangible support and many offer their encouragement. It’s like a whole new world — unmapped and unpredictable, yes, but I am headed in the right direction. I made the right decisions and doing the things I feared most is fucking paying off OH MY GOD ALL THOSE SELF-HELP BOOKS AND PODCASTS WERE RIGHT.
I am attracting the people I am meant to attract, who function on the same vibrational wavelength de moi! People whose energy can commune with mine so we can get to work alleviating suffering, fighting oppression, changing cultural norms that dictate our sociopolitical ecosystem, and stand steadfast against the autocratic wet dreams of the techdouchebro incel whatever the latest fad in feudal-tripping, robber barons and their unholy alliance with theocratic, Christo-nationalist fascists.
There’s a lot to do.
I’m ready to do it.
Now, I am in the place to do it. A place that allows for the support of the infrastructure I’m building and the space I’m tearing down systems and helping build new ones, intent on making change that can wait no longer. A vibrationally-aligned place in which I can move, thrive, operate, create. Where my nerves have calmed and I’m no longer grasping for escape hatches.
These are scary, desperate, dangerous times. No question.
But I am excited. I am built for this. I am made for this. I am ready. If for no other reason, than many other women are, too, and I’m finally, finally, FINALLY meeting them. Yay.
••M
