From Pyramid to Web (When Your Baseline is Someone Else’s Emergency (and you don't know if it's *your* emergency))
Content notes: intensely long; custom data visualizations; chronic illness, medical trauma, emergency department experiences, pain; isolation & interdependence; American Indigenous wisdom teachings
Author’s Note
This essay contains personal reflection and cites sensitive public reporting; it represents my views, not those of my employer. (And I’ve written my positionality a lot in the past articles… I think I might just put that in my “About Me”… not sure.)
I began writing this piece last week while heavily in the midst of healing—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The first draft emerged on September 17th, the day after my emergency department visit on September 16th. Since then, I’ve been on a short restorative vacation to Ohiopyle with friends, processing layers of grief while my body continues its protests. Today is Tuesday, September 23rd, the second day of Navratri, and I’m updating this piece with the accumulated wisdom of a week that has felt like a month, and a month that has felt like a lifetime. (I am up entirely way too late. I probably have to edit this for clarity later, and I’ll put my code somewhere public soon.)
As I posted earlier on Facebook and Substack (in a “Note” and not a “Post”): “Happy Navratri!! This year, I start this holiday with a very sore body and a grateful heart. While I prepare for Durga Puja, my goal is to pray, reminding myself that my ego and current circumstances do not comprise the entirety of my existence or purpose. My short vacation with my friends was very healing, AND I have a lot of rest to catch up on. I’m technically off from work today, and tomorrow morning I have more bloodwork to do (for my fertility journey) and a bladder instillation. I love my life and the people in it. I strive to be grateful for even the worst things in life, because it helps me appreciate and love the best things.”
Before I start, here is the Youghiogheny River view from Saturday, which captures both the beauty of the land and the flow of healing:
Wide river bending through rock shelves; late‑summer trees; smooth water suggests steadiness.
What the week taught my body about power (told at a tilt)
My nervous system read the week’s headlines as triage, too—another example of systems crashing and then stabilizing on borrowed capacity.
An international human‑rights inquiry reported “reasonable grounds” that four of the five acts named in the Genocide Convention have occurred in a besieged coastal enclave (killing; serious harm; life‑destroying conditions; preventing births). State officials dispute the findings and call the report distorted; legal determinations remain the role of courts. My body reads this as a call to prevention as practice, not abstraction.
A late‑night host was suspended after a political monologue; a federal regulator publicly invoked “public‑interest” enforcement; hundreds of artists signed a letter; the network reversed course. That felt like watching speech triage in real time—crash, stabilize, and monitor.
From the Oval Office, leaders linked a common pain reliever to autism in pregnancy. Major medical groups still consider acetaminophen a prudent option when used as directed; one 2024 study found no association. Disability justice says: reject fear frames that stigmatize autistic people and restrict care.
A policy shop behind a federal governance blueprint urged a new “extremism” category aimed at trans people and allies—a move widely criticized as evidence‑free and carceral in logic; data cited shows trans people are far more often targets than perpetrators.
Journalist Susan Faludi notes the backlash is now blatant, shameless, and cruel, often arriving as “the wolf in sheep’s clothing.” That line hums in my ears while I rebuild my web of care.
Last Tuesday, I made it two hundred and fifty-nine days into 2025 before my body reminded me—again—that resolutions are for people whose “baseline” includes functioning. I’ve been trying to avoid the emergency department (ED) this year, hoping 2025 would be the first time I didn’t have to go. (I used to end up there several times a year before 2023.)
(Clarification: I’m not shaming myself. I’m just… noticing. Observation ≠ judgment, even when the observation stings.)
My pain started on Monday afternoon, September 15. By early afternoon on Tuesday, September 16, I was at the ED (admitted after waiting two and a half hours in the waiting room), cycling through tests for infection, blood clots, cardiac weirdness, and inflammatory markers, while watching my blood pressure uncomfortably climb higher and higher (and yes, a nurse asked me to rate my pain on that ridiculous 1–10 scale). How do you quantify a roommate (referring to my disability) you never invited who’s lived with you for over two decades? My interstitial cystitis (IC), PCOS, endometriosis, etc., don’t knock—they move in and rearrange the furniture. And I didn’t know if I was having a systemic infection (like a kidney infection) or having a really bad reaction from my ovulation medications I took the previous week.
Here’s a photo of my bruising from the ED visit. I took the photo on Saturday, as a visceral reminder of how medical care leaves its marks:
Forearm with clustered yellow‑purple bruises from IVs and sticks; hospital tape faintly visible.
To be honest, I received excellent care from all healthcare professionals that day, despite the ED being extremely busy. People really tried with my pronouns, and I was treated with a lot more dignity than I have been in the past.
The thing about invisible disability—and IC is textbook invisible (well, except for the blood in the urine)—is that you end up performing wellness for a world that doesn’t believe what it can’t see. I’ve spent my twenties learning the choreography: smile through pain and burning, work through fatigue, apologize for cancelling meetings while your bladder wages a pointless war. The “achievement society” I wrote about recently (hello, Byung-Chul Han) says that if we optimize hard enough, we can overcome anything. Even our own organs.
But here’s a truer thing about chronic illness: sometimes “overcoming” looks like sadboi-texting (i.e., texting in a swirl of self-doubt) friends during the workday to see who can drive you to the ED and sit with you. Or in my case, trying to make it through my work meetings and reluctantly letting a loved friend take me to the ED, while wallowing about not having a partner or family (even though my brother and the one person I’m dating are ACTIVELY caring about me and texting me thoughtful messages throughout the day).
Sometimes victory is admitting you need the ride and the care.
The Pyramid Scheme of Wellness
Last Wednesday, after reviewing labs (hello inflammation, sigh), I had therapy. My therapist sent over the capacity pyramid (invisible illness edition), by Shruti Shivaramakrishnan (who posts under the handle @chronicallymeh).
It’s a tidy, pastel stack: SURVIVAL (breathing, meds, food, bathroom, existing) → MAINTENANCE (hygiene, appointments, basic care) → FUNCTIONING (chores, socializing, family time, participating, work) → MEANING (creating joy, not masking, living) → HOPE (imagining a future).
The diagram makes intuitive sense when your capacity collapses. And yet the frame is still a climb—an individualized ascension narrative. (Apparently, if I’m diligent enough, I get to hope.)
Here’s what the pyramid doesn’t capture: during a flare, these needs don’t stack neatly. When my friend drove me to the ED on September 16, was I at “survival” or accessing “belonging”? When I texted updates after getting discharged, was that “maintenance” or “meaning-making”? The pyramid suggests I need to secure basic survival before I can access community—but in reality, community is often what makes survival possible.
Free expression in the U.S. just had its own ED visit. Watch the timeline: critical monologue → regulator’s warning → corporate suspension → artist outcry → reinstatement. That’s a body crashing and then stabilizing—temporary, contingent. Capacity isn’t a climb; it’s a web of counter‑pressure.
That’s where my personal argument with Maslow re-ignites, not because I dislike the idea of needs, but because the popular pyramid leaves out a crucial variable: us.
I’ll return to circles when I show the diagrams below.
Let me bring forth my personal debate with Maslow from outside of my head into even more convoluted thoughts-transformed-into-text:
Eclipse Season and the Body’s Revolutionary Timing
Designing a model in the middle of grief is the point; models that only work on good days aren’t models.
My body is suffering from a lack of socialization and chronic health issues. I’m also in grief. And… I want to be that type of delusional and say that eclipse season was very intense for me.
The September 21 Virgo Solar Eclipse in my 11th house (as detailed in my personal astrological notes) promised to seed big changes in networks, long-term goals, and community belonging. Saturn opposing Pisces in my 5th house created tension between play/joy versus duty/discipline. The eclipse asked me to prune my social and professional networks, to clear away people and projects that don’t align.
Well, the universe delivered with precision timing. The day after my emergency department visit—while my body was still processing inflammation and my mind was processing trauma—I received a breakup text from someone I’d been dating. They shared honestly that we both really liked each other but had different styles and needs, and that they were overwhelmed with things going on in their life and in their head.
Faludi’s warning—backlash now wears no velvet glove—helps me name why even personal rupture feels public. The week’s headlines read like a curriculum of fear, a culture “with no grownups at home,” and a right skilled at wolf in sheep’s clothing politics. My cells register that noise as inflammation.
I responded on Wednesday with what I thought was thoughtful kindness—validating their feelings, apologizing where I thought I may have caused harm, expressing genuine admiration, and leaving the door open without pressure. I said that everything they shared made sense. I offered friendship if they wanted it and respected their decision if they needed a clean break.
Later, reflecting on my response through a Buddhist lens (as I’ve been reading Pema Chödrön’s “When Things Fall Apart” for the past two years (a gift from a friend who I’ll be visiting on Wednesday)), I recognized the patterns of attachment even in my attempts at detachment. The length of my response, the multiple apologies, the subtle holding on through offering friendship—all of these revealed my grasping, my difficulty with the Buddhist teaching of caring without clinging. As Chödrön writes about the four maras that assault us—devaputra mara (the seduction of pleasure), skandha mara (how we re-create ourselves), klesha mara (our emotions), and yama mara (the fear of death)—I could see how klesha mara was operating through my need to maintain connection even as it dissolved.
A more Buddhist approach would have been more straightforward, and I drafted an alternative response in my personal notes: “Thank you for being honest with me. I wish you ease and healing with your health. I respect your decision and will honor your need for space.” Compassion without ownership. Recognition that their path is theirs, and mine is mine. The practice of impermanence—that relationships change form, and we can appreciate what we shared without needing to hold it in a fixed way.
Yet even this recognition is part of the practice. As Chödrön teaches about the three truths—suffering, impermanence, and egolessness—the heartbreak itself becomes a teacher. I am heartbroken over this new connection ending. I am also heartbroken over my ex-partner N again… but I think it’s because I’m doing another form of release. I just miss them. I miss talking to them. I miss kissing them. I miss how they think about the world. I miss their partner. I miss hearing about their work. I miss their eyes. I miss their smirk. I miss their smell.
And… I miss my ex-spouse and the life we had shared, even though the version of myself I am today could never go back.
This compound grief—new loss layered upon old loss, physical pain interwoven with emotional pain—is what eclipse season actually delivers. Not the clean breaks we imagine, but the messy, overlapping waves of transformation that leave us gasping between breaths.
(And in the midst of all this, I am dating someone I really really like and can see myself building with.)
Siksika Circles: What Maslow Actually Witnessed
Anyway, back to my issues with Maslow.
Maslow didn’t actually draw the iconic pyramid that the previous image was based on; that came later. I think he took it from the Siksika people. More importantly, the Blackfoot (Siksika) lifeways he studied centered community actualization, reciprocity, place, and seven-generation responsibility—conditions in which self-actualization is common because belonging and provision are communal work, not an individual climb.
The Siksika Nation (Blackfoot: Siksiká) represents the northernmost of the Niitsítapi (Original People). The name Siksiká comes from the Blackfoot words sik (black) and iká (foot), with a connector s between the two words. Their worldview, as witnessed by Maslow during his 1938 visit, demonstrated astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction. He estimated that 80–90% of the Blackfoot tribe had a quality of self-esteem that was only found in 5–10% of his own Western society.
Some Blackfoot scholars have challenged the tidy “Maslow stole it” narrative; the deeper lesson is what he witnessed: cooperation, low inequality, restorative practices, and generosity measured by how much one gives away. Wealth and success in Blackfoot culture are defined not by material accumulation but by generosity and sharing. Maslow witnessed a Blackfoot “Giveaway” ceremony where those who had gathered the most possessions over the year gave every last one away to those in greater need. The wealthiest person was admired as one “who has almost nothing because he has given it all away.”
This philosophy extends to their understanding of self-actualization. As Blackfoot scholar Ryan Heavy Head explains, a person is “credentialed at the start”—born as a fully sacred being—and life is spent “living up to that” potential. Individuals are assumed to arrive in the world whole and complete, imbued with a spark of divinity or wisdom. Education, spiritual ceremonies, and life experiences serve to draw out this sacred self, rather than to “fix” or improve an inherently deficient individual.
The Blackfoot principle of Community Actualization means that the entire community shares responsibility for meeting needs and fulfilling purpose. Survival on the plains required collective effort and generosity. Blackfoot language traditionally had no word for “poverty”; the closest concept was “to be without family,” an unheard-of condition. This underscores a relational definition of well-being: the individual’s welfare is inseparable from community welfare.
Cindy Blackstock’s framing makes this visible: rather than a triangle to climb, think circles—needs met interdependently, with “self and community actualization/role/identity/service/esteem” at the center, and actions considered across seven generations. In her model, physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual dimensions interpenetrate rather than stack. A circular model explains why “survival” and “belonging” don’t always line up in a neat ladder: they shift with context, flowing into each other based on what the moment demands.
(Maslow himself later wrote that self-actualization, isolated from the good of others, is not enough.)
So here’s where I land: when I’m in a flare, I’m not at the “bottom” of anything. I’m a whole person whose wholeness is expressing itself through pain signals, sky-high inflammatory markers, and the need for help. The friend who drives me to the ED, the one who texts updates, the provider who believes me—they aren’t helping me climb. They’re participating in a web that never stopped holding me.
An inquiry naming four enumerated acts—disputed by state officials—underscores why public, communal verification matters.
Indigenous Wisdom and the Web of Healing
During my weekend vacation to Ohiopyle, between moments of watching the Youghiogheny River flow over ancient rocks and reading under trees beginning their autumn transformation, I finally finished the sapphic graphic novel, “The Girl from the Sea,” and dove deep into texts about care, mutual aid, and Buddhist teachings. But what kept returning to me was the wisdom from the Indigenous worldviews document I’ve been studying—notably how profoundly different Indigenous American perspectives on healing are from Western clinical psychology.
The Lakota concept of Wakȟáŋ—often translated as “the Great Mystery” or sacred unknown—teaches acceptance of life’s mysteries. Rather than seeking absolute control or explanation for every tragedy, traditional Lakota psychology teaches that some things are unknowable to humans, and acknowledging this mystery is a form of wisdom and humility. This outlook promotes resilience by preventing the spirals of self-blame or the obsessive search for someone to blame when misfortune strikes.
As I sat with my compound grief—the fresh wound of this past week’s breakup layered upon older heartbreak over N—I found myself drawn to this teaching. The Western psychological impulse is to analyze, to understand, to see the pattern or the trauma or the attachment style that explains everything. But what if, as the Lakota teach, the very lack of certainty is deemed sacred?
The Navajo (Diné) worldview, encapsulated in the concept of Hózhǫ́ (Hozho)—harmony, beauty, and balance—offers another lens. Traditional Navajo psychology does not sharply separate “mental” health from physical or spiritual health; all are one. Illness or conflict is often interpreted as a disruption of harmony that must be restored through ceremony, prayer, and community support. My IC, my endometriosis, my PCOS—in this framework, these aren’t separate medical conditions to be managed individually, but manifestations of disharmony that require holistic restoration.
The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Seventh Generation Principle—that decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future—extends even to relationships. Every decision should result in sustainable relationships seven generations in the future. This perspective, based on The Great Law of Haudenosaunee Confederacy (written somewhere between 1142 and 1500 AD), formed the political, ceremonial, and social fabric of the Six Nations. Interestingly, this Indigenous system of government influenced Benjamin Franklin and the American Constitution—the United States formed its Constitution not on the principles of European governments, but rather on that of a people they considered “savages.”
When I think about my fertility journey, the bloodwork tomorrow morning, the hope and fear wrapped up in the possibility of creating life while managing chronic illness, I’m reminded that Indigenous worldviews have always understood what Western psychology is just beginning to grasp: we don’t earn wholeness; we express it together.
Spoonie Capacity Circle (Invisible-Illness Edition with Data Visualization)
I don’t climb back to hope; I rotate toward it.
This section is the how—the way I built a visual language that’s honest about flare physics, community load‑sharing, and the lies hierarchy tells.
I’m leaving the bruises and the river in the story; here are the receipts and rituals that turned a bad week into a data visualization model. Each figure answers a different design question. I’ll show you what I asked, what I tried, what I kept, and how to read everything.
Step 0 — Values & constraints (the brief my body gave me)
No ladders. Flares aren’t moral failures; they’re physics.
Interdependence is not optional. If the model can’t show who is holding what, it’s lying.
Scope is medicine. I need to see the gap between what’s asked and what’s possible.
A11y over aesthetic. Fewer hues, more position/length; alt text on everything.
Receipts, not vibes. If it happened, it’s in the data.
Tooling: R (ggplot2, dplyr, tidyr, ggforce, ggtext, geomtextpath, ggrepel, gt).
Core palette: ink #2C2C2C; self #6C757D; community/capacity #0072B2; demand #D55E00; domain accents—Physical #E08B95, Cognitive #FFD700, Emotional #9DC183, Spiritual #E6E6FA
Attribution: In conversation with @chronicallymeh’s capacity pyramid and Cindy Blackstock’s interdependent needs framing.
Step 1 — What happened? (establish my truth)
Artifact: Table 1 — Weekly Capacity Data
Sept 15–21 table across five domains; Sept 16 highlighted; Survival remains high relative to others.
Why start here: Before metaphors and circles, I need a clean ledger. The table is the audit log: dates, domains, numbers.
Design choices: Column‑wise heat cues for pattern‑finding; a shaded strip on Sept 16 (ED).
Mantra: If the story isn’t visible in the table, the chart is a costume.
Step 2 — What’s the arc? (show the week as a body)
Artifact: Fig. 1 — A Week of Crisis and Recovery
Five lines across Sept 15–21; cliff on Sept 16; uneven rebound.
What I tried: Ribbon plots and area charts (too shouty).
What I kept: Lines + light phase bands (Essentials → Expansive) so the nervous‑system V is legible without screaming. Direct labels beat legends.
How to read: The cliff is the ED. The crawl is recovery. Not character; chemistry.
Step 3 — If it’s not a ladder or pyramid, what is it? (mapping the system)
Artifact: Fig. 2 — Capacity Circle (crisis‑day snapshot, more metaphorical)
Donut of outer domains (Physical, Cognitive, Emotional, Spiritual) with inner nodes (Survival…Hope); thick links where the system actually held on Sept 16.
What I tried: A re‑skinned pyramid. It still lied.
What I kept: Concentric structure (ordered set, not rank) + connectors showing which outer domains carried the weight.
How to read: Radius ≈ strength; the curved links are live circuits. On my ED day, Physical + a whisper of Emotional‑to‑Hope are what held.
Translation: Belonging is not “above” survival; sometimes it delivers survival.
Step 4 — Who held what? (turning interdependence into data)
Artifacts:
Fig. 3 — Support System Activation (matrix)
Grid of capacities × domains; darkest tile at Survival×Physical; a flagged dot at Hope×Emotional; most cells quiet.
Figs. 4A–4B — Capacity Distribution (self vs. community)
Donuts show gestalt part‑to‑whole; bars make cross‑capacity comparison obvious (Survival most community‑held).
What I tried: Donuts only (pretty, but comparison‑weak).
What I kept: Both. Donuts for vibes only, bars for truth (length on a common scale).
How to read: On Sept 16, Survival is largely community‑held. The rest was mostly me, at great cost. That’s the lie of “independence” exposed in one row of bars.
Step 5 — Am I out over my skis? (scope and overdraft)
Artifact: Fig. 5 — The Capacity Field (capacity vs. demand)
Five radial sectors; solid (capacity) vs. dashed (demand); blue buffers and orange overdrafts shaded.
What I tried: Gauges (felt like dashboard cosplay).
What I kept: A radial horizon: center = me; radius = how far I can reach today. Dashed demand = what life is asking. The wedge between them = buffer or overdraft. (I know I need to edit this (and also provide way more design context for everything. Oh well.)
How to read: On ED day, Survival has a buffer; everything else is an overdraft. The medicine is scope, not shame.
Step 6 — What’s the larger cosmology? (situate the person within the community)
Artifact: Fig. 6 — Interdependent Needs Circle (Indigenous‑informed)
Concentric rings—center Person/Child; equal quadrants (Physical/Emotional/Cognitive/Spiritual); outer rings for Community Actualization, Land/Place, Cultural Perpetuity with seven beads.
What I tried: A four‑quadrant wheel alone (read as personality, not responsibility).
What I kept: Outside‑in reading order: Culture → Land → Community → Person. Equal quadrants on purpose. Seven beads mark time (not progress).
How to read: This is the why behind the how. If the web fails, the person collapses. If the web holds, even low capacity can be dignified.
Respect note: This is a facilitation aid inspired by Cindy Blackstock’s work—not an “official” diagram of any Nation. Use with attribution and local guidance. (I should probably dedicate another article to my design work.)
Step 7 — Iteration after the ED day (what I changed)
Language: Replaced “get back to” with “rotate toward” to stop implying altitude.
Encodings: Pulled quantity out of color where possible (moved to position/length).
Legibility: Direct labels everywhere; legends minimized.
A11y: Reduced hue count; consistent tokens for “self” vs. “community”; alt text on each image.
Practice: Added a daily thumbnail version of the Capacity Field for quick scope checks.
Step 8 — How I’m using this since a pyramid isn’t working for me
Snapshot honestly. Set today’s capacity horizon first.
Right‑size demand. Pull the dashed line inside the solid line. That’s care, not quitting.
Activate a connection. Use the matrix to pick one tile to light up (e.g., Hope×Emotional = text two friends).
Name who’s holding what. Bars make the ask concrete. Trade shame for logistics.
Repeat tomorrow. This is not a climb. It’s a rotation.
My Body, the Revolutionary
What if—stay with me—chronic illness is the body’s refusal to perform the lie of independence?
My IC forces interdependence. It says, “You cannot do this alone.” You need a friend who will drive. The provider who remembers (or at least can look up) the last flare. The person who sets a heating pad quietly by your elbow. The rest that capitalism frames as personal failure.
In my last piece, I argued that remedy is a verb—abolition-as-care, not just “feels.” If we can’t organize around the “mundane” crisis of chronic illness in the community, how exactly will we meet the spectacular crises in front of us? (If we can’t text “I need help” when our bodies hurt, what will we do when the world flames out harder?)
REST IS NOT FAILURE. (It’s bodily labor organizing. It’s refusal.)
When my friend picked me up for the ED on September 16, I wasn’t “falling down” the pyramid. I was activating a connection on my web. When I worked from my hospital bed between tests, I wasn’t “pushing through”—I was finding meaning in maintaining normalcy. When I texted updates to worried friends, that wasn’t a distraction from survival—it was survival through connection.
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Spoonie
“I truly don’t know how much longer I can live without living with a family (a family of my own),” I wrote on Facebook while waiting for my friend to come and drive me to the ED. Not because a romantic partner or a family member would “complete” me—absolutely not—but because this culture designs life around healthy couples and nuclear families. Everyone else is left to jerry-rig support from whoever can pick up the phone at 10 AM on a Tuesday.
The capacity pyramid quietly assumes there is someone to drive you (MAINTENANCE) and someone to help with chores (FUNCTIONING). It assumes care that our systems reserve for marriage or blood.
But here’s what the circular model makes visible: those of us who are disabled while single, while queer, while building chosen family—we’re not only managing symptoms. We’re architecting entire support infrastructures that are coupled or family-embedded, allowing people to inherit them. We’re building the web while living in it, thread by thread, connection by connection. Every text, every ride offer, every check-in—these aren’t just nice gestures. They’re the architecture of survival outside the nuclear family structure.
The pyramid can’t show this labor. It can only show us “failing” to maintain or function. The web shows the truth: we’re master weavers, creating networks of care in a society that assumes they already exist.
Mutual Aid as Medicine
During my Ohiopyle weekend, I re-skimmed Dean Spade’s “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next).” The book reminds us that mutual aid isn’t charity—it’s solidarity in action, recognizing that our fates are intertwined. As Spade writes, mutual aid projects “meet immediate survival needs while building shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.”
This resonates deeply with Indigenous approaches to community care. The Navajo Peacemaking system, for instance, sees conflict and illness not as individual failures but as breakdowns of relationships that must be mended communally. The modern Navajo Nation Peacemaking Program provides a traditional-culture alternative to Anglo-American justice by using Diné customs to address disputes through consensus and healing rather than punishment.
Similarly, the Wellbriety Movement, started by Don Coyhis (Mohican), integrates the 12-step program with Indigenous wisdom like the Medicine Wheel teachings. “Wellbriety is wellness and sobriety,” a holistic philosophy that addresses not just stopping alcohol/drugs but achieving balance in spirit, mind, body, and community. It explicitly invokes the “next seven generations” to inspire personal healing for the sake of future children.
Labeling trans people and allies as “terrorists” was proposed by a prominent policy shop; their release misstates incidence and has been criticized by legal and LGBTQ advocates as a surveillance expansion built on faulty premises. The proposal misstates facts; trans people are disproportionately targeted, not the cause of “most” school shootings. Mutual aid refuses that story: it insists our safety is relational, not carceral.
These frameworks understand what “The Care Manifesto” (which I also re-read/skimmed this weekend) articulates: care is our individual and shared ability to provide the political, social, material, and emotional conditions that allow the vast majority of people and living creatures on this planet to thrive. Care is not just an affective state or an ethical stance, but a social capacity and activity involving the nurturing of all that is necessary for the welfare and flourishing of life.
Navratri: The Goddess Cuts Away False Alliances
Yesterday marked the beginning of Navratri, the nine-night festival honoring the Divine Feminine (Shakti) in her various forms. The timing is not coincidental—this eclipse happening just before Navratri can be understood as Ma Durga cutting away false alliances and distractions so we can channel Her energy into joyful creation with discipline.
In my Raksha Bandhan post from August, I wrote about reimagining protection beyond gendered confines, choosing protection that is mutual, queer, and anti-authoritarian. The flyer I created for that ritual (though never posted publicly) declared: “A rakhi is not just a string. It is a spell. It says: I see your divinity and dignity. I offer my protection not as a savior, but as a sibling. I entrust you with mine.”
Now, as Navratri begins with my body sore and my heart both broken and grateful, I’m reminded that the Goddess appears not just in strength but in vulnerability. Durga rides into battle, but She also knows when to rest, when to grieve, and when to ask for help. The festival’s structure—nine nights of different aspects of the Divine Feminine—reminds us that wholeness includes all states: the fierce and the tender, the creative and the destructive, … and the independent and the interdependent.
My astrological forecast for yesterday’s eclipse noted that a mutable cross activation (Gemini-Virgo-Sagittarius-Pisces), which is about adaptability; the Goddess is teaching me how to adapt without scattering. The offerings I make during Navratri are not just prayers but commitments:
For Virgo (11th house): Offering flowers and prayers for right allies
For Pisces (5th house): Chanting mantras for discipline in creativity
For Gemini (8th house): Journaling around intimacy, healing, and shadow work
For Sagittarius (2nd house): Speaking affirmations of my values, setting clear financial intentions
What Actually Helps Me (A Working List)
Friends who answer “I’m going to the ED” with “Which one? I’m on my way,” not “Are you sure you need to?”
Providers who start with “Your pain is real,” then order the labs
Group chats where “bad flare day” is complete information
Banishing “I don’t want to be a burden” from my vocabulary (harder than I admit)
Treating rest as a protected collective resource, not a private moral failure
Remembering Blackfoot wisdom: we don’t earn wholeness; we express it together—even when horizontal, even hurting
Asking “Which connections need activation?” rather than “How do I climb back up?”
Recognizing that accepting help isn’t falling—it’s weaving
Understanding, as Pema Chödrön teaches, that groundlessness is not something to overcome but to befriend
Practicing what “The Care Manifesto” calls “promiscuous care”—caring more and in more ways
Remembering the Haudenosaunee teaching: every decision affects seven generations, including decisions about how we care for ourselves and each other
Treat breaking news like meds: consider your dosage, indications, and side effects.
Receipt‑keeping: link to report summaries and legal filings rather than paraphrase; keep yourself off the hot seat.
Today’s Sacred Ordinary
Here’s the unsexy personal update: I don’t know if I’ve ovulated yet and I’ll find out tomorrow when I get my labwork done (sigh), my inflammation is still high, blood pressure needs serious attention, and I’m writing this from my couch, laptop balanced on a blanket, my heating pad on, trying to let my mind be as still as my body is forced to be. Tomorrow brings more bloodwork for my fertility journey and a bladder instillation (for my IC).
Achievement culture would call this a lost day, even though I tended to my body and finished writing a long-ass, self-indulgent Substack article, but oh well. The capacity pyramid might place me somewhere between SURVIVAL and MAINTENANCE.
But maybe this is where transformation actually lives. Not in clawing my way up a triangle toward “hope,” but in practicing a web: saying yes when someone offers help; listening when my body says enough; letting meaning emerge in relation, not in performance.
As Chödrön writes about egolessness—one of the three marks of existence—the fixed idea of “me” and “mine” is the source of our suffering. When I can release the fixed idea of who I should be (productive, independent, climbing the pyramid), I can rest in who I actually am: a being in a web of relations, whole even in my brokenness, worthy even in my need.
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant— / Success in Circuit lies.” (Emily Dickinson) I’m telling the week slant—through bruises, rivers, and goddess days—because the body knows when truth lands too bright. So I honor the web: cite the receipts, protect the tender, and refuse the lie of independence.
Tomorrow I might function differently. Today I’m remembering that even in bed/couch I’m in relation to the friends who check-in and drop off soup, to the river at Ohiopyle that continues to flow over rocks worn smooth by time, to you reading this from your own couch, your own pain, and your own quietly revolutionary act of existing in a body that refuses to perform wellness.
That’s not the bottom of a pyramid. That’s the web—and the point.
Selected References
Updated October 2, 2025 (Modified APA with annotations style)
BBC News. (2025). “Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, UN commission of inquiry says.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8641wv0n4go — Notes “reasonable grounds” for four enumerated acts under the Genocide Convention; emphasizes that courts make binding legal determinations as receipt, not verdict.
BBC Live Desk. (2025). “Jimmy Kimmel show to return after suspension over Charlie Kirk comments.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c701jr01dj2o — Documents regulator remarks and artists’ letter; provides neutral chronology for the speech triage week.
BBC News. (2025). “Trump makes unproven link between autism and Tylenol.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx20d4lr67lo — Reports medical-consensus context, ACOG’s prudent-use stance, and a 2024 study finding no association.
The Advocate / The 19th. (2025). “Project 2025 architects want transgender people and allies designated as terrorists.” https://19thnews.org/2025/09/project-2025-heritage-foundation-transgender-attack/ — Outlines the policy push and its critiques; situates with incidence data showing trans people are disproportionately targeted.
El País (English). (2025). “Susan Faludi, the US journalist who foresaw the rights reaction, there’s very much a lord of the Flies feeling here.” https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-09-22/susan-faludi-the-us-journalist-who-foresaw-the-rights-reaction-theres-very-much-a-lord-of-the-flies-feeling-here.html — Captures Faludi’s analysis that backlash is now “blatant, shameless, cruel… the wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Blackstock, Cindy. (2011; 2019). Breath of Life Theory. — Centers community and self-actualization together; establishes seven-generation horizon and circular model of interdependent needs.
Chödrön, Pema. (1996). When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Shambhala. — Teaches about the four maras, three marks of existence, and groundlessness as path rather than problem.
Cross, Terry. (2007). Through Indigenous Eyes: Understanding Wellness. National Indian Child Welfare Association. — Articulates Indigenous frameworks where needs are interdependent rather than hierarchical.
Spade, Dean. (2020). Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). Verso. — Defines mutual aid as meeting immediate survival needs while building shared analysis of systemic causes.
The Care Collective. (2020). The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence. Verso. — Articulates care as political and social capacity involving the nurturing of conditions necessary for flourishing, not merely affective state.
Ravilochan, Teju. (2021). “The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy.” https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-06-18/the-blackfoot-wisdom-that-inspired-maslows-hierarchy/ — Synthesizes Blackfoot teachings and Cindy Blackstock’s framing; notes debates about appropriation and clarifies Maslow didn’t draw the pyramid.
Shivaramakrishnan, Shruti / @chronicallymeh. The Capacity Pyramid (Invisible Illness Edition). Social media content. — Provides everyday language framework: Survival → Maintenance → Functioning → Meaning → Hope.
Ostertag, Molly. (2020). The Girl from the Sea. Graphix. — Graphic novel exploring identity, love, and finding your people through sapphic lens.
REST IS NOT FAILURE. This is something I have to remind myself and my loved ones often. I really like your working list of things that actually help you. It has inspired me to do one of my own. As a fellow person with invisible chronic illnesses, I wanted to let you know that you are seen.