This episode was recorded from my new family room in Colorado, sitting in front of an enormous stone fireplace, looking out at snow I can’t even quantify. Eight inches. Ten. Maybe three feet. Who’s to say. What matters is that it’s here. And that I am here.
This is a fireside reflection on why I left Cincinnati when I did, and why it was never just about the cold. It was the gray. Grief already compromises the nervous system. Seasonal depression was already part of my pattern even when Patrick was alive. I was not going to stack suffering on top of suffering this year.
I talk about the stress of moving inside grief, what it meant to pack one box at a time, and the quiet moment when I realized my memory was starting to come back. Not all at once. Just enough to notice. Enough to feel like progress.
From there, the episode moves into a complete redefinition of strength. Not endurance. Not white knuckling. Not grit. Strength as slowing down. Listening before the body screams. Paying attention to insomnia, hunger, money, and the ways the nervous system tells the truth long before the mind catches up.
I share the moment I had to write a thirty-one-thousand-dollar check to the biohazard company, and how money hits the body as safety when everything else has already fallen apart. Grief is not just emotional. It is cellular. It disorients time, memory, purpose, and identity.
The story of Operation Hummingbird unfolds through the drive west with Matt and Rachel, a ridiculous game of Would You Rather, and the moment lunch turned into tears when my body finally had enough fuel to let the sadness arrive. “Well, I’ve eaten. So now I’m sad.”
This episode weaves through coping, sobriety, nervous system capacity, and why grief cannot be met with toughness. I talk about softness, pliability, and why you can’t harden around loss without calcifying around what’s missing.
There is space here for psilocybin, not as escape, but as widening the riverbanks so feeling can move again. For trust without clarity. For the hummingbird as symbol, flying without a map and believing the nectar will appear.
I talk about hope as location, not optimism. Where it lives for me right now. Where it doesn’t. About not wanting to be with anyone and not wanting to be alone. About changing in order to survive, and the fear of not knowing who I am becoming.
The episode closes with beauty that isn’t pretty, and the question grief keeps asking underneath everything. Can you love without an object. Can you stay open when there is no repair.
This episode does not offer resolution.
It offers honesty.
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1 ora e 2 min