What prison are you in?
Trigger warning: suicide reference
For two years I lived on the grounds of Folsom Prison. Ages 11 and 12, fifth and sixth grade.
I experienced a lot of familial upheaval during that time - death, destruction, divorce.
One summer I lost all my cats to Parvo virus. I watched one of them convulse and die right in front of me on the front porch, feeling powerless in my ability to do anything but watch, horrified. I found another, following the scent of death to our garage. Sure enough, there it was, bloated from sitting for days in the hot summer heat.
That same summer my beloved Boxer, "Buster", died. He snapped his neck chasing something while tethered to a chain. We had just moved in and hadn't been able to put up a fence yet.
Buster didn't know chains before then. He didn't know how they work. That while he felt free to breathe the air and sit outside listening to the birds and doing his job of "guarding," he wasn't really free.
Buster was filled with a special kind of mischief. He loved Christmas, especially the tree. He would press his wet nose up against the tree-shaped bulbs and then abruptly pull-back and shake his head, thoroughly offended at the audacity of the lamp's heat burning his snout. And then he would forget about it and try again.
There was the time he ate the Thanksgiving pies while we were out. He left not a single solitary crumb. You would think the pies never existed -- Schrodinger's pies. The pie tins looked like they had actually been washed. I mean, if he had opposable thumbs and the ability to place them on the dish rack "to dry," we would have simply put them back in the cupboard. He was so good and efficient and thorough in his theft.
There was another time he sat by my side while I, dressed in my yellow terry-cloth bathrobe, was making my lunch for school.
I carefully laid out the bread slices, spread them with mustard and mayonnaise, placed slices of bologna and cheese on them, and then walked all the ingredients back to the fridge.
When I got back to my sandwich to pack it up in a baggie and put it in my lunchbox, it was gone. All I saw was Buster, still as a mouse, in the same spot. It was a real mystery.
I often lived in a dream state then and thought that maybe I had imagined making that sandwich. Until I saw Buster in the corner of my eye. He got sloppy and one of the bread slices slipped so he had to snatch it hastily with a second bite. Again, he was so fast and efficient.
This happened three times.
The day Buster died, he was on his chain longer than he should have been because my Stepdad had been called away.
His youngest brother, whom he adored more than life itself, died tragically while swimming in the American River. He and some of his friends in their early to mid-20's had been diving into the river from heights of 10-20 feet into what they thought was a place free of rocks below.
It wasn't.
His last dive was his last dive and it broke my stepdad. It cracked open his soul and he was never the same. It was the tipping point for the pain he had been carrying around for the bulk of his life after being the one to find his oldest brother dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. My stepdad was a child then, maybe a young teen. Still, a child.
I watched from the kitchen window as my stepdad and his friend carried Buster's stiff body from where he lay to a garbage bag until they could dig a grave for him. We dug a lot of graves that summer. We dug them near the one lone tree in our small backyard and I made a wooden cross to honor them.
From a young age I became hyper sensitive about the prisons we live in, and most of them have nothing to do with walls.
The first prison I met was religion.
The stepdad I mention above was the only father figure that ever made it feel like we were a family. (Until he cracked, of course.) He and my mom met while living in Southern California (Riverside), and we all moved together to Northern California when they were both hired to work at Folsom Prison.
He was Mormon and I, ever wanting to please and be the good daughter, decided that a good way to bond with my stepdad would be to share his religious tradition, even though I was baptized Catholic and the Catholic Church and traditions were all I knew. It was my way of manufacturing spiritual glue to help bond our new family.
We went to a few different temples to try them out. I already knew at a young age how important the vibe of a person or a place was. How you felt "in aura" indicated how safe that person or place was and how relaxed and free you could allow yourself to be -- whether or not you had to look for the exits.
After going to two or three different temples, I stopped. They all said pretty much the same things as the Catholic Church. That there was no direct connection to God and that you had to go through an intermediary or buy your way to preferential treatment and "Heaven" through good works or donations.
I had a very direct connection to God at that time and there was no way I was going to give that up and buy into these human-made constructs that I needed to distance myself from the relationship I already had, to go through someone else and all the static and vibratory distortion of their own lives and ideas they would bring to that channel. (I was spiritually precocious then, though I didn't realize it at the time.)
The worst prisons are the ones we can't see.
They're the prisons of other people's expectations that we've used to justify our foundation and establish a perimeter of what we're "allowed" to do or desire.
They're the prisons of the masks we wear to decorate our walls and paint the scenery in order to elicit the desired perceptions of who we are: how powerful we are, how successful we are, how desirable we are.
They're the prisons we place ourselves in to keep us from being too big, too extraordinary, too "bright."
I have recently discovered that my own prison -- the last prison I am here to dismantle for myself and my life -- is the one I built all by myself through my own self-oppression. I am both the jack boots and the warden. I am the metal bars and the heavy lock on the door. I am the concrete walls, ceiling, and floor.
I have been studying my Human Design for four solid years now, and living it intentionally in every moment that I'm fully aware and in my body.
In every design there are things we love, things we hate, and things that make us feel very uncomfortable or frightened, until we realize that there is no good or bad in a design and that every part of it is there to support us in our life's journey to our highest expression of self.
In my own design I have the Gate of Oppression four times.
FOUR.
TIMES.
There are only 26 activations in your Human Design chart and Oppression is 15% of mine with the lines of an investigator, a hermit, and a martyr.
If Sisyphus had a Human Design chart, this would be it. Ambition in the Personality Sun gate at the top of the mountain and the ever-present oppression of that fucking boulder and inability to stop pushing it after it rolls back down the hill. What a joke -- an extraordinary gift on the one hand, and shackles that prevent me from ever fully experiencing or expressing it on the other.
I have avoided looking at these activations for years because I hate their name and the idea of them. But as I deepen my academic and professional journey to become one of the world's most trusted authorities and practitioners of this powerful knowledge and tool to unearth and reclaim the sovereign self, I have started looking at them. If I don't look at my own shadow, how can I support anyone else in looking at theirs?
I have started to unpack my fear of them. I have started to look at them with curiosity and love. I have started to see the good in them, which is allowing me to finally reframe them -- not from a place of 'woe is me' powerlessness or victimhood, but a place of genuine grace, gratitude, and transformation.
It's one thing to know your Human Design and it's another to actually live it.
Living it is simple, but not easy. It involves following your embodied intelligence (instead of your mind) for decision-making. This is the first part.
The second part is to be aware of your conditioning -- all the messages that aren't you, but that you've wallpapered your inner self with in order to "fit in" or find acceptance or make invisible your extraordinary uniqueness.
The conditioning we inherit from our parents and ancestors, the conditioning of our childhood, and the conditioning that persists into adulthood create the prisons we live in, and the blueprint for your particular prison can be found in the openness in your Human Design. It's everything in white and it's incredibly empowering when you can unmask it by simply following your embodied intelligence known as your Strategy and Authority.
What prison are you in?
Download your chart to see where you're confining yourself to a life that's much smaller than it needs to be.
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Note: Every Human Design chart is more than the sum of its parts, and every element of a chart affects — and is affected by — every other element. Human Design is a deeply layered, complex system that integrates eastern and western traditions and wisdom. When I share discrete elements of a chart, I am simply sharing glimpses into the mechanics of Human Design (and the Gene Keys) to show others how they, too, can discern practical insights from their own charts into their uniqueness and the patterns of thought, behavior, conditioning, emotions, and psychology that keep them from achieving their highest potential or living their best life.
