Symptoms of the System: AN INTRODUCTION & The END

and for me? A much needed rest. I'll be back. Until then, I think we should sit down somewhere among the ether and connect.

Symptoms of the System is a raw, poetic exposé of how survival in modern society has been twisted into a performance. It explores how trauma, poverty, and inequality are systemically engineered, and how empathy itself has been commodified—turned into theater for the powerful. Using examples from celebrity philanthropy, influencer-led fundraising, and mega-church institutions, the series dismantles the lie that “goodness” is measured by giving back what was never yours to take. It asks a bold question: What if we stopped auditioning to be seen as worthy? And offers a radical answer: Care doesn’t have to be conditional. We already are the safety net. We just have to remember.

One or more of these essays, chapters, articles or pieces of prophecy contains “strong language.” I thought about removing the first one I noticed.. In my final edit.. Right there among citing carefully sourced works that support my work: FUCK.

Maybe it was fucking, maybe it was fucked.

I thought about removing it. Selected the letters with my mouse, dragging the highlight across them from K to F, hit delete and thought—

Nah, fuck that.

Sometimes I wonder—

does it make me seem more educated,

or less,

when I can’t find any other word than

FUCK.

to get my meaning across.

I don’t have an education,

at least not in the way most people mean it.

But sometimes,

I think it makes us more educated—

not in the academic sense,

but in the way that says:

“I’ve lived through so much bullshit that only one word still carries the weight.”

FUCK is a thesis.

A protest.

A prayer.

A mantra.

A pressure release.

It’s not lazy— it’s distilled.

Because when language fails,

fuck tells the truth.

So that’s it. That’s my introduction. If you want to know who I am here’s what would be on the back of my book:

I was born on a Saturday close to midnight, 21 days overdue to a 16 year old surviving her own systems of oppression, merconium, baby's first shit, throughout my system, from mouth to ears to down my throat and esophagus, when I was 16 my dad made a joke to a friend that my funeral would be on a Tuesday, the system had already been failing me, and I had started the process I now know as preferring to write myself to death than waiting for others to do it instead. Those poems full of longing and despair to just be allowed to be me. To find me. To understand me. Because the performance felt fake, but everyone else seemed to know their lines. My opening night arriving each new school year, new stage, new set, new leading characters, always handed the wrong script while the audience laughed and mocked that I didn’t get it right. The community I return to finding me then—the lost, the broken, those at the edge. Survival too ugly and messy for the world, even though the world, society. The ones who mocked our hand-me-downs and Kmart trends through imitation at knee level. Following with threats only sharp in my survival of my own inflictions of punishment.

I was locked in a cycle of shame and punishment through the first man to teach me a version of love that wired me for survival, to institutions, programming, court rooms, and departments that had once promised to save me only to find myself stuck in a crack. I found my own way out, Not above, not beyond. But as Robert Frost once spoke into my blueprint: Through. Through upending my life for what I still hope is the final time in walking away from what I thought I was supposed to do, to finding my way here. Chronically ill, struggling, feeling unsupported, unheard, silenced, dismissed and sick of being told I don't know what I'm talking about... or the forever a knife through my heart, the words that have ripped my soul apart since I knew what they meant: It is, what it is. What can we do?

Someone recently described the world as a runaway train on a track getting faster and faster and you just end up where you end up, and you either ride the train or you get off. and I say fuck that. Who told you the train couldn't fucking stop? slow down? run efficiently? cause they reverse engineered that myth and sold it back to you. and you paid with your silence and defeat.

Me? I’ve got nothing to lose and everything to leave behind.. So I wrote this. I couldn’t sleep. Maybe I can now. For 2 weeks now. The insomnia has persisted. Through headlines, dismissed conversations taken to notepads and apps, and unfolded in this order on Substack.. If you’d prefer close this book or document and head on over there instead. Where the real conversion is happening.. My goal: Encourage a collective coming together that changes the world. I don’t care if it’s tomorrow, next week, or 125 years from now when the universe will find another collection of voices and then do anything and everything it can, to bring them together. Every time we’ve been missing context. Maybe we need more. Maybe this is enough. Maybe. After I rest this series will have evolved with new voices and we can build something new. Maybe I’ll come back with more to throw into the ether. Until then. I need to rest. So I apologize that my posts will be scheduled and dripping with clickbait and CTAs that grab your attention. And podcasts with vocals that awaken your empathy.. After all that’s My certificate in Social Media Marketing from BYU-Idaho taught me to do.

This is your formal invitation to start at the beginning.

Where this entire Series took shape: