How Not to Lose Your Shit

When the X Shows Up Like Uncle Disney for Your Adult Twins Birthday Party

Oct 21, 2024

“If you think you're enlightened, spend a week with your family.” —Ram Dass

Welcome to Hogwarts—the scene of Abby and Libby’s 28th birthday celebration.

Dear Friends,

Thank you for being here and reading. A heads-up: I recount a traumatic incident, but not without offering a remedy to restore dignity and body autonomy. Your engagement means a lot to me. I write to harvest meaning. I respond to all comments to deepen our conversation.

I love men.

But I hate quoting the dominant male voice—especially the so-called God-gurus holding the keys to the promised land. Having spent more than half my life absorbing introjections from purity cults, where patriarchal enlightenment is idealized as a meditative state of transcendence—an out-of-body, heavenly realm detached from human experience—I proudly celebrate:

I am a woman, endowed with feminine consciousness and a womb that carried one baby full term. My twins' birth was dramatically interrupted by the brutal whims of the industrial medical complex. I possess an interior landscape that only I can know, give voice to, and make decisions for—a hard-won reclamation of erotic power, pleasure, and creativity. I want body autonomy for all women.

“If you think you're enlightened, spend a week with your family.” —Ram Dass

I make an exception for Ram Dass’s candid yet profound observation about how challenging family dynamics can expose unresolved issues, even after personal or spiritual growth. He was onto a phenomenon that, in modern spiritual parlance, is known as ‘spiritual bypass.’

Most people know Ram Dass as a countercultural spiritual teacher, author, and pioneer of the psychedelic movement, working alongside Timothy Leary in the 1960s to research the effects of psychedelics like LSD. His book Be Here Now became a seminal work in the Western spiritual movement, blending Eastern philosophy, mindfulness, and personal growth practices.

I was sitting in a chair at Dr. Zhu’s open acupuncture clinic, with my one-year-old twins crisscrossed over my chest in baby sling carriers. Dr. Zhu inserted about sixteen needles into their tiny scalps for twenty minutes. Libby had ongoing seizures (up to 100 a day), which Western medicine treated with numbing pharmaceuticals. Yet after just a few sessions, her seizures became rare—her brain’s plasticity was integrating the neurological treatments.

Dr. Zhu moved on to his next patient, an older gentleman in a wheelchair.

It was 1997, shortly after Ram Dass had suffered a severe hemorrhagic stroke. Cognizant but unable to speak—together—we received the tonic of the ‘healing triangle’ a philosophy in Dr. Zhu’s clinic—he emphasized three essential, equally important components for healing: the patient, the medicine, and the clinic/community. For six months, Ram Dass watched as my babies quietly endured needles twisting into their heads. I witnessed his fierce yet gentle determination for recovery.

Abby and Libby began receiving neurological acupuncture treatments from Dr. Zhu in 1997. They had three sessions a week for the price of one. Dr. Zhu was generous and kind, unlike any other. We saw him three times a week for two and a half years until he moved his clinic to San Jose. My babies were happiest wrapped tight or in their slings with needles in their scalps.

Dr. Zhu taught me that healing and growth don’t happen in isolation—we need each other. Ram Dass viewed his stroke as both a personal trial and a ‘gift’—an opportunity to deepen his spiritual practice and face the loss of control over his body. I was struggling with the consequences of medical negligence at my twins’ birth and the unknown terrain that lay ahead—a double ‘gift?’ Our exchanges were vulnerable, quiet, and mutually beneficial. I often reflect on that time with fond memories and cherish his undefended heart:

“Your little girls are my inspiration.”

What Does This Have to Do With Not Losing My Shit When the X shows up? Okay, lots, I’m getting there.

Here’s my memory of the timeline:

In November 1994, our first baby had an ecstatic home birth. I gave her the middle name, Bliss, as she initiated my journey into the mysteries of my body. Her dad and I were in the tenth year of our membership in a ‘cult’ that emphasized ‘Advaita Vendata±non-duality.’
In 1995, my partner, the dad, wrote a letter to his guru, who, upon receiving it, axed us from the cult. I had already psychically divorced myself from ‘guru land’ and was savoring the exquisite joy of motherhood.
In the spring of 1996, I became pregnant with twins—proof that my X and I had sex at least once more.
On October 18, 1996, my heroine’s journey began. I was 39, six months pregnant with twins, sleeping with my toddler snuggled at my breast. I woke with intense cramps. My midwife was at another birth, so I promised to go with her assistant to our local hospital for a check-up.
Upon arrival, the doctor on duty panicked:
"If these babies are coming, we don’t have the technology..."1

Suddenly—without consent—I was on a helicopter to Stanford, alone, without my abalone earrings—the ones my toddler dings with her tiny hands while nursing. My body was hijacked—stripped of her and my friends.

On October 21, 1996, after my midwife was denied entry to the hospital, multiple attempts to leave, and the failed administration of Pitocin to induce labor, my babies were C-sectioned out of my womb. They weighed one pound each and suffered serious brain damage. Libby required CPR twice.

Can you imagine the fuckernuckle family dynamic nightmare that ravished our lives?

Take a deep breath.

“The Wound is the Place where the Light finds You.” —Rumi

Decades of hours-long, fully immersive, mind-emptying meditation practice couldn’t keep the X in the family fold. We split up. I don’t blame him—I blamed myself and spent years chasing every possible way to “fix” my twins.

Over time, I discovered the brain and body’s remarkable capacity for healing. I had one LSD experience when I was sixteen with a friend in a hotel room. She had to call her older brother to coax me off the wall. I had zero interest in psychedelics after that. In 2007, I was introduced to indigenous plant medicine as an alternative path to healing. I wrote a bit about this in my essay: Drinking the Dark Brew. My training with the Shipibos and Ayahuasca showed me a spiritual healthcare system that allowed me to PURGE the shock, trauma, guilt, shame, and endless grief that I carried for not being able to protect my babies. And unlock the numbness in my body that disconnected me from my power, legs, womb, root, and Earth Mother. And STOP masking—anything including spiritual concepts that blind us. This is another powerful story.

In July 2021, I broke my leg while biking with Abby (my higher-functioning twin) on a three-wheeler tandem bike. It was a freak accident—the steering and brakes locked. We were heading straight toward a parked car. I slammed my foot down, seconds before crashing. My leg fractured in three places. I was ‘gifted’ a Full Stop. Maybe it was 2022?
It was my turn to use a wheelchair and reteach myself to walk. This injury became another opportunity—a personal trial and a gift that would take some time to unwrap. I was forced to reexamine my life and practice learning to receive by asking for support. I needed to learn to live in balance with masculine (producing/pushing/practical) and feminine (receiving/resting/intuition) energies. I had to unpack what remained buried in my shadow file—the things I had yet to see about myself with eyes wide open.

I name this the inner journey of meeting ‘Medusa’—the 'gift of rage. My deltoids burned day and night for weeks as I lifted my body around, fire building in my belly, questions cooked: With all of the prior work I’ve done—How did I end up here in bed unable to walk—similar to my twins? Ouch!

Later, a representative from DDS came to our house and asked me to recover my daughter’s files—the ones their bureaucratic establishment had lost—again.

That’s when I completely lost my shit. For twenty minutes I shook like a volcano, sweat, tears, guttural sounds, and hot lava poured out of me without apology.

“It is not my fault. I am not stitching together the pieces of someone else’s mistakes ever again. I’m done. It’s not my job. My plate is full. I’m done. done. done.”

The entire experience felt EPIC. One of Libby’s nurses listened from a nearby bedroom, afraid to join us. When they left, she came out applauding.

“I’ve never heard you like that. Good on you.”

It was ‘clean sacred rage’—Medusa. A source of power and freedom, often suppressed—contained in our bodies when betrayal, injustice, or power-over dynamics fuck with the lives of anyone Not of white male privileged status. Sacred rage releases ‘victim identity’ and acts as a massive course correction, paving the way for healthy boundaries and self-love. With it, presence, balance, and kindness naturally enliven us. I don’t have space to go into depth—a lot to unpack here.

If we don’t find a way to channel it, this rage lives on in us as ‘unconscious shadow material’—haunting us—until it becomes conscious.

I’m not saying, to model my messy example. Later, I met with the social worker to give her flowers. She inherited a dysfunctional system and was not to blame. Interestingly, my daughter’s files were quickly restored—without my help.

*I write and lead courses on The Mysteries of Women that include Reframing the Myth of Medusa and Receiving the ‘Gifts’ of her blood.

If I’d had access to Sacred Rage back in 2006, would my story be different? We found a video of the sonogram taken by my midwife’s technician. It showed the best-case scenario for carrying twins: two of everything—two placentas, an inner sac, an outer sac, and a dividing membrane. The best way to carry twins.

The docs were dead wrong!

Now I Can Tell You How I Don’t Lose My Shit When the X shows up.

I admit, I’ve never had my shit together. Uncovering personal and collective shadow in our bloodlines is a deep—ongoing dismantling and reframing work that has chosen me. Try as I may—I can’t stop digging.
It’s not my job to inventory my X’s files—personal or otherwise.
He has his scars—I have mine. I’m not here to change or fix anyone.
In reframing the ‘Medusa Myth,’ I’m unpacking rage and leaving victimhood behind—forever.
I see the sickness embedded within the industrial medical complex and the 'power-over' dynamics of patriarchal systems and culture as harmful to everyone. No one wins until we embrace “We and With”—not either-or; not us versus them… We live on a spectrum of possibilities. ‘Normative’ is nothing more than a conceptual ideal endorsed to sustain capitalistic minority rule and rape children of our Great Earth Mother. I refuse to collude.

“If you think you're enlightened, spend a holiday with your X or ‘Medusa.’” —Prajna O’Hara

The twins’ birthday party was celebrated yesterday, Saturday. They turned 28 on the 21st. I wrote a few popular notes about the possibility of losing my shit—but I didn’t. Writing was the purge that allowed me to rest and be in life anew.

Autumn (older sister) and Abby made this splendid ice cream cake. Abby is wearing her Olivia Rodrigo sweatshirt.

Here’s how it went:

My oldest daughter and her girlfriend came in as generators and orchestrated the most amazing party yet—ice cream cake, balloons, Harry Potter everything, pizza reservations, and the guest list. After pizza, we stepped into ‘Hogwarts,’—our front room transformed into a magical witchy wonderland. Wands were waved, glasses donned, and spells cast—all with Olivia Rodrigo spinning on Abby’s record player. Old and new friends arrived to celebrate two special young women who are the strongest and happiest people I know.

The highlights:

Abby managed to blow out two candles—one for her and one for Libby—after five determined attempts. I could feel the adult ‘enablers’ aching to jump in and blow them out for her. But by restaining ourselves with tender patience, she received a well-deserved dose of confidence.

You got this Abs! One more candle to go. Do it for Libby. She did. The crowd roared.

Libby, however, had intermittent moments of overstimulation. I do what comes naturally, I whispered, “Libby, don’t lose your shit.” As always whenever she hears a ‘swear’ word, she busts into uproarious laughter, which quickly becomes contagious.

My X didn’t have a woman by his side. I hadn’t realized how much I enjoyed seeing him share his life with another person. I felt sad for him. This reminded me of when he was close to dying from kidney failure and asked if I would take a compatibility test to donate one of my healthy kidneys to his frail body.

Without hesitation, I said, “Yes, of course.”

Until I told my good friend, and she snapped me back to reality:

“What are you, nuts? What if something happens to you? Who will be their parent?”

Good point. It says something about the mystery of love. It seems that once you love someone or something—Love is unbreakable. It shifts, bends, and changes shape—but it never leaves completely.

Ask Woody. He knows all there is to know about love. Our loyal friend.

Thank you for receiving your dose of The Salty Crone.

I would love to hear from you in the comments.

The Salty Crone—Prajna O'Hara

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