The Painful Truth: We Create Our Own Emergencies
The Box
The golden rays came in through the little window of my basement apartment. The way the light hit, it was perfect — the hour, the moment — and we were ready. We wanted to capture it, to launch with it, to drop into the richness of the moment so profoundly we could feel it in every cell of our bodies — together. We took out a new strain, recently bought from a new dispensary, highly recommended by a new budtender. We packed our bowl, and as the lighter touched the green it pulled into a deep cherry red ember. The glass filled with smoke and a swift slide released the torrent. In, hold, and out. The swirls of vapor dancing through the sunlight.
I was the basement. Buried, I could feel the cold earth piled up against me. But I was starting to see the sun again — to feel the warmth. The light shining into me, the golden rays filling me.
Up until then every minute of every day felt like a march into the void of inevitability. Every action I took was building a life I didn’t want. A box I couldn’t get out of. And I didn’t know how to stop until someone brought me into the moment. One puff was all it took to realize I was safe in my immediate environment — and putting down the weight of survival for a few hours let all of that settle… I was ready to do it again.
At first it was like all the other times.
And as we sat there, sinking into the sofa, he turned to me. Not the beautiful happy boy I knew — but one filled with terror — pale — fear struck in his eyes. A panicked hand — stiff and cold — snatched my wrist, clawing in tight.
His voice hardly able to make the sounds — “Hold me.”
His other hand shot up, twisting deep into my shirt — anchoring — I could feel the panic welling up with every passing moment. I grabbed him hard, pulled him towards me, and we found our way to the floor.
We spent the next two hours huddled up. The biggest bear hug I could manage — but it wasn’t enough. He was gone, in his head, out of his body, I don’t know. The person I loved, terrified, lost in a place I didn’t know how to get him back from. Helpless, there was nothing more I could do, but wait.
We fucked up.
I’ve thought about that moment a thousand times since. What went wrong? How did we get there? It wasn’t the setting — we were in our safe space, golden light, comfortable. It wasn’t the intention — we wanted to relax, to enjoy the moment. It wasn’t even the preparation — same dose, same methods, same tools.
It was the strain.
We were playing Russian roulette and we didn’t even know it. We set our sights on the green world — that space of ease and presence and connection that we’ve been to a hundred times. We did everything we knew — and what we knew we did right — but we still missed. And we missed BAD.
We blindly trusted a recommendation. We did what everyone does: walk into a dispensary, ask what’s good, take what they give you. None of those links had the language — not us, not them — to know what those molecules would do inside his body that afternoon.
And here’s what I couldn’t see then: we’d already been set up to fail. Not by the budtender. Not by the dispensary. By something much deeper.
I don’t know how old I was, but it was the first house I remember — a landing at the top of the stairs, between the bedrooms and the bath. I shared a room with my brother, stocked full of our toys. But one day the room across ours caught my attention — specifically, the barbies that sat waiting on the floor in front of the dresser.
The first time I wanted to, I stopped. I was never encouraged — always given something else. So I went back to my room. But a few days later it happened again. I saw them, the barbies, just lying on the ground. As if they were asking someone to come play, and I truly couldn’t think of a reason why not.
So I started to play, and play and play. And I got lost like any child would. Lost in the land of imagination and wonder — until I was interrupted. Their laughing broke me out of it. I turned around, barbies still warm in my hand, to see the fingers — pointed at me.
Boys don’t play with dolls.
A line that echoed in my head for decades.
Don’t get me wrong. The people in that doorway are some of the most important people in my life. I love them from the deepest place in my heart. They shaped me. They protected me. Years later, one of them would be the first person to show me what the world could be.
But on that day, standing in that room, I felt the world get smaller. Not because they were cruel. Because they were surprised. And their surprise told me something I carried for years — that the part of me that crossed that hallway was a part I needed to hide.
And every day, in a hundred different ways, it got reinforced. A look that lingered too long. The way people responded when I chose certain clothes. The way I walked. The way I talked. All day long, barraged — trying to cross lines to find myself, just to get pushed back by someone’s small comment. Comments we don’t know how to stop making.
We’re given what worked for someone else — a box built around their piece of the world, the one that got them through. We live in it. And then we hand it to the people we love — because it’s all we had. That’s not cruelty. That’s love from survival. And it’s the only love most of us know.
When my family saw me step outside — into that room, with those barbies — they pulled me back. Not because they wanted to crush me. Because they’d seen what happens out there — and they were scared. They love me. It just happened to be love that didn’t fit what I needed.
I put the barbie down. I went back to my room. And eventually I learned to stay in the box I was given. That’s the blue world. Not a place. A hunger that never ends because you won’t let yourself eat what you’re actually hungry for.
And that’s the thing. One person’s slice of infinity is different from anyone else’s. We are unique individuals with unique needs. If I force what works for me onto someone else — that’s me locking someone into a box that’s not theirs. It’s denying them what they need to eat. And when they can’t have what’s actually theirs, they grasp. Not because they’re greedy — because they’re starving for something specific and feeding themselves everything but. And in that desperation they break something.
A child, a counter, a culture.
The medical cannabis world was a green garden. Budtenders like Foster who knew the plants, knew their patients, knew which molecules did what in which bodies. That language was protection. It was care. It was someone who could spend forty-five minutes with you at the counter making sure you hit the mark.
Then recreation hit. And the flood came — consumers and capitalists alike — millions of people crushed in their own boxes, desperate for relief — to feel relieved from the hunger, the starvation — looking to give themselves something to fill the void of their self denial. All of us reaching for the green world through the only door we could find — cannabis. And as we did, blue money poured into the green system — and it did what blue always does — it took. It scaled. It prioritized profit over people. It replaced Foster with a label. It gutted the very language that could have caught someone before they missed. They destroyed the green sanctuary before most people knew what it could do for them.
A box that doesn’t fit sends you reaching. And what you grab, you break. Not because you mean to. Because you’re falling, and you don’t know how to stop. You’re grasping from a void you can’t name — clawing at whatever and whoever is closest, breaking the green things that could have shown you the way out. And the wreckage gets passed down. This is our normal. Our culture.
That’s what happened in that basement. Two boys who needed help from a system that had already been eaten alive by the same disease they were carrying.
We create our own emergencies. Not out of carelessness. Out of a lack so deep we don’t even know it’s there — because the box we inherited told us it was normal. And that night on the floor? It didn’t just come from the blue world. It built more of it.
Breaking Out
The first day of class I leaped up the stairs — excited to start my new journey. A pile of shoes punctuated the note: leave footwear here. I kicked mine off and stumbled through. A casual school, I thought to myself.
I crossed through the doorway and stepped into this grand room — ceilings that felt a story high, windows all around from floor to sky. And as I was hit by the space, continuing to walk forward, I looked down at the ground. About ten people scattered in a circle — some on pillows, some laying down — notebooks and pens strewn all around.
I saw their faces, their bodies in that space with mine. Neat, I thought. These are the people I’ll be studying with for the next year. And there wasn’t anything but fact. No judgment, no expectation, no competition. And trust me — I’m very competitive. But it just wasn’t there.
I scanned the circle and ended on her — Andrea. Sitting, mudra in hand, holding the space. Her smile guided me across the circle and I found my seat. I studied under her, graduated, worked, and trained with other teachers — but nothing came close to explaining what I felt in that room. Nothing came close to the talks and the lectures, the understanding she had given to me there. So I came back, and she took me deeper.
Her kitchen smelled like bologna salad. The lemon tree outside kept tapping the window like it wanted in. And it was in these moments — when it was just the two of us — lost deep in discussions on the mysteries of life, our embodied experience, and the world around us — that I could feel it again.
She knew why I was there — it was our agreement — she would help me open that energy inside myself. That was her work — what she lived for. And I agreed to receive it.
The practice? The training? The mystical rituals that I learned so deeply under her command?
Chores. I cleaned that kitchen. Swept, vacuumed, mopped the floors throughout her house. Dusted the shelves and straightened the pillows.
Feel the richness, she’d say — in her Austrian accent that made everything sound plausibly magical. The richness in the sponge. The plate. The water. The soap. The air in the room. The floor under your feet. All the sounds, the sights, the smells, the tastes and textures. She was always guiding me into the same place — right here, right now, with everything it’s already holding.
And I didn’t understand at first. But try it — right now. Feel what’s under your hands. The texture of it. The temperature. Feel the weight of your body in the chair. The air on your skin. The sounds in the room you didn’t notice until just now. That’s one second. One moment. And it’s already more than you can hold.
That’s what I found at the sink. The sponge — the plushness, the air inside it. The water washing over my hands. The plate — the ridges, the edges. The soap — slick, alive, molecules. Every moment was full. Overwhelmingly full. And that’s just the sink. Turn off the water, pick up the towel — different. Walk across the room — different. Every moment of every day is overflowing with experience. And those are only the experiences around us! There’s a whole world full of experiences in every single moment. That’s the overflow — knowing there’s more than you can ever have anyway. And in that overflow, you can find what actually matters to you — what nurtures you. You have the space, the time, and the clarity to ask and answer — what am I really hungry for? What box am I trapped in? Am I trapping others? How do I expand and prune the box I have so it fits me perfectly?
That’s what she was showing me. There’s so much right here, right now. More than I could ever need.
And as I took care of her space and mine — intentionally — I started to notice something: every time I cleaned the kitchen, the light filtered through it differently. The space itself seemed to change — like gravity’s pull and time itself was different. The more intention I put into every little detail the stronger that shift.
She used that shift for everything — sessions, classes, workshops, retreats. I’d clear the room, bring it to neutral, and she’d build from there. On nights her living room was packed with people I would sit on the floor by her feet. She would lecture, and wait for the energy to come in — and when it was there she would translate it. And in that space — when she let herself be so open — I could feel cool drafts pouring out from around her — like tendrils of space itself opening into infinite possibilities. She was so deeply in the moment that the room couldn’t help but follow her there. The green world she’d built around herself was thick enough to hold everyone in it.
Andrea built her own box. And because she gave herself what she needed, the love for herself and her life followed — and the richness flooded in. She could tend herself, tend her space, tend the people who came to her — because she approached it all from that place of abundance.
She called it an island — what she wanted to build. And she was creating a wave. She only needed ten people to catch this energy so strongly — so intentionally — that it can spread. She said there was a window — we needed to make it happen. Everything became obsessive — every morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Every moment of every day was spent fighting to find this energy. To find the boxes we’ve been crammed into and to reshape them — to expand what serves us, prune what doesn’t — to love ourselves and our lives so much that it spills over into others. And we fought and we fought — and life turned into a blur — but suddenly I realized — I finally have the choice. I can finally build the box that’s mine. I can write a new path for myself. And something inside me began to celebrate — and as I did, she became distant.
Not a choice of her own — she was sick.
And she was dying.
Just four months later she was gone.
I was stunned. I had a new self, but no one to share it with. No one who knew what we went through to get there. And in that loss, I was furious at myself — all my training in prevention, all my knowledge, my theories — and I missed it. She told me she was fine. And I believed her.
I vowed — never again. I’ll learn to see it coming.
Teddybears
So I went to work on the ambulance. To learn the medicine Andrea couldn’t teach me — to see the suffering, the disease, and the death up close. And what I found confirmed everything she taught me. Call after call, different people, different stories, same root cause. Someone is starved, and the way they reach out hurts themselves and everyone around them.
A father was abusive, and one day the mother had enough. She hurried her four-year-old into the backseat of the car — they were moving so fast she didn’t even get buckled in. Neither of them. The mom just took off. As fast as she could, down the road, away from the husband, the house, maybe her whole life. And in the flurry of her escape she sped past two police officers — who see a car flying down the road. Code-3. Their lights and siren only add to the blur of this woman’s chaos — she loses control and slams into a parked car. Someone hits the front windscreen — the mom, the daughter, we don’t know. We only see the wreckage as we pull up. And a mom being surrounded by police.
She had pulled herself out of the car, grabbed her baby — and in her panic — in her flight mode — she continued to run. But the police were there — trying to talk her down, trying to figure out the situation.
We hardly had time to park before our backdoors were open and a fire medic jumped in with the child — he managed to snag her before she hit the ground. PD had to restrain the mom. We could still hear the commotion over the hysterical 4 year old. A quick exchange of words, and the backdoor slammed shut.
“Get us out of here!” The medic yelled.
The husband was on his way.
The ambulance roared, breaking through the flow of traffic on our unyielding advance towards the hospital. Sirens echoing off every surface, the supplies rattling in their cabinets, the whole rig swaying through every dodged car. She’d been ripped from the only safe thing she knew — her mom. Her mom who was in distress — restrained — as she was locked in this cabin and taken away. She doesn’t know to where. And she was left with nothing recognizable. Not the people, not the car, not the seat — not what we were asking her, not what we were doing to her.
My partner is in the back with her, unable to tell her that we’re the good guys — that she’s going somewhere safe, to rest, with people who will take care of her. She can’t understand. So he goes to our linen cabinet and pulls out something wrapped up tight. Just another mystery to her — something that adds to the anxiety. But as he unwraps it he slowly reveals — a teddybear. She pushes it away. Doesn’t even take the time to look at it. Everything we’ve done has upset her and she doesn’t trust us. So he puts it by her feet.
And she’s crying and crying, and he inches it up, and she continues to cry. And as he brings it closer and closer her eyes open. Hands still wiping the tears, breath still shaky, but she sees it — the plush brown bear. He moves it up another inch. And behind the crying, the sobbing, the tears — you can see her recognize what it is. You can see her think about it. And as it inches closer the presence of the bear itself invites her in — to connect.
She snatches it. Brings it in tight. Hugs it close to her chest.
And the rig goes quiet. Nothing but the swing of the ambulance rocking her, and the smooth siren lulling her to sleep.
I looked at that little girl and I saw it — the whole chain.
And I recognized the machine. Because it was the same one at a different volume.
A father trapped in his box — starving for something he won’t give himself — pressing in so hard he beats the people around him. A mother who reshapes herself to survive him — who bends her box to fit his because that’s the only way she knows how to stay safe. A little girl who inherits all of it and takes that box into herself.
Same machine that pointed at a kid holding a barbie has destroyed others who’ve destroyed others who’ve destroyed others. A stare becomes a joke becomes an insult becomes a fist. Same machine, different volumes.
The father didn’t set out to put his daughter in the back of an ambulance. He was living in the only world he knew. And every day he didn’t tend what was growing inside him was a day it grew against them.
And it rolls forward. Someone says something cruel to you — you’re hurt, you take it out on someone else. A little comment, something small — it’s not about them, it’s about you and what you need. You take from them to fill your void — and that opens a void in them, and they take from the next person, who takes from the next. Around and around it goes until it finally comes back. And it hits again, but the original injury was never resolved, so now you’re dealing with two injuries, then three, then four. Before you know it you’re so hurt that you’re swinging and punching — breaking anything in reach.
This is what we have.
I fought to get those bears on the rigs. Nobody thought it was necessary.
But when you’re present with a child — really present — you see it. Strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers wearing uniforms — gear so tough it’ll survive a fire. Metal walls, plastic railings, the constant rattle of supplies. The bright lights shining on you. Everything cold, everything hard, everything designed to keep a body alive and nothing designed to make a child feel safe. And you can’t explain why to a four-year-old. But what you can do — what anyone would do — is give them something soft to hold. Just give them a bear. It’s the simplest, most obvious thing in the world, if you’re actually looking.
That bear wasn’t on the rig by accident. It was there because of intention. Because Andrea taught me to be present — and presence on the ambulance meant I could actually see the child, not just the patient. And when you see them, the answer is so obvious you can’t believe nobody thought of it before.
The Invitation
Here’s what I’ve learned.
When my box doesn’t fit — when I’m starving inside it — I can’t see you. And when I can’t see you, you reshape yourself to survive me. You bend your box to fit mine — the same way it’s always been passed down. And now you’re starving too. And now you can’t see me either. And we drive each other deeper into the darkness.
But when my box fits — when I’ve found my piece of infinity and I’m not starving — I can see you. I can listen. I can support. I can encourage. I can give you the space you need to find your own box — to cross your own hallway without someone standing in the doorway. And instead of driving each other into the darkness, we can finally let the sunlight in.
I think about that basement a lot. Two boys in the golden light, reaching for the green world with no way to get there. We had the intention. We had each other. We just didn’t have the language — and the system that was supposed to give it to us was already gone.
Andrea gave me something different. She didn’t give me a language for cannabis — she taught me to pay attention. To ground in a moment so completely that the starvation stops and I can finally see what’s in front of me — the room, the person, the child on the gurney, the bear that’s needed in the cabinet.
FOUNDATIONS is how I pass that on. How to read cannabis — reliably, intentionally, safely — so when you aim for presence, you actually end up there. And not on the floor.
And in that presence, I hope you touch the richness this life has to offer. I hope it inspires you to practice experiencing more of it.
Cannabis and essential oils aren’t the only way there. They’re a framework — guidelines for finding, attuning, and practicing your attention. But however you make it to the green world — whatever tools you use to find the path back to yourself — be intentional about it.
Search for that space where the moment is everything you’ve ever wanted. Where you love yourself and your life so deeply it spills into the people around you. Where we can finally see each other — listen, support, and encourage one another. It’s already here. You just have to recognize it.
Get high, and smell flowers.
It can be that easy. But however you do it — find that moment, and follow it into the green world. Build your box. Stop pressing in on yourself and everyone around you. Without intention, we create our own emergencies. But with attention in the right place, we can create our own healing.
FOUNDATIONS is waiting.
Let’s build a green world together.
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FOUNDATIONS is waiting…
Let’s build a green world together.