One of the most radical and anti-capitalist things you can do is like yourself as you are.

Part I, Chapter 2: “You Can’t Fake Believe in God”

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From my book, Unsolicited Advice: A Consent Educator's (Canceled) Memoir

The book starts here.

Previous.

“One of the most radical and anti-capitalist things you can do is like yourself as you are.”

It was 2019, and I had just received the much-needed diagnoses for my gut issues. As I began to implement the treatment plan my doctor had given me, I was sick. Very sick. The chronic illness I’d dealt with all my life had gotten to the worst stage it’s ever been and I was considering an exit from my body. I had just left a tortuous relationship in New York and moved back home to Los Angeles, in with my parents at 28, where they were able to witness the constant discomfort, the extreme bloating that caused back and rib pain, the fatigue, nausea, and 6-10 runs to the bathroom a day for the first time up close. I had never been in so much pain and it wasn’t livable. In L.A. I started a job as a casting assistant on The Affair and had a very compassionate boss who let me run out between auditions to use the bathroom. I began training to be an intimacy coordinator right around the same time that I found a doctor that had some new and promising theories about what was going on with me.

With the diagnoses I received around the same time that I started Intimacy Coordination training (the MTHFR gene mutation, the parasites, candida, and SIBO) there were physical factors contributing to my condition, yes, but my treatment was also going to heavily rely on addressing the mental, emotional, and spiritual components of what was going on.

I also began to do research on what’s called “radical remission:” cases in which someone has a really bleak prognosis and the disease suddenly reverses itself and goes away. My diagnoses weren’t bleak in the sense that that they were expected to lead to my death, but they were mysterious, would likely lead to other more life-threatening illnesses, potentially persistent, and not all necessarily “curable.” Before getting the diagnoses, daily I’d had the thought that if the condition(s) didn’t kill me, if my heart didn’t simply stop beating, I’d have to begin to look into an exit strategy. But having diagnoses gave me a sense of control and a sense that an end to the suffering was possible.

There were many common factors across cases of radical remission, but the one that really jumped out at me was that people who experienced them, more often than not, believed in a higher power. Believing in the concept of god, I read, could be powerful enough to not only heal, but actually extend life expectancies, heal wounds faster, and increase overall wellbeing and happiness during a lifetime.

I thought, “It’s worth a shot.”

I knew that I couldn’t fake this. I couldn’t just say I believe in god for this to work. I had to actually believe. What does that mean, “actually believe?” Is it in the mind? In the body? Is it learned or innately known? Created or uncovered?

Photo by Summer Wagner

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