Yes, I am a lot.

Just dealing with myself is a full-time job. I’m emotional, creative, wildly alive, and unapologetic about it.

Coincidentally, helping people claim their own aliveness and nest in their own “too-muchness” is what I do for a living.

I’ll tell you a secret, my loves, we’re all organically “too much” for the trappings of this artificially wrapped, preserved world, and our too-muchness is the answer to the systematic destruction of goodness, beauty, life, and nature.

I’m too much to be packaged and sold, and too much to become some consumer identity, some profile in some system, some artificially engineered personality based on any of my preferences, too much to be gentrified and pigeon-holed, and this is exactly how I like me.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably too much too, and that is exactly how I like you!

We’re all wild at heart, loves. Not wild like some adolescent who’s drank too much, and for a few moments or hours lets it all hang out, only to feel like sh*t and wallow in regrets the next day; that’s not wild, that’s acting out from numb.

No.

Wild…men and women who have imbibed too much nature to dwell in shades of grey, ever again. Wild, as in drunk on life, wildly alive, in senses and feeling, still as a lion at rest, yet ready to pounce. Wild. Attentive. Patient. Courageous. Pure. We will accept no substitutions and we have a nose for the fake.

Dearest “too much” soul, you are too busy, too dedicated, too consumed with holy human service. You are too honest, too real, and too sensitive. You’ve lost the taste for processed foods and processed reality. The shows and artificial flavors and textures cannot hold a candle to the real thing. Perhaps it has made you ill, your sensitivities, and the world judges you for your inability to ingest poison and you feel alone and isolated, anxious or depressed, and invisible at times.

I hear you. I see you. I feel with you. I’m with you.

You are not alone.

You, like me, crave the raw, the real, and we cannot help it—that craving is a gift. The vividness of our soul shines through; it does not disappear into a manufactured reality. That is why it paints a target that some throw daggers at, because in our aliveness we remind the numb and disheartened of their own pain.

It’s not our fault, it’s not their fault; we’re just so f*cking vivid that our presence reminds them of the absence of their own, and instead of developing the courage to excavate in themselves what is missing, they project and attack.

It’s not an insult, loves, though it certainly can hurt. And we must not allow ourselves to become doormats for those who will not remove their mud-clad cleats and humbly enter their own inner temple.

“Too much” is an invitation to awaken and rise through the rough and rub, travails and trauma, and use it to polish the shining jewel that is a wild soul. Yes, it will be painful, and those who have succumbed to numbing would rather forget their pain—but we cannot, and we can no longer see it as an enemy, either, but as a strange and feral friend, yet to be made.

We cannot bury our pain in glass, in plastic and concrete, nor drown it in booze or stuff the cracks with pills and poison. We can, however, mourn, as the rain does, blessing and watering our growth with our grief—and we must grieve. In grief we find aliveness, as paradoxical as that may seem. Those who have come, truly, to life know their too-muchness is a gift and have inevitably learned how to grieve.

We mourn the loss of life, of diversity, of who we once were or what we might have been. And in our pain, our rage, and joy and delight, in our innocence and desire, in our bones, we know we belong and no loss can steal that from us. We must rise to protect what is holy, human, natural, and meaningful.

So we paint targets on ourselves with our activism and care, and we glow with passion and purpose.

How dare you stand out? The voice of conformity, of authority, rumbles.

“I dare!” We reply, quietly at first, then louder—with our voice, with our body, with our soul and song, in our actions, from a bone-deep throb that can only be answered but never silenced.

We can’t help being too much in a world washed grey and wrapped in plastic, in which aerosol perfumes disguise the smell of decay. We stand out as a blossoming tree, soul-scented, standing in a stark concrete jungle, our roots cracking cement.

It’s unsettling. It’s promising. It’s life.

“Look what you’ve done,” they cry! You’ve ruined the polite little plaza. You broke the rules. You’re shattering our particleboard fantasy, crumbling our illusion of control.

We smile.

Yeah, we make you uncomfortable. Hell, we make ourselves uncomfortable! Our willingness and need to peel back our neuroses and touch the numinous is as unsettling as it is necessary for us to heal and grow.

So be too much, I beg you! Flood the world with your too-muchness. Flood the world with kindness, innocence, vitality, creativity, and courage. Be sensitive, stand up for something, for life, for love, for nature, and our humanity. Be exactly as you are, and even wilder, even more at ease, alive, and engaged.

The world needs your “too much” soul. You, my love, are a living reminder, an ambassador, and your presence, your gifts, your message is needed.