The Most Wonderful Life There Is : The Fascinating Challenges of Cultivating a Unique Voice and Vocational Identity in Public

Cultivating a unique voice and vocational identity in public is literally what I am doing in this essay, in my previous essay, and in much of my public work, past and present. Observe the psychedelic movements of my melted caterpillar-self in my transparent cocoon, dreaming the shape of a butterfly in every imaginal cell.

And good Lord Almighty, what a vexing task this can be.

It is a solitary pilgrimage of many years—one that weaves together the unique strands of identity, influence, enthusiasm, experience, and inspiration to carve out (or uncover) something utterly singular: a voice, a presence, a series of offerings that are unmistakably you, compelling enough to help a few people, and distinct enough not to step on anyone’s toes.

Perhaps you can relate.

And in the process, you will frequently feel the crunch of shame—the internal twinge that something you’ve shared may be slightly “off” according to your own ethic of respectful, non-appropriative engagement with mentors and influences. At times, there is also a scorching, consuming vulnerability—naked and nearly unbearable.

You will sojourn through occasional wastelands of despair.

(Why am I devoting my life to something no one seems to care about?)

And then the shame returns.

(Why am I equating impact with Instagram likes? Why do I care?)

There are long slogs through solitary swamps of editing, sorting, revising, and reimagining.

And yet, as e. e. cummings wrote of the poet’s life, it is the most wonderful life there is.

These are universal themes. And yet my own pilgrimage toward authentic voice and vocation is further complicated by the fact that I am a licensed clinical social worker in private practice, with ethical responsibilities I take very seriously.

I cannot freely post provocative images of my body, though I know the algorithm rewards this, and though many non-clinically trained coaches and healers in feminine empowerment spaces do so. It would likely grow my audience, expand opportunities, increase visibility.

But what if a client—someone working with me through the trauma of sexual violation—were to encounter those images? What might that stir?

This is why I choose not to pour this particular kind of gasoline on my public presence.

Instead, I face the more nuanced challenge of holding tension: between my erotic self and my ethical clinician self. Publicly. Without collapsing into one or the other.

This is a lifelong practice—allowing that tension to cook me rather than burn me, and attempting to do so in public without hurting anyone.

And why publicly?

Because I’m an artist, and I don’t have a boss. My private practice and my creative work are my livelihood. If I’m not visible, I’m not found. My practice stagnates, and my art risks becoming a private hobby that touches no one.

Bye-bye book deals. Bye-bye life I might have lived. Bye-bye possibility that something born from the deepest part of me might reach someone who needs it.

That’s why publicly.

And yet—when I enter creative space (to write, to paint), my internal censor is not invited. This is what allows truly alive work to emerge.

But then what happens when something electrifying comes through—a poem, say—with a line so mysterious even I am still discovering its meaning… and that line could, in some context, be experienced as harmful?

Those lines have come through me.

And yet, surprisingly, no one—no client, no reader—has ever told me they were harmed.

Maybe I’m just not public enough yet.

Still, the possibility haunts me. My creative process curls outward and inward, influenced by the relational reality that what I make does not belong to me alone once it is shared.

Because once you’ve made something visible, you cannot hide.

And we live in a time when hiding has become very appealing—emotionally, professionally, socially. As language and culture evolve, even the most sincerely liberation-minded creator may one day be misunderstood or “cancelled.”

And because my work lives at the intersection of two domains we still treat as separate—healing and art—the arc of my voice has been longer, more braided, less direct.

A further complication.

So when I encounter another creator and feel that electric recognition—this person is speaking from the same current I feel inside myself—the pull toward their river is strong.

Especially when they are more visible, more articulated, further along.

It becomes even more complex when I’ve already arrived at something on my own, perhaps even shared it publicly, and then discover someone expressing something strikingly similar. I find myself thinking: We are working in the same archetypal current. No one owns this. The tide lifts all ships.

And yet something is lost there, too.

Kindredness is beautiful. So is differentiation.

Those small, insistent voices of difference—those are my voice.

So I must hold the tension between resonance and originality carefully, tending my own garden, growing my voice from my own soil—however humble the yield may seem.

And even here, another question arises:

Who owns the soil?

(Insert tears-of-laughter emoji.)

The idea of ownership itself is culturally specific—rooted in a European, colonial framework of delineated property lines. When such ideas were introduced to the Indigenous peoples of this land, they often initially found them quite strange. (Before being collectively traumatized by these new ideas through forced relocation.)

In a speech attributed to Chief Seattle, there is a question: how could anyone own the warmth of the land, or the sky above it?

What if I belong to the soil I create from, rather than the other way around?

What if that soil is kin, not property?

What if my relationship to the soil I create from is meant to be a relationship of mutual nourishment, cultivation and thanksgiving? What if all soil is ultimately a commonwealth?

What is “creative soil,” anyway?

Is it the mysterious force of inspiration and coherence that stands behind every life—the animating force that outstrips the ego that believes it is in charge?

So yes—this business of showing up publicly as “no one but yourself” (another phrase from e. e. cummings) is no simple feat.

It is, in fact, arduous.

And yet it should be simple, shouldn’t it?

Radical originality moved through us as children.

How do we return to that?

(Cue another arduous interior labor. Another tears-of-laughter emoji.)

And now, in the post-2025 world, we face yet another complication in the commonwealth of creative soil.

Because I will confess: in the infinite obfuscations and myopias of being human, I have occasionally found ChatGPT helpful in reflecting back the threads of my work—helping me name what I do and where it might be going.

It can feel like having a creative identity coach in your pocket.

But recently, after sharing my last essay, I chose to revisit my Lineages & Influences Tree without its help.

Because AI reflects what it already knows. It recombines existing patterns. It says: You are this, and this, and this. (Somatic/archetypal psychology, psychedelic integration and poetics, for example.)

And yes—that may be true.

But it leaves no room for the breath of the truly new.

It creates, in a sense, a dead image. A collage of detritus.

Whereas I am not static.

I am the site of my own becoming.

I am the channel through which new enthusiasms and unknown inspirations move.

And I think I can trust that.

In fact, I will continue to trust that—because trusting my own voice is the greatest prize I have wrested from the hands of God.

It is, quite literally, why I am still alive.

And so I continue—despite the complications, the risks, the vulnerability.

Because I do not want to reach the end of my life and realize it is too late.

Because sending a book of soul-fire into the world has brought me the sharpest, tallest joy I have ever known.

Because I believe that voices of truth move culture forward—that they participate in the making of a wiser, kinder world.

And because, still, it is the most wonderful life there is.