From Survival Strategy to Sacred Sovereignty

We often hear that control is the enemy.
That to find peace, we need to let go.
To surrender.
To release the grip.

Terms like “control freak” are used against people as if it were some kind of spell that will magically break a curse.

What may be more useful is a deeper exploration of what conditions arise that make control the best option available.
To do that, I think, requires one to reflect deeply on the period in their life where they were most vulnerable, before they had the tools available to manage what was thrust upon them –

Violation.

I don’t use this term lightly, and it doesn’t necessarily come with intent.
But the feeling…
is undeniable.

Visualize, for a moment, being a child.
Pure.
Open.
Free.

Every moment was an exploration within this amazing experience.
Giggling with friends.
Tasting new foods.
Learning new skills.
Playing silly games.
Forming the foundation that your whole life is built on.

And suddenly – without warning – a new sensation floods your body.

Fear.

Maybe the source was assigned to a stranger, a friend, a parent, a teacher, an event. But your mind anchored it to something real,
because it knows it didn’t like it at all, and it marked the memory as deep as it could, into the body, into the biology – so you would never be caught off guard again.

The innocence of the childhood experience was just drained from every cell in your body, taking with it the expectation that you would always be protected.

Most, if not all of us have lived this to one degree or another.
And whether we remember it or not, there was likely a very specific moment in our life that it happened… and to what extreme it came crashing through our expectations with its hard dose of reality put us in a very precarious situation:

Without a base of experience in life, what tools do we have to move forward?
Because there is no reset button.
No off switch.
You need to do the best you can with what you have access to, even if that is not much.

From that place the only goal would be to do whatever is needed to make sure that feeling never returns.

Maybe it’s emotions – learning to compress them before they make you more vulnerable. Maybe it’s performance – becoming who you need to be to reduce the threat.
Maybe it’s hypervigilance – scanning constantly so you’re never caught off guard again.
Maybe it’s self-sufficiency taken to an extreme – never needing anything from anyone so nothing can ever be taken again.

All of it intelligent. All of it loyal. All of it making complete sense given the resources available at the time.

From here forward, we may begin seeking the source of our worth from the outside.
And when we get it, through validation, acceptance, care…
We layer it like padding on an unstable foundation.
We rerun the pattern tens of thousands of times.

Refining it.
Tuning it.
Perfecting it…

to get incrementally better results…
from a pattern that was built with pure intentions.

Calcifying it into a way of being so completely it now runs on autopilot.

That might feel like success for a while…
Only to realize later in life that these same patterns that have served you so well were becoming outdated.
You can sense the foundations they were built on were unstable.
Crumbling.

They were no longer helping. Instead, they were barriers, restraining your growth, turning opportunities into battles, relationships into competitions, and holding you back from the very thing you want most…

You. The real you.

Not the one masquerading as you – the performance that runs every day from the time you get up until the time you drift off into sleep.
Not the one that dampens emotions to be seen as strong.
Not the one that carries immense pressure to perform to perfection –
on metrics that aren’t even yours.
Not the one that braces for every impact before anything is even wobbling.
Not the one that is so self-reliant they can’t admit they actually need help too.

I want to feel safe, open, pure, and free – while holding the knowledge of what it was like to have lived feeling like that had all been taken away.

But the wounds are so deep.
The pain is so real.
And my whole life has been built on these patterns.
Patterns that were built when I was afraid – but kept me safe.

How the hell do I ever rebuild now? How can I forgive when I feel echoes of having innocence violated pulsing through every cell in my body?

I’ll start here…

Dear TJ,

Hey bud. I just wanted to take some time with you. I know you’ve been through a lot and it has felt like the whole world was crushing down on you at times. I see you.
I want you to know that I forgive you. You hold a lot of guilt and shame for not being strong enough, for not being able to control your emotions, for not feeling good enough. You did the best you could with the tools that you had access to at the time, and you did an incredible job. You kept us alive, you found opportunities, and set us on a path of growth even through all the shit.
You adapted. You shifted. You paid so much attention. You learned so much about so many things. You stayed curious, always.
Most importantly – the burdens that you chose to get us here, were seeds planted in such rich compost. I’ve learned so much going back over all of the events of our life that I could never have learned any other way.
You always questioned everything, refusing to fall into dogma. Accepting others’ ways wasn’t even possible for you, and this made you feel very alone. Isolated. The gift was that this always kept me in search of a path that was my own. It gave me strength, independence, and individuation.
You felt emotions raw – yours and others. It was hard to tell where you ended and the world began. That was very overwhelming, but taught me discernment. It taught me that emotions were like waves, and I just needed to experience them as the ocean.
Your aloofness was a tool of observation that helped me tune and hone much of the skill I developed finding that edge.
There were so many more it is hard to put into words. But I will continue to try. That is my promise to you.
I’m finally understanding why you became who you became.
My quest now is to share space and time with as few or as many as I encounter walking a similar path. And I will do it by being me. The one you guarded so carefully all of those years.
So, thank you. You were so strong and so brave and I get to live the benefits of that.
I will always honor the sacrifices that you made which helped me become the man I am today. I am truly grateful and will carry the knowledge forward.
I am humbled and honored to share a life line with you.
I love you. Truly. Deeply.
TJ

I didn’t set out to make this a personal reclamation. But when the conditions are right, sometimes you have to just go with the flow and not fight it.

There are times in deep reflection where you are no longer telling the story, you’re inside it, writing it in real time.

That was not easy… it hit like a mac truck.
I had to stop for a bit and let that settle.
I’ve removed the letter and put it back in a few times.
But this is why I do the work.

The more I excavate, the lighter I feel, and the path forward feels more full.
Feels more real.
Feels more me.

I’ve been through a version of this process in my mind with every person that I have ever felt wronged by –
any time I have felt violated or allowed myself to project that same feeling.
It was just as difficult,
Just as real.
Moving from wishing things had been different to just accepting them as they are.
Using the lesson underneath as information to rebuild the foundation that maybe never existed.

Forgiveness isn’t about being sorry, or releasing someone from responsibility, or needing them to change.
Forgiveness is about releasing the compression of energy that is being held so tightly, locked inside the story, wishing it had been different or would be next time.
It’s about stopping the maintenance that keeps it alive.
Letting the wound stop being a thing that needs feeding–
so that the mind can stop searching for proof that justifies the suffering.

And to stop sacrificing worth on the altar of grievance. Even a justified one. Especially a justified one.

Each time it leaves me lighter –
and it has set me so incredibly free.
Free from the constraints that I have put on myself because of the memory of something that cannot be changed, only suffered for.
I was afraid and thought control would fix it.
Not because I love control –
Because at some point I learned that releasing it was catastrophically unsafe.
Control, it seems, can just be fear with a steering wheel.

I have honored my challenges and chosen to use them as growth,
But I had never fully forgiven myself.
Until now.

Through this process, what I’ve realized is, control isn’t inherently bad. I’m not sure consciousness expands without it.

Some lessons may never materialize without the misuse of it.
Alchemizing those lessons would be impossible without it.

Maybe it’s just misunderstood.

At its root, control was born from survival.
Our nervous system learned to seek patterns and predict outcomes to stay alive.
Control gave us the illusion of safety in a world of chaos.

But as we grew –
And our fears shifted from lions to judgment,
from starvation to rejection –
control became psychological.

It became armor.
But armor, over time, becomes a cage.

Now I see control differently.

Control can be sacred.
It can be the way we choose direction –
without collapsing into attachment.

It can be the structure that holds intention –
without blocking flow.

It can be the soft strength of a hand on the rudder –
guiding, not gripping.

I don’t want to eliminate control.
I’m learning to relate to it differently.
To hold it in my body without tension.
To move from clarity, not fear.
To act from alignment – and release the outcome.

Because maybe the antidote isn’t letting go of control…
Maybe it’s learning how to hold it without being held by it.