Running toward something unknown but necessary

Caught somewhere between the unthinkable and the inevitable

My name is Hope. But what does that really mean?

Conventionally, you could say I am a comedian, an entrepreneur, a trauma therapist, an artist, and a sad, deep-feeling clown who prays to the plants and whispers to the wind. I love the earth and all things in it in ways words can’t hold. But I am not interested in convention.

I am here, and I’m not. I exist only in the way you are perceiving me right now. I am made up of everyone and everything I have ever encountered, and that includes you. If you don’t like parts of me, I invite you to follow me inward and get curious about yourself. And if you do like me? Well, thanks, but I never asked.

I live in between the liminal and the big beyond. I am a mirror for you and a mystery to myself. I am the fire and the flame. A maniac and a mentor. A woman and the wild. A poet and a rebel. An artist and an activist. A boring drag and a revolutionary. A dreamer and a freak. Never a someone, always a nobody.

I was raised to be a good girl, but I don’t believe in binaries. Sometimes being "good" requires breaking bad, and I take creative liberties with that. I’ve been to jail, been paralyzed and learned to walk again, talked my way out of a Turkish prison, faced life-threatening illnesses, had sleepless nights that I don’t remember, danced myself into oblivion at the center of the gay universe (Brooklyn, baby!) and lived in cars and slept on couches. I’ve had my fair share of struggles, heartbreak and tragedy. In the midst of it all, I founded a therapy practice that I love (Psychsomatica.com) and a nonprofit where we use comedy as a form of therapy (HumorforHope.com) and work with those suffering from and experiencing illness, trauma, displacement, and oppression—because nothing is more humorous than the absurdity of our own survival and the ways in which we need each other. Chaos and healing are dance partners, and I have spent my life learning their choreography.

Comedy, joy, rest, dance, laughter, community and art are all my favorite forms of resistance. And I believe in them in my bones.

I am a Scorpio sun, moon, and rising—which means I will either heal you or haunt you. (Maybe both.) I am your favorite person or your personal reckoning. A Kali-like lover, a feral heart with tender hands.

I was once that, now I’m this, and tomorrow—who knows? And honestly—who cares? Love is not a category; it’s a revolution. What matters isn’t who you love, but HOW you love. And I love like a storm, like a mother, like a reckless and holy thing.

Nature and relationships have been my biggest spiritual teachers, so I’ll stick with those. I don’t need to pray to your god for my salvation.

I was born in the South but learned the truth of life on the South Side of Chicago.

I am called to the feelers, the dreamers, the addicts, the gangsters, the ill, the marginalized, the displaced, the outcasts—the ones who have crawled out of their own darkness and refused to be broken. I’m not impressed by Forbes 40 Under 40 types or billionaires in boardrooms. I want to sit in the dirt with those who have seen the abyss and lived to tell the tale.

I want to howl at the naked moon and reclaim the wild parts of myself that were never meant to be tamed. I refuse to live in a world of PTO requests, “wealth and success” measured by fake money in made-up accounts, emails, bureaucratic red tape, false leaders, empty niceties, mind-numbing propaganda, and people who have forgotten their own aliveness, humanity and the sacredness of others.

I will not be shaped to fit inside your worldview. I am not success or prestige or polite dinner party conversation. I am wrinkled and wrong and messy. I am hurting and I am whole. I am joy and I am grief. I am alive and burning with desire. I am here to get free—and to help others do the same.

If that makes me impossible to define, then good. I was never meant to fit inside your frame.

You will make me what you want me to be in your mind, but I know I am my own.

So feel free to follow me down this weird twisty windy labyrinth. Let’s get lost and dance and sing and revolt and get weird and love recklessly so that together we can be found.

Let’s imagine new ways of being. I promise it will be worth it.