A Grifter, a Funeral, and a Flashlight Walk Into a Bar...
I was called a grifter. I sat at a funeral. A reader said I'm holding a flashlight, not giving instructions. All three moments pointed to the same truth.
This Week: A Grifter, a Funeral, and a Flashlight
This week, I don’t remember the days. I remember the moments.
Two things stand out clearly.
One, I was called a grifter.
Two, I sat at a funeral and witnessed what I can only describe as Big Love.
And somewhere in between those two moments, something else happened quietly, almost without me noticing at first. My Notes started landing. Not because they teach anything. But because they orient something in people.
Let me start with the grifter comment.
The Grifter
Every so often, when you speak from lived experience without offering a system, a ladder, or a step-by-step fix, someone gets uncomfortable.
When people can’t locate your authority, they try to label it.
I’ve learned not to take that personally. It usually means you’ve stepped outside the frameworks they rely on to feel safe.
And in my typical sassy attitude, I wrote a note about it.
Mercy! The responses were wonderful, delightful, and surprising.
To quote one reader, Elisabeth Peterson: “If this is a scandal, it’s the quiet kind—the kind where truth spreads slowly, one woman at a time, because it actually works. And frankly, I’ll take a soul pirate over a grifter any day.”
Yeah, I’ll take soul pirate. Now where’s my pirate hat!
Read the full grifter note here
The Funeral
Then there was the funeral.
What struck me wasn’t the tragedy. It was the way this young man was remembered.
Over and over, people spoke about how it felt to be in his presence. No judgment. No fixing. No hierarchy. Just acceptance.
Big Love, unearned and uncomplicated.
That kind of love rattles people. It doesn’t fit neatly into moral scorecards or redemption narratives. It just exists.
And for some of us, sitting in that truth is deeply unsettling—especially when the deceased succumbed to the combined tragedy of drugs and diabetes.
It could have been easy to discuss the tragic ending of his life due to drugs. But not one person who spoke mentioned the drugs.
They chose to remember the Big Love of acceptance he lived in.
The Flashlight
Now here’s the third thing.
I woke up to a comment from a reader who said my work feels less like instructions and more like a flashlight. Not telling her where to go. Just helping her see where she already is.
That stopped me.
Because those three moments are actually about the same thing.
What They All Mean
Most people aren’t looking for more instructions. They’re exhausted by them.
What they’re craving is orientation.
A steady presence. A voice that doesn’t rush them, sell them, or try to improve them.
Some people respond to that with gratitude. Some with recognition. And some with accusations.
But all of those reactions point to the same truth:
When you stop outsourcing your knowing, things shift.
You stop trying to earn permission. You stop explaining yourself. You stop asking to be understood by people who are committed to misunderstanding.
And the right people feel it immediately.
An Invitation
So I’ll leave you with this, not as advice, just as an invitation.
Where in your life are you still trying to earn permission for what you already know?
And what might change if you stopped asking to be taught and started listening for what steadies you?
That’s where the work actually begins.
P.S. A new essay was added to the Survival Series this week—in fact, this is the article that prompted the grifter comment. “Three Months Behind on Rent, Flat on My Back, and Completely Alone. Here’s How I Survived” is now live.
P.P.S. Loved this? Hit the heart. It tells Substack to show this to more women who need it. And it makes me ridiculously happy.
For the Woman Who Needs a Flashlight, Not a Ladder
This week taught me something: people aren’t looking for more instructions. They’re craving a steady presence that helps them see where they already are.
If that’s you—or someone you love—a year of The Daily ReWire might be exactly what’s needed.
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I love the flashlight image. It reminds me of an exhibit room in Freud’s house in London. You are given a flashlight to go into a completely dark room and then try to find the various objects. It’s a perfect explanation of psychotherapy. I’m not afraid of the dark. I have a flashlight and I will help you seek and find what you are looking for.
I still have, sitting under a split keyboard so I can see it, the a small photo of one of the most beautiful souls I have ever known. It is on the card from his funeral, which I did some years ago. His family were stunned by how people spoke of him as we celebrated his life. They only saw him as an addict. We knew him as a poet, a musician and songwriter, a playwright and reader, a man who could listen and love, a man who, yes, kicked down my office door looking for money for his next hit, but who also, if you needed him, would show up no matter the time of day or night. Once, he turned his 18-wheeler around in downtown Toronto, driving it out of the city and through the next three towns to bring me a can of gasoline when I'd stupidly failed to fill my tank. And before he did it, was emphatic about instructing me how to get and stay safe while he came for me. He was a man who could get clean, lead, love and be loved, but he was also a man who, like so many others, was no match for the sorts of weaponry designed in the labs of pharmaceutical companies.