The Alchemy of Coming Home to Yourself
Written by Tré Taylor, a mystic woman with a clown brain.
Category: Personal Reflections | Transformation | Healing | Boundaries | Reinvention | Self-Trust
We are moving through the fiery heart of Leo season and the 2026 eclipse season, and whether you experience astrology literally, symbolically, psychologically, spiritually—or simply as a beautiful celestial clock—this feels like one hell of a threshold.
The Sun.
The heart.
Fire.
Identity.
Creativity.
Courage.
The child inside us who still wants to run barefoot through the sprinkler, sing too loudly, fall madly in love, make something ridiculous, wear the fabulous dress and believe that life still has surprises waiting.
That is the Leo archetype I love.
And eclipses have always given humans a magnificent metaphor for endings and beginnings:
The light disappears.
Everything looks strange for a moment.
And then the light returns.
Maybe that is transformation.
Not becoming somebody else.
Remembering who was underneath all the survival strategies in the first place.
🌑 WALKING OUT OF AN OLD STORY
Yesterday I wrote about the eclipse through each rising sign and the areas of life that may become especially interesting during the months ahead.
If you know your birth date, location and—ideally—your exact birth time, you can also calculate your natal chart through a free astrology service such as Astro.com.
But you don't need astrology to understand this next part.
Sometimes life simply reaches a point where the old story doesn't fit anymore.
A relationship.
A career.
A family role.
A belief about yourself.
A way of surviving.
A version of you that once kept you safe but is now keeping you small.
That is where I find myself.
And one of the old stories I have been learning to leave behind is codependency.
🐾 THE WOMAN WHO COULD HANDLE EVERYTHING
For much of my life, I was extraordinarily useful.
Give me the emergency.
I'll organize it.
Give me the impossible executive.
I'll manage him.
Give me the brilliant scientist who hasn't eaten since Tuesday and has misplaced three manuscripts.
Apparently I am now running the care and feeding of polymaths.
Give me the event.
I'll produce it.
Give me twelve hungry people.
I'll cook.
Someone is crying?
I'll counsel them.
Someone has a technical problem?
Hand it over.
Nobody knows who's bringing chairs?
Congratulations.
I am now Executive Vice President of Chairs.
From the outside, this looked like competence.
And some of it absolutely was.
I spent years working around extraordinarily intelligent people in Silicon Valley and biotechnology. I loved helping creative and scientific minds organize complicated worlds so that they could concentrate on discovery.
There was real meaning in that work.
But underneath my competence was another pattern I couldn't see yet:
If everybody else is okay, maybe I will finally be okay.
That is exhausting.
🧠 THE FOUR F'S
You may have heard of defensive responses described as:
🥊 FIGHT
I'll defeat the danger.
🏃 FLIGHT
I'll escape the danger.
🧊 FREEZE
Maybe if I disappear, the danger won't see me.
🐕 FAWN
What if I become so agreeable, useful, charming, helpful or necessary that the danger decides not to hurt me?
Oh.
Hello.
There you are.
😂 AND THEN THERE ARE THE TRÉ TAYLOR BONUS F'S
These are not clinical terminology.
These are from the highly respected medical institution known as:
The University of I Have Been Through Some Shit.
🔧 FIX
Someone has a problem?
Excellent.
I HAVE FOUND MY PURPOSE.
🔮 FORECAST
Read every facial expression.
Notice every pause.
Detect the emotional weather seventeen minutes before anybody else notices clouds.
Hypervigilance can make you extraordinarily observant.
It can also make Sunday brunch feel like NORAD.
📋 FACILITATE
Nobody has a plan?
Fine.
I'll make the plan.
And the backup plan.
And a spreadsheet.
And sandwiches.
🍲 FEED
I may have absolutely no idea what I need emotionally…
…but somebody is getting a casserole.
🎭 FUNNY
The room has become uncomfortable.
Time for comedy.
Please direct your attention to the tap-dancing trauma survivor.
Nothing to see here.
🤬 [BLEEP] IT
Eventually even the world's most accomplished people-pleaser reaches capacity.
This frequently results in an extremely dramatic Act Three.
Entertaining?
Sometimes.
Ideal conflict-resolution strategy?
Perhaps not.
💗 THE REVELATION: MY LOVE WAS NEVER THE PROBLEM
This was enormous for me.
I didn't need to become colder, harder, less generous or less loving.
I needed to learn the difference between giving from love and giving from fear.
For years, I could be extraordinarily nurturing, helpful and capable—but sometimes what looked like generosity on the outside was actually an unconscious survival response underneath.
I was over-giving. Over-functioning. People-pleasing. Anticipating everyone's needs before they were spoken. Making myself indispensable. And because those behaviors were wrapped around genuine gifts—empathy, creativity, leadership, intuition and service—I couldn't see where the gift ended and the fawning began.
When I finally recognized the pattern, the pendulum naturally swung the other way for a while.
Wait. You mean I don't have to fix this? I don't have to make everybody comfortable? I don't have to earn my place by being useful?
Apparently not.
Who knew? 😂
Solitude helped me discover something I couldn't see while constantly responding to everybody else: there was a whole person underneath all those roles.
I could still be the artist. The organizer. The singer. The caretaker. The cook. The woman who can walk into chaos and somehow make things work.
Those weren't masks I needed to destroy. They were real parts of me.
I simply didn't need to perform them in exchange for safety, acceptance or love anymore.
And something remarkable happened as I changed: some relationships deepened, some had to be renegotiated, and some simply fell away. When you're no longer willing to participate in the old arrangement, not everybody wants the new relationship.
That's okay.
The relationships I want now are reciprocal ones—where we can see each other, tell the truth, apologize when necessary, repair what can be repaired, respect each other's boundaries and choose one another as the people we are now, rather than demanding that either person return to an old role.
I still want to serve.
I still want to love extravagantly.
Love • Music • Food • Art • Fun is still the center of my world.
But service is no longer supposed to require my disappearance.
That was the revelation:
I didn't need to stop giving. I needed to stop giving myself away.
⚗️ THAT IS WHAT I MEAN BY ALCHEMY
Alchemy doesn't mean pretending terrible things were secretly wonderful.
Some things were terrible.
Some decisions were mistakes.
Some lessons were expensive.
Some people hurt us.
Sometimes we hurt ourselves because we were making decisions with the emotional equipment we had at the time.
There are things I am still paying for—emotionally, practically and finacially.
I'm going to write about some of them.
Not because I have mastered life.
Good Lord.
Absolutely not.
I'm sharing my life while I'm living it.
But I have learned things the hard way.
And if something I've survived helps another person recognize a pattern sooner, make one better decision, protect their health, save some money, leave something dangerous, repair a relationship, discover meaningful work or simply hate waking up a little less…
then perhaps the expensive lesson wasn't completely wasted.
That is alchemy.
What can I make from what remains?
✨ TRANSMUTING THE OLD SURVIVAL STRATEGIES
Hypervigilance can become discernment.
People-pleasing can become hospitality.
Over-functioning can become leadership.
Sensitivity can become artistry.
Fantasy can become storytelling.
Anger can become a boundary.
Grief can become compassion.
Solitude can become sovereignty.
Survival can become wisdom.
And service can become sacred when the person serving is no longer sacrificed in the process.
That distinction changed something enormous inside me.
🪞 CODEPENDENCY'S STRANGE MIRROR
When you have spent years watching everyone else's emotional weather, you become remarkably good at asking:
Are they upset?
Do they need something?
Did I disappoint them?
Should I explain?
Should I help?
Should I fix it?
Should I stay?
Should I rescue them?
There is just one person whose feelings may not have been consulted in approximately three fiscal quarters.
You.
Recovery begins with an astonishingly simple question:
What is happening inside me?
Not them.
Me.
What do I need?
What am I feeling?
What is my body telling me?
What am I afraid will happen if I say no?
What resentment am I creating by saying yes?
And perhaps the most important:
Am I helping because I genuinely want to—or because my nervous system believes I have to?
Whoa.
There's the door.
🌊 WHEN IMAGINATION BECOMES ESCAPE
Another word I eventually learned was limerence.
It describes an intense state of romantic longing and preoccupation that can become wrapped in fantasy, anticipation, and the hope of reciprocation.
I understand fantasy very well.
For a wildly imaginative child, fantasy can be shelter.
When this world hurts, you build another one.
Artists have been doing this since somebody first scratched a buffalo onto a cave wall.
There is no shame in understanding why imagination protected you.
But eventually imagination can graduate.
Instead of becoming escape…
it becomes creation.
Instead of dreaming endlessly about someday:
Build something today.
One page.
One song.
One friendship.
One boundary.
One recipe.
One phone call.
One application.
One dollar.
One ridiculous idea.
One brave little move.
🦁 YOUR NEW STORY NEEDS YOUR HEART.
This is what I love about the Leo metaphor.
Leo doesn't merely ask:
What are you accomplishing?
Leo asks:
What makes your heart come alive?
Where did you stop playing?
Where did you decide you weren't talented enough?
Too old?
Too strange?
Too broke?
Too late?
Too much?
Too damaged?
Too weird?
Too dyslexic?
Too neurodivergent?
Too unconventional?
Too whatever-the-hell-they-called-you?
Maybe the new story isn't about becoming acceptable.
Maybe it is about finally becoming recognizable to yourself.
👽 FOR EVERYONE WHO HAS ALWAYS FELT LIKE AN ALIEN
I spent much of my life feeling fundamentally different from other people.
Eventually, understanding more about neurodivergence, dyslexia, attention, sensory processing and the nervous system gave me language for experiences I once interpreted simply as personal failure.
Language matters.
Understanding matters.
Because shame thrives beautifully inside mysteries.
Once you can say:
“Oh. There is a pattern here.”
you have options.
You can investigate it.
You can find other people who experience something similar.
You can develop accommodations.
You can stop demanding that your brain perform beautifully inside environments it was never designed for.
And perhaps the internet, for all its madness, has given us one extraordinary gift:
The aliens can finally find each other.
Welcome.
Refreshments are in the kitchen.
🏡 SERVICE WITHOUT SELF-SACRIFICE
I still believe deeply in service.
My entire creative world revolves around:
LOVE • MUSIC • FOOD • ART • FUN
But service has a new equation now.
The old equation was:
You matter + I disappear.
The new equation is:
You matter + I matter.
That little plus sign may be one of the most spiritually sophisticated things I have ever learned.
🧺 SACRED WHOLENESS IS SURPRISINGLY UNGLAMOROUS
We talk about transformation as if thunder will crack, angels will descend and suddenly you'll levitate six inches above the organic produce section.
Sometimes transformation is considerably less impressive.
Eat something nourishing.
Drink water.
Get some sleep.
Go outside.
Walk.
Swim.
Make something.
Turn the phone off.
Notice resentment.
Tell the truth.
Rest before collapse.
Stop rescuing adults who haven't asked to be rescued.
Ask for help.
Receive help.
Receive money for your work.
Apologize when you're wrong.
Say no when you mean no.
Leave environments that consistently harm you.
Find people who make your nervous system exhale.
Cook something delicious.
Pet the cat.
Grow tomatoes.
Laugh often.
Repeat.
Extremely mystical.
🚨 SOMETIMES LOVE NEEDS A FENCE.
One of the hardest lessons I've learned is that loving somebody does not automatically mean they are healthy for you to be around.
That includes family.
Sometimes people go through periods when their anger, addiction, instability, behavior or untreated problems make them unsafe.
You can love somebody without volunteering to stand in the blast radius.
Sometimes boundaries look like:
“I love you.”
Sometimes they look like:
“I love you from over here.”
And sometimes they look like:
“Merry Christmas. Enjoy the card.”
Love does not require unlimited access.
Loyalty does not require self-destruction.
There is such a thing as toxic loyalty.
🌱 PRACTICE THRIVING BEFORE YOU MASTER IT
I still struggle.
I still encounter learned helplessness.
I still have moments when something relatively ordinary seems impossibly complicated while something enormous and creative seems perfectly obvious.
Human brains are hilarious.
But something has changed.
I'm no longer demanding that I solve my entire life before I'm allowed to enjoy today.
That's huge.
Because the nervous system learns safety through experience.
One safe morning.
One successful boundary.
One peaceful meal.
One night of good sleep.
One honest conversation.
One person who keeps their word.
One decision you make differently.
One afternoon when you suddenly notice:
I'm okay right now.
Those moments accumulate.
💰 HEALTH, WEALTH, LOVE & MEANING
I have become increasingly interested in four questions:
❤️ How do we create healthier lives?
💰 How do we create sustainable wealth without destroying ourselves?
🤝 How do we build healthier relationships?
✨ How do we create meaning that makes waking up worthwhile?
I don't have universal answers.
I distrust anybody who claims they do.
But I can share what has helped me.
I can interview people.
I can research.
I can try things.
I can tell you what happened.
I can introduce you to practitioners, creators, artists, teachers and people whose work I genuinely find useful.
I can share recipes.
Tools.
Stories.
Music.
Experiments.
Mistakes.
Breakthroughs.
And occasionally something completely ridiculous because nobody should have to heal in beige.
🔬 MYSTERY & REALITY CAN SHARE THE SAME TABLE
I love astrology.
Mysticism.
Sacred geometry.
Ancient traditions.
Archetypes.
Synchronicity.
Psychedelic research.
Consciousness.
Emerging technology.
Nature.
And ideas that make my brain light up like a pinball machine.
But I also believe there is strength in saying:
This is what I know.
This is what evidence currently suggests.
This is what I suspect.
This is what I experience.
And this part is metaphor.
Mystery doesn't become less beautiful because we remain curious.
In fact, curiosity protects mystery from becoming dogma.
I would rather stand at the edge of the unknown with a flashlight than pretend I've already mapped the whole forest.
🌎 ROOTS & THE FUTURE
The future I want doesn't abandon technology.
And it doesn't abandon nature.
I want both.
High-speed internet and tomatoes.
Artificial intelligence and ancient trees.
Digital publishing and dirt under my fingernails.
Streaming music and people sitting around an actual fire making actual music badly until somebody finally finds the key.
Technology should give us more life, not consume all of it.
Because eventually our greatest luxury may not be another object.
It may be:
Time.
Time while healthy.
Time while present.
Time with people we love.
Time creating.
Time outside.
Time without panic.
Time without constant survival stress.
Time to actually notice that we're alive.
Maybe my job is simply this:
💖 HELP PEOPLE FALL BACK IN LOVE WITH BEING ALIVE
Maybe that is what Tré Taylor has always been about.
Love. Music. Food. Art. Fun.
Stories about getting lost, getting hurt, getting back up, laughing at the absolutely absurd parts—and discovering that sometimes the life waiting on the other side of survival is more beautiful than the one you thought you were supposed to have.
I'm still writing my book.
I'm still writing my story.
And I'm creating my own little version of Heaven on Earth as I go—traveling, exploring, making things, meeting wonderful people, tasting delicious food, listening to music, loving animals and experiencing this extraordinary world in a way I never could before.
Because for perhaps the first time in my life, I feel safe enough to be fully me.
Safe in my own company.
Safe in my own heart.
Safe enough to receive.
Safe enough to play.
Safe enough to hope.
And after spending so much of my life in physical pain, being able to move through this chapter feeling alive in my body is something I will never take for granted.
☀️ COME BACK FOR YOURSELF
Perhaps healing isn't becoming somebody new.
Perhaps it is noticing all the places where you learned to leave yourself…
and coming back.
Again.
And again.
Until one day you realize:
You aren't searching for home anymore.
You're living there.
So go live.
Make something beautiful.
Sing loudly.
Cook the delicious thing.
Go somewhere you've never been.
Wear the fabulous outfit.
Tell somebody you love them.
Let somebody love you back.
Be ridiculous.
Stay curious.
Begin again whenever necessary.
And don't postpone joy until you've somehow perfected yourself.
You live here too.
🦁 KEEP YOUR HEART OPEN WITH YOURSELF
I don't know exactly where this road leads.
For once, I don't think I need to.
I'm discovering it as I go—and I can't wait to share the rest of this wonderful journey with you.
If something in my story sounded a little like yours, I'd love to hear about it. Leave me a comment below and tell me where you are in your own journey.
And if you'd like to keep traveling with me, subscribe to the blog and stay in touch.
We have more living to do.
More healing.
More laughing.
More loving.
And hopefully considerably less bullshit.
Bleep the Tattoo would like it formally noted that he made no promises regarding that last one.
Love • Music • Food • Art • Fun
Tré Taylor & Bleep the Tattoo
