HEY, THIS IS ISH

The Seeds of Fear

Growing up undocumented for close to two decades planted the first seeds of what would become my life's work. Living in the shadows taught me more about the edge of fear than any textbook ever could. During college, I survived on two cans of black beans every two weeks, living in a basement next to dead cats in one of San Francisco's roughest neighborhoods. I told no one about my circumstances because being seen meant being caught, and being caught meant losing everything.

The First Death: Border Patrol and Solitary

On Thanksgiving Eve, returning from visiting my girlfriend, Border Patrol pulled me over in San Diego. I spent nearly a week in solitary confinement, my last two days bunking with a criminal from America's Most Wanted. I was released only after a congressman filed a petition on my behalf.

In the darkness of solitary confinement that week, I began to understand that the prison I feared most was nothing compared to the prison I'd built inside myself.

Fear had become my warden, and I was ready to stage a breakout.

The Initiation Begins

With nothing but blind faith, I began leaning into my fear. What I discovered was that fear wasn't my enemy but my muse, and she was pointing toward everything I'd been too afraid to become.

My first experience with Ayahuasca shattered the walls between who I thought I was and who I actually am, and gave me glimpses into a different world. Vipassana meditation taught me to sit with what is, without running toward comfort or away from pain. These became the first pillars of what would evolve into my life's work.

The Death That Taught Me to Live

At Yosemite, I dove from a 70-foot cliff into a waterfall. I couldn't swim back to shore and drowned for close to three minutes before being resuscitated. Right before I drowned, I encountered what I call Divine Light, my word for God, The Great Mother, or Source.

Returning from that experience, I started helping others experience this liberation without having to die first. My fear of death had been replaced by something far more powerful - the fear of not truly living.

Military Service: Attempting to Bring Peace to War

In the middle of an Odesza concert, I decided to join the military. My then-girlfriend was shocked. I was driven by curiosity and a naive belief that I could bring peace to an institution built on conflict. I spent four years serving without ever receiving the citizenship I'd hoped for, but I learned something invaluable: true service begins with serving the truth within yourself.

The Grief That Cracked Me Open

Losing my best friend to cancer while attending my first men's group taught me that grief isn't something to get over - it's something to grow through. It's the most radical form of strength.

Plant medicine, meditation, and men's work became the three pillars my life would rest upon. Each one taught me different dimensions of the same truth: we are far more resilient, far more beautiful, and far more connected than our fears would have us believe.

The Exile That Became Freedom

Moving to Canada meant accepting a ten-year ban from re-entering the United States, which had been my home for two decades. After deliberation, I made the choice knowing I'd lose access to the place I called home, but gain access to everywhere else. Sometimes freedom requires leaving everything familiar behind.

The Dissolution and Rebirth

Separating from my wife initiated what I call my "feminine cleanse" - two years of learning to receive, to surrender, to allow life to move through me rather than constantly pushing against it. To learn how to find my inner feminine instead of outsourcing to others.

This is also when I went to Peru and spent two months in an Ayahuasca centre.The medicine taught me that the wounds we carry aren't just our own; they're ancestral, collective, sacred. And when we heal them, we free not just ourselves, but everyone who comes after us.

The disease That Became Wisdom

During a routine check-up, I was diagnosed with a debilitating kidney disease. Two surgeries and nearly a year bedbound taught me that sometimes our greatest teachings come through our deepest helplessness. During that time, living off unemployment and the support of family and friends, I published my book - proving that creativity often flows strongest when everything else is stripped away. I also learned to lean even more into my feminine through tea ceremonies.

The Return: Teaching What I've Learned

Returning to Peru with six men, each experiencing Divine Light for the first time, showed me my true calling. Watching their faces as they encountered their own vastness, their own unlimited potential, I understood that my job isn't to heal people - it's to remind them they were never broken.

Today, I work with men who are ready to stop performing masculinity and start embodying it. Men who understand that the path to wholeness runs directly through the center of everything they've been avoiding. Men who are willing to trade the safety of the known for the aliveness of the unknown.