Since the 2016 elections, there have been three distinct moments when I felt compelled to take action: the 2016 elections (of course), the start of the pandemic, and just a few weeks ago. This last time was a full-circle moment that I will never forget.
The night of my high school graduation in June 2000 - or the early morning after, I pulled my 1990 Teal Chevy Corsica into the construction site behind Bob Evans on Route 50 in Chantilly. I was heading home after leaving the all-night graduation party at Chantilly High School, but was too anxious to go home. The year prior, there were times that I cried out of the blue, mourning my mom’s death. By this day, the spontaneous crying turned into crippling anxiety. I felt robbed of my senior year of high school as I couldn’t enjoy it because grieving left me in a place of survival - moving from day to day on autopilot.
Beside the construction site was a man-made retaining pond, which was pitch black except for the light of the moon. At that time, I was so angry at God…for “taking” my mother. One of the only people in the world who I felt knew me. I was furious because I was coming to terms with being queer, and “praying the gay away” wasn’t working. I was angry that my mom wouldn’t be there for the most important milestones of my life. I wanted answers. The answers never came that night. I continued to sit after the realization that not only did I feel alone, but I wanted desperately to feel better. Every once in a while thereafter, I had thoughts of suicide - I never made a plan, but it was an easy way to end my suffering.
A few weeks back, during the last full moon around the 13th of January 2025, I took Xola out for a walk, looked up at the sky, and was reminded of how I felt at that construction site. It was like I was hit in the heart and my chest at the same time, and it just about took my breath away. At the same time, I also felt tremendous gratitude for where I was in life. It was a realization that I may not have been able to express what I needed back then at 18 years of age; however, I realized that I was now living everything I wanted to be, everything that I wanted in life, and the way that I wanted to feel about myself at 43 years old. It was a feeling of finally understanding myself. It was a feeling of understanding why I am here on this earth. It was understanding why I have endless love and kindness for people. Still, in many cases, it will be misunderstood or met with contempt, criticism, skepticism, uneasiness, or insecurity. I’ve learned not to take this feeling personally. Most of us are critical of love and kindness because we’ve never been taught how it can show up or don’t think we deserve it.
Every time I get on the phone with my dad, we talk about the extensive capacity of love my grandmother (his mother) gifted to our family through her legacy and all that she encountered. We know her as Nana, but to others, she was Sister Clark or Evangelist Clark, but she could see through people and speak directly to their spirit…the aspect of ourselves where love, truth, and peace reside. It was astonishing to see how many people stood in line to say their final goodbyes to her at her funeral. There are countless stories of how she shifted the trajectory of people’s perceptions, despair, and disposition with just a few words.
This last year has been the most transformative year of my life. I can’t begin to tell you everything that has transpired due to understanding myself and how love works. Most notably meeting my partner Alfred showed me so many other rooms available in the house of love. This understanding of love includes recognizing my creativity, inspiration for life and being, how I relate to others, and seeking out the people in my life for mutual growth and changing our experiences in the world.
Given the many changes, it is not my job to change the world. My job is understanding and loving myself to recognize the same in others. Jules Romains, the French poet, writer, and the founder of the unanimism literary movement, gave us this famous quote:
“Smart people talk about ideas. Common people talk about things. Mediocre people talk about people.”
The Encyclopedia Brittanica describes unanimism as the French literary movement based on the psychological concept of group consciousness and collective emotion and the need to merge with a more transcendent consciousness. We are entering an era requiring a collective movement toward peace and innovation. However, before we enter anything related to collective and community understanding, we must truly understand ourselves and what we are about to move into the transcendence of a collective movement. It means a radical reshaping of what we want for all of us.
This will be the hardest for those of us who live in the West (or those whose ideals are shaped by Western ideals) and, more specifically, those who live in or have ties to the United States. We are about to see a complete decaying of what we have come to know. Personally, there is no fear in me saying that…I’m not trying to be hyperbolic, as I am doing my best to look at the current circumstances with a slightly broader worldview and engage with independent media sources based on facts and with a wider range of world perspectives. We will have to rethink everything. I find it exciting, but it will be a challenging ride.
Our unique identities must be acknowledged, accepted, and realized before we can link up with others and make this change. Over the past year, I’ve realized that most of us have not been taught to learn and study ourselves. This results in the complete disregard for humanity we are witnessing with our own eyes in real time.

As a result, my time, energy, and resources will be spent on helping people realize their authentic selves through the lens of their spirit, mind, and body and the interconnectedness therein. With the new moon beginning January 29, 2025, I will be stepping into my authenticity and not looking back. I no longer have the time or energy to hesitate regarding matters of a spiritual nature. I know who I am, the power that comes from the connection to all that is and the unknown, and I realize that life is not about me but how I connect spirituality to our collective endeavors.
This will be channeled through free online educational courses, coaching workshops, podcasts, and collaborations with those inspired by meaningful change.
As I believe education should be free, the self-guided courses will be offered for free. However, courses can be paired with coaching, and in those circumstances, there will be a paid subscription, as my time and your time are valuable. Paid subscriptions are not limited to money. Bartering and cryptocurrency will be considered, as abundance is not experienced solely through cash.
Anyone can participate in all offered, but I have a heart for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Times such as these leave many in this community houseless, especially teens and young adults. I had the privilege of working on a crisis line during the presidency of 2016-2020, where there was an increase of LGBTQIA+ youth abandoned by their loved ones, and even though we are in 2025, ignorance still exists.
My free courses were created with the LGBTQIA+ community in mind. As a collective, we do not know the genius that exists within this community, especially the POC within the community. If there is any abandonment or shame that exists in these individuals, it can take years to work out of the hurt that it causes, let alone the mental health decline that takes its toll. Courses were meant to boost self-esteem and confidence and expand potential early on so that if they experience hurt or mental health disruptions, they can rely on the courses to take some of the first steps towards understanding their beauty for themselves without relying on external acceptance. This will be an alternative to mindless scrolling that is often paired with anxiety and depression when we aren’t sure what the next steps are in life. When people have to start over, I want to provide ways for them to put some focus on their growth.
As someone who benefited from falling back on entry-level jobs because of economic downturns, I intend to help people understand success and self-fulfillment in understanding themselves and not for the benefit of obtaining a job solely to live. By 2030, it is estimated that there will be a significant shift in the workforce due to AI. We will have to rely on human advantage, creativity, and empathy with a focus on development.
This will require a shift in organizations and leadership. We cannot rely solely on hierarchical systems of power. Success will be measured by our understanding of ourselves and connections with like-minded organizations and communities that focus on innovation, creativity, and authenticity.
Capitalism is running out of steam; therefore, we must rethink economic structures and how we are compensated for our time and labor. We must shift away from dependence on corporations and learn to create.
My partner Alfred and I will also begin to align professionally. We will work together to help people explore and act on the inspiration from understanding and empowering their identity.
We will focus on transitioning current business models and leadership and working from consumeristic, opportunistic, and individualistic structures to more collaborative, diverse, inclusive, and equitable structures through our unique professional backgrounds.
We will also focus on the advancement of the LGBTQIA+ community to help those within realize their confidence, beauty, and potential.
Our love for each other strengthens each day because we do not compromise who we are individually at any time. This allows for an expansiveness, reverence, and understanding of love that surpasses expression or words. We do not want to give relationship advice, but we recognize that every relationship is different. We will create a safe space for people to make the most meaningful relationships and inspire those involved to develop fulfilling relationships.
For those ready to commit to understanding themselves, I invite you to enter this lunar new year to create a new world around you. It will be very challenging, but I and others will be here to encourage you. I take a highly unorthodox path to self-discovery, connecting spirituality and humanism, fundamental neuroscience, psychology, and practical activities to help ground yourself for what is to come. My partner Alfred and I started the “Empower Your Identity” Foundational Course Series, which takes you from grounding to organizing to taking action in your life and creating new courses to build upon your understanding of yourself. Everything starts with the first step…and in this case, it is the course “Change Begins With Me.”
Acknowledging the moon has changed my life because the lunar cycle breaks our understanding of timing. Much of the world is based on the Gregorian calendar, and timing is centered on Western ideals. A quick Google search will reflect more articles and opinions that analyze the decentralization of power from the West. Transitioning focus to the lunar cycle is a small step towards breaking away from what is to what is coming.
Let me be clear. Despite all that is happening, I am excited about what is to come. As someone who celebrates and promotes change, we observe a real-time trajectory toward rock bottom. When we aren’t in tune with making changes when we are invited, the only other option is to change by force. Either way, change has to happen. I want to participate in change actively, and it starts with me. I’ve learned that resistance to change is more detrimental to my physical, mental, and spiritual health, and it is not worth the toll.
I’d like to add more to the Jules Romains quote I mentioned earlier: motivated people turn ideas into actions, but visionaries are special people. They stand on mountaintops, observing the mediocre, common, smart, and motivated people. In some regards, visionaries are all four people at once but want to explore what is behind these labels. They can observe what is happening on the mountaintop to see beyond the horizon. They can see the hurricanes building up in the distance in the west and the sun shining in the south. They can see the progress in the east and the over-consumption in the north. Knowing this, they choose another path and work with the other visionaries on the mountaintop to do something differently based on their observations. Visionaries aren't necessarily celebrities, CEOs, or world record holders. They are the ones who see change, accept it, make it, and help others do it while letting go of much of their egoic pursuits.
Your experience, knowledge, and wisdom matter; we are invited to merge all this with our spiritual selves. Everyone has a spiritual side, even atheists. It has nothing to do with religion. Atheists know that there are things that cannot be resolved, measured, seen, or studied. Some things occur in life that baffle the human mind. In this unknown space, we can come together with the understanding that there is more to our existence than what our senses or limited intelligence would lead us to believe.
Now is the time to find, organize, and raise our true identities.
The foundational courses for the “Empower Your Identity” movement are found on my website, Amaris Vitae.
If you do not resonate with my courses, I am grateful to have friends who provide coaching and education designed for your unique growth path. Please email me at amarisvitae@gmail.com or DM me wherever we are connected on social media, and let me know what you need.
I will scale back social media interactions, except the Amaris Vitae Discord Server. I will create micro-communities within the server for course discussions, meditations, workshops, and virtual hangouts. Let’s connect communities and help each other build something new and better!
Sending love to everyone. Take this opportunity to create something new during this new lunar year and cycle.
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