On Becoming...

...I was figuring out how to talk about all the Nazism and I didn't do the best job of figuring that out, lol. This week, more music and levity with greater clarity and boundaries. That's a win-win, so you should listen. I do appreciate you being here and being with. Love yinz. -G

Marvin Gaye asked a simple question, linguistically, which carried with it the complexities and histories of his and his people's lives and experiences. What's going on? When we think about looking ahead (prognostication) or looking behind (retrognostication), we must consider what's going on in the "Me Now" and the "Here Now." It's a question, and an endeavor,...

Episode two of my fifty-first season on this globular rock hurtling through time and space with yinz. Pretty miraculous, that. I'm happy to exist with you here and now. My life and your life intersecting during the time of COVID as we navigate this massive paradigm shift out of several hundred years of masculine white supremacy and towards a more feminine-balanced, person-centered, intuitive,...

Along with several young people I serve, I've begun using a framework of three existential perspectives to create a mindset and setting for existing in 2025. My three points, and the three points that inform this entire endeavor, are: 1. Me Now 2. Time Of Covid 3. My Life Considering the spectrum nature of almost everything, there are finite, but overwhelmingly plentiful moments, experiences,...

The Tower crumbles, leaving us exposed and raw. Vulnerable. A scab picked too early. And out of the rubble? Emerges the human. A pure expression of The World, or the Universe. Sentient. Reflective. Alive. Season 50 of On Becoming... is done, and season 51 begins soon. Thanks for traveling with me. Hang out. Sit a spell, won't you? You are welcome here. -G

Hi! I’m calling this episode D2D2, or: Driven to Drink, Part 2. I went back, listened to the D2D1 episode, and realized that I’d left quite a few unfinished thoughts and even sentences in my attempts to tell a fairly convoluted story involving real people and traumas… without disclosures or allowing my personal traumas to overwhelm and dysregulate me. So… D2D2 has the answers! A few additional imp...

I am calling this one: On Becoming… Driven to Drink.  --- Chronologically, and technically, it should be: Driven to Drink becoming… On Becoming…, which then becomes a confusing mess of wtf do I do with all that punctuation?  So… --- I am calling this one: On Becoming… Driven to Drink. --- Driven to Drink was a podcast I did for a hell of a long time.  How long?  I don’t specifically remember and I...

It's been four months, I know. Three podcasts in 6 months is not the way to grow, I know. And... the world being what it is at present? Growth isn't necessarily a goal at this point. What is? Harm reduction. Survival. Finding ways to regulate the nervous system and understanding that my ability to "tap out" and regulated my nervous system... to even MAKE THIS POST... is a privile...

The tagline of all things On Becoming..., is, "Exploring existence and paradigm shifts in the time of COVID." And the bottom line, at this point in history, is that we are the paradigm shift. We must be. There is no more critical time than now for species-sustaining paradigm shifts. Fascism, eugenics, genocide, kyriarchy, war, and an overwhelming ethos of compliance and forced assimilati...

Hey. It's been three months. Three goddam months that feel like three years, or thirty, or zero. So... hey. I'm thinking about the very moment in which we sit, looking out over the existential contexts in which it all sits, and I'm actually feeling... I can't capture the word. I'm feeling profoundly energized, and maybe that will deflate tomorrow. And I'm equally feeling de...

Folks. How are you? Precarious? Ambivalent? Terrified? Angry? Sad? Confused? Unsure? All of the above, plus more? Something completely different?!! I feel you. I assure you you've come the right place. Here is a very brief, "On Becoming...," through which I travel out of a spirit of gravity and into a spirit of levity. Yin. Yang. The undeniable reality that duality is baked into existence. And not...

On Becoming... ...an exploration of existence and paradigm shifts in the time of COVID. I'm putting that tag here because you will not hear it in the episode. Why? Because the intro was recorded in 2018 and the piece, itself, was released in 2016 before the "Driven to Drink" podcast was removed from the internet for musical copyright infringement. It's the piece of which I'm most proud. I wrote an...

In several weeks, I'll be presenting to a group of self-advocates who gather regularly to bolster, mentor, and support the voices of those who are too often ignored and diminished. My goal is to ensure the presentation is as fully accessible to all participants, and anyone who might otherwise want to receive the messages, as possible. Today's podcast represents my desire to figure out what to comm...

While struggling to come up with a title for this episode, my spouse, who is not a fan of Dee-Lite or their ubiquitous hit, spit out, "Buddha's In the Heart," and it stuck. (Feelin' kinda high like a Hendrix haze.) Obviously, what you'll find here is looser and a bit more relaxed than previous episodes...but as I continue to find and hone my voice, or voices, in the spirit of...

This episode is a glossary of terms that I often use set in the spirit of play and existential joy. The material is serious and heavy, as any endeavor aimed at harm reduction should be. AND ALSO...I am but a human becoming within a universe universing. Sincere levity is praxis. I love that you're here with me. Thanks for hanging. -Greg

And there, in a space occupied by teenagers and young adults, many of whom have high enough support needs to have spent lifetimes with caregivers, teachers, clinicians, and other experts assuming INcompetency...we found community and a path towards true independence and freedom, confidence and know-how gained through lived experience. I'm grateful, every day, to exist in community with autisti...

The spirit of play. This is my current life goal. Inhabiting the spirit of play. I used to be very fluent with this. 2016 - 2024 have provided a myriad traumas that have pushed my nervous system over the edge. But it held on to a root or jutting rock formation. And I've mangaed to climb back up to stability. The spirit of play. Won't you hang out with me for about 20 minutes? It's stab...

I've committed to routines of recharging my wellbeing batteries, to regulating my nervous system, to reconnecting with the spirit of play. Among several goals is this endeavor, that I engage in recording once-per-week, which also implies that I engage in writing-for-recording once-per-week. Today, you'll experience on-script, off-script, vulnerable and silly Greg as I contemplate the triag...

On Becoming...is about transformation across each present moment. We don't know and cannot explain what happens in the cocoon as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly or moth. It is a black box. Much like the human nervous system. We have clues. We have data. Images and experiments. But we simply do not know a fraction of the complexities. We know quite a bit, but still...what we know is a sma...

Sanctuary: A place of refuge or safety. From the Latin, Sanctus, meaning holy. Holy, from the Old English and Proto-Germanic, "whole." Also wholeness, being sound, or well. I've also seen attributions of "holy" to Norse and a connection to the terms: health and healing. Though sanctuary aligns closest with the Latin, Sanctuarium, being (...are you ready for this, because I...

Hi! I'm back. Never really went anywhere, though the podcast endured a 6 month hiatus, which...nobody really missed me, so it's all good! Recently, Compassion Focused Therapy entered my life, lexicon, praxis, and pedagogy. I'm always happy to encounter a framing that aligns with person-centered therapy/pedagogy and trauma-informed care. CFT certainly does. It's been a minute since...

What is punishment? I'm not interested in dictionary definitions. I'm interested in how you frame punishment in your lived experience and praxis as a professional, or parent, or caregiver, or human with influence over other humans and/or living things. What is punishment? What purpose does it serve? Why do you use it? If you don't use it, why not? That's what I mean when I ask...wh...

I've read, heard, and experienced a tremendous amount of lip service offered regarding trauma-informed care. Much of it retrofits the profitable and ubiquitous standards of pathology, medicalization, punitive compliance training, forced assimilation, and radical behaviorism...onto the language of trauma-informed care. This manipulated version is, neither in spirit nor impact, a caring and impa...

As indicated in the introduction, this is more a bonus episode than a full episode. I will be using this recording as both a sleep aide as well as a meditation background. You may use this recording of a very powerful and insistent Atlantic Ocean from Duck, North Carolina, for whatever purpose you desire...if any. I'm diligently working on the next full episode, which will explore the construc...

Hi! Today, we'll engage in a practice illuminated by Lama Rod Owens in his marvelous book, "Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger," published in 2020. For those not subscribed to Spotify, this episode is presented without accompanying music. The practice of the Seven Homecomings does not require or need anything but the intention of the practicant. Nonetheless, I've...