ReBirthday ~ Soultree, the seed

Today, I begin my 28th revolution around the sun. I am reborn with a name I chose, Soultree.

I am Soultree

and I am on this life journey with you and many others, but it is undeniably solo/SOULo. Our path towards liberation and freeing our true selves, the gifted, hurt, surviving, and thriving self is usually quite a trek with no training manual and not much guidance at first, it seems, until we start listening. It has taken me some time to hone in my ear, my internal compass, my own heartbeat. I am unveiling my true self now ~ my shadow as well as my light.

It has taken me over a year to REALease this website because I was afraid of my own potential for greatness that will, undoubtedly, attract a lot of difficult lessons and harsh criticisms. I was also afraid of my own shortcomings and I have shifted that feeling to being open to change and opinions that are intended to grow and deepen my infinite though sometimes limited innerstanding.

I am Soultree

I am a 28 year old, undocumented, Pilipinx Marshallese Chicagoan artist who likes to live like a migratory bird sharing seeds and signs of land and life world’s over. I am a cunning linguist who enjoys cunnilingus and I just need to drop it like that literally and clitorally because I’ve been feeling trapped in the religious dogma, professionalization, gendering, and just all around fucked up expectations of me/us/this world that I have enforced on myself since I was young because that is how oppression is internalized, recycled, then fed into the next generation. I hope to work through those traumas privately and with my writing & collaborations, so that my experiences can be an example and lesson for those to come.

I am Soultree

And I am a recovering people pleaser. Masturbating, workaholic’ing in too many senses, and running away are what saved me from my own savioring and martyring tendencies. I’ve been in an unhealthy loop of deprivation and feeling unworthy with myself and “my community”. As I start writing and sharing more about this journey unapologetically, patiently, and with the tenderness only I can offer to myself, I hope to continue my process of re’birthing and freeing all the me’s that are coming.

It seems to be a trend that every four years we shed a new layer of skin and self. This is my 7th time going through this cycle of deep shedding and growth. I’ve been itching out of my old self and soon I’ll show how and why.

I am reborn today with a name I chose and a name that has helped me through times when the violence I experienced seemed nameless until I recovered and re~membered my own language. I am Soultree and I love words, sounds, prayers, music, and the relationships we build with each other. Though I cannot make any promises about what my work will do for anyone including myself I try deeply, lovingly, and with so much passion (be)coming into compassion every day. This is my attempt to free others as I have been freed. It’s taken me this long to believe in my writing and to feel comfortable sharing my life’s work even though countless organizations and individuals throughout the world have benefitted from and supported my words and works.

In rebirthing myself, I forgive and wash away all that I no longer need to carry and that I am able to let go now. I recognize that rebirthing is part of me becoming my fullest and truest self and acknowledging I’m already whole and that is safe to be me. Being reborn is part of what will keep me wanting to live when times are challenging and mental health challenges are high.  As a faithFULL and spiritual person, the state of this world has alarmed, harmed, but also warmed me at the same time. This world is complex and continues with and without us. I hope to leave behind possibilities for the next generations and life forces to come while bridging the practices of elders to youth and youth to elders and all that is in between and beyond.

Thank you for welcoming my arrival again and again. I am grateful to live and be alive.

Walang Hiya,

Soultree