Taking Kind Care

It was just another mundane afternoon grocery run.

Roaming, thinking about what I might want for dinner. I saw a woman at the end of a long aisle. I could just make out her face, and she was smiling at me.

As she got closer, she looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. Before I knew it, she was already hugging me. Like, really hard, and I could sense her welling up a little. Maybe I was just imagining that.

It wasn’t until we broke contact that I recognized her. Ms. S, my old supervisor from a clerk job I briefly worked in the late ’80s.

It felt a tiny bit odd. We were friendly in a professional way, but not much beyond that. I didn’t think too deeply about the hug. Figured maybe she was having a rough day.

It was a short chat. We caught up briefly, and she asked for my email. She hugged me again, harder and longer than the first time. This time, it was obvious she was welling up, tears on the verge of flow.

Looking back, something had been approaching all afternoon. I just didn't know what it was yet.

As we went our separate ways, she left me with a curious turn of phrase...

“Take kind care of yourself.”

Later that night, I got an email from her. No subject, no message, just a link. I clicked and read it, no surprises. It confirmed everything I already understood.

It was the CDC-Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study summary.

It didn't change anything at the time, but it offered a way of naming parts of a landscape I'd been walking through for years.

The real surprise was she apparently saw right through me in 1988. Then in 2006, she was telling me she still saw me, sending me that link and nothing else.

It landed like a data point, I filed it and kept moving.

Understanding something and being in a place to act on it are two entirely different things.

In 2016, I found myself in the middle of a full-on health collapse. Just a few years after coming through a personal and professional unraveling.

As my health was coming undone, I could feel I wasn't going to make it. Not unless I could move the needle on sorting the past.

Not dying in the ICU was just the beginning. Now I had to learn how to live, before I ran out of road a second time.

Specialist after specialist appeared until I had a healthcare “team.” The trouble I was in was heavy, and profoundly sobering. Sure, that part needed attention, but it was almost a distraction from the task at hand.

By then, more had been built around ACEs. I looked around and answered some questions. I scored a nine out of ten. Not a good look for future health outcomes.

I had a lot of work cut out for me.

Between the labs, imaging, biopsies, procedures, med changes…

I read, more than a lot.

I fancied myself competent at self-education, skills development, and execution. I taught myself welding, fabrication, machining, thermodynamics, and aerodynamics with a library card. I was good at it, built a life around it, and records were set. Engineering students and professors called on me to talk through solutions from time to time.

Of course, I thought I could fix myself.

I collected the data, read the studies, and listened to the relevant conversations. I understood structure, mechanics, behavior, and adaptation.

Maté, van der Kolk, Demartini, Crone, Sadhguru, Shi Heng Yi, Jung, IFS, Somatics.

All the usual suspects and then some.

I'd been doing breathwork and meditation since the ’80s. Samatha, Pranayama, Vipassana, Tummo, and so on. Plenty of spiritual bypass along the way.

Even back then, I could see transcendence in service of transformation as avoidance. Same substrate as addiction. I still have practices for the physical, fieldcraft, not sublimation.

I was in a health collapse, and financial collapse as a result. Even if I wanted to engage a program or treatment, all of it was beyond my means.

Where I came from, it’s easy to get lost and nearly impossible to find the trailhead.

I pivoted back to the physical, worked on capacity, clawed my way back to the trail. Not immediately, across years and alone. I found moments I didn't brace or flinch.

I kept going back. I stayed with it.

Years later, I was still finding my way back, quietly depending on those miles of dirt and oak for reasons I couldn't fully explain at the time.

Twigs snapping underfoot, rustling in the grass, doves suddenly taking flight. Mid-50s and still jumping clear out of my skin, over nothing.

Ghost threats.

I went back over and over, tiny proofs I could stay, that I was still alive.

No consequence, no hands land, no fists follow.

The body doesn't try to run, hide, or brace. Not every time, but enough.

More proof.

Over time, the trail became less about regulation and recovery and more about living.

Finding aliveness.

Ten years on, still ongoing and conditional. Bracing and flinching come back...

If I stay away from the woods too long.

If this stayed with you or found you at the right time...

Take kind care.

→ Share this with someone who might be in the middle, too.

Further Reading & Resource Links

→ Child Mind Institute: What Are Adverse Childhood Experiences
→ Cleveland Clinic: Childhood Trauma & ACES
→ CDC: About Adverse Childhood Experiences

Connective Tissue:

→ Dead Reckoning
→ It Comes Due Either Way
→ And It Stoned Me

Trail Crossings & Waypoints:

→ What Regulation Made Possible
→ Here Comes The Rain Again
→ The Urban Pivot

Overlooks & Vantages:

→ Oh, the Water
→ Until the Wheels Come Off
→ 2026 Wildflower Gallery: February

More on the way → Subscribe free for new posts delivered by email.

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* peer reflections: not medical or therapy advice. *