“And just like years before, I stare back at all the past versions of me, the ghosts of fully formed skin, filled with bumps, scars, and stories to tell. Even when you feel like everything is going backwards, you can see the progress you made little by little, with each new me bringing in the lessons learned from all that stood before.”

It’s the year of the snake, and no not the release of the Reputation vault tracks sadly. 

If you are new here, I write a blog post every year on my birthday, since it is so close to New Years, and a great time to reflect on the horrors of another year on this floating rock in space. Check out last year’s post: Radically Accepting 31 with a Lady Parts Tour de South

It is a year of shedding skin and transformation. For a snake this process is called ecdysis, but for us sometimes it means going to therapy or finally leaving that toxic job. A snake’s skin doesn’t grow, so they shed to get bigger. Our human skin doesn’t work in the same way as snakes, but we do require a shedding of our past self in order to grow. As Taylor Swift once said,  “if you never bleed, you’re never gonna grow.”

But shedding skin can be uncomfortable, painful, and heart wrenching. It’s accepting and moving forward. It’s getting curious instead of combative. It’s making that tough call to put yourself first because you can’t help others if your cup isn’t full enough to overflow. 

After 2 years of pay cuts, working multiple odd jobs to pay bills, and living off rice and beans, the company I worked for laid everyone off from the NY branch in April. With only a few months left on my lease, and the ever increasing rent prices, I made the decision to move back home with my parents. I am beyond lucky and privileged to even have this as an option and safety net, that I know not everyone has. 

I was pushing so hard to survive. I’d squirm through every sidewalk crack, but only to keep coming up short, eventually realizing that there was no point living in NYC if I couldn’t even afford to enjoy it every once in a while. It was time to shed my own ego, and think about what I really wanted out of the next years of my life. 

It’s almost as if I know a girl who wrote a movie about moving back home with her parents…okay yes this is a subtle plug to go see LADY PARTS coming to a theater near you! 

Okay now back to our regularly scheduled medical trauma…

I had 2 doctors appointments lined up with specialists that I had waited a year to see. Yes, the waiting lists are over a year at most places. Of course as my job ended so did my insurance and suddenly I had to cancel both appointments, and quickly scramble to find a new PCP just to make sure my medications didn’t lapse. 

I was on Medicaid for a bit, but with that you can only see doctors that are in your state. Of course with vulvovaginal and pelvic pain conditions, it is already hard enough to find a provider, let alone one you can trust that will even take insurance. In New York, there are no specialists I could find that accept insurance, let alone Medicaid. Fun fact, Medicaid is determined by the location of the building where the doctor works, not the doctor themselves. Yes, it is a fucked up system, but I have the pleasure of 20+ years of fighting with insurance experience locked and loaded. 

This meant going onto an Affordable Care Act plan and paying even more monthly fees just to ensure one of the vulvovaginal specialists that takes insurance in the US could see me. But can’t I just pay out of pocket and see one close by? Nope. If the specialist does take insurance, but doesn’t take my specific insurance, but sees me and makes me pay out of pocket, it’s considered insurance fraud. So now I pay $600/month just to even be seen. Savings? Nope had to use them all up as I was only given 80% of my pay the last 2 years to live in fucking New York City. Credit Card? Filled up just by surviving. 

Now, after being on a wait list again for almost a year, I am flying to San Diego on Jan 4th, because it’s cheaper to fly there to see a doctor that takes my plan than to go to a private practice near me. Lady Parts Part 2: Revenge of the Insurance Plan coming soon! 

Just as the year was rounding out in November, my back and lower hip went out, and I’m slowly working with PT to get back moving around. As a 32 year old (as of today) with scoliosis and kyphosis, I am not bouncing back like I used to when my back would go out. My patience is being tested. And as old habits die screaming, mine will need to as well. Just as I made it a priority to get my vulvovaginal and pelvic pain checked out, I need to stay consistent with my PT, workouts, and getting myself healthy again in 2026.

It’s hard when your body was put together by a couple fighting at IKEA. Sure, did they build a table? So why are all the legs different lengths and slightly askew? I can only focus on so many body parts at once. My dream you ask? Every body part specialist gets into a room and dissects me inch by inch to make a kick ass plan to straighten me out, or at least as straight as it can get with an S-shaped curved back. 

Just as a storm allows for a rainbow, with each shedding of my skin this year, I made more room for even better things in my life. I co-started my own business, secured 6+ theatrical screenings for Lady Parts on my own, while we still played at 6 film festivals in 6 different states, started working as the Tight Lipped Social Media Manager, started working out again consistently, traveled to 3 new countries across 3 different continents, and even started a new relationship. A chain of events that even a storyteller like me could not have predicted to fall into place. 

And just like years before, I stare back at all the past versions of me, the ghosts of fully formed skin, filled with bumps, scars, and stories to tell. Even when you feel like everything is going backwards, you can see the progress you made little by little, with each new me bringing in the lessons learned from all that stood before. 

Make sure to slither on into a LADY PARTS screening next year (yes I know another plug), at one of the following:

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Until next year, please enjoy a story I wrote in 2nd grade about just missing the t-shirt from the cannon at the Britney Spears concert…