Come As You Are Podcast

Friends, a quick hello on Day 3 of this new year, or Day 4 if you get this Sunday morning. We will not be counting the days of this year generally, just these first few because it’s wild that it’s only Day 3 and … yeah. There are some new people in the mix and in our midst, so I want to welcome you all with a lot of love, and thank you so much for being here. Also, I want to let you know I do a podcast every week, after the essay, and after I’ve had time to meet you in the comments section — which is one of my favorite places to be. Often I’ve had time to ponder further based on what you’ve shared, so I think about the podcast as a co-creation and a conversation we’re having. I may eventually move it to the app so we can see each other in real time if you’re around while I record. I genuinely treasure getting to know you. That will become clear if it isn’t already. Maybe you like podcasts, maybe not. There are a few I love, but I only have time to listen if I’m driving somewhere, so I get it. We are all inundated. But, maybe you do a lot of driving, or maybe you like a voice in the background while you’re folding laundry. Fair warning, I cry during episodes possibly more than most people with podcasts. I cry easily these days and have since my mother died. Maybe it’s grief, maybe it’s hormones, maybe it’s being relatively sane in a world that is heartbreaking too much of the time.Okay, thus ends this session of hello and podcasting with Ally, thanks for coming. Now we can talk about this particular episode and also how unhinged the president is. Fantastic.Why not end the longest year ever with back-to-back trips to the Social Security Office and the DMV? How could you have a car registered to your name, but the wrong VIN number attached — for four years? Why isn’t there an opt-out button that triggers a trap-door with a fun slide that takes people directly to a grown-up sleep-away camp where we could all go when the world feels like too much?I dug into all those questions and more in this episode about why some of us struggled mightily in 2025. The discussion includes love of the Constitution, the three branches of government, our checks and balances, the Supreme Court, and the free press…and the heartbreak of watching all of those guardrails of our democracy fail one by one, simultaneously. The biggest heartbreak of all was the collusion required for that to happen. Feel as you may about the Founding Fathers, I think it’s safe to assume they never imagined a world where so many Americans would pledge fealty to a man so lacking in ethics and morals, betraying the country they claim to love and the Constitution they swore to uphold.I talked about due process, ICE raids, the attack on DEI, the LGBTQ community, women’s rights, the increase in the number of abortions since Roe was overturned, the increase in maternal and infant mortality rates in states with restrictive abortion bans, the hypocrisy of causing people grave harm with no compassion or empathy in the name of Christianity. Those are just a few reasons some of us had a hard time last year.And here on day 3…it looks like we’ll have plenty to deal with in 2026. (Side note, it’s not a new thing for America to decide it’s time for a regime change somewhere in Latin America. Some of you are young, so maybe it’s your first time witnessing a president decide he doesn’t need congressional approval to kidnap a dictator in the dead of night, but I am old enough to remember George H.W. Bush doing this very thing in 1989. See: Noriega! We’ll get back to this because there’s so much to unpack. The Monroe Doctrine, The Roosevelt Corollary, The War Powers Resolution, and the Authorized Use of Military Force, just to get us started. But if you think two things can’t be true at once, for example — Maduro was terrible for the people of Venezuela, and in the simplest of terms he is a not a good man and, it is an abuse of power and a terrible idea to use military force to oust dictators/overthrow governments from countries with resources we want, and then “take them over” with no plan except “we want their oil”I’d say you might want to think again.) Anyhoo, friends, we’re off to a wild, destabilizing start, but that’s how this “peace president” — the one who wasn’t going to get us into any more foreign wars — likes and wants it. Someone pass the FIFA peace pipe I guess. My heart goes out to the family members of civilians who died in Venezuela last night, and those who are scared for their loved ones. It goes out to the family members of our military who are being led by a president who has no qualms about making it known we are there for the oil and there is no clear strategy beyond that. It goes out to anyone who wonders how we are supposed to do this for another three years. One hint: don’t do that to yourself. Take it one day at a time. Take it one step at a time, one phone call, one email, one kind word, one supportive text, one hilarious meme, one thoughtful card, one chance to let someone merge, one moment to catch your breath, one afternoon to slow down, one walk to notice the sun is shining, one conversation with someone who understands, one opportunity to make the world a little bit better…at a time. That’s how we do it, and we do it together. 5calls.org makes it easy to let your reps know how you feel, and please do call. Deep breath in, hold for the count of seven. Deep breath out for the count of eight. Repeat. Love y’all.Since it’s a new year, maybe it’s a good time to mention you can go into your settings and set things up so you only get essays and podcasts in the app — that’s a general Substack thing, did you know that? You don’t have to get emails sent to your inbox unless you want them. If that’s exciting to you or if it’s news to you, I’ll take you through it. From your laptop, click on your picture or avatar in the upper right corner, then click on Settings: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

I recorded this episode after one of the most sorrowful weeks I can remember. I wanted to be feeling joyful because it’s the holiday season, but you can’t force joy, and it’s very difficult to live in a country where we continue to have school shootings as though there’s nothing we can do to change that.Of all the issues we face here, that’s the one that wrecks me in a way that is hard to describe. Part of it is having school-age children myself — my son is the age the Sandy Hook kids would have been — and part of it is finding it unfathomable that anyone is willing to continue to fail our children this way. It isn’t normal that both of my children have texted me during lockdowns. It isn’t normal that we now have kids who have been in more than one school shooting.Then there was Bondi Beach, people fleeing for their lives, parents diving into pits trying to cover their children with their own bodies. When it seemed things could not get sadder, news of the Reiners stared to emerge.There wasn’t a way to pull holiday cheer out of the hat, friends, and if that’s what you’re looking for, stick a pin in this episode. But if you are struggling with it all and in need of a good cry, then maybe this is for you. Either way, this is not an episode for little ears. I’m sending you a lot of love. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

Four years ago today I was on a plane, trying to stay calm. I’d had to throw stuff in a bag and get on an app to find a flight that left a day earlier than the flight I had booked, which was a thing I did in a Lyft on the way to LAX. It wasn’t the plan. The plan was that I was going to fly back to NYC the following day, December 8th, to be there when the hospital discharged my mother into hospice care at home. I’d spent the last couple of days doing the paperwork and switching her into the hospice network, setting up the team to meet her at the apartment where I grew up, where she still lived, where I now seemed to live more than I didn’t. I’d been coordinating times for a hospital bed to be delivered, buying an easy chair that reclined all the way back and had good reviews so the hospice team could maybe get some sleep here and there, figuring out shifts for everyone. She was going to need 24-hour care in addition to me, my brother and my stepdad. You have to know when you’re beat, and I did.I’d had a bad feeling, though. My mother hated the bipap machine. That was the machine that forced oxygen into her lungs, and sucked CO2 out. I couldn’t blame her — her jaw was slack because of the ALS, so they had to use a visor and velcro straps to secure it to her face and around the back of her head. She’d been on a ventilator for 12 days before that, and when she came off the ventilator (a thing they weren’t sure she would do at all) her breath was shallow and weak. She didn’t like the feeling of the “aggressive breaths” being forced in and out of her. She scrawled those words on a notepad — her perfect, Catholic-school-girl cursive a thing of the past. She shook her head at me helplessly, and even that took effort. Her eyes were two huge pools of sadness. She didn’t like the velcro straps, the machines beeping, the tubes everywhere. I can’t write anymore about this right now.I’d gotten into the rhythm of being back in NYC, sleeping in the bedroom that was mine before my brother was born, spending 12-hour days in the ICU with my mom, who was dying. I’d fly back to Los Angeles for a night, hug my kids, make sure they were okay, and then get back on a plane the next day. It had been going on for a month. I never imagined I’d be taking planes like cab rides, and I did not allow myself to look at my credit card statements or even worry about how I was going to handle any of it, I just did it. For as far back as I can remember, I’ve longed for my mother. Sometimes I longed for her in a room full of people, sometimes when it was just the two of us talking. As a child I never felt that I “had” her — it seemed like she wasn’t very interested in me no matter how hard I tried to be good or perfect. If I had her attention, it was because I’d enraged her. We struggled as I got older, because I could see she was in pain. People do not drink like that for no reason. I wanted someone to help her, and to help me by extension. She refused to admit there was a problem. Everyone else refused to challenge her. There’d been so much pain between us. She was hurt, and she’d hurt me. Then when I receded, as any sane person will do if you hurt them, she felt betrayed. I was supposed to pretend the bad things hadn’t happened, and my inability to do that — and later, my refusal to do that — made her furious. As I got older, that response of hers enraged me. At the end of her life, none of it mattered. I would have fought an army by myself with nothing but my broken heart to save her if I could have. I tried. It was enough, though, because she saw me trying. Everyone saw me trying. I would have given almost everything for more time with her, because the ALS took every last thing from her, including her ability to drink. Including her ability to rage. It didn’t happen all at once, the year leading up to her hospitalization was a thing that was so brutal it’s hard to comprehend sometimes. As the disease ravaged her, she lashed out at me in ways that hurt my heart when I think of them. I’m still recovering from it all, four years later. But the last three weeks of her life, when she could not speak anymore…that was when my mom and I started to communicate in the only language you ever really need. It was the only thing I’d ever wanted or needed from her. I finally had her in that way I’d been longing to have her my whole life. Three weeks felt like such a short amount of time to have her, and then to have to let her go. I did make it to the hospital in time to be with her the last few hours of her life, thanks to a huge line of people at the taxi stand at JFK who let me cut to the front. Do not ever let anyone tell you New Yorkers are not kind. I still think of those people and wish I could hug every one of them.For anyone who is grieving or missing someone this time of year, this episode is for you. I will let you know that I had to stop a few times, and there were tears. But that’s okay. You have to let the grief move through you.Sending love to all, and to my mom, who left this earth of ours at 3:37 AM EST on December 7th, 2021. I miss her every second. Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

There’s a certain kind of person who is so concerned with their own needs, how they’re feeling, and what’s good for them, they really don’t have the capacity to take in much of anything else. You might know some people like this. They can be very charming and charismatic, but after a short time you’ll realize their favorite topic — and the one they circle back to again and again — is them.When they aren’t talking about what’s good for them or what they’re excited about or looking forward to (world dominance! ballroom-bunkers! the end of Obamacare!) — they’re talking about things that really upset them. A list of ways they’ve been wronged or people they loathe — and they can be very petty about it. These kind of people like to assert their dominance as a way of feeling better about themselves. No one feels the need to assert something when they feel confident it’s already understood, and only insecure, fearful people have the desire to dominate and control others. This week I wrote about a time I watched my dad strip my not-yet-stepmom of her power and joy right in front of me, teaching us both that he was the one who was going to call the shots. I was five, and I remember looking from him to her and back again, as the energy in the room shifted, and so did something in my mind. This wasn’t about a teddy bear, this was about permission. She’d done something without asking him if it was okay, and he wasn’t going to allow that.There was more to it — if she and I bonded, that threatened the relationship he’d set up with me. I was supposed to be his tiny confidante, his pocket therapist, his pint-sized affirmer and secret-keeper. If she started buying me teddy bears, who knew whether I’d keep his Extracurricular Olympic-Level Womanizing Activities to myself.My dad was fifty. His girlfriend (eventual third wife) was twenty-four. I was five. Those numbers feel significant. She’d bought me the bear with her own money, but he made us return it. We both got the lesson that she was not allowed any agency when it came to me. Only he was the grantor of joy if there was going to be any.What kind of man makes his tiny daughter return a teddy bear? What kind of man teaches his girlfriend she gets no respect, right in front of his child? She’s allowed to do the laundry, make the dinner, keep the house clean, work and pay half the bills, but she’s not allowed to buy a gift he wouldn’t have purchased … because, why?What kind of man gives $40 billion to Argentina, but won’t feed the most vulnerable people in his own country? What kind of man makes people choose between food and affordable healthcare? What kind of president doesn’t care that 20 million people are going to see a doubling of their healthcare premiums (mine are quadrupling) or that 15 million people will be thrown off Medicaid and the ACA?What kind of administration grants tax breaks to billionaires and huge corporations, but doesn’t care that hardworking people are struggling to buy groceries? What kind of people send ICE agents to daycare centers? In the midst of all these horrors, what kind of man pauses, looks around, and asks, “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” All this and more (including the very excellent special elections) in this week’s podcast episode. Love to all.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe

One of the harder things about life right now is the constant onslaught of news that feels insane, impossible, heartbreaking, outrageous, mind-boggling, or fill-in-the-blank with your chosen word. We really aren’t built for this and it’s so incredibly sad, because it doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t be this way. It could be so beautiful.I hope you are taking care of yourself, consciously stepping away from the madness sometimes, putting your phone down, getting outside if you can, breathing deeply, connecting with people you love, reading good books, listening to music, and doing anything and everything you can to remind yourself that human beings can be incredible. We’ve been through tough times before, and the most important thing is not to lose hope. Sometimes that’s also the hardest thing, I know.This week, of course, we watched as the president took a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House with no congressional oversight or approval, and no public review. There are at least a dozen other things happening that need our attention – he is directing our military to strike alleged “drug boats” out of international waters based on his assertion that they are carrying drugs — with no evidence, and without congressional input.So we’re just shooting boats out of the water, now, and taking his word for it bad people are on those boats. The administration just approved more oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge which breaks my heart. This president wants to accept a $130 million donation from a friend, Timothy Mellon, to pay the military this month and there are going to be millions of people who think that’s a good thing. It is not a good thing at all, even for active duty service members. Obviously I want them to be paid, along with all federal workers being impacted by the shutdown.I do not think senators choosing not to come to work should be paid, however, nor do I think they should receive top-of-the-line healthcare when they can’t be bothered to to their jobs. I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for their vacation. It’s not good for any American if the president starts accepting anonymous donations or any donations to pay for our military, because we need Congress. We need a functioning Congress to ensure we have a functioning democracy. We, the people, need our representatives to work together to make sure we are being represented. That’s why they are called “representatives.” That’s why we get to vote for them (unless the president calls governors of states and tells them to redraw their maps so we don’t get to vote for them), that’s why our tax dollars pay their salaries.They are supposed to go to our state capitols and to Washington to work for us. If there is a shutdown because our senators cannot come to an agreement, and the party in the majority starts taking huge donations to pay for things, there is no need to negotiate anymore. This president is working to undermine the power of one of the three branches of government in broad daylight and I do not understand why this isn’t the top story everywhere. More on that later this week.For now, in case you (also) encounter people who try to compare Obama’s basketball court to the ballroom, allow me to help. He turned the existing White House tennis court into a court that could also be used to play basketball – so some lines were painted and hoops were added. Even that he did with congressional approval and oversight. It is freaking hilarious to compare these two projects. Like an ant versus an asteroid.When people start telling you the “South Lawn Expansion Project” began during Obama and, “Trump is just finishing what Obama started” that is misinformation. In addition to the tennis court/basketball court mashup, Michelle Obama planted The White House Kitchen Garden, which continues to provide 2000 pounds of produce to the White House annually. She understands the concept of leaving a place better than you found it.You may also hear about a $376 million dollar renovation that happened while Obama was president. It did! It’s so funny, because the people talking about it are so smug. They’re like, “Look you apoplectic liberals having seizures over the ballroom, look what Obama did!” As if he spent $376 million in taxpayer dollars doing upgrades to the White House for himself.What they don’t say is that the $376 million dollar renovation was approved by Congress in 2008 when BUSH was president, before Obama took office, because the Bush administration came to Congress with a Bush administration report, saying inspectors the Bush administration had hired found infrastructure systems that were continually failing and needed to be replaced. Not just HVAC systems but security systems. So yeah, those renovations happened while Obama was in office, but they were approved and put in motion before he was president.CNN later confirmed in a September 10, 2010, segment that Congress had approved the project’s funding in 2008, before Obama took office, following a Bush administration report that warned of periodic system failures in the White House. Bloomberg News further noted that several of the building’s systems were nearing the end of their “reliable productivity.”It is very tiring and disheartening to have just paid my federal taxes when the president of the country where I live hates people like me who did not vote for him. That is not how it’s supposed to work. He is in no hurry to open the government, he said so himself just a couple of days ago. He is happy about the shutdown, because it is “killing the Democrats.” It is giving his administration the opportunity to get rid of “Democrat programs” – meaning SNAP, ACA subsidies so Americans can have affordable healthcare, Medicaid benefits, funding for pediatric cancer research, and Special Education, to name a few. Last I checked, these were not “Democrat programs.”Anyway, I continue to hope more people will realize what is happening here. Congress is the branch of government most accessible to the people – that is by design. We are able to call and email our reps for a reason. We know when votes go to the House floor, and the way our representatives vote are in the public record so we can see if they are representing our interests, voice our feelings if not, and vote them out if we continue to feel that way. Without a functioning Congress, we skid ever closer to an Executive-run country. A CEO at the helm, calling the shots — which, if you’re paying attention, is exactly what they want. This is Project 2025, and we are seeing it play out. It’s time to smell the hostile takeover.Someone commented on another platform that I have so much anger and should do some yoga. I am angry sometimes — watching arrogant, bigoted, racist, misogynistic, violent people ruin everything tends to piss me off. Sometimes I am full of despair. Other times I am full of hope, gratitude and joy — more of the time, thankfully. I don’t practice yoga to avoid my feelings or to avoid reality, I practice so I can face it, try to show up with love, and see how I can help.Come As You Are is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allyhamilton.yogisanonymous.com/subscribe