Fare Thee Well

goodbye for now, but not for too long!

Remembering

Reminders of my humanity, fallibility and areas calling for growth have abounded over these past few weeks. March 16-20 was one of the most intense times I’ve faced in my life, yet March 21-30 was nearly equally intense. The past five days have been pretty intense still, and only now is life chilling out.

Last post was about a great time I had with a love interest, but said love interest only remained interesting for a week. She ended up getting triggered by a boundary I set and woundedly storming off into the night, but it’s alright, as I told her. It’s even alright that some family decided to project wounds (wounds that felt very energetically similar, relating to not receiving enough of my attention) onto me at the exact same time — one day after I received the news that I wouldn’t be on season 50 of Survivor like I’d thought. Every loss creates space for the new, and in all pain lies potential power. Whenever I connect to my higher self and remember, I’m truly grateful for it all.

Survivor

In addition to gratitude, I remember that everything “out there” is simply a reflection of what’s “in here.” Going through a process of casting, psych testing and planning for Survivor 50 — a process that appeared pointless by the 11th hour — actually did have a point; the point just turned out to be different than what I’d expected. Shoutout to striving to live with no expectations like Tamar does. I expected the point to be fulfilling my inner child’s dream, but it was actually to let that dream go, and to become conscious of how deeply the dream had nested itself as a splinter in my mind. Now I remember: Light & Shadows is the dream — the dream beyond the child’s dream, the adult’s dream, the Tamar-validated professional dream.

Survivor did a number on me, big dawgs. I knew that, but recently the profundity of that number has been sinking in. It’s been sinking in dramatically these past weeks, but it’s also sunk in gradually since Ayahuasca addressed it during one of my ceremonies in February 2022. The ceremony was one of my last over a period of 45 days in which I drank Aya 20 times. I was exhausted, and as has happened in only a couple of my 71 ceremonies, I fell asleep. As the medicine flowed through me, I dreamt of being on Survivor: Cagayan, and I had a vision of Jefra from that season. I suddenly heard an extremely unsettling sound of auditory interference, and I woke up disturbed, receiving the message that the show had done far more harm to me than I’d previously fathomed.

In my experience Ayahuasca has never been a big fan of Survivor or of the United States, generally discouraging my attachment to both. Now, as I release what could be last vestiges of the Survivor and American dreams within me, in the wake of tweeting my news and seeing so many other former players hurting similarly, I understand. Survivor is like the worst boyfriend you can possibly imagine — a toxically dark-triad devil who’d happily drag anyone, whether me or my wounded love interest, into his hell realms. He’ll use $1,000,000 to seduce you into trying to be as dark-triad as he is. He’ll call you when he feels like it and shamelessly ignore you when he feels like it. He’ll ignore your calls for weeks on end, even when you need to know whether his filming plans conflict with your sister’s wedding, as was the case for me. He’ll tell you it’s on for months only to call you the day before your flight and tell you it’s off, as was the case for good humans like Shane Powers and Twila Tanner. He’ll flatter you with empty words and make you feel like royalty one day, and the next day he’ll drop you.

Masses of former survivors (of the TV show, to be clear) are now in pain, and I feel for them. I honestly don’t blame Survivor for the pain, nor do I believe in the oppressor-victim paradigm that disempowers so many people who voluntarily choose to do something like Reality TV. Yet, I feel oceans of compassion for those people turned out by the worst boyfriend ever. I also feel oceans of respect for the Survivor casting associate who first called me back in January 2012. I was a vulnerable 19-year-old with a dream, and in our very first call he told me almost exactly what I’ve written above: “we will talk to you like you’re the most important person in the world, and then we’ll drop you; just understand that.”

I respect truth-telling so much that I can respect almost anyone, as long as he’s honest. I consider myself extremely honest, but these past weeks have highlighted ways in which I, too, need to grow up and align more closely with Truth.

I can’t honestly blame the show and say that I was “misled.” I wasn’t, and even if I were, I’ve known for over 13 years what kind of beast Survivor is. I’m a strong independent woman man, and Survivor isn’t my leader. Thank God for that, because while I’m certainly still feeling some disappointment that I won’t be the sole survivor of such a landmark season, I’m now the sole author of my story. I feel immense excitement and alignment with what some former survivors and I have the opportunity to create.

Healing from Survivor

Light & Shadows has always been about shamanism, medicine and healing, but thus far it hasn’t won much attention, especially from my mainstream social media following.

We’ve also been losing subscribers almost every Friday since we began releasing weekly videos and posts exactly six months ago. We’ve been recovering and growing quickly these past few weeks, however, in large part thanks to Healing from Survivor — an opportunity to integrate the previously disconnected fields of Survivor fans and Light & Shadows viewers.

Healing from Survivor stands to bring medicine to former survivors who actually want that medicine (via plants, practices and conversations), and thus to connect with those Survivor fans who actually care about what we’re saying. HfS further stands to reorient our focus toward the big picture, and toward the Epics that will be the highlight of our storytelling.

Producing content every week has grown us a lot as a team, but it’s also made it difficult to focus on the big picture of our Epics. We’ve been scrambling week after week to deliver you something worthwhile, and haven’t been able to take a step back and work from higher inspiration. We’re still just a scrappy team of seven. We don’t have PAs and our budget is nothing more than Reiman’s personal budget. We like it this way, because it means we don’t have to answer to a CBS or even to a YouTube or any platform that sensors. This is our story. Nonetheless, we’ve felt our limits palpably since October 4, and we feel that it’s time for a break from weekly releases. We hope you can understand.

No more weekly stressing. No more hustling for hustling’s sake. No more lying. For me that means no more clinging to Survivor clout, yearning for a third season or pretending that even my second season was well-earned. Going into the fourth tribal council of Survivor: Cagayan, Kass and Tasha were planning on voting me out. I only “earned” my underdog story that season and my story in Survivor: Cambodia because Jeff Probst flipped the vote onto J’Tia through his line of questioning. J’Tia has earned a second chance far more than I’ve earned a third, and I sincerely hope she gets it if she wants it. I’m grateful enough to have played Survivor twice, and I’m beyond grateful to now be in the position to produce Healing from Survivor and to tell the truth. For me personally and for our team now, healing lies in speaking the truth.

We can only be transparent with you as we say goodbye and focus on HfS, which will be Epic II. HfS will film November 16-28 and will air roughly May through September, 2026. We plan to say hello and return with weekly releases before November, leading up to the release of Epic I — Pilot.

Reality Epic

Epic?!

I’ve mentioned them before, but for those of you who haven’t caught the vernacular of our Reiman-invented genre, Epics are poetic stories told over great spans of time. An Epic may encompass a handful of episodes (as will Healing from Survivor), or it may stand alone (as will our pilot).

For this moment, that’s all. I’ve got nothin’ for ya. In the coming months and years, however, we’ll have everything for ya.

Fare thee well.