What I used to believe is how being perfect was a solution. In this moment right now while I click-click on a modern writing device called a laptop what I trust is how being messy is an only true way through. Especially since gaslighting stymies bringing empowered choices into my life. Prior experiences are countless how gaslighting works and life has been messy to meet them. Purpose is to effect doubt. Manipulate a woman’s psychology so she wonders wtf continually—for years and decades.

And now I don’t. Ever doubt my womanly lesbian self. Still, a plainly gaslit is this blog where friendly readers peruse on occasion. How would I know? After several years not having access to basic info, like if a blog has readership, I surrender.

Entirely controlled I be. My phone, my email, my laptop, my blog, my every conversation is a place where I don’t get to bring empowerment. Yet I still can. Radical change is that today I don’t react because decisive nonaction embodies my dance-like power to choose wisely. I forgive. I accept. One hundred percent clear to me having reached all of my 61 years consciously aware to be in gratitude anyway.

A softening to surrender to what is my life progress not perfection even so. Garrett family of origin is derivative and lost in gaslighting. Authentic conversations have not been possible over the decades so I let them go. I move on. And still I take proactive steps since living in faith this way means I’m peaceful.

Ghosting, fake situations, ostracism, insult and more are here on the daily. Before I believed my behavior was causal or how might I have caused this mess? But is just life having challenges and this is my confidence to accept as debilitatingly, truly, and simply happening. And I don’t play goddess as in losing hope will ever end (mostly hopeless though), but what I am asking is how can I? How can I end psychological manipulation ensuring I over react given continual goading? What are best strategies to end intentional difficulty brought all my lifelong lived-lesbian, wholesome bitchiness? I’m listening, universe. Watcha got for me?

Studying history helps. Reality is that for five centuries and longer Hawai’i existed as a violent caste system. Chiefs, nobles and kings calling themselves ali’i believe royalty means direct access to gods created in Hawaiian mythology. Kahuna at second tier believe in priestly and professional craftsperson expertise: heiau ceremony, canoes, genealogy, hula dance, and healers. Next the maka’ainana believe as commoners to live a life of labor: farming, fishing, building, producting, and taxing. Last is the outcast or slave kauwa who believes life is feral and futile because reality is in the Hawaiian caste system these people were this—being relegated to lowly work and offered on occasion as human sacrifice in rituals.

This week I’ve been thinking about my Pololu valley lesbian couple. In this historical scenario we see two women who recognize each other for physical desire felt on a sensory level and often means treating each other well. Who we love, we love to respect. Would how each woman feels in historical Hawai’i times be called love? Or would we label a kindness gesture she has for her lover as romantic, a modern word applied historically? My curiosity is on modern phrases describing how ordinary women have been acting lesbian during history’s centuries.

Likely these women are commoners or maka’ainana who were allowed to couple. Temporary sexual and emotional couplings based on caste delineation and spiritual goodness connected to aina (land). Not calling themselves lesbian, while love and romance likely not phrases either back in the day. Yet she and she shared sensual desire. Last essay I think we resolved a lesbian couple in Hawaiian history pre-European contact lived a mindset reflecting the times. My modern history times give permission to rely on vocabulary I choose like romance and love and lesbian.

Calling myself a laborer today is privileged in historical comparison, clearly. Good news is Hawaiian historical times are shifting since when on a feudal scale commoners worked farm land to live consistently and continually returning profits to ali’i (kings). Shifting, yes, and isn’t a hierarchical finance dynamic still here? A balanced labor comparison is that today I work a routine gig to continually return economic profits to those who have done my hiring. A common worker I be where today’s caste system is capitalistic finance and being lesbian, I can be commodified.

For example, we have our LGBTQ Pride last weekend in Kona, Hawai’i Island. Now I’m very careful to write these words. An entire day devoted to LGBTQ visibility is worthy. And commodified. Pride in various LGBTQ cultures is vital for those having experienced a shaming factor which can render individuals invisible to self and to culture; being seen is key. My own process coming out as easygoing lesbian has been lifelong and continual. At a cultural level as in careful to not be too “out” for social consequences encountered like loss of employment, family, and complicated more. Because being out requires reading local culture and each circumstance every where she stands.

Even while we are being marketed while on parade, I love Pride! Is a street Mardi gras party where I get to go-wild sobriety style (can anyone say two bottles of water rather than my tamer one) and wiggle my waggle because dammit if dancing isn’t kick-ass good for soul. Just that one day a year for being sold trinkets, name brand this or that, and doused in too much materialistic influence is an economic message. Feels like a modern caste system. Maybe a few LGBTQers didn’t have the required $10 fee simply to walk in and join the parteeee. Progressing not perfecting is that while there I can call myself lesbian any ol’ damn time I wish, which is like always.

And is why I decided at Kona Pride 2026 to dance like no one is watching. We gathered at a Lez Come Together soiree where I focused on t-shirts. Women wore their pride. One woman wore a clear, bright lettering on a black t-shirt that read “I Fuck Like a Girl.” Seeing the phrase from a distance since I was busy throwing down a few of my awkward dance moves with a friend, I related my goal over the noise. I would ask t-shirt woman what she means wearing her phrase out loud so. Busy shaking my groove, I waited a while.

In a restful moment I sauntered over and clarified, before asking, that my curiosity question would be “nothing personal.” My lesbian culture has taught me to have 100 percent respectful boundary along my friendly way. Energetically direct and light and zero gaslighting. Is a life code I live on wherever I be. Which means besides studying history to acknowledge how my life exudes privilege and opportunity—unlike most of human history—speaking direct in easygoing intention is my second strategy to end gaslighting in my life.

Kind and clear eyed, she said, “I’m lasting a good while through a few orgasms not just a one and done.” My response was a smile and saying how she was being understood and I supported with a comment, “Right on!” We laughed and on my dance step way I went in a tightly crowded celebratory venue. This woman she took a sexist quip, “You throw like a girl,” all wimpy and no muscle, and reconfigured for lesbian culture that fucking like a girl is exactly the point. Women are having healthy, strong lesbian sex. And we consciously announce so—a difference from the indigenous Hawaiian ground we were standing on in the very moment. Another helpful historical comparison for me to end gaslighting. That’s why.

Gaslighting in a historical caste system makes oppressed people believe an assigned social level is gods ordained and permanent. But then King Kamehameha II (Liholiho) ordered a food banquet for an ali’i table and invited Queen Keopuolani and Queen Ka’ahumanu, a powerful ruler in her own right, to join. What had been a forbidden (kapu) taboo for centuries is that men and women could not sit at the same table. Yet in an 1819 culinary party a co-ed group dined at a shared table and no Hawaiian god struck anyone dead, so a caste system (kapu) was eradicated and for good. A woman could now have culinary freedom to select pork, coconut, and banana if she wishes, a choice being removed and reserved only for “sacred” ali’i during kapu.

In sharing this essay, I am ending gaslighting in my life. Two more t-shirts at our dance fiesta are showing me the way. One advocated to “Eat More Veg-Aina.” The art of cunnilingus compares to vegetable culinary perhaps and more like if she values veg from aina (land) then she herself has healthy flavor to offer. My interpretation, clearly, and what I end is any gaslighting doubt where I belong on my lesbian Eat More Veg-Aina spectrum.

A third t-shirt espoused that Vagina Is a State and I concur. Being in vagina state of focusing is a political mindset I vote for throughout any day. Women milling around at a social gathering for women only (and inclusive because we have democracy hearts, we dykes) inspired me to realize I can leave gaslighting far, far behind once and for all in my life.

Which is why when shouting at a friend on the dance floor—music happily loud is all—I said we need to form a women’s dance troupe. Was reminding me how our character Kaui in the novel Sharks in the Time of Saviors chooses hula dance as a way of life. Similar but lesbian different to the group in those movies Pitch Perfect. “Oh, you mean Bitch Perfect?” she laughed. And a name was named first while dancing. Now like Kaui finding solace in ancient women teaching her hula, we have Bitch Perfect, a lesbian dance ensemble—modern women finding solace in joyful dancing as resistance.

Evidence how I am consciously not allowing any techie or spoken or staged or indirect or hurtful gaslighting to ever take hold on my life again. I’m too busy dancing in Bitch Perfect to squander any more time. Now there is a commodity—my treasured time—for which (witch) I have a final say on how I spend, gratefully so, working a messy, bitchy life of progress not perfection.