LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS, OH MY!
When I vowed to change my life in 2011, I had no idea what to do or how to do it, but I did have dreams—of living my calling, of moving through the world as my most authentic self, of learning how to love myself and others, of being of service and giving back to the world. To do that, I knew I needed to find a community with whom I could begin to share the kinds of conversations about inspiration and creativity, hope and healing I longed to have.
After my financial collapse, I had hidden myself away in shame. I cut myself off from old friends. I spent precious little time having fun and more and more time working. When I could no longer afford to do the things that had brought me joy-filled connection, like riding my horses, traveling, or taking classes—I saw that as just punishment for being such a financial fuck-up.
Fortunately, because I was able to keep my business open, I created meaningful relationships with my design colleagues, my employees, and my clients. But because our connection was work, I rarely let them see my personal struggles. I cut myself off from the pain in my heart, and let my head take over. The deep loneliness I felt inside is ultimately what led me to that wake-up call in the mirror.
As I began to show up to my own life, it became clear to me just how much I was craving a deeper kind of community. On my road trip back to my truest self, I needed brave companions beside me.
When I was a little girl, my mother and I watched The Wizard of Oz together on television every Thanksgiving weekend. Each year when the movie ended, I would turn to my mom and ask, “So it really was all a dream? Dorothy was asleep the whole time? She never even went to Oz?”
“Yes,” my mother would tell me. “It was all a dream. Oz was in her head, and all the people in Oz were the people she saw around her every day. She thought she was away on a scary adventure, but all she had to do was wake up to realize she was home with everyone she loved the whole time.” My first spiritual lessons came from watching The Wizard of Oz with my mom.
As I began to discover the Way of Being Lost, I realized that it looks suspiciously like that same spiritual yellow brick road. Your house gets blown away; your beloved dog gets taken; there are really, really wonderful people and really, really scary people and very pretty things that put you to sleep. But mostly there is the always-tempting belief that that someone out there who has magic powers can help you get home—if you can only find him and convince him to assist you.
Inevitably, of course, we all come to realize that the man behind that curtain is our false self, that home has always been in our own hearts as our truest self, that we always end up where we need to go by the means we least hope to get there, and that no spiritual journey is ever possible without companionship. Just as Dorothy never would have found her way home without the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, in order to find our way back home to our own hearts, we all need heart tribes.
As kids, we formed our heart tribes so easily because we lived from our hearts. As adults trained to go through life head first, we have to be willing to consciously and intentionally seek out and co-create community because healing cannot happen in a vacuum. We just have to be willing to find our heart tribes in unexpected places.
We have been educated to believe that our tribe should look like us—racially, ethnically, intellectually, politically, denominationally, or nationally. True tribes are built on the foundation of unconditional love. I found this out in what I thought were going to be scary dark woods filled with lions and tigers and bears. Oh my! I learned about heart tribes in the most unlikely of ways—from the horror community.
When I was first invited to attend a horror convention as Vincent Price’s daughter and biographer, I thought the whole thing sounded nuts. First of all, I have never liked being scared. I couldn’t imagine what kind of people could possibly want to spend an entire weekend celebrating fear. When I first started going to horror conventions and saw everyone walking around in costumes, wearing fake scabs, and covered in piercings and tattoos, I didn’t know what to make of any of it. Who would want to slather blood all over themselves and stick a fake hatchet through their head?
It was my friend Jessie who helped open my eyes and heart when she told me something for which I will always be grateful: “You know how you always tell me that you’ve never fit in, always felt like an outsider? Well, so does everyone at this convention. But they get to go be with other people just like them, who love the same things they do. So don’t worry that you don’t fit in there. Go and celebrate that they have found a place where they can feel safe and loved among people who feel the same way they do!”
Horror conventions have taught me that deep, safe connection among like-minded people is not only possible, it is vital to living a life of joy. Buoyed by the safety of being with like-hearted people, we find the courage to love what and who we love—whatever it is and however we love it—and celebrate it together.
As I got to know horror fans, I realized that their costumes and makeup and tattoos and piercings were expressions of their truest selves. Horror fans, monster kids, and Goths have the courage to face the fears from which most of us hide—the fears they feel inside themselves as well as the fear they feel from others. There, in that disturbed soil, they wildflower into some of the most creative, kind, fun, honest, genuine, authentically interesting people I have ever met.
Although I may not be a horror fan, I have become a huge fan of horror fans—because the more time I have spent with them, the safer I feel being the authentic me. They model how to own your truest self and bring her out into the world in warts, wigs, weirdness, and wildness, wonder and all.
Eventually I got it. We were actually not so different, the horror fans and I. I just had to learn to see them through the lens of Love. I had to lose my belief that they were freaks and that I was not—that they were the fans and I was the “horror royalty.” When I did, I saw that we are all monster kids—a community of people who have felt “different” in one way or another our whole lives. The ways in which we feel different don’t really matter. Our differences may even make us seem different from one another. But that’s the beautiful thing—whoever you are is fine!
Society doesn’t celebrate outcasts. Society teaches us to marginalize, judge, pick on, and bully those who are different. Horror fans helped changed the rules by creating a forum where difference, creativity, weirdness, and otherness—being a monster kid—is celebrated. Horror fans have been my bravest companions on this road. I would never have found the Way of Being Lost if my horror fan heart tribe hadn’t taught me how to lose my need to seem “normal” and helped me hoist my own freak flag. Horror fans have always known about the Way of Being Lost. I did, too—they just helped me remember that I was already on it.
Turns out, I have been a monster kid my whole life. I was just too busy hiding myself from myself to know it. In 2016, when I received the Monster Kid of the Year award, I was overjoyed. I proudly took my place among all the freaks and outcasts, iconoclasts and weirdoes—all of us who haven’t felt like we fitted in, all of us who have felt like we were too different for our own good. All the monster kids of the world who are learning to embrace, enjoy, and celebrate who we are—and in so doing, shine our lights brightly into the world’s darkness so that all the other spooky freaks and scary iconoclasts out there can find their way back home to their truest selves.