Birth of the Hari Warrior

Pain. Pain, death, and self-definition, and the birth of my daughter. I was in a more than four-year long toxic relationship. I was co-dependent on my ex. Inevitably it destroyed my life; everything I had built, including my growing business, was systematically destroyed piece-by-piece. Along the way every piece of the man I used to be, was cut out, until there was only one remaining piece of him. That piece was his heart, and I ripped it out and killed him for the sake of my daughter.

We wound up homeless, my ex and I, and my daughter was born. CPS took my daughter in. My ex refused to comply at all with CPS, and inevitably she forced me to have to choose between staying with her or complying with CPS to get my daughter back. At that point, she had fought me so much on every little thing that there was only one thing left of the old me, and on that fateful day, I ripped that last piece out myself. I broke up with her for my daughter. I was at my lowest point; my life was in utter ruins, I had literally fought for my life against my ex's violent, meth-addicted stepdad to protect my daughter, and when I broke up with her, for so long I felt like I was dead in a grave buried in a dark forest.

I had killed my old self. I did not know who I was. All I knew, and all I had left to guide me, was that I love my daughter Freydis and I wanted her back. All that was left of my soul, or my moral compass was my daughter; all my kindness, trust, and goodness had been cut out of me bit by bit over years of mental and emotional manipulation and narcissistic abuse. But then one day while grieving the death of my old self, I realized I had a clear canvass on which to choose who I will be, and that my daughter needed me to fill that canvass. In that moment I felt resurrected, like with a burst of power I came rising out from that grave in that dark forest into a starlit sky.... reborn....as a hari warrior.

In my culture, that's Germanic culture, there used to be this class of ghost warriors called the "harii." They painted themselves, their weapons and armor black, wore black clothes, and were skilled stealth fighters in the night. My daughter needed me to be reborn as a warrior capable of fighting for her in dark times, and so, I redefined myself as a hari warrior. I was reborn as something far more powerful than the old version of myself.

I was born on May 6th. 1991. My daughter Freydis was born May 1st. 2024. To me, May marks the birth of my daughter, and the most powerful changes I have ever been blessed to have gone through in my life; for me it is the month in which I celebrate my closest encounters with life, birth, death, pain, and transformation.