I shaved my head last Monday.

Not for fashion. Not for a dare. Not for reinvention as some shiny little brand strategy.

I did it because my body needed a receipt.
Because my heart kept whispering, we are letting go now, and I needed my scalp to sign the paperwork.

Gizmo died.

Sundance ended. Not just the festival, but the way of it here. The particular Utah snowglobe version where I knew the back hallways, the green rooms, the secret shortcuts, the faces that needed feeding, the ones that needed a tissue, the ones that needed a firm hand on the shoulder and a “drink some water, babe, I’ve got you.” Ten days of taking care of everyone… and then suddenly the lights go out and you’re standing in a quiet room full of empty chairs, holding a lanyard like it’s a relic.

And Burning Man? I closed that chapter too. I am not going back this year. I can feel the hinge click. I can feel the door seal. I can feel the desert wind on the other side and I’m not stepping into it. I’m finished. I’m choosing something new even though I don’t yet know what “new” looks like.

Also, because life has a sense of timing that is either comedic or cruel (or both), my credit card got compromised. So this morning I drove to the bank, bald as bald can be, and I started thinking about what it would be to make a documentary of my life.

Not the highlight reel. Not the montage where the camera pans across costumes and concerts and glamorous chaos.

More like… the witness list.

Because if you really wanted to tell the story of me, you would have to find the people I have helped along the way. The ones who would say: she showed up. She filled the gap. She made it happen. She walked into the mess and started organizing the corners. She brought the water. She brought the snacks. She brought the extra phone charger, the spare hoodie, the peppermint oil, the hand on your back when you were about to fold.

I’m the fill-in-the-blank fairy.

Sundance Fairy.
Fluffer Fairy.
Share Your Sandwiches Fairy.
Missing-person search Fairy.
“Let me just handle it” Fairy.
“Here, eat something” Fairy.
“Breathe with me” Fairy.

And I never, ever, ever accept payment. I have built an entire life on the belief that if I keep giving, the universe will keep providing, and maddeningly… it does. It really does. Doors open. Tables appear. Someone hands me exactly what I need right when my hands are empty.

I’ve trusted that so hard that it became my religion.

Even back on Grateful Dead tour, even in those long-ago days when everything was loud and wild and starry and half-improvised, I was still taking care of people. I made Clyde’s Cookies on tour, vegan, organic chocolate chip cookies, because I needed a way to support myself, yes, but also because it was a survival mechanism. A nervous system strategy. A way to stay steady in the swirl. A way to love people and the planet at the same time. Those cookies ended up in cafés all over Santa Cruz even when the Dead weren’t touring. Little brown-sugar love letters in a world that moves too fast.

I have been in service most of my life. I don’t say that with a halo. I say it with the honesty of someone who knows service can be both medicine and the perfect hiding place.

Because here’s the part I’m trying to tell the truth about:

Right now, I feel broken.

Like… really broken.

Not “I’m having a hard day” broken. Not “I just need a bath and a nap” broken.

More like: I cry over silly things. A song lyric. A dog on a porch. A stranger’s hands. The way light hits a kitchen counter. I cry because my heart is full of endings and my body doesn’t know where to put them. I cry because I can’t fix any of the big things right now, and I am a person who has built a whole identity around fixing. I just can’t seem to find the Nakedjen superglue AND the duct tape.

The world is hurting. It really and truly is. There is a real revolution happening and I am paying attention. I am not looking away. I can feel the instability in the air like static. I can feel the grief in the streets. I can feel the fear. I can feel the fire. Sometimes it feels like the whole planet is holding its breath, waiting to see who will choose cruelty and who will choose care.

I want to be the person who chooses care.

I am still that person.

I’m just… shaky.

I’m alive, but barely. Tender as an overcooked beet. Raw in a way that surprises me. Not numb, not detached, not checked out.

Just open. Too open. All nerve endings.

So this is me, leaving a little note on the community bulletin board of the internet:

Hi. It’s Nakedjen.
My head is bald. My heart is bruised. I’m still here.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I know something is happening in me. Something is changing shape.

If you’re reading this and you’re also crying in grocery store aisles, or feeling oddly fragile in the parking lot, or standing in the doorway of your own endings… come sit by me.

No fixing required.

Just the quiet promise that we are not alone in this, even when we feel like cracked glass.

And if the universe has been kind enough to keep meeting me in the moments when I’m empty, then maybe it will meet me here too.

Maybe it will meet all of us here.

One breath at a time.