The Map Is Not the Territory: Remembering the Way Without the System

I want to tell you something real.

I once believed the system could be redeemed.

I gave it my best—years of effort, countless rooms, brilliant strategies, heart-led initiatives. I believed that if we just cared more, worked harder, innovated faster, we could transform it from within. That we could make it humane.

That belief gave me something to hold onto. It gave me purpose. It kept me in the rooms, on the boards, inside the frameworks.

But something has changed. Quietly, over time—and now loudly, undeniably.

The map they gave us does not lead us home.

It never did.

The Maps We Inherited

We inherited maps inscribed with the metrics of empire: success, productivity, hierarchy, safety, control.

Maps that charted a world designed for efficiency, not intimacy. For obedience, not aliveness.

Maps that taught us to move in straight lines, to keep our heads down, to ignore the aching pulse of the earth under our feet.

They never accounted for the wildness of being human. They left out grief. They skipped over joy. They erased ritual. They could not fathom mystery.

When we tried to bring our wholeness—the tears, the wonder, the deep remembering—we were told we didn’t belong. Too much. Too tender. Too slow. Too unruly.

So we split. We shapeshifted. We survived.

But survival is not what we came here for.

I Am Leaving the Map Behind

Not all at once. There’s been no grand speech, no final door slammed shut.

Just a quiet, holy unraveling. A listening.

A stepping, barefoot and unsure, into territory I once forgot was mine.

I no longer believe these systems can carry us home.

And in the absence of their promises, I am finding something far more sacred:

A return.

To land and lineage.

To soul and sky.

To kinship beyond blood, beyond transaction.

To truth that cannot be institutionalized.

What Now?

We stop waiting for the next reform.

We begin to remember.

We cook meals and tell stories and tend altars.

We sing our children into being.

We let ourselves grieve.

We walk slowly enough to notice the birds.

We build circles, not pyramids.

We let ourselves be shaped not by systems—but by the seasons, by each other, by what is true in our bodies.

This isn’t about abandoning responsibility. It’s about remembering what we’re responsible for: one another. This earth. The future.

The system was never meant to hold our wholeness.

But we were.

We are the territory. Living, sacred, immeasurable.

And perhaps this forgetting, this disorientation—it was never a mistake. Perhaps we needed to get lost to remember how to find each other.

To remember how to come home.

Together.