Ability is not obligation.
Hola! I’m Ixchel Lunar (they/them), an Indigenous-Time ecologist, ancestral medicine guide, and rhythm witch for creative rebels, decolonial dreamers, and neuroqueer visionaries. This Substack is dedicated to weaving business, body, and belonging into something no empire can replicate. Still punk as fuck. Still cozy in the chaos.
Beautiful Wildling,
I was the first and oldest female, the oldest granddaughter born into a matriarchal Mexican family of men. I had my children at seventeen and eighteen. I grew up while raising them as a single mother and caring for my aging, infirm abuelita at a time when I was supposed to be building a nest egg and securing a professional future.
When I turned thirty-one, my abuelita entered the final six months of her life with end-stage liver failure. I was there for every phase. I learned the weight of morphine schedules, hospital visits, and the quiet changes in breath in the middle of the night. She died at home, where she wanted to be, in 2003. I was there, fiercely making sure her final wishes were honored.
Before she died, she poured everything she could into me. Blessings. Stories. Prayers spoken over my children. And one request.
Keep the family together.
After she passed, I tried to do what I believed was mine to do. I tried to be the bridge, the stabilizer, the one who absorbed tension so it would not spill elsewhere. No one assigned me the role in writing. It lived in my body as an inheritance. Oldest sibling. Oldest grandchild. Capable one. And somewhere along the way, I learned that saying no meant I was failing love.
I carried her request like a stone. I wanted to honor her. I wanted to be the glue. And for years, I tried.
But when perimenopause came for me, something shifted. My capacity thinned. My tolerance narrowed. I couldn’t keep everyone together and keep myself intact. The cost became undeniable.
Colonial time fastens itself easily to that kind of body. It teaches us that usefulness is virtue, that endurance is love, and that strength must always be available to the collective. It trains eldest daughters in immigrant and matriarchal lineages to over-function quietly. To hold what others cannot. To confuse devotion with depletion.
And depletion doesn’t announce itself as drama. It shows up as resentment. As numbness. As wanting to disappear.
Recently, I read a post about being the oldest sibling and wanting to get away from it all because you’re tired. I recognized myself in it. Not the running away. The exhaustion of being the one who can.
I did not leave the United States because I stopped loving my family. I left because I did not know how to recover without burning everything down. I did not know how to rest without disappearing. I did not know how to recalibrate without rupture.
If I had stayed, I would have kept saying yes. I would have kept shrinking and called it loyalty.
So I chose distance.
Now I live with both truths.
I love my family.
And I could not be the glue.
Ability is not obligation, even when it is wrapped in love. Even when it arrives as an inheritance.
These last several mornings, a grey fox has come down to the creek across from my office at nearly the same hour. It moves carefully through the trees, drinks, lifts its head, and moves on. A guardian of the forest, usually hidden. Very visible right now. There is a pattern in its appearance, something precise and unhurried. It does not carry the forest on its back. It moves within it.
No one appointed the grey fox the keeper of everything.
I notice patterns more now. Subtle signals. Glimmers that remind me when something belongs to me and when it does not.
I’m still learning that keeping people together does not require erasing myself.
That loving deeply does not mean offering my body as collateral.
Because when you erase yourself long enough, you start resenting the very people you love.
If you are the bridge, the one who holds… the capable one, I wonder where that training began for you. And whether something in you is ready to loosen its grip, just enough to see what stands without your constant effort.
If you are in that season, the Stellar Fortuna + Daimon Map makes those patterns visible. It shows you where your vitality holds and where it quietly erodes, so your yes is chosen, not inherited.
If you are tired of being the capable one questioning whether this yes is devotion or self-erasure, the Stellar Fortuna + Daimon Map was built for this edge.
This Map shows you:
→ where your vitality actually holds
→ which commitments are draining you
→ how your body signals misalignment before burnout
→ what a carryable yes looks like right now
So you stop inheriting decisions that were never yours.
Stay wild, love fiercely. Your presence is golden.
With wild and rebellious love,
Maltiox! xo Ixchel
P.S. Love does not require your disappearance. If you’re ready to see where your vitality actually holds, get your Stellar Fortuna + Daimon Map here.
P.P.S. Maltiox pronounced mall-tee-osh means with gratitude in K’iche Mayan.
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Walk in beauty. Live your magic. Go wild.
Your Sanctuary to Cultivate Wild Presence for Thriving with a Planet in Transition
I was raised and bore children on the traditional, unceded, and stolen lands of the Coast and Central Valley Miwok (colonized as Petaluma, CA) and Nisenan (colonized as Sacramento and Fair Oaks, CA), past, present, and future. I also write, work, and live in the highland forest of the traditional, unceded and stolen lands of the Totonac, Nahua, and Mexicah, past, present, and future, in what is known as Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico.
P.P.S. I do not live or consent to the colonial impositions regarding the construct of Time. I also practice honoring rhythms of work, play, and rest so that I can serve you with embodied presence and with loving care. This means I may take several days to respond to your requests and questions. (h/t Eva Glamaris)
P.P.S. A mention is not necessarily an endorsement of someone. It’s an acknowledgment, a citation, of the origin of information in my process of understanding. (h/t Kelly Diels)
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Copyright © 2026, Cheyenne, WY, and Veracruz, Mexico, All rights reserved. Sharing your lineage of knowledge is decolonial. When iterating, please cite me. Not citing is epistemicide.
