I’ve sat down to write this reflection on resistance and our my relationship with it, probably six times now. On at least a couple of instances, I tapped out to go on wonderful and necessary wanders in Xalapa and Coatepec with Ixchel (because I’m very spontaneously suggestible like that 🤣).
There was a Mars square Saturn thing happening for a minute (action and focus, meet slow and methodical. Those tensions can let all kinds of shiny things in to distract me).
And then just me getting in my own way and bouncing out of the struggle phase of Flow instead of leaning into it. My own shit — usually some kind of cocktail of boredom, fuzzy focus, “should be doing this other thing (all the shoulds…sigh),” and feelings of low self-worth.
We all have moments (or achingly long periods) of resistance to things. And 2025 has given us a lot of reasons to put up walls and resist the fuck out of everything as protection or a coping mechanism.
It’s a relationship I’m continuing to deepen into — the surface symptoms and the deeper, shadowy sides of when I resist things, why I resist, and when/how resistance is useful/healthful, and when it’s not. It’s the medicine I need in this next chapter of life. I’m thinking about resistance most often through these lenses right now:
Resistance as Protection
We all throw up boundaries of resistance to protect ourselves, in times of danger (real or perceived), freeze, and flee.
I’m pretty Saturnian, by design and by nature. I’m introverted. I like structure and routine. My Saturn-Venus-Mercury stellium in my 8th house primes me for being able to transmute chaos into calm for others. It’s a thing I’ve built a reputation around.
There’s also a selfish reason for loving Saturnian things. For me, there’s an inherent feeling of safety in routine, a balm for when I don’t necessarily feel safe — in the face of whatever external circumstances might be happening. Maybe you can relate.
The truth is, even in my mid-50s, as an able-bodied, yt-cis-presenting dude, I’ve struggled with feeling safe consistently for most of my life. So routine and structure are Linus’s blankets I can return to, to “feel safer.”
I’ve learned to recognize the signs in my body when I don’t. A tightening in my solar plexus. Constriction in my heart center or throat. When things feel most chaotic, it’s the baseline daily routines I can come back to for safety. I can feel tense as fuck and stop to wash dishes in the kitchen…and get an almost instant softening of the body and relief.
But I can be very Gemini and live in the extremes of dichotomies. There are two nasty effects of my overdoing it and overindulging in my devotion to structure and routine.
First, too much resistance-manifested-as-rigidity keeps me small, and a smaller version of me is not as useful to impact I yearn to contribute to the world.
Second, when I indulge those routines to a fault, it’s usually at the expense of my family or my work. I get too rigid to the point where the tighening in my body makes it more difficult to accept what is, in the present now.
You probably have your own version of Resistance = Protection. Structure and routine certainly aren’t the only manifestations of it for me. But they’re the ones I’ve been witnessing and healing most often lately.
Resistance as Information
I just ended a full-time contract with an event client in October. Someone I’ve worked with before, have known for years, and who I worked with for the last 4 1/2 years. Nodding back to the themes of routine and safety, it was a regular, reliable income and resources for my family, even as a 1099 contract position.
To be honest, I’ve been blessed since I made the move to 1099 work more than 12 years ago, to basically have one full-time event “client” after another, giving us regular, reliable income.
But, probably the last two years of the gig were challenging. At that point (call it 2023), I’d been in the full-time event production business for 15+ years — 17+ by the time this contract wrapped up.
And — admission of truth — the pace and stress of full-time event organizing moved more easily through my body when I was 40 than it does now in my early-mid 50s.
Some of that is that it’s just gotten way more challenging for independent event producers. But a lot of it has just been cumulative fatigue.
So there was a natural atrophy that was already happening in the relationship with my chosen career, one that has brought me so much joy and stability for my family. And there was a point, by relationship, where I stopped really having any fun in that last gig, and it was just about the paycheck. I still showed up every day, but with resistance in my body, most every day. I knew it, and my client and friend knew it. We parted ways, amicably, and with much love.
(It’s probably a move I should have made two years prior, and I think I’ve learned from my last two long-term contract gigs that ~3 years might be my max capacity for a given engagement.)
Resistance can show up in our bodies when we’re at our expiration date with something. When there’s a thing — a project, a job, a relationship, whatever — that’s naturally waned. I think our job is to listen to that. It’s information. Sometimes making the jump is scary, but ultimately what we need to feel renewed and vital again. It’s not always information I’ve done a good job listening to, but I’m working on it.
Resistance as Liberation
Fast-forward to today (December 28, as I’m writing this). I’m now without a regular full-time gig for the past few weeks and have pivoted to full-time biz ops and project consulting / fractional work. Focusing on purpose-driven, growing SMBs and nonprofits. Taking the pieces of event work that I still love dearly and am good at, and putting them to use for making an impact in the world
For the first time, really ever, I’m in the driver’s seat of being responsible for finding a regular stream of clients. That’s been both wildly liberating and has really triggered all of my base safety alarm bells. It’s different muscles I’m learning to develop.
This liminal space has NOT been comfortable. I keep titrating between “keep going” and “fuck it, go find another FT job.” There’s resistance in my body looking down either path. So I’m yes/and-ing it for now. Build the consultancy. Be open to a singular FT role that will resource us and bring us ease.
But here’s what I keep coming back to. Bread crumbs of purpose.
I’ve witnessed way too many people this year — creators, solopreneurs, small, independent business owners, in particular, but also women, communities of color, and LGBTQIA+ — in states of trauma and stress because they feel alone. Because they are doing their thing all alone. Because the 2025 shit sandwich has stacked the deck against us all.
We don’t need to do it alone.
We can — and probably should — work in the cooperative, in the collective, more in 2026. This year has taught us that we should be forming mycelial networks between our small businesses. We saw tons of it in social media (for me, witnessing it in Threads) — small business owners turning out and amplifying each other. We can turn that energy into containers of mutual support for each other.
That’s a thing that shines light for me, that steers me back toward the path of scary entrepreneurship — even as my body tension stress levels are at an all-time high, in the absence of booked work for January and shrinking bank accounts.
Resistance as Rescue
I’m treating 2026 as a Year of Yes. I rely so much on comfort and safety inside my own structure that I stop living, and I get cranky.
There’s an analogy I love to live by here in Mexico (and in Nicaragua before that), and that is “if you’re waiting for there to be zero rain, you’ll never start living.” One way we experience the seasons is in terms of dry vs. wet. When it’s the thick of wet season, it’s…wet.
And when the heavier rains come, people pause their work, their errands, their goings on. They shelter. And when the rain lightens, everything resumes. But no one stops completely just because of the rain. If you wait for there to be zero rain during the rainy season to do anything, you’ll be pretty bummed for half the year.
There are no perfect conditions to do anything, really, including dancing with the things we resist.
So I’m leaning into saying Yes to more things, to getting uncomfortable, to surrender. Four things in particular that are pulling on me at a sacral level in 2026, which are also scary and uncomfortable as fuck in my body.
Getting on video, fully in 2026. I’m introverted, socially awkward, and self-conscious as all get out. But I know the algo game prefers visual content, so off I go. I’ve already dipped into posting a few things this year, then went retrograde, and now I’m back at it.
Learning how to become a better, committed entrepreneur and growing my consultancy, Bearfuht Labs, into its full being. Building and supporting human-centered, regenerative biz ops and project systems for/with SMBs and nonprofits. Making impact.
As an extension (or orbiting planet) of that, initiating small collectivos of founders and freelancers, grounded in mutual reciprocity. Using privilege to help spark containers of collective care, collaboration, and prosperity for more people.
Launching a podcast that explores how we deal with change and resistance, and creative and flow habits. Getting to surface others’ stories at these intersections, and also as a tool to deepen into and befriend my own relationship with resistance.
Scary, yes. But the good kind of scary - the kind that heals resistance to being seen, that practices self-love, that treats creativity and curiosity as essential instead of nice-to-have.
Here’s to 2026 as the year we befriend what we resist, and do massive things for ourselves and the collective on the other side. Thanks for listening!
Hola! Im Jaimey, founder of Bearfuht Labs. I love to help impact-focused SMBs and nonprofits build regenerative business operations and project systems that breathe—so your team can focus on the work that matters instead of fighting broken systems.
If your operations feel overwhelming, your team is burned out, or you’re the bottleneck on everything, let’s talk. DM me or visit bearfuht.com to book a free coffee chat.