Cameronwhitten
Cameronwhitten Personal essays, notes, and ideas worth sharing. Browse Latest Posts This is my corner of the internet. I write about whatever I’m thinking about: books, projects, random ideas, and sometimes my own messy life.…
Why Fitness Became My Form of Daily Meditation
Fourteen months after I walked out of Snake River Correctional Institution, a counselor at the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice office on SE Hawthorne suggested meditation. She meant an app. Ten minutes, eyes closed,…
Why I Reread My Own Writing When I Want to Lie
Why I Reread My Own Writing When I Want to Lie The kitchen table in my Gresham apartment has a warped edge where someone before me set a hot pan down without a trivet. I…
The Complicated Grief of Losing Friends to the Streets
Complicated grief has a clinical definition. In 2022, the DSM-5-TR added prolonged grief disorder: grief that stays stuck a year or more after a death, still disabling, still running the show. On the street, and…
How Financial Literacy Became Part of My Personal Freedom
Financial literacy isn’t a personality trait. It’s a set of decisions made under pressure, often with incomplete information. For me, it became a survival skill before it became anything like a philosophy. I learned to…
Why I Stopped Performing Strength and Started Being Honest
Reentry taught me that strength is often a costume. I wore it for years—shoulders back, voice steady, answers ready. The costume said I was fine. The costume said prison didn’t touch me. The costume was…
The Importance of Ritual in Maintaining Stability During Chaos
Ritual is a repeated action done with intention. It is not the same as routine, though the two overlap. Routine is the bus schedule. Ritual is the moment you stand at the stop, feel the…
Why I Write Letters I Never Send and What That Practice Actually Does
Last Tuesday, around eleven at night, I sat at my kitchen table with a legal pad and wrote a letter to someone I owe amends to. I won’t send it. Can’t. A no-contact order sits…
The Rituals That Hold When Everything Else Falls Apart
There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a cell at 5 a.m. It is not peace. It is the quiet of a building full of men who have learned to wake before…
Ritual as Resistance: Staying Steady When Everything Falls Apart
Ritual is a set of actions you do with purpose, in a particular order, at a particular time. It’s not habit. Habit runs on autopilot. Ritual is a choice. For those of us who’ve been…
Ritual as Resistance: Building Stability When the World Wants You Broken
Stability isn’t handed to you. Not if you’ve been locked up. Not if you’ve slept on the street. Not if every system you’ve touched has made it clear they don’t think you’re worth the time…
Ritual as a Raft: Staying Steady When Everything Else Is Unstable
Ritual is not a luxury. It is not a scented candle or a morning yoga flow reserved for people with clean bathrooms and disposable income. Ritual is a sequence of actions you do with full…
Rituals That Hold When Everything Else Falls Apart
Stability is a lie they sell you. The idea that if you just get the right job, the right house, the right routine, nothing can touch you. I learned that lie early, and I learned…