This Isn't How It's “Supposed” To Go
Sunset, Gate Thursday Early Arrival 2026
—
When people ask me how my Burn was this year, my answer has consistently been:
Phenomenal.
Quite possibly one of my best Burns yet after 12 Burns.
And since I’ve been back in the default world, I’ve been reflecting on WHY.
Because it certainly wasn’t a problem-free Burn. Far from it.
I was leading a camp within Illumination Village. We were bringing the Dirty Goat Roadhouse art car back to playa. We had to build it, get it through DMV, create the Fainting Goat Lounge, manage camp infrastructure, and navigate all the personalities and challenges that come with bringing a group of people together in the desert.
There were some really difficult situations.
There was exhaustion. Dust. Rain. Wind. Build. Strike. People being people.
And somehow, through all of it, I felt incredibly Calm. Grounded. Aligned.
Those aren't words I'm choosing after the fact.
Did I also mention I led my Burn With Intention workshop?
It was there that I asked myself the same question I asked everyone else:
How do you want to show up at the Burn?
My answer was:
Calm. Grounded. Aligned. True to Self. Honest. Truthful.
And that's exactly how I showed up.
It wasn't until I came Home and started reflecting on WHY this Burn felt so phenomenal that I realized Burning Man had given me an opportunity to see just how far I've come.
Because I've led camps before.
And they looked very different.
Operation Yurt Rescue
In 2015, at my third Burn, I led a theme camp for the first time.
I thought I knew what I was doing.
I absolutely did not.
The control issues started well before we even got to playa, and only compounded from there.
I am an on-time person. Back then, being late made me incredibly anxious.
I'm pretty sure no one in the history of Burning Man has ever left their house, Reno hotel, or the Reno Walmart at the time they said they were going to.
We didn't either.
As time ticked by, I realized we weren't leaving when I thought we would.
And I was losing my shit.
Because this wasn't how it was “supposed” to go.
That sentence pretty much sums up a lot of my relationship with control back then:
This isn't how it's supposed to go.
Eventually, we made it to playa and started building a used Tyvek yurt someone had given us.
Neither my boyfriend at the time nor I had ever built a yurt.
What could possibly go wrong?
Pretty much everything.
The wind started. Then came a full whiteout. Our yurt started lifting off the playa while a couple of friends and I tried to keep it from flying away.
Operation Yurt Rescue was born.
Then after it was finally secure, there was dust everywhere inside our Yurt.
I can’t explain how much I needed my living environment to feel clean back then, and now it was basically like living outside in the dust.
Then water spilled.
Water + playa dust = mud.
Now there was mud inside the Yurt.
I was having a full-blown panic attack and meltdown.
And the Burn had barely started.
Looking back, the yurt wasn't the problem.
I was trying to control everything.
I wanted everything to go my way.
And when it didn't, I didn't know how to be okay.
I didn’t know how to communicate what I needed because what I thought I needed was for everything to go exactly how I wanted it.
This was my first real lesson in what can happen when you go to Burning Man with Expectations.
Learning to Let Go
I didn't walk away from that Burn suddenly understanding my need for control. That took years.
I had to go deeper into my own shit and start understanding WHY I did the things I did. Working with coaches helped me get to the root of some of those patterns instead of constantly looking outside of myself at what everyone else was doing wrong.
Changing my relationship with alcohol shifted a lot for me too.
None of this happened at once.
Slowly, I stopped trying to control what everyone else was doing and started paying attention to the one thing I actually had any control over:
Me.
How I responded. The choices I made. How I wanted to show up.
When I finally stopped trying to control other people, I realized I could only control myself.
Leading Without Controlling
Fast forward to 2026.
I had taken on a significant camp leadership role again, and in many ways, I had MORE to manage than I did in 2015.
Getting the Dirty Goat Roadhouse through DMV, Burning Man 2026.
But I wasn't trying to control everything.
That's not to say I didn't ask people to do things. Of course I did.
Leadership requires direction.
And as someone who personally hates feeling controlled, I've had to learn that leadership and control aren't the same thing.
Behind the wheel of the Dirty Goat Roadhouse, Burning Man 2026
It's not about making someone do what I want them to do. It's about understanding what needs to happen, recognizing what people can contribute, and figuring out how we get there together.
And letting go of control doesn't mean letting go of boundaries.
People get to make their own choices.
So do I.
Something else happened throughout this Burn that was a delightful surprise.
People kept reflecting my own leadership back to me.
Campmates told me how calm I was. They told me they were in awe of how I handled situations. They reflected back the grace with which I was moving through things.
There were A LOT of things to move through.
And eventually, I had to stop and recognize what they were seeing.
My Grounded Presence was My Gift.
The more grounded I was within myself, the more I could create a calming presence for the people around me.
That's what my community kept reflecting back to me.
I've said for years:
We HEAL in Community.
This year showed me:
We GROW in Community.
And it was through that reflection from my community that I was able to see my own growth.
Maybe that's part of WHY my answer to “How was your Burn?” has been consistently phenomenal.
Not because everything went my way.
Because I no longer needed it to.
Some Integration Takes Years
I didn't learn to let go of control at Burning Man this year.
I've been doing that work for years.
What Burning Man gave me this year was the opportunity to see how much of that work I had actually Integrated.
I could look back at the woman trying desperately to control everything during Operation Yurt Rescue in 2015 and compare her with the woman leading in 2026.
They're both me.
But holy shit, have I changed.
And I think this is something we don't talk about enough when we talk about Integration.
We want to know what an experience meant while we're still getting the dust out of our hair.
Sometimes we do know.
But some of my deepest Integration has taken years for me to recognize.
Sometimes it's not until we find ourselves in a familiar situation that we realize:
I'm not responding the way I used to.
Maybe you don't know what your Burn means yet.
You don't have to.
But you can start bringing in awareness.
How was your Burn?
Where did you need something to go a certain way?
Where were you trying to control someone else's experience, behavior, or response?
How would you want to show up differently the next time?
We can't change how we showed up in the past.
But we can get curious about how we want to show up the next time.
Sometimes the thing you're beginning to understand today doesn't fully reveal itself until much later.
Sometimes, apparently, it takes 12 Burns.
And I'm okay with that.
