Lightly, as Though Cupping a Firefly

Why My Full Self Is Choosing to Say Yes Once Again to Fireside Project

Dear Fireside Community,

I’m delighted to share some exciting news with you:

I’m choosing to remain as Fireside Project’s Executive Director.

This was a huge decision that took five months to make. Why, you may ask, did Fireside go through an exhaustive ED search only for me to reverse course and remain the same role?

Great question!

The short version is this: I love Fireside Project too much to step down from its helm.

Of course, there’s a longer version. It begins with an exquisite book I read recently called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Though the book is about creativity, the author devotes a chapter to the process by which ideas seek to manifest in the world. As she describes it, ideas exist out there in the universe, wafting about in the ether, longing to be manifested, and actively seeking a human partner to fulfill that desire.

That is exactly what happened to me with Fireside Project five years ago, except that the idea for Fireside Project didn’t just tap me on the shoulder and invite me into a thoughtful dialogue about how we might collaborate to bring this concept into the world.

The idea consumed me.

To be more precise, I allowed it to consume me. I loved the idea so much that I abandoned myself to it. Back then, to love was to abandon myself. And I really loved Fireside Project. People would ask me how I was doing, and I’d respond by talking about the support line’s skyrocketing call volume.

There was no place where I ended and Fireside began. There was only Fireside.

But self abandonment is not a solid foundation on which to build and run an organization. As I told my dear friend Eamon Armstrong on his podcast, I started Fireside to help make the world less lonely, so that no one ever had to feel alone as I did as a child. But I devoted myself so completely to Fireside that I wound up feeling as alone as I ever had.

My attachment style to Fireside wasn’t secure. I clung to it with white knuckles, afraid of losing it or dishonoring it by not fulfilling its potential.

On Christmas Day, 2024, I returned to Beond for my second ibogaine experience, which I wrote about here. Candidly, I made the decision to step down from the ED role before I arrived. One of my intentions was to see what the medicine thought of that decision. With unusual clarity even for a medicine as powerful as ibogaine, the message boomed in my consciousness: it was time to shift out of the ED role.

I made the announcement a few weeks later. What followed felt like an exorcism. Fireside Project dislodged itself from me. I mean this in the most palpable way possible. I could literally feel the idea exiting my body.

I was finally free.

That’s how it’s been for the last five months. Free of Fireside. Free from Fireside. To be sure, I was still working. In fact, I was spending hour upon hour engaged in the profoundly weird process of interviewing candidates to asses whether they may be the right fit to be the next vessel for the idea that had inhabited me for the last half decade.

As the ED search wore on, I started to notice that I missed Fireside, even though I was still working there. After all, I had literally created the perfect job for myself, one that combines my love of psychedelic support, hotlines, psychedelic research, and risk reduction, while providing me a platform to not just be a leader in the psychedelic field, but to actually help drive the conversation and push the field in a direction that better honors these beautiful medicines, one where all people have access to the support they need. On top of all of that, I get to work with a group of talented, heart-centered, and dedicated humans, some of whom may actually love Fireside more than me. (They know who they are.)

But what would be different this time if I remained at Fireside? I asked myself. Wouldn’t I just abandon myself all over again? Wouldn’t I allow anxiety and fear to swallow me, as they nearly had before?

I knew that, to remain in the ED role, the answer to both of questions would need to be a full-bodied, confident “no.”

That’s exactly what the answer is.

The path to get here was carved by my two ibogaine experiences and my ongoing integration of them. Thanks to ibogaine, I have gotten to the root of, fallen in love with, and integrated the parts of myself that expressed love through self abandonment. Ibogaine also showed me that the path to abundance, whether in a personal or professional context, comes from surrender rather than holding on so tight.

Part of surrender, of course, is trust—in myself, in the universe, and in others.

Part of holding on so tight at Fireside was doing too much myself. To help address that, Fireside is expanding our Board of Directors and building out our development staff, so I no longer have to fundraise alone. More on those magical new additions to the team coming soon.

Over the last few days, as this decision progressed from tentative to final, I’ve felt Fireside’s ethereal presence tap me on the shoulder, as it had five years ago.

Unlike the first time, I didn’t just say yes and leave myself behind. Rather, Fireside and I had a respectful conversation where we talked about what the potential second iteration of our partnership could be. Like the first time, it involves hard work and devotion. It always will. But unlike the first time, it involves boundaries. It involves space for me. It involves holding the idea lightly, like a firefly cupped in my palms.

With that, I said yes.

So that, dear friends, is why I am remaining as Fireside’s ED. Serving in this role, despite all its difficulties, has been the greatest honor of my life. I look forward to this next chapter in Fireside Project’s evolution.

Glowingly yours,

Joshua