Why I’m Publicly Discontinuing My Connection to Bex Carlos
I’ve long believed in the power of repair, in quiet healing behind the scenes, and in not airing every rupture for public consumption. But some harms are too deep, too patterned, and too consequential to remain hidden. Especially when silence only protects those who caused harm, not the ones who carry it.
So, I want to speak plainly and tenderly:
I am officially and publicly discontinuing all personal and professional connections with Bex Carlos.
This decision comes after years of enduring painful betrayals cloaked in spiritual community and thinly veiled projections masquerading as “concern.” I chose not to speak about this publicly before because I was quite literally fighting for my life.
In the years leading up to 2024, I was battling a rare and debilitating endocrine illness that was draining the life from me. I was experiencing severe medical neglect, food insecurity, and housing precarity. I was crowdfunding my own survival, as well as the survival of my nonprofit, the Black Moon Wolfdog Sanctuary, which cares for euthanasia-listed wolfdogs in urgent need of rescue.
During that time, Bex was also facing personal and health challenges. I understand she may have felt I wasn’t able to be fully present as a friend or collaborator. But the truth is: I was dying. Every bit of my energy was devoted to staying alive and keeping the wolfdogs alive. I didn’t have anything left to give—emotionally, physically, or relationally. And yet, instead of meeting that reality with compassion, she chose something else.
Bex conspired with others—Ryan, Kiran, and Ilona—to “bring me down.” Amongst themselves, they began accusing me of being a “cult leader,” an accusation rooted in ableism, racism, and parasocial entitlement. I was continuously fundraising to survive. But instead of seeing this as a cry for communal support, they saw this as manipulation.
Bex went as far as expressing—in words that haunt me—that she wanted to "find the skeleton key” needed to "take me down", saying she hoped to do so "like Yolanda Saldivar took down Selena,” and that she would "drag me on her podcasts" according to text messages and Ilona in a live video-recorded confession to me. And yes, I have receipts. Screenshots, messages, and consensual video recordings. All the receipts. That was not just a betrayal. That was a threat cloaked in an ugly, ironically apropos metaphor. And it sent a chill through my soul.
This person I thought was my friend, colleague and mutual-collaborator was a hidden enemy. Conspiring against me while maintaining the allyship optics of supporting and aiding our fundraising efforts.
In hindsight of course, it makes sense. Seemingly out of nowhere, she removed her podcast interview with me on her show Tu Tia Bruja. I always felt uncomfortable with the name of the episode, "Look at that occult resume," which felt *pointed* and during the interview, I felt an awkward, insecure vibe from her. Like, I wasn't there to be spotlighted or elevated, just to bring my following to her podcast plays. It gave the uncomfortable mean girl energy, glaring at another femme just for existing... like we can't both be fabulous in the same space. I've never felt more begrudgingly interviewed, and I've been interviewed plenty times.
When Grief Was Weaponized Against Me
Everything came to a devastating head in March of 2024. Two of our beloved wolfdogs died unexpectedly and mysteriously- including one who was my dearest companion. We had no answers. We were gutted. Initially, my worst fear was that my KKK-affiliated neighbors could have harmed my babies. I was terrified and heartbroken. In my grief, I once again reached out to the public to raise funds for necropsies, cremation, and the immense expenses that come with unexpected loss on this scale.
Instead of meeting that grief with care, Ilona chose to lean deeper into the narrative Bex had planted. She questioned whether I must be a cult leader—because “something this strange and devastating” couldn’t happen otherwise, or that now I must be "using this as an excuse to get money". Rather than recognize the trauma and sacredness of what we were living through, she cast doubt on my integrity during my most vulnerable moment. Easily one of the worst days of my life.
Shortly after, Ilona vanished from our lives.
What made this loss even more cutting was that Ilona had been our largest supporter—providing all the kibble for the wolfdogs monthly, donating in addition to the kibble as she could, and recently had a meeting with me offering to help us find and apply for grants. Her absence created a real, tangible threat to their survival. What's more? Aside from kibble and donations, we lost Patreon supporters because Ilona, Medina, Ryan, Kiran, and Bex conspired against me. People withdrew their support, messaged me words of distrust, and named who encouraged them to. The wolfdogs suffered because of this harm. They had nothing to do with any of it—and yet they became collateral damage in someone else’s campaign of projection, cruelty, and manipulation.
This Is Not About Revenge—It’s About Safety and Closure
Let me be clear: this is not a call-out or a call-in. This is a closing of the door.
Bex has not and will not be notified, I don't owe her an explanation. She's had plenty of opportunities to enact restorative justice. This past year, I extended radical compassion and forgiveness, giving Bex the chance to do better after calling her in privately. She apologized. Ultimately, it wasn't healing for me or restorative justice for what she did. It became me self-abandoning to protect her feelings. That's a trauma response I am working on. Sometimes, even a year later, an apology is weak in the wake of the destruction we cause. Especially when the apology is followed by her interrogating me months later about my KKK neighbors, still implying that I must be some con artist.
I should have cut her off right there. As more than 1 trusted Black femme friend has done and encouraged me to also do. But as a trauma survivor, I tend to internalize abuse and blame.
A year later, I'm still fighting housing insecurity, my trust is still broken, and my intuition still gives me red flags about the ways she engages with me. I am done now.
This is about naming patterns of harm so that I can move forward in my work, my healing, and my service to community without the weight of this history lingering in the shadows.
This is about telling the truth so that others might recognize their own stories, and know they are not alone when they are scapegoated, slandered, or abandoned during their most vulnerable moments.
I wish Bex and those involved healing. But I no longer hold space for people who tried to destroy me or my pack under the guise of spiritual integrity.
Should they consider retaliation, I advise them to consider that I have financial documentation alongside social receipts implicating them under defamation, tortious interference with business, civil conspiracy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. I know how to deal with bullies.
A Prayer for the Ones Who Chose Harm
To those who betrayed me:
I do not forgive you. Forgiveness is not necessary for my healing. But I release you.
May your ancestors guide you toward accountability.
May your ego be quiet long enough to hear the truth in this.
May you one day understand the gravity of what you’ve done—not just to me but to the wolfdogs who had no say in your projections.
May you do better.
To My Community
To those who have stayed through the storms,
who showed up with food, with funds, with care, with fierce love—
thank you.
I share this because I owe you transparency.
Because my work is built on truth, and truth cannot live where harm is hidden.
And because I am no longer shrinking to make space for people who want to harm me quietly while smiling publicly.
I am reclaiming my time. I am reclaiming my voice. I am reclaiming my space.
And we—me and the wolfdogs—are moving forward.
When Support Isn't Solidarity: Parasocial Relationships, Shallow Allyship, and White Urgency in Creator Spaces
Creating in the Crosshairs
To be a multi-marginalized content creator is to constantly walk a tightrope between visibility and vulnerability. Every post, every video, every offering isn’t just a creative act—it’s a negotiation with platforms built on white supremacist values, and with audiences often unaware of their power within parasocial dynamics.
In recent years, we’ve seen more awareness raised around burnout, boundaries, and creator labor. But what’s often left out of that conversation is how white urgency, shallow allyship, and weaponized solidarity continue to harm BIPOC, disabled, queer, and otherwise marginalized creators who dare to speak truth, set boundaries, or simply show up authentically.
This is not just about me. This is about a pattern that many of us live through—a pattern that needs to be named, understood, and disrupted.
Defining the Terrain: Parasocial Relationships, White Urgency, and Allyship as Performance
Parasocial relationships are one-sided emotional attachments formed when audiences connect with creators they follow online. While connection isn’t inherently harmful, parasocial dynamics often blur the line between public persona and private personhood—especially for marginalized creators. We become therapists, educators, and emotional support animals for people we’ve never met, many of whom do not reciprocate the humanity they expect from us.
White urgency, as described by Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry, is “a product of white supremacy culture that believes everything must be done quickly, with hyper-productivity, and in response to manufactured crisis.” In her words, “Urgency is a power play.” It's used to prioritize the needs, emotions, and comfort of dominant groups over the actual harm or exhaustion marginalized people are facing. Hersey urges us to “opt out of urgency” and “embrace rest as resistance.” (source)
Shallow allyship is when someone claims solidarity with a marginalized group but withdraws their support the moment they are asked to confront their privilege, decenter themselves, or witness discomfort. It is allyship with conditions, and it is weaponized when individuals pull their financial support, public praise, or private kindness the moment you resist their overreach.
My Story: Mean Girl Energy Meets Parasocial Entitlement
I recently endured a painful rupture with a group of self-described witchy folk who performed allyship in public but acted from entitlement in private. These were people who uplifted my work, praised my insights, and claimed solidarity—until I named harm and set boundaries. Then I became disposable.
It started with subtle jabs masked as spiritual critique. Comments about my “tone,” my “approach,” and the need to be more “loving” when I called out harm. Then came the triangulation—private group chats filled with gossip, screenshots, and spiritual bypassing disguised as “concern.” The final straw? Withdrawing support, unfollowing, and passive-aggressively resharing each other’s work to make a statement: “You are no longer one of us.”
This is mean girl energy in mystical drag—an ancient tactic repackaged in sacred language. And it's devastating.
As a queer Indigenous and Black woman with disabilities, these ruptures hit differently. They are not just personal—they are part of a long, historical pattern of disposability, silencing, and extractive relating that’s been weaponized against people like me since colonization began.
What the Sacred Relatives Tarot Taught Me About Conditional Allyship
The vitriol I’ve faced as the creator of the Sacred Relatives Tarot deck is a painful example of how parasocial dynamics can twist even well-meaning support into entitled cruelty. What began as a beautiful outpouring of community backing for a decolonial, ancestor-rooted tarot project became a source of emotional harm when I was no longer able to meet proposed timelines due to compounding personal crises—medical emergencies, pandemic, economic disparity-driven business loss, housing instability, divorce, and profound grief. I’ve received rude, shaming, and outright dehumanizing messages from some backers, demanding updates or refunds with no regard for the fact that I was recovering from a near-death illness while still trying to keep the wolfdogs, my business, and myself alive.
Campaign update sections turned into places where people felt entitled to my time, energy, and trauma disclosures, as though their financial support made them shareholders in my life. But this is what white urgency does—it flattens complexity, dismisses the humanity of marginalized creators, and demands deliverables at any cost. When support turns into surveillance and shame, it’s no longer solidarity—it’s control. And I won’t participate in that anymore.
The Righteousness of Our Time: Reclaiming Slowness as Resistance
BIPOC cultures have always had a sacred relationship with time that contrasts violently with white urgency.
What white supremacy calls “lateness,” we know as “Colored People Time (CPT)” or “Indian Time.” These aren’t failures of punctuality. They are refusals to be governed by settler schedules and industrial timelines. They are ancestral rhythms that center rest, community, and care over capitalist efficiency.
When Rep. Maxine Waters declared “I’m reclaiming my time,” it wasn’t just a viral moment. It was a love note from Black femmes everywhere—a declaration that disruption is sacred when it resists disruption by whiteness.
Weaponized Withdrawal: How Shallow Allies Abandon Us for Saying No
What hurts most is not the trolls—it’s the people who said they cared. The ones who called you “beloved,” who bought your candle or booked your reading or reposted your infographic… until you challenged them, held a mirror up, or simply enforced a boundary.
This is when shallow allies show their true allegiance—not to you, but to comfort. They retreat, not because you did harm, but because you dared to name theirs. Their support was never unconditional. It was transactional, and when the transaction no longer benefitted their ego or image, they bounced.
Boundaries Are Sacred
The more I grow, the more I understand that compassion and boundaries are not opposites. They are sisters.
Radical compassion says, “I see your humanity, even when you hurt me.” Boundaries say, “But I will not let you keep doing it.”
I am no longer available for spiritual gaslighting disguised as feedback. I am no longer available for over-explaining my humanity to people who only see my content, not my context. And I am certainly no longer available for relationships built on power imbalance masked as support.
We Are All in Parasocial Webs—But Some of Us Are the Spider’s Prey
Even those who aren’t creators can recognize this: the heated debates in comments, the moments you’ve felt betrayed by someone online, the ways you project your unmet needs onto a person you admire. It’s common.
But for those of us with marginalized identities, the power dynamics are deeper and more dangerous. These platforms are not neutral. The algorithm favors whiteness, able-bodiedness, thinness, and compliance. More and more as the years pass, even. When we don’t conform, we are punished—by the algorithm and by the people in our audience who mistake our offerings as theirs to control.
Calls to Action: What Real Support Looks Like
🖤 Support marginalized creators without expecting anything in return.
That’s the bare minimum. Anything you receive from us—knowledge, insight, beauty, healing—is a bonus gift, not a transaction.
🖤 Examine your urgency.
If you’re demanding immediate responses, content, or explanations, pause. Ask if this urgency is rooted in domination culture. Choose spaciousness instead.
🖤 Practice reciprocal relating.
Support creators by paying them, citing them, respecting their boundaries, and not extracting free emotional labor.
🖤 When we say no, believe us.
No is a sacred word. When we use it, it’s not rejection—it’s reclamation.
🖤 Recommit to the long haul.
Allyship is not aesthetic. It’s a practice. A relationship. A commitment to showing up, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Final Words
I didn’t write this to shame anyone. I wrote this because I have had enough of being shamed—shamed into explaining, or justifying, or shrinking to make space for someone else’s comfort.
I also wrote it because I believe we can do better.
If we want liberation, we must learn to hold complexity, to move at the speed of trust, and to show up for each other with no strings attached.
To everyone who sees me, hears me, and honors my labor—I see you too. Let’s keep building the world we deserve, one boundary, one truth, and one righteous act of refusal at a time.
líla philámayaye ♥︎
Sacred Relatives Tarot is currently being prepared for print production and will be released and distributed to backers *as soon as* I don't have to dedicate every ounce of energy I have to resourcing and reclaiming our housing security. While I am no longer deathly ill, I am more disabled now, and still recovering from an impossible last 5 years of life's trials. But trust me, no one wants it published and out there in the world, and in your hands, than me. It will happen in it's own time.
If you want to send tax-deductible support to me and the wolfdogs in overcoming this final hurdle so we can finally thrive, please do so here.
wóphila