#49: Lori-May Cruz Orillo

"Making art is my greatest self-healing."

Health Gossip

Mar 30, 2025

Lori-May Cruz Orillo (@a_drifter__) is a writer and gardener living in New York.

At a glance…

Location: Brooklyn

Big 3: Sagittarius/Gemini/Scorpio

Health Gossip with Lori-May Cruz Orillo
Responses logged March 2025

What does health, or ‘being healthy,’ mean to you?

I can’t say I am the healthiest person. It’s hard for me to define true “health” while humanity seems so ill. I believe our mental, spiritual, and physical well-being depends on the resilience of our planet. “To have health is to have hope, and who has hope has everything.” We are observing a dreadful time, and I believe it means we’re unhealthy. I can’t be immune to what humanity suffers, so I’m devoted to observing it in my own life. It can feel hopeless.

I have a “low idling speed.” I’m alert when I need to be, though I sleep easily. When I get home, I nap, forget strange things that happen at work, reset, .. And then it’s when the city sleeps I love to be awake. There are much fewer variables in the night, and I like to read, write, dance, watch films, make work with little disruption. Sometimes I leave, haunt a music show, a dance party, meet a friend ... can’t be every night, but I welcome when it does.

Recently I wrote that my favorite state of being was one “susceptible to fear and enchantment.” Sometimes this feeling requires more or less sleep to bring upon. I fast intuitively to clear the mind some days. Especially if I am waiting for a sign or an answer to some thought, or just locked into some project.

I believe my handwriting is a direct litmus of my whole equanimity. I have written and drawn so much all my life, so I have a distinct if vulnerable “hand” in my line, seismographic, I know the state I’m in by my penmanship and what I am writing (and my amateur graphology). My hand’s steadiness, the style of it, the movement of my thoughts, is always expressive of the physical, spiritual, and mental state I am in.

It gets pretty rough when I’m down bad. It can look like asemic writing, in a sad way. I have little control of it, but I also believe it to be a way I communicate with myself, like an inner voice wavering — it should not be repressed. It is for this reason I have elected unlined paper for a long time. Dance is like this too; a discipline but also somewhat ungovernable. I feel healthiest when I am at ease, have freedom of movement, flexibility, content with my body . . . “Can I dance?”

To consider health I am imagining myself in some peril: Can I carry my own weight (physically, emotionally, spiritually)? Can I run away from danger? Through rain? Can I scale this fence, can I defend myself if I had to? Am I alert, lucid? Am I okay alone? I have felt my vitality walking the edge of a campsite in the dark. I can hear my thoughts and feel my creatureliness.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

Just last month I went surfing for the first time in my life. I’m not a great swimmer, I’m asthmatic, one of my greatest fears is deep water... but the opportunity rarely presents itself to me, I was in town only a couple days. Everything was glowing, LA, my friends were down to drive and had a suit my size so I just went along to San Clemente.

I never stood on my board, but I can see why some people build their spiritual life around surfing. It can be cataclysmic — you can’t deny a wave hurling at you, you have to look at it head on. It’s a lot, sublime — to be stunned by the beauty of the sun on the ocean and to engage your body and mind to fight a rogue wave.

I have vertigo and I am prone to dissociate, PTSD, whatever, I’m cerebral, and in those moments I was forced to consider my reaction timing. I couldn’t freeze, or turn away to my usual chill. I had to use my life force to make sure I was always facing the right direction because I could drown. I am unintentionally fit but I could be stronger. My spiritual presence in those moments could have yielded for a more primal physical presence! I should do calisthenics.

Before last month, no singular moment... I always remember all the extraordinary people I have known who were lost to their darknesses. Wellness for them I think would’ve been a feat of spiritual and mental health more than anything else.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

It’s the first time in my life I work weekends free. For the last few years I’ve worked as a gardener and at a textile studio. Exposure to the sun, much crawling, precision handwork, focus, but also lugging, and brute force —laborious on hands-eyes-skin-body, both jobs.

During the full fledged season I walk and bike at least 7 - 10 miles a typical gardening day. Both require of me to fly place to place — those moments suffuse my impression of the months. I ride my bike into a Prospect Park field to decompress horizontally. On my way home I’ll spend an unanticipated amount of money at movie theaters, or a bottle of wine/sake and visit some friends. I adore my friends and I always try to see a few people at least once or twice a week.

85% of my meals I make at home. This spring I volunteer for an AAPI CSA which will streamline my groceries. I'm extremely frugal so I avoid spending more than I could ever purchase some kind of very short-lived thing serially. This predetermines my relationship with substances.

I’m up late reading, drawing... I write all week, anywhere I am. Generally, I do a lot of things which incur eyestrain or require my hands to be very focused over minutiae. My only reprieves are (dancing), stretching, and swimming... I recently relocated to a studio connected to a huge yard (!). I’ve had a green thumb all my life and in temperate seasons when I’ve had outdoor or community garden space, I spend 1/3 of my time there.

How do you start and end your days?

I wake early to watch the light change. There is this giant pine I can see from my bed, south end of the yard next door. The sunlight is diffused by the swaying branches of this lumbering figure... It’s the first thing I focus on for some reason, maybe because it spooks me a little in a way that I like. I like to leave the window cracked open all day. There are a lot of birds out there and my cat chirps at them and paws at me to feed him — dawn chorus that wakes me before the alarm.

I get up, stretch, brush my hair, my teeth, drink some cold water with a half a lemon’s juice. Sometimes I brush my teeth again after the lemon water (and again after the coffee) — this is just for extreme fear that I am breaking down my tooth enamel. I make my little pour-over which my cat conflates with being fed because it happens around the same time. I splash tepid water on face with a gel cleanser, knead at my sinuses, pat dry, apply a vitamin c serum, Celimax Noni Ampoule…

I make a small oatmeal + fruit; sometimes I just make a smoothie of it. Supplements are commingled with spices on the shelf: rose petal, lemon balm, cinnamon, maca, morninga, shisandra, ashwaganda, lion’s mane, MCT oil, cod liver oil, l-theanine, among others. Local honey for my allergies. Weekdays: I prepare my lunch, usually 4-5 slices of raw or canned mackerel, nori, rice, and soy sauce. Or a Filipino stew and rice. I tote a little Nalgene and Stanley.

The day ends depending on the next day’s obligations. I drink a glass of water, brush hair, floss, brush teeth. One of my favorite things is wearing a tiny bit of perfume to sleep. What I wear to bed I don’t wear outside — musky white floral aldehydes, gourmands, citrus, or I am trialing something new. Even if it has weak sillage because I don’t go anywhere when I sleep, perfumes linger with the scent of down in the sheets — grounding me back to the moment before nodding off, especially if I had strange dreams. All my days end differently, though I wake at the same time regardless of when I go to bed.

Are there any practices that you rely on when feeling ungrounded, unsettled, or ‘unhealthy,’ per your definition above?

I light a candle. I play music, dance, and sing. Or I just cry lol.

I make sure I can take care of my garden, and my cat. If I am in any way unhealthy I want to promise myself that the life around me is not adversely affected. Care for others usually also ameliorates my condition. Additionally I secure my financial needs far in advance, if I can feel myself falling away into some depressive state. I really do think it is important to feel grief when it comes, so I have to have a plan.

As for practices — I go out to see music, go dancing, or dance at home. I love how in the rhythm I compress and extend myself, it sets me off balance, I return to center. And moving to rhythms is healing, has the rigor of some workouts, with style, catharsis. (I have phases where I will workout for 15 minutes a few days a week, a regimen that I adapt in longer periods of feeling ungrounded — but I prefer dance.) I also like to sing a lot, play instruments, make sounds — something about feeling air run through me to certain effect, and the way it’s invisible helps me feel more like myself. I read aloud (in a normal voice) — similar thing. These all invoke carnal energy within me, and work to recharge.

It’s important for me to be more present in my body, but also to change my perspective so I’m not too in my head. I call someone on the phone to hear a voice, see friends. I have favorite walks and one favorite hike path and I imagine my life from many miles away going down the same road. Reading also does this... The shadow side of a “low idling speed” is feeling oblivion too intensely. This will sound counterintuitive to most self-soothing methods; [in] my head-in-the-clouds, I temper with grounding, research, engaging in local ecological conservation, and in conversation at annual symposia; reading news regularly, considering humanity.

There’s always the spa if I can afford it… I love to swim, especially just back floating. Buoyancy requires the perfect amount of presence of mind.

What’s your relationship to self-healing?

I spent a great amount of my life avoiding professional medical attention for lack of insurance. Some things I gather from family, such as a history of high LDLs, or that we have weak lungs on both sides, but then certain confusing facts arise, like that my grandmother, a seamstress, smoked a good number of Alhambra’s, lived into her late 90’s, and somehow did not perish of lung disease. Or how I contracted a mysterious ailment in Quezon City and was sent a witchdoctor, who smeared something on me, and the sickness went away. I believe in miracles.

I listen closely to my body, and my thoughts. As a kid I had habits that resembled pica: I craved dirt, paper… it turned out I was anemic. That was intuitive, my body was telling me something. It was just the one time at age two I tried to eat the silk flowers on the kitchen table and nearly choked to death — that’s when I went too far (!).

There’s a Psalm that goes, I will solve this riddle with a harp. It’s like that sometimes. Making art is my greatest self-healing. It inevitably absorbs my conditions and generates wisdom beyond itself.

Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?

“Who if I screamed would hear me amongst the ranks of angels?” I will be at the end of some fugue walk when I hear Rilke’s agonized cry. He is my birthday twin (which I found out in some teen astro column). The Duino Elegies were written at the height of ontological desperation — I read it around 20, and it follows me a decade.

I read poetry and prose everyday. It doesn’t even matter what it is, it might turn out I don’t like what I am reading but at least I allow myself to venture. I like to read aloud, and it feels “social” to me in an otherworldly way that reanimates a history of writers’ thinking.

I’m exploring what a friend introduced to me as “healing frequencies” — they sent me a 639Hz track and it is so brain-stimulating. Last summer I snuck into an overnight drone show upstate when I couldn’t find a place to sleep, into this live “sound bath,” a crazy beautiful sonic environment. People were walking around, carrying sleeping bags with them to lay anywhere on their walks, dazed and ponderous. I felt like we were all in that one film based off Jakob von Gunten.

I have a very affectionate Siamese cat, “City.” I don’t know what I’d do without him. He is like a silly comet hurling at me at any time. I’m convinced he is trying to learn English; he mews “hi.” He knows all my secrets, pathologizes nothing, curls up in my lap and loves me.

Because it is uncommon in my family, I have never seen a therapist or psychiatrist, except for a drop-in counselor when I fell silent for too long grieving a friend in college. I’m lucky to never have fallen very sick (knock on wood!) ... I have adapted many heuristic techniques to support myself.

Are there any principles or mantras that guide your day-to-day?

“Come up for air.” I am a focused person and can lock in for too long.

Don’t fade, or lose yourself in atmosphere. My friend Amaranta: “Remember to take up space.”

“It could be otherwise.”

Do you have a favorite meal?

I love the taste of ocean in anything. I could eat oysters everyday of my life. It’s terrible how I once became the fastest shucker working someplace because I knew I could eat discarded oysters. I was raised eating a lot of fish. I love milkfish and butterfish, true to their eponyms.. Sinigang na Bangus, Daing na Bangus, Pinangat na Pampano are a few. I have a love of eating fish off the bone. When I was little, I was a dextrous de-sheller — I would pluck meat out of crab for my big sister or my mom if she had just done her nails. Some of my favorite memories were just that; cracking, de-shelling crabs and delicately placing it on their plates. When I see them during holidays I still enact this silent gesture.

I love seaweed. Supplementally, but also just the way it looks and tastes. Kombu and wakame broths. Dulse on medium grain white rice. The feeling of pinching up sticky rice with a shred of nori. Purple rice, bright green seagrapes. Rices, which are nutty and mildly sweet, sop up salinity and oils perfectly.

*Fish belly, tomato, thyme — perfect bite*

I am in love with the vegetable gabi (taro root) in a dish called Sinigang. When stewed it releases congealed starches and offers a lacteous mild-sweetness to the sour tamarind broth. And this is ritual: it is eaten with a spoon and a fork, a small bit of the gabi is carved by the spoon, with a bit of rice, a little tomato, a delicate piece of fish belly still attached to the meat ... the fork is dipped in patis or soy sauce, and broth smeared over the entire bite. Filipino mothers delicately prepare this bite by hand and feed their babies to the lips like this.

Since there are a wealth of Caribbean markets in Brooklyn, I have been exploring other root vegetables in the family Araceae and substituting taro for yautia and eddo roots. I love having a gradient of this milky starchy umami-absorbing palette.

When do you feel the most nourished?

1. My mom’s cooking. Everything else, “2.”

While working on a project — a bit of fasting doing uninterrupted work, feeling I have completed something, and the reward of eating anything at all. Similarly: spending a day with someone I love, immersed in a wonderful feeling, touring around eating barely anything too excited or busy, but drinking water, and then something indulgent for supper. It could just be buttered toast when I have felt this way; fasting brings upon extreme gratitude.

Fresh squeezed citrus juice. Soft yellow manila mangoes.

I once was offered a sliver of monkfish liver by a chef I worked with, and I’ll never forget how my eyes felt more clear, like something in my vision had changed. As an anemic and a woman with her cycles, I love liver, and all offals: lengua, oxtail, tripas, blood (see recipe “dinuguan”). And steak, medium rare.

During quarantine my garden had all my attention. Lacinato and white Russian kale grew prolifically in rows. Early morning I’d cut leaves and taste them. My friends would come by to pick up excess harvest. The feeling of having turned the soil the year prior, and grown them by seed again a third year.. and sharing it. In a palindromic way I nourished the plants up until they nourished us. The symmetry of this feels so beautiful, whole, and ultimately nourishing to me.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Protect your energy. No one deserves your perfect attention or the fruits of your labor more than you.

See through everything. “This too shall pass.”

To the person reading this?

Find a far vantage point, afoot or in your mind, from which you can see yourself and all life on earth. Feel lightness, but learn to treasure it and see it otherwise.

What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

The people I love often lament disingenuousness in society, so: presence, being genuine. It doesn’t mean always having something to say, losing all intrigue, disarming others past their comfort, or falling apart for everyone... It’s different for everyone.

The disintegration of consensus reality. What heals us of greed. Sustainable aviation fuels. Meadows.