Process

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Today

kimberleen

Just for today, it feels like a powerful moment to interrupt the months-long silence for those of you that had been following or at the very least keeping an eye on this blog. To say hello! Do you remember me I exist and yes I am still out here working on the things that I had been consistently writing about in this blog? To be honest I am largely just a little disappointed that I was not able to keep up with the thing that I had to write and the format by which I had planned for this year to keep writing them. More than that that I dropped out of any kind of posting at all. I had managed to maintain quite a stint to be fair. Right now I am in Windhoek, Namibia, an exotic location I know. The reasons and answers of how did I get here are far too long, winding and existential than I will ever be able to explain here. What I can say is that for right now I am COVID refugee where I was once a love migrant and things are a lot better than they might read. I am very happy to be where I am. I am safe and I also feel safe. Which if you’ve been following my streams of thought for any length of time you will know is of the utmost importance to me as it should be. I have been here in, Namibia since the 18th of May 2021 will be here I imagine for several more weeks to come, which I am also happy about. The reason why I am telling you this is this means I will finally have time to catch up on content I needed and wanted to produce for this website and all you healing humans out there. However, there is no way around it, though I may be trauma-informed the contents of my head and the strategy for creating content here is currently far from organised in what I can only describe as a backwards-facing action plan.

I started today by using debt management as an analogy for how I feel about my life, my to-do list and cleaning up my mess. That you should pay off all the smallest debts first and dedicate the excess money it frees up towards the bigger debts. Even with this approach to tackling the to-do list it still feels overwhelming as I can’t figure out exactly where is the best place to focus my energy. Though I am very aware that I have significant debt (if not the biggest debt and thus deficit of attention owed) here. This is, to say the least anxiety-inducing as this work and you are both crucial to my path forward and the development of this work. So what the hell happened?

What I can tell you is that a Master of Research in Human Geography; Spaces, Politics & Ecologies has been struck off the list officially today. So I can now put some fancy letters behind my name. I’m now Kimberley K Stone BA Hons MRes. Pah! Just like that, I did it. I achieved a dream. The inconsistency here is the price I had to pay for it and I apologise for that. I do hope to do much better in the future and in fact, I am going to have to.

I always like to remind my readers that I too am traumatised and hope that it offers you some semblance of sanity, in this truly chaotic world. That we are all deeply flawed and what can be impossible to express is at these times totally understandable. ‘Netflix and chill’ has become shorthand for “I just can’t”. At least the entertainment seems to be of slightly better quality than other dystopian carnations. Where exactly do we go to escape from escapism? So yes they say consistency is key to anything and mostly everything that you want to be good at. That turning up is enough. So here I am turning up again. I’m sad I was away from home for so long but I’m here now I’m back and I’m always doing my best to show up, sometimes though, that isn’t always possible. Please forgive me

Yes, life after trauma can feel like time travel as we literally just try and get our shit together, whether that is mentally, emotionally or physically, never mind organised. When a trauma bomb has arrived it can feel like our whole bodies are wading through electric treacle that overstimulates, overwhelms and can leave us numb. It’s hard to find ourselves. Hard to feel ourselves. Hard to hear ourselves. And most often hardest to embody everything that we truly feel and would rather have or be instead. So I’m back to one day at a time while stuck in seventh gear.

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The Human Life

kimberleen

I wrote out notes for this talk well over three years ago and hadn’t put together that I should make a blog post out of these things. To be honest I can’t really remember what I was talking about. I suspect that it was something to do witht the human life span or even human life cycles hah I wonder if I still have the write up to do the facebook events…

I do and they’ve helped immensely. When I first was working on the marketing for The Life Doula I had the tagline ’embrace the seasons of life’. As someone with CPTSD I tell you I am talking about far greater life cycles than those of the widely accepted things more Dantes Inferno, The Divine Comedy and The Nine Circle of Heaven rather than that of Mother, Maiden and Crone. Life cycles in all their forms and nuances are critical to how we develop as humans. From conception to birth we are now beginning to understand that even the seemingly ‘invisible’ start of a new life can have major repercussions as to how our future will unfold. Given that I spend much of my time discussing childhood trauma we only have to watch your average shit television series to understand how our parental relationship through childhood can fuck you up for life.

It’s only a matter of common sense that you might want to consider what you want to manifest over the course of the rest of your life. No big deal right? Of course all the Life Coaches will tell you to write it down. Get clear on your goals and manifest what you want. That bit’s easy isn’t it? Big house, nice care, freedom to travel. The thing is if you are reading this blog. My blog you didn’t turn up here cause life is going well. Maybe is was a car crash, maybe it was the shit corporate job that you kept you replicating the same shit patterns or oh no…that relationship. You can spend your whole life going round in the same circle. Which is very profoundly different from cycling upwards into new possibilities. Do you know what those possibilities are? So many of us are caught in unsatisfying life cycles because we are limited by our own imaginations or even worse the expectations of other people. Fuck that.

Yes, it’s good to know what you want out of your future. Yes, it’s good that have dreams. What’s really amazing is if that looks totally different to everybody else around you.

I have to be honest here. I came to the game late. I haven’t achieved everything I hoped to. Yet at the same time I have achieved far more than I could have ever imagined. Simoultaniously my biggest challenges was getting onto my own path. What’s really interesting that the chaellges I had getting on to my own path were everything to do with systemic trauma. The coming to terms with systemic trauma has been a huge growth point in my figuring out what I want to bring to the world.

When I started The Life Doula five years ago now I literally didn’t have the language for what I do. Everybody was telling me to niche and I could barely find a way to describe trauma, let alone understand that is what I was dealing with. I was so unsure of myself. How could this be it when everyone else was just ploughing on, on getting people focused on their goals, even though most goals were destroying the planet. Anyways what I was saying back then in a very roundabout way is that your life is important. It has value way beyond that which you might have ascribed to it or even the people around you. Pay attention to it. You’ve got anything up to 125 years to do some really cool stuff. What’s stopping you?

This article was written to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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A Fun Day Half-Writing Things

kimberleen

I’ve been struggling to write for a few months. The slow numbing of being non-creative brought brain fog and blocks. The brick wall of non-creativity turned into a mountain of boulders. As I tried to understand where my mojo had gone I was not doing too well. I had been incredibly consistent with my writing for over a year even under very trying circumstances. With high motivation to stay committed. Get things done and create ‘good’ content for you my clients and followers. Yet I just crumbled.

I’m sure I should probably be writing a backdated update for the end of 2020 right now. To create some kind of context for my creative commitment. Cause if you don’t follow my Instagram or Facebook you probably have no idea what is actually going on in my life. Cause you know I can be a bit cagy about telling the whole truth and rightly so. The main news is that I’ve been doing a Masters and I am working on my dissertation which is a lot less troubling to me than you might think.

I’ve got over 101 half written blog posts waiting to be published. I’ve just created about four more, with a poor attempt at tackling the backlog. My clarity isn’t shit hot at the moment and that makes it hard for me to move through the subjects I’ve outlined. Guess what? That means that there is something that needs to be healed there. This means I now have another blog post to write about the particular process. I’ve got timelines collapsing everywhere at the moment. Luckily last year someone explained to me that I only have to keep up. Who am I keeping up with exactly? I’m not sure I am capable of even keeping up with myself never mind the divine flow of the universe or the will of the ancestors. The thing is as well I don’t just crack out a lot of these ‘posts/articles/blogs/ there a process to create in and of themselves that involve and initial writing, an abandoning, a returning a revising and publishing. You see we think so many of these things are so easy. That we just wack it out without too much thinking. However, it isn’t as simple a that especially when your typing is poor and dyslexia has a huge role to play in how you present everything. The good news is that the crippling perfectionism and the imploding anxiety that accompany it are at bay… Though I’m getting a bit pissed of that Grammarly seems to be on strike from all my social media platforms, even though I just reinstalled it.

When I started writing keeping this blog ‘process’ as part of The Life Doula offering I promised myself that I wouldn’t restrict myself. That whatever I felt like writing I would and that no matter what I wrote as long as it was vaguely decipherable I would post it. That I wouldn’t force myself to make word counts or even have a subject matter that I would let whatever was pouring out of me fill the page conscious, unconscious, repetitive, boring and with lots of spelling mistakes. This was partial because I knew that ‘journaling or blogging kept me sane and that pressure killed me. So there we have it forced crystalline consciousness there as I have diligently wrote myself through many life crises without having to call to many people out in the process. These last few years I’ve been working thorugh themes and even writing my way through course I am creating as a way to multitask. It’s nice to be productive but I also need to be creative beyond forced labour. Of course I’m passionate abotu what I do. Sometimes it’s good to keep it mixed up a bit.

I swear it’s going to be an exhilarating series of books when it’s written. It’s just that now is not the time. What I have seen by totally neglecting my blog writing in a multiple way is that once again I have neglected my creative need. All work and no play makes Kimberley a very dull girl. Indeed that is where I have been at for several months. I literally replied to an email from a very old and good friend with thanks, I’m busy. It’s a bit fucked up, isn’t it? While I have forced myself through the last few months with a very clear mantra. I want to be left alone. I want to be left afuckinglone.

The truth is I want to be left alone to think feel and write, to explore to plan and to find away forward that supports and liberates me and overworking is not part of that. Some how even after years of self management my people pleasing gets in the way. No I can’t do that seems to be at the center of my periodical collapse. So here I am back at the center worshiping at the altar that is me. Wanting to know what do a truly need this time round to sustain myself. The quick answer to that right now if a finished masters; a complete disseration. It might feel like this is distraction therapy when actually it is something far better it’s nurturance. So I’m sorry if I let you down with my inconsitant writing habit I was doing my best to find my way back to me.

What I have also found interesting is that becasue I have stopped posting to my blog that my viewer numbers have collpased. I wonder what it means when I felt I creating so much value. I really am learning that valuing yourself is the key to being valued. Just like that I hit the 500 word limit.

I need to keep it moving…

Process, Uncategorized

Miracle Humans

kimberleen

Yes, you are a little bundle of miracle consciousness to love and cherish all for yourself. How nice is that? Are you now filled with warm fuzzy feelings of love and joy? Truly you are miraculous. There is a ridiculous sequence of numbers required to examine exactly how miraculous you are. So much so that it seems a bit tiresome to write them here. It’s a number so big you might barely pronounce it. It wouldn’t occur anywhere else and yet you are here. Here living your best life but only if you choose to. The chances of you being born, alone are one in 400 trillion. This doesn’t include the chances of you actually making it into adulthood. You see you are doing great.

You may not be aware but a number of factors had to come together beautifully in order for you to exist. It’s not just a matter of boy meets girl. It’s a matter of boy meets girl back to the start of human evolution and all the mammalian incarnations before that. Oxygen creation and a life-supporting environment had to happen a very long time before we even get to the pinnacle moment of sperm meets egg not to mention making it out the womb.

Before you even arrived here in this consciousness you had already been on such an epic adventure. From the creation of genes, all the way down to your DNA everything within your body has been passed on through the aeons to create you. Your mother may even been dreaming of your creation and existence from her own childhood. You have been called into this life in so many profoundly intentional ways that I personally and very grateful to have you there.

In recent years I personally have been deligating a lot of wondrous things to the universe. You know like human carrying ethical solar-powered electric drones. As I get onto that wavelength even now I know the perfect human has to be created to fulfil that task. If I trust that the universe is continually working on evolutionary consciousness I have to believe that every single human on this planet holds value. That you are the very latest creation at the cutting edge of evolution, that you are one mightily advance being.

Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you caught in a depressive cycle or maybe frozen in anxiety that either one you can’t see out of? Yes, the world is toxic, dangerous, crazy and destructive. However, evolution is pushed for by the slow persistent push of I think I can.

You have three different forms of brain. Imagine that human beings have been through such an extensive process of evolution that we have had to develop three different times of brain. No wonder we get confused sometimes? If you can grow a new brain well it else can you do? Sometimes the subtle achievements are the best. Just think how many humans had to collective change their behaviour to grow new brains?

You see we take it for granted that we exist. It’s a strange perspective really when we look at the world and see what is happening. Even more so we get depressed about the past and anxious about the future. We regret what has happened and what we have inherited. We berate and degrade ourselves in internal backchat. Yet on the most profound level, your existence is a miracle even with 8 billion of us on the planet. We think that we aren’t important or that we have no value. If you look at the long line of events that resulted in your creation, you’ve got to feel very lucky indeed.

Value what you have. It is certainly true of my journey that much of my challenge in life has been appreciating my own value. Sometimes this can be a very hard thing to do. When we don’t feel seen, heard or valued. Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that. Attachment theory…

If you are striking out into a new life, breaking the bondage of intergenerational trauma then it is clear, you got to find a way to build yourself up and create a new way of being. You are a miracle and if you’ve been getting through some tough shit without support that makes you very very special indeed.

This article was written to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Collective Trauma

kimberleen

Oh wow. When I wrote this as a title I had no idea that I would be writing it straight off the bat after having completed a mini project about land trauma. It’s like I want to write you a list of all the individuated causes of trauma I have come across over the last few weeks and even years, so that you might get a sense of what collective trauma actually means. It’s a long list, some of which I have explored in a number of previous blog posts and I am sure at some point might translate into an E-Book or even a book, book. Some of the primary sources of personal trauma are land, religious, educational, economic, institutional, gender, race, sexuality. Yup it’s a shit show. As you will know if you are reading this as part of Feral The Systemic Healing Circle. I have defined myself as a Systemic Trauma Specialist. What that means is that I look at all the ways in which ‘The System’ creates trauma. How those traumas intersect and become amplified.

Each one of the above material trauma’s might form a more specific psychological manifestation of collective trauma. One facet of religeous trauma might be religious guilt or specifically Christian guilt, as a result of original sin. That as a result of being born of original sin you are inherently sinful (Yup it’s loaded). Even though we ourselves may not speficially experience the guilt of original sin, their are millions of people out their that do. Original sin and it’s emotional psychological implications is an experience known to many as well as being a belief that has been held intergenerationally and thus ancestrally for over a millenaia. When we begin to apprcaite the weight of such a concept and how long it has been held in the human field we begin to approciate the unseen power it might have over the collective field. This is collective trauma. Of course original sin is only one of thousands of internalised belief systems that might inform collective trauma. I wonder how many you can easily indentify within yourself?

Let me break it down for you a little more. You see we all carry trauma, intergenerational and even epigentic (trauma that is carried in our genes). For example many of us experience land trauma. We are dispossessd, do not live in the indigenous lands of our ancestors. We have no connection back to the roots that connect us to any of our ancestral lineages, where not raised speaking the mother tongue of or people of our clan. As a result many of us feel displaced or lost in the world, continually looking for a way back to ourselves. The reason of the disconnection can be multiplus from family fueds to, economic deprivation, famine, war and much much more.

Many of these events that caused the displacement and disconnection become point of cultural trauma for example slavery, the Irish Potaoe Famine, The Holocaust. These are historical events who’s impacts move through time and create historical trauma. As each of these event impact an individual, a family, a community, a national identity they become part of cultural identity, collective consciousness and thus part of our collective trauma. As it is up to each individual, family, community, nation to resolve this trauma, trauma becomes fluid moving through realtionship, generations, spaces waiting to be healed.

Other things too can contribute to collective trauma such as sexism and racism. Collective trauma can be so prevelant yet appear to be invisible. That it is something so obvious that we might not even fully recognise it’s impact like World War Two or in South Africa, Apartheid. Collective trauma can also extend to intersecting structures of ‘The System’ like Colonialism, Religion and Education. When we really take our time to get to know people community and places there are common threads of collective trauma that run through all our lives. This does not mean to to say that Collective Trauma affects all of us the same. Some people have recurring nightmares, others dysfunctional family sytstems, while many of us battle with collective trauma as part of a ‘mental health’ innerscape. Inequality also plays it’s part in sustaining collective trauma. It is not as straight forward as either cultural or strucutural trauma often collective trauma can manifest in the environments that we live in.

So to put it succintly and as far as I am concerned Collective Trauma is how we psychically hold Systemic Trauma. Yes I just said the word psychically.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude to accompany Feral Systemic Healing Circle.

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Creating Clan

kimberleen

Clan? What doe that mean. People freely talk these days about finding their tribe. How important it is to have a group of people that you can connect with. That support your dreams want to share in them and celebrate your achievements.

If your suffering from PTSD or any form of trauma that celebration could be a simple as staying alive for a whole year, much less thriving through it. There is so much n the healing circuit about how you should heal, that you can heal and that healing is a choice. It’s easy to say when you have a support system. A family that cares about you. A family that has the skills of listening and compassion. I know right? We cannot heal in isolation and if you are attempting to you are on an uphill struggle one excruciating day at a time. Loneliness is painful. In a world where the family unit has become secondary to economic activity, it’s easy for us to be lost and even feel bereft when it comes to conversations about family. Much less what our deepest needs are in familial relationships. How do we create strong human attachments when no one has ever shown us what is truly possible?

Creating clan in this time can be as much about family healing as it is about ‘finding your tirbe’ . I talk about creating clan as Scot someone who knows where my family roots come from and have direct geographic acces to the orgins of my family. For so many that isn’t possible. Creating clan in this time can be as much about family healing as it is about ‘finding your tribe’. One clear way to find your tribe is finding a way back to yourself. Understanding how you family system in funtioning or dysfunctioning as they case may be and acknoldegeing how you are contributing to that dynamic. You may even feel the need to step away from family connections for a while while you that. In the meantime you may find that you need to do some intense personal enquirey as to what you do want from relationships. Not just romantic ones.

Being able to identfy how you want to be treated in your friendships is an important pathways to discovering who you want to be in the world. Taking time to discover what your interest are and how you might want those to manifest in your life is equally important to discover who you will be sharing your life journey with. You got to know who you want to be and what you want to create in order to attract the people who share the same values as you into your life. Of course, you’ve got be willing to accept that everyone is human and that they are not there to exclusively meet your needs. To have loving, kind, supportive relationships you’ve also got to be willing to forgive a lot along the way. We are all on a human journey. You attract what resonates. If it’s not working it’s time to resonate something else.

This article was wirtten to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle, by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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The Human Connection

kimberleen

‘You are born alone and you die alone’ It’s not true is it? And yet it is banded around as some kind of cure all explannation for the struggles of the human life. No doubt thought up by some highly evolved critic with a high victim consciouness. If only we could take a snap shot of the inside of their brain. If you are alive, someone cared enough to nurture you. Maybe not in the way that you wanted. Maybe not by a person that you would have chosen and yet as an infant they chose to keep you alive. Of course it’s really easy to see that someone may have kept you alive for there own selfish interests. Even if your care was an entirely selfish act you held enough value for that care to be continued. Lets face it children are expensive.

It probably sounds crude and uncaring to explain the human connection in this way. After all most of are searching for a place to call home. A place to fully express ourselves and just be. Yet we carry so much baggage, so much hurt, so much seperation consciousness. It’s hard to connect, especially when we feel abandoned by our closest family members.

If I am brutally honest I think given the world that we live in that knowing that we were cared for should be good enough. Just because you were born into this world it is not a god given right that you should be afforded the opportuntiy to survive into adulthood. It sounds pretty brutal doesn’t it? Given that I am writing this from a rural part of South Africa I can assure you that this is true. To be an adult human is a luxury. I know we should be aiming for higher and yet there it is the brutal reality. Also if you are living in South Africa it’s good to know that the average age of death is forty-nine. Yup so that’s me. I’ve got nive years left to live. Of course white privilge might tell me a different story about that. Yes colour is a factor…

Those of us living at the center of whiteness conveniently don’t have to think about that too much.

In farely recent history humans were breeding other humans like farm animals for means of trade and slavery. What must it feel like to be the product of a forced breeding programme? What must it feel like to be produced rather than created? How does that effect the psyche and epigentics? How all of this impacts systemic trauma levels in the human brain and body. Having been produced for profit how does that change the human story?

Of course in changes everything. It changes how we understand humans and humanity. It changes how we understand ourselves, where we come from and who our ancestors were on both sides of the fence. The enslaved vs the enslavours if you’re all baout claiming your European ancestry you are all about slavery if you are all about African ancestors worship you are all about slavery. The things torterous things that we do to one another, these are the ties that bind. Many of us spend a life time tryin to break family bonds while some of spend a lifetime trying to strengtne them. Often we have to seek connection outside family to move forward with our lives. Sometimes our best connections are those of friendship.

So you see here we are alive. Alive becasue of the pro-creation of other people. Alive because of human nurturance (even if it is just our own) alive because we were able to connect to the ever flowing and infinte abundance of the universe. The true connections that we have to create is the one with ourselves. The true connection is to that of our perfect place in the cosmos and the ability to manifest anything from where we stand. It’s true. You better believe it. You just have to learn to trust it. It is time to connect. It is time to fall so deeply in love with yourself that the universe brings you everything that you desire… its time to connect with the deepest desires of your soul and to know that this is exaclty what you were born to create.

This article was wirtten to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle, by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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How To Be Human?

kimberleen

I first came up with the idea that we have to learn to be human about five years ago. The world wasn’t ready for that idea then and although human consciounsess seems to have moved on a bit (at least going by my insatgram feed) the world is still struggling. It doesn’t take much to apprecaite that humaness is not a given. That as a species we are not automatically kind or even fare. In fact that much of the time the odds are stacked against us by a system that prioritses profits and whiteness. That white people don’t even know what whiteness is. It’s a beautiful combination of systemic trauma and non-white prejudice. You can say it’s clourism or even racism and still it’s so much more than that. Whiteness is the exclusion of anybody that refuses to accept the standardised forms and systems of institutions, organisations, corporations and governments. Yes you can absolutely decolonise something.

I’m not sure exactly how I framed the idea of how to be human a few years ago. There was alot about connection. A lot about the miracle of life and guess what ? Earth the human paradise. It often still disturbs me how detached we are from our true purpose here in our human bodies living an Earthly life. Of course no one persons purpose or calling is the same. We are all entitiled to have and live a many varied life. There is no one size fits all answer to humaness. Would you want there to be. Diversity is everything. Expression is everything. Creation is everything. As I sit here on the very expansive edge of consiousness. You see Abraham Hicks has got a lot to say about the human experience and it would seems so do I. You see I look around and I think human life in very deep ways. I look at the facts and then I look at my feelings and consider what is true for me as I step into my own belief system. It’s clear that we we look at the vastness of space or the habitability of our nearest planets, that Earth is a very special place. That to have entered into consciousness here is an entirely unique and incalculable opportunity. That it would be a shame to waste it. I know that life isn’t easys. I know that truama can make the world a scary hostile place. I know that many of us are not born with access to the resousrces that would have been an innate human right not that long ago. It makes me wonder how did we get here? How did we come to be at this place? I look at the other options like jetting off to Mars for example and I know that is not my journey at least not in this lifetime and then I wonder… this is it I have incarnated here. There is nowhere else that I would love to be and that on Earth no matter how challenging it might be I have to opportunity to have to most amazing life. From where I chose to live from what I chose to do. There are countilless ways that I could be spending my life here on earth and that I do not have to settle for anything less than what I want. That the only person in charge of that is me. That I have to take full resonsibiltiy for myself. That although the environments and the family systems that I was born into can be tough there are ways to expand thoguh that pain into a better life and in fact that is part of the challenge. Part of the human challenge is connecting to ourselves and discovering exactly where we want and need to be.

Of course this article is written from the perspective of privilige. When I think about access to opportunity I know I have and unfair advantage. Even as I wrote this and I wondered about the idea of showing up as a way to break into opportunity I had to consider is that true? Is that possible? The truth is that even showing up can be an extraordinary challenge when we don’t have the resources. How can someone attend varisity when there isn’t the money to do so. How can someone attend classes when they haven’t got moenty to eat. How can the afford to stay in college when there are no jobs to help pay the way. Yes the world is unjust and unfair and although it may be true. I never want to spend any of my time accepting tha truth is acceptable.

This article was written to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

Process, Uncategorized

Humans

kimberleen

Now this is a big subject. No two ways about it. Where exactly do I start with this one? Did you know that the oldest know humanoid is on display in Huntarian Museum in Glasgow? That they were named her Lucy after The Beatles son ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’. A lot has happened since the supposed discovery of the ‘missing link’, not least the connection between psychodelic plants and the emergence of human consciouness. Of course that all depends on who’s version of history you believe and if you have watched that banned Ted Talk.

I suppose as a human myself it’s hard for me to write about the subject of humans with any real sense of perspective. All we have to go on is the stories that we are told and that we tell. Which draws me back to a museum installation and exhibiton at Freedom Park in Tswhane. What are our orgin stories? It’s clearly no coincidence that I am wrting this directly after The Emotional Journey where I asked reader to explore their own origin stories. That’s the thing though isn’t it? That we all belong. More importantly than that, that we all belong together. And if you really want to dive in we all belong to one another. That it is the way that we relate that makes us human. That we don’t have a story to tell if it isn’t in relation to another person. That even if it wasn’t another person we are able to transcirbe the experience of human interconnectivty on to other things like the moon, or a teddy bear. It’s pretty obvious, we are here to connect. Yet at this juncture in history it is clear that the connections are broken.

Our broken connections start with the interpersonal and end with planetary destruction. We have lost the profound value of interconnection of everything and between everything and that all things hold equal weight in the sacred cosmology that we live every single day.

This article was inspired by three things the concept of Healing Humans, The Free Buffet and a Trauma Wise Circle. You can click through to find out more indepthly what these three concepts mean to me. However the main thing that I want you to take away from the above ideas is that Healing Humans is at the very center of the survival of our species and with that the only thing that we have full control over is our own healing journey. Something that I like to term as Personal Activism. You can come join some fellow healing humans over at my Healing Humans Facebook Group

This article was written to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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The Emotional Journey

kimberleen

Victimhood exploded into my consciousness today as I wondered what that really meant for so many of us. Victimhood has become a dirty word. So much of what we are told to be outraged about is in fact inconvenient, uncomfortable and honestly best left under the carpet for most people. We just don’t talk about it. About our weaknesses about our fears. Nor do we take the real-time to identify their origins. It’s an ever-ongoing journey the journey back to ourselves. Most of our journeys start with trauma, whether it’s garden variety childhood trauma or something a little more dramatic. Trauma lies at the root of our emotional journey. Of course, not everyone might believe that, for me it’s certainly a larger part of my truth. Once we get to a certain point in our own lives we really have no other option than to take responsibility for our journey. We have to take responsibility for our choices and we have to stand in our own sovereignty when reaping the consequences of those actions. So many of us walk the tightrope of boundaries trying to figure out what is just the right amount of give and take. For me personally, I always lookout for the best in people and now as I get older I have truly given deep thought to what is the most compassionate thing I can do for me. That seeing the best in people and wanting what’s best for them is not necessarily what is best for me. That in a world where you could be anything being kind isn’t always helpful. I’ve been mulling all of this over for months now. All the flawed belief systems that I have been running my life on. Unconditional love, sacrificial love, guilt, kindness, compassion and trust (I was raised a Catholic after all). Of course they are great values to have however what I have learned is that I have to put myself at the center of that circle. Even more recently what I have learned is that in my early twenties I was actually doing a lot better than I thought. More than this, the world is a lot more fucked than I thought and even more interestingly the people that are trying to save ‘the world’ are the most fucked of us all. Like seriously I’ve figured out a lot and although in my fortieth year I think I might have bordered on becoming a bit more conservative I fully appreciate that now more than ever I’m more radical than I ever thought. More than this I am frustrated, bored and quite frankly over it. Over what has been dished out and served up like dog vomit for us all to willfully eat. The terrible thing is that nobody actually knows any better. Like seriously unless you are invested in deep listening. You are not even close to discovering or unleashing the answers to the world’s problems. The world is at a loss.

Wow. It really is emotional. What else did you expect when you were catapulted into a human life that is bookended by birth and death? Yes, the emotional journey is about everything in the middle from dropping your first ice-cream to signing off on your will. It’s intense in here, this human life.

It’s certainly not what we are sold from the family films to the bible or even something a little edgier. It is really clear that most of the narratives are false. Well at least from my perspective? Or are they? You see I’ve been sitting at the centre of the emotional journey for a while now. I’ve been alive for a while now and like most of you I didn’t start out with anybody talking to me about how I feel. How I should feel or indeed if any of my feelings were ok? From joy to dismay most of my feelings by most of the people I have met on this journey through life have been dismissed, overlooked, ridiculed, mocked, weaponised and ignored. As a result, I have suppressed, repressed and ignored my feels and along with it any sense fo self. To be clear I here I am only talking about my feelings here. I amn’t even delving into the more resonable realm of thought. When it comes to human conversation orginal thought can be treacherous if you dare to have and imagination.

You see there’s a lot of talk about the heroes journey about the predictive steps that you might take to self-redemption. The real kicker is that you have to lose everything to gain something and go to where the fear is. I know it sounds straight forward. However it really isn’t the case. Especially when we are hiding from our own fear. Have you ever hidden from you own fear? To be honest the best label that I have for that is anxiety. The truth is it is super difficult to step into your own power especially when everyone is telling you not to. You might find it super confusing to discover that many people don’t want that for you, especially when you are living a life with deep authenticity. You see it highlights all the things that other people are not and they don’t like that. It’s actually quite a mission to turn off the exterior chatter that dictates your process in your head. More than this detach from it completely. There are so many people who are willing to hold you back from your dreams, question your curiosity and even undermine your moral commitment.

In a world where many of us are engaged with the world through the filter of screens controlled by an algorithm, now more than ever it entirely possible to control what you witness. Scary on one side of things and an incredible opportunity on the other. Of course, I am not a sunshine and roses kind of girl. I am ultimately someone deeply aware of the thorns. Although we do have to face our fears we don’t have to stay witness to human tragedy and especially not our own.

It’s a problem. It’s a problem that our feelings aren’t considered valid. The real challenge that I present in this article is how do we present emotions as both necessary and valid? How do we get on the emotional journey? More than this how do we get anybody to share the emotional ride. I suppose at this point we might want to ask is what is the first emotion that we felt can we remeber? Do we know how we felt as a child? Do we know how we feel. For many of us this is the revelation that takes us onto the emotional journey as an adult. It’s recognising the way we feel now is often related to how we felt in the past. That often our emotional journeys as adults is the recovery of the emotional journey of our pasts. That understanding the emotional journey of the past is absolutely key to unlocking the emotional journey that we desire in the future. Often the emotional journey doesn’s always start well. It’s sometimes all about all the feelings that we don’t want, that we are emmersed in, that we can’t seem to get out of. It’s the point at which that we can no longer stand the ‘negative’ emotions that we feel that creates a trajectory of radical change.

Of course it isn’t easy stepping out on to the open road with all you vulnerabilty on view after all isn’t that what unifoms were for? If we all dress the same, act the same, speak the same, think the same , then how could anythign possibly go wrong? You are not the control sample of the universe. We are not the play thing of corporations and institutions. We have feelings, we have emotions and we are entited to have our thoughts, feeling and emotions respected. It’s a no brainer. Literally stop thinking about it and start doing the work.

More than this the emotional journey is not linear. Somehow in this wack world we are all told that we have to continually prove ourselves. To be honest I wonder sometimes what it would be like to coast for a while. Yet somehow that doesn’t seem to be allowed. We have to keep pushing for ever greater success and ever greater emotional upgrade. What if you just put either one of those two things down for a second. In recent years it’s become ever more clear that the work never ends. That our evolving emotional landscape is the journey. That we as individuals are there for all our emotional ups and down and unexpectd sideswerves. I feel like I am, of course, pointing out the obvious. Yet truly in a world where the term ‘Mental Health Crisis’ is banded about like a ping pong ball we have to start connecting the dots. As a species we are not well. As a species our mental and emotional health are impacting our lives, familes and communities. Our mental health is impacting the planet. What are the deep seated emotions that are stopping you from doing the right thing? What is stopping you from addressing this ‘Mental Health Crisis’? Where and how is poor mental health affecting you? Is this the intersection at which to start the conscious emotional journey.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude to accompany the Feral Systemic Healing Circle