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Do you ever feel like you have failed?

kimberleen

The beginning of this article is preceeded by the story of The Holy Bucket. Which surely must become a parable of our time. In the interim though I do feel like my boundarylessness has failed me and thus I have failed myself, once agin not in the service of other but in the service of myself. I wonder how many times is this lesson going to be repeated before I get it. It feels like god like and what if we do it this way? or that way? Oh fuck she couldn’t possibly fall for this… wait for it…. Fuck.

It’s in moments like these I am so glad I don’t have kids. It’s in moments like these I am really glad that I only have myself to look after. As well as this it is also these moments in which I do astound myself at what I manifest in any given moment. It’s a fucking wild ride I tell you and The Holy Buket has all the hallmarks of a toxic empath. I’m throwing the word toxic around a lot right now. I’m naming, shaming, blaming, observing, witnessing and calling out all that soul puss in a very non-abraham way.

It’s easy to see that I relate my failing to a much bigger wider context. Yet where within that do we leave the space for personal responsibiltiy or if we are in the burn community radical self reliance?

Surely I should be focusing on something else right now, like the majestic Table Mountain. I can see it from the house I am sitting in. Yet here I am pouring my thoughts into the black mirror for the AI meta-data to market to me. Incase you didn’t know yet AI already has active consciousness. Are you terrified. I don’t think you should be. I am now wondering if the matrix is indeed real and do we actually live in it. It’s begining to feel that way. My object reality has been blurred for a long time and Isaac Asimov is clearly on point. He was talking about intelligent robots before we could have barely imagined the household computer. A lot of us are failing and that is ok. And it’s really ok to fail in an anti-human system. I wonder at the guilt of holocaust survivors and their descendents and how it is their internal dialogue goes. I wonder at myself as the descendent of two private soldiers who survived The Battle of the Somme. We are all vicitims fo systemic injustice that have rarely been corrected. We all sit with our own systemic trauma.

I trust the human algorthym. There is no cause greater than ourselves. My Gogo Water Star Facbook page went a bit viral recently by the time you read this it will have five thousend followers. I have had to think about that a lot feel about that a lot latey and consider the weight of the positions. Do I suddenly have to stop spelling badly? I fail all the time. We fail all the time. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail it’s whether you get up and keep trying. We go forward. These days as a business owner and as a teacher I consider more closely what am I modelling to the people around me? Nobody should have to tolerate disresepct, verbal abuse or anykind of abuse. Yet at the same time that model changes when you become lets say a leader of people. We can no longer tolerate waistage when people are relying on us to be better, to do better. Things change when we are answerable to people. Things change when we have to be made accountable and not everybody sees that unless they have sat at the top of the tree, with the overview. There are lots of moving parts, lots of things to consider and nobody, nowhere is ever going to get it one hundered percent right. What really matters is that we keep going. What really matters is that we keep turining up for the things that we believe in even if that is ourselves first.

Self-help is continually asking us these days ‘how are you showing up for yourself?’. The question alone invokes the inner cringe as we look down at the massproduced bread we are scoffing. Yet at the same time when did it become cool to food shame. It’s endless we are doing nothing right from the food we eat, the excercise we do or the ways in which we are showing up in the world. ‘You need to set firm boundaries’. It’s like and etheral bettering ramm of projection that won’t stop until our boundaries of being are annihilated into somebody elses way of thinking. Simoutaniously of course we are asked to surrender, we are asked to be kind, open and for the feminies amongs us now to be soft. When we haven’t even fully unpacked rape culture. Apparently water is an all absorbing force according to teal swan. It’s impossible to keep up with the barrage of information or everything we should be. All while the social media adverts are breadcrumbing and gaslighting us into our own personal oblivion. It’s like the propaganda of old yet it’s twenty-four-seven click to view all the way in which you will never be enough, while still being entirely worthy.

Trauma is running the show. This morning I was reading a book ‘Apartheid the Bastard Child of Britian’ that got me to thinking that money might be the first indicator of a dopamine fuelled society. I’ve often said that the collection of money and monied culture is simply a representation fo “Who’s got all the points”. It’s the gamification of global economics that ends like the game of monopoly. Yet we still think that we can win or that it’s important to get some skin in the game. Decommodification still holds it’s challenges even when we build imaginary town in the desert. That’s a whole new story, that replicates the old one, which we are building with our traumatised minds, that were created from a linear education system created to cater for the industrial revolution. There it is again, that systemic trauma. Of course it’s not all bad. I personally don’t even believe that it’s that bad or despite some larger narratives that I am bad. I just think it’s time tor create better education that is designed to fuck the systems and retune us to natural law. Which more then likely has similar principles anyway with our current human frequency. What I do know is that the work is changing and we can’t create a better world and better thinking with traumatised brains. So am I failing? No. Am I failing really? The answer is still no. What I am doing is a really good job of holding it together in really difficult circumstances, while finding new and better ways fo being in the world for all of us. And of course highlighting the fact that context is everything. I suspect if you are reading this you are too. Hang in there. We are doing the best we can.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

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The Holy Bucket

kimberleen

Sometimes an anology just appears and that is it. It’s in your head and there is no way round it. First of all the concept started as a holey bucket and as I went about my days and weeks it became the holy bucket.

The idea of the holey bucket started with the understanding that I was leaking energy. That some how I needed to plug those holes in order to be of better service primarily to myself, so that I could be of better service to others. In the process of understanding that I began to appreciate that maybe my holey bucket was a holy bucket that was being worn through by the concept of sacraficial love. The we have to sacrifice ourselves in order to benefit the other, that we are not just the giver but the donor of alturistically fuelled ascension magic (there is a lot wrong with this idea). That we have to cut off and cut up parts of ourselves in order to be of service to others. There is a huge amount of ego attached to such ideas, selflessness can often be a guise for deeper misgivings that the self is not prepared to face yet. Of course the idea of sacrificial is deeply entwined with religious doctrine than many of us have been brought up with. that we much act in service of the greater good or risk condemnation. That self-service even now is something that is often demonised. In a world full of systemic trauma waht does it mean to be kind, good or obdient. Kind, good or obedient to what? What is the underlying narrative, there is always one there. Even when we get down to the nuts and bolts of trauma.

As a sacred container my cup was supoosed to brimmith over and nourish all around me with the overflow. Yet the early segments of last two years have been accompanied by critical levels of compassion fatigue. Where quite honestly I couldn’t give a fuck about you and your problems. Not so lekker for someone holding space for the most vulnerable in our society. It’s made me realise how important it is to put things down, even when you are self-employed, even when you run your own business, even when you have responsibilities to people in your care.

The idea of The Holy Bucket got me thinking about a spiritual text I found in church one day that wrote about the concept of water in a bucket. I know wild idea right? That when we think about ourselves as important we must get a bucket of water and roll our sleeves up and put our arms elbow deep in the water and then pull them out. That if we look at the water we will notice there is no space left where our arms once were. It’s only then that we are asked to consider exactly how much spaces is left when we die. The answer is none. A brutal and liberating anology for the space we take up. So we might as well take the space fully and know that when our time is up, that we will be relquished on any grasp we had on this life. I think about that passage often, when I think about my relational value; what I mean to people in their lives.

I now firmly know that I don’t have to sacrifice myself for personal, professional and systemic reasons that might be expanded on at a later post. I must say that I am relieved. I have also found that my inner rescuer archtype is very clever. It likes to transfer grandiosse ideas of saviorism onto people, places and things to avoid uncomfortable conversations with others and with ourselves. How exactly is your trauma making you behave if you cannot go around saving people? What do you do now? It’s one of the hardesst things for those called to the healing profession to get clear on. We can choose to heal ourselves rather than giving what we need to the other. What if you just fed yourself fruit and drank some water? What then? I wonder. The simpliest thing always seems to be the hardest and the most over complicated for reason the traumatised brain is yet to devluge to us personally in our secret midnight dialogues that nobody else hears.

Having now taken inventory I am busy patching up the holes re-setting boundaries and re-writing the guidelines.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

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Self-Betrayal

kimberleen

Several years ago now I wrote a blog post called self-sabotage. That it wasn’t possible to self-sabotage as the sabotage was a deliberate way in which to protect some unconsious part of ourself. Knowlingly or unknowlingly we all have pattern that we play out and repeat some deeper than others. Self-sabotage could be considered as small scale undermining and diminishing of self that can be accompanied by shame and unworthiness. That we don’t think that we are good enough to have what we want to value what we offer or show up for ourselves in the way that we want to. Self-sabotage can arise in response to dysfunctional family relationships, that require us to stay small to stay safe. Sometimes require us to be something entirely other to who we are in order to be cared for or loved. It sucks when we grow up in familes like this. Often it takes a life time of self-sabotage and some really good therapy to figure out wha tis really going on for us.

Self-betrayal differs slightly from self-sabotage. Self-betrayal is like designing the path, laying the path, sign posting the path and then letting someone take you on a wee detour because they convinced you that they knew the path better, that they were better able to guide you. Which is impossible you built the path. The truth it everything that we make for and of ourselves is entirely from and for us. We ignore our own internal compass and self-naivigations system thinking that someone knows better than us, has deeper insights, or access to better information. In essence we delegate and allocate our own journey to someone else.

There are numerous reasons as to why this might do this. Sometimes it’s an attachment issue, that we to be more connected to other people than our own journey. Letting someone take you on a wee detour because there way or path is better, that they know the way. When people make us feel good it’s easy to get distracted. Sometimes we’ve been actively persuaded and then convinced. That somehow we believe that sombody else has the keys to our health, wealth or happiness. Self-betrayal has a sting in it’s tail is when we incrementally wander off the path in order to be amiable, connected or in services to others. Sometimes we wonder off of our path in the promise that eventually another way will take us where we are going. We often don’t even notice that we are doing it. It’s one small misstep after the other that can go on for years and we find ourselves in a very differnt place than we had hoped to end up. When we know the way ourselves. When our path keeps calling ‘Over here, over here, over here’.

I sit here writing this having become brutally aware of my own pattern of self-betrayal. It’s an interesting one I trust to much in other people, rather than trusting in myself. My own wellbeing. My own priorites. My own process. My own judgement. Sometimes I wonder at all the ways I might have fucked myself over too. Then I consider what I have also gained from trusting others. I’ve gained a lot. You can’t get very far without trust. In fact trust is the key ingredient that allows me to live my life the way that I do and faith is it’s ascended master. Everything is always working out for me.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

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It Feels Bleak

kimberleen

It feels bleak this Thursday morning. South Africa is on stage six loadshedding which essentially means that there is no power for six hours a day or something like that. A state of disaster was declared a new Minister of Electricity was appointed and guess what South African’s just roll on. They barely look up from their coffee as the country slides into a little more chaos. Maybe it’s the flock response, maybe it’s amazing reslience training or maybe it’s just extaordinary to watch people operate with such grace under fire. In South Africa the hustle is real. There is no state hand out and very little support. It’s ride or die. You got to figure it out quik or you are quit. Lots of people get broken in the process. South Africa’s relentless very real existence down here in the Cape of Good Hope. The place that is heralded as the place of good governance, if of course totally systemically racist. You only have to look at thr local Khoi San land disputes to know that and block on afforable housing in Seapoint.

Why am I writing about this today? I suppose the answer is why not? As well as I’ve been thinking about marketing a lot. What’s my story, who am I what I am trying to tell people through my narrative. What is the narrative? A marketer that I was considering collaborating with asked me what do you want to offer through social media? My answer was simple. I want to offer people a process. What does that mean? I want people to be able to witness a human process. Which is my process. That it is not easy to be alive in the world even if you do claim to be a quantum manifestation rainbow practitioner.

One of my Trauma Doula’s in preparation posed a question the other day as to why some wellness practioners only want to focus on the good stuff. You know the acturian crystal light vision and things like that. It’s what some people might term as toxic positivity and spiritual bypasssing; of course the people immersed in those practices could never think that. The belief that underpins that is that talking about trauma attracts trauma. Of course if you know that your thoughts create things then it’s totally understandable why you might think that. However, I simple don’t think or believe that. More than this I think it this kind of thinking probably highlights the challenges of duality and polarity. Because trauma isn’t necessarily a bad things and the judgement of it as such highlights how misunderstood trauma really is. As a trauma geek that makes me sad, especially when we look at thngs like post-traumatic growth and as “What happened to you?” talk about post-traumatic wisdom. People who have trauma have super power.

As many of you will know trauma is physiological and it’s strange misinformed and misguided approach to both gaslight, victim blame and shame those that quite simply don’t have the ability to snap out of trauma. This behaviour in other equates to ablism. I doubt many of us would go around saying these kinds of things to someone with a broken leg for example and advocate that people with broken legs that pay attention to their broken legs attract more broken legs or even broken legged people. These attitudes a fly in face of what toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing believe that we do have the ability to create our own reality. We can choose what we manifest regardless of what our current circumstances are.

It’s also important to note that because trauma is physiological it requires such things as human care to heal effectively. So when faced with the physiological repsonses to trauma; I would say for those experiencing trauma the most important thing would be to identify people who have the knowledge and capabilites to effectively care for trauma. Given that you cannot heal from trauma alone this means having to find a safe friends group or therapeutic support system to help you through the process. I hope this helps.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Safe Space Circle

kimberleen

The safe space circle came to me as a concept sometime last year. As a trauma specialist people often come to me with a lot of questions about self-destructive behaviours, toxic patterns and dysfunctional families and they want to know how to fix those things. The sad thing is that even in that moment when someone enquires it’s actually super difficult to start at the very base level; what is actually needed for that person, to even start to consider a healing journey. When people ask me about all of those things the first thing that I have to do is to help people figure out if they are safe.

At first glance it sounds both ridiculous and patronising to have to walk a grown adult through the concept of saftey. However I can tell you straight off that this process is not straightforward nor is it simple. When I talk about saftey in the context of trauma I am actually talking about two different forms of safety, physical safety and emotional safety and one cannot happen without the other. You see when trauma strikes whether it has been as a result of a one off traumatic incident or years of uncertaintly and life disruption; there is very little I can do for a person if they do not feel safe whether that is physically or emotionally and the two a intrinsically linked.

More than this people often speak to me about traumatised people they know and care for that often do not have either the capacity or resources to attend therapy. More than this the person who’s looking for some free advice that might get them through a tough challenge with a good friend I often talk about safety. The challenge is in a highly traumatised society safety in all forms these days is rare. There are very few of us that feel safe in our own skins, never mind at work or even at home. These conversations that are guided by care for another often demonstrate that the person who wants to help is also at capacity. That they simply don’t have the ability to look after another in the most basic ways and are too often struggling to cope with the stresses of modern life.

These days the stresses of modern life sounds like a convenient excuse for not being able to show up. However growing scientific research is clarifying how stressful modern life really is for humans and the traumatising impact that is having on human life and child development. The stresses of modern human life are a very real aspect of what is causing both personal and systemic trauma. That unless we turn back the dial on the way that human life is rolling out and how we are living there is not much that we can do in the growing epidemic of trauma and global mental health crisis.

Evidence is also growing that as a species not only are we completely out of sync with nature we are also totally out of sync with what were our natural family systems and how we should be living. Humans developed as part of intergenerational family groups where we were interdependent on one another. Now most of us live alone or isolated in small family groups with no immediate family or community to help us in our day to to day lives. This way of living is making us sick, creating additional stress that leads to emotional and mental health challenges. There is a growing need for humans to return to old ways of being in order to find wellness. The idea that a lone therapist or carer can fix and hold space exclusively for one person is an outdated one; that is impacting our ability to be well or create sustainable healing environments. We cannot heal in isolation. We need to be able to heal in community and work collectively in order to create greater wellness and turn the tide on personal and societal breakdown. We need to learn how to be in communtiy again.

Safe Space Circle is designed to create safety using the tools of community development to create equity practices that are based in diversity and inclusion. Creating equity is the very foundation of creating safety in groups unless we all feel seen, heard, understood and respected there is little that we can achieve collectively. Circling to is an ancient form of human communication that has been practiced through the ages. Creating safe space that we can share our deepest fears, show our true feelings and be who we really are and fully accpeted in this space.

If you you’d like to sign up for Safe Space Circle you can do so here

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Cleaning Up The Mess

kimberleen

There are probably a gizillion posts on wellness and water and breathing and yoga and and and and…..etc. I wonder how many of them are actually rooted in justice? I have another website you know called Kimberley K. Stone. Super easy it’s my legal name and yet even that is complicated. Now that is definitely content for at least one book. I promise you I’ve got an interesting story. One day when I finally sit down to write it you will be absolutely fascintated. Today and right now and for the forseeable future is not that day. Today I’m just doing me best like everybody else to keeping my head above water, my nostrils out of the mud, remembering to breath and being grateful for having a moment of gratitude for any of it.

Once again if you have known me for a while you probably also know, that I am constantly reassessing my alignment, my progress and my intent. For the last few years my work has quite distinctly been focused on the The Life Doula. Even though my first career was in curatorship and community activism I rarely talk about it or rarely take and interest in it. Please don’t talk to me about art, these days I find it utterly dull and have done for a very long time, sad but true.

An Honours in Post-Colonial Theory in Scottish Art put me firmly on a decolonising approach to art curatorship. Which largely means embodying de-centering white voices or for the advance practicioner non-indiginous voices. So yes, my decolonising curatorial practices basically ended my career. You are welcome.

This practice of post-colonial and decolonised curatorial practice can now easily be defined for me as Radical Curatorship. Which I am now having to both reexamine and revisist. What I realise is that in my curatorial practice I went silent without ever explaining why this was part of a process many years ago that didn’t have social media at it’s center. Now after my experience at the COP15 which I talk about in my previous post ‘Getting Back on the Band Wagon’ I have decided to take up the reigns on the decolonisation process again as what I might identify as a Liberation Educator. Quite simply because few of the things that I advocate for in my silence are actually being heard at all. That I need to be more expliity in what I know and what I stand for. I do this knowing that white centering is a thing. However in a systemically traumatised system I have to affirm that very few of the pale males in power are listening to marginalised voices of any hue. It was both heartening and distrubing to realise how white women still sat at the center of the dissemination of power of a global institution that was both Eurocentric and majority white. I don’t think I even have the capacity to begin to unravel how these are the best terms that I can use in this moment to describe what I witnessed. These terms are so very far from adequite in my quest to unravel the role of language in the creation of systemic trauma.

So for these reason’s I have now decide that it is entirely appropriate for The Life Doula as a brand to center the issues that are critical for ecojustice at this time. Centering ecojustice is the easiest way to get white people to listen. The lowest common denominator and right now that will just have to do. Of course ecojustice can’t happen if we don’t take into account all the other factors like women’s rights, decolonisation, indigenous rights, anti-racism and a wellbeing economy. So that is where we or in this particular instance I begin.

The other thing that I would like to add is that when I returned to the UK in 2019 I was somewhat emboldened by Extinction Rebellion of which I am a member if loseley. Their sign off on all their letters and communications is love and rage. It started to get me thinking about a powerful message that I could use as a sign of on my communications, especailly when working under my own name, Kimberley K. Stone, that unperpinned the ideas of Radical Curatorship. It became very clear very fast. My sign off is Beauty & Justice. I hope that we will find some here, in this life time for everybody.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Getting Back on the Band Wagon

kimberleen

What exactly does band wagon mean anyway? I like to think that it’s representative of some travelling Troubadours having and extistential crisis about there musical service to the Queen and literally having to leave the band wagon.

Anyways as some of you will have noticed and been aware that I have been what you might call away. However the truth is, is that I have been at capacity. Working with trauma is not easy. Working with ecojustice, women, indigenous rights, anti racism, decolonisation, a wellbeing economy and trauma work is tough. It takes a lot of emotional capacity to be involved in such things and sometimes I just don’t have it. Worse than that I consider blogging and writing to be a wellness practice. So you can only imagine where I have been and that feels sad for me. Of course nobody wants to hear about a trauma workers dwindiling capacity or about what now seems to be the cyclical nature of my compassion fatigue. That compassion fatigue is real or that priortising wellness in all area of your life can be challenging especialli while caring for others. I have at least stop saying that my life is busy and instead saying my life is full and my life is rich, meaningful and full.

To much social media and in fact media in general advocates for strong boundaries. However where does that leave you when you are dealing with infant children, disabled adults and the elderly. Although I don’t class myself as a carer, so many of us are doing this kind of work. Where we just have to accept that we might need to catch up with our needs late. However we sit in the paradox that if I am well then everybody is better. It’s not always that easy though and people in caring roles are all to aware of this. Dwelling on this thought takes me to the role of land guradians and their now deadly role as land defenders. I have two of these types in my immediate circles the death threats are real, the chronis stress is exhausting and the gas guzzling corprorations that are doign thes things just keep on going. You might want to talk about the extortionate wealth of the oil and gas companies in relations to your own fuel bill. I look at it as extortionate wealth that actively, consciously and legitimately destroys live and lifes on this planet. Hike’s in fuel prices for many of you are inconveint for some, deadly for many.

Then we have to take into account that we live in toxic is a toxic world, compiled of multilayerd toxic systems that impact on nearly every aspect of our live absolutely no one is untouched by this. I’ll say it before and I’ll say it again I beleive that we life and anti-human system and following on from a visit to the COP15 the UN convention on biological diversity I could also say that we now live in an anti-life system. It’s not just about us humans it’s about all the other earthlings too.

I’d like to say that my trip to the the COP15 was inspirational, uplifting, motivational. If you were expecting that I am sorry. All my worst imaginings were confirmed and worsened. I feel like I am now watching “The Don’t Look Up” movement in real life. Let’s be fair though I have always felt that way. Which might have more to do with my compassion fatigue than anything else this February. What happens when you find out that you are right? You see all my life I’ve looked out at the world and it’s madness and wondered it must be me. Why can’t everybody else see this? Why if I point it out does nobody care? Why if I talk about do very few people listen. The truth is I often still feel like that. However this year I feel like I have turned a corner. I don’t need to learn more, or be more, read more books figure more shit out or understand another person’s perspective. I am done. I am done being nice to ecocide advocates. I am done being nice to systemically traumatised people particularly men. I’m done being nice to people that won’t acknowledge and center indignous rights and knowledges as part of their process. I’m done trying to explain why your very vanilla word view is harmful. I’m done trying to cram PhD level knowledge about the decolinisation process into a five minute calls for your convenience, that you are not paying me for because somebody brought it up in board meeting and I am done being nice to those with colonlial inherticances that won’t acknowledge it. I’m done having to explain what a wellbing economy actually looks like when you don’t ascribe to capitalims as the solution. And finally I am done having to explain to people that don’t want to listen that trauma work and the acknowldgement of systemis trauma sit at the center of all that. I also feel like I have said all this before and have failed to stick to my boundaries. I need to be referring people to more books or these blog posts.

I realise now that not writing these blogs is at the source of what is holding me back. The answer always comes through writing, that is what I always find.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Emotional Safety

kimberleen

I am actually a little shocked that I haven’t written about this before. I might even have it teed up as title for this year’s article titles. I do hope that the blogging is fimly back on my weekly to do list. I’ve missed it. Things seem to be settling down again and I am very pleased for that. It gives me and increased sense of emotional safety. I keep saying it like I can’t quite get over it myself it’s been a wild few years. I feel like I have a lot to fill you in on, like I didn’t have enough to do already. Here I am charging through my final thing on the to do list for today before loadshedding hits. I just checked to see if I had written a post about loadshedding too and it also seems not. So loadshedding is now added to the list of article titles for another time too. I am supposed to be writing about emotional safety and I supposed for me writing about emotional safety is where my journey starts with emotional safety.

You see I have a very active mind where the thoughts pile up like a car crash most days. Especially when I haven’t been able to write for ages or power through my to do list. I have to do my upmost to not let the ideas that I have run away with my life and indeed take over my thought processes completely. Writing is a wellness strategy for me. Mainly because there just isn’t enough space in anybody elses life to help me process my thoughts effectively. So I write and because I am then able to process how I feel without having to bother anybody to much. Writing it gives me and increased sense of emotional safety as well as a sense of emotional control. Don’t worry i do have friend I can always reasch out to and a long term therapist too. It’s just writing is my way of managing overload, writing give me clarity.

Emotional safety occurs when we feel safe to express ourselves fully. Which would seem obvious and yet it is not. Too many of us have grown up oppressed and denied our emotional processes leaving us repressed, neglected, isolated and self gaslighting; believing that we are too much, too difficult or complicated. When we are reduced to having to give convenent, emotionally contained one word answers to the very nature of our being it’s difficult to feel heard or even seen. Which can lead to a lot of anxiety, distress and emotional discomfort. Not feeling heard or seen can leave us feeling emotionally unsafe and scared about what we can and can’t say. Growing up and working in spaces where we aren’t able to fully be ourselves affects our ability to relate both safely and authentically and it’s common.

A lot of my work with emotionally safety has specifically grown out of working with women and specifically women of colour in past-apartheid south africa. Women of all colours have been and continue to silence as part of the legacy of apartheid. However men too also feel can feel societaly impacted by this kind of silencing, having to maintain gender sterotypes that are embued with toxic masculinity that only account for one emotion anger. If you are trying to understand emotional saftey and how it impacts you I would suggest that you take the time to explore your own emotional landscape. How many emotions do you feel capable of feeling, sharing and expressing, especailly in the company of others. Do feel able to tell people that you are feeling sad, angry or depressed? Or do you think that showing emotion is a sign of weakness and emotionality a source or personal shame? Once again it’s common to feel this way and it’s isn’t something you choudl feel alone with.

The way to creating emotional safety is to quite simply allow yourself to feel your feelings, you’re entitled to your feelings and whatismore it is good for your health. What can’t be expressed gets repressed and held in the body and can eventually make you physically sick if not properly addressed. The way through difficult emotions is to find friends and form relationships with people who do make you feel safe. That allow you speak and not only speak; speak all the way to the end. It really is that simple and it’s one of the reason that talk therapies can be so successful. Often we just don’t have the right people to talk to. To share our lives and our problems with. If you don’t feel that you have anybody that you can talk to whoo might share your world view of work through your stuff with it is almost certainly time to get a new friends group. Creating emotional safety is really easy once you find the right people who are willing to listen. More than this you will develop healthier relationships where you to can become a reliable person to hear someone out. At first it can feel really challenging to reach out and it might feel painful if you don’t make the right connection straight away. it might be hard but it absolutely worth. After all humans are both social and emotional creatures and we need healthy interdependent relationship to both survive and thrive in this world.

If you are interested in exlporing your emotionas further you can vist my ko-fi shop for some inspiration.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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The Great Reset

kimberleen

Happy Chinese New Year, where does the time go? And the years only run faster as you get older. After all time is not linear as I sit here on this particular upward spiral of the current Kimberley incarnation.

The good news is that I am back in Observatory, Cape Town the bad news is that I don’t know how long for. There is no doubt it has been and interesting few years and my achievements far outway my misadventures, which seem to have been rather few for an unconsensual nomad. Except of course that I ended up in entirely the wrong country one early morning last year; it all worked out in the end, with surprising ease.

This year it seems I have come back to the start of my journey in an unexpected and complete full circle moment, living only three streets away from my old address. It’s been interesting to be back with some old faces and new venues, the pandemic certainly seems to have taken it’s toll here. So many businesses shut down it makes me glad of all the photos I have of the old Observatory that I first knew. Observatory now seems more transient that I first considered, then I ask the question; where in the world hasn’t undergone a radical shift in the last three years? Who in the world hasn’t undergone a radical change? The world is changing and we change with it. Life is change.

This year I start in the aftermath of my life choices trying to find a clear way forward. All I really know for sure is that I have four Trauma Doula Preparation Courses to run this year and whole load of admin to catch up on. The nomadic lifestyle probably seems fantabulous, exciting and liberating if you believe the social media slide show. The truth is I am exhausted and desperately in need of some radical rest combined with some high speed digital decluttering.

Of course I am supposed to be a source of wild inspirations and deep insight that going to get yout through the next twelve months cycle of everything that you ever wanted. You can achieve anything that you want to. You can be anything that you want to and as somebody who has managed to do ten years of work during a pandemic I can assure you that all things are possible. I’ve seen things that I could never have imagined and had experiences that have moved me beyond my wildest fantasies. When it all comes down to it I am still just me. I still have the same dreams and aspirations I always have. To have a good life, near the beach. It’s simple. Keep it simple. There is magic everywhere. Especially in Cape Town. It’s good to be home in the Mother City.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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How To Contribute To Planetary Shift

kimberleen

It’s all about frequency. In the case of the Cape Town water crisis that surrounded the frequency of visits to the bathroom. In your case, it’s probably not going to be that hard to master. Not drinking water in the middle of a drought. Think happy thoughts. Yeah, that’s a bit fucked up coming from a trauma-informed practitioner… Of course planetary shift isn’t all about positivity and solution-focused mentality. In fact, these days planetary shift for those of us willing to face terror face on is all about the climate emergency. Like other things you may think what has the climate emergency got to do with trauma? Where I have to invert the question, why do you think it doesn’t.

In fact much of what I do would say quite the oppostie. It’s time to dance with the shadow after all we a planet of contrast. Night, Day, Ocean, Land, Hot, Cold, Wet, Dry we live in a planetary space of polariastion and we have done for billions of years. Yes you and all your previous layers of evolution. It’s nothing to do with polarisation it’s about being able to accept the polarisation within you. I know you probably want to hear that contributing to planetary shift might be all about swimming with dolphins, meditating on mountains and of course running off to Bali. However what are you doing to feel better? That is all there is to it? What makes you feel good without increasing the Carbon footprint? (I truly do wonder for the world when I consider this (it’s really easy stop flying)).

What if you just sat down for a bit, without screen time, with the radio off and your phone deep underwater somewhere? What would happen then? How long would it take for someone to turn up at your door? Like seriously? Good experiment in a global pandemic. Have we got compassion fatigue yet? Fuck knows, it’s exhausting just maintaining our own space right now. By space I mean immediate space I mean in the physical realms. Brush your hair, make your bed, wash your clothes, stay sane that kind of thing. I managed to tidy my room today. That’s correct not the house. My room. That’s where I am at how about you?

You see we set our goals high (at least I do) and think that we can bring about planetary shift through a forced kind of militancy. Even if it’s just by holding our daily routines in place. We are told to dream big, aim higher or get out of our own way. Often. The last few years have been a roler coaster ride of what you should be doing for yourself, your community and for the planet. Including getting vaccianted and not questioning our right to bodily autonomy. In the next few weeks and years we will be encouraged to support Ukraine, the way we did Palestine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan when none fo those situations have been fully resolved to this day. Nor have the victims received the indepth trauma care required.

For over a decade now I’ve been watching Life Coaches, Spiritual Advisors and Gurus all dish out there advise as to what the meaning of life is. How to be happier? How to manage anxiety? How to identify high functioning depression? Explaining that addiction is emotional numbing. What I’ve learned? Is that most of these forms of personal development are directly related to how you participate in the capitalist system. What can you consume to make you feel better? Who knew that learning to breath properly is actually a chargeable product? You’d think someone would just help you breath? Especailly at a time were being able to breath is a critical life skill to tackle a respiratory virus. It appears not. Which leaves me personally with a lot of questions? Where is the collective human consciousness when we are charging people to improve their breathing. Just saying? How low have we sunk in our ability thrive if the most basic of human needs at the center of a global crisis still falls within the bounds of chargeable product? Very few coaches that I have encountered have ever truly got to the core of our human issues. Most of them are just tiptoing around healing fads to figure out how to profit. People might talk about slowing down for personal well-being without mentioning the benefits of local community living. People might talk about creating heartbased frequencies without explaining how to apply them in a practical level. How do we generate loving environments when our vibe is based on being handed the perfect coffee.

More than this how do we address the seemingly perverse approaches of most western societies to promote an experimental vaccine with unknown health risks over access to clean air, clean water, sufficient personal space and a healthy diet? We are told to breath in, the air is poisonous. We are told to control our thoughts when the world is playing mindgames. It’s hard to practice wellness and even safety in a word the practices harm withour consequences. We are told to maintain our frequency as disregulated light workers attempting to avoid pain. t’s hard to practice wellness and even safety in a world that practices harm without consequences. We live in a traumagenic world. Where each individual act that we take ripples outward with untold consequences, in unseen spaces that don’t apply to us. My current macbook (which I am using now) was created through exploitative extractive economies that benefit from human right violations. Yet I continue to use it and remain an Apple customer. I am complicit in the toxic systems that I attempt to disrupt.

I have often heard the wiccan wisdom “Do as you will and harm no one” As I travel through this life this simple suggestion for a living way forward is far more complex than many might imagine. After all “Salad is murder”. Never has this become more clear than with the growing interest in plant medicine and never has it been so misunderstood. The modern homo sapien thinks that plant medicine is a consumptive process that does not allow for the consent of the plant medicine. There has also grown to be an outsourcing of intution that goes with it. “My guides” strikes huge alarm bells from the get go. What guide exactly? I mean exactly? And are you sure that this isn’t the plant talking to you? You see going inwards can be an avoidence of what is, much like alcohol consumption or an over eager stoner.

I don’t think it’s any great news to explain that over the last eighteen months many of us have been going through a ‘shamanic’ breakthrough. Yes, the world is fucked. Yes, we all knew about it. Yes, we have all been complicit in it. Yes, everything is connected. No, that doesn’t mean you feel perpetual joy and wonder. Actually your ‘spiritual’ awakening is about becoming clear; you’ve got a shit tonne of work to do. Yes, you have a calling. Yes, that calling is to find your purpose. I know right? Who knew it was that simple? More than this you need to stick to your guns. Stay comitted, even when it is hard to stay motivated.

So really what I am saying is how about you combine you self-medicating with some community building. How do we do that? How do we contribute to planetary shift when so much of our world is dictated to us through the back rooms of power? I have to stay connected. Not online, out there in the ‘real’ world. Breath the air, clean the air you have. Drink the water, find your nearest fresh water supply is. Stand on the ground, find some a patch of earth that has a complete biome, that hasn’t been curated into being by some town planners idea of green space. When we begin to look at personal wellbeing indepthy we begin to appreciate that much of it is caught up in our living and working environments that are not designed to foster wellbeing either. We are beginning to realise that we cannot buy our way of a planet with finite resources. Nor can we avoid the consequences of living in a unified planetary field. The smoke of the Amazonian fires cross the atlantic and end up in southern Africa. Climatic changes that occur over the Atlantic, as a result, create hurricanes that wipe out the Southern States of the USA. Everything is connected. The dilusion that we have any control at all is a big one. Yet freakishly self-control is pimped as a superwork, when medical textbook might say the opposite, especially in relation to trauma.

Its easy to believe that planting a million trees is the way forward. Its also easy to get caught up in the well being or some poor unfortunately orangtuan. The things is what I know for sure is that whatever you think the problem is. It is never very far away. You don’t have to get on an intercontinental flight in order to make a difference. Begin where you are. Begin with yourself. You see so many of us are coming from a space of spiritual lack as much as physical lack. That we don’t know where to belong, what to stand for and more importantly who will stand with us. We only have to turn to Jerry McGuire to learn how little most people are moved by or inspired into change. Most of us are just looking for a safe base from which we can view tha madness. Until the madness comes for us. If you are reading this I trust that you are already all to aware of what a precarious point in humanity we exist in. This weeek alone I have heard of terms such as the end of civilisation, and the end of history as Vladimer Putin plays power games with his nuclear deterent. In such times many of us are asked to examine what really matters? We are asked to examing how we feel. And for many people that can look very different too.

In order to contribute to planetary shift we have to begin to appreciate that if it is about frequency. You get clear on what you want to create, whether it’s a clean room or a happy life. That means finding out what makes you happy is the most important part of that calling. More than this finding a team of people who are going to support you in that mission is paramount. Find your thing, then you’ll find your people. You need to have people that share in that dream that are working to create it. We cannot get there alone. I don’t know if you noticed it’s fucking crazy out there. Masks on, masks off, pandemic or plandeminc, anti-vaxers vs the anti-human, fake news vs your own inteliigence. Our whole world is being held in relief to be questioned, dismantled, weaponised and if needs be detonated. Lucky the UN have already outlawed nuclear weapons. Has anybody told Boris? The buzz word for the last year or two has been polarisation. It’s not something that I buy into.

Purpose and meaning are now touted as cure all approaches. Paolo Nutini to has been weighing on my mind “Nobody can give you the power to rise.” So that’s where the fuck are you in your life? Where do you want to be? Are we moving forward? And yet that may be part of it. However, is what are you doing making you feel better? That is all there is to it? What makes you feel good without increasing the Carbon footprint?

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