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The Holy Bucket

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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Emotional Labour, Community Activism, Boundaries and The Rise of the Divine Feminine

IMG-4499This year it feels like I’ve taken a crash course in all of the above. I’m also feeling pretty proud of myself in the process.  For the first time in the history of my own community activism, I have refused to take on other peoples shit. True Story.

Emotional Labour is the work of me, The Life Doula. I create space, I hold space and I offer up time as if it is an infinite resource and utilising a lost healing magic that seems to have been long forgotten in the realms of 21st-century healing. You can’t hack everything. It is at the very moment we can become grateful for the ageing process, proud of the whispy grey hairs and that wisdom usually has to be earned.

The truth is that Emotional Labour is, for the most part, the work of women. The absorbing, the explaining, the understanding, the coaxing and sustaining of families and communities. It’s the care of the dying, the nurturing of children, the comforting of the ill and distressed and the perpetual maintenance of the household. It’s also the commitment to healing, healing ourselves to be of better service. Healing our selves to create better homes, stronger families and resilient communities and yet so little of this work are appreciated and honoured even though it is the very stuff of life.

These days as healers and let’s be honest here as women we now have to resolve to set boundaries for ourselves. We have to decide to take care of ourselves first, heal our selves first before we ever hope to have a deeper impact on the world at large, even though there is so much to heal. Too often now I have had the call to action. “Kimberley we need your help” and too often now I have learned that the help I have to offer is mistaken for something else. That somehow I can do the work for you. That by me showing up and listening to the problem at hand is a cure and that due to my caring nature I might be willing to solve the problem by taking on the role of community enabler. That I will be project manager, researcher, facilitator,  admin assistant,  fundraiser and counsellor. All for free of course.

The answer is I can and I won’t. The truth is my house isn’t in order. I expect too much from hurt people. The best remedy I have for this is, of course, is getting back to the drawing board and straight back into dharma. Chopping water and fetching wood, figuring out where the mix up happened and re-committing to healing myself first, loving myself best and serving reason from a cup that radiates joy.

The age of Aquarius is here. The divine feminine is on the rise and emotional mastery is calling to us. Nurturance is key and taking on the emotional labour of others is over. Nothing is disposable. The energy we put out into the world is the energy we get back. After all, it’s the circle of life.

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Digital Drag

Well, this is a first. I’m writing from my phone as my computer has been taken over by the beach ball of doom. I’m wondering if it has any deeper significance. That maybe it’s time to stop or maybe it’s time to push through. Or even commit to digital filing in a profound spiritual way. Can we be essentialist about digital data too? My phone and computer seem to screaming out with overload. I wonder if this is a new dilemma for a new age digital dharma.

I wonder what tales of self-love and neglect my computer might tell me if it was fully sentient. Is that a question I can answer clearly? Increasingly I’m inclined to say no. Our psyches are spilling out all over the place, into google and all those other platforms. Can the hardware really be unaffected as we wonder how near into the future that robots will be the norm? How might they help one another? It makes me pleased my computer doesn’t have limbs or any of my other household appliances. Our minds seem to be morphing with tech and I wonder how long it will be before you are able to literally call your own car. What has all that got to do with Life Doulaing? Well, life is change and it’s our ability to adapt that ensures that we can thrive.

Already here in South Africa digital disparities seem to field the landscape of society as the world steps further and further away from the ideas of traditional work. Many people without digital access are already being excluded from the digital workspace, much the same way you can if you don’t have access to a car. In the business of global storytelling so much is being left unsaid. Then I laugh a little because I’ve made a proposition in my head. That somewhere out there in The Lost City of Khayelitsha that everybody’s up for telling the sad story. When human evolution forces the opposite to be true. We want to tell our best stories, show our best lives. Maybe not because we are frightened of judgement but maybe because we want to attract what we want. Clean clothes, running water. You’d be amazed at other people’s paradigms. It makes me consider all my internal landscapes and emotional environments again.

I’m curious to know how as humans of the digital age creating deeper interlocking patterns with tech how we might approach this ever-encroaching condition. These days the digital interface is so pervasive it’s hard for me now to really capture where community begins and ends. Where the boundaries of human relationships truly lie. What is the physical? Bringing a whole new meaning to what is the matter? Yup, it’s full on. I’m really interested to know if you are sharing the same questions.