Tag: Land Defenders

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End Of An Era

kimberleen

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It really is. A decade at an end. The truth of the matter is, I have no idea where I might be when you read this. I writing this nearly three weeks ago, as I sit on a precipice of something entirely new and unclear. Most of this year I have eluded to the fact that things have not gone exactly to plan in my life and yet still I find myself unwilling to share my story. It’s actually all lined out for the first of next years blog posts, hopefully, that will keep you tuned in for some major revelations.

In the last post, I talked about the power of connection. That is what I specialise in. Holding space, creating space and making time for change. If there was ever a time for change it is now. My personal crisis bathes in minutia as we look at things on a planetary scale. We have a climate crisis, globally polarised politics and a whole new generation seeking to be heard as Millenials begin to take a backstage. Millennials for obvious reason have dominated the last decade, largely considered entitled, among other things that don’t come to mind as easily. Even the other day I was talking to someone who had been in Bali to discover a tribe of Global Nomads, as I talked about taking more of my work online.

Twenty years ago I fantasied about being a travel writer and then demonised myself for thinking that anybody else would be interested in what I have to say. Writing was for the confident, the well educated and somehow the endorsed.  That we needed people to believe in us to move forward in life. I was not wrong. My lack of secure attachment, runaway lifestyle, (rather than nomadic) hindered me from progression in ways that I was not yet fully able to recognise or understand. What I realise now twenty years later is that somehow, that probably made me, far more interesting than your stock standard public school alumni writer. Yet even as I developed as a writer I found Guardian articles blasé and lacking depth as a result of the endorsement that only middle-class living can buy. I didn’t know then that how I felt was symptomatic of a broken system that disenfranchised the different, demonised the disengaged and stopped us from connecting. It’s only in very recent weeks that I’m beginning to understand that how I feel have far more to do with neuroscience than it has to do with personality. That brain science and personal perception are the universes playing out in the micro what is happening in the macro. That we are all reflections of ourselves and that those with the most to say are very rarely heard due to the importance of all matters E- Loc. That as humans we are controlled by so many things external to ourselves. That the need for endorsement is a form of psychosis visited on us not just by our primitive and infant’s brain yet by society itself.

It’s the end of an era. I really do hope so. I want the system to fail, for human spirit thrive and end the robotic and enslaved existence of the human’s soul. I’ve been told it’s all happening in January 2020. I won’t be stockpiling food. I’ll be hoping for the best, diving into my soul and surrendering to flow and be here somewhere in the either for anybody that needs me. The thing is about the Global Nomad thing is that most of us are deeply disconnected sitting in cafes or air BnB’s narrating lives that don’t really exist. Where tea with your mother is destroying the planet and your digital devices are implicit in illegal wars and child labour. Our privilege keeps people enslaved. There is in this current system no way round that. Ten years on from a decade ago we really are only just beginning to understand how the greed induced tyranny of most of human existence needs to be broken down.

On a personal level, this decade has been a decade of love, deep unadulterated love. The kind that heals souls, brings a person home and brings a sense of belonging that stills the heart long enough to hear itself. If there is one thing that I could to take into the next ten years it is love and love alone. Right now we all have the ability to chose the paradigm in which we want to live. For me, that is about giving all my power to my own personal truth that love and joy must guide the way. That personal frequency is everything.

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The Life Doula: Creating Connection

kimberleen

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It’s an interesting thing to sit at the core of what you do and understand that it is about something as basic as creating connection. Recently I’ve come to the conclusion that therapy is only needed as a result of the conversations that we are unable to have with a secure attachment. A secure attachment is someone we trust, that cares about us, that believes in us and wants nothing more than for us to be both healthy and happy. The sad truth that secure attachments have become rare.

More than this I have known for quite some time the power of deep conversation, that isn’t so much therapeutic as it is real. You see we all grasp for depth especially when life has challenged us. Secure attachments are the number one thing that guarantees our success in life as well as minimises the impacts of trauma. Do you know who your secure attachments are? Do you have a good friend? A relative or even a work colleague who is there for you?

Most of us are so caught up in the superficial we barely make time for the real stuff. We barely make time for eye contact or the space to feel exactly where we or someone is at. We are so controlled by time and external commitments we are unable to see or experience the things that are right in front of us. The things that are just as magical as all the others, if we took the time to appreciate them. You see life isn’t one long to-do list. Even if it was we have to ask exactly what it is that we are ‘doing’ it for? We cannot take the material with us. It’s just a sideshow to the main event. I wonder sometimes if life is not laid out something like The Crystal Maze. Where these fantasy worlds are created only to distract us and let’s face it it’s easy to get distracted by all the beautiful shiny things. After all, they were all created too. In the meantime, we are walking around in flesh suit ignoring one another even though we know that we are the most finite thing on the planet. Only existing once. So what is it that drives us away from one another? What drives us to disconnect us from the uniquely exquisite human connections that we face every day?

This year has been a breakthrough year for me. Most of my breakthroughs delivered to me by way of my own clients. That most of our sources of pain are systemic rather than personal. That our childhood wounds are not necessarily the results of bad parenting, rather the results of the inhumane conditions in which parents are expected to parent. We can’t hold our parents accountable for the circumstances and systems that they too were/are struggling to survive in. That we can only take responsibility for our own healing, that everyone’s healing is unique and that I heal to be taught as much as I am to teach. I have learned that trauma is about spectrum and range and that we simply can’t help people if we do not understand the depth of their feeling. That you can never walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes, you can only share the road. That is what connection is all about. Taking the time to experience one another.

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Creating The New

kimberleen

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The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. – Socrates

Many of us believe that the world and it’s current systems are in the process of undergoing critical collapse. Of course the world, media is largely lying to us about this while openly telling the truth. Yet many of us are in despair. Even last night I was talking to a new collaborator about his imagined terror of a world with no order and how the current human population might cope without the existing structures. Me on the other hand I’m feeling quite chipper and excited about the whole prospect. The idea of Earthly liberty are what my Earthly dreams are made of.

You see I’ve been working hard at this human thing. I’ve also been working hard on what might be the right thing to do at any given moment with regards to the planetary situatuion. That does not mean to say that I always get it right either. Fare from it. What experience has taught me is that fighting what is is both exhaustive and pointless. That we are far better capable and efficient at building new lives, new pathways and new communities than anything else.

You might ask: What’s the point? and spin yourself into a sate of anxiety paralysis and indeed you may be totally correct in your assumptions. Then on the other hand do you want to spend your life staring at the bedroom ceiling. Or indeed looking our wistfully from the living room window in hope of a better world? There is now way round it. The world is changing as it always has. Now faster than ever. Tech is changing everything and before you know it we are all going to be half cyborg is smart phones haven’t made that abundantly clear already. Here we are humans the cutting edge of life force as we currently know it, trying to figure out how best to use our time. Did I mention that time is imaginary…

We are literally getting ready to enter a new paradigm where thw world becomes a far fairer, happier and interconnected. In case you didn’t know it always has been it’s just that the dark forces that be have been busy convincing us other wise. Creating the new is largely about believing that another way is possible that threats, dominance and coercive control ware all rapidly becoming things of the past as we learn how to connect with ourselves again. That new sacred councils are coming forward in families, communities and nations. That in order for us to get through what is coming next we have to view the world very differently and that wellbeing economies have got to be at their core.

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An Introduction to Intergenerational, Bloodline Abuse & Trauma

kimberleen
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Trauma are often directly related to Trauma and Abuse are cycles that can be broken if we choose the heal. Bloodline and Intergenerational Trauma are often directly related to Systemic Abuse and Trauma that have been passed on through generations.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.
by Phillip Larkin

 

Your parents fucked you up. Yes, they did. Welcome to the human story. If you think what I’m telling you is new information what you really need to know is that the above poem was written in 1971 and they still don’t teach it in High Schools Globally. This is not new information.

If you are looking for a get out clause you can always blame your parents. After all, they chose to have you. You did not ask to be brought into this world. Then again neither did they. Blaming your parents for how you turned out or feel right now is not the way. That does not mean to say that your parent has not done fucked up and heinous things. What we can say is that you are and adult now and how you choose to respond to this information is your responsibility now. Fucked Up, Unfair and True. This is absolutely the right time to have a temper tantrum. It’s not their fault.

Congratulations you felt your feelings all of them and you’ve come back. You see the thing is that if we are able to look at our parents as people we might, in turn, realise that it wasn’t that easy for them either. When I look back to my grandparents who were both involved in WW2 it’s very easy to imagine that no matter how safe their war experience may or may not have been to live through War must be a relatively traumatic thing. Not only this my Great Grand Parents would too have lived and survived WW1. Knowing this it’s really easy for me to correlate that both my parents must have been raised by traumatised people and then only then do you begin to get the just of it. Depending on what your upbringing was like you may feel the waves of anger and resentment wash over you. Now what of the anger and resentment that you might feel expected to feel in response to this new information or you may be experiencing an ah-ha moment.

If you think this lets your parents off the hook it doesn’t. Like you we are all adults and we are responsible for our own actions and behaviours. I am not offering an excuse, rather an explanation. Knowledge is power. Now more than ever we all have the ability to gain access to the help we need. I know it’s shit that it fell you. That no one has come along and said now, their, there.  But you know what. You here, you made it this far. I believe in you lets keep going.

If you need some extra help with this please click the link for a free Bloodline Meditation Clearing by Steve Nobel of The Soul Matrix

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An Introduction to Systemic Abuse & Trauma

kimberleen
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Why oh why would you business cards to represent systemic trauma & abuse? I’ve figured out it’s my thing. Sign up to my website if you want to find out more http://www.thelifedoula.com.

I’ve been working on niching for years, padding round the issues with a few ah-ha moments with very little actually landing other than a few keywords and concepts, from Self-Nurturance to Personal Activism. Healing Humans to Collective Futures. Earthlings and Bloodline Trauma. Emotional Environments to Land Healing and even Human Geography and the Wellbeing Economy.

What I was trying to say seemed too big and cumbersome to effectlively niche in. I’ve trotted around ideas of overwhelm and crisis.  I’ve thought about secure attachment and support systems. Community building, emotional mapping, global patterns and issues. I’ve known for a very long time that they are all connected that it’s not any one thing but all of them without having the words to explain. Then all of a sudden trauma kinda became mainstream and the system became increasingly under attack. I have no idea how many times I have had conversations about “The System” in art studios, on beaches, basement flats and even in public talks. That it’s not just one thing it’s everything all without fully sinking into the idea of both systemic abuse and systemic trauma. They say if you don’t have a word for something you aren’t able to fully discuss it.

It finally hit me. All of a sudden it’s become clear to me what it is Systemic Trauma I actually deal with as The Life Doula. Systemic Trauma!!! It took a while and we got there. I’m not sure when it hit or even why then it was here and then it stayed and now I’m getting on with living with it. And saying hey I know you. Do you want a cup of tea? Can we talk about this a bit more? Luckily I’ve spent many years talking about all of the above. That seems to have made me perfect for the job I invented for myself.

That I have been burrowing down through form a very early age. Whether it by dysfunctional family life, cultural abuse, religious abuse, the education system, sexism,  the capitalist system, violence, ecocide, racism, and colonialism. I write that list in no order of priority other than the chronological order in which I myself have experienced them.

There are many places where my journey started from family disharmony to hating school, rejecting the Catholic Church, the Capitalist System and the impacts of Colonialism. It was this big messy ball of string that never fully became unravelled until one summer when I had the privilege of being the labour partner of a friend and witnessing a stranger die in front of me with a few days of one another. These two events impacted me greatly for what might seem obvious reasons. Then of course in the mind of a seeking soul for which I surely have, I felt something deeper. A vortex of thought had opened that I couldn’t get away from. Why were these two things birth and death so alien to me? How had I as a human avoided up until this point (in my late twenties) the two events that mark every life? That somehow our humaness was being systematically removed from us. It was a call to action like no other, that seemed to under pin all of our human failings. How do we restore our humaness? Every since I have felt like I have been moving through time at a very deliberate pace. That has been holding in each hand the chains of the past and the liberation of the future. That the actions that I take now have the ability to echo through time. In my own journey and that of those around me. That everything that I am able to interact with can be gently and subtly transformed if we approach them in the right way. Including me.

It’s all connected and as I have laid in bed over many years and even decades quandaring our unfolding human and planetary crisis, feeling all the feels.  I have known with complete certainty for quite some time it is the human that lies at the centre of both the societal challenge and the solution. What I also know is that there are a million and one ways to “fix it” whether it be ourselves, our communities or “the planet”. That is we approach the human as the incredibly creative and unique beings that we are each one of us has a personal solution to immense challenges that face us both privately, personally, as a species and as earthlings. The planet is not endangered. We are, along with all the other Earthlings that we have imposed our human pain on. We are a danger to ourselves and it is something that needs to be urgently corrected.

So yes Systemic Trauma.

If you want to find out more please sign up to this website or click the link below that will take you to additional informations about what is Systemic Abuse, Systemic Trauma and how is it affecting you.

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Innerscapes

kimberleen

IMG-5738Yup, it’s a new word. Innerscapes. Not sure if I made it up or appropriated it, either way, it was out there in the either and I grabbed it. Several years ago during a conversation with a friend when we were having one of those deep down and dangerous shares about how we really felt. When we cast aside the sunshine and rainbows and where we found our hearts and souls alone in a room. That’s the innerscape. It’s the canvas of emotions on which we build our lives. Let me tell you there are some beautiful interpretations of the human mood board on show for all of us to explore.

What I can say and let me use my own innerscape as en example here is that over the years is that my innerscape has transformed like the outerscape has looking out a train window. That depending on where or how you are sitting, and who you are sharing the journey with can radically alter your experieince. My own innerscape used to be painted with terror, despair, helplessness, sorrow and on better day mild melancholia. Only ten years on I frequently swim in elated, dance with happiness and delight in delightful. You see the words we say emit the feeling and now my innerscape seems to be underplayed by neutrality and curiosity rather than anything slightly more sinister. Of course, hurts rear their head from time to time and the pain and suffering are real. I no longer live there, those feeling are an interesting side trip on my life odyssey that added a little more adventure.

Innerscape to me can be experienced over time. Over a day, a week, a month, a year, decades of even life times. Small units of time are the building block of the innerscape. I know it’s epic. So how you feel on a day to day basis is going to underpin the landscape of your lifetime story.

From tired in the morning to invigorated in the afternoon. If we can write it down maybe we can begin to figure out the arc of the story. What’s draging us down or raising us up? What can be witnessed and changed? Loved into form or even nurtured into beauty. How we respond to the way that we feel tells us all we need to know about our relationship with ourselves. That if we can speak kindly, extend a compassionate outlook then maybe we can learn to accept what is. Extend the concept of gratitude and see where our emotions are guiding us. That sometimes our emotions are guiding us into the darkness and that is ok too.

 

If you want to discover more about your own Innerscape you can buy and download the Innerscapes Worksheet below. It’s $3.