Tag: Nurturance

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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…

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Nurturance

kimberleen

Nurturance has been a word floating around in my emotional body for a while. It always felt a little strange that it was so underused by wellness practitioners. Nurture it’s a big word and I wonder sometimes what it really means? For me, it means creating behaviours and environments that promote growth. Physical and emotional growth. These days as a fully fledged adult nurturance normally has a more interesting flavour it seems prime picked in order to support healing as I speak about in Self-Nurturance, you see we have grown, some would say that we have mistakenly flourished  in toxic environments meant for house plants and not wild roses.

It’s interesting that I should write that now as I see the nurturance lies at the very centre of a new circle that I am presenting over the next few months. Called Feral: A wild adventure in an uncivilised world. Where we learn essentially about all the ways the system is fucking us. All the ways we embody the system. The programming we carry. Our toxic beliefs based on productivity, as well as both of systemic abuse, capitalism and ultimately the anti-human approaches that are destroying lives, family and societies, quite deliberately.

Over the last year, it has made me laugh hard the volume of people that have been telling me about the fear-based propaganda of COVID 19.  Those who have desperately sought to educate me as to all the ways we are being controlled while I have blithely listened. I’ve yet to get to space of recommending my this blog as a form of countenance.

Fear frequency is so old school and given that I have spent most of my life terrified of other peoples blyth ignorance, it now makes me laugh that people think that I am one of those people. I’ve been fighting and brutalised by the broken system for your benefit most of my adult life and have come to a radical understanding of its anti-humans nature. That nurturance is the antithesis of the anti-human. That personal care, self-love and nurturance are the real tools of the resistance. In fact, this is something that I consider to be personal activism that the journey inward offers the greatest stability for us all. I know many of you might consider this spiritual bypassing. If you’ve read my previous blog post Minimalism, Essentialism & Necessity you might consider otherwise. The life of an activist is a far from easy one. I have spent a lot of my life displacing my own trauma finding cause to fight for when in fact the I’m really fighting for my self my own survival my own stability my own growth. My own right to life, a safe space to live and be unhindered to peruse my dreams. The pursuit of dreams is a luxury to those not bound up in the toxicity of end-stage capitalism and enduring the ever-increasing oppression of both propaganda-driven and fascist states. The only way that anybody can effectively organise it through the lense personal activism, community activism and collective healing all of course while unpacking our own systemic trauma.

So how is it that you nurture yourself? Only you know. Is it a long bath and pomegranate juice? A long chat with a close friend? A flask of tea on the beach? A pedicure? A wild swim? Some Netflix and pyjamas? A glass of wine at the end of the day?  A music gig? Some sparkly nail varnish or a political discussion? All of these things are valid forms of nurturance cause what nurturance is for you is not the same as everybody else. You are unique wild and lovable and you deserved to flourish.

If you have enjoyed this article you can donate here https://ko-fi.com/thelifedoula

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Water & Rest

kimberleen

2020 has been my worst water drinking years since about 2016. A change in climates will do that. You’d think a global pandemic might make you up your A-game on self-care and yet on the other hand life is hard. We are all only ever doing the best we can. What I write below is largely a massive note to self. Drinking water is to this day is one of the number one things that I can ever recommend as a very fast way to wellness. Your energy levels go instantly up,  even in the winter all you have to do is drink it hot, though people often forget. (I mean me). For the most part, it is an easy cure-all, you should drink it with an empty stomach to avoid indigestion. 

I’m going to save you (and I)  about three years of therapy here. It only took five years of my kinesiologist telling me to drink more water to finally get the message. I had fallen out of the habit by way of some very disrupted times in my life, which included living on a boat (which made water consumption slightly more problematic than for the land dweller). When your brain brakes the basics can be really hard to get hold of again. 

So I am hoping to save you some time. Drink water, preferably the natural non-chlorinated kind. 

A number of years prior to my ‘mental break’ I had been quite an avid water drinker. In fact, I can tell you that my favourite water sources are the Speights Brewery, a rural well in Romania and Table Mountain Spring Water. Live water, it’s the best. I got hooked on the stuff during both my time in New Zealand and the Cape Town water crisis, as I was forced to drink water from the natural Newlands spring that emerged from under Table Mountain. To say this water was both good for and highly energetically charging is an understatement. In fact to drink water daily from one of the Earth most highly charges sacred points has been revolutionary. Water is a life force energy that flows through us and connects us to everything. 

I’d like to be able to say that I never drink chlorinated water. However, that is not to be. Now here I am in thoroughly westernised society and access to spring water that is not pre-bottled is problematic. Which raises much larger questions about mass state control, water sovereignty and of course access to untreated water and this pure life force energy. 

If you’ve been following me for any time at all it’s obvious that exhaustion can at time plague me especially the emotional kind. You see that’s emotional labour for you. When as a woman you are endlessly forced to explain breakdown and point out all the ways you are being violated. That we are being violated to people blind to the fact that most abuse is in fact systemic and is in fact in your home, your family and your community. Please don’t be calling out Prince Andrew or Trump on all their shit unless you are willing to take a morning of your life to listen to an abused woman or the racist experiences of a person of colour. Although it may be uncomfortable to hear that your friends, your co-worker and even you nearest and dearest have serious problems with there mental and emotional health. That is not an excuse to allow them to project their trauma into the wider spaces of the community. As adults, it is our responsibility to call ourselves out on our bullshit. To call or friends out on theirs. Yes, it is exhausting. That is why we must rest. Sleeping is an essential part of our recovery. 

If you have enjoyed this article you can donate here https://ko-fi.com/thelifedoula

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Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

kimberleen

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Twilight under the Salisbury Craigs and I wonder why they bear this name? It’s certainly triggering a little bit of systemic trauma.

Aye that. It’s an illness that’s trending (well was). I can tell you that. Guess what they found a name for being proper fucked up beyond Gulf War Syndrome. Yup and a lot of us have it and we don’t even know it. If you have it you are a human superstar. It means you have lived life at the extreme more than once. Either actively or passively and you still survived. Good job!

I started writing this before the time of Covid 19 and now as I progress through my work for the next few months my pre-scheduled topics for the next few weeks, it’s going to be interesting how these topics pan out. You see before I was writing about all of this stuff in the time of normal. In the time of being outdoors, talking to people in person and having an attainable mission in life. Now all of that has changed. It seems it’s the perfect time to be bathing in our trauma. Why? Because we finally have time to do so. This time is time for healing. It’s a time for retreat. It’s a time to heal the soul and bring everything back into harmony.

Trauma is something I’ve been managing for years, even in the time of Covid when all is calm on the home front dissociation can be rife scatteredness can lose me as my brain tries to connect to itself.

For me, the main cure is sleep (if you can) and some better friends. There are some great online Facebook groups. If you’ve been involved with a or even some narcissists you might want to check out Melanie Tonia Evans. She got some great stuff on this. If you are experiencing flashback get on the EMDR it really works. TRE is also a great way to work with your body I have never done any extensive work with it what I can tell you though is that I used to suffer from disassociative fits. That means you are totally stressed to fuck and TRE gave me the ability to understand my boy in new ways. If you want to find out more about somatic experiencing then you can also check Iren Lyon. I also thoroughly recommend looking into the work of Mastin Kipp he’s the first person that I came across that truly gets it. If you are too traumatised to deal with him I’d say your next stop in me. Yes me. If of course, you live in the Edinburgh area. (I’m in the process of updating all my stuff after a big move) If you are in another are globally I mean then get in touch and I’ll do my best to let you know who I think is well informed and good in your area. I’ll put the shout out.

When it comes to healing trauma the number one thing is connection. (Please don’t throw your phone across the room) I understand how enraging that can feel when you are totally isolated. I know it’s shit, and it sucks. You can go eat the ice cream or lie on the floor if that’s what’s going to make you feel better. If this is where you are. All you need to focus on is feeling better. What makes you feel better. Do that until you get bored. When you get bored you are ready to feel different and that’s great. Anyways if you’re not there. It’s all about connection if not with other people with yourself. How do you feel? What makes you happy. What is happiness anyway? Do I like my clothes? It’s ok to hate yourself it’s not ok to pack up and live there. Look for colours and objects and things that make you feel safe. If you have a friend call them. If they are good friend keep calling them if they make you feel shit, don’t.

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Systemic Collapse, it’s here.

kimberleen

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The view from the bedroom window as we begin the process of social distancing.

I heard the news this week that a good friend of mine had finally secured some land for growing willows where they could live out the end of there days as a basket weaver. It’s a delightful story  I’m sure you’ll agree. I congratulated them on their commitment to the revolution, that includes many key elements like slow the fuck down, stay local, grow your own food and do you know your neighbours? Forcing us to aks the much bigger question like do you like where you are?

It’s been a question many of us have been asking as we chose to travel the world looking for better places to be all without taking on the full consequences of our actions. That includes me. Honestly, I was well into my twenties before I realise the impact or air travel on our environment or even seriously started to consider where my food came from. Back then it was all about food miles and now it’s all about community resilience.  Here we are at the end of capitalism and many of us are still living in a bubble where we have very deliberately chosen not to engage with collective responsibility. As we jet set from one global conference to another, barely conscious of the communities we live in and how they might function in a period of systemic collapse.

Systems collapse is here and for me it’s exciting. It’s the real stuff of life. The imagined structures of the world are exactly that, imagined. There are no effective borders for air born illness. We live in a planetary system. We know we can’t eat money. It certainly can’t cure Covid 19 and yet we worship this imaginary substance, that is nothing more than a digital commodity, that has no other purpose than control what people can or can’t do. Imagine if everything was free. Imagine if living was free. What would we be doing then? Most of us would be resting. Most of us would be in deep recovery after centuries of abuse. If our worth wasn’t caught up in money or the idea of productivity. A very different world is now emerging where community resilience is key. More than that where human connection is at the forefront of how we interact. How are many of us going to live if we actually have to stop? What is going to come up for us? That we are isolated? That we are alone? That it’s uncomfortable? That we need to make changes to our lives that doesn’t involve chasing down a mystical cash cow. What if you just did what you love? What if just if you believed that rest was resistance and it’s powerful? What if we just change how we thought about everything even ourselves. what if we didn’t have to call it fancy things like systemic change or human-centred design? What if we deeply took on board how interconnected and interdependent things are. So that when we have global emergencies governments didn’t have the power to make decisions that might condemn us all to death with on decision. It’s too much power for any one person to have. These are decisions that need to be taken collectively and we must all play our part.

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Life Doula

kimberleen

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I came back to Scotland, joined extinction rebellion and got sent a beautiful letter that was signed off, with Love & Rage. It gave me all the feels.

 

There is more than one life doula out there. I might not be able to say exactly what they do or how they do it but it’s certainly a thing. More recently I came towards the idea that the best way to really describe a Life Doula is as a Trauma Doula. Life can be very traumatic you know? The number one cure for trauma a secure attachment and that is the core of my work. I will literally sit with you in the dark, you can cry on me, snot up my favourite clothes and I will be very happy to be of service. Yes, I do appropriate hugging and holding. It’s all part of the healing process.

Not only that this year, yes  2020 I’ve finally been able to reach out to both Birth and Death Doula’s who get it. That makes me happy because have felt tribeless as I push towards the kind of care I know the traumatised deserve.  I’ve been claimed and that makes me feel like I have a tribe. It’s better than that though, I have found The Red Tent Doulas and am going to be training with them this year as both a birth doula and a death doula. Which makes me very very excited. What makes me most excited is the Alexandra Wilson who is also of Sacred Circles described “Doula work is like a trojan horse” that the work of the doula does much to bring into question current systemic approaches to life as we currently understand it. Doula work asks us to step away from the idea that we are human robots and take us back to both our origin stories and end stories. That we all belong and that in the process of being born, living and dying we are all far more deeply connected than we might like to acknowledge.

Healing both our lives and for me at least acknowledging our life-cycles is a very important part of our innate sovereignty as humans. You see the work that I do has hashtags for days. All of is important because all of us are important. We are living lives in defiance of our very nature. It’s why we are sicker, unhappier and yet at the same time healthier than ever. A return to some form of understanding of our sacredness can do us every kind of good as long as it is not informed by dogma. There is no right or wrong way to do things. No right or wrong way to be. Even no choice, is a choice but to be careering along with no connection to your greater being is something other. We were not intended to live like this. Being a Doula is taking ourselves to a very basic understanding of the deep value of life. That as human bodies we are witness to something, profound and unique. That we only have one of. That only we know. That only we get to live. Doula’s honour that process. We honour life. We want to use our lives to honour you in your deepest vulnerability. We are here in service, for the love of humanity.

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Ego Death & The Crushing System

kimberleen

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I’ve been tramping round Edinburgh to get to places cause money is a bit tight. The funny thing is that people feel sorry for me. After 7 years of being unable to walk around in the evening or at night, It feels like a total privilege to be able to enjoy what has come to be known to me as zombie time. Oh, twilight it’s nice to know you again.

So in my process of processing the term, Ego Death comes up. First of all, I do not in any way shape or form claim to be egoless. What I can say is that I’m stepping into me every deeper and exploring the inner landscape of shame in ways I’ve never been able to before. Maybe its because I’m turning 40 this year. Maybe it’s because I’m changing my approach.

Two things have happened to me recently one is getting a message from my Mother (who I’m currently estranged from) the other is having to get in touch with my old art college about course transcripts. Both have been triggering. Both have made me investigate my emotional landscape a little deeper. Even as I start to write about about it my anxiety rises and my self-harm ideation emerges and I very literally have to right now go deep into some somatic experiencing. I can feel the tingling of my skin the tightening of my chest and the emergence of ego as it’s rage and anger filled rant starts to emerge in my mind and I’m already getting up to the cup of tea and Instagram scrolling distraction therapy to not go there to deep. So I can stay here with you. You see I don’t think I talk about this part much. The fight. The fight to be here, to stay present, to keep going. To function while feeling and why the idea of ‘normal’ screams systemic abuse at me and makes me feel incredibly unsafe. You see for some of us and I’d like to think the growing part of the population that is becoming truer. The trauma levels are too high. The greenwashing, gaslighting bullshit is too toxic and I have to train hard to be able to deal with any of it. I know I am not alone.

Yet when I am out there posting my at-home selfies that don’t cater for outward appearances I feel like a failure. Like OMG seriously Kimberley again? You haven’t brushed your hair. How is anybody going to relate to this really? This must be so off-putting and then I realise that that is how most women feel all day, every night. That the pressure of appearance is crushing them, even when they have it all done. The hair, the make-up. The panic of office wear that has long left my life was a major liberation. I know for a lot of people that kind of freedom isn’t even on their radar. That I literally live a life of privilege every single day at home in a warm house with and internet connection in my pyjamas. You see and that’s when I think about it. That even the idea of self-care can be crushing. I mean I do brush my hair and teeth and I do do my four-step skincare most days. It’s just that because I work from home I don’t have to do those things immediately when I get up. Then some fab idea comes up and now I just hop online. Then even though I may be feeling good on the inside confident about what I’m saying my appearance doesn’t match my words. It poses big questions that although self-care might be for us what is it about ‘presentability’ that might be toxic. That people can’t see us as ourselves, at home in our pyjamas and does that work differently for men? So on that now I’m off to wash my face and grab some tea. To think about this a bit more.

I’m back.

Which takes me back to the thing I found triggering and why they interest me.  One I’m deep diving more and more into trauma recovery and the causes of systemic trauma which means a lot of deep diving for me personally. You see for me the personal informs the professional. I recently read somewhere (which I can’t remember) that they were thinking about naming CPTSD as a systemic disease. I’m not sure exactly what that means, except for me personally. So many things can be triggers if we are even slightly aware of the interconnectivity of everything how you connect with yourself is directly driven by how you were brought up and the family system you were or were not born into, will inform how you interact with the world.

Recently I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I am not ready to expose all yet. What I can say is that despite my trauma I do know that my family system made me into a change maker. You know why? Because I am playing out a polarity and using it to resolve my own trauma,  for which I am very grateful. It’s also allowing me to individuate in ways that I never imagined or managed. I’m learning so much about myself and my somatic experiencing about my family I’m quite simply shocked at the bodily feelings that come up for me. Like a few paragraphs before tears just started flowing down my face. It was purely a bodily response, a release.

The whole art school thing…well that. What I realise that through that horrific (Yes I do mean that) educational experience I would never have learned our understood exactly what it is to be complicit. How Systemic Abuse can be branded to look safe and how if we aren’t directly affected by Systemic Abuse we will still use corporate power to propel us personally and professionally even if we are well-meaning hippies.

So Ego Death…. what is it? Right now for me, it’s ending the idea of who you think you are or what you present to the world. I’m a lady that works in her pyjamas and old jumpers that don’t brush her hair until or wash her face until she is leaving the house. The weight of that truly feels enormous. Ego death isn’t anything to be afraid of. Most of us have already embraced it in some form or another when we donned our first uniform.

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The Total Rethink

kimberleen

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The is The Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters. it caught me off guard in a good way a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to find the nearest bank. If systemic trauma could speak I wonder what it might say about this building. Privately own publicly funded? It almost certainly one of the great spectacles of late capitalism. Righ up until the arrival of Covid 19.

Fuck. You can probably gather from my last few posts that I have been having a challenging time getting my trauma responses under control. I love it when people reach out to me to check that I am ‘OK’ because I’m posting about real life. About the true emotional landscape where I’m not just throwing around #blessed and showing off a #getawayfund. Fuck it, when I think of those things most of the time I just feel incredibly grateful that I have a life I can live with; even with anxiety, trauma and the odd sleepless night. Yes, these things are all normal, to be expected and in fact for the average human life mandatory. I know I’m not into the boom and bust gaslighting effect of your every day coaching tactics. Fuck that.

Given that I’ve been going through rebirth and reinvention. I think it was a little crazy for me to try and follow through with a marketing plan that I pulled together at the end of last year when I lived in another continent. In fact, it was a wee bit crazy fo me to think about marketing at all. Cause lets face it’s not something I believe in. Though all the marketing gurus in the world will tell you it’s something you should be. I understand why they want to sell you something meanwhile little old me I’m trying to give you something; as simple as a realistic perspective laced with magic.

Of course yes I am a Life Doula ( A profession I have in essence invented) I do have services for sale and please do feel free to contact me should you want something from me.  I think the big BUY NOW button should be flashing somewhere below (NOT). Does that work for you? Just wondering? I personally find it mildly traumatising. That my only value to the people who might want to emotionally help me is monetary. For all the love-bombing out there I think we’ve got to get real about the nature of true attachment, it is for the most part value-based. That loving unconditionally is premised at the very least on personal safety. Given that here in the ‘west’ we’ve been worshipping martyrs for the last 2000 years, we are all a bit fucked up about this.

Martyrdom is brutal and might explain why most of our boundaries are a bit messed up most of the time. It may play a role in why Europeans have become land grabbing, bloodthirsty maniacs that we are. Living out the polarities of give and take in extreme and destructive ways. If you can imagine that someone in the third world is probably selling clean water the way the European diaspora is currently selling emotional safety, you might begin to understand the scope of the challenge. Contemplate this further and you might begin to clarify exactly how messy the human psyche can be. In the last few years, we have been commodifying the nurturance of family and tribe. It’s what I do reticently I’m really not in it for the money. Though I really do like eating. You look after me I’ll look after you. Mutual respect and fair exchange is all I’m asking. Good Samaritan or not. The truth is we all have to be strong enough to support one another and part of that is making sure you have something for yourself.

Which brings me swiftly to my point I write for me. Writing is one of my ongoing ‘high functioning coping strategies’, these days I am daring to move beyond this and saying it’s one of my not so repressed gifts. When I write I get clarity and I get back to the core of who I am. So if I don’t do it makes me anxious, irritable and restless. It’s a key part of my own personal nurturance programme.  Its something I need to tend to be well. More than this blogging has become a way to manage journaling as a result of a nomadic lifestyle. I have neither the physical strength nor the mental capacity to carry the weight of my thoughts in physical form and thus blogging has liberated me. I do, I write for myself and every so often I get lost in the idea that I’m writing for someone. Maybe I am I’m writing for someone like me. Someone who has found life traumatising. Who has been confused and baffled by a system that promotes planetary and human destruction even when they mean well? Trauma interrupts thoughts,  experiences and ways to understand the self in relation to a fucked system.

I don’t want to write some jingoistic idea of what you might be interested in. That’s a load of bullshit because really if you are reading this you should be interested in me and more succinctly what I have to say. What’s really exciting in this now moment is that I am finding a place where the curatorial meets the coach. The trauma intersects with the system and that doulaing seems to be the platform that can bring it all together in an appropriate way.

Last night I looked at my website. It’s was better than I thought (though I am still working on it). My message is clearer than I expected. I’ve been using the last few months to hone down what I do even further. You see until I had discovered the systemic trauma thing; what I was working on felt very nebulous because it is. Systemic trauma has many many sources. From the way, we are taught to write in school to how systemic trauma can be passed down intergenerationally. From land misuse, ecocide to forced displacement. It’s not one thing. It’s everything and it’s all connected. It’s literally taken me 20 years to find the language. Systemic Trauma. It’s not one thing. It’s everything. It’s not just the professional it’s the personal.

Here at the centre of several global emergencies, it’s easy to become overwhelmed, highly emotional and reactive. Many of us have been forced to the street or retreat into binge-watching fantasy. While some of us swing wildly between both. Few of us are comfortable taking a selfie crying and yet society seems to be screaming toxic vulnerability. It’s a very specialised skill palpable emotional distress.  Yes, that and for those of us in the trenches highly functional coaches can be re-traumatising. Even though you are going to kill yourself I will only give you the solution if you give me… It’s pretty fucked up given that access to care should be a primary human right if it isn’t already.

So in that, I  realise that social media is my vehicle for connection. Because I actually do have my dream job. Wandering around in my pyjamas and not brushing my hair is good for me.  This is why I enjoy Instagram because I am taking the time to connect with myself. That’s a privilege. It’s a privilege to have gained this much emotional safety and to have a support system that can hold me emotionally to do this. I swim in thoughts and feelings trying to find some idea of true north. These days what I am grateful for is that more and more I find myself reading things I agree with like my tribe are emerging from a very long hibernation. That I am not fighting this fight on my own.

You see being yourself is difficult. Don’t let people tell you otherwise it’s bullshit. Finding the strength to really embraced yourself is a tough task. The thing is no one can help you find you. You have to do it all on your own. What that means is that you have to be able to love the things you love. Find joy in the things that bring you joy. You have make yourself distinguishable. In a world that wants cardboard cutouts and easy consumables, it’s hard. Believe me I know. I’m there all the time with the complex thoughts and the big questions, that make people uncomfortable. That’s my job. I’m a provocateur. I’ve spent my life challenging the system.

You have to be able to stand up for yourself. Claim what is rightly yours. Then figure out how much it’s going to cost you emotionally to get to your destination (without becoming an addict. (I might be one of those.) ) When I have enough money, respect, self-care, love. You know how it is. I have to consider this more deeply as part of The Total Re-Think. Yes I’m writing, thinking, considering and very aware that it’s a messy, unorganised process reconfiguring. I’m an unfinished artwork awkwardly collaging mediums and genres. All the more work for wanting to make it perfect trying to get it right hoping to be representative, document and find myself all at once.

In my last blog post, I wrote all about hashtags and I’m feeling a little bit sorry for you as I am probably going to have to write about that all over again. I mean for fuck sake. I basically posted a new Instagram post that made me realised my cracking or let’s say wack plan for writing in 2020 was now totally out of sync with where I was going and what I am doing. Now as seen above I have a very specialised niche. Which covers the below values. The other hashtags are still very relevant and an important part of my work

#systemictrauma #systemicchange #systemichealing #systemicabuse #systemicconstellations #familyconstellations #traumainformed #emotionalhealing #rebirth #europeandiaspora #humanitarians #environementalactivists #globalchangemakers #wellbeingecomony #planetaryhealing #itsallconnected #healinghumans #lifedoula #healyourselffirst #decolonising #diaspora #nurturance #thebasics

Although it isn’t always easy to own I like the way I align with my values. I don’t want to have a pre-plan what I write about and why. Do you know why? It’s important to stay connected to your emotions to process them to think them? Although personal marketing is meant to be liberating its hard not to fall into a formulaic or systemic trap.

So I’ve decided to continue with the approach I’m taking. Emotions are important. How the fuck they are fully connected with my webpage and blog writing is a little bit beyond me at this point. I do have some ideas. Kind of like grabbing my The and rewriting a whole post. It’s really interesting to be able to grab the roll of the crazy boss. Have you ever been there? Whey you are working on a project of a theme or a roll-out, sometimes for days sometimes for weeks, even months than all of a sudden the boss walks in and say “OK everyone we are changing everything”. Yup that.

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#thelifedoula

kimberleen

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Me in my new spot Portobello moonstruck with sea fever.

Ok change of plan –

I am a systemic trauma specialist. I help you identify toxic patterns and how to change them. I work with global changemakers, humanitarians and environmental activists of Europe and it’s diasporas.

This my friends is called niching. It’s the core principle of both marketing and coaching and holy fuck after four years of daily deep diving I have finally gotten here. Like seriously someone open the champagne.

I’m on the edge of something deeply tangible with this and I think you are going to like it. It feels like integration. I’ve often said that my work began when I lived in a small cottage in Cornwall when I had more time on my hands than I would have liked as a result of recovering from trauma. People need to be able to talk about stuff, in a safe warm environment and it pretty much became my specialisation. You know why because I had become experientially trauma-informed. How did I do that? I thought about the things that came out of my mouth and I wondered how much of what I said had everything to do with me or to do with the person I was speaking to and that’s when I became a good listener. Listening not only to the world that weer flowing out of other peoples mouths but of the feeling I was jostling within my soul. Where did they begin and where and I end. As much as I wanted to be helpful I also knew that I needed to have boundaries. Being able to offer people a safe space knowing that is was a community service rather than a calling allowed me to be able to say no. Allowed me to become my own person, with my own house and my own rules. Not just that the radical intervention of emotional self-care. Yes that. Even now I struggle with where that might begin and end, when you know danger as a safe space. It made me wonder hard, to dig deep and find new perspectives on everything. I had to consider myself what my needs were? Who I was? Most importantly what I needed to heal. Mainly long conversations and the occasional trip out of the house.

Fast forward 5 years and it’s clear I should train to be a life coach, even though I might be trauma-informed I am no good at sob stories. I can handle trauma like a boss. Yup, you’ve been in an accident. A near-death experience I can totally get you through it. An unexpected death? The afterbirth blues. Yuh-huh? I’m here but I’m not going to sit with you while your hair gets matted and the dishes go moldy. You got to get up off your ass and do something. Extreme life coach wading into trauma to help you. Here I am. yet at the same time how do you claim to be a Life Coach when you have got absolutely no interest in someone financial productivity? Like none. Unless of course, it comes down to a matter of survival… Unless your job is serving the planet I have absolutely no desire to work with you. So yes I wanted to train as A life coach thinking it would teach me things. Which it did, a lot. What I didn’t appreciate in signing up was exactly how much I might wanted to offer to the profession, so much so that I had to start a new one. I mean fuck talking for an hour. I mean things can be discovered in an hour but they can’t be resolved especially when you are really fucking stuck, traumatised, repressed or your own very special brand of fuck-upness (flawsome). That Mastin Kipp might describe as “High functioning coping mechanisms” – If you’re self-medicating like a boss with herbal tea and yoga, you are pretty much there. The good news is if you are doing anything at all you are doing a great job. You see being trauma-informed is easy it’s endless love and encouragement. Yup endless. That’s the hard part, get the ego in check. Cause you see we don’t leave people in labour. Why would you chose to put the most vulnerable in our society in situations they aren’t comfortable with? It seems bizarre.

Why would you ask someone to meditate on their relationship with their family, when in fact incest is common. Why are we gaslighting ourselves as a society? Even in healing circuits.

You see I’m always thinking, highly critical, forward thinking and running what I think I know and certainly what I’ve been told through the mincer. I mean I was on 14 when I figured our that low fat diets must be a crock of shit cause the body can store fat and that was in biology 101. Anyways wait until you get the physics – if every colour is a reflection of a light wave what colour is it really? You see that’s what it’s like to be paying attention. If it’s all about connection why am I actually paying you for your time? And do you really believe in the work you do. Yup that stuff.

So yes I am The Life Doula – I rebirth people and have grandiose ideas of rebirthing the planet through trauma.  We will get to all that later. I don’t do workshops either cause I have no need to re-traumatise you or the people around you. I’d rather not take the risk life happens to us anyway.

Also looking for collaborators that  are interested in working on the Glasgow UN COP 26 in November. Get in touch if you are keen.

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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.