Tag: Personal Development

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Emotional Labour

kimberleen

The best way to sum up doulaship is that it is, in essence, emotional labour. Emotional labour is a feminist term. Emotional labour describes the unseen and unvalued work that women do to maintain functional relationships. The emotional work that women do to keep relationships of all kinds running smoothly at all costs. It’s the work of maintaining and sustaining family life and communities. Emotional labour very often takes place in the work space too.

The challenge that I have when I write about emotional labour or emotional work is that few of us consider emotional processing as work. That it takes time to effectively process our emotions and the difficult situations that they often accompany. That if we are really engaged in the work of being human then we are deeply engaged in emotional labour. Emotional labour is the real work of being alive.

Life is rarely straightforward. Yet emotional labour and emotional work are frequently overlooked in day-to-day interactions, whether it is a fight with our partner or a work altercation, or just figuring out what is right for us. These things take emotional labour and time. We have to be able to feel what is right for us and engage with other people’s emotional processes to truly understand ourselves and our lives. As of yet emotional labour is not fully understood, accepted or valued as a legitimate form of work. Women’s work thus goes unpaid. As a result of this women are largely put at a disadvantage having the bear the responsibility of both production-based work and the emotional labour of our families and communities.

‘A woman’s work is never done.’

When it comes to big threshold moments there is often a lot to emotionally process. It’s hard to imagine a woman going through pregnancy without taking the time to consider how pregnancy, birth, a new baby, and motherhood might impact their life. That pregnancy might cause them to reflect on their own childhood and life going forward. Obviously, pregnancy is a life-altering process that shouldn’t be easily overlooked. Traditionally these bigger moments would have been given the space and honouring that they deserved as families and communities took time to give space to the human experience which at its core is marked by both growth and transformation. As the saying goes “It takes a village to raise child’. As I say in the concept page of this website it takes a village to hold there most vulnerable. What if it just took a village to show up for everything? Marriage, death, divorce, disability and everything else in between. Humans change with the seasons and with each life phase we learn, grow and expand into new ways of being with each season and role we step into.

So much of the capitalist and colonialist systems are built on the oppression and suppression of our emotions. By obscuring, refusing, deny and rejecting the emotional experience we deny our humanity. Our primary systems have emotional abuse built-in. We reduce the human experience to a means of production from which financial gain can be extracted. Our systems are built on the suppression of the feminine aspect that our emotional labour is regarded as free for all aspect of human life and society. If emotionality has been removed from a process or system, that system lacks humanity and is in essence inhumane.

In my own life I have done huge amounts of emotional labour for our human collective. I didn’t see it as a choice, it sat at the very nature of my being. That my process, as me had the human emotional field at its centre. Maybe you could say that this was a choice. I think that’s the nature of my vocation there was and is no choice. There is only the way. If we continue to deny the nature of emotional labour, the role that it plays in our lives and its necessity to the human species at this juncture between the climate crisis and the mental health pandemic we continue to deny our own humanity. We continue to deny who we are as a species.

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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Those Fucking Patterns

kimberleen

Mine is covert vulnerable narccists. What is yours? I fucking swear to god I thoroughly dislike having to write this. I dislike having to write this beacue it is rare, rare indeed that I attempt to falsely diagnose someone. As it is entirely not my place. I dislike having to write this because I dislike the poultist use of the term narcissit and the way that it is thrown around like skittles at the moment. The go to offhand psychological term that lets everybody off the hook for their part in our on mass global mental health breakdown. How could I possibly have anything else to do with another person’s behaviour or mirroring?

Step One: I have to own that saying this a uncooberated personal projection.

Step Two: I have to examine his projection and figure out the part that I am playing to maintain it.

Step Three: Become unfuckable with. Even when you are unfauckable with. Do not get into a false sense of security. You cannot handle this. It is not your job to pick up the flaming pieces of persons life and piss on them. Do you ever fucking listen to me. That myself that I am talking too. Of course I do. Not….

Step Four: I have noticed that I repeat myself a lot. A lot. It’s due to a lack of acknowledgement.

I f only it was this easy. We so often see the patterns that we carry and yet we fall right into them again. At the moment I am currently in the process of re-evaluating my delivery of the Trauma Doula Preparation Course and coming to the rapid and concrete understanding that trauma-boudaries need to be the foundatio of this course and of trauma healing. It’s feels very strange for me that i have only come to understand this now. I have sat for many years on the foundation of compassion. What is it to have compassion. Not just compassion but deep compassion and how that helps someone in their trauma healing journey. Of course being compassionate is a powerful foundation for all trauma healing. However the deeper I go into this jounrney and the more people I have to carry as Iwalk forward I realise that it really isn’t possible without boundaries. Of course I enact boundaries regularly and I do my best to maintain a certain amount of emotional distance from the people that I work with while being both compassionate and empathic. Yet every so often that one person sneaks into the field that seems crushed by life and you can’t help yourself from reaching down to try to grab them and almost drown in the process. That’s when you have to apply live saver rules. You have to let them drown. You have to be willing to swim away to save your own life. It’s brutal. Even though you might try to help them many times. Even though you’re sure you can bring them to shore. You have to be willing to let them drown. No matter how much you want to help.

The lesson here is that our lives are valuable. Far more valuable that we often give ourselves credit for. That we are precious jewels that have been brought to this incarnation to work. That our work is our work and we cannot do anybody elses work for them. It feel cruel and brutal. Except when we remember we have responsibilites to ourselves and the other people in our lives that are showing up. That are showing up for themselves and for everybody else and that you are an important part of the mission. That if you die in serviece this is where the journey ends for you and many of the people round you.

Sometimes having boundaries are super difficult when we see that another is in dire need. Especially when we have been raised on the idea of sacraficial love. That is we do everything we can for another that we will find redemption in that saving even through our own death. I don’t think that is true. I think there are deep lessons in accepting that we cannot help someone. Especailly when we have responsibilites to others.

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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Decolonize Your Thinking

kimberleen

Yes this is a thing. Yes if you bring it up in random converstation you are destined to find that this might be a activating thought, of course this depends what demographic you are talkign to. After all how are we supposed to get rid of all those colonial and imperialist statues without creating a revisionist history? As it is often touted ‘history is written by the victors’. I wonder what that says about the relics of ancient Egypt? As of yet ancient Egypt’s epitaph to pagan living has yet to be entirely derided as savage. In fact quite the opposite. We continually look to ancient egyption society for the keys and secrets of modern day life, in the hope that it offers a more advanced understanding to life, the universe and everything than our current defunct human existance. As well as the Egyption artificats continued to prized and revered even though we might consider the ancient culture for which they sprout to be both archaic or offensive to our modern day sensibilites.

I suppose that casting our eyes to ancient egypt does give us the perfect opportunity to consider what is meant by decolonisation. Understanding decolonistaion also invites us to take a wider lens on human thinking and understanding. We didn’t always believe what we do now. Nor did we always think the way that we do. In fact much of the way in which we think can easily be understood as modernity. That human society and culture should alwaye progress towards a utopian dream scape of human living. Of course living here in the early 2020’s we can easily say that the dystopian present is quickly catching up with us. Beyond Bladerunner life on planet Earth is probably worse than we could have imagined existing in a pandemic and the center of a climate ermgency that the masses fail to be waking up to. We are still driving cars for fuck sake. Yet here we are scoffing at the concept of decolonisation. That maybe the people that came before us have a better understanding of how to maintain the balance of life than we do.

I always found it fascinating when I used to look at documentation of life in Africa how simple life was and how beautiful it seemed to live in balance with nature. These dasy I understand that as not much more than a pastoral idyl that denies the ‘developing’ world the self-detemination of the eurocentric model that was built through exploitation. At the same time I also recognis that eurocentric models have got a lot wrong. This is mainly beacuse they have built there world view on strange things like logic and reason while complete undermining the interconnectedness of everything.

A butterfly flaps it’s wings and somewhere in the word a monsoon starts. This was once called chaos theory. I now have to sit and wonder what is so chaotic about it? It makes perfect sense to me especilly when we are playing the game of consequences. Everything has both an equal and opposit balancing action in science. Yet her we are wondering why consumption is killing us, and yet we still do it?

Of course if you have be following me for any length of time you will know by now that I premise that the underlying cause of most human behaviour in this time is an embodiment of systemic trauma. That as humans we are being called to review who we are, where we come from to indentify the traumagenic points in our lives. These are the points in our lives that are generating trauma, not just for us, for our families , communites and future generations. It makes sense then to examin the roles of our ancestors. The good ones , the bad ones or lets keep it basic the known ones. Then oh what a surprise it must be to discover that African spirituality has ancestral reverence as it’s focal point. How much more surprising who it be to find that these are the references that a littered through our bible, even within the new testiment. As I get older I wonder how much more anceint human wisdom is hidden in plain sight. How much more of this wisdom has been corrupted in order to center the Eurocentric take. How much longer are we meant to sit here and believe the illusions of modernity, progress and exponential growth on a planet with finite resources. These days playing stupid equates to playing dead.

So decolonising your thinking become more about creating a reasonable critic that moves us away from the psychopathic and sociapthic thinking of both the imperialist and the colonialist. Where may be just maybe we begin to value the wider human narrative more than that of the ruling classes. After all why do we need rulers? When nobody else seems quite so commited to breaking all the rules? Why do we seek to maintain the current structures of power when they do not serve us.

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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Re-Parenting

kimberleen

IMG-4176Re-parenting has been a theme that has been coming up again and again over the last few weeks. When I very first started out on what we might call the coaching journey; which is an entirely different thing to the healing journey  I thought I might advertise myself as a Self-Parenting Coach. Only now do I realise, one how ironic that is in terms of my own personal journey since then, and two how ahead of the game I was. Even now The Life Doula as a concept seems so way out there that only one of my clients so far has actually got it. (Hey ho) without me having to explain it. Re-birthing yes that too is a thing. Re-birthing as you can well imagine goes hand in hand with Re-Parenting or Self-Parenting as I have termed it.

So here we are talking about terms. What I really want you to know, is that although I might think up terms regularly,  I do try to think about the terms that I use at great length. Especially what they might mean to people or make them feel. So, for example, the term Re-Parenting, though very valid, automatically brings up the for me a bubbling kind of resentment and shame. Filled in with exclamation points!!!! Like “For fuck sake, like being parented wasn’t horrific enough as it was without having to take on the actual role of my parents as well in order to gain insight into how truly fucked up they were.” After all, assaulting a four-year-old wasn’t bad enough as it was without having to relive through both parties. Yup, it’s full-on inside my head. Then I get to Self-Parenting and it lets me give out this resigned sigh of “Well I suppose somebody’s got to do it” as I look round the room for an imaginary adult that might be willing to take on the task. After all, wasn’t that what you were always looking for another adult that might help and then, of course, didn’t….. Yup, it’s a bit fucked up no two ways about it. The abandonment buttons are very real in this process. As well as that it also leaves a certain element of blame on the parents part, like they should have done better, known better behaved better. When in fact they are fucked up, still fucked up and very committed to the process of avoiding that reality. Oh well and to leave yourself with the role of re-parenting or self-parenting leaves bigger questions about the need for the do-over or the very real neglect and abandonment, that may never be answered or might indeed leave us more traumatised. It’s not our job to re-parent ourselves it never was and it’s a mild form of victim-blaming to suggest that we should have to take on that role for ourselves.  So both terms linger within me with a mild toxicity. That seems to be corrosive over time.

So after all that and all that feeling and how I felt and how I thought other people in the same situation as me might feel I came up with the idea of Self-Nurturance, and I love it. Self-Nurturance seems light and fluffy and cuddly. It’s all the things you might want and need from a responsible adult. It’s all the things that you might want and need for your responsible adult, that makes me love it even more. It’s not as lofty unavailable as Self-Love nor does it seem as socially weighty and thus drudgingly boring as Self-Care it’s somewhere snuggly in-between. More than this it also signifies that its role is poised to create growth. That if we nurture ourselves we can have whole vibrant lives. That we are getting fully prepared for new adventures. Where lemon water is exciting and yoga can feel nourishing. Where we step away from what we are supposed to do, into what we want to do and that those things though separate in our head are exactly the same thing. It’s just no one ever told us. Do you know why? Because no one ever told them.

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Confused You Will Be

kimberleen

IMG-4020Confusion is not normally something that I have a problem with. Yet today some new informatio is playing havoc with my usual compartmentalisation process. Your probably wondering what it is? It’s something I like to call “Red Herring Syndrom” where you were certain somebody was something other than what it actually was and your trying to figure out exactly how it is you got taken in by an incredibly complex charade. Has this ever happened to you?

What does that mean? It means usually when I have got things to do, places to be or even things to process, everything has an alotted time and place. Like Self-Care is for Sundays, Dinner is between 6pm and 8pm, Lunch is 12pm – 1pm. 8pm – 10 pm is Personal Growth time, learning new things, that kind of stuff. Socialising is for Saturdays. Tuesday Mornings are when I make myself available to people for free Mondays are for doing back office admin. Friday’s are for backing up my computer. Any time after 5pm is for friends and family. Any time before 9am is for me and my personal stuff. That’s all pretty simple, right? I’m sure most of operate or basic daily and weekly schedules in this way. Right?

Then somedays we just can’t get things off our mind. Even if we journal about it. Even if we meditate on it. Even if we set an intention and schedule it. Unexpected things creep into our minds and hearts and disturb the equilibrium. The daily program and even when we are super organised we can\t really understand why. These are the things I describe as perturbing and we are going full adult if we are able to cast them off to one side to maintain focus. Sometimes that isn’t always possible.

It’s all part of being human of course, that we can automate everything. That the universe is sending us new information. Many of us might identify the arrival of new thought or situations as part of the ascension process. To find a new way of thinking or integrating ideas. That not everything is as it appears or even is as it should be. That there is a rupture in the force. Something beyond our understanding that even the most organising and well-meaning of people can’t automatically find the solution it takes time. Although inconvenient this is processing at it’s best. Where we simply have to put our hand up and say “I need some more time to think about that”. As we get older (for me at least) new challenges seem to present themselves less and less. We’ve seen so much of all this stuff before and then suddenly we are flummoxed.

The great thing about confusion is that it almost definitely means that we are going to learn something. It means that the quandry we are facing is a new one that we haven’t faced a situation before. It’s a new lesson being presented. It’s time for us to up-level. Which is very exciting. We never have it all figured out and there is always something new to learn.

So that me today, searching for the solution and being mildly excited about where that solution might take me in my future decision-making processes.

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JOMO: Joy of Missing Out

kimberleen

IMG-3804It’s another morning in beautiful Cape Town and I’m once again getting my priorities straight.  Do I write the blog first, go for coffee or muse a bit more o what my thought process is for the day? The kettle has just boiled and I’ve managed to slurp some water before what has become my daily caffeine intake. It’s winter here and yet it’s hard to believe that from my Scottish self’s projection. Sunshine pours in the window and the chairs that I painted with gloss yesterday are drying on the balcony. In fact, they are still dry no misty morning dew dripping off of them. It’s been a productive weekend and I’m glad to have the extra public holiday of Youth Day to get even more of my personal inventory done. I feel like I want to push a bit more on the business side of things and then I remember that no one is expecting me to be working, and no one is going to be inconvenienced by not receiving an email or an invoice today. Then I think how nice it will be to have the chairs finished and complete the small dreams that make up a life. That getting too small things done opens up the space for new adventures, even if they’re just in my mind.

The coffee is here and it occurs to me suddenly it must be a public holiday as I have already received a flurry of messages from friends. Which is not normal for a Monday. One to tell me that they are having an especially fun time walking along the Seapoint promenade with the dog they are looking after. The other to remind me that there is a holistic fayre going on in my hood (That I probably should have booked stall at). Some just to say howzit, it seems to be a reminder, that all the spare days that we have are an extra opportunity to connect with the ones that we love.

Personally, I feel still and it reminds me that these days I’m far more into the idea of JOMO than FOMO and what an incredible inner journey I’ve been on. That the peace and stillness of my own home are a sanctuary to me. That writing alone in my bedroom is as much as I need to feel satisfied with life and a day alone is a luxury that few get to delve into the way I often do. Sometimes I wonder if I should be out there doing more and then I remember that each place is powerful if we really take time to breathe in the air and witness the magic that surrounds us. There used to be times in my life when I would wonder what it might be like to live in an apartment in Paris, or taking a commute across London, or sitting on the beach in Rio and even hiking some trail in New Zealand? Then no matter where you are there you are. Witnessing your own magic. Your own unique imprint on the world. In this moment, this space, this time and you know how utterly perfect it all is.

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Alarm, Articulate, Assertive

kimberleen

IMG-3350These have been three words floating in and out of my thoughts for the last few days. Alarm came to me when I realised that most people woke up to one each morning. Articulate I considered when I realise that so many of us can’t say how we really feel and assertive I was pondering when I thought I was being a lower vibrational bitch. You know cause we all have these thoughts sometimes.

Alarm, like really? How many of you are waking up with this each morning? I’m hoping that my days of waking alarm are now long behind me. I sleep when I need to and have the luxury of waking up gently most mornings. I forget regularly what a privilege that is and how it’s improved my mood over the years. Lack of sleep and waking up with alarm are literally two things that have the ability to push so far over the edge of mental hell that a good sleep routine has been a priority in my life for years. It’s all about knowing your limits. 4 am starts and 12 hour days are not for me. As a result of this, I have been slowly implementing and changing my work schedule over several years to make sure that I am at an optimum and that I even have time for a nap in the afternoon. It’s just as effective as meditating in order to clear your mind (you should try it sometime).

Articulate it’s a word that has often been used to describe unless of course, I’m getting up at 4 am. I have often wondered what that has meant to the people around me. Now I think I know what it is. I’m always searching for the right words. The right string of thoughts in order to express where I am in any given moment. That expressing a genuine reflection of the world, my life, my mind, my heart, my soul all at the same time.  As always there is a lot to consider. My honest personal enquiry has always engaged people and now more than ever I am beginning to understand why. That even though my emotional environments changes and my ideas about life are shifting as I grew that I am able to share who I am and how I feel.

Assertive, sum how this about expressing how we feel to people even when it’s uncomfortable. This is something that I have been working on for years. As not expressing ourselves honestly can lead to pent up emotions. For me, assertiveness can cut out a huge amount of confusion in interpersonal relationships when we let the small things become big things. I see it so often with people and how they cope with life if they had just said something the moment it started it may have prevented an outburst or explosion late down the line. We always have the right to say how we feel. We are not responsible for how people receive the information that is given. It also opens the doorways of communication to help us gain insight into other peoples experiences. Sometimes as a woman I think that assertiveness is often what is mistaken or interpreted as being a bitch when actually we all have the right to live in our truth and be heard.

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The Morning After The Week Before

kimberleen

IMG-3339

 

It’s officially winter here, now, in the Southern Hemisphere and in the last two days I have awoken to thick mist on the slopes of our beloved Mother City’s Table Mountain. It’s quite a change after a week in the desert, where only the wispy clouds of the upper hemisphere were visible.

We are meant to go on a journey to change things, shift things and find a new connection. Increasingly, more and more as I get older I find myself even more earthbound. That no matter how big the adventure, no matter how far I go, that the physical journey barely changes me. The beauty I find is no more transformative than the cinematography of a good film. The things I find wow for a moment and then they’re gone. I am left with a photograph, a story, maybe a new friend and a slightly shifted future transmuted to help me discover another side story. These days I head off on adventures curious to find something new and instead I always end up anxious to get back. When before I would have longed to stay now I’m always ready to come home. Maybe that is because of something better waits for me here.

If there is one thing that I have learned in the last 12 months is that our life journey is more caught up in the emotional environments of our friends and relationships than they ever might be from escapist journeys of travel, about who we are in our day to day lives and the intricate weaving of the shared emotional journey we seem to embroider each other with. That relationships are the stitching that holds us together.

It seems for me now that mystery and adventure somehow seem to hold far less magic that the long drawn out conversation that occur between two people. That the pasts that the histories that people share are far more imbued with wisdom than the idea that we might learn something from leaving the lives we are in. People are valuable they are all round us with ideas, dreams and understanding that moved beyond our own life experiences, that no matter where we go we take ourselves with us. That we view the world from the paradigm in which we occupy and that magic only truly finds us when we are ready to upgrade our own frequency. That, that frequency only every changes on the basis of how much we are willing to give of ourselves. That sharing is, in essence, is caring and that holding space for people including ourselves is the best chance that we have at deepening the connection we have with the world around us.

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Change

kimberleen

IMG-2579Well, I can assure you that change is something I’m pretty good at with 34 house moves under my belt, I might even say that I am a master craftswoman or something like that. It’s something that many businesses and corporation go on about a lot these days, change management. Let’s face it the world has been speeding up for a while. Technology is outdated before it’s even hits the shelves and everybody wants to be everywhere all at once. FOMO seems to permeate the millennial life and more than that there is already a whole new generation getting ready to emerge. Millennials are already old news and insta perfect lives seems to a get to be a less manageable delusion. We all make mistakes. We all have bad days. Most of us crave more than we already have. Something different, something new, even if it is just that new restaurant that opened up in town. While other stick to the daily grind stay in their rat runs of existence and do there best to protect themselves for unseeable forces or simply embrace making the best lives that they can (Gold stars for them) My mother once said to me a long time ago that “Life is change”. My life of all people’s is certainly demonstrative of that.

For me right now it’s not so much what is going on for me in my personal life than is the challenge. It is the world at large. We often hear people talking about this period in history, as if nothing like this has ever happened before. Like religious, political, racial and gender persecution hasn’t been a thing. It is hard to acknowledge that it always has when we have experienced 75 years of relative peace in the western world. It’s so easy to forget that that peace is built on conflict. That the privileges that we have right now were developed in response to deep crisis and that most of the world systems have developed through exposure to disaster, whether it be in health, education or governance. Like Game of Thrones and the White Walkers, the biggest threat that we have right now is the preservation of life itself. It goes beyond what little scrap of Earth we may be able to dig out and protect for ourselves. It goes beyond our individual materialist needs and individual survival. It’s about land, waterways, communities and respect and believes that we are now on the very brink of a major paradigm shift where the world as we know it is about to change. Every ten years or so there seems to be a massive emergence of what we might call the radical left. Last time it was the Occupy Movement this time its Extinction Rebellion. Fundamentally what you need to know that movements evolve that many of the people involved in the Extinction Rebellion were involved in Occupy. The goal posts have moved somewhat but what you need to know is that the requirements for a successful resolution to our global challenges have not. What we need is a wellbeing economy that put the needs of the planet first. As The Life Doula, this is at the core of my work as I believe that in order for that change to happen that we need in essence to heal humans of the sickness of greed and the disconnection that fuels so much of our insecurities. That we need secure attachments, strong communities and the ability to sustain ourselves, having all the resources that we need for survival within walking distance. It’s time to get back to where we belong, in loving families, intentional tribes safe from the disruptive forces of capitalism.

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Our Bacon Tree

kimberleen

IMG-2295Our Bacon Tree is actually a Spekboom (Which is Afrikaans for Bacon/Pork Tree) that were given as a token reminder of our wedding. At the moment it lives on our balcony and has had a pretty epic year on its own. Having survived two moves, re-potting and being devoured by caterpillars. (Yes your right that is very symbolic, our wedding token was devoured by the Earth’s universally accepted animal change agent.) It has also given up a limb to spawn a fully independent mini-me.

The good news is that is has survived the process. Like most living things it has a variety of moods that I now use it as a relationship weather vain. Which has forced me to create a new relationship in my life and I find a place to focus the nurturing qualities of marriage. I talk to it. I encourage it and I tell it how beautiful it is. That it belongs in with us and that I am very grateful to have it in my life. That I love the work it does and how much it is doing for the planet. I make sure it’s loved, though I’m not sure it believes it after the caterpillar incident.  I wonder at what lengths people go through to keep a plant healthy and happy. Especially in the times, we live now.   I know it is a miracle in my life and it represents hope for the future. Especially as it loves munching carbon. Over a decade ago someone once told me “If you think you are ready for a relationship to get yourself a plant and if it lives a year, you are ready for a pet”. In recent weeks it has also been highlighted to me that a husband is a sort of pet. (I know it’s terrible) As we shouldn’t have such high expectations of people. After all most pets behave and do as they like and we love them anyway regardless of how inconvenient that might be.

The marriage process has made me confront things that I literally never thought possible. Miya Angelo said, “When people tell you who they believe them”. All of a sudden I do. There are many things that we choose to overlook when we get into relationships. For all the right reasons. We want to love through it. We believe that anything is possible. That we can love far beyond our own truths and live somebody else’s. Then we begin to understand just how wild that is. What a massive adventure is laid out before us and that in undertaking this path we are reconstructing the world in which we have chosen to live. That our world is no longer controlled by our personal truths and that shared realities are complex. That living with another person is like living with another reality that we might never fully discover. That we can’t colonise another person’s mind with ideas that aren’t true for them, any idea, and that somehow we might be able to navigate that together. That these are the decisions we’ve made and that we resist them at our own peril. Alternate truths are real. Yet somehow we are surprised by this. As if politics alone wasn’t enough to play that out for all to see.

The thing is though we don’t have to convince anybody. We don’t need to change anybody’s mind. We don’t need to make them understand how we see it and we certainly don’t have to expose facts in order to be heard. All we can ever do is turn up and be ourselves and live our lives as fully as we always intended, love ourselves enough that there is space for another perspective. Live our truths and through the process and know that we are enough and the world’s madness doesn’t change that.

They say that there are lessons in everything and that what we see is our mirror. What we don’t fully understand is how deep that reflection goes. Of course, what I’ve just said is a paradox. As there is no depth in a mirror. All we have is a flat perspective that can move and change giving us all the information that we need in it. Reflecting back all the details of our backstory and simultaneously our present. It soooo fucking magical. It’s totally understandable that we would be highly confused by it. Relationships take personal understanding deeper, as we unpick everything. We find that our internal traits, have external matches. Cause meets effect, openness meets rigidity, reflective meets reactive, embracing meets denial, truth meets reason. There’s also no telling where each of us may take that ground in the ever-shifting sands of life.

We all like to believe that we know the best way forward and that we can talk through everything. Then honestly what if you can’t? What if after nearly eight years of being together you finally realise that actually, you have totally different belief systems that literally took seven years to show up. That the veils have well and truly fallen and love can still dwell in the places where we can’t meet.

We may be very familiar and safe with our own demons and the process it might take to coax them into a ferral state of benign co-living. When all of a sudden you find yourself discovering somebody else’s lurking in the previously unexplored recesses of their mind.  We don’t know where they start and end or even their true form. Like the film, Alien we don’t fully understand what we are seeing. It takes a while for the nature and intentions of the wee fucker to fully come to light.

We can liken personal relationships to revelations in history. Where the nature of the universe even now is under debate. That the best ways forward are often argued about. Great breakthroughs are often dismissed and even ignored until we find ourselves in a new reality depending on who has the fortitude to push through. The lesson will be repeated until it is learned. Love always, especially when it is hard, confusing and frustrating. Yup.