Tag: Process

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Extractive Economies

kimberleen

The unpaid work of emotional labour acts as nothing more than an extractive economy. Extractive economies is a term that I have been throwing around for a while, like some unpopular fire poi at a party. Nobody likes extractive economies. Nobody wants to admit that we are actively involved in stealing somebody elses wealth or worse their means of survival. Yet we do, we are. Think back to the coltan child slaves of the Congo. They are never far from my mind.

It feels like a dirty word when ever I say it extractive economies. Yet here I am saying it. Writing about it, getting explicit about it. What if I told that as much as any future PhD I do might be about trauma it is almost certianly about extractive economies. Our world is fucked and the primary reason is the things we take without asking. The things that we don’t even value, like emotional labour or time. You are not entitled to my emotional labour. The things we take with out checking. The thing we take without equal recompence never mind paying. What’s money worth when the world is burning? Yet we are consumed by it.

I am so often devalued for the way I look, the way I speak, the way I dress, the way I operate in the world with all this dyslexic writing. People tell me I have to be everything other than what I am to be successful. That is not my idea of success. I see a different world in which I and every other living thing is inherently valuble. That I and other earthly automatically hold value. This is the underpinning of all indigenous knowledge systems. Everything plays it’s part has it’s role to be and is valued in that role. Imagine that world. It’s the world I live in.

I do not pull out the symbolism of power to seduce people into my influence I am often dismissed, denied, ignored and even treated with contempt. What people don’t realise are the ways in which they have been brainwashed to think that this is OK. You don’t look like me, or sound like me, or act like me and therefore quite bluntly you are subhuman. It’s nothing less than a colonailist tactic to produce standardised humans that are easy to manipulate, control and exploit.

As a human and as a supposedly advanced human with access to modern technology you might think that you are above and beyond such influences. If you went to school, watch mass media and went to university, it’s quite the opposite your almost certainly complicit and an active participant in extractive economies and ultimately human slavery. Where did the coltan in you phone or laptop come from exactly? Is it ethically sourced? Who decides if it’s ethically source? Where is the ethical standards commitee getting there money from? How exactly is the ethical standards commitee complicity in upholding the spaces of power? These are simple questions that underpin critical theory. That will have you spouting convenient colonial histories to absolve you from your complicity in child slave labour. The thing is though The Congo seems so very far away even in an African context. It might be posed as an extreme example of an extractive economy that in a structured debate would have the highly educated nailing down and offering the plight of Bangladeshi factory workers. If we are going to talk about Congolese child slave labour, than we also have to address the endless planetary injustices that all the sub-altern endure. Then of course it’s hopeless where could we intervene? Where do we possibly start and by this point the arguments gone south and their isn’t much point in bothering. After all the conversation alone is exhausting.

Of course if you are sitting, where I am sitting these forms of conversations and tactics are part of the systems of oppression that are designed to keep us stuck. The denial of the emotional labour that gets exhausted in these kinds of debates can easily be pinpointed as both emotional and psychological abuse. Marginalised communities continually live with this abuse by having to jusify their right to existance. You probably think that I am being dramatic and then you find out the news that 227 land defenders were murdered in 2021. You might think that that doesn’t affect you, that’s right up until you then learn that 80% of the world biodiversity is held by indigenous people, who in turn are only five percent of the human population. Then of course you might be thinking how on Earth did trauma work become about the climate crisis and ecojustice? It’s actually the root cause of your trauma. Good old fashioned land displacement, throw in some oppression, family break down, community disintegration, and mind control and you’ve got the perfect storm for a mental health crisis. Bearing in mind of course that their is nothing wrong with you because trauma is a physiological and normal response to shock, chronic stress and trauma. You are welcome.

Whatismore marginalised and indiginous communities hold the solutions to much of our worlds problems which it a large part of the reason that we go off to trip in the Peruvian jungles on Ayahuasca. We know, we know. We just don’t want to acknowledge the harmful and complicit nature that we currently extract our healing from, that both directly and indirectly sabotage indigenous wealth. Given that you can produce dmt in your own brain and a good Sangoma knows how to do that. Why are you off tripping anyway? Besides as any good trauma practitioner will tell you the secret to unpacking your problems is radical presence. Time isn’t linear, nor is memory, your body is a portal that you can hack. So my invitation to you is how about we learn to be radically present? Netflix and chill will disintegrate as a need as soon as you start asserting your own social justice.

So my small request to you is the next time your pre-judged underprivilige person in your immediate vaccinty makes you a cup of tea or offers your a listening ear. Why not transfer your cash directly into their bank account your privilige is almost certainly built on their opression. They don’t need saved. You are the problem act accordingly.

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

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

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Emotional Labour

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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The Holy Bucket

kimberleen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Self-Betrayal

kimberleen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Overthinking

kimberleen

It’s only in recent years that I have come to understand that I overthink. In previous years I would have never thought of overthinking as thing, instead it was possibly hyper intelligence gone mad. Something unique to me and my way of being in the world. It is hard for me to know where the overthinking began. In school I probably equated overthinking to being bored out my nut. Like where are we going with this? What’s the point? Seriously is that all we are covering in the lesson today. Is that all we are expected to learn in a whole year? Oh my god is any of this going to be in anyway relevant to my future life? It certainly didn’t feel that way. Yet I was always confused. Always overwhelmed. It couldn’t possibly be this simple? Yet alarmingly it always was, even now a lot of the time. Few of us get things right the first time around. Yet it seems to be something that is demanded of us in the western education system.

When I fist remember overthinking as an actual problem it was in my early working life. When I was a waitress trying to figure out how to get through the daily to-do list and rather just starting with what needed to get done. Sitting down to figure out in what order to do them in order to be most efficient. This of course leads to complete inefficiency and of course reflects that there must be a way to think my way out of it or through it so I can get it done faster. Rather than accepting that doing was the skill set. As I learned the work routines I would get faster because it would become easier and more instinctual. I know it seems obvious now. Linear learning is a long way from the circular learning of indigenous teaching where we repeat something over and over again until it is learned. However back then that seemed like a radical kind of learning that I am only beginning to catch up with now. I makes me feel like I should be doing better.

Overthinking can be applied to anything from cleaning the house to responding to communications or finally sitting down to do our life’s work. No pressure there. We don’t know what to do or in that moment at the very least what to do first. Overthinking stops us from flowing and usually ends up with our minds and often our body’s in tailspin. We get caught up in the consequences of getting wrong rather than the process of getting it done. Overthinking often removes our impulses to create. Overthinking can be excruciating and crippling. That can leave us stuck for years, even decades. I know I myself have suffered immensely at the hands of anxiety paralysis. Where every small decision and its resulting action has left me agonising over its long-term impacts. For example, my single-use coffee cup is going to destroy the world. Whenever I write about overthinking and indeed anxiety paralysis it takes me back to the interview scene in Good Will Hunting. Just as I write this I actually realise the deeper sentiments of that film set in the late nineties. After all, I’m the generation that burned down Woodstock. It’s only in the last year or so that I have fully begun to appreciate the impacts of late capitalism on the development on my own psyche and the generation that I grew up in. After all Trainspotting acted as the direct cultural backdrop to my teenage life.

Overthinking is a trauma response of a highly critical mind. When we overthink there are potentially four things going on. One; we have internalised the highly critical dialogues of the people that surround us, Two; our egoic mind is overdrive drive trying to resolve the things we can’t feel. Three; we become aware that we are in an inherently unsafe environment that isn’t just personal it’s cultural and systemic. Four; that this initial hypervigilance that accompanies shock or a traumatic event becomes normalised as an unconscious way of being in the world.

Ether way overthinking is trying to protect us from an unidentified threat. Overthinking is our mind trying to protect us from pain. Maybe we were criticized as children, maybe we have a parent that always finds fault. Maybe that criticism and fault-finding forced us into our shame body. Really I think that overthinking is born out of the need to create perfection to avoid crticism and the pain criticism causes. I’ve yet to learn of overthinking as a disassociative state. As I think about overthinking, (no pun intended) I muse as to whether it is a disassociative state of the right-handed mind that is desperate to execute fantasies of control.

What I know is that overthinking has kept me stuck. Lost in anxiety and trapped in the pain of shame. I know I myself have suffered immensely at the hands of anxiety paralysis. Where every small decision and its resulting action has left me agonising over its long-term impacts. For example, my single-use coffee cup is going to destroy the world. That the confusion about what to do next has left me not doing anything at all. I’m glad that time is past now.

Whenever I write about overthinking and indeed anxiety paralysis it takes me back to the interview scene in Good Will Hunting. Just as I write this I actually realise the deeper sentiments of that film set in the late nineties. After all, I’m the generation that burned down Woodstock. It’s only in the last year or so that I have fully begun to appreciate the impacts of late capitalism on the development on my own psyche and the generation that I grew up in. After all Trainspotting acted as the direct cultural backdrop to my teenage life.

Of course you know capitalism and AI are about to destroy our human ecologies. So you know maybe I’m right and I’ll be standing right over here behind my organic ethically sourced, upcycled climate disaster barricade. Cause you know there’s no running from climate disaster, in case you didn’t know already. Sorry for the bad news. This sums up the relationship between overthinking and eco-anxiety.

If I could explain the opposite to overthinking I would probably describe it as something called flow. Intuitively and instinctually humans do exactly what we are meant to at the right time in the right moment if we allow ourselves to trust. I use poetry as a meditation of presencing that brings me right back to the here and now. I am able to flow through my work far more easily than I ever was. If something feels wrong I put it down until it flows. Pausing the thoughts, following my intuition, listening to my feelings, and flowing through my instincts has helped me to gain a lot of momentum in my life.

It might lead to half-finished projects. It also leads to a little more done than the perpetual internal grip of the thought processes that held me back from making any moves at all. It’s more of a dance than a linear progression and it feels beautiful.

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

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

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How To Contribute To Planetary Shift

kimberleen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Just Start

kimberleen

It feels good to be here again. Writing. Writing what I want. Finding my way back to the blank screen only to find that it brings a refreshing calmness and healthy jolt that I have been away for a long time. WordPress has changed its layout again and I’m worried what challenges that might bring me in putting this article together. I really do wish I could have gotten to you sooner. It feels like a revisitation. However, I have been stuck. Stuck in an internal maelstrom for quite a while which has only just realised me to some slightly more gentle water rapids. The long and short answer is that I have been waiting on a visa as well as waiting on the opportunity to move. Even though I have been applying for visas in what is now close to a decade there are few that can describe the chronic anxiety of the state, that I have yet to master. So there it is my anxiety got the better of me and hopefully, that lets you off the hook too.

So I am here back in Mkhanda here to complete what I didn’t finish the first time around. I think really what has really spinning me out is how complex my life is as well as the work that I do. I wonder what you must all think as look at me going through this process which is my life that is all about trauma, when I can’t tell you exactly what I am working with because it is bound by confidentiality. Maybe at this point, I should probably be referring you to my other website which is also deeply neglected. Make you wonder why I have them at all if I am just going to ignore them. It makes me feel like an errand mother. However, that’s life sometimes we have to juggle. Something that seems negligible one week is critical the next as we attempt not to rock the boat from running from one task to another. That’s where my life has been at and although I have been very well looked after over the last several months, sometimes we just have to accept the innings we have and play from there.

Part of me wants to make promises or tell you what I will do next or even more about where I am in terms of work and who I am working with. the things is that belongs on the other website and maybe that just tells me where my next piece of writing should lead me.

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

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Leave That Shit Behind

kimberleen

I just wrote a wee post on instagram about this. As I actually considered the future of this blog. I was so committed at the beginng of this year to staying on top of everything when a few months ago I had to allow my work schedule to collapse for my own mental health it was a bit wild. As I sit here writing this I still have to evaluate exactly how it it is that my mental and emotional health can so easily eclipse my productivity. That even though I am a ‘trauma specialist’ or even a ‘trauma doula’ I still get caught up in some pretty destructive life cycles. Which in all seriousness will take several books to explain and that you probably deserve to read.

One thing that I can absolutely assure you of is that I have had a very interesting life. I’m also incredibly proud of that fact too. In the run up to this year’s winter solstice (in the southern hemisphere) is that the unconscious shadow has a huge influence on our lives (no shit sherlock). I know it hardly news is it. It’s also funny as I move through life how many terms I find for the same thing. I mean the unconscious shadow it’s literally the subconscious right? That means that we are unconscious of what is lurking in our psychic field. Depending on how aware we are of our own preferences, behaviours and beliefs we ,can also hold a lot of postive stuff in the subconscious too. You know like, the things we like to do when we aren’t being forced to work in shitty jobs. Or even better the things that bring us joy. Many of us have been entrained to believe that the things that we like, hold no value. It simply isn’t true. If it’s of value to you it is something that you should strive to create more of. The unconscious shadow is the unknown fear that drives you and I’m beginning to learn that it’s a very interesting thing. That the greater our progression through our healing journey the greater our shadow manifests. That actually love and light is a toxic deafening of some of our very real concerns. Unless we learn to listen to ourselves deeply we often repress and project what we feel unconsciously out into the world. That we attract the shadow to ourselves to be continually healed.

What I appreciate now is that much of what I have been trying to write about from my past life is old news for me now. It isn’t keeping me inspired even if it is crucial to what I want to teach. So how is it that my motivation collapsed and my anxiety exploded? When it’s simply a matter of getting shit down. I think it was the idea of having to revisit the same old shit. Of course I’m not meant to say that. It’s like saying what I have to offer is shit, boring, old but then again that is only to me. You see it’s taken me years to figure a lot of shit out and we are constantly evolving and groing. We forget how much we have had to learn to get to where we are. So maybe this is an opportuntiy to reflect on how far we’ve come, what I have learned and how much more I have to give rather than bearate myself for having writers block, being bored and stuck.

Just like that my commitment to this blog is back. It’s in writing that I find my solutions. The passion for what I am doing and creating and the clarity as to how I want to move forward. you see sometime I wonder how would it feel to wake up with a clean slate everyday. As I wonder about people who have had full time jobs all there lives, the things that they have been forced to achieve through consistancy and persistence. Sometime I think that these are qualities that I lack. I only have the pressure of my own conscious to keep me going. If I am out of alignment, have lost my inspiration or purpose it is hard to keep going. I often wonder where my writing is leading me. When actually it is always leading me back to my self . That writing gives me the clean slate that I deserve. That it cleans up the mess of my mind, You see to express somethign fully is a form of trauma healing. Writing is a way to be heard when nobody else is listening. Which leads me to another story.

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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Collective Shadow

kimberleen

I’m writing this right befor the the June 10th Eclipse in Gemini and doing some deep soul digging into my own toxic patterns, soul beliefs, and disruptive behaviours. I’ve been wearing my pyjamas for thress day and trying to figure out the best time to strip my bed and do the laundry. It’s not glamourous the Collective Shadow. I’ve spent last night in long conversation about the strange deep nuanced patternings of realtionships. Maybe your thinking here we go. We are drifiting into the uncontainable field of personal relationships. Which might feel too mediocre for words. However if you’ve gotten tot grips with the universe and it’s foible you may probably laready know that realationship of every kind is at the very heart of it’s expansive nature, and for us its human participants our teaching and learning.

Our Collective Shadow sits in our realtionship with ourselves and with our relationship with others. Here’s the next thing if it’s not a problem it isn’t. It’s your judgement of the issure that makes it a problem. I know it’s intense. I sit here with this wondering where my three day pyjama stint is leading me and if I really am as happy with my personal state of affairs as I might present… maybe it’s time to sort that out. I’ve brushed my hair.

The thing is when I write about trauma I’m not in the habit of hiding my shadow self. For sure there are things that I don’t necessarily want to make public becasue we all have the right to process things privately. Yet at the same time what do we do when the collective shadow is that exactly the things that we don’t want to process publicly? It may be one thing to apply this wisdom to personal relationships or indeed your private life. However what we have been dealing with over the last few millenia of this is that families, institutes and governments do the same thing too, even when the decsions the make and behaviour they support perpetuate immense human suffering. Its considered best to keep things private sweep things under the carpet and move on. Of course within this strategy is the hope that by giving an individual or and orgnisation some space that it might offer them some redemption. A place in which to redeem themselves. What is it exactly that we are redeeming ourselves from…now that is a big question?

Even over the last few days I have been exploring my own value system and cleaning up my priorties. In essence to understand where my priorties lie in terms of approach and within that learning how I am truly embodying those values? It seems as you might expect form the collective shadow I still have a lot of work to do. You see the real sticky point of the collective shadow and indeed personal relatiosnhip in the concept of both consent and sovereignty of which the shadow is control. It’s no lie when we say that it’s a big thing to unpack.

You see much of what we do and how we interact is based on this idea that we need to have control. In order to have control we need to have rules. The thing is that as adults and very often also as children we come to a very clear understanding that most of life doesn’t operate within the rules. What’s most interesting is that in fact much of the things that are supposed to be rules are what cause us such collective pain. For example there is no law that says your parents have to love you. Fucked up but true. It’s a best case scenario. When we begin to understand these things on a meta level we begin to appreciate that at best pop culture gives us guidelines for a good quailty of life. The irony is of course that unless we test the guidelines we don’t learn our own sense of self and boundaries. Even worse it that if we never break the rules we don’t learn their value. So even though as a society we might foster rules in order to gain some control over society behaviour, they don’t hold any value unless people are allowed to learn from them themseves.

Evil cersi Ivor in Jordan Petersen – unconsciousness.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude to accompany Feral Systemic Healing Circle.

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