God this feel like rabbit warren of toxicity that I’m not even sure that I am capable of writing about much less willing too. Yet here I a am self-employed and ready to jump into the most highly triggering topic of conversation know to man or other. Yes, the system is corrupt. Yes the system is rigged. Yes the system is toxic. You probably have to go get a vomit bucket, a dartboard and well something else that might help you manage your rage-induced madness that explodes when we discover the complex and numerous way in the system is toxic.
When we get deep down and dirty with all the way that the human race are literally fucking our selves over in order to get a temporary power buzz. Yeah, go you. Many a wounded patriarch has sat gently at the bar sanguinely calling in the return of benevolent kings. I’m really not that sure that one ever existed. You know the rule of law is a tough thing. Any South Africa will tell what it is like to have a country soley held together by the power of it’s judiciary.
All governments are corrupt and all leaders are doing their best to manage the ways in which governments are corrupted. You see I’m not interested in the big structures I’m interested in the tiny wee ones. I’m interested in the women’s circle, what people take for leadership and where people might learn a lot more about themselves if they just bothered to listen. I’m not here to heal you unless you want to be healed. It’s a school of hard knocks honestly. I’m not here to be overly nice and even psycho-fanatic (sycophant) and it’s quite a thing to have finally found your voice. To be saying what you feel and ready for the gaslighting. It’s ok to be wrong. I’ve been wrong all my life. It’s ok to be called out I’ve been called out all my life. When all of a sudden resilience finds us and we know that even though power has been corrupted misused and even misguided; as one individual person we still have the power to reside in our own souls and find out own ‘rightness’.
The abuse of power is so easy. It’s as simple as throwing someones food away without consent. (I did that). I’ve literally got to the point of being bored of being good. That doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily bad it just that kindness and consideration is optional once a crossed a certain a certain threshold. You get what you give.
I’m not sure if this is exactly the hinge point at which society may begin to breakdown. Where entitlement ends and radical self-reliance comes into being. I hate to be cynical about society and the truth is that for the most part of my life I have always been an optimist; if a highly critical one. The truth is though I have been viewing the world through my own perspective. My own niceness, my own good heart. The idea of fairness. You see hurt people hurt people. I’ve been making allowances for that my whole life. Finding ways to extend the embracing heart of compassion, so that abusers might learn to heal as I have. The things is that few people choose to heal and I see now that what is really going on. I overextend my sense care in the hope that it might invoke healing. It’s a form of abuse all of it’s own. A sublet one I grant you and yet there it is. All the justifications and responsibility for the state that feels the need to roll into fix things. All those broken unproductive people. Who are in fact exactly where they need to be. Finding the space to be themselves. Finding a way out of systemic abuse. I look to the out cat for inspiration.
As I wrote this now I found the tingles deep within me. A truth that can’t be unlearned and the regrettable moment at which you had to learn it. It’s a boundaries thing. It’s a consent thing. It’s an addiction thing. It’s a trauma thing. For some reason, it’s not fully known that those that abuse have been abused. That every abuse is an attempt to feel powerful. It’s an attempt to regain control. It’s a beautiful thing to understand and witness as we watch the bullies of the world wreak havoc on the lives of millions. Needless to say, abusers have mental and emotional health issues. If we wanted to take a kinder approach we might find say that they have unmet emotional need. After all, that is where I believe all mental health arises from, our unmet needs.
If you ever wanted to under the darker sides of human consciousness you must fully understand that all of us have an abuser in us.
In the true reality of the world as it is I have had countless thousands of conversations about abuse and consent and how it is constructed in the world. Only in recent years has the power of consent been fully understood as a powerful tool of empowerment for those of us in relationship. (isn’t that everyone). Consent is simply a conversation where everyone is very clear on what that they agreed too. And indeed what they are responsible for. I think the only thing that we are every truly responsible for issuing a clear yes or a clear no. Unfortunately, the way in which I clearly understand abuse is a very clear violation of a clearly articulated boundary with complete disregard for the consequences.
This can be incredibly challenging to articulate clearly and well when we seek to create a peaceful outcome. Where we are accommodating of someone’s needs and that accommodation is taken to be tacit consent. Let me explain for example my experiences in shared living accommodation over COVID19. When I allowed an emotionally vulnerable adult at risk of mental break down come visit me in my shared home as a way of a community invention while maintaining social distances. In a very short space of time it became clear that this person was no doing the same in other households. This was done without asking for consent. I expressed my concern and yet the behaviour continued. Now a sensible person would have stopped it right then and there. However my housemate had got used to the visits and seemed to have also become quite reliant on this social interaction. Despite having a heart murmur and technically being at risk I fully understood how the impacts of the lockdown might have on households and particularly single people alone in their houses. I had already predicted that suicides rate would increase immensely as a result of the social isolation many people would be newly experiencing. In the vacuum of having very few other people to talk to my shared housemate and my friend quickly for a romantic relationship.
Before I copuld even blink I no longer had any say who comes in and out of our shared home. I repeatedly and persistently refused the right to consent by simply not being asked. Even though I continually state my need to be asked. This need is ignored. It becomes very clear that neither of the two parties has any understanding of active consent and literally continue to do what they please.
Though I continue to ask for consent or indeed simply information regarding the use of the house I am continually ignored, until such point as the noise on one particular day becomes too much tolerate while working from home.
Literally the deathly blow was when they decided to go on holiday, despite 14 day quarantine rules, even though it was explained to them that I am at risk due to having a heart murmur. Apparently it’s their house and they have the right to expose me to deadly virus without my consent. Needless to say, I moved out before they got back.
The point at which you have to argue for your right to be heard and in the most extreme cases life you are speaking to an abuser. If anybody tells you otherwise they are gaslighting you so that they feel safe. The world is a treacherous place full of betrayal.
Yet we must remember the way someone treats you in the way that they have been treated. Hurt people hurt people. Also top tip you allowed to change your mind at any time about giving consent to let people have sex with you and/or harm you.
When we talk about abuse on a systemic level it always comes back to the personal. Someone is always personally deciding to ‘abuse’ you and breach your boundaries. Abuse is a personal decision not taking in the full impact of a detrimental decision for the other person involved.
I’m on a writing roll and just finished the previous blog post about me as a ‘Changemaker’. That ended with me questioning how deliberate am I being. Once again as I write this very deliberately in messy, unorganised and detached ways. Doing my best output me at the centre of my world and very clearly dishonouring others and my promises in the process. Fuck!!! The emotional labour is real. The ideologies of success can feel toxic.
Recently I have been called to look at The Four Agreements again and as great as they are right now I am being shit at them. Which doesn’t bode well for my Trauma-Informed business or even supposed attitude or approach? My Emotional Labour right now feels highly intensive as the demand for my skills seems to be ever-increasing. I wonder how well I am actually skilling up. How well I am holding myself in this accelerated process of deepening. As I sit here anxiously typing away trying to fast forward in order to buy myself time. I feel like I keep on sliding off the treadmill, wobbling off the board as I begin to understand the much deeper responsibility of occupying the space of Change Maker. Where I think at this point I might even want to say honour keeper (OMG it sounds so lame, geeky and real). How about I just managed that? How about I just did what I said I was going to do? What I feel I can achieve? Who I feel I can be responsible too? The things I say I think I can get too. There is soooo much juggling and dropping. I can’t even reference, edit and maintain my website blog well. Let’s be clear here the blog is as much about honouring my own emotional process as it is about projecting my ideas out into the world. Even this I am struggling with and I can’t keep up with my own brain. My own process, my own space of personal self-expression, which has nothing to do with generating change and everything to do with generating personal stability. These are very different things or are they?
You see stability is the change that I seek to make for myself and indeed other. Even in this toxic fast-paced environment that is hurtling towards disaster. I want the stillness, the openness, the expansiveness of self-knowledge and assurity and yet here I am barely tending to my own innermost needs. Being mildly driven by the passing need to make money. Yes the system still occupies me from time to time. Right now in this moment each article. Blog posts and even presence seem to sprout branches; one more thing to write about. One more nuance to understand, One more deepening understanding of language. Maybe it has all been said before. So who am I typing against the clock for. Maybe radical self-expression is as much as we can do to acknowledge the ever-changing within us. As we process the inevitable change that is happening around us. What is our sole purpose here on Earth to witness the inevitable change as it occurs here on as part of the multiple layered and deeply interconnected process of being alive on planet Earth as part of a far greater and expansive cosmic system?
You see people watching? Regardless of how long we sit still everything changes anyway. In the meantime I must brush my hair and get ready for dinner and think about what respectability is with regards to honouring one’s self.
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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.
I took this photo on a walk to my last in-person Extinction Rebellion meeting. This was when the idea of hospicing humanity was merely an abstraction. I create my reality.
Well, now there’s a thing. When life ramps up to full volume and you wonder where your key priorities might be. In my journey as a life doula, I always believed that it was important to train as both a birth and death doula. Now it would appear that these skills are needed now more than ever. Especially surrounding Death Care with more and more reports coming in from Italy that the death system, like the medical system, is close to collapse. People are dying at home, unattended and alone, in one of the best medically equipped countries in the world. They are dying alone with their bodies being left ex
So it now poses all sorts of question about death care and highlights all the reasons why I have chosen my particular path as a life doula and the training that I am now undertaking. That we can’t outsource the human experiences and that the two most profound experiences of birth and death are things that should stay wherever possible in community. Now more then ever this seems very clear to me. The situation here in the UK right now seems to be under control and contagion rates in Scotland seem to be happening much slower than in England.
The Dentist has just called and cancelled my appointment so they can be used as locum doctors. It’s another little tick as the on the upscaling of this crisis as preparations take a much deeper grip.
My thoughts are also with South Africa right now. It’s a privilege to be living in a first-world country where free health care is accepted as a norm rather than a given. There’s a lot of concern about when COVID 19 hits the townships and what is going to happen there. AIDS, HIV and TB are all going to take there toll on the survival rates. When I think of the measures that the UK government is taking with a fully fledge health care system my heart breaks for South Africa. There are dark days ahead for us all. While many of us are grappling with the impacts of marshall law on our civil liberties. I baulk at the potential death toll and the things people will have lived through at the end of this experience. Many accept that in a country that still struggles immensely with economic and cultural inequality COVID 19 is going to be a massive social leveller. It’s a situation that is going to affect everyone, globally. Few of us are able to buy ourselves out if this one and even if we could? At what cost? As martial law begins to get rolled out on a planetary scale it’s intense. The conspiracy theorist, the sceptics, the cynics and the gullible all take their view. All that we can rely on is our own subjective reality.
For obvious reasons, my phone has been ringing. I’m distracted, grounded and weirdly focused on the conversations that matter, as I do my best to stay present. Emotions are high and I feel the writhing of collective consciousness flowing through my nervous system. It doesn’t feel surreal to me. It feels normal like the world is only just catching up to what life is like for the poor, disabled and the elderly on a daily or even yearly basis. Millions of people live like this locked in their homes and in their neighbourhoods all completely socially isolated all the time. Many of us are going to be lucky enough to die like this, in our gilded cages. Figuring out that all that really matters is life. All of it.
This is a situation that you can’t buy your way out of.
There’s has been a lot of rainbow weather lately. I’m going to miss this as follow through on my commitment as a Self Healer. Remember lots of people live lives of isolation and desolation daily.
Yes that is me. I’m fucked up too. I’m traumatised too. No I don’t have all the answers and even if I did I wouldn’t tell them to you anyway. Yup it’s fucked up being fucked up.
All those marketers say to tell your story, make yourself vulnerable and as a Systemic Trauma Specialist I say bollocks to that. You know why? Because I’m trauma-informed. We tell our stories in the hope of being heard. That people will both consider and validate our experiences, views or opinions and the truth is they don’t always. The internet is not a safe place. It’s not safe for women. Yet here we are asked to bare all in the hope of attracting, a following, a tribe, a crowd, a mob. All this when we actually have a word for trolling.
We have to be brave to tell our stories to be unheard, ignored, overlooked, criticised, mocked, ridiculed and even humiliated then carry on telling them anyway. You see we need to be partway to healed with a minuscule droplet of self-belief in order to survive the process. This is what it really means to be a Self Healer. It’s having to go against the mob when you are at your most vulnerable. You have to take on those arrows of misfortune and pull them out your back one by one. While everybody is shouting die.
Of course I believe in the best of humanity and that is because I have learned from the worst. I’ve learned from the property developers, the business leaders, the corporate managers, educators, and even the well-meaning exactly how cruel the world can be. People with power prescribe how they are going to help people, largely by deciding who is the most deserving, because they have the power to do so. Abuse of power is rife and most of us have given up our divine sovereignty for a monthly paycheck. We are employed doing things that go against our values or even common sense inflicting undue pain on our immediate and planetary communities.
This is what it really means to be a self healer it’s to pick up your pain and stop inflicting it on anybody else. It’s all about mitigating your trauma and recognising that trauma is largely systemic. When I fully understood this, that I couldn’t consume my way out of it, my only choice was to take what measures I could to detox from a toxic system. That I had to change everything that I believed conscious and subconscious. That I had to dig through all the ways that I had been programmed for somebody else’s benefit. That I had to claim my own humanity for my own sanity. That I had to be kind to myself, supportive of myself because love is the revolution.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
