Tag: Trauma Healing

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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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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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The Human Connection

kimberleen

‘You are born alone and you die alone’ It’s not true is it? And yet it is banded around as some kind of cure all explannation for the struggles of the human life. No doubt thought up by some highly evolved critic with a high victim consciouness. If only we could take a snap shot of the inside of their brain. If you are alive, someone cared enough to nurture you. Maybe not in the way that you wanted. Maybe not by a person that you would have chosen and yet as an infant they chose to keep you alive. Of course it’s really easy to see that someone may have kept you alive for there own selfish interests. Even if your care was an entirely selfish act you held enough value for that care to be continued. Lets face it children are expensive.

It probably sounds crude and uncaring to explain the human connection in this way. After all most of are searching for a place to call home. A place to fully express ourselves and just be. Yet we carry so much baggage, so much hurt, so much seperation consciousness. It’s hard to connect, especially when we feel abandoned by our closest family members.

If I am brutally honest I think given the world that we live in that knowing that we were cared for should be good enough. Just because you were born into this world it is not a god given right that you should be afforded the opportuntiy to survive into adulthood. It sounds pretty brutal doesn’t it? Given that I am writing this from a rural part of South Africa I can assure you that this is true. To be an adult human is a luxury. I know we should be aiming for higher and yet there it is the brutal reality. Also if you are living in South Africa it’s good to know that the average age of death is forty-nine. Yup so that’s me. I’ve got nive years left to live. Of course white privilge might tell me a different story about that. Yes colour is a factor…

Those of us living at the center of whiteness conveniently don’t have to think about that too much.

In farely recent history humans were breeding other humans like farm animals for means of trade and slavery. What must it feel like to be the product of a forced breeding programme? What must it feel like to be produced rather than created? How does that effect the psyche and epigentics? How all of this impacts systemic trauma levels in the human brain and body. Having been produced for profit how does that change the human story?

Of course in changes everything. It changes how we understand humans and humanity. It changes how we understand ourselves, where we come from and who our ancestors were on both sides of the fence. The enslaved vs the enslavours if you’re all baout claiming your European ancestry you are all about slavery if you are all about African ancestors worship you are all about slavery. The things torterous things that we do to one another, these are the ties that bind. Many of us spend a life time tryin to break family bonds while some of spend a lifetime trying to strengtne them. Often we have to seek connection outside family to move forward with our lives. Sometimes our best connections are those of friendship.

So you see here we are alive. Alive becasue of the pro-creation of other people. Alive because of human nurturance (even if it is just our own) alive because we were able to connect to the ever flowing and infinte abundance of the universe. The true connections that we have to create is the one with ourselves. The true connection is to that of our perfect place in the cosmos and the ability to manifest anything from where we stand. It’s true. You better believe it. You just have to learn to trust it. It is time to connect. It is time to fall so deeply in love with yourself that the universe brings you everything that you desire… its time to connect with the deepest desires of your soul and to know that this is exaclty what you were born to create.

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

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Humans

kimberleen

Now this is a big subject. No two ways about it. Where exactly do I start with this one? Did you know that the oldest know humanoid is on display in Huntarian Museum in Glasgow? That they were named her Lucy after The Beatles son ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’. A lot has happened since the supposed discovery of the ‘missing link’, not least the connection between psychodelic plants and the emergence of human consciouness. Of course that all depends on who’s version of history you believe and if you have watched that banned Ted Talk.

I suppose as a human myself it’s hard for me to write about the subject of humans with any real sense of perspective. All we have to go on is the stories that we are told and that we tell. Which draws me back to a museum installation and exhibiton at Freedom Park in Tswhane. What are our orgin stories? It’s clearly no coincidence that I am wrting this directly after The Emotional Journey where I asked reader to explore their own origin stories. That’s the thing though isn’t it? That we all belong. More importantly than that, that we all belong together. And if you really want to dive in we all belong to one another. That it is the way that we relate that makes us human. That we don’t have a story to tell if it isn’t in relation to another person. That even if it wasn’t another person we are able to transcirbe the experience of human interconnectivty on to other things like the moon, or a teddy bear. It’s pretty obvious, we are here to connect. Yet at this juncture in history it is clear that the connections are broken.

Our broken connections start with the interpersonal and end with planetary destruction. We have lost the profound value of interconnection of everything and between everything and that all things hold equal weight in the sacred cosmology that we live every single day.

This article was inspired by three things the concept of Healing Humans, The Free Buffet and a Trauma Wise Circle. You can click through to find out more indepthly what these three concepts mean to me. However the main thing that I want you to take away from the above ideas is that Healing Humans is at the very center of the survival of our species and with that the only thing that we have full control over is our own healing journey. Something that I like to term as Personal Activism. You can come join some fellow healing humans over at my Healing Humans Facebook Group

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

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Water & Sleep

kimberleen

I’m sure I must have written about these two things before. Yet these days a rarely mention them in conversation. Not least because my water drinking practices have become precarious, as in I have fallen out of the habit.

I intitially started writing this article from the view point of hydration. I’ve writteen about the benefits of drinking water for years now even though my own water drinking habits have fallen by the wayside recently. I still think that drinking water is important and we are all entitled to have a slump in our self care. Especially when feeling means healing. Especially when we have to give ourselve time to process what is going on and not just push through… that’s really important too not maintaining a routine that is destroying you emotionally. For many of us that dopmine hit is just a little to tempting…

I didn’t start drinking water regularly until I was well into my twenties, up until then water was just tastelss stuff that came out of the tap. I’d been raised on coca-cola and cordial. My teeth are proabaly still paying the price forty years on. Clearly sugar addiction was a formative part of my youth which could tell you a lot about almost anybodies health journey over the latter half of the twentith century. Even now I’m engaged in a period of sugar dependency. I guess a global pandemic and a bit of personal trauma will do that.

Water on the greater persepective is 85% of who we are. It is what we are made of. It is the primary composite part of the planet that we live on. It’s fuels the majority of life. Our relationship with water defines who we are, as it is what we are made of. It is our life force energy. We can’t survive without it. So when I write about water now it moves beyond how we consume water. It’s about how we relate to it. How we honour it. The moon moves the ocean as it moves us and yet these days this relationship is often treated and mythical rather than factual. We have become seperate from ourselves.

Sleep is caught up in survival, rest and trhiving. If you can’t sleep there is not way you can survive. My brain at least really can’t deal with the pressure. Sometime I wish it was different and then I think about the delerium, mania and dread that covers my days if I don’t get enoguh sleep. Being rested is far more important than being fed in my dreams of wellness. Where would I be with our sleep . Where have I been without sleep half mad, unregulated, strained and cracking.

General conversations about sleep these days too seems to be informeed by its scientific function rather than it’s ritual purpose. To rest, to sleep to dream. These day you are far more likely to read an article on the benefits of good sleep for productivity rather than for soul growth. Even in the bible dreams are highly referenced as both insightful and prophetic. That sleep is a powerful place in which to connect to our truth. To swim in our subconscious and find the answers to all that plagues us.

Sleep for me will always be one of the most direct routes to healing. I love to sleep, it feeds me in ways that I have only very recently come to fully undersand. Since I graduated as a Sangoma sleep has taught me the most about my spirtual journey and how the expectations of society have drawn me away from my calling as a dreamwalker. The we can move beyond and outwith this world through our dreams and find answers to our deepest questionings.

The article was written to accompany the trauma wise circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Your Needs

kimberleen

As you read the title I wonder if it is anything that you have ever considered before? What are your needs? It’s a farely straight forward question. However if you’re experiencing trauma the idea of your needs can be vomit inducing. My needs? I just want everybody else to be happy? I’ll do anything to help. When we haven’t had our needs met as children and even as adult the idea of having needs can be confusing, overwhelming and even disorientating. I know. Having needs can seem scary, panic inducing and fill you with guilt. It’s just awful that you should have any needs at all. What for? Why? Even the question can be unsettling. What do you mean needs? I don’t have any needs. We can get reactionary defensive, dismissive and even aggressive at the very mention of having needs. Having needs is dangerous. Asking for want you want is dangerous. So is it any wonder that maintaining not having needs is a good thing? That maintaining that you don’t have any needs is keeping you safe.

So this blog post is here to simply ask you and to get you to consider what are your needs? What keeps you safe? Even if that means maintaining that you don’t have needs. Depending on the environment that you are in, not having needs could be the best thing for you and your life plan. However is that healthy? Is that really serving you? Right now during a global pandemic our most basic need is threatening. The right to clean air, the right to breath. What would it take for you to be able to breath? What would it take for you to breath deeply? Air is the most basic need we have to remain safe. Is it any wonder the that in this time of global crisis that “I can’t breath” became the rallying cry of a whole generation screaming for the right for their most basic human need to be met. If the right to breath is under threat on a societal basis, what does that look like on the most personal level? Of course “I can’t breath” can be taken to metophorical to. We are being denied the right to expand into ourselves. We are governed by restrictive practices that deny us the right to express our needs. That asking for air is insulting. I just need some air. I just need to take a breath.

Beyond our access to air, water too is a basic right. Yet having access to water too seems a little far fetched at times. Have you got access to clean fresh water? Do you drink water? We have been trained in so many ways to neglect our basic needs. We’ve even been denied direct access to clean fresh flowing water as a result of the capitalist system. Water is now a commondity, it’s not a right. The governments and corporations that are running the world want to keep it that way. In a world where everything has to be paid for access to water can seem daunting especially for the most vulnerable.

Of course your needs may well surpass the right to air and water. You might need a safe place to simply be. A safe space to sleep. In this spaces that we currently occupy that is not necessarily a given. So here it it is. The question again. What are your needs? Can you name them? Is there a list? Can you gain access to the thing that you need? What if they are things that only somebody else can give you? Like love, succour, care? What if your need was just a little bit of tender loving care? We all have needs, no matter how meager or arbitary. What are your needs? They don’t have to be physical. They can be emotional or energetic. One simple act of acknowledgement. Stop hiding from your needs.

The blog post accompanies the Trauma Wise Circle.

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

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The Matrix

kimberleen

Our reality is constructed and the great news is that you are a co-creator in our collective reality. Now a lot of people think that the above statement is indeed bullshit. You are entirely welcome to continue to believe whatever it is that you want to believe. 

What I’m here to ask is is that belief system making you happy? 

To be clear I have no idea what you believe, why you believe it or indeed why that might be important to you? There are lots of reasons as to why we come to certain conclusions in our lives. That are broad, varied and nuanced. They can be everything to do with collective consciousness, impressing your parents, proving you worth or indeed what it is that you need to feel well. If you grew up in a hostile environment, as many of us did, it’s easy to accept that anxiety is normal or self-protective actions are primary. That being financially secure is the primary source of your emotional wellness. All of these beliefs absolutely serve a purpose and if what you believe is working for you, then you are absolutely right and taking the right course of action for you. 

Right now just because you are still reading this is I am asking you to step beyond what you already know, once again. 

I fell out of The Matrix the minute I bought that boat (the one that I was living on in My Lostness) I didn’t know it at the time. I thought it may be the source of a summer adventure not a complete and radical alteration of my understanding of life itself. I had been asleep most of my life and hadn’t fully noticed. I had and an inkling that my dissatisfaction with life itched at. I didn’t see the point of school, often time even books, I wanted to experience life. I had had those moments on holiday, stoned at a festival, post-coitus oxytocin hits. Where the world had been sublime and it felt like I was living life chasing those hits. Like the girl in the red dress. 

Life on a boat for a year change that entirely every day was like being in a blissed-out connective state. The boat moved with the tide. The tide moved with the ocean and the ocean moves with the moon, The moon moved with the seasons and the seasons change with the  orbit of the sun. We all know this. It’s all standard geography 101. Few of us have experienced it. Even though we live on planet Earth. These are the deep underpinnings of earthly existence long before humans ever turned up. The cycles seem to be to focus on our earliest worship beyond our daily water gathering rituals. So much of what we are deeply connected to has been forgotten. Overlooked as we starred at progress and lost sight of the real balance and wisdom that are Earthly presence has to offer. 

Progress as The Great Pause is teaching us has enforced our disconnection which goes against human programming. We are wired for connection beyond the digital. 

This article has been written to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle

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Feral

kimberleen

I’m fairly confident that I have not written about this before. I’ve got no idea why, given that its’ been burning though my brain as an idea ever since forever ago. Like alot of the ideas I have. Anyways I’m really excited about this one. Let me say this very clearly, I am feral. I don’t belong in the system and my natural environment has been destroyed and well it’s left me somewaht untameable. That might be how you youd describe me if I was an animal, and then of course I am. Human’s are animals, we certainly seem to follow our worst impulses a lot of the time (that will be the trauma). And yes most of live very far outside the confines of our natural envirnoment, most of us don’t even have access to a natural water source these days, especially if we live in cities. We are forced to drink chlorine for our own good.

You see I got a bit pissed of with all these re-wilding wild women posts, projects and groups that seemed to need a matching head dress to go with you mass produced slave labour arm bands in order to feel free. What true wild human have you met that has a warddrobe of accesories that are weather essentials? Anyways I should probably stay quiet here. My bad attitude hardwire is being to shine through after a rather intesne week. That’s my problem that is why I might describe my self as feral. I don’t fit into the system, in fact it terrifies me that so many people do. I’m literally lost as to how people keep together such a distinct and fuck-up socital lie. Except of course for paychecks. That’s how. Would anybody like to talk abour corruption? We are courrupt. Remember you can’t eat money? Universal enslavement has been a thing for a while now. As I’m sure any Marx theorist will tell you. So yeah I called bullshit on the system a long time ago. I didnt’ like it going in and I’ve broken the heels of all the pretty shoes I have doing the best I can to stay out. In fact I’ve nearly destroyed myself to be non-complict in the system’s anti-human ways. So yes fuck the system. Fuck the system hard.

It’s not very productive though is it? So I’ll internalise capitalism and keep on writing. So if you are disruptor an interested in Personal Activism and Systemic Healing you can sign up to join the Feral Systemic Healing Circle which convenes on or around every new moon of 2021.

If you have enjoyed reading this article you can donate here or check out my shop for services.

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Minimalism, Essentialism & Necessity

kimberleen

This feels like uncharted territory. 

This came to me at the beginning of the year after packing up my home and all my possessions again. This time I’d leveled up bringing all the stuff that I had back in a 35 kg rather than the standard 25kg. I had also lost my nail scissors to airport security and agonised over buying a new pair because well I hate having to buy new things even though my nails and my heart felt as ragged as an old rusty saw. I’ve moved somewhere in the proximity of over 30 times since I was 18. Living out of a bag seems to be what I do. I don’t buy things unless I absolutely have too or unless I accidentally splurge. There’s a clarity to having very little and a depth of character that comes with it. I often don’t present myself in the way that I would like because that would take a hair dryer, a mirror and well a much deeper commitment to a personal aesthetic than circumstances might allow. Yet objects and aesthetics enthrall me. Which leads me to the ever pervasive question; Are you lead by your spirit or your wound? 

You see you’d be amazed by how little you can get by without. At its most extreme even fresh water, having lived on a boat and survived a three year water shortage in Cape Town.  Even the most essential items can be reduced greatly when we live in extreme times. Messy buns are an accepted fashion necessity of these times that have become hallmark. How many of you can happily go two weeks without washing your hair? You know what the most important thing to master about such situations is attitude. I honestly believe that complaining is one of the most useless things in the world. Yet I do hold on to the right to have a monster trauma response. Especially given that my essential right to life was infringed upon this week by two particularly unconscious characters. 

Beyond this the idea of minimalism, essentialism and necessity  were presented to me last year by Lifestyle Business owner as ideologies for living. To be honest as far as I am concerned minimalism is nothing more than an aesthetic expression of clarity. What ever you don’t need is surplus to requirements. Essentialism, it’s a bizarre idea. What is it that you actually need? Which changes endlessly in response to almost any given situation.  Do you have the ability to manifest as you go? I can tell you I have lost, gathered, manifested, gifted and distributed so many essential items on the road less travelled by, that it may well be the reason that I have seriously begun to consider magic as a path of the faithful. Only yesterday I was digitally gifted some bluebells from South Africa, which could only be magic right? Necessity they say is the mother of all invention. I have to say that I agree. Some of my most favoured things have often been macgyvered.  I’m far more attached to the human heart that fashioned something for my benefit and everybody else’s, rather than for the higher aspiration of aesthetic values. 

You see this is really a question of your procurement policy? Have you thought about the stuff you buy how it impacts you and others? Do you believe that there is enough? Do you hold onto things longer than you have to? As much as these questions are about how we live and survive in the 3D physical world and where our focus should be on the products we buy, it is also asking for  higher understanding of how we manifest our lives. Recently I’ve been learning in Sangomic traditions that when something is broken it means that all the bad luck is done. That they don’t mourn the loss of objects they celebrate them. That their purpose has been fulfilled like a christmas tree wish. It’s an interesting way to look at things, even human life. 

If you’ve enjoyed this blog post you can donate here https://ko-fi.com/thelifedoula

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Generational Questions for a New Age.

kimberleen

IMG-8166
Wow I just realised Generationl = Gene Rational

I have to admit that when I set out this heading I was more focused on a climate emergency, than a global pandemic or indeed the continuing questions of decolonisation that systemic trauma is always posing.

Yes WTF? I was taking a very privileged stance as they might say. My privilege affords me the right to take a ‘wider view’ to consider the big questions. Do you know why? Because I don’t live my life in abject terror on most days. Fight, flight does stuff to your brain. It’s called trauma.

Yet at the same time, I’m still interested in root cause, you see. The root cause is trauma and trauma in my experience is largely systemic. For me trauma is the question of our generation. That is why I’m always talking about it. It affects everything and my hashtags might teach you.

The earth is not the issue, a global pandemic is not the issue, nor is race. It’s the way that we relate to each other and the world at large that needs to change. It’s why I am interested in the oppressor. I’m interested in a deep examination of self. How to use that personal power to fall out of the system, redirect my attention and create the new.

Systemic oppression is complicated if you are witnessing it through the lens of trauma. We’ve been taught to believe that feelings don’t matter. That only objective facts matter. Except objective facts aren’t human or humane. This is an inherited tool of oppression. It’s been passed down through the generations. It’s one of many. If we don’t care how people feel we don’t care about people.

It’s for that reason that the killing of George Floyd is so powerful it’s an objective fact that he was murdered on film by an organisation that is intended to protect him. We can’t argue with it. It’s truth. Yet at the same time, we aren’t taking the same heed of what ‘isn’t’ happening in the UK, Israel, The Yemen, Brazil or even South Africa. Our social media is biased, or news platforms limited. We are all bound up in systems of oppression. We are all oppressed. That is what the powers that be don’t want you to know. It’s divide and rule all the way.

We need to come together to debase systemic abuse on all fronts, on all levels, in all nations. That until we take control of our own trauma it’s almost impossible to take care of the people we need to help most. I’m ready to be torn down in flames over this. Fuck like really. Decolonisation work is scary. The reason that it is scary is because there is so much trauma involved.  You say the wrong thing you hit a nerve and a whole situation explodes. I’ve been there. I’ve been there plenty and still, I need to learn more so I have to ask more questions. Read more books and wonder what is actually going on. Really it’s trauma. The questions that we need to ask is how is our trauma preventing us from acting?

In recent months I have come to a conclusion, even though I’m writing now, even though I am centralising myself and even though I don’t understand everything and I will never get it all right. Oppressors need to be quiet. Unless of course, we are speaking to oppressors about oppression. We need to be able to hold space for the oppressed. We need to do some deep listening if anything is going to change.

The challenge that we face is that we seem to think that emotions aren’t’ real. That rage isn’t justified. Everybody’s rage is justified and it’s the result of not being heard. Black Lives Matter.