complacency. the thing about complacency is that it’s insidious.

it’s like growing up in a hoarders home never knowing that clutterlessness exists, much less that we can have the freedom it would bring. so we get older and attract other hoarders to confirm our worldview. we move out and fill our space with stuff and stuff and more stuff and we stand in the one tiny piece of floorspace we have and declare, with shoulders approaching our ears, ‘this is life’.

it’s not life.

it’s entrapment.

and it takes a towering pile of broken knick-knacks to come crashing down on our faces for us to understand ‘this is fucking painful’.

lying flat on our backs, in heaving tears and covered in so much junk we don’t even know where to begin – that’s the most clear we’ve been yet.

for me, the first of those moments came when i knew i had to end my relationship.

i couldn’t for the life of me figure out where i began and he ended. did my depression have to do with his? for all my fierce independence, i couldn’t understand why i was so simultaneously confused about how enmeshed we were. could i disentangle myself simply with more non-violent communication, with more awareness, with more knowledge from the self-help section of the library, with him seeking therapy, too?

i tried to figure this out for weeks, and then one day it hit me: the only way i am going to know for sure is if i leave.

so that’s what i did.

i didn’t learn how to really allow myself to cry until months later, but the emotional upheaval was devastating, nonetheless. and yet, entwined with this feeling was one of pure freedom.

freedom is an interesting word because there are a million contradictory ways of defining it, depending on where you’re standing.

to a hoarder, freedom might be buying whatever they want in whatever quantity they want.
to a corporate person, freedom might be making more money so they can afford the holiday or house they really want.
to a drifter, freedom might be travelling without a plan, on impulse.
to a mother, freedom might be staying at home with the kids. or it might be getting out and working. or travelling across europe with toddlers in tow, or moving to iceland, who knows?

a friend of mine works in the public service. he’s got about as steady a job as you can get these days, he still lives with his parents and he’s saving up to retire at 35. i used to want to argue with him. ‘why don’t you just do those things you’re waiting for now?!’ i can’t remember what he said to that, probably because i was only listening to myself. the truth is, what the fuck do i know about what constitutes freedom for him?

freedom is the ability to choose the best path for yourself and then act on it.

which is exactly what he’s doing. maybe no metaphorical piles of junk will topple onto him and he will be spared that pain. i know that whatever happens will be right for him.

my personal definition of freedom, however, is different:

freedom is aliveness. it’s being embodied. it’s being powerfully clear on what i want and how to get there. it’s being open to the depth of human flaw and courageous enough to be honest about it. freedom is growth and truth and love beyond what i thought was possible. it is the ability to forgive and the humility to let people in. it is the feeling i get when i just did something i didn’t even know existed last week. freedom is plunging headlong into this one messy life and knowing it’ll be great anyway.

i was inspired to write this post by a passionately-made documentary about complacency called ‘i’m fine, thanks‘. the 5 folks who made it are raising money on kickstarter to recoup the money they personally invested in it, and to get it produced and out there. i’m thrilled to share the trailer with you, which was released yesterday.

i did all the things that were expected of me… at the expense of my dreams.

check out ‘i’m fine, thanks’, “a collection of stories about life, the choices we all make, and the paths we ultimately decide to follow”.
and pledge, if you believe in it.

okay. so let me ask you,

what’s your definition of freedom?

i do this thing where i pretend that i am fine.

pretend that i’m ‘being optimistic’ and thinking positively

when there is nothing wrong with negative thinking if i’m telling and feeling the truth about it and loving myself enough to let me break down anyway.

instead i will use my pretending powers for good, and imagine these magnificent women are singing to me, because this is what i need to hear today. and maybe get my head out of my butt enough to stop sucking it up alone, and actually ask the magnificent women in my life for a hug instead of just eating ice cream for breakfast.

“i don’t know nothing except change will come”

patty griffin and melissa etheridge – when it don’t come easy

Don’t just follow your dreams. You may lose them at a red light, or while wandering the trailways of transformation. Better yet, ingest and embody them, make them indistinguishable from you. Weave your most wondrous imaginings into the breath of your being.

~ jeff brown, soulshaping.com

I have been thinking a lot about what my calling is. Deep down, I know I’m supposed to do something important (though not necessarily massive), something that means something. Something I’m not doing right now. I’m being called to grow.

I know I am riveted by how people work. What do we feel? What do we have in common? How do we heal? What’s underneath? And then underneath that? And then underneath that?

I know I am drawn to people who are crying because it seems like the most beautiful thing in the world to me. To be let in, to see that depth of truth in them, and the deeper the truth is, the more vulnerable it’s going to look.

I am drawn to film and art that moves me deeply. But what fascinates me more than anything is being with this feeling person. It is not edited and produced and acted and formed, it is raw truth. The rawest of truths.

When I am with this person who is breaking down, everything else falls away and I am not simply a voyeur, I am a participant in this energetic dynamic that means something. It changes and grows and challenges me. To be present with their feeling without trying to argue with it, keep it down, force it to be better already or in some other way invalidate it, I need to unconditionally accept that feeling in me, too.

It is truth plus connection. And actually, this means everything.

We are not here to be merely materially satisfied, and what else is there but connection? What else is there but love?

So I studied counselling, because that was the only way I knew to experience this deep-heart-to-deep-heart-ness.

But I do not want to be a counsellor. I want more freedom. In counselling there are rules. In counselling there is an unavoidable inequality which says to the client, ‘I know more than you about how you should heal. I am your guide. Follow me.’

No matter how adamant they are that the client is there to heal themselves, it is there in the very fabric of the relationship.

I thought I just needed to branch out to achieve the freedom I wanted. To be some kind of intuitive healer or coach. To incorporate oracle card readings and energy healing and art therapy and whatever else seemed relevant to this particular person at this particular time. I deepened my intuitive study and delved into bioenergetics, psychic ability, achetypes, women’s wisdom, sexuality, and god knows what else.

I understood that being a healer did not mean that I healed the person.

But being a healer or guide just kept feeling wrong to me. Every time I did a session with someone, even though I felt useful and glad that I was useful, I felt drained and utterly trapped when I thought about doing it as a profession.

And now I understand why.

I want to be on equal ground with the person I am with. Being a healer would never feel free to me because it is a one-sided relationship. My stories and experience were not really welcome there. And the stories they shared with me would always be coloured by the inequality between us, by the fact that they know nothing about me and my deep pain and truth. Of course their shields are up to some extent, given that they are going ‘there’ and I am not ever going ‘there’ with them, and those shields should be up.

Every time I told my own counsellor something that I hadn’t admitted to anyone else before because I was too ashamed, I felt uneasy. Not in a good, comfort-zone-expanding way, but in a tense, this-is-just-not-safe way.

This only happened a couple of times, and I am a pretty courageously honest person, so it doesn’t suprise me that people can have therapy for years and never ‘get anywhere’. On the other hand, everything I had already accepted in myself that I shared with her felt like a healthy way of getting to the bottom of things with another smart person.

The problem is that those places of deep, deep shame are the places we need company the most. We need a friend, a peer, a person who is willing to show us that they are wading around in just as much life-mud as we are, so that we can know that we’re not completely, inherently fucked-up, and if we are, at least we are not alone. Then we can use our energy to figure out what to do about it, instead of using it to keep the lid on tight so no one ever suspects – which happens without us even realising it.

I am not at all saying that the counselling and healing professions are useless, because they are absolutely not. I am saying that I have a different vision.

Let us all be healers. Let us all be honest about being deep in life-mud. Let us heal our friends and family and each other through honesty. Healing is simply telling the truth to someone who says, ‘Me too, I’m with you,’ and means it enough that you feel it in your bones. And let’s remember that not everyone can handle the privilege of our truth so let’s be instinctual about who we share it with.

I came across a piece of writing this morning about fiction and non-fiction.

When I think of myself as a healer who tells stories I get stuck. I’m trying to make something happen. I’m trying to teach you something.

When I think of myself as a storyteller who heals, I get stuck, too. I’m trying to craft an ending. I have a message to convey and I want you to hear it.

When I think of myself as a person who tells the truth, my body relaxes. I feel free and I know exactly what to do.

I have been so intent on defining myself as a person who knows stuff and who can help you.

There is such safety in being a counsellor or a healer or a coach. I can put the emphasis on you. I can feel important and clever when I know things that you don’t. I can be thought of as a kind and generous person for being in a therapeutic profession. I can sit there with you, with important parts of my heart closed off, while you squirm in opening yours to me, and tell myself that the part of me that feels satisfyingly superior doesn’t exist. I can write things that tell you what to do, how you should think and feel and behave, for your own good.

I finally understand what my intuition has been telling me: all of that feels like SHIT and I don’t want to do it anymore.

I have tried not to, and I have been improving, but I have still been attached to ‘healing you’ because I have not been clear on what to do instead of that.

Because how am I supposed to make a living telling my own truth? Isn’t that just incredibly self-indulgent? Who on earth would want to read my ramblings about life?

And then I come across products or posts or books like ’30 days to self-love’ and I cringe inside because there is no person to connect with there, there’s just a bunch of dot points and loud text. I watch shows like ‘Girls‘ and my heart sings with real greater self-love because Lena Dunham, the writer, isn’t trying to teach shit, she’s just telling her stories and I relate to them. They are funny, they are painful, and they are incredibly entertaining.

The thing about my truth is that I, naturally and without trying, do everything I possibly can to deepen my relationship with myself, listen more closely to my intuition and be more loving to myself and to others. I’m addicted to this because it’s all working. I take my feelings way more seriously, I have more fun, I have better relationships with everyone in my life and I believe in myself more than I ever have before.

I’m supposed to share this, not to teach you, but to share me.

I am here to invite you into my life.

And I am letting go of trying to heal you or teach you or do anything other than that.

When I was younger, I judged people who sang heartfelt love songs.

Especially the really painfully heartfelt ones, the ones that got right to heart of feeling rejected, of pining, of unrequited love.

I thought they were giving themselves up, giving their power away. I thought they didn’t realise how weak they were being, and didn’t they know they could move on? ‘Just move on,’ I thought. ‘Don’t you realise how pathetic this is?’ But I was still compelled by their total vulnerability.

I liked to think that I had the upper hand in my relationships, although I wouldn’t have wanted to admit that to myself. I still don’t like to admit this to myself, because I’m sure I still do it to some degree. The only people I would ask out on a date were the ones where I didn’t really care if they said yes or no. That was scary enough for me.

Really, what was happening was that I was keeping a part of my heart closed off for protection. That’s not an upper hand. That’s hardening, and it hurts.

I have fallen in love with three men before. I don’t say ‘three times’ because the feelings haven’t ever gone away.

(This would have come as a pleasant shock to fifteen year-old me, who was convinced that she would die an old, alone virgin, and that that one horrible kiss in the dark the year before from that boy she’d known for five minutes was the best it would get for her.)

I am constantly amazed by the sheer strength of love, that it can pierce through hardness and take root, even through the most doubting minds, and my mind was very doubtful. I did a lot of rolling my eyes about love, even while floating about in the midst of it.

My independence was extreme.

What I thought was me meeting my own needs was really me doing my best to shut people out because it was too scary to let them in.

And what of my needs for holding, support, consoling? I rarely asked. My own mother never knew I ever felt depressed until several months ago, that’s how strong my persona has been.

I would not allow myself to feel rejected, disappointed, or any sort of hurt in response to someone else. I did my best to force myself not to care because that would make them more important than me, because I didn’t want to be a victim, because I never ever wanted to feel that someone else had the power to make me feel like that.

Except. This meant I was doing to myself what I feared they would do to me. I was rejecting my feelings, so those disowned parts of myself controlled me.

I thought that unless I was fine, I was not loving myself.

There was zero space for me to feel disappointed because someone cancelled on me and love myself at the same time. I would not allow feelings of deep craving for company because I thought that meant I was not loving myself. I could not admit to wanting to be with someone if they didn’t want to be with me because I thought that could not happen while loving myself.

The thing about love is that it unconditionally accepts all wants and feelings, so me loving myself means claiming them all as mine.

This is what it really means to be on my side and to not give myself up.

Yes, I feel sad and nostalgic because you’re not in my life anymore.
Yes, I still miss you sometimes.
Yes, when I think of you I want to cry because I’m not in your arms.
Yes, I love you with all my heart even though you’re not with me and that is a wondrous sort of ache.

And now, I want to be the one singing wholehearted songs about aching sorrow, loneliness and hurting hearts, not as a way of giving my power away, but as a way of reclaiming it.

Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait, and wait without anxiety.

~ A Course in Miracles

Perhaps it is no secret that I am wanting more of this, here, now – whatever this is that you are experiencing as you read these words. More transparency, more acceptance, more connection, more gentle, courageous reflection and revelation.

A part of me is trying very hard to mold these qualities into something. Something Important. Something Productive. Something Tangible. Something that will hopefully hopefully one day pay the bills.

It’s in the molding that I get stuck.

Because my soul wants to feel free.

I have run from relationships, jobs, and courses all to get that sweet relief of my life back. And I’m running from the smaller things, too. The family obligation. The deadline I set for myself. The pile of dirty dishes by the sink and the box of junk by the door I haven’t sorted yet. I am running from every single should in this moment right now, away from all those things that threaten to confine me.

After I have let go of everything I do not want, my true commitments are revealed in the things that I become without trying.

Perhaps I am not running away, but heading towards, dropping more of the unmeaningful with each step.

And I am already living my dream, unless I decide to confine it into boxes sorted in scales of acclaim and product and objective value.

All I want is to tell true stories, to give more of myself than I think I can. I want to connect with that part in you that, like mine, is always yearning for kinship and understanding. I want to remember what I’m here for, and maybe to help remind you what you’re here for, too.

All I want is to be with me and for me, and through that, to be with you and for you, too.

Not just here, but everywhere.

Something in me is rallying against the idea that writing or speaking my stories here is any more important, meaningful or valuable than speaking honestly with a friend or writing my words down in my journal for-my-eyes-only. Self-expression is a balm that heals and fulfills me unless I block it because it doesn’t have the cultural stamp of external approval.

What if my life doesn’t need to be chopped into pieces – love, work, play, art, health, family – what if it is all one piece because I am one person with one life and one heart? I keep reaching for the knife even though those qualities my heart wants are not different depending on the category I believe I am standing in.

What if there are no categories, only qualities?

Honesty. Courage. Acceptance.

Those are my signposts.

If I am already there, why am I in such a rush?

I’m still recovering from post-natal depression.

It was the most deeply painful experience of my life, and even though I’m on my way out of it now, it still completely crumples me sometimes and at those times I find I have more healing – more feeling into it – to do.

I used to consider myself a ‘strong’ person in the sense that things other people might have found painful didn’t bother me so much. Or so I thought. There is a difference between suppression and freedom. This was suppression, and it meant that I was piling pain upon pain in a small, shut-away room in my heart, and on the surface, I was only conscious of the unease and sense of disconnection.

I remember in one of my counselling classes, which were always quite small and intimate, when it was my turn to share I was all set to talk about my relationship with my daughter and with motherhood from a cool, rational place. I began speaking and then unexpected tears came, and before I knew it, I was a blubbering mess, heaving and snorting in front of these people I didn’t know particularly well. I felt utterly ashamed, but also, (and only in hindsight) it was comforting to know that my soul would not tolerate me keeping this inside any longer, that it would keep pushing me into healing, despite my conscious mind wanting to keep it locked away so I would have some semblance of my status quo.

One of the most difficult things I am learning is to be on my side. To be on the side of how I feel and what I need, instead of on the side of what my inner critic is telling me about ‘what people think’, which keeps me in feeling shame instead of the root of the pain, keeps me disconnected from what is going on underneath.

I had my daughter unexpectedly when I was 21 to a man I had been dating for three months.

I had plans, you know? I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. But in my idealism, I thought I would be able to do it all anyway and to smile through the whole thing.

Instead I was thrust into the deepest despair and disconnection I have ever felt. There was flailing and falling and a refusal to admit to myself what was going on.

A couple of months ago I felt into it so deeply that I didn’t leave the house for a few days, and most of that time was spent crying and meditating and writing and painting and sleeping. I let myself break down and I came out on the other side with a renewed sense of freedom and love.

And then, through many tears, I wrote a piece about post-natal depression and my motherhood journey, packed with the charge of what I had just experienced.

My dear friend Yael Saar, who I so wish I had known in those early years of PND, is dedicated to helping liberate mothers from their self-judgement and the pain that comes from that. She has shared my piece – a letter to my daughter – on her blog.

You don’t need to know anything about post-natal depression or motherhood to get something out of this. It’s about fear. It’s about the willingness to admit to ourselves those things we are desperately running away from owning, and what happens when we finally stop hiding.

Here it is: Letting myself hate you let me love you.

If you are a mother and would like to connect in a safe sisterhood space for support, encouragement and solidarity, Yael runs a Mama’s Comfort Camp group on Facebook – a free, private, online place for just these things. You can find out more about Mama’s Comfort Camp here, and you can request to join the group here.

xo

I’ve been experimenting with fear lately.

In my video ‘Being willing to be a bit creatively shit‘ I spoke about wanting to share my process of expanding my comfort zone, particularly the uncomfortable bits. It’s the uncomfortable bits that keep us small, keep us quiet, keep us unable to move towards what we want. We pretend they don’t exist and in this way, they control us.

I don’t know about you, but in the past I didn’t fully understand how universal this is, and how profound it is to know, deeply, that I am not alone with my discomfort and anxiety and nerves. My intention is to help you understand this more deeply, by sharing those pieces of myself, not just from the safe distance of writing, but in video.

In this one, I talk you through playing a song on my guitar (filled with nerves!), and muse on how we’re all expanding, on the healing and growth in being transparent, on getting out of the way of ourselves, on slowing down and taking leaps of faith.

Here’s the video.

I believe in miracles. I am not naive.

My feet are firmly planted on the same earth as everyone else. I still gotta buy the milk and the bread, still gotta dance with Time and Not-Enough and That’s-Impossible.

I am bigger than I think. I am made of the same stuff as the stars, it’s scientifically proven. Science and mysticism is merging and society is not keeping up. Falling into science is the same meeting of the divine as falling into mysticism – you go too far and people start calling you a wack-job.

Society is not keeping up.

Society is in pain. Society is medicated, depressed. Cashed up but deprived. Isolated. Disconnected.

Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually hurting.

Society is fighting what would heal it.

We want to feel connected but we resist the idea that connection is right in front of us for the taking. We want freedom, but we cling to the labelled boxes we built for ourselves like our life depends on it. We want love, but we distrust it with all our might.

Don’t get your hopes up, get real, keep your head out of the clouds.

If I let myself soar I have further to fall.

Except that I’m always falling anyway.

There is a reason they call the divine ‘the source’. It is my source. It turns me into a source, instead of a taker. It turns my neediness into giving. It turns my despair into faith. It turns my shitty day into a loving reminder, my good day into a radiant never-ending moment of possibility.

If I am open to that.

You gotta be open.

My willingness to be open is the birthplace of every love, joy, relief and act of courage I have ever experienced.

I believe in miracles. I am not naive. I am just willing to name what you have been craving but don’t want to fully admit. Because we all want to feel beautiful, in flow, in love with life.

I don’t care what you call it. This is bigger than words. This is about the times you aren’t fighting yourself. The times you trust yourself completely. The times you feel bigger, greater than the you you thought yourself to be.

The times you feel free and accepted to be who you are.

I see the beautiful, brilliant divinity in you and I am not blinded by love, I am magnified by it.

Dearest, if you felt this, please share it. ♥