If the past 2 years have taught me anything, itâs the art of giving up hope.
Itâs about a human as it gets to dream, to wish, to imagine, to long for, to crave, to seek after something or someone to fulfil our wants, needs and desires.
Now, I fully believe in following the path of desire. I have absolutely no interest in sitting here and telling you Iâm a desire-less puritan â quite the opposite. Iâm full of unmet needs and aching yearnings.
However, I am going to try and communicate with you the importance of giving up hope...
Giving up hope doesnât mean becoming hopeless, or admitting defeat, or becoming a lost cause.
Not at all.
What Iâm talking about is giving up hope as an act of surrender.
So long as we hope, we project outwards onto the world, onto others, and unknowingly give our power away to ideas, concepts, and people. We make them, the other, something or someone outside of ourselves and outside of our control responsible for our individual happiness...
Letâs take a look at one very relatable example:
So, like many of us, I spent much of my time at the beginning of 2020 âhopingâ that the pandemic would all be over in a few weeks. I begged and bargained with the powers that be to make my lockdown misery end and clung desperately to hope. We all know this story too wellâŠ
Did it end?
Did it fuck.
Every few weeks âtheyâ would announce yet another indeterminable amount of time stuck in the prisons we called home.
My dreams of freedom were crushed, over and over again, until eventually â I gave up hope.
I remember thinking, âalright, I get it, screw this, I give upâŠâ and I surrendered to the now. I stopped trying to fight reality with the idea of freedom I had constructed inside my mind in order to try and cope with the current situation.
I canât tell you how many times Iâve done this in my relationships (Iâm the fucking Queen of projection - such a powerful imagination⊠).
I was either too busy clinging to a version of a person I was hoping theyâd turn out to be â or clinging to a situation, scenario or concept of what I hoped relationships could be like â to see what was right in front of me all along.
The grass was ALWAYS greener, or at least I hoped it would beâŠ
The trouble with perpetual un-fulfilment, AKA addiction, AKA the human condition, is that weâre so damn distracted looking for the cure to our pain, hoping itâll be in the next dopamine hit, that we are literally blind to the abundant nature of reality screaming out for our attention.
Thereâs a saying, right: âyou wouldnât know it, even if it hit you the faceâŠâ
When it comes to love, this has certainly been true for me.
Not only are we blinded by our past conditioning and traumas, but even when we begin to see the love, joy, pleasure, freedom, safety or belonging thatâs right in front of us, weâre so fucking terrified to receive it and let it in that we subconsciously sabotage, resist, deny, reject and continue to fulfil the age-old narrative that âweâre just not good enoughâ or âwe donât deserve itâ ⊠or, if youâve got an extra sneaky-smart psyche âitâs just not good enough for me!â ⊠and off we go again, demanding more, more, moreâŠ
Of all the things, situations, and people, Iâve hoped for in my life, the moment I gave up hope and surrendered to the pain of my reality, thatâs where true liberation was found.
The trouble is, we arenât all well equipped or ready to fully feel the depths of the pain that giving up hope brings. Itâs scary AF. Especially if we canât yet see whatâs right in front of us. So instead, we fight, we run, we freeze, we appease. We spend every waking moment of our lives looking for the next get-out of feeling the pain from our past.
Thereâs that other saying: âyou donât know what youâve got till itâs goneâ - classic. I bet you can relate to that one as well.
It was painful for me to give up on my hopes in relationships. So painful, that Iâve often stayed in alternatively slightly less painful relationships, substituting one pain for another, because facing the pain underneath of the thing I was masking was deeply terrifying â like, chilled-me-to-the-core kind of terrifying. So much so, my mind had created all sorts of elaborate tales about my unworthiness and lack of deservingness to protect me from experiencing that kind of pain ever again. And the masochist in me was indeed thriving.
It was too painful to give up hope, I needed it. I dug my claws in and I refused to let go. Because giving up hope, surrendering to what is real and present right now, meant having to acknowledge and grieve what I was never given but rightfully deserved. Weâre talking, of course, about childhood wounds. The pain of that betrayal, the loss of love, care and nurturing from the adults in my life that were âsupposedâ to care about me was truly heart breaking. Not only this, I felt just as terrified to receive it. I could not trust it that it would not come at a cost of more pain and suffering â just in another form â so why risk it?
I didnât want to be alone - I couldnât bare re-experiencing the pain of my loneliness and isolation. I didnât want to be close - I couldnât bare re-experiencing the pain of risking abandonment, rejection and neglect.
Oh, my sweet, agonising, disorganised attachment injury. Forever caught in a double-bind. âCanât live with it, canât live without itâ â thereâs another one for ya.
Truly, the only invitation I have for you here if you relate at all to these experiences, is please â give up hope.
Gently, slowly, with compassion and acceptance, feel your pain.
Hold yourself tenderly, allow your heart to break open. Soften your breath, your body, feel your feet on the ground. Release your tears, cry, scream, wail, rage, punch, roar â drop deep into the depths of your pain with such loving awareness for the universal experience of how painful it is to be a human being on this tortured planet.
You are not alone.
For I assure you, what awaits the other side is a freedom, a bliss, an ecstasy more real than any hope.
Nothing can prepare you for death, except perhaps death itself.
Though the truth of our impermanent forms my be difficult to swallow, I do believe our ability to take it a little more seriously will indeed liberate us.
If only we lived each day remembering how temporary and fleeting each moment is - these mystical, never to be seen again, one of a kind, perfect moments in all their pain and glory - tiny nuggets of pure aliveness itself.
Someday, you and I will cease to exist, and then whatâs left? Regret? For all the times we spent impatiently wishing our time away, forever in a hurry, waiting for life to begin, anticipating a future that will, inevitably, never arrive.
All we have is now. This moment is all that there is, not then, not when, right now.
Whilst our bodies and minds might be stuck in the past, frozen in fear, crippled with anxiety and lifetimes of trauma as we subconsciously recreate the pain of our old stories over and over again, there is still something so bright and beautiful inside of you waiting to emerge.
Who were you before all that shit happened to you?
You have forgotten your true essence...
It might hurt a little as you try to remember a time long ago when all you were was innocence, curiosity and joy. This memory might be buried so deep it feels almost impossible to recall.
I assure you, difficult as it may be to remember, you are that. At the core, you were indeed born into this world as nothing but a reflection of pure love itself.
You are not the stories of pain, suffering, rejection, abandonment, unworthiness, neglect, resentment, fear or rage that you have been led to believe you are.Â
Underneath it all, behind all the masks and armour that you wear is something so precious and magnificent - else why would you be fighting so hard to protect it with such elaborate costumes and layer upon layer of thick, heavy, defense?
You are sacred.
You are golden.
Though it may pain you to admit, it may be so unbearable to acknowledge that something so special, so beautiful, so divine could have been so cruelly treated, it is only by giving yourself permission to feel this betrayal, this injustice, this grief, that you shall light the fire within your being and allow the fury of those flames inside of you to rage, burning through the lies, the deceit and the treachery of all that has came before, reclaiming your power, taking whatâs rightfully yours - your birthright to love, safety and belonging - restoring your wholeness and returning you to your original essence.
Do not be afraid of your anger, your resentment, your judgement, your jealousy, your shame, your sadness or your heartbreak. Separate these emotions from the actions or harm you fear they may cause.
Honour them, follow them, for they are your greatest teachers.
These cracks in your heart are the only way in which that light inside of you will ever break through.
Opening your heart is both terrifying and painful, but for those courageous enough to follow its path will surely be rewarded.
For once you are truly cracked wide open, blown apart by that fierce love inside of you because you can no longer stand the lies and the truth in you is too powerful to be contained, it will certainly hurt like hell.
And yet, in its wake, all that remains is the infinite ecstasy of that very same love inside of you as it showers down from the heavens above.
So remember, you are dying - donât forget to live.
Some of you are telling me: âNon-binary or Trans Gender? Whatâs the point? I canât be bothered with all that. Weâre all just souls living in human bodies having an experience. Your soul is genderless, your soul is love, your soul doesnât have an identity â why do you need a label so badly?â
This is spiritual bypassing.
Letâs take a look deeperâŠ
Iâm sure you will agree that you, as a person who is not me, does not get to tell me how or what my experience of this lifetime should be like, and vice versa.Â
If you ever catch yourself doing this, this my friend, is your privilege talking and you should likely check it before you cause any more unintentional harm.
What you are forgetting dear, is that I am not just a soul, and neither are you. We are also human, having an experience, all of us having a different experience. We are both human, and divine.
As divinity â yes â we are one. But as a human being, we are most certainly not one, and our separateness and differences are what makes us able to sit here having this conversation.
Sure, weâd all love to be able to âtranscendâ our differences â what a perfect world that would be. Unfortunately, concepts like gender, race and ability are deeply engrained in our society and with these constructed systems of oppression and internalised beliefs that we can not simply transcend these identities, and most certainly not by denying our differences. We must unravel, understand, deconstruct and dismantle these systems of oppression, together.
None of us are free until we are all free.
Itâs ok if you âdonât get itâ ⊠you came here to earth to learn, so letâs educate ourselvesâŠ
In the human world, gender is a social construct made of 3 parts:
The gender you were assigned at birth based on your genitals
Your gender expression â how you âlookâ to the outside world
Your gender identity â how you âfeelâ in your inside world
âSexâ and âGenderâ are two very different things.
âSexâ â eggs or sperm â is biological and has NOTHING to do with gender. In fact, for those folk born intersex, even this is biological binary is useless in the Gender debate.
âGenderâ on the other hand is something that has been created by human beings to identify the norms and ideals of a particular set of qualities or traits that the Male and Female âshouldâ be. Binary gender tells us what society thinks is ânormalâ or âpreferableâ.
For example: Females wear pink, Males wear blue. Females are submissive, Males are dominant. Females are gentle, Males are strong. Females are emotional, Males are rational.
If I were to sit here and write down a list of the things that are âfeminineâ and âmasculineâ itâs highly likely none of you would fit exactly neatly into one of those categories.
Considering we live in a capitalist, patriarchal society, our âidealsâ about what gender is supposed to look like is quite fucked up.
So, what does that mean for you and your gender identity? Or your gender expression? Are you simply non-existent because you are neither one nor the other?
No, itâs a spectrum. You sit somewhere along that spectrum and likely will move along it in all directions throughout your life.
Now, can we finally agree that gender is a spectrum?
You are entitled your opinion, to your experience of the world, but you cannot deny others theirs. For some more than others, their experience of gender is fluid and powerful.
They/Them, Non-binary, Gender Non-Conforming and Trans folk are all human beings just like you living their very real and often extremely difficult lives because some people in this world want to erase their experience of life simply because they donât subscribe to societies binary norms.
You do not know, and can not make any assumptions, about a personâs internal experience of gender based on their external expression of gender.
This is why pronouns are important.
If you guess and make an assumption, you will likely be causing much harm to that individual.
If you are personally âof the normâ or if your gender identity and expression matches the one you were assigned at birth â this is a privilege, a fucking massive one. One that you â if you truly have such a heart that you say you are âliving fromâ â would be using that privilege to allow and support those less privileged than you to live a safe, fulfilling, empowered and loving life.
The spectrum of gender expression and identity is vast, and beautiful, and magical â why would you want to erase this? Another personâs identity and expression does not threaten yours. You still get to keep whatever binary identity you like, just make a little space for others in this world who donât fit those boxes...
You, as either human or divine, do not get to dictate or deny others of their human experience.
âNever forget that justice is what love looks like in publicâ - Cornel West
It recently became clear to me that the most rebellious thing we can do in this world is love.
Whether you choose to love yourself, a partner, multiple partners, an enemy, your best friend or the whole damn universe... To love unconditionally, and publicly, is radical AF. To love without cause, without reason, without judgement and without fear is by far one of the most (if not, the most?) profound acts of social justice.
Perhaps like me, if youâre reading this, itâs likely you consider yourself somewhat of an activist - standing up for what you believe in and for what is true for you. In that case, I ask you to consider this:
There are so many worthy causes in this world. There is so much injustice, so much inequality. Whatever you choose to fight for, choose love; no matter what.
...ok I hear you, sure, choosing love feels terrifying - heck even impossible - when we ourselves are not fully resourced. In a world full of pain and suffering, it can be difficult to keep our hearts open and our minds at bay.
What does it even mean to always choose love? I suppose, it means precisely that. Just choose love.
Whilst there are many barriers and systems in place that make it more difficult for some of us to love, to feel loved, to give love freely or to know we are loved, underneath it all lays a choice. It may be a seemingly difficult and overly complicated one for some, or paradoxically, a seemingly simple and ineffective action for others. But the choice will always remain, no matter how bad it gets, we always have the free will to choose love.
To love, no matter what, simply because thereâs no other option at first might not make much sense, until eventually, itâs the only thing that makes sense.
As the sun sets on another year, it begins to finally dawn on me: the binary of right and wrong - the fairytale spell Iâve been under of good vs evil - of forever striving to be a âgood girlâ and fearing the tarnished brush stroke of being a bad friend/lover/sister/wife... itâs all a dream.
The charade of trying to be impossibly perfect is up. The smoke has cleared, the mirror; broken. The facade that I am ânever enoughâ is no more.
I begin to recognise I am, I always was, and I always will be enough. The constant shaming, blaming, judging game is over. I am simply human, this is enough.
I will get it wrong, and I will get it right, and the rules will constantly change. This is not a game we play to win, but to learn. To grow, to evolve with what is - not to reprimand ourselves when we do not, and could not, know the way.
Life is a game of seeking, of asking questions and for directions. Itâs about making commitments to ourselves to never again walk the path that leads us only into brambles, thorns and stinging nettles once we know the painful consequences of such a blind and sharp turning.
The path for you is always clearing, there are indeed sticks and rocks and you will trip and fall. But, up again you will rise, and you will not kick yourself for falling - instead you celebrate each and every time you get back up.
May you awaken into 2021 with an open heart, with more love, self-compassion, forgiveness and inner safety than you ever dreamed possible.
Iâve struggled with my âidentityâ for as along as I can remember.
Being born into a body considered disabled, for most of my years on this earth Iâve held great shame, a sense of loss and deep rejection towards my body.
Never feeling truly at home in this body that was not considered to be enough, I searched endlessly for belonging, for acceptance, for a deeper knowing of myself.
I chased highs, I crashed hard, I lost myself over and over in a desperate attempt to be anything other than who I thought I was.
I fought this body...
I resented this body...
I punished this body...
I inflicted pain on this body...
I tried to escape this body...
I felt trapped in this body...
I felt angry in this body...
I felt fear in this body...
I was overwhelmed in this body...
I was drowning in this body...
I was lost in this body...
And then one day, it dawned on me â just who is this âIâ that appears to be so lost anyway?
Truly I had no idea.Â
So, I set out to find her...
I forgot all that I thought I knew, all that others wanted or hoped I would be and I began to unravel the mystery.
At first, I was terrified.
How could I trust this body that had wronged me for so long?
In time, I understood the difference between how often she had saved me, and how often she had stood in my way.
I learned how to nourish her; how to care for her. I learned what she needed; what she wanted.
For the first time, I could see her, I really knew her.
Eventually, I trusted her enough to show me the truth.
I surrendered to her, and she began to lead me towards freedom.
She began to reveal the secrets of how she thrives, her magic, her power...
All those who lead your love back toward yourself are the one. All those whose paths you cross will lead you there, every single one. The one who left, the who who stayed, the one you could never have. Some will show you what love feels like, some will try to withhold love from you, some will want to bargain for your love and others will simply love you just because love is. They are all part of that very same one. Though each road may look very different, all paths lead to love eventually. So long as you keep believing that love is without, you will suffer. You will go on searching for love, you will go on getting hurt, your heart will break many times. Itâll hurt like hell when you feel it, when you really know it and you see that itâs been there all along. Thatâs why you chose for so long to be without. The truth is almost unbearable. But, once your heart cracks open, youâre free. There is nothing to do, no where to look, nothing to seek. Your life will simply go on with or without your awareness. You can either choose to see how it all really is and rest right here, right now, in love, or you can choose to be without. Though really it doesnât matter - love still is.
My heart aches to be known, truly, deeply by you, to greet you in the space where you and I no longer exist; to be openly and unconditionally received as I pour into you.
I ache to unleash the flame that burns fiercely in my chest, and yet it is only I that stands in the way, blocking the path to liberation which lays only in the heart.
With temptation around every corner, my lust for you keeps me hungry. The momentary taste of you brings the sweetest bliss, but it is a single drop on the tongue of a starving humanity.
I try to satisfy the void of you by gorging on your most delicious fruits, but so long as I refuse to recognise you, I will remain unknown.
I question often, is it really me who longs to be seen? And if I am so desperate to know you, how am I still blind?
I cannot blame her, only love and forgive her â still, what does she think she is protecting me from? Rejection, sure. Violence, maybe.
In a world that does not yet know how to allow love, that does not trust that love will not come at a price, that has no understanding of the language I wish to speak; I pray she finds the courage, strength and safety within to surrender, fully, to you.
My conditioning taught me: Love = conditional. Sex = love.
But society also teaches us: Sex = worthiness, status, wealth and power.
So basically, my self-worth = sex.
I have internalised that if Iâm not having sex with a person, then I donât deserve love. I donât deserve nice things, care, affection or protection.
I spent most of my life believing that simply because of who I am, the body I was born into, and the personality I have, it will be very difficult to find a person whose love I am worthy of, and if Iâm not having sex with them, then I most certainly donât deserve their trust or security...
Sex is a tool we use in our society to validate the world and each other.
âSex sells.â
Sex and desire have become patriarchal and capitalist systems of oppression; itâs become the way we learn to value ourselves.Â
Whoâs hottest?Â
Whoâs getting laid?Â
Who wants sex with who?Â
Even the word âfuckâ is used as an expression of how good or bad something is!
âTotally fuckedâŠâ
âFucking incredible!â
Why is sex on a pedestal?
I know cognitively that sex does not equal worthiness, and yet deep in my body was the only narrative that exists. My desire for sex and my desire for love have been scrambled and messy for as long as I can remember.
Society has taught me that if I care deeply about someone, if I feel deep compassion, love, generosity, joy and encouragement towards a person â then surely I should also want to have sex with them? And if Iâm not having sex with them, do I still get to enjoy the benefits of a secure and healthy relationship with them?
Mononormative, heteronormative, patriarchal, capitalist society says no.
What if Iâm not having sex with the person I care deeply about, but having sex with other people I have less emotional intimacy with?
What if Iâm only turned on by unavailability, power dynamics, control, arrogance, wealth, dismissal, competition and approval?
Is it ok that my love and my lust are entirely different and seemingly disconnected?
What do I do about the guilt or shame I feel for not âgiving myselfâ to the person I care deeply about and yet I so freely âgive my bodyâ to others?
In this narrative, my body and my sexuality is a commodity, and Iâm using it only to get what I need, not what I want or what actually feels good.
I have internalised my sense of self-worth based on my sex appeal...
How sexy am I?
Am I attractive enough?Â
Can I make a cock hard?
Society tells me I need to be sexy in order to be worthy, but at the same time, as a female-bodied human, I am objectified and oppressed through the sexual desires of the patriarchy.
I have to be sexy in order to be seen, but if Iâm sexy then my power is instantly taken from me. Iâm either invisible or just an object of desire.
I feel guilt if I assert my sexuality in a way that turns on a man that I do not want to have sex with. Thereâs a deeply ingrained narrative that if I have turned him on, I must now do something about it, itâs my fault that he is aroused.
As a woman, my only purpose is to satisfy the male sexuality, the male gaze, the male desire.
My desire and my pleasure is not important â we are taught this in school during sex education (who else learned about male ejaculation but never about the female orgasm??) and we are raised by a culture that exploits and objectifies female sexuality (erm, hello, every single advert Iâve ever seenâŠ).
We learn that any expression of our female sexuality is not for us, it is for men.
Not only is the autonomy of women and female desire taken away here, but also the autonomy of men â he is no longer responsible for satisfying his own desire and sexuality.
He is âpowerlessâ to expressions the hypnotic and tempting female sexuality...
âBoys will be boys.â
This also feeds into the fear around expressing my sexuality and not âfollowing it throughâ because the man will then feel frustrated â since he is an animal â he is uncontrollable in the face of my feminine charm.
This is where threat of sexual violence comes in, not only for myself â but for all of my sisters.
Even in the case where sexual violence isnât necessarily a threat, but itâs still difficult or impossible for a woman to keep herself safe from the unwanted sexual advances of a man in the unfortunately very common experience of a woman who hasnât yet found her voice to say no...
To assert her boundaries...
To even know that she has boundaries...
That sheâs allowed boundaries...
To know what her boundaries are...
To trust that her boundaries will be respected if she expresses them...
To even know what she desires when itâs not based entirely on whether or not she is being desired by himâŠ
What does it mean to reclaim our female sexuality?
Our femininity?
Our power?
What does this even look like?
Whatâs the alternative narrative?
What do I do with the fear, guilt and shame when asserting what is sexy for me, for my pleasure only, and for no other purpose?
How can a woman be sexy without losing her power?
How can she assert her sexuality and own her desire without the threat of having it ripped away from her?
Well...
First, she comes to terms with the truth that she is not fickle, a tease, or playing hard to get.
She learns to feel her fear...
Her pain...
Her oppression...
Her anger...
Then she learns that she is loved...
That she is worthy...
That she belongs...
That she is divine...
She learns to feel safe in her body.
Once she has let go of all that no longer serves her, and she has called in and embodies her sensual and sacred essence, she can finally begin to ask herself what feels good?
She will listen to her pussy.
What pussy wants, pussy gets! (with consent of course!)
She has boundaries and power.
She has freedom and pleasure.
She has a firm no and fucking enthusiastic yes!
I donât know yet exactly what this feels or looks like â Iâm working on it.
What do know is that I need to be sure Iâm having sex (with myself or with others) because it feels good â that itâs for pleasure, and not for validation.
Right now, itâs complicated because I get a lot of validation from pleasure â I feel good about myself when I know Iâm giving pleasure because it makes me feel like Iâm âbetterâ at it than others⊠Itâs competitive and again itâs a part of the patriarchal narrative Iâm trying hard to let go of.
How do I shift from giving and receiving pleasure to prove my worthiness, to giving and receiving pleasure for pleasures sake?
I know that I have deep love, deep compassion, deep care and deep joy for myself, but what I do not seem to have is deep lust and attraction for myself â and perhaps this is part of the reason why I still crave sexual validation?
In a society that deems it as taboo to fancy yourself, to be turned on by yourself, that shames us for being âvainâ or âself-indulgentâ, itâs no wonder Iâm finding this difficult...
Iâve been on a beautiful journey of learning to love myself deeply, unconditionally and ecstatically.
Now itâs time to learn how to fuck myself, well and truly.
Can I fall deeply in lust with myself? Can I have hot AF sex with myself? Can I fulfil my own sexual desires and needs?
Many of us carry the ableist ideals without even realisingâŠ
If we hold views about ourselves such as:
âI am too needyâ
âAsking for help makes me a failureâ
âI have to do this on my ownâ
This is ableism.
Thereâs a lot of shame that surrounds the idea that having needs is a problem that we have to solve â and we have to solve it by doing it alone.
This is entirely false. Without even bringing disability into the conversation, weâre already making an assumption that we need to be fixed, that thereâs this ideal version of what health and wellness looks like.
Notions like âself-careâ are steeped in ableist culture. Three of the biggest issues I have with the wellness industry is that:
It's often used as a way to blame people for their lack of health.
It promotes a packaged idea of what health looks which excludes so many people.
There are a number significant physical, emotional and financial barriers to wellness.
If you look at the trends surrounding food choices, exercise, or products, the people speaking about them or benefitting from them are overwhelmingly able-bodied â and it even took me, a person with a physical impairment, quite a while to recognise this because of my own ableist views.
Itâs thanks to my stubbornness and refusal to be told what I can and canât do that I was able to access yoga classes, go on retreat and find my inner truth. However, the huge barriers and lack of awareness in ability diversity in these kinds of spaces make it impossible for many to access.
Firstly, self-care is often seen as a luxury - and sometimes it can be. But for people living with disabilities, those "luxuries" like therapy, a specific diet or yoga are crucial to our health and survival. Self-care isnât just about a nice face mask and a slice of chocolate cake - it's also about creating a support system, avoiding toxic relationships and setting healthy boundaries for yourself.
Secondly, the stock image of self-care being a petite white woman in Lululemon is really damaging. Weâre beginning to see progress in areas of inclusivity on gender, sexuality and race â but ability is being seriously ignored in wellness. For wellness to be fully inclusive, it needs to feature ability diverse bodies that move away from the social âidealâ. Ok sure - disability is an infinitely diverse spectrum which, of course, makes the task of accessibility for all not a particularly economically viable option. The truth of the matter is though, weâre currently ignoring the needs of every 1 in 6 people â which to me is insanity! This âone size fits allâ approach is entirely based on a capitalist model of health and wellness, and itâs really toxic.
Finally, people with disabilities often experience significant financial barriers to health and wellness. Additional expenses from astronomical medical bills (and no, disability allowance or financial aid from the government IS NOT available for all people living with disability) often means that Instagram's version of self-care is simply not an option.
So, when I say disability â Iâm talking about ability diversity; physical, invisible and neuro.
I subscribe to the social model of disability which defines disability as the systemic barriers, derogatory attitudes, and social exclusion, which make it difficult or impossible for individuals with impairments to attain their valued functioningâs - rather than the dominant medical model of disability, which is a functional analysis of the body as a machine to be fixed in order to conform with normative values.
For example: if a person is unable to climb stairs, the medical model of disability focuses on making the individual physically able to climb stairs â to meet societyâs expectations of what a body âshouldâ be able to do. The social model tries to make stair-climbing unnecessary, such as by replacing the stairs with a wheelchair-accessible ramp. Therefore, the impairment itself should no longer be considered disabling in that scenario.
If we consider the functionality of products, services and infrastructure from this perspective, then anything that is inaccessible to a specific group of individuals is quite simply bad design. Inclusivity should not be an afterthought once the needs of the majority are met â it should just be exceptional design thinking from the very beginning.
This is what I loveeee so much about the design of the 2012 Olympic Stadium here in London. From the stadium accessibility, to the competitors accommodation, to the spectator and at-home viewing experiences â absolutely everything was considered from an ability diverse perspective. Everything was intended to be accessible for everyone, which meant that even the audio commentary that was created for the visually impaired spectators were being used by most people in the venue who didnât have a very good view of the games! Amazing â better quality service for all, right?
Ability diversity and ableism is an issue in wellness that we cannot continue to ignore.
If youâre a currently working in the wellness industry â if youâre a yoga practitioner, a fitness coach, dietician, therapist, if you work in areas of personal development - sex, love, relationships, holistic and spiritual â I really want to hear from you. Iâd love to know what youâre doing to support ability diversity in your practice and if itâs not something youâre already thinking about â Iâd really love to hear what your concerns are.
If youâre someone living with a disability and youâre here like, âPreachhhhhh!!â, then please get in touch with me via Instagram @dizexplainstheuniverse - Iâd love to know what youâre experiences have been, if you work with any adaptions or any specific accessible techniques.
And actually, this is a call out to anyone. If youâve got any ideas of how we can bring ability informed wellness into the industry, please get in touch â because being able to live your best life, to develop deep self-love, body confidence and participate fully in life, in love, should be available to absolutely everyone.
Last night I got caught in the crossfire of a vicious assault on the 149 bus in Seven Sisters.
Horrifically, this isnât the first incident of assault on public transport in the past few weeks that has come to my attention. With such a heightened state of anxiety and fear among the general public due to Covid-19, the increase in activity through the Black Lives Matter movement and a great deal of public shaming and peer-policing of our fellow citizens being encouraged through the governments snide tactics to âregulate the situationâ, weâre truly living in hauntingly terrifying times, not just here in the UK, but across the globe.
As the conversation between a clearly intoxicated white male aggressor and an elderly black man continued to escalate at the front of the top deck of the bus, my heart began to ache. I sat there, hand on my chest as the chaos spiralled â I sensed the conflict wasnât going to end well. Even when the white maleâs girlfriend tried to calm him down, he began directing threats towards the elderly black male. Disgustingly, his threats were cheered at and fist bumped in admiration by a bunch of young white males at the back of the bus.
I could not believe what I was witnessing.
Whilst I cannot claim outright that what happened next was the result of racist attitudes, but given the circumstances, itâs a crucial factor in this story that I refuse to ignore.
The elderly black male stood up and demanded the white male go downstairs and join his girlfriend. The white male did not appear to take kindly to this suggestion, grabbed him by the throat and threw the first punch. In a desperate scramble to calm the white male down, his girlfriend tried to pull him down the stairs. There were a few flailing elbows and some t-shirts grabbed and then in an explosive rage, the white male launched himself onto the elderly black gentlemen and began repeated pounding his fist into his face.
To my absolute horror, no one did anything. I was the only female on the top deck - clearly Iâm not strong enough to break up the fight - but I panicked and in a knee-jerk reaction leapt towards to white male in a screaming rage, pulled him off the elderly black male by the back of his t-shirt and in the cross-fire, got hit in the face myself. In a state of shock, I fled quickly down the stairs and off the bus. My heart pounded with visions of the elderly black male defencelessly being beaten by the enraged the large, steaming drunk, white male.
I felt sick.
The brawl continued at the top of the bus and as the bus driver, a petite black female, called the police I considered standing in solidarity with her as the other passengers disembarked from the bus but honestly â I was a little too traumatised to function by this point.
Whilst I knew in my core that I was neither big enough nor strong enough to have any sort of impact on being able to diffuse the situation, I do not feel guilt, shame or fear the judgement of what others may think for my intervention in the situation. Yes, I could have come off a lot worse, but truthfully, I believe that taking a stand against violence and not just turning a blind eye sits far more comfortably in my heart.
This incredibly heinous confrontation is a potent reminder that we are living in an incredibly violent world. Not only is it deeply traumatic on a personal level for many of us, but our collective trauma is an enormous weight that sometimes makes daily life a truly painful experience.
This brings perhaps one of the most mighty dilemmas of existence into awareness:
What do you do when you can no longer carry the guilt of averting your gaze from the cruelty in the world, but equally, you cannot bare the pain to look?
Itâs moments like this that really highlight for me the importance of the work that Iâm currently doing and the duty of care and responsibility that we have as individuals to pay close attention to the part inside of us that respects ourself enough to do whatâs necessary to free ourselves, and others, from suffering.
Itâs not easy, and itâs certainly not always fun, but itâs the only thing that we can do.
Though I work hard at reminding myself, I am safe in this body, I am powerful, I am loving, I am free to express myself â the truth is, many of us arenât always safe in our bodies. Most commonly, in female, trans, non-binary or BAME bodies, we are not always safe. We often suffer greatly by the inefficiency and bias of the systems in place that were built to âprotectâ us.
Itâs a cruel reality.
For me, this is where spirituality takes on an integral role. Whilst I have faith in our divinity and connection to the universe, this alone will not keep me safe. If I forget my humanity and live only in faith that we are one and that the universe does indeed have a plan for us all, that everything happens for a reason and therefore, who am I to intervene? Sure, I may live in blissful ignorance, but this would not be a loving way to exist. If I forget my divinity and live only in hyper-vigilance, always on the look out for the next attack, the next person whoâs going to come along and take something from me, if I live in fear and resentment that I am always being âdone toâ in the world, this neither is a very loving way to exist.
This really is a dilemma. If I show no trust, no compassion and no relation to those around me that I walk this earth with, my world is a very cold and empty place to be. But if I show complete trust, compassion and relation to all beings, do I risk pain at the hands of violence? If last night is anything to base my experience on, then yes, perhaps.
However, I believe in the power of transformation, I believe in the power of healing your own wounds, of deeply taking care of yourself, so that you can keep your heart open â even to those who hurt you â and relieve suffering. For if they hurt you when your heart is fully open to receive their pain. The depth of my heart will entirely absorb their suffering into my own. If all I have is love to give, nothing can be taken from me.
Today I realised something incredibly powerful about the depth of our human hearts. After spending time to process the trauma of yesterdayâs events, and also processing the re-traumatisation from the triggering that occurred due to my past experience of violence at the hands of drunk men, all that I have in my heart right now is love.
Under the layers of pain and anger at the unfairness and violent state of the world lays grief and a deep sadness aching in my heart. As I penetrate the depths of my heart deeper still, I find a longing for acceptance, belonging and love. It is only love that I need, crave and desire. The same longing that exists in the hearts and souls of every single human being on this planet. Our social conditioning, our formative experiences, our earliest childhood memories, and maybe even continued traumatic experiences in adulthood encase our hearts in layers and layers of thick shame, guilt and judgement until we become nothing but callous and enraged.
I pray only for every single being on this earth to feel the love, acceptance, forgiveness and belonging that I feel. I have only love in my heart for the elderly black male whoâs fate I do not yet know. I have only love in my heart for the hyenas at the back of the coaxing the perpetrator. I have only love in my heart for the enraged drunk white male attacker. Whatever their stories are that entangled them at that very moment, I grieve for.
Sometimes I find myself scrolling through your Instagram feed just so that I can project onto your pictures a kinder version of you that I can miss. The walls around your heart are so thick itâs impossible to truly know you. Perhaps I never really knew you at all.
This digital self-harm gives me a sense of control. You see, Iâd rather hurt myself aching after a fabricated version of who you could be than to admit to myself that youâre just a fool. Iâd rather believe I have to power to heal, to nurture, to set you free - I guess thatâs the fool in me.
It breaks my heart to see you, so charming and exciting, but deep inside your inner child screams, lonely and afraid. You were just another one of those Peter Pan Neverland Lost Boys refusing to take responsibility for who you know you could become, if only you had the courage.
I saw what I wanted to see, projections of a fairy-tale beaming right out your sparkling eyes. As I bathed in the light of my most beautiful fantasies, I was blinded. Just as suddenly as you entered my periphery, it all went black. Scrambling around in the darkness I tried desperately to jam the remaining fragments of you into myself. I squashed and squeezed my aching wounds to fit you in, but you just wouldnât, and I just couldnât.
Some of us spend our entire lifetimes looking for that missing piece of the puzzle with a sharp eye forever on the lookout for the perfect shape, so much so that we forget to check our own pockets.
And so you keep waiting for the one to come along. The one who inspires you, holds you, fills you up. The one who will praise you, encourage you and always show up. Should they dare challenge your carefully curated fragile image of self, you just rinse and repeat.
If loving you feels like such an emergency, I know still my work is not done. Each time my heart breaks and another piece of me crumbles and falls away, between the cracks I see the flickers of a burning deep within. Despite the intensity of this pain, I know more must be delivered. The embers rise and burn my skin, I feel the heat.
So crack me open one last time and let the flames roar.
The daddy, the issue and whatâs so great about walking into the fire.
The daddy
When I was 10 years old, my father broke my heart.
As I watched him marry his third wife, I burst into tears as he declared his love for her in front of our entire family and friends. It was as if my heart fell from my chest into my stomach and Luciferâs hand reached down my throat, wrenched it out and threw it down onto the floor in front of me â âYou wonât be needing thatâ, he said.
âYou may now kiss the brideâ, I stared across the room at them, broken and confused, as my heart lay limply pulsating at my feet.
I remember my older sister laughing at me and asking me why I was crying. I couldnât tell her it was because the man I loved so deeply, the man I so desperately craved the love and affection of, the man who abandoned me when I was 6 years old, the man who â as it turned out â didnât hug me until I was 16 years old and to this day I can still count on one hand how many times Iâve felt his awkward embrace, the man who was so far from the definition of a father youâd assume we werenât related had just married a stranger.
I told her I was crying with happiness.
The issue
The joys of being self-aware and invested in the business of self-development often means that I can spot the reg flags in a potential relationship pretty early on. I can smell the avoidants and dismissive from a mile off and yet their alluring scent draws me in closer to the fire. I gaze longingly into it, knowing if I get any closer I will definitely get burnt â Iâve got a million burns to prove it. It never gets any less painful, and yet, like a moth to a flame, I flutter on into the blaze.
Ouch, that hurt. I knew it, why did I do it AGAIN?
I know exactly why I do it. I do it because Iâm idealistic, romantic and my inner child desperately craves validation and approval from a particular type of person because of the deep wounds my abusive father left with me with. (Itâs unfortunately an all too familiar storyline for many of us.)
Iâm always looking for a do-over. Always chasing the kind of love only a father has for his daughter. The âIâd die for youâ kind of love. Even when I think Iâve found it, itâs never quite enough. So I keep on searching, I keep on pining after the men who donât seem to give me enough attention. I keep on craving their approval, needing so furiously to be desired, to be everything theyâve ever needed and more. I need it to feel powerful, I need it to feel safe, I need it to feel loved.
Even if I do succeed in capturing their attention, it still feels like something is missing. I become restless, there must be something wrong⊠and so the craving sets in once again.
Iâve spent much of my adult life trying to heal through practicing self-love, doing the work, nurturing to my inner child work, facing my shadows and releasing my embodied trauma. This shit takes time and whilst weâre healing, inevitably we sometimes end up repeating some of the same mistakes, more than twice. We try not to judge and punish ourselves, we show ourselves compassion, we forgive ourselves and we continue to grieve the loss of the love we didnât get from our parents. Itâs exhausting.
Thereâs an interesting moment in time in the healing process when our unhealthy habits and coping strategies no longer work for us â they seem entirely pointless. But equally, our new coping strategies are really fucking tough because theyâre these new, weird, inconvenient tools that we donât really know how to use yet and we arenât quite seeing the pay-off from the expensive investment that weâve made in ourselves. Weâre stuck in limbo. Weâre in an incredibly transformational period; so close, and yet so far. We see clearly the patterns of behaviour which are no longer serving is. We see very clearly the habits that are preventing us from growth. But, we just canât seem to shake them.
For me, this is particularly true when interacting the âpopularâ types. You know the ones, the shiny, extroverted, sun-shines-out-of-their-arse types. Someone Iâd perceive to be more attractive than me and more successful. These aspects are quite specific to the areas in my own life where I believe Iâm a failure â likely because these were the areas that I felt if only I was better or special in some way and then maybe, just maybe, my father would finally acknowledge me and show me he loved me. This all very much drives my perfectionism and my insanely critical inner voice.
So, these types really stab me in the âdaddyâ shaped hole in my heart.
Thankfully, after a little chat with my inner child I can usually spot the signs that Iâve been triggered. If they arenât responding well to my yearning, the rational thing to do would be to turn the ship around and save myself the aggro of falling for yet another avoidant dismissive and having my heart wrenched out of stomach after feeling rejected or abandoned. These types make it very difficult for me to remember my worth, to keep myself grounded, to remind myself I am enough, I am safe and I am lovable. HoweverâŠ
I just canât help myself. Itâs honestly an addiction.
And whatâs so great about walking into the fire
This was a question that up until very recently, I had never considered. Iâd always assumed the reason I did it was because I didnât respect myself enough â I think probably to begin with that was true. Iâve often wondered if itâs because I donât love myself enough, or maybe I do this because feeling unsafe is all Iâve ever known. But thatâs not true, I have had very healthy, very loving and very successful relationships and I really do care for myself now. I stopped judging myself, I forgave myself, I learnt to love and accept myself. I let go of the layers of shame and guilt that smothered my ability to fully express myself. I even learnt how to have boundaries. And yet, those flames still really, reallyyyyy titillate me...
But whyyyy?
I decided to sit down and I write out a list of things that draw me towards the fire:
First of all, I live in an absolute idealistic and romantic fantasy (most of us do!). Thanks to innumerable trashy rom-coms, I have ridiculous expectations of what love is supposed to look like and the things people will do to win the affection of their beloved. Maybe this time itâll all work out? The shy wallflower will finally be acknowledged by the tough jock when he realises how wonderful she is and theyâll live happily ever after?
Never.
Secondly, itâs exciting. Thereâs risk involved in potentially (inevitably) getting burnt. Itâs much like any other risky addictive habit; gabbling, drugs, sex with your best friends ex when he explicitly told you not to. Maybe the rush of it will be worth it this time? It definitely wonât be. The low, the regret, the guilt and the self-loathing is ALWAYS horrendous. On the other hand, maybe you already feel pretty shitty so, what have you got to lose? Might as well, ey?
Nope.
And finally, I honestly find everyday life seriously mundane. I constantly crave intensity and losing myself. Routine is boring, change is exciting. The fire offers me the perfect distraction from the monotony of the day-to-day snooze fest. I used to believe I was trying to escape something, trying to run away from my problems by filling my time with a chaotic love life just so I had something to talk about other than the files that Susan lost when the auditors came to⊠GAH! To begin with, this was true. But Iâve done a fuck tonne of work on myself since then, I no longer find solace in my old coping strategies because they simply do not work. I gave them up, I started actually taking care of myself and tending to my needs and wounds instead. So what was it?
I then realised something very important. Wanting excitement, thrill, ecstatic joy, bliss, celebration, partying, romance, love, sex, creativity, playfulness and adventure is in no way a bad thing. It is in no way a sign of weakness or an indication that Iâm trying to escape something. It tells me I am human, that Iâm alive, that Iâm a social being. It tells me I want more than this average life we get sold by the system, that I wonât settle for this bullshit, that I deserve more, I am worthy and â I am the fire.
I already embody all of the things I so desperately crave. I am everything that I need. I have everything that I desire. Iâm drawn to the fire because itâs calling me to be seen. My attachments and wounds have left me feeling dismissed, unacknowledged, invalidated and deleted⊠But I AM the fire. We all are. Whether or not another human experiences you in this way is irrelevant. We do not need anyone else to approve our existence and worth. Even if it is never seen or shared with anyone, the fact still remains true that you are indeed already burning effervescently.
No permission.
No recognition.
No validation.
No attention.
No acknowledgement.
And you will still remain the brightest light in the universe.
