Reconnecting with the value of being human
There are many things that will knock you off balance in life.
Money worries, illness, family illness, bereavement, co-parenting challenges, mental health issues, traumatic events, worries about your child’s health, menopause… to name but a few.
Just one of those things will upset your equilibrium…
So I can maybe forgive myself for feeling WAY out of sorts at the moment….. 2022 has brought ALL those things into my life.
In just ONE year.
It’s safe to say, I’ve been spending a lot of my days staring into the abyss, retreating under my duvet and wondering what the hell is going to happen next.
And when I’m not doing that, I’ve been seeking fun and joy as much as possible in life. And while this is not a bad thing at all, far from it, the things that bring me fun and joy, to a large extent, require spending money. Not all of them, but gigs, tattoos, violin lessons and festivals all require some dollar.
So among one of the very worst years of an ‘interesting’ life, I’ve been managing to light the sparks. But work…. That’s been very hard.
Motivation to do the hard things, in a year when I’ve had SO many hard things to handle, has been low. It’s been as though the hard things in my personal life have taken all the strength I have, so the hard things involved in being a business owner have had to take a back seat.
I’ve been working, but I haven’t been doing the things I expected to do. Or earn the money I expected to earn. I’ve been holding my breath, letting life happen around me, waiting for the worst to come.
Well, the worst thing that will happen this year (I HOPE!) has happened with the recent death of my mother.
And although the many hours of abyss staring and duvet hiding are one way to pass the time, I am very conscious that I am losing myself in the chaos of the year.
I used to be scattered but very driven. I had a hundred things I wanted to do, to achieve. Now, I feel like I would be happy to coast along doing as little as possible with my life.
And I don’t want to get to the end of my life and know that’s what I did.
I want much more than that.
And besides that, I have a 12 year old child to support. He needs me to be present and operational in his life. He needs an ever increasing supply of food. He is growing at a scary rate and is going to cost me a fortune in shoes!
I need to get back on track, and reclaim my entrepreneurial, ambitious, driven self.
But where do you start when the foundations you built your whole life on have been shattered? When the rock you’ve always clung to through life’s storms has crumbled and shattered before your eyes, and has now returned to the sea?
Thanks to valuable lessons I’ve learned from my friends and mentors Tracy Otsuka and Lisa Barry, I know that I can re-centre myself by looking at my values.
Who I am defines how I want to show up in the world.
What I value shapes what I want to do, how I want to make an impact, who I want to help, and how I can achieve that.
A recent look at my values revealed that my core values, in this phase of my life, are
I might not be feeling very empowered right now, as I start to gather myself and put my life back together, but I know that in reality, I am getting stronger with every passing day. My body is getting stronger and fitter through my frequent walking and working out. The strength that has got me through this unimaginably hard year, watching my mother decline while battling numerous other issues in my life, has left my emotional muscles sore, but stronger than ever before.
I am now 8 years sober, and have been tested in those 8 years more than I think I was in the last 10 years of my addiction. And still my sobriety is strong. I don’t feel trapped in a battle with the demons I once partied with. They have left my life for good. If I can get through the past few years of stress after stress after stress, and not once think about hitting the fuckit button and getting hammererd, I feel confident that urge has left me. I think the demons have given me up as no fun to hang out with anymore. I felt the same about them!
It hurts to feel the pain and despair, but I can also feel the joy, the passion, the awe the world has to offer. I’d rather feel it all than numb any of it, The pain and despair remind me of the things that matter to me, what is important in my life
The last few years have taught me many things, but perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned is the value and importance of connection. When I’ve felt lost, it’s been connection that has held me together, kept me strong. Connection to those I love, connection to the world around me, connection to my body, to my roots, to myself.
Connection is the core of human existence. We are social animals. Even the most introverted among us have those connections that enrich and nourish their lives. We connect through shared experiences. We connect through our creativity. We connect through shared interests and values. Whether we realise it or not, we are intrinsically connected to each other, and without that connection to others, we lose a bit of ourselves.
It was through connection to myself, through Yoga and writing, that I was able to heal enough to commit to a life of sobriety. It was our need for connection that sent millions of us rushing to create a Zoom account when it became clear we were going to be stuck in our homes for a while in 2020.
We need to feel connected to one another. To know that we are not alone in the world. That we are not the only ones who feel as lost as we do, that we aren’t the only ones making the mistakes we are making, the only ones who feel like everyone else knows what they are doing in life. When we connect, when we share our stories, our fears, our passions, our insecurities, we learn that everyone is just as bewildered by life as we are, and everyone is just winging it, and hoping for the best. No matter how polished their instagram life might look.
One of the ways we express and manifest this connection is through our creativity. Music, writing, art, dance, craft. These are all ways we not only create for others, but we express the core of who we are. Creative acts unite and connect us. You only have to look at the crowd in any live music experience to know that, for the duration of the gig, and beyond, that crowd is one being… many souls brought together by their shared desire to feel the joy to be found in music. Friendships are made and deepened through a shared love or discovery of music. Love and connection is found when we dance together. We find our people through words on a page or a screen. We see our stories in the tales of other lives, and see our hearts in the colours left on someone’s canvas.
Stories have united and bonded us since language began, since we first learned to make sounds and mark the walls of our caves with stories of our discovery of the world. We create life out of pleasure and pain. We are born to create as surely as we breathe.
Even before we take our first breaths, our bodies need to move. We move to create strength, to create energy, to create life. Nothing in nature is still, one of the fundamental characteristics of living things is the ability to move. We need to move in some way. If I don’t move, my brain freezes up as my muscles weaken. Movement is our natural state of being, our natural way to health.
But we don’t just move ourselves. When we connect and share our stories, our views, our pain… we move those around us. We feel each other’s lives as we move in connection and creativity together through the world. The more we can feel, the more we can create, the more we can share, the more we can move, the stronger we become, the more we can live.
So when I dig deep into my values, I am reminded what it is to be me, but also what it means to be human.
We love, we grieve
We feel strong, we break
We feel, we hide
We express who we are
We move our bodies and our hearts through our days
We want to feel that we have control, but we know that nothing is in our control, not even ourselves much of the time
And we need one another. We need to know we are not alone. We need to know we are seen, heard, and understood.
And we all worry that we’re the only one fucking up and feeling lost
But maybe, just maybe, that is what makes us more human than anything else we do. What we have most in common with everyone else around us.
