5 on a Saturday
I started this post on a Friday. Actually I started this post on a Thursday with the intention to post it on Friday because if I didn’t plan ahead as a content creator I’d lose my marbles, and also because I was convinced it was Friday all day on Thursday. But alas, here we are on a Saturday and I’m finally rounding out my thoughts. This week has been hectic and I like having this little reframe for my thoughts. I did a writing workshop a while ago with a teacher who had us do this same process, except with 5 unique moments we experienced throughout the day and turn them into more literary prose style pieces. When I write in my journal every morning, I list my thoughts by number, and while I don’t always make it to 5 having space to explore and dive all the way in to a topic has always been helpful for the way my brain works (which I’m learning is very neurodivergently and the ways that I’ve learned to cope so I can actually keep things organized and functioning are not things the general public does. But that being said I would like to know who the neurotypical people are because it seems like most people I know have some form of neurodivergence going on)
Today (Friday) is the release of Taylor Swift’s new album. It was a double release, and I listened to the first release in its entirety while I was getting ready and then the second release in chunks while I was between meetings and driving. The first group is definitely my favourite. Taylor Swift music has framed my life in a lot of ways, which might just be a millennial thing now, but I knew even before I heard the first song this was going to be an album to be savoured and that would bring up all the feels. Cody and I started dating and bonded over the 1989 album, and still whenever I listen to it there are songs that feel like our songs. Red will always sound like the boys I loved in high school, and the re-release feels like when Taylor Swift did that collab with Starbucks and I got a caramel latte for the first time in my life and drove around town with the windows down. Midnights sounds like driving away from a life I knew wasn’t meant for me but I so badly wanted it to be, and putting together my broken pieces. So even before I played the first song, I had this in my mind. The way each era of Taylor’s music has spoken to a different era of mine. I’m still processing my feelings over this album, and will probably listen to it a few more times before I make any kind of statement, but there were a few lyrics that first listen through that made me sit up straighter, jaw hanging open, marvelling at the poetry of it all.
A few nights ago (from Thursday) I watched a documentary on Disney about matriarchs of the animal kingdom. The episode I specifically chose to watch was on bears and orcas, which are among my favourite animals. I know animals, and I was thinking ok, Disney nature documentary on queens in the animal kingdom, it’s going to be cute and feel good. I was not expecting the nature of what it actually showed (And I won't spoil it for you in case you want to watch it. I did go on and watch more episodes). To sum it up for you, it was very natural animal behaviour, including death, and animals that kill their prey. In the similar vein, I’d just done a somatics training where we looked at animal behaviour, and this idea that we identify as predator or prey, that we attach our own moral objectives onto animals in these roles. A bear that kills is not a bad bear, or a mean bear, it is a bear following survival impulse. Which, when I began to put the pieces together, felt like a huge social commentary. We exist in a world where we assign moral value to everything and prey is celebrated and predators are villainized and if a woman expresses anger she’s a bitch but when a man does it it’s accepted, and there’s different conditioning for people socialized female versus people socialized male, and we’ve made it this whole big mess. And in animal behaviour, it’s not that. Also looking at humans, we have this entire social nervous system that really isn’t found anywhere else. We also tend to store stress and activation, and don’t move through it like animals do. And it was less an assigning of good and bad (see what I did there) but more of an observation that this is what happens. And even in this nature documentary, we’re so uncomfortable with seeing “predators” and we root for the “prey” that we take animal behaviour out of the equation. I came across a situation this week where I heard something that immediately activated my system. I talked it out with my husband and a friend, and the place where I landed was I was being asked to respond in a way of protecting myself, my reputation, my family, and I was terrified of being seen as mean. I needed to occupy that “predator energy” to move in alignment with my values, and I’ve spent the majority of my life associating with that prey energy. And when I noted the shame I felt around just moving into a different energetic space, it gave me some freedom to play around with it and try it on and just see. And I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who had my back in this, and let me know that it’s safe for me to occupy this new space.
Today (Saturday) is warm and the sky is blue and I’ve spent the majority of the day in the sunshine, listening to music and reading poetry and feeling layers of nostalgia.. My brother is back from backpacking in Europe, and we’ve spent so much time since he’s returned just lounging in random spots around the house and discussing everything from pop culture to politics. This morning I attended a virtual yoga class with one of my favourite teachers, and IV laid on the corner of my mat, and I realized I’ve created this life I’m wildly in love with. There were a lot of moments along the way I didn’t think I’d make it here.
There are a lot of big things happening, things that are consuming my heart and mind. And i’d write about them but they aren’t my stories to tell, or they aren’t stories ready to be told yet. I’m learning to walk this line between being a storyteller and a story keeper. I’m letting the overflow of my life be the best story of all. If you’re interested in any of the not written content things I’m doing, I’m leading workshops and keynote sessions and in person somatic movement classes and podcast appearances, I share the most up to date details on all that on my instagram.
