In these uncertain times, it is more important than ever that we live consciously, intentionally and truthfully - with integrity and authenticity; with mindfulness, awareness, openness; and willingness to reflect, consider, grow, change, flex and adapt. We must make choices from our hearts, and listen, think, act, speak and share with care, compassion, connection, and love, always love. All to the best of our ever growing abilities. Despite all that we cannot know, all that we do not yet know, and all that we do know; despite our challenges, our fear, our pain, our grief; we can choose our way forward, and on we go.
So for me, having previously fallen under the weight of it all, and reaching a crisis point again, I knew I had to take care of myself in these tumultuous tide turning times, and flow with the waves instead of resisting, fighting, and floundering. So this time I used both old - perhaps forgotten, and now remembered - and new - gathered, learnt, practised - resources, skills and knowledge, to stop myself falling so hard. This doesn't mean it has been easy. But it means I do now know what I can do, what I need to do, what I have to do, what I must do, to support myself and to work always onward, forward, upwards, towards the new world I can see in my vision. The new world that follows the world that is ending, the world as we know it.
Each part of this picture is big. Complex and detailed and wonderful. So here I will start with a list of some of the pieces of this puzzle. And I will follow this post with more in depth exploration of these important pieces that together support me as I work forward in the way that works for me, as I play the role of my piece in the bigger picture puzzle. Each of us is a piece in this puzzle, each of us has a role to play, and it is so important that we all step up to and into these roles. We must find the ways that resonate with our hearts, our souls, our spirits, our minds, our bodies, our visions and our dreams of all that is good, and work forward humming with that resonance. We work forward toward all that is wonderful and amazing, all that is sustaining and nurturing and creative, and powerful - in a truly, deeply powerful way. Not easy, but very necessary.
And so, here follows an ever growing and expanding list of all the pieces of the puzzle that is my piece of the bigger picture puzzle...
Holding the vision - though no one can say what the future will hold, we can all harness the power of our will by holding the vision of all that is good, growing. This way anything can be possible, and magic can happen. We are releasing all that no longer serves; and all that is good is growing. The tide is turning. The groundswell is building. We are returning to our deepest knowing, reclaiming our power, and reconnecting - reconnecting to our hearts, and souls, to spirit, to each other, to all that is. We are remembering, we are reimagining, we are regenerating. All that is good, is growing.
Supporting myself - in oh so many ways. Supporting myself with various personal practices, and seeking support from others - those around me, my village, my tribe, a wider community of connections growing, and also professionals of various kinds, as required - be it a massage, Shiatsu or Reiki treatment, Chinese medicine, a counsellor or something less easily defined, there are many people out there with the role, the skills and knowledge to help healing and support people through testing times. Also, of particular note, this year I discovered a wonderful growing network called the Good Grief Network, and with them, I worked through an online group support program of 10 steps, designed to support us through the big feelings - despair, anxiety, overwhelm, confusion... and uncertainty of these times... and to share understanding and tools that provide resilience, enable us to continue on, and empower us to keep moving forward and contributing in meaningful, fulfilling and sustaining ways.
Creating change - personal change. We now find ourselves in a world where it is not always easy to live within the bounds of our finite planet and its limited resources. It is not easy to know what is the right thing to do, let alone how to do it. It is not always easy to live in real, true, deep connection, even with ourselves, let alone with each other, our work, our communities and our environment. But we must do our absolute best and just keep on trying. We all start from wherever we are, and from there we can only move forward. It's not always a simple step wise process, we can have our ups and downs along the way, but we can always keep trying, keep learning and keep growing our knowledge, our understanding, our skills and resources. And we can keep sharing and supporting each other in this along the way. And where individual change is the hardest, that is where we need to work for bigger change, where we need to step up as citizens and work to create community change, system change. So on that note...
Supporting others and connecting with others - I will soon be starting to facilitate Good Grief Groups in my own area, to support others, just as this program continues to support me. Also my aim as a healing helper, in my work in general, is to support others in whatever they need, and to support us all, including myself, to live ever more in our hearts, in deepening connection with our selves, and our souls, with each other in community, and with all of Nature and the Universe of which we are so privileged to be a part. More connection, more love, and more living lightly in every way.
Supporting community and growing change more - So many ways to do this! Yay! We are never alone! Lately I have been volunteering each month at the Ballarat Repair Cafe - since it started back in July - as part of a team of volunteers mending people's things, and growing the culture of repair, and respect for resources while actually, right there, on the day, saving resources from going to waste and allowing them to continue to be used. I have also this year started managing the Ballarat Cloth Nappy Library, and along with a wonderful team of local helpers and a wider network growing, the aim is to grow the library and continue to inspire, encourage and support more and more parents to use cloth nappies, again reducing waste and saving resources, and meanwhile building a village and network of support for parents generally, as those first few years of the nappy days can be so crucial in so many ways. Tonight I also did my first shift in a long while at the Wholefoods Collective, part of the conditions of membership that I haven't been keeping up with as well as I might have in these years with small children. Soon to be remedied as I become more available!! It was nourishing tonight to be on the other side, not just filling my own containers, but doing my time - refilling stock, washing dishes, tubs and buckets, answering questions... and meanwhile enjoying the company of community committed to ethical food choices.
Working for even bigger change - I've been signing petitions and sending form emails as they come up, for whatever they're worth, and after attending the global School Climate Strike in September and so far two Ballarat Climate Action Network meetings and a recent BREAZE Green Drinks I will continue showing up to strikes, marches, rallies, actions, meetings and gatherings when I can and when they feel an effective use of my time. I will also continue connecting in with groups and networks and doing further deeper work as much as I can. Currently in the mix as specific ongoing projects - following a webinar with Friends of the Earth Melbourne's Act on Climate I have begun work lobbying Victorian Labor MPs, by writing letters and arranging and attending meetings, to set strong, science-based emissions reduction targets for 2025 and 2030, as we head for the legislated zero net emissions by 2050 - as fast as possible!!! Growing connections and sharing learnings around this work too. And also, after emailing the Premier, various Ministers, and VicRoads and then Major Roads Projects Victoria, as directed by the Djap Wurrung embassy, with the aim of supporting the protection of sacred Djap Wurrung birthing trees, other trees and land threatened by the planned duplication of the highway, I followed the train of insufficient responses to the point of a complaint to the Office of the Victorian Ombudsman, which along with other complaints submitted has led the Ombudsman herself to pursue her 'own motion' inquiries into the processes. Both these lines of work have required me to step out of my comfort zone and extend myself. I have felt deeply nervous doing this, but it just goes to show that it is possible for each of our voices to have an impact. And so we must continue to speak our truths and do our work for change. Engaged and activated!
Living in a new paradigm - Lastly on system change, I believe in living the world we want to create as much as we can. Be the change we want to see! A phrase I have previously used to encapsulate my disengagement, as much as I possibly can, with capitalism and the culture of growth at any cost, is: "Minimising my participation in the economy of false costs and values." I mention this because this is an important key at the heart of it. This system we find ourselves enmeshed in must change, in so many ways. It can only collapse, and the ways that replace it will bring more than we ever will lose by its destruction. So, briefly and simply, what I mean by that, in part at least, is reducing to a minimum all unnecessary consumption, avoiding mass media and advertising as much as I can, choosing to step off the treadmill of worthless work for worthless money; and instead prioritising all that is vibrant and glowing, heart warming and growing - supporting, being, becoming - all that is local, self-sufficient, and community oriented - sharing, caring, giving, receiving, growing and creating. And also holding strong to truth - stripping away all falsehoods and manipulations and just holding true to the essence of what matters most. The changes that we are going through are deep and complex and all encompassing, while at the same time really it's a stripping away of all that is obfuscatingly complicated, back to the simple and clear essence of all that really truly matters. There is no area of our way of life that will remain unaffected. So we can dream our wildest dreams, imagine that all that we ever dared hope for really is possible - anything is possible! - and we can live on into the future as we become even more than our wildest dreams and greatest hopes, beyond all imagining!
Learning for the new paradigm - And always I aim to keep learning new skills and new knowledge for a new world in a new future. The possibilities are endless! We can upskill ourselves in so many wonderful, interesting, and important, ways! We can learn like sponges - both intentionally, and incidentally along the way; through courses, workshops, reading, research; and by talking, discussing, asking, and observing. It's hard to list what I've been learning lately as there is so much every single day, but I suppose as ongoing themes I've been focussing on learning about various aspects to do with parenting - through courses and also reading - and also communication and relationships more generally - all skills and knowledge that I believe is vital to our future; also I've had some focus on food, cooking, gardening, growing, seed saving… mostly practical and experimental but also courses and reading; and of course my Reiki and Counselling studies - for now I've been taking a bit of a break with the Diploma of Counselling, but keen to get back to it in the new year, and meanwhile I completed my year of mentorship for Level III Reiki and I am now a Reiki Master, qualified to teach Reiki and share it onwards with others - yay! And, all of the above! Every other area above is an area where I am learning. Mending skills, and mending possibilities, at the Repair Cafe; reading about mindfulness and self-compassion and also many articles as part of the Good Grief Network in aid of learning how better to support myself, and others. Also learning more about the complexity of the issues faced by Aboriginal people, and also, in particular, reading about the appropriate language to use in this context, and learning more about local Aboriginal Wadawurrung history and culture too - via events and reading. And the MP Lobbying has also been a massive learning area, and along with that, engaging with media - sometimes it's as much about just getting on and doing it as anything, but workshops and encouragement and support from others have been crucial in getting me to step out of my comfort zone many times over this part year! … And on it goes…!
Likewise, all of the things in the other categories above really go some way to changing systems too probably. These categories are much overlapping in many ways - there is no real need for clearer delineation - that would only be to simplify and lose the essential depth and complexity - but I feel that each category adds to the overall picture, and for me it is important to cover all of those areas, so that is why they form my list (for now anyway!). Meanwhile the pieces of your puzzle might look completely different, as they will form a different, vitally important piece of that overall big picture puzzle too. All that matters is that ultimately we are all headed the same way and we are all stepping forward, one step at a time, leaving behind all that no longer serves, and growing all that is good, while we add our piece to the bigger puzzle that is the new world we are heading to.
And all that is good, is growing.
