January, 2022
The Precipice
As the work load is beginning to ease with Holoholo, I've had more time to sit in presence and reflect on all the feelings and thoughts arising as we make the transition from living on land to living on the ocean.
I was speaking with a friend about work, success, and the value we put on this in our society. Which led to a deeper discussion about my own self-worth.
I love this lifestyle and I want to have my means of making a living resonate with the rest of my life. I wish for there to be cohesion, harmony and passion, the experience I have often living close to nature, also in my work.
Reflecting on this has brought a few insights that I wanted to share.
My value as a being in this world is a core wound of mine, I think.
My family’s values, the medical system, societal career and education ideals, all supported and reinforced the idea that I don’t have value. Because I didn’t play their game.
I did not follow the mold. I did not know enough to see this playing out, but I knew it didn’t FEEL right to play by a set of rules that don’t make sense, even as a child.
It hurts my chest.
Who am I if I do not follow what society values? How does an unorthodox lesbian, chronically ill woman who has no ambition for traditional work have value?
And so.
Everything about me and my old lifestyle screams NO, I don’t want to play in a world that honors death of the soul and body.
I’ve wanted OUT since the beginning.
Since childhood.
So of course I’m not valued by this dying system of shame if I am not productive and compliant.
My heart hurts now.
So what is my value?
Who do I allow to assign this? (!)
Can I allow myself to stand within a new value system of my own making-
the innate knowing I’ve had since childhood that there is a different set of standards than the ones most people currently live within?
That my value is inherent, not earned?
It is precisely who I am, at my core, that is of value.
That my creations, and way of being in the world is all the value I need?
Just breathing.
Is enough.
I am enough.
I always have been.
But now I see the game that I have played, that has been played on me.
I see how I allowed myself to be twisted.
To view myself through the eyes of production and success, a slave to a world that values doing over being, illness over health, money over compassion, struggle over joy.
I see how my inner knowing was crushed by the pressure of society, work, friends and family pressure to conform.
I see how I have been breaking out of this oppression all my life.
Shattering the status quo by coming out, by taking alternative jobs, being a strong women with a voice, healing myself when all the system could do was create more illness, choosing a life on the road, or in a boat, choosing to quit the rat race, choosing nature, choosing myself over and over again.
And so I stand at a precipice.
(We all do I think.)
Do I, can I, trust my own intuitive sense of what is right?
Trust that I am and have always been of great value regardless of what I DO?
Trust that together, as we each find our voice, our truth, that we will create a world that our inner child feels loved and valued for the beautiful light that we are?
And so here I am, taking the first step, off the cliff.
Into a new world
Of my own making.
