KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – In this very weird time of limiting our social gatherings, now more than ever, I have to sit with myself.
How can I/we begin? How can we use this time to start anew? How will I use this time to grow? How will I meet my demons? How will I love myself with no distraction, only going deeper?
Now is the time for healing. For deep, messy, unavoidable self reflection. Finding ways to collect every resource we could ever need to heal ourselves. The world has stopped for but a moment in its long life to force this time upon us. How will we get to know the children and partners and family we are so lucky to be “stuck with”?
If you had caught me a few years back I would’ve recommended that everyone needs some form of therapy and 100% would not have taken my own advice.
Here I stand, after having reached out to community when my triggered state became too much for me to navigate and having completed two (extra long) therapy sessions. Are you wondering if I feel like I’m seeing everything for the first time, fresh and new? You’re probably thinking…wow I bet she’s sleeping like an angel…Or maybe her self confidence is renewed.
The truth is I feel like I’m waist deep in thick mud, standing at the bottom of a mountain and I can’t see the top because the fog is so thick. But I’m beginning. Against all odds being stacked against me… I have begun.
After working with youth for years, hoping to at some point influence or guide their decisions oftentimes getting them to just begin is the true hurdle.
Just make one “good” choice, just walk away from one fight, just apply for one thing, just finish one assignment…just begin curating your life in a way that feels strange and hard. Those feelings will eventually become familiar and you will find that you can do literally anything.
To fulfil and face our highest version of ourselves is terrifying because what if we fail? Well, in truth, we will fail. We always fail. We fail everyday. And so fucking what? We get up and try again. We learn and move forward. All advice that I am so familiar with sharing and now having to take myself.
To have hard conversations of getting to know each other so intimately we can see the gift in isolating together. To create a space and home that is infused with the freedom to feel. To return back to ways before our time – ancestral knowledge.
What a time, full of wonder, growth, and possibility.
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