I had a cervical smear test the other day.

And asked the nurse if I could insert the speculum myself.

A kind woman, she agreed with no hesitation, although it clearly wasn’t a standard request.

I’d put this exam off for years, harmed at the fingers of a holistic practitioner with benign incompetence.

Who’s session I’d left shattered, a breaking point back then.

I bought a second-hand keyboard on eBay to help with the back pain from hunching over my laptop too much.

It came and it took me a few days to open the package.

It needed batteries.

It took me a few more days to get them.

I try the keyboard, it works.

I try it again a few days later and realise some keys are broken.

I apply for a refund even though the seller doesn’t accept them.

It gets approved.

I plan to go to the post office to drop it off.

I don’t go.

It becomes this insurmountable task that feels doomed to failure.

I avoid.

I feel despair every time I remember this task or see the keyboard.

I eventually get curious about why this is the case.

Like what memory is driving this avoidance?

What pops up is my first ever online package - that I never returned.

The sense of failure from that still lingers.

It’s coded in my body as this is what happens when I try to return things

and is unconsciously pulling me to repeat the pattern as it feels familiar.

The Risk of Performance. 

Last night was the Christmas jamboree for the choir I perform with (Feral voices). 

It was a wonderful evening with a twinkly-magical-connective-community vibe, where we got to perform for each other. 

I put my name down to perform a poem and a song.

The poem went down well, it’s one of my own and I’ve performed it a few times. I was somewhat nervy, but overall it was in my comfort zone.

On the right side to be exact, just above my skull.

 If you've never experienced that, it won't make any sense to you, but if you have, you know exactly what I mean.

When my anxiety was at its worst, I couldn't get a full breath

And if something intense happened to me, flashbacks of the event would loop over and over and over again in my mind

Navigating change and lost your routine

I've just recently shifted out of having a paid part-time job with standard hours etc to being fully self-employed.

This shift has totally changed up my routine.

I no longer have a reason to walk the same route that I used to.

It's now harder for me to get to the gym to workout.

Doing what you want, sometimes means disappointing others, and that’s an uncomfortable experience to have.

You can intellectually know that you want to do something

Have all of the arguments on why it’s healthy to prioritise your own needs

Maybe you’ve read a book on this topic

Listened to a podcast

Can articulately explain the rationale to another person

Resting in your genius is a helpful route out of burnout

Bed rest and relaxing is intuitively understood as the solution to burnout, alongside meditation, exercise, connection and eating well.

But often a missing ingredient for healing is getting to experience being in your genius. 

And by genius, I don’t mean being a savant or exceptionally intelligent.

I mean the skills that you intuitively grasp, innately excel in and enjoy getting mastery in.

Shame and fear based motivation only gets you so far and burns you out

Finding the intrinsic motivatioSticking to the running theme from yesterday, I’ll illustrate my point.

I’m no stranger to the aesthetic preferences of our culture and there are times when I run to ‘get skinny’. 

I drag on my leggings and lace up my trainers out of fear.

Fear of being rejected for being soft and curvaceous.

Fear of hearing taunts about my fatness (these come from childhood memories of being the chubby kid)

And just an overall sense of being wrong and running being the cure for that.

A celebration of being a bit shit at something and doing it in anyways 

I've been running for 15 years. It’s been an on and off thing for me. Months, years have gone by where I haven’t hit the pavement, but it always beckons me back.

There’s an intrinsic call, desire, pull, goal, knawing knowing that compels me to keep at it, despite the fact that I don’t hit any impressive metrics when it comes to distance or speed and that I’m mostly shuffling along with generous breaks.

Why becoming more embodied helps you to stop defaulting to your people pleaser persona

I had this experience this other day.

I wanted to do one thing, but I imagined that someone else wanted me to take the opposite action.

This person hadn’t expressed that, in fact all evidence pointed to the contrary, but my brain used them as an inner critic, puppet, avatar to beat myself up with.

In response to this perceived judgement, I felt shame for wanting what I want.

Like I was a bad girl (it was a young part of me that was having these thoughts), and that I would be abandoned and discarded for not complying with someone else’s wishes.

My gums live under capitalism

Maybe yours do too?

I was brushing my teeth the other day and I was doing this new thing where I press gently and spend more time on the activity.

I’ve started doing this thanks to my hygienist, who told me, as I have been told before, that I brush too vigorously and my gums have receded as a result.

Despite having been given this precise information years ago, and intellectually knowing it to be true, my body had a whole other timeline for compliance.

Seven years to be exact.

Why is this?

Behind the scenes, my obsession these past few years has been feeling more.

I had noticed during the pandemic, that most of the left side of my body had become numb and there were other parts that were inaccessible when I tried to put my attention on them.

The parts that I could feel, where wrought with tension.

Each breath was empty of its full promise and left a gaping craving for more air.

As my throat and chest, choked me, from the inside.

The pressure ‘to make it’

I was daydreaming recently, as I do

I was dancing in my room

Getting my groove on

Feeling joyous

I started to imagine that I was a DJ

Playing my favourite tunes, guiding everyone to ecstasy with the beat

On Maturing

I watched a cheesy Netflix rom com on Saturday night, called ‘Love at First Sight’.

In it, two young people fall in love after meeting at an airport.

I used to watch these movies relating to the young woman on the cusp of love.

This time though, I wasn’t intrigued by this archetype.

I’ve been there, done that.

Unconsciously blocking progress

I haven’t been jogging in three weeks, after having a peak week.

I ran the furthest I had ran in years.

Each jog was a joy and I could feel the possibilities of this practice expand ahead of me.

Then nothing.

Some desires take years to come

This isn’t failure, it’s reality

Community Action for Climate Change

Last year I had an awakening of sorts.

I was reading posts by @sarahmagdalene where she was calling out the coaching industry for pushing an agenda of consumerism, whilst ignoring climate change; and I realised that I fit squarely into her descriptions.

This was not a comfortable realisation.

I thought back to my teenage years, when I was passionate about the environment, a member of the eco committee in school and I represented Ireland at a green flag conference in China. Or the years in my twenties working for Lush, a brand who’s DNA is pro-sustainability and actively taking part in their campaigns.

So I’ve wanted to go jogging for years. If you’ve been following me a while, you may even remember some Facebook Lives I did about it back in the day. Honestly, I’ve struggled to do it consistently and I’ve mostly given it up.

Fast forward to this week where I went for a jog using the Couch to 5K app. I’ve heard about this app for years from friends but I always ignored it. Mainly because I thought it would be better if I figured out jogging by myself.

Do you hate online dating?

I was talking with a client recently and she shared how she finds online dating tough because there was no way to know before a date, if the guy would show up looking like his pictures or if they would have a connection.

Can you relate to this experience?