Checking in: A joy revolution
Check-in's and rule breaking.
Every workshop I’ve facilitated in the last decade has begun the same way. Doesn’t matter who it is with, how old they are, or the context of why I’m there, every workshop begins with a check-in. Every participant must say a number between one and ten that represents how they feel, and then, answer a question. The number system gives me and the group an easily interpretable sense of where people are at.
One: things are pretty crap.
Five: things are pretty neutral.
Ten: things are so great rainbows, lollies and unicorns are spraying out of your face holes.
Words are hard, articulating feelings is harder, numbers though, easier. Everyone can do numbers. Smaller risk involved. When I was studying Arts Therapy I loved the practical and experiential ways we would give our participants a way into talk about whatever they wanted to through the making process. You can talk about the art you just made because it’s physical, it’s tangible, it’s real. You can talk about colour, or shape, movement in your body, but clarity about the life stuff is harder to come to. Often we don’t know how we feel, but we do know how we feel about the colour black, and the way it’s been in that picture, because it makes me think of storm clouds, and I fucking hate storms. So often language fails us. Actually it’s not language at all, it’s the cultural freedom to be vulnerable, to speak truthfully, messily, to be unpolished and raw. We don’t get to practice that. We don’t get to learn how to hold space for that. Check-in’s are my way of exercising these muscles, and seeing where the group i’m working with is at and what they might need. I work in direct opposition to teachers who think students who should meet them at their level, we should instead, be trying to meet our participants where they’re at. That is, by my definition, the job.
Now, the question part of a check-in varies in its seriousness, and are often adapted to the context, how long i’ve been working with the group, or what energy I want to set-up in the space. Asking a group, If you were a cake, what cake would you be?garners very different results to What do you need today? Or, how are you, really?
I didn’t know what to write today, my gut said just check-in.
I’m a four, today.
I feel a little overwhelmed and anxious in my body, there’s lots to do and lots whirring around my brain…there’s applications and articles I need to write, videos I need to record, emails I need to send, laundry I really need to catch up on because I keep putting it off. I don’t know what I want to wear to my book launch. I haven’t seen my family in a while and should call them to check-in. I need to find a new therapist, someone who is good with late diagnosis ADHD strategies. I wish I had more time. I wish I wasn’t paralysed by a total lack of executive function when I do have time. I wish I didn’t feel guilty about resting and not getting ‘enough’ done. I hate letting people down because of my chaos brain. I think i’d benefit from a routine, but I hate being told what to do, even by myself.
I feel sick for my Trans friends at the repulsive rhetoric that is being fired with such malice around the world and now there are literal Nazi’s in the streets objecting their existence. If all big feelings like rage and anger and disgust actually speak to an unmet need inside their feeler, then what is it about free gender expression that challenges these bigots most? Can it really be about their own desire to feel seen as they are? That the supposed “rule breaking” of Queer people really fucks with their own sense of self because it highlights their lack of freedom. I don’t know. This isn’t about compassion for their stance, not at all, more so a pondering about their shame, their fear, their lack of control, their quick access to hate others with such righteousness and ease. That feeling is hard wired - their hate for themselves makes it easier to do it externally. Imagine being so deeply triggered by someone’s joy, by their freedom, by their own self love and integrity. It’s abhorrent, and it’s real and it requires our voice and our action and genuine allyship.
I saw this on Instagram:
Joy Unbridled…ooft.
And now i’m thinking about allyship looking like joy unbridled. Saying fuck you to the rules and doing life on your own terms seems more important than ever right now. Wearing what you want, eating what you want, saying what you think and feel, leaning hard into pleasure and joy and delight always has been bold, but right now it is bold political action. It’s what these arseholes are most challenged by in our Trans loves, so let’s let them be challenged by it everywhere. In their workplaces, their families, at Christmas lunch, on the street - joy as political action. There is revolution in our pleasure.
I do not abide a system that is designed to make us look, and think and feel the same. That is built on guilt and shame. That is about very few making money off of this working out. And it is, it’s working exactly as it was designed and it privileges the people who designed it. Please don’t follow their lead. Follow your own. Build your own community that cherishes people showing up exactly as they are. Loving who they are, being who they are, smooching whoever they want to. That’s the community I exist in, that’s the community I want to exist in.
So, check-in with each other, ask each other…
What number are you today?
What rule are you abiding that you didn’t agree to, and what the fuck are you going to do about it?
And, what does more joy look like in your life?
I love you exactly as you are.
What’s happening:
Play Date workshop on Tuesday 28th March - a two hour online workshop led by me - $55 - a space to create and play…just because. Book here.
Melbourne West Side Honey in-conversation with Kate Mildenhall is happening on Monday May 8 - you can book your spot here, Naarm babes.
Pearler is created on the unceded lands of the Yagera and Turrbal people in Meanjin, and Claire extends her heartfelt respects to First Nations Elders past and present. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.