Here is the audio version of this post in case you’d prefer or need me to read it to you.
Dearest love,
I’ve been thinking of you often, and i’ve wanted to write, but I haven’t really had much that i’ve wanted to say or share. I’m trying to pay attention to the ‘should’s’ and ‘I should write,’ doesn’t feel like a yearning i’m willing to follow. Tonight there was a nudge though, a nudge to show up and see what pours out.
Here’s some things…
I’m writing new fiction on and off with little commitment. It’s a young adult that has been swirling since 2019. I’m trying to approach my creativity without shoulds this year too, which means i’m trying to believe it will happen when it happens. I saw the Andrew Scott one man monologue version of Uncle Vanya and it shouldn’t have worked, but it did and my artist theatre loving heart THRIVED. I recently bought fidget toys that meet the precise sensory desires I have to focus in boring meetings and when I’m teaching and they’re a revelation. And, I’ve joint a new gym and I went to an aqua aerobics class this morning where I was the youngest by at least twenty-five years, and the instructor giggled and played Cliff Richard and I delighted in the sensation of being in a pool with glorious elders. Especially the old man in a pair of suspenders to hold his board shorts up.
This weekend was my first full weekend off in two months and I did very little, except sit on my couch and re-watch Normal People and delight in its spaciousness, whilst also being amused by own my audacity to believe I can pull off the kind of craft projects that I believe I can. This time it’s an embroidered vest. Have I ever embroidered anything? Not really. I went through a cross-stitch hyper fixation a few years ago. I went to Spotlight yesterday and thought I was buying $1.50 reams of thread only to get to the counter and realise the specific ones I chose were not in fact on sale and were instead $4.50 each, and did I think to do anything other than behave like I meant to spend that precise amount of money? Of course not, because heaven forbid I inconvenience the fifteen year old mild mannered cashier. Midge had to go back to the vet today because she is allergic to the air and the pollen and her own skin. So, there are new antibiotics to administer and money to spend on remedies and brain space consumed by the eight-year-old, 8.2kg living thing that I love so much that thinking about the day where there will be no remedies to administer on her allergic little body makes me feel grief unbounded. Grief for the future grief I will feel when she is no longer around.
I’m pondering why the first things I abandon in the business of life are the things that I know buoy me the most. Like, journaling and tapping and not disassociating in a spiral of reels in the evening. And I think I might be perimenopausal or insulin resistant or maybe there’s something going on with my cortisol. Perhaps, it’s lymphatic? Perhaps it’s all of these, or perhaps it is ADHD. Perhaps it is all of these things plus living in a wild and broken society where children are starving to death, and lawmakers think it’s okay to pass laws about bodies they don’t inhabit, and men think it’s okay to murder women running or tie small children up with cable ties. And its unfathomable and a different kind of grief, that’s rage laden. I try and remind myself that rage is fuel to act. Don’t do nothing, do something. That’s the Dangerous Females rally cry. I really would like to go back to therapy to discuss all of this, but the energy and executive function to find a new therapist is really not present right now. It’ll happen. How is it March, already?
I’m pondering a beautiful event I went to in Mackay last weekend. The Just Saying Project’s Women’s Awards. Fallon Drewett, the founder is walking her talk and using story and community to celebrate people who usually wouldn’t be celebrated and I was deeply moved and inspired. So many women honored by the people in their life for showing up and following their knowing, for being bold and resilient and getting back up after being knocked down over and over again. Women bending expectations in the realms of construction, women’s pelvic health, cleaning, mothering, and aged care.
Here was a bit from my keynote:
It is a brave thing to listen to the yearning in your heart, the curiosity bubbling, to acknowledge that as real and then do something about it.
Why don’t we talk about that?
We say things like, trust your instincts, or follow your gut…
What I’ve realised is the notion of trusting your gut is just another happily ever after floral concept that we’re bound to fail at. The ‘trust your gut’ bit is the romantic declaration on the bridge. We never get to see the bit after the spinning hug in the rain because the credits roll. Trust your gut…and then what? Then you have to acknowledge that it's the truth. You have to declare it to yourself on the bridge. You have to fight through the barrage of bullshit your brain will use to convince you that your gut is wrong. Or that your knowing will lead to irreparable damage. This safety part of our brain, and the external constructs, make us believe that our truth must be rejected at all costs. We’re certainly not raised to trust the perfectly built internal system that knows stuff about ourselves because trusting the truth means trusting ourselves, and trusting ourselves requires action, and that action could mean we fail, or look strange, or upset people - or disappoint them. Especially in a society that has taught women to not rock the boat, or stand out.
We don't talk about the bravery required in knowing, and then acting. We don’t talk about the bravery of disappointing others if it means not disappointing ourselves.
The saying should be,
Trust your gut. Believe it. And then do something about it.
But I guess that doesn’t look nearly as good on a t-shirt or a bumper sticker.
What I know now is this…I know. There is a part of me that truly knows what I want, and crave, and desire and how I feel. It is the calm peaceful voice at the centre of who I am. It is the truth. It is the thing I freely ignore with distractions and the opinions of others and culture and the chaos of life. But when I get really quiet, I can hear her. When I put pen to paper, I can hear her. I can hear me.
And here’s what I want you to know from this knowing place…
You know too, my love.
You know. You know. You know.
And you can.
First you know. Then you listen. Then you trust. Then you do.
Know. Listen. Trust. Do.
You can.
People came up to me after my talk and spoke about their desires to quit their jobs, to make art, to leave their husband, to travel, to write their novel and I had a very teary, gratitude moment in the hotel after because when we tell the truth about our knowings and brave moments we give other people permission to be truthful and brave too. And ultimately isn’t that what we’re all craving deep down? A thumbs up permission slip that says YES, YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN.
I’m thinking about the notion that people are just doing the best they can with the information they have at the time.
Thank you for receiving these ponderings upon your person or eye balls or ear holes. I appreciate you being here.
I hope you know I believe in your knowing and your bravery and I really, truly think you can trust it and act on it. I believe in your smarts and resilience and innovation to handle whatever comes next. There are so many people, so many stories , every-day brilliant stories of people showing up with their suspenders on so their pants don’t fall down and doing it. If he can, you can. If I can, you can. If you can, I can.
So much love to you.
Love.
Claire.
If you fancy you can sign up to support me and my writing and get a Sunday Grit Guild Journal club pondering in your box every week…except yesterday because I forgot and I’m going to send it right now.
Pearler is written and created on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, and I pay my deep respect to First Nation Elders past and present. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
I also want to acknowledge the atrocity and genocide we’re seeing play out in Palestine right now. I don’t believe I can wholeheartedly support sovereignty of this land I live on without honoring the impacts of colonisation of Indigenous people everywhere else. We need ongoing and final ceasefire.