A Letter To Lost Souls
🎶 Let's go back
Back to the beginning
Back to when the Earth, the Sun, the stars all aligned 🎶
And by that, I’m talking back to when blogs were blogs.
Why can’t a girl just pour her heart out to strangers on the internet anymore these days?! (Also, okay, 16 year-old Hilary Duff 😦)
I feel like Carrie Bradshaw, sitting down to type to other lost 30/40-something-year-old women.
The more that I meet and connect with other Type A women throughout my life, the more I realise we all have the same story. We all learned that our value was provided through performing well in school. Good attendance, good grades, and more than the numbers, the desire to not only meet, but surpass, expectations.
This need to be perfect, to be perceived and thus accepted as such, migrated into the workforce. We strove to climb the corporate ladder, at least in terms of performance and anticipating needs. We worked overtime, refused to put boundaries in place, all while pouring into those around us. Coworkers, friends, partners, children, family, pets, neighbours. You name it.
And all of a sudden, out of the very blue of the universe, we wonder why we’re so exhausted. Drained to the point where there’s nothing left of us. And one day, like a tick with Lyme disease*, this little bugger of a thought takes deep root in us. And demands attention from the depths of our exhaustion.
Maybe this version of life doesn’t have to be it. Maybe I can make things work in my favour. Feed my soul. Make reality of the ideals that I believe in.
*Is anyone else just terrified of contracting Lyme?! I need to frolic in a meadow but not at the risk of compromising my health!
Care for a journal prompt?
Journaling has been my saviour throughout this. Truly.
It gives me the time, and space, to just… unravel the complexity of my overlapping thoughts. Would you mind, terribly, if I included a few of the prompts that I use in my own journaling?
It doesn’t let go. It feeds. Slowly it eats away at the excuses, the acceptance of living a life for someone - everyone - else. And you dare to say out loud to your closest girlfriends, “Something feels off. I want to do something about it.” In return, you receive a gift. You realise you’re not alone. So, you dare to say it to your family. They look at you like you have three heads. But you know that you have to push past the weight of all of their doubt on top of your own self-doubt. As if enough hasn’t already been asked of you.
Somehow, despite how impossible it felt even to say it out loud, you now have to wade forward through the self-doubt and take action. Then, you have to continue to take steps forward and pour yourself into this metamorphosis. Knowing that you’re paying the invaluable price of time. Isn’t time the most valuable asset we have?
It feels like such an oddly specific life experience that no one else could possibly relate to. Yet, so many women I know feel this way. We’re socially conditioned to please and to live our lives in service of others. Eventually, you’ll deplete yourself. In that emptiness, the echoing within this chamber of yourself reveals…dissatisfaction. Longing. Desire. Motivation.
This, dear reader, is where you find me. In that messy unravelling of what is expected of me, what I am doing to meet the needs and expectations of others, and what I, as an individual human living on a rock in space, actually want out of this life.
Redefining myself and my value
What I’m finding about the wading through is that the first quicksand is rewiring your own understanding of yourself. There are a lot of truths that we have to rewrite for this new version of ourselves. Our whole identity might have to shift. And that takes time. And effort. It’s an emotional, cathartic process that requires the discomfort of metamorphosis as an offering to the universe to come out on the other side. For me, this has involved a lot of Inner Family System therapy.
And so many of us go through this incredibly raw and difficult process on our own. Because it’s such a unique experience of the self, and no one can hold your hand through that. Unless, of course, you’re taking the leap together. Starting a business together, for example. (Can you sense my jealousy?)
For me, I realised something was amiss when I fell in love with the Ice Planet Barbarian series. What the f, TikTok?! Like, this series is true insanity. But then I asked myself why I’m continuing to read this series. It’s not their…. appendages. I realised what draws me in is the world.
The fact that they literally cannot rely on their history from Earth. Who cares what job they had? Now, they have to survive. And beyond that, girls with craftsmanship are welcome, and thrive. Because everyone’s unique abilities contribute to the greater good. Yes please?!?!??
While I wouldn’t say I’ve come out of the other side of this self-definition stage yet, with words of wisdom, one thing that I’m finding helpful so far is taking pauses when I feel overwhelmed. “Venting” to myself about all of my worries and frustrations and doubts. And then I respond as I would to a friend. NOT as I would normally respond to myself. “That sounds really hard. What have you tried so far?”
And then I have to take a step back, and, with a titsch of embarrassment, go, “You know what? Not a whole lot. In my head I have. But not in the real world.” and then your friend goes, “Okay, let’s make a game plan then.” and you talk through what the potential next steps are until you come to the obvious conclusion of what’s next and you take action. Because you processed it as a friend to yourself. Not as the self-critical enemy.
The Year I Started Calling Myself an Artist
Which brings us here. To the most cocophanous transition ever to my metamorphosis. Which, in a nutshell, is represented as this website. A from-scratch revision. A new beginning. A feeling of freshness. An emphasis on my identity as an artist, first. As a marketer, for income, as second. And, importantly, a priority of my time (focuses, attentions?).
This website has seen me through so many stages of evolution. So much growth. It’s transformed with me. And here we are now, at this whimsical, rooted, present version of ourselves. I’m letting my creativity lead and hoping that my intuition leads me forward in the right direction.
If you’re really been here since the beginning, you’ll remember this classic header.
Fun Fact, this was a rose in my neighbour, Mel’s, garden.
He has since passed from cancer. But man, did that man love his garden. And as a budding photographer, so did I.
Accepting All Side Quests
So, what now? I am following my joy. As my friend says, I am in my “side quest era”. Maybe I’ll write another blog about integrating pleasure back into my life. But the shout-it-from-the-rooftops update is that my shop is live. You can order embroideries and linocut prints from me, with the intention to expand. Because this undiagnosed ADHD (why does it cost a grand to test?!) has over 100 ideas in the backlog. Quite literally. My Jira is overheating.
So for now, I am following my intuition. Not my anxiety. Because, babe, there’s a big difference.
There are lots of exciting things on the horizon. Workshops and commissions and the full moon, oh my!
I would say that my anthem for this era is very much “Vitamins” by Qveen Herby. Contrasted with “EnergY” by Tyle Jane. Essentially, I’m in my self-care era. Which I’m calling my “unbecoming”. Because I’m unbecoming who I thought I had to be. The version of myself built around other people's approval. Productivity as my measure of self-worth. The belief that I need all the answers before I begin. The "optimized" version of myself.
As Hilary Duff said, “Shedding every color, Trying to find a pigment of truth, Beneath my skin, oh, Cause different, Doesn't feel so different.” What was she up to at 16?!
Make sure you’re subscribed to my blog (below), or to my social media (in the footer) so you don’t miss a single second of this messy chapter of self-discovery. Until my next entry, please reassure me that I’m not alone with your own stories of self-discovery, self-doubt, and transformation. Truly, I need the reassurance.
Yours imperfectly,
Alix