I got to that point where I looked through my feed – and kind of wanted to scream a little bit. (It happens quite frequently). 

Everybody talking and yet, nobody saying anything of any meaning

Meanwhile I’ve been sat here in this chateau, saying nothing.

Nothing because, well, to MOAN about how actually, living the absolute dream of being in this incredibly perfect, rose-covered, heritage given chateau, stuffed full of family and history and oak staircases and acres of land and beauty in the snow or the sunshine-

Well, how could I possibly sit online and talk about how I really felt?

Which was, actually, disconnected, dull, flat as a pancake and couldn’t REALLY be bothered to say anything at all.

And you know what it’s like

When you should feel grateful for everything you have, and you are, so grateful and yet still –

Rising up all around you this image of perfection and kind of actually

All you want to do is scream and run away from it all. And you don’t know why and yes of course you feel you have so many blessings

Yes of course you SHOULD feel this way, you SHOULD feel how lucky you are despite whatever else has gone on / happened, yes you SHOULD count your blessings because REALLY, aside from the odd blot on the copybook aren’t we SO grateful and

yes of course. But yet don’t we still basically want to tear our hair out and create some chaos somewhere just to feel I don’t know,  ALIVE maybe,

Because really

You, I

We were not made for perfection, were we? And I was sat there feeling incredibly guilty about how BAD I felt when I was sat in what for some people would be the very epitome of #lifegoals

Literally, I couldn’t have even dreamed of a better place to live, to bring up our kids,

And yet

And yet.

So I felt guilty and then because I felt guilty I felt angry and started to self sabotage EVERYTHING, looking to the outside instead of in, because that’s what we do, isn’t it?

Try to change the outside because we run from the very being of who we are, and more-

we run from all we were made to be

And you, I

We were NEVER made to be happy in a false idyll of perfection!!!

Perfection is so

dull

Uninteresting

lifeless

Playing at cardboard cutouts of a life

And so of course – it wasn’t actually the house at all that was the issue-

 and the house wrapped me up in its gentle lemon walls and held me with its stories and history, and let me pick cherries from the trees while I figured it all out and while I felt like I was falling like the blossom

it was being surrounded 24/7 by zero life that I LET get to me, and I don’t even mean people, I’m a huge introvert and prefer my own company a lot of the time, but just being surrounded by energy, buzz, vibrancy, people excited and on fire for life

And sure, boohoo me, poor thing in her CHATEAU in idyllic rural france, how tough must her life be

But I’m not built to trundle through days of endless perfectionism.

Pretty little brands and matchy-matchy colours kind of suck me in for about a second while I look for a pulse but generally, no –

I cannot handle riding out my days from one bland nothing to the next, glued to netflix and talking about babies and fur babies (as much as I love mine, BLUERGH) with really little purpose or direction or focus and

nothing breathing beneath the surface except maybe traces of who you once thought you’d become 

NO. Can’t do it. I was withering away.

And maybe then when everyone is just talking about NOTHING or about vaccuous nothingness – you feel like you have nowhere to go. No place for you here, the world whispers, and so you retreat, wondering about if it’s true or whether there is just a ‘something’ that you need to figure out

Please, show me something more

Because can you really afford when EVERYONE is talking about the same thing and even saying in the same way

To be another whisper on the wind?  What is it really costing you, to keep everything you know and the way that you ache for something else, locked up inside, sharing it with only the few discerning ears around you?

I mean sure, they’ll talk

They’ll say you’re crazy

They’ll say… they’ve changed. Not like us anymore. Not like everyone else.

But really

When was that ever a bad thing!? 

Or sure, sit and die in an ivory tower planning weddings and funerals in front of series that you’ll barely remember a year from now anyway other than in more of that mundane conversation

Carry on, pretending like you’re living and at the same time wondering why you can’t get your weight / drinking / addictions / comparisons / perfectionism / escapist imagination / money / under control

Sure, carry on pretending everything is bliss-

Because I wasn’t. I was bored out of my brain and how could I post about THAT, when I had everything, at least on the outside?

Well of course –

You post about that just like you post about pain and healing and beauty and truth and love and energy and money and everything else people give a damn about

Because you’re NOT MEANT TO BE KEPT IN.

Locked up inside

Wondering why, creator of all this beauty yet on the inside you just can’t seem to keep your shit together

Well, that’s why

What’s IN has to come OUT, doesn’t it?

Isn’t that why you struggle with your weight / creativity / goals / income / relationship, really? 

Because the real you isn’t designed to follow boxes or patterns or rules or step by step guides to a ‘better business/ life / parent / way to heal’

The real you is designed to share your very human experience and your art and creativity is a vessel,  to let her out

The real you is designed IN LIKENESS, from the very image of Truth itself.

So tell your truth then

Let it be raw and bloody and messy

Let it be that you felt guilty or bored or restless or just not yourself, because, me too

(and don’t even get me started on THAT Hollywood show, sorry and I almost definitely identify myself as a feminist BUT NOT The feminist of the modern agenda which has been USEd as a power play, but seriously if you can’t see what a COVER UP that was then please no longer read my blog)

And actually I got really bloody bored of having to be politically correct in case I accidentally hurt someone from my ‘place of privilege’ (which apparently means nobody is allowed to have an opinion ever, about anything)

I even got bored of my clients YES MY PAYING CLIENTS and when some partnerships ran their course or expired I was relieved to say the least (and just to stress this was last year, not NOW, because as soon as I realised this I got super selective on my private client list and now will only take clients I know, like, and I know are aligned and why didnt I do this in the first place, because we have to LEARN!

We learn it’s ok to say no
We learn it’s ok to accept people who are not right for us
We learn to discard people-pleasing (I think I kinda discarded that as a teenager and it never came back, actually)
We learn to understand that the light in us attracts the light in others
But our darkness and our fears well, we forget that are a mirror and magnet for our reality too –

And you want everything to be TRULY beautiful beyond turrets and ivory towers

Deeper into the darkness we go, and they won’t understand, you know BUT-

because let’s face it

We are simply not designed

To keep the peace
To make it easy
To keep the status quo

To keep quiet
To live a life of pastel boring blandness and blah blah wedding blah blah good wife blah blah good citizen

Might as well be tied to a chair in a room for the rest of our lives

But more than that

It’s about connecting to eachother, it’s about changing the world, and we can hardly do that when we can barely even speak up to ourselves about everything that matters, let alone post it over social media.

So that’s it, and where I’ve been.

And I created a new business which is out there and running, and I can’t share it because it has to stay anonymous because right now I can’t be dealing with hackers which is a very likely thing when you’re talking about what I’m talking about, and that’s been fun, but also

I missed this. I missed speaking and writing and for a while I thought about, you know that, well what would they say type of conversation that goes around in your head, the kind when you’re sat with true friends at dinner talking about stuff you would probably never ever come out with in public and then I thought

OH.

Imagine if nobody ever talked about this stuff publicly? Imagine if the only place we ever felt safe to speak our truth was over dinner with our very closest like minded friends? Imagine a world where we couldn’t actually SPEAK UP or even know how to verbalise to ourselves what it is we really, really wanted? 

Because of course most of us sure of COURSE we want the chateau and the travel life and the FUN but more than that we want to feel ALIVE and we aren’t going to do that when we are becoming like the walking dead,

Numbing ourselves to our true desires, burying ourselves in work and business and blah boring being the good wife and housewife and earner, even, being quiet and not speaking up EXCEPT when it becomes ‘allowed’ and permissible

because isn’t that what #metoo was really all about, roll out the bogeyman, parade him around for a bit, job done, issue addressed, when really everything that really mattered was swept under the carpet while everyone screamed for justice of course because

In an age when we can’t be heard because of all the screaming

In an age when nobody can say what really matters well because BREXIT or POTUS or RACE or whatever else is next
You want to not only get clients but actually feel like you’re LIVING and BREATHING!? !

Say something that matters. Say something true. Say something bloody and maybe even small but powerful but say something. 

I swear to God I’ve had more clients cry to me recently in the past six months than ever

Because they simply haven’t spoken up

And I didn’t know what was going on but of course

I had gone mute, not said anything, simply sat down and rested and we all know I don’t really do resting, really

Thought I might just ‘take it easy for a while’, and all that happened was that I got MORE business and book ideas than ever before and just got more frustrated that I wasn’t doing them all

And you know

Sometimes what will come out is messy, like this, where I tell you I almost broke myself living in what is everyone else’s idea of a dream

Sometimes what will come out is raw and guttery and bloody and messy

But it’s a bit like birth, really

Out of the blood and the mess

Comes nothing short of true majesty

The spectacular

And you can sit and continue to create the pretty and hoping and wishing one day your world will one day explode into the cosmos with all you dreamed of (although the likely chance is if you can’t speak up then not only will you not get that you might actually end up with the entire opposite because, it’s all a choice and if you’re not deciding for then actually, you’re deciding against)

Or you can just begin to speak or write or create into reality

Everything this was meant to be about.

You were never meant exist quietly. You were meant to be magnificent and sure, not everyone is meant to be magnificent. Can’t have the entire world being fireworks because then everything would explode 

But some of us are meant for more and I know if you’re reading this you most likely have that feeling, that indescribable pull towards MORE, more meant for you far beyond the mundane dance of quiet and pretty and perfect,

far beyond the chains of debt and fear and loss and addiction and perfection that have always held you down because you were too afraid to let her out so you’d rather trap yourself rather than feel the possible piercing of letting the world see your soul and exactly who you really are –

More.

But, it’s not too late

And you’ll find your real strength again, beautiful.  

You’ll soon remember who you are, even if you for so long buried her in layer of survival or not even survival but just like I did, just a sort of quiet existence for a while-

Well-

It’s not who you are. And you can’t continue to fight who you are forever,

like I said up there, if you don’t decide for you’re actively deciding against, and your world will either crumble down around you or you’ll simply feel as though you cease to exist in any kind of meaningful way whatsoever

And sure France has been beautiful. Like, breathtakingly beautiful. We drive up to the ornate gates and I think – wow – do I actually LIVE here?! We might even buy this beautiful petite chateau – if it is meant to be. 

But beauty is not everything.

And it is not anything, if what’s underneath is rotting and screaming and dying to break out and just say something real and just connect with truth and energy and everything that matters.

This post was meant to be about what I’ve been up to in this chapter of our digital nomad family adventure! But clearly it turned into something more 

Because that’s what matters. You let whatever needs to come out, come out. It’s how visions are made, true artists create, writers tell stories, and how empires are made.

You start connecting and creating when first, you voice what has been on your mind, and what you want from now on –

And you do it, now. And you heal. And you grow. And you release. And from all of the mess, like a canvas or a draft or a trial for whatever existed before – out begins to emerge, the spectacular. 

And here you are.

xo