It feels like so long since I stopped, just to write. So much has happened in the last 2 years it’s hard to know where to start. This feels like sitting down with a friend who I haven’t seen in years and being asked, what have you been up to? Catch me up! When really, the head’s been down, the feet have been paddling and the mind has been processing everything, everywhere, all at once (little 2022 film reference for all the independent film lovers out there).
Truthfully, I’ve been afraid of coming back here. Of coming back to the space where I’m my most honest and open and vulnerable, because for so long I have felt…fragile. Like a breath of wind would blow me back down into a depression that I’ve been trying my hardest to get out of. It’s only when you break that you find where your strength is and 2020 broke me. Not just the pandemic, not just Black Lives Matter, not just slipping a disc in my back, not just spending weeks alone in my house with my wonderful Aristotle as my only company. Those were situations which forced me to face some unsettling truths that I had previously been able to gloss over with work. Work has been my superpower, to find new wonderful things to distract my mind and occupy my body so I could turn my head from the fact that there were parts of my life that were broken.
My body tried to tell me in so many ways; for months I felt like my mental and physical health was skating on thin ice, but it’s easy to ignore when you’re always moving. Stopping, sitting and listening to yourself is one of the hardest things we can do; especially when we hear things that are difficult to acknowledge.
There’s a part of me that desperately wanted to document the journey because it has come so naturally to me in the past – sharing my wins and my failures – but something’s been different this time something about it that I haven’t even tried to put into words until now, because it shook the very foundations of who I am. It made me question and examine everything – starting with myself. I had to re-find and redefine who I am; my strengths and my weaknesses, and why I do what I do. Who I do it for, why it means so much to me and where my core beliefs come from.
Three years into this journey that my healing body forced me to go on, I feel like there are elements I can begin to share. I feel my strength and sense of self returning in a way I didn’t know it would. It feels exciting and tentative and I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve learned along the way and continuing to learn and grow with those around me. Here we go…
