Being with each other in close proximity, living on a boat with three adults two budding teenagers. Living in a small, confined space, where everything you do or do not do is felt by the 4 other people. If it is waiting for someone to go past first or you both squeeze through the kitchen or up the ladder at once. Cooking, cleaning, with new resourcefulness in terms of water awareness, electricity, gas. Simple things like water does run out and when it does it has a direct consequence on everyone else. Seeing so quickly the cause and effect of decisions that would previously have gone un-noticed on town water supply. Learning to use less dishes to cook, and to shower differently to conserve water. Having direct consequences when messes where made and left for others to clean up. That Sylvan and Briar where on the team to support the boys in raising their level of awareness and responsibility to reach beyond themselves. Which was a breath of fresh air for me to have a team to reply on

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Seeing the boys attitudes and behaviours dramatically change after being with other kids in a Fijian Village up in the Yasawa Islands, playing Volley ball and hanging out. What I realised is adults (I) can try and teach the kids all (I) they like, but the boys seeing and being with other teenagers completely emersed in island life contributing to the broader organism, orientated around nature, and not devices, doing their part for the village like bringing firewood and doing it seemingly proudly. I could see the learning, perspective and attitude shifts- happening through osmosis. Through the boys being in experiential reality with peers the flow and absorption of information hits differently and more deeply (I observe). Everyone’s kids are everyone’s kids. The slowness of island life compared to city life.

Such a high level of intimacy was created being with Niko, Maika, Briar and Sylvan adventuring and experiencing things for our first time.

Parenting with two other adults, with the same point of origin and a shared context was such a gift for me. Being in the experience of collaboration was like each of us being strands in a flax mat woven together, for the trip to stand on. Remembering I am not solely responsible for the children, that Briar and Sylvan were choosing to holdspace because they wanted to. Something that touched my heart was when Briar shared with me her realisation that for her to hold space for the children in seemingly small ways e.g. using her fear to stay with them in the water is also a way she loves me. This really landed for me and touched me. By being attuned, consciously feeling with and around the children this is a way she was holding the energetic container of parenthood with me. This is something I have tried to explain to many people and partners before as a way to support me and she just got it without words. The direct path to my heart- what a woman. Being on each other’s team to korero and give each other the feedback and coaching when such juicy hooks into drama with the boys would dangle, glimmering. Briar said to me through the trip a couple of time “she doesn’t know how I do it” this was following challenging interactions with the boys gremlins or boxes. And what I said and have been thinking about since is something I want other single mothers and fathers to know about and take seriously, is the importance of a regular consistent anger practise. Something I rely on to orientate myself to myself, which is a reorientation from previously orientating myself to parent according to what I see outside myself. Once you have established a consistent regular anger practise I highly recommend adding fear practise in as well. This has been so transformational to detect, sense, see in foresight, be able to receive more broader information from the universe. (I digress).

What I celebrate is when Sylvan would bring his clarity to the boys, make proposals, share his anger, celebrations, sadness and fears (the boys seeing in real life a man using his feelings to navigate life- that the feelings thing isn’t just a mum and her friends thing!), Sylvan using his gremlin to deflect hooks from the kids, or shift into a crazy outrageous identity to cavitate a whole other space for not just the kids but us all to step into. Sylvan’s radiance, ease, flow and playfulness with the ocean was inspirational. A sharp comparison and a reality check for all the fears I had absorbed through Hollywood movie messaging about sharks and the ocean. Sylvan has superpowers in weaving connection with locals, and quickly identifies how he can contribute or add to the collective projects or families based on their necessity. Living a different narrative to the extraction culture which much of Fijian tourist economy is base in. His thirst for life, thirst for adventure, exploding the boxes of the boys of what being a man looks like, in is joy, play and care for Gaia.

I felt the relaxation, relief, joy in my experiential reality of other adults with shared context holding the net/container of parenting with me. Realising in these moments where the net I’m holding slackens a bit with other adults holding some of the rope too. The impact enabled me to come even closer to myself, my needs, wants. And enabled some big emotional fears about motherhood to rise to the surface and be processed on the boat. Definitely, this trip was as much an initiation for me into motherhood as for the boys.

Through these processes I discovered I can not protect my son from life happening. That they are entering teenagerhood and are making their own decisions and for me to come closer to reality that they may make decisions that among many possibilities could result in death and it is no longer my job to protect them from life happening. That I have protected them from swallowing things when they were babies that could make them choke. Or stopped them from almost accidentally dying many times through out their lives. And now it is time for me to let go and keep letting go, to stop doubting their capability, thinking that I know, and therefore disempowering them. They are ready to learn their own lessons for their own life. The reality is I cannot teach them all they need to know, but life will, and it is time for me to get out of their way and shift spaces into a different phase of motherhood.

I began to sleep early, waking before sunrise, charged and ready (which is not so common for me). I also realise as I was in the experience of Briar and Sylvan holding space for the children, that I could relax more. That they are not just holding space for the children they are holding space for me too. That it is an act of love towards me. I am deeply touch receiving this type of love in motherhood, as it is easy to forget or become blind to the story of “ultimately the children are my responsibility” and that I should just gratefully allow and accept what-ever support I get in as if I am a scavenger for scrapes. But to be creating in real life parenthood/ guardianship of children on a different map, where in this territory it is not based in individualism, isolation and scarcity but in creation, collaboration, and FUN!

As I write this, I can still feel Gaia’s power so intimately as she rocks us to sleep at night. Or fuels our sails with her wind, or envelopes our bodies as we submerge into her first thing in the morning. Or as she kisses our skin with warmth from the sun. A contrast to being so sheltered, protected and seemingly disconnected in suburban life.

This adventure has been such an honour and privilege to live, breathe explore so closely with children and my dear friends. I feel so inspired. And amazed at what we can create together.

Being a woman taking back my life from the patriarchy is no joke. In fact, a reckoning. An undoing.

On the average day I could distance myself/ separate/ numb from the impact of having absorbed into my very cells the discourse and narratives of a system founded on the oppression of woman. The suggestions left in my cells from the absorption over generations- is designed to affect my body’s expression, patterns, behaviours and thoughts according to someone else’s rule book- patriarchy.

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Terror actually waking up and seeing within myself reflections of what I hate in the world, I am not separate from the patriarchy. The patriarchy lives in me. That the information purging from my energetic and emotional bodies right now is of despair. Fumes of fear because intrinsically in my most protected parts, the parts I keep hidden from you and especially those closest to me are stories defended with iron bars and violence. Stories with such conviction I didn’t identify them as stories, but of truths about myself. These “truths” so well guarded that I each time up until yesterday were not touchable, that each time I try to feel what is going on I was met with the iron wall from my own personal prison guard (gremlin).

“Truths’ from somebody else’s mouth live with in my cell. That even now after years of training, healing, growth, evolution, being the lighthouse of empowerment that I am. I stand before you bare.

Finding (as if surprising) more lies hidden in my body. Another trip around the learning spiral- bridging worlds between unconscious incompetence and conscious incompetence. When I thought I had taken my authority back from my life centred around relationship with man, that I thought I had moved on, empowering myself, to give less fucks and to live more unapologetically. I am slammed with the reality that regardless of layers previously worked through, -there is more. There are other parts of me that are so deeply programmed to voluntarily give my life energy to, to perform for, to be in service of the men is “the way” and that this part of me gets feed by the value men put on me. How attractive I am to them, how interesting I am, what I can give them. Do I have enough men doting on me, am I getting enough male attention. Enough awe and praise from them. Measured and valued.

Over the last months a dear woman friend has been opening doorways for me to see how I don’t rely on her, that I keep her and everyone else at arm’s length. Each time she spoke about this immediate fear rose in me, fear with the defended words like I don’t get it, I can sense what she is talking about but can’t grab it. Lying illusive for months slowly by surely making its way to the surface. Noticing with interest: that the nature of my gremlins commentary through my life had changed in tone. Noticing stories of grandeur about men, how super sexy I am, how they are so obsessed with me, that of course they want me, I’m this superior, delectable man magnet that they can’t refuse. I noticed fear rise as I listened to this protective force within me. And what pinged to mind was all the things I have in my knowledge bank about grandiosity as a survival strategy. Often seen in people with narcissistic personality traits, which a previous version of me attracted in romantic partners- hence the symptoms so clear to observe in myself. Which lead me into my own grandiosity research- what is my gremlin (survival force) covering up by spouting on in grandiosity?

Just like fever is a symptom of infection which could be located anywhere in the body. Grandiosity a symptom of emotional dis-ease. What is the cause?

My prison guard growing nearer and nearer by the day, using incredible technology to disconnect me from my body and into my brain. Walking around disconnected with the illusion of connection. Until a loving soul sister sat before me and just sat, asked some questions, and there it was my prison guard trying so hard to distract, disrupt, control, sever the earthquake that was happening in my body, this part of me trying so violently to supress the energy about to break the surface….. shame. Shame is underneath, what grandiosity is protecting (but is still not the core). My gremlin rather pretend and create fantastical protections of superiority than feel shame.

Shame, if not identified for what it is, is a slippery slope to playing a very infinite game of self-abuse, victimhood and to confirming core wounds. For me specifically “I am alone” and “I am unlovable”. Shame like grandiosity is also a survival strategy. It is a mixture of emotions, fear, sadness, anger and gremlin joy all coming at once. With the purpose of avoiding the clarity of each feeling. A genius strategy of my gremlin to get results that have been extremely crucial to my ancestors’ survival- shrink, submit, collapse, make myself wrong and inferior.

Shame unmixed for me was:

Fear because I don’t know what is happening to be, so I can’t ask for anything, I don’t know what I need, all I know is my body is trying to freeze, fight, flight and fawn all at the same time with this woman looking at me. Terror she will leave because I am such an “incoherent mess”, with “nothing to give her”, “unable to perform”, “unable to pull myself together”. “Unable to add value” to her and terrified she will leave because “if I can’t reciprocate or benefit her”- “I am nothing” and she will leave- these are just some of the patriarchal programming wired in my structure. She stayed not needing me to be anything different, not coaching me, not wanting anything from me, just generosity pouring out of her toward me, being with me as an affirming force.

Sadness crashing into iron walls, iron starting to bend and shake under the force of sadness. Sad because realising these fears are of somebody else’s voice, the voice of a system, that ‘of course’ I’m afraid, when who I am is conflicting and separating with the template/construct of a woman I have been conditioned to be and have absorbed from society. Programmed to be “that” woman rather than the woman I am.

Anger because the internalised self hatred of my gremlin- for not being able to force myself into submission and compliance, and defending against reality hitting me in the face. Anger because of the societal lies I have absorbed that all lead to normalisation of extraction culture on such a personal level. Anger because no matter my empowerment and healing, my conditioning is my conditioning, it’s already happened.

Gremlin joy of being so helpless and hopeless, that I get to “be right” about all the abusive stories my gremlin tells me. See it is happening again, “I’m right”. The relief in knowing and being able to predict the outcome with all the evidence my gremlin has gathered.

No wonder my heart has been starving when the so called “love” I have been focused on is actually validation and approval for being a good performer, and mask wearer. Rather than receiving love in each breath I take, existing in and as nothing. Not being anything, not doing anything, just as I am. Yes, there is a difference between being in the experience of love. Open allowing your being to be touched at the interface of life happening. Rather than your survival part receiving validation or approval for being so good at bending yourself in half, while being sexy and productive etc.

Not only am I waking up to more ways the patriarchy lives in me. But how I project templates, pictures, stories onto others. Templates that I didn’t realise were templates, but rather truths.

Recently realising I have been going around my dearest relationships gathering evidence why I can’t rely on them and commit to them. Finding all the evidence to confirm “I am separate” from them and “too intense”, “I grow too fast”, “they don’t understand me”, picking up all these subtle ways in their behaviour in tone of voice that “I can’t rely” on them to be there for me.

Well, for those of you who need reminding about another way in which the insidious tendrils of the patriarchy is active now- through the ideology and normalisation of individualism. Ask your self- Are people easier to control when isolated and separated from the group? To divide and conquer is a method of gaining power and control used for centuries, and still now. Unfortunately, now these patterns live within us and have been normalised, and when something becomes normalised it often recedes into the invisible layers of what makes up the culture. What I am learning is as I step forward, stand up, speak up, become from angry, more unapologetic, more disruptive, hold more spaces for people to explore their anger, speak publicly, ancient emotions, vows, agreements, oaths, have come to the surface for processing and transforming. Thousands of years have passed, and my ancestors really needed to play the part of patriarchal woman or die! Even though now in 2026 New Zealand I will not hang as a witch for having an opinion, however as I push the edges of what I know, memories in my energetic and emotional bodies emerge for processing so I can expand my window of operative capacity. However, when this old stuff emerges, it literally does feel like I’m dying or going to die. Learning to allow people to ‘Be With’ me when I am falling apart, when I have nothing to give, when I can’t speak the words of my experience, when my full body is simulating a memory I can’t explain, being witnessed in my terror to be seen bare bones/ naked and undefended, has been an extreme expansion and recalibration of what actual vulnerability feels like.

Top tip for navigating shame: for yourself and as a spaceholder.

Request a space for someone to be with you as the witness to simply hold a space for you to unfold. As soon as you taste the flavour of shame coming up in your body, say it out loud. Identify it. 2. Make the distinction that shame is a mixed emotion, 3. Make a choice: option A, sit in the shame, be there, confirm all your core wounds and feel righteous about it, ride the waves and eventually your nervous system will return within your window of operative capacity and you will move on and also probably not have clarity & likely you will experience this shame bomb again.

Option 2: Be with your experience of shame, because you have the distinction of mixed emotion you can use part of your attention while riding the waves of shame to navigate to the biggest feeling in the moment, it’s like you catch a hold of the thread of emotion e.g. anger, sadness, fear or joy. And choose to be with that with your attention, it is not a “holding on tight” to one feeling, it’s more of a decision to put your attention on one emotion right now and intimately swim in it for a bit to hear the information and express what has been banked in you and express the unexpressed. While splitting your attention to not deny the other feelings moving through you, more hold them in compassion. Allowing the other feelings to simply continue in the background. Imagine a multi colour ball of different coloured thread all tangled up. From a far the overall colour might be dark which might be your impression of shame, but once you zoom in, and see what shame is made up of is multi coloured, each colour is an emotion and a bit tangled up. Processing shame is not just to express and integrate one emotion at a time, what I have found is the antithesis of shame is compassion (more on this later). You will likely find yourself riding and expressing the thread of an emotion e.g. anger. Then another emotion rises bigger, gently let go of the thread of anger and be with the next emotion. I get the image of a monkey swinging through trees riding the waves of momentum between branches, letting go sometimes before the monkey has a hold on the next. The trick is to feel the different feelings separately, if you notice the person or you are holding space for is mixing their feelings, if they have been practising conscious feelings work for a while and have the matrix and skill to receive coaching, and feedback and continue to feel, you can be more precise and coach them to untangle. Note: often a high intensity plug of mixed emotion emerges, I have found it more healing and transformational for the person to be with them expressing this as it is, rather than be neurotic about them needing to express their emotions in a certain way- in this situation the emotion rises quickly and is expressed and comes back down. I have found once these high intensity mixed plugs are expressed it creates space for the person to navigate for clearly to the different feelings.

Warning: if you are bridge worker- someone who works with people brand new to feeling, and they are experiencing shame, and you try to coach or give them feedback about unmixing their emotions. In my experience this results in the door to the evolution of consciousness slammed shut for the new person. Especially with people who have experienced sexual abuse, addiction, violence in their conditioning their shame sensitivity is extremely high. Feedback and coaching is often received and translated by the person as I’m wrong and something is wrong with me even in healing spaces. Holding a space for them to be however they are with total neutrality, and compassion may be the most potent spaceholder skill in the realm spaceholdering for people new to feeling and healing.

What I find with gremlins who use stone walls to protect themselves, or sever/ cut off technology to cutoff their feelings from their awareness. Is often shame as the substrate of the wall or technology. What I have found as a doorway to possibility, for people to touch parts of themselves that they have never, is to unequivocally guard the space of judgement, when people are beating themselves up for being who they are often identifying them-self in the position of lack/victimhood- not having the skills, or not being taught, not being protected and have turned something that wasn’t working for them in their environment into “there is something wrong with me” & “I am the problem” etc. This is a genius way for children to survive their environments. However, into adulthood if you don’t heal and initiate these parts we end up creating our lives from these stories. Over or under compensating for the perceived lack in self. Shame is a useful survival tool to keep these stories out of awareness.

The disillusion of shame through compassion:

Use phrases to create normalisation. Some phrases that have worked for me is “of course” e.g. “of course I learnt to adapt and fawn to men, I needed these skills to survive my environment as a child”. “Of course I have learnt to keep people at arm- length and not rely on people, because in the past when I needed it the person I wanted wasn’t there. “of course you have all these amazing survival skills, because you had to survive your up bringing”. Normalisation takes the power away from the secrets, takes the power away from taboo subjects. When you can admit to your-self and then someone else what really happened, and them hold you openly, without blame and in total compassion and celebration for existing. Then the layers of shame can begin to dissolve. What normalisation does is disarms and disrupts self-judgement, tears down illusions of good or bad, separateness or isolation- stories of “no one gets me” “no one knows what it’s like”, putting straight on the table that every single person has a gremlin. We all have this crazy psycho weird force in us, regardless of if we choose to accept it or not.

Not normalisation in terms of “to look away”, or “it doesn’t matter because it is so normal”. But normalisation of, of course you learnt these survival skills, thank goodness you did. We all have genius unconscious survival skills you are not a weirdo for having these, its normal.

Being with (being with and not needing the person to be different) and normalisation are key components to support someone to return to their window of operative capacity. When someone is in hyper arousal-flight and fight, or hypo arousal- freeze, fawn, flop/dissociate -healing is not happening, the person is in survival mode. When a person spends too much time in hyper/hypo arousal/dissociation it can narrow their window of operative capacity. Supporting those with a narrow operative capacity often send in people with history of sexual abuse and violence to find their edge. This is where they find their next integratable evolutionary step. Working on the edge, widens your window of operative capacity.

To all you spaceholder out there- the most powerful space you can hold for someone new to feeling and is experiencing shame. Is to be the fierce guardian of an empty space. Holding compassion at the front, not compassion like “poor them” but compassion sitting beside them, two humans full of mana (pride and self-sovereignty) human to human, not trying to change the person, or get them anywhere. Providing a space for them to unfold and find their next integratable evolutionary step. Not where you think they should be.

I can still hear the echo’s of their screams in my heart as I write this. The first of 6 rage spaces took place this weekend. Huge waves of sadness rumble through me, heaving deep into my belly, wobbling, aching, the tide pulls back from the land then crashes hard again and again. Building in energy as I allow my sadness to simply move through me. The sounds begin to change from sobs to aching cries, to ancient sounding wailing. Although I was alone in my sadness physically, my experience was of being totally held and connected. A pulsing, held in connection with the collective grief of humanity. Hello Gaia. The echo’s of reality crashing into my heart as I allow the state of the culture in which surrounds me to arrive in its full impact into my heart. I start to write….

I feel so sad because 2/3 of woman in the space have been raped or sexually abused. Excluding the woman out side rage space who disclosed to me recently horrendous crimes against her and her children. These rapes and sexual assaults are happening now. It’s not a past problem people. The woman are ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED to be angry.

The woman entering rage space were on the brink- trying so hard to be nice and kind to others, yet their blood begins to boil, and terror begins to rise as they start to realised their inner volcano is about to erupt. Terrified to fall outside of the bell curve of what modern culture purges into our subconscious as “normal” woman behaviour. So they deny their inner rage, terror and grief out of fear they will be judged as a “Crazy, psycho, bitch”.

Well, dear Woman and dear Man it is my pleasure to break the spell you are under, of modern culture portrayal of sterile smiling insanity, if you know where to look the underbelly is hiding in plain sight. In the frozen, fawning, fighting and fleeing bodies of women remembering, in the statistics of rape, sexual assault and violence towards woman. If you have any woman or girls in your life or not, do you know these statistics in your area, in your town, city, country? I’m going to guess the results will terrify you. And I hope they do terrify you. And know when you look these statistics up they WILL be under reported.

Right now, I don’t want to talk about someone else’s research, I’m speaking to my lived experience over only the last days. Holding space for Men and Woman to practise being angry. Fearing their inner crazy psycho murderer, as if all of us don’t have this potential. Of course we do! To break the spell of this haze of abnormality in feeling big feelings, when they are present in each of us whether we consciously choose to express them or not. The amount of unconscious fear that you need to lock down the rage in your belly is enough to cause chronic physical illness. Don’t take my word for it. Try raging consistently for 3 months and just watch how your physical health changes.

I feel so sad because to be a Man in a healing space means to almost certainly be projected upon by woman, legitimately terrified of a man’s anger let alone rage. Pushing all the buttons to the emotions left unprocessed and simmering under the surface, needing but a tiny scratch to the surface is all it takes the woman to unleash the whirling terror laying firmly atop the rage pitted deep in her womb.

And he in the taboo of sexual violence, silences himself that much more, adding to the stoic, be strong armour he already carries. But where does he disappear too when faced with such confronting & terrifying reality that woman seem to only have smiles of insincerity to mask their body’s fear to being in their presence. What happens to the man’s heart when he is confronted with the heart ripping screams of the reality in front of him?

The men showing up to healing spaces showing a higher levels of sensitivity and care for humanity than that of the average population. However, does the heart ripping screams cause echos in their hearts…enough to talk to their brothers about consent? How to give and receive a no? Do they know how to sniff out an inauthentic no and yes in someone? In themselves?

I feel scared because I do not see men taking responsibility for the reality of sexual abuse to women by men. That it’s a woman’s “problem”, woman need to do more to protect themselves more? Do we accept that sexual abuse JUST IS , and is apart of our culture?

NO!

What will make a man more uncomfortable with staying silent? Create more tension or torsion as he twists his integrity?

In my state of liquidity following rage space, I followed an impulse with my soul sister to walk in nature as apart of my integration of a transformational space. To discover a man and woman in full throws of a violent dispute. Fuelled by the clarity of rage space- I WILL NOT LOOK AWAY. We approached, eventually invited the woman to let the man go and come for a walk with us. She eventually dropped the bone of wanting him to admit to his crimes, hear her, apologise and change, and came for a walk. She disclosed the sexual violence, physical, intellectual and emotional violence she has been experiencing. She was desperate for someone to truly hear her, not laugh at her, smiling and tell her she is crazy and has no evidence to his paedophilia. Someone to listen to her rage, someone to simply be with the enormity of her feelings, the experiences she has endured and been gaslit and manipulated far beyond her sense of self, to think she is the problem. But the growing roar of knowing breaching the surface from its journey from deep in her belly. A moment shifted and with wide furious eyes she declared ITS OVER, NO MORE! Then a thousand birds took off from the grass we were standing in and flew around us to confirm my sense the space was coming to a close, her communication had been received. I invited her to rage space before we departed.

The purpose in practising feeling is not for catharsis, yes the release of your big feelings can feel euphoric, but the purpose in my feeling spaces and in particular rage spaces is far bigger than emotional reprieve. It is a home coming. A remembering of who the fuck you are! Through learning to listen to the information of the feelings coming through you. That they are not a design flaw of human kind. Feelings are the carrier of information designed for you. The rage in your belly might be a thousand NO’s, never said. Before you can embody a more peaceful warrior/ress and simply emanate clarity and be the unfuckwithable energy that is in you. It starts with practise, consistently and often, clearing out all the old debris of the words left unexpressed.

My heart and soul are hungry for something else. This modern culture game I’ve become “successful” at, leaves me thirsty for another way of being in the world. My sons already with tight defended boxes around them about how life goes. Becoming teenagers 12 & 10 years old looking to the outside to see how to be men.

My self doubt is the poison licking through the fire in my veins, suffocating any rouge embers of inspiration or clarity trying to catch alight, into a self-catabolic neurosis. I have all these strong feelings about creating something else for myself and sons, dreaming, longing and yet I stay. What is the piece I’m missing, to strengthen my backbone and get on with it?

It’s time to shift from being focused on self (without self-sacrificing) and get on with creating and living what I’m here to do. What am I missing?

How do I experientially land in myself the unimportance of the survival games I’m playing and shift to being in service of what I’m here to create?

Discovering at the core of my specific variety of self sabotage- is a foundation built with emotionally coercive language. The foundational make up of my thoughts and language patterns are laced with signatures of failure, try harder, compete, compare, must be valuable to the man’s measuring stick and above all else doubt myself.

Doubt my intuition. Doubt my capability. Doubt my experience- did that really happen? Doubt my feelings- know one else is having big feelings, it mustn’t be that bad? Doubt my authority- Maybe I’m wrong- there is always to sides to a story? Doubt my expression- use other people’s ways, words to language my own into the social norms.

Thoughts, narratives, stories slid from someone else’s tongue into my ears and found a place deep in my psyche. Lying in wait like a dormant disease, for the perfect conditions. To ensure the plights of the past are not only remembered but recreated to continue impregnation of high value culture capital being passed on to the next generation. What is high value cultural capital you may ask? Cultural capital are narratives and behaviours of great importance to the modern culture capitalist patriarchal system. Think of ‘capital’ as an asset society places value on.

Take a scroll through your Instagram or sit & observe in a public place to play & explore the idea of high value cultural capital. What do you think motivates peoples behaviour? What are the common threads you discover?

Sex? Power? Belonging? Money? Victimhood?

Without these wonderous ponderous questions added in to the monotony everything trucks along as “normal”, “nothing to see here”. Doesn’t it?

No, there IS something to see.

I’m tired of trying hard, I’ve made myself chronically sick on several occasions. Then I eventually knit myself back together, only to slowly but surely start spinning one plate after another until I end up like these performers below desperate for the show to go on. Addicted to not only the high’s but the low’s.

Finally the first plate smashes to the ground to begin the inevitable decent into crash and burn. After a good few days in bed fighting off whatever disease I have created to end the performance.

The level of normalised internal abuse and violence within me rivals any psychopath.

I am actively participating in a culture that celebrates and rewards me for be so good at self-abandoning. So good at putting what I want on the shelf so I can go to work and make them lots of money. Working hard, locking in, grinding, push, push, push. Winning apparently impressive deals, getting bonus’s for apparently impressive sales margins, achieving said success of the culture I was born into. Deliciously regular and stable income, providing abundantly for the needs and wants for myself and children, the car with all the bells and whistles, working so I can go LIVE life on holidays. Putting the ebbs and flows of my menstrual cycle in the basket of liabilities. The education of my children into the equally self-abandoned hands of the public school system and continue to funnel my money into the supermarkets to feel the bottomless bellies of my male offspring. The cost showing plainly in my bodies pain, my hearts thirst and my souls longing.

The generous eyes of my children looking at me, concern furrowed deep in their brows. Fear stirring up in their worlds as I ask them scary questions about culture and propose alternative ways of being, when all they are trying to do is belong as they enter teenager-dom.

But where to from here? A seemingly insurmountable task to not only create something different for myself but to open doors for said male off-spring to walk through on their own accord.

As I wade in and out of consciousness, at times brinking the edges of my own thought structures and blinders, to discover new ways of being in the world. Not centred around money or work. But of heart exploding relationships and projects lighting my soul on fire, my real work in the world starting to burst through the seams and catch alight. Then an attack of the doubts pulls me back into the allure and haze of the modern culture hypnosis. “Phew that was a close one” the chief surveillance office of my inner prison says to himself. The familiar comfort and ecstasy of providing abundantly for my family. My capitalist/patriarchal bones purr with pleasure knowing how capable I am, doing this all myself. Does this sound familiar to you?

Are you surrounded by people who pretend everything is good? Juggling all the plates, exhausted solo mothers neurotic, taking over responsibility and on the brink self-combustion. Solo fathers making really scary decisions to leave his 8 year old son at home alone because he has to work late. Phenomenally terrifying really, all fuelled in the haze of high value cultural capital.

Well for me this try hard, over achieve strategy is over-compensation for sure, from the “I’m not enough stories” that plague my psyche and are ingrained in my structure- as if carved into my bones. I’m pleased to reported I’m getting bored of this particular story. I am realising the only reason it still exists is not through lack of healing but from my intergenerational programming. Self surveillance, try hard and control ingrained into the very genes making up the DNA of my thoughts, all secondary to oppression under the patriarchy. It was a genius and necessary survival story, to increase my own culture capital value. Badass really….However, I’m learning my own flavour of bad ass now. If you have reached the bottom of this article consider this a sign from the universe herself, that you may use doubt as a way to smother the smouldering embers of clarity, building in your belly also. Slowly and terrifyingly your clarity is making its way to the surface. You can choose to keep imploding it inside yourself (and probably keep making your self seriously sick) to keep yourself small and palatable…. or learn to be with the energy, listen to the information and use it.

It is time for you to find your tribe of weirdo’s (like me and you) and begin your journey of reclamation. If you don’t know where to start…..Rage Club or Rage spaces! If you don’t have one near you fly to NZ and come to mine!

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