I’ve discovered that, like everything else in my life from the way my kids behave, to the things that happen, sex is yet another thing that reflects back to me parts of myself that may be about old thought patterns and feelings.

When I was reading about Pavan Amara’s Take Back Your Body project, although I’ve never experienced sexual abuse directly, I could relate to the concept that taking back the narrative of sex is a crucial part of healing.

Amara says “After any sort of sexual violence, the way you think about sex and your body changes, so you think it’s not under your control, or you have to go with someone else’s likes and dislikes and you lose that connection to yourself. We look at ways of taking that back.”

Whether a person has been abused or not, I believe an unhealthy narrative about sex prevails among the collective conscious, and feelings of fear and shame still too often dominate the landscape in both sexes.
I recall listening to Teal Swan sharing that each time she runs a workshop and asks participants to raise their hands if they have felt fear for their life, all the women and many men raise their hands. When she starts to narrow that down to a shorter and shorter timeframe, the men are often gobsmacked that most women in the room still have their hands up when she asks who has felt that fear in the last week.

History tells us that females (and many males) have suffered at the hands of power-hungry men for centuries and, while life in the twenty-first century is changing in many places, oppression still exists both in the world around us and reverberates in the world within us. This is something I am mindful of in relation to my own experiences and those of my children.

My eldest daughter was inadvertently exposed to the topic of sex in a fictional story she had listened to recently that had been miscategorised under children’s books rather than for young adults. The main thread of the story was about time travelling back to Arthurian times to save the future. However, the plot apparently also included two teenage girls having sex and a baby being born.

This brought up questions for her about what sex is and, while I did not mind having the conversation, I hadn’t anticipated having to answer quite so many questions for another year or two. I had to explain to a somewhat bewildered young girl, who finds the whole concept rather abstract, that a whole new view of the world opens up when hormones start flooding our bodies in the teenage years; sex becomes desirable (when allowed to unfold naturally) and is just nature’s way of making sure we humans survive.

It made me reflect on my own experiences emerging into young adulthood, recalling the perplexing question of what a French kiss might be and what exactly was I to do with my tongue? And just how embarrassing everything seemed at that age, even asking that question of anyone was too much.

When I think of my first kiss in that genre, with an eleven year old boy in my class using his swanky digital watch to time it to two minutes, his tongue like a slab of meat sitting unchewed in my mouth, and his eyes focused sideward to the timer on his wrist, it was clear I wasn’t the only one clueless and uniformed. Of course, that was just the overhang of Victorian virtuosity in our upbringing.

Here, on the opposite side of the world, my partner was brought up in a different culture entirely; Kiwi male bravado reflects an archetype of patriarchal male entitlement to female flesh, like a set of untrained puppies that grow old having learned no tricks at all except the art of enthusiastic and instant gratification. 

Both those examples are clearly not everyone’s experience, especially those that have been exposed to sex or experienced sexual abuse at a young age, but it demonstrates how we all view sex through a filter of our own experiences; and there does seem a lack of examples around what healthy sexuality might look like.

Being the digital age there is no lack of material available on the topic of sex, but how much of it is actually helpful? I’ve noticed in this era of Coronavirus lockdown, on social media there seems an increase of bored blokes sharing weird videos and material designed for shock and titillation.

My youngest daughter, unbeknown to my partner, was looking over his shoulder when his phone pinged and there was one such video that popped up – sent via a social media app by an aforementioned archetype of the bored Kiwi bloke. “Mummy” she cried “someone has sent daddy a video of a man bouncing an exercise ball, like the one you used to have, on his willy.”

She thought this was hilarious, and thankfully didn’t see enough to have absorbed the sexual component of it. Needless to say, my partner has since taken a much more mindful approach to his device.

To me, of the prudish upbringing, this type of media automatically gets categorized in my psyche as smut and makes me view the man in the video (and anyone sharing it) as sad. In my partner’s psyche, it’s just funny, something to send on as a bit of bravado and one-upmanship in the shocking humour stakes.

Being a mother of daughters and someone who deeply understands how even things that are seemingly benign in intent can shape a person’s psyche, I am inclined to err on the side of caution when it comes to exposing my kids to life beyond their current point of development, a hard task in today’s world.

As I said in From Desires of the Flesh to Deep Connection our sexuality is deeply connected to all our other interactions. When I listen to the demeaning lyrics of a rap song, it creates images in my head, the same happens when watching a video, reading news, playing games… on and on. The question we each have to ask ourselves – and for our children as they emerge into young adulthood - is whether these images are pathways to love and connectedness or quite the opposite?

Science has shown us that the more exposed to something we are, the more desensitized to it we become and this is especially so when we have been indoctrinated into a way of being since early childhood, we have no conscious memory of our true feelings. I believe that many males simply don’t understand the female perspective and, what they see as harmless can often be disrespectful or even harmful.

I get that to most of the people out there sharing the videos I mentioned, it is all just a bit of fun. But there was a time – likely in childhood and before their conscious memory -  that it would have created a bad feeling within them.

Having read the work of Dr Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-born Canadian physician with a background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development and trauma, and in their potential lifelong impacts, I know the harm that comes from children being exposed too early and too insensitively to everything from noise to the thoughts and emotions of those around us.

This is where the collective consciousness on the topic of sex and sexuality gets perpetuated; where insensitivity arises.

For one friend of mine, this is a huge trigger and I understand why. Our sexuality, like everything else in our lives, develops through the filter of our experiences. Her experiences include bearing witness to a wide range of sexual abuse. As a healer, she knows the damage to our psyche when abuse occurs.

For me, as a female who has not been subject to what we would term abuse, I still bear witness to the thoughts and feelings and mistreatment of females and have my entire life. Everything from the lewd wolf whistling that accompanied any passing of a work site from a young age, to frightening moments at the hands of testosterone charged males fuelled with alcohol or even just at a football match.

There is definitely a sense in my psyche that these things are the manifestation of a collective experience that views females as objects rather than with reverence. So when it comes to the realm of my own body and my own relationships, this collective sense of my female heritage creates part of the lens through which I view sex.

I suspect the reason this plays out so emotively for me is because my soul knows reverence for both the masculine and feminine and can sense that neither is being truly honoured in much of what I’ve discussed here.

Sex is to be enjoyed, of that there is no doubt, but what are the blocks in the pathways to mutual joy that exist in your life? What are the fundamental ideas and beliefs you have that stand in the way of honouring this? What experiences do you need to heal? And what messages do we want to send to our collective sons and daughters?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be at Ease With the World Around You, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, Do You Really Know the Different Parts of You? and Womanhood: A Story of Our Time. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I had been doing some shadow work this week, which is to say I had been diving into the subconscious mind to surface some unhealthy thought patterns and feelings I had recently become aware of, when the universe gave me a sharp reminder to get out of the weeds and look at the big picture.

On this journey to me, I thoroughly enjoy the ah ha moments when something suddenly makes sense; it is like another piece of the puzzle falling into place and I become that little bit lighter and brighter. This was no different except I got stuck in the bad feeling of memories and details rather than focusing on healing; as if I wanted to punish myself more.

You see, for quite a while now I have been tracking my dreams, and I often get this feeling of being on the outside. When I explored this (see Heal Your Past Hurts To Help You Fulfill Your Potential) it took me back to a time in my early teenage years where I betrayed someone’s trust - twice - and unsurprisingly lost their friendship.

For a number of years, although I saw my once-friend on a regular basis, he ignored me and it created a deep sense of loss. He was someone who had got me and liked me and that was something I needed, I imagine it is something we all need.

Simultaneously I lost both grandparents on my dad’s side within a short period, and I used to go back to see their house often, sitting unseen in the neighbourhood outside knowing I could never go in again and I would never see them again.

This ache of not being able to connect with my friend, nor ever see my grandparents again, was palpable. This feeling then embedded itself over the years as friendships and relationships ended and, whether I had been the one to end the relationship or not, I would blame myself in some shape or form.

Being liked for who I am is important to me, as I am sure it is for most people. This wasn’t something I felt as a child, how could I when – like many kids – I was constantly being corrected and told what to do and who to be. I used to seek validation through my friendships and relationships, and it is true to say that still happens today to an extent.

My memories took me back through each friendship I had left behind or lost and I felt ashamed that I had hurt people, or not been worthy enough to hold onto certain friendships, perhaps I was just too intense for some people? As I contemplated all this I felt that there was a lack of integrity with myself that I needed to heal.

This, as you may imagine, was not a good feeling place. So, when we were playing a version of hide and seek today with our kids, as I was hiding under the table, my mind flashed back to this deep dive I had done on the feelings of being on the outside, and I reminded myself I had further work to do on it.

Then, suddenly, I was sprung from my hiding spot and – as I leap to my feet – my foot got caught in my trouser leg and it bent my big toe under me, making a crunching sound (a bit like when the chiropractor does a neck adjustment) as my weight landed on it.

I’m not sure if I have fractured anything, but I sure have given it a good wallop and my foot is rather swollen and bruised. Knowing accidents are often a subconscious way of punishing myself for guilty thoughts, I was intrigued by what my little reference books on the metaphysics of trauma would reveal.

Annette Noontil’s book said that the big toe is all about “the inner authority to love yourself and the will to stop judging yourself or others”. Obviously I had little trouble seeing a connection between that and the whole narrative I had been contemplating about past friendships and relationships.

Lise Bourbeau’s book said “The big toe gives direction to the others. An injury represents regret or guilt about the direction taken and will impact your future. You need to get back in touch with what you want for your future. Whatever your goals, regret or guilt will only serve to magnify your fears. Remember, there are no mistakes; there are only experiences that will be useful in your future.”

I contemplated this thought of keeping integrity with myself and recognised that there really is no way that anyone can get through life not hurting anyone nor being hurt. So, yes, shadow work is great - when it is brought into the light rather than me going off to dwell in the shadows.

There is a great article How and Why you Compromise Your Integrity  by Leon F Seltzer that explains this particularly well from a psychotherapy perspective. He asks “have you ever considered that the word integrity intimately relates to the kindred integration? Because if the different parts of yourself – each harbouring a voice and agenda of its own – aren’t well integrated, it may be impossible (across a large variety of situations) to keep your integrity intact...
​
Your integrity, your wholeness, can come only from your integrated self.”

I also recognised the entanglement – the feelings from childhood of not being accepted for who I was, the loss of a friendship and the grief of loss of my grandparents - that had given rise to particularly potent sense of not belonging.

In fact, I can see how it feeds another part of me that lives in the shadows, highly anxious about speaking my truth for fear of? That is the question, as I unpick this, I see the jumble of entangled experiences that have led to and enforced this feeling of anxiety that arises. Luckily I have a louder part of me that compels me to speak my truth anyway; but then one part punishes the other with deep
rooted anxiety.

This is especially so on email, text and social media. Sherry Turkle says “When someone’s in front of you, you get to see the shadow of your words across someone else’s face.” Julie Beck explains “while social media allows for a back and forth dialogue, it is without any of the additional context of body language, facial expression and intonation. It’s harder, for example, to tell that someone found your word choice off-putting, and thus to correct it in real time, or try to explain yourself better.”

With all of this floating around my mind, it really is no wonder that the universe delivered a short shrift to get back in touch with what I want for my future, I was allowing my mind to dwell on all this and got stuck in the weeds. In fact, it is a great reminder to me to Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart. This kind of work is better healed and expedited in my heart space.

The reason I even do this kind of work is to bring me to that place of kindred integration that Leon Seltzer describes. The more integrated I am, the more at peace and in synch with myself I am rather than carrying the chaotic energy that had evolved from beliefs attached to old experiences. Integration creates greater clarity, and allows me to see more of the opportunities life is presenting to help me move forwards in a direction consistent with that kindred integration.

So what about you, rather than allowing your life to run on old neuro wiring that dwells in your past, is it time for you to get in touch with what you want for your future?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Meet Future You, Do You Really Know the Different Parts of You? and Rewriting Your Future – Rewiring for Appreciation. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

The only way to be at ease with the world around me, is to be at ease with the world within me; which feels like a big job at times. It never ceases to amaze me how I might face the same circumstances as hundreds – thousands, or even millions – of other people and yet the range of responses to those circumstances is as varied as the people involved or even just observing.

Right now there is an excellent example of this globally with around a billion kids on the planet, who usually attend school, finding themselves at home with parents like me who are suddenly expected to home school on top of everything else. Or are we?

As I contemplated this whole arena of my kids learning at home during lock down, knowing I have actively considered and rejected the idea of home schooling for my family many times, my mind wandered to what my legal obligations actually are at this time.

After a few Google searches, I could find no answers. It reminded me of when my curiosity led me to investigate what our legal obligations are around attendance, how it is recorded and what actually constitutes a red flag. I like transparency and, instead, what I seemed to find is smoke and mirrors.

If I feel there is an expectation set around me delivering something, I get triggered. As a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser, this homeschooling stuff It is right on target to test me. This is the crux of what I mean about becoming at ease with my inner world, the felt expectation is a narrative I created about the outer world.

And while it is likely there are people in political power and the educational arena that have their own agenda and are indeed driving those expectations, I also recognise the opportunity that home schooling gives me at this time.

The fact is, my kids need some sort of attention, many times in each day; for my youngest it is a great deal of the day. I have choices: I can determinedly plough on with what I’m trying to achieve for myself, I can sweep aside all of that and just focus on my children, or I can manage some of both those things. The key for me is the word manage.

I need a plan; I had one in fact before we ever went into lockdown. I knew it was a prime opportunity to teach my kids how to get involved more in looking after themselves and the home they live in, there is also quite a number of card games and board games that largely get ignored in our house that I could see would be useful additions to managing the family dynamic.

Device time is a non starter for us, we already conducted that human experiment and came out the other side as I talked about in What Addiction Has to Teach Us on the Pathway to Joy. We certainly did not want to be cooped up with two frazzled kids, but I could see this was an opportunity for us to connect more as a family and cultivate respectful communication and compassion for one another.

What about school work? In its doses. There are things my kids are drawn to, and things they hate, this feels like the time to focus on what they are drawn to.

A good friend shared with me the words her child’s school had sent about accessing online learning materials throughout the lockdown; they were salve to my soul:

“The work on the Distance Learning site are suggestions only. It is up to individuals families to decide how much of the work their children complete. They are not intended to place undue stress on your family at this time.”

It was as if a weight lifted from my shoulders and my heart had space to breathe. I needed to hear that.

While it wasn’t directly from my own kids’ school, with the flight or fight response within me now set at ease, common sense and rational thought did manage to kick in. If that had come from a school in our country, it is the answer I had been seeking.

The communication went on like an enchanting, deeply resonant song drawing me in:

“Don't worry about your child regressing in school. Every single child is in this boat and they all will be okay. When we are back in the classroom, we will focus on their learning and meet their educational needs. Teachers are experts at this!

Don't pick fights with your children because they don't want to do any activities. Don't scream at your children for not following the timetable. Don't insist on 2 hours of learning time if they are resisting it. See if you can make learning fun through their play.

Over the coming weeks, you may see an increase in behaviour issues with your children. Whether it's anxiety, or anger, or protests that they can't do normal things - it will happen. You will potentially see more meltdowns, tantrums, and oppositional behaviour. This is normal and expected under these circumstances.

What children need right now is to feel comforted and loved. To feel like it is all going to be okay.”

In short, this kind of heart-felt communication set the perfectionist and people pleaser in me at ease. I felt understood, I felt my children were understood; I felt validated. I recognised that this is exactly the kind of communication I need to write to myself more often.

While this is a deep process of conscious learning for me, I also recognise there are many parents who don’t have these same triggers. They may be adopting the home school curriculum and that works well for them and their family, or they may wholeheartedly take an entirely different direction without even a thought or a care for what anyone thinks or expects.

My triggers are not necessarily your triggers, but you can be sure if you are feeling ill at ease in the world right now you are being triggered by something. Become aware of the narratives in your head, this is your opportunity to do something about them, it does not serve you to be in a chronic flight or fight state.

Yes, there is a new virus out there. Someone you know or someone you care about may even have died, and this – like all death – is hard for those left trying to figure out who they are in the world without that loved one. However, most people will not catch nor die from the virus; I know the more robust my immune system, the more likely I am to remain healthy. Nothing compromises a human immune system quicker than fear (check out Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress for more information on that).

The chances are that you, like me, are faced with the challenges, and therefore opportunities, these movement restrictions have created. This is life calling you to become unencumbered of ideas and beliefs that may have served you once, but no longer do. Dive into the narratives, and really challenge yourself on whether those narratives help or hinder you.

Becoming at ease with our inner world is the key to being at ease in the world around us.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Is This the Opportunity of a Lifetime?, Are You Overlooking the Obvious Opportunities in Your Life? and What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I got an email today from someone in lockdown who is struggling to see any of the positive aspects in her life. It is serendipitous as I’d just been ruminating on the messages life has sent me over the years that I’d completely missed.

In hindsight I can see that some things I disregard or push away are the things I need to embrace. In fact, all the things in my life that feel uncomfortable, stressful or painful are all telling me something important.

The general thought pattern in my head goes like this “The thing I feel most inspired towards/want the most is X (fill in the blank), this particular issue has nothing to do with that and it doesn’t inspire me so I’m not going to focus on it.” In fact, it is fair to say I usually feel it would be easier to focus on all the other, less important, things if only I could have the one thing I desired the most first.

That blank (the thing I feel more inspired towards/want the most in my life) has been different things for me at different times. It’s not something that usually changes on a daily basis, but rather something that becomes an overarching or dominant theme for an extended period of time. And the longer I don’t have it, the more strongly I want it and the more I think about it, yearn for it and feel its absence.

As I was reminded by Claire Zammit in her Unlock Your Feminine Power talk recently, I do have aspirations in all areas of my life, and it is often helpful to focus on something of less importance in order to create some positive momentum.

There is no greater example of this in my life than when I wanted to start a family. After years of trying and four unsuccessful pregnancies, as I describe in Food for Your Best Life, it was only when I felt I’d done all I could and decided instead to focus on my overall health and wellbeing the way forward presented itself.

However, this is obviously not a lesson easily learned for me as I still have a tendency to focus on my main desire to the exclusion of all else. Yet when I turn to the other areas in my life that need attention, and are usually easier to get traction on, I get so much positive momentum. Usually, in hindsight, I see they were all intrinsically linked like a magic code to unlocking my deeper desire.

I’ll give you some examples. Despite my experiences that led to finally having the family I had dreamed of, I had gotten off track with my diet after the kids arrived. For a number of years I knew my body fitness and health needed some attention but it was not my dominant theme. My dominant theme was about uncovering my life’s purpose.

I allowed myself the excuses of a busy work life and a busy home life, and had argued in my mind that I could get through until about age sixty without making drastic changes, by then I’d have the time and energy to focus on it as the kids would be grown.

Then a couple of years ago life decided it had enough of my crappy excuses and sent some stronger messages as I contended with my first kidney stone, which I wrote about in What Are Our Thought Patterns Really Doing for Us?

I knew the changes that I wanted to make, I wanted to take up swimming again and eat a diet that resembled something consistently closer to nature rather than anything processed. Having given my mind permission to ignore this until I was sixty, my body rebelled.

My body had decided instead that my mid-forties were more suitable and delivered me some straight forward calls to action through my osteopath as I wrote about in Get Moving to Get Moving: Where Physical Exercise Fits into the Soul Journey and Listening to the Signs – My Road to Health.

In the midst of this I realised my life’s purpose - as discussed in How My Kids Helped Me Find My Purpose (and it is not them) – and my deepest desire then evolved into a desire to understand how to live my life’s purpose, how to be of service in the here and now.

Meanwhile the relationship I have with my partner is another example of an area of my life that was (and is) important to me, and it wanted its time in the sun despite my attention being focused on how to live my life’s purpose. As this year got underway, having come out of the long summer school holidays here in the southern hemisphere and an extended visit from a family member drawing to a close, I was ready for a big out breath; finally some time to myself.

However, only four days later my partner had an accident. Instead of out working, he found himself at home, incapacitated, for a few months. To give this context, he is a person who likes to be productive and enjoys being out and about serving his customers, meanwhile I enjoy the solitude that (and the kids being at school) brings.

This happened before our country was particularly concerned about the spread of COVID19 and a month before lockdown. I won’t deny that I had my moment of anguished “why me?” and “are you kidding me?” cries to the universe. My partner and I had not spent that much time alone together since before the kids were born and, while it required some major mental shifts on both our parts, it was a true gift.

Now, in light of the lock down, it has actually turned out to be such a blessing. That time together enabled us to be on a more solid footing together before the kids got added to the 24/7 environment.  As I described in Is This the Opportunity of a Lifetime? It is allowing us to work on our whole family dynamic and relationships.

Would I have chosen any of these things? The answer would be an emphatic no. However, I cannot deny that these are all areas of my life that are flourishing as a result of giving them some positive attention. That being the key, I think, they are all now receiving my positive attention rather than the negative light I saw them in beforehand.

Another area of my life coming to light, that I have been pushing away for some time, is about creative expression. I decided the other day that – while we are all in isolation together – I have to find a project I can work on in snatches that gives me an outlet for expressing that deeper part of me. The obvious answer, since I love to explore and focus my thoughts through writing is to write a book (or at least start one); something many people have suggested.

This idea is one I have never really felt inspired towards, but when I consider how uninspired I was about improving my health and relationships, and how well that has turned out, I’m thinking it’s an idea at least worthy of consideration since it keeps coming up.

It also tackles another area that I’ve been ignoring, and that is taking time for myself when the rest of the family are around. If ever there was a prime opportunity for cultivating that it is now.

There is a quote by Rumi “what you seek, is seeking you”, so what is seeking you right now? What challenges are you facing, and therefore what opportunities are staring you right in the face? If ever there was a time to really confront the obvious, it is now.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy in Life Really Does Support Your Deepest Desires (And How to Access Its Support) or What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.