What was I thinking?

I wasn't

I first heard of Substack in the chatter between like minded souls at an Elizabeth Gilbert talk in Adelaide. I asked Siri on the way home to remind me to find out what is Substack and curious how I didn’t know a platform filled with food for the heart and soul existed and I had missed it (so far).

I regard myself as a fairly curious person, to the point of enough mistakes I’m sure my siblings, extended family and friends could recount the number of times I’ve gone listening to Mark Manson far more than I have to my yoga philosophy, less f…it and more ahimsa was needed for sure.

Honestly if the universe did have a plan and every wrong and amazing experience has been part of it, by now my head would still be ringing from the amount of times it tried to shake sense into me ‘wake up, you are not listening’ ‘not that path, I said the other one’. I’d hear it only didn’t recognise until recently, I wanted to know what was on the other side of what I shouldn’t do. I’d been living a life of curiosity all this time and never realised. It’s not as if labels aren’t far easier than exploring the wonder in every why.

I’m a thinker, the only time my brain slows to a pace it can hear it’s own voice, is in meditation and a little peeved it took over 40 years before anyone showed me the way to solitude, by only using my own breathe and body. So it was without question I had to go to Bali and to learn how become a yoga and meditation instructor within weeks of deciding and no wonder Ketut (yes the same Ketut who has been 100 yrs old I believe for at least 30) and his son suggested during the wrist tying ceremony, it usually takes only one Tridatu (red/white/black braid around the wrist) and by the time it has fallen off, the learning is complete “although (holding my hand to view the lines) I think you come back for another one”. It would seem the Godly power of the Tridatu, with its strength in longevity and purity, a simple reminder how to live my life in the in-between, I should do good, be of good will and teachings, somehow my guard must have been down and I was revealing my inner rebellious side. It would appear from my life lines and the gasping, raised eyebrows and repeated check of the lines, I needed a 2nd Tridatu, maybe I’d been a little too busy not thinking enough.

There is a saying, what happens in Bali stays in Bali, although I’m pretty sure we say this when we don’t want whatever we got up to going anywhere else than where it happened, so let’s just say, I didn’t do so well at trying to empty the cup. I went to Ketut for advice, direction and the answers and with Lou Reeds ‘walk on the wild side’ comes first to mind, I did learn how (she who made her mother grey at an early age says with the deepest of exhales - it was not a sigh!) to look into the cup and begin the journey of being less anchored to my past or anxious about the future, to stay connected to the present, the here, the now and freedom of curiosity.

It would be over a decade before I would be standing beside the author of Eat, Pray, Love. Honestly, finding verbal expression at any time has never been a challenge in life (the right words, a different story) and all I could utter was “wow, just wow”. Something inexplainable was occurring and stirring within, among a room filled with liked mind souls.

I’d stared down my fears (little did I know I tucked a few in reserve), I was creative with everything from food to twisting my hair rather than just an ordinary bobby pin behind the ears. I’d read Big Magic cover to cover, listened ear to ear. I thought I’d be inspired by validation, I was rocked with awakening.

The bomb hit and it struck the nerve paralysed by the fear of not being enough, the same fear requiring 2 Tridatu’s, the one which chose academic pursuits, collected qualifications like I was in a ‘good enough’ Jumanji game. The dam burst, the holding back to fit in with pleasing and doing right, just not to myself.

I drove the 4 hrs home the next day, I didn’t sleep at all and it wasn’t the wine I sipped for the first time since going dry in 2024. I advocate being true, I believe it, speak it, say it to others, mediate on it, yet deep in my heart and soul I wasn’t true. To everyone else except myself I gave it all and I’d never had long enough, quiet enough or given myself permission to be curious about why I didn’t keep something for myself with all the lessons I’d learned.

So here I am, lighter of the shackles of conditioning which silenced the journals, notebooks and scribble pads of a little (I’ve been 5ft 2 forever) teen girl who preferred poetry over partying and lost her grip on courage, on bravery and her freedom, in the lost world of childhood struggles and change.

I arrived home and started immediately, box after box from the shipping container I’d carted from the move from Tasmania via a stint in the NT in the Gulf of Carpentaria. I opened, tossed and cleared every box. I found every note I’d written and like Taylor Swift, I too use my Apple notes to write whenever I am inspired by a word, a picture, a person, a thing, I write, I write because I must. I thought it was just a compulsion I couldn’t resist.

The only thing was my ‘must write’ had become a sacred place I shared with few. I tried once a class, another an Instagram page on 1st drafts. It only took the wrong person to read the right piece for my courage to shrink.

I carried the responsibility of making a living as any single parent does and I did it with joy and love. Writing didn’t pay bills, poetry was for dreamers, being inspired for those who had other options I couldn’t conceive.

It might have taken the fear of losing it all, life becoming shorter by the day, to be just enough pressure and positioning to turn on the light.

Now it was time for the self-compassion, the play, of saying to myself “yes” over and over again until I heard it, it was time for the magic to begin.

I was no longer a passenger in my own life, I had taken the wheel.

So buckle up, my curiosity is back and my freedom has returned, thank you to the wonderful women in the seats beside me, their stories of packing up and leaving, hiking trails in faraway places, living and standing in their truth, of place and home, of the heartfelt need and desire burning in each of us, calling ‘I see you’.

How do I stay curious?