Transition- And how I’m coming out the other side brand new …. kinda!
Pick up any self development book on business or life and you can bet there will be a chapter in there on transition.
Most of these stories (that I have read at any rate) seem to work around a purpose or an outcome or a timeline.
Do this and then work out that and Viola! Welcome to your new life!
I was chatting on-line with a gorgeous woman recently and she said to me that someone needs to tell us that these transitions can go on for what seems to be an indeterminate length of time and I agreed. Let me tell you it can feel like you’re failing and could easily give up. Truthfully I feel like even if someone DID tell me, I probably would have said, “yes yes” and then intellectualised a time line of a couple of weeks.
As if.
Despite it no longer really being a viable metaphor, I have often used the analogy of being in an airport transit lounge; you know that you will eventually get on a plane, but you’re not sure where too, nor how long you’re going to be waiting for your plane.
After a while it becomes less about where you are going, than how you’re going to spend your time in that lounge without going crazy.
I think the lounge analogy here is quite good as many of us will attest, they are not usually comfortable places. The food is over priced, it’s either too hot or too cold, either way you have the wrong clothing on, there are super annoying people talking loudly right next to you, the list goes on.
And yet here we are for an undetermined amount of time.
Transitioning.
A few years back some of you might recall that I shared that I was stepping away from my claim- to-fame Spa Therapy, Rockupucnture. I wrote about that process then HERE
I created this modality at the dawn of the wellness era, prior to the hashtag and now multi billion dollar industry. As a veteran of this industry I had a lot of my identity wrapped up in it.
This therapy created a whole business for me, literally out of thin air when I didn’t even realise I was running a business. I trademarked it and won awards around the world. It sent me around the world to destinations I had only dreamed of going to, created a FIFO business in Sydney 6 times a year and kept a roof over my head for 9 years. I think I underestimated the skill that all of that took.
And I stepped away from it. Because it was time.
Whilst I will aways be deeply anchored in my acupuncture practice during this time I stepped up into what I believe has always been my calling as a coach. I’m still looking for a better word than that and probably wont find it!
I also created my first online course offering Boundaried!
Since this departure 2 and a half full years of transit lounging has taken place.
2 years in that damn transit lounge!
If you’ve only recently joined my journey probably on instagram you would perhaps have assumed I was an eccentric occasionally ranting woman practicing acupuncture and gardening in my spare time.
Oh and moving house more times than is mentally sound and finding my self on more than one unexpected long haul adventure.
But I have had to pull myself back from wondering what all that looked like from the outside because that is crazy making friends and I do not recommend it!
Instagram will have us applauding and sharing Brené Browns message about the “Messy Middle” but I don’t see anyone talking about just how bloody long and messy that middle can be. And sometimes how much of a pay cut you might need to take for awhile.
To be even more truthful I don’t think we know how to hold ourselves and trust ourselves deeply to REALLY go into that messy middle enough until it’s actually done. I mean how could we, where do we see that messy middle modelled? (say that quickly) It’s like a type of grieving process, there’s no saying it’s done until it’s actually done.
So whilst I was in that place wondering when or if I would ever actually have a business again I have consciously chosen with my emails to my mailing list and on instagram to show instead of telling.
There is much to tell, as I’m beginning to.
But what I have chosen to do whilst I navigated this time is as much as possible to try NOT to justify or explain and simply show. This is what my life looks like for a while, and yes alot of gardening has featured!
De-centring that capitalist tendency to package my experiences as they happen has been necessary for my own sanity.
There were plenty of points in the last two years where it would have been very understandable to say “you know what I’m done here, I’m going find a job in a cafe” (totally valid) and opt out of the messy middle transition all-together.
The thing that I know to be true is that we eventually end up circling back to this place within ourselves or forever experience a un-namable itch that we cant’ scratch.
I see this every day with the women I treat and you come to me for coaching, there is this thing that is longing to come into being through you! (but also you can totally stick with your day job as well, I have lots more to say on this, you know I don’t do black and white thinking)
At the beginning of this year I knew I had turned the corner. There were a few cross roads early last year that only in hind site I can now see were pivotal, but as we crossed the finish line into 2020 I knew things were going to be really different moving forward.
And of course I interpreted that to mean ACTION. Yay!
My beloved action, where I could be productive and rewarded and you know, do all the things. Finally!
It was in early March I found my self chatting with my best friend sharing all the many plans, tours, pitches and half written articles that I still hadn’t taken action on and I asked her;
“Is this procrastination, resistance or self sabotage? Because I know I’ve turned the corner and I have finally found the time and spaciousness in my life to sit still long enough for the creative ideas to arrive but within all of that there is still this persistent voice saying – WAIT”
Now in the light of this year so far (where do I even begin) I can see why that voice may have been there.
2020 has had a path that none of us were prepared for.
Perhaps it was my instincts sensing that there was much about to change?
I can also see how leaping into action even in the previously ‘normal’ world wouldn’t have been the best idea.
Because here is what else ‘they’ don’t tell you about transition, especially as a creative and it’s that the WAY you do the things and even WHO you’re doing the things for might not be the same after.
This has been the case for me and I needed to take the last couple of months to become clearer on that specifically. (And attend to all sorts of lovely things in my life)
So where to from here i hear you ask?
My Women’s Emotional Wellbeing Events will soon be a 5 part video series with workbooks and a special one off live component for the launch. This will delivered primarily for health practitioners.
This is now live and ready for you, the first enrolment will enjoy a bonus live virtual event in January. Check out the Masterclass now!
And the big excited new offering is the Soul Salon – Re-wilding Middle Age
This will be for women who are identifying as being in middle age, (whether that’s 35 or 55)
There will be education on navigating Peri Menopause, hormones, cycles and wellbeing from a Chinese Medicine Perspective and lots of deep diving soul support for transitions that this season in our life tends to dish up!
This will be a 6 month group coaching immersion.
If you’d like to know when the Soul Salon opens head here
AND my first online creation Boundaried is undergoing a 2.0 rejuvenation and will be ready for you in the Spring!
There is so so much more to share, like I’m also growing out my silver hair!
My #grombre journey is on instagram. Don’t worry there is no chopping it short!
But for I’m going to leave this instalment here.
If your’e going through what feels like a never ending transition please hold strong, I know how hard it can feel (and tiring and sometimes downright boring!)
I’d love to hear your stories if you feel like sharing.
Keep following your own wild and wondering path.
KK
x
