CHOP WOOD, CARRY WATER

Vol.19

EMBRACING THE CLIMB FOR A SMOOTHER LANDING.

I’ve come from picking up my girls from school and on the way over, I was driving through the sugar cane fields... Endless cane fields as far as the eye can see helping me to reflect on my current life. I haven’t been getting too much done this week, simply doing what’s necessary and allowing a lot more time to myself to just be. Something that I’ve noticed is an internal shift. It’s difficult for me to articulate into words what has shifted within me, but I feel it so strongly, as if I have gone through something, transformed in some way.

Whilst driving, I observed the large expanse of land in front of me, the old volcano, the expansive sugar cane fields surrounding me, and I felt an incredible kinship with this land in a way that I have not felt before. In truth, I’ve always felt at war with the land here. But where I was once angry with this land that was the cause of much grief, disturbance, and trauma for my family, I now feel supported, even in wanting to leave it. There is no doubt in my mind about one day soon arriving in France. In fact, my family and I can see the finish line, we can see that we are getting so much closer. The clouds have parted, the path is clear, the obstacles are fewer and where there are still a few hurdles to move toward, we are now moving through them more stealthily, healthily, successfully…

Before now, there were all these little things that amplified and caused dissonance in my relationship to this space where I live. Things would come up in my relationship with my husband, with my children as a mother, there were also financial struggles in the back of my mind, time constraints, body image and weight issues… All these little things that would stack up like a badly formed house of cards. And I feel that I can say that the house hasn’t come tumbling down but rather it’s been burned to the ground, and it no longer exists. Maybe it was this powerful eclipse energy, but I feel like I am starting anew. Purified, set free, and at peace moving forward. So, let me put things into perspective.

We went through multiple struggles on this land. In 2017, we lost a home and 90% of our belongings due to the floods. We were cut off from power and food and everything for days because the river that we lived on came up into the house and there were active power lines that had gone down.

Moreover, there were a slew of other situations that happened around this time, like people ripping me off in business, employees stealing money. In my opinion, it may be the transient nature of the whole Northern Rivers, full of flashy Air B&B’s and celebrities and Maserati’s, all while there is another handful of people living in their cars because the landlords have told them they have to get out for Easter to accommodate renting it out for $2000+/week.

In the aftermath of this incident, when we had somehow survived, we decided to buy a camper to live in because we were in between homes. While we had a plot of land, there was nothing built on it yet and there wasn’t enough money to build a house (it was difficult to get a loan to build a house after the floods). There were so many families displaced from the area and without enough support, it was difficult to get our footing again. So, because the prices to rent in the Byron Bay, Northern Rivers area were astronomical, like over $1500 a week, we opted to buy a camper caravan (which was expensive in itself) and live in that on our plot of land through the winter with two small children. It also happens that at the time I was going through a miscarriage. The area in which we lived is cold but temperate, almost like a subtropical rainforest climate, so it's damp, it's mouldy and mould causes inflammation and was perhaps the cause of other health issues I was going through at the time and contributed to the lose of that little life.

It was in these moments of living in survival mode, in fear, in struggle without adequate help or support, that I became fed up with the land and it resulted in so many negative feelings about being in Australia. But I tell this story now with less resentment, with less anger, with less frustration. None really, because as I mentioned before, this part is burned down and now washed away. It is no longer. We survived.

When it was time to find someplace to go post floods, we decided to live in that camper for a few months until we could build just a small cabin and oversee our build of the main home. One thing that many people don’t know is that my husband and I take sustainability very seriously – it’s not just a fancy word to us, it’s an ethos that we live by. I shared in a previous musing that my husband is an architectural designer and part of what we do is to show people how you can live sustainably without having to build something from scratch so that it doesn't become a 1-million-dollar build. Rather, you can take an existing 1970s/80s brick and tile house and make it green and aesthetically beautiful. So, while we couldn’t afford to buy materials or get a builder’s mortgage because we were self-employed (I was running Sat Nam Institute at the time), we got a permit to chop down some of the trees on our land, and we decided to get someone to come and mill that those very tress into timber on our land, to build with. After two months and my husband taking a few weeks off work, we built a very basic two-bedroom cottage, with our bare hands. I became a master on the drop saw and was the fittest I have ever been. As the saying goes, "chop wood, carry water" I lived by this and we thrived through the process of our pursuit.

For every setback there is a solution.

A few years passed by, we built some more and eventually sold and move a little north, to the home we now reside in. Within these past few years, being here I have felt distanced from the person who was able to do what she did with her family. I feel as though I had defaulted back into survival mode, without any great disaster to put me there. Technically speaking things we great for us. That little alarm bell within me was set off somehow and kept telling me that the only way I can get to where I need to get to is by pushing and pushing forward. But in doing life in this way, I was taking myself out of the present moment.

There is a lot of truth to that belief that the thoughts that we have create our reality and our lived experience. Our thoughts create our inner landscape and our outer landscape and the two need to be in sync with each other. At this moment, I don’t see things as desperately as I did. What I mean to say is that I don’t feel like I am running after things, running after something that feels too far out of reach or running away from something that feels unbearably close and embarrassing. I feel resolved in where I am, with immense trust for where I am going. I have been running away from my past most of my life and there is a default habit that I have being working on for the past few years to break, to change it eradicate. To no longer run from but to lean in towards something great.

I can now see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it's the most exhilarating thing, it's the most beautiful thing and it makes me look at this community and Behind the Veil as a humbling experience because I've never done things to be known or to be famous or to stand on a pedestal or anything like that. Instead, it’s been the opposite: that through my vulnerability and the truth that I share about my life and my experiences makes the resources that I share more human. And this entire experience, even not knowing entirely what it was going to look like, has shifted my perspective in prioritising the thing that I love most. And we’re all knuckling down on the budget now where we are buying only what’s needed for that fortnight because the truth is that we were just accumulating things that we didn’t need. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to get stuff, it just means that we’re tightening up on things. I’ve come to a point where I’ve kind of flicked a switch and I’ve realised that I don’t need as much as I think I do.

I realise that as someone who adores luxuriating and who talks about luxuriating and it’s a term that people associate with tremendous wealth because to afford luxury implies it. And I make these beautiful products that I dub luxury and I am consciously aware that they don’t cost $2 because there is a certain cost associated with making them. But what I am trying to say is that there is luxury in the everyday. The cardigan that I’ve put on my Mother’s Day list (because it's Mother’s Day in Australia soon) is so simple but so beautiful and it costs $150 rather than $500 and it is of wonderful quality, from France. The book that I added to my list is about wild gardening, the Naturalist Garden by one of the philosophies founding creators Piet Oudolf and some knitted wooly socks from my favourite wool shop, Woollykins. There is luxury in everyday things and when we can acknowledge what we've gone through and the experiences that we've had and look at them through a different lens, you see them with the eyes of clarity, and I am gracefully sliding down that hill.

Therapy is about the past. Therapy is finding resolution or healing or understanding of the past and that's one of the main reasons why I have chosen not to do that work anymore. I take all things I've learned and the ideology and philosophy of psychotherapy and somatic based therapies into a place that honours the present, that focuses on having a better today, so we have a better tomorrow. I am aware that therapy helps the now to help for the future, but it is about dwelling and going back to the past to help today.

You’re not allowing an experience or something to hold you back. You are taking control of your steering wheel.

The reason why I share these resources and teachings and why I love storytelling and all these mentoring ways is because it focuses on the present and what we want out of tomorrow and that, for me, is a very empowering place to be. And it’s not to say that therapy is not valid or important or that it can’t help to look on to the past but to get the most out of today and allow that to set the tone for tomorrow means that you're in the driver’s seat. You’re not allowing an experience or something to hold you back. You are taking control of your steering wheel. The mentality is one of: this is who I am, this is what I am doing and I am going to make sure to get the most out of my day by being present and being aware of what I'm doing. That’s the point of having some sort of plan, of having a vision, of having desires and things that we want to achieve. And this is a luxury. It is a luxury to be in the driver’s seat and to be in control of your life and to know what you want out of it and to take active steps to do that and to surround yourself with people who are also at that place in their life of wanting a better today. This is why we’re here. This is why I have moved on from being a Therapist and to creating my private sessions, to help others to be in that driving seat to get to their destination. This is why I am here.

It is for the sharing of this viewpoint that the work that I do here for Behind the Veil will continue and this is why I love this work and why I am sharing this in the way that I do. Perhaps what I’ve worked through or a breakthrough that I’ve had about coming out the other side has gotten better in that I have evolved in some shape, way or form. The analogy people make with exercise and feeling different muscles that we haven’t worked in a long time or feeling muscles we don’t normally use applies to the shifts we can have in our mind. Connecting with nature and seeing the clarity and changing your attitude towards things is like discovering those muscles that we forgot we even had. Our brain, our heart, our intuition is the same way. It needs to be flexed, it needs to be worked out, it wants us to pay attention and to rediscover these things that are continually changing with us. In this way, it’s important that we pay attention to these things and we have these daily practices, we have these tool kits and these practices that help us to be a better Brooke, to be a better Sally, to be a better person. And it’s not ever about not being happy or satisfied with yourself and chasing betterment or improvement. There is nothing wrong with wanting to better yourself, there is nothing wrong with wanting change, there is nothing wrong with wanting more out of your day or tomorrow. That means that you're desiring something different and you're ready to shift and move and only you can make those choices and take the steps that are needed to create that change because there's something there waiting for you on the other side, there is an opportunity, there is someone or something waiting for you. And that’s why we have all these prompts – it’s our subconscious speaking to us, our intuition guiding us, prompting us that we are ready to level up, to make that change, to leave that job or move to that new city. It is your subconscious telling you that there is something waiting, there is an opportunity that is trying to reach you, there is a door you must move through waiting for you to walk through it.

This shift that has occurred within me is as if I’ve now got my glasses on and I can finally see very clearly and in a way that I feel completely grateful. It is because of these horrendous and awful things that we’ve been able to climb the mountains and now we’re on the other side of it rolling down gracefully, admiring the expansiveness around us.

This week, for instance, I didn’t feel like doing much work. I wanted to just do my minimum requirements. And taking from my lead, my husband decided to do the same. But meanwhile, for some reason, somehow, it allows for so many more things to get done. I truly think that it is a result of the attitude that I’ve been having towards not being able to be where I want to be and rather be grateful that these experiences and these opportunities (like the ones I’ve just talked about) has resulted in the bounty and prosperity and goodness that we are feeling and experiencing now. Because of the choices that we made, we are now able to finish these renovations and sell the home and be mortgage free in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. And this came to be, not because we have millions of dollars in the bank but because we have literally gritted it down and had tenacity and endurance by evaluating priorities and making smart choices that best serve us in the moment. We've made those sacrifices, we've done those things that needed to be done and because of that, it's going to change the future of my children's lives, and it's going to gift myself and my husband and all of us so much endless adventure.

No matter where you may be in your life in this very moment and where you desire to be, take stock of all the little wins in between. It is all those little triumphs that create the most drastic change, they are what pushed you up that hill, one little push at a time to come sliding down the other side.

Amoureuse,

Brooke x