The Scapegoat

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This topic is highly relevant for millions of people—nothing any of us goes through is unique to us—and relevant to me in the context of having thought the dragon had passed and then getting caught and thrown temporarily off balance by that final flick of its tail.

The ones who demand forgiveness after hurting you; the ones who criticise you for having boundaries—who tell you said boundaries harden you; the ones who project their unintegrated anger onto you in the form of poisonous verbal and emotional abuse and then tell you it’s your fault for not being ‘spiritual enough’ to keep taking it … they are the ones who benefit from your always having been the scapegoat; the ones who benefit from your resilience to not react; the ones who rely on your not having boundaries.

The ones who tell you ‘I just want you to be happy’ are guilty of gross manipulation sending the ambiguous verbal message that they are entitled to use you as a punching bag and make you the guilty party for your not being happy for it … because all that passive aggressive message says is that you are responsible for their happiness … the double whammy of gaslighting!

They are so lost in their own cognitive dissonance that they need to make someone else responsible for their unresolved shadow. And the longer you remain in the scapegoat role—because, honestly, it can take decades of sucking it up to keep the peace before recognising you are perpetuating the dysfunction—the deeper into all the layers of your being the disease will sink … until you have to choose to heal or die.

And when—or if—you choose to fully heal by removing yourself as their scapegoat and to instead tell the truth, it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. 

The less you react the less justified they feel to maintain the abuse. The vitriol will increase and the accusations of your so-called instability will increase. Because they need you to react so they can use your reaction to justify their behaviour … because they really can’t accept any kind of blame—that’s your role, remember.

Remember—please!—that you have done nothing wrong. You are not responsible for making them feel better about hurting you. You are not even responsible for forgiving them—because that would require them admitting fault, being accountable, and changing their behaviour. You are not responsible for making them understand this. The ONLY thing you are responsible for is healing.

It’s ok if it’s taken so long to recognise you have enabled this; it’s ok to be angry and indignant and to want it to be different. If there is any place for forgiveness it is in forgiving yourself … and to keep forgiving yourself. You are the only one responsible for your own changed behaviour and the only one who can live your own life with your own true self. Mostly the abuser is perpetuating their own cycles of karma and abuse … mostly they are emotionally inept and incapable of integrating their shadow self. Mostly hurt people hurt people. 

You have been made to feel you are helping them heal by being the scapegoat for all their own wounds. You are not responsible for fixing them. You can only fix yourself. You are the only one who can stop the abuse by removing yourself from the abuser.

While they turn you into the perpetrator for not taking responsibility for causing them to hurt you; while they create stories to make you the crazy one, the broken one; the mean one; while they spin the cycle of their own personal drama triangle and blame you for their self-inflicted crisis of the soul (which they obviously don’t recognise as such while they are still in the echo chamber of their own delusions)… while they shame you for not ‘taking the spiritual line’ that enables them to continue being abusive … it is up to you to: Stop the cycle of hurt! 

All these things they perpetuate are not yours to heal in them.
You can only heal those parts in yourself that they are karmically activating.
It’s up to you to break free of the drama they have staged.
It’s up to you to not be a hurt person who hurts.
You are the hero of your own story.
Take your own shadow.
Get off the stage.
Step into your light.

The 5 Symbols of the Camino de Santiago, Part Five: The Scallop Shell

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Symbolically the shell is from the ocean and is linked to Venus (self love). It is the so-called medal at the end of the journey once the shore is met and one is able to baptise oneself in the salt water and become new once more—like a baby, and with unconditional love for self.

The way it ties together the network of support is that its image is used as way markers along the route, marking the way through landlocked villages and cities in the hopes of—in days or weeks or months time—the pilgrim will reach the end … which is also the beginning.

It is not only an inner and outer totem of the achievement of the completion of this particular pilgrimage, it also denotes an opening of the heart and a vessel from which to gather water to drink or anoint oneself. It is also used to ask for donations of food and money.

Sometimes building self kindness can be through random acts of kindness to others. Showing someone else the way can be a guide for self awareness and more adept self trust, self love and self guidance. The notion of offering a helping hand draws attention to the focus on the work I do with my hands and how that reflects on how to give—but not too much of myself so as to not become depleted—and, with the same open hand, to receive what I need from others.

The lines on the shell are known to represent the different routes taken by the pilgrims so, having this as a source, we can trace our different narratives with the outlook that there are many pathways to the same destination and the goal is in the experience itself. Being open and aware to the needs of others is the beginning of a journey home to self.

Questions to ask yourself:

  • How did I stay open and flexible to changes in the direction my day took?
  • What are the inner signals of courage I can pay more attention to?
  • How did I engage with and harmonise giving and receiving?

The end of one journey is always only the beginning of something else so there can never be any expectation of finality. Life is only what you can hold in the Scallop Shell.

On this pilgrimage, because I am walking to raise awareness for mental health and will be intentionally working with people who approach me for coaching, meditation, therapies etc, I will hang a donation box from my backpack with a QR code that pilgrims can scan to access my socials, the work I do and the cause I am walking for. This is aligned to the scallop shell which can also be used as a begging bowl and I am doing this as a way to break down my ego as I open myself to receiving donations from strangers like a nun. 

You can follow, support and share my Walking for Mental Health fundraising campaign on BackaBuddy. All my socials can be found on LinkTree.

The 5 Symbols of the Camino de Santiago, Part Four: The Bandage

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Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss”. Pilgrims follow their bliss/ters.

On no past Camino de Santiago or long-distance local hike have I had to deal with blisters. The only trek I suffered from blisters was in 2001 on the Annapurna Circuit (Nepal) when I walked in leather boots I took out of their box to pack in my backpack … I didn’t walk in them once before boarding the plane to walk for 21 days across and over the Himalaya at 5,400m altitude.

Symbolically, my life in 2001 was plagued with abrasions that caused more pain than pearls and by 2016, my first Camino of 250km with my then 11-year-old son, I had recognised and was acting on my need to nurture my wounds.

Some people diminish their wounds; some deny them; some go into a trauma response and simply obliterate them from memory; some defend their wounds and use their pain as a badge of honour, and some just never quite manage to shine because that would mean giving up on the psychic injuries they have been subjected to.

Adapting to different footwear—I now wear Altra trail running shoes for Camino and will be wearing T-Rockets running sandals on some days too—and conditioning my feet long before the journey, as well as every day before and after walking, is a good analogy for building capability and competency to face challenges … and also to recognise where the stone in my shoe is going to hinder my journey and where the stone in my shoe is the grit that the oyster uses to make the pearl.

It is erroneous to bandage and splint healthy body parts, so there is a call for discernment in how one treats one’s wounds, both from the past and those that present themselves currently. Self-care can reprogram one’s emotional, physical, psychic and mental bodies to engage differently with personal injuries or traumas and shift perspective from being overcome by wounds to using them as a pathway to healing.

As I walk this journey from next week, for Mental Health I will be intentionally working with fellow pilgrims who approach me with specific needs around grief, loss, trauma and dis-ease and I am cognisant of needing to be discerning in how much self nurturing and self supporting I must do in order to be able to support others on their unique walk to wellness.

We are not here to be perfect, we are here to heal. And the first part of any healing process is to recognise the wound as a symbol of healing rather than as an obstacle in its way. It’s important to not get too attached to the strapping and then fail to acknowledge that the wound is no longer there. Struggle can be used as a tool to justify one’s actions or one’s suffering and to eliminate the need to step up and show up. A wound isn’t a life sentence and a bandage isn’t a ticket to victimhood. Letting go of the identity of injury can be empowering and can create the space for taking on the responsibility of stepping fully into one’s essential self.

Take care on the journey by training well in order to diminish the risk of injury and by also preparing well by carrying a first aid kit.

Questions to ask yourself:

  • How do I grieve whilst supporting others through their struggles without comparison?
  • How do I create discernment between compassion and a bleeding heart?
  • How do I bandage the internal wounds that hurt more than anything that bleeds?
  • How do I relate to past wounds, injuries and traumas on an emotional, physical and mental level?

You can follow, support and share my Walking for Mental Health fundraising campaign on BackaBuddy. All my socials can be found on LinkTree.

The 5 Symbols of the Camino de Santiago, Part Three: The Yellow Arrow

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It may look like the same route as the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims before you yet it is different for your walking it. A pilgrim’s unique footprints make for a unique pilgrimage. 

The Yellow Arrow is a sign of reassurance that one is following one of the routes on the pilgrim’s way and is an iconic symbol of direction in one’s life as well as ancestral direction and rites of passage—pointing out A way which is different to THE way. 

When finding and following these markers it’s a reminder to honour those who have come before. There is a ritual to walking a path that many have taken before, honouring them for carving the way and then honouring oneself for creating one’s own journey from the way. There are many paths leading individuals back home to themselves.

A well-trodden path is still the path untaken until one actually takes it … and then one gets to make it one’s own. It is important to get lost in order to find my way and there is a particular practice of non-judgemental observation that comes with the acceptance of this. I feel it’s important to find myself in a place so unfamiliar that I am challenged to work out how to come back to myself or to accept the new place in which I find myself.

Every part of the entire universe is already right here in this one moment … this one step. There is no manifestation magic in life; it’s all about showing up and placing each foot down with attention and intention. In alchemy it is the third stage in the process, Citrinitas, which is the stage of education before Rubedo, the stage of transformation.

The present moment is your refuge, and this is your home … each footfall brings you back to your self and each self that footfall brings you to is changed because of the footfall. Each contour is as unique as the contours on each individual’s thumbprint; each arrow perceived as just a subtly different shade of yellow; each vista viewed with new eyes; each drop of dew a different prism of light. 

Stepping into each moment builds awareness of what’s in the way, where the path is leading, how open you are to your intuitive GPS, when to follow outside signs or inner cues, when to change direction etc. Trust in self appears in the showing up without knowing where the path goes but recognising that no matter where it goes it is going somewhere and it’s ok to adapt along the way. It’s impossible to be ready for every eventuality before a journey but it’s possible to be prepared to be resilient enough to figure it out on the way. To be able to flex into the curves and detours of any journey is a skill we can develop through recognising that there are over seven billion unique humans and, therefore, over seven billion unique paths.

Questions to ask yourself:

  • Where did I lose my way?
  • How was I able to find my way again, find a new way, or ask someone to guide me?
  • In the moments of getting lost how did you recalibrate to a new way by asking for guidance?

You can follow, support and share my Walking for Mental Health fundraising campaign on BackaBuddy. All my socials can be found on LinkTree.

The 5 Symbols of the Camino de Santiago, Part Two: The Walking Stick

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The Walking Stick is a symbol of those people in one’s life who assist in upliftment, encouragement and forward momentum. Having an emotional, physical and spiritual staff to lean on can help traverse tricky terrain.

I don’t walk with poles or a walking stick—in fact the few times I have used someone’s for a difficult crossing or steep downhill, I have fallen. This indicates to me that I need to become more familiar with asking for support. My innate tendency is to always be self supporting and to hold others up. This can be to my detriment if I can’t equally find the people and resources to support me in supporting others.

A Walking Stick can be seen in the negative light of a crutch and using one can be seen to highlight one’s disabilities. It is, therefore, imperative to give this an archetypal symbology that encourages its use. The sense of outreach in difficult times is so key to reducing suffering and restoring well-being. 

This current campaign to walk 1,000km to raise awareness for mental health and suicide prevention made me extremely vulnerable in the asking for support and extremely disappointed. My lessons around support are to lean in only when the support is actually there and being mindful of expectations of it, without using the lack of people believing in me to snap back into being 100% self supporting again.

When you carve a walking stick that ultimately provides support for your pilgrimage, it is like an analogy that can translate into the care and love offered to and infused into another human being that ultimately become the food that fuels that individual to be the support you one day may reach out for.

The pilgrim’s Walking Stick is a symbol that young, able-bodied people also make use of this often necessary tool for of support and that there is no stigma attached to utilising it, whether walking 5 or 45 legs of the Pilgrim’s Way. Using a Walking Stick can be a practice of mindfulness and gratitude—a way to honour the self and the body in recognition of its strength and also acceptance of its fallibility.

It holds the intention and reminder that there is always support at hand and it will challenge a different response when either needing to ask for or accept the offer of help from others. I can lean on something/someone temporarily and it’s ok to then lay it down, until needed again, without a) feeling obligated to be enslaved, and b) depending on it always being there.

Questions to ask yourself:

  • What held me back—cognitively, emotionally, somatically—in asking and/or receiving a hand of support today?
  • Who are the people in my community, tribe who are my walking sticks in life and how do I honour these people more by being receptive to their care?

You can follow, support and share my Walking for Mental Health fundraising campaign on BackaBuddy. All my socials can be found on LinkTree.

The 5 Symbols of the Camino de Santiago, Part One: The Backpack

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As I embark on my most challenging pilgrimage, 1,000km on the Camino de Santiago in Spain, Walking for Mental Health, I am drawn back to reflect once more on the symbols of The Way that I have previously walked with.

The first symbol is the most important for me as it indicates the strategic part of the planning phase as I consider what to pack … adding and then eliminating … ruminating and deliberating … trying to envisage the climate, the landscape, the skin feel and mostly—perhaps obviously—the weight vs the comfort of choice.

If a backpack is too full, the physical body will be strained over capacity and the mind will be less focused on the path ahead as a consequence of the pain. Carrying an extra weight on one’s shoulders has become normalised and it’s common for people—adults, children, corporates, healers—to be brought to their knees by this weight before asking for support. Equally, the journey can be hindered by too light a pack as a result of not paying enough attention to the necessary items one needs to carry on a journey; this could also indicate a—conscious or unconscious—negation of certain personal needs and basic requirements for comfort and health.

We all tend to accumulate too much, often out of fear and death denial; a habit that is hard to break and one that ultimately results in being unwittingly burdened with more than we can carry. It’s important to see what and who lies beneath the layers we have built around ourselves and the burdens we have chosen to carry, and then to create new habits to do with shedding rather than accumulating.

To strip down on an emotional, physical and mental level takes courage because it shows us our authenticity and the corresponding vulnerabilities. By stripping down I don’t mean full renunciation; I refer to discernment around needs according to values and a slow un-layering in line with each person’s capacity and desire for transformation.

Questions to ask yourself:

  • What am I carrying today that may not be mine and/or what is the impact for me?
  • What can I remove from my backpack, and who, if relevant, can I give it to?
  • What’s essential that I might add or that would be worthwhile adding to my backpack for now?

Observations:

  • Awaken your ability to recognise when, how, where and for whom you may be over-burdening yourself. 
  • Build your capacity to feel into how your whole system is responding to the weight you are—intentionally or unintentionally—carrying on a physical, mental and/or emotional level.
  • Look at what doesn’t need to be there as well as what is potentially missing that will benefit the pilgrimage and ease the long walk.

You can follow, support and share my Walking for Mental Health fundraising campaign on BackaBuddy. All my socials can be found on LinkTree.

Believe yourself into Being

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When people believe in you, you start believing in yourself.

I grew up not being believed in — my skills and abilities and also my innate wisdom were overlooked; considered odd — and I consequently learnt from a very young age to abandon myself to fit in and be fed.

I am not a victim to this because I also know the wound is the gift.

So my life’s calling, and my ultimate answering to it, has been to value people and help them heal enough to believe in themselves again.

I have found in life that there are two times where people get abandoned in the type of society we now live in where attention spans are diminished and judgement trumps trust: when at our absolute rock bottom having lost the ability to don the masks of an expected norm, and when in our blissful joy living in alignment with our purpose and meaning.

There are always those champions in life who hold you in support and believe in you at both ends of the spectrum — these are your people; hold onto them … the ones who only hang out in the middle zones only erode the belief in yourself you have worked so hard at regaining.

The loneliest of people aren’t those who have no one around, they are the ones surrounded by people who don’t share values and who expect you to show up in service of who they need you to be.

As Michael Mead says, “The calling keeps calling.”

It is never too late and you are never too old to become who you were born to be. Depression, addiction, anxiety, stress … to name only a few afflictions of this world we live in … are the silent killers that need to be witnessed and brought into the light by those willing to go into the dark.

I have found that when life is so hard I have lost the capacity to help myself, I go buy a meal or a blanket for a homeless person or pay for street people to spend a night in a shelter. This is my medicine—an unwitting and relatively minor altruism and the one that has had the power to keep me going until I believe in myself again.

And then I must dance … because dark and light have to be navigated in equal measure for the psyche to find true harmony.

Profound Sickness

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People consume physical, emotional and mental toxins and then reach for medications to suppress the symptoms of the inevitable diseases so they don’t have to treat the habits that caused their sickness.

Outsourced healthcare is not only irresponsible; it is dangerous. We are part of nature and the real medicines, foods and therapies are considered alternative whilst synthesised modified chemical substances that are essentially best-guess hit-and-miss one-size-fits all are treated like elixirs of healing. 

Each individual is unique and as such needs a unique combination of tools and competencies to develop a foundation of cellular nutrition, mental wellness and emotional resilience that supports their specific combination of ailments.

Without the toxins consumed on every level the chemical medication would not be required and without the indoctrination of the availability and usefulness of chemical medication toxins might not be consumed

It has become a human condition to indulge in habits that make one sick because of the outrageous assumption that someone or something else can just fix it when it breaks.

Sadly the substances we have been taught to rely on at best just keep the individual at base level functionality whilst causing a range of adverse side effects and at worst cause death.

I think we need to keep redefining normal.

When asked, ‘Why …?’

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When asked why I chose the Camino de Santiago for this mission and to raise awareness for Mental Health in Suicide Prevention month, the answer was clear:

I have walked so many varied paths all my life, always with this libido driving me towards something there … yet not yet visible. There has been this calling, sometimes subtle and sometimes so intense it has brought me to my knees in prostration and frustration. And yet I have walked and walked and walked through injury, bad climate, distress and, most importantly, a deep knowing that there was something I was walking towards.
Raising awareness for mental health; de-stigmatising conversations around suicide, trauma, grief and loss, and educating people with tools and techniques to recalibrate around adverse life events and debilitating emotional distress are what I was unwittingly walking towards on all my paths.
My paths have been in psychology, investment banking, social development, coaching, meditation, mountain guiding, Vedic scriptures, travel and trekking, writing, creating, consulting, healing and helping.
In short, Walking for Mental Health is my very own Camino de Santiago

With two weeks until departure for Spain to walk 1,000km whilst offering my skills, gifts, wisdom and work freely to fellow pilgrims on their own unique paths to their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual goals, I am reaching out once more for support for my campaign, which is almost 50% funded and which still needs over ZAR 20,000 to make it possible.

If you are unable to make a donation, please consider sharing the campaign with those who resonate with my vision and mission and please note that there are donor incentives for those who would like to experience my work.

To contribute to Walking for Mental Health you can click on my BackaBuddy link:
https://backabuddy.co.za/campaign/walking-for-mental-health
or find all my socials, including how to follow my journey on YouTube, by clicking on my LinkTree:
https://linktr.ee/Walking_for_Mental_Health

Being a donor and supporting me to walk my talk means you become part of the journey of support for whomever I coach along the way. You become part of the solution.

Unravelling

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People often ask how I got from the 60-hour work week, shackled to a corporate desk in Investment Banking, to the fluidity and flexibility of a multi-faceted therapist, coach and guide.

In surrender, I reply … on my knees, with broken heart and shattered dreams. And not just the once.

For decades I did what I was meant to do to fit the societal construct of a productive adult contributing to a broken world. Nobody had versed me in the art of creative choices, the trust in intuition, and the capacity to follow my soul in life or in love.

We often think doing the work, the training, the emotional labour, means that we will be more resilient at times of challenge. But it’s often not true.

It is my role to guide you through the crises, that will ultimately bring growth and development, rather than numb you with more layers of bullshit just to temporarily help you ‘fit in’ with the essentially dysfunctional society in which you exist. Existential distress does not equate to mental disease; it means there is an inner tension pushing you through another birthing into a new way of existence. It is a calling to the you who needs to unravel in order to be rewoven.

Through the blend of modalities that I show up with in service to your wellbeing, there is an un-layering that occurs to reveal your values and roles, or bring you to a place of balance  from where you can better develop those values in order to find belonging through authenticity rather than through merely adopting the values of those around you and ultimately adapting to a system that doesn’t resonate with your true need to find meaning.

It is important to find the core strength to stand out rather than fit in; to add rather than adapt; to live your own life rather than exist in others’. You don’t come into the world; you come out of it.

As a nomad on life’s landscapes I have developed the skills and wisdom to guide you to a deep exploration of who you are, what your gifts are and how to live your truth and purpose into the world with curiosity and compassion.

People call me courageous because of how I approach life. The word courage comes from cor meaning heart so, yes, this is a word I live into the world … one day at a time.

I blend my studies with my experience and I bring a deep wisdom, tempered with ignorance, into the world.

I invite you to explore your inner world like a true adventurer.

I am an energetic accumulation of my life force, my experiences, my research, my studies, my connections and my family tree; I am you in me and I am me in you.