Mercury is in retrograde,
My WIFI has broken,
And in homage to the condensing of little mix of 2020 and fateful removal of Jessy Nelson,
My 4G has become 3.

I didn’t adequately prepare,
I forgot to sage my crystals,
Let alone shove one up my butthole,
It truly is a miracle this basic white girl is even here in writing.

I’ll do my best,
But if my words become incomprehensible,
It’s because the bad energy has overcome me,
And I’ve gone to inhale some Palo Santo and partake in brief energetic movement to clear it from my soul.

I’ve been speaking a lot about self-awareness this week,
On a couple of great podcasts,
The one with Ed Cunningham (a need to read) will be out next week,
And I realised some take homes I had to share with my favourite people.

I support you to develop your awareness of self,
Because when you unpack why you do certain behaviours,
Why you emotionally eat,
Why you believe leaner is always better,
You can start to overcome the disordered habits you have around them,
But there’s something cooler in it.

You see,
Our dysfunctional relationship with food,
Our depression,
Our poor choice in men,
We can use them as a self-awareness string to pull on.

Once we tug on that little piece of string,
An entire ball unravels,
Opens us up to areas of our lives we hadn’t considered to review,
And provides an ability to use our awareness to develop the rest of our lives.

What I mean is,
When you start to heal your relationship with food and your body,
You heal your relationship with yourself too,
Because your relationship with food gives you a mirror into which you can reflect.

When you look at your dysfunctional habits with curiosity and compassion,
Instead of frustration and self-criticism,
You start to identify a trail,
Your habits being the initial breadcrumbs,
Your thoughts providing some more,
Leading to you to inner workings and the treasure that is your true self.

Your lived experience provides a lens through which you see the world,
Your introjected values and societal expectations further thicken this lens
The self-beliefs and stories you’ve told yourself over the course of your lifetime add another coating of colour,
Before your habits then display everything for you to visibly see.

Your dysfunctional habits are a gift,
They serve to direct you to dig deeper,
To develop your self-awareness,
If only you’d let them.

Another thing that’s come up repeatedly though,
Is to be mindful of getting lost in your self-awareness,
Of letting the narratives that you create about your life become the basis through which you live forever more.

Our stories create a lens through which we see the world,
Provide the power of awareness before ultimately,
We make a conscious choice as to what we do and how we act.

At any moment we can choose to respond to our situation,
Choose to exacerbate a problem or choose not to,
Choose to conform to old stories we’ve created about ourselves,
Or choose not to.

At any moment we can choose to look for things that feel good,
That are expansive,
Or we can choose to constrict into ourselves,
Fall back into old habits,
Because they feel safer,
Because they are what we know

Develop your self awareness,
Ed recommended ‘The Elephant in the Brain’ as reading to help,
But don’t get lost in it.

Heal your relationship with food so you can heal your relationship with yourself.
Because unfortunately,
You can’t dissociate your thinking around food from the rest of your life.

You are one whole being,
And it’s not a food issue you have,
It’s a thoughts issue,
Or rather,
A thoughts challenge.

And what are challenges?
Simply opportunities to learn more,
To progress,
To be brave,
To live a wholehearted life.