The Joy of Old Friends and Enough is Enough
Plus, why is it so weird to meditate, recommendations and Tim's most random joke yet..
This weeks drop is arriving to you on a Sunday instead of the usual Thursday, or sometimes Friday.
It’s school holidays and one of my oldest and dearest school friends, Prue is home from London on a last minute trip, so our group of friends all headed to Ballarat for a last minute catch up on Wednesday night. It was cup filling and lovely.
Dinner out a lap of the Lake and lunch. No kids, so proper long chats about all sorts of things. Just so good. They are all just very grounded, clever women who are doing so well and it was lovely to be around them again for such great quality time.
A lot of our conversation did go to the situation for women and it’s just so shit and it’s also great that it seems to be FINALLY getting more traction and changing the conversation and there are greater calls for action. It is SO hard and we need more change. It is so good to see Domestic Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin calling an emergency meeting on the 7th of May to evaluate the Federal Governments National Plan to End Domestic Violence. About time. They changed the one punch rule, we need action like this for women.
The rise has prompted Domestic Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin to call an emergency national roundtable on 7 May to evaluate the Federal Government's National Plan to End Domestic Violence.
Also - if you are in difficult situation I am sending you so much love. I also can recommend this app that was recommended by a friend. It’s the Be There App which is a bystander support app to help you recognise domestic violence. This might be helpful for you or if you suspect someone else might be in a difficult situation.
I was in a very toxic relationship in my early 20s. I don’t think or talk about it much, but I went through this app and all the questions and it was pretty stark and hit me that I could answer yes to many of those point about my time in that relationship.
I was at a very vulnerable time in my life, having lost Dad and then leaving the safety net of school. I started drinking and I was so fragile looking back. He completely took advantage of that. He was very controlling, very jealous, drank excessively, isolated me from my friends, he was a compulsive lier and it was just not healthy at all. And I know how hard it was, what it feels like when you are in a relationship like that. The power they have over you. Thank god, he broke up with me in the end.. and I just have so much compassion for how hard this all is… it is so complex.
Why is it so weird to meditate?
We were chatting with a mate the other day and telling them that Tim has started meditating (finally, we all get there in our own time…) and he was quite shocked, like wow, you’re actually doing it and a comment about “do you tell anyone” like it was sort of embarrassing.. Now, I love this guy and he’s the best and I know he’s actually quite interested in meditating, he’s just posing a view that so many people have..
The conversation then went to, well you know, I ride my bike so that’s meditating, or I listen to music on my own and zone out so that’s my meditation… and those things are great, they are a type of meditation, or more mindfulness activities but they are not meditation in the full sense. Or at least you are not going to get the same outcomes from those as deep mediation sitting still in a chair.
It was just interesting for me to reflect afterwards on how people see meditation as being the weirdest thing and it’s so foreign and we just think it’s so strange and woo woo and weird to just sit still.
It is literally just sitting in stillness with your own thoughts and it seems so ridiculous. We are funny things!
Hot Tip
Get conscious with your money.
Now, money is a a complex thing for many people and it brings up so many emotions. Guilt, greed, fear, shame, joy, all sorts of things. I have had a complex relationship with money for a long time, but I didn’t even really realise it.. I have been doing a lot of work around money and understanding my relationship to it and it’s been hard. I have had a lot of shame and fear around money.
Often our money worries link back to our childhood and our subconscious programming. Growing up in our family and even our community, there wasn’t a lot of money around. Like many families of the 80s, there never seemed to be much money, there was always a lot of stress when the bills came in and had to paid, we didn’t get a lot of new things, we drove old cars, like everyone you either had a holden or a commodore and if you were rich you had a calais..
Then when Dad died, there was a lot of stress around the selling of the farm because it wasn’t making money and I guess I associated the loss of the farm and the farm not making money with him taking his life.
So my subconscious programming was to kind of fear money, to feel like there was never enough.. but my behaviour, was to not care about it. To pretend it didn’t worry me, to push it away and to not think about it, I guess like a self protection. But trying to pretend I don’t care about money and not thinking about it, has not necessarily gone that well… So - there has been a lot of work to be done around healing those subconscious beliefs..
I guess there was a time I thought this stuff was woo and weird but it makes so much sense now. So I am learning to be conscious with money.. I’ve been reading books, doing the work of To Be Magnetic, and really trying to feel safe with money.
If you have a suspicion you have a complex relationship with money, if you’re not “good” with money (which by the way is not a great term to use), I bet there is more going on and I bet you can trace it back to some sort of childhood wounding. So it could be worth looking in to..
Recommendations
Money stuff recommendations
To be Magnetic - I would start here as it’s often the subconscious stuff that needs working on first.
Other things..
Oh my god these talks… if you’ve been here a while you know how much I love Signposts Back Home from The Broadplace which are a collection of Matribo’s talks that he does at his meditations. Well, now Jac has recorded their conversations to us to be a fly on the wall and I could not love them more. If you are a spiritual seeker trying to understand your place and yourself in the world, you will love these.
These drop on a Sunday and they are awesome. Of course everything that Annabelle does is awesome so this is too.
Shout out
Kirstin Diprose from The Rural Podcasting Co and many other things like the Ducks on the Pond Podcast She’s also an ABC Journo and wrote this fabulous academic paper about Bush Podpreneurs: How Rural Women Podcast Producers Are Building Digital and Social Connectivity - which I think I mentioned last week but is worth mentioning again.
Kirstin is very passionate about raising women’s voices and she now coaches and supports people to start podcasts so if you have a burning desire - get in touch with her!
Joke of the Week
Thank you for being here guys, see you next week
Katrina
xx