Kerri On Down The Road

 It has happened to us all...we get to a door and stand there pushing with all our might while the door stays closed.  Then it dawns on us, maybe I should try pulling instead.  A gentle pull back and voila, the door magically opens for us.  Lately I feel like this dance between pushing and pulling has been playing itself out in my life. I have been focusing a lot in the past few months on patterns of behaviour that have been manifesting themselves in my life.  I felt that the time had finally come for me to understand the root causes so I could make adjustments that would lead to healthier ways of being and living.  From that angle, the work has been very beneficial and I feel proud of what I have been able to discover and now have awareness around.  Of course there is a shadow side to everything and where that comes into play here is the way in which I went about the work.  Unrelenting.  Unkind.  With a lens of self reflection that turn...

 I remember when I was a child we would often say those words "Stampsies, No Erasies" as a way to demonstrate just how serious we were about something we had said (often concerning a crush on a boy or something equally as important).  It was a way of making it permanent, no undoing what had been said by anyone.  As I move through life I realize how much of that practice I have carried forward with me and am now working on undoing.  The need for permanence in thoughts, decisions, and what I understood to be true for me in my life has been a struggle to see and now soften.  My therapist has often (and still does) call me out for living in black and white thinking...right and wrong...this or that.  Grey is a colour I like to wear as far as clothes are concerned, but boy oh boy I do not like living in it.  That squishy, fluid and uncertain place where there are no concrete answers or The Ends to issues that we are dealing with.  Instead there is proce...

 As you read this post I have just celebrated my first six months living sober.  It feels surreal to type those words and yet is a choice that deep down I know was such a necessary one to make.  Some people who know me may find it surprising that I have chosen sobriety, as I didn't outwardly exhibit the stereotypical behaviours of someone who was struggling with alcohol.  I didn't hide bottles throughout my house, I didn't miss work due to hangovers or show up at my work intoxicated.  I didn't have blackouts and end up losing time or days.  So why make this choice?  Why now?   For me alcohol has always been a means of escape.  A way to soften the hard things, take the edge off, fit in, blur out.  I remember in my twenties when my parents would ask me what my weekend plans were, inevitably the phrase "going out and getting hammered" would be part of the itinerary, because it always was.  A weekend without drinking was a weekend ...

With today being International Women's Day, I felt this topic was incredibly relevant.  The idea of reclaiming, or actually finally claiming my sexuality after a lifetime of never feeling like I have owned it or even had a handle on it. Sex and sexuality in general has never been something I remember talking about with anyone - when I think back, the only girls who did talk about it were "doing it' and that made them easy and so it was the somewhat scantily dressed elephant in the room I suppose.     When I reflect on my own relationship with sex and my personal sexuality, I realize that I have never taken time to explore, nurture or develop a healthy outlook towards it.  Throughout my life I have been a passenger and not a participant when it came to sexual encounters and situations - I gave it away and did what I knew I needed to do in order to make my partner happy and to hopefully stop them from leaving me for someone else more willing, or better, or less in...

 This past week I had the opportunity to participate in some online creative movement and dance classes.  It was definitely something that was pushing my edges as it required me to experience myself and my body in a new way.  A softer and more loose way.  It was exciting, a bit scary and SO MUCH FUN!  I have started to incorporate some creative movement into my nighttime routine lately as it feels like a great way to reconnect with parts of myself that I have shut down or shut off over the years.  The parts that are a bit messy, uncontrolled, and unpredictable. I was thinking more about this today and realized just how much of my life has been fear-based or driven by fear.  The routines, actions and habits I have assumed for a large part have all been ones that I put in place out of one fear or another.  This realization set me back on my heels for a few moments as I have never considered myself to be a frightened person...but I definitely would d...