Looking for the Black Swan

On being a proper grown-up and weaving threads of compassion

I spent a long time stuck in the idea that ‘proper work’ looked like Monday to Friday, 9-5, outside the home. Unsurprisingly this was also a time when I was in my cycle of hitting burnout every couple of years, which I addressed by changing job rather than re-evaluating how my life was structured. In my twenties I put lots of emphasis on performing ‘adulting’ to avoid peoples judgements for my lifestyle. (I hadn’t just fallen in love with another woman, but one who already had children and was a little older.) People had ‘opinions’, but twenty years later we’ve proved to them all that it wasn’t a phase destined to fail, but is the most wonderful part of my life (even with its challenges).

By the time I hit my thirties and started training to be a therapist, I was on the way to letting go of trying to be a ‘proper grown up’ and making space for being me. The final nail in the coffin of ‘proper grown-up Louise’ was found in my late thirties when my therapist asked me if I might be autistic. Coming to know and understand my neurodivergent self was the lens I needed to really see how societies expectations had left little space for me.

Although I’d known cognitively that my idea of adulting (or more specifically womaning’) was based on patriarchal and capitalist values that were not my own , it took a while to give myself permission to try and find a different path. Permission became an important word during this part of my life as I started letting more of myself show than before.

Permission to have colourful hair, permission to wear the clothes that made me smile, permission to dream of a different way of living.

Audre Lorde tells us that

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

It is a quote I often go back to when I find the old ways of being creeping back in.

• When I start thinking about Mondays as a bonus admin day instead of the rest day it was intended to be.

• When I wonder if I’m too old to have purple hair or wear wizardsaurus dungarees.

• When I start valuing things in financial terms rather than their worth to me.

• When I have any kind of thoughts that compare me to someone else.

When I notice these old thoughts whispering in my ear, I know it’s time to have a little word with myself and make a different choice. Because these whispers aren’t commands I have to follow, I can now see them as just another way that my brain is letting me know that I am doing too much and that I need to make time to rest. I know it’s time to follow the advice I am always giving to clients (and anyone else that will listen) and to find the threads of compassion I weave through my life and make sure they are woven in a little tighter.

Today, those whispers were strong, I was full of (self-imposed) deadlines and stress after an overscheduled month. Everything was telling me that I needed to just get on and work. But I knew that I would never get what I needed done if I didn’t make time to weave in those threads of compassion, and it seems the universe was on my side.

Despite not setting an alarm I naturally woke up in the hour of five and so made it to my sunrise yoga class (although I grumped all the way there and most of the way through it). I know this always leaves me grounded and better able to navigate a tricky day.

After a couple of hours admin and client work I took myself for coffee and cake at the knit and natter group a friend organises. Here I found wonderful connections with friends I don’t see enough of and laughed until my face ached. I even managed to get a little closer to finishing my special interest jumper.

Back home for another hours work followed by a walk with a friends dog where we managed to spot the black swan who arrived this morning to much excitement on the park Facebook group.

When I finally finished my last client hours of the day and found that all my admin had been woven in between the threads of compassion. Rather than finishing the month exhausted as I had thought I would, I find that I am tired, but satisfied. I have had moments of overwhelm, but they have not stayed as long as they might in the past and I am measuring my accomplishments, not by monetary value, but by the joy in the memories and the depth of connection.

Not only have I still managed to keep up with my day job, but I’ve also put the final pieces in place to launch the course I’ve been working on for the past six months (and the workshop my hyperfocus gifted me with last week).

Maybe being a proper grown-up doesn’t have to look like I thought it would. Maybe it looks like colourful hair, dungarees and sneaking off in the middle of the day because you might see a black swan.

How do weave the threads of compassion through your life?