Soul mirrors

An army of collective power

It was so out of character for him to just disappear. To not deliver his work. This had never happened before. But everyone figured he was just really busy. When his clients started messaging people on social media (including me) asking where he was and if they would ever receive their photos, we started assuming the worst.

So a week ago we started searching for him, asked all the industry friends we knew.

After a lot of calls, messages and some serious FBI worthy shit, we finally got a hold of him. My friend and I went to his house because we were scared and we needed to see if he was actually ok. He was alive and life had overwhelmed him. The work got too much and his response was to freeze. He retreated from everything and everyone and nobody knew. He didn't ask for help, he didn't tell anyone, he simply stopped everything and fell apart.

It broke my heart to sit with him and in his tears see someone that carried everything by himself. Someone lonely.

A few of us photographers came together, took of his editing work load for him so he can slowly recover in peace.

He was mind-blown that we would offer to do this for him. I was mind-blown that he was mind-blown. Because this is normal life to me. This is love.

---

I am not strong alone and I don't want to be anymore. I have long given up on the idea of making it alone. Isolated strength will slowly kill you overtime.

When I left my marriage I became a pro in asking for help. And it's not because suddenly I lost the support I was used to. In fact, I didn’t receive adequate support within my marriage. I was in charge and operating in a high masculine energy. We were two little kids who got together so young and bonded over trauma. The passive one and the one leading.
When I began my healing journey and my energy shifted, suddenly there was an imbalance because the person in charge (me) didn’t want the job any longer. And he didn’t know what to do with me if I wasn’t the strong one, the one leading us. What would I be then? What would he be?

But with the death of my marriage also died my stubborn clinging to masculine energy. I operate differently from how I did in my twenties and early thirties. The last five years have been a beautiful learning in energy.

Hustle? Who is she? I don't know her anymore. As difficult as self employed life can be (on your own with no one to fall back on), I approach it with softness and gentleness. This means that I achieve my goals differently from others and slower, but that’s ok. It feels right and aligned with my being this way.
Like this is the energy I was supposed to live in all along. It also means things come to me, unexpectedly, without me having to chase them the same way I did ten years ago.

When my marriage ended, I was a deflated balloon from years of being “strong” and so my era of asking began. Something I hadn’t done all throughout my twenties, be it in my relationships or professionally.

I am quite the pro at it now. I let people know what I need and want. I ask for help all the time. Collaboration and community has become my biggest mantra and joy.

I have developed a fuck it attitude. Fuck it, I'm gonna ask. The worst that can happen is a no. So what. If you don’t ask, you already have a no.
I have seen people's love and kindness to strangers and friends. I believe that we are inherently good. I know my own heart and I will forever assume that it will be reflected back to me by others.
I want to support my friends and strangers alike - and so I believe, with great delusion and hope, that they want to do the same for me.

Because this is how this community thing works right?

Even through embarrassment, even when it would be easier to say nothing, even when my brain wants to convince me I look weak if I ask - I will reach out to the people who are my safe place. The ones who have the best intentions for me.

Collective strength is always superior to individual strength.

Last week I had a decision to make. I feared I would fold and not do it. I felt my batteries were too low to take action. So I called upon my army for strength.

I sent a voicenote to some of my closest friends to ask for a specific reminder from all of them. I knew I needed their clear voices to bring my vision back into focus. I didn’t ask for advice. I knew exactly what I had to do. But I needed strength to follow through with action.

So that’s what I asked for.

I have an incredible network of people in my life, and they came through with force, some even in the middle of the night.

That night my friend Sasha gave me an important reminder:

“You already know what you need and what you want, in asking you are simply reflecting what you already know. The knowledge doesn’t come from us, we can reflect it back to you, but ultimately you can trust yourself. We are going to be mirrors for you when you need to strengthen what you already know.”

What a gift. To be loved like this. To be seen like this.

The next day I had a playlist of voicenotes from people who love me, infusing power into me.

While I was listening to this unique playlist on repeat, memorising it, internalising their words, I was so in awe of them. Of collective strength.

In this instance I simply needed more than just my own thoughts, my own intuition, my own strength (which is never mine alone to begin with), I needed a whole network of it.

Standing on the words of my soulmates, I felt like I had been plugged into a power source, their belief running through me like electricity.

And in that moment, headphones in my ears, walking through the crowds of London, I had a glimpse behind the veil. Heard a whisper of something ancient, like a call from the past.

A reminder from nature, that this is how love works. This is how life works.

Like how mycelium wraps itself around the roots of trees to connect a whole forest, in order to send each other the minerals they need.

This is natural. This is the original, real life. This is how community is supposed to work. It wasn't meant to be done in florescent light offices, with a couple of hours in the day remaining to connect, with the TV on, it wasn't meant to be spent doing Christmas alone, having going-out friendships and no coming - home friendships, wasn't meant to work for individual goals alone, to achieve individual happiness and healing alone, raising a nuclear family alone, carrying the weight of life alone.

That's not how nature does it. That's not how we're supposed to do it either.

We are nature.

We are not independent and we can never be.

We're interconnected and interdependent, when one calls, the many send out signals, and whoever has the resources, sends out the nutrients.
And with collective effort, so many of us can be nurtured, healed and even saved.