Yeah, but…

Work has taken over my life (in a good way), so I’ve created a second, work-related blog at www.dirussellimmigration.com – hope you pop in for a visit!

~Di

It’s been over a year since my last post, and it would likely have been much longer if it hadn’t been for a new colleague mentioning to me that he had been reading my blog.  My blog?! That thing that consumed me for months and months while I was trying to ‘find myself’ in South Africa, wondering what I was really doing here and how I would go about re-establishing myself as a contributing member of society? I’ve been rereading these pieces of my soul all morning, wondering who that writer really is. And where has she gone?

So much has happened in the past year – I don’t even know where to begin other than to say that I now realize that my time as a blogger was the beginning of a metamorphosis that continues today.  I still am that blogger, but there is now so much more. Blogging allowed me to reach hidden aspects of myself and come to know some very quiet places in my heart.  It also allowed me to grow larger than I had previously allowed myself to grow; it’s an expansion that has been beautiful and painful all at the same time.

Funnily enough though, it is the theme of my blog, the ‘yeah but’ concept that is written in the About Me section, that makes me realize that this blog WAS written for me, by me, as a way of encouraging my future self to break free of any residual fears about becoming more powerful and imagining my life in a bigger way than I had ever imagined. I was pushing my small self into the light, forcing her to realize that her smallness was no longer needed.  It’s taken two years of living in Africa in the absence of my former self to realize that my former self was just far too small to carry out what I have been put on this earth to do.

Two years later, I live in a new country with a new qualification and a new career.  I have transitioned from employee to employer with a lot of unemployment in between, and I have learned that depending on others can impart a much-needed sense of humility, appreciation and vulnerability.  Most of all, I have realized my value and my special way of serving others.  Helping other people leave their home country to live in a strange new northern world where they can be free to reinvent themselves like I have done in South Africa is such an incredible privilege, and I know that those two years of flux and feeling lost will enable me to feel empathy and compassion for those about to make that same external and internal journey.

Immigration is not just about making a physical move. It’s also about making a giant psychological shift, processing many losses and trying to find one’s place in a new culture that does not always fit or come close to meeting one’s expectations.  It’s the process of cultivating a new identity and seeing yourself via a new cultural mirror.  Sometimes I feel this experience has been like playing ‘dress up’ – experimenting with a new cultural paradigm and trying on a new ‘self’.

For me, living in a new country has meant viewing life through an alternative lens. Sometimes it seems like I’m wearing the wrong set of glasses as everything I used to know seems distorted, sometimes it feels like I’m wearing a telescopic lens that allows me to see so much more than I could before, and sometimes it feels like I’m wearing tri-focals – depending how I tilt my head, I can see the world as my old self, my new self or a combination of my selves, which is usually the most confusing.

I have hesitated about keeping this blog public now that I own a business, but I think that keeping some posts private is the best way to handle being a blogger as well as a business person. If my clients happen to discover this blog, I hope they are encouraged by my inner experiences and can maybe find some solace on the days when they feel their lives are upside down and they no longer recognize themselves.  To me, it is that lack of recognition that signals how much one has grown.

Do butterflies recognize their own reflections upon emerging from their cocoons?  I suspect not; instead, they likely marvel at the new beauty which is now theirs and fly around the world sharing their new colours.  Helping people find that inner butterfly in the midst of such an enormous life transition is my reason for being.  When I hear stories of immigration consultants and lawyers who rip their clients off, treat them indifferently or who belittle their concern, I feel even more driven to provide my clients with something more…something human.  I’m now thankful for the struggles I had both in Asia and now in Africa because my sense of understanding and ability to empathize with people who are immigrating have truly deepened.

I miss my books.  I brought a few from Canada, but due to the weight restrictions, I was not able to bring all my beloved books.  It seems that books are ridiculously expensive here, so without a job (thanks to the psycho-jerk-ball director of the company I just quit) I can’t buy any (ok, many is more honest).

I’ve been daydreaming about my books like one dreams about food while stranded on a desert island or how one imagines herself in all her favorite clothes when she is travelling abroad and has only had 4 outfits for 8 months (oh, yeah, that’s me too).  Anyhow, am I weird to be wishing my Pema Chodron collection with all the wrinkled pages from falling into the bathtub would magically arrive on my doorstep?  Or my Chopras?  Or my Thi Thacht Ngat however you spell it (it’s been so long I can’t remember) anger book?  That one would certainly have helped me out today when I chewed off the bf’s head.  Or an oldie but goodie like Debbie Ford’s Dark Side of the Light Chasers, the first ‘spiritual’ book that actually made me gasp aloud as I realized how much I was projecting my unacknowledged shadow side onto everyone I knew.  What a revelation that book was…and where is it now?  Buried in a dark box in Canada, locked in a cold garage with boxes of other lonely yet deeply meaningful books.

Does anyone else read their books over and over again?  I’m fascinated that each time I reread a book, I find totally new things that I didn’t highlight or bend the page for before.  After a few reads, almost every page is highlighted to the point that the non-highlighted areas appear to be the important ones, and every second page in the book is folded over in one corner.  Some people cringe when they look at the condition of my books, but for me, a book needs to be worn in like a ball glove.  A book whose spine is stiff and pages show no sign of stains or ink has been seriously neglected. If it shows no signs of watermarks or red wine stains, it clearly needs some TLC.

I’m forgetting all the stuff in my books, and I worry that if I can’t read them again, all this knowledge and understanding and supposed wisdom will drift away.  It’s like how I studied French for 8 years in school, but when I went to Quebec last year I couldn’t remember a bloody thing.  My cookbook collection is a prime example – I used to love cooking and had a beautiful collection of various ethnic recipe books that are happily covered in food stains and hand written notes on recipe adaptations.  Of course I had to leave them behind, and although there are millions of recipes on the internet, they are not MY recipes from My books with MY adaptations.  Talk about attachment issues!  This is actually proof that I’m slipping – my non-attachment practice has gone seriously awry.  See – I’m now attached to my non-attachment practice too!  That’s all the proof I need.

I miss my books.

The universe obviously wanted me to take a break from writing.  Many things have conspired to keep me away, so I decided to listen and again step away from the blog.  When I got locked out of my email account last week, I knew that forces greater than myself really wanted me to stop all communication.  To be honest, I haven’t really missed it, and not much has happened that would be considered blog worthy, well, ok, except maybe two things.

First, I have had the sad yet strangely fascinating experience of watching a distant acquaintance go through a complete mental upheaval on Facebook.  This person is demonstrating shocking instability through bizarre and deliberately cruel status updates, and the public ‘show’ of sanity’s demise is startling.  I wish I could intervene and direct this person to the appropriate mental health facility where proper care, therapy and medication would be provided, but it is not my place and would not be welcomed, so I sit and watch the spectacle, swaying wildly between horror, anger and compassion. What is an outsider’s role in a situation like this, when someone is clearly suffering and making others suffer as well? Compassion is always necessary, but when the behavior begins to border on being psychotic and maligns innocent bystanders, what is the next step?

Second, I have developed an addiction to Rooibos yoghurt at Woolies.  Seriously, I have never tasted anything like it and cannot pass the fridge without diving into the tub with an enormous spoon.  I sit in the other room, wondering if enough time has passed since the last frantic mouthful.  I also wonder if anyone feels like this.  Surely it cannot just be me…

So that’s it.  Maybe I’ll find something more poignant tomorrow.  Or maybe not.