When everything goes wrong

Moving at the pace of trust

I’ve been absent from this space, I have barely looked at emails or gone to the gym, it feels that life was put on pause. This week has felt like months and also the blinking of an eye, god hit the reset button and I’ve braced myself for impact. When everything goes wrong my impulse is to blame myself, I wonder if I did something wrong, was my discernment was off? I come from a dysfunctional family where both parents were absent and also unpredictable, I grew up around addiction and I survived many transgressions during crucial developing years.

What I experienced last weekend shook me to my core, I touched my wound and my body became the child who had to withstand the fires of my mother’s rage and protect my brother from harm. I am still somewhat at loss for words, I’m still in a bit of shock as if I was sleepwalking through a recurring dream. I am simply amused at how familiar this feeling of surviving events is, how often I’ve had to accommodate and rearrange my life due to someones else’s behaviour. I would like to reframe that actually, it is not that I am accommodating, I am simply observing and choosing to respond according to the integrity I embody.

I am sitting with the weight of the situation, I just landed on a new property, my life is still in boxes, and I am moving away today, we are leaving this place. I do not know where we will go, all I know is I must go. The woman I agreed to share land with is not stable and I have always known, I have been able to see her distortion of reality and yet I gave her the benefit of the doubt, I ignored all the red flags and focused on her potential and intellectual capacity. And now I am experiencing the outcome of avoiding my ability to sense where people are at and instead of leaving her there, I agreed to share land. I figured as long as we’re not in the same house, it will be ok. and nothing could have been further from the truth. During our last gathering in the old property, as friends offered help with the move and as we all shared meals and laughter, she showed herself. Every word revealed what lives through her body, eventually she reacted violently towards a few people and justified her assault saying she was overwhelmed.

It was the longest day of the year and by 9PM all hell had broken loose, I sat out in the porch and asked a friend to roll me some tobacco, I needed to ground, my hands were shaking, my entire body went into a trauma flashback. The last time I witnessed a woman act violently was when I was a child and the woman was my mother, I knew right there I was not moving anywhere near her, no thank you, I have already survived the unhinged shadow of a woman who has no self awareness and blames others for her violence. Never again.

Well I was grateful to gain clarity and what a lesson to only choose to be amongst kin, nothing less will do. The decision to move on the same property was because we all needed home but such decisions matter in profound ways, who you choose to be around is of utmost importance, they must be aligned and at the very least conduct themselves in a way that is conducive towards the benefit of the collective. And while conflict may be unavoidable, choose people that can receive feedback and take accountability, choose people that have the maturity to correct behaviours that don’t work. I am doing my very best to be kind to myself at this time of reckoning, I did indeed see it coming but not quite like this.

I have been in the swirl of chaos magic, everything got flung up into the air to be rearranged and settled back in a new configuration. The beauty that has emerged from the unfortunate event is truly awe inspiring, the depth in connection and bonding with friends is true, our circles are tight, they are solid, people exit and other people step in. During crisis we return to the pack, we remember how essential it is to hold one another and how loving it is to let people feel the consequences of their actions. Of course immature people will continue to feel victimized and betrayed when their disrespect or abuse is stopped through boundaries. I believe people that react with no self control or awareness, have a deficit of remorse because they protect their ego’s fiercely, they are neither ready nor desire to evolve, it is a scary though indeed.

The reason I am leaving today is because while I thought this woman would remove herself since she did create all the disruption in the field, she is holding on to her guns and feels entitled to move onto the property since she did sign a lease. So there you have it, she is not sorry enough to actually take accountability and do the right thing, instead the room-mate and the mother with a child will go find another place to live, we were already raise by women like her so we are gratefully bowing out.

The father of my child and I have opened new pathways of relating, this whole scenario has provided the opportunity for him to show up in big ways and he has stepped up for the task at hand, there is of course a lot between us that needs repair but I am so appreciative for the ways in which he has been holding all of us who were impacted. I still feel like I am somewhat suspended midair and I need the ground to feel at ease again, I know its close, again the chaos opened up a conversation with kin that are desiring to move to the area and steward land with us, interesting how that happens. I also got to set a boundary with someone who is unpredictable and harmful, I did not leave my body, I held myself and I allowed others to hold me and support me through this shock. I ensured my inner child that she is safe, I will never let a bully make her shrink ever again, I stood my ground and said NO, that will be enough of that. Despots must be stopped. I’d rather face uncertainty than go against myself.

I will never forget solstice of 2026, the time I my body remembered how scared I was as a child and how much compassion I have for myself and the road I’ve travelled. I wept that night with my friends, the father of my child held me until I softened and then the sweetness started sinking in and also the humour of it all. The woman who went beserk is always dressed in natural fibers, she eats clean organic foods and listens to mantras in the car, she is “love and light’ crew so of course she was going to loose her shit when triggered. People who lie to themselves are extremely repressed and therefore become a liability, I should have known. You do not need to fear the punks or metal heads, they are in touch with their feelings especially rage, it is the soft spoken ones that pretend they are above anger that are most volatile. Lesson learned, slate wiped clean, here we go.