The Manifesto 20#
As I sit here thinking about what I want to write I can still feel the emotional hangover of the last 3 weeks. It has been a challenging time, with my kids and with myself. I found it hard to do the things that I know make me feel better. I isolated and sat it out. So I want to talk again about the fact that life sucks and sings, it’s a given, for all of us. No one is immune. So much of what we see and read about each other is through the lens of social media. Festival pics, opening nights, perfectly filtered pictures. We all know it’s not the full picture but it’s easy to get lost in comparison and to think ‘Its just me, I am the only one struggling’.
Sometimes there’s an instinct to share absolute vulnerability on Social Media and ask the universe/friends for help, and other times a powerful instinct to just present a glossy perfect image and manage challenges privately. Either approach can have benefits. I internalise and search for ways to make sense of things on my own. It can be isolating and lonely.
Being publicly vulnerable is an attempt to de-stigmatise the fact that sometimes we don’t always cope so well. Our usual strategies don’t work and it’s OK to admit to friends, colleagues and ourselves that we don’t have the capacity to manage in our usual ways. Ask people to be gentle. Ask yourself to be gentle. My emotional hangover is still present but each day it dissipates. It passes.
Then life will continue..
..until the next challenge.
Kareena. x
Kareena Hodgson was a full-time professional international circus performer for 20 years, who is now an accredited Counsellor/life coach and The Manifesto is her professional consultancy. She is uniquely suited to working in the mental health space within the performing arts. She is also the Senior Editor, Executive Coach & Moral Backbone of Carnival Cinema.
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