Waterfall

Most of us have at least two or three sides to our personality. I’ve spent a lifetime getting to know mine, before I learned how to get to know other peoples, and I always come back to water : You’ve got to flow.

In the nineties, a friend who was massively into his indie music sent me a mixtape. On it, he’d written You’re a Waterfall, a reference to The Stone Roses track.

That tape set me up for life. I’ve always thrown myself over the cliff. Waterfall was the blueprint.

But I grew up in the hood in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. As a kid, I’d hang my coat up and see where the guns were stashed. You learned early that trust and respect weren't abstract concepts. They were a code of conduct. You were knew when to speak, when to keep your mouth shut and when to freeze.

Despite also having at times the personality of a Labrador puppy!….That freeze became another side of me. Sometimes it meant literally saying nothing and mastering a poker face. Sometimes it meant freezing people out. It was a way to survive, and it worked.

Years later, navigating the world of fashion advertising at big name fashion media brands with formidable bosses, that same response came in handy. Keep your cards close. Don't give too much away. Hold your ground. But survival mechanisms have a habit of outstaying their welcome.

Through meditation and working with shamans, I began to understand that my freeze hadn't simply disappeared when the danger passed. It had set like a block of ice. And I'd carried it into places where I no longer needed the armour - i iced over when my guard went up with someone. The work wasn't about losing that side of myself, but thawing it out.

I also began to understand that a childhood spent knowing when not to speak meant I had some balancing to do as an adult. Developing my voice by explaining or asking questions. Learning to adapt my communication rather than go silent, and running off to do what I wanted to do regardless of what anyone else thought.

These days, my world has changed and I don’t have to ‘survive’ every room I walk into. I want to feel it, read it, move through it and leave when it's time. The ice had its purpose but it’s not really that necessary anymore.

I teach women how to spot the aspect of themselves that needs to be dissolved so they can flow. Because we've got to be like water. We need to know when to be warm, when to move, when to hold our ground and what to do when we freeze. Water changes form, but it doesn't lose its nature.

Ice, on the other hand, is rigid. And when we become too fixed in the ways we've learned to protect ourselves, the cracks eventually appear. In our relationships, our work, our communication, and in the gap between the woman we've become and the one we're ready to be.