flow living

Here I sit. Thinking about it all. My back against warm, gargantuan rocks that hold a pyramid to the Moon-Gods. Someone, somewhere, plays a trumpet that boldly distorts across this lush valley to blend with distant church bells that chime to the purrs of a ginger cat who nestles in my lap. Eyes well up. How did I come to be?

I’ve never fitted in to a nice neat box.

Itchy, neurodivergent feet trapped in a UK society that doesn’t accept difference and where the price of rent costs your left arm and an eye for good measure. Body holds a brain that can’t conform, and brain holds a body with a health condition that likes to hurl normality out with the bathwater through a habit of operations, recovery, sadness and signing on.

Pain hurts when contorting to fit into one way of being. Its exhausting trying to bend politely around an office chair when laying flat works better, or allowing a mind to wander into new possibilities when it has to focus on a greying spreadsheet. But to question normality means taking a gamble; as the moment you leap from mundanity and into a freelance world- security flies up into the smog and you start to scrape a round, aging barrel that’s flaking at the edges.

So for a while, I thought supress yourself. Grin and bear it, chug along like a clunky cog and numb it down at the £8 a pint afterworksdrinks before making the smoggy no-seats-left commute back to the end of the line to sit in a windowless room. But as glasses clink, you watch the haze of a too-hot sun make trails in the air. You wonder where the wasps are that would usually gather over leftover plates. And the familiar pang pang panging starts in the side of your gut to tell you that everything is, slightly, off~

The last endo operation and the hell of the entire journey to become myself again was the final straw. And I wasn’t alone. So many other women go through the same baseline normality. Why was I having to explain my situation with unjustified guilt to the job centre as they glazed over my sobstory with tickbox eyes; why was I being made to feel incapable when I had so much to give; why was I trying to be a round peg in a sanitised square hole that whistles over as the world slowly burns. How could ever stand up to make the changes that I wanted in the world while I was living in this way?

And so I the seed started to grow.

How could I s l o w quit on this way of being?

This year I took the leap. I heaved the great weight of stale societal expectations off my shoulders, and leant into difference. I tuned in to listen to my body, my mind, and the environment that held me through, who, too was supressed + simmering. I moved from feeling stagnant to try to flow like the elements. What could I learn from water, how could I embody it to understand it, to protect it, to live in the same way? How could I shift my mindset out of the mainstream to challenge our failings? I wanted to transcend borders to flow where opportunities came and trickle into intricacies of normality to question and make change.

Flow living is about collaboration. It unites the environment with a happy, neurodivergent brain, that pushes curiosity to the forefront to encourage a ‘noticing’ of the way the world is working. It embraces the full lean into creativity to question, to seek adventure, to see the world differently and to do it in a way that enables others to learn and grow too. It invites the authentic person to come out behind the mask and wave to the world while doing a hop and a jump so that others feel the courage to peek out with difference. It calls for meeting Earth with humbleness as a human, and to think about everything else that exists within our small time here. It’s holding your hands up to say, yes, I’m improvising my way through life.

But tangibly, what does it mean? For me, it meant seeing colours again. I quit the commitment of paying London rent on a greying shoebox and started to exist within different worlds to scrimp, save and experience. I converted a van, my dreamboat, and go from working in muddy festival fields, to dorming it up in hostels across the world and then jump to housesit mansions with swimming pools in return for looking after animals. Embarking on adventures with so many types of minds to learn different perspectives and experiences. And through sharing, we come together through our differences. This has a power.

And so, as I stood on top of a mountain in Mexico to actually listen with tears to the thousands of Monarch butterflies flap as a man tells me to encircle my ears with my palms to tune-in like an animal would, I realised I could understand the world so much more by exploring and learning from different communities and environments as opposed to sitting still and feeling stagnant. This year was the first time I could really listen, really notice, and see first-hand in a joined up way how the world is changing and communities are responding. In living this way, whilst being conscious of my own priveliges and background, I get closer to understanding. From this, work becomes more authentic, more inclusive, more aware. Ideas come and grow into collaborations across borders, sectors, species. And in rejecting the grind, I feel my body and my mind thank me for not trying to slot in anymore. I get more out of this way of living than I ever did before, and because of that I can give more back.

And why am I sharing this? Because living this way is both a privilege and something I fight for. It is a balance of choice, and of feeling unable to be part of having a ‘normal’ life. A balance of barrel scraping and confidence pretending to get the small amount of grants that enable this freedom to think and to question. I know many other creatives and people with health conditions that are feeling undervalued in the ways that they too have had to bend to live. So why should the individual have to mould in silence and society not adapt? Only through speaking about it are we going to be able to make true, inclusive change for the future of our planet and the people within it. The only way to advocate is to share our vulnerabilities and our stories.

So to anyone else trying and failing at fitting into a society that too is failing. I say, lean into what makes you you. And to those that hold the keys to the office kingdoms, what can you do to make work more accessible? What small choices can you make to try to make your world a bit better for the people within it? What steps can you make to help foster empathy, with both people and the environment? How can we embrace difference more?

Lets experiment in creating roles that enable people to question. How can we give the ‘creative brain’, the ‘thinker’ , ‘the observer’, the ‘neurodivergent brain’ the standing that it deserves so that we can cultivate ideas to help us out of the mess we find ourselves in? These people are so powerful, and they are exhausting themselves by clawing at closed doors. They are burnt out, and with that so is the potential of making incredible change.

Improvising and learning and having empathy are the most important things we can do with this time we have. Staying as curious as we can.