This guest post from Bek Ireland looks at the courage and magic of exploring a life unlived.
This is the 16th guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!
Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable and central part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.
I’m excited to have Bek Ireland as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Bek and I met via coaching and I had the pleasure of guiding Bek through a coaching series. We worked through deep wholehearted story work and Bek focused on getting back to the essentials of what was important. In this story, Bek shares how she has moved courageously into living that life unlived she imagined. It takes brave and sometimes unorthodox steps, but that’s wholehearted work. Read Bek’s journey of working through embracing her natural personality and living her life unlived!
Come in, come in, I’ll show you around. There’s a table, which also serves as a desk of course (excuse my laptop, notebook, 2019 diary on it!) and a gorgeous little kitchen, with coffee and tea and breakfast stuff.
In here’s the bathroom, with ‘Who Gives A Crap’ toilet rolls (love it). Here we have the bed (built high so you can store your suitcases or bags under there). The comfy couch is opposite the television, although we both know that’s not going to get turned on while I’m here, don’t we?
That’s one of the very reasons I’m here!
This is the third time I’ve stayed at an Airbnb in the last few years. It’s interesting that trips are stored in the app – my first time was June 2017, then June 2018, and now January 2019.
I rent them for two nights usually, but I don’t stay overnight. All three have been within a 5-minute drive of my own house. I come for the afternoon on the first ‘night’ and then the full day of the second ‘night’.
The first time was one night, because my daughter, who was nine at the time, had gone to a friend’s house and was possibly going to stay the night, depending on how she felt. I would’ve stayed the night if she’d stayed at her friend’s, but she didn’t. So I was only there for a few hours in the afternoon and evening.
Reclaiming sovereignty
The bliss of it though! The no-TV, no-power tools, nobody talking to me. Not even offering me a coffee – so, still interrupting, still intruding on what I was beginning to understand was an innate need for uninterrupted time to myself.
When you’re a people-pleasing INFJ like me, going against the grain of 40 years and trying to establish some boundaries with scant practice is hard work. Being interrupted with the offer of coffee is excruciating. Because yes, they’re interrupting when you’ve asked politely that they not talk to you, but for an ostensibly nice reason.
It’s all too much and you give up and give in and swallow yourself and go watch TV with them.
But not if you’re in a space of your own.
The second time I told my daughter and her dad that I was going on a two-day writing retreat, which was true. But it wasn’t until it was over that I explained I’d been the only one at the retreat.
I went for walks, I wrote, I read.
I didn’t talk.
I listened to cars driving past, blokes playing sport on the oval up the road. The sounds of birds, the wind, insects. I thanked the thoughts of guilt when they came, then let them dissolve.
Agency and guilt are two of the balls I juggle as I stretch my wings to test their strength. Please excuse the clumsy metaphors. Done is better than perfect, as they say.
Wings to fly
So those two were a year apart. That’s interesting. Come the Junes had I had enough? Did I need some counterbalance mid-year? And what was happening at those times?
I quite like the wings metaphor, let’s think Angelina-Jolie-in-Malevolence type wings. So, in June 2017 you might say I was feeling the nice itch and burn of them under the skin on my back. Perhaps they were starting to protrude a little.
I’d been six months in an assistant manager position at a company for whom I’d worked, on and off, for over 20 years. A company, by the way, that in Year 12 I had sworn I would never work for. Careful what you feel strongly about is my advice to you!
If you ask me where I would have planned to work at that age, I couldn’t have told you – and I guess the universe just fills in the blanks for you sometimes, doesn’t it? Which can be good, or not so good.
Strength and the validation it brings
Anyway, I digress.
By June 2018 my wings had sprouted. Not long after my first brief, blissful sojourn, I had completed a semester of a combined English and Creative Writing/Secondary Education degree.
I deferred the following semester while I held the fort for my boss, who had been promoted to a new role. I absolutely did not want her job – leading a team of 17 across three states – but I was happy enough to fill in till they advertised her job and found someone new.
And to be honest I had gained confidence, having met a kindred spirit in Terri and benefiting from a series of coaching sessions with her; with doing well at my studies; and by being considered competent enough to be the acting manager.
And here we are, six months later, in this glorious tiny space. I would love to sleep the night, but again, juggling with agency and guilt, I find it difficult to justify staying away from home when I’m in the same town. I travel a bit for work, to Adelaide and Sydney, and of course, I stay away from my daughter then. But I have no choice – because I’m so far away.
Here, I am only five minutes down the road. And having the whole afternoon and then the whole next day to myself is good enough, for now.
But as soon as I got settled in this one, I was already planning my next stay. And I won’t even wait six months this time, let alone a year. The first time this is available again is two months from now. The only reason I haven’t already booked it is that I don’t want to seem too weird.
Remembering who you really are
Creating time and space for solitude is symbolic of my journey along the path of wholeheartedness. Believing I deserve to create this time and space for myself. Acknowledging its importance.
e e cummings said,
To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
Or condensed for modern times by Danielle LaPorte:
Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?
Getting away, stepping outside the realms of my normal life, into the magic of a life unlived, if only for brief periods of time, helps me remember who I really am. It is there I find myself. I have been there all along, but sometimes I am hard to find under the accumulated detritus of the world which does its best to make me (and all of us) everybody else.
In the majesty of silence, I can recalibrate, recharge, rejuvenate, rejoice. Quietly.
I remember thinking of Virginia Woolf and her room of one’s own. It’s a recurring fantasy of mine to rent a house of my own and semi-reside there. What riches could emerge? How might the fabric of the universe stretch and shimmer in those circumstances?
Trusting yourself and honouring your instincts
I also often long for a beloved, wise mentor. Someone who knows me, who sees me, who could guide me on the path. What’s the next right thing? Tara Mohr has an exquisite guided meditation, (you can find it here) where you journey to meet your future-self. I highly recommend it.
The last time I did it, my future-self lived alone (probably with a cat too) in a humble, funky, uncluttered small abode not far from the sea. She had wavy grey hair, and she was fit and strong. Her days consisted of long walks, reading, writing, and conversing with a community of like-minded folk from all over the planet via the world wide web.
I can see now she would live a waste-free life. She would cultivate vegetables and walk or ride to the local farmer’s market each Sunday to buy fruit and catch up with local friends face to face.
Besides solitude, reading is like breathing to me. I also love learning about astrology, and like many INFJ’s, have a wide smattering of interests.
Waking up
I have however recently acquired a new focus: climate change. I can’t believe I got to 43 knowing basically nothing about it.
In October 2018 I attended a local TEDx event. All the speakers were inspirational, but a talk by Darren Lomman of GreenBatch really stood out. He’s working to create the first plastic recycling facility in Perth, Western Australia because at the current rate, it’s predicted that there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had just released their latest report on the state of the planet and Sarah Wilson (of I Quit Sugar and First We Make the Beast Beautiful fame) had posted a summary of it on her blog. I love Sarah’s no-nonsense take on things, and read her views with interest.
Since then, I have been learning about carbon dioxide emissions, what ppm means (parts per million), who the planet’s largest emitters are and how we can avert the potentially catastrophic consequences of our mindless pursuit of economic growth.
I have bought cloth pads and a menstrual cup. I am trying to reduce, reuse, or refuse single-use plastics. I have a large bowl in the sink to save the water that would normally go down the drain when I wash my hands and rinse dishes. I have a bucket in the shower to capture a portion of the water that washes over me.
It makes me think about others that I share this incredibly beneficent earth with, others who do not have toilets or disposable pads or tampons. Others who walk miles to get water. Others who have as much right as I do to feel the itch and burn of newly growing wings under their skin.
Courage to grow
And I am delving deeper into the science and political history of the climate emergency we face, because I want to do more than aspire to waste-free living; I want to help drive policy change.
I need to educate myself, because as much as I’m growing, there’s a saying I still tend to live by: better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
I find myself noticing moments of quiet with more frequency now, and recognising that creating quiet – and solitude – for myself is a necessity, not a luxury. Quiet and solitude allow me to work out what it is that I think, how to apply the ideas I generate, and how to be confident that when I do speak, it’s from a space of considered knowledge. Reading Greg McKeown’s Essentialism guided me to figure out what was essential for me, and to live that.
I believe though that most of us are trying to raise our awareness, and knowing that I am part of a community of brave souls, finding the courage to test our wings and raise our voices, gives me hope.
With such hope, it’s delicious to imagine how the fabric of the universe might stretch and shimmer.
Key book companions along the way
Here are some books I love that have supported me:
Presence – Amy Cuddy
Essentialism – Greg McKeown
The War of Art – Steven Pressfield
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg
Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
The Hate Race – Maxine Beneba Clarke
Autobiography of a Yogi – Paramahansa Yogananda
Anything We Love Can Be Saved – Alice Walker
Quiet – Susan Cain (my first realisation that I was introverted, and not only was that a thing, and okay, but it brought incredible gifts)
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Salt – Gabrielle Lord
This Changes Everything – Naomi Klein
Eaarth – Bill McKibben
Requiem for a Species – Clive Hamilton
About Bek Ireland
Bek Ireland leads a team of specialists helping communities build their financial capability. Bek loves reading and learning, and is passionately interested in the connections between things. She has studied, amongst many other things, astrology, English Literature, crystal healing and education. She is an INFJ and is interested in psychology and esoteric teachings. Bek has recently joined 350.org and is learning how she can contribute to raising awareness of global warming, and a sustainable future. You can find Bek on Instagram and Twitter.
Photographs 1, 4, 6 & 7 provided by Bek Ireland and used with permission and thanks.
Read more Wholehearted Stories
If you enjoyed this wholehearted story, please share it with others to inspire their journey. You might enjoy these stories too:
Dancing all the way – or listening to our little voice as a guide for wholehearted living
Tackling trauma and “not enough” with empathy and vision – a wholehearted story
When the inner voice calls, and calls again – my journey to wholehearted living
Maps to Self: my wholehearted story
The Journey to Write Here – my wholehearted story
Ancestral Patterns, Tarot Numerology and breaking through – my wholehearted story
Message from the middle – my wholehearted story
The journey of a lifetime – a wholehearted story
Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story
Grief and pain can be our most important teachers – a wholehearted story
Breakdown to breakthrough – my wholehearted life
Embracing a creative life – a wholehearted story
Becoming who I really am – a wholehearted story
Finding my home – a wholehearted story
My wild soul is calling – a wholehearted story
Our heart always knows the way – a wholehearted story
How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine
Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide
You might also enjoy my free ‘Reading Wisdom Guide for Creatives, Coaches and Writers‘ with a summary of 45 wholehearted books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below.
You will receive access to the Wholehearted Library which includes the Reading Wisdom Guide and so much more! Plus you’ll receive monthly Beach Notes with updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes writing, personality type, coaching, creativity, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.
Quiet Writing is on Facebook Instagram and Twitter so keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!
