Hi! Welcome✨ I hope you had a great holiday, ready to rock the year or whatever! If you’re feeling in any way the opposite, I’m sorry; you’ll, hopefully, be fine.. go through the motions, and hold onto hope 🤍

Before I start blabbering, I stumbled upon this, and wanted to encourage you this 2022 to:

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken – Oscar Wilde

I’m a bit dumbfounded.. My first post went up on the 10^th of January 2021, and I’m now fulfilling a promise to myself to publish one blog a month for the year, which was considerably much harder than I had anticipated.

Thank you for reaching this point and huge milestone with me.. 12 months of writing: of changes, emotions and exploring. I believe in purpose, that there’s purpose in all things and people, and there’s purpose in this series of literature; I hope it always reaches the hearts of those in need of it.

I’ll bring her back again one sweet day, but for now, I hope you enjoy the last take 🎬

It’s a New Year, and while the calendar does its annual reset, unfortunately, our troubles, sorrows, the losses and failures, they, well they don’t. 

Life goes on.

So while the new slate doesn’t wipe off all the sads of former years, it does offer a chance at new perspective.

When a tragedy strikes, home or life in general gets filled with friends and family ready to provide support and offer a hand, other times rather lending to pry and chatter, but really, what endures is the noise, the loud distracting noise. It fills rooms and empty crevices of the heart in such stark contrast to the silence of it’s leaving after it all ends, the tragedy gets laid to bed; Life goes on.

I read somewhere: ‘Shelly Rambo had written of traumatic events that they “shatter all that one knows about the world & all the familiar ways of operating within it.” We move on, but life is not as it was.’

We move on, but life is not as it was.

Damn.

I was reminded of a scene from Sex Education recently when a girl was riding the bus, and a man that had seemed nice and smiled at her, masturbated onto her on the bus ride.

Nothing happened, everything went on as normal. So afterwards, she couldn’t get on the bus anymore. She couldn’t get on the bus.

(But ofc the girlies later helped her overcome it, which was a beautiful scene 🥺)

We’re allowed to feel certain ways, and although maybe not our doing, we can deal with some of these traumas/emotions, and adapt to our new world. We can also be more mindful as friends and bystanders, to create safe landings for others, because whilst we ‘move on’, for them, life is not as it was.

Since we’re entering into the new year, remember, sometimes the things people are dealing with may not necessarily be labelled as trauma. Everyone goes through something. Arguably, a string of failures/losses/rejections or any bad situations in any one year is enough to constitute some form of trauma, and we’ve all faced this in some way or form, especially over the last two years.

So, no matter how big or small the situations, as we enter the year,

1. Remember to be kind to yourself, to take time to mourn and grieve the year(s), feel what you feel, and set beautiful intentions for your year.
2. Know adaptability. Changes will be with us to death because that is the only constant. Some changes are heavy, maybe life changing, others are small changes, maybe over a day/months that only marginally affect us somehow, but we have to live with. Having a more accepting and determined mindset to overcome any changes/challenges you face  will always keep you going.
3. Be resilient. You’re a diamond, do.not.buckle.

The other thing about life after horror or a horrible year, is that, sometimes our dreams are completely shattered, and every single thing changes, our direction as we knew it. But maybe sometimes, our dreams shouldn’t come true… May they not come true. As we usher in the new year, listen what unknown saying:

‘May your dreams not come true…”
As a single sentence, that phrase may be off-putting or sound mean spirited. But the magic is what follows the ellipsis:

“… so that you may make room in your life for all wondrous things you couldn’t possibly dream of.’

Sometimes, learn to let go of what you dreamt off, what you knew, to make space for new beginnings. Let the failures of the last year remain there, and let not unease stop your heart before recalling there’s always magic brewing in our lives, and if we wait long enough we’ll see the sparkle. Open mind, open heart lala. You’re still here so keep fighting for yourself.

‘Hope that better things are always ahead’ ✨

Alrightttttt, cut! It’s a wrap!

Thank you to my babies, my friends and loves, Malebogo, Nako and Raquel who have contributed to this blog, the monthly proofreading and, keeping me sane 🥴 😂

Thank you to everyone who interacted with this blog, the shares, comments, all and any form of support. I have seen and appreciate every single one of you. I wish you all your hearts desire’s, that you achieve your wildest dreams and beyond. Let it be so.

Goodbye 🥺 I’ll be back with my Masters, and a million things and one to tell you about, and it’ll be exciting!

I leave you with his word today, Lomus’ ongaka wanele bonke ❤️

Ey yo.. what’s up? 😊

Welcome to my blog! 

We’re almost at the finish line baby.. Big Win! Join me for a rhymeee;

All shame

Lives on the other side of fear

Wrong blame

Mandem draw 9 beers

‘Ugly’, ‘lame’, outlaws shunned to tears

Wild, insane.. throw it asylum or lairs

Lighting the abyss

Illuminates all despair

Shadows & denying

Disgrace thick in’e air…

What comes to mind when you see these words?

Ugly, bad, shameful, weird, taboo, socially unacceptable, shunned, denied, reject, envy, greed

There’s an umbrella term in psychology they use:

Shadow/Shadow Self

The Shadow

From Wikipedia – the long version;

But this is the fuller explanation that I like:

‘The shadow, said celebrated Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung, is the unknown “dark side” of our personality—dark both because it tends to consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially, or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses, like sexual lust, power strivings, selfishness, greed, envy, anger or rage, and because, due to its unenlightened nature, it is completely obscured from consciousness. Whatever we deem evil, inferior, or unacceptable and deny in ourselves becomes part of the shadow, the counterpoint to what Jung called the persona or conscious ego personality.’

These are things we view as either unflattering (envy, greed, cruelty, power, sexuality), or unfamiliar (defying culture or expectations).

You should hopefully know by now, everything we know, until a point of self-awareness, is everything we were taught to know through socialisation –

Definition: Socialisation is known as the process of inducting the individual into the social world. The term socialisation refers to the process of interaction through which the growing individual learns the habits, attitudes, values and beliefs of the social group into which he has been born.

As we grow up, we’re taught that certain emotions and/or behaviours are good, whereas others, such as anger, envy, expressing sexuality etc are bad. Everything that we reject or are taught to reject falls into our shadow, neatly out of conscious and awareness; it doesn’t mean these things go away, however.

For example, as a child, you may be taught that jealousy/envy is a bad emotion and instead of learning how to manage it or understand what the emotions mean, you instead learn to discard it into your shadow. Growing up means realising that jealousy isn’t a bad emotion, but human and normal, and can point towards where you may need to make changes in your own life.

Jealousy and envy are only bad if they create malicious intentions that one wilfully acts upon, especially if never taught how to feel and handle them.

Okay, back to the point.

The central idea is what is out of our conscious. The unknown.

There’s also the idea of fear central to our thoughts about anything unknown. Fear is fundamentally encoded in our DNA, to help us survive and avoid uncertainty. It shows up as adrenaline or fits of anxiety and triggers, but living by fear and to survive closes you off from experiences and influences how you interact with people.

To put this into context,

The psychological term for fear of the unknown is “xenophobia.”

Fear can be internal, occurring as anxiety or safeguarding ‘false’ beliefs, or external, arising as xenophobic violence.

And what do we fear?

When you really look at the grand scheme of things, it can be so many things; failure, divorce, interacting with/being druggies, being viewed as aggressive, being an outcast etc, because maybe we’ve been socialised to view them as shameful, promoting disregard and stigma.

Disregard?

What you perceive negatively will form a trigger in seeing it in others, so you’ll blame and shame.

The Four Major Jungian Archetypes

‘Archetypes are universal, inborn models of people, behaviors, or personalities that play a role in influencing human behavior. They were introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who suggested that these archetypes were archaic forms of innate human knowledge passed down from our ancestors.’

So according to Jung, the four main influential archetypes are the self, the persona (mask we show to the world), the shadow and the anima/animus.

Third time’s a charm. Do you see a mirage?

The persona is the mask we show people, and it counters our shadow, which is everything we’d like to keep hidden, which may even be hidden from our conscious as well, and, may be the truer versions of who we really are.

Repression leads to projection.

The fight between the mask and shadow ultimately leads to projecting the parts of ourselves we deny – what provokes us about other people points to something unresolved within us.

Issues from projection

There are two components to issues regarding not welcoming/understanding your shadow:

• Harshly judging and finding wrong in others, even where there is no wrong except from own prejudice.
• Using judgements and shadow expectations to attempt to control other people or their behaviours e.g. shaming in families

Real Life?

In family

A “black sheep” is a family member who is marginalized, treated differently, or excluded by the rest of the family. Black sheep, also known as marginalized family members, experience feelings of hurt, inadequacy, and loneliness.

(And if you’re part of this squad, I’m sorry for what you go through.. wishing you love 🥺)

The phrase originates from a recessive gene that resulted in black rather than white sheep, and so they stood out. Black sheep doesn’t even always mean a bad child or qualities, it can even be being more adventurous than the rest of the family, or being a remarkable creative in a family of outstanding scientists etc.

The term when disparaging however shows larger dysfunctional patterns in family as one person evolves as the scapegoat for a long line of personal projections, rejections and lack of acceptance, for fear of losing culture and defying expectations.

The many psychological effects of rejecting misunderstood children in family can’t even be unpacked here bo’babes.. Ebile when I bear in mind people always say children are blessings, and realise just how shitty humans are at raising those little humans in their most important development years, hai hai, cima cima le’camera yoo.. making my blood boil 😠

And even the seemingly ‘troublesome’ black sheep is most likely only so because of being outcast from the get-go, and experiencing hurt and loneliness.

In society

Many things I can think of, but I’ll consider two topics. Firstly:

Slut-shaming: the practice of criticizing people, especially women and girls, who are perceived to violate expectations of behavior and appearance regarding issues related to sexuality.

In the paper ‘’Good Girls’’: Gender, Social Class, and Slut Discourse on Campus, its argued (convincingly) that most slut shaming by women occurs due to issues of classism and portraying power dynamics, (since the girlies resist expectations.)

In shadow psychology, that would mean ‘first party’ violates ‘other party’ expectations about how women should act or carry themselves sexually. Hence, the ‘other party’ unconsciously comprehends it as depiction (or lack thereof) of class, power and, purity and worthiness of respect.

It’s possibly all boiling down to a denial of something that they may also feel and loathe seeing in others, and/ or projecting weak ideas they’ve been indoctrinated to hold that give them a sense of worthiness.

LGBTQ+ 🏳️‍🌈

Most shaming of this community occurs due to cultural and religious expectations of what sex and relationships should look like based on socialisation. For men, you’ll find their projection results from  their father’s actively teaching them that men can’t be gay, showing them to be sadistic to the LGBTQ+ community that doesn’t conform to what they’ve always known.

For others, people, it can be projections of having those same unwanted feelings for the same sex, that leads to blame and shame in others who accept themselves.

In Conclusion

Do your shadow work.

Oh, I almost forgot! Today we celebrate victory as the Botswana Court of Appeal has upheld the ruling that decriminalised same-sex relationships 🥳🥳🥳🥳🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈❤️❤️❤️❤️ A re nkao tempela 🥳 …… Pel’🎉

The end :))

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed! See you next month for a finale!