We need to be responsible for our own healing
I am not sure if it is in good taste to start a post with an excerpt from an article by another writer but here goes. I read the paragraph first thing this morning and it hit an emotion that I am not sure I can express in words. Continue reading after the excerpt to peep into my thoughts,
“One of the first steps we can take towards generating internal accountability is to develop an assessment of why the world is as it is. This requires us to leap from the uninformed faith we have in the societal myths we were given as children, to the informed faith that we need in order to co-create the real world as adults. This informed faith is based not in cultural myths, but instead in lived experience, political education, and analysis. And this informed faith can allow us to embark on the right assessment, which then helps us find the balance between understanding the systems that have most deeply shaped us, and the responsibility we have over our own lives, choices, and impacts.”
Murmurations : Returning to the Whole - Adrienne Maree Brown
In my work as a life coach, we are trained on how to get people to understand their limiting beliefs and narratives. In an effort to challenge them and hopefully they have a better human experience from the awareness. What perhaps conventional life coaching does not look at is the differing complex contexts and societies that most people live in. White gaze anyone?
Now taking it back to the excerpt above, personal growth and the subsequent accountability has to come from an understanding that our societies have conditioned us in a way that may have held us back from being in charge of our own lives.. I will give you an example;
Aisha living in a country that holds careers in law, medicine and teaching highly ends up falling into and obligated to one of these careers despite her desire to be a fashion designer. She then spend 30 years working in a sector she is unhappy with against her passion and purpose and does not get an opportunity to challenge the societal conditioning she faces or understand that she has a choice for her life. Simply she doesn’t get to find the happiness that comes from living your purpose and finding meaning in what you do.
Aya living in the same country ends up being a Doctor but has dreams of opening her own woodworking shop. She stays in medicine for 5 years but realises that something doesn’t feel right. In this time, she is triggered and embarks on a personal growth journey that allows her to question the societal expectations, her lived experience and decides to pursue her dream and take control of her life.
Now do not get me wrong, I am not saying that Aya is better than Aisha for pursuing her purpose but she gave herself permission to question certain things that she couldn’t subscribe to in her society and made a choice to heal and do things differently.
Back to my work in life coaching, growing up as a Kenyan, African woman there is so much that has clouded my human experience; cultural and social conditioning and expectations, flawed education, colonial systems etc. This has shaped the thinking I have around how life coaching can work in my specific context and I am determined to widen the scope of coaching beyond the white gaze.
We need to be responsible for our own personal growth and holistic healing be it through therapy, coaching, internal introspection and being intentional with our personal growth. This can mean exploring triggers that allow you to challenge your context and imagine beyond what you have lived.
It wouldn’t be me without the hard questions so here are two to get you moving ;
What rules do you live by without questioning?
How could life look like beyond the rules?
Thank you for reading.
X
Nyachomba
