Edition 16
On my mind this week:
They say make stuff about what you know and so what I know the most about are feelings and emotions. Big feelings small feelings surprising feelings uncomfortable feelings. If you want to know about a feeling I’m your gal. I’m like an emotional sniffer dog. You’ve got something to feel out loud that is stuck in your imaginary luggage? I’ll pull you up and search you until we find it. This does not always make me the funnest friend but if you want some help exfoliating or understanding your feelings I am here. My husband James explained to me once that not everybody lives with their insides on the outside all the time. That one of the things he loves about me is that I am usually a very open book wherever I am. All feelings from the inside also on the outside. Apparently he said, not everyone is like this. I found this very confusing. TELL ME HOW YOU REALLY FEEL. I want to scream at the barista who makes my coffee. Too much? Probably. All this is to say that on Tuesday the 15th of June I’m releasing a new podcast called TONTS. It’s a way for me to bypass all of that small talk and get to the feeling of the life things that are hard and messy because the other side of that is the getting unstuck, the growth, the creativity and the connection. Connection (science has proven) is what makes life bearable. That and toasted cheese sandwiches but I digress. To me, naming and processing my emotions has been the only way through so many of the hard things that life has thrown at me. Taking out the hard, strange, uncomfortable experiences of life, showing someone else and saying this is my stuff what's yours forever helps us feel less alone I reckon. I’d love you to stop by and take a listen to the first episode of TONTS. You can subscribe in Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts.
Often in life we’re told that the feeling stuff of life is the bit that is soft. That doesn’t really matter. That we should bloody well get on with it and usually it’s women with the big uncomfortable feelings and can’t we all just get a handle on ourselves and pipe down. Brene Brown recently said that what pissed her off the most about her academic work on vulnerability and shame was that people often pigeon hole it as the feelings stuff, the self help stuff, the not serious science stuff. Well what if we lived in a world where those things were given as much weight and breadth and air as the other stuff. What if I said to you that being able to name, process and express your emotions and feelings was just if not more valid than engineering or chemistry. Important. Vital for our planet and ourselves. As a teacher in my classroom I would see time and again that what got in the way of my kids learning or disrupted our day was not how or what I was teaching but how my kids were feeling about that day or themselves. Writing in particular always brought this up, close and personal. When you learn to write you are able to see really clearly what everyone else around you is doing compared to you. What shape your letters are in, how bad your spelling is, how slow you are to form your letters. It was usually at this point that quite a few little humans would start to cry. Or tantrum. Or give up, head on desk. For whatever reason the feeling of embarrassment, shame, vulnerability, jealousy came crashing in to my little grade 2s and it would stop them in their tracks. Teaching writing to me was often as much about teaching how to hold a pencil correctly as it was how to deal with your inner critic and your emotions while you’re doing it. It was the kids that forged ahead anyway, that had the ability to regulate their emotions, talk to themselves with kindness and pep that ultimately got something onto the page. I think this can be applied to our own lives as adults too. How we think about ourselves and our abilities, how we talk ourselves through our own fear can make all the difference to what we are able to do with our lives and how we show up in the world.
Something to read:
This week I'm recommending a book I've talked about before called Your Own Kind of Girl. It's a memoir by one of my favourite musicians Clare Bowditch and has so much in it about inner critic and dealing with emotional resilience. It's now available as an audiobook with Clare reading her words to you and it's wonderful.
I'm also going to recommend a graphic novel (comic book) that James bought me called I Kill Giants created by writer Joe Kelly and artist J. M. Ken Niimura. According to Kelly: "It's a story about a girl who’s a bit of an outsider – she's funny, but totally in our geekland: she's obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, she doesn't have a lot of friends, she’s a bit of a social misfit. She's taken her fantasy life a little far, and really only talks about giants to people.
She's convinced that giants are real and giants are coming, and it's her responsibility to stop them when they show up."
The comic in my mind embodies so much of what I felt growing up and how being a misfit, being different can be your superpower.
Something to watch:
Season 2 of Love on the Spectrum has been released on ABC iview (and on Netflix) and it is absolutely glorious. James and I watched it together and it is one of the best programs on TV at the moment I think. It follows the lives of young people living on the autistic spectrum who are looking for love and I think speaks deeply about our universal human need to be loved and accepted for who we are.
Something to cook:
Tonti's Favourite Salad of All Time (A big call? Certainly.)
Chickpea, Pumpkin and Crispy Bacon Salad
Ingredients:
2kg butternut pumpkin cut into 1.5cm cubes
60ml Olive Oil
1 clove of garlic crushed
12 slices of thin bacon
2 x 400g cans chickpeas rinsed and drained
1 cup loosely packed coriander (unless this is not your thing and you feel it tastes like soap. Life is hard without coriander)
1 cup baby spinach leaves
Delicious lemon and garlic dressing:
60ml lemon juice
60ml Olive Oil
1 clove garlic crushed
*can add chicken tenderloins fried in olive oil, salt and pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius
Combine pumpkin, oil and garlic in a bowl, toss gently and roast in a baking dish uncovered for 45 minutes until tender.
Place bacon in a single layer on an oven try. Bake for 20 minutes until crisp. Cool slightly and break into pieces
Combine ingredients for the dressing in a small jar and shake well.
Combine the roasted pumpkin, bacon, chickpeas, coriander, spinach and the dressing with salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately. You can add chicken, strips of capsicum or really any other delicious salad ingredient your imagination can conjure. I've been known to throw in some feta and even some fresh chilli with excellent results. Can also be made vegan without the bacon and some additional salad love.
And that's it from me this week! Can't wait to chat to you on Tuesday if podcasts are your thing. A cheeky reminder if you'd like to listen to TONTS. you can head over to Apple or Spotify and subscribe now ready for then. But also no worries if not! Hope you get a glorious sleep in this weekend and maybe even some breakfast in bed.
All the love in the world.
Tonts xxx
I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I write today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.
