Liberation

I sat down to write this, and as always when I write, I like to gather information first (it harks back to my days studying my BA in History, and even through school I always loved to gather information, analyse and pull it together in an essay - full on geek alert!). I tapped ‘Liberation’ into google, looking for a working/recognised definition, and my eye was drawn to an interesting graph, showing the proliferation of the use of the word as found in books over the last 200 years. It was fascinating for me to see the curve, rising steeply from just before the 1920s, peeking in 1975, and dropping off again.

I was curious to delve a little into the history of these times to understand this rise and fall. Of course we have the obvious, two world wars, where liberty was inevitably going to be front and centre of people’s minds. Then off the back of these two wars came the seismic cultural shift that led us into the new generation that developed through the early 1960s, partly led by the Beat Generation of poets and writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, which as a movement focused on the key ideas of cultural ‘rebellion’: communal living, political decentralisation, environmental awareness and 'dropping out' of the system. The world had changed and people were looking for a new way. At the peak of the graph, in 1975, it is interesting to note that Peter Singer published Animal Liberation, which forever changed the conversation about human treatment of animals. It is fair to say that this 60 year period radically changed the way human beings existed on this planet, and at its core was the ideology of Liberation. As I sit here now, in today’s world, I feel certain that the curve on this graph is about to rise again. I am here now to add a little notch to the upturn.

So, what did I find when I finally looked at the definition?

Perhaps of no surprise, the primary definition is: the action of setting someone free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression; release (I think we can all feel a strong association to this definition of late!).

However the definition I want to focus on by and large for this blog post, is this: freedom from limits on thought or behaviour.

For context, let me refer back to my blog post from last week firstly…

“The through-line of my work has always been about Liberation; I recognised that very clearly last year as I considered my unique story. Liberation from the diet trap, liberation from body hate, liberation from the food industry and all the crap they peddle, liberation from the pharmaceutical industry, liberation from the ‘beauty’ industry and all their toxins, liberation from Patriarchy’s expectations of what a woman should be, liberation from the corporate world, liberation from the cleverly manufactured system of debt, liberation from the education system for my children…I could go on! I will…and here is how. I realise now that my path is leading me to support women, in all walks of life, to liberate themselves from their inherited stories, from their inherited and learnt beliefs…from their stuckness! There are too many women out there living a shell like version of themselves, and as such not bringing their gifts out to the world.”

The first freedom we have to stand up for is that of our own. Freedom from limits on our thoughts and our behaviour! Unbinding ourselves from the shackles of expectations, wherever they may be coming from. Once we do this we are truly liberated.

What would it look like to be truly liberated?

Of course I could wax lyrical right now on what this would look like in today’s world, to be set free from the imprisonment and oppression that has been placed on us over the last year (and less blatantly over the culmination of decades, if not more): freedom to travel, freedom to see those we love, freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, freedom of science (because science is not ‘finished’, science by definition is a free + open entity, always shifting, always (should be!) open for debate!), freedom to breathe, freedom of CHOICE for our own bodies.

Ultimately there is a link with all of this though to personal liberation, because when you are truly liberated in yourself, from your stories, from your wounds (those from your lifetime + generationally), from society’s expectations, from anyone’s expectations, then actually a lot of the above freedoms you don’t easily surrender anyway (many of the above I have not surrendered at all this last year for example).

I have spent the last two decades unbinding myself from my stories, from inherited stories, from my wounds, from expectations. Do I still have more to do!? Yes! I have no doubt it will be a life’s work. However, because I have chosen to live a life by my own design, based on my intuition first + foremost, I have naturally been very distant from many of the aspects of society that have made most people numb to the realisation that freedom comes from within, and cannot easily be taken away from you. When you don’t outsource your life to others (pre-packaged foods, pharmaceuticals, traditional schooling systems, working within the system), when you don’t numb yourself (video games, mindless television watching, sugar, caffeine, drugs), when you live taking full responsibility for your life, and truly feel into every moment, then you KNOW (it is a deep knowing) that nobody can tell you what is right for you, and you see clearly when things are going wrong + need to be fought for.

So what would it look like to be truly liberated? I am asking you. I would actually love for you right now to pull out some paper and write. Here are some questions I would like you to ponder, and I would like you to ponder them with the vision that you had let go of all the stories that you were not worthy, not good enough, too much, too little, things that you ‘shouldn’t do’ or ‘shouldn’t say’. I want you to answer these stories as if you were the truest version of you, living in complete alignment:

• Who would you surround yourself with?

• Who would you let go of?

• What would you eat?

• How would you move your body?

• How would you dress?

• How would you speak?

• What would you create?

• What would you share with the world?

• How would you parent?

• Where would you live?

• How would you show up on social media?

Easier said than done, I know, but it needs to be done.

I know this isn’t going to be easy for everyone. A lot of it is still not ‘easy’ for me, despite the fact that I am purposeful every day to live as in much in my truth as possible. I know there is a lot of work to be done before the unbinding + liberation can really start to unfold, but I want you to start to think about it. I desire you so much to start to think about it, because I have come to realise this last 10 years, and especially this last year, that without this work, we (women!), are not living our purpose, and our purpose is huge! However you want to look at it, whether it be the imbalance of the masculine and the feminine, or the disproportionate control of the 1%, it all ultimately comes back to the same thing: change (liberation!) on a mass scale cannot and will not occur until it starts + cements firmly within us as individuals first, and I truly believe that women are pivotal to the creation of this new world. We have to be living the life we were meant to be here living + the life we deserve to be living, and I know it is possible, I know it is. It is time to stop being complacent, to start asking ourselves the questions, and to start living the answers into reality. Even when it is hard, even when it pushes us to our limits, this is the work that needs to happen, because this is the work that will set us free.

It is time to start pushing up the curve on that graph again, and this time doing the work for real, making it stick, so ‘Liberation’, in every sense of the word, is at the forefront of humankind, all of the time. After all, what better thing, when it really comes down to it, is there to live for?

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