One month in the UK

One month of rest and restoration and connection with beloved friends. You can find very patchy accounts of my time in the UK (see: rest) @sarahfuruya

I got to the UK and in the run up to going to the UK, I wanted to chill, and I didn’t want to record when I was in the UK - I thought I did, I thought I would, but I actually wanted to land, ground, rest and I mean REALLY REALLY rest - not performative rest, but the kind of rest that can only be delivered by the most radical, smart and soft black feminists. Women with skin in the game. Read on below…

I learned more about rest from ONE CARD in the Map Ministry’s Rest Deck than any self care information (thanks beloved client for lending me that deck). I cannot preach about this - it is not my ministry, I can only surf, ineptly in the wake these trailblazing women and continually remind myself that, in the words of Trisha Hersey, Rest is Resistance. My greatest allyship can be to do it. Step outside of culture and take a risk. My greatest act of feminism can be to challenge the system - but only following the lead of those outside of the system. I can feel it in my stomach and front of my abdomen. And so I did.

Thanks to pre-trip me, I got all my tax sorted before leaving with the help of my admin manager and bookkeeper, under practical and emotional circumstances, that you can hear about in this episode of the Creative Musings Podcast - I’m pretty proud of that. I may have to rethink my self-stereotype that I’m bad with paperwork. I showed up to every single coaching session, group session (including a 1AM Grief Circle call!) and kept on top of things; did UK paperwork (my ultimate nemesis) and then rested rested rested and cancelled every stop in the trip besides two dear dear friends at the beginning of the trip, then Mum and Dad’s, and a week in London because I injured my knee quite badly. This extended stay allowed me receive 3 rounds of physio, on this historical yet never-quite-healed injury, hang out with my Mum and Dad, eat well, turn off, deal only with the most important things (surprisingly few), see school friends, visiting friends, local friends and just do the least. And let me tell you - this was the greatest challenge I have ever found myself in. And using the word challenge makes me balk a bit, but in attempting to undo productivity culture and this need to be endlessly doing and outputting, or documenting all the not-doing, which has been my default and my way of feeling ok with myself, something new is emerging. A true transition. Leaning out and taking rest, watching TV, reading really slowly for pleasure, at my own pace and looking out of the window at the Irish Sea. I felt so calm and there was a bit of an internal fight against doing the absolute least, to just not continue Season 7, and not to document all this not-doing as a marketing tool (which is fine but not real, embodied, skin-in-the-game rest); I felt amazing. In a way I have never done before. This feels like a truly radical and fertile place from which to be building forward. And planning the next 20 years with optimism, sincerity, truly radical moves and skin in the game. I didn’t want to leave. And I’m back, emerging from jet-lag and things are in progress. Many things. Wonderful, unexpected things.

It is making me a better coach too - broadening my edges beyond my own imagination allows me to hold so many multitudes and possibilities for clients, way more than I could from inside the culture. Way more.

So this UK trip was revelatory. It’s hard to put int words, because it really is a wordless practice.

Perhaps I’ll try in a Creative Musings. #skininthegame