Audio transcript:
So as you can hear - this is something different today! I’m Alex - the writer behind Feeling It - and I’m still new to Substack, and testing out all of the features it offers, and I thought the audio feature may be a good place for you to get to know me better. I’m not used to recording myself, so please excuse any stumbles and umms and ahhs. As is always the case with this newsletter, if something pops into your head while I’m talking to you, please feel free to leave a comment or email me - I would absolutely love to hear from you.
Let’s first talk about this space, then we’ll chat about me and what brought me here. Firstly it is, and likely always will be, continuously evolving. I know myself well enough by now to know that I can’t stick to one topic forever, so it may shift and change, but it’s intended to a place where I can talk about the emotions that accompany my 30-something life in a way that is both comforting and - I hope - helpful to others moving through similar things. I’m particularly fascinated by the amazingness of our human bodies - how we actually create emotion and thought, and process the world around us. I believe that if we can break through the barriers of understanding why and how we do things - so why our brains and bodies might respond the way they do in certain situations - we can create compassion, and then create change. I guess the big aim, the big why behind what I do, is hoping to learn from and understand our bodies so we can feel fully human - and then show up fully for the world around us.
I think so often, whether it’s through the expectations of society, or through our own individual experiences, we learn to shut down parts of ourselves - or we’ve simply lost knowledge throughout time on what helps us humans live well and live happily. I see issues in our food systems, our relationship to work, our health systems, our attitudes towards sex, the way we treat the environment, the way we treat each other and I know that I can’t change all of that all at once - but I think that so many of these issues are exacerbated (or maybe even caused) by our lack of true, deep connection - to ourselves, our fellow humans, and our planet. And I don’t believe we can fully connect without allowing ourselves to fully experience what it means to be human. By that I mean our full scope of emotion, sensation and knowledge that the body provides us. That’s different for every single individual, but all too often we’re encouraged to only inhabit one area of our bodies - the mind - and to move through our lives relying on logic, or overindulging our thoughts, or to ignore any sensation below the neck. The only exception being when we experience pain, or illness - and even then our Western healthcare system (despite being wonderfully advanced and - in the UK - free, which rightly should be celebrated) only focuses on individual symptoms rather than listening to the body as a whole. I know the problems I see in the world are incredibly complex, but the small piece that I feel like I can have an influence over, is helping anyone who comes into contact with my work and my writing feel like they understand themselves a little bit more than they did before. And the more we understand ourselves, the more we understand others, and the more we have power and agency over how we interact, and what we are compliant with.
And all of that sounds quite big and quite stressful now I’m saying it all! But I approach it with lightness. My writing is lighthearted, down to earth, and I hope it feels as though we’re just having a chat about all of these things together. It’s about connection after all, so I hope you feel that in everything you read (or apparently listen to) here.
I feel like I’ve been interested in all of this my whole life, in various iterations. I was a super emo kid - in the literal music/fashion sense way - but also always journaling and exploring my emotions from a really young age. As I grew up that turned into blogging and writing about my life - I had a blog called Fight Cancer with Food that I started after I lost my Mum from - you guessed it - cancer when I was 21 - and all of the research for that got me understanding that our bodies are so much more intricately connected to the world around us that I realised. I went into writing as a career - be it more in a copywriting, marketing and PR way than I’d imagined I would be, which eventually started to feel hollow and pointless. I dabbled in interiors for a while, and started to understand how our direct environment impacts our bodies and nervous systems - although at the time I didn’t have the language for it that I do now. And then after a string of really difficult experiences at work I decided that it was finally time to work for myself - which was when I came upon life coaching as a way to help other people understand themselves and make changes in their lives in a similar way.
At first I absolutely loved it, was completely taken in by the motivational and inspirational ways the industry helped people, and I thought I’d finally found my thing - you know, after years of feeling lost, finally there was something I could call my ‘home’ as it were. But then lockdown hit, and I lost so much traction in my business, and then lost complete faith in myself as that happened. I took quite a long time off, and took a part time admin role to pay the bills - which actually I’m still unfortunately doing now! Then, I started to notice cracks in that rose coloured industry, and saw how there was harm underneath the inspiration. So many coaches charge unbelievably high rates, and perpetuate the problems they claim to solve - kind of like the fitness industry creating body issues for people, I saw that the coaching industry was continually telling people that they needed to spend money in order to feel magically better about themselves - which didn’t sit right with me at all, and made me question whether or not I wanted to be a part of it at all.
Eventually I came back to the fact that human connection is powerful and necessary for our happiness - and I think happier people ultimately create a better world. When we’re disconnected and struggling with our emotions we simply don’t have the scope or the capacity to care about the world around us, through absolutely no fault of our own. So if I can do something to shift that, I think that’s important. So I made the decision to get further training in Somatic Coaching, which is life coaching that incorporates the body in the conversation we have, so I can deepen my own understanding of that relationship. I am still offering coaching for people who want to work directly with me, but also focusing on this community and freelance writing, that will potentially help me use my skill set to connect with more people in a more accessible way. So it’s felt like a complete overhaul of the way I think about my work and my business, and that’s been really difficult in many ways, but I feel like I’ve eventually got to a place where I feel content with where I’m heading, which is a relief. And if anyone wants to reach out - either about coaching, or to put me in contact with someone who might appreciate my freelance writing - then please do get in touch, because it has been a wild ride.
But anyway - you’ll notice I’ve spent a lot of time talking about my work, which is interesting considering I’m still trying to unpick the conditioning that tells me to talk about myself in terms of what I do before anything else - so let me tell you about the rest of my life. I’m 33, and live along the Hertfordshire/Bedfordshire borders in the UK. Currently renting with my wonderful boyfriend of 7 years, but we’re moving in with his parents for the summer to save some money to do up a campervan to start mooching about in Europe towards the end of the year. I have a very idealistic vision of throwing open the side door of the van, and sitting with the Scottish Highlands in the distance, writing to you about all of these fascinating things - and then probably unidealisticly having to drive somewhere different to find wifi to actually send you anything! But I can’t wait to have it finished. I’m a country girl at heart, and I’m happiest by the sea, or stomping my way through a muddy forest, and I would love nothing more than one day to have a stretch of land with horses and dogs and vegetable patches. I have a dream of creating multiple bolt holes for solo travellers - particularly women - to find solace and comfort in. I love the idea of designing a holiday space that you could come to on your own, and find journaling prompts and playlists and interiors that regulate your nervous system without you even knowing. It’s something I’ve been yearning for and haven’t yet found the perfect spot, so maybe I’ll create it one day.
Mm what else - I love cheese, and bread, and wine, so it’s possible I should have been born in France in the middle ages. Hate windy weather with a passion. I can tolerate pretty much any other weather, but wind makes me so angry. I love gardening, although my success rate of things staying alive is decidedly 50:50. HGTV is my favourite channel; I would watch Escape to the Country all day long if I didn’t know that ‘working’ in front of the TV is really not working at all. And although I love people and truly believe in the power of connection - I’m also a big fan of my own company, and pretty introverted, so I like lots of down time, and I hate overbooking my calendar.
And now I’d like to invite you to tell me something about you! If you’ve listened this far, drop me a quick hello or a comment to let me know who’s out there. I love Substack so far because of the intimacy - it really feels as though you’re behind the scenes with some amazing people. For me, social media has been really difficult over the last few years - I haven’t known how to show up or what to say, or if I even want to say anything - but this feels different, and like something I can spend time cultivating and showing up for. And if you’re on that journey with me, I’d love you to say hi.
I’ll leave it there, but I hope you’re having a wonderful day wherever you are - but if you’re not, take a breath. Know that your body is equipped to support you. Sending you so much love. Take care.
Pop the kettle on, would you?