Blowing in the wind

A journey of self-discovery

I love a good cry. I find it cathartic. It’s a release that regulates my body and soothes my sensitive soul. It took me a long time to embrace the sensitive side of me and realise that letting it out, instead of powering through, was key. Some of my biggest cries have been at critical life moments, when I have ended up sat on the kitchen floor, snot streaming, sobbing until I ran dry. Amidst the crying though, I’ve found that there’s something comforting about being on the floor. There’s a comfort in being all the way down on the ground. The lowest point. Because from that point, all we can do is stand up. Even if its just to get up make a cup of tea. We just have to stand up, and then we move forward.

My hardest kitchen floor moment was when my mum was ill. We’d spent all day at the hospital for her chemotherapy treatment. As I left the hospital and switched on my phone, a stream of emails, messages and voicemails came flooding in. I was still working in manufacturing at the time and the problem was… chocolate bars. A customer of ours, a chocolate manufacturer, had shut down because of an error from someone in my team. All this noise and fuss was over some chocolate bars. As I was making dinner that evening, the absurdity of the situation struck me. I’d spent all day sat in a room with people fighting for their lives, and the bosses at work were losing their cool over a few less chocolate bars being made.

This realisation tipped something within me. As tears started pouring down my face at the frustration of the whole situation, I slid down onto the floor and asked myself. “What am I doing?”.

My mum was a huge Bob Dylan fan, and we often listened to his raspy tones all through my childhood. One of his most famous lines is this: is the answer my friend, blowing in the wind.

I didn’t realise at the time, but that moment on the kitchen floor was the start of a journey for me, and I would find the answer to that question, indeed, blowing in the wind.

Let me first give you some context. If life was a check list of achievements, I had ticked a lot: Straight A student; engineering masters degree; corporate job; company car; beautiful house I owned with my partner at the time. I had built around me the life that I’d always wanted. Or at least, I thought I’d always wanted. But in that moment on the kitchen floor when I asked myself what I was doing, the real question I was asking is whether this is really the life that I wanted.

This question was like a loose thread on a jersey that I kept tugging at until it completely unravelled and the structure of my life became a ball of wool in a pile on the floor.

Within a year and a half of that moment, I was single, unemployed, grieving my mother’s death and living on a farm in Nepal. One morning, I was digging in the mud to find root ginger (which was tricky because the ginger was the same colour as the mud). It was 32 degrees. I was sweaty, muddy and digging before breakfast. I found myself asking that same question again, but this time with feelings of joy, freedom and surprise at where I found myself. This was not where I had ever envisioned being. But I suddenly realised I was… happy.

I had studied and worked hard for over a decade to build my old life and the security that came with it. Over the last year, I had given it all up with no clear answer of what I was giving it up for. But in that moment in the ginger-speckled mud, I knew that I needed to find out who I really was, and not who I thought I should be. I needed to let go of the identities that had kept me safe until now. I would find the answer to my question, “What am I doing?” by answering a different question: “Who am I?”. So I went on my journey, blowing in the wind, to find that answer.

From Nepal, over the next two years, the wind blew me for a few years through India, Dubai, across Europe and ending in South Africa. I went back to university to do a masters in psychology. I did a spell working as a gym instructor, and as a delivery driver.

I said yes to every opportunity that came up, and so I began to learn about myself. I learned that I love teaching spin classes. I hate sky diving. I am good at listening to others. I can’t use chopsticks. I’m a decent water skier. All these tiny jigsaw pieces of myself started falling into place and through this, I started to build a new sense of self and new identities.

But I still had moments of feeling isolated and lost. I still didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do or who I was becoming. My life, despite all these incredible experiences and opportunities, still felt like that messy pile of wool on the floor.

One morning, when I was back in the UK and nursing the heartbreak after splitting up from my pandemic-partner, I found myself back on the kitchen floor. The reality of the breakup had shaken something in me. Suddenly the freedom I’d been enjoying for the last few years felt unstable. This relationship had given me, for a short time, a period of stability and for the first time in a while, intentions around what my future looked like. I’d enjoyed envisioning a future together, a solidity and security. Now, without it, everything felt uncertain. There were too many options, and no anchor.

Sitting on the kitchen floor in that moment, I know I had found as much as I could blowing in the wind. It was time to find some solid ground on which to set my foundations. I had unravelled all the old threads of my life. I’d let go of old identities and expectations. It was time to start knitting together a new life.

I booked my flight back to South Africa. I started the process to apply for citizenship. I enrolled in a coaching course and started building business proposals. I carried on reading, exploring, saying yes to opportunities, but this time firmly anchored in the life I was creating. Rather than blowing, I was sailing in the wind, with a clear direction and purpose.

After I’d been back in South Africa about a year, I celebrated my birthday with a small gathering of friends for sundowners on the beach. As the sky burned from orange to pink to deep magenta, I, unsurprisingly, started crying again.

This time, tears of gratitude.

I was living in the most beautiful city in the world. I was surrounded by people who loved me. I was swimming, hiking, drinking delicious red wine and in general filling my life with activities that bring me joy and peace. On top of that, I had a new career as a coach and I was working on female empowerment projects. Every day, I was making a difference in someone else’s life. I had found my purpose. And that didn’t involve making chocolate bars.

Four years later, I know that I am still very much in the process of knitting together the life I want to live. I still have my kitchen floor moments. I still cry. But now, I can find solace in the inner strength that has come from knowing that this is all part of my journey of discovering myself, my authenticity, my purpose in life. That question still lurks in the back of my mind… “What am I doing?”, especially when facing challenges of building a business, of making big life decisions, or confronting the obstacles and redirections life throws at us. But when that question sneaks up on me, I’ve learned to reframe it. Rather than get lost in the big existential angst, I think of myself standing up from the metaphorical kitchen floor and simply as: “What am I doing… next?”

I don’t have all the answers. But I know that the choices I am making now feel more aligned with the person that I want to be. The years of blowing in the wind has helped me discover who I am. The life I live now is not one I would have been able to describe when I was sitting in the hospital with my mum. I needed to release my old life in order to make space for my new one. Each experience was a building block of the person I am now.

The answer wasn’t, as Mr Dylan professed, blowing in the wind.

The answer was always here within me.