Breaking the silence - My personal COVID response

After two months of silence, I reviewed the value of vulnerability and why I started blogging in the first place. It is about how a stranger can hurt you, and also about how it is and always will be your own responsibility to choose how to react and whether you want to grow from the situation or not.

I have not written a single word for several months. Before COVID, I just wanted to take a break, as I was deep into Dostojevskij.

I’ve been meaning to share. But I have not. I have lost my sense of purpose, my self-esteem, and my personal power. The COVID response has taken so much of me, and I was quickly left with the feeling, I had nothing to say. The feeling of waiting.

I had the feeling of being mostly confused, with revolting emotions, disturbed focus, and low vibration from all sides – and from this state of mind, I basically had nothing to say, felt my contribution was of no value, as I had no clear view.

But is it true?

Hold on to your truth, always

Might it just be, that this situation brings us closer to who we are, not further away? Might it just be, that the skeletons sneaking out from every corner during this lockdown situation, have important messages for us? I believe so. Well, I believe it is complicated, and both can and will go both ways. But I believe, we are in charge, and if we are not, we need to take charge of how this situation affects us and how we respond to it.

I do. It is true. If we do not grow from this, it is our own fault.

So, my life journey is about freedom. You wonderful people out there following the blog or the social media of me and my family, probably do so, because this perspective is important to you too. I started blogging basically because I answered the same questions over and over, realizing, there was something unsaid in our overstimulated and overinformed community of the global world.

Of course, there are other unschooling traveling mothers out there, and I am grateful they are there. My love goes out to Lainie Liberty, my personal huge inspiration and friend. I will not list a lot of names, but I will join this narrow choir with my voice.

If we do not grow from this, it is our own fault.

Social beings are vulnerable

One thing important to me is to dare to be vulnerable. So many blogs out there seek to inspire, and in doing so, they share all of the awesome stuff and are truly inspiring. Look at Mommy Pottamus, Kathy from Wellness Mama, or Laura from thefirstmess.com – to name some of my favorite bloggers. They share truly amazing stuff. If I look only at professionals like them, I find myself giving up.

But giving up is the one thing we do not do. We never give up.

My special voice will be one of the honest and vulnerable ones. I find it more important to share the doubt, the complicated moments of fear, and the impact on self-esteem and daily joy, than to seem awesome.

We are all vulnerable. And we are all prone to NOT sharing exactly this for many reasons, primarily because of the fear of social judgment.

A cruel comment on Reddit

Yesterday, I asked a question on Reddit. It was about the solar film on bus windows, as we need to change our film, it is more than 20 years old. Some people asked for more pictures of the bus, just because they found it beautiful, and I did not really have or take the time to share photos of the bus, so I just gave the link to my blog. My blog not being about the bus; I totally understand the frustration of the person asking: no real good pictures of the bus conversion available?

But the guy who wrote, quoting: “Overall really bad pictures …. Ah, well” – he was just there to be nasty.

Even if it should not, it really affected me a lot in many ways.

First, I wanted to defend myself. No, first, I got sad and insecure. Are my pictures bad pictures? Then I wanted to make a gallery of pictures of the bus, amazing pictures. Then I got sad again. Then I wanted to attack the guy, asking him if it made him feel happy to down my pictures, and if he understood it was not a photoblog but a lifestyle blog. And all along, I asked myself, if it had any importance at all to my life, what this guy thought of me. Obviously, it had, as it did affect me. Then I reflected some more on the topic, and realized, the sharing of our life is important to me, because of all of the good responses I get from people. Because I know how it is to look for this kind of information, and how rare it is to find it. Because I know how much it meant to me, and because I am grateful to know, it means a lot to others to be able to follow our lifestyle. Of course, I want to inspire the best I can.

Walking away from normal

I know I did something – quite a few things – very different in the design of my life. It is clear that it is inspiring to those who want out of the matrix, and I truly want to serve this process as much as I can.

I walked from a lifestyle, very close to the Western normal, to living in a bus conversion, homeschooling (radically unschooling) my children, focused on a healthy and adventurous life. I am now at the point where I sold my house, downscaling the number of things I own, still working on the deschooling process, studying languages and math, and nerding out doing foodie stuff.

It was never easy to get this far; I had many days of doubt and fear, many relapses, many frustrations, and many choices. But I also had a lot of interesting conversations, a lot of important personal development, a lot of insights, and many stages of inner work.

I got this far, and I can still get affected by a guy saying my pictures are bad. Even though my blog is not to impress anyone, it is not to share photographic artwork or to get a lot of “likes”. I do this to share my insights, and also my lack of insight. How to live an inspired and intentional life, even though the path is not clear.

I want to connect to anyone trying to find his or her own way in life, anyone who feels they just are not compatible with the Western lifestyle and values, and share the light of my experiences and thereby try to make it easier for those at the beginning of the path to move on.

Getting up and moving on

So, here we are.

I will keep writing even when I feel doubt, even when I doubt myself.

The reason I share so many details of my personal life is so it can serve to inspire those who are in need of inspiration and support. Every time I took a step further out of the “Normal”, I sought to find inspiration and voices from out there, and every piece of advice, every piece of “evidence” from out there, has helped me on my way. By writing this lifestyle blog, I tend to pay back by paying forward and sharing our progress and insights as we learn. As we live.

And if you feel like getting back to me in any way, I can assure you it will make my day. Any text message by SMS or WhatsApp or email, any smile or photo or comment will make it easier to do my “comeback,” any questions will inspire me to write, and maybe we will all grow.

Back to the guy at Reddit. Confronted with the emotions it evoked in me, I got this far: I started to write again after two months of silence, of self-censure, of succumbing to feeling insecure. I started to think about why I wanted to write. I realized the importance of the social life we all share the importance of kindness. But honestly also the importance of …. Being honest. In a vulnerable and thinking way.

So, in a way, Thank you, Reddit commenter, for your aggressive and unkind comment. It made me grow.

Let’s move on, even in this COVID craziness affecting all of us. Let’s keep growing, thinking, evolving, learning, moving forward, and speaking our truth.

Even when it is a complicated truth, even when we have doubts, even when we feel paralyzed sometimes, I will keep sharing my skeletons and insights alike, and let you all in on how this life of personal freedom unfolds. How it feels, why it makes sense, and what battles we have to win, to stay in this position of doing what we believe to be the truth, no matter what the world around us looks like.

May the sun shine on you!

Cecilie Conrad

Comments for this article from my old website:

Lolita Reid Thank you, Cecilie, for sharing! You voiced my feelings in your blog and I can relate to everything you have said. "Let’s move on. Even in this COVID craziness affecting all of us. Let’s keep growing, thinking, evolving, learning, moving forward, speaking our truth," - amen to all of this and more.