Endings and Beginnings:
Authoring Your Life After Lockdown
by Kate Daniels
For many people the ending of lockdown has been happily claimed as a swift return to the habits and lifestyle they enjoyed before March 2020. For others, and I count myself among these – the ending of lockdown comes with ambivalence and it requires some reflection.
In the quiet and stillness of lockdown I was able to be more attentive. I was given an opportunity to consider what was important to me and how I wanted to live the next stage of my life. I found myself reappraising my values and beliefs and wondering what might help me stay true to these, after lockdown ended and life swept me up.
But to feel you are the author of your own life is harder than it sounds. The why’s and wherefores of our choices are so often absorbed unconsciously over years from family, culture and a society driven by its own contradictory values and beliefs. Life with its rules and requirements rushes us along and shame is always hovering around for those who are seen to be making ‘wrong’ choices, are different or fall by the wayside.
So it is not just about having time to investigate and decide on ones life choices, but it is also about having confidence to take risks, to speak out, to trust one’s judgement. To feel authorised.
- How then do you claim that authority so that you can consider your choices and move forward from this period of stasis and deliberation into the next stage of life?
- How do you quieten all the difficult and critical voices that may be jostling for position in your head and instead start giving space to the appreciative voices. How do you learn to appreciate your own resources and strengths, attend to and acknowledge your own helpful solutions and listen to what they might be suggesting?
These are some of the questions I am hoping to explore in my workshop at The Grange over the May Bank Holiday. And I am expecting us to find answers!
Kate
Join Kate Daniels for her course at The Grange this Spring Bank Holiday
Endings and Beginnings with Kate Daniels runs from 28 May to 31 May 2021 (3 nights) at the Grange by the Sea.
Find out more here >
About Kate
Singer and songwriter, Kate Daniels, was also for many years the director of Systemic Psychotherapy training at the Tavistock Centre in London, Kate continues to teach there and in addition has run courses and directed for Skyros for many years.
Pursuing a creative life is her passion. She studied in Birmingham with playwright David Edgar, has acted and written for theatre and radio and this year she will be launching her third CD as a jazz singer.