Though this blog began as a record of my 643km/32 day walk from Oslo to Trondheim during the month of July 2021, I’m still walking. Physically, I walk 7-8km per day around my neighbourhoods. Mentally, emotionally and spiritually, I’ve been walking my way home for years. Over the past two years though, I believe I’ve walked more steps than ever in my life, both literally and along my path of integrity.
I began a physical daily walking habit at the start of April 2020, shortly after we locked down in Norway with the arrival of our new global community member, SARS-Cov2. Nearly two years later, C19 walks with me, as my Challenger to wellness (David Emerald’s Empowerment Dynamic), rather than the Persecutor, (Karpman’s Drama Triangle) that it once was.
Inspired by several factors, including a friend who told me last fall that she invited the virus to dinner so she could listen to its possible messages (she even set a place for it at her table), Charles Eisenstein’s “The Coronation” and Báyò Akómoláfé’s playful essay, “I, Coronavirus. Mother. Monster. Activist,” I wrote a poem to the virus in early Oct. 2021. It was through this act, and my invitation to the virus to walk with me outside in the fresh air any day it had something to share, or when I thought I needed to understand and listen more to its purpose, that I began my ability to step out of Victim role of the Karpman Triangle and into Creator role of David Emerald’s Empowerment Dynamic triangle.
By being pushed (challenged! 😉) to the brink of normalcy and sanity, I began to investigate and to more clearly define my values, which include the respect for, but not a life-defying fear of, death. The prevention of death (ultimately impossible) is surely not a higher metric of success for me than the living of life and the health, respect for and quality of the relationships I have with myself, other humans and the other-than-human world with which we are enmeshed, infused and enveloped. My top values also include balance: the yin & yang, the paradox of shadow and light, especially within myself, yet also with all of Creation. The race of which I am a part, the human race, is not protector, nor victim, nor persecutor of the World, though as an environmental educator and communicator, I admit I’m working to untangle my entrenched beliefs that humans are permanently bound within the drama triangle.
Upon reflection of the voice and tone of my poem (posted above), my understanding of Katie Byron’s Loving What Is, Martha Beck’s exercises in her book, The Way of Integrity, and Paul Levy’s Dispelling Wetiko, I feel grateful for the gentleness of my poem. According to Byron, Beck and Levy (and Carl Jung and many many many others), when we flip the messages 180° that we would send to our perceived persecutors or cast upon the world when we cast ourselves in the Victim role, there are often significantly rich nuggets of wisdom meant to be heard not by others, but by ourselves. Through flipping my poem, I see more clearly the fruits of the incredibly uncomfortable, yet necessary, work I’ve been doing to care for my wounded inner child (who exists in all of us regardless of how amazing our people are/were) and to integrate my shadow back into my wholeness. It is a continuous process, but I have been able to step into Emerald’s triangle as Creator, with the virus as my Challenger, my ally, my Holy Helper along my path toward greater integrity, especially in regards to my health.
As I’ve continued my daily walks these past two years, my Holy Helper almost often alongside me at least during the past year, I proceeded to take a leave from a job in which I experience chronic, unrelenting stress, where I’m firmly entrenched with those around me, as we incessantly bounce around between all the roles in the Karpman triangle; I am taking courses and reading/listening to professionals who help me understand trauma and restore the nervous system, help me develop new habits, and help me heal and integrate my shadow self (Jung); I walked over 600km in July 2021 and started a daily 7-8km outdoor walking practice in April 2020; through my walking, I am feeling more and more connected with and getting to know my inner home, and adopted home, Norway; I’m improving my Norwegian, and am celebrating Day 900 in a row with language lessons on Duolingo, and I am hoping that face to face human relationships will become more and more normal now that our restrictions have been lifted as of Friday, Feb. 12, 2022; I began researching the strong connections between immune systems, food and soil health; I am writing and listening more to my inner world and the natural systems around me; and I’m continuing to consciously and lovingly choose what I bring into my body’s magnificent community of human cells and microbes so I can sense my life more clearly and serve Consciousness more fully.
For my next steps, I will observe and investigate the role of Persecutor that I’m currently casting on Trudeau (Prime Minister of Canada) and the shamers in my life, while I sit here stewing in the Victim role. Actually, I’m in Norway, where there are no injection mandates, so I suppose I am playing the Rescuer role in this drama. I’m cheering on, much to the apparent chagrin of many of my friends and family, who I’m utterly confused by, as they seem to be by me, the other rescuers in their trucks. Though I also see the truckers as Creators, who are no longer helplessly complaining about the injustices they sense in how their fellow Canadians are being treated for practicing their right to medical non-consent, and instead, the truckers are taking action. I’m aware of the irony that Canadians casting themselves as Victims are being cast as Persecutors by others, and vice versa. And others still are either being cast as Rescuers or Persecutors, depending on the position of the role casters. And those cast as Rescuers may be casting themselves as Victims. You see how messy it is?!
I’m becoming more and more grateful to those I’ve cast as Persecutors who are becoming my Challengers through a shift in my perception. Now, I can sometimes see them as helping me to become more clear about my values and to walk my path of integrity more fully. I still have work to do.
As proposed by Martha Beck in her previously mentioned book, to heal and integrate my righteous error, I will write a no-holds-barred letter to Trudeau (Prime Minister of Canada) and those shaming, and perceivably to me, withholding their love because of my choice to practice my right to feel safe in my own body, and my medical freedom to not give consent to an experimental drug for which we have little to no longitudinal evidence of safety or efficacy. I will ask them in my letter to stop undermining my integrity and authority to choose what does or does not enter my body. Then I will flip it, put myself as the receiver, and see what riches lay in my projections on and advice for these “monsters”.
Whoa! Already, just by writing those last sentences, I can imagine where this is going. Not only, am I becoming aware that I am the world’s most oppressive shamer, doubter and name-caller of myself, I’ve also been increasingly gorging myself on the junk food provided by online and other social media every day. My screen use went up 21% two weeks ago, and another 15% last week as I attempted to figure out what was going on in Canada. How is that amount of screen time immersed in the drama triangle not oppressive to my freedom and my health?!?! Oh! And there’s Shaming Seamus, one of my strong saboteurs (see Shirzad Chamine’s Positive Intelligence tools) right on cue to shame me. And who is responsible for the oppression and shaming here? Not Trudeau or those who disagree with my medical choices.
Stories from the Walk Home 