October Reflections
Black Barbie, pink heart sunglasses, a blue toy car (Cadillac to be precise) and a plastic bendy straw. These are the offerings that sit outside my bedroom door, gifted to me by my daughter after a spree of clearing her room.
I leave them there and walk past them for a few days. I partly do this just because I can. My days of having to clear stuff away because otherwise more junk will accumulate around it are gone: these treasures were gifted to me after a pre- Masters clear out, knowingly given by my adult child, raised in a world where Play Therapy dominated.
She grew up surrounded by Play Kit and my evolving career. It isn’t just wilful abandonment that keep the objects on my floor, there is an interaction taking place each time I pass them by.
Barbie staring up at me waiting for me to hear her voice, the glasses resting their arms for a moment, the car at a dead end by the skirting board with no choice but to reverse or stay stuck. My fleeting glances connect these objects together; they start to form a story in my head with each of them playing a part.
Admittedly an early career in Play Therapy may have made this imagining more accessible and tangible to me - but regardless it has left me curious.
Curious about the stories and narratives we construct, simply based on what we notice or see clustered together.
A group of teenagers gathering at the edge of a park, a young person on their own, headphones on and striding past with a blank look; a mum with 2 kids battling to get them into onesies after a swimming lesson, distracted by her phone. The narrative for all of these scenarios can tip toward critical judgement, we can quickly construct a story based on a fleeting moment and before you know it the corresponding response follows.
A change of route away from the park in that moment, irritation, impatience and comparison. All of this is a story we tell ourselves yet that story arc is within our control. There will always be key feature, a protagonist and a cluster of archetypes. There will be a rhythm and a plot that has familiarity at the core - and what we are able to control is how swiftly we tell ourselves the shadow side of a tale.
How would it be to turn the lens more often toward hope, to begin to rewrite the story we tell ourselves, to step toward curiosity? This is a work in progress for me, I’m definitely mid plot, I’m not quite certain where the story is heading.
But looking through rose tinted glasses, sipping my drink through a bendy straw with Barbie by my side, this road trip is looking like a good one...
- Katy