Little Me

There is a lot that this culture of healing has given to us, and not all of it has been good.

People are taking advice from 20-years-olds on TikTok who are telling you how to heal yourself based on a whole lot of…well…nothing. Just an echo chamber of buzz words and generalisations about your inner child and what it takes to comfort them. In no world would I take advice from 20-year-old me, so I certainly won’t be taking it from 20-year-old anyone else.  

A few days ago a friend of mine asked if I could recommend any self-help books to her and my answer was…no, not really. Not because I haven’t read any, but because there are very few that I have found to be a singular source of profound help. That’s not to say that they aren’t actually helpful, I’m just not sure they’ve enlightened me to the point of action or understanding. I think a lot of authors step into the self-help space with good intentions but the potential commercial benefit in this day and age puts doubts in my mind about the authenticity of anything. It would take a lot for me to buy into the promise of “this book will change your life”, particularly when what has helped me in the healing space has been a culmination of so many different modalities. There is no one book, no one way and no one Therapist to rule them all. If you want to heal yourself you first need to know that nothing about you is “broken”. Every single one of us is suffering from a few cracks in the pavement, some running a little deeper than we’d like. But as Rumi says, cracks are how the light gets in.

When I moved to PNG over a year ago I did so under very rushed circumstances for my job. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it whilst packing up my entire life, finding a place to live and trusting that everything else would fall into place exactly as it was meant to. A solo flight with 7 suitcases and no idea how I would push them out of the terminal on my own, I ran into a friend who very kindly offered to help when we got to the other end. That coupled with an out of the blue business class upgrade (which has literally never happened to me in my life) and a song that reminded me of my Dad as soon as I got on the plane, told me that I was doing the right thing. Whatever happened, I was going to be ok.

Leaving behind my friends, my sister and my grieving Mum and moving back to Port Moresby where my parents no longer lived felt as hard as it did timely. I had been too comfortable for too long and knew something had to change. On the 3 hour flight I had a realisation that my life in Papua New Guinea had always existed as part of a family unit, and now I was returning on my own without the safe haven of the people that I loved. I was 100% by myself.

This train of thought would continue well into the next few months until my sister reminded me that I'd willed this move into existence. Manifested it if you like. Many years ago I'd said to her that I knew I would move home to PNG, it was just a matter of time before I made it happen. Everything else I'd manifested in my life had been consciously spoken out loud to the Universe or written down in a journal, but this one I shared with her in passing conversation and moved on. Being quite spiritually inclined and aware of all the signs I’d received on my journey to PNG, I took this as a reminder that this is exactly what I asked for. This move and this life are what I wanted and the Universe had handed it to me on a silver platter.

With that in mind, instead of lament how different life is in PNG without my family, I decided I would comb back through my childhood and relive some moments as a little girl growing up in Port Moresby. I would ask little Jazzy what she needed and give her exactly that, right here in the place where her first ever memories were formed, the good and the bad. There was no one book or one Therapist or one reel on Instagram that told me this would be a healing experience. I wasn’t taking advice from a specific person and banking on it working, I knew all too well what putting your eggs in one basket looked like. I simply took everything I had learned over years of ‘figuring it out’ and asked myself where I should start. Which as it turned out, was a back road in 2 Mile.

When we were young my Mum implemented a rule that my sister and I would have to take turns sitting in the front. As all siblings know, this is quite a point of contention before every journey. Whether it be 5 minutes to the servo or 3 hours on a family road trip, the power struggle of who gets to sit in the front is a battle fought and lost by brothers and sisters all over the world. Heated arguments, punch ons, opposing memories of who sat there last and parents who quite frankly couldn’t give a flying fuck are experiences we can all relate to. These car trips hooning around 2 Mile to get to Andersons Foodland are a core memory for me because there is one tiny little dip in the road that we’d beg Mum to speed down. Seatbelts have always been deemed ‘optional’ in Papua New Guinea so as one of us would stand on the back seat Mum would rip down this road to a cheer of screams and laughter from her little girls. Life was simple and sweet back then. All it took to make us happy was a led foot on the accelerator. 30 years later I take that road as much as I can and haul ass down it with the radio at a deafening decibel. A small action that lets little Jazzy know her happiness is just as important to me now as it was back then.

Despite my reputation as a social recluse up here, I put that aside to relive childhood memories at the Boroko Racquet Club. My sister and cousin would play together while my mother threatened them from the sidelines for not actively including me, a tiny human who was barely big enough to hit the ball. 30 years later I’m 5 lessons deep into figuring out how the fuck to get said ball over the net and into the right lines. Every time I swipe my members card and step over the gates threshold, I think of the little girl who spent time at the club with her family and am so grateful for the opportunity to bring her back. To see herself through new eyes. To watch all the little kids who look like her and her cousins running around and having fun. To experience life once again at its most precious.

I could tell you all the ways I’m reclaiming and reliving my childhood. How I shortcut through the back streets to drive past my childhood home, how those same streets are the ones my Aunty used to carry me through when she met up with her Police officer boyfriend. How my Mum would give her the worlds biggest dressing down when she found out I was tagging along on their rendezvous’. But you don’t need to hear everything that I’m doing. Because what I’m doing for little Jazzy isn’t as important as why I’m doing it.

I’m not doing this because I think I’m broken. I’m not doing this to fill the gaps. I’m not doing this because some 20-year-old on TikTok told me to.

I’m doing this because I finally know how to let the light in. And out of all the lights that make their way through the cracks in my life, none shine as brightly as the ones I spark myself.

With love, always

J