Yesterday I was all set to interview my wonderful colleague Rozalia Kovacs- Napier about ISEN’s exciting news. Rozalia has taught me so much over the last 18 months of intensively working together, and I wanted to give her the opportunity to share ‘behind the scenes at ISEN’ with the #Emergingproud community.

One of the most important things I have learned from Rozalia is what it really means to work and live the TEAL ethos. And it hasn’t been a painless process. Being a TEAL organisation is all about ‘showing up whole’ – this means not hiding behind any ‘professional’ facade and building trust with each other through allowing raw emotion; acknowledging our humanness so that we can provide an authentic ‘human’ service.

So yesterday this involved me showing up to our meeting sobbing into snotty tissues and sharing the fact that the day had mostly been lost in processing some anger (i.e. pillow- thumping and swearing) that had triggered yet more layers of feelings of abandonment, loneliness and fears around my security.

The most beautiful thing about this is that Rozalia has created a safe space to express these very ‘normal’ and ‘valid’ kind of emotions, and that is something we are aiming to do in ISEN for each other. It takes time to build trust, and practice to be in touch with such raw emotion in a healthy way, but it’s also necessary to accept that it’s actually a very natural part of life.

Does this rollercoaster of emotion ever end? NO, of course not. Not until we stop breathing. 

Life really is like a box of chocolates; sometimes you get to enjoy a smooth, comforting praline, and other times, you pop a sticky toffee unexpectedly into your mouth and it ends up pulling out a filling and costing you both financially and in pain.

Such is the beauty of living our wholeness, and the best thing about it is; living this wholeness really is the point of life; to learn to enjoy every mouthful, and grow from the lessons of the sticky toffees.

One day soon I hope to connect with Rozalia on a ‘praline’ day, and share more of her wonderful heart- centred wisdom with you all!

With love (and snotty tissues),

Katie x