Recently I have listened to my first two ebooks, The Hobbit and a Danish self-help book which translates to “Why you never fall in love with the wrong person” by Jytte Vikkelsøe. I found it particularly interesting what she says about gentle parenting, specifically the part about accomplishments. Imagine this scenario, where your daughter comes and brings you her drawing and you look at the it and tell her how beautiful it is and give her a hug. Now what you basically tell this child is that if they draw good they will be loved. Jytte proposes an alternative way to react in this scenario where you first say thank you to your daughter, give her a hug and then look at the drawing. This way of reacting shows that no matter what she has drawn, she will be loved.
This resonated so much with me as my life has been all about being skilful and show it off to my siblings/parents/friends to get approval and praise. I am very happy for the skills this has given me, however, recently I have not been fulfilled by this anymore and I realized it’s a process that started a few years ago where I actually started rejecting the part of me that is skilful. I stopped caring about being good at juggling because somewhere in me I have felt that I have been doing it for the wrong reasons.
“Performing well and being proficient can increase your self-confidence, however it is unrelated to your self-worth”
Jytte Vikkelsøe
Through my depression I have been having really high ‘ups’ when I’ve been performing and receiving praise, then really low ‘downs’ whenever I haven’t been showing my skills. So much pressure got tied to how I will perform - I became fragile like a glass bottle shattering even from the smallest of fails. And that’s unfortunate when juggling is all about failing over and over again until you don’t anymore. The activity of juggling became so stressful I didn’t even manage to train by myself in the fear of not being good and it taking a toll on my self-worth so I avoided the activity altogether. Especially having juggled for so long there’s a certain expectation I should be good so I started doing all sorts of other activities where I was protected behind the excuse of “well I have only been doing this for a few weeks, I’m actually a juggler” but then not wanting to show my juggling. It went so far this summer I told myself I would never toss a single juggling prop in the air ever again and completely stop performing, even though in reality I love these activities.
Projects
Recently I have been rediscovering my love for juggling and performing again, working with my brothers “Davido el Solido” and Børre “B-center” on the Funky Trio Show where I have given myself the nickname “J-drops” to praise the fails and know that no matter how well I do I will still be loving myself. It’s been a nice journey and a lovely project in between all the other things going on.
This week I also joined a dancer for “Rabalderdans” to perform for, and play with 0-2 year olds where I make music on the hang drum and juggle the orbs.
I also performed “The Mythical Mystical Magical Forest” for two people that came to stay in our AirBnB, a kindergarten of fifty 3-6 year olds and for employees and autists of a nearby Camphill. Today and yesterday we performed “The Funky Trio Show” for children at a football cup and now I am travelling down to Latvia for the project “CirqueMusique”. Here I will be collaborating with 5 musicians, 4 other circus artists and 50 students from 12-18 years as well as perform my solo show.
I just signed up to go with “The Flying Seagulls” group to volunteer for two weeks in Bulgaria, performing for and playing with children in refugee camps. Lots of exciting stuff going on and much to look forward to!
Healing
This video popped up into my feed after a long day and I was like “Astral projections?? What is that” and put it in my headphones as I felt too tired to do anything other than relax, and it was incredibly healing! I had several memories from earlier relationships come up and I felt a certain pain in my body connected to the memories. So I started feeling this pain, welcoming it, and accepting the hard moments that I have been through. I started feeling rumbling in my tummy in the areas of pain and the pain would slowly release and slightly shift to another location and I would follow it and welcome it. I fell asleep for a while, woke up and relaxed for the last 20 minutes or so and afterwards I felt like a new-born! It was really transformative and I highly recommend it, like a guided afternoon nap. Just put on some headphones and relax.
Thanks for reading, please share the post with anyone who you think would be interested.
With love,
J-drops