Music Break 0:49
Intro
Steph Psychocinematic 0:49
I'd like to start today by acknowledging the land. I'm recording this podcast on today, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung lands of the Kulin nation and pay respect to elder's past, present, and future.
Hello, everyone, it's been a while. It's been a very long while since I presented an episode to you from the Psychocinematic desk. It's currently the 31st of March, which is Easter Sunday, four years ago, on Easter Sunday, I gave birth to a child. But today, I come to you with a bit of an update on the future of Psychocinematic podcast and where things have been at a last episode was in December, just before Christmas, so it's been almost four months since that time, I originally wanted to go on a short hiatus. However, that has become a long hiatus for a number of reasons. Before I continue, I'd like to introduce Luigi, who was my new little kitten. There are some pairs for your listening pleasure, some ASMR.
Luigi 1:57
cat purs
Steph Psychocinematic 2:00
Is that not the most relaxing sound you've ever heard? Thank you, Luigi. While we let Luigi continue his purs in the background. Let me catch you up in the last nine months of my life, I honestly reckon the last nine months of my life could probably become pretty good book. And maybe I'll write that. writing is something I've always wanted to devote some time to doing. And maybe this is my chance. Because it would be nonfiction. And people would think that it was fiction. So this time a year ago, I had a brother who was alive, a marriage that was alive, you know, a little family, some friends who aren't around at the moment, and also a strong desire to do some hard advocacy in the disability and mental illness space. Since that time, as you're already probably aware, my brother passed away. As you may not know, unfortunately, myself and previous Psychocinematic Music Maker and supporter Michael have parted ways. This is quite sad for Psychocinematic as I definitely would not have been able to do this podcast without the support and championing of Michael, and I appreciate everything he's done for that. This also means navigating the grief and loss of a 12 year relationship, and managing a new life of co parenting and ensuring that our beautiful boy's needs are being looked after first and foremost. I thought that having a kid was going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. But I can tell you now, this is the hardest thing I've ever done.
Along with adjusting to the new life of being a shared cared single parent moving out of the family home into a new single apartment. I've also been heavily involved in setting up an organisation. This took a intense amount of my time and energy, it wasn't sustainable, and it never really allowed for any work life balance. Unfortunately, things occurred, which meant I could no longer associated with this organisation and took a turn that I could not stand by. I won't provide details, but I'm sure more will be highlighted in future particularly if you follow social media. It has been a huge learning curve for me. And it's really highlighted for me that despite years of psychology, training and practice, I'm not always the best at picking up red flags in people when they are even presented to me, myself and others are still dealing with this in the most protective way for ourselves and for the community who has been hurt by the actions of the organisation. And I've also been able to learn how best to manage this in the future and prevent similar situations from happening. I do just want to share one detail about what occurred, which is that part of the issues of the organisation pertains to race and anti Black behaviour. The most valuable thing to take away from this experience for me is that as white people, we have a duty and responsibility to educate ourselves about how to be good white allies, and to be as safe white people as we can be to the black community, we can only get that education from black advocates who have chosen to work to do this education, which also means paying black educators for their work. I highly, highly, highly recommend, Asiatu Lawoyin, autistic abolitionist who myself and others have been engaging with to help be the best ally moving forward. And it has been absolutely invaluable learning. In light of everything that's happened, and everything I'm going through, it feels like trauma and grief on top of trauma and grief, on top of trauma and grief. And there hasn't been really a lot of time and slowness to actually process all the goings on in my life. It feels like so much radical shift at once. I can barely keep up with it. And as I've been dealing with these, I've been attempting to put things in motion, for the podcasts to come back again, something's always gotten in its way.
I think this is the universe telling me to have a proper break, to actually stop, slow down and allow space for myself to process and heal, and figure out what the fuck has happened in my life. And I think by doing that, I'll gain some wisdom. And I'll gain some learnings from everything that's occurred. I do feel that with space, creative energy will come seeping back in. Because I haven't had a lot of that lately. And I think that comes with rest as well. We don't rest, we're not really giving our best selves to projects. So what I propose to do is to pause the podcast, continue the hiatus until next year, use the energy I have leading into next year to record episodes where possible, so that I can start next year fresh and ready to go. And that will give me some opportunity to revamp the look in the sound of Psychocinematic. And perhaps make things a little bit more sustainable down the track. There is still so much disability and mental illness focus content that I want to talk about. There are excellent movies coming out this year, fantastic TV shows that I'm yet to see. And I still want to talk about them. So I will use Instagram to share my thoughts on those, which will be how I keep up with analysing and engaging with the community and continuing to be part of the conversation about representation.
I am so so grateful for everyone, whether it's been one Listen, or every episode you've listened to, or just subscribed and not listened, or have just followed me on Instagram, and not engaged with my content. And of course, all the wonderful supporters who regularly engage, and who I could probably consider friends, even if we haven't seen each other in real life. As well as all the bloody, incredible guests that have been on the podcast, it's so nice to be able to say, I don't really have to look for guests, because so many people have offered to come onto the podcast. That is such a great position to be in for a podcast. And it's also makes it a sad time to have a hiatus because it's hard to let go when so many people are interested in joining you. But I know I need to do this for my mental health.
And I know that, you know, I could be tempted to continue podcasting. But if I flood my brain with more distraction, that will make things harder in the future. So this is me also being honest and transparent. And saying my way of dealing with traumatic events and change is often to distract myself. And I can't do that if I want to be able to properly heal from it. So that's what I'm doing this year. And that gives me time to be as present a parent I can for my son to ensure that he's emotionally safe and well, given all the transition and changes that he's having. He's experiencing. And it means I get to actually learn from this rather than muddle through. I know it's going to be harder before it gets better. And in fact, this is the first weekend I've had probably in years where I've actually spent a whole day just doing nothing. Catching up on sleep that I've been there needing to catch up on for four years. And being alone with my thoughts. Obviously, a kitten helps, but it sucks, I don't love it, it feels shit. But I kind of have to process the shit to get through it. So that's what I'm gonna do. Wish me luck.
I guess a caveat with this is if you are going through something similar or multiple things similar, me making this choice to step back from projects so that I can focus on isn't a message for yourself that if that's what you're not doing, you should be doing it. Everyone has their own healing journey, everyone goes through it at different times. And it's not a competition as well, like what's happening to some one person might look smaller than the other person, but they can still be just as hurt by it. So whatever works for you, and whatever pace you work through, it is okay. And I think a lot of this healing will be processing my brother dying, which happened nine months ago. So yeah, grief loss adjustment, it's not linear. And it's whatever works. And what works now might not work in the future and what works in the future. You can't really speed it up. So I will sign it off now. But I again, just want to reiterate my deep, deep appreciation for the community I've built. It's more than I could hope for. And I'm very lucky that I have so much support around me. And it's that support that keeps me going. And that makes it more guaranteed that I will be returning. Anyone who signed up for our Patreon. I will be pausing your subscriptions. But in the meantime, to follow any updates, or Instagram reviews of content. Follow me at Psychocinematic podcast. We also be on threads. And who knows I might make a tick tock or two but let's not go that far. Please listen to the almost 70 episodes that we already have. And support your fellow indie podcaster. There are so many of us out there. It's so much hard work, especially when it's just a one man show. But it brings so much joy and it's worth all the hard work. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next year.
Music Break 10:23
outro
Luigi 10:23
cat mioaws
Steph Psychocinematic 10:23
What's up?
