There are no natural predators in New Zealand. This was one of the very first things I learned when I got here; Kiwis claim it quite boastfully, almost completely ignorant to their privilege and the implications of their circumstance. 

60-ish days in to my stay in Cape Town, I drove a co-worker home and as we passed family homes, all fortressed up to at least eye-level, keeping the inner inside and the outer outside, he told me that the fences were necessary to keep out the burglars and the murderers, obviously. 

And I asked him what would happen if all the fences just came down one day. 

People often used words like “brave” and “bold” when I told them I was flatting alone in South Africa. Especially staying so far from work. And driving by myself. Especially in the dark. And there was a night when I was driving through the CBD at night, marveling at the moon and all the lights and I got so properly angry. I remember how my knuckles tightened around the steering wheel and my breath changed and I realize only now that I was supposed to be angry —

angry that I was expected to live half of a life because of other people’s fears for me.

And this was important:

that they were not my fears.

I have never felt so safe walking at night as I have here in Auckland. My head still swivels, imagining at times scary things that could possibly happen, my dad’s edict, his eyes bulged wide, his index and his middle finger firmly outstretched to form a peace sign (but not one that meant “peace”) jabbing from his eyes to mine,

“Pay.

his eyes

Attention”

my eyes

ringing in my ears. 

I walked past a new house today — their neighbor left out a book open to a page that just said “SMILE,” a direct order from Goodness herself. And so, this new house decided they would do more good — they offered passersby a pot full of bulbs, bulbs whose common name was scrawled on a sign above, along with directions on when the bulbs would bloom and where they should be planted. This was akin to the sidewalk libraries I often stroll past, feasting my eyes on what people are reading and not reading, delighting in the diverse authors whose works line the shelves, free to be consumed. 

Also here,

*I have become a food rescuer — it is my job, my sacred duty to buy the food that will go to waste from all the cafés in town who sell their pastries at half price at 1:30 every day because of course they do!!!

All of these acts of generosity, of abundance and trust, are refreshing and, I believe, a direct product of living in a young, bright country; one whose women could vote before any women anywhere else in the whole world and one whose people never fear being eaten by lions and one where a shooting makes the news and rocks the population for days instead of being uttered and forgotten in the same breath, replaced by yet another and another and another, each massacre worse than the next. 

xx

Until You Know Better

Try micro-greens! I didn’t believe it either until I tried them……….

*Download Foodprint from the App Store — become a food rescuer

Great Artists Steal

Letting Go took me on a journey through all the vibrations at which humans operate, from fear to love; through this framework and also Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I have come to believe that if we operate on a linear scale from Having to Doing to Being, we must move from a belief that we Have Enough in order to believe that we Do Enough in order to believe that we Are, simply, Enough. 

Episode 239 of the “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast with guest adrienne marree brown, on being satisfy-able