All The Days That Led Us Here. Now.

A Farewell To 2024.

Open Heart Surgery is a newsletter devoted to exploring metamorphosis, unravelling, questioning and healing. I write essays and poems in service to personal and collective liberation - the personal, political, social, cultural and spiritual realms are all present here. This is a space for divergent thinking and open hearts.

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This piece was first titled “On Enduring More Than You Bargained For”.

Because shit, was 2024 more than I bargained for. It was more than many of us bargained for.

I find myself in the familiar arms of transit again - the liminal space of in-between, of possibility and question marks, in most significant areas of my life. After major destruction, there is an assessment that must be made before the Rebuild.

Last month I packed my belongings into brown banana boxes and stacked them in my car, like a precarious jenga game. I drove away from my tiny home (cabin) of the last dreadful seven months (enlightening/life-changing/dreadfully difficult for my body and mind but impossibly important for my heart and soul) with Thelma Plum’s Backseat Of My Mind blaring. It was a cinematic movement, eliciting a tangible déjà vu on my tongue as I tasted the bittersweet memories of all of the Endings that have come before this one. And All Of The Beginnings.

Since I left home at eighteen, I can count at least seventeen times that I have moved my life in boxes like this, or in a backpack (headed somewhere across an ocean) over the last 11 years. You’d think I’d be Great at Packing. You would be incorrect. I drive away in the late November heat with an air of exhaustion and Relief. I have survived (most of) 2024. I Made It Through That Dark Passage Of The Underworld. I Am Still Here. The fourteen months that preceded this move were Hell, but here I Am. Eighteen odd doctor appointments across thirteen odd months, after a terrifying hospital visit last Spring where inflammation caused the kind of stomach pain where Death Sounds Like Sweet Relief. (You could say the body handed me its Score).

Countless specialists seen. Weekly therapy. Several diagnoses. Chronic fatigue. Many demons/trauma confronted, seen, and understood (this is obviously ongoing/lifelong work). Intergenerational trauma unravelled further. Ongoing financial stress. Existential anguish. Career redefinition. Life/success redefinition. Many weeks/months of insomnia. Several little bottles of awful sleeping pills. Fourteen months of severe depression, caused by the aforementioned physical health crisis/breakdown (of many things happening). An anti-pharma complex conquered (after ten years of barely taking even painkillers when I needed them, and raw-dogging my way through many seasonal and situational short depressions). Serotonin returning in my depleted system… along with the capacity to feel joy and delight again, after so long in misery and at best, apathy (anhedonia).

SURVIVAL IS A FINE THING TO CELEBRATE.

I don’t know what you have personally overcome this last long Gregorian calendar year, but I am applauding you from here. Being a human on Earth at this time ain’t easy. There is still an ongoing genocide… and new horrors and bloodshed being broadcast every day through our cellular devices, along with the ridiculous amount of what writer Caoilainn calls digital litter. It’s enough to overwhelm or paralyse any nervous system. I understand why so many of us are numb - it’s hard to be awake and sentient to all of the suffering on earth at this time. I know so many people who have had terribly Trying times this last year, that have required every inch of one’s inner resilience, grit and tenacity. These are all just words to say strength of character.

But I really do think that perhaps our best can come from the worst of shit - that if I could still plant some seeds and grow a few flowers this year even in a yard, or trench of manure (this Substack!), with very little resources/energy/capacity, then I must be made of strong stuff. That we must be made of strong stuff. That there is still so much beauty, even with the rivers of blood and trauma and warfare. I wrote a rambling essay in August about politics, identity, art, history, resistance and poetry. It’s called “Tell Me, Did You See The News?” and it is about the hope and humanity and the resilience I find in Art and Artists in these troubled times.

I thought a lot this year about this quote:

“We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach - though not necessarily within arm’s reach.”

-John Berger (Ways of Seeing)

And I wrote this poem about bearing witness to atrocity (both within and without), also titled Did You See The News? I wrote in October about Why I Write Poetry, about it’s alchemical power in healing us. And I wrote about my breaking and my broken heart and trauma and longing and friendship and boundaries and learning to recognise those who were lessons in our life, instead of always romanticising every past connection. And I wrote about my complicated relationship with memory and the past, about grief and depression and difficult solitude in truly facing one’s shadows and about being Okay with being truly Alone. I wrote about death and existentialism and I wrote about seasonal wisdom and letting go and the lessons of Winter Solstice and contemplated impermanence deeply this year. I wrote about learning to rest as my broken body and system demanded it and I wrote about reclaiming pleasure. I also wrote about political theory and the insane society we inhabit and rejecting the Status Quo. I wrote about becoming an unlikeable woman and I wrote about William Blake and I wrote about resurrection and survival and all the things that bring us medicine.

One of my favourite pieces from this year, which also seemed to resonate with a fair few people, is titled Things I can do instead of being swallowed by a black hole and it is a kind of survival manual written from my wisest Self to my depressed self in suffering. I need to print it out for myself, to re-read and remember when things get sticky and Everything Feels Too Hard. I am so heart-warmed that that piece offered solace to others.

This newsletter marks my 35th Substack post and today I am quietly celebrating that. It took a large leap over gigantic hurdles of fear to even start this, to believe that anyone cared about what I have to say. I am continually humbled and so touched that anybody cares what I have to say, to be honest. This Substack is still small, but to me, it is my favourite place on the internet. It is slowly growing, like a baby tree, and I am reminding myself that my writing quality can never be validated by metrics of engagement, or platform popularity. It needs to be honest, true, and courageous, hopefully critical and entertaining but at it’s core - this my Open Heart baby, hence the name.

- Picture from my 29th birthday this July.

I am contemplating today how I am made and remade by life as it dishes me its fruits and lessons and how I am made and remade by my choices and my orientation and environment. I have been so humbled this past year by what I cannot control. Getting chronically ill teaches you a hard lesson of surrender. And if you are a Type A/Ambitious type/Overachiever by nature/conditioning/wiring, then that lesson is especially hard. There is so little that we control. And yet, I know that I want to continually use the agency that I am afforded to turn towards the light/liberation/freedom/soul/healing, and I want to live in a world where more souls are doing the same. But the work starts here, with me, right now, with the thoughts I pay attention to, with the rest I allow myself, with the choices that I make regarding my life direction, with an expanding awareness of what is motivating my decisions/thoughts/beliefs.

Healing is an overused word in this day and age. Perhaps we are all always healing from something or someone. Or the oppressive culture and society. There is so much damn noise. And so many mind-manufactured excuses not to pursue the life that we actually want. Perhaps I should just speak for myself. This Substack is for the renegades who are on their own windy paths, who question the status quo and who know that a better, more just world is possible.

I spent the morning of this last day of the year here in Aotearoa in a coaching session with a dear friend of mine, who is also a world-class coach/facilitator. It is also a new moon in Capricorn, which feels especially auspicious if you have any interest in Astrology. I now have several A3 pages filled with some of my biggest dreams for this life. It is terrifying to admit how much your heart wants what it wants. I witnessed a thousand mental barriers/blocks/excuses as to how I can’t take all the million action steps required towards my dreams. And then there is the guilt of feeling like I should want to do other things that my heart and soul don’t actually naturally expand towards, but that would help in other spaces. I have long held a saviour complex, and there is plenty of injustice in the world and people to fight for.

But I can’t deny the vision of the life that calls me. I don’t know many others on a similar path, personally, and it’s isolating. I wrote a poem months ago called I took the early exit, and this is how it feels to leave the Highway that most are on, to forfeit the Status Quo. Doubt and fear still frequently visit me, and sometimes I wonder if I should rejoin that Highway again, for the security and stability of it. But then I have dreams of death deities visiting me, like I had last night (poem to come), and I remember that none of this is guaranteed (life/the number of days/years I am granted here). And I remember how much time we all waste when our priorities and values aren’t clear.

And with that, I will sign off until the New Year (tomorrow here).

• What seeds are you planting for 2025?

• What does a fulfilling life look like to you, in ten years?

A last note - to newcomers, welcome! Your energy is so appreciated here! I hope you stick around!

This Substack has been my greatest joy this past year. There are a lot more critical essays and poetry coming next year, and I am excited to see how this space evolves!

With love,

Laura x

- a joyful painting created yesterday of the energy I am currently feeling relating to possibility (after a very very long winter/hibernation).