A messy introduction
A brief & painful attempt to describe what I'm doing here & why. There has to be a first episode so here we go!
Hiiiii👋Coming at you live from my play kitchen studio!
Obviously I’ve got professional sound proofing & quality recording going on here 🎵🎧
Audio Transcript
This is Divine Interruption.
I'm Sarah Hildreth Rankin.
Thank you for being here.
I am actually amazed that even I am here.
I have tried to do this for so long that I'm essentially just driving myself crazy.
You know when you just get so sick of your own bullshit and you just can't handle it anymore?
That's where I am.
I have been trying to start this project, whatever it is, this podcast, for years.
I know I'm called to do it, and there's a reason for that.
I can't know exactly what that is, but I know I'm meant to do it.
And it's also, unfortunately, or maybe perfectly, the scariest thing that I could think of doing.
It really is.
It's terrifying.
It is attached to probably my biggest wound in life, which is around expression and sharing my expression.
And I know that.
And so I've been slowly trying to work towards this, but it just keeps being really hard, which I feel like is the way it's meant to be.
But oh my god, even, I don't know, even today.
So I've been trying to record for, well, I've recorded an intro multiple times.
And I'm like, yep, yep, okay, rip the bandaid off, just go for it, just express yourself.
And then after, like, yay, good for me.
And then I come back to it, I'm like, oh no, that's like, that doesn't make sense.
What am I talking about?
This is better.
I don't know what I'm doing.
And then I redo it.
And it's gotten to the point where I just can't keep operating in the same way.
Like there is a lesson here and it's driving me crazy.
And mainly because I know I can't not do this.
Like this is a part of something bigger for me.
I don't know what that is.
Maybe this is just a cathartic project.
Maybe it's not.
I don't know.
But even this morning, I have just felt this need to speak about things, but I'm so used to suppressing them.
And it's just such a familiar feeling that the idea of actually expressing them is just foreign and uncomfortable and yucky and shameful and embarrassing.
And I'm just so sick of feeling that way.
And I know I have to overcome this, but it feels like there's just these interruptions after interruptions that make this so much harder.
So I wanted to just talk out loud this morning, but I'm like, no, no, no.
Okay, I'm going to journal this out.
So I get to my desk, I'm journaling things out, and then I'm seeing that it's that same old adage of the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.
And the way I've done everything, everything always has to be a certain way.
There's so much control to it, there's so much perfection to it.
And it's just this way of like protecting myself.
You know, I'm very aware of that.
But seeing that I'm doing it with everything is just so frustrating.
And I could see him like, no, no, no, you're just journaling about this because you don't want to do it, because it makes you feel uncomfortable, because you're afraid that you're not going to know what to say, or it's not going to come out the right way.
And I'm so used to suppressing that, that expressing it is just foreign and gross.
Like, this is so uncomfortable.
But in yet, I know I need to be here.
So after that moment, I was like, go do it, go do it now.
So I ran upstairs.
I drank like four different drinks this morning.
So I was like, oh no, okay, I need to pee.
So I like ran into the bathroom and I peed, and then I'm trying to set everything up.
This microphone, the laptop, the headphones.
And there's no good place to do this in my house.
My kids are at school, so they're gone.
My partner's working from home.
He's in the basement, so you'd think that'd be pretty far away.
But there's always this moment of like, is he going to come upstairs?
Is he going to turn on some really loud British murder mystery in the kitchen while he's like making chicken?
I don't know.
So I'm trying to take this moment.
I rushed upstairs to the bedroom, set things up, and my setup is pretty pathetic.
I've got, oh my god, I've got a kid's play kitchen.
I pulled that in here.
And then I've got a Where's Waldo book that's like propping up my laptop.
I'm sitting on a weird bath mat on the floor.
And I don't know what I'm doing, but I made it here.
And this just like has to, this has to be enough.
I can't keep putting this off.
You know, there's never going to be this perfect moment.
And I keep wanting to figure out what it is I want to say.
And I don't know either.
I've got tons and tons of notes on my phone because I get woken up in the middle of the night with things I want to say.
But I'm so used to not saying them that they just end up as notes, or sometimes they end up in a journal, or on lists on the back of receipts of just these moments I have.
But it's time to share them, regardless of how messy they are, or if they don't make sense, because I don't think they do.
But I know they're meant to come out, and maybe there's value in that, and maybe that value is just for me.
Maybe it's for someone else.
I have no idea.
But it's messy, and I got to embrace the mess, which is why I'm here, and I'm just trying to rip this band-aid off, and I can't explain exactly what I'm going to be talking about, or how it's going to be, or what it's going to look like.
I just know that there's a lot there, and it's time for it to come out.
And I'm just waiting through my own mess, like everyone else, and I just kind of want to share it as I go along.
And as someone who has worked in media and communications, and I went to college for this, and I also went to university for this, and my entire professional background is in communication, and being able to communicate properly, and that includes planning and note-taking and preparing and perfect editing and all of that.
So this goes against kind of everything that I've been taught to do in the way I've been taught to do it.
But I realize if I hang on and keep doing it the way I've been doing it for work, which is way easier, may I say.
It's nothing to do with me.
If it's not related to me, it's super easy.
Let me communicate for you, no problem.
But if I keep doing that, I will never do this.
And so I'm just going to say, hey, I'm here, I got a lot of random stuff to talk about, and I want to share it and put it out there, and come along with me for that journey, whatever that may be, whatever mess that may be.
You know, I have lived a very messy life and tried to control every moment of that life, trying to make it make sense to me, so that I can create a narrative that helps, you know, make me feel safe, or like I understand what I'm doing, or where I'm going.
And that never really has worked.
And I've been sidetracked so many times again and again, and always find these ways to jump out of where I am to make it make sense.
And I've taken a lot of detours, and I got a lot of things to share.
So I don't know.
Right now, I am on long-term disability.
So I had a full-time job.
I worked for a university in communications as a marketing manager, and I have not worked that job in over a year now.
And that's a little weird.
I'm used to it now, but it's even hard to say that.
I have some pretty bad skin issues that I've always had in my entire life, like over the course of my life since I was born.
And those have kind of morphed and shifted and changed and turned into essentially like a mystery chronic illness.
And the symptoms change and shift over time.
It's confusing and it's hella messy, so messy.
And no one really knows what to do with that, where to put that, what kind of box to put me in, and with my health especially.
And so I'm kind of dealing with that.
That's why I'm not working.
It got so bad that I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not managing well anymore.
And over the course of the last year, it's gotten so much worse that it's kind of even hard to conceive of where I'm at now, and how much that has broken me down into me sitting here speaking right now.
You know, it's been a part of this journey and helping me strip away that way of controlling, like what I can do and who I am and how I appear.
Like there's no turning back, you know, when your body starts failing you for so long, to the point where, you know, you can't, you know, wear the clothes you want, you can't present yourself in the way that feels comfortable.
I can't, you know, show up in a way that tells the story that I want to tell, you know?
Oh, this is who I am, this is what I look like, and I can express myself in all these ways, and I just haven't been able to do that.
So, you know, it's led me here.
A part of that journey has been crazy skin infections, been in and out of the hospital, the emergency room, the infectious disease clinic.
That's been fun.
And just trying to figure out what's going on.
And a lot of it, I don't know, but I'm just trying to navigate it as I go along.
And, you know, that's just like one part of the journey.
I've got six-year-old twin girls.
You know, when I had them, that ripped open a whole other side of my life, as I'm sure anyone who, you know, has children, whenever we go through any sort of big life event, you know, changes things.
And, you know, I kind of hit many rock bottoms in that journey, especially with my health, mental health, emotional health, all of it.
And I also opened up spiritually, which was a really insane experience.
I will say it was like mildly traumatic, just because it was like every sense in my entire body was kind of on fire.
You know, I could see and feel and hear so much more than I could before.
And before, I was already an extremely sensitive person.
And I was already kind of seeing the world through this lens of like, ugh, why am I here?
I'm made of air and dust.
Like, why am I here?
It's just so uncomfortable.
But then that just got amplified.
And there's like, who the F am I?
What is happening?
My body is melting.
My mind is disintegrating.
My emotions are on fire.
And I, like, what am I even doing here?
So that has been a long journey.
That's been like a six year journey, but it's, you know, in moments, it's made a little bit more sense.
And I've tried to figure it out and work with what I've been given.
And in other moments, just completely, you know, fell to the ground and just like crying, like, I don't know what I'm doing.
And it's been a lot of death and like rebirth again and again and again.
And that's how I describe my life.
It's like a series of just, I don't know, being led to a point of having to give up and surrender to whatever's happening, regardless of if I want it to be happening or if it makes sense as to why it's happening.
But it's not usually what I want or what I saw for myself, but then having to be like, okay, this is where I'm at, let's rebuild from here.
And that has just been constant, just being interrupted again and again, and reaching points where I can accept that.
Whereas a lot of the other time I'm like, no, not again, please no.
And in that span, I've shifted what I've been doing for my work, shifted how I've felt about my relationships, worked through a lot of health stuff.
I've really changed so much.
But I keep waiting for this moment when it's all just gonna, like this moment is just gonna open up in the clouds, and they're gonna part.
And I'm like, Sarah, this is why you're here, and this is what is happening, and here's what you need to do.
And that hasn't happened yet.
That's why I'm sitting here on this bath mat in front of this kid's play kitchen, talking to a microphone, because I need somewhere to put all of this mess, because it can't stay inside anymore.
Not at all.
It's like making me, it's a part of, you know, being ill is having suppressed so much of my life.
And I don't know who I am, like how we express is a part of who we are.
And that's something that I have kept inside my whole life.
And I've had moments where, you know, from the outside, perhaps would look like I was expressing.
And I found ways to kind of cope with that, whether it be, you know, through drama or through writing or through creative things.
And I was, it was like I was trying, and I was doing the things, but at the deep core level, it was just never enough, because it wasn't fully the truth, if that makes sense.
You know, I always knew there was more, or there was more of me that I could be sharing that I wasn't sharing.
And that was so terrifying, and I didn't know how to do it, but it was exactly what I needed.
So it was like denying myself the prescription or the medicine that I needed, you know, for almost 40 years.
And now being like, I need to, I need to like give myself this prescription, but I've been denying it for so long, I don't know how it's going to affect me or what it's going to do to my system by talking and not planning and not controlling and just expressing because it's messy.
So all of that to say, hi, thanks for being here.
Nobody may be here also, but I'm here to share my mess.
I'm here to share about all the interruptions I've experienced in life and just put it out there alongside everyone else who's dealing with the same stuff because being alive is kinda intense.
So yeah, I will talk to you soon.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
