THE IMPOSTER SYNDROME.

I feel like this post should have been written a while back. You know, when I started this blog. When I was unsure of where I wanted to go with this space. A space that I curated with so much love and zeal. A space that intimidates me at the thought of it just being live for everyone to see. Nonetheless here we are now so let’s hang.

Once in a while, life gets me fantasizing hanging out in my parents rural home. A lush place with greenery and lots open of spaces to sit and bask in the sun. (These I can’t have enough off). We had a kitchen garden, which I would just walk to and get in measured portions some parsley or spring onion. Fresh stalks of spinach. A zucchini here an aubergine there. Oh, the ease and availability of fresh produce was surely a gift. A place I loved and still love so but also could not wait to leave and see the world. See the city lights. Be dazzled. Be a chef. Travel the world.

In that small village is where I found inspiration and still do by taking myself back there. It’s where I found my cooking self. Where my creative self was born. Where I made do with the simplest of ingredients and a big appetite for creativity. I smile in awe of that girl as I write this. Did this make you smile when you thought about yourself? That small girl with big dreams?

What I also find interesting, is the fact that she is not really there. She lives in me with me. Perhaps, its true when they say, Location holds energy and time holds memories. I go back there because it’s safer. I know what is going to happen next. I see her or perhaps I have a longing to be her again. So I linger there and at the thought of what she was (still is ) and the possibilities. The magnanimity of who we really are and what we can really be is an intimidating place.

This notion is especially challenged when I want to get creative, whip up something cool, be it a meal, snack or a drink. When I want more out of myself. That’s when I crumble and tremble with dissonance at the thought that I do live in duality. That there are many parts to who I am. That all parts that define me can and should co-exist within this great human.

The truth is, she and I are the same person. We take up space of the person we need to be at that present moment. Then become another energy of the same person in another different setting. So yes its true, location does hold energy. So the girl who can cook forms parts of me. I can be her in a minute, she is a part of me. She fills me with so much inspiration to be more, do more and more so be authentically me. Albeit trembling.

Please don’t start going all swoon on me with your emotions, while I do appreciate the affection, it’s been a long road. One that I am still travelling and dancing to that beat of where my heart takes me. It’s in the breathing when my emotions are choking on me, it’s the slow dancing when my feet can’t carry me one more step. It’s the believe that there is something more (or less but a step I got to take) ahead that is destined for me, when my mind can’t fathom it.

It’s in the giving myself permission to show up authentically and imperfectly with the full knowledge that in hindsight my path will always be guided to the fullest version of who I am supposed to be.

This is the journey I am taking you along with me. A journey of discovery. To dance together, fable together, find the strength to get back up, walk in grace with self. And gather around the table
Share a meal and memories and most important, be a community that roots for each other.

Go forth and BE.
Xx, Wandia.