Hey there, I'm Britney

I had started out wanting to be a surgeon. A trauma surgeon (read into that what you will). But life rarely goes as planned, and neither did this. Within four months of starting pre-med, I couldn't handle life anymore — and so ensued a period which I was often unsure would ever end. I got into psychology with the hope of understanding myself. It is an all-too-common trope, the "wounded healer" — though I don't quite like the word healer, nor helper. It gives a bit too much power to the role. Perhaps the wounded fellow traveller is more apt. Or, nowadays, perhaps just fellow traveller.

 

Regardless, I tried, as many do, to operationalise diagnoses, to explain things away, to gain some kind of knowing. Certainty. It was only on encountering existential philosophy, and diving beyond into the philosophical grounding of why we think we know what we know — or rather, like to convince ourselves that we know — that I understood that the greater wisdom is in not knowing, and in holding things loosely.

 

I consider myself exceptionally fortunate to have landed where I have. I enjoy my work, my dogs, the ocean, guitar, piano, singing, CrossFit, and the sunshine of the island. The things which used to overtake my mind have largely faded. I have loosened my grip on them. I like the word courage. What has comforted me most is realising that whatever the momentary hell is, it will pass — and that tomorrow can be different, should you let it. If it fails, it fails. But what is failure, really? If you keep trying — small things differently, others consistently — until you create a way of life and not a symptom fix, things do start to look different.

​

It also never hurts to notice the small good stuff.