When history with a small h meets History with a capital H

I am turning 52 today.

It is a weird age - not young, definitely not young - but not old either, at least I hope

It is not a round number like 50 or 55, and yet it is a birthday - the opportunity to look inside myself and see what happened in the last year, and look at the year ahead.

What is remarkable in this birthday for me is not the number itself but rather the year that I/we just went through and the lack of visibility that I/we have in the future.

Looking at how my personal history (with a small h) intertwines with the collective History (with a big H) I can’t help but notice that there is a connection, a plan, that the “Marionetiste” (the Puppeteer in English, but it sounds better in French ;)) has a good sense of humour

2022 was a challenging year for me. Not because I turned 50, but because I went through a burnout and I had to reconsider many things in my personal and professional life. It doesn’t sound terrible when I write it like that, but it was very painful and scary.

It was only in the first half of 2023 that I started to see clearly in the path that I wanted to take and that’s when I made big decisions that would change the course of my life. One of them was to turn the Global Network, which had been running for 3 years, into a non profit.

And then…October 7th happened. My daughter was in the south. I stopped breathing. A miracle happened and she was safe. The world around me and outside of me collapsed, but somehow, I had gone through so much internally the year before, that it gave the me strength to focus all my attention on the History with a big H and to do everything I could, on an individual level and on the Global Network level to try to bring my small contribution.

They say there is always a dark period before the light. That you have to go through destruction before you can build again. That you have to go deep inside yourself, where it hurts, to be able to come back with renewed strength.

And while I am writing this, I am realizing that if this is true for individual, it is also true for People, civilisations, and generations.

On an individual level, it almost feels like I had to go through my burnout before October 7th, so that I would be able to have my strength back to be there for my People.

And maybe this is also what is happening on a collective level. Maybe the pains that we are going through right now as a People, are birthing pains preparing us for something bigger than us, something we can’t even see or imagine or name.

I don’t know…All I know is that this is what happened to me after my Burnout.

While I was in the dark, I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel, literally. Everywhere I turned I felt that there was no light, and I did not even know where to start to get back on track. The lack of vision was the worst. I could not “see” how my life was unfolding, I had lost my sense of self.

And so I worked hard on reconnecting with myself - I went around my friends (even some that I had not spoken to in years) and I asked them to remind me of who I was, I worked with professionals (therapists, coaches, you name it…) to regain a sense of self, to work on my values and my priorities in life.

But I also gave myself time. I tried not to panic and not to be impatient (this was the hardest). I tried to trust in the process that was unfolding, and to let go of my need of control. And slowly but surely. I started to “see” again a vision of myself and to “feel” myself more anchored in my life and in the world around me.

But it did take a good 9 months. Just like a birthing process.

I could never have imagined what happened on the other side of this darkness - The journey that I started with the Global Network as a non profit, working together with such amazing souls towards the same vision, and the potential impact that we can have with this Global Network. I could not have imagined.

So maybe this is the lesson that we need to learn - when we loose sight of the vision, it is because something bigger, that we can’t even imagine, is in the process of happening and we need to deconstruct all our belief systems and the way we look at ourselves and at the world, to be able to make room for the new.

?And maybe, just maybe…my hands are shaking when I write this…what we are going through is the deconstruction process that we have to go through as a People, to make room for the new and to become something that we can’t even imagine.

I am careful while writing those words because they are scary and I hear a voice inside of me saying “Who are you to pretend that you can read in between the lines of the divine plan?”

And yet… if seeing it like that helps me/us bring meaning to everything that we are going through right now as a People, then maybe it is worth it to change our perspective.

It doesn’t change anything to the pain that we are feeling and to the loss that we are experiencing and when this is all over we will still have to go through a long mourning period and find a way to somehow heal our wounds. It seems impossible to do now, but isn’t this the definition of going through a dark period?

I know that I could not have imagined getting up from the darkness I was in, and yet I did.

And I am not trying to compare the suffering of one individual with the one of a whole People, but it helps me make sense, it brings meaning and it gives me a frame of reference on things that I can do, such as - letting go of control, not avoiding the pain, going through the dark period with as much calm and patience as possible and hope, just maybe hope, that it will bring us to a new birth.

That’s what’s happening for me on the day of my 52nd birthday…and if I had a cake with 52 candles to blow right now, I would close my eyes, take a deep breath and make a wish that, I, as an individual and we, as a People, find the strength to go through this dark period of time, all the while knowing that there is something bigger happening and I will pray that we know what to do to bring this vision to us and that we have the patience to wait until then.

Thank you for being together with me on this journey<3

In the pic below I am celebrating my birthday with my daughter, my princess Rashel Kakon