What makes your soul sing?

The concept of hearing your soul sing can only be explained as feeling sick. It's as if there's something deep in the pit of my stomach screaming to get my attention so I can acknowledge that I am on the right path. People speak about their conscience talking to them or the voice inside their head, some even speak of instinct ruling their decisions. The feeling to which I refer is so much more than just instinct or conscience. It's like a clear personal clarification of "girllll you're doing good!"








I first felt this sickness when I was read Harry Potter for the first time. I clearly remember being lay on top of my bunk beds and my brother being nestled below and hearing my Dad's voice from the landing as he recited Rowling's words. I remember feeling almost intoxicated with this new feeling as I heard the description of Tonks' "bubble gum pink hair" echo into my very core. It's here that I first heard my soul sing and fell truly in love with literature. From here on in I always relied on this feeling to make decisions in life no matter how small they are.

It's the feeling I get when I hear Beyoncé sing '1+1' or I hear Ed Sheeran's voice and the same way I feel when I smell roast chicken. These are the things that make my soul dance. It's the feeling that makes me tearful when I hear Oprah speak or listening to Maya Angelou talk about her Mother. They are the moments that open their arms and embrace my very being and inspire me to take another step on the right path.

This is why I think I became so distraught when this feeling disappeared from my life, completely packed up and left. I no longer felt sick on a daily basis as I had always done at Sixth Form. When I felt a personal clarification daily that "this is where I should be." Surrounded by ethical debate and Virginia Woolf, it was hard to not hear my soul as these feelings shot round my system. To go from this constant back and fourth conversation with my soul to hearing it almost cry at the sight of Skype lectures and silent seminars was more than I could take, and I had not heard my soul sing since.

It was not until a trip to the House of Commons that I knew it hadn't quite gone. My Mom calls it my spark and I felt it was truly back. I had only experienced flickers of it since returning home, once whilst talking to an incredible woman and again when I was called someone's "favourite tutor" at work. It's always small things on the surface that I realise now are the things that allow me to move further forward in my life. A year ago these would be things I would take for granted and moments I would usually overlook or consider to be normality because of my excessive self confidence. However I can honestly say now that after desperately sitting and hoping to feel sick or get some kind of reassurance that I am moving forward when all I felt was stuck, it's these things that matter.

 It matters that my brother is allowed to shine in his own light and accepts and appreciates himself just as others do. Because truth be told, that is what makes my soul sing. Over the past year I have learnt that it's definitely important to reach your full potential and travel on the right path but you've got to have people there with you. And more importantly they've got to be people that want to be there and want to push you forward even when you're dragging yourself back into bed in your baggy shirt. These are the people that let you sob in the foetal position if you need to and the ones that accept you're 'two curries liv.' And more importantly lately, the ones that know when it's time to go for a pint! The people that know you're on a journey and things will eventually get better so they just make sure you know they're there until they do. These are the ones that will hold you up and make sure you're moving, no matter what the pace. These people make my soul sing and that never faded. I was just too intoxicated with pity and clouded with misery to listen to it.







So I beg of you to open up your soul and let it sing, because it will. No matter what the sound.

Love Liv x

When did Politics start to care more about outerwear than opinions?

On Wednesday 18th of March I was lucky enough to be given the chance to enter the Houses of Parliament and be present for Prime ministers question time and the Chancellor's budget announcement for 2015. It was an experience like no other and something I felt completely immersed with as I saw women proudly taking their places on the front benches, defending their beliefs and fighting to be heard amongst the crowds. So you can understand my utter disappointment on the train journey home where the evening standard did not at all echo what I had observed in the day but chose to focus on Theresa May's choice of shoe and suit for the occasion.

 

The worst part is that this wasn't a one off where a reporter simply didn't care to report anything of more importance. It seems that sadly this is the case with all of the press reports of the day, minimalizing the political women to nothing but mannequins to be criticised and dissected for their enjoyment. Theresa May is the home secretary for our nation yet not one of the articles I have come across so far have any mention of her role in our society or the impact she has had in the political world, instead it merely comments upon her ever evolving choice in shoe wear and bright suit. There is even a dispute on whether it was orange or pink as it has been recorded to be both, what a politically stimulating debate eh?  The most ironic thing I think is that Theresa May was appointed the Minister for Women and Equality by David Cameron, yet she's sexualised and judged based on her dress sense in every article about the Budget announcement. It's as if her importance is completely disregarded, who has the authority to do that to anybody? Certainly not the press.



I had never understood up until this experience why women felt they had to be submissive in politics and almost take a back seat and let the male mouthpieces deliver the policies that these women have endorsed and created.  These women understand that they have to be liked because at the end of the day politics is a population game, and they find themselves being the vital players. The perfect example of this theory is Margaret Thatcher. I could never understand why even at the beginning of her life in politics she found herself being disliked, simply because she refused to be tamed and sit quietly while her country crumbled. I even believe that some of the decisions she made which caused her to be branded a 'Monster' and to 'have no heart' would not have been taken so harshly and been such a threat had she not had boobs.  It's quite distressing to see that women in the house find themselves faced with a decision to either dress plain and speak out and be branded 'butch' and 'threatening' or to open themselves up and accept being sexualised in silence whilst others talk of their work.

 

 

But women please first we have to help ourselves! We could do without Edwina Currie, a political woman, tweeting such things as "Great cleavage though, eh? Feisty lady, bold statement, love it" in regards to Theresa May. Just the part about her being a "Feisty lady" would have been very sufficient, thank you very much. How can we expect things to ever change if we continue to sit back whilst the camera's focus on the cleavage of our countries most important and impacting women? This has to stop. I cannot read another debate about the colour of a woman's suit when she is responsible for gender equality in our great nation.

 

Love Liv x