Misfit to Maven. Ebonie Allard

      THE RIDDLE

      It’s all very simple.

      Which doesn’t mean it’s easy.

      You were born curious.....

      .....and you have access to all the answers to all your questions.

      You know how to love you. You know how to feel. You know how to think.

      You also know how to process, to connect, to engage or to numb and to run away.

      It is all here for you.

      Everything you have ever had the notion to desire or want or not want for yourself, others and the world is all here for you.

      There has also been a misunderstanding, and that common and widespread misunderstanding has led you to believe that all of this is somehow outside of you. It is not. It is inside of you.

      You are constant. No matter what, there is always you.

      You are born alone, you fear alone, love alone, joy alone, share alone, connect alone, live alone, die alone. And you are constantly changing. For some of you this is a scary truth. But it is not as scary as you think.

      You have been given yourself as a wonderful riddle. Once you figure this riddle out, you are no longer alone, but part of the universe, and from this place of being not doing you can experience all that this adventure playground called life has to offer, from a place of wonder.

      Don’t misunderstand me when I say this; you will still experience anger, sadness, and feelings of all varieties, but without suffering them. A life of AHHH is not about living in BLISS or about some kind of spiritual bypassing of human feelings. It is about experiencing it all with reverence.

      You have been given a guide to help you understand the riddle that is you. It is an inner voice, a gut feeling, a sense of knowing. Learning to listen to it is all there is to ‘do’, everything else is ‘being’.

      And actually, you are not entirely alone. Actually there are all the other people in the world who are part of the big riddle too. We all entangle and entwine and mix and meet and muddle, acting as mirrors and triggers and carers and preoccupations for one another.

      Isn’t it fantastic?

      Isn’t it frustrating?

      Breathe.

Have you ever noticed what happens when you breathe? Everything calms down. Everything makes sense again. Nothing is urgent. Inside and outside become one. Breath is the link between inside and out.1

1. Our autonomic nervous system regulates primarily involuntary activity such as heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, and digestion. Although these activities are considered involuntary, they can be altered either through specific events or through changing our perceptions about a specific experience. The system is broken down further into two complementary systems: sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system controls ‘fight or flight’ responses. In situations we perceive as threatening our sympathetic nervous system kicks in to prepare our bodies: our heart rate quickens to get more blood to the muscles, our breathing becomes faster and deeper to increase oxygen, blood flow is diverted from the organs so digestion is reduced and our pupils dilate for better vision. In an instant, our body is prepared to either defend or flee.

      However once the threat has passed the relief we feel may be instant, but our body takes longer to adjust, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and returns everything to normal. This system is slower acting, and may take several minutes or even longer to get your body back to where it was before the scare.

      Regulating your breath, making it smooth, slow and even, activates your parasympathetic nervous system and therefore calms down your entire body. In this information age so many things trigger our ‘fight or flight’ responses, we can often be in a state of high alert for prolonged periods, which is not how we were designed. Consciously focusing on and slowing down your breath really does calm you down.

      STAY WILD, STAY TRUE

      Dear Mum, dear Dad, dear siblings, dear ex-lovers, friends, clients, colleagues, readers; teachers both knowingly or unknowingly, please know this:

      I love you.

      Forgive me.

      I’m sorry.

      Writing this book has been one of the most joyful and most terrifying experiences of my life! I have lived the hell out of my life, and yet this – sharing my truth – has been tougher than anything else I’ve done yet.

      Fear that I may hurt feelings, fear of being misunderstood almost stopped me. However it is because this is a truth for so many of us that I want to share my story with open-heartedness and transparency, hopefully in some small way setting a precedent and giving you all permission and desire to share yours too.

      So many of us carry secrets and shame and are reluctant to share these with our closest friends, and this saddens me. I hope that somehow this book enables you to open a window and let in some air and some light to the closed dark spaces that we are all afraid to look at more closely. I hope that through personal growth and awareness we get better at discerning who is trustworthy and upon finding those people trust them; sharing our vulnerabilities and allowing them to do the same, so that we may all experience the honour and connection of this kind of intimacy.

      The story I am about to tell is my truth, and it may not be the same as yours. Both can exist, just because you remember it one way and I another doesn’t mean that one is right and the other wrong. The truth is that each minute of each day, each of us gives meaning to our experience differently, and so many times it is not the event itself but our reaction to it that colours our perception of a situation. Reading through the diaries and journals that made this book possible, it became really clear to me just how much our perceptions and memories change as we move through our lives. Please know this: I take responsibility for my life and I wouldn’t change a moment of it, for it has brought me to where I am now. If you have played a part in the tale so far, whatever that might have been, I am truly grateful.

The way I see it; life is a series of soul lessons, and as my father1 once told me:

      ‘You sat up in the sky as a star looking down on earth and picked us, you

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