No Longer Tiptoeing Ashamedly in My Pixie Boots

Hello

Today I had one of those moments that quietly changed me.

Not because I discovered something new.
Because I finally recognised something that had been there all along.

For years I've wondered whether
I needed to look more professional
having tiptoed around in my pixie boots for long enough.

Should I stop wearing my pixie boots?
Should I stop wearing fluffy jumpers?
Should I lose my humour?
Should I look more like people's idea of what a therapist "ought" to look like?

Then I remembered a conversation with my own therapist.

He told me Richard Branson doesn't stop being Richard Branson because he wears a jumper.
Steve Jobs didn't become less visionary because he wore the same black roll-neck every day.

So why had I quietly begun believing that my pixie boots (in an array of colours) somehow diminished:

nearly three decades of therapeutic work,
well over 25,000 clinical hours,
years of research alongside thousands of extraordinary women
whose lives have intertwined with mine?

Of course they don't.

The boots were never the issue.

I realised I'd spent years tiptoeing around in my pixie boots and fluffy jumpers, quietly feeling unprofessional, as though the clothes I loved somehow diminished everything I knew and everything I had to offer.

What I realised today was that somewhere along the way I had started separating myself into two women.

There was the playful, creative, sensual woman who paints, laughs, wears fluffy jumpers and delights in imagination.

Then there was the therapist me. 
The researcher me. 
The professional me.

As though they lived in different rooms.

Today something quietly shifted.

I realised they have always been the same woman.
The woman who laughs with her clients.
The woman who sometimes cries too.
The woman who researches.
The woman who writes.
The woman who paints.

The woman who has spent nearly three decades accompanying extraordinary women through some of the most painful, courageous and transformative moments of their lives.

The woman who wears pixie boots.

They're all me.

For years I thought I had to choose between being deeply human and deeply professional.

Today I realised there was never a choice to make.
The pixie boots never diminished the therapist.
They simply belonged to the same woman.

Then another realisation arrived.

I don't think I've been underplaying my work inside the therapy room.
The women who work with me know exactly who I am.
They know the depth of the relationship.
They know the care.
The challenge.
The laughter.
The tears.
The honesty.
The reorganisation that slowly unfolds through relationship over time.

The underplaying happened outside the room.

In the way I introduced myself.
The way I described my work.
The way I tried to make something deeply relational, creative and psychologically rich sound smaller, simpler and perhaps a little less intimidating.

I think I was still doing what so many women learn to do.
Making myself easier for other people.

Today I realised something that felt profoundly important.

I have spent years helping extraordinary women become more fully themselves.

Yet perhaps there was one woman I had unintentionally left out.

Me.

Today I became a witness to my own work.

Not with arrogance.
Not with self-importance.
With accuracy.

I looked back over nearly three decades.
The women.
The research.
The courses I've created.
The writing.
The paintings.

Thousands of therapeutic relationships over time.
The observations.
The philosophy that has quietly emerged over thousands upon thousands of hours spent alongside women.

And I finally allowed myself to see it as one coherent body of work.
Not lots of disconnected interests.

One life's work.
I don't ever want to abandon my fullest self again.
Not to look more professional.
Not to make myself easier to understand.
Not to fit someone else's idea of what a therapist should be.

Just to be wholly, truthfully me.

Because I have a feeling that's where my best work has always lived.

Professionalism isn't a costume.
It's a way of being.

No pair of pixie boots can add it.

No pair of pixie boots can take it away.

love
Kas
Planet Kas Is Waiting For You