New Storylines

When I was in highschool, I thought you became an adult when you started driving. Then, I started feeling like a real adult when I started living by myself at 19 years old. Then, I started working and paying my own bills, and what could be more adulty than that? Well... turns out my real shift from childhood to adulthood took place on a less material and administrative level, and on a more emotional one.

Taking responsibility for your emotions

I realized years later that even though I was already independent, I still had an unhealthy bond with my past. Going to therapy helped me see that many aspects of my life and personality were defined or influenced by some traumas that I had been through at a young age (again, traumas don’t have to be the worst events one could imagine to damage a child’s self-worth). When you realize that, it can be easy to blame everything that’s wrong on these traumas and just accept that you’ll live this way forever. It’s convenient, but it won’t take you very far.

More than a pretext to develop a victim mentality, it can be an invitation to take responsibility for your reactions and evolution as a grown-up.

It can be an invitation to understand where your discomfort comes from and work to shift your perspective. Granted, it’s easier said than done. It takes a lot of effort and I already suspect it will be a life-long process, but it does seem worth it to me.

Cultivating compassion for all parts of you, identifying toxic patterns and relationships, becoming more patient with yourself, getting more curious about the meaning or roots of your emotions... If you can learn to all that with yourself, you’ll have the tools to do it with others. And I think that’s probably the most responsible thing one can do while living in a community (which the social animals that we are do).

Playing adult sucks

That being said, it can be freaking exhausting. This is part of a process some call “reparenting”, and who said being a parent was a smooth experience? Working through your traumas in order to become emotionnally more centered and balanced is a bit like becoming your own support system. It is very powerful and brave, according to me, but it can also be scary and tiring.

I wrote this song to aknowledge this nostalgia for a time when I was still naive and carefree.

Because since I started doing this work, I sometimes find myself missing the time when I didn’t know that life would consist in working on myself, going from one existential crisis to another, trying to put one foot in front of the other without losing balance, and just picking myself up when I do. Fortunately, being your own parent doesn’t mean you can’t have other family members, friends and partners to support you as well.

So I hope more and more of us accept this invitation to see adulhood not only as a purely material/financial step, but also as the process of unlearning patterns that don’t serve us anymore, and becoming better family members to ourselves and others.

Pray for Amazonia, the world, Lebanon, Palestine, Paris... These are some of the invitations you can find on social media in the shape of hashtags. Well, my invitation is a little different...

We are the Gods of money

No god controls political or economic systems. Money and power do. And when you have money to your name, you have power. Granted, it may not as big a Bill Gates or Elon Musk's, but it's still better than nothing. And our money doesn't magically appear from the sky. We have to work to get it. We have to spend time doing something we may or may not love in order to buy stuff and survive and hopefully thrive.

I don't know about you, but I hate the idea of my hard-earned money financing things I'll need to pray about later.

#Pray+Act

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you shouldn't pray. I'm just afraid that these hashtags and tweets are like a Band Aid and hide the real roots of the problem, as well as our capacity for action. Indeed, when it seems like all we can do is pray, it must mean the problem isn't rooted in anything tangible that we can act on. And that's just untrue for many of the situations where sending "thoughts and prayers" seems appropriate. Here's a video about this very topic, made by a Christian.

When the Amazon forest is burning, you can pray for the fires to stop + decide to eat way less products whose production requires deforesting (aka animal products).

When terrorists harm people, you can pray for their victims and their families + try to understand why those people decided to harm others, and push for a social/economic/geopolitical change that will prevent such violence.

Who made your clothes?

One great example of what I mean is the fashion industry. Many were devastated in 2013 when over 1,000 people died in the Dhaka garment factory collapse (Rana Plaza). Well, it turns out if all these workers died on that day, it's because their managers urged them to go to work in that building, knowing it didn't comply with safety rules and that it was risky. Why? Because people from all over the world wanted to buy clothes that were cheap and quickly available. Our greed meant death for many people and endless pain for their families.

So sure, we can pray for them. But we should also assess our priorities and figure out a way to keep clothing ourselves without infringing other people's basic rights to lead a dignified life.

And if you're afraid these poor people will be without a job if we stop buying from these fast-fashion and unethical companies, don't worry. Supply follows demand. If we demand better products, they will have to up their game. That's how economics works.

Human rights and sustainability, better together

I like the example of fashion because I think it shows perfectly how the way we spend our money means something for other human beings, and for nature in general. Because yes, fast fashion has a horrible impact on the planet and it doesn't seem to care to rethink its business model.

If you want to know more about this, I recommend you check out Fashion Revolution, a movement for a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. Next week is the Fashion Revolution Week and it will focus on the interconnectedness of human rights and the rights of nature!

Let’s talk about sex studies, baby.

There’s a problem in the sack

Studies show women are more focused on their male partners having an orgasm than on having one themselves. Other studies show how little women know their bodies and what gives them pleasure. A lot of women feel they have to conform to a certain idea of what their sexuality should be. And since we’re told “women are difficult to please”, when we don’t fit this mold, we must be the problem, right?

Then how come studies also show that lesbians reach orgasm way more often than heterosexual women during intercourse? Could it be that women aren't "difficult to please" and that the problem lies elsewhere?

The culprits: science and movies

Female pleasure wasn’t much of a topic until recently. These studies are fairly recent because scientific literature has historically been written by men who didn't seem to care too much about female sexuality. This means that, unfortunately, the sexual liberation in the 60s didn’t totally did what its name says it did. Of course people became more free sexually, but many women felt like they were handed an appliance they didn’t have instructions for. And at the same time, they felt pressured to look comfortable with their new sexuality. Since then, sexuality looks liberated on the outside, but the way it’s taught and shown is still very much centered on the same thing: the guy’s pleasure.

That’s why in most movies, TV shows and even pieces of literature, female pleasure is depicted as linear and... basically identical to male pleasure. I mean, the woman always moans and finishes at the very same time as her male partner. Now if that's not love and chemistry, what is, right?

As someone who grew up watching TV and movies, and loving them, I can honestly say that most of my sex education consisted in what US screenwriters, directors and producers decided to show me. And it turns out it wasn’t very realistic. Now, is it a problem when some artistic content isn’t realistic? Nope.

Does it become a problem when one point of view (one may say “gaze”) becomes dominant and is perceived as universal and realistic when it’s not?

It does for many people, men and women alike. Bear in mind that such ignorance causes issues that go from low self-esteem to genital mutilation or worse.

As in nature, diversity is key

Of course artists are not responsible for everything, nor to make everything better. But I do believe that telling stories in more honest ways can be very powerful, and using the female gaze is one way of doing that. It is not a way to “see the world as a woman would”. Women artists create male gaze and men artists create female gaze as well.

The female gaze is not a gender thing, but rather an opportunity to open new doors for creativity in storytelling.

This industry is very aware of the importance of diversity in terms of ethnicity or gender, but I must say I’m still waiting for more diversity in terms of gaze.

Decolonizing the mind

I wrote this song because I personally found it difficult to decolonize my mind and make room for other gazes, other paths to wander down. You see a lot of sex positive content nowadays, but not a lot of support during this transition where you realize the one story you believed your whole life is a scam.

I named my blog New Storylines because I really believe we live by stories we tell ourselves and that others tell us. So my invitation today is to create space for more diverse stories and, above all, to tell them in a more honest way that makes people want to be curious and empathetic. Not every story should be this way. Just like not every story should be the other way around.

If you want to learn more about this problem and how to fix it, here are some resources you might enjoy:

Ted talks:

What young women believe about their own sexual pleasure by Peggy Orenstein

Cliteracy by Sophia Wallace

Amazing book:

The 21st of December (on my side of the world) is a day many dread, because it’s officially the first day of winter. Cold and dark, the winter makes us want to stay home. We’re typically less sociable and lively than during other seasons. It’s quite the metaphor for what happens in the rest of nature at that time: plants die, animals go away or sleep, and we watch more Netflix.

The birth of the Sun

My view of the winter changed completely when I learned about the winter solstice celebrations that used to exist or still exist in the entire world. In many cultures, this solstice was the day of death and rebirth of the Sun because at a very specific moment, the North Pole gets to its furthest point from the Sun, and right after that, it starts to get closer and closer again. On that day, people would pray gods or just celebrate the arrival of better farming conditions. They would make bonfires to welcome the light. Isn’t it beautiful to see winter that way? 

The birth of Jesus?

Sorry to break it to you, but Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th. Nobody knows when he was born because it was never mentioned in the Bible or any other religious text. Historians think he was actually born several centuries BC (Before Christ... before himself...what), and they assume he was born in December because of his supposed date of conception. As you can see, Christmas was founded on a lot of baseless assumptions. And it wasn’t until the 4th century that the Church decided to establish that he was born on the 25th. And that’s how Christians replaced pagan Solstice festivities with Jesus’s supposed birthday (I won’t accuse Christians of wanting to annihilate other beliefs but it kind of was their thing).

What about Santa?

As a lot of people already know, the Coca Cola company turned Saint Nicolas into the most obvious symbol of Christmas. I mean, most of the people I know celebrate Christmas with socks on the chimney and no mention of Jesus, or the Sun for that matter. A lot of us deplore the fact that Christmas is but a marketing stunt where people flock to stores to buy decorations and too many gifts. So...

Let’s reclaim December’s magic

I wanted to question the origins of supremacy, patriarchy and all kinds of hierarchy between beings. I wanted to talk about science, but I think I’ll just tell you about my day at the beach instead (when I wrote this song, which I hope you’ll enjoy).

The Indian Ocean is in France

I was sitting on a rock, looking at the sea on a winter day, at one of my favorite places on Earth. It’s kind of the end of Marseilles (South of France); the city center is very far away and all you can see are white rocks and the Mediterranean sea.

I was just staring at the water when a funny thought came to me: I was looking at the Indian Ocean. Technically, the water I was looking at, from the South of France, was the same as the Indian Ocean, or the Atlantic Ocean, or... you get the gist. 

The water in front of me was directly touching every other ocean and sea in the world, so it was every other ocean and sea in the world.

Sure, they all have different levels of salt etc., but water is water. This thought blew my mind and made me feel very calm at the same time. I immediately felt this sense of oneness. All water is one. All energy is one. All matter is one. 

“We are one”  — Pitbull, singer and wiseman, 2014

And we, human beings are water, matter and energy (among other things, which I’m sure are also one). No matter what our different cultural narratives tell us, we’re the same. We’re made of the same stuff, no matter what party we vote for, the color of our skin, if and whom we pray to, what type of genitals we have in our pants, or what neighborhood we grew up in.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where we remember that each day, and where we don’t divide people into groups and subgroups and sub-subgroups? I guess that would require a big change of culture and...

Can a drop do anything?

We tend to think we’re too small to impact anything. Or when we decide that we can, then we feel overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done and that we cannot possibly do by ourselves. That’s when this day at the beach helps me: this feeling of oneness, of belonging to something huge reminds me that a drop is insignificant and necessary to form the body of water that covers 70% of our planet.

Belonging to this world means I must do something and the weight of the world is not on my shoulders. 

We wouldn’t expect a single water drop to form a wave. We can only expect it to do its part.

Some of 2020′s great lessons are the undeniable evidence that we all depend on each other, the fact that we should all be worth the same, and that we’re all gonna die soon anyway. I’m as important and as unimportant as any other person who’s ever breathed. It’s a relief and a great responsibility too.

This is a new storyline I suggest, one that can help us remember our interdependance and develop empathy for others. You can start by something as simple as checking where your clothes were made and in what conditions.

Disclaimer: I’m not a psychology expert and I’m only speaking about what I learned through my own process.

Have you ever reacted to something in a way that made you think “Why did I do that? That’s not me”? Have you ever felt emotions and didn’t really know what triggered them (for example suddenly feeling sad in a context that should objectively make you feel good)? Have you ever had thoughts in your head that you didn’t feel OK with because they just didn’t match your personality or the idea you have of who you are?

Getting to know your shadow

According to psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung, these reactions, emotions and thoughts are not something that comes from outside of you, but rather from your shadow. Jung defined the shadow as the part of us that’s unconscious, irrational, unknown: our uncharted territory. Every conflicting part of our reality, trauma and bad experience, we tend to send to this magical black box to forget about them forever. But this shadow is still a part of us. Your unconscious personality is you, just as much as your conscious one. And it wants to talk.

According to Carl Jung, the shadow speaks in symbols, intuitions, dreams and emotions.

A lot of us grew up with the narrative that only rational and linear thinking is valuable. But we can change this narrative and embrace inconsistency, cycles, complexity and irrationality. We can decolonize our imagination to learn to understand the shadow’s language and what lies behind what we try to repress.

Traumas can seem stupid

Thanks to my therapy, I now understand, among a million other things, that my irrational fear of being replaced is due to painful memories of my childhood where I literally saw someone take my place, as my mom got pregnant again just one month after giving birth to me. Now, you may be thinking: “That’s your trauma? Some people go through devastating events and you were traumatized by your little sister?” Well yeah… The word “trauma” evokes a list of horrible events, but there are actually different degrees of trauma and wounds.

A childhood trauma can just mean that your needs as a defenseless human being weren’t met.

So, while it may be wrong to consider a “small wound” to be as horrible as something like physical abuse, for example, you shouldn’t deny that your small wound had a huge impact on you and probably still does (more on this in Dr. LePera’s video at the end of this post). 

Making space for the hidden parts and befriending them

I wrote Insecurities (Sorry not sorry) when I was looking for ways to get to know this hidden part of me that clearly wanted to communicate with my conscious self. I thought writing as if I was her, about what I knew about her, unapologetically, would be a good starting point for this relationship and my life-long process of reconciling my conscious mind with my unconscious.

This journey can be painful but it’s also wonderful. I honestly believe my life is way richer now than before I delved into this inner exploration. I have a better understanding of myself and this allows me to let go or resolve conflicts that used to paralyze me. And my world is way bigger now too. I think everyone deserves to grow this way.

So that’s a new storyline I suggest because I believe accepting with compassion our own inconsistency and complexity is key to understanding our inconsistent and complex world.

In this article, I’ll talk about this song, which is about killing our mom, the Earth. You can read the lyrics in the comments on YouTube.

Why we don’t do shit to save our asses on this planet

The climate crisis... We have the data, we have the terrible disasters happening around the world, we have the experts’ reports and previsions... Millions of climate migrants (I never understood why xenophobic people aren’t the biggest environmentalists ever), water insecurity (we have plenty of water on Earth, but only 1% is accessible freshwater), food insecurity, natural disasters, diseases and, of course, the high risk of social and political unrest due to these difficult conditions... You’d think we’d be working our asses off to mitigate this mess.

Sadly, those facts compete against other, older beliefs, like the one in infinite growth.

This contradiction creates a tension called cognitive dissonance, which is very uncomfortable. Now, our brains are prepared for such events and have tons of cognitive biases to help us feel comfortable again. Problem is, in the case of the environment, choosing immediate comfort is actually what is putting us in great danger. So we keep doing our thing, while knowing deep down that we shouldn’t, even subconsciously. And that’s very fertile ground for guilt. Or in this specific case, “eco-guilt”.

Why it’s okay to feel bad about it

It hurts to know that when I don’t buy organic (and even when I do buy organic, depending on the certification), I give money to corporations that poison the soil and water. It hurts to know that when I buy cheese, I’m basically paying people to contaminate the air and, again, water (and I won’t even mention animal abuse). The list goes on and on... My only consolation is that I never wanted to procreate. Yay! But still... each time I wash my polyester clothes, tons of microplastic end up in the (drinking) water. I live in a system that’s so ill-conceived that virtually everything I own and do adds to contamination, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, etc.

A lot of people in the media keep saying that eco-activist groups are too radical and sad because they want us to feel guilty. Personally, I don’t need anyone to tell me what to feel in order to understand that my Western lifestyle contributes to a huge catastrophe, and to feel really bad about it and for not knowing how to make the world better right now. I think it’s only fair to feel bad for having such horrendous impacts on other lives. I also think guilt is a helpful feeling as it shows us we’re doing something wrong. And I strongly believe that anyone who says otherwise must have fierce defense mechanisms and badass cognitive biases.

The good thing, when you learn about these biases, is that they kind of weaken and you get to be more aware of your own feelings and the actual facts regarding the world you live in.

How it can be useful

The bad thing is... it can make you cry. I say it’s a bad thing, but I don’t believe it is. I wrote this song while crying in the shower because I was feeling very sad about contributing to the horrible current and future suffering. And I think that putting out in the world a song that honest on this topic is a nice thing. So you see, crying is not that bad. ;) Maybe we shouldn’t be afraid of emotions like guilt, sadness or fear itself... Maybe we should feel them and see where they want to take us. Maybe that would help us build more sustainable and fair systems, and a more interesting storyline for us as individuals and as a whole. :)

I’ll leave you with a few “fun” facts about the song:

I wrote it as a sad ballad and it turned out to be this totally different, upbeat genre. I like to see this as a metaphor of how you can recycle your dark feelings into something lively (environmental pun, get it...?).

When I was recording it, months after my sad shower, I realized it had something major in common with a movie I love: mother! by Darren Aronofsky. Both my song and his movie are about killing a mother that represents the Earth. That’s why I decided to name it “Mother!” as a tribute. If you’ve never watched this movie, I highly recommend it.

I use this song with my #Motherkiller story highlight on Instagram to show that living in a perfectly ecofriendly way isn’t always easy and that I mess up a lot.

The world is messed up. And I’m passionate about a lot of causes: the destruction of vital ecosystems leading to climate change (and new epidemics), the discrimination against different groups of people, social injustice, climate injustice, the exploitation of garment workers and so many other workers, the disappearance of democracy, you name it. But my intention here isn’t to dive into the data on each of these causes, nor to explain their different layers. A lot of people do that way better than I ever could so I trust you’ll educate yourself on such issues with some of the countless books, podcasts, articles, blogs, YouTube channels and so on. What I have to offer is my little exploratory recipe to (try and) save the world. It only requires 3 ingredients but it is not a “quick”, “easy” or “lazy” one. If I haven’t lost you yet, here it goes: 

Ingredient 1: Recognition that you are part of the problem

Capable leaders and citizens have known about most issues for ages and yet, they persist. I believe it’s in part because we are taught that we can’t do anything. We learn to feel powerless before the 1%, the ones in charge. And this feeling of helplessness is very convenient for us in the short term, as we are animals who like things to stay the way they are and who are not fans of making efforts. But the truth is we hold great power, in that we are free individuals who live in (human and non-human) systems, which means every action we take has an impact on the rest of our systems. And of course, the nature of our actions define the nature of their impact. So the minute you decide to act consciously, you gain power and control over who you are and what you put out in the world. And that means that you (and I) are part of all the problems I mentioned, and many more.

Not because we’re bad people, but because we’re part of bad systems.

And recognizing that is very depressing and liberating at the same time. Because you can choose today to stop doing certain things that you feel go against your values. And that’s being part of the solution. Careful, I’m not suggesting that individual actions such as recycling are going to save the world. Just that recognizing our own role in our systems is the very first step towards making systemic changes.

Ingredient 2: Emotional intelligence to connect

To me, it feels like the reason why most of us don’t make that shift is a lack of intelligence. But not the kind of intelligence that is praised by mainstream education systems. No, I’m talking about emotional intelligence, the one that allows us to have a healthy relationship with our emotions, which in turn helps us to have healthy relationships with others (humans, other animals and even other beings).

I feel this type of connection is missing in the general activism landscape. Because yes, we need slogans and hard data, but I think we mainly need to develop our capacity to connect with our own values and the experiences of others. We live in a society that values rational thinking and that makes money off of irrational behaviours (like the dopamine reward system that makes many billionaires happy). But when we listen to the emotional and irrational part of ourselves, we can meet that person, make friends with them and try finding balance between the world we live in and the world inside of us.

Ingredient 3: Courage to keep cultivating your emotional intelligence

Now, that can be hard, because the world we live in tends to go against most people’s core values. Most of us are decent people and don’t want to harm anyone. But we still have a lot of work to do in order to achieve what we see as fair and even acceptable... And like I said earlier, we are animals who don’t like to work hard. The human brain is wired to always take the easiest shortcut. And if it’s allowed us to survive for so long, it also means that sometimes, it has to mute certain emotions (or facts) so we can go about our day without feeling bad because the world is crazy and it’s partially our fault.

So it can be tempting to give up and let our civilization go down in history as the greatest failure on Earth. But I’m here to invite you to resist the temptation. 

Cultivating this intelligence will keep you connected to what you really are, to others and to the systems you depend on. It will be hard, yes, but I think it’s the only way to maintain hope (and I’ll talk later on about how having hope is the only rational thing to do). And personally, if I’m going to look for ways to do my part to save the world, I need to have hope. That is why I will dedicate this small space on the Internet to the process of observing our emotions, understanding them, connecting to them and acting on them to expand our imagination and create new storylines for the history books of the future. And I will focus on this process through art (mainly my own songs), because I believe in its power to shape narratives.

If you’re someone who wants to engage in activism (meaning to act to make changes - you don’t need to organize protests to be an activist) but you don’t know how or even whether it’s worth your energy, I suggest your bookmark this blog and follow me on Instagram to know whenever I post new personal insights.