Emily Phillips

23/03/2022

Two years ago today, the day the pandemic was officially announced in Scotland, I moved out of the flat I’d been living in for four and a half years in Edinburgh, and into a house with a friend, her husband and two children. 

I didn’t want to feel alone.

We experimented with living communally, sharing food, painting, getting the paddling pool out, and we also had deeply painful, challenging conversations, difficulties communicating and multiple relational dynamics to process and unravel together and alone.

Honestly, it hurt our friendship in some ways, and strengthened it in others.

Innate feminine wounding became more visible, I felt betrayed, rejected and deeply loved + seen

Innate masculine wounding became more visible, I felt dissociated and full of desire to lead and love from truth, like nothing else mattered, like I’d die for freedom of expression

We couldn’t find ways around certain things, and then we’d be paddling in the stream near Braidburn talking about the ripple impacts of coronavirus and watching Strictly Come Dancing on the sofa.

Much love and uncertainty and gratitude was shared, and the friendship and the experience changed my life.

A year and two weeks ago today, after three months of lockdown in London, I moved back to Edinburgh and into a new flat on my own.

I wanted to belong.

One night, I had a dream that shook me to the core, perhaps a dark night of the soul, and led to a couple of months of panic and anxiety like I’d never felt before. 

My nervous system was in survival overdrive.

It felt like my psyche was in trouble.

But my body and soul was telling me it was an initiation of some kind 

“into motherhood” was what I kept hearing.

And expressing my feminine voice in easeful ways

Into caring for the planet, it’s animals, offering the deep love of an unconditional inner woman and man, inner mother and father, inner child and teenager, inner sage and wise woman 

But today, this isn’t about me, or my story,

22/03/2022

And just like that, spring has sprung, it’s 19 degrees in London today, my body was loving direct sun on skin, softening my edges.

Remembering that we are all springing out of winter at different times and paces. We’re in our own lanes of growth + nervous system care is a vital component of business and creative expression. Keep swimming in your lane of genius. There is NO rush, just listening 🧡

08/03/2022

Happy International Women’s Day

28/02/2022

I’ve always felt a natural ease of connection being and working in the realms of the unconscious.

Both my parents, who are now semi retired, work in the psychoanalytic work. One a psychotherapist, the other a doctor and psychoanalyst.

Conversations about Freud’s approach to fantasy, body dysmorphia and ways to structure thinking were regular chat in the kitchen.

There was ALOT of introspective time and questioning of the self through the family dynamic

Which, with time and percolation space, I realise wasn’t always useful,

it meant things could fester, an endless questioning without allowing space for lightness and resolution that didn’t seem to resonate with me on some level

I regularly felt like a black sheep, pushing not to conform, sometimes not confident enough to stand up for what I believed in or felt strongly about

I didn’t like confrontation and was scared of not being liked or loved

And yet at the same time, everything was exactly as it was meant to be

At home growing up, there was a curious, sometime confusing mixture of bravery, depth and repression,

Tablespoons of suppression,

support, kindness and warmth.

I often felt like an outsider

And yet one of the biggest treasures having a psychoanalytic family gave me was an ongoing setting to develop deep listening, and a learning of how to get better at being with it ALL - the rough, the inspiring, the numb, the terrifying, the sensual

and my childhood home on some levels prompted my desires for more play, more laughter, stronger relationships and transformative change, because amongst the suppression, I wanted to feel deeply alive

And now I realise that this was also happening on a collective level in the world,

The feminine being squashed by the patriarchy, though as a child, I had no idea what was happening, I just wanted to put on my leotard and backflip down the beam and bars of the gymnastics hall!

27/02/2022

A weekend in The Malvern Hills. Some heart tending, fresh sunlight and new sights, tears, nervous system flight and freeze, conversations about building a life, ice creams and muddy walking shoes ✨

24/02/2022