Women Who Run With Wolves - the Exile Needs To Start Over

I was reading the book by Clarissa Pinkoles Estes and it felt like she was speaking about my life. I had been in exile, and I had left home to find myself. I found myself and realized that I had nothing to run away from anymore. Photo by visualsofdana on Unsplash

Transcript

Hello everyone!

I hope that you're doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Bhoomshika and I welcome you to my channel.

As always,

I'm so grateful that you're listening,

Subscribing and commenting and I really appreciate your support.

In this one,

I wanted to speak to you about the exile,

The outsider,

The black sheep of the family of the community.

I'm sure a lot of you probably resonate with these terms because you probably felt like that all of your lives.

And I know that I definitely did.

Not through any fault of the people around me.

Of course not.

It wasn't the fault of my family.

It wasn't the fault of my friends.

It wasn't the fault of anyone around me.

It wasn't anyone's fault.

It was just the way I felt.

It was because of extenuating circumstances.

Something that you can't control.

There's nothing you can do about it.

Just the way it is.

For the beginning of my life,

I did blame my family because I was like,

Why can't they just understand?

If they just tried to understand,

They would understand me.

But I realized this time and all that it's not their fault.

They're living through their own paradigms and their own ways of thinking and I'm living through my paradigms and the way I think.

And of course,

Sometimes they're parallel tracks.

They just don't meet.

It's just not possible to meet.

But at that point in time,

And I think it started when I was 12,

13,

Maybe even earlier than that,

I started realizing that I was having this sense of this growing sense of aloneness,

Of loneliness,

Of just a lot of aloneness.

And just feeling like the way I thought,

The way I wanted to live my life,

The way I wanted to look at the world,

The way I looked at the world.

All of it was so diametrically opposite to everyone around me that I literally felt like if someone was looking at me from the outside and they're like,

Are you just trying to be opposite?

Are you just trying to do everything completely opposite than the people around you?

Are you just playing a game here?

And it's kind of funny because I'm like,

If I could,

If I could literally comfortably could,

I would have just gone along with the crowd.

And I did for the longest time.

I just pretend like I didn't have an opposite thought or I didn't have a thought that was a completely diametrically opposite thought from the crowd around me.

I just go along with them because I was like,

Oh,

It's easier to go along with them.

And so for the longest time,

I did just play the game of being the same as everyone else because it was just easier.

Like,

Why bother?

But as I got older,

I realized I just don't want to play that game anymore.

It's too lonely.

It's even lonelier,

Lonelier than actually.

Like,

It's too lonely.

I was like,

I just can't.

Right.

I'd rather not play the game and just say exactly what's in my mind.

At least I have myself.

If I'm in that zone,

I can at least have myself as a friend,

Even if I have no one else as a friend.

Right.

And so for the longest time,

I would say throughout my 20s,

I kind of went the opposite route where I was like,

All right,

I don't care if I have anyone around me.

It does not matter.

I'm going to live my truth and I'm going to live my life the way I want to live it.

Exactly the way I want to live it.

Even if it means that my family doesn't speak to me,

Even if it means that my parents don't are always angry with me and never want to talk to me.

Even if it means that I don't have any friends anymore because no one gets what I'm doing.

Even if it means that I have to live in destitute poverty or with very few things and all that stuff.

I was fine with it.

Being alone was OK with me.

But then as I got to the end of my 20s,

I realized that,

OK,

There's actually people around the world who are actually like me.

They do think like me.

And I'm not completely crazy in the head.

And so my mission at that point became to go after,

To look for those communities,

For those people who were like me,

Who thought like me,

Who wanted to live their life like me,

Who wanted to live a different life,

Who wanted to try different things,

Who wanted to be a nomad,

Who wanted to be location independent,

Time independent,

To have that kind of freedom.

All those things.

I was like,

I want that.

And I know there are people like that out there because I was reading about them online.

I was kind of reading books about them.

And I was like,

All right,

They're out there.

I'm not alone.

They're out there.

I need to just go search for them.

And of course,

What I always do when I'm searching for things is I read a lot of books and blogs and things like that.

But also I asked the universe for help.

I always ask the universe for help because the universe is always so giving and kind towards me.

And so I asked the universe,

I was like,

What should I do?

How do I find these people?

How do I find a community?

How do I feel less alone?

How do I find people who really think like me so that I don't feel like a complete crazy kooki or a kooku?

And so,

Of course,

The universe giveth.

You just ask and the universe gives.

And so what I did was I started moving towards the idea of starting my own business.

That was the first thought that came to me.

So I was like,

All right,

Let me follow.

I just kind of followed along with the plan that the universe kind of laid out for me little by little,

Step by step.

And so I quit my job.

And you know by this already,

In April 2016,

I quit my job.

It was a really good corporate job and I quit it.

Started my own business or at least started thinking about it.

And then another sign or signal or message came from the world saying,

Go to Chiang Mai.

And of course,

I had no idea what Chiang Mai was.

I had no idea it was a city in north of Thailand.

I had no idea what it was all about.

I had no idea what digital nomads were all about.

I did not know any of that.

I just knew that I did not want to live in the same place for the rest of my life.

I did not want to work in the same place for the rest of my life.

I wanted to work for myself for the things I really cared about.

Being creative,

Sharing my voice,

Sharing my creative things with the world,

The assets that I create.

And I wanted to do it in a time free,

Location free manner.

And I knew that.

I knew that to the depth of my core of my being.

I knew that really well.

And so,

Of course,

As I said,

The idea was move to Chiang Mai.

And so I was like,

All right,

Cool.

I guess I'll do that.

And even though I didn't know anything about it,

I booked the ticket.

I still remember where I was sitting,

Where I booked the ticket and I moved to Chiang Mai.

And one of the reasons I think why it was so important for me to move to Chiang Mai was because of a clean slate.

And I think that's the real point of this video.

The reason I wanted to do this video is the importance of a clean slate.

You need to start off with a clean slate if you're going to move towards finding your community.

Because I would say that what happens with the way we do things is that we have these preconceived notions about who we are and about the world that we live in.

And other people have preconceived notions about us.

Right.

So you might someone might think about you,

Oh,

She's lazy.

She's always been lazy.

She's been lazy all her life.

Or someone else might think about you that,

You know,

She's so confident.

She never looks like she ever has a problem with anything or he doesn't ever look like he has a problem with anything.

Right.

And so we have all these preconceived notions.

And when I moved to Chiang Mai,

I knew no one there.

No one knew me there.

So it was as if I kind of like had a rebirth moment,

Which is epic and so important in my journey.

And that's the reason I wanted to do this video is because I think that rebirth blank slate moment is extremely important if you want to restart your life.

Restart your life in a fashion where you can go out and find your community,

Find your what inspires you,

Find what you're supposed to be doing on this planet.

Find your true life purpose.

Find yourself.

Right.

And so,

As I said,

In Chiang Mai,

No one knew me.

So no one had any preconceived notions of who I was.

I could be anyone I wanted to be.

I could be whoever I wanted to be.

If I told people I'm a digital nomad and a writer,

No one would blink twice because they'd be like,

All right,

Cool.

Yeah,

Great.

That's great.

Good for you.

Because they didn't know me.

They had no idea who I was.

Right.

They wouldn't be like,

Well,

No,

I don't think so.

I mean,

I've known you for six years or I've known you for 17 years and you're not that.

You're a marketing person and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Right.

And so they don't know who you are.

You don't know who you are anymore either.

I didn't know who I was anymore.

I was like,

All right,

Let's just kind of run with it.

Let's start from ground zero.

Let's see what comes up.

Maybe it'll be good.

Maybe it'll be bad.

Who knows?

Right.

And so,

As I said,

I started with complete zero.

I had no idea who I was.

I was re-figuring it all out.

I was kind of rewriting my story.

Everything was zero.

Like everything was blank and I was rewriting everything.

Who am I?

Am I an impatient person or I'm a patient person?

Am I,

Do I like this or that?

You know,

Everything.

Do I like to eat meat or do I like to eat vegetables?

Everything was kind of being rewritten because there was nothing.

I was basically starting as if I was a baby again.

And that was so important,

As I said,

Because if I hadn't gone through that,

I wouldn't be where I am right now.

Right.

I wouldn't have rewritten my complete story and decided,

OK,

What I really want to do is I want to create.

I want to write.

I want to do YouTube videos.

I want to move around the world and I want to be extremely creative.

Right.

And so that's what I'm doing now.

Like I was like,

All right,

This is what I want to do.

This is what I'm going to create.

Right.

And as a constant thing,

Every single day,

This is what I do.

What do I want to do today?

This is what I want to do.

OK,

Cool.

Let's do it.

And it started,

As I said,

With that blank slate that happened because I moved to a country where no one knew me and I didn't know anyone.

And I'm sure you know the story as well.

But I've spent I spent when I went to China,

I spent a lot of time in my room just by myself figuring things out.

It was like I was in the cocoon or in the room,

If you want to call it.

And I was kind of re-emerging from the cocoon.

But little by little,

I was kind of like,

Oh,

Right.

What do I like?

Oh,

I don't like that.

OK,

I'm not going to do that.

Oh,

I really like that.

OK,

Let's do more of that.

Oh,

I really like this food.

Let's eat more of that.

Oh,

I don't like that food.

Let's eat less of that,

You know,

Or don't eat that at all.

And so little by little,

I started figuring myself out and little by little,

I started being the person that I wanted to be.

Little by little,

I got to where I am right now.

And I'm still actually going through the process because every single day it's a new rebirth process.

You know,

You wake up in the morning and you could be anyone you wanted to be.

You could be if you want to play this role today,

You can play that role.

Or if you want to be this person,

You can be that person.

There's no limits as long as you don't put limits on yourself.

But also because I had a blank slate,

I also realized that I could be whoever I wanted to be and I could be friends with whoever I wanted to be.

Because in my mind,

I also had this kind of block where I was like,

Well,

Yeah,

I think differently and I'm kind of the black sheep of the family.

But because I was denigrated for that for so long,

I thought that if I found new people,

A new community of people who were like me,

Who thought like me,

They would denigrate me too.

I thought that they would laugh at me or laugh at my thoughts or the way I was as well.

And so that blank slate really helped me because I realized,

OK,

Yeah,

No,

They don't they're not laughing at me.

They're not denigrating me for who I am.

They actually accept me for who I am.

Because they are the black sheep of their families too.

They all kind of converged in Chiang Mai and found their community there because we all were so similar.

We kind of like,

You know,

Like moths to a flame,

We kind of just kind of all converged into Chiang Mai and we're like,

Oh,

Right,

This is home.

This is where I'm supposed to be.

This is this is life.

This is true life.

This is true family that I'm supposed to be with.

And so I wanted to do this video to kind of explain a little bit of the process and hopefully to share my story a little bit more.

I hope it makes sense to you.

If you are interested,

I can share more about what the whole process looked like and all that.

But I wanted to go and give you a brief spiel on it because it's so fascinating how these things work.

And all of a sudden I'm kind of going back and realizing,

Wow,

This actually happened.

So if you have questions,

Obviously comment below and I shall do a follow up video.

Again,

Thank you so much for being on my channel.

I really appreciate your support and I shall see you the next time around.

Bye for now.

Reviews

Hi Boom, that was cool, so nice to hear about your clean slate and rebirth in life free to define yourself in any way.
Random question, I'm looking for the full audio version of Women who run with the wolves and can only find abridged versions. You have a lovely voice, would you maybe consider doing a course on these stories perhaps?
Just a thought, take care, Vicky