In 2017 I had long struggled in trying to make sense of my place in a world that was rapidly spiralling into global environmental crisis. It was during my Rolfing training in South Africa when I soberly came to terms with my place in the system.

I remember the exact moment when I decided to stop running from the internal struggle. Ironically I was out running - at the time the only thing that allowed me to feel any sense of clarity or sanity. I was on Stellenbosch mountain feeling blissfully alone - even the dog that Ingrid insisted accompanied me had turned on her heels and bolted home after being scared by the exposure on the ridge. I could see the little white streak of Zoe heading back to her safe place and I knew she would be waiting for me outside the fortress garden fence when I returned. I felt safe up on my exposed perch, where most people were afraid to venture alone, and I didn't feel any peace down inside the fortresses.

I was sitting with my feet hanging off the biggest rock at the top of the mountain looking down at the complex mess of geopolitical and environmental sorrows of a cape that was days away from turning the taps off. The pollution hung low in the air, the deep hurtful separation between the haves’ and the have-nots’ so clearly visible from this lofty place. From my lofty and WEIRD world view…

Westernised, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic.

The overwhelming feeling that I was confronting on top of that mountain, that I had visited so many times alone in wild and beautiful places, was that I don't want to be part of the mess that is modernity. I viscerally rejected it inside myself. I rejected my toxic part in that complex system. I could deeply feel the familiar self-disgust and wrenching unease. I wanted to stay up there pretending I could exist with simply the birds, the snakes, the flowers and the clean air.

Facing the enormity of the challenge ahead to accept my place in that system below felt way too shameful - far easier to squash it down and numb it away into the isolation, hedonism and selfish pursuits of my teens and twenties. The ‘doesn't-fit’ feeling was always there, in the background, rearing its ugly head whenever I had an honest thought.

Looking past my feet and it suddenly and viscerally hits me that I belong in that system. I need people, I need connectedness - not just to the beautiful things my privilege allows me to loftily choose but connectedness to absolutely everything. The good, the bad and the ugly.

I felt a wave of certainty as the shift happened. There have been a few points in my life when I have felt such significant shifts. It's a decision landing where I feel my entire body confirming, with zero uncertainty, that this is the way. In that moment I accepted I could not survive in this idealised isolation, and I couldn't afford the energy it required to continue to reject myself and my part in that messy, uncertain and polluted system. I might not like it, and I would continue to struggle to accept the inconsistencies of my modern life with my idealised core values. But I needed to find my way back. I needed to put in the work to belong. I needed to change from within myself in order to be a force for positive change in that complex system.

Running wasn't getting me anywhere. In the eight years since that moment I have run away up into my safe isolated space when I needed to retreat from the battle - but I have also faced down many internal struggles head on and I held myself accountable in this complex and messy system. It is my work as a human being and now as a therapist trying to share my personal experience in healing in the hope it will help us all feel more connected.