Finding wholeness in your ecosystem of life and work.

Contemplating what “wholeness” feels and means to help navigate the hats you wear.

What does “wholeness” look like for you? How does it feel in terms of personal life, and how does it feel for work life? Is there a separation between these parts, or are you one “whole” being when navigating these worlds simultaenously?

Emergence.

If you work in the conventional office job (even if remote), then perhaps you do find a separation. Your work colleagues only get the tip of how you define yourself as a person, because they see you in a structured environment, so once you leave the office is when your other roles come into play, or your hobbies can take priority. However, for those self-employed, maybe it’s difficult to separate work from home. Even if you have an office to go to, you’re still classed as temporary, as flexible; you are your own boss and so can you really take your boss hat off when you finish for the day?

Perhaps like me you navigate a part-PAYE/part-freelance lifestyle and so there are times when you renege some responsibility, and then all the rest of the time you’re hustling. There are no days off because you feel you should be working, or you’re thinking of working. This is particularly frustrating when you’re running a business, rather than being self-employed for one-off jobs. So is wholeness in this case the fact that your work and home lives are interconnected, impenetrable, boundary-less? Or is it wholeness because you are contentedly deciding to lead this flexible lifestyle?

The theme of wholeness came up in this morning’s coaching session as part of the Wild Work Collective from The Wild Academy, a platform for “untamed learning” that seeks to challenge established ways of thinking and being. This was a “waymarker” session to check in mid-season: between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. The Celtic festival of Imbolc falls on February 1st, a time to celebrate the emergence of spring and the power of the sun.

January is established as that usual waymarker into the next year, where there’s a push towards regeneration and letting go. And yet, winter (in the Northern Hemisphere) still has it’s grasp on the land and beings. Though bulbs emerge (earlier each year), we get rain rather than frost, and daylight lengthens, seasonally it is still winter (especially if we look at the food growing cycle). So, because January comes and goes before we’ve had time to catch up or because the month feels incongruous to our need to cocoon in bed, and before we do emerge fully into Spring at the Equinox, it’s useful to consider and reflect upon what to regenerate and what to release.

Emerging out of a dense forest into the light. [Credit: Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash]

Healing.

My key takeaway from today’s session regarded healing. In order to feel and to appear whole, there are surely some bits that need mending. Even if there are occasions when we feel content or complete, there will be prior pieces of ourselves strewn about, maybe discarded deliberately or lost along the way. On the prompt of “Do you feel whole?” I wrote “no, not quite”. I’m still striving to find myself, to make my way back to parts of my being that feel hidden/suppressed/restricted, and mostly these feelings are because I’m not in a suitable environment to nourish them. Practically, I could make the decision to ensure these parts come back to life, but realistically, it takes more energy to try than to not try.

There are parts of my personal self that I cling to as the thing that makes me me — endurance running, strength training… sports, really, that highlight and nurture my power. Though an environment could be created to make these advantageous, actually it’s only me myself that can go through the process and either fail or succeed — and even when I fail (like stumbling in yoga yesterday) I am content that I am trying. This makes me feel whole. It makes me feel authentic. I am visibly holding up who I am.

Frankly, I know where this comes from. It stems from recognising my strength amidst restriction: from relationships to a broken ankle. These activities are proof that I am great, I can “succeed”, I am resilient.

Opening yourself up, accepting. Hands are palm up in offering. [Credit: Milada Vigerova on Unsplash].

Authenticity.

When it comes to my business, however (even if we only refer to freelance jobs rather than the company still unregistered almost two years later), I do not feel whole. Well, ok, actually I don’t feel whole in personal life either (I have minimal friends, no intimate life, I live in a terrible disrespectful houseshare, I pay way too much for bills each months, and I have stomach acid consistently gurgling up). But, I don’t shy away from exploring or explaining these parts that are integrally messily observable in both work and “home”.

In May 2022, when I made the decision to go off on my own and establish a business doing what I felt would make a difference in the world, under my own steam, to my own values, with integrity and standards, I knew I didn’t fully have a grasp on what it would look like. That’s why it’s still unregistered. But I’m nearly there. Through iterations, experimentations, coaching, mentoring and kind words from my network (plus some occasional freelance jobs), I do have a business, though not yet fully formed or at it’s full potential.

What we discussed as a group was whether wholeness needed to be a total completeness — like yeah this is done, ticked off, finished — or if it’s ok to be honest about your journey, which subsequently aids you in feeling complete. Authenticity and integrity are wrapped up in one another; while the former is more regarding trust, and the latter is more regarding honour, I’d say that in order to have integrity you need to authentically show your thoughts, feelings and opinions.

One of the session’s prompts was “what does it mean to live and work with integrity?” and I wrote “boundaries”. Perhaps you can have silent integrity (you know what you’ve made decisions on and why), which works for certain businesses or home scenarios; your boundaries don’t need to be visible to anyone but yourself, or even explained, though in particular contexts it may be beneficial to highlight why you have certain boundaries in place.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” — spiritual author Marianne Williamson

You can only live your truth, even if you’re hiding or not disclosing certain parts. Wooden letter tiles spell out the phrase “I am the truth”. [Credit: Brett Jordon on Unsplash]

Wellbeing.

When it comes to navigating all the hats you wear — self, sibling, parent, child, partner, friend, employee, business-owner etc — do you feel in balance, or imbalanced? Wholeness presents notions of perfection; if you search synonyms of “wholeness” then you find pristine, undamaged, faultless. It’s similar to “happiness”. That this feeling of being complete is the end goal, though what I’ve tried to suggest above is that the journey can be just as rewarding.

I’m writing this on Valentine’s Day, and beautifully one of the other coachees responded to remarks on the day that we shouldn’t forget the community and our connections when contemplating wholeness. We are not alone; actually most of the time it is the people and other beings and things around us that bring contentedness (possibly too superficially). We know our relationships are not perfect, yet we strive to hold up the goodness in our people; why do we jump to praise our friends for their good work, but not ourselves when we succeed (in whatever personal success looks like)? We look to our colleagues, family and friends for confirmation or acceptance, though rarely address ourselves as an objector. So how can we actually feel whole if we’re constantly highlighting the holes in the whole?

Reflecting upon what makes us feel and appear whole (which could be entirely different considerations, and also dependent on varying scenarios) can aid an understanding and recognition of what doesn’t make us feel and appear whole. Or vice versa — you can start with the seemingly negative stuff. For me, the negative stuff is my living situation, that my finances are precarious, and that I don’t quite have what I’d consider to be a full friend network. Can I work on any of these? Yeah, absolutely. Can I acknowledge and celebrate the things I consider good? Yeah, with practice.

So I can’t foresee a time when I’m whole, in the sense that I have everything I ever wanted and I’m complete. There’ll always be gaps. Grief and trauma should be acknowledged too, as accomplices in the inability to feel whole. However, I can reflect and practice gratitude for what does feel whole, which in my case, is exploration. The privilege of having freedom to explore. I feel most at home in myself and my surroundings when I’m exploring, being curious, using my intuition. There are holes in my whole, though the “damage” or the missing parts are not invisible or intangible — just faded, set aside, percolating.

Recognising and showing gratitude to what does make us feel whole. A woman sits on a bench on the top of a hill overlooking a sunset in San Luis Obispo, California. [Credit: Sage Friedman on Unsplash]

Reflections.

1. What does wholeness look like in home life and in work life? Is there a separation or a linking? Could there be gaps because of the season you’re in when you read this, or certain circumstances causing particular feelings? Has there been a time when you’ve felt whole in any of your roles, even if you don’t currently feel that way?
2. What needs healing in order to move closer to wholeness? Are there holes that can be fixed, or does the damage seem too heavy to repair?
3. What does authenticity look like to you? Is it even something you strive for? Do you hold yourself distinctly in the hats you wear, or is there a crossover?
4. What activities, habits or practices can you implement to aid in your overall wellbeing, and particularly in the spots that feel less whole? How do you want to navigate the feeling and appearance of wholeness as you navigate your year?

If you find these and the above useful, and you’d like to learn about unleashing your wild side, The Wild Academy have a free downloadable guide on Awakening Your Wild — Learn how to remember, reclaim, and unearth your wild; How to rewild and prepare for this journey; How to realign, reconnect, and walk the pathway of awakening.

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Stephanie Steele is the founder of Steele Studio, a space that educates everyday folk on the interconnectedness of our food, fibre and fashion systems through community courses and workshops. As an organic food grower and textiles sustainability specialist, she otherwise writes about art, textiles, plants, running and systems design.

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