Why aren't we talking about this: Chaos as a catalyst

Sometimes a book finds you at exactly the moment you need it and Chaos was that for me.

We all experience it. Those moments where everything feels uncertain, where something is shifting, ending, or asking more of you and your instinct is to resist it. To panic. To or at least in my case, go straight to the very worst possibility. 

But what if that’s not what’s happening at all?

In this conversation, Sarah talks about sitting in a hospital waiting room, convinced she might be dying, while everything else in her life was already falling apart- she was on the edge of bankruptcy and felt emotionally and physically broken. And in that moment, realising something quite uncomfortable. That she hadn’t just ended up there… she’d played a part in getting herself there.

That’s the bit that stayed with me. She as responsible.

It’s much easier to blame the situation, the timing, other people. But the moment you realise you’ve had a hand in it, you also realise you’re the only one who can change it.

That’s where chaos starts to look different.

Not as something that’s happening to you, but something that’s asking something of you. Sarah’s book explores the choices we make in those moments. Whether we lean in, take responsibility, and move through it, or slip into handing over our power. Even in the messiest shit shows, there’s a decision point. So if that’s the case… why aren’t we talking about it?

In this weeks episode of Why Aren’t we Talking About it’ I’m speaking to the brilliant Sarah McDermott about what it takes to sit in that discomfort - and choose differently when life doesn’t go to plan. Listen and also buy the book- it’s really very good, especially if you need a bit of tough love right about now.

Buy here at Waterstones 

 

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Why Aren’t We Talking About This? is a series of honest conversations about the stuff we rarely discuss but probably should - big feelings, weird thoughts, life, death, and all the messy, beautiful parts of being human.

Hosted by me, Carly Osman-Holme, on a quest to dodge a full-blown existential crisis. I’ve reached that point in life where I’m asking the big questions: How did I get here? What do I actually want? And why didn’t they teach us any of this in school?