i am enraged. everyday i wake up enraged. every time i open that fucking app owned by Meta that used to give me visual inspo and a sense of awe i find another thing about those fucking men and what they do to women, children, queer people, immigrants.

there is not one day that passes without me feeling rage and grief and violence and despair at the state of the world and the absolute impunity that is embedded within capitalism and patriarchy.

i’m tired to the bones and you know what? the first thought i have now is that it would be stupid of me to bring a child into this world.

mind you, i don’t even know if i want kids! the last few years i said i didn’t want kids because of the climate crisis (and i’m saying this as a privileged cis white woman with a French passport).

now, it’s because of something else: what if my kids were raped in kindergarten?

wait, let me rephrase. active voice: what if a grown ass man raped my kids in kindergarten?

that’s not unusual, isn’t it? we know that now. and if my children go through their first 3 years of life without anyone raping or putting their fucking filthy hands on them, what will happen in school?

there’s a private school on my street. catholic. the director was arrested a few weeks ago for alleged sexual assault on a 7 year-old boy at school. he spent a night in custody. he’s free now.

what guarantees do i have that it won’t happen to mine? what options would i have to obtain justice if someone violated them — god, if someone violated me — in a world where women and children are never believed? where we have to argue, again and again and again, against “not all men”? where the epstein fucking files exist and are normalized? where men in power can be rapists with zero consequence? where a country can bomb a girls’ school and say oopsie, casualties?

and if my children were boys, how can i educate them to respect women in a world where 62 million men visit one porn site hosting a rape academy in a month? where watching porn starts at 9 years-old? where andrew fucking tate has 991k+ subscribers on substack? where sam fucking levinson degrades every female character he writes on screen and calls it art? how can i educate them to never sexually assault anyone when men will protect themselves and their boys’ clubs at any cost? where they laugh at women in locker rooms? where they film themselves hitting a punching bag with all the strength they have to knock down a woman if she says no and post it on tiktok for millions to see? where husbands fantasize so much about raping their wives and the mothers of their children that they turn to a fucking rape academy to learn how to drug them and share the footage with all their rape buddies? where men are actually women and children’s number one predator? where mothers who refuse to give their children back to their abusers are sentenced to go to jail?

what amount of violence does it take to make someone refuse to reproduce?

we’re way past shame. we’re way past anything, really. and it completely shatters me.

those men are incredibly lucky that we’re not seeking revenge en masse. we’re just mainly decentering them. we just wanna fucking live, for god’s sake.

and so i fantasize about another world cause this one ain’t it. those monstrous structures put up by monstrous people in power belittling and abusing and killing women and children and the planet for centuries ain’t it. endless extraction ain’t it. systemic violence ain’t it.

i fantasize about a world where predators are never at the top of anything. i fantasize about a world where community, harmony, coherence and care are pillars. i fantasize about a world where if you harm the community, the land, the creators of life, the children, you’ll pay for it immediately. no question asked. a round of applause!

i fantasize about female bonobos. Polly, Tao, Ngola, Djulie, and Bella, beating in unison 20 year-old male Hugo to oblivion because he attacked Bella’s infant. mind you, bonobos are a pretty chill species. when i read that article, i thought: wow, five female bonobos are way more effective at reducing infanticide than developed countries’ justice systems. shocker! mother nature really is our best teacher.

i fantasize about common sense. and i abhor how impotent i feel in the face of it all. the grief that comes with disillusion and complete loss of faith is not for the weak.

mental state so bad my friends and fam tell me to stop seeking information.

that won’t stop the rage, though.

at least i know i’m human.

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She was walking on a beach in the morning. I know it was the morning because of soft light. Deep blue and yellow hues. Low tide. Huge rocks in the background. White t-shirt and black linen pants floating in the mellow wind, bare feet, long hair, tanned skin, direct gaze and a warm, grounded and embodied energy that made silence feel spacious and full at the same time.

I usually shy away from visualization because it makes me feel contradictory.

I am a visual person. I learn the best by seeing words on a page. My work and art revolve around being a visual person. My most precious sense is sight. The way I see life is my favourite thing about me. Working on my photographic eye is an ongoing delight.

How come visualizing myself, my past and my future becomes the hardest thing to do when I close my eyes?

So today I let go, and it was way easier than I anticipated. Letting go meant listening to the first word that came to my mind and see the first image that would appear behind my eyes without questioning or making sense of them. I was just trusting that they were the right direction and I instantly felt at peace because I felt connected. Held. In conversation with the invisible. Mind on low, intuition loud.

I asked her the path to become her and she replied through the voice of the woman guiding the meditation, as it often happens for me when I listen to podcasts and hear nuggets of wisdom that seem to have been placed for me.

“Take time to listen,” they both said in sync.

They meant: take time to listen to your own voice. Take time to listen to what’s subtle. Make space for it to become louder than the constant chatter in your mind. Conversing is not chatting. Sacred monologues.

They meant: take time to express it. Not only because it is where you grow and resonate with others. Express it because it is a privilege. A duty to you, all the women before you and all the women that will live on this earth. Express it because this is how you feel whole. Express it because it is still scary, and that makes it brave.

“and write”, she said.

Because this is the most meaningful and most beautiful thing you have been put on this earth to do.

Your own pathway to spiral up to your fullest expression.

⋆｡°

As the visualization came to an end, I saw her walking away on the beach.

And then, I saw myself walking beside her.

And I saw myself as a child, walking beside me.

We were all walking together.

I kept her light smile with me all day. My own light smile. The one that says “you’re gonna be more than okay and you know that, babe”.

Yesterday I realized that I simply can’t keep pouring my creativity into others’ cups if I don’t dedicate time to cultivate it for myself first.

This morning the universe confirmed it to me while I listened to a conversation about perfectionism between Chelsea Riffe and Antonia Dolhaine on my morning walk.

A specific question landed home: in what ways do I starve myself to be nourished by others?

Nourishment comes in many forms but nourishment isn’t consumption. Nourishment isn’t a number in the bank. Nourishment isn’t a race. Nourishment demands time, attention and sacredness. True nourishment happens in relationship between who is nourished and what nourishes them.

Flowers don’t grow without being in a relationship with light, water and soil.

Humans forget that they can actually time travel with their senses, their imagination and their intuition.

Humans forget that true connection asks us to connect with ourselves first, and that this is not an act but a practice, just like writers sit at their table to write to connect with their muse. Connecting is engaging. And to engage fully, we must clear the noise. Sharpen the focus. Get our attention back and decide to project it where we actually want to, free from distraction.

Lately I have been feeling disconnected from myself, my voice and my expression, and a little self-reflection last night made me realize that it was because I hadn’t sat at the table with myself. I hadn’t been in conversation with myself, all the selves I’ve been and all the selves I want to be.

I’ve felt the weight of time a little too much because I haven’t been practicing what makes me forget it.

So I wrote.

And now I feel better.

<3 ⋆｡

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We sat down in the teeny tiny coffee place, ordered two lattes, two pastries, and talked about break-ups.

I don’t know if there’s a season for it or specific cohorts that the universe decided to put through this experiment but there’s truth in saying you’re never really alone in it. I definitely am not, even though almost all my close friends are in long time relationships right now. I’m not alone but I can still feel very lonely though. That’s one of the many “yes, and” that have come to my understanding in the couple months that went by since the goodbye. Everything’s blurry and yet also very clear. Depends when you ask the question.

We talked about break-ups, the one I’m going through right now, the ones I went through before, the one she’s about to go through some time in the future, so it seems. I feel like liminal spaces are both magnificent for learning and also outrageously painful because they force us to acknowledge that we don’t have a fucking clue and cannot control the tiniest of things in this life. We sometimes have the illusion we do, and that’s how we think we stay sane.

Truth is it’s madness. The only certainty is uncertainty. I know it’s a bummer, but it’s our lot.

We bonded over shared experience and I tried to sympathise without colouring her story with mine, because even though break-ups are as old as time, as my father told me, each story deserves to be heard on its own.

So I listened. I nodded. She listened, too. I asked how she felt. I asked if she was supported. I never asked why she would leave. She didn’t as well. And that felt nice to have somebody to talk to without being interrupted. Someone who could hold the complexity of the myriad of emotions I feel right now without demanding that I justify them. It felt nice to be in the trenches together, the ones where you’re the one leaving, on one side feeling like there’s truth and liberation to be found, on the other feeling like you’re a terrible person for hurting two birds, being you and your former lover, with one stone.

I truly feel like shit sometimes. I feel like complete shit and it’s easier to write it in English, both because it’s not my mother tongue and because it’s the language that I find myself expressing my emotions into. It just flows so I let it.

I feel like shit one minute, absolutely fucking sad the second, resentful and bitter the third, at peace the fourth. And the cycle starts again. Sometimes it all happens in the same day, sometimes it lasts for weeks, and then, one day, I wake up and feel neutral again.

I felt neutral when we hugged goodbye. She had an appointment to visit a flat. I had an appointment with fate, apparently, since I got the urge to visit my favourite bookstore in town on the walk home. I know by now that urges that I feel very deeply in my lower belly cannot be set aside if I really wanna live the life I’m supposed to live, so I entered the bookstore and went straight to the English literature section, because again, it flows.

I set my eyes on the shelves and scanned them from left to right. One specific book caught my attention. Couldn’t really read the title at first. Didn’t really need to.

Good Material by Dolly Alderton.

I’d already read most of her books and it wasn’t the first time that I’d seen this specific one there before, but it hadn’t stroke a chord in me until that very day.

I grabbed the book, put it under my armpit and went to the cashier without opening it to know what is was about. I paid cash, collected my change, put it in the tiniest pocket of my fanny pack, said thank you, have a nice day, and called my grandma on the way home without thinking too much of it.

We talked about break-ups with my grandma on the phone, too. She forgot I was single. I never told her, actually. My mom did. Couldn’t really find the words, even though she of all people wouldn’t have asked me why I left.

Why did I leave?

There’s something about my grandma and the bond we have together. We laugh, we talk about grand things and we both take pride in the fact that we can do most things on our own. We don’t particularly need men (nor women, I told her, to remind her that I love more than one gender, but she forgot, too). That’s both a blessing and a curse.

I put the keys in the lock of the home that was once shared and now is only mine. The one year anniversary of this new home is at the end of the month and this is another “yes, and”: yes, I feel at home in this flat, in the city I’ve wanted to live for so long; and there’s deep sadness at the thought of celebrating anything that doesn’t exist in the same way it did a year before.

I always say that a lot can happen in a year. A lot can happen in a nano second, in fact. And it’s not good nor bad, it just is.

I went on with my day, filled with edits of a wedding gallery I shot the weekend before and human design studies; hours of intense focus interspersed with social media numbing sessions, not really to neutralise my sadness but more so my boredom and impatience when the pictures don’t export or upload at the speed I want them too.

I’ve always been very impatient. That’s the downside of being fast and linear most of the time. This break-up is teaching me that lines are nowhere to be found when it comes to healing emotional wounds and that you are absolutely not in charge of the timeline. Even the word timeline isn’t right. It more looks like an upward spiral in my mind. Or a wave. You’re just a surfer learning to enjoy them, even though they give you the occasional (or daily, depends on where you are on said upward spiral) rough time. The kind of rough time that forces you to improve your surfing.

I went on with my day and whenever I looked at the new book, still unopened, I would feel a sense of shyness. I was magnetised, but also I wanted to keep it at safe distance, if that makes sense. I almost knew that something very profound for me was inside those pages, like an encounter that changes your life forever, and I wanted to wait for the perfect moment to say “hello, I’m ready to be absolutely but beautifully shattered by your wisdom”.

My new summer night routine is to go for a walk at sunset. My flat is located on the right bank, facing West, which means it kind of looks like sunset on the ocean. Summer night breeze, golden sparkles on the Garonne, people drinking beer and eating snacks under the trees and the moon, when she’s there.

I sat on steps facing the setting sun, the book in my fanny pack, cover facing the outside world, radiating “Good Material” to everyone who crossed my path that night.

I opened the book and found what would have been the back cover story behind its front cover. I read it.

Every relationship has one beginning.
This one has two endings.

Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy.
And he can’t work out why she stopped.

Now he is...

1. WITHOUT A HOME

2. WAITING FOR HIS STAND-UP CAREER TO TAKE OFF

3. WONDERING WHY EVERYONE ELSE AROUND HIM SEEMS TO HAVE GROWN UP WHILE HE WASN'T LOOKING

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak at a time when everything he thought he knew about women, and flat-sharing, and his friendships, has transformed beyond recognition, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of their broken relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him.

Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story.

I closed the book for a second in the exact same way somebody would take a second to collect themselves after being slapped in the face, except the slap was inside my heart.

I looked at two men playing badminton with each other, deep orange sun rays dancing on their moving bodies.

I looked at the trees and their leaves, dancing in the winds like dark golden medals, emitting this sound that soothes me in an instant.

I looked inside me and found the same movement: energy in motion, dancing in my solar plexus, going up to tense my throat and flood my eyes.

I wasn’t alone.

I reopened the book.

Page 3: “Reasons Why It’s Good I’m Not With Jen”.

The other lines went instantly blurry. I was crying behind my sunglasses.

I exhaled deeply. Inhaled deeply.

Books really do find you when you need them.

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Actually, this is a vision I had in 2021, just before announcing the closure of my first company to my partners, clients and community.

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In hindsight, I see this vision as an existential need to reinvent myself before tearing things down, as if I had to show that everything was smartly taken care of. That I wasn’t taking the wrong decision. That I had a plan.

A phoenix reborn before the ashes.

The cart before the horse.

I remember sitting on my white couch in the flat I used to rent to be closer to my biscuit factory. It was sunny. I was working on my computer, typing the title of a word document that felt right at the time.

“What I’ve learned in the last four years”

I couldn’t get rid of the cinnamon cookie smell in the air, on my clothes, in my hair. Even my skin smelled like cinnamon cookie. My hands hurt from all the kitchen burns. I had pain in the joints from standing all day, every day.

I started to resent it, that all-pervading scent that would stick to me and my shadow.

That word document was like jumping in the pool for the last time, both as an attempt to fully enjoy it and also never see the familiar deep waters again.

When you end something, you want to know it wasn’t all for nothing. You want to prove it wasn’t all for nothing. At least I did, because I couldn’t fathom the fact that all the pain and complete despair I felt for a year and a half leading to this conclusion could in fact be for nothing. I had to transform it into something good. Alchemise metal into gold. And at that time, transmission was the word that felt right.

It was all I had, actually.

All I had left was my experience and my ability to share it in a way that was both interesting for people and monetizable for me. Because yes, deciding to close my company was like firing myself. It was the tricky situation where continuing would eventually cost me my mental health and probably a few thousand euros; stopping would cost me my stability, my home, my livelihood and also, let’s be honest, my identity as an entrepreneur.

So I was trying to be smart about it.

And being smart was, as my mum always says, trying my best to “anticipate”.

So anticipation it was, with me pouring my brains out — and shutting down my emotions — on that little word document that I hoped would lead me somewhere brighter and safer than the cinnamon cage I built for myself.

I already was a photographer at that time, but because I worked too much on keeping my first company afloat, there was no client in sight. I didn’t actually have the energy to get creative, neither for myself nor for my clients. I was in complete survival mode. Sometimes fighting, mostly freezing.

Until I decided it was time to go.

And so here I am, a year and a half later, almost ready to birth my first online course to the world. It took a long while to get back on my feet but well, time, therapy and intentional action always seem to do their thing.

I am only a few days away from the launch and as much as I would want to control the outcome, I want to enjoy the now.

I don’t want to be smart about this one. I don’t wan’t to strategise. I don’t want to overplan. I don’t want to anticipate. I just want to fully enjoy being a vessel of creativity. I just want to share my truth. Because I know for a fact that this is how it will find its audience.

I chose photography for entrepreneurs as my theme but there’s truly all of me inside it.

It is called L'Atelier ✺ Photo.

As I write these words, I realise that all of my entrepreneurial endeavours are imbedded in this name.

“L’atelier” was the name we used to call my biscuit factory.

Seems like I’ll always get my hands dirty somehow.

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I was 25 when I really started sensing and seeing that everything is energy. I had hit a rock bottom and had to let go of what I considered my home, my base, my stability, for an unknown that felt both freeing and terrifying. I left, hoping I would find myself. And I did.

During this time, I regained access — not that it was taken from me before; I know my responsibility in all of this — to what makes my heart fizzle and cells sparkle. In no particular order: writing, photography, reading, music.

Creation.

For the first time in ages, I let my artist inner child take over the ship, and it was like coming home to a lover you hadn’t seen, touched and smelled in too long. Every waking and sleeping hour had this visceral feeling of reunion, of communion, where the now is so exhilarating you would do anything to sustain the buzz, again and again, till the end of time, as if goodbyes didn’t exist.

My base frequency was so high I felt invincible. I know now that it didn’t just magically happen on its own: action was needed on my part. Commitment, as well.

I would use every day to actively connect with what moves me. I would read for hours, tasting the last sip of every aha moment I had, a pencil in hand, scribbling, circling around words that opened doors in me I hadn’t yet seen. I would capture light with my cameras anywhere I could find it. I would write pages and pages and pages in my notebooks and computer files, so much so that I found myself to be writing a 200 pages debut novel without even thinking about it, actively manifesting my inner child calling to become a published writer. I would listen so much music that I started to write my own, with the beginner mind of someone to whom imposter syndrome doesn’t even exist.

I was a vessel for creation.

Every day, I felt a little more plugged into the high vibrations of life.

Getting to know yourself comes in layers. We are nature after all. My theory is that whenever you reach another stratum, another level of awareness into this unique game that is life, you increase your ability to hold more of it. You hold more of who you were, who you are and who you can be, and it transpires into every relationship, every creation, every interaction you have. It doesn’t just happen inside you. It beams from you. And it spreads. Most living beings are attracted to light after all.

That’s how I decide to live my life.

And right now, it means committing to a daily kundalini and movement practice, and consistently showing up for the visions I have for myself as a writer, as a photographer, and as an entrepreneur with a mission: committing to find, enhance and grow light in everything and everyone I see, everywhere I go.

The fun part is that the more I commit to what moves me, the more energy I have to keep moving and growing.

I smile as I write these words, because there is no better testimony to what I just wrote than deciding to sit down to write at breakfast this morning with a cup of coffee and sunshine rays on my face.

Cheers to nurturing and beaming light always,
x Mathilde

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I was 27 years-old when I realised I was a control freak.

It was in March or April of this year. I was sitting on my EMDR therapist’s comfy armchair, modestly pouring my little heart out on the last two years of inner and outer battle I had just started to see the end of.

When I say modestly, I mean it: I’m notoriously bad at crying in front of anyone except my boyfriend, which means I am an expert at squeezing my throat to hold back salt pearls. I’m very good at dissecting every feeling I have and every experience I have ever lived, but terrible at actually feeling the feelings and letting them go. I find it silly now because a therapist’s office should have been the perfect safe space for me to finally break down in tears and let them pour down my face and neck and shirt for more than one minute max like I’d been used to, but for some reason, it wasn’t.

We were talking about my own weakness and the injustice I felt. I was struggling with allowing myself to be a victim and owning the responsibility I had in my suffering. The more we talked, the more I disclosed the profound need I have to make things work—and more accurately to make them work the way I want them to work—, whatever the cost. On the good days it can look like being loyal and determined till the end; on the bad days, being controlling as fuck.

The more we discussed about this, the more I saw that this pattern insidiously penetrated every relationship I had ever had, professional and personal. I hadn’t yet been totally aware of its consequences on others and, at this exact moment, it made me feel like the most disrespectful and meanest person on Earth.

So on this comfy armchair, throat squeezed like the sourest lemonade, misty eyes that matched the tiny rain drops on the windows, heart sinking with shame and guilt, I made a decision.

I am done controlling things.

For real.

It’s not that ‘I’m done’ as in fed up with the whole concept of control or fed up with the things which and people who, despite my efforts, don’t conform to what I’d like to do, who I’d like them to be or how I’d like them to behave (thank god they don’t).

It’s not a loud quitting like slamming the door. If it was like that, it would be masked resistance in itself (i.e. another form of control).

It’s more of a calm, grounded and absolutely deliberate decision to make myself accountable and change a pattern that’s been engrained in my subconscious for ages: that of placing way too much energy into micromanaging everything and everyone around me.

Or in essence: resisting reality.

I’m done micromanaging, because:

1. it’s not my place 99% of the time (thanks EMDR for the accountability check);

2. it’s creating a very unpleasant internal experience for me and, I’m sure of it, others;

3. it’s simply not effective.

What’s funny is that what actually did convince me to quit micromanaging is the third statement. It’s not effective, and I see effectiveness as a part of my identity (I don’t know yet if it’s ego, or the shadow side of my gate 2 in Human Design, or the way nature harmoniously works towards efficiency in all forms—I’ll keep you posted on my findings).

Ineffectiveness actually triggers me hard, and as I’m writing this, I laugh at the fact that what triggers me hard is actually conscious ineffectiveness, because I seemed to go on with my life without taking effectiveness into account when I diligently poured my energy into projects, be them actual projects or stories I had in my head of people and what we could do together, while being absolutely unconscious of my controlling behaviour and its consequences both on myself and on others.

My favourite object is a mirror.

Because it both reflects light and shadow.

(Funny that I chose photography—the art of capturing and editing light and shadow—and writing—the art of translating into words inner and outer light and shadow—both as a career and preferred medium of expression.)

I love therapy (and especially therapists who lovingly but firmly call me on my bullshit) because it deeply fuels my essential need to evolve and shape shift into my favourite self. Turns out, learning to become my favourite self means shedding light on all the unconscious addictions I entertain; assess if they are contributing a great deal into helping me becoming who I want to be; and attempt to wean myself off them if they don’t.

My default mode of pouring all my heart and will and energy into forcing things to happen isn’t the most effective anymore, despite the fact that it’s created the reality I’ve lived in for years.

It equally feels like a bummer and a software upgrade.

I know now that this drive to steadily make things happen, to make people change, to constantly better myself is actually for the most part a safety mechanism. Making things happen was (and still is) one of the many ways I use to feel secure and cared for. I don’t hate myself for that now. I do what I can with the weapons I have, and as my therapist said: if I did what I did, it’s that some part of me was happy with the result.

But I’m not happy anymore.

I’m not happy anymore because true contentment actually lies in the act of letting go.

And it's a buzzword. Everyone talks about “surrendering” and very few actually give its instructions of use or recipe. I found some in Michael Singer’ book, Living Untethered. Surrendering doesn’t imply suppression nor expression of emotions, but rather pure, untouched, experience of them. It turns out that actually feeling the feelings is the ultimate internal cleanser.

And I haven’t been very diligent with my inner skincare routine. Or rather, I have been very good at squeezing it.

Last night I watched the final two episodes of Sex Education. (If you haven’t seen this masterpiece of a series, fucking run. There’s a 99% chance you will be a better person after watching it.) It was Halloween, and even though I didn’t watch Harry Potter and get all witchy and stuffed with candy as I thought I would, I did find some magic in the frames I saw, and purification in the tears I shed.

Basically, I am Jean Milburn. The mother figure, the older sister, the therapist, the communicator, the micromanager. And if she’s able to ask for help; if she’s able to finally accept reality and let go of the reins she firmly has hold on to her whole life; I can, too.

Forcing things for people’s own good (or more precisely what I see as people’s own good) isn’t love, it’s entitlement. And what really changed in me is the direction at which I decide to point my entitlement: directly at my own face, where it belongs.

It’s humbling, for sure, but it’s the only way to go.

One might as well begin to like it.

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