A love letter to my 37 year old liberated self
written by Francesca Filippa
Self liberation to me is to embark on a mission to break free from social conditioning to live one’s own unique truth. The definition of social conditioning is:
‘The sociological process of training individuals in a society to act or respond in a manner generally approved by the society in general and peer groups within society. The concept is stronger than that of socialization, which refers to the process of inheriting norms, customs and ideologies.’
This is an anecdotal and declarative love letter sharing a liberatingly definitive year of going my own way, making my own rules to live by, and celebrating all of the things that my peers and society might never celebrate in me. This is a love letter to the year that I stood in new beliefs and ideologies that cultivated feelings of deep self belonging and true happiness. This is a love letter to myself for the year I chose to go all in on an existence that is wholly based on radical self permission to live my truth. May it inspire you to live yours.
I have felt the acute weight of having to repeatedly question and push back against my conditioning as a woman and creative this year. Two days before my 38th birthday last week, I found myself unexpectedly writing a love letter to my 37 year old self in my daily morning creative writing practice. What poured onto the page were reflections and celebrations on a year that had confronted me with endless opportunities to stand in the truth of who I really am and who I need to be in my own sacred life. This love letter to my own freedom is something that has been building increasing momentum in my belly and spirit for the last 3 years and has finally erupted into searing, terrifying and liberating clarity in my heart and body-mind. As a recovering people pleaser who had looked outside of myself for approval and answers for most of my life until my early 30s, this process of self liberation has now crystallised into self actualisation. Here are some raw truths of a year that saw me claiming and expressing who I really am. 37, I already grieve you as I love and leave you.
37 was the year you fully decided to be the woman and human you came to be no matter what or who it cost.
37 was the year you decided to be what you came here to be, free.
37 was the year you finally made the choice to put yourself first on all levels- a highly uncomfortable edge that asked you to sacrifice the multiple layers of the people pleaser to be in service to show up as the truth speaker. You started the year with fierce intention and chose your health after another burn out by writing an anti-new year manifesto in your native land of Scotland. You took a strong anti-capitalist stance at the start of the Gregorian calendar when everybody was regurgitating the bullshit consumerist self improvement mantra ‘New Year New You’, you rebelled by remembering your root truth and vowed to forever mark the New Year at Imbolc on February 1st as your Celtic Ancestors did. You made your first DIY poster and protested that creatives will cure capitalism. I see your wise rebel spirit and celebrate the courage this took as a freelance service provider who runs her own business to free yourself from the pressure to sell a version of yourself that would have betrayed your personal morals and health.
37 was the year you allowed yourself to consciously “disappear” and immersed in a self-initiated artist residency, albeit working at the same time to put food on the table and pay the bills. You unhooked from social media noise to be able to hear your own voice and answer a deep ache after realising you had abandoned your core creative identity of music. You had to look at an uncomfortable truth of uplifting everyone else’s wellbeing and creativity before your own and always putting your own artistry second or 3rd. You stopped teaching at weekends and shifted the way you lead your creativity community venture to make space for art and love. I see and celebrate the courage this took to reclaim yourself as an artist before you are a teacher or an activist and to truly see it is not selfish to make your own art a priority- especially being conditioned as a woman who is programmed to care take and sacrifice her own needs for the sake of others. I see the radical self regard and celebrate the trust it took to do this in a capitalist world that tells you that being an artist and creative has to be a side hustle or an afterthought. Well it does not, you are doing it and I’m fucking proud of you.
37 was the year you were confronted with the “it’s too late, I’m too old” narrative that female artists have been plagued by since time infinitum. You momentarily forgot your power, cried aching soul grief sobs, reached out to other successful female artists in their 30s to remind you of who the fuck you are and chose to disrupt the limiting belief that age is an obstacle for a woman, especially in the arts. You became a woman that admits her age when society tells her to stay pretty and youthful. I see how vulnerable this is and the immense strength it takes to disrupt the life long pattern of intense and crippling self shaming that repeatedly caused you to try to fix yourself and hide. I celebrate you as a woman in her late 30s who declares her age as wise, powerful and truthful, and by standing in that truth as an act of defiance, you know you will now be part of the cultural movement of brave women shifting a distracted society obsessed with youth into de-centering looks and activate more women into claiming who they came here to be- BLAZINGLY WISE AND TERRIFYINGLY FREE.
37 was the year you called in your soul mate band mate after aching for it for 16 years since you came to London to be a singer and artist. He came in when you chose to go all the way in on your art, he matched that all in energy of your devotion to your primary creative expression and rewrote all the stories that you would never find a committed collaborator to put your biggest life long dream of music in motion. I see and honour you answering the aches to sing and scream and getting still enough to listen to the medicine messages that dropped in in lyrical hooks by taking the time to look and really see who you came here to be. You have always been a kick ass front woman of rock and soul here to devotionally disrupt and fuck things up in the name of truth and love. I see your unwavering devotion to honour your gifts, talents and soul’s callings and celebrate your reignited fire to perform on festival stages with a bandmate who shares the same ache. I see and honour the vulnerability it takes to let yourself believe that your music dream is possible again. I celebrate the social life you have sacrificed and how fucking hard you have worked this year on old and new songs to get them ready to perform and record. Hunter And Her is now a band you did it!!
37 was the year you vulnerably opened yourself up to the fact that you are indeed Queer, and despite feeling like an imposter you were welcomed into the queer community with open arms. You found bone deep belonging in your wise ancestor Bell Hooks words:
“…queer as not about who you’re having sex with, that can be a dimension of it, but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
37 was the year you chose to love a beautiful Polish man with a heart that spoke prayers of care into your bones that made up for all the men that objectified and manipulated you. He made you see that all the work you have done in one to one romantic relating was not in vain. That your long held vision of standing side by side with a conscious and kind man, open arms, soft flesh whilst holding your own is indeed a reality you can co-create with patience, trust and devotion and is a testament to how much you have grown in the area that has caused you such pain.
37 was the year you learned love isn’t enough in romantic relationship, truth is, and you will never settle no matter how close you get and how gut wrenchingly painful that is. His love grew you but you were only supposed to walk together for a while. He loved your vulnerability as equally as he loved your wild. He nurtured your home and soul with his hands and made you pickle soup when you were sick. He sat in conscious ceremony with you and planted seeds of devotion and was mature enough to love you for who are, not who he wanted you to be. He helped you stand more in your deepest truth and healed an inner conflict that has haunted you for the last 5 years. He helped you see that you do not want to be a conventional mother in any form and that you do not need to justify this choice to anyone, not even your own family. You are eternally grateful to his healing mirror that helped you finally be set free from a role of motherhood that is not who you are called to be. I thank you, my love, my ally, you will forever be in my heart, apart. The body shaking grief of our ending wasn’t like the others, your love was a gift that showed me the energetic difference between grieving real love and being triggered by old relational trauma. Grieving real love is healing as it rewrote the false stories embedded in my cells that I could never be loved well or honoured and deeply respected by a man as my true self. The most mature relationship from beginning to end, love you forever my Angel and I know you will always be there for me as I will for you.
37 was the year you learned you have nothing to prove and that you have works of declarative art you are burning to share that terrified you and liberated you to make, and no doubt will do the same when you release them into the world in the coming 6 months. I see and celebrate the immense courage it takes to make authentic art and share your soul with others.
37 was the year you chose to value your voice and make some necessary noise. I see the work you did to unhook from impostor syndrome as a woman and artist and celebrate you showing up in this way to share your voice and make a valuable contribution to society.
37 was the year you learned that you have a humanitarian mission and creative ambition for yourself and culture that is way bigger than you ever knew. I see your unwavering commitment to expand your comfort zone and face every layer of fear of judgement in being truly seen, so you may realise your individual and collective dreams. I see all the sacrifice, patience, dedication and determination behind the scenes to nurture a soul-led grass roots business from the ground up. I celebrate you for valuing yourself and making a long term financial investment in creative mentoring to help you develop your vision and to hold you through the days when you lack inner faith. I celebrate all the ways nobody sees you backing yourself and working up the courage to take up more space to make a really good living from your art and an ethical, sustainable business that uplifts yours and the collective wellbeing. You are nearly there for the rebirth of your 18 month old creative baby that is flourishing from its founding community members you deeply cherish as friends, teachers and allies who have stood side by side with you through this wild ride. Keep going darling!
37 was the year you did deep deep inner child work to honour and re-nurture your 7 year old, 14 year old, 17 year old, 25 year old, 29 year old and 33 year old selves. You vowed to always nurture and live your deepest truth for them. I see and celebrate your devotion to accepting and loving yourself like a mother to her own child.
This has been such a healing process to reflect and share my lived experiences of a year that saw me realise I will never fit into normative notions of happiness and success a woman and an artist. I had to course correct, stand in my own unique truths, so that all past versions of myself could be liberated from false identities that were in fact the conditioning of who family and society expected me to be. I am still learning to release the need to explain or justify my life choices. Practising giving vulnerable voice to them in private circles is now becoming unapologetic in public- another edge that I am in deep trust will open me up to more of my true people; a risk I am willing to take because I have learned and experienced over and over that expressing who I truly am is a basic human need and invites others to do the same. Authentic creative community is my deepest love language and a form of abundance and true success that is all that really matters to me. I see and celebrate my bravery in getting to know myself, own myself and let myself be known to find those who feel like home. Instead of settling in love, shapeshifting into socio-normative roles of a woman or waiting for the world to change to celebrate me as a female artist, I have chosen to liberate myself from the prison of external approval. Instead of waiting for the mainstream to accept my identity and life choices, I choose to co-create this queer Hunter And Her community space of authentic artistry where I celebrate myself, am celebrated by others who love and accept the the real me and we stand together as a reciprocal force of support and solidarity.
I have so many more stories and art to share from my heart and soul.
38, here we fuckin go.