They say the best stories start at the beginning, but we all know that ain’t necessarily so. The best stories throw you into the into the dragon-fighting, dying-on-a-clifftop action before you’ve barely skimmed the dedication to Mom and Dad. So let’s start like that. Only with less dying on a clifftop (there may or may not be dragons).
We’re the Anwyn Family. We first realised that our physical body had a whole freaking bunch of drivers in our mid-teens. At first we thought we were crazy. Who wouldn’t? After all, like you we’d been bought up on Jekyll and Hyde and Harvey Dent. We told a few close friends, relaxed a little around them, and found that honestly? A little weird isn’t the end of the world with the right people.
But the social pressure to be "right" is strong, so, we spent the next fourteen years hiding it, giving us a timeline that goes a little like this:
- Graduated with an MA (hons) in English Literature
- Worked as everything from a document controller to a college tutor to a copywriter
- Changed how we presented ourselves to the world many times, trying to find a way that fit the “one body one mind” paradigm
- Got involved in our local communities here and there by way of a forest school, elderly aid and mental health services
- Tried to force ourselves to have one person be in charge and hide everyone else, because that was “right” and “normal”
- Burned out at least five times because we were forcing ourselves into a way of being that was unhealthy, despite “accepted wisdom” telling us we were unhealthy for simply being ourselves
- Facilitated a good handful of spiritual / self development workshops
- Changed our name, sometimes legally, a whole lot of times trying to find a way to fit who “we” were into one person
We’d done it. We’d told people and the world hadn’t ended. So we went a step further. It no longer mattered if "I" was a whiz in the kitchen one day and could burn water the next. And if our laugh never came out the same way twice and people noticed the differences between the shy sweet person one day and the opinionated rabble rouser the next? Well, that was ok too.
That was when we swore that no matter how hard, we would never hide who we were out of fear of not being accepted again. Real self acceptance is the point at which life truly begins.
