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Thesimisola
Reasoner. Writer. Poet...

“This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what its causal nature [or form]? And what is it doing in the world? And how long does it subsist?”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.11
Thesimisola is a space for essays and poetry exploring philosophy, belonging, and epistemology, questions of who we are, where we come from, and how we choose to live.
A sanctuary for whispered musings from the soul.
Echoes


Conversation As Part of Healing
We are constantly told that talking is the key to emotional recovery. "Reach out," they say. "Open up. Share what you are carrying with someone." Indeed, there is truth in that advice. Externalising our thoughts can break down the walls of isolation that trauma and pain so often erect. Because of this, we tend to measure healing by how much we have talked, assuming that if you aren't explaining your pain to a friend, a partner, or a therapist, you aren't doing the work. But c
Oct 153 min read


Eating in Alignment
I used to think of food as fuel. Calories in, energy out. It is a neat idea, but it leaves out most of what happens at the table. For years I lived mostly in my head and my spirit. I read, I prayed, I thought things through. This year I decided to pay a different kind of attention to the body, and food was where I started. That's when I truly saw what eating is really about, on a soul level. Why alignment Diet culture emphasises discipline. Give up this, deny that, earn your
Oct 52 min read


Understanding Healing and Recovery
We often use healing and recovery as synonyms but they are quite different things. I believe understanding where you are on each is the key to moving past survival and into wholeness. Healing Healing has to do with your internal state of being; it's your inner process of becoming whole. The focus of healing is internal repair, transformation and resolution. Healing asks: How safe do you feel in your mind? How whole do you feel in your body? How integrated do you feel inside y
Sep 234 min read


Approaching Vulnerability After Healing and Recovery
I think vulnerability is one of the most accurate measures of courage we possess. To be vulnerable is to be seen fully, in your true form, and without control of the audience's response. When you're recovering from trauma or hyper-vigilance, that can be scary. Sometimes, even triggering. So you spend a long time waiting for permission to express. Unless every connection was a therapist, how do relationships thrive in emotional silence? Now generally, this can be a good thing,
Sep 163 min read


On Belonging to Yourself
Belonging to yourself is an act of historical and structural reclamation, and not just a mindset shift
Aug 302 min read


The Religion of Alignment & Acceptance
Someone asked me what I practise recently. Now I’ve always been curious and therefore open-minded. So naturally, I’ve long expanded my belief system way beyond the confines of religious doctrines. I’m omnist leaning but I wouldn’t call myself a complete pluralist. So I thought briefly and said “I practise alignment and acceptance.” Today I get to put that to paper. Alignment Alignment shifts the focus from striving to resonance. Most of us are taught to construct a life throu
Aug 233 min read


You Won’t Be Sad Forever
You won’t be sad forever. Don’t do anything rash. If you’re in it right now, hold onto that sentence before anything else here. Everything below is proof, not theory. The Unnaming There’s a point in real pain where people around you start reaching for words to explain what’s happening — Depression, loneliness, antisocial... Sometimes none of them fit, and refusing a label isn’t denial, it’s accuracy. Loneliness implies absence; no people, no company, no witness. But what this
Aug 134 min read


On Guardedness, Body and Soul
We often think of weight as a purely mechanical equation. Calories in, calories out, willpower against appetite. Biology-wise, that’s not wrong. But it overlooks how guarded you’re willing to be, at the deepest level of who you are, and what that guardedness costs the body over time. Guardedness is not a metaphor. It is a physical stance. One that begins somewhere less visible than in the body, it’s in the part of you where you decide, moment to moment, if it’s safe to be ful
Aug 53 min read


The Freedom You Forge: Beyond Innocence and Survival
There is a fragile freedom given to us at the beginning of life. Fragile, because it exists only so long as we do not know how heavy the world can be. It is the lightness of a clean slate; untested, unearned, and unexamined. Therefore, easily broken by the first real weight we are forced to carry. When that innocence inevitably shatters, we build survival tactics in its place. We adapt. We construct walls and navigate the world through defense mechanisms designed to keep us s
Jul 283 min read


The Rhetoric of Sacrifice
There is a difference between sacrifice and the announcement of sacrifice, and almost everything worth understanding about the concept lives in that gap. Real sacrifice tends to be quiet. The parent who loses sleep for a newborn does not, as a rule, narrate the sleep loss; the exhaustion simply gets absorbed into the fact of loving the child. The friend who quietly covers for you, who gives up an evening or a sum of money or a plan of their own, often never mentions it. When
Jul 213 min read


The Substance of Elite Reproduction
This is part two of a deep dive. If you missed the first part on how the internet democratised aspiration without democratising arrival, catch up here. In exploring how the internet created a form of meritocratic opportunity while leaving the substance of elite reproduction intact, we must examine this substance. Elite reproduction is the process by which advantage perpetuates itself across generations without appearing to do so. Transmitting in forms that don’t look like adv
Jun 282 min read


The internet is a chance for the masses to extract from each other in an attempt to aspire to elite status.
The internet democratised aspiration without democratising arrival. Millions of people now have access to the tools, aesthetics, and self-presentation strategies once reserved for the culturally elite, yet the structural conditions that produce actual elite status (capital, networks, credentials, inherited taste) remain largely intact. So what you get is a kind of aspirational mimicry at scale, where everyone is performing a slightly elevated version of themselves for an audi
Jun 272 min read


The Unbecoming
You’ll never embody values you despise. If you’re a bit objective, you’ll recognise it for what it is. Even so, your disdain will blind you to its worth, so you’ll never truly embody it. The key is to unlearn what you knew, unbecome who you were. And then, your journey begins
Nov 16, 20231 min read
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