The awakening process isn’t just an unlearning and relearning that happens in the mind. We aren’t like aircraft jettisonning tainted fuel and being topped up in flight from pristine tankers with new official facts.

Every part of your personal and family history is open to reinterpretation. The cultural icons, norms, routines that defined ordinary life suddenly change or lose meaning. Relationships you thought were sound and dependable vanish or flip. What attracted or motivated you may quickly seem empty; things that looked dull or backward gain value.

I have jumped career, and my old world of jetting about to telecoms conferences is like a mirage. Sexuality, food, entertainment, addictions, sports, hobbies… so much change to process. I feel like I am part of an alien invasion, yet of the very terrain where I was born.

And it is only just getting started!