LabelLess Living
what label might define your life right
now and if you’re kind of thinking what
do you mean by labels let me run a few
by you old
young
gay straight married single
fit
sick you kind of get the idea right what
i’ve noticed in my life is that
labels sometimes come into our neurology
without us even noticing they go
underneath the radar and what happens is
they kind of affect how we show up in
the world
being told you have cancer is not
anything you can really ever plan for
and yet in 2014 i was diagnosed with
kidney cancer
and with that came three labels really
quickly one was cancer patient one was
cancer victim and the other was cancer
sufferer
now at some level the cancer patient
kind of serves because it allows you to
be put into a box medicated and treated
which i’m really grateful for but the
cancer sufferer and cancer victim
definitely not
what i decided to do was develop
something that would allow me to decide
what labels would i accept and what
labels would i delete and i’m going to
share that with you in a second
what i decided to do once i was
diagnosed with that disease was to
embark on it with a label of being an
adventurer i’d never been into hospital
before let alone had surgery so it was
kind of like how do i want to view this
i went in with the eyes of an adventurer
and i asked the anesthetist on the
morning of surgery if i could go down to
the operating theater and see what it
looked like she agreed and was really
pleased she did
we went in and i met the team the
operating theater was like super super
shiny it was like walking into a star
wars movie and the table that they were
going to operate on was so tiny i was
like how i’m on earth am i even going to
stay on there and she was like oh don’t
worry we’ll strap you down
so learning to have that label was
really helpful to me because it allowed
me to experience it totally differently
now let me share with you how i use the
delete button the very first time
whilst i was in hospital a lady came to
visit me and she was telling me about
this documentary she’d seen where
another lady had given away a kidney to
somebody that really needed it
she also shared with me that apparently
when the human body loses an organ
then the human body can go into a deep
decline and become really depressed and
i am like at what level is this serving
me and i use my delete button and this
is kind of how it goes you imagine the
big red button you imagine the white
lettering across it that says delete and
this is what you do inside your head
delete delete delete as loud as you can
inside your head and imagine that button
kind of lighting up each time you’re
actively and consciously deleting the
label that you don’t want to accept
it’s important you do it inside your
head though otherwise that would be kind
of a bit weird i imagine that you come
home from work you’re absolutely
exhausted and your six-year-old comes up
to you they’re really excited to see and
they want to play
and you’re like i need to do a few
emails and then i’m i’m totally there
for them you remember that in a magazine
you were flicking through earlier that
day there was a map of the world so you
rip it out you tear the map of the world
up into tiny pieces you put it on the
floor and you’ve made like a little
homemade jigsaw
you give your six-year-old the tape to
stick it back together again and you
make it fun for them and you say when
you’ve done that i’ll be totally here we
can play a game you see life is a little
like that it’s deciding which pieces do
we want to stick together so that it
becomes the fabric of our life with the
labels that we choose to have
i remember a time when i didn’t have my
delete button i was working for estdale
order in rackham’s bradford selling
lipsticks and fragrance i had a lovely
time but one of the things i wanted to
do was to have a career with them i was
19 years of age i was told i was way too
young
but yet i got a job working as a
training executive
i was the youngest training executive in
the estee lauder corporation to be
promoted at that time
and
at some level i always believed that i
was a little bit too young even though i
excelled even though i did a great job
i often wonder
what life would have been like if i
hadn’t had that label installed another
time a label affected me when i didn’t
have my delete button was when i met and
fell in love with keith
i was told he was way too old he was
older than me and even though we got
married and we had this wonderful life
together at some level i believe that
that was true at some level i believed
that he was too old
i do a lot of things for charity and
some crazy events and one of the events
that i did was run across portugal which
is a marathon a day for seven days and
you get a sense the type of labels that
were sort of installed or attempted to
be installed was you’re going to get
injured you can’t do that it’s too hard
for you not at your age i was 41. so you
can imagine delete delete delete none of
that serves you when you’ve got to run a
marathon every single day for seven days
the other label i got was crazy lady
which i kind of quite liked so i didn’t
delete that
now
when i was in hospital in christchurch
if somebody tapped me on the shoulder
and said a year tomorrow
you’re going to lose your husband keith
i would never have believed them
and yet a year and a day later i lost my
beautiful husband keith and a new label
came with that the label of a widow
delete delete delete that did not serve
me people treated me differently people
looked at me differently people didn’t
talk about the future
it was a label that was definitely not
going to serve me i was running around
the lake here in queenstown beautiful
lake hayes with my gorgeous friend vicki
and as i’m following her she stopped in
her tracks i practically ran into her
and she said amanda your life is like a
beautiful canvas one half of it has been
painted it’s rich it’s textured and
that’s up until the point that keith
passed away and the other half is
completely blank you can put whatever
you like on that and trust me i got my
designer label kit out and i started to
put in labels there like magician i
wanted to have some magic in my life i
want to go to burning man i wanted to
fall in love again i wanted to be a
hopeless romantic
now somebody that has had three
long-term relationships won 10 years
with a really hot fireman
one five years and then sadly divorce
and then won 19 years with beautiful
keith and all with men
would have the label of being straight
right
except this time i fell in love with a
woman
and the immediate label i was given was
oh you’re gay
delete delete delete i’m not gay i’m not
straight i’m amanda i just happened to
fall in love with a soul that happens to
be attached to a female body
and therefore
being in control of those labels really
allows you to navigate your life on your
terms even my lovely mum said to me
amanda you’re not gay you’re grieving
delete delete delete
at no level is that going to serve me
creating your life on your terms means
you get to choose which label you want
to have in your life sarah and i got
married in portugal in 2016. beautiful
wedding at a vineyard there we even went
to burning man for our honeymoon which
was absolutely epic
and then we decided we wanted to have a
family now
when you’re 52
and you start to share with people that
you’re gonna go on an ivf journey and
have children trust me that label of
you’re too old comes right into place
delete delete delete at no level is that
going to help us the ivf journey another
label that’s hard delete delete delete
doesn’t serve us at all and yet we
embarked on that journey and the label
we chose was an adventure that was fun
that was eventually going to get us what
we wanted and boy did it
on the 9th of may
2019 two beautiful baby boys noah and
jasper were born in invercargill new
zealand
we were a family and with that came a
new label
same sex family sarah and i were a
little bit too busy with twin boys we
didn’t get out the delete button we
didn’t delete that
and questions we got asked were
who’s the dad
every child deserves to have a father
we’ve used our delete button so many
times
to navigate our life on our terms
to create the fabric of our life out of
the labels that we want to include and
delete the ones that we don’t want
i’d really encourage you to do the same
thing
now that six-year-old finishes that map
of the world so quickly you’re like oh
my goodness how did they do that so fast
you’re not even through your first email
and you say my goodness you put the map
of the world together and the
six-year-old looks at you and says no
it was really easy
all i needed to do was stick the lady
that was on the back of the map stick
her back together and once she was back
together
the world took care of itself