Allison Keating

in her own words…

I feel like I’m attending a meeting but here it goes, my name is Allison Keating and I am…. well, I’m lots of things. I was never one for boxes and I remember in my twenties doing an aptitude test that was supposed to highlight your strengths and interests. I was told in no uncertain terms my new and flustered boss that I ‘must have done the test wrong’. ‘Why?’ I asked, ‘well, you couldn’t possibly like science and art and all those other things that don’t match or mix. You are either academic or arty, you can’t be both’ I was told. I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to simultaneously be in different boxes, or Heaven forbid, love things that upset and rocked this futile tick- the- box exercise.

If you ask my husband, he can name nine different versions of me, and he is so right. I do love ar,t and as a kid, I wanted to be a gymnast/architect/fashion designer but at my core, I always knew I wanted to be a Psychologist.

I love the idea of being liminal in terms of knowledge, and being allowed to not be defined by one aspect of ourselves or for how we think we should be for, or to, others. We are a kaleidoscope of all of our experiences and we don’t fit into one neat box, which I argued defiantly with my new boss in my ‘how very dare you’ twenty-year-old voice.

We play so many roles as the seasons come and go, and allowing room for your personal preferences as you grow, adapt and change is vital to staying true to our authentic selves. This belief is what is at the core of who I am and what I love to do. I hear so many times a day ‘I don’t know who I am anymore’; a deep ache in women as they realize they have lost some integral part of who they know they really are.

Women, and all that being a woman encompasses, is integral to my life and work. As a mother to three girls, a daughter with three sisters, and a niece to seven aunts, the feminine psyche is alive and strong in me.

As a true Gemini, I love mental space and air; I need space in my head and heart to just be who I am, not who I think I ‘should be’. Allowing others the same space to make up their own mind is vital for all of our collective growth.