September has been a month of birthdays and anniversaries in our family. These occasions are supposed to be happy. We gather the people we love, acknowledge another year and celebrate the memories we have created together. Yet milestones can also bring emotions we do not always expect—or understand. A birthday, in particular, can bring up far more than excitement about presents, cake or getting older. Some people love their birthday. Others feel unusually emotional, anxious, flat or...
18 days ago • 4 min read
Yesterday, while I waited for my take away coffee, I watched a lady apologise for taking three hours to reply to a message. Not three days or three weeks. Three hours. It made me wonder when we started believing that being reachable meant we needed to be constantly available. You might recognise it in yourself. You see a message come through while you're doing something else and immediately feel that little pull to respond. You notice an email sitting unanswered and mentally add it to the...
25 days ago • 4 min read
There are things about ourselves we rarely think to question. The way we see success. The kind of life we believe we should have. How hard we think we need to work. What makes someone a good parent, partner or friend. How much money is enough. Whether rest needs to be earned. What we believe about relationships, family, happiness, failure, money, our bodies and even ourselves. They can feel so deeply ours that we assume we chose them. But how much of who you are did you actually choose? Long...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
There is an entire industry built around helping us become better versions of ourselves. Be more disciplined. More productive. More confident. More successful. Wake earlier. Exercise more. Think positively. Set better boundaries. Build better habits. Find your purpose. None of those things are necessarily bad. But I think we’ve got the order wrong. We keep trying to improve ourselves before we’ve taken the time to understand ourselves. For years, I did exactly that. If something in my life...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
There are moments when we doubt ourselves without even realising we are doing it. It can happen so quickly that we barely notice. We feel something, sense something, experience something, or simply know something to be true — and then, almost immediately, we begin talking ourselves out of it. Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe I'm imagining things. Maybe I'm being too sensitive. Maybe there's another explanation. Maybe I've got it wrong. And just like that, we move away from what we knew and...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
I designed our dream home. When the plans were finished, my husband looked at me and smiled. "Well... you've designed it. Now you can build it." He wasn't suggesting I pick up a hammer. He meant managing the entire project. We had renovated 3 homes previously, but I had never done anything remotely like this. So I accepted the challenge, and that's what I did. For the next four years, while continuing to see clients one-on-one, I project managed every stage of the build. Hundreds of...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Today, I want to explore one of the most confusing experiences of adult life: when you've done everything right on the outside, but something quietly feels missing on the inside. If you've ever wondered why success, security or achievement haven't brought the fulfilment you expected, understanding this could completely change the way you see yourself. The problem is that most of us assume something is wrong with our life, when often that's not where the disconnect actually is. The emptiness...
3 months ago • 3 min read
It was September 2022 when one of my very first paying clients sat across from me looking deeply uncomfortable. Let's call her Anita. She wasn't crying. She wasn't angry. Nothing dramatic had happened. If you'd met her that morning, you would have thought she was doing just fine. Yet something had brought her to my office. She shifted in her chair, searching for words that didn't seem to exist. Eventually she sighed. "I don't even know why I'm here." She laughed nervously before continuing....
3 months ago • 3 min read