Daily Alchemy

Spring is stirring... After the inwardness of winter, something begins to shift.
Light returns. Energy rises. We feel the pull to move, create, connect.

The Spring Equinox is a threshold... a moment of balance between light and dark, rest and movement, stillness and emergence.

And perhaps we can meet this season in the same way.

With a little more spaciousness.
A little more play.
A little more willingness to follow what wants to move.

This Sunday, we’ll gather at Cherchernz for two hours of movement, drawing, writing, rest and connection.

A space to tend to yourself while being alongside others.
To awaken creativity.
To move at your own pace.
To connect without needing to perform, achieve or have it all figured out.

I’m an advocate for collective care... there is something deeply nourishing about being together while still having space to be ourselves.

🌿 The Gathering Place
Sunday 27 September
2–4pm
@ Chercher, 17 Parere Street, Whakatū/Nelson

Come as you are.
Move, create, connect.

$15–20 sliding scale.
All ages, bodies and abilities welcome.

The scars of your past may have taught you to cling to what feels familiar, even when it asks you to dim your own light.

To fear the darkness of being alone more than the quiet ache of disappearing inside a relationship.

But as you heal, something begins to shift.

You start to understand that love was never meant to require the abandonment of yourself.

That choosing yourself isn't selfish.
That having needs doesn't make you difficult.
That walking away from what diminishes you isn't failure.

Like the moon emerging from a long eclipse, you begin to see yourself again.

Your own desires.
Your own voice.
Your own wild, beautiful aliveness.

You learn to nurture your own soil.
To honour your own boundaries.
To trust that the right connections won't require you to disappear in order to belong.

Because the deepest freedom isn't found in never needing anyone.

It's found in knowing that you can love deeply, belong deeply, and still remain wholly your own.💛

Where might you be abandoning yourself because you're afraid of losing someone else?

One of the unexpected gifts of living with my family for four months has been noticing how quickly old versions of ourselves can reappear.

You can spend years doing your inner work…

learning, growing, changing your patterns, becoming more conscious.

And then…

you visit your family. 🫣

…and suddenly you’re the peacemaker again.
The responsible one.
The one who explains.
The one who anticipates everyone else’s needs.

🙃

It’s such a strange experience... knowing you’re not that person anymore, and yet feeling how easily an old version of you can still find you.

It got me thinking about the stories we carry about one another.

The roles we fall into.
The expectations.
The assumptions.
The versions of ourselves that were formed in particular relationships and particular seasons of our lives.

Sometimes the people who know us best also know us through our history.

They remember who we were.

And sometimes growing means allowing the people who have known us longest to discover that we’ve changed.

Not necessarily by walking away.

But by staying present enough to be seen differently.

To speak from who we are now.

To let an old story become incomplete.

To make room for something more honest.

Perhaps growing isn't always about becoming someone new.

Sometimes it's about becoming free enough to let the people who have known us longest meet the person we have become. ❤️

Does anyone else find that being around family can bring out an old version of you... even when you’ve done a LOT of work on yourself?

I’m curious… what version of you tends to show up? 👇

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between being understood and being at peace.

For a long time, I thought being misunderstood was something I needed to fix.

If someone had the wrong idea about me, I wanted to explain.

If there was conflict, I wanted to find the words that would make everything make sense.

If someone was hurt or disappointed, I could find myself searching for the perfect explanation that might change how they saw me.

But I'm beginning to understand that sometimes the endless explaining isn't actually about communication.

Sometimes it's about wanting to be seen as a good person.

Wanting to be forgiven.
Wanting to be understood.
Wanting to control how someone holds me in their mind.

And there comes a point where the desire to be understood can quietly become another way of abandoning myself.

I'm learning that I can listen without taking on someone else's version of me.

I can take responsibility for what is mine without carrying what isn't.

I can acknowledge another person's experience without making it the truth of my own.

And perhaps most importantly, I can allow someone to misunderstand me without rushing in to correct them.

This isn't always comfortable.

There is something deeply vulnerable about accepting that someone may hold a version of me that I don't recognise… and knowing I don't have to chase them down to change it.

I'm learning that I can be misunderstood and still remain rooted in myself.

I can disappoint someone and still be a good person.

I can make choices that others don't agree with and still trust my own knowing.

I can walk away without needing everyone to agree with my reasons.

There is a deep freedom in no longer needing everyone to understand my choices in order for me to trust them.

Sometimes peace isn't found in finally being understood.

Sometimes it comes from knowing myself well enough that I no longer need to be. 🌀

I've been quiet here for a while. 106 days, to be exact.

Life carried me across the Tasman to Melbourne, where I spent time caring for my family through one of the most profound seasons of our lives.

There has been grief, tenderness, love, and the kind of outward change that has set something in motion within me… reverberating through my sense of self and quietly reshaping how I see my life, my relationships, and who I am becoming.

I've returned home with a heart that isn't quite the same.

One of the greatest lessons this season has offered me is this:

There comes a point in healing where my peace becomes more important than being understood.

For so many years I believed that if I could just explain myself more clearly, love more deeply, try a little harder, people would finally understand my heart.

Now I see that the people who are able to meet me with love rarely require me to convince them of my worth.

This season of adversity has changed the way I experience relationships.

Not because I've become harder.

But because I've become more honest.

I'm learning that awakening isn't about becoming someone new. It's about gently releasing the parts of myself that abandoned my own truth in order to belong.

Over the coming weeks I'd love to share some reflections from this season… on grief, relationships, boundaries, nervous system healing, and what it means to return home to myself.

If you've ever felt yourself changing in ways that others don't understand, perhaps this conversation is for you.
🤍

This weekend we move through the Autumn Equinox, a moment of balance between light and dark, and a natural point in the year to pause and reflect.

In my own life, and in the work I share with clients, I’ve been noticing how often the body is communicating long before we fully understand what is happening.

Sometimes it shows up as tension, heaviness, or a quiet sense that something isn’t quite right.

Other times it’s more subtle. A feeling, a pull, something we can’t quite name.

The body holds so much of our experience.
And when we slow down enough to listen, something begins to shift.

This image came from a time where I was exploring the stories living in my own heart. As layers of protection softened, threads of joy, grief, and longing began to reveal themselves.
Creativity can become a powerful doorway into what the body is holding.

If you feel called this weekend, you might take a few quiet moments with a journal or some colours and simply let something emerge.

Then gently reflect:

What do I notice?
What do I feel?
What might this be showing me?

No need to analyse or make sense of it. Just notice.

This kind of listening is something we explore more deeply in my upcoming Mythical Body retreat through movement, creativity, and ritual.

If you’re curious, feel free to reach out 🤍

Over the years I’ve noticed something about the way many women move through the world.

They are thoughtful. Self-aware. Often deeply reflective about their inner lives.

Many of them have spent years learning about themselves... understanding their patterns, exploring their histories, and developing language for the experiences that have shaped them.

And yet, when we begin to slow down enough to listen to the body, there is often a quiet moment of surprise.

A realisation that the body has been holding far more than the mind has noticed.

Many of us were taught, often without realising it, to override the first signals the body offers.

The subtle tightening in the chest that says something isn’t quite right.
The heaviness that asks for rest.
The instinctive no that arises before the mind has had time to explain why.

Instead of listening, we learn to keep going.

To be accommodating.
To be capable.
To be the one who can hold everything together.

Over time this becomes second nature.

We push through tiredness.
We reinterpret discomfort.
We convince ourselves that what the body is communicating is something to manage, rather than something to be curious about.

The mind becomes very skilled at explaining our experience.

Meanwhile the body quietly carries the sensations that were never fully felt.

None of this is a personal failing.

These habits are often shaped by the environments we grow up in and the roles many women are asked to carry. Learning to override sensation can become a way of maintaining connection, keeping the peace, or simply getting through what life asks of us.

But there often comes a moment when the body begins asking for something different.

A slower pace.
A deeper kind of listening.
A willingness to notice the signals that were once easy to ignore.

This is often where the real work of reconnection begins.

Spaces like Mythical Body exist to support that return.

Through movement, reflection, myth and ritual, we begin to explore what the body has been holding — and what it might be ready to release or transform.

Not through force or fixing.

But through curiosity, presence, and learning how to listen again.

If you’re curious about the retreat or wondering whether it might be a good fit for you, feel free to send me a message and I’m happy to share more details.