Writings & Musings
Rested. Rooted. Radiant.
Insight and inspiration on living unhurried lives, overcoming feminine burnout, reclaiming our radiance and self-sovereignty and embracing our brilliance.
Cultivating “Radical” Hope When We Don't Know What Comes Next
There are many times in our lives when the path in front of us becomes unclear and difficult to see.
Perhaps a relationship has ended, our health has changed, our work feels uncertain, our children are leaving home, or something we had hoped for doesn't come to fruition.
We find ourselves standing at the edge of a new chapter without knowing what that chapter might hold.
These times can feel particularly unsettling because so much of the certainty we usually rely upon has disappeared.
And yet, perhaps the more uncomfortable truth is that we never really know what comes next.
Most of the time, tomorrow resembles yesterday closely enough that we experience our lives as relatively stable and predictable. We make plans that we trust will unfold as we expect. We imagine where we'll be next year. We move through our days with a sense of knowing roughly where the path is leading.
And that offers us a reassuring feeling of certainty.
Until something happens that reminds us that we were never actually holding the whole map.
So how do we move through these in-between, uncertain spaces?
From Hacking to Tending - Meeting our Body with Presence, Attunement and Care
As a somatic practitioner and educator supporting women, I choose not to use the word hacking when I talk about women's wellbeing.
Because I believe the language we use shapes the relationship we cultivate with our bodies.
For women, that relationship is especially important.
Many of us have spent decades carrying the belief that our bodies are somehow wrong.
The wrong shape, weight, colour, age...
The language we use can unintentionally reinforce the idea that our bodies are still problems to fix, rather than intelligent living systems with which we can foster a compassionate relationship.
We all respond differently to different language.
I personally prefer using the word tending.
Because the lens through which we see the body shapes how we meet it.
And how we meet it shapes the relationship we cultivate with it.
Beyond Healing: How Somatic Work Opens the Door to Expansion
We think somatic work is all about healing. But beyond healing, it also opens a doorway into expansion.
When I first came to the world of somatics, supporting women on healing journeys was at the heart of my work.
That’s what I believed somatics was exclusively about.
So much of the language around somatic work focuses, understandably, on trauma and the nervous system, regulation and safety, and the ways our bodies become organised around experiences that were overwhelming, painful or too much for us to metabolise alone.
This work matters deeply, and it continues to matter deeply to me.
And yet, over the years, I have become increasingly interested in what happens when we are no longer organised around protection: no longer living from survival, anticipating what might go wrong, overfunctioning, giving to the point of exhaustion, pleasing everyone (often at our own expense), pursuing perfection in everything we do, or holding everything together while we slowly crumble beneath the surface.
What happens when some of this energy is freed and more of it becomes available to orient towards new possibilities?
