The irony is, we often have to experience struggle before we realize this. Up until I was 31, I lived with anxiety, depression, and the belief that I’d never be happy. I faced toxic relationships, substance abuse, and deep inner turmoil. But now, I see my anxiety as a gift, a signal that something was out of alignment. My relationship struggles were mirrors reflecting my inner chaos, and my coping mechanisms were simply my way of trying to escape the disconnect from myself.

Reflect on this: In what ways can incorporating more play into your day help you reconnect with your inner child? That part of you who knew the wisdom of joy and the abundance it brings without questioning it?

“Motherhood had consumed me, and in the process, I felt like I had lost touch with the woman I once was. As I was saying the words, “I miss myself”, I knew I didn’t want to buy into the victimhood of my mind. I knew that I could choose differently this time around. I had lost myself with each baby, but I knew I wanted this time to be different. It came down to a choice.”

“After being unwell, and making the choice to surrender to love, surrender to it all, surrender and detach from needing more, I noticed a shift in my journalling practice.

Instead of going in with the intention to manifest more, instead of my “I am” being followed with success or abundance or wealth, I began writing simply…

“I am” and “It is”.

I no longer felt called to write anything following these words, it almost felt untrue to write anything more. In a way, it was untrue. IT was already. I was. I am.”

“There is a huge misconception and belief we hold in our cultures around being emotional and how showing emotion makes you weak. This makes me want to vomit in my mouth a little bit.

I feel for men, as this seems to be a huge and poisonous programming for them. “Have another beer and get on with it”, is one of the MANY forms of avoidance and repression for emotion in men.

Truthfully, women aren’t too far off the mark, but instead of repressing sadness, we repress anger, and that repression of anger turns into sadness.”

This was my third drug-free birth but somehow, I’d again forgotten what it felt like to birth a baby. I have no words to explain what it’s like but as my gorgeous friend, Brydie, put it, “It’s like we’re pushed to our edge and don’t die”. That’s as accurate as it gets. It’s unworldly, as if we enter another dimension, but our human minds cannot comprehend nor put into words. It’s beyond the mind.

“It’s so easy to unconsciously let fear take the lead. We let it influence us and then wonder why we end up in undesirable situations in our lives. We even sometimes look back at our experiences and think, “I knew that” or “I had a feeling” but at the time the fear-influenced option is so strong that we went with that, not realising how much power we have to tap into our innate knowing, our intuition, our body’s wisdom.”

“I wrote down what I desired to FEEL in the having of this relationship, including love, connection, pleasure, sensual touch, play, adventure, safety, and security.

Then… I gave it all to myself physically so I felt it emotionally and became it energetically.

It’s your energy that attracts the people and things in your life.

What do I mean? Ok, let’s explore this.

I didn’t want the relationship as such. What I actually wanted was to feel love and connection.”

“Here’s the thing… what manifests is the energy you embody. If you have fears which are unfelt or charged in your body, that is vibrating out… and you attract back what you put out. So, it’s actually the opposite… by NOT feeling out or neutralising your fears, you are attracting back like vibrations. It’s actually a POWER MOVE of a conscious creator to approach your fears with love and curiosity”

“I feel supported… not because I am financially supported, but because I chose to tap into the eternal support that is always present and focus on the ways I am supported by those I love in my life now.

I feel loved… not because I am loved (although I am), but because I cultivated love within and for myself and as a result called in people who amplify that love tenfold.

I feel abundant… not because I have an abundance of money, but because I chose to tap into the frequency of abundance that surrounds me and is me.

I feel at peace… because I choose to not be a fucking pushover to my external circumstances and instead stay in my damn power, from the inside out.“

Not only that but daily I have made it a practice to create space between my thoughts (stories of the mind) and my truth, the truth of who I am underneath the humanness… Spirit, source energy, unlimited. The mind is the only thing that limits us and creates beliefs of limit, due to past conditioning, but none of it is true. When you expand your mind to beyond the stories, you WILL create magic.

“That feeling of needing to tick things off the list made me NOT do that, and instead, I made a cacao and went to the beach. I connected to the earth, closed my eyes, felt held by Mother, and opened my heart and mind, letting go of the stories of the mind as I sipped my cacao and listened to the waves as they splashed onto the shore. I began to feel grounded, detached from work, and in tune with the truth.

The truth… that my (our) mind stories, to-do lists, and even money, are all made up. It’s all made up. It’s all made up.”

“I went from living out my actual dream of becoming a published author and stepping into a new chapter in business and life, including picking up speaking gigs which was something that I thought I could NEVER do (read You Don’t Have Anxiety), to hitting the ground hard in pregnancy. I had no energy, no inspiration, my mind was foggy and honestly, it felt like I went back to that unconscious state I lived in for oh so many years of my life. If I wanted to label it, I’d say I was suffering from prenatal depression. Depression being something I hadn’t experienced for years. I couldn’t work out how I went from my state of power and bliss to absolute misery.”