safe to conclude, my life has contained a catalogue of interruptions these past few years. mostly, embodied. majority, (unwelcome) surprises. some, self-enforced.

just as life started to flow, something eventually, interrupted it.

time and time again, i resisted that seemingly repeating cycle. sitting in the interrupted moments, waiting for them to pass. waiting for life to free flow again.

it was my second time recovering from shoulder surgery, and my second time spent in crutches, weeks passing me by. i was deep in interruption territory. this particular set of interruptions occurred in the summer time. and therefore -rightly so- everyone was out living their best lives (or at least that’s the story my instagram algorithm sold me). and there I was, tied to sitting down all day, every day, awaiting my injuries to heal, so I could continue living again.

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and somewhere amongst all the sitting, waiting and obsessing over what i’d do and where i’d go once these interruptions were out of the way, a dear friend turned to me and said:

I think you’re resisting where you are right now by over-planning what will come after. your life is still happening right now you know?

and it hit me like a tonne of bricks.

oh, this is still my life. it’s still happening.

of course, if you’re having a hard time in the now, the beauty (or downfall) of our brains is that we can time travel, without ever leaving a room. pick your poison… you can dwell on what was or you can project what could be. typically, we are more naturally past or future orientated in our escapist-mind-time-travel ways. my natural inclination: living in future-me, transporting myself into a time when the not-so-nice thing (the interruption) doesn’t exist anymore.

but, as this realisation sunk in, i decided it was time to stop treating each interruption as a waiting room to my ‘real life’.

(waiting room reference kindly stolen from this epic essay i read a while ago by )

i realised, life doesn’t have to be ‘right’ or ‘perfect’ (whatever the fuck that means) for it to be worthwhile.

in fact, what i am learning is that the real art of living is making all moments worthy, the perfect and the imperfect. to craft who you are during the interruptions. because ultimately the harder moments are the ones that shape you, form you, transform you, if you let them. if you sit in them.

some lovely reframes for life’s interruptions:

• your arrow has to be drawn back before it can shoot ahead

• things break so they can be re-made into something new (+ better)

• often we crack so the light can get in

• a plant doesn’t grow while you’re watching it, it grows in the dark (underground) first

• the caterpillar doesn’t know it’s becoming a butterfly

may you remember to live within the interruptions.

with love (especially in life’s stickier times!)

Annabelle x

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I proceeded to flip my life upside down and go on an adventure to the other side of the world. I had no plan. Just a savings pot dedicated to the gap year I never took screaming to finally be spent and an almost 2-year-long relentless whisper asking me to be brave. The whisper was begging me try life on in a new way, to not play it is so safe for once, to honour the 80 year old version of me that would one day look back and be so thankful I took the scary leaps when I had the chance.

…And so I finally listened, and took a flight into the ultimate unknown.

No home, no work, no partner, no schedule, no plan, no pressure, no timeline.

eeeeepppppp ! ! ! !

If you want to read more on how this decision came to be, I wrote about ‘chosen change’ in this essay.

Fast forward 365 days later and I am ready to share some golden nuggets that my year of complete freedom and surrender has gifted me.

Pre-warning: this year did not provide the answers I may have unconsciously been seeking. But it did allow me to wholeheartedly live the questions instead.

In the rest of this essay I write about what I can’t un-know / un-be / un-embody / un-live now…

Discomfort doesn’t mean wrong

Just because something feels uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s not right, it’s probably just unfamiliar.

There was a large part of me that couldn’t fully surrender to the island-girl life I’d built. I was so used to sitting at my laptop for most of the day, every day, creating online. Suddenly that was not my day’s driving force. Instead, I was teaching yoga with people in the same physical space as me, having coffee for 3 hours afterwards, talking about life. How glorious!! And yet, there was still such a strong pulse of urgency in me. That there must be somewhere else to be or something ‘more important’ to be doing. I couldn’t let myself fully experience the new reality I had created for myself without sneaking back to my laptop, quietly browsing remote jobs that felt more familiar than the way I was actually living.

I’ve since learned there’s a name for this. Gay Hendricks calls it the Upper Limit Problem in The Big Leap , the idea that we all carry a kind of internal thermostat for how much love, success or peace we’ll let ourselves feel. When life hands us more than that thermostat is set for, our nervous system reads it as a threat rather than a gift.

This reframed a lot for me, and allowed me to understand the discomfort and resistance I felt towards accepting a really beautiful reality that was finally mine. The guilt of abandoning an old life and way of being rings loud, even when the new one is more aligned with your desires.

New takes longer to trust than we ever expect it to.

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Freedom isn’t free

Firstly, my definition of freedom has been TESTED. I used to think freedom meant untethering myself from anything that contained me. I thought it was entirely about the outer conditions of my life, the job, the schedule, the location, the structure. What I hadn’t accounted for was the conditions inside my own psyche, my own nervous system. Because even when I was tied to nothing, I realised I still hadn’t freed myself, from myself. The voice in my head kept me just as trapped as it would have if I’d been sitting in one single room for the rest of my life.

I wrote about my evolved definition of what freedom is in this essay.

But a secondary lesson to this foundation became: Freedom has a cost. To access it, I had to leave things behind. Structure, safety, security. A version of myself that I’d always known. The reliability of knowing what tomorrow looked like before it arrived. I grieved that, more than I expected to. Because the structure I had demonised and defined as restriction, was also support. A scaffolding holding my inner and outer life in a tidy-ish place, that felt secure and soothing. That was the price, the loss of these things. I paid it in exchange for new qualities of being: flexibility, risk, spontaneity, aliveness. Not better, not worse, just different.

I’m someone who craves both, the safety and the risk. I still haven’t figured out how to blend them completely and I’m not sure that’s a puzzle anyone fully solves. But I now know, freedom is never free. It’s about whether we are willing to pay the price for the gifts it can unlock in return.

Everything is a choice

If freedom opens up the space for anything to be possible, I soon realised that this is a wasted privilege unless you’re willing to actually choose and commit to one of those possibilities. Everything is a choice. And if anything is possible and nothing is actually chosen, you risk never living a life bigger than the one you’re already in. You can see a bigger life from a distance, but you could wind up never living it unless you OPT the heck IN.

There was a moment, untethered, genuinely free to go anywhere, do anything, when I felt completely paralysed by the sheer privilege of possibility. I hadn’t planned on staying in one country for 7 months, I’d imagined moving around the world more, chasing each new place and each new adventure. But something felt so right about Sri Lanka. And so, I chose to stay. One single choice, out of the entire abundance of choices available to me.

We have to accept that saying yes to one choice says no to all the others ( a concept I call Ghost Lives). And this experience weighs heavy, but I have learnt that this weight feels a heck of a lot lighter than living in the limbo land of indecision.

wrote to this sentiment in “Choosing the Life You Already Have” . Where she explains that ‘real agency isn’t just the ability to do things. It’s the ability to choose things, and then build a life around those choices. To look at something—a person, a place, a path—and decide it’s yours. And this brings me so much peace. If we’re lucky enough to have endless possibilities, it is our duty to choose at least one of them and give it our freaking all.

Abundance is a practice, not a circumstance

You can have all the time in the world and still feel like you don’t have enough of it. There was a stretch of time (3 months!!!) where I removed almost every stressor from my life, no dishes, no laundry, no cooking, no cleaning, none of the small (but time-consuming!) admin of living. It felt like I was on a permanent holiday… from the outside. Inside I was STILL feeling like I was running out of time to do everything I wanted to do.

That was the moment I realised: I was the problem.

Not the lack of time, but my relationship to it.

Time is our most precious resource, learn how to spend it, waste it, shape it, protect it. And remember that ‘enough’ can be self-defined.

Follow serendipity

News flash: we don’t always know what is best for us. I have spent so much energy across my life trying to figure out what I want and then willing it into happening. But time and time again I’d be disappointed if life did not unfold as I’d planned. I had this pattern play out enough times to realise, there must be another way.

What was refreshing about this the past year, was I for once didn’t set a plan or have any major expectations for what was ahead. Which allowed space for life to SURPRISE ME. And surprise me it did.

✨Serendipity✨ followed me everywhere I went. I mean, serendipity is what lead me to Sri Lanka (I’ll save this story for its own essay!) In fact, my year away felt like my very own Surrender Experiment (one of my favourite books by Micheal A Singer). Rather than forcing, wishing, controlling, I let life guide the way, responding to each new stepping stone that life naturally presented to me.

The serendipity rule: if it feels easy, follow it.

It felt like I was in an ever-evolving, ever-expanding conversation with life. Sounds beautiful right? Yep it was… but this was also a whole system reset for me. And as mentioned above, it takes time to alter your typical way of operating before it begins to feel comfortable. And to go from control freak to surrender freak was no smooth journey (and trust me, there are still bumps in the road!) But oh how grateful I am for this new ability to put my faith in something beyond myself, to trust life and let it guide my way.

The bigger life gets, the more questions it asks

Not to be all Eat Pray Love about it, but I naively suspected that opening my life to something new would make room for certain answers to arrive. That this year’s success was determined by how many epiphanies I could have, and how much wisdom I could integrate.

Answers did arrive. Everything I’ve shared in this essay is proof of that. But they did not arrive as clear-cut, loud answers. They arrived as a messy collection of uncomfortable growth edges, small but unforgettable insights, micro-shifts in my being that accumulated over many months. Each slowly altering how I show up within my self and relate to life.

But most of all, I was presented with more questions and a repeated opportunity to create a different relationship to the asking.

I got stumped finishing this essay because I kept searching for the perfect ending, the neat conclusion, one finale answer that tied a neat bow around it all. But the more I tried to shape this, the more I realised I was falling back into the very pattern this year has been asking me to unlearn.

We’re so conditioned to believe the value of an experience lies in the answer it gives us. That growth should end in certainty. That if we’ve really learned something, we should be able to package it into a handful of beautiful sentences and move on. But life is messy, ordinary, epic, blurry. More easily felt than explained.

In Letter’s to a Young Poet, Rilke wrote that we should “live the questions now.” And somewhere along the way, without noticing, we slowly live our way into the answers. I used to understand these words with my mind. This year, I think I’ve finally understood them with my life.

Instead of chasing certainty, I’ve found myself becoming more comfortable in the constant conversation with life. Letting it hand me small, imperfect snippets of clarity alongside equal measures of confusion. To expect that when a slice of an answer arrives, a deeper question will always accompany it.

With all that still feels unresolved in your heart, and the permission to simply let it,

Annabelle x

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It’s been a very unique summer. Returning from my active life in Sri Lanka back to the UK for a surgery on my shoulder (full story of this here). Even more time of enforced stillness, rest and recovery. And somehow along the way I've landed with another broken hip too. A rogue second injury, cause: still unclear. Hip pain arriving with no obvious reason and even less logic, turning out to be another stress fracture. 18 months ago, left shoulder surgery, right hip fracture. This time, right shoulder surgery, left hip fracture. Madness. It's a series of events I'm still struggling to fully process, but I'm slowly settling into the bizzare-ness of it all.

I want to share in this essay, how to make peace with something, even if it does not make sense.

Déjà vu…

What’s odd is the fact that I’ve been here before. Not many moments in life hand you a complete mirror of an experience, especially not one this embodied. What's different this time is that I'm not processing this experience in my mind so much. (Thank goodness, because there isn't a whole lot of sense to be made of this particular repeated chapter) So instead, I've been FEELING the process. Actually feeling it, the grief of it, the weight of it, the strange familiarity of it, the reality of more stillness and rehab. Rather than reaching for an explanation that would make it easier to hold, I've just been letting it land. And for someone that has over-intellectualised most of their existence for their whole life, I am proud to be out of my head this time around.

There’s lots of mystery. Lots of confusion. With my previous injuries I could pin them to a reason. This time, my hip is broken rather randomly. I mean I’ve not met many 28 year olds that have had both hips fractured in the space of 2 years……

And so I’ve been faced with what feel like two options:

• Option A: Play the role of victim, life is random and unfair, I am unlucky, I give up.

  Or

• Option B: Trust the unfolding. Treat the experience as a highly spiritual experience. See it as an opportunity to learn more, integrate further and have faith that there is gold in this extra time at injury rock bottom.

Option A is tempting and trust me, I tried it on!!! (I respect a time of wallowing, it can’t be skipped IMO)… but I’m choosing option B.

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Sometimes we don’t find sense, we shape it

Life happens, changes occur, curve balls hit. And if I can find one common thread underneath all of my very own curve balls (the heartbreaks, the injuries, the big transitions) it’s that they all lead me into a deeper arrival into myself. To inhabit more of myself. To meet myself where I am, in the depths and the darkness and accompany myself back to lightness with a heart full of patience and trust. To endure my spark being on and off, and loving myself through both.

I have come to learn, that rarely will we see the gifts emerging from an experience, whilst we are IN that very experience. When we’re in the storm, we can’t easily make sense of the storm. It’s only AFTER we are out the other side that we can sit back and bare witness to (and maybe even celebrate) what the storm has left behind.

So whilst I am in the middle of this current stormy experience, it’s tempting to search for sense to be made. But the sense hasn’t fully arrived yet. Instead, I have the unique chance to softly shape it. Slowly (oh so slowly) but surely, it will form. And I have the foresight now to trust that someday, somehow, I will look back at this moment, gold in hand, and feel grateful it happened exactly as it did.

The irony

The word ‘sense’ carries within it a large paradox. In it’s definition, sense can be attributed to both physical perception and mental understanding. Of course in the angle of this essay I have been talking about trying to make ‘mental’ sense of my situation. But interestingly, by letting go of the urgency to mentally understand my situation, it’s allowed more space for literal sensing of my bodily sensations. Space for feeling.

And beautifully this has made way for sense to come from my body and not my mind. And this appears to be my soul’s repeated lesson the past few years.

But this isn’t just my story. Most of us are educated almost entirely from the neck up, conditioned to treat the body as something to manage rather than something to listen to and be guided by. To use our mind to make sense first and foremost. And I have fully subscribed to this way of being for most of my life.

The deeper irony for me is that I’ve spent years being labeled a learning designer in my career, but the most important work of my life has been unlearning. Unlearning slowly and repeatedly (and often painfully) the deep conditioning that says: think first, feel later… if at all.

My takeaway

But instead, right now, I’m letting this current shit-show crack me open even wider. To myself, to my body, to allowing sense to be shaped slowly and through ways that bypass my mind. It’s inviting me to unlearn even more ways of being that no longer serve me. To soften my grip. To trust that this experience is crafting me into someone who can sit in her body through all its seasons, all its shapes, all its sensations, more fully than ever before.

And maybe that’s what all of this has been in service of. Cultivating a deeper capacity to show up in the world more whole and embodied and to gently guide others to do the same. Not because I know the perfect way or have all the answers, but because I’ve lived my own arrival into the body SO wholeheartedly that it would feel like a waste not to walk alongside others as they find their way back to theirs.

So I guess, although this chapter still feels messy, raw and unresolved, I can feel a specific promise taking shape. A promise to let this season shape me in all its grit and all its glory. To sit in the non-sense of it all and instead, just feel. To allow space for sense to arrive when it is ready. And to allow that sense to look and feel different than it ever has before. To trust that this rollercoaster of an embodied journey has been preparing me for the work I’m here to do next.

An invitation

One of the things this season is making beautifully clear is where I feel called to go next.

Alongside writing, yoga and learning design, I’m now training as an Embodiment Coach. Whilst the formal training is giving me frameworks and qualifications, I’d always argue my recent injuries and embodied experiences are my greatest training to work in this space.

And so… I am feeling the call to start aligning with people who want to work with me in a 121 coaching capacity.

Whether your a mind dominant person finding your way to your body, or you’re injured and struggling with the mental and emotional side beyond the physical, or you’re just curious to learn more about how to inhabit yourself and your life more authentically and fully, I think we should chat <3

Email me here to find out more.

With love and non-sense,

Annabelle x

MOSAIC is alive ♾️

This idea has lived inside of me in so many different shapes, forms, words and feelings for a long old while now. And I’m so happy for it to finally become a little more real.

Much of my life philosophy exists around the fact that each and every one of us is a mosaic of the experiences we’ve lived, the places we’ve been, the decisions we’ve made, the people we’ve met, the feelings we’ve felt. We are who we are as a whole because of the pieces that led us to be that way. And for your entire life, more pieces will keep being added to the mosaic that is uniquely you. Freaking beautiful, if you ask me.

So it felt right to apply this philosophy to my next creative pursuit. To feel out what I believe is missing in the world, and where there’s an opportunity for something new to be born, all in the direction of what I care about and where I think I can add something real.

But every time I tried to make something, I got stuck. And somewhere along the way I realised that building something new had always felt so daunting because I was trying to do it alone. Maybe I’m not destined to do it all alone. I don’t have all the answers, all the ideas, all the knowledge or experience. But I do have the ability to pull the right people and ideas together to create something that couldn’t exist otherwise. We need each other to build the things we can’t build on our own.

That was the seed of MOSAIC. What if I don’t arrive with a finished, polished product, but launch a values-led project with the belief that what follows will rely on the connections, conversations, collaborations and co-creation that can only happen when I open it up to others?

MOSAIC is what we’re calling the home of the offline. And if you care about shaping a more human, more offline, more real future, in a world that is obsessed with screens, then I think you’re going to want to join us!

Read our manifesto and become a piece to our whole 🧩

Not exactly the sentence I was hoping to write after a year long of blissful, injury-free life.

But yes, here I am again in the aftermath of shoulder stabilisation surgery number 2… this time, on my other shoulder. (At least both shoulders should be locked in place for life right?????) And it’s early days, so yep, I am still in a sling which means I am typing this essay one handed…with my non-dominant hand…

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know this isn’t my first rodeo. Over the past two and a half years I’ve had a rollercoaster experience with my body, including 3 shoulder dislocations, 1 broken hip, 2 slipped spinal disks, 3 surgeries and one rather savage dog bite. I’ve spent more time in hospital than I’d care to calculate.

And whilst I want to celebrate how I’ve handled these hardships, with a healthy dose of consistent:

✔️soldiering on

✔️surrendering to what is

✔️smiling through the pain

…I’ve arrived at a moment of the THROWING MY ARMS UP (well, I wish…) and screaming at the sky. Where I’m finally ready to vulnerably admit: I’m fucking exhausted.

Injuries (and the accompanying recovery timelines) don’t just impact physical health. They are emotional, mental and spiritual endeavours too. Particularly when you’re a highly active individual who relies on exercise to function. So yeah, I am pretty damn tired. Tired of being patient. Tired of feeling limited. Tired of resting. Tired of finding myself back here again.

For a while I thought I was just clumsy, accident-prone. But somewhere along the line I’ve realised something deeper has been going on. And I think I finally understand why it’s all unfolded the way it has. And so whilst I am tired and frustrated… I am also immensely grateful. I am proud that this is my journey, because I think all along it’s been setting me up for my very own body of work (excuse the pun). In this essay, I’ll attempt to walk you through why I think my breaking, is absolutely going to be my making…

A girl who was very good at leaving her body behind

My body has been trying to get my attention for years. Not just through injury (injuries have just been my body’s method of turning up the volume to max on something that’s been whispering at me for most of my life). Because long before the surgeries, the crutches and the rehab plans, there was a girl who was exceptionally good at leaving her body behind.

Movement has been one of the great loves of my life. I was the sporty kid, the teenager training for triathlons, the university rower training twice a day, the marathon runner running almost daily, the gym girl turned CrossFitter, the yogi - the person who never really did anything by halves. Exercise, a healthy addiction. But an addiction nonetheless.

What I can now finally admit is that exercise and moving my body became my escape. A way to outrun difficult feelings, to feel worthy, to stay productive, to achieve, to avoid stillness, to control my body image. For years my mind told my body what to do, and my body obeyed: run further, lift more, push harder, keep going. I rarely stopped to ask what my body actually wanted. How it felt. Whether it was tired, or scared, or carrying something I hadn’t yet let myself feel.

I knew how to train my body. I had absolutely no idea how to listen to it.

I’d spent most of my life living from the neck up, thinking my way through things, rather than feeling them. Overriding fatigue and tension and the small, early signals that something needed attention, because slowing down felt like losing, and I had things to do, places to be, a body to control.

And I say all of this towards myself with a heart full of compassion, and not judgement. Because how could I have known any different? It's me, and almost every other girl who grew up carrying the same inherited belief, that our bodies are something to be shaped, managed, perfected. (Over)exercising was simply one of the socially acceptable ways to control our bodies and what they look like.

We were raised in a culture that doesn’t reward stillness. Educated in a system that taught us algebra but never once mentioned how to regulate our nervous system, or how to listen to our own menstrual cycles, or tune into our own bodies’ needs.

So no, it’s not my fault. But I understand that it is my responsibility.

Injury as invitation

So life (and more specifically, my body!!!), in its mysterious-wisdom-full ways, started presenting me with opportunities to learn. The first injury. Then another. Then surgery. Until eventually I was bed-bound, in a sling and a wheelchair all at once (WILD), faced with my ultimate fear: the inability to move, to work out, to control anything at all. Instead, a whole load of stillness. More than I knew what to do with. The unbearable invitation to simply stop.

At first I resisted every single part of it. I wanted my old body back, my old routines, my old ability, my old certainty. I wanted movement exactly as I’d always known it. What I didn’t realise was that life wasn’t trying to take movement away from me, it was trying to change my relationship with it. And in doing that, change my relationship with myself and my body.

The irony is that it took losing access to my body as I knew it to finally become embodied.

Learning to listen

Somatic work entered my life and completely changed everything (shoutout to my first coach Emily.) I finally learned about what the heck a nervous system is and how to regulate my own. Once able, I got back to gentler ways of moving (like yoga and pilates). Everything became slower, more intentional, more intuitive. Because it had to… I mean I literally had to learn to walk again, hop around training my hip for impact and try hand assisted bicep curls…. bodyweight (rehab of multiple competing injuries teaches patience like nothing else). I discovered how to tap into my own intuition and how to trust my body, again and again.

For the first time, I stopped asking what can my body do for me, and started asking what is my body trying to tell me. Everything began to shift, piece by piece.

And in more recent days some of my favourite movement practices barely resemble the type of exercise I once built my identity around. Moving to feel rather than achieve. No watches tracking performance, no numbers to chase, no outcome to optimise. Where exercise is no longer something I do TO my body, but something I do FOR my body.

Movement as a method to let my body speak and express and flow.

A messenger, not a malfunction

Maybe that’s why this latest surgery recovery feels so different. Not easier, and not less frustrating, (trust me, there are still moments where I stare down at my sling and wonder if the universe is taking the piss) but different.

Because eighteen months ago, I was sitting in exactly the same position, after my other shoulder had been operated on. Facing another 6 month recovery timeline. Same situation on paper, but a completely different experience internally. Back then I was fighting reality at every turn, desperately trying to get back to the version of myself I thought I’d lost, counting down the days until I could train properly again, treating my body as the obstacle standing between me and my actual life. This time, there is grief and frustration, yes. But there is also acceptance and trust.

Somewhere on this journey I have finally have stopped treating my body like a problem to solve and started letting it be a relationship I tend to. So when it is broken and healing, I let it be broken and healing.

And after everything I’ve been through with this body of mine, I think I finally understand what embodiment truly is:

Which is why, despite all the pain and the frustration and the hours spent in hospital waiting rooms, I find myself feeling strangely grateful for this particular path. Because I now believe my injuries didn’t simply arrive to interrupt my life, I think they came to redirect it. My greatest source of limitations have become my greatest teachers. And this is ultimately why I believe my breaking is leading me to my making.

My body’s been talking to me for years. And I’m FINALLY building a whole life dedicated to listening.

If any of this has landed with you, if you recognise yourself in the neck-up living, or you’re curious about embodiment, or about coming back to your yourself after injury or a difficult relationship with your body, say hello!

With so much love (and SO much more to come on this body of work),

Annabelle xx

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I keep tasting my life

having a nibble

chewing it around

noticing the flavours

trying to understand the flavours

but never quite swallowing it

digesting it

letting this life pass through

i get stuck tasting it

benefiting from its flavour

but never quite reaching its nourishment

noticing here

but not being here

witnessing the now

but not fully inhabiting it

as though I am scratching the surface of my own existence

standing at the edge of my own experience

what a waste

i say, softly to myself

and perhaps I still don’t quite know how to chomp down on my own life

to grab it with my own two hands and wholeheartedly be within it

not on the sidelines

watching it, thinking about it, judging it

but just simply, living it.

it’s no way to live

i whisper to myself

to live less through constantly striving to live more

so just live in it

i gently answer back

without needing it to be more

or different

or deeper

without needing it to make sense

or be any certain way

just live what it is

exactly as it is

be in your life

embody it

breathe it

inhabit it

and taste it yes,

but this time, allow yourself its nourishment.

Now go and chomp down on your own life. Until next time, I send a wave of love,

Annabelle x

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And of course, as I began typing, something rather divine happened…

I had music shuffling softly in the background, moving through thousands of gentle songs, and suddenly ‘The View Between Villages’ by Noah Kahan started playing. For those that don’t know it, the song centres around the exact feeling I’m about to try and put my own words to. The strange emotional whiplash of returning home after journeying somewhere new. The ache of changing and no longer fully belonging where you were then, and not yet fully belonging where you are now. Existing somewhere emotionally in-between, split between places, people, versions of yourself.

Safe to say, it felt like a little nudge from the universe that it was finally time to sit with this properly. (Timely, too with Noah’s new album The Great Divide recently releasing and inspiring this entire ‘divided self and life’ sentiment even further. Here for the Noah references !!)

This essay is about my very own (rather non-intentional) great divide…

Let’s circle back a moment…

Almost a year ago, I packed my bags and left my life as I knew it (you can read the full story here.) Of course, in making a decision like this, you don’t just leave a place, you leave your people, your routines, the version of yourself that only exists there. And yes, I knew that booking a one way flight with the intention to land where the wind took me would carry equal measure of adventure, discomfort, homesickness, reinvention, freedom, expansion, fear, unknowns, joy… the whole mixed bag.

What I hadn’t quite expected was the experience of being split in half.

Life as our ever-colourful canvas

For the past seven months, I have built a life in Sri Lanka. Transitioning from my very full and structured corporate life in London to becoming a free-flowing island yogi who drinks a coconut everyday. Two wildly different realities. Both offering very different pros and cons. Both granting access to very different versions of myself.

The transition from one way of life to the next has been a confronting, eye-opening, life-altering journey so far. Each step, untangling from what was, and opening up to the reality of ‘what the fuck is next’ (!?) Quite literally repainting the canvas of my life.

But to say I arrived with a blank canvas would not be true..

Because my canvas before leaving was already full and colourful and overflowing with beautiful people who made my life sweet as honey. Twenty-seven years of texture and memories and love splattered across it already.

So really, it’s more accurate to say that something deep inside of me was called to add more to my already very full canvas. Shades of life and selfhood I wouldn’t reach unless I left what was familiar behind and travelled beyond what was known to me.

And sure did I find many extra shades.

I have fallen deeply in love with the slower, more nature-fuelled life I’ve been creating in Sri Lanka. I’ve fallen in love with the person I have become there too. But I can’t deny the low-level hum of background grief that has accompanied that love.

The grief of realising my heart no longer exists in just one place.

Detachment as survival

In many ways, I detached from my ‘old’ life when I set off on my new adventure. Not intentionally, but as a way of surviving the enormity of the change. The pain of leaving what you love in one place to go and create something new elsewhere.

Active avoidance of home-sickness became my strategy. I thought… if I think of home less, if I don’t call my friends as often, if I don’t look at pictures of my dog, I give myself a better chance at surviving the unfamiliar. This was never going to last long, being the sentimental, nostalgic, family-loving human that I naturally am.

But I’ve come to learn exactly this: nostalgia is a privilege. To miss something is evidence that you lived, loved, shared something meaningful. To have something to reflect on, and wish you could have more of, is the bitter-sweetness of life. To ache in the absence of things is potentially our strongest indicator that we are alive and that our heart is working exactly as it should.

And slowly, as my resistance to homesickness softened, I realised something important:

I missed my people from home deeply AND wanted to continue building this new life on the other side of the world. That my life didn’t have to be a ‘this OR that’ it perhaps could become a ‘this AND that’.

Split.

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Can you ‘be where your feet are’ if your heart isn’t there with them?

I’ve felt the divide even more since coming home for a visit. Being reunited with all those I have loved for years and feeling that sweet elation of togetherness again. But at the same time, feeling like an alien. Feeling out of sync with their rhythm of life. Feeling like our time together is brief, before I inevitably jet off again towards a chapter that isn’t yet complete.

And maybe this is the harsh reality nobody prepares you for when your world expands. Your heart expands too.

“Be where your feet are,” people love to say.

And yes, I understand the sentiment: presence matters (and it really really does). But lately I’ve found myself wondering… what about where your heart is?

What about when your heart is alive in many places at once? Across different countries, different people, different versions of yourself? What about when your feet are in one place, but your inner world is stretched across oceans?

Because that’s what this year has felt like for me. Existing in my very own view between villages. Nostalgic for the old life I was living whilst yearning for the new life I’ve been creating. Carrying guilt and grief on my shoulders as my soul shines with pure gratitude and joy for the life right in front of me. Trying to contain all versions of myself. The Annabelle in London. The Annabelle at home with her family. The Annabelle barefoot in Sri Lanka. The Annabelle building a life that no longer fits neatly into one place, one title, one version of home.

Leaving life as I knew it has been the best decision I have ever made by myself and for myself, but also one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to navigate. And I am still very much in the messy middle of learning how to stretch my heart across time, people, place. A totally privileged, and by equal measure, painful reality. So here I’ll be, split between here and somewhere else, moving through cycles of leaving and returning, slowly learning how to let myself belong to more than one place at once, letting myself pluralise the experience and feeling of home, sitting in the strange in-between and riding the wild wave that is my very own great divide.

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With love from the in-between until next time,

Annabelle x

This is the second in a series of written and spoken reflections: words to come home to.

A Valentine’s Essay: my philosophy of love.

For a long time, I thought love was something that happened to you.

We’re given so many warped ideas of what love is. From films and rom-coms. From stories passed down that were never ours to begin with. From models of love we absorbed before we were old enough to question them. From fairytales that quietly teach us love is found, secured, kept, and if it leaves or ends, it failed.

So I believed love lived most visibly inside partnership. In the exclusivity of it. The romance of it. The story of it. I thought that was where love reached its highest form, when two people chose each other and built something contained and named.

And then I loved people, and I lost them.

And though pain rippled through my entire being, once the dust settled something unexpected revealed itself: love remained.

It didn’t vanish when the relationship ended. It changed shape. It transformed. It moved out of daily proximity and into memory, into gratitude, into quiet well-wishing. And alongside that reshaping, something else emerged… love felt louder everywhere else, towards what remained. Deeper in my friendships, towards my family, within myself.

When romantic love left in the shape of a person, love itself did not leave.

Maybe I lost touch with it briefly. Maybe grief disguised it for a while. But slowly, again and again, I realised: people leave. Love doesn’t. Circumstances change. Love changes with it. Life goes in a new direction. Love gets channelled somewhere new.

And that was my biggest realisation: that love is not found outside of me.
Love isn’t tied to a singular person, attached to a relationship, reserved just for my closest connections.

Love lives inside of me, always.

Yes, people enter our lives and help unlock new expressions of it. They introduce us to versions of our own heart we didn’t know were there.

But despite what happens, despite who comes, despite who goes, I am the key to my own source. And love’s door is always wide open, if only I am brave enough to step inside and live from this space.

From there, everything’s rearranged.

Love was no longer reserved for romance. Love is not proven by longevity. love is not validated by reciprocation. Love is not a contract that succeeds or fails.

Love is a way of being.

Love is a way of living.

And when you begin living from the love that resides within you, without any conditions attached to it’s existence in your life, everything feels richer.

It becomes how you look at the stranger on the street.

How you move your body.

How you speak about the one who left.

How you make your tea in the morning.

How you say goodbye to a friend.

You love without it needing to be returned. Without it being matched. You love without needing to know where it’ll take you. You love for loves sake. And you trust that ‘anything done with love is done well’.

And so, love became the fuel of my life. Expressed often. Shared openly. Given freely. My own internal currency that I can spend generously in the world.

And I won’t deny, living in this way can hurt. And hurt greatly.

Because to feel anything deeply is to risk feeling everything. To know love in its purest, fullest form is to accept you will meet its opposite. Grief. But what is grief if not love persevering? What is a bruise on the heart if not proof of its active participation in your life.

Live heart first, open and alive. Because no expansion of the heart is ever wasted. At least not from my philosophy of life.

So this Valentine’s Day, I am not celebrating a relationship status. I am celebrating love as a way of living. Letting love take the lead. Not getting caught up on ‘finding love’ but getting totally devoted to being love.

With love (haha),

Annabelle

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There are certain voices that arrive in your life at exactly the right moment.

For me, ’s voice has been one of those. Her words have soothed me in ways I didn’t know I needed. Her tone, her messages, her lived experience alchemised into wisdom - the purity of sharing the real, raw humanness of being alive and loving wholeheartedly - landed somewhere deep inside me. A place I’m not sure had ever been accessed or truly witnessed before.

Her words are soft and spacious and yet profound and awakening. And they are words I continue to return to.

For a long time, I’ve carried a quiet desire to offer that same kind of presence and impact through my own writing. Not to reinvent anything. Not to compete with the noise. Simply to speak honestly from my lived experience, and trust that what is true within me might land in someone else.

January was slow and unpressured. A month of listening, resting, and letting myself be quiet without rushing to make meaning out of it. I didn’t write for anyone else but myself this month. A break from sharing, and a return to the purity of writing with my pen and my journal.

It was cathartic and revealing. The break wasn’t intentional, I just didn’t feel the call to share. But as a new month approaches. I’m ready to re-connect to my voice on this page and pursue something I have been sitting on for a little while now.

To not just type my words, but to also start speaking them aloud. To own my words more fully. To make them even more mine. To connect to my voice. And to invite listening as a new avenue for my words to land within you, the receiver.

This is the beginning of a new thread within my creative

space. Words that are both written and spoken. Reflections that invite you to pause, feel, and come back into relationship with yourself. Inspired by one of my favourite quotes:

If you listen (or simply continue to read!) my hope is that you do so quietly. Maybe with your eyes closed. Maybe while walking. Let the words meet you where you are. Let them accompany your own arrival. And if something I share soothes a small place inside you, or makes you feel seen, or less alone, if it helps you sit just a little more calmly in the seat of yourself, then my wish has been fulfilled.

I’ll end this introductory piece with something raw, straight out of a page of my January entry journaling around the theme of ‘beingness’. Perhaps it resonates.

I didn’t realise life could be this way,

as in not hard.

I’ve always wanted to achieve, to produce, to strive for more.

At least that’s the most familiar state of my being.

But slowly I can feel it,

the unravelling, the productivity protection melting away,

leaving me with nothing left but to feel,

to feel it all, all that I distract from.

To realise that the only thing I’m here to do is is to be.

Not just learn to be, but live to be.

Whole, complete, enough beingness.

If all I achieve in this life is the truthful experience of being,

can that be a success?

For someone who knows nothing but to do, I’m learning and living to be.

Thank you for being here, and for meeting these words with your own presence.

May what’s alive in me meet something alive in you, and may we both feel, even briefly, the reassurance that we are never truly alone in that which feels most lonely.

With love,

Annabelle.

The song itself is a beautiful piece of art (if you have not listened yet, pause here, put your headphones in, lie down, close your eyes and FEEL the music… the drop at 3:22 literally sends shivers through my entire body, every single time!!!!!!)

But what stuck with me from that first listen was the song title: depth over distance (the fact it is a lyrical and melody genius is a bonus)

The simplicity and yet profoundness of that three-word phrase seemed to encapsulate so much. Ben Howard of course was relating the sentiment to love directly - about choosing depth of connection over ease or distance. But the phrase represented more than this for me, it became my guiding, overarching intention for how I live my life.

Not how far you go, but how deep. Not how long something lasts, but how much of your soul it touches. Not the breadth of experience, but the depth of feeling.

Not skimming across the surface of experiences, relationships, conversations, life lessons but diving deep into them. Staying with the hard questions, feeling emotions wholeheartedly, even when it’s uncomfortable, choosing the people and places that take me somewhere new within myself.

Depth over distance in everything.

This sentiment drives much of the energy behind why I write and share in the way I do. But also, the more I write, the more I share, the deeper I seem to go. Like this beautiful growing intention→outcome loop.

And so, writing slowly became my primary practice of going deeper. Every journal entry, every public essay an opportunity to explore and make sense of the wild and mysterious (as well as the ordinary and mundane) experiences and feelings associated with being human. Turning life into language and seeing what emerges when I’m willing to be honest about what I don’t know and splurge it onto a page.

But there’s only so deep you can go alone…

At some point, depth requires community and conversation. To share the experience of exploration and curiosity with others. Where you can collectively dive beneath the surface together, not to fix or solve, but to discover new depths that you wouldn’t reach alone - and be witnessed in the process.

So I’m building something.

Introducing: Deep Divers.

My community :)

A collective of deep feelers, big thinkers, and anyone tired of navigating the rollercoaster of life and its lessons in solitude. An opportunity and space to explore life with others rather than figuring it all out alone.

What we’ll do:

Each month will centre around a theme I’m exploring in my writing - trust, transitions, embodiment, love, fear… the questions we don’t usually have permission to ask.

I’ll share an essay to orient us, something for us to sit with and reflect on individually. Then we’ll gather online for 90 minutes to explore it together, through movement, conversation, and practices that help us feel into the theme, not just think about it.

Between gatherings, we’ll have a private community space to stay connected and share what’s moving through us.

This isn’t a course where I teach you things. It’s a collective, co-created exploration. I’m not the expert with all the answers, I’m a fellow diver, navigating the depths alongside you.

I don’t know exactly what will be born from all of us meeting with a shared intention to explore and dive deep. But I know it’ll be different -and better-than trying to do it alone.

This is for you if:

• You’re tired of surface-level and crave conversations that go deeper

• You’re navigating a transition and want space to process it with others

• You’re learning to trust yourself and want support in that practice

• You’re drawn to embodiment, intuition, and exploring things further than just ‘thinking’ about them

• You want to meet new people and talk about the often unspoken

The Invitation

If this resonates join the waitlist here to be the first to know the details about our first meet which will launch January 2026.

And if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me directly!

Hope to see you in the deep end,

Annabelle x

The film showcases two versions of how a woman’s life may unfold,

in one life, she runs for the train and she makes it onto the carriage,

in the other, she misses the train.

This simple sliding door moment dictates her entire path forward,

alters every subsequent choice she makes.

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This concept stuck with me,

that each decision we make,

whether conscious or unseen,

holds the power to shape everything that follows.

That each falling domino

will soon enough knock the next.

A ripple effect of moments, containing various choices, that lead us down our unexplored paths

I often think of my different ghost lives,

all the lives I miss out on living,

all the versions of me I’ll never get to meet,

all the people who never cross my path,

as a result of my very own sliding door moments.

Curious by all that I leave behind in the wake of a single decision.

And sometimes, I grieve them,

those unlived lives,

those unseen selves,

those unmet people.

But how greedy of me,

to wish for more lives than the very one I am blessed enough to be inhabiting.

Because we cannot live in the grief of our unchosen lives.

We must live in the presence of the one unfolding before our eyes.

Such is life,

that with every no comes sacrifice of the unanswered yes,

and with every yes, the wonder of the unlived no.

Life, though a singular word,

is a plural experience.

Within this ‘one’ life,

we live many.

But we will not live them all.

So I remind myself -and perhaps you too-

not to get lost in longing for the lives we’ll never live,

but to bask in the joy of the ones already ours,

and all the ones still finding their way to us.


p.s. if you’re feeling the pull to go deeper, I’m creating a space called Deep Divers where we can explore ourselves and life beneath the surface together. Join the community, to be the first to know about upcoming workshops, retreats, and experiences <3

With love for the life unfolding before us,

Annabelle x

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On a long car journey to the airport, I for some reason I gazed down at my hand, and I was captivated by it.

This seemingly ordinary part of my own body that had been there for 27 years, 11 months and 22 days, suddenly felt like an entirely undiscovered aspect of myself. And it was ready to reveal an insight I had never accessed before.

In that moment, the first thing that caught my eye was that my hand had aged. My skin less plump and youthful, but instead more textured with fine lines across my skin. I placed both hands side by side, and stared blankly. It felt like my hands were suddenly wearing a lot more life than before. Like I say, not that I can recall the last time I studied my own hands in such a way. Yet, the shift felt noticeable, tangible, bizzare. As though in that very moment, I realised that my hands no longer belonged to a girl, but to the woman I’m becoming.

Maybe it was some sort of subconscious, existential processing towards turning another year older and my hands were the target. But either way, the moment and attached insight felt pretty profound. Like I was capturing my maturation in real time. Present to my portal of womanhood.

As I studied my hand even further, I began to see my mother’s hand within my own. A part of her, with me. And in this moment I was flooded with emotion. That my hand, though mine, is actually a piece of her. I’ve always admired my mother’s delicate hands, so this was quite the self compliment. And then I peered at my thumb, and my half moons on each nail. Features of my father. A part of him, a part of me. Special.

And as my hyper focus on my hand continued my mind expanded to the idea that generally, our hands hold so much life. They showcase a lot about a person. They tell a story. Nails bitten? Rings worn? Callouses showing? Features that will be unique to each hand studied.

(Don’t get me started with the fact that each of our finger prints are entirely unique. Completely unreplicable. Undeniably our own!!??)

Anyway, in this particular moment, the story my hand narrated was that I was growing into a woman. That chapter 28 might just be the year that I begin to feel like a woman and not just be a girl. Not in a scary ‘ohhh I’m an adult now’ way (still in denial about that one). But in a self-assured type of way.

No longer a girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing, but a woman who has chosen to explore life beyond the walls of what she claims to know.

No longer a girl who needs reassurance from others to make her decisions worthy, but a woman who trusts her intuition enough to to ask for its input before anyone else.

No longer a girl who self-abandons to try and make love stay, but a woman who realises that aligned love cannot pass me by.

No longer a girl who let’s worry and doubt stop her, but a woman who holds hands with her fears and steps forth anyway.

I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed my own maturing so explicitly (and ironically, it seems very mature to do such a thing….) but something about turning 28 feels all womanly. And I love it. Like I am finally ready to claim the entirety of myself and how my life is unfolding and love each and every god damn ounce of it. The good, the great, the bad, the messy, the ugly.

No longer a girl trying to be anything and everything the world asks her to be, but a woman becoming exactly herself.

p.s. if you’re feeling the pull to go deeper, I’m creating a space called Deep Divers where we can explore ourselves and life beneath the surface together. Join the community, to be the first to know about upcoming workshops, retreats, and experiences <3

May you take a moment to study your hands and honour your own maturation today.

With love,

Annabelle x

It’s the 10th of August 2025, and as I sit solo drinking my Freddo espresso somewhere along the Western coast of Greece this morning, I realise how at peace I feel in the company of myself.

No scrolling, no talking, no reading. Just thinking and pondering. And I guess in this moment, writing on the ponders that arise.

The ideas that springs, the realisations that settle, the whispers that can be heard.

This is in the magic of time and space alone. Discovering parts of myself, my experience, my intuition, my life that perhaps otherwise would not be revealed.

It’s not even as far as dating myself anymore. I don’t plan these moments. I just find myself within them. Through a combination of accumulated conscious choice and fateful circumstance overtime. Moments like these feel blissful. Where anyone joining it would actually retract from its power.

Finding myself feeling the least lonely, when I am alone. Discovering the purest form of intimacy with myself. Where the deep truth of: ‘wherever you go, there you are’ comes alive. And feels exhilarating. Where I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life, with myself.

And of course, not all alone moments feel this way. Some feel excruciating. Moments where I want to escape to the online world. Moments where the wish to share it with someone I love drowns me. Moments where my mind screams in every possible direction. And after years of running away from such feelings, with time I am learning to find the strength to even sit with myself during these harder alone moments. Trying not to distract, trying not to escape. But just witnessing. Being with the intensity, trusting it will pass. Arguably, these are the alone moments where I meet myself the most. The darker, deeper, less glamorous parts of myself. Intimate again, just in a less sexy way.

To sit with yourself in the shit (as well as in the glory) is where the real magic lives. And the combination of being with yourself wholeheartedly through both, that’s gold.

I love partnership, and I can’t wait for it. I’ve had it and it is too, magic. Sometimes I long for it back. And sometimes I celebrate its absence.

And I guess singleton has invited more and more moments to myself than I realised I needed. What began with so much resistance and loneliness, in time became surrender -> discovery -> gratitude -> ritual towards my time spent alone.

As I embark on solo travels, I expect there will be a whole mixed bag of beautiful time alone and extreme loneliness and everything in between.

But for now, I just feel such purity and gratitude for my relationship with myself. That I can sit here with no one’s company other than my own and bask in all it has to offer. As though somewhere along the journey of being single, and being wholeheartedly with myself in the trenches a few times over, I learnt how to become my own best friend (who still gets on my nerves OFTEN) ha!

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Something for you to ponder:

• How intimate do you feel with yourself (and not in the sexy way) but in the raw, companionship type of way?

• …And where might there be space to invite more of this into your life?

Rituals for you to deepen self-intimacy:

1. As you wake up, don’t pull your phone, or jump out of bed, simply lay there few moments, in your dreamlike state and just notice yourself from the inside out. Even if there is someone next to you in bed, can you have those first few waking moments only to yourself to tune in, check in, be with your body and feelings before the world or anyone else asks anything of you…

2. Take yourself somewhere immersed in nature (and if possible with a lack of other humans around) and for 20mins or so TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Just stare at a tree, or the clouds, or a piece of sand. Just see if you can let your mind wander freely. Notice the urge to escape, be with that. Don’t judge it. Notice how it feels to be with the good thoughts and maybe the bad too. Capture any cool ideas, insights. Let yourself receive messages from yourself that you may typically be too distracted to normally listen to.

3. Erm, obviously, WRITE! All the weird things that your mind conjures up, note them down. Make a ritual out of journalling in the company of yourself. Write about your inner world. Write about your outer world. Write about an imagined world. Let yourself get real or get creative and see what pours out of you. Permission to just pour. No question, no judgement. Just you and your pen and whatever flows.

4. Intentionally date yourself. Start with coffee. Then maybe take yourself for brunch. Dinner. To an exhibition. Again, just notice how it feels to do things alone that you’d usually jump to do with someone else. (THAT IS OK TOO!) but this is an experiment in SELF time.

5. Try some guided meditations. I highly recommend - her voice, her words, her storytelling, her guidance soothe my soul like nothing else. She has a few free on Spotify:

I became a yoga teacher earlier this year, and I have (luckily) been teaching classes since the moment I qualified.

Did I feel ready? No. Was I ready? Yes.

Isn’t it always this way? Readiness isn’t a feeling, its a decision.

And at so many points across my yoga teacher journey so far, a part of myself has been screaming, ‘YOU’RE GETTING IT WRONG. THAT WAS A RUBBISH TRANSITION. WAIT THAT’S NOT HOW YOU WERE TAUGHT TO TEACH? OH CRAPPER I FORGOT THE SANSKRIT NAME OF THIS POSE!!!!!’ YOUR CLASSES SUCK COMPARED TO (insert inspirational teacher with decades of yoga experience)…’

And despite practicing yoga for 5+ years, after my 200hr training I truly felt like I’d become a beginner all over again (I know that sounds backwards). But the more I learnt, the more I realised how much I didn’t know (echoing Socrates there). I felt like a yogi fraud. I had uncovered the true extensiveness of yoga as a practice. It wasn’t just time moving across poses on a mat. It’s a practice rooted in deep sacred lineage, philosophy, history.

Swirling in my mind: can I ever do the sacredness of this practice justice?

I may never be able to contain all that underpins ‘yoga’ within my own practice and in how I teach. And yes, I’ll probably get it wrong or put my ‘western spin on it’. And yes, there will always be more to learn and discover.

But then, I sat with it all and realised:

1. That my perfectionism was kicking it

2. That this doesn’t make me unworthy of teaching (it just makes me human)

3. That I’m simply at the very start of defining (and always refining) my own unique style of holding space for others

On being a beginner

Starting anything new feels daunting at the beginning. Doubt rings loud. And in some cases causes efforts to cease all together. But if we loosen the grip of perfectionism, of urgency, of paralysing conscientiousness (guilty!) and give ourselves space to be a beginner, for things to feel messy, and uncertain and unfinished, then we may just have a shot of creating something rather beautiful. For ourselves, and for those that are impacted by our dedication to stay with the discomfort of the beginning.

So I’ve stopped trying to leap ahead, tick the boxes, get it right and be the best ‘yoga teacher’ to ever exist. Instead I’m focusing on honouring the practice of yoga whilst becoming the most myself I can be in the pursuit of my teaching. More myself in the way I move, the way I create classes, the way I guide, the way I express, the way I hold space during classes.

Letting myself be at the beginning of attaching this new string to my bow. Letting it feel uncomfortable whilst deciding to be ready. Ready to form my own way in this space.

Because, surely the world needs more of that. Authentic expression. Inspired and deeply influenced by the absolutely beautiful and completely sacred practice of yoga. Whilst also, becoming a unique mosaic of all my favourite yoga teachers, trusted mentors and life experience. Alchemising it all into my own form of wisdom, my own form of guidance, my own way of holding space.

My teaching philosophy

Slowly but surely I am beautifully discovering that when I hold space for others it is all about inviting deeper connection to self. A place to practice embodied listening . To tune into what our body needs. To let embodied wisdom arise. To let poetic language and storytelling resonate somewhere beyond the mind. To offer space for intuitive movement. To create permission for any shape to be welcome. To evoke a feeling. To cultivate an experience. To build trust in our bodies. To invite surrender. To find comfort in discomfort.

For myself, and for my students.

A year ago today, I dislocated my shoulder, discovered I had a broken hip and slipped two spinal discs in my lower back… all. at. once.

If you want the full story, you can read my post about my series of unfortunate events.

But long story short, I was extremely injured. And deep story light, I was extremely unhappy about it.

I couldn’t walk, work, socialise. You know, kinda live. I’d say it was my most challenging chapter yet, physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, spiritually, existentially. Every aspect of who I was and how I lived was confronted and I had an entire identity unravelling (because who was I if I couldn’t exercise, work, achieve, progress??!!)

Naturally, as one year has passed, I’ve been reflecting. Mostly comparing where I am now to where I was then. Or more importantly, comparing who I am now to who I was then.

Rupture and return remould.

Through my countless appointments with fracture specialists I discovered, that when a bone breaks, it doesn’t simply “fix itself” and go back to how it was before. In fact, I was told my fractured hip bone could take up to a year to remake and remould itself along the lines of stress. It may never be exactly as it was before as the bone remodels. The structure that emerges is slightly different. Stronger in some places, more sensitive in others.

Similarly with my shoulder, I had to have surgery to re-attach cartilage, using metal to fuse parts that were broken. Hence, my shoulder will never be the same as it once was. It will forever be patched up. Remoulding anew around the metal and the stitches.

Healed bone, isn’t the same bone.

In this sense, when the body breaks, it doesn’t return, it remoulds.

Beyond the bones

A year on, and I am still not back doing the level of activity I once was. I am not running marathons, or throwing heavy weights over my head in CrossFit classes. I never ‘returned’ to my pre-injury self.

But this, I am not viewing as a loss, or a lack of recovery. Because what happened changed me. Not just physically within the structures of my bones, but it changed what mattered to me. It shifted how I related to myself, how I relate to my body, how I relate to exercise. And I will never be the same me as I was before all of my injuries unfolded.

I am forever remoulded.

Just like bones, we don’t heal in pursuit of returning to who we once were. But we heal in a direction of becoming something new.
Something shaped by experience.

Life happens - injury, heartbreak, loss, transition - and each time it invites us to adapt, remould, become anew.

Breaking as a becoming

We break, and rather than go backwards, we have the opportunity to become.

Just as broken bones don’t return to what they were, neither do we. Healing isn’t about restoration, it is about creation.

We carry the memory of the break within us, use its lessons and weave them into who we become, we’re forever remoulded around it.

That’s the quiet gift of breaking: it doesn’t end us, it remakes us.

To grow, we must break.

Every year, I choose a word that I want to represent, guide and inspire my year ahead.

For 2025, that word was FREEDOM.

Looking back, my idea of freedom was:

1. The flexibility to choose how I spend my days (not stuck in the repetitive routine of corporate, city life)

2. The opportunity to travel (not locked into paying rent or a mortgage in one fixed place)

3. The ability to work and create on my own terms - defining what towards and HOW I worked (not being tied to a certain creative process that was not my own)

4. The chance to meet new people, see new ways of living, have my perspectives challenged and expanded (not going deeper into my very own life echo chamber)

My vision boards had images of women floating in the ocean, writing in their journals sat on the floor of cute cafes and hiking up giant mountains. You get the gist.

I realised I was on the brink of comfort. I had a stable job, a lovely home, a beautiful community, a set daily routine. It was great and I was grateful for the life I was living. But knowing my next 5-10 years could continue on this very trajectory -without taking a moment to try life in another way whilst I had the chance- began to freak me out. And so, I craved change. I craved more freedom from the comfort of the life I had spent the past 4 years creating. Feeling the call that I was destined for something new.

I was single, my only valuable possessions were my books and I had no real responsibilities beyond looking after myself. I was tied to nothing, but myself. It felt like an opportunity to grasp with both hands. And so… I did.

Fast forward to now and I have created the conditions. No job, no set destination, no routine, no partner, no responsibilities.

It maybe sounds like freedom. I mean they’re the exact conditions I imagined ‘freedom’ to be. And I am fully, wholeheartedly living within them.

And yet… I didn’t feel free.

The realisation moment

One morning in my new, freedom-full life I was strolling along the South Sri Lankan coastline as the sun rose, blissfully unaware of what day it was (I know so lucky! So free!). And yet, I suddenly had this overwhelming sense, that I’d missed a key part in my pursuit of freedom.

The FEELING of freedom.

I realised: wow, I have freedom, and yet, I don’t feel it.

Beyond the conditions, beyond the circumstances, beyond the context. What was my lived experience, my embodied feeling, my intuitive truth about this current situation? That I was free in life. But not free of myself.

Not free of myself.

Deep, huh? Yep. Can’t say I was thrilled about this realisation either.

I stood there almost rolling my eyes at myself. I knew all the ‘stuff’… ‘Wherever you go, there you are’ yada yada (I LOVE this quote by the way). But the irony of this moment made me want to scream a little.

Because once again, I realised that: it’s only through the lived experience that the truth comes home.

It was only through setting myself up in a life full of ‘freedom’ by my own definition and expectations, that I realised the one thing I needed most was to free myself, from myself.

Perhaps only then, I’d access that sense of freedom I so craved.

On being ‘untethered’

Another piece of this puzzle was revealed to me -again as I walked along the Sri Lankan shoreline at sunrise- when I bumped into a stranger. As the conversation usually goes when meeting new people on your travels, he asked me the usual ‘How long are you staying? What’s the plan?’.

Slowly but surely, I have learnt to own my answer of: ‘I don’t actually know’

Seen as my timeline is unknown, my plan undefined and my next move not yet clear. I explained my situation (the whole ‘I quit life as I knew it and am following the flow’) and his response struck me.

He replied: ‘ Wow, you really are untethered then?’

I paused for a moment, I hadn’t thought of myself in that way, untethered rather than free. And yet, he was right.

That word became a mirror for my current state.

I’d liberated myself from the structures and routines that in any way felt limiting. And so, by definition, I was -by all external measures- untethered. Like the unchained horse, free to roam.

But what remained was an inner tethering. The new me attached to old me. Or at least, to particular old scripts, stories, conditioning, expectations, patterns….

And I now believe, that this entire experience is here to show me true freedom. Not breaking free from life. But breaking free of myself. And learning to be free, feel free within whatever conditions I find myself within.

A new paradigm: Freedom as a feeling

After some initial frustration (and a fair bit of eye-rolling), I am now at peace with this unfolding and my evolving definition of and relationship to freedom.

It takes on a new meaning. Freedom as a way of being internally, not as a checklist of circumstances.

A matter of what it feels like, not what it looks like.

A continuous practice of inner untethering.

I make to-do lists the night before each day begins, I set a daily intention in my journal each morning, I map and time-block my week every Sunday, I set goals at the end of every month to guide the next month ahead, I write annual letters for my future self to receive, I vision board the heck out of every new year that arrives, I make decisions based on what I think a future version of myself would want, I often imagine myself at 80 and ask her what advice she has for me, I do Joe Dispenza manifestation meditations most days, I make an itinerary for every trip I take, I plan my weekends way ahead of them arriving… you get the picture, I live for future me.

Intense right, I know. And before we move on, I want to make it clear that by no means am I shaming myself (or ANYONE that does anything remotely similar) for any of the above habits and rituals. They have soothed me, guided me, and most likely are the reason I am here living in a rather ‘dream life’ moment that once only existed on pages in my journal and Pinterest images attached to my yearly mood board. I think its beautiful to engage in methods of creation towards a life that you want and dream of. However, there’s a moment where it can all go a little overboard. And I think it’s safe to say, without really knowing it until recently, I was overboaring…

The moment that everything changed…

A few months ago, someone said something that flipped all of my love for intention setting and manifesting on its head for me.

You know those life altering sentences that you hear and they change your whole perspective, shift your whole life trajectory, blow your freaking mind??? Yeah it was one of those moments. As thought a snippet of wisdom arrived that I simply had to listen to, explore further and I guess now, integrate and implement.

Story time……

I was on my yoga teacher training course and we were in a journalling session. One of the prompts we were all jotting away to was: ‘What was your intention for the course and how has it unfolded so far?’. Of course, I made my intention for the course crystal clear in my mind before it began and kept it top of mind each day that arrived (how on brand of me!)

We were then invited to read our answers aloud and one of the beautiful souls in the room spoke on her answer. (I will of course not detail the entire contents of her response but I will paraphrase and mention the KEY sentence that stopped me in my tracks and brought instant goose bumps to my body and tears to my eyes). She read:

"I didn’t get chance to set a clear intention for the course at the beginning, which was a shame and not having one unsettled me. But then as I was journaling on this question, I realised that no intention meant no expectations, and this opened up the chance for me to get what I need and not what I want from this experience.”

!!!!! GET WHAT I NEED, NOT WHAT I WANT !!!!!

And there I sat, mind blown. Maybe for you reading this it sounds simple. It is simple. But it was a sentiment that had never crossed my mind in such a way. Having glorified intention setting for basically my whole life, to suddenly realise there are benefits from doing the exact opposite, was mind opening to say the least. That through placing no expectation, no control, no plan, no forward thought towards something before it just naturally happens can bring to us what we need.

WOW.

And for the weeks that followed hearing that sentence, it was like a whole entire new way of living was revealed to me. Permission to not plan. To release expectations over what an experience ‘should’ hold. Intrigued by the possibility of not ‘trying to know’ something before I just simply, know it. To play no part in how the future happens. To surrender control over what occurs next. Ready to open space for life to present me with what I need, not what I want.

I was left wondering, what have I been missing out on by meticulously planning each moment of life? What does life need me to know, that I haven’t ever given it space to show me? Exciting stuff.

The risks of manifestation

And so, with all this stirring. I guess I started to really question the practice of intention setting and manifestation more generally. At least as my primary way of operating, constantly. I realised there were some pretty big risks of engaging (and perhaps relying) on such future-focused living:

• The subtle rejection of now: Engaging in manifestation leads us to believe that something is missing. It draws our focus to what is lacking. Makes us believe theres always more to gain, more ways to grow, more places to go. It has us denying what is and searching for what could be. It makes the present you, the present moment, feel inadequate and feeds the storyline of ‘not enoughness’. And unless we’re conscious of it we can live in a cycle of perpetual discontent with who we are, what we have and what is right NOW.

• The arrival fallacy: We work and wait for our goal, intention, manifestation to be realised and reached and then we think, ‘ah life will be ok then’, or ‘I’ll feel better then’. Spoiler: it rarely does. We hyper-focus on destination and forget about the funny old thing that is the whole freaking point: the journey. Life shouldn’t feel like a series of pursuits. Life can also just be the plain and simple nowness. No chasing, no waiting, no trying, no striving. No place to arrive, other than exactly where you are right now, and now, and… now….

• Limits of imagination: Imagination, our greatest human asset. But also, our greatest limitation. We can only manifest what we dare to imagine. But life what if life has something to show us that is beyond our imagination, something that doesn’t fit into our neat vision board template? We don’t know what we don’t know. And sometimes what’s possible is so far beyond what we could ever ask for. You may think you know what you want, but life may just have even more in store for you, if you give it the space to offer it. Manifestation can tether us to what we already know, instead of opening us to what we don’t yet see.

• Playing God: Manifesting demands that we know what we want (something that has always brought me great anxiety). Feeding us narratives like ‘ if you are clear on what you want, and you want it enough, it can be yours’… But what if we don’t know what we want? What if we are not supposed to know? It can make uncertainty feel like a failure. And places an immense amount of pressure, power and level of entitlement over ourselves and what we bring into being. Perhaps we are not supposed to be the all knowing, all powerful force in our life.

The new paradigm

Whilst I honour the part of me that has forever been trying to learn from past me, soothe present me and protect future me via all her wild and wacky manifestation techniques, I now realise, I don’t have to live in such an extreme version of this. Because, if I constantly try to map out what I want next, I run the risk of walking right on past what I need.

And so, Rumi says it best (as usual):

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”

I don’t need to plan every step of the way (my subtle way of trying to know the way). I just need to be on the way. Be in the way. Be the way.

This isn’t me waving goodbye to manifestation tactics all together (sorry misleading title alert)… It is about balancing my future-focused habits with a let go and flow type of existence. Learning to tread the delicate line between, my desire to ever-grow and ever-expand and be the conscientious, intentional, forward thinking soul that I am, WHILST leaving space for a new part of me to emerge. The one that is open to life’s surprises, the one that can surrender, the one sitting so wholeheartedly in the now, she forgets to plan what’s next.

The one ready for life to show me what I need, not just what I want.

Wayfinding is the art of figuring out where you’re going when you don’t know the exact destination. You don’t need a map, just a compass. And that compass is made up of clues: joy, curiosity, energy, alignment, resonance, aliveness.

It landed so deeply because it put a label on the moment I am currently in (and have been in for a while!)

Out the Other Side

A few months ago, I quit life as I knew it.

After years of living in London, building my “dream career” at The School of Life, and trying to keep up with the fast-paced corporate grind, I realised I didn’t want to keep following the script of what I thought it meant to be “successful.”

So I stepped away.

Now I’m out the other side of that ending, teaching yoga at a surf camp in Sri Lanka, collaborating on creative design and facilitation projects, and (for the first time in a long time) giving myself full permission to build something of my own.

It’s freeing, yes. But it’s also confronting.

There are no rules here. No guidelines. No shared brainstorms. No pre-planned strategy to follow. No team to lean on.

It’s like staring down at a blank piece of paper and having to put the pen down, not knowing what the final drawing will be.

A Compass, Not a Map

But luckily, I have realised my page isn’t blank. I know what I care about. I know where my curiosity lies. I know the things I’m good at. And actually that is absolutely enough to begin.

This is where wayfinding comes in. I don’t need a clear map. Or the final destination in mind. I just need to follow the compass clues.

The clues are simple:

• What lights me up?

• What am I curious towards?

• What energises me?

• What feels alive?

• What is fulfilling?

• What do I value?

• What brings me peace and joy?

Answers to these form the path of which to follow.

Following the Clues

Right now, those clues are pointing me toward:

• Words → turning life lessons into language

• Movement → yoga, embodiment, and what the body can teach us (going beyond our mind for wisdom!)

• Connection and shared learning → creating spaces for reflection and expansion in groups

• Building out loud → sharing the messy, unfolding process of transition

I don’t yet know exactly what I’m “building.” And maybe that’s the point.

An Invitation

If you’re also in a season of transition, maybe this will resonate: you don’t need to have it all mapped out.

You just need a few compass clues and the courage to follow them.

And maybe you’re thinking, ‘you’re crazy’, and that’s ok :) So often I think this of myself too. But with time, as I soften to the more intuitive and spiritually connected side of myself, and let her have a seat at my table of life, the less I think I’m crazy, and the more I think I am just open to life and its mystery.

And dreams are a beautiful way to be with the mystery of ourselves. To tap into the power of our subconscious - to be with all that we cannot understand on a more conscious level. To tune into the deeper, more hidden parts of ourselves. To greet our internal unknowns. To connect to our intuitive wisdom. Or even on occasion, by my interpretation, to receive from the divine*

* My definition of ‘divine’ is faith in something far greater than what I can typically understand. A trust in beyondness.

Anyway, I could talk about my relationship to the realm of unknown and my ever-evolving faith all day long. But let’s talk about the message and its resounding comfort it has left me with.

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The Divine Message

I won’t delve into the story of my dream - that feels a little too personal - but the message, and what I have interpreted it to mean, I’ll share.

Before I dig in… I am very aware I have assigned meaning to this dream. I’ve interpreted something, with all my humanness, biases, unconscious processes and current life context applied. I am a Psychology Grad after all, so I am very aware of this side of things. And perhaps more importantly, I'‘m acutely aware of all the things I am unaware of, all my blind spots that may be impacting my interpretation of such an experience… but hey I could nuance my way out of bringing meaning to anything, so I’ll continue despite this…

For wider context and to add colour to the gravitas of the dream’s message: I’m single. Happily. But after a while of feeling pretty closed off to new romantic connections, I’ve more recently arrived at a place of readiness. Aka, my heart feels open towards welcoming partnership in my life again. What a lovely realisation hey!.. Well I thought so to, until this realisation was accompanied with an overwhelming sense of urgency to find someone, a flood of feeling like there was something I needed ‘to do’ to tick the open heart box and utterly bombarded with the idea that I need to start ‘putting myself out there’ to make it happen ??? (whatever the fuck that means)

In an instance, I felt completely responsible for my sudden readiness to meet someone. That the entire onus was on me to solve this 'missing piece’. It felt like a math equation that I should have an answer to, or at least be able to figure out. But, of course, I also realised, love isn’t a ‘controllable’ force. I cant control or predict when, how or who I fall in love with. And I cant make this happen on a timeline that suits me. Funnily enough, love -real love- doesn’t work this way.

This made me think of one of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite movies - Interstellar.

And so, I decided to meet this sense of ego-urgency with a new energy. To flip the script. An energy not filled with control, or rush or heaviness or pressure or expectation. But instead fuelled by the sentiment: ‘Love will find me’.

This became my new mantra. And not just for love. But for anything in my life where I was clinging too tightly, chasing too urgently or controlling too heavily. It felt soothing to channel this energy. As though I could finally surrender.

Fast forward to last night’s dream, where a three word message arrived and felt like a complete reassurance that this is the exact energy I need to channel.

The message was:

‘Love has legs’

This message was on repeat. Given to me in a very direct and intentional way. On loop. It was loud and it was consistent. Almost as though a part of me (or whoever planted it within me) ensured I would wake up, remember it and feel deeply guided by it.

‘love has legs, love has legs, love has legs, love has legs’ it whispered.

I woke up and instantly wrote it down in my notes app on my phone. Along with the following words that I will leave you with as my takeaway meaning gifted from this divine message…

‘The one phrase that kept repeating:love has legs. Almost like I just had a complete vision of how love will enter my life. That even if love feels far for a while, when the times right, love has legs and it meets you where you’re at. You’ll come together with love. Love moves. Love acts. Love greets you. You don’t have to seek it. Or chase it. Or find it. You just have to be open when it arrives.

Let love grow legs and come to you.Be patient. It’ll find you.

I’m intrigued to sit with this message further. To meditate on it. To squeeze it every last drop of wisdom it holds, realising there is more for it to teach me. But for now, it feels like one gigantic, comforting divine hug, that I really needed.

Grateful to have this new found ability to be at peace with the unknown. To be intrigued by mystery. To remain receptive to the signs, in tune with the whispers, present to the nudges and of course, open to love.

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She told me about the stool analogy.

“A stool needs at least three legs to stay upright,” she said.

Imagine you are the seat of the stool. The three legs holding you are:

• your relationships

• your home/environment

• your work

Each one is a pillar of existence (of course, life is far more nuanced and multifaceted than this, but stick with me…)

She explained:

“When one leg breaks or wobbles, the stool can still stand. But if two of the legs give way, the stool will crumble.”

That analogy stuck. I realised we can usually cope if one leg wobbles. But when two, or God forbid all three, wobble at once, we can soon fall.

Since then, I’ve tried to nurture all three pillars, or at least pour energy into the sturdier ones when one is faltering.

But then came my latest life decisions and shifts, where I didn’t just wobble a leg or two… I consciously chose to take them off one by one…

• My job: I quit.

• My home: I left and decided to travel.

• My relationships: I waved goodbye (for now) to my friends and family.

So right now, my stool is truly legless.

Foolish? Maybe. Exciting? Absolutely.

And so, perhaps I’m not a static stool with all legs in tact right now (a safer more secure way of living, following the usual status quo).

Instead, maybe I’m a frisbee - light, flexible, flying through the wind. Waiting to see where I land, so I can re-attach my legs and rebuild my stool.

Balancing stability with freedom will always be my life’s dance. Two values I’m learning to hold, honour and harmonise to different degrees at different times.

For now, I’m testing what it feels like to live without consistent legs. To see if I can stay steady while in motion. To write a new analogy, not one of a sturdy stool but of a free-flying frisbee. Trusting that a life can have a space for both.

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This is part of a new series I’m writing on Substack about life transitions, navigating endings and listening to your intuitive knowing.
If you’re navigating a shift, or just love a good poetic unraveling, subscribe to come with me on this journey of change.