Some of us spend so much of our lives trying to understand what makes us unique, trying to locate the particular feature, the singular thread, the one thing that distinguishes us from everyone else. And I believe the urge for differentiation is not only natural, but developmental. We need to know the “I” from the “we”. We need to know what is ours and what is being projected onto us, what belongs to our own inner world and what has been placed there by family, culture, or the many expectations that begin shaping us long before we have had the chance to know ourselves. We need to know where we end, and another begins, because without some sense of distinction, how do we make contact with ourselves at all?

So I do not think differentiation is something to move beyond entirely. I think it is necessary, both early in life and still in adulthood. It is important to know the edges of the self, to understand the difference between self and other, self and object, self and expectation. That kind of discernment helps us understand what is truly ours, and what isn’t. It allows us to resist being absorbed into identities that have been assigned to us before we could choose them for ourselves.

However, when differentiation becomes the main way we measure worth, something begins to narrow. The focus on being distinct can make sameness feel less valuable than it is. It can make the ordinary, sameness, something to move away from, rather than something to embrace.

There is something deeply comforting in being like other people. In having similar hobbies, similar passions, similar ways of speaking and thinking and making sense of the world. There is relief in shared references, in the ease of understanding the particulars of a thing without needing to translate it first. There is relief in recognising ourselves in others. In getting to be ordinary, normal, like others. In discovering that some of the strange, specific quirks we thought were so personal, or some of the conflicts we thought marked us out as different, are in fact part of the ordinary texture of being alive. That recognition softens something in me. It tells me I do not have to stand alone in order to be real.

We can be distinct and still deeply similar. We can have our own inner worlds, our own particular paths, our own bodies and histories and ways of moving through life, while also sharing the same basic human questions, the same vulnerabilities, the same longings, the same need to be seen and held and understood.

And perhaps that is part of what I am learning now: that differentiation and interconnection are not opposites, but companions. That one is not more valuable than the other. There are seasons when it is necessary to sharpen the self, to separate, to claim one’s outline, to insist on one’s own interiority. And there are seasons when the work is to allow resemblance and to rest in the fact that we are not the only ones carrying these particular human experiences.

I think this is where the spiritual dimension begins to emerge for me. Because once sameness is no longer read as a threat, it starts to feel like something larger than simple likeness. It begins to feel like a reminder that our lives are not as sealed off from one another as they sometimes appear. There is a shared field of being here, a shared human terrain and our similarities are not incidental. They are part of the architecture of what it means to be alive together.

Ubuntu echoes this when it says, “I am because we are”. My being is not independent of the collective, nor is the collective diminished by my presence. We are not isolated units merely tolerating one another’s existence. We are implicated in one another. We shape one another. We are formed through relationship, through contact, through the many ways our lives touch and echo each other.

I think that is what I am moving toward now, after so many years of orienting myself through difference, not away from uniqueness, but beyond needing uniqueness to hold my value.

I hope this resonates with someone out there.

Love, Ash x

I think feelings of emptiness are part of what we sign up for when we come to earth. There is an existential loneliness, a void, that comes with being human.

To be human is to be on a quest for meaning, to live with the reality that we are born and die alone, and that whilst we are wired for connection and sustained by the presence of others, there are particular afflictions, stressors, and life experiences, shaped by our personalities, our biology, our dispositions and our value systems, that make our experience of the world uniquely our own. Accompanying all of that, at times, is a sense of emptiness.

For some, that emptiness is so vast they cannot locate themselves within it. They become wholly consumed by it, unable to sit with its presence, and find themselves rendered powerless in the face of something that feels too large to name. I am talking about people who have struggled with depression, with prolonged low mood. I include myself in that. Those of us who have been there know what it feels like to be swallowed whole, to be deep inside something dark and to be searching, with everything you have for a way out.

For others, it is not a constant fall. It is more of a subtle presence, a niggling awareness that surfaces in ordinary moments, like walking into work, looking across the table at a partner, sitting in a car at traffic lights. The inner voice that asks, what is the meaning of all of this? What is the point? Not from a place of despair, but from that deeply human place of searching for understanding, for purpose, for things to make sense.

I think to be human is to feel the void from time to time. Some of us more than others. I want to say this carefully because I am not taking away from the reality that for many people this requires more support, more intervention, more scaffolding to make it livable. But I also want to normalise its presence. So many mysteries shape our reality. Why would the void not exist? Its existence, to me, is proof of the universe and its ambiguity. Of life’s uncertainties. Of the existential questions that every human being must eventually face, or spend a lifetime avoiding.

The void’s existence is, in its own way, humbling. It reminds us that we cannot truly know. That there will always be something beyond our grasp, something that exceeds what we can see or prove or hold. In that sense, it becomes a test of faith, of endurance, of our capacity to surrender to what remains uncertain.

It may also be a signal. A signal of an imbalance at play, one that is both internal and structural. Western epistemology has long overemphasised the material and the empirical, what can be measured, proven, and seen. This has come at a cost, including the undermining of African and indigenous cosmological worldviews that hold a much more expansive understanding of reality, one that includes the spirit, the ancestors, forces both known and unknown, and a far greater openness to what is not visible.

I find myself drawn to this connection. The emptiness, the sense of ‘what is the point ’, may arise precisely because we are so focused on the physical that we have become disconnected from something deeper. The missing piece, for many of us, may be that we are not living a soul-led life and that we exist inside systems that were never designed to support one.

The void also speaks to something about our origin stories. If we came to earth with a particular purpose, moving across a lifetime towards greater alignment with it, and if we were always souls before we were bodies, here to move through certain lessons and experiences, then the emptiness takes on a different quality. It becomes something closer to mourning. A grief that follows the soul into this life. A deep yearning for a simpler existence that preceded this one. Understood this way, the void is not an anomaly. It is part of what it means to be here.

How wide that gap feels can also say something about our early experiences. The sense of falling into something formless may carry within it the echoes of emotional loneliness in childhood, of not having been sufficiently attuned to, of not having been fully seen. What tends to follow from that is a subtle and persistent sense of not being enough, of searching to be witnessed, of reaching for needs that were never quite met. The void, in this sense, is a reminder that nothing outside of us fully resolves what we never got to experience within.

With all of this in mind, I find myself wondering whether the void is something to be fixed at all, or whether the invitation is to encounter it differently.

Modern life tends toward optimisation. We want partners who tick every box, meals delivered in thirty minutes, healing on a schedule, and the best version of ourselves available at all times. Pop psychology has not always helped with this. We have become, in many ways, intolerant of ordinary unhappiness. Freud described this as a necessary suffering, an inevitable part of being alive. I think he was onto something.

Perhaps the work is not to rid ourselves of the void but to become more resilient in its presence and more curious about what it is trying to communicate to us. Maybe it wants us to stop treating it as a problem to be solved and start treating it as something worth listening to.

The questions it brings up for me are: How do we move with the void rather than away from it? How do we let it speak? If it has no words, what does nothingness communicate? What colour is it, what texture, what shape?

If we are willing to look at it directly, to name it, to be alongside it rather than flee from it, maybe then it becomes less frightening. Maybe then it becomes something we can hold as part of what it means to be human, part of what it means to be a soul on a quest for meaning in a vast, dynamic and deeply uncertain world.

I hope this sparked some thought and curiosity in you. I’d love to know your thoughts on this piece.

Love,

Ash x

I was diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive and hyperactive combined type, at age 30. In many ways, the diagnosis explained so much. So many moments from my life, moments I had spent years feeling confused or ashamed about, suddenly made a lot more sense. I felt relieved. Finally, I had the language to explain why I had always felt that my brain worked differently.

But relief was not the only thing that came. Not long after, grief arrived too. I noticed my mind sorting through memories of times when I had faced great difficulty and didn’t know why. It made me feel sad for those earlier versions of myself.

I think part of what makes a late diagnosis so complex is that it asks you to revisit the past with new eyes. Moments that once felt like personal failings begin to look different. You start to realise that some of the things you spent years criticising yourself for may never have been character flaws at all. And while there is relief in that understanding, there can also be sadness. Sadness for the support you didn’t receive, the compassion you weren’t able to offer yourself and the years spent confused about why you acted or responded in certain ways.

Lately, I have been reflecting on what exactly I am grieving and I wanted to share it with you. Perhaps you might see yourself here, or perhaps your experience looks different.

I grieve the support I didn’t receive

I didn’t get any special adjustments in the workplace. I had to sit in rooms with bright lights and loud sounds and find a way to get through. I had to explain to managers why I kept forgetting the smaller tasks, why my brain missed essential details, and why I wasn’t as productive as everyone else seemed to be without having any real understanding of why myself. I made up excuses to my managers that felt formidable enough, all while knowing somewhere inside me that they weren’t the full truth.

I had emotional breakdowns in bathrooms at work and at home. I fell asleep at my desk due to a lack of dopamine and boredom. I sometimes slept through my lunch breaks because the day was so painful to sit through that my body simply checked out. I got into jobs that were, in hindsight, the worst possible environments for how my brain works: demanding, detail-heavy administrative roles that required the very things that didn’t come easily to me. Executive dysfunction reminded me constantly of how far behind I felt. There were stretches of time when I genuinely detested my life. I’d spend many months daydreaming about the life beyond the one I currently had.

I could have asked for a private space to work. I could have requested noise-cancelling headphones. I could have chosen work that actually matched how my brain operates. Maybe I would have had more compassionate managers. Maybe then I wouldn’t have bounced from job to job. Maybe then I wouldn’t have been fired. Maybe I would have actually enjoyed my job.

I often wonder what might have been different had I known sooner.

I grieve not having the language to explain myself

I grieve not being able to give people accurate context for why I acted the way I did. Taking a long time to respond to messages because of executive dysfunction. Going silent in group settings because I was overstimulated. Struggling with rejection sensitive dysphoria after an interaction and not understanding why I was spiralling for hours afterwards.

I had so many conversations with people close to me where I said some version of ‘Why do I find basic things so hard?’. I know why now. I wish I had had the language, the insight, the diagnosis, to explain it at the time. Instead, I thought something was fundamentally wrong with me.

But it wasn’t just that I didn’t understand myself. Other people didn’t understand me either. And without the language to bridge that gap, I was often left carrying the full weight of being misread and misunderstood.

I grieve the confidence and self-esteem I didn’t get to develop

There were many days when I asked myself why I couldn’t just get it together. Why everything felt so hard. Why, when I did well in one area of my life, something else would fall apart. Why I could be deeply passionate about something and still forget the essential details and struggle with the follow-through. Why I know something and still somehow not do it.

I would stay silent in conversations because I was afraid of losing my train of thought mid-sentence, and when I did speak up, and it happened anyway, it only confirmed what I already feared about myself. Silence felt safer. Smaller felt safer.

Perhaps what I am grieving most is how much energy I spent trying to become someone else. Someone more organised. More consistent. More productive. Someone who seemed able to move through life without struggling over things that appeared effortless for everyone around them.

I spent so long trying to fix myself that I never stopped to consider whether I needed understanding rather than fixing.

Looking back, I can see now that what I was carrying was shame. A deep, accumulated shame about the way my brain worked that I had no framework to question or challenge. I wish I had known sooner that it wasn’t a reflection of my intelligence or my worth. I wish I had been able to own who I am and how I work, rather than spending years measuring myself against a standard that was never built with me in mind.

I grieve the struggles I experienced in education and training

Pulling all-nighters. Leaving my dissertation to the last possible moment. Not reaching my true potential. Falling behind with administrative tasks.

I only recently found out that I could have had a support worker through my university, or an ADHD coach funded through Access to Work UK. These resources existed. I just didn’t have a diagnosis and without it, I didn’t feel able to ask. I am grieving the unnecessary weight of all that unsupported struggle.

I grieve what rumination took from me

The years I spent staying mentally and emotionally connected to relationships long after they had ended. The overthinking that kept me circling my own creative desires without ever quite landing in them. The workshops I wanted to create but talked myself out of due to overthinking loops.

I spent a lot of time in my head and in a dysregulated body, not knowing why I kept spiralling. The rumination wasn’t just unpleasant. It was costly. It kept me from things I genuinely wanted. And this, perhaps more than anything else I have named here, is a grief not just for productivity or outcomes, but for relationships, experiences, and a creative life that I didn’t fully get to inhabit.

Where I am now

It has been nearly a year since my diagnosis, and the grief is arriving all at once. I find myself going back to old versions of myself with new information. What I am grieving the most is the years spent struggling, both internally and externally, without understanding why. Perhaps that is what diagnosis has given me. Not a way to change the past, but a different way of relating to it.

Diagnosis has brought relief. However, it has also brought mourning. Mourning for the support I didn’t have. For the language I didn’t have. For the compassion I wasn’t able to extend to myself because I didn’t yet understand that I deserved it.

There are, of course, positives. There is a version of this essay I could write about resilience, about what I have overcome, about what I have built despite all of it. And that would be true too. I am reminded, in sitting with all of this, of how much I have survived. But right now, I want to make space for the grief to exist. I am allowing myself to be in it. In despair. In the sadness. In the frustration. In the anger.

P.S. I want to be mindful not to collapse my identity into one category. ADHD is not the sole explanation for every experience I have described here. Anxiety, low mood, relational trauma, and other co-occurring factors have all shaped my life too. What I am exploring in this piece is one part of a much larger picture.

Have you been diagnosed ADHD, autistic, dyslexic, or another form of neurodivergence? Did grief show up for you too? I would love to hear from you.

Sending you love,

Ash x

Did you feel like you never got to just be the child? There may have been moments of fun, of lightness, of doing all the things children do. But underneath it, you carried the weight of your family life. You learned to pay attention to things other children didn’t have to think about. You became aware of your parent’s moods, their energy levels, and whether they seemed like themselves or not. You learned to recognise the signs that things might be changing. You adapted, adjusted, and often carried responsibilities that were never meant to belong to a child. And then you grew up. But the weight didn’t necessarily go with it. It remains a feature of your life, even if the relationship with your parent has changed.

This piece is about what happens when you grow up with a parent living with mental illness, and what it means to continue navigating the impact of that long after childhood ends.

But before I go further, I want to make my intentions clear. This is not an attempt to shame or stigmatise people who live with mental health issues. Mental illness remains widely misunderstood, and many people are doing the best they can with limited support. There are parents living with mental illness who are loving, devoted and trying their best. Mental illness does not automatically make someone a harmful parent. What I am reflecting on here is the impact of growing up in an environment where a parent’s mental health significantly shaped the emotional landscape of childhood. What I am interested in is not a verdict on the parent, but rather the experience of the child, i.e. its impact and what it continues to ask of us in adulthood.

I am also writing this not from a place of resolution, but from the middle of it. I am a qualified therapist with lived experience of a parent living with mental illness.

Growing up in this kind of environment can shape how you move through the world, how your nervous system responds, and the roles you unconsciously step into. While everyone's experience will be different, these are some of the patterns I've noticed in myself:

I developed a sense of responsibility that had no off switch

One of the most consistent threads in my life has been a sense of responsibility that does not fully switch off, even now. There is often an underlying feeling that you need to be aware, prepared, and ready to step in if needed. This is not always conscious, but it sits in the background, shaping how you move through situations and relationships. It extends beyond practical responsibility into an emotional realm where you feel the need to hold things together, anticipate what might go wrong, or manage the tone of an environment.

Over time, your sense of self can become tied to being the responsible one. The one who keeps it together. The one who doesn’t fall apart. There is strength in that, but there is also a cost. Often, it comes at the expense of undervaluing your own need to be supported and held.

I became an emotional caretaker

Alongside responsibility came another role: the emotional caretaker. When you grow up around instability, you often become highly attuned to what other people are feeling. You learn how to soothe, accommodate, and anticipate. You notice when someone is becoming distressed before they have said anything. You learn how to make yourself smaller when someone else’s emotions feel bigger.

For a long time, I thought this was simply who I was. A caring person. A thoughtful person. And those things are true. But I have also had to ask myself where genuine care ends and survival begins. There are moments even now when I catch myself scanning for what everyone else needs before I have paused to ask what I need. That instinct made sense once. It helped me navigate an environment where other people’s emotional states had a direct impact on my sense of safety. But adulthood has required me to learn that caring about someone doesn’t have to come at the cost of my core needs.

I became hypervigilant in ways I didn’t always recognise

Alongside that, my parents’ health made me alert to everything, such as being highly attuned to other people’s moods, noticing subtle shifts in tone or atmosphere before anything has been said and feeling the need to read a room carefully before fully settling into it.

I recognise this even now. If my phone rings unexpectedly, there is often a split second where my body assumes something is wrong before my mind has caught up. As a child, I learned to check the emotional weather of the house before deciding how much of myself I could bring into a room.

Even in environments that are safe, there can still be a part of you that remains scanning. In some ways, it forms part of my strengths; I can read people well at times, but equally, it makes me feel like I can’t truly be at ease, even around the people I love.

I found leaning into play and joy to be a process

Following on from the last point, hypervigilance means I am not always comfortable in play and enjoyment. My nervous system became wired for instability, and, as it is still unlearning and retraining itself, there are moments where play can feel sort of uneasy. There can be an anticipatory quality to enjoyment, a waiting for something to shift, even when nothing is wrong. In adulthood, play and rest can become things you may have to move towards deliberately, rather than things that come naturally.

I tried to manage unpredictability

When a parent’s mental health is inconsistent or difficult to stabilise, unpredictability can become the rhythm you grow up inside. You learn to anticipate it, brace for it, and try to manage it before it arrives. Over time, your nervous system comes to expect disruption. So even when life becomes more stable, your body may still respond as though something difficult is just around the corner. I carried with me this sense of always ‘bracing’.

Now an adult, but the same parent

For some of us, none of this is simply history. The relationship is ongoing, and it’s difficult to hold all its complexities and responsibilities whilst trying to live your life and heal.

Boundaries are more complicated than people realise

People talk about boundaries as though they are straightforward, but when the person you are setting limits with is a parent living with mental illness, the reality is often much more complex. Their safety may at times be a genuine concern, and their capacity to understand and respond to your needs may fluctuate depending on their mental health. You are not just managing your own wellbeing. You are often weighing it against someone else’s vulnerability.

People often speak about boundaries without acknowledging the complexities of navigating them in these circumstances. Add in under-resourced mental health services and cultures where mental illness remains highly stigmatised, and it can leave you feeling very alone.

Explaining your family life to others can feel difficult

Even in adulthood, this can remain an isolating experience. I have often found myself simply saying ‘It’s complicated’ and leaving it there. This is not because I don’t want to share, but because the full version requires so much context. I’ve often found myself editing the story depending on who I’m speaking to. Offering a simplified version because the fuller truth feels difficult to explain. There is relief in finding people who understand without needing every detail translated.

It can be hard to be vulnerable about this part of your life

There is also vulnerability in allowing others to see this part of your life. Whether that is friends, partners, or people you are building trust with, there can be questions about how much to share, when to share it, and what it might change.

Especially being Caribbean, I was raised to believe that what goes on in the family stays within the family. For a long time, speaking about my experience felt almost non-consensual. My parent couldn’t help being mentally unwell, and there was a part of me that worried that by sharing my experience, I wasn’t giving them the opportunity to tell their side. It left me feeling conflicted about what belonged to me and what belonged to them. What I have come to realise is that both can be true. Their story belongs to them. My experience belongs to me.

Looking after yourself while still, in some form, looking after them

One of the least spoken-about aspects of this experience is trying to heal while the relationship that shaped the wound is still active. You may be in therapy working through something while simultaneously receiving a call that pulls you back into an old dynamic. You may be learning to rest while still carrying a background concern for someone who is not well. Progress is rarely linear when the context itself remains active.

Where I am now

I am still navigating a relationship with a parent living with mental illness. I am still learning what that relationship can and cannot be. I still notice old patterns showing up in me: the hypervigilance, over-responsibility, the instinct to manage.

What I have come to understand is that it is possible to hold multiple truths at once. That someone can be unwell, and that not be entirely their fault, and that being in relationship with them can still be difficult. That you can love someone deeply and still feel the weight of what their illness asked of you.

Where I find myself now is in the slow process of putting some things down. Not all at once, and not without difficulty, but with a growing sense that I do not have to carry all of it, all of the time.

Perhaps one of the hardest things about having a parent living with mental illness is realising that there isn’t always a neat ending. For many of us, the story remains ongoing. The relationship continues. The questions evolve. The impact shifts shape over time.

Healing, then, is not necessarily about arriving somewhere. It may be about learning how to be with the complexities, the edges, whilst committing to living fully.

If any part of this resonates, I want you to know that you are not alone. This experience is more common than it is spoken about, and perhaps part of healing is creating more space for these conversations to exist.

May you continue to meet yourself with kindness as you navigate life’s complexities.

Sending you love,

Ash x

Have you ever considered how your relationship with your mother may have shaped the way you relate to your friends? I often hear discourse on how parental wounds shape romantic relationships, but not so much on how they influence the types of friendship dynamics we find ourselves entering into.

Similar to romantic relationships, these patterns aren’t always obvious. However, upon reflection, you may begin to notice that the way you relate in friendship, how you navigate closeness, the roles you step into, or how you feel when connection deepens or becomes distant, can often reflect your early attachment relationships with your caregivers.

In my own experience, over the past few years, I’ve become aware that the way I have related in friendships is linked to my mother wound. As I’ve been understanding myself more and my primary relationship, I’ve begun to see just how deeply entrenched certain behaviours have been. In many ways, I was seeking repair and healing through my friendships.

From taking on the rescuer role, as I did with my mom, to struggling with trust issues, to unconsciously searching for a mother figure in others, there are many ways in which this has shaped my friendships. Let me give you a snapshot of some key themes that came up for me.

I took on a rescuer role

One of the most consistent patterns I began to notice in my friendships was a tendency to take on a caregiving or rescuer role. These were often friendships that felt emotionally intense, where closeness was built through navigating challenges, unpacking experiences, or supporting one another through difficult periods.

On the surface, this felt like depth, and in many ways, it is. But over time, I began to notice that some of these dynamics lacked reciprocity. There was often an unspoken expectation that I would be the one to hold, support, or help make sense of things.

What I didn’t initially recognise was how much this role gave me a sense of purpose within the relationship. When I was needed, I felt secure. I knew where I stood. There was a clarity in my position that made the connection feel more certain. At times, being in that role also created a sense of control. If I were the one helping or guiding, I wouldn’t have to fully sit with my own needs, or risk being in a position where I might need something that couldn’t be given.

Sitting with this more deeply, it became difficult to separate this pattern from my relationship with my mum. Growing up, I often felt responsible for her wellbeing. On countless occasions, my sister and I held family interventions, where we would try to encourage my mom to make positive changes in her life, while also holding emotional space in ways that, in hindsight, were inappropriate for a child.

I was a parentified child, and I therefore unconsciously sought the same conditions in friendships. It felt more familiar to be in a managing and guiding role, rather than relating from a more equal or spontaneous position.

I struggled to trust and let people in fully

Alongside the pattern of over-functioning, I began to notice something more internal, particularly in the way I related to trust.

While there has always been a genuine desire for closeness, there was also an underlying hesitation when it came to fully allowing others into my inner world. Reflecting on this, it feels closely linked to experiences of inconsistency and broken promises growing up, not necessarily rooted in a lack of care, but in a lack of capacity. Over time, this shaped an expectation that people may not always show up in the ways I hoped or needed.

When trust felt uncertain, I noticed a shift within me, a pulling back, sometimes subtle, other times more pronounced. It showed up as overthinking interactions, questioning intentions, or becoming more self-reliant in ways that limited closeness.

In moments of rupture, which are a natural part of any relationship, this often felt heightened. Rather than seeing the rupture as something that could be worked through, it felt like confirmation of something deeper, reinforcing the belief that it may not be safe to fully rely on others.

I led with a mask instead of vulnerability

Another way I’ve come to understand this is through Internal Family Systems (IFS), a therapeutic model developed by Richard Schwartz. IFS suggests that we all have different “parts” within us, each with its own roles, often shaped by our early experiences.

In my experience, there has been a strong protector part, one that knew how to manage, adapt, and maintain connection. This part often stepped in to ensure that I remained safe within relationships, sometimes by staying in control, over-functioning, or limiting how much I revealed. These protective parts often develop to prevent us from feeling emotions that once felt overwhelming or unsafe to experience.

Beneath that, there were more vulnerable parts, sometimes referred to as exiles, that held sadness, longing, and a desire for care, affection, and reassurance. These were the parts that wanted to be held and seen, but had not always felt safe enough to be fully expressed.

In friendships, this meant that while I may have appeared open and supportive, there were deeper layers of myself that were not always fully shared. Over time, this created a sense of not being fully seen, even within close relationships.

Even though deep down, I wanted more vulnerable relationships, I was afraid of being abandoned or cast aside in my vulnerability. To protect myself, I masked instead.

I felt uncomfortable with physical affection

For years, my nervous system felt deeply uncomfortable with physical displays of affection from friends. Affectionate gestures such as hugs or casual touch felt unfamiliar and, at times, uncomfortable. It wasn’t because I didn’t want connection, but because my body did not necessarily recognise these experiences as safe or familiar.

There have been moments where someone reached out in a completely normal, affectionate way, and I noticed my body tense slightly. I didn’t know how to receive what was offered.

Due to not having consistent experiences of physical affection growing up, there was a disconnect between the intention of closeness and my body’s ability to receive it with ease. Over time, this is something I have been working through, allowing myself to become more comfortable with safe forms of affection.

I compared my experience to friends with more secure mothers

There have also been moments when I became aware of a sense of difference within friendships, particularly when observing the relationships others had with their mothers. Even when those relationships were not perfect, there was often still a sense of having somewhere to return to, a base, a form of emotional safety that existed in the background of their lives.

At times, I felt the absence of that in my own experience, particularly during periods where I needed support. It felt difficult to articulate, but there was a sense of being, at times, slightly outside of something others seemed to have access to.

I was searching for a motherly figure in friendships

Contrary to my point about being the helper/rescuer, in my earlier teens and twenties, I also searched for motherly figures in friendships. Alongside taking on a caregiving role, I noticed a tendency to seek out a maternal presence. At times, this meant unconsciously projecting expectations onto friends, seeing them as more nurturing or holding than they may realistically have been able to be.

When those expectations were not met, the emotional response often felt stronger than the situation alone warranted. It felt like rejection or abandonment, almost as if something important was being taken away from me. Looking back, it felt less about the person themselves and more about what they represented to me.

I didn’t feel able to be my full self in friendships

Perhaps one of the more difficult realisations has been recognising the ways in which I didn’t always feel able to be fully myself within my friendships. While it is natural for different relationships to bring out different aspects of who we are, there were times when this felt more like adaptation than authenticity. I would subtly shape myself in response to what felt acceptable or safe within the dynamic.

At times, this meant emphasising certain parts of myself while minimising others, being more composed, more supportive, more attuned to the other person, while the parts of me that felt more vulnerable or in need of care remained less visible.

There was also an underlying fear that if I were to show up fully, without adjusting, I might not be received in the same way. And so, connection was maintained, but not always experienced in its fullest form.

Where I am now and how this is shifting…

At the same time, it feels important to acknowledge that my friendships have not only reflected these patterns but have also been spaces of healing, growth, and repair. There have been friendships that have shown me different, more healthier ways of relating. They have taught me that it is safe to be myself whilst in the presence of others.

Where I find myself now is in a space of awareness. I am learning to notice when I am stepping into a role, when I am responding from a place of wounding, and when I have the opportunity to choose something different.

There is also a growing focus on building a sense of safety within myself, rather than relying solely on external relationships to provide that. I am growing into a deeper understanding that I can trust that, regardless of how a friendship unfolds, I will be able to hold myself through it.

Here are 6 reminders to help you address and heal how your mother wound may be impacting your friendships:

1) Developing awareness of your patterns
Taking time to observe your friendships with curiosity rather than judgement can be a powerful starting point. For me, recognising that I often stepped into a caregiving role allowed me to begin questioning whether that dynamic was truly meeting my needs.

2) Practising self-compassion
Many of these patterns developed as ways of adapting to earlier environments. In moments where I notice myself falling back into old roles, self-compassion has been essential in allowing me to respond differently, rather than becoming critical of myself.

3) Understanding your internal dynamics (IFS)
Using frameworks such as IFS has helped me make sense of my internal world. Recognising when I am operating from a “parent” role or when a protective part is leading creates space to pause and choose a different response.

4) Noticing your responses in real time
Whilst engaging with your friends, check in with yourself and ask: How am I feeling? Is this performance or authenticity? Am I playing a role or being myself? Even a small amount of awareness can begin to shift how you engage.

5) Allowing yourself to rewrite relational patterns
With awareness comes the possibility of change. This might look like being more visible, expressing needs more openly and choosing friendships that feel more reciprocal. For me, this has been about small, consistent shifts over time.

6) Holding onto hope and trusting the process
Change is rarely linear. What has felt important is holding onto the awareness that something is shifting, even when it doesn’t always feel that way.

How has your relationship with your mother shaped the way you experience friendship, and in what ways are you relating differently now?

If you resonate with this piece, please know that you’re not alone. I am with you through it.

Sending you love,
Ash x

Let me preface this by saying that this is a reflective piece.

I would be inauthentic if I didn’t acknowledge that some of what I’m describing is not only observable in others but also true to my own personal experience. These are things I have reflected on within myself, and uncomfortably so. I have been hesitant to write about this in depth before because I struggled to find the words, and because I worried about being perceived as someone who takes social media too seriously. And quite possibly, that may be true. But through deep self-reflection, I do think there is something worthwhile in these observations that might be useful for others.

As a therapist, someone healing from an anxious-attachment style and a content creator for nearly eight years, this is a reflection of my own intrapsychic world and the complexes that have emerged within me. My reflections are therefore rooted in both personal and professional experience. Take what resonates and leave the rest.

I think discussions on relational patterns do not always extend to how we relate online. Yet, similar to how we have a relationship with food, with work, or with our friends and family, we also have a relationship with social media. It can be distant and impersonal, like an acquaintance. Or it can feel familiar and comforting, like a close friend. It may be like work: you tap in and out. It can be transactional. It may be playful, intellectual, or inspiring. Depending on the person, it may be all of these at once.

I believe that the way we relate to social media says something about us. How we engage, or choose not to engage, reflects our personality. It can reflect what we value, how we organise our lives, and even our political stance. Within this, there is also something about attachment.

Social media is not just a platform. It is arguably a relational environment. And like any relationship, it can bring up our wounds, our hopes and our longing to be seen.

Attachment theory, originally developed by John Bowlby, suggests that our early relationships with caregivers influence how we relate to ourselves and others. If caregivers were emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, intrusive, or overwhelming, we may develop insecure attachment patterns in response. In contrast, caregivers who were adequately attuned and responsive support the development of secure attachment. These relational patterns are internalised and become part of what psychoanalysis refers to as our intrapsychic world, shaping how we experience relationships across the lifespan.

Attachment styles are not fixed. Someone may show anxious attachment patterns in romantic relationships but feel more secure in friendships, or vice versa. In the same way, our attachment patterns can also emerge in how we relate to social media and online visibility.

It is also worth noting that social media itself, with its metrics and algorithmic unpredictability, can create the conditions for anxious attachment patterns to form, even in people who feel relatively secure elsewhere. The platform doesn’t just reflect our relational wounds. Sometimes, it produces new ones. Here are my thoughts on how a person with an anxious attachment style may relate to social media.

5 ways anxious attachment can show up on social media:

1. Social media becomes a substitute for internal validation. For someone with anxious attachment, social media can become a place where validation is endlessly available. Likes, comments and shares become quantifiable markers that who you are is enough. When engagement is high, there can be a sense of feeling seen, valued, and affirmed. Over time, visibility can become intertwined with identity. Being recognised for something online can create an internal narrative of ‘I am somebody’. And understandably, this can produce a desire to maintain that feeling. Unconsciously, online validation may feel like it meets early developmental needs. The need to feel seen. The need to feel enough. The need to exist without constantly proving one’s worth.

Here, something known as transference can begin to take place. Transference refers to the unconscious process of redirecting feelings and relational patterns from early relationships onto new people or contexts. In this context, social media can begin to unconsciously represent caregivers. The audience becomes the one who validates, rejects, or affirms and in doing so, activates something much older than the present moment. Social media becomes a battleground for unresolved emotional and relational needs. In this way, online validation can start to become a substitute for self-validation.

2. When engagement fluctuates, self-worth fluctuates. When someone’s sense of worth becomes closely tied to online engagement, changes in likes or comments can feel deeply personal. A drop in engagement may be internalised as something being wrong with the self, rather than understood as a combination of external factors such as algorithms, shifting interests, or timing. The interpretation can become, ‘If they no longer see me, maybe I am not enough’. This mirrors patterns often seen in anxious attachment, where perceived distance or inconsistency in relationships is interpreted as rejection. The emotional response can feel disproportionate because it touches something older and deeper than the present moment.

Dry spells online can evoke the same anxiety as emotional distance in relationships. The silence becomes threatening, and the absence of response can feel like a disappearance. Underneath this, there can be a fear of losing belonging altogether.

3. Mirroring instead of creating. Another pattern I have noticed is the shift from creating from internal motivation to creating from perceived expectations. Instead of remaining connected to why we started, we may begin to mirror what we think people want from us. Passion becomes performance, and creativity becomes prediction. In practice, this can look like scrolling through your own analytics before you’ve even had an idea or noticing yourself gravitating toward a topic not because it moves you, but because you sense it will move the numbers. The original impulse, the thing that made you want to create in the first place, quietly gets replaced by what you perceive will keep you relevant and useful to others.

In this dynamic, the audience unconsciously becomes the parental figure. We try to anticipate their needs, remain within the confines of what they like, and avoid disappointing them. The audience becomes the place where early unmet needs are unconsciously replayed. There may be a longing for unconditional acceptance, but instead of cultivating that internally, we seek it externally through visibility and approval.

It is worth saying that creating content you think your audience will enjoy is not, in itself, a sign of anxious attachment. For many, that attunement is exactly how they stay connected to their creative purpose, and in the context of a business, it is often necessary. What I am describing here is something quite different: a more compulsive, anxiety-driven mirroring where the audience's approval becomes the primary compass, slowly replacing your own.

4. Cycles of performance and the fear of disappearing. There is nothing inherently wrong with participating in trends or increasing visibility. Not everything needs to be pathologised. However, for someone who is anxiously attached, visibility can become tied to belonging. Participation in trends may become driven by a deeper need to remain seen, relevant and worthy of attention. Online, this may look like trend hopping, or performance cycles that subconsciously communicate, ‘Please see and remember me’.

The dopamine high of engagement often does not last long. When engagement decreases, insecurity can return. This creates cycles of activation and depletion. From an Internal Family Systems perspective, protective ‘parts’ of oneself may push for visibility while more vulnerable parts carry fears of not belonging. The performance becomes a protector. Underneath, there may be a deeper fear of invisibility and disconnection. An experience felt in childhood.

5. Everything feels personal. Someone who is anxiously attached may also become hyperaware of tone, timing and engagement. A delayed response to a DM can feel like rejection. A decline in likes, reposts and comments can feel like disapproval. When an anxious attachment pattern is activated, it can be difficult to hold a broader perspective. Everything begins to feel personal. And this is where online visibility becomes emotionally loaded. It is no longer just about content, opportunity, education or enjoyment. It becomes about belonging.

These reflections are not about pathologising ourselves or others, nor are they about suggesting that everyone who seeks visibility is anxiously attached lol. Rather, this is an invitation to reflect on how our relational patterns may extend into digital spaces or be created by them.

I am curious to know whether you resonate (or not) with any of these reflections, or whether you have noticed similar patterns within yourself or others.

Let me know what you think?

Love,

Ash x

This might ruffle some feathers, but here we are.

The other day, one of my friends said to me, ‘Spiritual people are some of the most toxic ones’. This is a statement echoed by others in my life. I have also seen this first-hand through family members, people I’ve crossed paths with, and past acquaintances. The tarot readers, the believers in ancestral veneration, and those who hold plenty of esoteric wisdom, have unfortunately, been some of the most unaccountable people I know.

But why? What is it about some spiritual people that has led to this reputation? Side note: I mention' babe’ in the title. Here it is genderless.

Before I get into this topic, I want to be clear about my positionality. I am a spiritual babe. I align with African spirituality. I believe we are all spiritual beings, living among other animate spirit beings such as animals and plants. I believe in God. I am also a psychotherapist, and most importantly, a human. I am sharing this because it informs my lens of perception here.

In a society where many people align with Abrahamic religions and where there are structures and, in some parts of the world, state religions that uphold these beliefs, diverging belief systems often sit on the periphery. They are therefore othered. People use varying derogatory words to describe spiritual people. As someone who identifies as spiritual when asked about my belief system, I’ve been ridiculed, told that my beliefs don’t make sense, and had my moral integrity questioned. People often ask: if I don’t follow an organised religion, how can I live a righteous life? I’ve also had my understanding of, and personal relationship with, God questioned.

I’ve heard people say to spiritual people that we ‘pray to rocks’, or that we engage in idol worship. Spirituality is not a monolith and is unique to each individual, but the ignorance is baffling, even if unsurprising. Indigenous spiritual systems have been stigmatised, stripped away from their people, and labelled as inherently evil. This history of colonisation within religion has, in turn, disconnected many of us from ourselves and our traditional belief systems.

If spirituality is already stigmatised, when people then encounter, through friendships, romantic relationships, or even vicariously, spiritual people who are harmful, a confirmation bias can occur. It reinforces the stigma they already hold: “Those people whose beliefs we don’t understand are toxic. I’m not surprised.”

That said, I do think there is something worth exploring in what has been mentioned. So here are my reflections on why some spiritual people are perceived this way. For me, this is also a reflective piece. I want to remain mindful of my own ‘shadow’, and I hope this invites others to critically engage, reflect, and consider whether any of this resonates with them. Hopefully, to steer away from some of these pitfalls.

My 6 perspectives on the toxic spiritual babe archetype:

1. Spirituality becomes an egoic identity. For some, spirituality becomes a way to create separation. Deep down, there may be an unconscious desire to individuate. Spirituality allows them to construct a distinct identity from those around them. They may feel part of a ‘higher knowing’ or hold esoteric understandings that differentiate them from others. Being ‘average’ or ‘normal’ can feel like blending into the group, existing in the grey, not standing out. There may be a desire to be seen, to be known, to be distinguishable. Over time, this can lead to a sense of hierarchy, where they place themselves above others. Spirituality then becomes something that makes them feel special, elevated, and unique.

2. Spirituality as avoidance of reality aka spiritual bypassing. Some people begin to see themselves as separate from this world, or as having transcended it. They may miss that to be spiritual is also to be human, and that everyday human experiences are inherently spiritual. There is no separation. This can show up as avoiding participation in society or disconnecting from people who are not on the same ‘wavelength’. It can also lead to intolerance of difference. In some cases, there may be avoidance of responsibilities such as work or financial stability (and while I understand that capitalism is exploitative and many of us want freedom from it), this kind of avoidance can still be harmful to one’s material needs. This can also reflect what Transactional Analysis Theory refers to as the ‘child ego state’, where there is a tendency to act child-like, by avoiding or refusing responsibility, rather than sit with and process difficult feelings that arise from living within these systems. Spirituality, therefore, can become a defence mechanism, a mask used to avoid confronting maladaptive patterns of behaviour and repressed emotions.

3. Performance of, or lack of, shadow work. Accountability can become something that is performed rather than genuinely embodied and integrated. There may be little shadow work taking place, or it may be more about appearance than depth. Self-reflection can stop at identifying what others have done wrong, labelling them as toxic, without turning inward to reflect on one’s own behaviour and how one might show up differently. Because non-spiritually identified people may be perceived as knowing less, their perspectives can be easily dismissed when they offer feedback or point out blind spots. This overlooks the fact that others can often see aspects of us that we cannot see in ourselves.

4. Desire for community. Contrary to the earlier point about wanting to stand out, there is also a deep desire to belong. As this is a fundamental human need, spiritual spaces can offer a sense of community, shared language, and identity. They provide a place to belong. This can mean everything for someone who has felt misunderstood, who didn’t quite fit in, and who was seeking connections that go beyond the surface and into something deeper.

5. The wounded healer archetype. The darkness, the struggles, and the pain people have endured in their lives often draw them into healing or spiritual spaces, where they can support others in moving through their own challenges. They may become spiritual guides, tarot readers, or other types of healers. This can be powerful, and both the healer and the person receiving support can experience transformation. However, there is something important to hold here. The healer’s own wounds do not simply disappear. They can still be re-enacted, activated, and replayed in their lives, in their relationships, and even within their practice. Even with healing work, they are still on a journey. Ongoing introspection and accountability are essential. There needs to be an awareness of one’s triggers, and how they show up in how they relate to others and in the work itself.

6. The shadow side of the highly sensitive person. I’ve noticed that sensitive people are often drawn to spirituality. This may be because they are more inclined to ask existential questions and seek deeper meaning. Their sensitivity can draw them toward the esoteric, as they crave depth, connection, and understanding beyond the surface. However, there is also a shadow side to this. The depth of emotion, the tendency to ruminate or overthink, and challenges with boundaries can all impact relationships. Sensitivity without clear boundaries can lead to projection, where it becomes difficult to distinguish between one’s own emotions and those of others. Overthinking can create problems rather than resolve them. As a result, relationships can become intense, unstable, or even volatile. While sensitivity can foster empathy, unexamined aspects of it can interfere with how one navigates relationships.

Anyhoo, as I’m writing this, there are so many other thoughts that are coming up for me. But I’m curious about what you think? What are your thoughts on what I’ve shared?

I’d love to hear your reflections!

Love,

Ash, x

Have you ever felt like you’re in between identities? Not quite integrated into who you are becoming, yet no longer fully connected to who you once were. It can feel disorienting to be in this space, unsure which parts of your identity want to hold onto and which parts no longer seem to fit. Sometimes it’s difficult to even explain the shift to others. You might notice that certain relationships feel different, or that the way people see you no longer quite reflects how you see yourself.

At times, this experience can feel isolating or frustrating. You may find yourself wondering why you can’t simply integrate the changes and move forward with clarity. Instead, you’re left navigating a strange in-between space where things feel uncertain and unsettled.

If this resonates, you might be experiencing what developmental psychology refers to as ‘identity re-negotiation’. In astrology, a similar theme often appears around the late twenties or early thirties during what’s known as a Saturn return, a period associated with stripping away old layers, letting go, and integrating lessons that guide us into becoming a more whole, aligned and integrated adult. Even outside of these pivotal moments, however, transitions such as this can arise throughout different stages of life.

In my own experience, they seem to arrive every year or so (in true Scorpio Moon style). At times, every few months. Sometimes they appear when I least expect them, even during moments when I feel relatively certain about who I am. It often feels like moving through a kind of death and rebirth. Each cycle can feel destabilising, as though the ground beneath me is shifting.

Over the past few years, so much in my life has changed, while other things have remained the same. I’ve spent the last five years at university, largely focused on a career transition. During that time, I also entered a relationship, moved homes, experienced shifts in family dynamics, and watched friendships evolve. Much of my energy went toward building something new professionally, and in doing so, other parts of me became undernourished.

Some aspects of my identity that once felt foundational now feel less present. Writing, which used to be part of my everyday life, slowly slipped out of my routine. At times, I find myself wondering whether I can still call myself a writer. Creativity, in general, has become quieter in my life. Much of my work has centred around therapy, and I’m not creating in the world in the same way I once did. Even the way I express myself aesthetically has shifted. I used to care deeply about how I dressed, how I put outfits together, or the photos I took. Style once felt like an extension of my inner expression, something that reflected who I was, daring to become. Now I notice I care less, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that change.

My relationship with social media has shifted, too. Posting and creating online has become irregular. There was a time when I showed up consistently, but now I sometimes avoid logging into Instagram or even Substack. Part of me appreciates the quietness that comes with stepping away from the digital world, yet another part of me misses the visibility and connection that sharing once brought.

Alongside all of this, there has been a grief that I’m still learning to sit with. I’m not grieving the career shift itself, but rather the energy and enthusiasm I carried before it; the creative spark that once felt more accessible. Now my energy reserves feel more limited, and I sometimes feel sadness when I realise that the commitments I’ve taken on have left less space to create.

I’m slowly realising that identity transitions rarely feel like growth while they are happening. More often, they feel like a loss. At times, I feel fragmented, uncertain, and ungrounded. A significant shift seems to be unfolding within me, yet I don’t know what will settle on the other side of it. I want answers, but they haven’t arrived yet.

Perhaps that is why I felt compelled to write this, to normalise that strange in-between space where you don’t quite know what you are emerging into. The more I sit with this transition, the more I realise that this space may simply be part of how we grow. Identity isn’t something we arrive at once and keep forever; sometimes it asks to be renegotiated.

If you resonate with the above, here are some reminders for you:

1. You’re in the middle of an integration period. Periods of identity transition are rarely comfortable. When you are between identities, it can feel destabilising because parts of your inner world are being reorganised. You may find yourself questioning what aspects of yourself you want to integrate and which parts you are ready to let go of. Some moments may feel clear, while other moments return you to uncertainty again. All of this is part of the process. Stay with it. Soon you’ll find your ground again.

2. Integration takes time. Much of what is happening is internal, and it cannot always be rushed or neatly explained. Like any natural cycle, there is often a period of incubation before the next stage emerges. If you find yourself in a cocoon phase, it may simply mean that the bloom has not yet arrived.

3. You may be grieving a past version of yourself. Grief does not only appear when we lose a loved one. It can also arise when we outgrow identities that once shaped our lives. You might find yourself mourning the relationships, environments, or ways of being that belonged to a previous chapter. Allowing yourself to grieve these versions of yourself is an important part of the transition. If you are someone who feels deeply or tends to be sentimental, acknowledging that grief can be especially meaningful. Honouring who you once were does not mean you are unable to move forward. Rather, it recognises that those earlier versions of you helped shape who you are today.

4. Be patient with yourself. Growth often requires a willingness to sit with uncertainty for a while. You are not simply losing old identities; you are gradually integrating new ones that align more closely with who you are becoming. Extend compassion and grace to yourself in moments when you don’t know what to hold onto, when it feels all-consuming, when you lose your ground. You’re a human blooming. A simple affirmation that might help is: ‘I trust the transitions that are taking place’.

If you are currently navigating a similar shift, please know that you are not alone. I see you, I hear you, and I’m sending you love as you move through this chapter.

Love always,

Ash x

Have you ever felt like a part of you just can’t seem to truly relax into fun or embrace moments of joy for very long? Maybe, at times, you can switch off, but often, even in joyful moments, you find yourself flooded with thoughts about what you need to do or what you’re not doing enough of. If so, know that you’re not alone. I can relate to this deeply.

Where did this exploration begin?

I remember being on holiday in Johannesburg, standing on the balcony of my Airbnb and looking up at the moon in awe of how majestic the view was. It was beautiful and peaceful, a moment I had been longing for. And yet, I felt flooded with thoughts about everything I needed to do and resolve in my life. I could only embrace the moment briefly before my mind pulled me back into worry and responsibility.

This was the holiday I had looked forward to, the trip I hoped would help me let go and enjoy myself. The environment had changed, but my emotional and mental state had not. That was the moment I realised there is a part of me that struggles to fully experience joy.

This is just one example, but it stands out because I can remember the view, the feeling in my body, and the exact thoughts in my mind. It was then that my unconscious patterns began to surface into awareness, showing me that something deeper was at play, something rooted in my past that still needed healing.

Why is joy so hard sometimes? A personal reflection.

Many factors have contributed to my difficulty in allowing myself to relax and have fun. Growing up poor created a deep fear of not having enough, which often shows up as anxiety in moments of rest. There is a lingering sense that I must always be doing something. To do very little felt dangerous, like a return to instability. I lived by the motto “If I’m not grinding, I’m not living”.

Capitalism plays a role, too. We are often taught that our worth is tied to productivity, that rest must be earned, and that we must always be useful in order to be valuable. These messages seep into our nervous systems and shape how safe we feel when we are not ‘doing’.

But what I want to focus on here is how relationships with emotionally immature parents can impact our capacity to experience joy.

The relationships we have with our caregivers in early life create a blueprint for how we see ourselves, others, and the world. In my case, having two parents who were emotionally dysregulated, traumatised, and struggling with their own mental health meant that I learned early on to become hypervigilant. They lacked emotional regulation, communication skills, and healthy relationships with themselves and others. As a child, I learned that to survive in this environment, I had to stay alert.

I began monitoring my behaviour in private and in public. I adopted a serious, contained persona, trying to create order in the midst of uncertainty, impulsivity, and chaos. I learned that relationships were unpredictable and emotionally unsafe, so I became controlled, responsible, and watchful.

In attachment theory, having a secure base means being able to explore, play, and have fun, knowing that your caregiver will be okay and that you will be okay, even in their absence. That was not my experience. There was always a sense of what might happen if I relaxed, if I let my guard down, if I allowed myself to fully enjoy the moment. As a result, I could not fully surrender to joy. The seeds planted in childhood followed me into adulthood.

I want to say this honestly: things are much better now. It has taken years of therapy, deep self-reflection, and becoming a therapist myself to work through this. And I am still learning.

If you experience this too, know that you are not alone. Learning how to have fun and experience joy might sound simple, but for some of us, it is a real and valid struggle. And it is one you can move through.

If you relate, here are a few things that have helped me:

1. Notice what happens when joy appears. Zoom in on moments when you are having fun but struggle to stay present. Pay attention to what your mind is saying and what your body is feeling. Ask yourself what you might be trying to escape from in that moment. Often, when we pause and check in, we begin to understand the deeper story beneath our reactions.

2. Reframe joy as meaningful work. Joy is not wasteful. It is restorative. It brings balance to your nervous system, your relationships, and your wider ecosystem. Joy is not optional. If your ancestors lived in survival mode, your journey toward joy may be about breaking that cycle and honouring ease, pleasure, and rest. Your joy can become medicine for past and future generations.

3. See this struggle as a ‘part’ of you rather than something that is wrong with you. You might even give it a name, like “Stressed Samantha.” Get curious about what this part is trying to protect you from, what it needs, and how you can reassure it. Approaching yourself with compassion changes everything.

4. Offer yourself affirmations. You might gently remind yourself, “I am deserving of enjoyment,” “Joy is my birthright,” or “When I experience joy, I am healing myself and my lineage”. Over time, these messages begin to soften old beliefs.

5. Consider therapy as support. Therapy can help you explore your family history, culture, and structural experiences, and how they shape your present. It offers space to process emotions, integrate experiences, and build internal safety. If you would like a free introductory call with me to see how I can help you with this, you can book here.

If any of this resonates with you, I would love to hear your reflections. Thank you for reading, and until next time, take care!

Love, Ash x

Have you ever felt small in the presence of others?

As if their very existence takes up more space than you, leaving you shrinking into yourself, head down, over-apologising, minimising your needs so others feel comfortable? If this resonates, this post is for you.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a few conversations with therapy clients about this exact experience, this sense that other people feel “bigger”, more important, more deserving than them. These experiences resonated deeply with me. They echoed wounds I’ve worked through myself. Supporting others in this has often felt like holding a mirror up to my own experience.

My story of feeling small

Growing up, I was the black sheep of my family. At gatherings, I was reminded, sometimes subtly, sometimes not, that my presence was an inconvenience. And that smallness followed me into adulthood. In school, I watched girls who were deemed prettier or more popular receive preferential treatment, and I internalised an unspoken message: Not being them meant not being good enough. These experiences accumulated, shaping the way I saw myself and my worth.

So when a client recently said, “I always feel like people are bigger than me, higher up, and I’m beneath them”, something inside me recognised that narrative instantly. And while I’m always mindful not to let my own experiences distort my clinical lens, that shared familiarity deepened my empathy and helped me understand the complexity of this wound.

How these internal hierarchies form

We don’t wake up one day feeling small. We learn it.

It comes from the times when:

• Our needs were dismissed

• Our desires were overshadowed

• Our presence was treated as secondary

• Our worth wasn’t reflected back to us

Slowly, we internalise a hierarchy where we place ourselves below others. At the core is shame, the belief that something within us is flawed, less deserving, or inherently inferior. This shame leads us to create different rules for ourselves than for other people. We therefore bend to their will, desire their position while doubting our own.

So, how do we unlearn and heal from this? If you struggle with feeling small, here are some anchors to support you:

1. Bring safety back into your body.

If your sense of safety currently lives outside of you, hinging on others’ reactions or approval, you’ll always feel unstable. Learn to anchor into the felt sense that safety resides within you. When you can return to your centre, others feel less like a threat.

2. Use the ‘clone test’.

Imagine there’s a version of you living elsewhere in the world, someone with your heart, your story, your essence. Would you tell them they’re less than someone else? Of course not. So why do you do it to yourself? You are just as worthy as that version of you, and just as worthy as anyone else. Remind yourself of this when those thoughts and emotions arise.

3. Root yourself in a spiritual or existential truth.

If you believe we all carry a divine spark, then it’s impossible for someone to be fundamentally better than you. It contradicts both spiritual law and logical truth. So if your mind insists otherwise, the problem isn’t you, it’s the belief you inherited. And anything inherited can be released.

4. Remember: it’s a part of you that feels small, not your whole self.

Shift from saying “I feel small” to “a part of me feels small.”
This immediately creates space. It allows your grounded, compassionate self to tend to the younger part of you that still holds old memories of feeling inadequate.

Ask that part:

• What is your earliest memory of feeling this way?

• How old are you?

• What reassurance do you need from my adult self?

When this part gets triggered, respond with care, not criticism.

5. Build your confidence by aligning with your values and strengths.

Knowing who you are, what matters to you, what you’re good at, and what you stand for builds an inner solidity that no external hierarchy can shake. When you live aligned with your values, you naturally take up more space in your life. You become anchored in your identity, not others’ perceptions.

Conclusion

Healing the feeling of smallness is not a quick or linear process. It’s a gradual unfolding, a slow, compassionate return to yourself. Over time, you begin to recognise that the version of you who learned to shrink was simply adapting to environments that didn’t reflect your worth back to you. As you grow and heal, you start to reclaim the emotional space you were always meant to inhabit, not by force, but through awareness, gentleness, and self-understanding.

This work requires patience. It asks you to be tender with the parts of you that learned to disappear in order to feel safe. When you approach yourself with empathy rather than criticism, you create the internal conditions for real change to happen. You learn that you’re not building your worth from scratch; you’re remembering it.

If this resonates with you and you feel called to explore this work more deeply with support, I’d love to walk alongside you in that process. You’re welcome to book a free introductory call to see whether my therapeutic approach is a good fit for you. And if anything in this post inspired any insights, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Until next time.

Love,
Ash x

Most of my creative friends are tired. We are dreamers, innovators, artists, and philosophers. People who imagine new worlds. A few have reached the point where they can pursue their soul-work (passion) full-time, but most are still in that uncertain phase: holding onto the vision while trying to make ends meet.

Some have recently stepped back, returning to traditional jobs after attempting to work for themselves. They’re doing what’s necessary, trying to navigate a world that rarely accommodates or sustains artists. I’ve had countless conversations about this desire to do the work you love and the stark reality of getting there in today’s economic and political climate.

We live in a system, late-stage capitalism, that is fundamentally transactional. It demands that we monetise our time and energy simply to survive. Under such conditions, personal fulfilment and creative purpose get pushed to the margins, treated as luxuries rather than necessities. Surviving can drain our mental and emotional resources in roles that exist mainly to serve corporate profit, leaving us with little left for the work that actually feeds us.

And yes, your day job doesn’t need to be your passion. We all have different needs, financial stability being one of them. Sometimes we need a job that supports us, gives us resources, and helps us build a life that feels more spacious or secure. And if that’s what sustains you right now, then it’s enough.

But understanding that doesn’t make the ache disappear. Not for those who feel an undeniable pull toward tending to their soul’s creative expression. A calling that refuses to loosen its grip. The kind of work that feels like home.

I often think about the artists whose lives eventually became intertwined with their craft. I recognise that same ache in the people around me and sometimes, in myself.

So, how do we move through this?

Making space for the dream

We need to make space to dream, even when things feel far away. Even when the day job consumes most of your time. Be intentional about imagining better. Picture the version of life where you wake up and pour your energy into what you love. Let that image soften you. Let it sustain you.

And while we wait for the fuller vision to unfold, we can still build lives that support us. Maybe you can’t leave your 9–5 yet, but maybe you can find one that pays well and you somewhat enjoy, without draining your spirit. Or one that offers more time, more quiet, more breathing room. Even if it’s not ideal, you can still touch the thing you love. You can still build a life that makes space for you.

A note to those who are waiting

This exhaustion so many creatives feel isn’t a personal failing. It’s a response to the conditions we’re trying to imagine and create within. We’re navigating a world that asks for our labour but doesn’t always make room for our art, nor the deeper parts of ourselves.

And because so many of us are living in this in-between space, I want to leave you with this:

The in-between is not a failure. It’s a season of your life. One to honour, one that still holds beauty, growth, and meaning. It’s part of your becoming. Keep tending to your dreams. Keep showing up when you can, in whatever way you can. And remember, you are not moving through this alone.

Love,

Ash x

My fear of being seen takes me back to my childhood. It wasn’t until I took a year-long break from social media that I began to understand the reasons why.

Growing up, being seen was both a blessing and a burden. My parents, though emotionally distant, recognised that I had potential. Academic success was expected of me, even if it wasn’t always enforced. I was seen for what I could do, not for who I was; valued for my achievements rather than my inner world.

At the same time, visibility carried its own pain. My sibling and I were the black sheep of the family, the only children of a mentally ill parent, with grandparents on both sides who also struggled with their mental health, one of whom battled alcoholism. Our parents had us young, an anomaly on one side of the family. We grew up poor, children known by the state. We were often reminded that we stood out like sore thumbs on my paternal side. From a young age, there was a sense that we didn’t belong, that our very existence was a reminder of what others were trying to move away from.

During my parents’ psychosis, I remember the ultra-bright wigs that were ill-placed, the odd dressing, and the people on the street staring in shock, concern, and laughter. Being seen became associated with embarrassment. I don’t remember exactly how I felt at the time, but I remember the onlookers, the witnesses, during my parents’ and my most vulnerable moments.

And that sense of embarrassment didn’t end with one parent. The other, who had poor social awareness, would occasionally embarrass us in front of strangers, saying rude and disrespectful things that made others uncomfortable. In my small body, I carried the shame of having parents who didn’t fit within social norms, and in all the ways that didn’t feel good.

From my grandparents to both parents, and a family that taught us we weren’t good enough to belong, my early experiences created a deep split within me: one part that associates being seen with danger, and another that longs to be visible.

Why am I sharing this with you?

Partly to bring you into my inner world. And also to help you understand that the conflicts we often return to are rooted in something historical, in our early lives.

For me, the fear of being seen hasn’t been a simple struggle to move through. Unpacking it has led me to encounter layers I thought no longer affected me. Though it might not be outwardly visible to others, there’s a part of me working overtime just to keep showing up.

Becoming aware of how my past experiences have shaped my ability to be seen has helped me refuse to let the past dictate my present or future. And for the most part, I’ve succeeded. I still show up, despite the discomfort. Something in me knows that allowing myself to be seen is a vital part of my healing.

This is what I remind myself as I work through the fear of being seen:

1. I was someone before my socialisation, before the trauma, before I was made to feel as though my existence was an inconvenience. I am not any of those experiences. Part of healing is breaking free from who I was told I am and aligning with the core of who I truly am: that essence that already shines bright.

2. Perhaps my struggles are exactly what the world needs to see and hear. Maybe, by expressing the challenges I’ve faced, I can help others on their own journey toward becoming their highest expression.

3. I’m reminding myself of how crucial it is to seek self-validation, not to force visibility from a place of wanting recognition or acceptance, but to do this solely for myself, for my healing, for my divine purpose. When the applause fades, or when people don’t resonate with what I do, I can still commit to showing up and following what my spirit calls me to do.

As a psychotherapist, I’m grateful, in some ways, for my personal experiences. They’ve given me the wisdom and insight to understand the complexity of the human psyche. Everyone’s story is different, and while some may not relate to my specific experiences, others may find resonance. What I’ve learned and what I recognise in my clients is that the conflicts we continuously return to are rooted somewhere. My aim is to help others reconnect with and understand the seeds that have grown within them.

If any part of my story resonated with you, or you’re exploring your own relationship with visibility or self-acceptance, you’re welcome to connect with me as your therapist. I offer a free introductory call where we can explore whether working together feels like the right fit for you.

Until next time.

Love,
Ash x

Can we take a moment to talk about the endless pursuit of credentials, the need to accumulate more qualifications and certifications as proof of our knowledge and worth?

I finished my master’s in psychotherapy last year and my PGDip in counselling in 2023, yet here I am, still searching for courses to pursue. A few months ago, I submitted applications for a few university courses. The very next day, their admissions teams contacted me. I found myself thinking with some regret, “What am I doing?”

It became clear to me: the pattern, the core belief, the ‘not being enough’ that follows me — rooted in shame. Always needing something else to distract from these feelings, as if who I am and what I offer right now isn’t good enough.

I’m already a psychotherapist, and while I want to grow further, I haven’t yet fully immersed myself in the work I’m already doing. I’m aware there’s still so much more to explore and offer in this field, yet I’m already distracted by the allure of the next new thing, the next ‘shiny object’ that seems to promise value and purpose. It’s as if I’m feeding an addiction to the stress and cortisol that comes with chasing the next deadline, the next milestone.

That said, I can see the benefits: the expanded career opportunities, the learning, and the potential impact I can make. However, the inability to fully immerse myself in the current set of achievements is a problem.

So where does this drive come from? I am aware of its roots: social pressures, the way our society equates productivity with worth, and childhood trauma. My ADHD, with its combined hyperfixation and inattentiveness, fuels my urge to do more. But, at the heart of this urge is fear: fear of stagnation, fear of not being enough, fear of being seen as an imposter, fear that things won’t go according to plan. These fears trap me on a relentless hamster wheel.

And so I often wonder, “Who am I when I stop chasing?” The honest answer is, I don’t know. Part of me enjoys the chase and perhaps always will. But I’m beginning to want to simply hold space for what’s already here and invest my energy inward rather than always racing outward. Maybe by doing this, I can confront my fears, not by running from them, but by staying present with them.

Love,

Ash, x

Image from Pinterest.

By now, most of us know what we mean when we talk about accountability. In the self-help world, the word is everywhere. To be healed, to be self-aware, is often equated with being accountable.

But for me, accountability wasn’t instinctive, it had to be taught. I had to learn what it truly meant to be accountable. In fact, I struggled with taking accountability for a long time (AND occasionally still do, even as a therapist!).

Even though it’s often framed as the emotionally mature and evolved thing to do, actually owning my actions, especially those I later regretted or that painted me in an unfavourable light, brought on an overwhelming sense of shame and guilt.

To be accountable felt like confirming the voice I’ve spent years trying to escape, the one that whispers, “You’re not good enough”. Admitting my faults felt like proof that I was inherently flawed. That voice would say, “See? Here’s more evidence that you’re a failure”. So I resisted accountability. I deflected instead. It felt safer to see flaws in others than to face my own despair and self-disappointment. You had to be wrong for me to feel stable.

I believed that if I stayed fixated on what they had done wrong, I could avoid responsibility, and in doing so, preserve some sense of being redeemable. Forgivable. To myself.

We often focus on the damage caused by unaccountable people, and rightfully so. Unaccountability can harm others, and many of us are still carrying the weight of childhood trauma and the effects of systems that model avoidance over ownership.

But what about the inner world of the unaccountable person?

Deep down, there’s often an inner child who believes: “If I admit I was wrong, I might never be loved.”

The psychoanalyst and attachment theorist John Bowlby wrote extensively about how children form attachments to their caregivers, even when those caregivers are inconsistent, neglectful, or abusive. For many children, securing attachment is a matter of survival. Without that bond, they feel unsafe and unloved. So they adapt. They mould themselves to fit the emotional demands of the caregiver, often suppressing their own needs or blaming themselves in order to preserve the connection.

That survival strategy can follow us into adulthood. Adults who avoid accountability often do so because acknowledging their impact on others can feel like a threat to the core bond they’re trying to maintain, or to their own self-worth. They think: If I’m wrong, I might be unlovable. If I caused harm, maybe I’ll be abandoned. If I admit this, I might not survive the shame.

These fears aren’t rational in the present, but they are defence mechanisms that protect them from the pain they’ve endured in the past. And they’re still alive, often unexamined, in the body and nervous system. To maintain control, they cling to illusions of themselves. Their internal world is held together with something like PVC glue, just strong enough to hold, but always at risk of coming apart.

As someone who’s struggled with accountability, I know this reality intimately. My sense of self once felt so fragile that even mild rejection could send me spiralling. So I projected outward instead. Better to keep the door shut from criticism or constructive feedback. At least then, I thought, I could stay safe.

But over time, through my healing journey, I’ve learned a few things that have made accountability feel less threatening and even slighting empowering:

• Accountability has the capacity to build my sense of self. It helps me see which behaviours serve me and which don’t. It offers feedback, which helps me to make better decisions that align with my highest expression.

• People are critiquing my behaviours, not my essence. My behaviours are just one part of who I am. They’re not the whole story and I can change my behaviour if it’s no longer serving me nor the collective.

• We all fall short. Everyone has moments of failure, whether they happen in public or private. I’m allowed to mess up. That doesn’t make me unlovable or broken.

• When I spiral into self-blame, I pause and ask: What childhood feeling does this remind me of? For me, the emotion is familiar, though not identical to how I felt growing up as the black sheep in my family. I often wasn’t invited to things. I didn’t quite fit. That same feeling of exclusion still echoes today when I feel bad or wrong.

• From a spiritual perspective, the essence of who I am is inherently worthy. I am aspect of the Divine. Nothing anyone says or does will change this FACT.

Some reflective questions for you if you struggle with accountability:

1. What story do you tell yourself about what it means to be wrong?

2. When did you first learn to associate mistakes with shame?

3. How did your parent or caregiver respond when you made mistakes? In what ways does your current response to your own mistakes reflect or differ from that?

This piece isn’t meant to dismiss the importance of accountability. On the contrary; it’s a call to recognise how hard it can be for some of us to access it. It’s a reminder to those of you that whilst it feels uncomfortable, you too can be accountable. You’re strong and resilient enough to handle the discomfort.

Love always,

Ashanty, x

Self-betrayal looks like…

“Do you think you’ll be able to get this done and sent over by the end of the day?”
“Yes, sure. I can do that.”

“I’ll take one more appointment today”. (Inner dialogue: I’ve already taken on too many, but one more won’t make a difference).

“I’ll skip the walk today. I stayed up too late catching up on work. I need the extra sleep”.

These aren’t abstract examples. They’re mine. These are the moments I’ve recently caught myself in. Subtle, almost automatic decisions that seem harmless in isolation but are part of a deeper pattern. A pattern I’m still actively unlearning.

For many of us, self-betrayal doesn’t show up in dramatic, overt ways. It shows up in the micro-moments. The small negotiations we make with ourselves. The justifications that seem logical, even caring, but that, when repeated, quietly erode our boundaries, our energy, and our trust in ourselves. When we talk about people-pleasing, it’s easy to frame it as a relational dynamic: saying yes to others, overextending, and avoiding conflict. But underneath that external behaviour is something more internal, a fractured relationship with our own needs, timing, and limits.

To undo these patterns, we have to start by noticing how we relate to ourselves.

It’s easy to intellectually know your limits, or to teach others about boundaries. But the real work is what happens when no one else is watching:

• Do you override your own capacity to meet an expectation?

• Do you abandon what your body is asking for to get more done?

• Do you succumb to the urge to perform, produce, or be liked, even when the cost is your own wellbeing?

This is what self-betrayal looks like. And this is the layer of work that transformation often lives in.

It’s not flashy. It’s not performative. It’s rarely about grand, visible changes.

Instead, it’s made up of small, concrete shifts:

• Choosing to go to bed when your system is asking for rest.

• Saying no to an event, even if you could technically go.

• Being honest with others about the kind of connection or support you can offer.

• Allowing silence in conversation, rather than filling space out of discomfort.

These are small acts of self-attunement. Over time, these moments accumulate. They begin to build a different kind of internal structure, one where you don’t have to betray yourself to stay in relationship with others. One where your nervous system doesn’t always live in urgency, performance, or depletion. One where you get to be honest with yourself and then live in accordance with that self-honesty.

If you want to shift a pattern, look at what you do daily. Not just what you believe, or what you say, but the small decisions you make when no one is watching.

A few questions to reflect on:

• When was the last time you said yes when you wanted to say no?

• What would one small shift look like today?

• Could you write a short reflection on a moment where you did listen to yourself? Even if it felt uncomfortable?

Love Ashanty, x

The ideal for me as a creative was to have my passion be my day job, a part of my everyday existence. And it still is. But I didn’t anticipate the challenges that would arise when merging business and pleasure.

It’s kind of like a marriage; you get married, and it takes work. Maybe before, it didn’t feel like that. A long honeymoon period where everything just flowed, until it didn’t. Couples often say the ‘spark’ is gone. They miss the limerence, that early feeling where the person is like air, and you can’t imagine being without them.

Why am I comparing marriage to merging business and passion as a non-married person, lol? I guess it’s just the metaphor that fits how I feel about all of this.

I remember when I started wellness writing back in early 2018. It began with a blog post— a reflection on my personal challenges with this thing called self-love. I remember it getting around 15 likes on Instagram. Barely any comments. I think people weren’t sure what I was doing or where I was going with it all. Honestly, I wasn’t either. I just knew I felt a deep sense of satisfaction. I was finally expressing something that felt true to who I am at my core.

That post marked the beginning of a new chapter. It changed how I saw myself in so many positive ways. What started as a hobby, writing and sharing my mental health journey, eventually led to me writing two books (Highly Sensitive Warrior and A Warrior’s Reminder) and creating an organisation, Warrior Reminder. I loved what I did (and I still do).

As time went on, I decided to pursue a career in therapy. And I write this to you now as a qualified psychotherapist. Somewhere along the way, I thought, ‘Why not make this my life?’ Since I was young, I’ve always said I wanted to work for myself and make a positive impact in the world. That meant doing all the things I was passionate about and living fully. Being in service to others has always been important to me. So, I decided to marry business and passion together.

It was a great idea and still is, to a large extent. But I didn’t realise the trade-offs at the time.

Things got more serious. I used to post freely, without much thought. Just pure impulse, the joy of sharing. But over time, this creative hobby started to feel like it had to work. It needed to become something. What once came from love now came with extra weight. I started asking myself, ‘Is this financially viable?’ Woah. Pressure.

So, what is the trade-off when you make your passion your business?

Let me share two things that made it complicated, and then I’ll share where I’m at with it all now.

1. I never thought I’d be that person, but I almost stopped writing altogether. The spark felt gone. I went through a period where I couldn’t find that sense of comfort in writing anymore. I kept hitting creative blocks. I couldn’t find my voice, let alone own it. I felt stuck. And instead of leaning into the blocks, I started seeing them as the enemy, like they were holding me back instead of offering me something to pay attention to. I wasn’t giving myself permission to just pause, reflect, or even let the blocks be.

2. Comparison. As the saying goes, comparison really is the thief of joy. I started comparing how others were doing business to how I was doing mine. And yes, part of business is looking at what your ‘competitors’ are doing well. But I found it hard not to internalise it— like I was doing something wrong because my creative process didn’t look like theirs. It started to take the fun out of things. I went from sharing from my soul to thinking about how I could replicate what other people were doing. That was tough to sit with.

So, where am I now?

I think I’m in a season of decentering social norms and other people’s ideas of success, and recentering my own. For me, that looks like a kind of tunnel vision. Not in a rigid way, but in a focused way. It doesn’t mean I won’t evolve or adjust when it makes sense. For example, I’ve come around to the idea that doing videos might help bring my words to life. I used to resist that, but now I’m okay with it; maybe even open to it. It feels like a shift I’m welcoming.

But do I need to host brunches? Become a YouTube influencer? Run endless events and programmes? I mean, I can, but I don’t have to. I can keep some of my creative expression sacred, just for me, and for those who deeply resonate with it. I don’t need to make it into something huge unless it truly serves my highest good.

That’s where I’m at right now: recentering myself and my joy. Doing what works for me and suits my natural rhythm. And doing so mindfully, in a way that still allows space to grow and move. It just means I’m no longer letting external pressure be the compass I live by. I’m turning inward. I’m making it mine.

I’ve also decided to take some things out of my business model. Not everything needs to be monetised. For instance, I can write without worrying about sales or algorithms. It can simply be about doing it for the love and joy of it. And as I write this, I have a deep sense that this is the right path for me.

And what’s interesting is, once I landed on that mentally and spiritually, things shifted. I’m writing more. Sharing more. That pressure I was carrying? It’s eased. I can feel myself opening again.

I’m on a journey of reclaiming my creativity. And in doing that, I’m reclaiming my joy.

And all of this is happening in a world that’s heavy. Spiritually, politically, emotionally, it’s all a lot. Gosh, the world is deeply troubled. Systems are designed to make us sick. War and genocide continue (as we’re witnessing with the Palestinians). Anti-Blackness means we don’t all see oppression the same way, even though Congo and Haiti are bleeding too. I’m hurting.

In a world like this, having things that nurture the soul is necessary. It allows us to be of greater service, to ourselves and others.

I started this journey because I loved it. Not because it would be profitable, marketable, or scalable. Just because it made me feel more like myself. And now, I’m finding my way back to that.

Back to the spark.

Back to the curiosity.

Back to the kind of creating that feels like breathing.

Love Ash, x

I’ve been thinking about what it means to crave connection but feel drained by the pursuit and maintenance of it.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with some difficult questions about community. Community is something I deeply value. It’s tied to my African spiritual beliefs and to my understanding of what it means to live well and be human. But I also have needs that often clash with how community is commonly imagined or practised. I get overstimulated. I need time alone to recharge. Social interaction, even when it’s meaningful, can be draining.

That tension between what I believe in and what I can physically and emotionally sustain has left me feeling like I’m failing at something essential.

I started noticing how certain posts about community online would trigger something deep in me, a sense of guilt. A feeling of failure. Shame. Shame for not being more involved, for not responding to messages quickly, for not attending things as often as I want to. Shame that my wellness needs don’t allow me to engage in community the way I feel I should.

There’s a constant push-pull: I want to pour into others, but I don’t always have the capacity.

A recent in-person conversation helped me start unpacking all of this.

We talked about neurodivergence (a shared experience for many of us) and community building. We talked about overstimulation, the need for solitude, the feeling of not quite fitting in, and the exhaustion of masking.

We also talked about the joy of being alone. Most of us in that conversation felt it deeply.

Then the question came up: How do you stay connected to yourself and to others when your wellness needs require more space than most community structures typically allow?

One of my friends said something that really stayed with me:

We can find ways to be in community that match our energy. And sometimes, building community looks like:

– Participating in mutual aid when I can
– Supporting policies that align with my values
– Leaving a gathering early when I feel overstimulated
– Taking a long time to reply, but still caring deeply
– Resting when I need to, without guilt

It looks like shared values, shared politics, a shared love for humanity.

Your politics can be communal, even if your energy is limited. Your wellness doesn’t make you less connected.

She reminded us that community exists in degrees. Just like we have different kinds of friendships, we can hold different layers of connection. We might be close to a few people and more loosely connected to others. We can be part of a group, a union, a collective, not always front and centre, but still meaningfully there. Still contributing. Still belonging.

That reframing helped me release some of the guilt I’d been carrying.

I’m learning to sit with the tension between my values and my wellness needs, not to erase it or “fix” it, but to make space for it. To soften around the idea that community has to look a certain way. That I have to perform belonging or prove it.

We don’t have to burn ourselves out to belong. We can redefine what community looks like and build it in ways that nourish us, too.

I hope this makes sense… at least somewhat.

Love,
Ash x