Never in my life did I think I would be writing this, however here I am, sitting at my favourite cafe, feeling the most stripped-back and raw I have felt in what seems like years. It is very timely that in my last Monthly Becoming essay, Rules nobody else has to follow, I explored about how we often lean on productivity as a form of self-worth, and how I was learning how to source dopamine from places outside of the screen. All while overnight, every small-business owner / creative’s worst nightmare came true for me. I mean, perhaps this is a slight exaggeration, but that’s how it felt when I first realised what was unravelling before my eyes. In short, my Instagram was hacked and held for ransom, completely dissolving years worth of hard work and devotion. The beautiful community of over 20,600 people I had been personally nourishing, and what had become a source of my livelihood, was erased in a click of a button. But here’s the thing I didn’t expect: I felt somewhat relieved. As a writer and content creator, it was my “job” to keep up-to-date with the current trends, and sharing my life consistently out of fear of losing relevance and therefore, income. I had built a beautiful network of clients and from this community, have hosted multiple group trips that stemmed from this platform that, at the same time, was quietly draining my life force and creative energy.

And so, here I am, welcoming the beginning of a new month which also happens to be spring down here in the southern hemisphere. It feels quite ironic that Spring symbolises fresh starts, dusting off the debris that had slowly gathered over the still and stoic season of winter. A month that revealed so much, and simultaneously cleared all that was no longer supporting this next evolution of Self. It’s not to say it hasn’t been uncomfortable, in fact, discomfort has become my new normal. A familiar companion that walks alongside me throughout my days. Yet, I had become so resilient. Experiencing so much dissolution in such a short time frame has expanded my capacity for life’s natural ebbs, and has allowed me to notice the small delights with more awareness. And on top of this, has been the gentle push to update my Alignment Tracker Notion template, the one tool grounds me whenever I feel disconnected from my values and what truly matters to me. It’s my little anchor point and makes it incredibly clear where I’m disembodied.

This Monthly Becoming essay has me reflecting on how August has left me kneeling in the remnants of a life that I thought I wanted, but was actually built from a place of deep scarcity and therefore, misalignment. I enter September with no sense of ‘home’ as my lease ends this week and I find myself once again in the limbo of finding a rental here in Byron Bay. You’d think with all of this chaos orbiting me, I’d be crashing out. I won’t lie, I have had a cry or two, and yet I find myself resting in a deep space of trust. Trusting that this is just the natural cycle of rot and decay that occurs before something new and better arrives. Trusting that these inconveniences are here to teach me a gentle lesson, to humble and and remind me of what is truly important. And trusting that my beautiful support network of humans that surround me are here to hold me through it all, and that, despite my clench fists, I am learning to receive.

It’s here that I arrive each month and invite you into a garden of deep introspection. I share the unique ways in which I set intentions, and offer guidance on how to move through life feeling deeply embodied, despite it all. My Monthly Becoming essays are the only place where I share rituals shaped to this specific season of life, using upcoming astrological transits as a guide, journal prompts and somatic practices that will become a gentle landing place for you. And finally, sharing the media and tools that moved something in me in August, and that I know you, too, fellow sensitive creative, will love.

Come closer, pour yourself a warm cup of tea and light a candle. We’re about to soften a little more and are becoming deeply clear on what we are wanting to call in for the month of September. I call this “planting seeds”, where I list ten intentions that I will slowly move towards during the upcoming weeks. Below, I will share the ten seeds I’m sowing, and I invite you to do this practice alongside me.

Here, I created a playlist just for you:

1. Send a friend a song that reminds me of them. Song-sharing is a love language in itself, and it’s such an innocent way to say, “I’m thinking of you”. My intention this month is to make my friends feel deeply valued, especially as I have been leaning on them a lot more than usual lately. What’s one, unassuming way you can show your appreciation to your support system this month?

2. Introduce micro-somatic practices in my day-to-day. I recently completed my Applied Somatics Facilitator training with Collective Being and was reminded of a habit that I (and many of us) have fallen into. This is the habit of reserving only mornings and evenings to do restorative, nervous system regulation practices, rather than engaging in multiple mini practices throughout the day. So, this month, I will be intentionally taking time to pause, reconnect to my body, and the best part is that most of these practices take only 1 - 5 minutes each.

3. Go snorkelling. I will be staying with my best friend Josie (who is also a phenomenal writer on here), and lives directly across from the beach. We have both expressed our excitement to go snorkelling together sometime soon, and since now we’ll be in each other’s worlds a lot more, there’s no excuse but to make it happen.

4. Try a new local restaurant. I am a lover of a home-cooked meal. I have become so comfortable exploring new recipes and eating in harmony with my dosha and what phase I am in, in my cycle, that I have neglected the very human luxury of trying a new restaurant. This is the month that I step out of the cocoon of my kitchen for one night, and indulge a little. Hey, I deserve it.

5. Waste a day. This goes without saying. How often do we grant ourselves permission to do absolutely nothing, or at least nothing that is considered ‘productive’? I want to stare aimlessly out the window, to notice the subtleties that were once a hum in the background. I want to swim in the spaciousness of a day and make decisions purely on intuition and desire. Maybe a day wasted is exactly what I need to heal my relationship with quick dopamine fixes and seeking validation from sources outside of myself.

6. Create something for my inner child. Oh to to create something with no expectation but to be in constant conversation with the inner child. To be messy and impulsive and deeply curious. There seems to be a running theme here in my seeds, and it sounds like I need more play.

7. Write 1,000 words for my book. I have been resistant to starting this book since I solidified the concept, which truly goes against my nature of nurturing all creative acts with steady devotion. So, I guess I have nothing else to do except start.

8. Go to the cinema. I’m a secret film snob. I appreciate good film, and could spend countless hours in front of a screen indulging in quality cinema if it wouldn’t simultaneously send me down a spiral due to the countless ways in which my time and attention could be of better use. So, to scratch this itch, I’m choosing to go on one movie date (either by myself, or with someone) and to see a movie that makes me feel something.

9. Thrift one thing that embodies this new season. Since I am closing the door on a tumultuous six month chapter in my rainforest home, entering this new season calls for finding an object that symbolises the beauty to come. The intention here is to thrift one item, a single knickknack that will be my anchor to this fresh slate.

10. Share a YouTube video. Long-form content is my safe place, and I have promised myself that this month, I will return to YouTube, even though on the outside it feels like everything I once knew is now dissolving, and especially because my life is currently the epitome of imperfection. So, expect a slow, honest, and soulful vlog about a girl living in Byron Bay, exploring the endless journey of becoming.

Each month I share my Field Notes; a curated selection of media, products, and tools that nourished me, and perhaps, moved something within me too. As a sensitive creative and someone who values living a slow and holistic life, I often find myself seeking stimuli and experiences that invite a sense of restoration. I feel most connected to media that inspires me, and products that allow me to inhabit my life in a way that feels deeply regulating. So with this in mind, I welcome you closer.

The Creative Power of Invisibility by Oana Leonte

The Architecture of Meaning

The Creative Power of Invisibility

Rick Rubin cannot play a single instrument. He cannot read music. He does not know how to work a soundboard. On 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper asked him what he is actually paid for, and Rubin did not reach for modesty. He said he is paid for one thing…

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25 days ago · 3549 likes · 291 comments · Oana Leonte

I needed to read this right now as it touches on the themes that I have been sitting with for a while. In some ways it provides a sense of relief, given the potential permanent loss of my Instagram account. As someone who built this platform, and business from a place of wanting to share my photography, videography, and writing, which then transformed into me becoming a lifestyle creator, this essay returned me to my why. How being seen wasn’t necessarily the goal, but has become the means of growing my business. The fact that my work being visible depended on an algorithm and validation of strangers never felt quite right, and yet I almost lost myself in the noise of it all. I suppose this essay in some way gave me permission to dance awhile within the shadows. To view this inconvenience as an opportunity to self-source my sense of worth, and to devote my time and attention to what drew me to showing up online anyway - the insatiable hunger to alchemise my experiences into art.

Cam Does It on YouTube

If you haven’t already found yourself swimming in the sweet and soulful world of Cameron Nuttall, may this be your invitation. Her YouTube videos feels like witnessing the epitome of womanhood in real-time. It’s in this cosy corner of the internet where she shares her slow travels, reflections on solitude and connection to land, and the endless journey of living an embodied and creative life. It’s rare these days where staring at a screen can feel like a salve, yet each vlog I stumble across does exactly that - soothes the part of me that feels disconnected, and reminds me of the parallels that are shared between many of us across seas and timezones. Cameron also has Substack and frequently shares her travel stories, musings, and poetry. To step into her world feels like a sun-soaked morning at your favourite place in nature where time feels endless and creativity flows freely.

Dry Body Brush from the Wooed

Dry brushing has been a steady part of my daily ritual for the past three years. Rooted in Ayurveda, dry brushing, or garshana is used to help stimulate and cause flow within the lymphatic system which therefore clears out the toxins in our body. I also use this tool as a part of my somatic practice, as the brush strokes somewhat energises me and invites me deeper into sensation.

This particular body brush is from one of my favourite small Australian businesses - The Wooed, and has travelled across the world with me. I think it’s no coincidence that since using this daily, I rarely get sick (maybe once a year, but is always very mild), and my skin always feels incredibly soft and exfoliated.

I’m never one to monopolize the tools and practices that genuinely work for me, so may this be your invitation into deeper connection with your body.

A Ritual for the Threshold

In honour of Virgo season & Libra seasons, and the lunations of September

September arrives almost sheepishly after the intensity of eclipse season - like the morning after something tumultuous, yet significant. When the dust is still settling and you are only just beginning to reorient yourself with the remnants of what was.

We open in Virgo. The great editor. The sign that looks at your life with clear, honest eyes and asks what is actually working, and what has simply become habit. Virgo is not interested in grand overhauls. It wants the small, honest adjustments. The routine draining you. The story about yourself that expired somewhere along the way and you just haven’t unravelled it yet.

The New Moon in Virgo lands on the 10th - an invitation to simplify, clarify, and tend what actually matters. On the 22nd, the Spring Equinox arrives here in the Southern Hemisphere, tipping the light back toward abundance. Something that has been composting underground all winter begins, quietly, to stir.

The Full Moon in Aries closes the month on the 26th. After all the editing and discerning of Virgo season, Aries arrives like a match being struck - asking what courage has been gathering in the dark that is now ready to move.

This ritual is a bowing down to the shifts that are to come.

• Choose an evening close to the New Moon on the 10th. Light a candle, make something warm, and let the space feel intentional.

• Gather your journal and something from the season - a flower beginning to open, something found outside today. Let it sit beside you while you write.

• Before you touch the journal, place one hand over your heart and one over your belly. Take three slow breaths and with each one, let August go a little more. Give it permission to settle.

• Open to a fresh page and write: what is actually worth carrying into this next chapter?

Write honestly. What is genuinely nourishing you right now - in your creative life, your relationships, your daily rhythms? And what have you simply been maintaining because you haven’t found the moment to put it down?

• Turn to a new page and write: what am I finally ready to simplify?

A habit that has run its course. A version of yourself you have been maintaining for an audience that stopped watching. Write it simply. You don’t need to make it dramatic to make it true.

• On a third page write: what do I want to tend with more devotion this season?

One thing. One creative practice, one relationship, one daily ritual asking for more of your attention. Name it and make a quiet commitment to it - a private promise between you and the page.

• Return to all three pages at the Full Moon in Aries on the 26th. Read them back slowly. Notice what has already shifted.

• Blow the candle out. Step outside. Feel Spring beginning to move through the air. Let it remind you that what has been composting is already becoming something.

I truly hope this month is sweet to you, and offers you reminders - both great and small, of how deeply loved and cherished you are. It feels bitter-sweet that I leave August on a bit of a low, but I’m hopeful and open to whatever truths are waiting for me to notice them. May you find time to notice them too.

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P.s. The Inward Journal is where I go when I want to share something that does not belong anywhere else. Fortnightly dispatches from my inner world - seasonal rituals, astrological musings, honest creative reflections, and first access to future retreats, residencies, and offerings. If you have been quietly craving something like this, consider this your invitation.

May you only carry what feels true.

From Bella,

With love x

Continuing the Conversation

Connect with me beyond these pages and keep the conversation going.

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Disclaimer: Some images featured in this essay are sourced from Pinterest for inspiration and remain the intellectual property of their original creators.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I honour the Arakwal people as the traditional custodians of Bundjalung nation, where I live and work. I recognise their enduring connection to Country, waters, and all living things, and I am grateful for their care in protecting these precious ecosystems. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.

Read my most recent Substack on desire, devotion, and the reluctant unravelling of a life you thought was already whole.

Our energy is our most valuable currency. It dictates who, what, and where we choose to direct our awareness, and yet most of us are leaking it in ways so subtle and habitual we are entirely unaware of. A creative life does not just require inspiration and talent. It requires a quality of inner aliveness that, left untended, quietly drains away before we ever make it to the page, the canvas, the camera, or whatever altar your creative practice calls home.

These are the leaks I have been paying closest attention to lately.

Avoid task switching

I used to pride myself on my ability to do seventeen things simultaneously. I have since learned that this is less a superpower and more a very convincing illusion.

Every time we switch between tasks, the brain requires time to fully re-engage with what it left behind. For sensitive creatives whose best work emerges from a particular quality of sustained attention, this is devastating. The depth of presence that genuinely original work requires simply cannot coexist with a browser tab situation and a running to-do list and a phone face up on the desk.

One thing at a time. All the way through. Then the next thing. I know it sounds almost insultingly simple. Try it for a week and report back.

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Oh, I have a bellyache. I am sitting in bed eating gluten free toast with butter because nothing else seems to soothe it, wondering whether this is actually a stomach bug or something far more inconvenient. My body coils at the thought, and knots the moment I realise my fears have become my reality. The word keeps threatening to jump off my tongue every time I think about this person, but I won’t let it. The way his eyes, pools of honey and moss make the edges of my being blush, infuriates me. The intensity of it. The urgency. It makes me want to do something that closely resembles an adult tantrum. To kick and scream in utter denial. To wail into a pillow until my throat aches. To gently unpick the threads of the perfectly woven story I had constructed about my future, because now, against all reasonable judgement, I want him in it too.

There was a time when my days felt entirely spacious. Each moment sacred, holy even — completely my own. Like the artist I am, I had full creative freedom over what filled each hour and what spilled over into the next. Even the moments still resting in the distance had an air of clarity to them, a sureness. I had nothing to consider except how I would show up, and even when I wandered astray, I knew exactly the breadcrumbs that would lead me back. A recipe and ritual I had perfected over many years of contented solitude.

What follows is the part I wrote for the ones closest to my work. Inside you will find:

• The full unravelling - what happened after the talk, what I am still figuring out, and what love is actually asking me to become

• Three journal prompts for anyone navigating tender thresholds like these

• The O’Donohue quote that cracked something open in me

This essay is for Open Palm Members of With Bare Hands. For less than a slow coffee a month, you get access to this piece and the full archive - rituals, cosmic musings, honest reflections, and the writing I reserve for those who have chosen to step a little closer.

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My loud interior world has yet to raise its voice today. Usually, it starts by naming the seemingly endless things I am falling behind on. But not yet. Right now there is only birdsong, candlelight, and hands still warm from a cup of ginger and hibiscus tea that has been a craving of mine for weeks. The innocence of the morning still remains, and I am in the phase of my cycle where I give considerably less weight to the inner critic. I see those thoughts for exactly what they are — stories and conditions I have created only for myself. Distractions from everything I have already accomplished, however slight it may seem.

I have a bad habit, you see. I love to measure my self-worth against how productive I have been. The more ticks on the to-do list, the more satisfied I feel with myself. There is a biological element to this — the dopamine rush associated with reward, motivation, and pleasure. But today I choose to self-source that gratification. To find it in the small things. Like allowing myself to sleep in instead of forcing myself to a yoga class, even though I know I would feel good after it. Choosing nine hours of well-deserved rest that I have been neglecting. Like cancelling plans with a friend because I am feeling deeply internal. I know seeing her would have filled my cup in other ways — but right now I am craving the generous silence that only solitude can provide.

These things were left unticked on my calendar today. And I am choosing to celebrate that. So here I am, sitting on my lounge room floor with an assortment of warm beverages scattered around me, incense burning, a blanket cocooning me, feeling quietly smug about my small acts of rebellion.

I frequently like to confront the conditions I set upon myself. The ones only I have to uphold. I notice I am not remotely as judgemental toward the people closest to me — in fact, I celebrate them when they rebel against their own inner critics. The hypocrisy is wild.

In July, the stories I carry about my own worthiness felt particularly loud. So I sat with them a little longer than usual. I got clear on what the old, outdated beliefs are across every area of my life — relationships, creativity, career, health, spirituality, finances — and asked myself: what is the most radically opposite belief I now have permission to step into?

This is the work underneath the work. The quiet dismantling that has to happen before anything new can grow.

July gifted me with the solitude I had been craving. Evenings that stretched endlessly, hours of reading and writing without the pull of social obligations. A romantic jazz night. A delectable batch of homemade body lotion that my skin has been adoring ever since. A return to my evening abundance log and my pre-bedtime yin yoga practice. Yes, a few things from last month’s seeds slipped through the cracks, yet I welcome that imperfection. How beautifully human of me. This is all data, all information, and so I will adjust this month’s list accordingly and extend a little more grace to my expectations.

Each Monthly Becoming has become a ritual of its own — a thread back to myself, and judging by your responses, to many of you too. A chance to reflect on the month just passed, check in on the seeds I planted, and share the media that moved me.

I think of intention setting as gardening. The landscape of the month ahead is vast, the soil rich and ready. So each month I plant ten seeds — ten small activities, goals, or mindsets I hope to tend to. Ten quiet gifts to future me. I also share a bespoke ritual guide, an invitation to drop inward in homage of the astrological and seasonal shifts ahead. Because I am a firm believer that we could all use a little more magick in our lives — and this, right here, is a gentle place to begin.

Come, gather around the garden. Listen to the bees doing their slow, important work. Notice the smell of the soil beneath your feet. That rich, dark, woody scent that somehow bypasses the mind entirely and lands straight in the body. How each breath draws you a little further inward, a little deeper into yourself.

It is from this quiet place where the mycelium does its invisible work and the roots push further into the dark, that we turn our attention to what we want to grow in the month ahead. And it is from here that I too will share the seeds I am planting in August.

1. Go on at least two hikes. It is winter down here in the Southern Hemisphere, and living somewhere so lush and tropical makes the warm indoors incredibly seductive. But rain jackets exist for a reason, and the great outdoors are calling me home.

2. Write a love letter to a friend. I have fallen into the habit of reserving love letters only for my boyfriend, completely forgetting that friendships require romancing too. I am surrounded by some of the most nourishing people I have ever known, and this month I want to show them exactly how much that means to me.

3. Create a morning playlist. I have reached that sticky point where every playlist I own has been played into the ground and lost its magic entirely. This month I am making something new — soft, intimate, and specifically designed to ease me into the morning.

4. Write a poem a week. Poetry is a conduit for understanding my inner world in ways that prose simply cannot reach. In August I am committing to one a week — even if it sounds terrible, even if it goes nowhere, especially if I don’t feel like it. My poetry is a living relationship I have been quietly neglecting, and it is time to show up for it.

5. Return to dream journaling. I notice an almost immediate disconnect from my intuition when I am not writing down my dreams first thing in the morning. This is my own gentle nudge back to a practice I have let slip, one that has always given me more clarity than I expect.

6. Practice speaking French in conversation. I recently fell in love with a Frenchman, so naturally I am taking this as a sign from the universe to learn his language. As someone whose second language is also English, I understand deeply what it means to have someone show genuine interest in your mother tongue. French is hard. I am loving every humbling moment of it.

7. Donate something (money, time, or energy) to something that matters. I am not yet sure exactly how this will manifest, but I trust that the right opportunity will find me. It always does.

8. Be a student again. It has been a long time since I engaged in any formal study, and I have felt a quiet pull to reopen that chapter. I have been eyeing the Applied Somatics Facilitator Training by Collective Being for a while — and the moment their doors opened for 2026, I signed up without hesitation. In August I am flying to Melbourne for this training and I could not be more ready for it.

9. Clear my phone storage. An ongoing and slightly embarrassing source of avoidance in my life. This month there is nowhere to hide, only the long overdue task of decluttering my camera roll and reclaiming sovereignty over my iPhone.

10. Go on a girls trip. Nothing says “I appreciate you” quite like a road trip to a beautiful Airbnb, a few nights of deep conversation, shared dreams, and uninterrupted time with the women who feel like home. This one is already in the calendar and I cannot wait to share every detail with you here.

July was the month I consumed the least media I have all year. Living tucked into the mountains with a temperamental internet connection I was blissfully unaware of when I signed the lease has had a way of forcing a digital detox upon me — and honestly, I have made my peace with it.

Despite this, one film still managed to crack something open, and a handful of artists found their way to me regardless. This month I am also shaking things up a little — alongside the usual recommendations, I am sprinkling in a product I have genuinely fallen for and believe is entirely worth the hype.

My Field Notes is for the sensitive souls. The ones who move through their days with a deep curiosity and a quiet craving to understand their place in it all a little more. So welcome, pull up a chair.

Silent Friend - Ildikó Enyedi, 2025

Three stories. One centuries-old ginkgo tree and starring the one and only Léa Seydoux. It is slow, deliberately and beautifully so. This film follows three lives across three different eras, all in conversation with the same tree, all sitting with the same question about what it means to truly pay attention to the living world around us.

I watched this on A rainy Sunday evening, deep in my luteal phase, curled up in my rainforest home with creatures pressing in from every side. Something settled in me by the end of it. A reminder that we have never been as separate from nature as we like to pretend.

Watch it in the dark. Let it be long. Go outside afterwards and put your hands on something old.

In Phases - Azamiah

I cannot remember exactly how this group found me (it must have been on one of the days I felt daring enough to use smart shuffle on my Spotify) but I am glad it did. Glasgow spiritual jazz led by India Blue. Divine vocals, harp, ocarina, a rhythm section that sounds like it was recorded somewhere warm and intentional and slightly outside of time as we know it.

I have had it on rotation for weeks now. It is the album I put on when I am cooking something slow, or writing, or driving to work in the morning when I am wanting to activate the parts of me that have felt dormant and unexpressed.

Night Woman will get into your body before your mind catches up. Bedroom feels like smoke and candlelight. The whole thing moves like a late night walk.

Genuinely one of those finds I keep sending to people unprompted. You are welcome.

Period & Leakproof Underwear - Hara the Label

I have been wearing Hara’s bamboo pieces for years, so when I heard they were releasing a period and leakproof underwear range I trusted immediately that the quality would be there. Two cycles in and I can confirm it absolutely is.

These have genuinely changed the way I move through my bleed — no leaking, no discomfort, no tampon situation. Just ease. They come in the most beautiful earthy colourways and feel completely aligned with the kind of slow, nourished, sustainable lifestyle I am always trying to move toward.

A discount link is here for you if you want to try them. A perfect gift to you and your future bleeding self.

A Ritual for the Eclipse Corridor

In homage of Leo season and the eclipses of August

August arrives carrying two eclipses, a solar eclipse in Leo on the 12th and a lunar eclipse in Pisces on the 27th, and between them, sixteen days that tend to accelerate, illuminate, and occasionally dismantle whatever has been quietly sitting in the waiting room of your life.

The Leo eclipse is an opening — a fated invitation to step more fully into your creative expression, your visibility, your truest self. The Pisces eclipse is a closing — of an illusion, a story, a dream ready to be composted. Together they ask: what are you finally ready to claim, and what are you finally ready to release?

This ritual lives in the corridor between them.

• Choose an evening between the 12th and the 27th. Light a candle and let the space feel ceremonial.

• Place two pieces of paper in front of you. One for what you are calling in. One for what you are releasing.

• Place both hands over your heart before you write anything. Notice what is pressing against the inside of your chest asking to be said. The body always knows before the pen does.

• On the first page write: what am I finally ready to step into?

Follow what your soul has been quietly circling — the creative project, the truer version of yourself, the thing you keep almost saying and then swallowing back down. Write it fully. Leo season is asking you to take up the space you deserve.

• On the second page write: what am I finally ready to release?

A story about your limitations. A version of yourself that has expired. A dream that belonged to who you used to be. Write it with ease. Something rich will grow here.

• Fold the first page toward you three times and place it somewhere sacred — your altar, your journal, beside your bed. Return to it often.

• Offer the second page to the flame. Watch it dissolve slowly. What burns here is returned to where it came from.

• Blow the candle out. Step outside and look up at the August sky. Let it be as large as it actually is.

May August return you to the inner place that you have been longing to land.

May August feel like an endless field of long grass and wildflowers for your soul to dance and frolic around without fear or hesitation.

May August be the answer to your spoken and unspoken prayers.

And finally, may August allow all of the invisible parts of yourself feel safe enough to be visible again, to be loved, held and received exactly as you are.

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P.s. If something in this essay landed, know that there is a quieter and more intimate version of this work happening every fortnight inside The Inward Journal. Future retreats and offerings, cosmic musings, honest shares from my creative life, and the kind of writing I reserve for the ones who have chosen to step a little closer. If that is you, I would love to have you inside.

I’ll meet you in the in-between.

From Bella,

With love x

Continuing the Conversation

Connect with me beyond these pages and keep the conversation going.

Instagram

TikTok

YouTube

Spotify

Pinterest

Disclaimer: Some images featured in this essay are sourced from Pinterest for inspiration and remain the intellectual property of their original creators.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I honour the Arakwal people as the traditional custodians of Bundjalung nation, where I live and work. I recognise their enduring connection to Country, waters, and all living things, and I am grateful for their care in protecting these precious ecosystems. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.

There was a time when I lived entirely by borrowed values.

I absorbed opinions and beliefs from every source around me without ever pausing to ask whether they actually resonated. I inherited rules I never chose and accepted them as objective truth. Those years felt like living as a hollowed out version of myself, and it is no coincidence that I had almost no creative clarity and was completely severed from my intuition. I have always been a deeply sensitive being. However, I didn’t know how to ask the questions that unravelled layers, or trust myself enough to discern whether or not I, too, held those beliefs.

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Everything shifted when I discovered what it meant to truly understand my own values. Not the ones I thought I should have. Not the ones that would make me seem more evolved or more cool. The real ones. The ones that live in the sediment of my being, finely refined like grains of sand along the shore of my mind.

So one day I sat down and distilled my entire being into five core values: integrity, authenticity, freedom, belonging, and health (you don’t need five, this simply felt like the right number for me). What followed was a practice of returning to these values at the beginning of each month, getting deeply clear on what I will and will not tolerate across every area of my life — relationships, work, creativity, health, finances, and spirituality.

The clarity that came from this was unlike anything I had experienced before. It felt like setting down a weight I hadn’t realised I had been carrying, the weight of trying to keep up with those around me. Stepping into my own worth became effortless once I had such clear, visible proof of what my soul requires to feel genuinely at ease.

Being someone who finds comfort in structure, I needed somewhere to hold all of this. A living document I could return to every time I felt that quiet internal friction that misalignment creates. Somewhere to log my values, track what is currently flowing, and identify what is asking to be released or recalibrated. That is how my Alignment Tracker was born, a Notion board built for the sensitive creatives who have drifted so far from their own inner knowing that they have forgotten what their own voice sounds like. It has become my most essential anchor. The thread I follow back to myself when everything else feels uncertain.

Writing is the other anchor. There is something quietly miraculous about putting pen to paper and watching deep inner knowing simply arrive. When I was first getting clear on my values, I developed a series of journal prompts to help me unravel what they actually were — and then another series to help me get honest about the standards I needed to set across every area of my life.

What follows is a complete journaling guide for coming home to yourself. For stepping out of the habit of being agreeable out of sheer uncertainty, and into a place of deep, unwavering inner authority.

Part One: Uncovering Your Core Values

These prompts are not about what you think you should value. They are about what you actually do. In the choices you make, the things that light you up, and the moments that have hurt the most.

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There is something I keep returning to lately. The realisation that in some fundamental way, we are always in the middle of something. That no matter what milestone we reach or destination we finally land in, there is always something else glimmering just off in the distance. Something we are somewhat holding out for, measuring our present against.

This year has felt like moving from one threshold to the next without ever quite touching solid ground. And somewhere in the sitting with that, something in me exhaled. Because what I realised is this: the certainty I keep reaching for doesn’t exist out there. It never did. Every time I defer my sense of arrival to some future moment, I am quietly abandoning the present one — the very one that a past version of me used to lie awake dreaming about.

I am writing this from a lively cafe in the eastern suburbs of Sydney — my old stomping ground, a place I once called home before the mountains began their quiet, persistent summoning. There is something terribly romantic about a bustling cafe. The way it charges you with the energy of a dozen different realities unfolding simultaneously. I am sipping English breakfast tea, people-watching, observing young families and overlapping conversations and the hum of an overcast Sunday morning . My dear friend Aimee sits beside me, also sipping tea, also writing her next Substack. We are long-distance best friends with a running list of promises — things we will do when we finally reunite, and this Sunday writing date has been one of those. There is something sacred about sitting alongside someone you love in shared creative devotion. No agenda. Just the work, the warmth, and the tea going cold.

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I am not sure if June was a collective blur or simply mine, but it came and went like a fever dream. I found myself retracing journal entries and my camera roll just to confirm that what I remembered was real. It was, to my genuine surprise, all very real. The month opened with a festival — days swallowed by dancing in the sunshine, lounging by the lake, eating well, and learning more than I expected. Festival culture is woven into the fabric of who I am. I have attended Woodford Folk Festival with my family every year since I was six, and being surrounded by open-hearted, curious people who crave community in the same cellular way I do still feels like coming home. What followed was a staycation at 28 Degrees Byron Bay, a camping trip south for the solstice, and the Bangalow Film Festival. June was a month of honouring every intention I had set in the previous Monthly Becoming. Of setting boundaries and actually keeping them.

And yet. There was a familiar feeling stirring underneath all of it. A quiet residue of inner frustration that I have noticed threading through previous entries here. Externally, life was so full. Rich with new experiences, unexpected connections, and a particular sweetness of a life that is beginning to resemble the one I used to dream about. And yet, the introvert within me was quietly longing for the long evenings spent alone. For hours of writing in ritual, of existing in my own company without an audience or an agenda.

Those evenings had been slowly consumed by time with my lover, late work nights, and weekends devoted to building community. And here is what strikes me as both humbling and quite hilarious: these are things I once prayed for. Intentionally, specifically, by name. And now that they are here, my nervous system is treating them like distractions rather than the miracles they actually are. This July, I am learning that receiving what you asked for is its own kind of practice. That integration is not the same as arrival. And that perhaps the work now is not to long for something different, but to learn how to hold — with both hands, without flinching — everything that has already found its way in.

Each month I return to the soil of my inner landscape and simply observe. How nourished does it appear? What does the quality of this sediment quietly say about how I have been tending to it? And then, after this observation, I plant new seeds, my version of intention setting. Ten little seedlings to water and care for over the weeks ahead. Ten anchor points. Ten quiet acts of devotion toward myself.

If you are a sentimental soul (and if you are here, I suspect you are), open your journal and plant alongside me. Here are the seeds I am carrying into July.

1. Attend a jazz night. It is winter, it is too cold to spend evenings outdoors, and nothing feels quite as romantic as watching a live jazz band in a warm, dimly lit room. Need I say more?

2. Commit to my Abundance Log. My Abundance Log is my version of a gratitude practice. It’s a running list in my notes app of the small, almost mundane things that reveal the endless abundance already woven into my days. Non-material evidence only. The smell of something cooking. The way the light falls. A conversation that arrived at exactly the right moment.

3. Finish reading A Happy Pocket Full of Money. In my last Monthly Becoming I planted the seed of tending to my relationship with money. This book found me through a post from Doechii, who shared how it completely reoriented her relationship with wealth and abundance. I am learning that our finances, like any living relationship, deserve time, attention, and genuine devotion. I was not educated about financial literacy growing up, and so I am doing it on my own terms, in my own time, with a highlighter and an open mind.

4. Make a batch of homemade body lotion. I stopped buying moisturiser from the store the day I discovered I could make it myself with three ingredients. Completely natural, non-toxic, and scented with whatever essential oils are calling to me that particular week. It has been a while since I sat down for this little ritual, and given the cold and the dry, my skin is gently asking me to return to it.

5. Edit and post a YouTube video. Long form content is ultimately where I feel most like myself, and where I connect most genuinely with other creators. This month I am committing to showing up there more consistently. If slow, soulful vlogs that move through travel and the interior life are your thing, come find me there.

6. Befriend a tree. Just one. I live tucked into the mountains, surrounded by some of the most extraordinary landscape I have ever known, and somehow I have not yet truly connected to a single tree. There is something ancient and unspoken about having one tree you always return to. To sit beneath, to speak to as you would a dear, patient friend. In July, I am going to find mine. I cannot wait to tell you about it.

7. Bake more. I recently discovered, to my genuine surprise, that I have a hidden talent for banana bread. Baking was never part of my upbringing so it was never something I felt connected to until I found an abundance of bananas growing on my land and decided to simply try. Three batches later, all of them quietly incredible. Genuinely, every bakery banana bread I have had since simply does not compare.

8. Create something with low stakes. I was talking to a friend recently about how rarely we make things that aren’t destined for an audience, a platform, or eventually a source of income. In July I want to make something purely for the pleasure of being terrible at it. To be a beginner without apology. To not wish I were anywhere else except exactly where I am.

9. Start a conversation with a stranger. I am someone who lives deeply inside my own world and rarely initiates unplanned connection, even when I know it will be brief and beautiful and exactly what I needed. This month I want to compliment more strangers, ask more questions, collect more perspectives. We have so much to learn from each other if we are willing to simply begin.

10. Return to evening yin yoga. For most of this year, my evening yin practice was sacred. Candlelit, slow, accompanied by gentle music and something burning. My body would soften, my fascia would melt, and I was able to move through and sit with so much stored emotion. I notice, acutely, what its absence has done to my mobility and my ability to wind down. July is the month I stop negotiating with myself about this one. I am returning back home to myself.

This month, my screen-time was the lowest it has been in a while, which meant I genuinely had very little media to draw from. So this section came together differently than usual, smaller, slower, more deliberate. Here is the small pile of things that did reach me this month, the essays, the artists, the films that quietly stirred something. The recommendations I keep passing along to dear friends, the ones who love to pick my brain about these things. Consider this me emptying my pockets onto the table and saying, here, this helped, maybe it’ll help you too. Field Notes. June’s findings, take what you need and leave the rest for someone else.

You are what you love by Sherry Ning

This essay argues that real change doesn’t come from thinking harder, but from reordering what your heart actually loves and desires. I loved it because it put language to something I’ve always intuitively known but never quite articulated, that becoming is a matter of the heart, not the mind. P.s. I absolutely adore literally everything Sherry writes, she’s so wise and witty. It just feels like you’re having a deep conversation with a good friend.

The Testament of Ann Lee

A semi-musical biopic about the founding leader of a religious sect starring Amanda Seyfried — I was already gone before the opening credits finished. Haunting, strange, and completely its own thing. It blurs folk horror, musical, and spiritual drama into something I genuinely don’t have a category for. Seyfried is mesmerising, the choreography is unlike anything I have seen, and the whole thing lingered in my system for a few days afterwards. My only gripe is that I wanted more of Ann’s inner world, but I left moved in a way I am still quietly sitting with.

The Darkening Green - ELIZA

This album found me at exactly the right moment, which I suspect is what it does to everyone it reaches. ELIZA moves between accusation and tenderness so seamlessly you barely notice the shift. One moment calling out the collective sleepwalk, the next pointing at wildflowers growing in the cracks. She says what she means, once, without softening it. For the sensitive creatives who are done with music that doesn’t ask anything of them, this one will. Put it on and pay attention.

Ritual for the Tender Heart

In honour of Cancer season and Mercury retrograde

Last month asked you to think. To write fast and follow the thread and empty the mind of its noise. July asks something older and softer of you. It asks you to feel. To stop translating your emotions into something more manageable and simply let them be what they are.

Mercury retrograde in Cancer has a way of surfacing what we have been quietly suppressing — old memories, unspoken grief, the feelings we filed away because there was never quite the right moment to sit with them. This ritual creates that moment.

• Wait until evening. This one does not belong to the morning. Let the day complete itself first, then come to this when the world has quieted and there is nothing left to do except be here.

• Light a candle and fill a small bowl with water. Place both somewhere you can see them. Water has always known how to hold what we cannot. Let it hold something for you tonight.

• Settle into the softest, warmest space you have. Remove your shoes. Uncross your arms. Let your body arrange itself the way it wants to rather than the way you usually hold it.

• Rest one hand over your heart and one over your stomach. Breathe slowly into both. Stay here until you notice something soften — a jaw, a shoulder, something behind the eyes. Wait for it. It will come.

• When you feel ready, open your journal and write this at the top of a blank page: what am I feeling that I have not yet given myself permission to feel?

• Write until there is nothing left. Do not be tidy about it. Do not try to understand what arrives — just let it land on the page. Grief and joy can coexist here. Confusion is welcome. This is not about arriving at an answer. It is about finally giving something a voice.

• When the writing is done, turn to a new page and complete these three things honestly:

Something I have been carrying that belongs to someone else. An old wound, a borrowed belief, a story that was handed to you before you were old enough to question it. Write it down and then cross it out with one slow, deliberate line. It is not yours to keep.

Something my body has been asking for that I have been too busy to hear. Rest, perhaps. Touch. Stillness. Warmth. Write what comes without arguing with it.

Someone or something that makes me feel completely safe. Not impressed, not entertained, not useful. Safe. Name it, and make a quiet promise to return to it before the month is out.

• Trail your fingers through the bowl of water. Let it be whatever you need it to be — a clearing, a comfort, a small act of returning to something elemental and true.

• Extinguish the candle. Make something warm to drink. Let the evening be slow.

Cancer season teaches us that feeling is not weakness. It is how we find our way back to what actually matters.

I hope July is the exhale after a very long held breath. I hope something surfaces that surprises you, that you let it, and that somewhere in the dark of this season you remember that feeling things deeply was never your weakness. It was always the whole point.

P.s. If this is the kind of writing that makes you feel a little less alone in the wondering, there is more where this came from. The Inward Journal is where I go deeper — seasonal rituals, astrological guidance, honest creative reflections, and the kind of content that doesn’t belong anywhere else. A space built slowly and with intention, for those who are ready to come a little closer. You can find it here.

Continuing the Conversation

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Disclaimer: Some images featured in this newsletter are sourced from Pinterest for inspiration and remain the intellectual property of their original creators.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I honour the Arakwal people as the traditional custodians of Bundjalung nation, where I live and work. I recognise their enduring connection to Country, waters, and all living things, and I am grateful for their care in protecting these precious ecosystems. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.

Conscious Consuming

We live in a world where consuming content is, at some point in the day, inevitable (unless you live completely analogue, in which case I am genuinely envious). If you are a sensitive creative navigating the digital landscape, you will already know how quickly and quietly depletion sets in without boundaries in place. Here are some of the ways I set and honour those boundaries, shifting social media from something mindless into something that actually serves the creative process.

• Frequent social media detoxes

I spend my weekends completely off social media. It is a ritual I have maintained for over a year now and has fundamentally changed the way I relate to my phone and to my time in the real world. I communicate this boundary clearly with friends and clients so there are no open loops or miscommunications. It is a small and gentle way to reset the nervous system, and it brings an extraordinary amount of presence back to the weekend.

• Intention setting before consuming

This one is more challenging, but perhaps the most potent. Setting an intention before opening social media provides clarity and direction that transforms the experience entirely. Even if your goal is to mindlessly scroll, let that be your intention. Give yourself a time frame, name the purpose, and watch the guilt and shame dissolve. For me, I often set an intention to gather inspiration, to observe creators I admire or discover artists who light something new within me. This is not permission to look externally for creative validation, but a reminder that gathering is a natural and necessary part of the creative ecosystem.

• Regular culls

We all have those saved folders quietly gathering dust. We all still follow accounts that no longer reflect who we are or who we are becoming. I set aside time to go through old folders, unsave and reorganise, bringing more structure and spaciousness to what I choose to keep. The folders function on Instagram is genuinely wonderful for creatives when used well, but when neglected, becomes another source of unnecessary clutter. Unfollowing brands, creators, old colleagues, and people who are no longer part of your life creates an almost immediate sense of spaciousness. I also love the ability to remove followers. If you feel resistance to showing up because of who might be watching, this is a beautiful and underused place to begin.

• Protect the first and last hours of your day

The research on how screens impact our nervous system in the early and late hours of the day is well documented, and I feel it acutely. There is a palpable difference in my energy on the mornings I move through my ritual before reaching for my phone versus the ones I don’t. I treat these hours as sacred. Something to be protected. By ensuring I move through my morning and evening practices without touching a screen, I create a grounded and safe inner landscape — one where creativity is far more likely to find me.

• Learn your overflow signal

Know what it feels like in your body when you have taken in enough. A tightness in the chest. Brain fog. A low hum of irritability that has no obvious source. That is your cue to close the input tap. Our bodies are such intelligent creatures, and know long before our minds catch up. The sooner you honour the signal to switch off and return to yourself, the more connected and available you will be to your own creative life.

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A new month opens and I feel the gentle pull of it in my chest. The soft petals of my heart unfurling despite the slight chill in the autumn air. What versions of myself await our introduction in June? I barely recognise the woman I was this time last month.

How lucky are we to be offered so many opportunities to turn inward. How new months roll around and lunations wax and wane, granting us spaciousness to release what no longer serves. A constant cycle of life, death, and rebirth. A reminder to befriend the rot that must take place before any blossoming can occur.

May was a month of surprises. Unexpected connections, an almost overwhelming amount of creative flow, and an invitation to slow down and trust the process. Perhaps the most important thing it taught me was that no matter how safe and beautiful it is, a cage is still a cage. I had to dissolve some of the beliefs that once kept me small, to remember that like the seasons, our stories must also move through their natural cycles of becoming.

I got swept up in the flirtatious excitement of life and abandoned my practice. Losing that momentum stirred more shame and guilt than I expected. But perhaps getting swept away is part of the process. Perhaps my creative becoming requires me to lean into desire and pleasure, to use it as raw material for the work. I am a hedonist at heart. So perhaps I will dance in the shadows a little longer and see what finds me.

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It is likely that you too experienced some kind of dissolution last month. That May surprised you in some small way you are still turning over.

Each month I come back here to dive inward — rituals, astrological musings, honest reflections, and the media that moved me. For the sensitive creatives who are learning, slowly and imperfectly, that paying attention is its own form of art. If you want to step a little closer, The Inward Journal is my most intimate creative space — part living altar, part creative companion, entirely devoted to the intentional life. I would love to have you there.

It wouldn’t be The Monthly Becoming without planting some seeds. Doing this practice each month has gifted me so much clarity and quiet confirmation. It allows me to take stock of what is truly important to me in this season of life, and acts as a gentle framework to walk toward. In the spirit of being more raw here on Substack, here are the ten seeds I am planting for June.

Invitation: Journal your own seeds on a blank page and return to it whenever you need a gentle reminder of what you are walking toward this month.

1. Go camping at least once. Despite the cold. Despite the million things pulling my attention in all directions. I am craving to be completely immersed in nature for just one weekend, with no agenda beyond a fire, the stars, and the wild.

2. Candlelit evening rituals. A practice I highly neglected in May, I noticed myself rushing through the evenings and avoiding true stillness. This month I am returning to dim lighting, soft music, something burning, and direct eye-gazing at myself in the mirror. Extra points for repeating loving affirmations.

3. Say ‘no’ more. Even when it feels uncomfortable. Especially when saying ‘yes’ is just a way of avoiding the discomfort of my own company. Saying no is sacred. It is also the fastest way I know of getting clearer on what a genuine yes actually feels like in the body.

4. Start writing my book. Regardless if it is just research and dot points and half-formed thoughts scattered across a page. I am deeply conscious of how creative momentum works and I refuse to let this one dissolve through inaction.

5. Attend the Bangalow Film Festival. I have wanted to go for years and this is the month I actually do it. A dinner date beforehand with a certain person who might have entered my life in May, a drink, a film that moves something within me.

6. A sunset ocean dip. Since moving to the mountains my relationship with the sea has become a long-distance one, which aches more than I expected. I want to drive the twenty minutes, stand at the edge of something vast, and get in despite the cold. A rekindling. A gentle ritual. A reminder that she is still there and so am I.

7. Dance more in solitude. A repeat from last month because I didn’t honour it the way I wanted to. I attended events in May that invited some boogying, but what I am really craving is the slow, sensual dancing I used to do alone in my bedroom. Something raw and animalistic that I had forgotten reconnects me so deeply to my own body and sensuality.

8. Create more consistently on YouTube. Long-form content is my greatest creative love, and the process of translating my writing and my affection for videography onto this platform has been one of the most rewarding creative explorations I have undertaken. I am still finding the rhythm of it, still learning how long a single video actually takes to make. Every transition has its teething moments. This is mine, and I am giving it grace.

9. Allow myself to receive. I notice the tension that rises in my body when someone offers help, or care, or softness in my direction. How every part of me wants to resist and insist I am capable of doing it alone. I believe one of the quiet lessons of this lifetime is learning to let people in without it meaning I am less capable or less strong. If this one lands for you too, let it be your gentle permission slip to soften a little this month.

10. Tend to my relationship with money. To look at each bill and expense not with dread but with genuine gratitude — how extraordinary that I am able to pay for things, to move through the world with resources, to trust that what flows out will find its way back. Money, like everything else worth having, responds to the quality of attention you bring to it. This month I am bringing reverence.

Each month I offer a small window into what the sky is doing. Not as a forecast, but as an invitation to notice. To look up, and then look inward. These are not predictions. They are simply patterns, offered gently, for those who find meaning in them.

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I don’t know if it’s because I’m the eldest daughter, have an avoidant attachment style, or because I have Sagittarius in my 5th house — but I feel incredibly confident arriving in new places and building something real, something authentic, wherever I land. In the past three years I have travelled for over six months, lived in three different cities, built a beautiful and abundant online community, all while finally feeling like I have found my people in real life too. This goes hand-in-hand with doing the inner work — healing the sister wound, becoming genuinely comfortable within my own solitude, so that from that place of inner wholeness I am able to show up as my most loving and unguarded self around the people nearest to me.

This doesn’t mean the social anxiety has disappeared, or that the doubts and insecurities don’t still surface — they do, and I imagine they will throughout different seasons of life. But despite all of that, I feel a quiet and growing certainty that I am both able to and worthy of finding my people, wherever in the world I happen to be.

If you have found this essay, or have been following along with With Bare Hands for a while, then it is likely that you too are a sensitive creative who longs to feel deeply seen and understood. You know the value of having a safe circle of people around you that feel like home. Perhaps you have recently moved to a new city and are starting from scratch, are travelling and eager to connect with people who truly get you, or maybe you’re still in your hometown and feel a quiet pull to branch out and build something more nourishing. Regardless of the season or stage of life you find yourself in — it is never too late to find your people.

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I started from scratch with all of my friendships at twenty-three. I looked around at who I was surrounded by and didn’t recognise myself anymore. My friendships weren’t supportive, and didn’t bring out the best in me. My heart had hardened, and my creativity felt like a distant friend I had somehow lost touch with. It is wild how the people we surround ourselves with can completely drain our life force. So I stepped away from that timeline and decided to begin again.

Connection is your birthright. Belonging is a fundamental human need. You are worthy of building a community around you that becomes your chosen family. It is all already available to you. What follows is a gentle guide on how I have navigated building connections, and the steps I have leaned on most heavily in the past two months since moving to a completely new town and starting over once again. This is the land I see myself settling into, building a life on, and nourishing a community within. So naturally, I pulled out my journal — and now I’m sharing everything.

1. Begin within

I had to strip myself back in the most metaphysical sense to truly understand three things: who are the kinds of people I want to call into my life, what within me is blocking me from allowing that in, and how do I become a better friend to myself first. If you want anything to manifest in the physical world, the inner work always comes first. A resource I leant on heavily during this phase was my Words of Introspection journal — a tool I return to again and again when I need prompts that genuinely unravel me. Find a home within yourself first. Remember your inherent wholeness. And quite soon you’ll notice that you stop seeking connection out of longing and start attracting it through resonance.

2. Sit with the sister wound

I couldn’t write this essay without naming it. If female friendships have hurt you — and for most of us, they have, that wound will shape every new connection you try to build until you decide to sit with it directly. The guardedness. The waiting for it to go wrong. The subtle competition that lives beneath the surface of even the warmest interactions. Do the work of understanding where it came from. Because on the other side of that healing is the kind of female friendship that becomes the most nourishing, most life-giving force you have ever known — the kind that makes the younger version of you, the one who never quite felt like she belonged, finally feel at home in the hearts of others.

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I felt the first kiss of autumn last week. Here in the Southern Hemisphere, we spiral inwards, and I, for one, welcome it. I find myself noticing subtle shifts in the natural world — how the sun traces different paths across my bedroom walls now, slow and unhurried, as if learning the room for the first time. How the birds sleep in a little longer, as I do. The way the mist breathes across the paddocks as I drive to my studio in the mornings, as if I am starring in my own opening credits of some wholesome film shot in the countryside. It’s all very poetic.

I don’t seem to mind that the rest of the world is unfurling into the fertile landscape that is spring. How more Euro summer photo dumps find their way onto my screen, and how the balmy days by the sea here in the Northern Rivers feel like a lifetime ago. Lucky for me, I like a cold creek dip (it takes a lot to get in between myself and a body of water).

It’s in this liminal space that we leave April behind. We release the habits, practices, and ways of being we don’t wish to carry into this new month. We let go of the stories we have held about ourselves that keep us small. For me, April was a perfect storm — and I am honestly ready to step away from it, carrying a basket of beautiful learnings and unlearnings along with me. It was the month I settled into my new home, re-entered the dating scene (which brought up a lot, and is potentially worth its own essay), finally felt like I found my community, and received a powerful download for a book idea. A month that cracked something open and refused to let me look away — one that moved through my inner world like a hurricane and left nothing but debris and poetry.

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Regardless of what side of this floating rock you find yourself on, we have all just entered a new month — May. The spaciousness of her potential offers a blank canvas to the delicious body of work that is Life. She offers so much, if we choose to sit with her awhile. I’m a lover of thresholds, of the moments in between where intentions can be set and clarity settles like sand on the sea floor — like when the sun finally peeks through the clouds on one of those days where you feel a little extra vitamin D deficient. There’s something flirtatious about a month’s opening. So much unexplored terrain to wander.

If you are also someone who loves to romanticise a new month and craves a little guidance with a sprinkle of wisdom from the cosmos, ritual offerings, and recommendations from the media I have been consuming that I believe you will devour — welcome. And if you want to step a little closer and be the first in the loop for future offerings, workshops, and residencies, I invite you to The Inward Journal — my bi-monthly newsletter and my version of a living altar. Here, we dive deep into the creative process, the esoteric, and the philosophical — like a cosy teahouse with a good playlist, warm lighting, and something beautiful burning.

I like the word intentions — it feels true and heart-led — however it has become quite diluted and overused. Lately, I like to view my monthly intentions as seeds I am planting for the weeks ahead. Little wishes and ways in which I aim to show up that bring me closer to both my dreams and my true self.

Invitation: Journal on what your ‘seeds for the month’ are on a blank page and return to it frequently — let it bring you back to these gentle intentions.

1. Dance more. In my bedroom (preferably nude), in nature, at parties, wherever good music goes — my hips shall follow.

2. Solo nature dates (bonus points if art is involved and devices are left behind).

3. Kiss a girl.

4. Write more poetry. I’m in the habit of waiting for the words to find me. This month I am devoting time daily to writing one poem, despite despite despite!

5. Parallel play dates with friends — organising hangs where we all bring our own art, maybe bring a plate of food, and simply create alongside one another.

6. Read more Substacks. I have so many incredible essays bookmarked that have been sadly gathering dust in the graveyard that is my saved folder.

7. Be more radically honest. I am retiring the part of me that confused self-abandonment with being easy to love. My intention in May is to speak more openly and honestly about what’s on my heart.

8. Attend a life drawing class. An artist who works out of the rooms in the studio I rent hosts monthly life drawing classes and has invited me to attend her next one. Drawing is definitely not my strongest creative practice, but it will put me in a room with a bunch of other creatives — which in itself feels exciting and expansive.

9. Genuinely rest during my moon cycle. The past few months I have been super social during my bleed and am hyper aware of how that lack of genuine rest ripples out onto my energy for the rest of the month. I’m someone who historically deeply honours this phase and ritualises the heck out of it. This month I’ll be uncontactable, likely horizontal, and unapologetic about it.

10. Be more raw with my writing. I feel a slight veil between my writing on Substack and what truly wants to come through. On my other platforms I have kept such a poised and curated image of myself — one that feels like a fragment of my true nature. This month I am stepping away from perfectionism and a fear of being perceived, and welcoming a little more mess.

My Sun Letters are simply an astrological toe-dip. As someone who finds deep resonance in the patterns of the planets, and has been quietly curious about the synastry between what moves in the cosmos and how it translates into the natural world — here are a few notes on what’s to come, how it might be showing up for you, and how we can work with these alignments to deepen our connection to our own inner worlds.

Two full moons bookend the month — one in Scorpio, one in Sagittarius. What’s hidden, then what’s true. The month asks you to feel before it asks you to understand.

Scorpio Full Moon — May 1

Scorpio rules the underworld of the self — the grief we haven’t sat with, the truths we have been slowly unravelling but haven’t quite landed on yet. This full moon illuminates what we have been keeping in the dark. It is an inward time, and an invitation to melt into the discomfort — because what remains unexamined will eventually find its way into the body anyway. Collectively, this may feel like a reckoning with what has been quietly draining us — relationships, habits, stories about ourselves we have outgrown but not yet released. Scorpio is the great composter of the zodiac. What it transforms doesn’t disappear — it becomes the fertile soil from which something new grows.

How to work with it: Sit with what feels unfinished or unexplored (I also invite you to check which house this transit is falling into in your chart). Ask honestly — what am I still carrying that was never mine to keep?

Taurus New Moon — May 16

Where Scorpio asked us to excavate, Taurus invites us to plant. This process is to be done slowly, and without rushing the outcome. This new moon asks for one small, true commitment — a creative practice, a daily ritual, a quiet promise you intend to keep. Not a grand declaration or complete life overhaul. Just a seed, placed with intention into newly nourished soil. In the Southern Hemisphere, this lands in the heart of autumn — a season that already understands the art of letting go in order to preserve what matters most.

How to work with it: Choose one thing to tend this month — one creative seed, one aspect of yourself asking for more devotion — and begin before you feel ready.

Come, take a seat around the fire. Feel its heat settle around you, hear the flames lick at the wood, notice how the smell of smoke and charcoal pulls something loose — memories of camping trips, nights under open skies, conversations that seemed to exist outside of time entirely.

It is in this kind of space — unhurried, warm, a little wild — that I want to share what moved me last month. Consider this my offering to the circle — the things that cracked something open, that settled something down, that made me feel a little less alone in the wondering.

1. Toni Morrison Interview

In this interview, Morrison asks us to create from genuine need, to forgive by moving toward shame rather than away from it, and to treat ancestry as something living. Depth, she suggests, requires full immersion in the difficult thing. There is no way through except through. It soothed something deep within me — particularly the way she describes writing her first book because she was craving something like it but couldn’t find it. This immediately made me reflect on what I wish had been created but is yet to exist, which led me, not long after, to my own book idea.

2. Devotion & The Black Divine by anaiis

anaiis’ album was on repeat for the whole of April. Her inner world feels like a mirror of my own. There’s something deeply healing about finding an artist whose words land that way — like being seen without having to explain yourself. My favourite songs are Something is Broken (immediate tears), Call Me (a), and Here Comes The Sun.

3. A Chinese Medicine Guide to Transitions by Dr. Linh

One of the most grounding things I’ve read in a while. The idea that transitions aren’t lost time but the body’s way of completing one cycle before beginning another is exactly what I needed to hear in this season of life. I have been curiously walking the path of Traditional Chinese Medicine for over five years now and find deep resonance in its teachings. Dr. Linh’s Substack is one I return to often for guidance and deepened understanding.

It wouldn’t be a With Bare Hands essay without some kind of ritual to tug at the seams of your self — to usher you into the depths of your own heart so that you can move through the month ahead with more clarity, a deepened connection to your creative essence, and a strengthened bond to your intuition. Here is a simple practice for the threshold between what was and what’s coming.

• Find a quiet moment — dusk is ideal, or the soft hour before the day has asked anything of you.

• Gather what calls to you: a candle, something borrowed from outside — a leaf, a stone, whatever the season has left at your feet — and your journal.

• Light the candle. Sit without agenda. Let the closing of one month and the opening of another be something you feel in the body rather than think your way through.

• Place a hand over your heart and breathe. Notice what you are still carrying from the month just passed — what was heavy, what surprised you, what grew quietly in the background.

• Open your journal and let these three questions arrive slowly, without editing:

What am I releasing?

• A story you have been telling yourself for too long. A habit that once served you and now simply weighs. A way of moving through the world that has quietly expired.

• You can fill a whole page, whisper a single word, or let the pen find its own way. There is no wrong answer here — only the honest one.

• Fold the page three times away from you and offer it to the flame. Watch it dissolve — not with grief, but with grace. What burns is not lost. It is simply returned.

What am I welcoming?

• Not a goal — a quality. Softness, perhaps. Courage. The willingness to be seen a little more fully than last month.

• Fold this page three times towards you and keep it somewhere safe and in sight for the month ahead — a gentle reminder to return to when you lose the thread.

What is my one quiet devotion?

• Not a list. Just one thing. Small enough to keep, true enough to matter.

• Keep this somewhere it will find you again when you need it most.

• When you feel complete, blow the candle out with intention — not as an ending, but as a sending. What you have named is now moving.

• Step outside if you can. Let the cool air of the new month meet your skin.

• Begin.

I hope May is gentle with the parts of you that have been working so hard to hold everything together. I hope it loosens something that has been held too tightly for too long, and returns you — even briefly — to the version of yourself that still believes in the magic of an ordinary day.

Thank you for being here,

May you carry only what feels true.

Bella x

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I honour the Arakwal people as the traditional custodians of Bundjalung nation, where I live and work. I recognise their enduring connection to Country, waters, and all living things, and I am grateful for their care in protecting these precious ecosystems. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.

How we move through a whole season, weeks of light changing and air shifting and life happening in the small unremarkable moments — without ever really stopping to be inside it. We are always just slightly ahead of where we are. Already thinking about what comes next, what needs doing, who we need to become.

Taurus season, for me (which arrives on April 20th), is the invitation to come back.

Not in a grand way. Not with a plan or a practice or a version of yourself you need to perform. Just back to your body. Back to the cup of tea going warm in your hands. Back to the particular quality of light in your kitchen at this hour, which you have never once paused to notice, even though it has always been beautiful.

This is the medicine of the season. And it is quieter than most of us expect.

The energy we’re moving with

The archetypes present in Taurus season are the Gardener and the Sensualist — two figures who understand something the rest of the world seems to have forgotten: that tending is enough. That pleasure is not something you earn at the end of a productive day. That presence, real presence, is its own form of arriving somewhere.

This season asks us to ground into the senses. To find meaning in texture, in taste, in the rituals we return to without thinking. The slow walk. The body in water. The act of cooking something with your hands.

It does not ask you to be more. It asks you to notice what is already here.

A ritual for the month

Step outside, or open a window. Let the air arrive before you do anything else.

Breathe, and invite in whatever form of guidance feels true to you — ancestors, the natural world, your own quiet knowing.

Collect a few things that call to you: a stone, something in bloom, a leaf still damp from the morning. Arrange them simply somewhere in your home. A windowsill. A corner of your desk. Let it be imperfect.

Place a hand over your heart. Feel its steadiness. Let yourself settle into the words: I am rooted. I welcome what is already here.

Sit for a few minutes without an agenda. Notice colours, textures, what the air smells like in this particular season. Then carry that ground gently into the rest of your day.

A writing prompt

Turn your inner landscape into poetry. You don’t need to be a poet. You just need to be honest.

Write about where you are right now using these as gentle anchors:

Earth, soil, stone, moss, root. Bloom, wildflowers, fruit. Vessel. Wood, clay. Rooted, grounded, abundant. Rhythmic, tender, caress. Savour, linger, delight, notice.

Let the poem become a small map of this season of your life — not where you think you should be, but where you actually are.

This season, I am not reaching for more.

I am learning, slowly and imperfectly, to let what is already here be enough. To find the extraordinary inside the ordinary — not as a concept, but as a daily practice I forget and return to, forget and return to.

If you have been moving quickly through your own life lately, feeling the low hum of disconnection that comes when you are always slightly ahead of where you are — this is for you.

You don’t need to arrive somewhere different. You just need to come back to here.

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P.S. If you’d like a quiet space to slow down and connect with yourself, The Inward Journal — along with reflections, workshops, and experiences — can arrive in your inbox, offering gentle guidance for presence, reflection, and connection.

I’ll meet you in the slow unfolding.

Bella x

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Disclaimer: Some images featured in this newsletter are sourced from Pinterest for inspiration and remain the intellectual property of their original creators.

The birds dance differently here. There is a symbiosis to the way they move — bodies shifting as one through the trees, grazing the sky in formation. Some would call this time of day dusk. I call it surrender. The hour when everything in nature urges you to unfurl a little, to release your to-do lists to the wind, to forget your separateness and remember that it is time to soften, as the sun does too.

This is my favourite time of day.

I walk through the portal that is my driveway, gazing up at ancient trees while the creek sings her gentle song in the distance. These sounds are still unfamiliar, and I catch my body resisting her tune. Moving from the city will do that — make spaciousness feel wide and overwhelming. And yet it is as though my nervous system remembers this pace. Perhaps not from this life, but from something older. Past lives, maybe. Or the daydreams I have been quietly constructing for years, the ones where I finally come home to the country.

Far From Seamless

This move has been far from easy. Far from seamless. Far from how I had hoped.

From day one there have been internet issues, forcing me out of my home office and into a rented space in town. Vermin, sporadic power outages, appliances breaking, and our landlord making more visits than either of us would have liked. The kind of small, persistent problems that seem to multiply in old homes. And yet — to anyone who walks through this place, it feels like stepping into a magical treehouse tucked into the mountains. Lush garden beds. National rainforest pressing in from every side. An energy that makes you feel hours from anywhere, when in fact we are twelve minutes from town.

The land feels maternal. Not the warm, nurturing kind — the tough love kind. The kind that says: you didn’t get what you wanted? Let me give you what you needed.

The Ungrateful Arrival

I write this as a reminder to myself, and for those who feel a deep connection to land and place.

I stumbled onto Bundjalung Country (the land I now call home), here in the Northern Rivers without much gratitude or grace. I plummeted up my gravel driveway, unloaded my things, and forgot to acquaint myself with the spirit that has resided here long before I arrived. If you have read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, you will understand the significance of introducing yourself to land. Of making an offering. Of giving thanks to the ancestors still quietly watching over us.

A month into living here, I had done none of that.

And in response, I have been gently deprived of the simple pleasures I once took for granted — the ability to binge Outlander, to fall down a YouTube spiral until my eyes grow heavy. The land, it seems, has other plans for my evenings.

Home as Living Relationship

Our homes carry so much more than furniture and trinkets. They are living altars of all who came before, and all who reside within. Sacred spaces where we lay our heads, where we experience joy and pain in equal measure. I have noticed that the state of my relationship with place mirrors the state of my relationship with self. When I tend to one, the other responds.

So, with that, here are some gentle ways to infuse intention and ritual into your space — to live in harmony with the land you are on, and to simply listen to what it has to say:

Introduce yourself and make an offering

Treat your first interaction with a new place as you would building a connection with another person. Speak your name. Share where you have come from and your gratitude for being received. Offer something — a song, a story, something of significance, and then sit quietly for long enough to listen. Sometimes, if you pause long enough, the land will say something back.

Treat your space as a living relationship

Be conscious of how you speak about your home. Are you complaining? What are you taking for granted? Gratitude spoken aloud has a way of returning to you. Be thankful for a roof, for safe shelter, for the particular quality of light that falls through your windows at a certain hour.

Hygiene is energetic, not just aesthetic

Regularly cleaning and clearing your space is not merely about appearances — it is about energy. Decluttering, wiping surfaces, tending to the corners. In my case, de-cobwebbing, as I now live essentially inside a rainforest and have become acquainted with creatures great and small. There is a palpable shift in how you feel when your space is clean, and it communicates something to the home itself, that you are devoted, that you are paying attention.

Learn the history of the land you are on

Living in Australia means living on a colonial history of genocide, displacement, and loss — and that history does not disappear because we choose not to look at it. I have made it my responsibility to ask more questions about the people whose land I am on, about their songlines, and the ways in which they have always known how to be in relationship with this country.

Follow the calendar of the natural world

Mark the solstices and equinoxes — not necessarily as spiritual events, but as orientation points. The year has a shape, and most of us move through it without ever feeling it. Notice what is flowering or fruiting near you right now. Eat something seasonal and local, not because it is virtuous, but because food that grew nearby carries something that travelled food simply doesn’t.

The Deeper Lesson

These are simple rememberings. Things we intuitively know but have gotten swept up in the humanness of existence and quietly forgotten. That everything is connected. That land has memory. That we are guests, always, even in the places we call home.

Things are still going wrong here. I am still coming to terms with the realities and discomforts of rural life. But I feel something shifting — a growing sense of responsibility, a recognition that I am the one resisting the natural cycles of things, and that there is a lesson in all of it, waiting patiently to be learned.

Upon writing this, and reading it aloud, I think the lesson might simply be surrender.

Thank you for meeting me here, in this gentle pause.

Bella x

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It doesn’t look dramatic from the outside. It looks like a group of eight women loading surfboards into a van before sunrise on a small island in the Philippines. It looks like shared meals and barefoot volleyball and karaoke with locals and afternoons where nothing is planned and everything somehow fills itself in. It looks, from a distance, like a holiday.

But something else is happening beneath the surface. Something that has less to do with the destination and everything to do with what occurs when women come together with intention — and then get out of their own way.

The rise of the group trip

We are in the middle of a quiet but significant shift in how people, and particularly women, are choosing to spend their travel budgets. The era of the solo itinerary optimised for Instagram efficiency is giving way to something slower and more relational. Group trips, retreats, and residencies are no longer niche offerings — they are becoming the thing people are actively saving for, seeking out, and returning from changed.

And I think I understand why.

We are lonelier than we have ever been, and we are finally admitting it. The digital spaces we were promised would connect us have left many of us more isolated, more performative, and more starved of the kind of belonging that can only come from physical presence. Shared meals. Real time. Waking up under the same roof as people who are, at least for now, fully here.

What a group trip offers — when it is held well — is not just an experience. It is a container. A temporary life lived alongside other people, stripped of the roles and routines that usually define us. And in that stripping back, something essential tends to surface.

Supporting what already exists

This particular trip came together in partnership with Worldpackers and Puran Wahines Surf Retreat — a women-led surf camp on the island of Catanduanes in the Philippines, known locally as the happy island, and for good reason.

Kissy, the owner of Puran Wahines, set the tone from the moment we arrived. The table already full of warm food, the instructors already laughing and loading boards, the rhythm of the place already doing its quiet work before we had even settled in. There was a care embedded in the fabric of the camp that you cannot manufacture — it grows from people who are genuinely rooted in what they do and where they are.

Choosing to run the retreat here was a deliberate decision. Slow, regenerative travel is not just about the pace at which you move through a place — it is about the impact you leave behind. Supporting a local, women-led business meant that the money spent on this experience stayed in the community, circulated through local hands, and affirmed the kind of tourism that builds rather than extracts.

This is the part of conscious travel that doesn’t always make it into the highlight reel, but matters perhaps more than anything else.

What the island actually did

The days shaped themselves around the weather rather than a schedule. Clear skies one morning, sudden rain the next. We stopped trying to predict it and began moving with it — surfing until our arms gave way, dancing in downpours, letting Catanduanes set the pace.

There is something that happens to your nervous system when you surrender to a rhythm that is not your own. When the agenda is the tide, and the tide does not care about your productivity, your to-do list, or the version of yourself you have been maintaining. The island asked very little of us, and in that asking very little, gave back something I am still trying to name.

I arrived almost a week before the group — spending those early days in solitude, walking, reading, sitting in the particular quiet of a place that has not yet asked anything of you. I needed that time. I was preparing for something I had never quite experienced before, and the weight of it — the nerves, the self-doubt, the quiet voice asking whether I was enough for it — needed somewhere to go before the others arrived.

All of that dissolved after the first night.

The pressure of being the facilitator softened, and suddenly it felt less like hosting and more like being on a trip with eight women I had known for years. It was unserious, playful, and deeply, deeply healing.

On the sister wound

There is something I find quietly extraordinary about the way women can heal parts of you that other women once hurt.

The sister wound is real. Many of us carry it — the residue of female friendships that turned competitive, or cruel, or simply absent when we needed them most. It shapes how we enter rooms full of women, how much we trust, how much we allow ourselves to be seen.

And yet. On this small island, in a surf camp in the Philippines, with women who were strangers to me a week before, something in me was tended to. Not through grand gestures or therapeutic frameworks. Through the accumulation of small, ordinary moments — someone passing you zinc without being asked, laughing until your stomach hurts over nothing, sitting in comfortable silence at the end of a long day.

What shifted wasn’t dramatic. It was the simple, radical act of coming together with no agenda beyond presence. A shared desire to wring the juice out of life and honour that full-body yes that hums like electricity.

I left with a tribe. Women I still message almost daily. Women who arrived as strangers and left as something I don’t quite have the right word for yet.

Choosing experiences that are worth your investment

The retreat and residency space is growing, and not all of it is worth your money, your time, or your trust. As someone who both attends and hosts these experiences, here is what I would ask before committing to any group trip or retreat:

Who is holding the space, and what is their relationship to slowness? A facilitator who is in a hurry — to fill the schedule, to deliver content, to perform expertise — will create an experience that mirrors that energy. Look for someone whose pace you trust.

What is the intention, and does it align with yours? Not every retreat needs a theme, but there should be a clear sense of what the experience is oriented around. Vague promises of “transformation” and “community” without specificity are worth questioning.

Who benefits from the money you spend? Where is this experience located, and who runs it? Supporting local, community-led operations like Puran Wahines is not just an ethical choice — it often produces a richer, more grounded experience precisely because the people holding it are rooted in the place.

Is there space for nothing? The best experiences I have had — as attendee and host — have included unscheduled time. Space where something unexpected could arrive. If every hour is accounted for, ask what is being avoided.

Does it ask something of you? Not in a demanding way, but in the way that growth tends to require a degree of discomfort. The most meaningful group experiences I have been part of have involved moments of genuine vulnerability — the kind that cannot be manufactured, but can be made possible by the right container.

A final word

We are living in a time that is asking us to be more intentional — about where we spend our attention, our money, and our energy. Travel is no exception. The question is not just where you are going, but what you are going for, and what you hope to carry home.

If you are considering investing in a group trip or retreat this year, I would encourage you to choose slowly. Research the host. Read what past attendees have said — not the polished testimonials, but the specific, offhand details that reveal what the experience was actually like. Ask questions. And trust your instinct when something feels like a container worth climbing into.

The Philippines gave me something I did not know I was looking for. Eight women, a surf camp, and an island that asked very little — and gave back everything.

With bare hands and an open heart,

Bella x

I host intimate group trips and retreats for women seeking slow, intentional travel and genuine connection. If you want to be the first to know when the next one opens — before it reaches anywhere else — The Inward Journal is where that invitation will land first. It is a small, unhurried corner of the internet, and the door is always open.

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Twice a year the earth reaches a point of balance.
Day and night stand almost equal, holding the same amount of light and darkness.

This moment is called the equinox.

Here in the Southern Hemisphere, the equinox on the 20th of March marks the quiet arrival of autumn. The air begins to soften, the evenings stretch a little longer, and the year starts its gentle turning inward.

Astrologically, this same moment also marks the beginning of the astrological new year, when the Sun moves into Aries and a new cycle begins. In many seasonal traditions, the autumn equinox is also known as Mabon, a time connected to harvest, reflection, and quiet acknowledgement of what has come to fruition.

Not in a grand or ceremonial sense, but in the simple act of pausing long enough to notice what the past season has grown in your life, and what might be ready to be released.

I believe many of us need these pauses more than we realise, because modern life rarely gives us a moment to mark where we are.

We move quickly from one task to the next.
From one season to another.
From one goal to the next version of ourselves we feel we should be becoming.

Without ever stopping to ask:

What has actually grown here?

This equinox, I am choosing to mark the moment gently. Not with rigid structure or elaborate ceremony. Just with a small ritual, a candle, a notebook, and a few quiet minutes to notice the season changing.

If life has been feeling rushed, fragmented, or disconnected lately, consider this your invitation to pause with me.

A Simple Equinox Ritual

This ritual is not about doing it perfectly. It is simply a way to mark the turning of the season and create a small moment of intentionality.

Gather a few simple objects:

• A candle
• A sprig of rosemary, or any herb you have nearby
• A small offering from the season. A piece of fruit, bread, or something that feels like harvest

Begin by creating a small space for yourself.

Take a few breaths and invite in whatever form of guidance feels supportive for you. This might be your ancestors, your future self, the natural world, or simply a quiet sense of presence.

Light the candle and notice the flame.

Let it represent the small spark of courage that begins every new cycle.

Pass the herb gently through the flame and inhale its scent, imagining your intentions carried outward.

Then open your journal and write:

What do I want to begin cultivating within myself this season?

Not in a productive sense.
But in a human one.

Perhaps more presence.
More slowness.
More honesty about what truly matters.

When you feel complete, close the ritual by offering a moment of gratitude and letting the candle burn quietly for a little while longer.

Writing Prompt: Mapping Your Inner Landscape

Turn your inner landscape into poetry.

You do not need to be a poet. Just let the words arrive as they are.

Write about the terrain of your life right now using these gentle anchors:

Earth, soil, stone
Bloom, wildflowers, fruit
Vessels, bowls, cups
Wood, clay
Rooted, grounded, abundant
Rhythmic, tender
Savour, linger

Let the poem become a small map of where you are in this season of life.

As the season turns, consider this your quiet invitation to pause with it.

To notice what has ripened in your life.
To honour what is ready to fall away.
And to begin this new cycle with a little more intention, steadiness, and presence.

If these kinds of seasonal pauses speak to you, this is the rhythm I explore more deeply in my newsletter, The Inward Journal. A space where I share ritual guides, reflections from my own altar, writing prompts, and future gatherings and offerings designed to help us return to a slower, more intentional way of living.

If that feels like something you’ve been quietly craving, you’re warmly invited to join me.

I’ll meet you in the in-between,

Bella x

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Birthdays have never felt easy for me. Being the center of attention, receiving gifts, the unpredictability of it all—something in me stiffens. (Also, I’m a Pisces, Cancer rising, with predominantly water placements, so emotions are… abundant).

For years I tried to control the day, down to every last detail, thinking maybe if I managed it perfectly I could avoid disappointment. When that stopped working, I just stopped celebrating altogether. It felt safer not to expect anything.

I think a lot of us carry complicated feelings around birthdays. They can press on old wounds, quietly questioning your worth.

But this year, on the edge of my Saturn return, something softened. I’m surrounded by love that isn’t contained in a single day, and it’s giving me space. Space to notice who I am at twenty-eight, and what these years have taught me.

So here’s what I’ve been learning:

1. Energetic hygiene

Pay attention to what you let in. Release what was never yours. I do it with morning visualizations, little prayers, whispering affirmations into my cacao or lemon water. Even showers have become cleansing rituals. It’s small, but these check-ins remind me of what I’m carrying—and what belongs to someone else.

2. Loving yourself is work

It really is. Last year I finally stopped looking to someone else to “complete” me. For most of my twenties, I quietly hunted for it, only to remember the power was mine all along. I stumbled upon one quote that landed just when I needed it:

“No one is going to love you the way you want them to, because that is your job.”

Simple, but heavy. Now at 28, I feel full, loved, and safe within my own solitude—and the wildest part is that I did it all myself.

3. Move your damn body

Movement isn’t just exercise. It’s medicine. Yin yoga releases stress and trauma stored in the fascia, dance is renowned for its anti-depressant-like affects. Jumping, shaking, moving my body in whatever way it needs to, even if it looks awkward and ugly, has allowed me to move from being an over-intellectualiser to someone is is able to somatically process whatever needs to be released in real time.

4. Attention is prayer

"Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer".

This is a famous quote by French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil, and is a way of being that I have decided to adopt. For me, this means being extra conscious about what I'm consuming (which includes, media, music, conversation, and the words I speak). Words are spells, and information seeps into our subconscious easier than we think. Viewing my attention as something sacred, and therefore, something to be respected and protected has allowed me to move from a more grounded and intentional place.

5. Everything is a teacher

This subtle shift in mindset is one of the core lessons I learned during my Vipassana retreat last year (which I strongly recommend to anyone walking this path). Nothing is inherently “good” or “bad”; it simply arises as an opportunity to meet life with greater equanimity. Now, every inconvenience and every heartbreak has become a teacher to me, offering lessons in patience, empathy, or the need to set clearer boundaries. Over time, this cultivates a sense of detachment which feels freaking liberating. It is a place in life where essentially other people’s bullshit no longer has the power to disturb your inner peace.

6. Create time for the muse

When I refer to the “muse”, I mean creative energy, or that delicious flow state we all crave but so rarely devote time to actually sit with it. This is a fundamental teaching in The Artist's Way which is creating an “artists date”. If you are on the creative path, even if you haven't yet figured out what your medium is, creating a scheduled ritual or practice to simply create for the sake of creating will inevitably open that channel for whatever is trying to come through, to flow. The key here is patience, and not creating for any other outcome than to simply devote yourself to the art of becoming.

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7. Lean on ancient wisdom

Leaning on holistic systems like Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda for over five years has completely changed my relationship to health. After years of struggling within the Western medical system to find relief for my endometriosis, it was only a few months of acupuncture that finally brought healing. That experience made it feel even more important to share, especially with other women.

These ancient systems are still accessible to us and are often far more affordable than the long, exhausting trail of specialist appointments many people face just to get answers. Beyond treatment itself, living in alignment with the lifestyles they encourage has supported my body in ways my younger self, who lived with chronic pain and hormonal issues, would never have believed possible.

Turning 28 doesn’t feel like a milestone. It feels like standing at a threshold. All of these lessons, rituals, and practices are the little footholds keeping me steady as I step into the next year.

I don’t know exactly what will come. I just know I want to show up—fully, gently, awake—and keep noticing what life is trying to teach me.

May you carry only what feels true.

Bella x

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When calendula blooms, its marigold petals stretch outward with such confidence you might mistake it for something ornamental, destined only for a dining room table. But her medicine is not decorative. She is used for wound healing. For soothing inflammation. For tending to what has been irritated, reopened, or slow to close.

My dreams have always shown me things before they arrive. Precognitive dreaming has been part of my inner world for as long as I can remember. Sometimes the line between dreaming and waking feels thin, almost porous. I blame my Pisces placements. Still, it is rare that I am shown what my body needs, rarer still that the message comes from an elder.

I am not here to unravel plant medicine or dream symbolism, though I easily could. What I am doing, in my own way, is tending to a wound. Not one born of heartbreak or sudden loss. This one was self-inflicted. Lately, I have been picking at an old scab. A familiar pattern. A cycle I felt curious enough to revisit.

It is easy to move through life by avoiding the people or situations that might reopen old injuries. Yet here I am, tucked between mountains and sea, deliberately unstitching each thread, one by one.

I decided long ago that when I began dating again, I would return to therapy. We all have blind spots, places that bruise easily, tenderness we cannot always navigate alone. For me, that tenderness lives in romantic relationships. Entering connection feels like unfamiliar terrain. I have always struggled with dating men, never quite understanding the rules, often feeling awkward in their presence. Part of me blames my parents for sending me to an all girls school, a choice that quietly shaped a sense of otherness. A feeling that, if I am honest, resembles what I imagine prey might feel.

So here I am in the mountains, on a Zoom call with my psychologist. I tell her about him. A man who is almost perfect on paper, yet carries a dynamic I know too well. I tend to attract partners who adore me, sometimes to the point of reverence. In theory, being cherished feels like the bare minimum. We all deserve devotion. But when admiration is one sided, my body notices before my mind does.

At first, it feels safe. There is validation, emotional steadiness, no threat of abandonment. Then the shift arrives. Attraction fades. My humanness breaks through the goddess image. Emotional distance slips in quietly. And before we ever reach that stage, I pull back. I tighten my grip on control. I avoid vulnerability, even as I ache for intimacy.

This pattern is deeply shared, especially among parentified daughters who were praised for their independence and usefulness. What I am learning is that this dynamic is not rooted in low self-worth. It is protective. A part of me learned early that being capable, wise, and self-contained keeps connection intact. Needing someone felt dangerous, maybe even humiliating. So I unconsciously choose relationships where I remain the chooser, shielded from rejection and spared from equal vulnerability.

My psychologist reflected something that landed softly and painfully true. For many women, especially those familiar with objectification or external validation, the drive to be adored is not about ego. It is about self-preservation. We guard our hearts so fiercely that we forget we were ever searching for love. Being adored feels safer than being met.

Because to be met means to be seen. Not just the polished parts, but the neediness, the ache, the places we hide even from ourselves. The parts that spill onto journal pages, filled with longing to be understood. And the real question underneath it all is this: what would it mean for someone to see us fully and still choose to stay?

We do this everywhere. In love. In life. We choose safety over intimacy, control over equality, admiration over being known. It protects us in the moment, but the cost is connection, respect, and sometimes our own integrity.

The work, and the invitation, is in noticing the pattern and staying anyway. Allowing yourself to be chosen completely. Letting vulnerability exist without recoiling. Holding desire alongside uncertainty. The work is untidy and uncomfortable, but it is also the doorway to relationships that feel mutual, grounded, and true.

Until next time - palms open, heart steady.

Bella x

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My own journey to Bali emerged from a rare opportunity: to host my first slow travel group trip to Nusa Penida focused on marine conservation and reef restoration. This had been quietly calling to me for over a year, but I knew the timing had to be right. With this privilege came responsibility. If I was to bring twelve women onto Bali’s sacred land, I needed to approach it with the deep reverence—for the land, its people, and its traditions.

Once I began researching, my excitement turned to grief. Mass tourism and overdevelopment had created economic dependency, rising living costs, and uneven benefits for locals, while straining water, land, and waste systems. The subaks—ancient irrigation networks sustaining rice paddies for centuries—were threatened by the unrelenting thirst of resorts and villas. Rice fields, forests, and wetlands were being transformed into commercial zones, eroding biodiversity and disrupting ecosystems.

This led me to question the cultural and spiritual effects of tourism. Balinese life is guided by Tri Hita Karana, the harmonisation of humans, nature, and the spiritual world. Spirituality, social relationships, and environmental stewardship are inseparably intertwined. But sacred rituals and sites are increasingly reshaped to meet tourist expectations, leaving reverence and ritual integrity under threat. I couldn’t help but draw parallels to my own homeland: Aboriginal Australians have faced displacement, disrupted ecosystems, and erosion of spiritual and cultural practices due to outside forces. In both cases, communities—human and ecological—are left fragile, fragmented, and disconnected.

“The urbanisation of modern life has succeeded in exiling us from this fecund kinship with mother earth.” – John O’Donohue (Anam Cara)

When I first arrived in Bali, I felt untethered, floating above the land like an observer rather than a participant. My body buzzed with excitement yet was heavy with self-imposed expectation to be a “perfectly conscious traveller.” I soon realised that no itinerary could replace presence. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass: “Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and an open heart.” I had been so busy doing, I forgot to listen.

The turning point came during a Balinese Immersion trail with Astungkara Way, an organisation offering regenerative travel experiences that support local culture, agriculture, and traditions. They work with farmers to transition from chemical to regenerative farming, blending tourism and conservation in a way that feels meaningful. The money I spent here went directly into restoring ancient practices and supporting local livelihoods. For the first time, I felt hope—hope that travel could be an act of care rather than extraction. I realised that the thriving of humans and the natural world is not separate; it is co-evolutionary.

Through subak networks and learning about the plants that have fed and healed communities for generations, I experienced a different kind of listening. Kimmerer reminds us: “A teacher comes when you are ready. And if you ignore its presence, it will speak more loudly. But you have to be quiet to hear.” Trekking to a private Melukat ceremony—a Balinese Hindu ritual of purification—I felt like I was returning to myself. Participating alongside a local priest and guide, and later sharing a meal in a traditional compound, I understood the true depth of Tri Hita Karana: connection to each other, nature, and spirit creates true balance and belonging.

From that day, the rest of my time in Bali felt like a prayer in motion. Gratitude became a rhythm in my days, and my conversations with the land deepened. The group trip that followed brought twelve women together to receive our open water diving qualification, identify manta rays and turtles, and to restore coral. But it was more than a trip—it became a sisterhood, a shared resonance of reverence for the natural world and regenerative travel practices.

If regenerative travel calls to you, consider these ways to give back to the land you visit, or to deepen your connection to the land you live on:

• Make an offering upon arrival—fruit, tobacco, a prayer, a song—anything that resonates.

• Learn about local culture and customs through conversations with elders and residents.

• Support local businesses and artists, particularly women-owned enterprises.

• Participate in regenerative experiences: cultural immersion trails, workshops, and hands-on conservation.

• Embrace being a student—acknowledging your limits, remaining curious, and listening deeply.

If you feel drawn to regenerative travel, or would like to explore future group trips, I share resources, offerings, and reflections on slow and intentional living in my newsletter. You can sign up here to receive insights directly into your inbox and join this quiet corner of conversation where curiosity, care, and connection meet.

Travel is not just movement; it is a practice of attention, reciprocity, and belonging. In a world that often feels rushed, fragmented, and disconnected, these moments offer us the chance to slow down, to notice, and to weave ourselves back into the living web around us.

May you carry only what feels true.

Bella x

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Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about grief — how I once believed it only arrived in the wake of something tangible: a loss, a breakup, a move away from home. I’ve known the heaviness of collective grief too, mourning the injustices and destruction that unfold in the world, even as I sit safely behind my screen. That kind of grief has always felt thick, like tar on the heart — dense, hot, and difficult to move through alone. It moves at its own pace, soothed only by the slow balm of time, by the spaciousness between moments where the ache can burn, simmer, and eventually soften into something quieter.

But recently, I met a different kind of grief — one that wasn’t born from tragedy, but from transformation. On the surface, life has felt rich and full, yet somewhere deep inside, something began to unspool. My heart cracked open, spilling years of sorrow and fear I didn’t realise were still sitting within me.

Maybe this is what it feels like when a cycle ends — when the body finally feels safe enough to process what it’s held for so long? When we outgrow an identity, a pattern, or a way of being that once kept us safe. It’s the grief of evolution.

Our bodies cling to the familiar. The nervous system finds comfort even in discomfort because it knows the rhythm of it — the story we’ve repeated enough times to mistake for truth. When we choose differently, when we remember the pen has always been in our hands, there’s a rupture. The loop breaks. The skin sheds.

And what’s left can feel raw — anger, tenderness, fear, or tears that appear out of nowhere. It’s the ache of being newly born into our own lives.

For me, I felt this through the mirror of a loving connection — realising I had finally broken one of my oldest cycles: the pursuit of external validation. For years, I sought love through reflection, needing someone else’s eyes to confirm my worth. But this time, something shifted. I could feel my peace resting quietly in my own hands. My worth no longer swayed in the presence or absence of another.

And yet, I found myself crying at the smallest things. The emotion sat close to the surface, like an ocean waiting for a soft current to move through. Each wave of tears felt cleansing, as though my body had finally learned safety deeply enough to release everything it had been holding. I wasn’t mourning a person, or even a memory, but the closing of a chapter — the quiet goodbye to a girl who once ran my life through longing and fear. She’ll always live within me, surfacing in moments of doubt, but she doesn’t lead anymore.

And maybe that’s what grief truly is — not an ending, but an honouring. A thank-you to the versions of ourselves that carried us through the parts of life we didn’t yet know how to navigate. We all carry those selves: the overachiever, the caretaker, the one who learned to shrink to be loved, the one who performed strength to feel safe. Letting them go can feel disorienting, like standing barefoot on unfamiliar ground. But grief is proof of presence — a sign that we’ve slowed down long enough to feel the change.

Perhaps this is the kind of grief that lives quietly beneath our daily routines — in the stillness between sips of tea, the folding of laundry, or the way light moves through a familiar room that no longer feels the same.

To grieve a past self is to acknowledge growth. It’s to pause amidst the rush and recognise that even without external markers of progress, something deep inside us has shifted. It’s to remember that healing is not a single moment of clarity but a continual softening into who we are unfolding into.

We don’t need to rush this process. Grieving our past selves isn’t a failure to move on — it’s a sacred part of becoming.

Reflection prompts:

When these emotions rise within me, I don’t always know how to name them, or even fully feel them. And yet, not every feeling needs to be understood right away — sometimes, it is enough to simply notice them. Still, I’ve created a few reflection prompts for those moments, both for myself and for you, to offer a gentle space of curiosity and the comforting possibility of understanding.

1. What part of me am I currently outgrowing, and what did that version of me once protect?

2. What emotions surface when I let myself slow down long enough to feel what’s shifting?

3. Where in my body do I still carry the weight of who I used to be?

4. What does grief feel like in my body today — and what might it be asking me to acknowledge?

5. How can I honour my past self — not erase her, but thank her — for carrying me this far?

A Small Ritual for Letting Go

• Light a candle or sit near an open window.

• Write a letter to a past version of yourself — the one who tried so hard, who longed, who endured. Thank her. Tell her what she taught you. Tell her she can rest now.

• When you’re ready, fold the paper three times away from you the paper and bury it under soil, burn it, or let the wind carry the pieces away.

• Feel your breath deepen, your body soften. Let that moment mark the quiet beginning of your next season.

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P.S. If you’d like a quiet space to slow down and connect with yourself, The Inward Journal — along with reflections, workshops, and experiences — can arrive in your inbox, offering gentle guidance for presence, reflection, and connection.

Thank you for holding this space with me.

Bella x

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Show me how you feel, for my body craves that familiar stirring in my chest when you return - like syrup or velvet, textures that soften every edge of my bones.

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But did you ever really leave, Love? Or have I simply forgotten how to notice you? I think that’s how I know I’ve drifted far from myself - when you feel like a distant friend I’ve lost touch with, rather than something pulsing quietly beneath my skin. You were here, Love. You were always here.

Lately, I’ve been curious about what it means to love. I used to believe it was something to be found, or given by another. For nearly four years I’ve chosen to be intentionally single, dipping cautiously in and out of dating - not out of cynicism, but from a desire to understand love from the inside out. I wanted to learn what it meant to love myself wholly, without waiting for someone else to prove I was worthy of it.

Romance, for me, has always consumed me entirely. I have never been able to do “casual.” I merge, I almost evaporate, I offer all of me. To be chosen once felt like the highest form of safety. But I’ve come to realise this is not an uncommon story - many women have abandoned themselves for love. Knowing this, I stepped away from the pursuit of romance until I could learn to choose myself first.

Solitude is a strange kind of teacher. Often feared, often fled from. It reveals what remains when the noise dissolves - when there’s nothing left to hold but your own rawness. It hurts, choosing solitude. For me, celibacy became the gateway into it - a way to meet every blurred edge of myself without the soft distraction of another’s gaze.

“To be holy is to be home, to be able to rest in the house of your own being.”
— John O’Donohue

After years of shapeshifting for affection, of confusing desire for love, everything finally fell away. I returned home to myself. Solitude became sacred, not barren.

In that stillness, I began studying Tantric and Taoist teachings - learning to circulate my life force inward, to build radiance before merging with another. I discovered the importance of energetic discernment, of being conscious of who I allow into my field, knowing that every exchange leaves an imprint.

Then, unexpectedly, I met someone. A connection that arrived quietly, at the exact moment I had stopped searching. Through it, I learned that solitude and union are not opposites - they are part of the same continuum. Solitude refines your energy; union shares it. Moving unconsciously between connections once made me porous, but moving intentionally has taught me that both solitude and sexuality can be expressions of the same devotion - the devotion to creation itself.

For a long time, I feared that opening myself to love would distract me from my work, from the life I was building with such care. I worried it would pull me off my path or dissolve this newfound self-devotion. But I’ve come to see that not all love stories are meant to be forever, and not every romance needs to be defined by its duration.

Some are meant to awaken you - to stir something alive within you that spills into your art, your creativity, your movement through the world. Sexual energy is creation energy. It can be transmuted into poetry, into ideas, into radiance.

I forgot that becoming my own muse doesn’t mean love cannot find me through the reflection of another. Love has many faces, many names. The fact that my body felt safe enough to open again was proof of healing - a sign that something old had softened. The ability to choose myself, even within connection, felt like a quiet celebration.

Now, love, solitude, romance, and creativity feel indistinguishable. I find love in the depths of my solitude, in fleeting but safe intimacy, and in the quiet moments of creative surrender.

Dating no longer feels black and white. I’m open to connection that feels grounded and true, but I no longer chase it. I no longer scan for signs of permanence. Each person who enters my orbit is a mirror, a teacher, reflecting where I am in my own evolution. I can honour the lesson and still stay rooted in my own energy. My presence alone feels romantic enough.

This isn’t an essay of advice or instruction - it’s simply my heart, laid bare. Because I know I’m not alone in the dance between craving validation and craving solitude. Both are deeply human.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: approach romance like an artist. Notice the sensations it stirs in you. Let it move through you. Let it become art. Even the fleeting loves, the almosts, the heartbreaks - they are muses if you allow them to be.

Allowing someone in doesn’t diminish your magnetism - it expands it. Let love find you, even if it burns, even if it breaks you open. It’s all art if you let it be.

P.s. If you’re looking for a quiet, grounded way to connect with yourself and what’s unfolding, joining my newsletter will bring The Inward Journal and all upcoming workshops, retreats, and experiences directly to you.

May you carry only what feels true.

Bella x

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There’s a quiet mourning that takes place once we adopt the belief so often told to us — that we can only pick one fig from the fig tree.
That tasting more than one, even just a nibble, is indulgent.
That we must choose a single path and stay on it.

We become tethered to the stories we’ve been told — about who we are, what we offer, and how much we are worth.

There’s a strange comfort in Sylvia Plath’s Fig Tree metaphor, which captures the paralysis that comes with possibility. She writes of the suffocating freedom of choice, where each ripe fig represents a potential life, glistening and waiting. The fear is not of choosing wrong, but of choosing at all — of closing the door on all other lives that might have been.
In her hunger for perfection and completeness, she becomes still — starving not from lack, but from abundance.

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Beneath this image lies a deeper pulse — one that hums across generations.
For centuries, women have been asked to choose: to be either traditional or progressive, soft or ambitious, nurturing or wild. In this lineage, our hunger is inherited — a hunger for wholeness denied.
There’s a quiet feminist ache here: society starving us of fullness by fragmenting our potential.

Recently, I’ve begun to notice this same murmur within myself — a vine-like restriction curling up my own fertile fig tree. It tightens around my roots, whispering the same old stories about who I’m meant to be. So instead of mourning the lives I will never live, I’ve decided to visit them. To spend time with each one.

Some days, I collaborate with my alter-egos — tasting from different figs when my spirit calls for it.

All archetypes live within us. It’s our task, our art, to try them on — to see what fits, what stretches us, and what new energy they awaken. I now think of it as creative excavation — becoming my own muse, uncovering inspiration buried in forgotten selves, and meeting each version of me with curiosity.

If you’ve felt the pull in many directions — lit up by one path yet fearful of straying — consider this your invitation to soften. Let the below prompts guide you in exploring your inner archetypes, your alter-egos, and the many expressions of self that long to be witnessed.

Journal Prompts

• What energies, dreams, or versions of myself have I always wanted to embody?

• What calls to me with quiet curiosity or excitement, even if it feels impractical?

• What fears or beliefs keep me safe within the identity I’ve chosen?

• Where in my body does this fear live? How old is the story it tells?

Ways to Embody Each Expression of Self

• Dress as your alter-ego — let clothing become a small act of becoming.

• Try a medium or creative outlet you’ve always been drawn to but never allowed yourself to explore.

• Introduce a new ritual or habit that once felt out of reach due to fear, scarcity, or comfort.

• Create a playlist that captures each archetype’s rhythm and mood.

• Give each alter-ego a name, a scent, a texture.

• Notice which senses awaken with each expression — what colours, sounds, or sensations feel most alive.

Final Reflection

Write freely:
A day in the life of one of your alter-egos.
Begin from the moment they wake.
How does their body feel? What do they notice?
Move through the day, tracing the sensations and choices that define this version of you.

Carry this noticing into your own life — tasting from each fig as you wish, knowing that fullness was never something to fear.

Thank you for being here.

I’ll meet you in the in-between.

Bella x

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