Summer is ending, which means I can slowly start retreating back into my shell. My Substack is my shell. I get notifications every now and again and feel the shame of having abandoned it temporarily. I gave the people my word of a Substack a week, and apparently a week is 30 days. Anyway, reprimanding over, let me tell you about my time, tehehe. It’s 10am on Sunday and this week’s topics are:

• detoxing

• restarting my skin

• shadow journalling

detoxing

Apparently Saturn and the cosmos are somewhere which is why everyone is currently in a funk. I spent two weeks in Lisbon, and as much as I love going home, it didn’t give me the recharge I was needing. I felt calmer, but it wasn’t how my soul wanted. I feel like I’m always chasing that calm, and I don’t have the skills required to relax. I think I’ve spoken candidly about my stress and my inability to stay in a calm state, it’s my default state. I don’t even realise I’m stressed until I experience genuine stillness, and even then it takes a minute to recognise it for what it is, because stillness has started to feel foreign to me.

I went for acupuncture to help ease it, and the woman felt my body and laughed. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing when I described my 12-hour-long screen time days. The minute those needles pierced my body, I knocked out. I lay there for an hour, she felt bad even waking me up. The first words out of my mouth were, “is this what I’m supposed to feel like?” I felt like I was floating, like my body wasn’t even my body. It’s strange to say that calm felt unfamiliar, almost like I had to relearn what my own baseline was supposed to be. Now that I know that feeling, I strive to achieve it every day in small, small ways, so that I don’t reach that point again because, as I said, my usual stress indicators are being overridden and are no longer clear. Now I’m only able to recognise my stress when my eye hasn’t stopped twitching in days, or I nap for three hours in the middle of the day. I’m a pro at autopilot and surviving, and I think a lot of us are, honestly, we’ve just gotten so good at pushing through that we’ve forgotten what the alternative even feels like.

I thought about going to the GP, but the gorgeous GPs in this country will just recommend therapy and pills. I’m already working on the former, and I don’t necessarily love the latter. The stress doesn’t come from a place of anxiety, it’s more of an addiction to never stopping. It feels like something no one else can really help with, but I definitely need help from someone, or another way to manage it that feels more productive than taking something every morning.

I’m way more holistic than that, and pills feel like a worst-case scenario to me. So I’m going to see a Chinese doctor, do a herbal cleanse, go for reflexology, I even took all my gel nails off, which sounds small but felt like the first real signal to myself that I was serious about this. My soul is just itching for a reset, not a quick fix, and I think that’s an important distinction for me right now.

restarting my skin

My skin, gosh, I get bored talking about my skin. Bored because I’m frustrated and I’m just going around in circles. Let me focus, because I have a tendency to catastrophise.

I’ve recently started doing laser facials for my acne, Aerolase, to be exact, and I was hoping for a dramatic change as early as 4 sessions in. If you couldn’t tell by my frustration, that didn’t go to plan. My skin didn’t change much across the 7 sessions I did, so I’m back to square one. My skin actually looks quite good, I’m not going to lie, it just doesn’t look how it’s supposed to after a £3,000 course. It doesn’t look like glass. I think the laser did a little, but my daily supplements, improved skincare routine, and better surroundings did the heavy lifting. It’s a humbling thing to go through that and realise the boring, unglamorous basics were doing more work than the expensive procedure the whole time.

I’ve decided to go back to see my derm, Dr Sam. I realised I haven’t seen her in two years, and I would loooooveeee to go back on tret. There’s a lot of buzz right now around the tret + azelaic acid combo, but Dr Sam has been raving about it for YEARS, long before it was the thing everyone’s talking about. When she had me on it, my skin had never been so steady and clear. So my goal is to hopefully get that prescribed again, and then maybe do a resurfacing facial monthly for the scars and vessels that don’t seem to want to go away. There’s something comforting about going back to what actually worked instead of chasing the newest thing, I think I needed the laser detour to remind myself of that.

So yeah, that’s where I’m at with my skin right now.

Might also do a no-makeup September, just as something to prove to myself.

shadow journalling

I tend to only journal when I’m sad, which is really bad. If my kids inherit my journals, they’re going to think what a miserable life I had. To make it even more miserable, I’ve started doing this thing called shadow journalling.

Shadow journalling basically taps into the unconscious parts of ourselves, the parts we’re in denial about. I actually love finding my worst traits in a very [honest] way. I find more joy in that than in knowing the positives, which is probably very telling of my self-confidence. There’s something almost freeing about writing down the version of yourself you’d normally never admit to out loud, the petty thought, the jealous flicker, the thing you did for the wrong reason. Once it’s on the page it stops feeling like a secret you’re carrying and starts feeling like information you can actually use.

It doesn’t have to be all about the bad emotions either, it can also help you figure out how you actually feel about a situation, or what you truly want to do, underneath the version of the answer you’d normally give. The goal is to access all the areas we store away, so that we’re able to become whole. We all know there’s this side to us, and I’m finding out mine is way more complex than I originally thought. We know our issues, but do we really know how bad they are? I’m not sure I did, until I started writing them down instead of just carrying them around.

If you want to try it yourself, here are a few of the prompts I’ve been using:

• What’s a trait in other people that irritates me the most?

• What am I proudest of hiding well?

• Who would I be jealous of if I let myself admit it, and what does that jealousy actually want to tell me?

• What’s a compliment I never believe when I hear it?

• What do I do the second I feel unseen?

• What’s a version of myself I’ve outgrown but still perform when it’s convenient?

• If no one ever found out, what would I let myself want?

Have a fantastic week and reset this September!!!

Jéssica x

Dear my “childbearing hips”,

I don’t remember asking for this

I don’t remember choosing the shape of you, the curve of you, the way you decided to grow before I even understood what growing meant. I was a child. I was still learning what a metaphor was. I wasn’t even allowed out on my own yet, and somehow you had already become something other people felt entitled to have opinions about

I didn’t invite the looks. I didn’t invite the comments. I was a girl in a school uniform. That was it. That was apparently enough

Nobody prepares you for that. There’s no lesson, no warning, nothing. You just learn it in real time, the hard way, that your body showed up to the world a few years before you did, and everyone else met it first

And people call it a compliment

You should be grateful, they say. This is what women pay for. So what am I complaining about

A compliment doesn’t make a 12 year old cover her own bum with her hands, hoping it makes her invisible. A compliment doesn’t do that. I know because I did that. I was a shy kid and I did that

What I felt wasn’t flattery. It was exposure. Being seen before I had any say in how

So I disappeared into fabric. Looser. Longer. Not shame, just exhaustion, from constantly managing what your body made other people feel entitled to say to me. I made myself smaller so the world would leave you alone

And it wasn’t only men. It was women too. Aunties, making little comments they assumed went over my head. They didn’t. I heard every one. I learned to feel your growth as something to apologise for, and I learned it first from women, women who had clearly been handed the exact same lesson years before me and never put it down

Because nobody explains this part. The blame and the praise come out of the same mouth, sometimes the same sentence. Lucky. Blessed. Be careful. Cover up. Don’t bring it on yourself. Nobody can tell me how a body is meant to be a compliment and a warning at the same time. I just learned to carry both, the way you carry anything that makes no sense but gets repeated at you like it’s law

I grew faster than the other girls too. You turned up early to something none of them had even been invited to yet, and suddenly I wasn’t in the same childhood as my friends anymore, even though the calendar said I was

And still, it was never about what I wore. I know that now. Some part of me knew it then too. The attention didn’t start with an outfit. It started with existing

People love calling it a compliment. Nobody’s ever said that to explain the specific sinking feeling of realising a grown man is watching you, and you’re 16. Nobody calls that an honour. They just don’t call it what it actually is either

The messaging was rigged from the start. Cover up, but don’t make a thing of it. Be proud of your body, but not too proud, not in a way that “invites” anything, as if I ever sent an invitation

For years I thought there was a formula. Dress a certain way, move a certain way, and maybe I could calibrate it down to something manageable. There was never a formula. You were never mine to calibrate. I couldn’t out-behave this

And it doesn’t end. It just changes shape. The same body people felt entitled to as a child becomes, as a woman, something people feel entitled to discuss, rate, comment on, like it exists for evaluation instead of just being mine

It got into intimacy too. Into the places that are meant to feel safest. Hard to hand your body over as trust when for years it’s only ever been taken as assumption. I’ve had partners sexualise me before anything else, lead with how I look like that was the whole offer. I’m still relearning that being wanted by someone I chose is not the same feeling as being looked at by someone I didn’t. For a long time I only had one drawer to put both of those feelings in

And now I’m back at the same wall, just with thousands watching instead of a school. I wear something fitted because I like it on me, because it’s mine to enjoy, and it ends up in the wrong corners of the internet for exactly the wrong reasons. So I try loose. Something that gives nothing away. And the suggestion of you is still enough. The comments don’t change. What’s behind them doesn’t change. Only the outfit changes, and it changes nothing at all

So I’m asking the same question at 26 that I was asking at 12, just louder now, with more people watching me ask it. What am I supposed to wear so this stops. I already know there’s no answer, because I lived this once already. There was never a formula. The clothes were never the variable

But I won’t let that be the reason I disappear. If I start editing myself down, posting less, choosing silence, that’s not protection, that’s surrender wearing a safer outfit. That’s still them deciding what I get to wear, what I get to post, what I get to be, just from a different direction. I’m done shrinking so other people feel more comfortable. I did enough of that at 14

I’m tired of being told this is a compliment. I’m tired of being told visibility is a gift I should be thanking someone for

I want it understood plainly. A body isn’t an invitation. Curves don’t imply consent. A child’s body is not a subject for commentary, ever, no matter what language it gets dressed up in

I don’t know when I’ll stop having to say this. But I’ll keep writing about you, my body, until people stop treating your existence as permission

Jéssica

Happy Sunday!! Spirits are high!! Heart is full!! What more could I ask for? It’s Sunday at 10am and this week’s topics are:

• Cape Verde in the WC

• Addiction

• Fascia release

Cape Verde

Cape Verde lost. I need to say that first because it’s true. But it also doesn’t feel true, if that makes sense.

They went out to Argentina. The actual, current, defending World Cup champions. The team ranked second in the entire world, with the greatest player who has ever lived leading them out. Messi scored first, and for a minute my stomach just dropped, because you brace for the version of this story where it’s 4-0 by half time and everyone goes home early. But then Duarte pulled it back. 1-1. And suddenly you allow yourself to believe again, which is a dangerous thing to do as a Cape Verdean, historically speaking.

It went to extra time. Martinez put Argentina back ahead. And then Lopes Cabral hit this shot from the edge of the box that I have watched about forty times since. Curled it right into the corner. 2-2. I screamed. I don’t even think I was breathing properly. And it still wasn’t enough, because Romero’s header deflected in off their own player right at the death. 3-2. Game over. Two and a half hours of football, gone in one cruel bounce.

I cried. Because I know what that scoreline actually means, even if the final whistle doesn’t show it. A team ranked 67th in the world. The smallest nation, by population, to ever qualify for a World Cup knockout. A goalkeeper who is 40 years old and only wanted his mum to see him play. A defender who got scouted through a LinkedIn message, which is such a mad, beautiful, un-glamorous way to end up marking the best player on the planet. And they went toe to toe with all of that history and all of that money and all of that talent, for two and a half hours, and very nearly took them down.

Following on from what I wrote last time, this is exactly what I meant. This is the whole thing. We didn’t win, but we didn’t lose either, not really, not in the way that matters. People had given us a 1% chance. 1%. And we made the reigning champions work for every single second of that game. The whole world knows how to say Cabo Verde properly now, not Cape Verde, Cabo Verde, and people are looking up cachupa and figuring out where we even are on a map for the first time in their lives. That’s everything, actually.

I keep thinking about my family back home, and what it must have felt like on that tiny island, watching their boys hold their own against Messi. I’m so proud I can’t even articulate it properly.

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addiction

Second thing, and it’s a less comfortable one to write, so bear with me while I get it out properly.

I went to Mallorca and I was told, by people who love me, to not make content. Just be there. Just live it.

I didn’t manage that.

I mean, I managed it more than I wanted to, so that’s something. There were whole afternoons where I didn’t take a single picture. But there was this one moment on the beach, golden hour, water doing that thing where it goes almost silver, and I felt this actual physical urge in my hands to reach for my phone and take a picture of myself. Gagging for it.

And that’s the bit that properly scared me, if I’m honest. Because it made me realise how deep this goes. It’s not even really about the content itself. It’s something closer to a compulsion.

I believe in the domino effect, and I think that’s the root of it. One good piece of content leads to the next opportunity, leads to the next brand conversation, leads to the next thing I couldn’t have predicted six months ago. So missing a moment doesn’t feel like missing a nice photo. It feels like snapping a chain I can’t even see the end of, cutting off a future I’ll never get to find out about. That’s the fomo, if I’m calling it what it actually is. It’s not “ooh I might miss out on some likes.” It’s “what if this was the one thing that mattered, and I let it go because I wanted to enjoy my holiday.”

Which, when I write it down like that, sounds completely unwell. And I think it probably is, a bit.

But I can’t keep living like that. I can’t kill myself for this job. Nobody is going to hand me an award for never once switching off. My nervous system is certainly not going to thank me for it, my body’s already told me that in other ways this year. Work and rest have quietly become the exact same thing for me. Same platforms, same phone, same part of my brain lit up whether I’m meant to be clocked off or not. Mallorca was the first time I actually watched myself do it in real time, rather than just knowing it intellectually, the way you know smoking is bad for you while you’re doing it anyway. There’s a difference between understanding you have a problem and catching yourself mid-way through having it, phone half out of your bag on a beach in Mallorca, sun still up.

I don’t have a neat resolution for this one. I wish I could tie it up with a bow and tell you I’ve fixed it. I’m working on it.

fascia release

I am obsessed with fascia release right now. Properly, annoyingly obsessed, the way I get when I find something new that actually works.

I get my sports massages regularly, which anyone who’s followed me for a while will know I bang on about. But I’ve started using fascia balls in between sessions to loosen everything up myself, and I need to be honest, it is not a comfortable experience. Rolling around on a hard little ball, digging it into tight, stuck tissue, trying to find the exact spot that makes your eyes water. There’s a specific kind of pain to it, dull and deep rather than sharp, and there’s always a moment right before I start where I have to properly talk myself into doing it, because I know what’s coming.

I think the actual massages will feel so much less brutal when I’ve kept on top of it myself in between sessions. Everything will move better going in. It’s like doing the groundwork so the big session isn’t spending the first twenty minutes fighting through months of built-up tension before it can even get to the good part. I think about that longer benefit while I’m wincing through the ball digging into my hip or my back, and it genuinely gets me through it. I’ve started actually looking forward to it in a strange way, in the way you look forward to a hard workout, not because it feels nice in the moment but because you know what it’s setting you up for.

Small, painful, worth it.

Have a great

Jéssica x

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The World Cup is my favourite time to be patriotic. Genuinely, unashamedly, embarrassingly patriotic. I love football, and I love what football does to people, and this tournament in particular is doing something I’ve been trying to put into words for days now. It’s the feeling of watching the world accidentally be kind to itself. I’ll try to explain.

Cape Verde had a 1% probability of winning, apparently. Someone ran the numbers and that’s what they landed on. 1%. And some of the bigger nations, I’m not going to name them, but you’ve heard the quotes, came out and said they didn’t even bother watching small nations’ games in preparation. What was the point?

And then we drew. Multiple times. Against teams who didn’t think we were worth their time.

I’m Cape Verdean, and I can’t fully explain what that feels like without sounding like I’m going to cry, which I might be. It’s not just pride. It’s the specific satisfaction of proving people wrong who didn’t even think you were worth proving wrong. We weren’t on their radar. We didn’t need to be. We showed up and made them reckon with us anyway.

What’s made me laugh, and also genuinely irritated me, is the reaction. The offence. The visible discomfort of teams and fans who feel wronged by a draw against a nation they’d never thought about before this tournament. The entitlement in that is staggering. You didn’t prepare for us, you didn’t rate us, and now you’re upset that we didn’t lie down? That’s not our problem. That’s yours.

And then there’s Curaçao. Haiti. Nations that the football world looked at and wrote off before a ball was even kicked. What I kept thinking, watching them, is that just being there is the ending of a story that started decades ago. Entire villages watching on tiny screens. Diaspora kids in cities far from home suddenly seeing their flag on the biggest stage in the sport. The scoreline is irrelevant. The joy on those players’ faces said more about what football actually is than any final ever could.

Meanwhile Scotland descended on Boston and simply did not leave it alone. I’ve seen the videos. The kilts at 7am. The singing in the streets. The pubs running dry before noon. And then, my personal favourite detail, Scottish men accidentally ordering ranch dressing and becoming completely evangelical about it. People who had complicated feelings about America, who maybe had never thought about going, who came anyway because football asked them to. And America surprised them. And they surprised America right back. That’s a cultural exchange no government could have planned.

That’s kind of the whole point though. This tournament is putting people in the same room who would never otherwise share a room. Koreans in Mexico City. Iranians and Australians in the same stadium queue for forty-five minutes, finding out they have more to talk about than either of their governments would like. People experiencing Texas BBQ for the first time and ringing home about it like it’s a spiritual event.

And then Vini Jr. And Hakimi. Look, I’m not his biggest fan right now for reasons that are a whole other essay, but credit where it’s due: he refused to do his interview in anything other than Spanish. Both of them pushed back on being told that Spanish was a problem for broadcast. I don’t want to dress it up. That’s racism with a lanyard. It always has a procedural excuse, regulations, broadcast requirements, whatever, but what it’s actually saying underneath all of that is: assimilate or be quiet. At a tournament that is literally built on the idea of the world coming together. The audacity of it.

Let me talk about the visa situation properly, because I think we’ve been too polite about it.

Multiple nations have had officials denied entry to the United States for this tournament. A Somali referee, FIFA-accredited, specifically selected, couldn’t officiate matches because he couldn’t get a visa. Think about that for a second. The sport’s global governing body chose Omar Artan. The host country said no. The Iranian squad has been flying back to Mexico between matches because they can’t stay in the country in the days between games. These are footballers. They just want to play. They’ve trained for years for this. And they’re being treated like a liability.

I find it hard to describe what that is without using words that will make some people switch off. So I’ll just say this: you don’t get to invite the world to your home and then stand at the door deciding which humans are worthy enough to cross your threshold. That’s not hosting. That’s something a lot uglier. And the fact that the same man who has made it this hard for people to enter is taking credit for bringing the tournament to America, I can’t decide if it’s ironic or just deeply, depressingly on brand.

History will have a lot to say about this period.

But here’s what I keep coming back to, through all of it.

The football is still happening. The cultures are still colliding. The warmth is still real, and it’s overwhelming in the best possible way. America is getting an education it didn’t ask for, restaurants in host cities running out of ingredients they’d never stocked before, local kids watching players who look like their grandparents, people googling Cape Verde for the first time in their lives. The world is showing up and showing off and it’s genuinely beautiful.

I’ve felt so much community watching this, it cuts through everything else. Different languages, different food, different histories, but everyone losing their minds at the same moment because a ball went into a net.

It’s all quite silly if you really think about it.

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It’s been two weeks not one and a lot has happened. A lot but also nothing at the same time. I got matching tattoos, I worked out, I went to an Olivia Dean gig and, above all, looked hot. I’m really finding my feet in life and feel stability for the first time in a long time. A few things to talk about this week — it’s now 10am on Sunday and this week’s topics are:

• blood tests

• skin update

• connecting to my roots

• women’s only spaces

blood tests

I love learning about myself, and any chance to try something new, I will. My friend did the Healf blood test and talked a big game about it, so I was immediately sold. The blood sample process doesn’t hurt at all, results come back quickly, and they go into real depth on every marker they test.

I just got my results back and all looks well except my elevated total cholesterol and high-sensitivity CRP. I had to go digging into what this all meant, and essentially my cholesterol is fine, it’s just one part of it that’s slightly elevated and CRP sensitivity is a general inflammation marker. It’s linked to poor sleep, stress, and lack of exercise, and if you’ve been here a while, you’ll know that sounds about right.

I’ve been very conscious with my eating because I knew this blood test was coming up, and I’m genuinely enjoying it. It did make me think though, if this is me “trying,” what the hell would my bloods have said beforehand, lol. The inflammation marker was especially interesting to me because I do have acne, so I wonder if the two are linked. I also always say I never feel rested, and it’s bizarre to see on paper that this is having an actual effect on my body. My brain never stops and I never know how to pause, but I fear I’m going to have to try even harder to sort that out, because my body is clearly telling me it’s triggered. My hormone levels are fine, so calming my assumed leaky gut, moving more, and actually winding down are my next steps to controlling my acne and feeling better overall.

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skin update

Speaking of skin, I had my second laser session with Teresa. Same procedure as before, but this time we added in microneedling. Because I’m a total virgin to all these processes, I always feel quite amazed at how much we can actually do to the face.

The Aerolase doesn’t hurt at all - like a 2/10 - but the microneedling was more like a 6.5/10. We only did it on my cheeks, and we went very slowly, unlike what I see online. I could definitely feel the needles going in, but it was easy enough to sit through. I left the clinic with red, rosy cheeks that lasted a day or two, but now my skin has calmed down and things genuinely seem to be clearing up. No deep, angry breakouts, I feel like this is the start of the change. I was advised that from this point I shouldn’t experience any uncontrollable breakouts, so we shall see.

connecting to my roots

By now you should know who Cabo Verde are, thanks to the World Cup. For those who don’t, I’m half Cape Verdean. Just before we showed out at the World Cup, me, my friend, and my mum went to a Cesária Évora tribute concert by Mayra Andrade, and I’ve never felt more grounded or connected.

There’s something about being brought together with your people that does something to your soul. We’re a small nation that usually requires an explanation when we say where we’re from but in a room full of thousands of us, we feel so big. Flags flying, our language being spoken. Things that feel niche to me out in the world feel completely common in that space. You look around and everyone looks like you. I’ve spoken before about my weight and how I feel I’ve changed, but it’s true what they say, if you want to feel good about yourself, go back home. Everyone was built like me. Beautiful, beautiful people everywhere.

I’ve gone all around the world, yet I haven’t been back to Cabo Verde in ten years, and I’m ashamed of that. It’s not that I don’t want to go, I think about it every year, I’m just waiting for the “right time.” I want to go with my whole family, but that feels more and more complicated as time goes on. My grandma is only getting older, and we need to go see her, so next on my list is a visit, even if it’s short, it’s not even that far. I also need to make more of an effort to speak Kriolu and actually use it. I understand it perfectly, but speaking it is a different story entirely. How can I write a whole Substack about losing our mother tongue and be a hypocrite about my own? Lol.

women’s only spaces

The sun was baking, so the only right thing to do was head to the nearest body of water in London. Hampstead Heath has a women’s only pond, which sounded like the perfect oasis to spend the first real day of summer in. When we got there, we were greeted by a “women only” sign that almost lifted a weight off my shoulders I didn’t realise I was carrying.

My usual days in a bikini are quite tense, honestly, anything but relaxing. I’m always braced to be hyperaware of men around me, and I never fully feel comfortable, no matter how hard I try to override it. When we stepped in, it was genuinely something close to paradise. Meadows, serenity, calm, wildlife. Ducklings wandering around, a fox prancing past so calmly it was like it felt safe too. It was all very on the nose, metaphorically.

It was my first time in a women-only space like this, so I spent most of the time just looking around in awe. Women nipples to the wind, relaxing, basking in the sun with no fear of being watched. Not having to think about something accidentally slipping out, because everyone around you looks the same. It took us a few moments to even realise we could fully relax, because it’s not in our nature to. It’s almost instinct to always be on the defense. It was genuinely insightful to glimpse what the world could feel like if it was run by women, and I loved every second of it. If the option for something to be women-only is there, I will always take it. I don’t know how many men would choose a men-only space, or even consider wanting one, and honestly, I think that says a lot.

Have a lovely week gorgeous girlies x

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Uh oh, we’re here again. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t dragging my feet writing this. This is literally the last thing I want to do right now, but showing up for you and for myself is the least I can do. I feel like I have nothing to say this week but who knows, maybe the more I write, something will come. It’s 10am on a Sunday and this week, I’m just going to flow.

I started off in quite high spirits, actually, same as I have been over the past few weeks. I had lots to look forward to. I did a lovely little staycation with my bestie, which I’m so lucky to call work. It was out in the British countryside, which is honestly the only way I think I get to enjoy this country, and the weather was actually really nice. High spirits all round.

I’ve also been quite motivated with work, which feels good to say. I usually slip into a kind of lazy plateau after a while, but right now I’m genuinely enjoying it and I think the high reward has a lot to do with that. I’m seeing what committing to the work actually looks like when it pays off, and that feeling is hard to argue with. I guess nobody wants to pour into something and feel like it’s going nowhere. The difficult part is pushing through that initial stall before the momentum kicks in and just riding on hope and belief alone. The possibility of the outcome is what I need to hold onto when the reciprocity stops showing up.

Around mid-week, my mood shifted. It hasn’t consumed me the way things have before, but it’s definitely sitting above me like a cloud. I’m not really here to go into the why but I am here to talk about what I’ve noticed about myself.

I’d like to think I have some genuine self-awareness. I know how I operate in certain situations, which means I can give people around me a heads up about what to expect. But being aware of my patterns doesn’t excuse them, and I think that’s where a lot of people get it dangerously wrong with this whole self-awareness conversation.

The entire point of self-awareness is to do something with it.

What is the good in knowing you shout when you’re angry if you’re not actively working to change that? Awareness without action is just a nicer way of accepting your worst traits. Me, for example, I catastrophise. I know this about myself. So the sequence goes: acknowledge I’m triggered, pause, give it time, if it’s still bothering me, talk to a friend, if it’s still bothering me, journal, sleep on it, ask myself how I actually reached this conclusion, figure out how I genuinely feel, address it if I have to, separate the facts from the assumptions.

Of course, sometimes my feelings are valid. Sometimes it is an external thing and I won’t discredit that. But the key is knowing that I have a tendency to be led by my feelings before the facts and any other possible explanations. That awareness is what gives me the pause I need.

There’s so much awareness talk around me right now, and I don’t mean to speak from a higher place, but the point of growth is to actively go against what you’re used to especially when you know it isn’t working. How do you move forward if you keep doing the same thing? You have to put yourself in situations that test you, that trigger you, and use them to prove something different to yourself. You can’t just call yourself self-aware because you’ve identified that you’re difficult. That’s not self-awareness. That’s just a personality trait you’ve given a name to.

I’m ranting now, but I’m genuinely tired of hearing the same thing on a loop with no follow-through. What exactly am I supposed to do with that information if nothing changes?

I’ve told you how I am. I’ve given you the context. You’ve said you understand, that you care. But when the moment came to actually show that, you did the opposite.

I don’t do unexpected silence. It was used against me in previous relationships as punishment, as manipulation, so now when it shows up unannounced, something in me breaks a little. I know that’s a me thing. I’m not asking to be glued to you. I’m not asking for constant reassurance or a running commentary. I’m asking for five seconds. Literally five seconds: “I need some space, it’s nothing to do with you.” That’s it. That one sentence can save an entire week of psychosis, of running every scenario, rewinding every conversation, trying to find the thing I did wrong. The ratio of effort to damage there is genuinely insane, but that’s just what I need. And I’ve told you that.

Every second of the silence, I’m trying to self-soothe. I’m telling myself this is different, that I’m different, that the patterns don’t have to repeat. But that’s so much harder to hold onto when the context I’ve given you gets ignored. I share things about myself so that people can understand me, not so that it sits somewhere unused. I do this for everyone in my life. I’ve had friends tell me that my silence when they text makes them anxious, so you know what I do? I make sure I respond. Because that extra two seconds, that tiny act of consideration, saves them from a spiral. I do it because I care. It’s really not that complicated.

I am a very considerate person when someone makes me feel safe, I give them that fully. I extend benefit of the doubt in places I probably shouldn’t, and I think people take advantage of that sometimes, whether they realise it or not. It’s worse when they’re fully aware of it and do it anyway.

What’s a girl to do, though.

I’ll be fine. I think my ego is bruised more than anything, the blindsiding is what gets me every time. I just need the people I let in to think outside of themselves occasionally. I have a lot of empathy, but where you lose me is when you genuinely cannot see past your own experience. We are human beings. We are built for connection. Isolating yourself, shutting people out, treating closeness like a burden that will be your own undoing. The sooner people realise that the more they let people in, the better everything gets, the better the world genuinely gets, the sooner things change.

We depend on depending on each other.

Sorry i’m quite angry this week lmao.

9:14am

I wrote all of that and now I feel completely fine. If that doesn't show you the power of getting it out of your head and onto a page, I don't know what will. I'm not deleting any of it either, why not just put it all on the internet lol.

See you next Sunday x

things I love

I’ve been using Clean Skin Club towels for months now and genuinely don’t know how I ever used a regular towel on my face. At first, a fresh towel per wash feels excessive but once you start thinking about the hygiene of it, it makes complete sense. Especially if you have acne.

I get a lot of joint and muscle aches and sometimes I really don’t want to take medication, I can be very spiritual like that. This Puresport roll-on is mostly just oils, and whether it’s placebo or not, it genuinely does alleviate a lot of the pain in my neck and knees.

Rhode has another launch. I got sent these before they went live, and they might be her best launch yet. The bronzers are my type of product to a T. Beautiful shades, incredibly creamy, and so easy to apply. They’re not muddy at all and they look genuinely good on acne-prone skin.

I haven’t had a good background series to watch in ages. I was driving down the M4 and saw an ad for Rivals, so I gave it a go. It feels like it should be an American show, but it’s British and set in the 80s, which I love. It’s well shot and perfect to put on when you want to lock in and get some work done.

Speaking of the 80s, I’ve always had a soft spot for that era. My dad grew up in it, so a lot of what I know and love comes from that time. Listening to the music in Rivals reminded me of just how good it was. It felt joyous, like it was genuinely filling my soul. It’s all I’ve been listening to lately.

Jéssica x

Happy Sunday, what an absolutely unbearable heatwave this has been. It feels ungrateful to complain about heat when you live in the UK, but we are genuinely not a country built for this. It was great while it lasted, but we need a little rain to cool the city down now. Anyway, it's 10am on Sunday and this week I'm covering:

• birth

• body dysmorphia

• acne

birth

If you’re not new here, you’ve probably read my “I don’t want children” article and understand my stance on having kids. That said, I’ve been deeply invested in Iwana and her pregnancy, as has half of the internet. She’s just the most beautiful, radiant person and her vlogs and honest account of the whole experience genuinely make my heart warm. I watched her birthing vlog and it sent me spiralling down a rabbit hole of other birthing videos.

We’re taught about the process in school and we know, in theory, that birth is unlike anything else we’ll ever experience but there’s a difference between hearing about it and actually witnessing it. Seeing all the emotions that move through everyone in that room, the way time seems to compress and expand at the same time, it’s this strange, hybrid feeling of adrenaline and total stillness. Seeing also how quickly things can shift, and how little you can really do to prepare for that, only added to my already long list of fears. I was in tears.

I’ll be honest, my “no kids” meter has shifted. Only by about 4%, but still, that’s something. There’s a softness there now that wasn’t before. I can see a version of my future where it’s possible. That’s new.

body dysmorphia

I don’t know how open I’ve been about my weight before, but I have some feelings about my body right now that I want to try and put into words.

As I’ve gotten older, my body has changed, of course it has. I’m not in denial about that. I can see it in the way my clothes fit differently, feel it in the way I carry myself. I’m not content with how I look right now; I’d prefer to feel more toned, stronger. It’s less about the number and more about how I feel in my body.

The change has been gradual, so I wasn’t bracing for other people to notice it before I’d even really finished processing it myself. Here’s the thing, I’m very openly outspoken about my acne. I’ve made it a point to discuss it, own it, normalise it. By talking about it publicly, I’ve implicitly opened the floor for others to engage with it too. That’s a trade I made consciously.

What I have never done is open that same door for my body. I’ve never spoken about my weight, how I feel about it, or that anything has changed. And yet I’m receiving comments, people saying I’ve “let myself go,” or calling me “brave” for posting in the body I’m in. The “brave” ones almost hit harder than the mean ones, because they confirm something. Bravery implies risk. What risk? My body existing in public?

It’s left me genuinely confused about what I actually look like. I have no clear picture anymore. Am I really that different? Some people tell me I look completely normal. Others comment like I owe them a different version of myself. It’s disorienting in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

I’m simply just existing.

My activism begins and ends at acne, for now. I’m not a body positivity account. I’m not here to make anyone feel seen in their own skin by accident. I didn’t sign up to be anyone’s representation. And like any comment I receive online, it’s not going to make me change a single thing about how I show up. I’ll still wear what I want, even on the days my body doesn’t feel like my own.

Just take this as a reminder to be mindful of what you comment on other people’s accounts. You might think you’re being kind. You might even be right. But you could just as easily be adding weight, no pun intended, to something someone is already quietly carrying.

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acne

Right, hitting all the insecurities in one go today, apparently.

I know I present as confident about my acne, and I know it might feel hypocritical to then actively try to get rid of it. I get that. But to be clear about where I actually stand: I’m not upset that it’s here, I know how to live with it, and I’ve made a kind of peace with it but if I had it my way, my skin would be clearer. Vanity aside, I genuinely don’t love the idea of my skin being chronically stressed. Those two things can coexist.

So, I’ve started laser treatment with Teresa Tarmey, who is, factually, the best facialist in London. I’ve never done anything like this before, I’ve always been a bit afraid of interfering with my skin too aggressively. But when Teresa herself said she wanted to help me, I didn’t hesitate. She’s taking my facial virginity and I’m oddly at peace with that.

Here’s what I wasn’t expecting though: the grief.

My acne has been on my face for five years. In a strange way, it’s become background noise, I notice it, but I also don’t. It’s just always been there. It’s woven into how people know me, into how I’ve built my platform, into so much of how I present myself. And now I’m sitting with this weird fear - who am I without it? What do I talk about? What do I bring to the table when the thing that made me vulnerable in public is just... gone?

I’ve spent years building up the confidence to not only live with my acne but to talk about it openly, honestly, without flinching and now that confidence might just become redundant. It’s a strange kind of loss, grieving something you’ve also been hoping would leave.

I think the worry will ease as I get more sessions in and actually start to see results. But right now, in this in-between space, I genuinely don’t know how to feel. Change is scary, even when it’s the change you asked for.

things I love

Teresa Tarmey had to make the list. Some people are well known for a reason and Teresa is no exception. I’m only at the start of my course but I have people like my best friend who swears by her, and honestly, that’s all I need to know. Word of mouth is everything, it’s the only endorsement that actually means something to me.

The combination of the sun and flowy midi skirts has been doing something for me this week. I think I have a genuine eye for finding a good skirt, and I’ve been making a conscious effort to wear them day-to-day rather than saving them for occasions. I want to be the girl with the nice skirts. There’s something about a flowy skirt in the heat that makes you feel effortlessly hot. I’ve been wearing them to the shops, to do nothing, to do everything.

We got to the Chancery Rosewood this week and it is everything it thinks it is, I mean that as the highest compliment. I’ve been to my fair share of luxury London hotels but there’s something about the newness of the Rosewood that hits differently. The room prices are people’s rent, so I won’t pretend otherwise, but if you’re ever looking for a truly special London stay, the Rosewood and the Emory are my two. And Serra, the restaurant inside? We ate GOOD.

Carrot and pineapple juice have been fuelling me. I juice my own and I get real funky with it. I don’t always want to drink water and knowing exactly what’s going in feels like a nice compromise on a hot day.

And finally, lash extensions for the first time in years. My fear has always been that they come out too dark, too dramatic, I’m a natural makeup girl and that’s just not me. But mine are perfect. Dark brown, just the right lift and fullness. People have been asking if I got a lash lift or if they’re even real. That’s exactly what I wanted.

Have a calm week x

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The sun has finally arrived in the UK and now I'm feeling max max joy. My calendar is starting to fill up and there's nothing I love more than having plans to look forward to. I hope you have something gorgeous planned for this weekend 🤪 It's been a full week, literally and emotionally, so this week's topics are:

• brick

• change of scenery

• overwhelming emotions

brick

As I write this, my phone is currently bricked. You may be thinking Jessica, what is that? Brick is a physical device that blocks apps on your phone so that you aren’t unnecessarily distracted. My screen time is crazy, and I found that the built-in screen limits didn’t work because I just override them. I needed something more serious.

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I was starting to see my days waste away just being on my phone, and I don’t like how that’s making me feel. I don’t like the feeling of my brain going to waste, and unfortunately I don’t have the self-control to just put my phone down and not touch it. I need something that is out of my control, something that removes the option entirely.

You can create different modes on Brick depending on what you need. I have Be Present, Sleep, and Work. You either tap your phone on the device to unlock it, or set a schedule. The trick is to put the Brick somewhere inconvenient - outside, in your car, in a room far away - so that you have to actively consider how much you actually want your phone before you go and get it. That pause is the whole point.

I’ve been locking my phone when I’m out to be present in the moment, and when I go to bed. Being outside with friends I’m finding quite easy, it’s more when I’m alone that I struggle. I find myself pressing Instagram and TikTok from pure muscle memory, just chasing a small dopamine hit. It’s so bizarre to observe your own brain freaking out, searching for stimulation anywhere it can find it. It really makes you realise how conditioned we’ve become.

Me and Michaela are both doing this at the same time, and we’ve been having the most pointless conversations as a result, and I mean that in the best way. We’ll talk at length about absolutely nothing, just to have something to do with our minds. It’s fun to see how long we can stretch a conversation, but also a little alarming that we’re doing it in the first place. What does it say about us that without our phones, we immediately scramble to fill the silence?

Highly recommend spending that £50 to save your brain.

change of scenery

We’re still looking for houses in London, which is becoming more difficult by the day. West London is our comfort zone, it’s what we know, but I fear we’re going to have to cast a wider net. We’re considering South London, which is a horrible thing to say as a West Londoner, but the market simply isn’t allowing us to look strictly west anymore.

The thing is, I’ve lived in South before and quite enjoyed it. It’s different to West, for sure. You almost feel it the moment you cross the bridge. But there’s a comfort in South London that I genuinely can’t explain. When you spend all your time in West, you stay in this bubble that feels wonderful. It’s a very romantic life, the life I think people picture when they romanticise London. Cobbled streets, garden squares, white buildings. But there is so much more to this city than that.

I’m a woman who comes from culture, and South London is closer to what I knew growing up. The authenticity, the food, the music, the people, I love all of it. I feel at home there, strangely. It reminds me of that feeling I’m always trying to describe from Australia, when you travel somewhere and it just wraps around you. A comfort and a peace that you weren’t expecting but immediately recognise. South London gives me a similar feeling.

It doesn’t deserve the hate it gets from the rest of the city. I will never fully understand what it means to be a true South Londoner, to be from there, to have grown up in it but I embrace everything it represents.

overwhelming emotions

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I am a weird case when it comes to my emotions. I go through what feels like seven stages of grief in about five minutes, and then I’m over it. Those five minutes are the most intense five minutes and they are necessary. I need to feel everything profoundly, and I need to talk through every single thing I’m feeling in order to reach my conclusion and understand how I truly feel. This is something I have learned about myself.

Where I mess up is when I act on my emotion at like stage three. That’s the impulsive version of me, that isn’t how I actually feel. I have to make a conscious effort not to do or say anything until I’ve settled. The issue is that in the moment, I genuinely believe every stage is my true emotion. Each one feels completely real and completely final, which is what makes it so easy to act too soon.

What I’ve learned to give myself is an hour or two just to feel it and figure it out. By then, I almost always understand how I actually feel, and more often than not it’s much calmer and much clearer than stage three ever suggested.

I also do best when I have a listening ear. I like to bounce these thoughts off someone, which can get complicated when the person I need to process with is also the person I’m having a disagreement with. It can be a lot to ask someone to sit with you through every wave of emotion, especially when they’re involved. I know that. It’s been difficult during conflict, but now that I understand this is simply how I process things, I can make the other person aware of it too.

When people talk about how you handle conflict, this is what I’d say now. Not that I need it resolved immediately, but that the most important thing for me is feeling like the other person understands how I got to where I am. The journey matters as much as the destination. Once I feel heard, I can move forward. Without that, I can’t.

things I love

Another Summer Fridays launch, the new ShadeDrops SPF. I feel like SPF always leaves something on your face, and to be honest, this one is no different, but what I do enjoy is its texture. I would describe it as similar to the Rhode Milk Glaze, but in an SPF, it leaves a gorgeous glow on my face.

In Brazil they do this thing called Banho de Lua, which is a moon bath. Essentially, it’s bleaching your body hair instead of removing it. I do this on my arms and thighs primarily because the upkeep of removing it is far greater than dyeing it. When the sun shines on the hair it just looks so golden and cute.

Dragon Diffusion bags have been on my list for a while. I love the woven leather of Bottega, and Dragon Diffusion gives the same vibe, if not more fun, for a fraction of the price.

I usually prefer slim books over fat, mammoth novels. I like the idea of being able to finish a book in one sitting, and I also think it takes more skill to create as much impact in fewer words. I will always buy the slim Penguin book. If you have any recommendations, do let me know x

Speaking of books, when I was checking out at Waterstones, I spotted a book called I Still Believe in Miracles, and it felt like it was speaking to me. I had no idea it was a poetry book; I hate poetry. My short-book logic doesn’t extend to poems. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Lucas Jones and his words. The themes felt very fitting to my life right now, t’s everything I’ve been needing. I find myself rereading a lot of the poems, seeking comfort in them.

Have a Hugo Spritz for me this weekend x

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It's past my usual 10am on Sunday because I actually managed to sleep for 9 hours last night and I wasn't going to interrupt that flow, respectfully. We all know how much I don’t sleep so I'll take whatever sleep I can get. I may be late today but we're still here, better late than never! I'm still in high spirits this week and hope you are too. This week's topics are:

• woman in every life

• compatibility vs chemistry

woman in every life

If you could pick, would you choose to be a woman or a man in another life? pls answer, I’m curious

My answer is always the same. I would pick to be a woman in every life, without a single second of hesitation. And yes, I talk about how hard it is all the time. I’m not pretending otherwise. But I’m also not biased just because it’s all I’ve known. I’ve genuinely thought about this. Sat with it. And when I weigh it all up, the good outweighs the bad by a million. The bad doesn’t even feel like ours to carry, if I’m honest. It was placed on us. Handed down to us by systems and fears that were never really about us at all. That’s a very different thing.

There’s something about being a woman that I have never been able to fully explain and I’m not sure I ever will. I have this burning, aching passion that rises in my chest when I look at my friends, my family, women I’ve never even met and will never know. Something in me just recognises them. It just feels like us and that feeling alone is worth everything.

I feel this fierce, almost overwhelming protectiveness when I think about the women around me and not because I think we’re fragile - God, no. Because I know exactly what we carry. What we absorb. What we walk through with our heads up and our hearts breaking sometimes. It makes me love us in a way I genuinely don’t have the words for.

The deepest love I have ever known has not come from romantic relationships. It hasn’t come from family, not primarily. It has come from friendship. From women who showed up in my worst moments and didn’t flinch. Who celebrated me without an ounce of jealousy. Who told me the truth when it would have been so much easier to say nothing. Who somehow loved me through the versions of myself I wasn’t even sure were loveable yet. That kind of love, I didn’t know it existed until I had it and now I could never go without it.

Being a woman is the thing I would choose every single time. In every life. Without looking back.

I just needed to say that out loud.

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compatibility vs chemistry

Dating is one of those things that everyone has an opinion on and nobody fully has figured out. We’re all out here collecting experiences, collecting feelings, collecting the occasional situationship we don’t talk about, and somehow still surprised every time it gets complicated. But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, one distinction that I think explains more heartbreak than almost anything else, it’s the difference between compatibility and chemistry. (i’m not a love expert lol)

Compatibility is everything you can write down on paper. Same values, same vision for the future, same sense of humour, similar lifestyles, both want kids or neither do, both early risers or both night owls. The things you could put in a dating profile and someone could read and think “yes, that works”. It’s logical. It’s measurable. You can point to it and explain it to someone and they’ll nod and say “of course”.

Chemistry is everything you can’t write down. It’s the thing that happens when they walk into a room. The way a conversation with them feels different to every other conversation you’ve ever had. It's the person you can't stop thinking about, the conversation that goes on until 3am without either of you noticing, the pull you feel before you even know anything real about them. It's largely involuntary. You can’t explain it to someone who isn’t feeling it. You can’t manufacture it. You can’t put it in a list. It just either exists or it doesn’t.

And here’s the painful truth, you can have one without the other. You can be perfectly matched on paper with someone and feel almost nothing when they touch you. And you can feel everything, completely undone, by someone who is completely wrong for you in every way you could write down.

This is why I genuinely believe everyone should write their list. Not a list of what you want someone to look like or what job they have. The real list. Your actual values. What you need to feel safe. What you can’t compromise on. What a future has to have in it for it to feel like yours. Write it down before you meet someone or write it now, while you’re already feeling something, and read it back with honesty.

Because chemistry is a cloud. A beautiful, intoxicating cloud that makes everything feel urgent and electric and real. And it is real, the feeling is absolutely real. But feelings are not facts. And the cloud will lift eventually, and what’s underneath it is either something solid or it isn’t. The list is how you remember what solid looks like when you can’t see clearly.

The dream is both. The list and the feeling. The logic and the electricity. But at least if you know your list, you give yourself a fighting chance of not mistaking the feeling for the whole story.

things I love

The ByTerry CC serum isn’t a new product around here, I’ve just rediscovered it. I’m into looking healthy and dewy recently and this product, although it isn’t a foundation, has been replacing my foundation.

Summer Fridays makeup can be hit or miss for me. Their new cream bronzer is super lovely and not muddy. That paired with the ByTerry CC serum have been my combo.

Don’t sleep on Sephora and their brushes. In the brushes category, Hourglass and Victoria Beckham have a solid place in my books and Sephora may take 3rd place. My personal favourites are 64 and 50.

Dove has probably been the most consistent brand throughout my life. Their body washes and deodorant have always been there for me and now they keep developing new products. I bought the new whole body deodorant and as someone with a phobia of smelling, this is my dream. With the weather improving, I suggest we all start applying this in all our cracks and crevices.

Unpopular opinion, I actually like Drake’s Iceman album. I haven’t heard all 79933 songs across the 3 albums but I do actually enjoy it. I don’t think it will be his greatest work but I do think it’s good. Am I alone here?

Final thing I’m loving is something I’m doing. I’m doing these weekly junk journals on Instagram which are basically how I would journal in my real journal but I’m just choosing to put it on the internet. It’s just another way for me to reflect on my week and I’m enjoying how creative I can get with them.

Have a joyous week x

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I could have swum in the tears I cried this week. None were from sadness, they were more from the warming of my heart. This week my emotions felt so big, so expect quite the outpour in my near future Substacks. This week I want to offer a glimmer of hope for all the pessimists out there: that you may one day see the world in a different light, like I did.

That being said, it’s 10am on Sunday and this week’s topics are:

• feeling my nervous system relax

• finding joy in my life

• dating with acne

nervous system

I’ve always felt like the way I feel cannot be how everyone else is feeling. My eyes have never known what good sleep looks like. My body has never fully relaxed. A kind of background noise that was dull enough to not derail my day, but persistent enough that I noticed it, lurking somewhere at the back of my mind.

I wasn’t always an expressive person. And so, quite naturally, I learned to compartmentalise. To tuck things away. To function. What I didn’t understand then is that ignoring something doesn’t make it leave, it just gets tucked away. Your body, though, keeps a record of everything. Bessel van der Kolk writes about exactly this in “The Body Keeps the Score”. The premise sounds simple but it unravels something enormous: trauma, stress, emotion, they don’t just pass through you. They live in you. In your muscles, your nervous system, your sleep, your posture, the way you hold your jaw.

Now, I’m unlearning. I’m speaking up more, when something isn’t right, when I’m overwhelmed, when I need something to change. For someone who spent years absorbing rather than expressing, it’s the whole thing and I’m not only feeling it, i’m also seeing it.

My Oura ring has been showing me something lately that I don’t think I’ve ever consistently seen: full nights of sleep, actual deep sleep, recovery, data that suggests my body is finally starting to feel safe enough to let go. I track it partly out of curiosity, partly because having something external reflect what I can feel internally is oddly grounding.

Van der Kolk also talks about the profound role that people play in nervous system regulation, and this is the part I keep coming back to. We aren’t meant to heal in isolation. Safety, calm, and security are not just internal states we manufacture alone. They are co-created. The people around you, their energy, the way they speak to you, whether they make you feel seen or guarded, all of it also lands in your body.

I’ve been more intentional about this than I’ve ever been before. Who I spend time with. What I’m willing to tolerate. Where I place my attention. It turns out that protecting your peace isn’t a soft concept, it’s biology. So please, if your stomach starts hurting around someone, stop seeing them.

joy in my life

My heart feels warm. I feel love. I feel joy. I feel like there’s genuinely good around me and I don’t say that lightly, because for a long time I couldn’t have said it at all.

My heart has always had a lot of love in it. An overwhelming amount, actually. But it takes some work to get there. A few layers to move through before you reach it. I think I always knew it was in there but somewhere along the way, I learned to keep it at a distance. Not because I chose to be cold, but because warmth had cost me something before. And so the armour went on, without me really noticing, until one day it just felt like the shape of me.

In recent years, my heart has essentially been out of service. Functional on the surface, guarded underneath. I warm up to people slowly. I give access even slower. I’m noticing that the hard shell I was wearing isn’t actually protecting me from anything meaningful. It’s just keeping me from myself. Because my authentic self, the version of me that exists without all that conditioning on top, is soft. She’s happy. She’s somebody who finds beauty in ordinary things and loves generously and shows up with her whole chest. And I was doing all of this work to keep her at arm’s length.

So I decided to stop.

I’m still unlearning. Old habits are stubborn and they don’t go quietly. But I’m choosing, every day, to show up joyously. To let that be the intention even when it doesn’t come easily. Because I think joy is a practice before it’s a feeling, you have to keep choosing it until it starts choosing you back.

Here’s the thing about pessimism: It feels intelligent. Like you’re ahead of the disappointment, already accounting for it. I would know, I lived there. I was fluent in worst-case scenarios, in bracing for impact, in the low hum of this probably won’t work out. And that posture protects you, up to a point. But it also flattens everything. It makes life smaller than it is.

Now I keep asking myself a different question: what if it does work out? That’s it.

And something strange has happened. I’m walking around noticing how wonderful trees are. How the light looks in the late afternoon. How good it feels to laugh. I barely recognise myself and I mean that as the most tender kind of compliment to whoever I’m becoming.

Everything is beautiful.

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dating with acne

There’s a specific kind of stress that comes with letting someone get close to your face. And I don’t mean emotionally. I mean literally. The wrong lighting, waking up next to someone, a moment where you can’t control any of it. If you have acne, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The mental checklist running in the background of a moment that should just be easy.

I’ve been at war with my skin for years. And when it’s your face, it’s not something you can just ignore, it’s the first thing people see. So you adapt. You learn your angles. You find a foundation that will actually last. You get very good at being seen on your own terms.

Dating with acne on top of all of that is a whole thing.

First dates are fine because you can prepare. It’s everything after that gets complicated. Because the more someone likes you, the more you start to panic. I’ve sat in front of someone perfectly nice and spent the whole time half-present, running the numbers on whether they’d noticed, whether it looked worse in that light, whether they were just being polite. That’s exhausting.

But then sometimes the opposite happens. Someone looks at you and just... doesn’t react. No comment. No weird pause. And somehow that’s almost more disarming than anything else, because you realise how much you’d built yourself up for a reaction that never came. There is one strange upside to talking about my skin so openly online. By the time I meet someone, they already know. I've made enough content about my acne that it kind of addresses the elephant in the room before I even have to and honestly? That's a relief. The conversation I used to dread has already happened, somewhere in my comments section, without me having to sit across from someone and have it in real time. There's something quite freeing about that. My skin isn't a secret I'm keeping. It's just part of who I am, and people who show up already know that.

things I love

La Roche-Posay pimple patches are one of my monthly top-ups. Everyone seems to be coming out with their own version but theirs are still the ones that work best for actually reducing the size of my pimples.

I bought some Kolo slippers whilst out in LA. They were an impulse buy but I’ve found great purpose for them at home. I don’t like wearing shoes inside but socks feel too bare. Their slippers are a nice in-between. They also come in really fun colours.

I may still be battling acne on my face but I seem to have got my body acne under control. The PanOxyl body spray has completely cleared my chest acne, right in time for summer. That paired with the Soft Service exfoliating bar are working wonders. I don’t know what I’m going to do once they run out because they’re only available in the US.

I love most of what Cyklar releases, and this last month I tried their perfume oils. Sometimes a parfum is just too much and smells too artificial - a perfume oil feels like it comes from within. Excuse the name, but “Sex Musk” is my favourite for its clean, neutral scent.

Have a sexy week x

I took a little longer than planned. Things happened, I travelled and I processed approximately none of it, which, if you know me, tracks completely. But I'm back. I have thoughts and this is still the only place I know how to say them properly. I’m up at 6am this Sunday writing this. I wasn’t going to but I need to start showing up for myself and the things I love. It’s 10am on Sunday now though and this weeks topics are:

• self worth

• Australia

• moving

self worth

Self worth, for me, has never really been about whether I think I’m enough. It’s bizarre because I know I am and i’m not filling my thoughts with scrutiny. It’s more subtle than that, and honestly more confronting. It’s about whether I show up for myself when it would be easier not to. Whether I keep the promises I make, to no one but me. Because those are the ones that actually count.

Discipline is the most telling thing about a person for me. Discipline isn’t performed to anyone but yourself. It reveals your integrity, your patience, your resilience, the way you regulate yourself when life gets in the way, and ultimately whether you actually respect your own potential enough to act on it. It lives in the Tuesday at 7am when nothing’s on the line except your own word to yourself. The workout you do when you’re tired. The thing you finish when the motivation ran out three weeks ago and now it’s just will. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s clapping. You either do it or you don’t, and you know which one it was.

Every time you show up for yourself, you’re casting a vote for the person you’re becoming. Every time you don’t, you feel it. A kind of betrayal. A tiny crack in the trust you’re supposed to have with yourself. And those cracks accumulate in both directions, the showing up does too.

I know the person I want to be. She’s consistent. She follows through on the unglamorous things. She doesn’t wait for the right mood or the perfect circumstances or someone else’s encouragement to begin. She just does it because she said she would, and that’s enough of a reason. I’m not always her yet. Some weeks I’m closer than others. But I’ve stopped measuring my worth by the weeks I fall short and started paying attention to the fact that I keep coming back, that something in me refuses to stop trying to close the gap.

I struggle with the idea of doing something and not making everyone aware of it. That's the part I'm still getting used to. I live a very public life in a lot of ways, and there's a version of personal growth that gets performed, the before and after, the transformation arc, the caption about doing the work. But the discipline that actually changes you happens when no one's there to see it. You're not proving it to anyone else. The only person keeping score is you. Which is somehow both the most freeing and the most confronting thing I've ever had to sit with.

And I think it's worth saying, nobody has this completely figured out. The most disciplined people I admire aren't people who never slip, they're people who've just gotten better at not letting a slip become a story. The gap between who you are and who you want to be doesn't close and then stay closed. Everyone's just somewhere in the middle of their own private effort.

Australia

I think about Australia every single day. I sit and watch my videos and look at my photos like who was that?

And the thing I keep coming back to, the thing that makes it hard to just file away and move on, is that the place itself wasn’t particularly unique. I want to be honest about that. It was a city with a beach. Stunning in the way that a lot of places are stunning - sun, good food, good energy. But not incomparable. Not once-in-a-lifetime in the way that the Amalfi Coast makes you feel like you’re hallucinating, or the way certain cities just stop you mid-street. It wasn’t that. Sydney was just a city. A beautiful, warm, alive city but a city nonetheless. So why can’t I stop thinking about it?

Because it was never about the place. It was about who I was in it.

I felt free there. Not free in the holiday sense. I mean genuinely, deeply free like something in my chest finally loosened. I was away from everyone who drains me without meaning to. Away from the low-level stress that I’d gotten so used to I stopped noticing it was there. Away from the version of myself that exists in other people’s expectations of me.

I felt inspired. I felt healthy, like my body was running on the right fuel for the first time in a while. I felt productive without forcing it, which anyone who’s ever had to force productivity knows is an entirely different experience. I felt genuine joy.

And I felt hot. Which I’m including because it matters and nobody talks about it enough. There is something about feeling physically confident, tan, sun on your skin, moving through a city like you belong there, that changes the entire frequency you’re operating on.

I spent a month there. A whole month, which is usually more than enough time for the novelty to wear off and the familiar comfort of home to start calling. It never called. I got to the last few days and instead of looking forward to my own bed, I felt something closer to dread. I stood at the check in desk begging my friend not to board. That the thing I was returning to didn’t feel as much like home as the thing I walking away from.

They say if somewhere makes you feel that alive, you can’t just ignore it. And I’ve tried. I’ve tried very hard, actually. I’ve told myself it was the novelty. I’ve told myself it was the break from routine, the distance from responsibility, the fact that I was on holiday and of course everything feels better on holiday. I’ve filed it under “amazing experience” and “not real life” and “you were just rested for once.” I’ve been very reasonable about it. And then I’ve thought about it again the next day, and the day after that, every single day for long enough now that I’ve had to admit the reasonable explanations aren’t quite covering it.

The distance is the most extreme it could be. I’m not naive about that, it’s not a small thing to say you feel at home somewhere that is genuinely as far from where you are as it’s possible to get on this planet. That’s a real sacrifice. Probably the only real one, if I’m being honest with myself.

But I’m starting to think the bigger sacrifice might be staying somewhere that doesn’t make you feel like that, just because it’s familiar. Just because it’s closer. Just because leaving would be the harder, more inconvenient choice. I don’t have a neat answer for what to do with any of this yet. I just know I think about it every single day, and I’ve decided that probably means something.

I'll be back in January Australia.

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moving

Moving out is stressful for everyone. I know this. But moving out as a self-employed person in this economy is a particular kind of humbling experience. Nobody trusts you. You can show them the numbers, you can show them the tax return, you can demonstrate quite clearly that you earn a living and have done for a while and landlords will still look at you like you’ve just handed them a crayon drawing instead of proof of income. The entire system is built for people with a salary, a payslip, and a job title that fits neatly into a dropdown menu. The rest of us are apparently a liability. Anyone can lose their job at the end of the day no?

And the houses. I have to talk about the houses. The audacity of the current rental market is something I genuinely wasn’t prepared for. The prices are not matching the product. I’ve seen things listed at numbers that suggest the landlord has lost their mind entirely. Rooms where the bed fits wall to wall, blue walls, sheds named an “extra room” - all presented with the confidence of someone who knows you don’t really have a choice. Because you don’t. Because there are fifteen other people ready to take it the moment you hesitate.

Landlords have never been greedier. The market has never been less accountable. And the really exhausting part is that everyone knows this, everyone agrees, and nothing changes. You just have to keep refreshing Rightmove at 11pm hoping something decent gets listed before someone else snaps it up in the morning.

things I love

Been loving a lot recently.

Cotton On halter neck top - I found this top and immediately understood what people mean when they talk about a wardrobe staple. Cotton On, of all places. Simple, flattering, goes with everything and it snatched me in my most stubborn place right now (my belly).

Boba tea - I don’t want to talk about how often I’ve been having boba tea. I want to talk about it just enough to justify the frequency. It’s a treat that doesn’t feel like a treat because it’s a drink.

Seeing Olivia Dean live - Olivia Dean live is an experience I would recommend to absolutely anyone. I sat for about 30 minutes at the start, in silence, in awe of her. Left feeling full in the way only really good live music can make you feel. Top 2 experience.

Drowsy eye mask - Sleep is a whole thing for me and the Drowsy eye mask has been saving my life. It’s like a pillow for your eyes. It blocks everything out. A small luxury that makes a disproportionate difference. This is also coming from someone who hates eye masks.

Kilian “Rolling in Love” perfume - A sexy, subtle almond fragrance. I've always been a “Love don’t be shy girl” but this is a more subtle, everyday alternative to that. I’m scared for it to finish.

La Roche-Posay B5 serum - Michaela goes ooooon about this and I finally used it and my skin had life in it again. I was lacking hydration in my routine and that was making me look dull. This will become a constant in my routine.

K18 leave-in - Coloured hair is a commitment for a low maintenance girl like me. I’m really trying to look after my hair now that it’s fully bleached again. I’m treating my hair routine as a ritual, taking time with it. The few times i’ve used the k18 leave in my hair has felt unrecognisably soft.

Armani skin tint - The Armani skin tint is for the days when you want to look like yourself but a well-rested, slightly more put-together version. Barely there but does just enough.

Pied de Poule salon in London - My friend told me about this salon and I genuinely feel like I’ve been let in on a secret. I get all my maintenance done here and I was going to gatekeep but everyone needs to know.

The Testaments on Disney - Started The Testaments and immediately remembered why I love a story that makes you angry in the best way. I love Handmaids Tale so I was always going to love this.

Have a sexy week x

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Dear social media,

You began as a place for community

A way to keep up with friends, share moments, discover people you might never have met otherwise. You promised connection. You promised creativity. You promised a digital world that simply extended our real one

But somewhere along the way, you became something else

You became a third space, somewhere between public life and private life. And in doing so, you slowly erased the line between the two

Our thoughts, our relationships, our locations, our families. Moments that used to belong only to us now belong to the internet

And despite what you claim, you’re not safe

You are not safe for women. You’re not safe for children

Harassment happens constantly and openly. Women receive abuse, threats, sexual comments, stalking, yet the systems meant to stop it rarely do. Reporting tools exist, but they rarely lead anywhere. Accounts stay up. Comments remain. The cycle continues

You say you’re trying to protect us, but it often feels like protection is performative. Safety features exist more as statements than solutions

Real protection would require real commitment. And real commitment would come with a cost

It would cost half your population

Real moderation would anger a large group of users who have grown used to saying whatever they want without consequence. Regulation would feel like restriction to them. Their outrage would be loud

So the cost becomes a woman’s freedom instead

Our safety is traded for engagement

And it’s difficult to ignore that the people who designed these platforms, the people who shaped the rules of this digital world, are overwhelmingly men

Meanwhile the dangers evolve faster than the protections

People steal your images and create entire identities pretending to be you. They profit from it, sometimes monetising your face, your life, your work. You report the account and nothing happens. As long as they call themselves a “fan account”, it often remains untouched

Now add AI into the mix and the risks multiply again. Deepfakes appear. Versions of your face and body placed in situations you have never been in. Images that look real enough to spread, but impossible to fully erase

Because nothing truly dies on social media.

Information travels too easily. I can learn almost anything about someone in minutes. His new girlfriend, you know where she works. His mother, you saw the birthday celebrations. You know he was in a club in Miami because a stranger posted a story from the same room

Access to information used to require effort. Now it requires curiosity and five minutes

Everyone is accessible

That can be beautiful. It allows connection across countries and communities that might never meet otherwise. But it’s also easily abused. People trace emails to phone numbers. They find contact details and suddenly your phone is ringing with strangers who believe proximity online entitles them to access in real life

We’re also seeing more faces than we were ever meant to see in one lifetime

Hundreds, sometimes thousands, every single day. Lives, bodies, relationships, successes. That volume of exposure inevitably breeds comparison. Comparison that humans were never built to handle at this scale

At the same time, we know everything without experiencing anything

We watch restaurants before we taste the food. Travel somewhere before we arrive. Hear every opinion about a place before forming our own. The world becomes previewed before it’s lived

Even absence feels different now. I can’t sit on a plane without thinking about what I’m missing online. Then when I land and reconnect, it often feels strangely anticlimactic

Because the truth is that you were never neutral

You were designed to keep us here

Infinite scroll. Notifications timed perfectly. Algorithms constantly adjusting. Micro changes that we barely notice but that slowly train our behaviour. You’re psychologically engineered to be addictive

And while we scroll, you profit

You prey on users while pretending to empower them

Outrage spreads fastest, so outrage becomes currency. Vulnerability becomes engagement. Personal pain becomes content that performs well. The more emotional the moment, the more visible it becomes

You reward creators with pennies while the platforms themselves generate billions

And now entire industries depend on you

Music success depends on whether a song is “good for TikTok”. Brands rely on social platforms as their primary marketing channels. Careers are built and destroyed by algorithms that can change overnight without explanation

If you want a brand to succeed today, it must succeed online first

Which means everyone is dependent on you

Creators, businesses, musicians, journalists, artists. We are all at your beck and call, posting, adapting, adjusting, trying to remain visible inside systems we do not control

Sometimes I envy the companies that were built before you existed. Businesses that formed their identity in the physical world rather than the algorithmic one

But even they now struggle if they refuse to move with the times

That is the paradox

I love using you. I genuinely do. You have allowed me to share ideas, connect with people across the world, create opportunities that would not have existed otherwise

But you also exhaust me

You are both connection and surveillance. Opportunity and dependency. Community and comparison

And the truth is that leaving you is not simple. Too much of our world now depends on you

So instead of leaving, I want you to change

I want real accountability. Real protection. Real systems that prioritise safety over engagement and people over profit

My dream is to keep speaking about these issues until they cannot be ignored. To use whatever voice I have in this space to push for something better

Because if influence means anything at all, it should mean pushing for change

That is the kind of influencing I want to do

Jéssica

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It’s Sunday again, we made it through another week. This week has been about myself in many ways, working on my physical self and my mental self of course, slowing down and doing things that feel right. It all felt taxing at the time but fun at the same time, quite bizarre. It’s 10am on Sunday and this week’s topics are:

• pelvic floor

• lingerie

pelvic floor

I’ve been feeling very tense, especially in my neck, which I suspect is from a mixture of stress and poor posture. My friend has a sports masseuse that she swears by so I booked her in. I don’t work out religiously, so booking a sports massage felt silly, but I read that everyone should get one regardless. I didn’t know what to expect other than it being extremely painful, but I’ve had painful massages before.

As I waited in reception, this small, soft woman walked out to greet me. She had the most comforting aura, so I wondered if I had accidentally booked the wrong massage. She lay me down on the bed and without hesitation started analysing my body. I didn’t expose any of my ailments because I wanted to see how accurate she was. When I tell you immediately she pointed out that my legs were a big issue in my life, I’ve had complications with my knees all my life. She said my left leg was basically non existent and I’ve always complained about running lopsided and feeling more impact on one leg. I mean, I could go on. She asked if I ever rest, I don’t sleep. She said my glutes were overworked, I tense them when I’m stressed. She said I lead with my neck. She said I’m outspoken. She gave me an all round analysis based purely on what she saw in my body and my reactions to her touch. Her intuition was unmatched.

This tiny woman suddenly had the weight of a thousand elephants on my body. She was finding spots I had never addressed in my life. She kept referring to my pelvic floor as a “big deal” because it was so locked. I had heard of the pelvic floor but didn’t really know what it meant. It’s essentially the deep muscles around your hips. She kept implying that something had happened, but I’m clueless. All I know is the second she touched it, my spirit left the room.

After a certain point during the massage, I was no longer there. It was the most painful but releasing pain I have ever felt in my life. Tears kept rolling from my eyes and I tried to resist them, but her encouragement made me feel comfortable enough to wail. I see videos about releasing tension or trauma in the hips and I finally understood it. It doesn’t always equate to trauma, sometimes it’s your fight or flight system finally relaxing. As I said, my glute region is the first place I notice stiffen up.

I am going to gatekeep this massage place, but all of this is to say I think practical, functional massage is the way for me. The relaxing ones are lovely but they don’t really address the root issues. She said I wasn’t mentally prepared for the session, which I wasn’t, but I plan on seeing her every two weeks. The relief in my neck, my hands, my lower back was unmatched. It felt good to address pains in my body that I didn’t even know were there, like re laying the foundations.

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lingerie

That was the physical, now for the mental.

I was at my friend’s house, bonding, kekekeing, and as girl chat does, we started talking about sexual endeavours. Next thing you know, her lingerie drawer was in the middle of the living room. Lace everywhere. Silk everywhere. Tiny, delicate things.

I was deeply inspired by her array of options, but more than that, by how casually confident she was about them. It wasn’t about a man. It was about how she felt in her own skin. That’s when it clicked for me, lingerie is for yourself first.

As soon as I got home, I hit the Agent Provocateurs of the world and started imagining what would look best on my body. It’s kind of hard to do this online, so I really recommend going into stores and trying things on properly. Find the bra style that flatters you. The underwear cut that makes you feel held in the right places. Do you like lace, or do you prefer something clean and minimal? Do you feel powerful in black, soft in cream, playful in colour?

I used to think that when people said they wore lingerie under their clothes “just for themselves”, they were lying. Surely it was always for someone else. I understand it now. When I put my pieces on, I didn’t care whether anyone saw them or not. There’s something about knowing what you’re wearing underneath that shifts your posture slightly. You sit differently. You walk differently. You feel in on your own secret. It’s literally that meme of “no one in here knows…”, and that is the fun of it.

It also made me realise how disconnected we can become from our own sensuality. We treat it like something that switches on only in the presence of someone else. But it’s part of you regardless.

Find your version of sexy, the one that feels authentic. And if you are buying lingerie for a man, make sure he deserves it, because these strings of fabric are not cheap, and neither is your energy.

things I love

I miss doing these so here we have some from this week.

I’m very big on accessories now. Something awoke inside me in Australia and now I wear some sort of something with every outfit. Having an Oura ring also made me accustomed to the feeling of always having something on.

I bought the Missoma Savi Signature Small Hoops by accident, but they’ve quickly turned into my everyday pair. I love how dainty they are, but specifically that they’re mixed metal, so depending on my outfit I can have either the gold side showing or the silver.

Another favourite of everyone’s, and mine, is my Phoria ring. It looks way more expensive than it actually is, very dainty again. I’m not into crazy jewellery, I usually prefer quite understated pieces. The ring actually inspired what I might want my engagement ring to look like one day. I love the hanging pendant detail. Phoria also do Spinelli style rings, so if you just want that look, they’re a great option.

Finally, on jewellery, I was wasting time in Selfridges and stumbled into Gentle Monster. They’re known for their eccentric designs, so I was intrigued. I’m also trying to invest in nice frames so I can actually wear my prescription glasses more. I settled on the Origami frames and I love them. They’re very Marmite, but I’ve had people stop me in the street to ask about them, and those are the opinions that matter to me.

On the skincare front, things have been very boring. I would say I don’t actually have a solid routine at all right now. The two things that stand out are the Biodance face masks and the Palmer’s Foot Magic. I love a face mask and I find the Biodance ones actually sink into my skin rather than just sit on top of it. Palmer’s Foot Magic is genuinely magic. I have the driest feet, but this is just about the only product that properly smooths them out.

The final thing I’ve been loving is the Initio Lift Me Up fragrance. I’ve never been a vanilla girl, but recently the majority of my fragrances have been. Maybe it’s the softening happening to me. But it has to be a specific vanilla, a grown vanilla. Initio make very grown fragrances and they’ve managed to fuse vanilla into that in a way I really appreciate. It’s very versatile, something you can wear day and night without it ever feeling overpowering or offensive, even to yourself.

Hope you feel sexy this week,

Jéssica x

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Dear you,

I used to pretend I only spoke English

I would hear my parents’ accents and feel my stomach tighten. I would answer for them in shops. I would correct their pronunciation too quickly. I thought I was helping. I was distancing myself

At school, I denied everything

Denied that I spoke Portuguese. Denied that my house sounded different, that it smelled of food my friends wouldn’t recognise

When the jokes came, I laughed

African. Polish. Indian. Foreign

I laughed so they wouldn’t look at me too long. I laughed so I could control it. If I joined in, maybe it wouldn’t stick to me. Maybe I could be adjacent to the joke instead of inside it

You live in translation

At home, you’re on the phone to British Gas at 11 years old, pretending you understand tariffs and direct debits. You’re translating letters with red writing across the top. You’re explaining council tax before you fully understand what it is. You’re topping up a Lyca SIM so your parents can call home

You’re a child learning the language of responsibility too early

At school, you pretend none of that exists

You smooth your vowels. You edit your lunch, your stories, your reactions. You create a version of yourself that feels easier to digest

Parents evening is the collision

The teacher meets your parents. Your friends see your home life. The two worlds you’ve worked so hard to keep separate stand side by side in a sports hall

You watch your parents trying

Trying to pronounce things correctly. Trying to sound confident. Trying to appear as though they belong in that room as much as anyone else

And instead of pride, you feel heat rise up your neck

As a child, I was impatient

“Why can’t they just figure it out? Why is everything harder for us? Why can’t we just be like everyone else?”

I didn’t understand that “figuring it out” meant rebuilding a life from nothing. I didn’t understand what it meant to leave your language, your parents, your childhood streets, so your child could have options. I didn’t understand what it meant to send money back home every month, to split minimum wage across continents, to carry the weight of being the “rich” family abroad while still counting every pound

I didn’t understand why cousins I had never met were suddenly sleeping in my room. Why our house was always open to someone trying to find their feet. Why sacrifice wasn’t something we spoke about, but something we lived

I just knew we were different

Now it’s desired to be from somewhere else. The more layered your identity, the more interesting you become. The more languages you speak, the cooler. Heritage becomes aesthetic. Culture becomes something you place proudly in your bio

England raised me. Portugal birthed me. Cape Verde runs through me

If you’re young and split between places, I hope you take up space in all of them. I hope you pronounce your surname properly. I hope you speak your language loudly, even if you stumble. I hope you stop laughing at yourself just to stay safe

Our parents crossed oceans without certainty. They worked jobs beneath their qualifications. They built stability from scratch. They carried entire histories in their suitcases and still made sure we never felt like we were lacking. They swallowed pride so we could have choice

The least we can do is refuse to shrink

Speak your language, even if it is broken. Visit your homeland, even if you feel slightly outside of it. Learn the history, ask the questions, listen to the stories while the storytellers are still here

Don’t let assimilation erase what survival preserved

I’m proud, without hesitation, to be an immigrant. Proud of the grit it took. Proud of the quiet endurance no one applauded. Proud of every parent who swallowed humiliation and kept going. Proud of every child who learned to navigate two worlds and didn’t break. We are not a footnote in someone else’s country. We are part of its foundation.

Jéssica

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Happy Sunday!! I’m back in the UK (unfortunately) and I’m fighting jet lag, hence the lack of Unfiltered Sunday last week (sorry). Australia was everything I wanted it to be. It made me realise a lot about the way of life and forced me to reflect on the quality of life I actually want to live. My plan now is to figure out the logistics of potentially moving over, how well my job would pay out there, how often I would want to come home, immigration, all of it. I’ll talk you through my thought processes over the next few months, but for now I’m just adjusting to getting back into my normal routine. It’s 10am on Sunday and this week’s topics are:

• beach etiquette

beach etiquette

You spend most of your time in a bikini when the sun’s out in Sydney and that, to me, is entirely unremarkable. It’s heat logic. It’s geography. I like my body, I like my skin out, and I refuse the idea that either requires justification. In a place built around the beach, this should be neutral.

I think I assumed that beach cities come with a shared literacy around bodies. That when exposure is normalised, it loses its charge. That people learn how to look without taking. That assumption was generous.

Australian men had a way of looking past me, or perhaps through me, which I found myself enjoying. I felt oddly unobserved. I’m so accustomed to registering attention that its absence felt physical, like a pressure lifting. For a while, my body relaxed into that anonymity, or into the illusion of it.

That illusion broke on our penultimate day.

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We followed the same routine we had all trip. Breakfast, beach, long hours in the sun. The UV was high so we walked towards the café for food. Halfway there, two girls ran up behind us, urgent and apologetic, as if they were the ones interrupting our peace. They told us that two men were recording us. Taking pictures. Sitting still and doing it openly.

There’s a grey space men rely on. What they’re doing might not always be illegal, but it’s never accidental. That gap between the law and basic decency is where most women are expected to quietly live.

The information landed before the emotion did. My appetite disappeared. The day shifted. There’s a particular disorientation that comes with realising your body has been turned into something portable, something that can be taken away without your involvement. What unsettled me most was not just the act itself, but the idea of permanence. That my body could exist somewhere long after I had left the beach, detached from context, consent, or control.

I paused because I genuinely didn’t know what the appropriate response was meant to be. Confrontation feels futile when denial is the default. Accountability feels theoretical in a world that rarely demands it.

After a brief exchange with my friend, anger arrived with clarity. We walked over. They denied it immediately. Repeatedly. I’d seen this play out before through friends, so the script was familiar. Ask to see the phone. Check the camera roll. Check recently deleted. That is where evidence is usually buried. Worst case scenario, your image has already travelled. If you’re lucky, they offer you the phone as a bargaining chip to make the scene end.

These men were uncooperative. When it became clear that reason was not enough, I did the only thing left to me. I made it visible. Men are far more responsive to exposure than to morality. I raised my voice. It cut through the sound of the waves. I didn’t care who it disturbed.

The reaction was immediate. One of them went silent, visibly processing the fact that he was being exposed. The other tried to argue his way out, louder, defensive, indignant.

As women, we are trained to calculate risk before we calculate justice. Is this worth it? Is this safe? That calculation never surfaced for me because we were surrounded by women. The beach was full of them. There’s an unspoken solidarity that appears in moments like that. A collective recognition of the imbalance.

I didn’t feel settled afterwards. My body stayed alert. I paced, restless, unable to return to the rhythm of the day while knowing those men were still occupying the same stretch of sand. I kept circling the question of what the correct next step is meant to be. Calling the police feels disproportionate. Doing nothing feels like consent. So women are left holding the aftermath themselves.

About fifteen minutes later, they left. I can’t say why, I choose to believe the discomfort transferred. That the embarrassment lingered long enough to move them.

I’ll never know what they felt. But I know what I felt. I felt violated. I felt angry. And I felt strangely resolute. Because every time a woman refuses to stay quiet, something cracks. Maybe not enough, maybe not permanently, but enough to matter.

And I hope any woman who saw it happen saw this too. That you’re allowed to take up space. That you’re allowed to be loud. That you don’t have to keep swallowing the feeling of being watched, taken, reduced. That the beach, your body, your existence doesn’t come with an unspoken clause.

I like to think of myself as a case study. Not because I chose to be one but because I’ve been turned into one. My social media is a mess when it comes to male engagement. I’m sexualised daily based purely on how I look.

I want to use my platform as an example. I think because I look a certain way, people don’t expect these conversations to come from me. There’s an unspoken assumption that women who are desirable should be grateful. That we exist to be looked at, not listened to. So when I speak about fear, harassment, power, and entitlement, it disrupts the fantasy.

If I already have their attention, if they’re already watching and projecting, then I want to use it. I want to hold up a mirror and show them exactly how they behave. I want to call it out in real time. If using my voice makes even one woman feel less alone, or makes one man stop and think twice, then it’s worth every second of the backlash.

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Happy Sunday chickens, I hope you’re all having the best start to the year. Things are looking up again and honestly I love how volatile these Unfiltered Sundays are. One week it’s genuinely the worst week of my life and the next, life feels worth living again. If that isn’t a glowing endorsement for journalling then I don’t know what is. Except my journal is weekly and public, which still makes me laugh. It’s 10am on Sunday and this week’s topics are:

• trauma drowning

• Hamilton

trauma drowning

When I was in Aruba last year, I briefly mentioned that I had a very near encounter with heaven while snorkelling. At the time it felt serious, genuinely scary, but as with most things in my life, I brushed it off. I did what I always do, I moved on quickly and didn’t give my body or my brain any time to process what had actually happened.

Since that incident, I hadn’t been near a body of water. Not consciously avoiding it, but also not seeking it out. I didn’t connect the dots until much later. What I did notice was that something had shifted inside me. Every time I saw videos of huge waves on TikTok, the kind that swallow people whole, my chest would tighten. My breath would feel shallow. I would scroll away quickly, like my body was reacting before my brain.

Coming to Australia forced me to confront it. There is no avoiding the ocean here. My first proper exposure was Bondi Beach and its crashing, relentless waves. I realised very quickly that what used to be my favourite thing in the world now felt like the most daunting thing I could imagine doing. Even watching my friends run into the water filled me with anxiety. I felt frozen, stuck on the sand, negotiating with myself.

My compromise was Shelley Beach, a much calmer spot where the water is flatter and the waves are gentle. It felt like a small, sensible step, and it was. Progress is still progress, even when it looks unimpressive from the outside. But the fear was still there. The moment I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet, my body panicked. I scurried back to shore without thinking, heart racing, adrenaline flooding my system.

It was humbling, and a little confronting. That tiny moment was confirmation that this is no longer just discomfort or nerves. I think it is trauma. Possibly PTSD. Something lodged itself in my nervous system and has been quietly running the show ever since. A part of me hates admitting that, because it feels like a silly thing to go to therapy for. But another part of me knows that I want my life back. I want to swim freely again. I want to jump off yachts this summer.

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Hamilton

I am, by nature, a stubborn girl. I like to do things when I decide to do them, not when they’re recommended, or aggressively hyped by people around me. I had known about Hamilton for years. One of my friends is absolutely obsessed with it, knows every lyric, every reference, every pause for applause. Still, I had zero desire to watch it. The more people told me I would love it, the less interested I became.

It took a 23 hour flight to Australia, total isolation, and genuinely nothing else to do for me to finally give in. Three hours of content suddenly felt like a gift rather than a commitment. So I pressed play, mostly out of boredom.

My verdict? Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius. There is no other word for it. Hamilton is so widely known for a reason, it is absolutely phenomenal. I’m not even a musical fan like that, but it takes an insane amount of talent to keep people engaged while rapping about founding fathers for three hours. The lyricism alone had me wanting to pause and write sentences down, just to remember them. It felt like pure poetry disguised as entertainment.

Halfway through, I realised I should have known I would enjoy it. Lin-Manuel Miranda also wrote Moana, which is my favourite Disney film of all time.

So this is your gentle reminder, and maybe mine too, to try new things. Sometimes the thing you are avoiding ends up being the thing that feeds you the most.

See you next Sunday x

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Dear *****,

I’ve always found friendships difficult

I value them but I learned early on that they can fracture without warning, while still pretending to be safe

My secondary school friendships were built on betrayal disguised as loyalty. People stood beside me, called themselves my friends, then broke that trust. That period created a warp in my psyche that I’m still unlearning, the belief that all friendships have an expiration date, that connection is seasonal, temporary, something to brace for rather than rest in

When I look at my life, that pattern repeats
Secondary school
Sixth form
University
Cycles of extreme closeness followed by distance

I’m aware that I am the common denominator
I sit with that honestly

I’m often ready to leave before things have the chance to fall apart. Distance gives me a sense of control. What I once believed was self sufficiency was really avoidance and lack of accountability

For a long time, I didn’t choose my friendships. I accepted whoever was around me, whoever welcomed me, whoever stayed. You were the first exception to that

You were my first real choice
My first introduction to a normal, vulnerable, female friendship
I trusted you fully
I shared everything, sometimes more than I should have
There are things I wish I could take back, not out of regret, but out of fear. Still, I choose to believe you are an honourable person who held what I gave you with care.

You met me in my most turbulent period. My growing pains. My worst moments. The version of me that was still learning how to regulate, how to communicate, how to exist. You carried a lot of that, and I know that was not easy

I want you to know that I’m still the same free spirited, fun person you knew. That part of me didn’t disappear. What changed is how I handle conflict. I talk things out now lol. I stay. I see the value in maintaining friendships. I don’t put unstable men above people I can count on

People often ask what actually happened between us, and the truth is I never know how to answer

What stopped me from wanting to reconcile was seeing you befriend someone you knew would hurt me. When I realised you were friends, all I could think was that you knew all my weakest points. My thoughts. My fears. My vulnerabilities. It felt like a conflict of interest. I didn’t know your intentions, or what that proximity meant, given how things ended between us

To me, it felt like a clear message. A matter of loyalty. A betrayal. Maybe you didn’t think it was that serious. Maybe it could have been a conversation. But in that moment, it felt deliberate, and I chose not to fight for something that suddenly felt compromised

I know I may be placing too much importance on my role in your life. That’s my perspective, not an objective truth. But perspective still shapes pain. I don’t know your side of the story either

This letter may explain my disappearance, or it may simply be an attempt at closure. I’m not too sure tbh

We’re both on our own paths now. We have likely outgrown the versions of each other we once knew. That feels human, and I am at peace with it

I don’t hope for anything specific in the future but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t still hurt. I’m not losing sleep over it but it does cross my mind sometimes. What lingers is not anger, but confusion. Questions more than resentment

This isn’t pressure for a reopening
Just an acknowledgement

I hope life is working out for you. Genuinely

Jéssica

Friendships shape us. They teach us how safe we’re allowed to be, how much of ourselves we are permitted to bring into a room. When they end without explanation, the confusion can linger longer than the connection ever did.

If you’re carrying an unsent letter to someone who once mattered, you’re allowed to put it down. Or write it. Or tear it up halfway through.

Happy Sunday gang (it’s now Monday). This week has been so emotionally taxing that I genuinely don’t know where to begin. I’m still on the other side of the world, yet somehow trouble has found a way to reach me anyway. It’s 10am on Sunday and this week’s topics are:

• grief

• girlhood

grief

I’ve had the privilege, some would say, of never truly experiencing grief in my 26 years of life. It’s something I know is pending, inevitable even, and no matter how much I try to mentally prepare for it, it remains completely unpredictable. I have pets, ageing parents, and the quiet understanding that life can change without warning. As erratic yet dismissive as I can be, my own reaction is what scares me the most. Will it flatten me, or will I simply add it to the ever growing queue of things I’m suppressing? To be continued, thankfully.

All this to say, this week I received news that gave me a glimpse into how I might actually respond when faced with something serious. One of the closest people in my life told me they have the big, scary C word. It’s at a very early stage, very treatable, and action is already being taken. I’m writing this from a much calmer place, because when I first heard it I was completely all over the shop. My default response was to compartmentalise and distract, distract, distract. No amount of reassurance can stop something like that from feeling huge. Your life flashes before your eyes, even though it’s not happening directly to you.

I once wrote about the presumed regret I would feel if something were to happen and I had not done what I could, when I could. This scare was all I needed to finally understand that feeling. I probably could have done with a smaller wake up call, but maybe I wouldn’t have listened. Maybe it had to be this serious. It has only been a few days, yet I already see a shift in my behaviour. I don’t want to live in the “what if” space anymore.

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girlhood

Or maybe the lack thereof.

Speaking of regret, I regretted a moment this week.

We were on the bus to Bondi, sat at the back, 1 boy and 8 girls. The boy was with his girlfriend, both around twenty. They were very clearly in the middle of some sort of domestic, later confirmed by her tears and her attempts to communicate with him. He kept insisting she stop talking. If you have ever been in a toxic relationship, you know the silence I’m describing. The one where the insults are muttered just quietly enough that no one else can hear. The strange protection that comes from having an audience, because you know once you’re alone, it will be worse.

All 8 of us girls knew exactly what was happening, yet none of us did anything beyond exchanging looks. A few even laughed when he called her a bitch. I can’t sit here and say I’m better than any of them, because I also didn’t stand up for her. The only difference is that I didn’t mock her. Suddenly everyone had so much to say. “I would never put up with that.” “Ah young love haha.” Comments delivered from a so called wiser standpoint, when in reality we were all just cowards.

I felt ashamed of all of us. I still feel a lot of regret for not stepping in, for letting fear dictate my silence. Even afterwards, when the other women continued mocking her, I could have said something. I didn’t. Part of my lack of confidence comes from a fear of not being able to articulate myself properly. I have a hot head, and when I don’t know how to say something calmly, I default to insults. That isn’t how I want to handle situations, but it is also not an excuse.

I keep thinking about how a small comment, a moment of solidarity from any one of us, might have changed the trajectory of her day, or even her life.

What this week really left me with is an uncomfortable knowing. Knowing how quickly life can wobble. Knowing how easily I freeze when something feels too big. Knowing that wanting to be better and actually being better are two very different things.

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Happy Sunday and hello from the land down under 🦘🇦🇺 I’ve been in the Australian countryside for a few days now and it has been genuinely refreshing in a way I did not realise I needed. I fear it has put the British countryside to shame, which feels almost traitorous to admit. There’s something about the vastness here that feels grounding and disorienting at the same time. I’ll do a full Australia debrief once I’ve finished travelling, because there’s a lot to process and I want to give it the attention it deserves.

My mind has been unusually present these past few days. I’ve been where my feet are. Because of that, when I sat down to write this, only two things came to mind. It’s 10am on Sunday and this week’s topics are:

• fear of rejection

• megalophobia

fear of rejection

I can’t remember how much I’ve spoken about my fear of rejection, but I know I’ve touched on my tendency to stay where I feel safe. I like comfort. I like familiarity. I like knowing where I stand with people. What I’m less good at is risking the parts of myself that might make someone uncomfortable.

This week, I was forced to confront that fear with a friend. She’s one of the newer friends I’ve made, which means we’re in that delicate stage of moving from friendly to real. The stage where honesty starts to matter more. I need depth in my friendships. Surface level connections make me restless, yet they’re also where I feel safest. I don’t know how to exist comfortably in the in between.

We were talking properly and she asked me to share something I thought she wouldn’t like hearing. A simple question on the surface, but my body reacted as if I was being threatened. I had an internal battle that lasted a full ten minutes. My chest felt tight and compressed. There was a physical block in my throat. Tears started rolling down my face before I could even understand why.

The answer itself was simple. The fear attached to it was not.

All I could think was that once she heard it, she might not want to be my friend anymore. That I would be quietly reclassified in her mind. That fear overrode my need to be honest, even though honesty is something I say I value deeply. In the end, another friend had to say it on my behalf because I physically couldn’t get the words out.

And then nothing happened. The world didn’t end. There was no awkward fallout. No shift. She’s still my friend.

Sitting with that afterwards felt strange. Almost anticlimactic. It made the root of the fear painfully obvious. It’s not rejection in general that scares me. It’s the fear that once someone sees the real me, not the edited version, they will decide I’m not worth staying for.

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megalophobia

This one is slightly unhinged, but bear with me.

While hiking in what felt like a jungle here in Australia, we came across trees unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Towering, ancient, overwhelming in their presence. Instead of feeling awe, my body reacted with discomfort. I felt nauseous. I started gagging. I couldn’t look at certain ones for too long.

It was such an odd reaction that I almost laughed at myself. Then I remembered that large ships also make me feel this way. Standing next to them fills me with the same deep, physical unease.

It’s not fear in the traditional sense. It feels more like an existential response. My brain can’t comprehend how something in front of me can exist at that scale. How it has been there long before me and will remain long after. How small and temporary I suddenly feel in comparison.

How insignificant. How fragile. Standing there among those trees, I felt humbled and unsettled at the same time.

Being in Australia feels like a reset so i’m going to take this time away to do things I enjoy and hope you guys have a fabulous week tooooo!!!

Jéssica x

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Happy first Sunday of the year!! What a blessing it is that we all made it here, into another year and together. You might notice a shift in my tone and that’s because I feel like I have a new lease of life. This year I’m choosing to tap into my Sagittarius optimism, the kind that believes things can work out even when there’s no proof yet. It’s 10am on Sunday, the year is still fresh, and this week’s topics are:

• Australia

• karma doesn’t exist

Australia

Starting the year as far away from everything I know feels like the perfect way to begin. You might remember me mentioning Australia months ago and now the time has finally come. Next week I’m heading to the land down under for the first time and I can’t lie, I’m really looking forward to it, especially while the UK prepares for yet another bout of cold and grey.

Last year I skipped this trip with my best friend because it just didn’t feel like the right time. This year it feels oddly aligned. I think I want to throw myself into the unknown a little more in 2026 and Australia feels like the perfect balance of familiar and daunting. It’s only really daunting because it’s far away and the animals are named after other animals. Other than that, I’m with people I know, they drive on the same side of the road and the weather is on my side.

More than anything, I hope this trip expands me. I want to meet people, lean into nature, be present, and come back feeling refreshed and inspired to actually show up for my life at home. I’m not trying to run away from my real life anymore. I want to improve it so I don’t feel the urge to constantly escape through extreme holidays or temporary distractions. I want to know more about the world and in turn, know more about myself. I want new interests, new references, new ways of thinking. I really believe travel does that, it reminds you that your front porch is not the whole story.

After Australia, I’m planning to live in a European city for a few weeks. Not to holiday, but to adapt. To restart. I’ve realised how comfortable I’ve been for most of my life, and how often I avoid putting myself out there because I’m afraid of being alone or rejected. When you travel knowing you’re going home soon, you never fully surrender to the experience. But if I tell myself I’m staying, even temporarily, I hope it draws something new out of me. So who knows, I might end up in your city.

And on that note, if you have any Sydney recommendations, pleaseeee reply to this.

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Karma does not exist

Or at least, not in the way we like to romanticise it.

I don’t think karma has the success rate we claim it does. I think we like to believe in it because it gives us comfort. It reassures us that there’s something out there keeping score, standing up for us when we are too tired, too hurt, or too proud to do it ourselves. It strokes our ego and softens the blow of loss, especially in romantic situations.We hear it all the time. He will regret it. Someone will break his heart. His next girlfriend will be awful.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but sometimes that moment never comes. Sometimes their life does improve without you. Sometimes they get the pretty girlfriend, the peaceful life. Sometimes they never think of you again. And if you’re waiting on their punishment to feel free, you might be waiting forever.

The danger of believing too heavily in karma is that it keeps you emotionally tethered. You’re still watching, still hoping, still outsourcing your closure. You’re not releasing yourself. Real freedom comes from accepting that life is not always fair and choosing to move anyway. Closure doesn’t arrive through cosmic justice, it arrives when you decide to stop checking the scoreboard and start building a life that feels good regardless of how theirs turns out.

Maybe karma exists. Maybe it doesn’t.

This weeks random finds:

Jéssica x