I would come to learn, though she would never tell you this herself, that she is a medicine woman. She has the capacity to see beyond what is obvious to the eye through body work, breath work, and other secret gifts from somewhere ancient and old and she uses them to create change physically, emotionally, energetically and spiritually.

Amanda also has a gift with food. She is an alchemist in the kitchen.

She has cooked for me on retreats for six years, nourishing me and my guests from the inside, out. She transforms simple ingredients into divine offerings and whenever we sit at her table, taste buds dance and vocal chords vibrate in harmonious song. Ahhhhhh… mmmmm… ohhhh myyyy goddddd!

With every plate, guests ask, ‘Do you have a cookbook so I can make this at home?’ to which she has always replied, ‘I’m working on it’.

I am so thrilled to share that Eat Like You’re on Retreat is available this spring! I had the privilege of editing this gorgeous cookbook (so if there’s any mistakes you can blame me) and took liberty to celebrate Amanda by writing the foreword for her book. Pre-orders are open with a sneak peak recipe that drops into your inbox when your order one, or many, copies.

To celebrate and gather, Amanda is hosting Return to the Table - a three night retreat at a stunning venue 45 minutes northwest of Coffs Harbour 9-12th October, 2026.

This is an invitation to slow down, breathe deeply, cook with your hands, share beautiful food around the table and reconnect with the simple rituals that restore us. Over four nourishing days, we’ll cook meals from her cookbook together, explore seasonal Australian produce, share long-table meals, move, rest, laugh and create space for restoration.

I’ll be there to support her, to celebrate the birth of this beautiful cookbook and to get my hands dirty in the kitchen. I am so looking forward to eating with her again.

Single or twin share rooms are available and several pricing options to suit your budget. The retreat is all inclusive of accommodation, meals, experiences, offerings, and a copy of her cookbook.

The venue has a swimming pool, tennis courts, kayaks and dam, bush walks, birdlife and plenty of space to lounge around if that’s what your heart needs. It will be a gathering of women for the sake of celebration.

You’re invited!

You can learn more about it and book your spot here. Or, if you can’t make it, order your copy of her cookbook here.

I tasted freedom

When I sat on the plane

And had eight hours to myself

Three movies in a row

And meals served on my lap

I stood at the back to stretch

And peed when I wanted because

I didn’t have to worry

About a small human beside me

Who asked questions and fretted

About turbulence and delays and microwaved meals

So I could be thrust

Into a world I had not known

The loss of the tether

That contained me at home

Was left before I boarded a plane

Where I felt so free.

I tasted freedom

When I placed my feet on slippery rocks

And waded myself into cool water

And caught the torrent

From the waterfall

The whitewash pushing me beneath the surface

Knowing it would spit me out

Careless for the locals who laughed at me

Unaware I was doing it deliberately

Because it made me smile

I grabbed one of the young girls’ hands

And she hauled me up

To stand on top of the jumping rock

She grabbed my arm and said ‘Okay?’

When we launched off the four metre drop

And we did it again and again

While I taught her new words

Like ‘Jump’ and ‘One two three’

And we played, her and me

Where I felt so free.

I tasted freedom

On the back of a bike

My arms outstretched

I closed my eyes and let the wind

Rush past my ears

As we drove across, down and around mountains

On winding roads

With the clouds beneath,

I felt like a bird in flight

And smiled as I sat

With the pain in my knees

From squatting on the

Back of the bike

Where I felt so free.

I tasted freedom

In a cooking class

Making foods with ingredients I love

With strangers from places I’d never been

We chopped and grated and stirred

And laughed and played in a kitchen

Like a family might

Then I drank a beer, for the first time in years,

With a man from France

Who asked me out

And we talked until late

In a dingy bar until

He walked me back to my hotel

And I said goodnight

Though he hugged me longer than he needed to

And I went to bed

With no one to check on, or tuck in,

Or prepare a lunch for the following day

Asleep in the hotel

Where I felt so free.

I tasted freedom

In a dodgy room

In a darkened street

In a mountain town

Somewhere in the north of Vietnam

Singing Bohemian Rhapsody

With the lass from Austria

At the top of our lungs

Because that’s what you do

When Queen comes on

We sang in tune and each took turns

Singing the parts we’d both learned

Sometime ago, in countries afar

That start with Aust-

Microphones pressed against our lips

We sang until we were out of breath

Then I was driven back to my room

Where the rain sang me to sleep

Into dreams of worlds I’d not yet known

But was coming to love

In the mountains

Where I felt so free.

I tasted freedom

When a flash of light

Woke me up before the sun rose

A quiet ocean beneath our boat

A twinkle of light from the cruise close by

But it was 4am as I looked out the window

And saw a storm smashing in the distance

Above me, a blackened sky

Quiet and cloud free

A lightening storm on display behind the limestone mountains

I grabbed my journal and threw on some shorts

And ran up the stairs to the top deck

I lay on the wooden floor of the overnight ship

And watched the purple blazon sky

Display a show Netflix can’t provide

Flashes of light, zaps of lightening,

Clouds whitened by electricity flashing

And then the sun began to shine

And I watched in silence

Just me and the changing sky

Where I felt so free.

I tasted freedom

Walking down streets

Without sidewalks and pavements

Unfit for a cane

My arm free of a tiny hand

That relies on me to guide the way.

I skipped over puddles

Ran in the rain

Sat beside lakes and drew ancient temples

I dodged cars and trucks and scooters

And stores on wheels

Where you could buy anything you wanted

I watched women dancing at 6am

Street food sizzling and fans fanning

I carefully stepped over railway tracks

And broken roads she couldn’t tackle

To roam and get lost

To walk against traffic

And trust that I could avoid

A deathly collision

On the streets of Hanoi

Where I felt free.

Just me.

Rags, once bed sheets, are mounted beneath cemented walls,

Now a makeshift window, that hang, wet in the humid skies

Four men, shirtless in thongs,

Construction titles against their names

Without the safety measures one might expect

Necessary for working in such crumbly conditions

They squat in a line, atop a hill of broken bricks,

In rolled up jeans and rags across their sweated foreheads

Each one with their little finger jammed up their noses

A woman walks down the hectic street

In her Donald Duck pyjamas and a pair of high heels

The lady behind her, hobbles to the bus stop

On a busted leg with piece of wood grasped in her arthritic hand

She struggles to mount the rubble of rubbish and old walls

Beneath the hundreds of powerlines

Mixed up and hung high above wooden poles

That are surely hazardous

In the rain that’s about to fall

I can’t make out which black electricity-producing cable

Feeds what building

And yet the city is bright and alight

And the bus stop sign loosely hangs from a piece of string

Above her head.

There are as many scooters as there are bodies

Often they’re on the wrong side of the road

Need to turn? Turn.

Need to cross? Cross.

Care not for the oncoming stream of motorised vehicles

They will adjust their course to make way for your

Travel route requirements.

People mounted on bikes, heads free of helmets

Or helmets free of clasping

Hands full of phones

With fingers busy scrolling

It’s a wonder to me how I never, once,

Saw anyone crash

A man has three kids squished into his back

The youngest lucky if she’s been plucked

From the breast of her mother

Her head turned, her tiny hands wrapped around

The slightly older sibling in front of her.

A man stands at the intersection

With a barber behind him, cutting his har

Beside the cop who’s parked his scooter

Beneath the bridge where he happily loses himself

In his phone

While the woman behind him sweeps the dust

From one pile to another

Proud, nonetheless, in this filthy city,

She does her part to keep her

Concrete tidy.

My limousine driver,

Which is just, to be clear, a 12 seater bus,

Throws his rubbish out the window

And the wind catches it

Sending it up to the washing hanging on the second floor

Of a building that looks like it’s been abandoned

For 100 years.

A guy carries his freshly cut poodle

Under its front legs

And hovers its ass above the ground

So it can pee on the side of the road

Just as a guy flies buy on his scooter

With a 12 foot ladder jockey strapped to his back

Which is less concerning than the large pig I’d seen

The day before in the mountains.

I know we are getting closer to the Old Quarter

When we speed past the beautiful mosaic wall

That tells stories of culture and community

And triumph in tiny coloured squares

But my eyes dart to a guy who sits on it -

His shirt rolled and tucked under his tits

With his sweating belly exposed

And a durry in his mouth.

I am landmarked to the souvenir store

Getting closer to my hotel

And I watch a grandmother help a baby

Eat a sausage on a stick

And the I watch the traffic lights count down

90 seconds from green, before they switch to red

And red counts down to give the signal to go.

A wave of bikes moves towards us

One of which is playing music

And has an entire retail store on its back

A large umbrella shading the woman

Who gently rides down the narrow street

With t-shirts and shorts and bags

And fans and fans and fans

Because, goddamn it’s hot.

A garbage truck plays lullaby music

As it passes a woman who is cutting

Her friend’s toenails at the front of a shop

And a fat white guy in a Bintang singlet

Wipes the sweat off his top lip

And takes a swig of his Hanoi beer.

There is a child

That lives inside me

Whose eyes widen

At the sight of a full moon

Glowing afar in the

Midnight sky.

She gasps when a shooting star

Sprays across the

Blackened night

And smiles at the sight of

The sun sparkling like

Diamonds

On the surface of the ocean

When the hue behind the

Beaming star

Is the perfect kind of blue.

She lives inside my body

That is softer, larger,

A little droopier

With bumps and hairs in places

They never used to be

She notices a tightening

And a feeling that it’s slowing down

But she never once took her foot off the

Accelerator

This body that holds her

Can still touch its toes

And get off the floor without hands

Unlike most middle aged women

She knows.

She still scrambles up rocks

And screams as she leaps

From ten metre platforms donned

With signs that read

‘Dangerous - do not jump’.

She still handstands and cartwheels

And plays with hacky sacks

At mountain-top stops

With strangers who don’t need to speak

The same language

Because play is universal

And moving our bodies

Like kids don’t hesitate

To do

Is the best thing I can think of

To kill twenty minutes

Before we ride into the clouds

Again.

She still laughs at farts

And stretches her arms wide

Because she feels like she’s flying

As she rides on the back of a motorbike

Along mountain sides

Where indigenous children

Naked, and poor,

Wave to her

With smiles richer

Than anything she’s seen before.

She sings her heart out

At karaoke

Not in need of a drop of alcohol to have

Such fun with the younger ones

Even though one of them thought

She was the mother of the adult woman

Who sang beside her

Yes. It’s true. Two decades between us

I could have, in fact, birthed that human

Into existence

But the child inside me

Plays with the child in her

And I scoff at his suggestion

That I am old enough to be anything

Other than a little person

That refuses to don a raincoat

Because the feeling of warm rain on my skin

Makes me feel so goddamn alive.

She wraps her arms around the neck

Of her driver

And pretends to choke him

After he spins her around

Having lovingly buckled her helmet

Under her chin

And suddenly kicks into the back of her knees

So she collapses

Unexpectedly

They both erupt in laughter

Because the child inside him

Saw the child in her

And their humour cut through

A thousand unspoken words

Because of

Language barriers.

She laughs until she cries

At her own stupid jokes

And let’s the rush of a roaring

Waterfall

Suck her under its whitewash

And spit her out

After sliding down its smooth

And bumpy rocks -

A smile on her face

As the local teenagers

Point and laugh

Unaware that I would do it

Again and again

Because the water feels like

Home

And who doesn’t like a wedgie

After your body slips down

Nature’s playground?

So I tend to her;

The child inside

And give her time

To play

As her body ages

She is forever young

And free.

And when the world makes space

To invite her

To take the driver’s seat

In her middle aged vessel

I feel more alive

Than any younger years

In this body

Could ever make

Me

Feel.

I got scammed by a 7 year old

In the Old Quarter of Hanoi

I was smiling

Clapping

To the people dancing

Cha cha

Rumba

Hips swaying and swinging

Bodies twirling and

Shoulders shimmying

Fluorescent toys

Whizzed into the blackened canopy above

A quick pull on the cord

And the children’s faces

Lit up

Like the sky

The moon aglow

Cloudless, finally

The smog lifted but

Stars were no where to be seen

And then-

‘Excuse me, madam!

Can I practice my English?’

Was it written in my forehead,

Somewhere displayed

That my native tongue was

The one she wanted?

Large brown eyes

Perfect black silken hair

Her friends beside her, faces curious

A little nervous.

‘English?’ I ask

‘Of course!’

‘What is your name?’ she says,

Perfectly.

I reply.

We exchange pleasantries and she wonders if I’ve been to Ha Long Bay

I had.

We learn

About each other

They learn three languages

Taekwondo

Love to sing and do ballet

She whips her leg up beside her ear

And I cheer, remembering when I once

Could do the same

‘I was a ballet teacher’ I confess

To which she earnestly cheers

She spins around and points to her hair

A blue cotton scrunchie wrapped around her ponytail

‘Oh I love it!’ I say

She whips her backpack around to her chest

Opens it up and and thrusts its contents in my face

‘I’m selling them. $25000 Vietnamese Dong. No. $30’

I show her a photo of my daughter

And tell her to choose one for her

I reach into my bag and give her $40k -

$2.17 at the current exchange rate -

Because how does one deny a child

Pittance?

I walk off, knowing I was scammed

And not caring one little bit.

But as I stroll through the night markets

A thought enters my mind -

What if someone was fishing in my backpack

While she was wooing me with her linguistic genius?

I whip my bag around to my chest

And thrust the contents of its insides into my face

Momentarily terrified that my passport or money were gone …

They were not.

Thank god.

I sigh

Just a scrunchie on top of my water bottle

From the moment I was scammed

And I promise to make sure I am

More careful

The next time I’m approached

By someone I need to bend down to

Talk to.

I was inspired by this new world to write poetry. So this week, leading into my birthday, I share them with you.

Good morning Vietnam!

Fuck.

It’s hot.

6am and a thickness not dissimilar to molasses

Smudges its way into my energy body.

Do not apply moisturiser

Unless you’ve got time to sit beneath the aircon and let it soak in

For it will otherwise slip off your face the minute you’ve strolled but a few metres down the narrow roads

And it runneth down between your tits

That are somehow now the size of coconuts

And not the fried eggs you’ve always known.

The lake at the edge of the Old Quarter is a hive of activity -

Thousands of bodies

Wet with sweat

And not a single fuck given

Dripping and soaking in the saturated salt of their insides.

Community is rich

So many old people dancing

Literally dancing.

Tai chi

Cycling

Ball games

Walking

It took me a solid ten minutes to realise I was walking in the opposite direction around the lake to the hoards of people flowing like water, the other way

I couldn’t un-see it once I knew

And felt like a cancer disturbing the balance

But to walk against the flow meant I could see it all coming at me

- a tsunami of humans

Individual little brown blobs with limbs and hips and feet moving and slapping, shaking and tapping

Shifting energy with Hoola Hoops and jumps and paddles

A tennis court, of sorts, in the middle of an intersection, white lines marked,

And shirtless men hit a ball over an invisible net.

There is an unending stream of movement that has no beginning, nor end. I cannot tell where it started, or what time

The city is alive before the world I am from is usually awake

And yet, on the corner, an old man squats, barely a blink of an eye lid

A stillness so considered, juxtaposed against the backdrop of mopeds that fly past him

It’s an organised chaos

Do not, at any point, hesitate when crossing the road

Commit. Go. Do not stop.

Be one with the flow

But watch your step

Pot holes and rubbish and bikes

And little old ladies sitting side by side in the gutter fanning themselves while rice cooks on the pavement and bananas are suffocating under Gladwrap neatly packed on styrofoam plates.

A town thriving in age

Of buildings worn, and bodies tired

I wonder how the woman with the limp gets up the three stories to her apartment where her clothes have been hand washed and hung to dry in the wet air on her tiny balcony.

It’s hard to believe any of it was once new.

It’s filthy. And I miss the sky blue.

I’ve not seen grass.

But the unfamiliar trees and the pops of colour from flowers

And the women dancing in synchronicity, arms choreographed to be above their heads as they shimmy their hips to an American pop song at 6:05am

Makes me smile.

I was hiking the southern NSW coastline from Kiama to Gerringong on a walk my friend had organised. The woman beside me, a past yoga student and fellow special needs mother, was telling me about a trip she’s taking next year with her best friend, hiking the Camino trail in France. I could hear the excitement in her voice and I was equally excited for her. She wasn’t just talking about a future trip; she was already carrying the joy of it.

Then she asked me,

“What are you looking forward to?”

And I was floored. I didn’t have an answer.

I was reminded of another question years earlier, when my daughter asked, innocently, “What are your hobbies?” and I realised I didn’t have any.

There were plenty of things I enjoyed - swimming, walking, being in nature, cooking - but they felt more like ingredients for good health than hobbies. Her question opened a door. I started trying new things to see whether any would stick: piano lessons, charcoal drawing, Jiu Jitsu, art lessons, singing classes and a handful of other pursuits over the next few months and years. None of them lasted, but I enjoyed the process of giving things a go and learning new things.

Now, years later, another simple question had cracked something open.

Just a month before that hike, we had brought our puppy, Figgy, into our lives. Instead of feeling joy, I cried every day for the first two months. I was grieving the loss of freedom and feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for another living being.

I dropped the puppy and my daughter at my parents as the hike was a last-minute escape from puppy duty, which was stirring up old wounds around solo parenting, isolation and lack of support. Figgy triggered so many unprocessed feelings about my role as a single mother and the burden of care I had to carry on my tired shoulders for almost twenty years. You can listen to these stories on my podcast here and here.

The fresh air, rolling green hills, vast ocean, distant whale spouts and sea breeze softened some of the exhaustion and the constant thoughts of ‘What have I done?’ that had been looping through my head since she’d arrived. The woman’s question hung in the air.

I scanned the rest of 2026 in my mind. I had no trip. No retreat. No adventure. My traditional long weekend away with friends was cancelled. Nothing was sitting on the horizon that made my heart lift. I had been swamped by feelings of sadness, resistance to the puppy’s presence and concerns for how I could ever do anything outside of the home ever again.

Why this matters?

Research suggests that anticipation is an important contributor to wellbeing. Psychologists have found that we often derive as much happiness from anticipating an experience as we do from the experience itself. Having something meaningful to look forward to can increase motivation, hope and resilience. It gives the mind a future point to lean into during difficult seasons. In many ways, anticipation is a form of emotional nourishment.

But there is another side to this.

If we are always living for the next holiday, the next achievement, the next relationship, the next thing, we can miss the life unfolding in front of us. Mindfulness research shows that wellbeing improves when we bring our attention to the present moment instead of constantly replaying the past or rehearsing the future.

I had spent over a decade on my yoga mat learning the art of presence, and the importance of feeling and holding life in its moments, and sharing these teachings with students in my classes, workshops and retreats.

As we walked over the hills, I thought about this and wondered if, perhaps, the goal isn’t choosing between looking forward and being present. What if it is learning to hold both?

To have something that excites us in the distance while remaining awake to what is here now.

Ironically, this was exactly what Figgy was teaching me. While I was wishing away the hard days, wondering how I could give her back or fantasising about a future where things felt easier, she dragged me back into the present:

• Early morning walks

• The softness of her fur

• Her unconditional love, despite my unexpected anger

• The warmth of a sleeping puppy curled beside me while I watched my favourite show

• Conversations with strangers in the streets

• And making new friends

Figgy doesn’t care about next year. She doesn’t care about my plans or whether I have anything exciting booked into my calendar. She only cares about this moment. Just like Mackenzie, who is rooted into a firm sense of here and now and has asked me, over and over again, to the do the same.

Recently, I looked back through photos from those early puppy weeks. She was impossibly cute - tiny paws, oversized ears, sleepy eyes. And I realised something uncomfortable: I wasn’t able to appreciate her then because I was so focused on surviving, so desperate for things to get easier, and I missed much of that fleeting stage while I was looking forward to the next one.

Those photos felt like a gentle reminder. Sometimes the moment we are trying to rush through becomes the moment we later wish we had inhabited more fully.

That is why the question lingered long after the hike ended.

Not because life should be spent chasing the next thing, but because hope matters. Anticipation matters. Creating experiences that light us up matters.

But equally important is another question: What am I already living that I might one day look back on and miss?

Maybe a meaningful life requires both. A horizon to walk towards and the presence to notice the wildflowers beneath our feet.

A week after the hike, the universe seemed to answer the question before I had fully answered it myself.

A dear friend from New Zealand who I met at my pregnancy group 18 years ago messaged to say she was coming to visit later in the year. Suddenly there was warm hugs, connection and long-overdue conversations to look forward to.

And then, in an unexpected twist of fate, I booked Figgy into a board and train program so I can feel supported with managing her development and goals of becoming an assistance dog. In her absence, I have booked a solo trip to Vietnam. The anticipation has already begun: unfamiliar streets, new tastes, different rhythms and the possibility of discovering something unexpected about myself along the way. I have never travelled alone to a foreign country. It both terrifies and excites me.

Then came an invitation to support my writing mentor on a writers’ retreat in Queenstown in 2027. The thought of spending time with writers, immersed in stories, creativity and words, is always such a gift. Having completed my memoir with Joanne’s support, I know the power of immersive writing experiences. 27 of Joanne’s writers have published their books and there are only a few spots left on this experience.

6 night writer’s retreat in Queenstown 29th Jan - 4th Feb 2027

You can view the full PDF here or contact Joanne for more info: joanne@joannefedler.com

All these things have reminded me that looking forward to something doesn’t require an extraordinary life. Sometimes it is simply creating small points of light on the horizon - tiny markers that remind us there are new experiences, meaningful connections and unexpected adventures waiting for us.

Maybe a meaningful life requires both - the excitement of what is coming and gratitude for what is already here.

When I think back to that question now, I no longer sit in silence. I have an answer.

So I’ll ask you the same question to you:

What are you looking forward to?

Not the things you think you should be looking forward to or the things everyone else is excited about. What genuinely lights you up when you think about the weeks and months ahead? A holiday, a catch-up with a friend, a course you’ve been wanting to take, a book waiting on your bedside table. Or perhaps, like me, you realise there is nothing sitting on the horizon right now.

If that’s the case, maybe this is your invitation to create something small and meaningful that gives your heart a little lift when you think about it.

And then if you close your eyes, take a breath, and take an opportunity to see what is already here: the people, places, moments and even the unexpected challenges that one day you may look back on with tenderness, perhaps you’ll be able to see that you are already living a meaningful life. Even if it doesn’t feel like it.

I have been seeking self-understanding and healing my unconscious and conscious body, heart, mind and spirit for well over a decade using a host of modalities such as yoga, meditation, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Matrix Reimprinting, holotropic, shamanic and rebirthing breathwork, chiropractic care, reiki energy healing, Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) , sound healing and plant medicine, to name a few.

I have also guided my daughter with these tools and they have provided fertile opportunity for us to heal, recalibrate, understand ourselves and find peace within, despite the chaos of being a human being.

In the past two years I’ve also introduced Kinesiology to my basket of tools when I met the most wonderful woman and healer, Claire from Qi Kinesiology, who is multi-modality trained. Claire is based in the North West of Sydney and offers face to face and online sessions using a personally developed approach to helping people and animals shift stagnant energy, clear mental blockages, understand and rewire core beliefs, reconnect misconnections in the brain, body and heart, create new neurological pathways, and, ultimately, help you feel better within yourself.

She offers a fusion service that includes holistic kinesiology, Mind Body Medicine, meditation, channelling, intuition, access bars, hyponosis, NET, Neuro Organisation Technique and Lifeline Technique and let me tell you - her work is life altering in the most magical ways.

Every moment we have ever experienced is stored in our cellular memory.

Information we store and hold and experience in our body and mind can be inherited through the intergenerational lineage, meaning something we are experiencing in our bodies or minds such as a belief, a fear, or a physical symptom, might have come from a parent, grandparent or, even older, from our ancestral pathway.

From laboratory work on rats and intense studies on survivors from the Holocaust, we have learnt that inherited trauma exists. There’s a great book written by Mark Wolynn called ‘It Didn’t Start with You’ if this sparks curiosity.

We also know, spoken about in Bessel Van der Kolk’s book ‘The Body Keeps the Score’, that trauma is stored in the body and nervous system. His work suggests that when someone goes through overwhelming stress, especially when they can’t fully process or escape it, the body can stay stuck in survival mode. Long after the event is over, the nervous system may react as if danger is happening in the present moment. This can show up as things like:

• chronic tension or pain

• anxiety or hypervigilance

• numbness or shutdown

• digestive issues

• emotional overwhelm

• feeling disconnected from the body or emotions

In the path of intergenerational trauma, you can experience symptoms on behalf of someone else who experienced the traumatic event, first hand.

Healing can happen through the body by using somatic therapies that address the energetic imprint when the body and nervous system begin to feel safe enough to come out of survival mode.

Because trauma lives in the body’s reactions, sensations, and nervous system patterns, healing often involves approaches that help people reconnect with their bodies, regulate their nervous systems, and process emotions physically as well as mentally – the list of modalities I shared earlier can be a great place to start to looking at the imprint of trauma in the body.

It’s important to note that trauma does not have to be something catastrophic. What you might perceive as a traumatic event – like having a car accident – might not be traumatic to another. According to Gabor Matè, a renowned physiatrist and author,

What he means by this is that two people can go through the same event, but their nervous systems may respond very differently depending on things such as:

• age

• support and attachment

• sensitivity

• whether they felt safe, seen, or alone

• whether the experience could be processed at the time of the event

To go a little deeper, we can also carry trauma into this life, from our own past lives. Through breathwork I have had many past life memories come up which have given me great insight into who I am, the stories and beliefs and life lessons I am learning and the patterns and behaviours I’ve carried in this life time.

In episode 5 of my little podcast, Whatever You Can Know, tilted ‘I shaved my head because of a past life’ I share a story about how I shaved my head a few years ago, and how being a Buddhist Monk in a past life was the motivation for me to do that.

Recently, I took our 3-month-old puppy, Figgy, to see our Kinesiologist. In the previous episode 29, titled ‘We got a puppy and I’ve hated every moment of it’ I share the reason behind getting a puppy, what her intended purpose is, how I don’t actually want a dog, and how her presence alone has unravelled me.

I have been in complete and utter emotional turmoil since she arrived because she has triggered a lot of emotional healing related to unprocessed suffering from being a single mother to a medically fragile and disabled child.

Although I have really struggled with Figgy being here I am still being the best doggy mother I can be to give her the best opportunity to thrive, and create the best experience for her and my daughter to connect so she can fulfil the purpose she was chosen for, which is to be an assistance dog and companion for my daughter (who is blind, intellectually delayed, autistic and anxious).

In the first few weeks I sobbed every single day and felt so undone by the pup being here. She was really unsettled, she was terrified of the crate (she had crate trauma after leaving her mum and litter and spending 4 hours in a crate on a plane), when she yapped I felt like someone was sticking needles in my ears, and I wasn’t coping with the disruption, mess and major alterations to the life I had created for me and my daughter, which was orderly and peaceful.

Both of which provide me with a sense of safety and security.

When Figgy arrived, I immediately felt like I was having a midlife crisis.

To help her, and me, through those first few weeks where I contemplated sending her back to the breeder every moment of every single day, I took her to see our kinesiologist.

Dogs are sentient beings (meaning they have the ability to feel, perceive, and experience things subjectively and have awareness of its surroundings). They are emotional, they sense and feel and connect and know danger and love. They can feel energy, better than most people, and I know Figgy was feeding off my dysregulated nervous system.

To work with Figgy, my kinesiologist used me and my body as a surrogate to speak on behalf of Figgy so we could understand what she was thinking and feeling, and help create a better experience for her, coming into our home.

Kinesiology is based on the idea that the body and nervous system respond to stress instantly, and that these responses can be observed through gentle muscle testing. In a typical session, the practitioner might ask a person to hold one arm out while they apply gentle pressure. The arm isn’t being tested for strength - it’s being used more like a communication tool or “biofeedback” system.

• when the body feels calm, balanced, or aligned with something, the muscle response stays steady. The practitioner can’t move the arm. The client sustains the arm in position.

• when the body experiences stress, overwhelm, or imbalance, the muscle response weakens or unlocks momentarily and the arm cannot hold itself against the gentle pressure.

You can use muscle testing to get feedback on things like:

• emotional stress

• physical imbalance

• energetic blocks

• foods or sensitivities

• beliefs or memories connected to stress

• Uncertainty and lack of clarity

It’s like playing detective to determine the origin of where your struggles (physically, mentally or emotionally) have taken hold and slowed down your capacity to access love, nurturance, joy , value, worth, nourishment and experience flow in your life.

With animals, kinesiologists use what’s called surrogate testing. Because animals can’t follow instructions for muscle testing, a human - often the owner - acts as the “surrogate.” The practitioner may have the person connect physically or energetically with the animal (for example by touching them or focusing on them), and then muscle test the human instead.

The belief is that the human can temporarily act as a stand-in for the animal’s energy or nervous system responses.

I know surrogate healing works because have been a surrogate for Mackenzie; either because she was absent or because the therapy we were doing was too complex for her to intellectually participate in. So I took Figgy to see Claire and I acted as a surrogate for her, and what we discovered was absolutely fascinating.

These are the five main things we discovered on Figgy’s behalf.

1. Figgy doesn’t know how to be a dog. She was taken away from her mother and litter who would have shown her and taught her how to be a dog but in their absence, she has turned to me to teach her. She sees me as the mother and the guide, but of course, I don’t know how to be a dog, so she is feeling confused.

2. Figgy doesn’t know how to connect with Mackenzie. She does not get any eye contact from Kenzie because she is blind, so she looks to her for hand signals but Kenzie stims – she shakes and flicks her hands - and due to low muscle tone and poor coordination, she doesn’t have very good control over the way she uses her hands so that confuses Figgy during training. To connect with Kenzie she launches herself onto her lap, puts her paws on her shoulders and licks her eyes. It’s like she’s saying “I’m here can you see me/feel me/notice me”.

3. Confusion over her purpose: Figgy knows she’s been chosen for a purpose but she doesn’t know what that is or how to fulfil that.

4. Heartbreak: At one point in the session I had a really heavy, fuzzy feeling across my chest so we used that somatic information to find out what Figgy was feeling and we identified that she feels abandoned and she is yearning for her mother. It was like I could hear her crying, ‘Mum! Mum! Mum!’ and the core feeling she has around this loss of familial connection is that she feels heartbroken.

5. Core belief: Figgy’s core belief is ‘I am attractive and I will be loved because of that’. She came into this life thinking she can use her attractiveness and personal magnetism to connect with others. And it is true, for the most part, that the moment anyone sees her they say “Oh my god! She’s gorgeous can I pat her?” But she has come into mine and Mackenzie’s life and neither of us care about what she looks like so she doesn’t know how to feel a sense of love from us.

She is having to change the illusion of her sense of self to fit into the narrative of what others think of her. Because she relies on her cuteness to feel loved, she has no other way to connect. Although she is beautiful, she feels like a major disruption to my life and I don’t have love for her yet so she can’t win me over with her looks. And Kenzie is blind, so her good looks don’t work on her either. And because of that, she’s unsure how to be loved which is creating an internal conflict and feeling of disconnection.

We worked towards supporting Figgy’s nervous system and recalibrating her sense of place in this new world with me and Mackenzie and identified some solutions to overcome some of the blocks and issues we learnt.

That afternoon, Figgy was the calmest she’d been since we got her.

The following week I had my own kinesiology session to specifically address the uncontrollable and unexpected anger I’ve been experiencing since Figgy arrived. I speak about my anger in episode 29 of my podcast. During the session, we identified that the anger was inherited from an ancestor from nine generations ago.

As soon as we identified this, I had a vision (which felt like I was experiencing a memory) of a woman, my ancestor, watching her entire village, and everyone in it, on fire. A man in uniform who I believed was responsible for murdering her family and burning her home and village, walked around the corner of a burning thatched-roof hut. She picked up a pitch fork and attacked him to death. I then had momentary flashes, like a time trail, which followed her survival into the creation of a new life, in the wake of tragedy.

But she carried the rage and grief inside her.

From 29.40 in episode 30 of my podcast I speak about the the visions in detail. I noticed that some of the themes I saw in her life mirrors some of the things I am experiencing in my own.

With Claire’s support and an approach you have to experience to understand, I handed the rage the the woman in my visions swallowed and suppressed inside back to her. It had been locked away in her cells and was passed through generations to my great grandmother, grandmother, mother and me. I used Matrix Reimprinting (a gentle mind-body therapy that combines EFT with guided visualiaation to release the emotional impact of past experiences. In this instance, I was able to use it to explore and heal inherited / ancestral trauma patterns, and shift the emotional response, limiting beliefs, and stress held across generations).

As I supported this ancestor to rewrite her story, I gave her the time and space to release all that was inside her. I saw her scream and rage, smash things, hit thing, cry and roar and hit and scratch and then I saw her collapse in the arms of the man in this house I saw in the vision, and her sorrow, loneliness and grief wept from her body.

As I watched this new vision play out, I sobbed on the table with Claire beside me, rinsing emotion from my cells that was never mine to hold, but was gifted to me to heal.

I have felt a lot more peaceful ever since.

I stepped into a dark and dusty giftware shop in the Blue Mountains, its shelves laden with leather goods. Book marks, brass globes, hand carved wooden geese, and quirky clocks lined the wallpapered display units.

I sucked in my belly to avoid knocking a lamp off an antique table and squeezed my daughter into my chest as I wiggled past overstocked shelves. Mackenzie was three years old and heavy in my arms but she couldn’t walk yet. A long list of diagnoses slowed down her progression to achieving developmental milestones like a mother would expect of their child. She would learn to walk, in years to come, but some things she would never learn to do, like see from her sightless eyes.

Her dad and his partner, who, unlike me, would one day become his wife, were waiting for us outside. Our relationship had been severed by hospital visits, grief and fear when our daughter was airlifted to a newborn intensive care unit soon after her birth.

I left his homeland, the land of the long white cloud, with our daughter in one hand and a medication bag in the other, days after her first birthday, returning to the familiarity of my childhood bedroom. Although an ocean lived between us, him in New Zealand, us in Australia, we visited his home, and him, ours, to nurture the relationship between a father and his disabled daughter that could not be done under the same roof.

He was visiting us with his young love so we holidayed in the mountains; me and Mackenzie in one bedroom, and them in the other. Sleet silently fell from an icy sky as they stood on the path waiting for us outside the shop.

A blistery cold wind howled and the shop door creaked against its chill. I greeted the shop keeper at the back of the store and behind him, was a journal. It stood alone on a wooden shelf beside its hardcover box. I placed Mackenzie in front of the heater and she shivered at the sudden warmth on her back. I outstretched my arm, somewhere between pointing and my palm upturned, and asked him to hand it to me.

I caressed the cover decorated with vintage images and slowly unclipped the leather button to expose perfectly crafted unlined paper with deckled edges. I closed my eyes as my hand danced over the pages made from recycled cotton, a welcoming softness beneath my fingers.

For your story, I heard my inner voice say.

I grabbed my wallet from my bag.

‘What will you write in it?’ the shopkeeper asked, as he wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with string.

‘My story’, I replied.

He stepped back and placed his arms across his chest. He looked at Mackenzie standing on the floor, and saw her seeing-eye cane wedged into my jeans’ pocket. He smiled and nodded.

It would be four years before I released the knot of the string and a black inked pen would touch its pages.

I was studying to become a yoga teacher and attended a breathwork experience that would, without exaggeration, change the course of my life. I returned home from that event, awed by the healing power of the breath, and inspired to write.

My pen swam across the page.

‘I have a story’, I wrote. ‘This is my story’.

I sat anywhere I could - parks, cafes, my bedroom, the backyard, the car - and documented my journey as a single special needs mother. I wrote about my childhood, my daughter’s diagnosis, leaving the love of my life, living for eight years in a shared bedroom with my daughter, the hatred I had felt towards her father, and the horror of raising a disabled and medically unstable child alone.

It was messy and without craft, but it was a beginning.

It is now ten years since I first wrote in that beautiful hand-crafted book. And I can, after all this time, finally say that I have completed, crafted and edited my manuscript. The Road Unseen is an 80,000-word memoir that helped me process, heal and grow through the tragedies that were thrust into my heart, and the unmet expectations of the twenty-seven-year-old version of me who thought her life would be something different to what it was destined to be.

Ten years of remembering.

Ten years of wondering what the core of the story is really about.

Ten years of living, crying, suffering, expanding, learning, healing, striving, struggling, growing.

Ten years of writing, deleting, editing, clarifying, fine tuning, stripping, rearranging, and preparing the manuscript for a professional network of people.

Until it was ready.

The start of 2026 presented the task of looking for an agent or publisher to share my manuscript with. The title, hook, description, synopsis, cover email, chapter outlines, summary and personal details were carefully crafted into submission emails which sat in my drafts folder until I was ready to let them go.

A lover of astrology and numerology, I decided to send them to my chosen agents at 9:26am on the 26/2/26. But on the chosen morning I woke at 4:26am and felt a familiar yet subtle hum inside my body - what can only be described as a vibration in my cells. As I stood to go to the bathroom, I felt a little wobbly. My stomach was swollen, full and painful. And as I settled back into bed, I cupped my warm hands around my distended gut and meditated, my head nestled back into the warmth of my pillow.

I sensed that my body had stories about letting the book go.

But whatever secrets my body was holding, didn’t feel aligned with the stories and beliefs in my mind. Intellectually, I felt so ready for my book to leave the nest.

But my body told a different truth. I felt physically sick. I couldn’t eat my breakfast. I had low energy. So I closed my eyes and asked my body,

What is this feeling?

Dread, it replied.

Determined to commit to my preparedness to let it fly out of my hands, despite the dread and the physical discomfort I was experiencing, on the 26^th Feb 2026, I sat at a café, a soothing tea in hand, with Eminem’s Lose Yourself blasting in my ears, and I hit send. My memoir left my hands and landed in the inbox of strangers.

It was a mammoth moment - a decade of working towards that very moment - and my body was thrown into a spin. Curious about what I was feeling, I had an urgent kinesiology session to help me identify what stories and memories were stored in my body to help shift that feeling of dread.

On the table, memories swiftly surfaced. I frowned, confused.

‘Why this memory?’ I asked my therapist.

‘Let’s have a look’, she replied.

Memory 1:

Mackenzie was eight months old. I handed her to a nurse and they walked around a corner, but as she disappeared out of view, I remembered feeling that same sick feeling in my stomach that I’d woken with that morning that I was ready to send my book out. Mackenzie was having a feeding tube permanently inserted into her stomach due to failure to thrive and a severe sensory processing disorder that saw her vomit multiple times, every single day. I let the memory play out and as she disappeared out of sight, I remembered feeling dread. There were also feelings of not being in control and having to trust that my daughter would be safe in the hands of strangers.

Memory 2:

I was running with my uncle and his daughter, my cousin. I was ten years old. He was ahead of us and I felt a huge amount of pressure to perform. He was the leader, firm and non-negotiating, and I had to run my little ass off to stay close to him. He didn’t look back, just powered on ahead and expected me to follow. It didn’t feel like we were working together or on the same team. I was scared of not being able to perform to his expectations and being left behind.

Through the session, we discovered these memories have a relationship to my book.

My memoir feels like my second baby. I’ve nurtured it, cared for it and worked on it for over a decade. Handing it over into the hands of strangers felt the same as when I handed Mackenzie over for life changing surgery. I recognised that I had an unconscious fear that publishers, editors, graphic designers, etc. will change my book, like the doctors changed my baby. And I have to trust that it will be okay in their hands.

The memory of my uncle was linked to an unconscious fear that I will not be part of a team. I want this run to the finish line to feel more like a leisurely stroll, where I am walking alongside my team mates. I want to be connected to them, working together, where I feel valued, seen and understood. I want it to be in our hands, not their hands while I’m puffed and terrified that I can’t keep up.

My kinesiologist helped me rewire the fear, dread and feeling of loss of control about letting my book go, into a feeling of pleasure, joy and love. When I left the session, the symptoms in my tummy were gone, and when I hit the send button on all the emails I’d saved for the publishers the following day, they were sent out with a feeling of peace, lightness and joy.

The body is so wise, always working to protect and support us. I truly believe that physical symptoms in the body are not random ailments. As Bessel Van Der Kolk says in his book, The Body Keeps the Score,

If we have the courage and insight to use the body’s symptoms as a doorway and enter curiously, gently, honestly and lovingly, we create a safe pathway to a new experience of living. To understand that moments in our past are actively affecting and impacting on our present, and willingly seek an understanding of the impact of past moments on our now, we create an opportunity for healing, and freedom.

I am now in waiting, like a mother waiting for labour. In this incubation phase, I have received three rejection emails from two agents, and a publisher. Each one celebrating the quality of my writing and the richness of my story. But for reasons outside of my skillset (such as, memoir isn’t selling unless you’re famous), they did not want to represent it. I’m currently waiting to hear from the other agents and publishers, without a doubt that in some way, shape, or form, my memoir will be published soon.

I have the option of self-publishing, but I can’t help but think I’m meant to do this with others.

I’ve done a lot on my own. I chose to, to protect myself from the fear of losing control or people letting me down na failing to meet my expectations. But I sense that this baby is meant to be carried in the hands of many. A team who gets me, and my story, and walks beside me to the finish line, so it can land in your hands, and hearts, the way it was destined to. However and whenever that may be.

As a young girl, looking at the world through my big brown eyes, ears that were too big for my head, and sensitivities to energy and emotion I didn’t yet understand, I created beliefs that shaped the person I would be for many years to come.

I made these beliefs up based on my perception of the world, through a brain that did not yet understand what it was seeing, hearing, or experiencing.

As a newborn, a toddler and even a five-year-old, I did not know how to discern what was true and what was not, except through the way things outside of me made me feel within. I noticed feelings and sensations in my body in response to something I saw, heard, noticed or was afraid of, and turned them into the story that if I was a good girl, helpful around the home, diligent, followed the rules, did well at school and didn’t make a scene, then I would be loved.

Yet, these expectations were never imposed on me. They were beliefs I created in order to feel safe.

As a young, vulnerable and generally helpless child, our survival depends on our parents. Our primary physical, emotional, relational and developmental needs must be provided by our caretakers. Access to, and nurturance of, these fundamental human needs form the foundation of our character, behaviours and perceptions as adults. Any perceived threat to this provision of life-affirming care can alter our perception of safety and impact on our emotional wellbeing, our ability to connect and relate to others, and our capacity to sustainably care for ourselves and, eventually, our own children, in the future.

I grew up in a safe and loving home. But when my parents were exhausted, fed up, dysregulated and sick of four children squabbling, they said and did things that, to my precious heart, felt dreadful. Though, in comparison to what some children are tragically subject to, it was nothing to write home about. But here I am.

When words spat from tired mouths, I felt terribly afraid that I would be thrown to the curb and left alone to fend for myself. To ensure my place in the home, a pillow to rest my head, and a warm meal to feed my tiny body, I believed that my worth was tied in to my ability to be helpful.

Being unnoticed, silent and never a burden guaranteed the feeling of belonging. And belonging meant safety.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that love was something you earned by being useful.

I smoothed the doona cover over a made-up bed, ironed the family’s clothes and made my own lunch when I could barely see the top of the kitchen bench as a six-year-old. I folded my wet towel over the rail, kept my room tidy, put the dishes away, and got good grades. I went to bed each night running a checklist in my head of all the niceties I’d performed and convinced myself that I’d done enough that day.

I went to university, studied a health science degree that landed me working in hospitals and with people with catastrophic injuries so I could fulfil this unconscious need to be helpful, convincing myself that I was safe and worthy.

And then, in my late twenties, I birthed a child who needed significant care. The weight of her world landed on my shoulders when I became a single mother so I martyred myself into self-reliance.

I dared not tell another soul of the fatigue in my brittle bones from carrying her diagnosis, chronic illness and needs alone. I pushed everyone away, made it clear that I could do it without them, terrified that if anyone knew the truth of my physical, mental and emotional exhaustion, they’d turn their backs on me and leave me to do it alone anyway.

To protect myself from the fear of separation, I became a diligent, educated mother who didn’t make a scene. I got on with it, prided myself on courage and resilience, and silently burnt out.

As I’ve come to understand these unconscious programs that kept me bearing the load of a sweet, giggly, but medically and physically complex child on my own, I began letting go of the relentless diligence I’d demanded of myself.

I let people in and spoke honestly about the need for support through my blog, and yoga teachings. I’ve asked for help more times in the past two years than I had in the previous 15.

At first, it was hard. I noticed feelings of guilt and shame and the fear that needing support was a sign of weakness. But I faced the feelings and continued to reach out, until I’d asked for help so many times that it became easier.

I travelled away for work, spent time with friends and attended events that entertained me while Mackenzie was cared for by others. People have assumed some of the toll of being a single parent to a child with a disability. I speak about it, openly, but I still protect the world from some of the deeper truths of our life.

And then life presented a moment that asked me to trust this life lesson even more deeply. It came as a message to get an assistance dog for Mackenzie.

I’ve never openly spoken about the financial implications of being a single mother to a child with a multi-faceted disability. I have made my life work and the streams of passive and active income that trickle in and afford me my life, and my daughter’s medical needs. Resourced to manage our financial responsibilities while not being able to work a full-time job, I channelled my diligence into carefully managing our finances. Somehow, I’ve made it work.

More times that I care to admit, I have to check my bank balance to ensure that I can afford groceries (disclaimer: this is not a request for pity. Just another layer of the truth of my life that I finally feel safe enough to share). In the aftermath of two years of her chronic anxiety escalating to be so challenging to deal with that I had to reduce my work load, couldn’t go away and needed to be with Mackenzie as much as possible, I intuited the need for an assistance dog for her.

Though the idea of having a dog to care for (food, products, insurance etc.) on top of the cost of a pure-bred pedigree dog and the financial investment of training it to become an assistance dog felt out of reach. While my intuition, heart and body were screaming ‘you must do this, it will help her’, my mind was saying ‘how the hell am I going to afford this?’

I had a lot of mental resistance to the idea but went down the path of researching assistance dogs anyway, because when my intuition says this way, I listen. I trust that if something is meant to be, the means will be there to make it happen.

So, we reached out to our community and asked for help. My daughter and I launched a personal fundraising campaign and my God, did people show up.

People from all over the world have raised over $22,000 of a $30,000 fundraising goal.

As the tally rose—hour after hour, day after day—I cried rivers of tears.

Friends, family, acquaintances and strangers. Special needs mothers. High school friends I haven’t seen in almost 30 years. Dancing friends I haven’t spoken to in over 20 years.

Whether it was $10, $1000, or simply sharing the campaign, I felt overwhelmed with love and support. For someone who had spent most of her life believing she had to do everything alone, it was almost too much to hold.

But as the support came and the tears flowed, I noticed thoughts looping in my mind. Words and stories that were convincing me of my ‘right’ to receive support.

It said things like:

‘You gave up your life for Mackenzie.’
‘You are a kind person.’
‘You have been in service for many years.’
‘You’ve done a lot for your community.’
‘You’ve given a lot of advice and therapy away to help others for free.’

I listened to these words working hard to validate my decision to launch the campaign and convince me that it was okay to receive. And I realised that for all the ways I had nurtured myself into safety even when needing support, I still had work to do.

The campaign triggered the awareness that I had limiting beliefs around financial support; because I’d never been transparent about my financial burdens. And then, in one simple text from a friend, I felt so seen. He simply said, ‘It’s okay to ask for help’.

I was reminded of the biblical teaching,

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” - Gospel of Matthew 7:7.

I took myself to my kinesiologist who helped me identify where the patterns and beliefs came from. We worked through them so I could continue to receive with joy and love and not limitation and fear.

In a world that values independence, self-reliance, and the capacity to pull up your socks and get on with things, I am falling into a self-governing space that says, we are not meant to do this alone. I asked for help and it was provided in ways I could not have imagined.

But the most unexpected beauty shone through because I asked for help. I have received so many emails, messages and calls from people who have been on the end of my email list for a decade, and never replied. I have had wholesome conversations with people who are there in the periphery of my life, and were suddenly holding my heart in their hands.

Little Tanya, my inner child, was terrified that needing support would lead to disconnection.

But when I finally asked for it, the very opposite happened.

Asking for help, enriched and deepened connections. I have spoken on the phone to many people and we have shared tears, laughter and stories. I received lengthy emails and had messages that included life updates from people I’ve not been connected to for decades.

I have never felt so valued, seen and loved. Asking for help created a pathway to deeper connection, not separation.

Figgy, Mackenzie’s assistance pup, will be home with us in a month—because we asked, and you answered. We are indebted to the world’s kindness and generosity.

I went on a solo road trip last week to visit the breeder and meet some of the pups. I feel like we are in exceptional hands and we are so excited for the journey ahead. You can watch my the reel here.

We are sharing our journey on Instagram and the fundraising campaign remains open as a way for people to continue supporting Mackenzie with the long-term costs of training and caring for her assistance dog.

If you feel called to support Mackenzie and Figgy’s journey, you can do so here: GoFundMe.

When my daughter, Mackenzie, was airlifted to a Newborn Intensive Care Unit at six weeks of age, I was thrust into the complexities of a diagnosis that said she might not ever walk, talk or eat. In those first few weeks in the NICU where my old world felt like it crumbled, I made her prognosis my personal mission to overcome.

Reliant on medications to survive, Mackenzie is blind, autistic, anxious and has an intellectual delay. She was fed through a tube for six years and developed a severe sensory processing disorder, vomiting for 2.5 years.

I have spent countless hours of our life together resourcing the best therapies, practices, professionals, tools and equipment to help her bypass the challenges of all the labels that were added next to her name when she was a newborn baby. I travelled to faraway places to meet and work with exceptional teams who excelled in their fields of expertise and, through that journey, deepened my love for and interest in the human body.

We have scanned, mapped, assessed, documented and retested every part of her brain, body and nervous system. I have sat for weeks and months in uncomfortable chairs while doctors and nurses and therapists and specialists poked and prodded and pinned and pushed her to her limits, to help her gain strength, switch things on that were sleeping, turn things off that were overactive, and neutralise brain activity that caused her to fret.

And despite it all, there remain limitations. I couldn’t wipe the slate entirely clean. And for all I have learnt because of the things I couldn’t eradicate, I wouldn’t change a thing.

However, we’ve had a really rough couple of years with Mackenzie’s anxiety, particularly in relation to being separated from me. In May 2025, when my grandmother (her great grandmother) died, Mackenzie contemplated death for the first time. The outcome of which, has seen her in a perpetuating fear of losing me. As a solo parent, and primary care giver, Mackenzie does not have another person to anchor into. She is also very aware of her needs and reliance on support to survive and complete basic tasks.

I have a wonderful family and support network that are around and will step in to support when needed, but the relationship I have with Mackenzie, and the minutia of that connection, at a subtle, broad, energetic and emotional level is deeply rooted.

Over these past couple of years, I could not go to the toilet, walk to the letter box, or put the garbage bins out without her panicking and needing hours of therapy to regulate after spiralling. She has spent many nights terrified, waiting for the break of dawn (she will literally lay in her bed and wait for the birds to sing) so she could charge into my room to make sure I was alive. She has feared me not returning home from work, dying in a car accident, leaving her home alone in the middle of the night (which has never happened), or not picking her up from school.

She has greatly suffered. And as a result, I have, too.

This has put a huge amount of pressure on me and contemplation of big questions like, what happens to her when I die? have been at the forefront of both of our minds. This is a huge thing for her precious little brain to contemplate.

I wrote more about this in the crux of her fears in September last year in this post:

As an OT, massage therapist, somatic therapist, breathwork coach, yoga and meditation teacher and and EFT and Matrix Reimprinting practitioner, I’ve done everything in my knowledge and power to to alleviate her anxiety. If anyone could help her be free of it, it was me.

But I haven’t been able to. It’s been a tough one to swallow.

In a desperate, heart-centred attempt to broaden her sense of safety and security and give her something other than me to anchor into in the context of our home, I have, for almost two years, been researching the benefits of a therapy dog for her. And as much as I wanted to deny the real possibility and contemplation of this as a solution, the research is pretty solid.

I have spent months mulling over the responsibility of raising, caring for and training a dog when my hands are already overflowing with Mackenzie and her needs. But, I tell myself, I have done harder things than raise a dog.

I have spent the last 12 months researching breeds, breeders, trainers, programs, organisations and options to source Mackenzie a dog that can be trained to be a therapy assistant for her. An animal that can be with her 100% of the time (on planes, in cafes and other public spaces), trained to do the following things:

• Emotional regulation: support Mackenzie when she feels anxious

• Interruption: minimise nail picking when anxious (she removes her fingernails)

• Security: provide an anchor/companionship and a sense of security to help alleviate and soften the stress and anxiety when separated from me. The separation anxiety happens even when we’re in the home together

• Retrieve: locate and retrieve dropped items (as a blind person with compromised mobility, finding dropped items is really tricky).

This is not a decision I am making lightly.

We have found a breeder and a trainer that will work together to find the best pup to be trained for Mackenzie in the shortest amount of time possible. Mackenzie finishes school at the end of this year, which will present a major disruption to a familiar, safe and secure routine and environment. I don’t feel like we can wait any longer. Some organisations, that train and then supply the dog when it’s two years old, could take 3-4 years to receive.

Last week, a little of Cobberdogs was born on the mid north coast of NSW, and one of them has the potential to be hers. The breeder and trainer will assess the pups at 7 weeks of age and it must meet the assessment criteria to be considered for Mackenzie. We have had intense discussions with them both to help them understand her needs. We feel like we’re in really good hands. And for someone who’s never been interested in having a dog, I cried when I saw this photo!

But we need your help.

I’ve previously martyred myself into independence and managed Mackenzie’s needs (financially, emotionally, socially, psychologically and physically) on my own. But the truth is, I don’t want to do it by myself anymore.

I’m not very good at asking for help but here goes …

The cost of this pure-bred dog and the intensive training alone (which we will do 1:1 with a specialist trainer) will be over $30,000 in the first year.

We have done two things:

1. A GoFundMe campaign is set up where donations can be made (if you’d prefer to avoid the fees with a donation platform, an Australian bank account can be supplied upon request)

   Donate here

   If we can turn this idea into a reality, her pup will be named Fig / Figgy with meanings of new beginnings, peace and protection, luck, and sweet nourishment. Nicknames include Figaro, Figlet, Figalicious and Figgy-Boo. You best be believing my next children’s book will be, ‘The Adventures of Kenzie-Moo & Figgy-Boo’.

2. An Instagram page has been created @Kenzie_figgy_and_me which will be used to:

• Document the journey of getting a puppy for Kenzie (due home in April if we can raise the funds)

• Share the process of the intense training protocol we’ll go through over the next 2 years to train the dog to be exactly what it needs to be. This includes rigorous assessments at 6 months and 2 years. It will have a ‘therapy assistant dog training’ vest which is wears until certified

• Share more of Mackenzie and her great light and beaming delight because, well, let’s face it, she’s who you’re all here for anyway 🤣

• Bring joy and magic to your social media feed because the world is pretty messed up and we all need more puppies and more Kenzie in our lives. It will be an informative and educational platform and just a space to share some good shit!

Follow our journey

I know it’s a lot to ask you to put your hand in your pocket to help make this happen. I can’t do this without you.

To be clear, this is not just an expensive pet.

This will be a highly trained animal that meets the needs of a young girl who has suffered greatly, to broaden her circle of safety and, fingers crossed, bring a little more peace to her world. Because ultimately, as a mother, that’s really all I’m ever trying to do.

If you can help by donating, thank you. If you can’t donate but can share the GoFundMe to your community thank you. I am holding a light of possibility.

I think that we’re all about about to change Mackenzie’s life in the most unimaginable ways.

Visit the GoFundMe page HERE>

With love and gratitude,

Tanya and Mackenzie (and hopefully Figgy) xx

There are moments in life when nothing is wrong, yet everything feels complete. Not broken. Not failed. Just… finished.

I’ve been moving through a threshold which has stretched across time and space between who and what I’ve been, what I believe, what my purpose is, and how I show up and contribute in the world. For the last year and a half I have been receiving insights and intuitive downloads that I need to let my work go. Given I have spent my lifetime honing my connection to and trust in my inner voice / intuition, I’ve felt a little discombobulated by the messaging.

For a decade, I’ve moved through the world as a yoga teacher, breathwork facilitator, reatreat host and healer — holding space through movement, breath, and embodied practice for people in need. It was real and very meaningful work. And yet, over time, something began to feel complete. Not because the work lost its value, but because my role within it had finished its teaching.

I have loved this work and I’m really good at it, so I have struggled to let it go, especially because, I had no idea what I was letting it go for. When others still see me in a role and identity I’ve outgrown, I have had to dig into courage and trust the quiet inner knowing that has said: this chapter has served its purpose and now, it’s over.

I’ve taken myself through a very long and drawn out process to cessation of my identity and shift my state from being one thing, when I had no idea what I was meant to launch into next.

And then I realised, I wasn’t meant to launch anything.

I was meant to sit in the liminal space between one thing and another so that whatever I am destined for next, can find me.

This is the wisdom of completion — the kind that asks me not to cling, but to bless and apprecaite what has been and release it with gratitude. So I am finally ready to let it all go, and sit in the void between yesterday and tomorrow. To not rush, plan or create. But to be here, in the uncertainty, and trust that I am okay.

I have closed down my website after operating my business from it for 8 years. I have deleted Instagram (again). And I am sitting here patiently waiting for the next thing to reveal itself. And slowly, it is.

The Year of Completion

We are collectively moving through an energy of endings. Not dramatically. Just honestly and, hopefully, gently. We are in a place where stories have reached their natural conclusion, identities have softened and shifted and old obligations have started to loosen their grip.

This weekend’s New Moon in Sagittarius arrived in one of the greatest thresholds — a pause between release and momentum, between what has been and what is quietly asking to be born.

We are in right at the tipping point at the end of a Universal Year 9 (2+0+2+5 = 9) which symbolises completion, reflection, and collective closure. This is a time to wrap up long-running cycles, release what no longer serves us, and learn from the past before a new chapter begins in 2026. Emotionally and culturally, it can feel intense as endings—whether personal, social, or institutional—come into focus. Rather than pushing for brand-new beginnings, 2025 invites patience, forgiveness, and wisdom, reminding us that meaningful progress often starts with letting go.

We are also at the end of the Year of the Snake from the Chinese zodiac, a 12-year cycle where each year is linked to an animal and its symbolic traits. The Snake represents wisdom, intuition, strategy, and transformation. Unlike loud or impulsive energy, Snake years are associated with quiet thinking, planning, and inner growth, encouraging people to move carefully rather than rush. Snakes are observant and thoughtful, making this year favorable for learning, problem-solving, and personal development. The Snake also symbolizes renewal, because it sheds its skin—so Snake years often focus on letting go of old habits and emerging wiser. In modern interpretations, the Year of the Snake is about working smart, trusting intuition, and embracing change with patience rather than force.

The Seed Beneath the Ending

At the same time, there is a different energy stirring — one of beginnings. But not loud, fully-formed beginnings. These are subtle. The barely visible seeds that ask for listening before action.

As one cycle closes, another doesn’t rush in to replace it. It waits. Something, I’ve discovered, I’m not very good at. Instead of waiting, I fill the space. And when I fill the space with what I think will work or for the sake of making a little bit of money, I miss an opportunity for what is right for me.

The space created by letting go of old work roles has become fertile ground for something else to emerge — more is to be shared about this in the new year but for now, I can say, that I am moving into ceremonial work and intentional gatherings. Work that feels playful, light, and wholesome. Work that creates change not by what I do, but by how I do it.

This work hasn’t arrived as a plan. It has arrived as a remembering.

Shedding Skin, Finding Direction

In the language of Chinese astrology, this moment feels like a meeting point between two archetypes.

The Snake teaches discernment. It sheds its skin not out of rejection, but because growth requires release. Snake energy is patient, intuitive, and deeply wise. It reminds us that not everything needs to be carried forward — some things are meant to be left behind so we can move freely.

We are transitioning into 2026 (a Universal Year 1 which is all about beginnings) and the year of the Horse, which is associated with energy, independence, forward momentum, encouraging action, confidence, and personal freedom. It’s a time that favors bold decisions and pursuing goals with enthusiasm. It’s a year that can support progress, adventure, and stepping into your own direction with courage.

Together, these energies ask us to pause long enough to shed — and then to move with intention.

Standing at the Threshold

This weekend, we are on the cusp, a turning point, and we are in the energy of the Sagittarius New Moon, which is offering a moment to tell the truth about what is complete, and to feel into the direction that feels expansive rather than impressive.

It’s a New Moon for honesty, vision, and faith — the kind that comes from listening deeply to what life is asking of us now. So before we rush ahead, we are invited to reflect. It brings a fresh energy focused on optimism, growth, and new perspectives and is a great time to set intentions around learning, travel, personal beliefs, or goals that expand your world in some way. Sagittarius encourages honesty and big-picture thinking, so this New Moon supports letting go of limiting mindsets and imagining what’s possible next. Overall, it’s about starting anew with hope, curiosity, and a sense of direction.

An Invitation to Reflect

I spent some time creating a vision board and journaling this weekend, in contemplation and reflection so I can release the old and prepare for the new. I thought I’d share my journaling prompts with you. It’s an invitation to meet yourself, and this moment, with curiosity and care. Let it be a doorway — not into certainty, but into truth.

I hope they bring closure and clarity. I also hope that you have the courage to let things go, especially when it feels like there is no safety net, and you feel supported to trust your life’s process, can allow the path to reveal itself in its own divine timing, and enjoy creating a life that you love.

Journaling Prompts

1. What is ready to be released in my life (Year 9), and what wisdom have I gained from it (Snake energy)?

2. As one cycle ends and another begins, what new path am I being invited to step onto with courage (Year 1 + Horse energy)?

3. Where can I slow down, trust my intuition, and plan more intentionally before taking action?

4. What beliefs or stories about myself are ready to be expanded or rewritten?

5. How can I honour endings without rushing past them, while still feeling excited about what’s ahead?

6. In what areas of my life do I need both patience (Snake) and bold forward movement (Horse)?

7. What lessons from the past 9 year cycle will I carry with me into this new beginning—and which ones must I leave behind?

8. How can I move into my next chapter with greater honesty, confidence, and trust in my inner guidance?

9. What progress do I want to see in six months and what can I do now to support that right now?

10. What does personal renewal look like for me right now, and how can I support it with intentional action?

I’m part of that generation (whatever the letter is that marks me as belonging to a group of people born at a certain period in time) that grew up without a phone. I got through my childhood and high school education without one. My first email address, created using dial up internet included the words sunbeam eyes. Large Macintosh computers lined the desks in the technology room at school but were rarely used and our teacher, Mr R, who was lean, and tall and so damn gorgeous, told us that one day Apple would run the tech world and we’d live in a cashless society. We laughed in his face. But Mr. R was on to something, we would soon find out.

I can remember loading a video game into the console of my neighbour’s Atari 2600 in the 90s and spending hours trying to beat our high scores, the small black and white screen and its simple and slow-moving graphics a far cry from the intense, realistic and fast paced visuals of video games today. Not that I’d know, though, it’s been at least 20 years since I played one.

I remember standing in a Vodafone store as a first-year university student in the year 2000 getting my first phone; a Nokia 3210. I’ve had the same number since then. I have, like most one-year-olds today, progressively grown more reliant on and more lured by my device. But I have some loose boundaries that I pride myself on and, when I’m feeling superior and pretty judgy, I can convince myself are way better than they actually are.

I refuse to pay for things using my phone and instead, I still carry a wallet that I bought in a boutique leather shop in a tiny little place called Tilba Tilba on the south east coast of NSW, right next door to where I bought my very first Tibetan singing bowl.

In 2015, in the prime of my people pleasing era and employed in a role that allowed me to fulfil my over giving tendencies, one of my clients, who incessantly texted me at 4am and 5am and 6am, was the cause for making a decision that would ensure that no one could contact me before 8am, least of all, her. She messaged me over and over again until I’d finally respond before breakfast. But one fateful morning, so pissed at her sense of entitlement and pleas for '“urgent replies”, I made a decision to turn my phone off and power it up overnight in the kitchen where I couldn’t reply to her fake emergencies. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. I have continued that practice for a decade now, having made peace with the fact that if someone I actually loved was to be in dire need of assistance or was dying or some other tragedy that I’m just not contactable. And everyone knows it.

If you need me at night you have to drive over to my house and throw stones at my window to get my attention. Or just wait until I turn it on in the morning.

But my boundaries are fluid and quite flaky. I snuck my phone into my room after a scare last year when my neighbour looked over my fence and peered into my house and scared the shit out of me. I didn’t feel safe so my phone got plugged into my room, and then it didn’t get turned off, and then it was in my hand before I went to sleep, and back in my hand the moment I woke up, taking me away from my morning yoga and routines and making me late every single day. It’s been a process to loosen my grip on the illusion of safety and control by having that tiny little piece of titanium in arm’s reach.

I don’t have Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok or LinkedIn. I do have WhatsApp and Instagram and two email accounts (professional and personal). I’m fully aware of how many times I pick up my phone, and make a conscious effort to put it away when I’m with my friends. But at home, I’m glued to it. So, I delete my Gmail and Instagram apps often, but then I just turn on my laptop and look at them through that instead. Because I’m seeking that little dopamine hit.

Eventually, I get so sick of myself and my addiction that I get a friend to change my passwords to my social media accounts. It is the ONLY way I can unlock myself from the compulsion to look at them. Last year I took six months off Facebook and Instagram. I also deleted FB Messenger and both email accounts. It took several months to stop looking for the apps, the neurological pathway was so wired for tapping on them every time I looked at my phone. I broke my addiction to Facebook and Messenger during that break and I’m happy to say, I haven’t gone back. People know that if we used to converse on Messenger and they want or need me, they have to have my number. And if they don’t have it, then they’re not that important to me anyway.

But something I discovered, as I unwound myself from the tether of these social media platforms, was that I am not addicted to social media. I’m actually addicted to my phone.

I’ve thought about using a flip phone but have, for now, convinced myself that I can’t do without WhatsApp. When I don’t have workshops or events to sell online, it’s easy for me to let go of Instagram. But I am also addicted to that little sucker.

I’m what I call, mindfully addicted. I know when I’m down a wormhole, doom scrolling and, despite my awareness, I’m still unable (or at least unwilling) to stop. There are some wholesome and some utterly ridiculous things to spiral with on the internet. And, if I’m honest, sometimes I love a long doom scroll that leads me to couples finding out they’re pregnant after years of infertility, women having face lifts, people getting engaged, blind people riding skateboards, men losing 50kg, big body transformations, big wave surfers, random acts of kindness, people writing poetry, street photographers talking to strangers, and little old ladies being given flowers by strangers in the streets.

When I choose to feed the beast, this is some of the stupid and wonderful things I love getting lost in.

• Inflated egos and the joy of watching someone eat a piece of humble pie on Vladimir Shmondenko’s page with his 32kg mop

• Ash Watson is an ex gymnast takes the piss out of himself and doing random things with his body for my entertainment

• A blind guy and his partner who plays pranks on him (disclaimer, as they’ve gotten more famous I enjoy their content less but if you can be bothered scrolling back a while, there’s some fun stuff from their earlier days)

• Men getting toupees and relieving themselves of their boldness… Their smiles. I can’t. Seriously makes me cry. The way Mr Novo listens to them and holds space for them. It’s so beautiful. I want a man like that

• Beautiful stories and photos from a street photographer on Portrait Geeek

• Chris Corsini is an astrologer and tarot by a young guy who does all his readings using sign language (what a legend)

• Zach Bush fuses science and nature…totally swoon worthy

• A young guy who changes people’s lives through random acts of kindness

• An Aussie psychic medium who connects the dead to loved ones in live shows. It’s the real deal. I seriously love this stuff.

• And medicine in words with Jaiya John

It’s an eclectic collection and reflective of the randomness that lives inside me. A little sentimentality, a little playfulness, a little depth and humanity. I’m here for all of it.

I’m ready for another break from Instagram so will have someone change my passwords for me this week. I’ve quit my only job and starting the new year totally unemployed. I’ve finally thrown caution to the wind and I’m jumping off a ledge, letting go of everything that I have been identified as, trusting there’s a safety net to catch me and some new sense of self will start to blossom.

I’ll be starting some study and launching a different business in the new year with a big focus on ceremony. All of that requires attention and focus, none of which Instagram supports.

I’ll be back there again when things are ready to be shared. And I’ll notice, as I always do, how overstimulating and how incredibly invasive social media it while I slowly return after having a break from it. If you’ve never had a break from social media or the addiction that you also have to your phone, I highly recommend. It’s quite confronting when you step back into it and you can see, if you’re mindful enough, in real time, the addiction creep back in and the desire to have it in your hand and all that information processing in your brain. It’s pretty scary, actually. but here we are!

But I also know, because I’ve done it every year for a few years now, that over the weeks and months that follow my return to the platform, that it will soon feel like I never left and I’ll be sucked into it again. And I’ll hate that, but I’ll be there anyway. At least until I get to a point when I need to break from it again.

I feel like writing my school captaincy speech (which I was unsuccessful in achieving. And rightly so. My best friend won the vote and went on to become a barrister. So it didn’t have any hard feelings. Well deserved, I’d say). I feel like it was only a few years ago. Not 27 years.

It’s hard to believe the time is ripe for Mackenzie to be doing the same. How is my baby moving in to her final year of school next year?

Time is a thief. It’s elastic in many ways, stretches and expands the realms of our constructed concepts of time. In other ways, it’s running faster than the speed of light and unforgiving. Moments gone in a flash. The click of a fingers and poof! It’s gone.

It’s confusing, at times, that I have a young woman, nearing society’s consideration of adult-age where alcohol and driving and employment are available to some. But not all. Because here I am, the mother of a child in need. There remains many things she cannot do for herself. I feel like she is locked in a time capsule at the age of 10. But her bank won’t let me speak on her behalf anymore. I need a Power of Attorney for such things.

Though she cannot unclip her bra, or maintain the temperature of the shower if it’s too hot, screaming for assistance to cool it down if she steps in too soon. She can write a speech with leading prompts and has spent the best part of every Monday afternoon this year learning to open a folder and save a document using a voice command software program for the visually impaired. It’s a trip for my beating heart. She exists somewhere between not disabled enough and not independent enough. But she is right there, where she is meant to be. And I love her for that.

I am noticing a softening around the edges of the fear that I’ve carried for what our lives look like when she is no longer in the safe and familiar care of a school for 30 hours a week. Not because I have any more information or foresight for what that will be. But because I have acknowledged that fear, and thanked it for trying to protect me. And then I fell back into faith and trust. I’ve never not landed on my feet, I remind myself. Some great God, or ancestor or Universal Consciousness watches over me, us, and guides us to where we were always meant to be.

I have lived in a perpetual and complex world of quandaries where I’ve felt trapped in my own home because she doesn’t talk to me, but needs me around to feed her, find things on the floor is she has dropped them and incidental care requirements that are the minutia of what her care used to be. But lately, rather than confinement, I’m feeling a sense of connection.

If not for the little moments of ‘Mum can you please … ‘ I’d be mourning the loss of my teenaged child while she ran between friends and boyfriends and jobs and parties. Instead, she’s right there on the couch, texting a million people, listening to music and getting lost in the world of reality TV shows that share children’s journeys through the hospital system.

She’s with me. So with me. And something is shifting within that reminds me that this is not a great problem, but a great gift, and there are worlds of magic that reside in the intricacies of our love and bond.

She is learned. And all of this was but a dream. To access mainstream technology, to take initiative, to do things for her self. I knew it was all possible when, a week after receiving a feeding tube when she was eight months old, she showed me signs of her capacity to learn.

I write about this beautiful scene in my memoir. It was profound. And now, I sit back as my sweet 16 year old daughter overcame many odds and can turn on, open a folder, create a document, add headings and bullet points, and talk about how great she is and what kind of leader she would be, because she is all of that, and more.

She has been my leader, my teacher, my guide, since before this life time. We have traversed lands and plains, time zones and life times, spreading light and joy and lessons. And I rest in peaceful prose that I have done enough. She is all these things she says, and I’m so proud of her. But more importantly, is that she is proud of herself. She is her greatest cheerleader.

I am less fearful, and more excited about the next part of our journey. The gates of the world open up and we have access to everything we could possibly dream. And I’m here for it. I’m so here for it. As I unravel the layers that keep me safe and small and afraid and remember my greatness and capacity to create whatever reality I desire, I will take the time to dream and allow myself the space to ponder a life that continues to expand and grow and gather momentum.

What a blessing it is, for my Soul to have known that there were things for me to learn and so took me on the path to find the teachers and practices and the child that would allow that to happen. I am who I want to be because she is who she was destined to be. And I am grateful to have the ability to see the light, through her darkness.

I’ve been contemplating whether there is a fine line between doing hard things to build resilience, and the hard things being so uncomfortable that it’s damaging to the nervous system, stamping trauma into the body, mind and heart.

I just dropped my daughter off at school with a suitcase stuffed with a sleeping bag she feels awkward sleeping in for a school camp that she does not want to go to. But it’s the same story every year. She resists and cries and I gently remind her that she’s safe and she is going. I will not allow her to call the shots.

Last night, we had an hour-long emotional freedom therapy session on the couch, the tears were running down her face as she connected with the fear and anxiety of being away from me and all the anxiety-inducing possibilities - none of which have ever happened in all the camps she’s been on - rather than the more excitable truth of the experience which is, when she returns home in two days’ time, she will tell me she had a great time and can’t wait to go again next year.

But, as legend has it, next year rolls around and the months of anxiety and “I’m not going” statements overtake, and she forgets she loved it last year and is replaying the same stories and patterns over and over again. And I just have to remind her that she does this every year and she is going to be okay.

I can only assume I am not the only parent who finds it difficult to push their child out of their comfort zone. I only have my own experience of parenting to draw on, and I often think that the challenges I, and we, face are because of my daughter’s disability. But I have gathered enough data over the years to understand that what I’m experiencing is not specific to being a special needs parent. It’s just a normal part of parenting. And boy is it tough.

When children face appropriate (not overwhelming) challenges they develop stronger self-concept, better adaptation and resilience. Children who stay within safe and easy tasks (the comfort zone) may miss out on opportunities to practice skills like self-regulation, coping with frustration and persistence. The data shows that there is a qualitative difference: children who are supported to tackle new and slightly harder tasks often report more growth, more “I can do this” attitude and a positive mindset, than children whose environment remains neutral and perceptively easy.

Dan Siegel’s work on the Window of Tolerance discusses the optimal range of arousal to be able to make good decisions, to adapt and effectively function, whilst maintaining emotional regulation even in the face of stress or challenge. Outside of that optimal arousal zone, the nervous system goes into survival mode. Mackenzie becomes hyper-aroused when it feels too hard. Going to camp is pushing her over the edge into that hyperarousal state.

She has all the tools – deep breathing, mindfulness, recalling memories to stay connected to me, being grounded, a strong voice to ask for what she needs, therapeutic tools like EFT to identify what’s happening somatically in her body and to move the energy out of her body. But when she has stretched the edges of her window of tolerance and is hyperaroused, anxious and overwhelmed, she can’t do any of it.

I am her co-regulator and she knows it. So, in my absence, she feels so dysregulated she cannot reclaim her sense of self and she crumbles.

The research is clear that doing hard things builds resilience. It develops self-confidence and self-belief, nurtures self-reliance and expands critical thinking and the ability to problem solve. It strengthens emotional regulation and prepares them for the ‘real world’, growing character through persistence and perseverance.

But my daughter was thrust into the real world from the moment she was born. She did not have the same chance that other (definitely not all) children had to sailing into life with ease and grace and calm and safety. She was intubated, cannulated, surgically altered, fed through a tube, assessed, medicated and separated from me over and over again. And those experiences seriously compromised her nervous system. Not to mention she cannot see or move freely so is dependent on the presence and instruction of others to know where she is in space and how to safely evacuate or seek help. She was traumatised at birth.

And yes, those experiences have shaped her (and me) into strong, resilient and adaptable humans. But I’m left wondering, is it the right thing to keep pushing her to do things she doesn’t want to do, with the idea that she will grow and adapt and change and better self-regulate? Perhaps, her nervous system is done with adaptation. What if she has paid her dues and accepted her fair share of hardship and all she needs now is peace, safety and familiarity?

We had a very slow and uneventful school holidays a few weeks ago. After two weeks of her declining every single idea for getting us out of the house, for exploring and learning and connecting with the land and the world outside the confines of our small home, I came to a realisation. We are different people. We do not love and value the same things.

I love to be challenged. I value opportunities to grow and explore and adventure and learn and expand my window of tolerance and do cool stuff and meet new people and have a full and rich life outside of the four walls of our living room. She has a preference for listening to music and being at home. Because she is safe there.

And for 17 years I have pushed her, dragged her and created, what I thought, were incredible opportunities for her to engage in the world, but I’m coming to understand that it’s just not her thing. I chatted to her about this realisation before she returned to school and I told her how I’ve realised that we want different things from life. She prefers stillness, quiet company and the safe and familiar comforts of her home. And I love all of those things to. But I also love and have a preference for nature, wild water, learning new things in different places, movement and adventure.

Perhaps I should stop trying to make her enjoy the things I love. I wonder if it’s time to leave her to enjoy and create her own life, like any other 17-year-old would be doing right now. The complexities of letting her be her own person while I can’t really go anywhere without her because of her disability is creating a rift in the tides of my heart. I have to let her go … but how? She is still so in need, so reliant, so dependent.

But I mentioned in my last post, that I can’t be her medicine anymore. And she needs to build a community around her that can offer the same care and support that I do but in a way that she wants that to happen, so I can expand my world beyond her.

In one of our recently conversations about camp she told me she would be on her knees begging me not to make her go. The dagger wounds in my heart when she says things like that penetrate deep. I can’t help but think that I shouldn’t force her to go, leaving her bawling her eyes out at school. She is beyond her safe zone, but I am challenged in what the right way is.

It’s confusing and I don’t have the answers.

I want to believe that I am not creating new traumatic imprints in her brain and her heart by forcing her to do things she doesn’t want to do. I want her to feel strong and safe and capable in my absence to rely on herself. I will not be here for her forever, and these are small building blocks to expanding her trust and safety within herself. I can hold both stories and truths at the same time, and then I’m left to rely on my underlying belief that hard things build resilience.

So off she goes.

I’ll never forget the moment I saw grubby fingerprints all over my mirrored wardrobe doors. My daughter, Mackenzie, was two years old and had, after daily therapy and instructions from the physio we met when she was six weeks old - she’d been airlifted to a newborn intensive care unit quite from home - she had gained enough strength in her legs to stand on her own two feet.

Every day leading up to that I had lined her favourite musical toys along the edge of the hideous floral couch in my parents’ home, her belly resting against the cushions for support. It was often really challenging to find toys that presented a neurodevelopment opportunity with music enticing enough to encourage her to explore them. Most mainstream toys are colourful and lit up, but such motivators useless to a blind child. Thankfully, having autism meant she was happy to listen to the same tunes on repeat, never bored by the jingly played for the 700th time on the few toys that did the job. I, somehow, learnt to the block the monotony out.

Harder, still, was the motivation and insistence I needed to battle her disdain for therapy. She squabbled and squawked, whinged and whined when I stood her against the couch. She knew hard work would be asked of her tiny body which was somehow flawed. Or, perhaps, I was the flawed one. I didn’t design her to stand alone. Her brain was so compromised, by no conscious fault of my own, that I was told she may never walk. So I had to disguise therapy as play, but, even at two, she wasn’t stupid. And she knew what was expected of her when her naked feet were placed on the rug and her toys were patiently waiting for her to play, no matter how much excitement I tried to muster in my voice.

Over time with repetition, intention, consistency and a ‘fuck those doctors I’m going to prove them wrong’ attitude, she gained the strength needed. Neural pathways were created, maps in her brain were formed, muscles activated and switched on. Over many many hours, days, months and years of therapy, she became stable enough to hold herself up.

We were living with my parents after the demise of my relationship with her dad. We had a bunk bed assembled in our small bedroom, the same room I’d grown up in. I’d shared a bunk bed with my little sister back then, too. But I wasn’t on the top bunk anymore. I had a double bed beneath Mackenzie’s single bed on top, a slat rail along the edge of the bed to ensure she’d never fall out and hit the deck like my sister did when she was six years old.

Obsessed with repetitive movement, rhythm and sound, Mackenzie loved standing in front of the mirrored doors. She slid them left to right, enjoying the soothing sound of the runner on its track, and the gentle thud as the door closed before she slid it back again. She was safe without my support for the first time ever, and our bed behind her just in case she lost her balance.

I sat on the bed watching her, grateful to have a moment to rest while she gained important skills. Although it was just sliding doors, she was understanding cause and effect, action and outcome, choice and how to use her body to create a different experience such as using more power gave a greater thud. She was gaining strength in her legs, learning to cross her hands over the midline and was activating her core, gaining skills in rotational forces and twisting and stabilising through her glutes. Everything we did, served a purpose. I was a therapist more than I was a mother.

On discovering this love for the doors for the first time, as the morning light hit the mirror, I noticed her fingerprints along the edge of the door and I a smile subtly sang on my face.

I imagine that mothers with neurotypical children who walk by the age of one, run before two, who climb trees and induce heart attacks as they scramble up walls and through windows, clambering across chairs to access out of reach places for their tiny bodies, must live for years with abated breath and fret at the sight of dirty finger prints on every surface in the house. Annoyed, perhaps, at having to wipe walls, couches and floors at the end of the day to rid the evidence of where their active and capable children have been.

I didn’t have that privilege. I had feeding tubes, blood tests, hospital visits and nitrous oxide to drug her into silence and stillness so we could gather her blood to test her levels and adjust medications to keep her alive. Mine wasn’t developing normally, whatever that means. It was normal for her. She vomited through a diagnosis of failure to thrive while I taught her how to sit, transition from one position to the next, stand and step - forwards, backwards and sideways. I had to teach her how to structure sentences so she could ask for what she wanted and manually move her legs and manipulate her feet to create a pathway in her brain that allowed her body to have the strength, balance and coordination to stand, then walk, because it was never going to do it alone.

So when, after two years of dreaming about her standing alone, she outgrew the standing frame she’d been reluctantly strapped into since she was eight months old and fell in love with the sliding doors on our bedroom wardrobe, I lay on my bed behind her and closed my eyes. I listened to the hum of the motion of the doors, lulled into a moment of relief and a hope for possibility for what might come.

Remnants of fingerprints on surfaces incited joy because it denoted progress. She was achieving things, reaching milestones, albeit many years later than other children I knew. I couldn’t know it would be another two years before she progressed enough to walk unassisted when she was four years old. But her fingerprints gave me all I needed to carry on. So I let those marks sit on the glass for days between her door-sliding sessions because it was something I never thought I’d see. And, for a brief moment, I felt like like a mum, without the added title of being a therapist.

Mackenzie is 16 now, independently walking and capable of navigating around our home without her seeing eye cane. And she still leaves her mark wherever she goes. Her fingers gently trail along the walls for guidance, across the top of draws and cupboards, along doors and frames, across the back of chairs. So when needed, I grab a cloth and wipe away the trail of her achievement, overcoming a prognosis that said ‘she might not ever’.

Vegemite, peanut butter, olive oil, cookies and cream ice cream, fresh herbs and sticky sauces … she leaves her mark wherever she goes. And every time I wipe them away, I remember the first time I saw her fingerprints on the wardrobe in my parent’s home and I smile again. Unfazed by the constant need to clean up behind her, like I imagine other mothers might be, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude that she can move herself from one place to another. That messy trail is also a sign of all the good food she eats orally, after overcoming the need for a feeding tube which was required in the first five years of her life.

A therapist says it’s time to teach Mackenzie to use a knife to minimise how much she eats with her fingers, the intricate motor planning and coordination is difficult for her neurologically compromised hands. ‘It’s not really socially appropriate for her to eat with her fingers now’, she casually suggests. I scoff, ‘Social appropriation can kiss my ass’, I say. ‘We’ve done enough to adapt to the social norms of a society that fails to accommodate the needs of people with disabilities’, I add.

But I think, perhaps, I’m just not ready to let go of the good that I feel when I wipe away her fingerprint trails each day because it’s a beautiful and quiet reminder of all we’ve overcome and achieved together. And I want to hold on to that, just a little while longer.

‘You’ll be here at 230pm right?’, my daughter asked for the seventh time in as many minutes.

‘Absolutely’, I assured her.

‘You’ll just be at home, right?’

‘Yes, I’m at home today. I’ll be here when the bell goes off’, I said.

‘I’m feeling very nervous’, she confessed.

‘What can you do to that anxiety?’, I asked.

‘Boss it away’, she said, with an unconvincing confidence.

‘And use your healing hands to sooth the sick feeling in your tummy’, I reminded her.

She placed her hands on her stomach and her bottom lip quivered as she held back tears like she did every morning. But I already knew she’d get into the car at the end of the day with a face red with fear, snot dripping to her mouth and gloves wrapped around her hands to stop her from peeling off her finger nails.

This is our new daily routine. A repetitive dialogue that attempts to alleviate, unsuccessfully, an anxious beast that has taken residence inside my daughter. It snuck inside her when my grandmother died in May and convinces her that I, too, will die and I won’t be there to pick her up from school.

‘What’s the worst thing that can happen if mum doesn’t arrive at pick up time’, her therapist asked. I was expecting her to say she’d be left at school alone and she’d have to sleep there, like she has said many times before.

‘I won’t have a home or someone to cook me good food. I’ll be a stray’, she said.

I felt an arrow shoot from its bow straight into the core of my mothering heart.

She frets if I don’t answer a call or reply to a message. She cries if I have to delay my return home from work or am 30 seconds later than I said I’d be. She is experiencing a separation anxiety from me which can feel suffocating and unbearable. It pulls at all my fears for how I could ever live my own life, free of the demands of being a carer, when she is so in need.

I have been her anchor into time and space. The thing that provides security and safety. She knows who and what and where she is, only in relation to me. I have been her medicine for her sadness and terrors, her blindness and endocrine dysfunction, her erratic nervous system, her autism and physical and neurological imperfections. I ground her, soothe her, guide her, teach her. I’ve tried to protect her like any good mother would.

Recently I’ve been reflecting on that fact she has been anxious her whole life. I have video footage in the extended hospital stay after her birth that brilliantly displays an overactive moro reflex. She was born afraid, alerted into some invisible threat to her survival and it never ever went away. We discovered, recently, during a routine neurological test, that her body goes into sympathetic activation, the fight flight or stress response, just from standing up.

The fear has shifted from one thing to another over the years. She’s been scared of the vacuum cleaner, the washing machine, children touching her, dog’s barking, driving slowly in traffic, alarm bells, me placing my hand on her knee, hospitals, PA systems, unexpected announcements, pedestrian crossings, crowds, changes in routine, people yelling, being one minute late, abrupt or explosive language.

I’ve spent 16 years carefully manipulating and amending our lives to mitigate, as much as possible, the things that cause her stress system to go into overdrive. I’m a magician. I created the illusion of success, conditional to my presence, my actions, my choices to hide her from the things that cause disarray.

Now, she is terrified whilst waiting for me to return from somewhere. Her nervous system is alerted into a deep sense of fear that I may never return. She doesn’t breathe properly. She vomits. She picks at and removes her fingernails. She’s missing three of them on her left hand.

I’ve spoken to her about death. She knows and understands energy, spirit, memory and love. She is deeply connected to the spiritual realm. But it doesn’t alleviate the humanness of our connection. I’ve taken her to every healer that has supported me. Kinesiology, Neuro Emotional Technique, Energy Healing, Psychology, Chiropractics, Neurological Rehab, Primitive Reflex Integration, Movement, Infrared Light Therapy, Sensory Diet, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Meditation, Therapeutic Listening, Nutrition…you name it, I’ve done it. I’m doing it.

And the anxiety hasn’t gone away. Perhaps I was foolish to think I could change it. I have had to remind myself she has a highly compromised nervous and endocrine system. Medicated to keep her alive, it makes sense that her capacity to regulate her emotions and manage the spike in adrenaline is challenged.

I’ve resisted medication for a long time but I’m at a point where I feel like it’s time to trial it. And as I dropped her off to school a couple of days ago, we ran through all the words that fail to assure her that she’s safe and I will be there to pick her up. Silently frustrated by her inability to reason and take control of her mind and the anxiety thoughts that she knows are not real or bathed in any truth, I drove off and I asked myself, ‘Why am I so resistant to medication?’. As I pulled up at the lights around the corner, I wept. So I asked,

‘What message is in these tears?’ and I heard,

‘I’ve failed her’.

I gasped. Failed? I was surprised to hear this hidden thought sneak up from somewhere deep inside me and wash down my face. I have never, ever, in my life, felt like I, my actions or behaviours, have been a failure. This is not a word, or a belief that exists in my orbit. I have never been made by my parents, family or friends to believe that I have failed, in any aspect and for anything in my life.

I view everything as an experiment and an opportunity to experience life so I always feel like I’m winning. I don’t perceive failure, just opportunities to grow and learn and, should I choose, to master. I have never consciously thought that I have failed my daughter.

I know, truly and deeply, that I have not because I’ve gone above and beyond to do the best I can to support her to live a life of joy and peace, to be free of suffering, to the best of my ability.

But I know I cannot prevent her from suffering. I have gathered too much data over the years from hospital visits, surgeries and tragedies, that remind me of one of the fundamental truths of life – to live, is to suffer. And she is no exception.

When I arrived home, I sat in meditation and let the tears flow. I clutched at my heart and my belly as I cried a river of tears, my hands trembling as the energy shook itself out of me. I used EFT to tapped on my body saying ‘I failed’ over and over again. Although I do not believe that to be true, I have done this therapy enough to know that if I say the words that came up unexpectedly, memories associated with that story will surface.

And sure enough, they did.

I remembered waking up in hospital the morning after she was born, paralysed from the waist down from the epidural required to deliver her in an emergency caesarean. She was not there. And I felt like I’d failed to be there for her.

I remembered the nurse wheeling her in to me after pressing the buzzer, confused by her absence from my side, only to see that a nasogastric tube had been inserted in her nose while I was sleeping. And I felt like I’d failed to advocate for her.

I remembered standing outside the door when a nurse inserted a catheter into her urethra when she was six weeks old, airlifted to a newborn intensive care unit far away from home. I felt like I’d failed to protect her.

I remembered sitting on the bed when she disappeared out of view in the arms of a stranger to be anaesthetised and operated on to insert a permanent feeding tube when she was eight months old. I felt like I’d failed to make her whole so she didn’t need all that treatment.

I have all the tools in the world to alleviate her anxiety and I haven’t been able to rid her of it. So, I feel like I’ve failed to save her.

I ugly cried on my living room floor as these memories with secrets spilled out of me.

And then I realised it wasn’t that I felt like I’d fundamentally failed her. It was that I didn’t feel like I had upheld my responsibility as a mother to protect her. And in not protecting her, I had failed.

But I know in my bones this is not the truth.

With this awareness I started sighing, indicating that my nervous system was recalibrating as the memories and stories and trauma rinsed out of me, and then I reminded myself that I cannot save her and protect her from her life path; her journey. She is her own person, 16 years old and so supported to manage the symptoms of her anxiety herself. She has the tools, the therapists and knowledge to take hold of that beast and send it away. It is not mine to hold.

I said a little prayer, and imagined handing it back to her. I told her, in my meditation, through my heart, that I will always be there for her, but she has to find a way to manage this herself. I whispered that I cannot and do not want to carry the burden of her sufferances, because she is growing up into a young woman and she has to find her own way.

The sun peaked through the clouds from a sky that had cried for 24 hours, painting my face in orange and drying my tears. Warmed by the sunlight, a softness beginning to simmer, memories flashed in my mind of all the times we lay on the couch together, her little legs intertwined with mine, our heads rested into one another, singing songs. I smiled at the memory of the joy, love and safety. And I let those qualities warm me up, while I let go of the belief that I had failed, and remembered the truth.

Letting go of the illusion that I can protect her is hard. But holding on to the illusion causes more suffering.

We are leaning in to and navigating the pharmaceutical world, considering CBD and western medicine options so I can share the load of her care. I am handing her needs and management to the medical world, because I can’t be her medicine anymore.

I wrote this poem after my moment of realisation and healing. You can listen to it on IG here.

In the midst of the harrow
Of a somber night
Where it feels cold
And dark and
Oh so lonely

The moon casts a shadow
On the secrets inside
That even you
Did not know

The story writes its words
On your heart
And you gasp,
Surprised
You had no idea that’s what you’d been carrying
For all those years

An instant river
Runs from your eyes
Rinsing secrets and sadness
From your insides

A short story written
Of unspoken truths that
Were hidden away
Ready to be heard when the time was ripe

And so you make space
And let the tears come
And the sighs and the yawns
As your nervous system recalibrates
After its shed it shivers

And the blossoming of a stillness
That had been hard to find in weeks before
Settles in your mind
As the afternoon sun
Hits your face
And you recall all the moments that
Felt like sunlight in your Soul

And you remember,
That after dark,
Light.

Four represents the need for creating a strong base for things to grow from, and yet here I am, 44, somewhere close to the middle of my life, and, I presume, right in the crux of what I imagine some people to call a midlife crisis.

Although I’m incredibly peaceful.

I don’t feel like I’m losing my mind, like some might at this time, but I do feel like I’m growing out of the identity I’ve portrayed myself to the world as for many many years.

Like a caterpillar that’s about to bust from its chrysalis and turn into a blazing butterfly, I am in transition. To what, like the caterpillar, I imagine, I have no fucking idea.

I have already been in a chrysalis, of sorts. My body, like the caterpillar, is going through its own metamorphous, transitioning from the once was lean like a bean-stalk body, youthful and uppity, and so freaking tight and toned and flexible and fast, to soft and bumpy, slow and droopy, achy and full of fluid with hair in places I wasn’t warned it would be.

What kind of cruel God must one be to inflict such necessities onto an aging, raging woman to not be able to leave the house without a pair of tweezers stashed in every single bag and console she owns. Plucking those sharp little black hairs that poke through the skin of my chin has become a part of my routine.

I met a woman recently, who was the same age as me, I found out. And up until that point I’d thought she was surely coming up to maybe, 50. But not 44, like me. I still feel like I’m in the prime of my life, thirty and smoking hot, capable of attracting young, hot, ripped men into my one-night-stand-bed.

But, let’s be real. Neither of those things are true anymore.

And then I wondered if everyone’s looking at me thinking I must be nearing 50 and then I wondered does everyone continue to feel so youthful on the inside, despite the body that changes?

Although I am wrinkled, sagging, grey-haired, and chin-haired, with cellulite and a gunt I can grab with two hands, I feel so young because, I suspect, the deepest parts of me does not age.

The soul is timeless, defiant of aging in its foreverness.

And besides, my tits and ass are still perky and bouncy and perfectly placed on their bodily placemats. So, I’ll take that as a win.

I’ve been experimenting with exposing my rotten toe nail this week. I usually cover it, hide it to protect the world from its hideousness. For 16 years I’ve taped it, painted it, super glued fake nails to the bare nail bed, exposed when my three-month-old baby was diagnosed with what I’d imagined would be terrible things.

But, let’s be real. I hide it because I’m protecting me from my own judgement and shame. It’s a just a fucking toenail, I say.

So, I’ve let it rip, barefoot and nail polish free in the sauna this week reminding me of that time I sat on a hospital bed while my baby was fed through a tube in her nose and the nail just fell off into my hand.

I’m at peace in the quiet, in the kitchen, in nature. I have a preference for boring. But I do love an adventure. I don’t want the noise, the too fast reels that trip my brain into some minor seizure as it tries to compute the amount of information that our bodies were never designed to take in.

I want to plant trees, chop fire wood, make sour dough and preserves. I want to massage bodies for love, not money, and make fires and cook meals with friends. I want to potter in a garden of lavender and learn how to take care of bees.

I want to be of service in subtle ways that make a big difference, not loud ways that involve screaming from roof tops with little to no impact at all. How, for who, what, I don’t know. I’m waiting for the wisdom to come.

And while I wait, I’ll keep wearing socks and Birkenstocks, swim in open-air pools in the middle of winter to remember what it feels like to feel. I’ll laugh when I learn and say cunt too much, because somewhere along the way it became my favourite word. I’m realising that the more I learn the less I know, and all that we’re taught is important never ever mattered, at all. But kindness. Oh, kindness matters. Compassion and consideration.

And peace matters. In my heart. In my heart.

And there it resides, at 44, and that’s a strong base for things to grow from.

.

My daughter, Mackenzie, is blind, autistic and intellectually delayed. She is highly motivated to be independent, accepting of the assistance and support she requires when necessary, and incredibly resilient. She thrives on learning new things and celebrates the little wins; she is her own hype girl.

I used to be an Occupational Therapist and have used these skills to support her development and growth over the years. When Mackenzie is ready to learn a new skill, we break it down into small achievable tasks and scaffold the learning, building on each task to completion. It can take many months and years to achieve a goal and complete everyday tasks without support. Sometimes, to be independent, she needs some environmental set up, which means her capacity for achievement is dependent on a familiar setting. If I remove her from that environment her independence dissolves.

What a neurotypical child was doing at four years of age might still be a work in progress for Mackenzie as a sixteen-year-old but she is free of pressure to achieve things and undisturbed by timeframes. She puts one foot in front of the other, knowing that over time, things start to click into place. We cheer and celebrate when she nails something she’s been working towards. But at other times, I have to provide assistance for the same task every day for many years without any hint for how she’ll ever become independent in that task, and that’s okay too.

Dressing requires a lot of support. Clothes are folded, hung and stored in specific ways so she can collect them and dress herself, but if they’re placed in the drawer or wardrobe incorrectly, she can’t do it. She asks for help, and tries so hard, and smirks at her success with quiet appreciation for her achievements.

For quite some time, Mackenzie was independent to put her socks on but they often ended twisted or upside down. Socks, I discovered, have minimal tactile clues to help a blind person identify what is up and what is down. The heel scrunches up on top of her foot and doesn’t fit properly, which is uncomfortable, but due to lack of sensitivity, finger dexterity and strength, Mackenzie requires assistance to reposition them.

I asked some mums who have blind and vision impaired children how they overcame the dilemma of teaching their child to put their socks on the right way up. Every mother was resigned to one of two solutions:

‘I put them on for them’ or ‘They just wear them upside down’.

Disgruntled by their resignation and lack of problem-solving, I withheld my passive aggressive thoughts like, ‘Who’s going to put their socks on when you die?’ or ‘How would you like to walk around with your socks upside down?’ I couldn’t believe that no mother, carer or OT before me had a solution to wearing socks the right way up, a fundamental dressing task that we do every day, and one in which, I’ve clearly taken for granted. Like many things my body can do.

Every person has a right to participate in their activities, purpose, personal care, passions and responsibilities to the best of their ability, with as much support or minimal external interference as needed. I wanted Mackenzie to be able to complete tasks within her skillset and capacity. I believe there is a solution to every problem, until there isn’t. At that point, the solution is to have assistance or modifications. But when the sought-after outcomes are close, it takes a little ingenuity to resource ourselves into outcomes.

If Mackenzie has the capacity for independence, no matter what the goal or task is, and no matter how big or far away it may seem, I make it my responsibility to find or create the solutions to enhance her ability. I will and have rested in acceptance of compromised function only once I’ve exhausted all options to find an alternative way, even if that means adaptation.

For example, after two years of trying every single day to get toothpaste on the toothbrush, she resolved to squirting toothpaste straight into her mouth because she was unsuccessful in smearing it onto the brush head. She uses a fruit slicer instead of a knife to cut up apples and pears because it’s easier, faster and safer. And she uses a quick-release shoe lace system because she can’t tie laces.

We have made adaptations to encourage independence, after many years of striving for total independence. In the end, we don’t care how it’s achieved, we just care that is is achieved.

It wasn’t good enough for me that she would just wear upside down socks for the rest of her life. And I sure as heck don’t want to be putting them on for her. As her independence blooms, so too does her self-esteem, and my freedom. The more she can do for herself, the better she feels about herself, and the more time I have for me. That’s a win win situation.

Imagination, hope, creativity and the belief that a different way is possible, as well as the desire for my child to participate in her life as she wants, drives me to find solutions to the myriad of problems we face. When you’re a medical parent and your child has different needs, not everything is available to you the way you thought it would be. These moments empower me to find ways to evolve through adverse endeavours in creative and opportunistic ways.

At times, I’ve been blindsided by the reality and weight of what’s needed, because I was trying to survive another moment. Special needs parenting demands energy and advocacy in intricate and grand ways, and sometimes, there’s little verve for either. At times, I have to pick my battles. But often, things are so close yet just out of reach and a little resourcefulness can get us to where we want to be.

Or not, and then we settle for upside down socks.

Hardship presents the opportunity to cultivate resilience, problem-solving skills and adaptability. It’s in the face of unfamiliarity that I have become resourceful and sought ways to overcome hurdles. Adversity comes and goes with the ebb and flow of life. Often, we don’t get to choose if we step into the ring or not; rather we choose how we step in. The doors fly open and the whistle blows as we stumble our way into the blaring lights dazed and confused, trying to put our fists up to fight between the stings of each unexpected blow on the special needs journey.

There are many things that I can’t change about Mackenzie, her needs and our situation. And there are many things that I’ve had to surrender to, knowing that I couldn’t do any more to create a different reality for her, or us. She lives with permanent limitations. But packaged with these limitations are some of her greatest gifts. And, I’ve learnt, the greatest limitations are the beliefs I bring into the situation. I can’t change the influx of adversity that knocks on our door and embraces me like an old friend at times, but I can change how I respond to it.

Choosing not to be defined or limited by the perception of a dead end entices lateral thinking and the enlistment of the right hemisphere of the brain, which makes way for innovative potential. We can imagine the unimaginable and make believe that anything is possible, until it’s not. I believe that possibilities are endless and, whilst many factors play a role in successful outcomes, with a mindset and attitude for results, opportunities are waiting to be snapped up.

So, with the help of my mum, we sewed tactile tags onto the left-hand side of each sock rim. This small addition to each sock gave Mackenzie a marker to know that, with the tag in the left hand, the socks were up the right way. With one hundred percent accuracy she has independently put her socks correctly, ever since.

The sock dilemma helped me see that there are two kinds of people in the world. The kind that are satisfied with their blind child wearing their socks upside down for the rest of their lives, resigned to a dead end. And the kind that see that dead end as a detour and an opportunity to find another way.

And I get to choose which one I want to be.

“I always feel good about myself”. These words came flying out of my mouth during a conversation with my Muay Thai trainer this week. As the vowels and consonants formed and flicked off my tongue, I sensed that they came from somewhere deep inside me, where truth resides.

I’m passionate about learning. I’m always searching for ways to explore the edges of what I know physically, energetically, spiritually and emotionally. I love neuroplasticity and the potential for something to be available in my body and mind that wasn’t before. That love helped me guide my daughter to break the limitations of a diagnosis and prognosis that said she may not ever walk, talk or eat without a feeding tube. I knew I could change the narrative for her, and I love exploring where I can do the same for me.

As a highly educated and passionate learner I have spent many years being the leader and teacher, learning things to share with others. But a few years ago I felt like I didn’t have any teachers to look up to. I wanted to be a student and sought teachers who were exceptional in their craft so I could be guided through things that I had no knowledge of.

In 2023 my word for the year was BEGINNER. I took up piano lessons, singing lessons and joined a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym. It’s there that I made a friend, whose husband recently opened his own Muay Thai gym. When I became his student six weeks ago, I had no idea what I was signing up for. All I knew was that Muay Thai is a martial art from Thailand and assumed it including punching and kicking. I intuitively felt it was a sport that could tick off a few things I was seeking so I signed up for all those reasons. I wanted -

- to move my body in a new way

- a movement practice that included fast twitch muscle fibre activation (coming from a yoga background, pilates and gym work there is a lot of slow controlled movement and felt like my body needed to be fired and shook up)

- to learn new skills

- to be instructed and guided by someone who’s proficient in their craft

- to challenge my body

- increase the cardio activity in my exercise program

- to improve my balance and develop my core strength

- connection and to experience the pleasure of intimate communion – student and teacher. To listen and be heard. To watch and replicate. To take instructions and feedback

- and I really wanted to explore my fallibility

My coach praises my progression and effort a lot. He says I’m doing great and we’re moving through this initiation faster than other beginners he’s worked with. He is often surprised that I haven’t done something like this before because my form and movement patterns are indicative of previous exposure and practice.

Although it’s all new, some of it feels very natural for me. I have an incredible relationship with my body and a keen attention to detail. I like understanding the what, why and how. I’m an avid learner and ask questions. I can see how a movement pattern that is embedded in someone else’s body feels awkward and clunky in mine, and know that there’s room for me to have that same experience with practice.

I can sense and feel a deeper experience within my body physically, neurologically, emotionally and energetically because I have academically trained to understand the body, I’ve enjoyed various movement practices throughout my life, and I’ve done a lot of somatic therapy to sense and feel at the most subtle level. I am not joking when I say, I swear I can feel synapses growing and connecting in my brain when I’m learning new things like in this video.

My coach has an attention to detail that I value, with over 25 years experience. He’s a great listener, knows what he wants to get out of the sessions, and has a capacity to explain the what, why and how. He has intel into why a particular posture, stance or position is assumed and drip feeds this to me when he perceives my capacity to receive that information.

I don’t have all the information yet - I am right at the start - but I know that he’s creating a solid framework, scaffolding the practice with some insight of what’s to come, and why it’s required to move in a certain way. There’s so much preparatory work to build me into a person who could protect myself in a fight should that ever happen; God forbid.

Truth be told, I had no idea that’s what I was going to Muay Thai for. But to be able to protect myself if threatened or attacked is definitely a skill worth learning.

If I had the choice, there are components of the sessions that I would opt out of because I don’t enjoy them as much as some of the others. But that’s the benefit and importance of having a teacher. I have to follow his lead. In my life right now, there aren’t many places where that’s required so I value his expertise and appreciate turning up and doing what I’m told.

We enjoy life and philosophical chats at the end of the sessions and somewhere amidst the discussions about neurodiversity, spirituality and self-exploration he said that people are often frustrated by what they can’t do and often focus on the things they’ve done well in a training session because they want to leave feeling good about themselves. Without a second to think about it I said,

When I got in the car, I reflected on the words that flew out of my mouth and journaled about it when I got home. What I discovered that truth meant for me, is that I love everything about me. The parts of me that are fallible, that need working on, that makes mistakes and requires guidance are just as enjoyable for me to explore as the parts that are ‘good’. Perhaps, even more so.

In the first few weeks he thought I was a little hard on myself, focusing on the parts that were ‘bad’ and not acknowledging the success I had or the things I could do. But I think that was a misunderstanding. I have great capacity to see, know and love the parts of myself that are ‘good’ or doing well, or succeeding. But I can just let them be as they are. I don’t need validation or praise. I don’t rely on positive reinforcement or accolades. Words of affirmation is not my love language. My sense of worth and ‘good enoughness’ are already high. So, I can hear and appreciate praise, but it’s not necessary for me to keep showing up, participating and growing.

I have rock-solid self-esteem and self-belief which lends me to total enjoyment in experience because the foundation of enoughness is ripe. This allows me to see any activity as an opportunity. Not to convince myself that I am worthy, or capable, or good enough. But to allow myself the opportunity to be challenged, to see new ways in which my body, brain, cognition and humanity has the potential to change, adapt and grow.

I focus on and love the parts of me that don’t know because that’s where there is room for improvement. I’m not attracted to a negative bias. I simply appreciate my humanness; my imperfection. There is so much to learn in that arena and that really excites me.

During my sessions, I laugh right in the midst of fucking up. I can feel the inability and unfamiliarity in my body. I can sense the process of neuroplasticity trying to create new neurological pathways in my brain. I embrace the slowness and appreciate the effort that’s put into trying something new. There is a great joy in figuring it out and messing it up. It’s the cliché of ‘it’s the journey not the destination that matters’.

This is where all the goodness lies. Right at the beginning, with nowhere to be, but right in the messy, uncertainty of new.

Although I can’t recall my parents overly praising or celebrating me as a child, my capacity for self-appraisal and appreciation in the not knowing has had to have come from a fundamental nurturance in my childhood. Or perhaps it’s part of my unique blueprint…born with an innate okay-ness in screwing up and figuring it out. Maybe it’s a gift of age and wisdom. Or a gift from yoga, meditation and healing over the past 15 years where I’ve learnt to appreciate and honour my humanity. I have compassion for all of me – the good and the bad. Not that I hold such polarising views these days.

I am okay to fail because I see it not as a failure, but as valuable feedback and a pathway to adaptation, resilience and learning. I do not need to be more or less than I already am, so I can embrace each learning experience with wonder and possibility.

It's so important to learn new things. There are many benefits such as:

- Cognitive enhancements through neuroplasticity

- Improved memory

- Sense of accomplishment and pride

- Increased self-esteem and confidence

- Enhanced emotional wellbeing

- Adaptability and flexibility

- Increased motivation and productivity

- Personal and professional growth

- And expansion of social connections (which is where the juice of life flows)

So, I will keep plopping myself into situations where I don’t know anything because I love the potential that comes from being right at the start. I’ll lead where I am meant to, but I also want great teachers.

The greatest gift in this self-exploration through Muay Thai over the past couple of months has been realising the joy I experience in not knowing how to do something, and making mistakes through trial and error. And I discovered that this positive trait has somehow been handed over to my daughter. During a recent therapy session Mackenzie was doing a new activity and every time she got it wrong, she giggled. I smiled, listening to her joy echo around the room. If my daughter can laugh at her short comings and experience joy through the process of learning, then I know I have done something wonderful as a parent.

This autumn I’ve signed up to do a pottery class, attend a bush survival course, and a drawing course so I can be in nature, explore my creativity, and connect with new communities. I’m excited for all the things I’ll get to explore across my lifetime and grateful for all the things I have already had the opportunity to do.

I’m so grateful for the ways in which I am resourced emotionally, financially, cognitively and physically, to be able to put myself in experiences where NEW leads the way. And I hope you create space to do the same, for you.

Shout out to my trainer, Adam, from Dukes of York Muay Thai in North West Sydney. He offers personalised 1:1 services in North Kellyville tailored to your needs and experiences.