Long before algorithms decided what was worthy of being seen, I was using the internet as a journal. A place to gather thoughts, capture moments and leave little breadcrumbs for my future self.

Over the years, I’ve realised that I rarely write for an audience.

I write to make sense of life.

To pause long enough to notice what is unfolding.

To create a record of becoming.

Every so often I’ll wander back through old journal entries, blog posts, Facebook memories or photographs, and I’ll meet versions of myself I had almost forgotten. Some make me smile. Some make me cringe. Some make me cry.

All of them remind me that becoming is never a straight line.

This article is simply another marker on that path.

In late November of 2024, I was presenting at the Bohemian Festival in Victoria, Australia.

On the final day, I felt an undeniable pull to have a reading.

I wandered through the market stalls until I found a woman casting the bones. Something about her felt ancient. Quiet. Certain.

So I sat.

She began to read.

Whether you believe in intuition, spirit, synchronicity or simply the extraordinary capacity of human perception isn’t really the point.

What mattered was this.

She spoke about my life with a depth that left me completely still.

Then, just before I left, she looked me square in the eyes and said,

“Tracy... your life is about to change profoundly.

It will be difficult.

It will be challenging.

But it will be worth it.”

I walked away wondering what on earth she meant.

Then life carried on.

Or at least, I thought it did.

The year unfolded beautifully.

There was travel.

Festivals.

Road trips across the Nullarbor.

Retreats.

Sacred journeys.

Conversations that nourished my soul.

Like many of us, I was busy creating.

Serving.

Holding space.

Keeping everything moving.

Looking back now, I can see the whispers had already begun.

I just wasn’t listening yet.

Later that year I travelled to Peru.

I had no expectation that the journey would alter the direction of my life.

But somewhere within the ceremonies...

Something shifted.

One vision has never left me.

I found myself sitting in a bath covered in roses.

When I stepped out, I entered a magnificent building.

Again and again I placed a crown upon my head.

Again and again I removed it.

I remember asking,

“What does this mean?”

The feeling that came wasn’t about royalty.

It wasn’t about status.

It wasn’t about power.

It was about identity.

About stepping into one version of myself...

Then stepping beyond it.

Again.

And again.

And again.

For most of my life I’ve experienced the world differently.

I’ve sensed things before they happened.

I’ve felt drawn toward ideas long before they became mainstream.

I’ve often struggled to explain what I know in a language that satisfies people who need certainty.

These days...

I no longer feel the need to.

Some experiences are invitations.

Not arguments.

While I was in Peru, one of the shamans called me over.

His English was limited.

Mine certainly wasn’t Spanish.

Yet somehow, everything that needed to be said was understood.

He looked directly at me and said,

“You see differently.

You are like Condor.”

At that point I wasn’t feeling particularly visionary.

I was exhausted.

Burnt out.

Emotionally depleted.

To everyone else, I probably looked like I was doing wonderfully.

Inside...

I felt empty.

Yet those few words cracked something open.

Not because he gave me an identity.

But because, for a fleeting moment, I felt completely seen.

Cue the ugly cry.

When I returned home to Australia...

I rested.

Properly rested.

For perhaps the first time in years.

I quietly disappeared.

Not dramatically.

Not because anything was wrong.

Simply because something inside me knew that continuing to consume the noise of the world wasn’t helping me hear my own voice.

Social media became quiet.

My calendar became spacious.

My inner world became louder.

Over the months that followed I immersed myself in study.

NLP.

EFT.

Human Design.

The feminine teachings within Her Frequency.

Neuroscience.

Ancient wisdom traditions.

Mary Magdalene.

Nervous system regulation.

Identity.

Consciousness.

At first glance it probably looked like I was collecting more qualifications.

I wasn’t.

I was collecting language.

Language for experiences I’d carried my whole life but had never quite known how to articulate.

Because here’s what I’ve come to believe.

We don’t transform because we learn something new.

We transform when something we’ve always known suddenly becomes embodied.

Knowledge informs us.

Embodiment changes us.

The quieter I became...

The clearer everything became.

I started recognising something I’d witnessed for decades in my counselling room, at festivals, in retreats and in women’s circles.

People weren’t lacking information.

They were drowning in it.

Books.

Podcasts.

Courses.

Quotes.

Reels.

Opinions.

Advice.

More and more knowledge.

Yet many women still felt disconnected from themselves.

Not because they needed another answer.

Because they needed an experience.

There is a profound difference.

You cannot think your way into safety.

You cannot analyse your way into belonging.

You cannot mindset your way into self-worth.

Eventually...

The body has to come with you.

Looking back now, I realise every chapter of my life had quietly been preparing me for this understanding.

Twenty years of holding space.

Thousands of conversations.

The neuroscience.

The psychology.

The spirituality.

Human Design.

The nervous system.

The ancient mystery traditions.

They weren’t separate paths.

They were all pointing towards the same truth.

The deepest transformation doesn’t happen when we accumulate more knowledge.

It happens when we remember who we already are.

Somewhere during those quiet months...

Phoenix Temple was born.

Not as a business idea.

Not as a product.

Not even as a course.

It emerged as an experience.

An invitation.

A place where ancient wisdom, modern neuroscience, identity work, Human Design and embodied practice could finally sit at the same table.

Where spirituality didn’t require abandoning science.

Where science didn’t dismiss mystery.

Where women didn’t need fixing.

Only remembering.

The women inside Phoenix Temple often tell me,

“I can’t explain what’s happening... but something is changing.”

I smile every time.

Because that’s exactly how I felt.

Transformation rarely announces itself.

It whispers.

This year has become my own Year of the Phoenix.

Wild Women Weekend carries the theme Return of the Phoenix.

Sistahood Rising celebrates ten extraordinary years.

My work has found its way onto new stages, into new audiences and into conversations I never imagined having.

Yet none of those things feel like the biggest story.

The biggest story is much quieter.

I came home to myself.

As I move deeper into this fifth decade of life...

I feel less interested in certainty.

More interested in curiosity.

Less interested in proving.

More interested in presence.

Less interested in becoming someone impressive.

More interested in becoming deeply authentic.

I feel more peaceful than I have in many years.

More creative.

More grounded.

More alive.

Not because life became easier.

Because somewhere along the way...

I stopped asking permission to become who I already was.

Perhaps that’s what the phoenix has always symbolised.

Not rising because life burns us down.

But trusting that sometimes the fire is clearing away everything that was never truly us.

If you’re standing in one of those seasons...

If life feels uncertain...

If the version of you that once made sense no longer fits...

Please don’t rush to rebuild.

Sit with the ashes for a little while.

There is wisdom there too.

If this reflection resonates with you, perhaps it’s because you’re standing at a threshold of your own.

That is exactly why Phoenix Temple exists.

Not to give you another framework to master.

Not to convince you to believe what I believe.

But to create a space where you can become deeply curious about your own inner world... supported by ancient wisdom, grounded science, compassionate community and practices that invite your whole being—not just your mind—into the conversation.

Because I don’t think the world needs more people searching for themselves.

I think it needs more people remembering themselves.

And if that remembering has quietly stirred something within you as you’ve read these words...

Perhaps this is your invitation.

—

With love,

Tracy McFie
FoundHER, Author, Red Rebelle

They become mean girls because belonging feels safer than thinking for themselves.

I’ve spent the better part of thirty years inside women’s empowerment.

Not watching from the sidelines.

Not commenting from the cheap seats.

Inside it.

I’ve stood on stages. Held circles. Led retreats. Run festivals. Built communities. Held women while their worlds fell apart and celebrated them as they rebuilt themselves from the ashes.

I’ve dedicated a significant portion of my life to cracking the code on the sisterhood wound.

And after three decades of doing this work, I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion:

A lot of women still haven’t left high school.

I don’t mean intellectually.

I mean emotionally.

The moment conflict arrives, the moment someone says something uncomfortable, the moment a woman dares to step outside the approved narrative, something ancient wakes up.

The pack forms.

The whispers begin.

The group chat lights up like a bloody Christmas tree.

The alliances are made.

And suddenly we’re not mature women navigating complex human relationships.

We’re fifteen years old again.

“You can’t sit with us.”

Most Gen X women know exactly what that feels like.

The lunch table.

The exclusion.

The sideways glances.

The punishment for being different.

The unspoken rule that belonging is conditional.

Conform and you’re safe.

Challenge the group and “bye bye” .. you’re gone.

We love to believe we’ve evolved beyond that.

I’m not convinced we have.

Recently, I found myself on the receiving end of this dynamic.

The specifics aren’t important because this isn’t an expose.

It isn’t a character assassination.

And it certainly isn’t a poor Tracy story.

Because if I’m honest, I wasn’t perfect either.

Under pressure, I can be blunt.

Under stress, I can be sharp.

Last year brought extraordinary pressure into my life. The collapse of a business partnership. The responsibility of carrying major events. The weight of leadership. The kind of pressure that strips away your polished spiritual language and reveals the human underneath.

I had moments I wish I’d handled differently.

BUT that’s called being human & I have the emotional intelligence & desire for deep self reflection to take absolute accountability .. no one is harder on me than myself!

What fascinated me wasn’t the breakdown of a friendship. Nope.

Friendships end.

People disappoint one another.

Relationships change.

What fascinated me was what happened afterwards.

A narrative formed.

Sides were chosen.

Stories were exchanged.

And before long, social media became the modern-day schoolyard.

Not a place for conversation.

Not a place for repair.

A place for judgement.

A place where grown women gathered around a single version of events and treated it as gospel.

And that’s the bit I cannot wrap my head around.

Not the criticism.

Not the disagreement.

The complete ABSENCE of curiosity.

Because here’s my question ..

How can you possibly form a grounded opinion about a situation when you’ve only heard one side?

How babe? HONESTLY..

How can you claim discernment, emotional intelligence or consciousness when your entire bloody understanding comes from a single source?

The answer is .. you can’t.

That’s not discernment.

That’s recruitment!

What fascinates me is how quickly otherwise intelligent women abandon curiosity in favour of belonging.

Nobody asks.

Nobody picks up the phone.

Nobody seeks context.

Nobody goes to the quiet voice and says,

“Hey, what’s your experience of this?”

Which is ironic, because some people will spend forty-seven minutes discussing mercury retrograde but won’t spend four minutes having an actual conversation.

Instead, they gather around the loudest story.

The biggest bleeding heart.

The person with the most compelling narrative.

And before you know it, they’ve recreated the exact same dynamics they claim they’ve spent years healing.

The older I get, the more suspicious I become of certainty.

Particularly when it’s wrapped up in a neat little package with a hero and a villain.

Life isn’t that tidy.

Humans certainly aren’t.

Most conflicts involve two wounded people fumbling their way through an experience neither of them handled perfectly.

But the pack doesn’t want complexity.

Complexity requires thinking.

And let’s be honest, sometimes it’s far easier to grab a pitchfork and join the parade.

The pack wants certainty.

The pack wants someone to blame.

The pack wants a witch !!

Preferably a competent one.

We never seem to burn Brenda from accounts.

It’s ALWAYS the woman who’s built something.

Here’s the thing nobody wants to admit.

Sometimes being the woman at the front comes with a HUGE target on your back.

If you’ve built the movement, hosted the festival, started the conversation, stood on the stage, used your voice and taken the risks, there will always be people who have opinions about how you did it.

Fair enough.

That’s the cost of visibility.

But unless you’ve actually carried the weight of leadership yourself, unless you’ve laid awake at 3am wondering how the hell you’re going to pull off an event, pay the bills, support the community and keep your own nervous system from packing its bags and leaving...

Maybe pull your head in before declaring yourself the expert on somebody else’s journey.

This is where I think so much of modern women’s work misses the mark.

We’ve become incredibly good at learning the language.

Boundaries.

Empowerment.

Authenticity.

Sisterhood.

Consciousness.

Trauma.

Healing.

We can recite the words beautifully.

But spirituality without emotional maturity is just better vocabulary.

You can burn incense and still be cruel.

You can know your Human Design and still be emotionally immature.

You can facilitate women’s circles and still participate in character assassination.

You can talk endlessly about the divine feminine while actively excluding another woman from the tribe.

And that contradiction is worth talking about.

Because the women I’ve watched participate in these dynamics aren’t bad women.

They’re wounded women.

They’re women who still believe belonging is more important than truth.

Women who still believe loyalty means agreement.

Women who have never learned that genuine sisterhood sometimes requires asking difficult questions.

And perhaps that’s the saddest part.

Not that they attack.

Not that they judge.

But that they never stop to consider there might be another perspective.

Because mature women understand that every story has layers.

Every conflict has context.

Every human being has a version of events.

And wisdom lives somewhere in the space between all of them.

One of the strange realities of being visible is that people often assume everything is about them.

It’s not.

Most of us who stand on stages aren’t collecting material about individuals.

We’re OBSERVING HUMANITY!!

We’re speaking about patterns.

Dynamics.

Behaviour.

The human condition.

And if someone reads a story months later or watches a ‘live’ and instantly sees themselves in it, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being targeted.

Sometimes it simply means something inside THEM is still asking to be looked at.

That’s uncomfortable.

But discomfort has always been one of life’s greatest teachers.

The truth is, after thirty years in women’s work, I’m no longer interested in empowerment as a concept.

I’m interested in emotional maturity.

I’m interested in repair.

I’m interested in women learning how to stay in difficult conversations.

How to hear feedback without collapsing.

How to take accountability without shame.

How to disagree without launching a crusade.

How to stop treating every conflict like a public trial.

Because the old era is dying.

The era of tribal exclusion.

The era of public crucifixions.

The era of gathering the villagers.

The era of burn the witch.

And thank Goddess for that.

Because the most evolved woman in the room isn’t the one with the loudest story.

She isn’t the one with the biggest audience.

She isn’t the one with the most supporters standing behind her.

She’s the one willing to ask:

“What part of this belongs to me?”

She’s the one willing to stay curious.

The one willing to seek context.

The one willing to have the conversation nobody else wants to have.

The one willing to put down the pitchfork.

The one willing to resist the seduction of the pack.

Because sisterhood was never supposed to be about agreeing with one another.

It was supposed to be about GROWING together.

And we can’t do that if we’re still behaving like the mean girls of high school.

At some point, healing has to become behaviour, not branding.

At some point, consciousness has to leave the Instagram bio and enter the bloody conversation.

At some point, sisterhood has to mean more than agreeing with whoever cried first.

And at some point, we’ve got to stop calling ourselves healed while we’re still running the exact same software we installed in high school.

Because we’re not fifteen anymore.

We don’t need more witch burnings.

We need more women willing to put down the pitchforks, have the uncomfortable conversation and grow the fuck up.

Babe, the lunch bell rang decades ago.

The question is:

Are you still trying to earn a seat at the table...

Or are you finally brave enough to leave the playground?

—

Who Does She Think She Is?

Apparently, the woman who put down the pitchfork.

The same daughter who lectures me about hormone disruptors, endocrine chaos, microplastics and chemical overload in literally everything from shampoo to sandwich bags… just handed me a trigger spray of Sard and said:

“Mum, can you spray this on my dish cloths?, they stink”

Now before anyone starts clutching their organic cotton period undies, let me give you context.

I love this girl with my whole entire being. We have one of those relationships that is equal parts devotion and friction. Deep love. Deep triggering. Deep respect. We are mirrors for each other in the most confronting and beautiful ways.

We live together on 17 acres in Western Australia. Well… not together together. She, her partner and my two exceptional little wildlings live down the hill in a tiny house on the same property. And honestly?

It feels ancient in the best possible way.

Women raising babies in community.
Food growing from the earth.
Kids running barefoot.
Shared resources.
Shared responsibility.
Shared chaos.

She’s the flower farmer. The grower. The nurturer of soil and seedlings and tiny humans.

I’m the Gen X mother over here paying mortgages, folding washing and trying to keep everyone alive with snacks and emotional support.

So one of the ways I support her is by doing her laundry.

Now listen.
If you know, you know.

Those whites weren’t white. Those whites were barely surviving.

And I made the fatal mistake of doing what every Australian woman over forty has done since the dawn of time:
I soaked them in Napisan. G A S P !!!

Oh dear Goddess.
The backlash!

Apparently I was single-handedly poisoning the bloodline.

And look .. she wasn’t wrong.
She was completely correct.
That stuff is chemical soup.

So I respected her boundary.
I stopped using it.
No dramas.

Until today …

Today, this same anti-chemical, toxin-aware, label-reading earth mother walked up my verandah, handed me a spray bottle of Sard and whispered like a woman on the edge:

“Mum… my tea towels stink & my whites aren’t white”

And honestly?
That’s the whole lesson right there.

Because somewhere along the way we forgot that life requires nuance.

You can care deeply about natural living and still occasionally need bleach on the dishcloths that have been fermenting at the bottom of the sink bucket for three days.

You can reject overconsumption and still use modern medicine when you need it.

You can grow your own vegetables and still buy hot chips from the servo on a road trip.

The point is not perfection.
The point is consciousness.

The point is awareness.
Choice.
Discernment.

Not self-righteousness disguised as purity.

Because when we grip too tightly to ideals, we lose our humanity in the process.

And sometimes?

Sometimes you just want your whites to be white.

So yes.
That beautiful, wild, wise daughter of mine handed me a bottle of Sard.

And I sprayed the absolute shit out of those dish cloths!.

Not blame everyone else.
Not build a personality around her wounds.
Not spend twenty years recycling the same pain story at lunch, on Facebook, or in therapy circles.

Radical responsibility.

That’s the rebellion.

And after five decades of living, loving, losing, rebuilding, mothering, burning down identities, resurrecting myself, and walking through more fire than I care to count…

I can tell you this:

One thing my fifty years on this Earth have taught me .. just one thing among many, is this:

Life is not happening to me.
Life is happening through me.

And honestly?
That realisation cracked my whole world open.

Because when you finally understand that you have authority over your own energy, your reactions, your nervous system, your choices, your standards, your boundaries, your voice .. you stop handing your power over to every opinion, every projection, every emotional circus happening around you.

Now don’t get me wrong.

I’m still human.

I still get hurt.
I still get activated sometimes.
I still have moments where my nervous system wants to throw itself dramatically onto the stage yelling, EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?

But these days?

I come back to myself faster.

The noise still reaches me occasionally .. but it no longer colonises me.

And for a Generation X woman raised to monitor everybody else’s emotions, needs, comfort levels, expectations, and approval ratings… that is reVolutionary.

We were conditioned to become emotional contortionists.

To stay quiet.
To tolerate.
To over-explain.
To make ourselves digestible.
To remain loyal to identities we outgrew twenty bloody years ago.

And somewhere along the way, many women became so externally referenced that they lost the sound of their own inner voice completely.

So let me say this clearly for the women in the back:

You do not need to spend your entire life managing how other people experience you.

That is not enlightenment.
That is exhaustion.

Because when we carry victim consciousness in our bodies, life keeps handing us evidence for why we are powerless.

And equally, in the old paradigm, someone always has to become the villain.

Here in Australia, we call it tall poppy syndrome. We love cheering for the underdog. Particularly in women’s spaces, people often rally around the loudest wound, the biggest public collapse, the most visible heartbreak.

And look .. compassion matters. DEEPLY.

But I also think many of us are waking up to how addictive victimhood has become in modern culture.

Late last year, I experienced a situation where I was very publicly cast as the villain in someone else’s narrative. And what fascinated me wasn’t even the event itself .. it was how quickly people chose sides without a single moment of curiosity.

Nobody asked:
“Hey Tracy… what’s your experience here babe?”

No nuance.
No conversation.
No critical thinking.

Just emotional tribalism.

And I saw the fork in the road immediately.

I could become the victim in my own story.
I could spiral into outrage, self-righteousness, bitterness, performative suffering.

Or…

I could take radical responsibility for my own frequency, my own healing, my own evolution.

So I turned the volume down.

Not because I was weak.
Not because I was avoidant.
But because I realised something important:

Not every battle deserves access to my life force.

That’s maturity.
That’s discernment.
That’s sovereignty.

And instead of asking:
“Why is this happening to me?”

I asked:
“If life is happening through me, what is this moment trying to refine within me?”

That question changed everything.

Because radical responsibility is not self-blame.

It is self-leadership.

It is refusing to let painful experiences become your permanent identity.

It is saying:
Yes, that hurt.
Yes, that was unfair.
Yes, I am grieving.
And still… I refuse to abandon my own power.

That’s where the magic lives.

Not in public warfare.
Not in emotional bloodletting.
Not in endlessly auditioning for sympathy online.

In agency.

And honestly? I think we are watching the old paradigm die in real time.

The competition.
The constant outrage.
The need to dominate.
The public shaming rituals.
The obsession with villains.

It feels like the death throes of an old consciousness.

Because what’s emerging now are emotionally sovereign women.

Women who can hold themselves.
Women who can disagree without destroying.
Women who can lead without bleeding all over everybody in the room.
Women who know that softness and strength can exist in the same body.

All my life I’ve stood on soapboxes. I’ve marched. I’ve protested. I’ve fought for justice. I’ve always carried a fierce sense of what is fair and true.

But what I’m most grateful for now, in this decade of my fifties, is that I finally understand how to use my energy with precision.

How to stop feeding chaos.
How to stop leaking life force into meaningless noise.
How to remain open-hearted without becoming energetically available to every drama looking for a host.

Within my Magdalene lineage teachings, there is a phrase called walking the ‘Beauty Way’

And maybe that’s what this next era is really about.

Not martyrdom.
Not performance.
Not proving ourselves until we’re emotionally haemorrhaging on the floor.

But beauty.
Presence.
Discernment.
Truth.
Embodied power.

So my beautiful sisters .. and the few good men mature enough to walk beside us ..

You only get one life in this skin, in this body, in this wild temporary human experience.

Stop waiting for permission to become who you already are.

Let life move through you.
Let it sharpen you instead of shatter you.
Let it awaken you instead of imprison you.

And for the love of God…

Make something extraordinary from it.

And nothing quite prepares you for the moment your daughter grows up, has children of her own… and suddenly begins psychologically unpacking every parenting decision you made between 1999 and 2017

One minute you’re her safe place.
The next you’re sitting in what feels like a TED Talk on nervous systems, attachment theory, emotional regulation and “the red dress incident of 2009.”

And the wildest part?

Underneath all the friction…
there is enormous love.

Last night, I sat in the front row watching my daughter perform in a ritual dance-art offering that was honestly breathtaking. She was luminous. Powerful. Soft. Wild. Entirely herself.

Back in 2005, I would have been sitting there with one of those giant camcorders trying to work out how to zoom.

But last night I had my little gimbal in hand and I filmed the entire performance. Not just for her, but for all the women who created it.

Because somewhere deep inside me, that is the archetype of the mother I know myself to be…

The witness.

The woman who wants to see her children fully.
The woman who wants to remember every becoming.
The woman who wants proof of their magic.
The woman who still tears up watching the people she created become who they are.

And maybe that’s why the polarity between mothers and daughters can feel so brutal sometimes.

Because honestly, being the mother of a 26-year-old daughter is one of the wildest spiritual initiations of my life.

This is the same child who gave me absolute HELL as a teenager.
REPEAT…
HELL !!

The same child who could slam a door hard enough to shake the solar plexus out of my body…
The same child who survived almost exclusively on sass, attitude, emotional damage to her mother, and pure audacity. She did ALL the THINGS!

And now…
NOW…

She has two small children and suddenly has a PhD in conscious parenting, trauma-informed communication, nervous system regulation, emotional attunement, gentle boundaries and apparently… everything I did wrong in 2007.

And listen…
I can handle reflection.
I can handle accountability.
I can even handle:
“Mum, that really impacted me.”

But why does it always begin with:
“I’m not judging you…”

Followed immediately by a full forensic investigation into my mothering history?

What fascinates me most is how our children remember moments without remembering the context surrounding those moments.

Case in point…

When my daughter was nine, I took her and her brother across Europe for six weeks.

London.
Switzerland.
Disneyland.
Paris.
Back to London.
Then a full tour through Wales, homeland of my father .. and southwest England.

A huge adventure.
Beautiful memories.
Magic everywhere.

Before we left Australia, SHE packed her little suitcase with all the clothes she wanted to wear.

One of those items was a red dress.

Now somewhere between Disneyland exhaustion, Paris overstimulation, hotel laundries, travel chaos, and living out of a suitcase for six weeks… she decided she hated the red dress.

Would not wear it.
Despised it.
The red dress became public enemy number one.

But there weren’t endless options.
We were travelling.
Clothes were being washed in hotel sinks.
The suitcase had what the suitcase had.

And to this day…
SEVENTEEN YEARS LATER…
she still brings up “the red dress” as evidence of how I shamed her.

Not because I screamed at her.
Not because I humiliated her.
But because I insisted she wear one of the few clean items available while travelling Europe.

And every time this story resurfaces, I sit there thinking:

“Babes… respectfully… there was CONTEXT.”

What her memory holds is:
“I felt embarrassed in the red dress.”

What MY memory holds is:
“I was navigating international travel with children, exhaustion, budgets, washing, logistics, overstimulation and trying to keep everyone alive and somewhat dressed.”

Both things can exist at once.

And honestly, some of these conversations with grown daughters are WILD.

Because this same little girl, during that same trip, once got so angry at me in a hotel that she took my toothbrush and rubbed it around the inside toilet rim.

I only found out HOURS later because my son quietly said:
“Mum… I wouldn’t use that toothbrush.”

Now imagine surviving THAT level of feral child behaviour…
only to one day be told you were the emotionally unsafe one.

And look…
I understand this generation has access to information we never had.

They have podcasts.
Therapists on Instagram.
Attachment theory.
Gentle parenting.
Somatic healing.
Nervous system education.
Trauma language.
Emotional literacy.
Fourteen women on TikTok explaining how one wrong sentence can alter a child’s nervous system forever.

Gen X mums had instinct, overwhelm, survival mode, and maybe a few episodes of Oprah.

We did not have the information they have now.

And honestly?
I LOVE that younger mothers are more emotionally aware.
I respect the devotion they have to doing things differently.

But I do wonder whether constantly dissecting every tiny childhood discomfort as “trauma” is actually healthy.

Because sometimes a red dress was just a red dress.
Sometimes your mum was exhausted.
Sometimes there were no other clean clothes.
Sometimes we made imperfect decisions inside impossible moments.

Not every mother is a villain.
Not every painful memory was abuse.
And context matters.

I think many mothers of my generation are quietly sitting in conversations where they are being reduced to the worst interpretation of decisions they made while carrying enormous unseen pressure.

And yes…
sometimes the brutality of that judgement cracks your heart open.

Because there can be this sense of being lectured.
A sense that because information is now infinite and immediate, the younger generation becomes the authority not only on parenting… but on YOUR parenting.

And in many ways, they ARE more informed.

But honestly…
is it really necessary to make your mother cry just to get your point across?

Because behind every imperfect mother…
was usually a woman doing the very best she could with what she knew at the time.

And eventually…
your daughter will be 26 too.

And I am genuinely curious to see what today’s parenting looks like once it too has travelled through memory, emotion, projection and hindsight.

Because one day, that tiny deeply-loved child with beautifully conscious parenting…
will likely sit across from her mother explaining all the ways SHE got it wrong too.

So do remember:
Emotional intelligence is not just information.

It is delivery.
It is nuance.
It is compassion.
It is understanding context.
It is knowing when truth becomes punishment.

And still…
I’m up for it.

I’m up for the healing.
I’m up for the reflection.
I’m up for the uncomfortable conversations.

Because beneath all of it, I know there is love.

Fierce love.

The kind of love that keeps showing up.
The kind of love that sits front row.
The kind of love that records the performance.
The kind of love that witnesses the becoming.

So today, on Mother’s Day, I just want to shout out every mother.

The single mums.
The solo mums.
The married mums still carrying most of it alone.
The women in beautiful partnerships.
The exhausted mums.
The healing mums.
The women quietly wondering if they got it all wrong.

Mothering is one of the most rewardingly difficult, soul-shaping, wild rides I have ever been on.

And it is worth it in every way.

And whilst I also have a son, I want to specifically reflect something back to the mothers of daughters…

The mirror we have with our girls .. even when they are grown women .. can become one of the deepest initiations of our lives.

At least it has been for me.

It’s brutal.
It’s beautiful.
And I’m up for it ❤️

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There’s something happening to women in the middle of their lives.

Something sacred.

Something wild.

Something that no one really prepared us for.

Lately, I’ve been waking in the mornings and whispering a simple prayer into the universe:

“Thank you for all the abundance of opportunities I am open to receiving today.”

And honestly?
That one practice has been changing me.

Because I’ve started to truly understand that I am not my thoughts.

I am not the stories that run circles around my head at 3am.
I am not the fear.
I am not the old conditioning.

I am the observer of the mind.

And when I step outside the narrative and lovingly ask myself:
“Tracy… what’s really going on here?”
everything softens.

Everything opens.

This season of my life has been deeply confronting in so many ways. I’ve cried more this last year than I have in a very long time. But instead of seeing those tears as weakness, I’m beginning to understand them as revelation.

An opportunity.

An opportunity to heal the emotions I never processed in my younger years.
An opportunity to understand myself more deeply.
An opportunity to ask:
“What am I really here for now?”

Because I believe something profound happens to women as we move into our wisdom years.

We stop performing.

We stop shrinking.

We stop trying to fit inside lives that no longer fit us.

And instead… we begin listening.

To the body.
To intuition.
To truth.
To the quiet whisper of soul.

I’m in my 50s now, and I can honestly say this feels like a whole new era of my life.

Not an ending.

A beginning.

This is the era where I feel women rise into their legacy work. The era where we stop apologizing for our knowing. The era where we stop asking for permission and start honoring what our bodies are telling us.

And for me, that has meant learning to trust opportunities that feel expansive… and walking away from anything that feels contracted.

Because my body knows.

Your body knows too.

I truly believe life is not happening to us.

Life is happening through us.

Even the hard things.

Especially the hard things.

I look back now at the woman I was when my marriage ended, and I can see that version of me rebuilding herself through grief alone. But this season feels different.

This time, there’s grief… yes.

But there’s also excitement.

There’s knowing.

There’s wisdom.

There’s a deeper understanding that I am co-creating my life with the universe every single day through my energy, my choices, my words, my beliefs.

And words matter.

Goddess, words matter.

I’ve always loved poetry. I’ve always loved language. I’m Welsh, and there’s an old saying:

“To be born in Wales, not with a silver spoon in your mouth, but with music in your blood and poetry in your soul, is a privilege indeed.” — Brian Harris

And I believe words are spells.

Every single thing we speak over our lives carries frequency.

Every thought repeated becomes a pathway.

Every declaration becomes an instruction to the universe.

So lately, I’ve been choosing my words carefully.

I am open.
I am ready.
I trust the unfolding.
I welcome abundance.
I welcome opportunity.

And the more I do this, the more life opens.

The more magic arrives.

The more aligned opportunities seem to appear out of nowhere.

So if you’re standing in the fire of your own becoming right now… if you’ve built a life that no longer fully fits… if something inside you is aching for more… I just want you to know:

You are not broken.

You are becoming.

This may very well be your Phoenix era too.

And maybe the invitation now is not to cling to who you were…

But to trust who you are becoming.

Life is opportunity, beautiful soul.

And I hope you say yes to it.

Trace xXx