It finally happened. I pooped myself in public this morning. Wait. It’s not as bad as you think.
I was at the beach for the first time in weeks. The monsoon rain finally stopped and I got up early and walked down to the black sand and got a coconut at a shack on the edge of the inlet, then wandered along the shore until I found a spot where I could sit in the sun and watch the surf lifesavers train in the water. I had only just settled in. Towel laid out. Coconut balanced on a piece of driftwood. Clothes off so my skin could finally see daylight again in a teeny tiny bikini after weeks of monsoon rain. And then I felt it. A rumble in my stomach. A familiar urge, but more urgent than usual. I had only been sitting there for about thirty seconds and already I knew I didn’t have much time. Panicking slightly, I started packing up my things. If I can just make it to the nearest toilet, I thought. But the nearest toilet was not really that near, and my body, it turns out, had very little patience for dignity or logistics. I dropped everything and ran. Not toward the cafés but toward a fishing boat a few metres away, ducked behind it and squatted down. Just in time.
I knew yesterday, right after I ate the fresh vegan spring rolls, that something was slightly off. The evidence was now undeniable. I tried to clean up and cover my tracks with some leaves but honestly there is only so much one can do in a situation like this. What can one do but get on with things? I casually strolled back out from behind the fishing boat hoping that no one would need to use it for at least a week, looked around satisfied that nobody had seen me, picked up my towel and my coconut and started making my way home. Home was a twenty five minute walk away. I knew I needed to get clean and I needed to be near a toilet for the rest of the day.
And then.
The next nearest café didn’t have an easily accessible restroom but the one after that was part hotel, part café, and happened to be the exact place where I had eaten those damn spring rolls that caused the predicament in the first place, which frankly made the situation feel a little bit like their responsibility. I felt like they owed it to me to recitfy the situation. I confidently strolled past reception like I belonged there, which is really the only way to enter a place when you are about to do something you technically shouldn’t. I found an unlocked vacant hotel room, walked into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet to relieve the remains of whatever turbulence was still unfolding in my stomach. Then I stripped naked, got into the shower, washed myself thoroughly, shampooed my hair with the tiny hotel shampoo, dried off, got dressed again in everything except my now retired bikini bottoms, and strode back out onto the street feeling, if not proud exactly, then at least reborn.
When I got home I peeled off my clothes, put them in the washing basket, rinsed under the shower one more time just in case, pulled on an oversized t-shirt and got into bed, which is where I will remain for the rest of the day. Close to the toilet.
The funny thing is that when I decided on the title of this article — what can no longer be postponed — it was before all of this happened. My idea at the time was far more high-brow. I wanted to write to you about all the things in life we put off because of this that or the other, when actually the things we are avoiding are often the very things that move us closer to ourselves. But it turns out the title still works. Because this morning on the beach something very literal happened. My body made it abundantly clear that there are moments in life when postponement is simply no longer an option.
A few days ago I asked on Instagram: What needs to be claimed? (Excuse the ‘why’ in place of ‘what’ typo. Here are some of your answers:
I look at these beautiful heartfelt answers and think about what it means to claim them. What it really means. In ourselves. In our daily lives. Claiming something rarely happens in a single moment of self-realisation or readiness. More often it requires a shift in behaviour or energetics. A choice we begin making over and over again. Something that, at a certain point, can no longer be postponed if we really want what we say we do.
Take self-love. Claiming self-love doesn’t mean reaching some mythical state where you love yourself twenty-four hours a day and never struggle again. It means that in the moments when you are tired, disappointed, ashamed, or convinced you are not enough, you choose the loving action anyway. You rest when you would normally push through. You speak to yourself with a little more gentleness than you feel you deserve. You stop participating in your own internal bullying.
Claiming abundance is similar. It isn’t just about learning how to receive more. It’s about noticing all the subtle ways you have been telling life that you are not worthy of what you want. The ways you downplay your gifts, undercharge for your work, apologise for taking up space, or quietly assume that other people are allowed to live well but somehow you are not.
Claiming health is not simply about giving the body time to heal. It is about being willing to listen to the reasons the body fell out of balance in the first place. Illness has a way of pointing, sometimes quite bluntly, to what is no longer sustainable. The pace that needs to slow down. The stress that cannot continue. The truth that has been quietly sitting in the background waiting to be acknowledged.
Claiming work you love is rarely neat or linear either. It usually requires you to do things that feel uncomfortable, unexpected, and occasionally inconvenient. You stretch yourself. You try things you are not yet good at. You keep showing up before you feel fully ready. The love for the work often grows through that process rather than appearing fully formed at the beginning.
And claiming romantic love… That might be the most confronting one of all. Because claiming love often means letting go of the ways we have protected ourselves from it. The strategies, the stories, the old disappointments we have been using as quiet evidence that it might not work out anyway.
You have desires and you ask for things in life. And suddenly there you are. Standing in front of something that can no longer be postponed.
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I’ve opened up my books for a few 1:1 mentoring spaces across the month of March.
If you need to untangle this next step in your life → book here.
If you want to start your own writing journey on Substack → book here.
If you’re ready for creative strategy infused with intuitive intelligence → book here.
for everything else click here
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A few nights ago I had the strangest dream.
I kept trying to take flight. In the dream I knew, with total certainty, that I could fly, but every time I tried to lift off it felt like something heavy was pulling my body back down again. There were all these reasons why I couldn’t. People telling me I shouldn’t, even wrong, to want to. I kept waking up and then slipping back into the exact same dream again and again, each time attempting the same thing from a slightly different angle. Trying harder. Trying softer. Scheming. Adjusting. Negotiating with gravity. Until finally, toward the end, after many false starts and failed attempts, something shifted and I lifted cleanly off the ground. And the feeling, when it happened, was ecstatic.
It felt strangely indicative of the inner journey I find myself on right now.
Lately I’ve been asking myself the same questions over and over again. In a world increasingly fragmented by things like social media and AI, what actually feels meaningful to me? How do I want to contribute? Not just in ways that are productive or visible or strategic, but in ways that genuinely feel good and do good.
More and more I feel drawn toward creating things that last. Things that are genuine and whole. Work that doesn’t feed on the low-grade panic or outrage that so much of the world now runs on. I know instinctively that whatever I create next won’t come from strategy alone, or from information, or from reacting to whatever the algorithm seems to want. It is comimg from reaching inward and pouring from a place inside myself that none of those external forces can really access or touch.
Remembering how to do that seems to be the journey I’m on right now. One that is revealing itself slowly, almost reluctantly, from within. One of my greatest gifts is helping other people find that place within themselves too.
Yesterday my friend Kelly Vittengl and I had a conversation that stayed with me. She told me she’s become increasingly convinced that one of the truest acts of rebellion available to us right now is to stop endlessly consuming the news and instead start becoming and creating what is actually true and authentic to us.
It can sound a little like spiritual bypassing. It can even feel slightly uncomfortable to say out loud. But her point wasn’t that we should ignore suffering or pretend the world isn’t complicated. For all the darkness we see in the world, she said, there is also immense goodness. And if you find yourself struggling to see it, sometimes the most meaningful thing you can do is become it.
I’ve been wrestling with this quite a lot lately. I’ve found myself hesitating before sharing things publicly. Wondering if it’s appropriate to talk about beauty, or creativity, or joy when the world feels so noisy and heavy. And yet, deep down, I still believe that the most meaningful contribution many of us can make is to focus on the things we genuinely value. To build and nurture the things we want to see more of.
Perhaps that is what so many of us are feeling right now in different ways. I suspect this is where the question of what can no longer be postponed becomes important. Because eventually something in us grows tired of waiting. Tired of negotiating with the parts of ourselves that are afraid or cautious or endlessly trying to behave appropriately for the moment we are living in.
Eventually the body runs for the fishing boat. Eventually the dreamer lifts off the ground. Eventually something inside us realises that postponing our lives isn’t actually helping anyone. Not the world. Not other people. Not ourselves.