by Vienda | 5 Sep 2024 | personal update, Travel + Freedom
winter is coming / maybe south? maybe more south? / a love-hate letter to Australia / a surf road-trip along the west coast of Europe / a catamaran trip around the world
Maybe south. FranceSpainPortugal…and then?
Maybe more south. IndiaIndonesiaAustralia…and then?
☾
I am back in my little cabin in the southern part of the UK my furry shadow in the shape of a cat firmly pressing his little warm body against my side as I tap at my laptop keys willing little pieces of my heart out of my fingertips to share with you.
My 8-month mentor training that you have been reading about across the past month started this week and I am in between live training calls today. The shift from externally facing business work and output to internally facing business doing the actual work is palpable. I notice that I have withdrawn from the clamour a little while I recalibrate.
The weather outside is grey and wet. 17°C. Winter is coming.
If I didn’t know I was leaving in three weeks I would be crying but instead, I am laughing because I am leaving three weeks. It was a fast and short six-week on-and-off summer here in the UK.
An anticipated disappointment.
This morning I spoke to a very nice car salesman who told me he would help me sell my car before I go.
I’ve sold all my other furniture already, except for the desk and the bed. The rug that I have shipped across the world several times will get rolled up and put in storage in a friend’s garage with one other bag that will stay behind for now.
Where to now?
☾
Australia is a strange place.
Not my home but sometimes the closest thing. Many formative years spent there have etched a love for the country.
There is something about those endless skies, the vast open space, the scorching bright light. Everything is more alive, more wild, more dangerous. The ocean, the wildlife, the sun.
Every beautiful thing has malice to it.
As a young girl, I learned to be wary of long grasses and concealed foliage. At any moment something that wants to kill you might appear. Even now when I walk through gentle European landscapes my eyes search for evidence of a poisonous snake or spider, a magpie attack or a vicious lizard hidden somewhere.
I have skills most of my friends don’t.
I can open a coconut with a machete in three short hacks. I can identify most tropical fruits and herbs and can tell when something is good to eat. I can look at the ocean to determine whether it’s safe to swim and where, or not, based on the movement in the waters. I can walk barefoot on any ground, my feet instinctively finding safe pockets to balance on, without being marred by rough surfaces.
Sometimes I watch people without the same wildness in their spirit clumsily fumble through nature being pitted by its elements and feel a superiority in my feral heart.
Australia gave me to myself.
It taught me to find peace and vibrancy in the terror and brutality of life.
I miss the smell of the eucalyptus and the feel of the paper bark under my fingers. I miss the unbridled wildness and the freedom you can find when you get far enough away from civilisation. I miss the instant community formed through the shared obstacles of navigating this treacherous land.
Australia.
A country that is rough and raw and honest its bigotry and vacuity. That will readily opt for toxic positivity instead of squarely addressing what is truly going on. Punctuated by the cultural archetype of the “battler” — the idea that people should work hard to earn just enough to survive — is deeply ingrained in the national identity. With little room for more delicate and nuanced ways of being.
I did find my people there.
But they are not the average Australian. As they are not your average Brit or average European or average American. There is nothing average about the people I claim as mine.
It’s been 10 years.
I think of it often. More now, than before.
☾
But Europe is my home, too.
Europe gave me delicacy and refinement inaccessible elsewhere.
A month ago I had a plan.
A friend of mine and I were going to take our cars and meet in the north of France and slowly drive our way along the west coast. France, Spain, Portugal.
An all-girl surf road trip. I figured, that by the time we arrived at the end, I’d have an answer to that question.
Where to now?
But then the plan changed.
My friend could no longer go and I was left adrift in no man’s land wondering what better kismet plan the universe had in store for me.
A good one, it turns out.
Instead, I was invited to join a friend on a four x double-bedroom catamaran with my cat to sail around the world for six months or more. However long it takes and suits our tastes.
In three weeks we will take a taxi to a port south of here, ferry to France, train to Paris, stay the night, fly to Menorca, board a catamaran and slowly sail south.
From the Balearic Islands to Sicily, through the Greek Islands, onto Turkey, through the Suez Canal edging Egypt, into the Red Sea, to the Gulf of Aden, across the Arabian Sea, onto India, the Pacific, and more…
I had never imagined I’d end up here but that’s the beauty of this life I have chosen.
It is kismet.
Contained by an ecstatic swell of destiny, accessible only by relaxing into the unknown.
by Vienda | 16 Aug 2024 | Love + Relationships, personal update
Part journal entry, part example of how I reparent my inner child and regulate a fearful subconscious, part break-up letter, part invitation. It’s all in there! 😮💨
When a woman ends a relationship, she begins grieving the end of it, long before she leaves it.
Perhaps that is how women do most things. Feel them first. Act on them last.
☾
I am at the tail end of an unusually hushed week for a mid-summer month.
A week swimming with incomplete to-do lists and notes, extended walks in the woods, visits to the farm shops, and long days filled with writing content marketing for the final enrolment of The Mentor Training. In preparation for a week south by the sea in France where I will have fewer chances to make it to my laptop to work. Punctuated by pauses where I took my clothes off and lay naked on the ground to take in sun and soil.
I spent July and August getting to know this land and its people in the way I had always hoped to. I wandered every walking trail I could find. Got lost several times for hours. Was rescued once by a stranger who took pity on me after I roamed three hours in the wrong direction and drove me back home. Went to a couple of local music festivals. Met locals, new and old.
I got to know the community and to understand this place in the world.
It confirmed to me that it is not mine.
Place matters. The vibe and people of a place influence. The wrong place can corrode a life. The right place can enhance and flourish it.
This place is in a different season than mine.
Made up of young families or young people still living with their parents or adults who are well into their elder years. My enchantment with Forest Row has failed to meet me. I’m too young for the oldies and too untethered for the families. I reconcile this through conversations with those who share my current season in life. All of them seek a place that nourishes their spirits elsewhere.
It’s sweet and easy to be here, we agree, but it gives little, and are we starving.
I know home is less a place than a state of being. Home, really, is when the urge to leave… stops
☾
Today, after three weeks of sun and warmth a light rain has settled in. It’s that soft mist familiar only to the UK.
Every sunny day here is so treasured. It does not have the same reliable abundance of summer as other places. Instead, a spartan scarcity of sunlight.
I noticed it in particular two years ago when I was visiting from Mallorca.
A dreary, grey, depression had swept across the country. London, which I had fallen in love with in my 20s for its rebellious joyful expression via a melting pot of music, fashion and culture, had become dulled.
My friends tell me the cause is political and socioeconomic.
When I fell in love with this country it was in arms with the E.U. allowing trading, migration and shared regulations. As a European, this provided me with the freedom to jump borders when and as often as I wanted to. Life here was (mostly) sweet. I made the UK a home base, flowing in and out of the country at will, whenever I needed a soft landing.
After Brexit the gritty underbelly of racism and colonialism rose to the surface, the country became grim.
I have had to commit to a certain number of years (three) within a certain time frame (five) to be able to remain. Even then, there is no certainty.
I think my love affair with the UK has ended.
☾
This part, as much of this article, has been pulled directly from the pages of my journal.
I’ve been grieving it for a while.
I will come back for visits. Or practical reasons. My car and business are both registered here for the time being. But that’s it.
This country and I have reached completion.
We are not compatible despite the love between us.
I am curious to discover what is next for us. Danger-baby, Punto-the-car, and me. My little family of three. Where are we going to end up, I wonder?
My intention for the rest of this year is that it has got to be easy. Sweet and easy. Ease is leading the way, everything else is falling away.
Having written that, I have come to realise that the recurring lower back and hip pains I’ve been experiencing have to do with home and safety.
It started when I left Brighton in 2021 to move to Mallorca — a chronic pain that I rarely shared about which persisted during those 18 months — and then subsided on my return mid-last year. The UK has always symbolised safety. A place I am familiar with. Now that I am aware that this perceived safety is going to change my body is making my unconscious fear known to me with the return of this pain. Pain that I ease each day through mindful movement.
Thank you body. I hear you. I feel you. I acknowledge you.
I have an ongoing yearning for home as a safe external environment in which I can relax and thrive. A big part of choosing where to live is being conscious and clear-eyed about the inevitable tradeoffs. There’s no perfect place. Just a set of trade-offs I’m more willing to make.
I am doing the dance necessary to make manifest any desire:
— showing up to the practicalities in the ways that I can
— holding the vision and vibe high
— trusting and surrendering
Back to the subject of home… from me to me.
Darling body. Thank you so much for communicating with me so clearly. I love you so much and am in awe of you every day.
Darling younger self, inner child and subconscious. I know how easily you feel scared and unsafe due to childhood circumstances. I am so sorry that was your reality. And… I am an adult now. I’ve got you. I will always keep you safe. I have the deep understanding, emotional and intellectual intelligence, and resources to do so. Unlike your caregivers when you were little. I love you. All my choices are centred around your expansion, growth, joy, freedom and well-being. Always.
Place matters. And the yearning and seeking for the ‘right’ place, matter too.
☾
Younger self and shadow work play a big role in my work and my self-growth. They are both included in the methods I use with private clients.
I sometimes am asked to explain shadow work.
It is the beautiful inner work of making the unconscious conscious. The parts of ourselves that we hide: our fears, guilt, shame, anger, secret desires or pleasures, the things we lie about. To fit into society/survive/belong. This kind of inner work enables you to be your authentic self thus increasing your personal power and well-being because you’re not hiding anything.
Work with me 1:1 here.
by Vienda | 6 Jul 2024 | Biz + Blogging, Books, Creativity, General, Intuition + Manifestation, personal update, Psychology + Soul
my life of “it’s enough” instead of “I want more”
We’ve swallowed the lie whole. It’s in our bones now.
Our egos have been programmed into the structure.
This relentless pursuit of more. Always more. Your benchmark keeps changing. You never reach the finish line. The wanting never ends.
In this capitalist world that constantly whispers “more, more, more”, standing still and saying “I have enough” feels like a rebellion. A quiet revolution of the soul.
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.
Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have — enough.”
enough kms/steps walked
enough friendships
enough discipline
enough money
enough clothes
enough love
enough joy
enough
There is a certain magic in embracing enough.
It’s the moment you stop struggling against the current and simply float. Suddenly, you realise the river’s been carrying you all along.
As we meet mid-year, I’m learning to trust in the existing abundance.
I’m tuning into the rhythm of sufficiency that beats in every cell of my body. It’s a gentle pulse that says, “You are enough. You have enough. This moment is enough.”
In the soft light of dawn, in the quiet moments between breaths, in the space between thoughts — that’s where I’m finding my enough. It’s not a destination, but a way of being — a lens through which to view the world.
A life of abundance disguised as simplicity. A life of richness measured not in things, but in moments. A life of recognising that the cup isn’t half full or half empty – it’s overflowing, if only we have eyes to see it.
In this noisy world that’s always clamouring for more, let’s be the ones who dare to whisper “enough”. Let’s be the ones who find infinity in a grain of sand, and eternity in a wildflower.
Because when we know we are enough, we have enough, we do enough – that’s when we truly begin to live.
A THOUGHT EXERCISE:
Make a practice of writing your list of enough.
Not could it be 10x better – but does it feel in your heart like enough?
* Family — Enough
* Friends — Enough
* Home — Enough
* Work — Enough
* Partner — Enough
* Mentors — Enough
* Memories — Enough
* Blessings — Enough
* Recognition — Enough
* Opportunities — Enough
* Financial independence — Enough
by Vienda | 4 Feb 2024 | personal update
life update: red cappuccinos, warm grand-fatherly wisdom, friend-dates that end in kisses, inequality turned into appreciation, money & self-worth & internal reorienting + more…
“What was your miracle today?” The text reads.
I just sat down in my new favourite cafe, a small red, white and pink oriental/hipster/millennial vibes place that’s cute and kitsch with an obvious identity crisis, laptop in tow. I pull my phone out and read those words, words we have been sending back and forth to each other. An invitation to look for the miracle that happens each day.
Yesterday’s miracle was a delightful Greek lunch date with a man I consider just a friend which poured over into an art gallery and music adventures through Cape Town’s city centre streets and ended with a kiss.
The other miracle was the deep sleep that followed.
I order a ‘red cappuccino’ from the stocky African man behind the counter, flustered and sweating in his busyness — essentially a shot of strong rooibos tea made like a coffee — and return to my seat at a bench that has small cards labelled with “for laptops”.
I don’t notice the elderly man who sits down next to me until he turns and asks “Where are you visiting from?” I smile at him and say I live in the U.K. wondering how my Europeanness stands out. He tells me his daughter lives there naming a town in Surrey that I do not know.
We chat about travel and Cape Town, how the world has changed from recognition in the past three years and how social media is doing a number on human beings.
I tell him about my philosophy and my guilt.
That we are not meant to have so much information to filter through our minds, that I choose not to watch the news nor engage in the mad goings-on of the world stage because if/when I do it does irreparable damage to my mental health and that I feel guilty that by making this choice I am not offering a positive contribution to the world.
He presents a warm grandfatherly wisdom-filled smile.
“I think it’s the opposite. I think you are doing far more good for the world by refusing to engage with the drama on the world stage that is not a real part of your life because it means you can be present with what is real. The best thing you can do is make choices about the kind of life you want here and now. Is that a privilege? Sure. That’s the gift you were given. Make use of it.”
Solaced and grateful for his words I smile and thank him before the conversation is hijacked by a runaway dog who scampers into the cafe followed many confusing minutes later by a stressed dog walker with seven other dogs attached to his waist. My elderly companion finishes his coffee and says goodbye.
Maybe that was today’s miracle, I think.
After he leaves I weigh his words and how they fit into my current perspective of the world and my place in it. These past few months what I’ve really learned is just how privileged I am. And not to take any of it for granted.
Seeing people suffering without access to basic resources and human rights has lit a fire in me.
Not the fire you might think.
I do not think omgoddess, life is so unfair whydoIhavealltheseresourcesandtheydon’t. I should have/take less.
No. I have known for a long time that life is ‘unfair’. Life is unjust all the time. People die. People hurt. Life is unequal. Just look at nature.
The fire that has been lit in me was that, while I am alive, I might as well make the most of what I have available to me. And in making the most of it, I can also be generous with what I have.
When I appreciate what I have, I am abundant. When I feel abundant, I am free to give back more of myself and my resources.
by Vienda | 3 Feb 2024 | personal update
“What was your miracle today?” The text reads.
I just sat down in my new favourite cafe, a small red, white and pink oriental/hipster/millennial vibes place that’s cute and kitsch with an obvious identity crisis, laptop in tow. I pull my phone out and read those words, words we have been sending back and forth to each other. An invitation to look for the miracle that happens each day.
Yesterday’s miracle was a delightful Greek lunch date with a man I consider just a friend which poured over into an art gallery and music adventures through Cape Town’s city centre streets and ended with a kiss.
The other miracle was the deep sleep that followed.
I order a ‘red cappuccino’ from the stocky African man behind the counter, flustered and sweating in his busyness — essentially a shot of strong rooibos tea made like a coffee — and return to my seat at a bench that has small cards labelled with “for laptops”.
I don’t notice the elderly man who sits down next to me until he turns and asks “Where are you visiting from?” I smile at him and say I live in the U.K. wondering how my Europeanness stands out. He tells me his daughter lives there naming a town in Surrey that I do not know.
We chat about travel and Cape Town, how the world has changed from recognition in the past three years and how social media is doing a number on human beings.
I tell him about my philosophy and my guilt.
That we are not meant to have so much information to filter through our minds, that I choose not to watch the news nor engage in the mad goings-on of the world stage because if/when I do it does irreparable damage to my mental health and that I feel guilty that by making this choice I am not offering a positive contribution to the world.
He presents a warm grandfatherly wisdom-filled smile.
“I think it’s the opposite. I think you are doing far more good for the world by refusing to engage with the drama on the world stage that is not a real part of your life because it means you can be present with what is real. The best thing you can do is make choices about the kind of life you want here and now. Is that a privilege? Sure. That’s the gift you were given. Make use of it.”
Solaced and grateful for his words I smile and thank him before the conversation is hijacked by a runaway dog who scampers into the cafe followed many confusing minutes later by a stressed dog walker with seven other dogs attached to his waist. My elderly companion finishes his coffee and says goodbye.
Maybe that was today’s miracle, I think.
After he leaves I weigh his words and how they fit into my current perspective of the world and my place in it. These past few months what I’ve really learned is just how privileged I am. And not to take any of it for granted.
Seeing people suffering without access to basic resources and human rights has lit a fire in me.
Not the fire you might think.
I do not think omgoddess, life is so unfair whydoIhavealltheseresourcesandtheydon’t. I should have/take less.
No. I have known for a long time that life is ‘unfair’. Life is unjust all the time. People die. People hurt. Life is unequal. Just look at nature.
The fire that has been lit in me was that, while I am alive, I might as well make the most of what I have available to me. And in making the most of it, I can also be generous with what I have.
When I appreciate what I have, I am abundant. When I feel abundant, I am free to give back more of myself and my resources.
In speaking to this, I softly opened earlybird enrolments for Her Wealth: a five-week money course for women starting at the end of this month. The early bird option has limited spots and ends on Saturday the 10th at midnight. Enrol here.
There’s a hot wind blowing in from the interior today, warm air wafting in currents between sweaty bodies as the desert tries to extend its reach to the Atlantic Ocean shore. I brought a Balinese fan out with me and am fanning strangers as I weave my way down to the water’s edge to keep cool.
I spend my days walking along the ocean, taking dips in the ice-cold water, making new friends and working: running my personal brand, seeing private clients, meeting with my The Mentor Training team (enrolments open again soon), and overseeing Plannher my stationery label.
Speaking of…
I have 3 new spaces to work with me starting in March. Press reply to this if you want to know more about what that might look like.
Mentoring topics always seem to move in seasons. What has been coming up for my recent clients is this internal reorienting of who they are, who they want to be and what that means for their place in the world. We are only just grasping how the past three years have impacted us as individuals and as a collective and we are all at a crossroads of some kind to make decisions about the future.
January’s her way circle was on precisely this topic: crossroads navigated by stepping back from the cacophony of external noise and turning the gaze inward, so we can collect the subtle signposts that are offering us a new way forward.
Amidst these explorations of my own, as I restructure the way I work with a focus on relaxing and softening into my professional life and letting it all come to me more with ease at the helm, I’ve changed my mind about a few things.
One of them is that, originally, the her way circles were going to be for paid subscribers only. Now, I’ve decided that, in the spirit of generosity, I want to keep them free for everyone.
Here is the replay, to watch, for all.
I’ll be back in your emails mid-next week with an invitation to the next one which will be on the topic of ‘worthiness’ or ‘worthfulness’ and how we decide on and prescribe our self-worth, both financially and in our sense of self and esteem.
The depth of gratitude I feel for the sun and sea right now is immeasurable, my appreciation coupled with a heartfelt yearning for ‘home’. Home. It’s the first time in a long time that I have allowed myself this kind of nostalgia.
Another little miracle happened a few days ago when the perfect flat, in the perfect location, at the perfect price opened up for me in Forest Row. Just at the right time.
It found me, after I had given up my search, and posted an ad on Spareroom.co.uk hoping it would act like a note to the Universe. It did and it worked and now I get to go back to the village love and left only a few months ago.
A big piece of my sense of worthiness is allowing myself to have places that I feel I ‘belong’ to. They all have to do with people that I cherish the most alongside nature and lifestyle.
I have travelled to so many places and after almost 20 years of that, all that’s left is blurred images of landscapes held together by threads of love and friendship. My yearning to explore the unknown outer terrain has been replaced by a desire to explore the unfamiliar inner ones.
This trip has re-inspired my re-indigenisation into my traditional roots: Italian and Austrian and then going further to British, Romanian and Arabic. I want to learn and remember where I come from and the rituals and connections to nature that my ancestors practised.
This seed was planted two years ago when I read Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaportawhich I recommended in one of my emails to you. It sparked something in me and started a revolution around the legacy I want my life to have which is to integrate and honour both the past and the future. This is why I keep being pulled back to Europe, to where my indigenous lineage lies.
by Vienda | 15 Jul 2023 | personal update
I have intentionally reduced my commitments over the past few months to allow life in, in a way it hadn’t been before. There’s a cost to this though — lost productivity, lost progress, lost income.
I’m sitting with my back cushioned against the headboard of the bed I call my own for this month. When I left Mallorca I chose a life that would exist in a state of flux for a while. The first 5 weeks in a small village in the north of England, now a month in a market town in the mid-East, then a month in London, and after that, possibly Asia.
Still in my pyjamas at 4.30 in the afternoon, I am getting to the business of my work: emails, admin, articles… finding my flow amongst the tasks that tether me to the physical world more than anything else. I enjoy the familiarity and comfort of it.
Yet…
The truth is I haven’t felt much like working for a long time now.
Since April I find myself a season of life that is asking me to allow rejuvenation by ‘not doing’. Some seasons are imbued with unparalleled productivity and abundance and some seasons are fallow.
I have intentionally reduced my commitments over the past few months to allow life in, in a way it hadn’t been before. There’s a cost to this though — lost productivity, lost progress, lost income.
I have this feeling that maybe this season of not knowing how life is supposed to look like is a fragile invitation to discover how life wants to be lived.
People talk about thriving inside a busy life. I don’t want a busy life. I want a slow life. I want an empty life. I want a life that I can fill with ordinary passing-by moments that only I can witness. A squirt of lemon juice fired in the wrong direction. A single butterfly seeking shelter in a bougainvillaea. A patch of grass, soft and cool, under my feet. I want a life that is pregnant with stillness.
So… I have let go of control: body leads, mind follows.
I act from the advocacy of my body’s wisdom and while systems are necessary and valuable, at times they get in the way of what wants to land.
Even the structures I used to pin my productivity on have fallen away.
Binding my tasks to the energy of the days of the week which I infused into my Plannher stationery brand has naturally dissolved, for now. Showing up to specific timelines and time zones is relaxed and limited until I find a new flow. I pay attention to my cycle and endeavour to have fewer commitments around my menses and am more available for social and travel engagements around ovulation. And that is it.
There is very little planning happening in my life right now.
I am allowing life to move me.
It is an enormous privilege to be able to do so.
It is a privilege to be able to disentangle myself from the hyper-productive capitalist world we live in and to be able to take a step out of that. To surrender and wait and hold out for where life is wanting me to go.
It takes courage and determination and trust and willingness to let go.
It is clear to me that the more controlled life is, the less it is actually in control. The more out of control we feel the more appealing the illusion of control becomes. That the way to gain control is to let go of control.
Allowing ourselves to let go isn’t a revolutionary solution to everything that ails us. Instead, it is a process and a practice.
To let go is to let life wash over us. To let it redirect us and renegotiate the timelines that we exist on, to teach us things we otherwise could not see. Things, feelings and experiences we cannot access when life is tightly contained and managed.
Letting go of control — letting your body lead and mind follow — is about opening up space. It’s about allowing another dimension of life to open up for us to slip into.
