Vienda Maria

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Category: personal update

  • when the urge to leave… stops

    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.

  • enough

    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

  • little miracles

    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.

  • little miracles

    little miracles

    “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.

    her wealth

    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…

    mentoring

    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.

    her way circles

    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.

    more little miracles

    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.

  • let go of control: body leads, mind follows

    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.

  • closing the loops [a ritual]

    closing the loops [a ritual]

    closing the loops

    2021: Trial by fire.

     

    Today, I am closing the loops. An energetic loop is the container of something that began that needs to be closed. A calendar year, a relationship, a trauma cycle, a life. These are all energetic loops.

     

    2021 found me pulled under the current and tumbled in the backwash of a turbulent world that I had actively opted out of a long time ago. I held my breath and froze. I stopped dreaming dreams for myself this year.

     

    I pulled back this year. I sat back on my haunches and allowed the currents of the world to wash past me while I waited. I plucked at the thorns in my heart and planted wildflowers in terracotta pots on a balcony that was not my own. I watched them grow and loved them through the shortest summer and their even shorter lifetime.

     

    I was held afloat by the women in my life this year. Women who saw me and heard me when I felt I had nothing left in me. I hurt for a world that is unfamiliar to me and over and over I keep wondering if it had always been this way but I had not noticed while I was firmly living in a fairytale world of my own creation.

     

    I drove a Fiat across 4 countries this year and learned to parallel park on narrow winding streets that lead to stairs into the sea. I fell into an obtuse coma fuelled by loneliness and self-reflection and revisited childhood trauma after childhood trauma and grieved all the grief I had suppressed. I needed to feel it all, to heal it. I grieved my past hurts hoping to create space for the light to come in. But mostly, I waited, sitting back on my haunches, for the tide to change.

     

    Until today. Until today, when I decided I would not wait for someone or something else to close those loops for me. I have sovereign responsibility to myself and my life experience. This year has walked me through the fire and taught me energetic mastery. I know where the line of my fierce embodied discernment lies, where I am no longer available to participate in old patterns, and where my wholehearted “yes” lives.

     

    Energetics is the feeling of truth in our bones. It’s the energy that runs through each moment and reveals its core, its verity, the integrity of the current moment and those interacting in it. We work with energetics every day to witness, amplify, conceal, move through what is. More tangibly, energetics is the intersection of our patterns, learned beliefs, and choices. Energetic mastery is how we consciously choose to act on them. It’s our intentional vibe.

     

    When energy loops need to be closed, meaning, they are still open, we feel them leaking our energy leaving us feeling frustrated, tired, confused, foggy, avoidant, crazed, anxious, lethargic, ungrounded. I wonder if you want to close the loops with me too.

     

    Today we have an opportunity to consciously close out open energy loops that need to be closed out before we head into 2022. Today is a beautiful opportunity to kick off this upcoming year with intention, presence and self-love in the form of letting go of what’s ready to go.

     

    CLOSING THE LOOPS RITUAL

    — Take inventory of the open energetic loops in your life by writing down a list.

    — Determine which loop is the most exhausting/pressing/ scariest and begin there.

    — Address it. Either make peace with it, or have that hard conversation, or set that boundary (and keep it), or scream it out. Whatever you need to do to move it. Go through your list until you’re done.

    — Watch/feel/sense your inner energetics rearrange themselves. You may feel tired all of sudden and that’s ok. That’s the release. Rest is encouraged after this ritual is complete.

    — Burn your list or shred it up while setting the intention “I give permission for any old, stuck energy that no longer serves me to be released with absolute ease from my body while I rest/nap/sleep. Thank you, body.”

    — Enjoy the reset, rest, celebrate, feel liberated.

     

  • moving on

    moving on

    moving on

    ☽
    January

    Most mornings I wake to an aching heart. I place a hand sometimes both, over my heart and remind myself that I am love, that there is limitless love around me, that I am not alone. I’m not even sure anymore what I am mourning but there’s an unbounded deep sadness in me. I just want it to end. I feel fragile, vulnerable and sensitive, there’s a cynicism creeping in and I resent it. I want my innocence back.

     

    I spend the weekends in London with one of my best friends. Her company and way of being are soul-and-heart soothing. I feel so safe and content when I am with her. She has recently gone through her own kind of heartbreak. We are healing side by side. I am so grateful for her.

     

    There are fine lines collecting under my eyes and a frown that is becoming more permanent and I refuse to buy into the idea of ageing. I know I can rewire any belief system and I recommit to my own vibrancy and wellbeing. I ask my intuition what I need and devote myself to it. She says: Vitamin C, Zinc, Vitamin D, exercise every day, vegetables, eating light, passion, creativity, relaxation, harmonious relationships, honouring what I want and need. Most of those things I’m already doing. I start putting Castor oil packs on my liver and reproductive system in the evening and see so much shift and move out of me. A gorgeous Russian woman teaches me face massage and I learn face yoga and begin sucking on little sachets of Vitamin C. Feeling good is my priority.

     

    My relationship with myself changes. Perhaps I have never loved myself in this way before. There is a nuanced subtlety to it. A sensitivity and honesty that is new. The heavy heart, sadness and grief start to melt away and are replaced with anger, disappointment and confusion. I want it all to go away but I hold it close knowing that the only way out is through. Every now and then it overwhelms me and I weep. Big, ugly, noisy sobs shake my entire body until everything inside me feels loose.

     

    One morning I eat a warm croissant and four tiny blue-veined mushrooms and spend the day drifting through a myriad of realities asking each one to bring back to wholeness what has been lost. I scribble endless pages in my journal and draw a card that tells me to restore greater harmony to our Earth. I have nothing to give but my words, I think and hope that this is enough as I write poems and stories and feelings that are meant to soothe and calm and soften the gaze inwards. I walk beside the English Channel over the pebbles until the sun slips behind the clouds transforming the day’s warmth into biting cold. I am restored.

     

    ☽
    February

    There is an unexpected softness to the beginning of this month. My work feels inspired, fulfilling, joyful. I film and present a free 28 Day Journaling Challenge and receive the sweetest notes from women who feel held and carried through this practice. I develop a new program called HER WAY and sense that it is one of the best things I have ever created. I go to the farmers market every Friday and take time to touch, smell and choose local, organic produce for the week ahead. My body craves movement like never before and I blend pilates with yoga or running every day depending on what I am drawn to. I feel balanced, vibrant, satisfied. I make a new friend but crave community in the form of a village. I am excited and scared because I can feel myself embarking on a whole new way of living. It is unfolding before me even though I cannot yet make sense of it.

     

    It is as if I have to be broken in order to become new again. I am creating a new perspective on what my reality looks like. It all takes longer in the physical world — like wading through molasses — than it does as the lighting-fast synapses activate these transformations that occur in my mind. The old ideas and paradigms around what formulates a happy, successful life are falling away and something new is revealing itself. I am left with a sense of curiosity and wonder and an imbued knowing that I can only give all of myself from a place of fullness and wholeness. I want to speak to this more but it requires a page of its own. I am awakening from tight bud to blossom, from maiden to mother, from immature girl to emboldened woman. At almost 40, I realise I have always been a little behind my time…

     

    One of my lessons this month is that I am equally as eager to be loved as everyone else. The human in me sometimes neglects my integrity by way of my yearning for deep intimate love and connection. I wonder if I am a love addict. Then I wonder if it’s helpful to label it this way. I make a pact not to throw myself into love as easily next time.

     

    The test comes soon after. My new friend begins to demands an unrequited intimacy from me that I do not feel. His approach is gentle and hopeful but skillless and artless and leaves me reeling. I want to find a way to maintain the friendship and connection without the promise for more but fail and hurt him with my refusal and lack of reciprocation but fail. Formerly, I would have let myself be swept away into the romance of it all but this time I stand steadfast and centred in my knowing that the love I truly want is spectacular, and not mediocre.

     

    ☽
    March

    90 women join me for an emblazoned month-long journey in HER WAY. 90 women that formed the most powerful alliance, supporting, uplifting, cheering one another on and created a fertile yet safe space for growth, vulnerability and expansion. Very quickly it was apparent that, when given a chance, women will rise most profoundly through alliance and collaboration. Each olive call left me more exhilarated than the last and I thought this, this is it. I can create the community I am yearning for. As we nudge towards the end of our month together I started receiving emails and messages from them. “I’ve never been in a group before where I’ve felt this kind of energy from the group. I’ve been in other group programs and they have been nothing in comparison to this energy that I felt from HER WAY.”  “I’ve never felt so uplifted and supported before in my life! More, please!“. “I miss meeting with everyone every week already! Can we do it again?” “Can we keep this going?” I  start wondering if we could find a way to create an even more intimate space for women to grow, develop and rise within their businesses. HER WAY.  I listen to what is asked for: smaller groups, more 1:1 time, more support and guidance, more intimacy. And so the HER WAY — 7-Month Women’s Business Cocoon is born.

     

    My days a full and fluid and lighter than those of the months before. I find pockets of joy in everyday things and reasons to smile and celebrate. Then suddenly things take a turn and the gods initiate a whirlpool in my little corner of the universe. Within 48 hours, I receive an actual letter (via email attachment) from my mama after not hearing from her for 6 years, a lover from the past asks me to come to Mexico, the love of my life ex (whom I thought was dead) finds me on Facebook and informs me that he has been released from prison and really needs to talk and I am left questioning the meaning of my existence. A calm seeps over me when I realise it’s all part of the closing of cycles, making space for the new way that is unfolding in my life, and I relax into the chaos of human life again.

     

    ☽
    April

    My body always wakes before my mind does… I notice it start to slowly extend an ankle, a toe, palm out. I stretch and remind myself to take my temperature before I move much more and then sit to pull the blinds up. The morning light is hazy outside even past 8 o’clock. I lean my pillows up against the wall and read about Circe the Greek goddess, sorceress and witch. It’s Sunday. I don’t have to do anything. Hours later with several trips to the kitchen for water, coffee, tea my limbs feel restless. I feel restless in my life and in my body. A year of confinement to a small corner of the world is unfamiliar to me. I keep remembering that I chose this. That it’s good for me. That it has already taught me so much. And this too will pass. It’s the last day of lockdown in the U.K. and I will myself to go outside. I pull on leggings and layers, Spring has not warmed this part of the world enough yet, and tie the laces on my trainers. No headphones, I want to hear the world today. I walk to the sea and turn left. Past crowds of people in their Sunday best and worst, past a cute skater girl in baggy jeans and a tie-dye t-shirt, past a dozen fish and chip stands, past new outdoor seating and eating spaces prepared for the new world that begins tomorrow. The seafront feels like the day before a festival, the carousel being tested and repaired, the restaurants offering tents set up with carpets to provide outdoor dining options. I walk until my legs start to ache and the walkway runs out at a hidden car park filled with mobile homes and caravans and gypsy girls in long skirts eating from metal plates sitting on the black asphalt. They remind me of a decade past when I used to live like them and give me heady nostalgia for a life filled with freedom a few cares beyond the next meal and the next place to sleep. Here, I smile at them and wave, I spin around to return to the new life I call my own right now. I wonder what will happen next, I think to myself.

     

  • This is 39.

    this is 39 — Vienda Maria
     
    Growing older is such a luxury and honour. Every year I become more myself, stronger, softer, wiser, kinder, happier, I let go of and move with things easier. This year was one of my favourite birthdays yet surrounded by friends, new and old, by the sea in the sun, laughing a lot.
     
    There’s a really powerful shift that happens when you embrace exactly where you are. No chasing other things/places/people. Not wishing they were different. Fully allowing yourself to be exactly where you are and celebrating the eternal motion of life.
     
    When people ask me what’s next my answer is always “I’m enjoying what’s right in front of me. That’s where I believe life gets really good.”
     
    At 39 I have lost the care for counting years in numbers. Instead, I want to count the number of times my heart swelled with love, the times I lived fully in rapturous joy, the times I broke down in tears and fell apart entirely succeeded by a new version of myself. I want to measure my life by my ability to stay soft when things are hard, to approach things gently when they are sharp, and to choose trust and tenderness in any conditions.
     
    Over my lifetime I developed a high resilience for uncertainty. At first by circumstance and later by choice and further on by habit I chose uncertainty in my home environment, in my work, in finances, in relationships. The more I stripped away at the external sense of certainties the more effectively I was able to anchor myself in my centre letting go of the illusion that anything is for sure.
     
    Over the past 2 years, the rebuilding began for me. It feels so good to be able to create and fully grasp this physical life in both hands without attachment, treading through it lightly. Once nothing was left I had everything to play with without the illusion is that things are solid in their certainty.
     
    It is an illusion that has melted for many of us this year.
     
    There was an innocence to the beginning of this year that none of us can ever reclaim. A hopeful naivety. We were invincible in our optimism that things would continue the way we know them. There was no hint of how the year would unfurl. No evidence of the ways it was yet to break us open and the ways we would have to stitch ourselves back together again, never quite the same as before.
     
    While not much makes sense right now I know that this is happening for us. It’s a coming of age for all of us as a society. A chance to strip away the stuff that made our foundations weak and crippled our society. An opportunity to burn it all down. We are creating space to rebuild a new way of life.
     
    I feel so strongly that the air is thick with thousands of new different ideas and new ways of living and doing life right now. So much is coming through.
     
    We are being propelled forward. We don’t have time to indulge in the unhelpful dogmatics like our fears and pity ourselves or play the victim game. We have to continuously clear all the ego-debris that comes up along the way to keep the space open and be a clear channel for what needs to come through.
     
    These past months and those going forward I am keeping tremendous amounts of time and space open for me to hear the new ideas, concepts and ways of being to allow them to drop in so they can move through me.
     
    One of the huge pieces that I feel is being released collectively right now came through yesterday around working hard and doing things that create socially valued results and how we can start doing work and showing up in a way that is entirely new. I think the concept of jobs as we have known them is starting to fall away.
     
    Ultimately amongst all this, I feel a sense of vulnerable patience knowing what really matters is moving with this stream of the unfolding of my life and trusting that while we don’t know what is next, or how it is all going to pass, it is all exactly as it should be.
     
    This is 39. I like it here.
     
    From previous years:
    This is 38.
    This is 37.
    This is 36.
     
    Photo by Ste Marques