My final vlog of 2025: the last month in Paris, in all its unglamorous glory. Slow brunches and busy workdays, ethical fashion chats, pre-Christmas errands, a cold that took me out, and the quiet work of not turning difficulty into a victim story. I talk therapy (again), breakups, why we date our unresolved parental wounds, and what it actually takes to take responsibility for your life as a new year approaches. Also: three big losses, one major perspective shift, and the decision to leave Paris in search of sunlight.
My apartment is set to a tropical 24°C, a decision I stand by morally. My weather app is teasing me with numbers between -1°C and 6°C, as if any of those are meaningfully different. The solstice slipped by quietly a few days ago, and with it, winter has officially arrived. I am hibernating through the final week of 2025, emerging only for strategic walks in glimpses of sunlight and friendship gatherings.
It’s Christmas Eve. I’m in bed with my laptop balanced on my thighs. A fragile truce between closing the final loops and rest, peppermint tea stationed to my right as both beverage and emotional support. Outside, the last remaining leaves clinging to the final undecided tree outside my window have turned a dark, rain-soaked brown and are rustling in the wind.
The past two months have been a slightly feral mix of redesigning, rebuilding and upgrading The Mentor Training. The kind of work that makes you forget what day it is, question your life choices, and then suddenly remember exactly why you started.
This training was born in 2022, not from a slick business plan, but from something I couldn’t ignore. Client after client arrived in my world carrying quiet damage from experiences with people who called themselves coaches or mentors and had deep emotional influence without the responsibility or rigour to match it.
Now entering our fourth year, the training has matured. The curriculum is stronger, the standards clearer, and the focus remains on ethical, relational, embodied mentoring — not performance, not charisma, not “personal brand,” but trust.
Thank you for being here with me and reading, watching, commenting and sharing your journey as we bumped along side each other through this year. This was my last note to you from me in 2025.
I am taking January off from outward-facing work and this newsletter to replenish and rebuild after a year that took everything. If you’re a private client, you’ll see me in our video calls as usual.
If you’re a free subscriber, starting next week you’ll meet one of my inspirations every Wednesday: on the list. In November, I started this gentle, playful interview series about what women I admire are tending to, dreaming of, and prioritising, one list at a time. It’s been such a joy introducing you to women who show that anything really is possible when you choose to trust yourself.
If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll continue to receive my most vulnerable writing: unfiltered, raw, honest stories and updates, as always. Essays I’m working on in my drafts include Bad Sex with Nice People, Inside My Notes App, and My Year of Magical Thinking.
If you’ve been thinking about becoming a paying subscriber, I’d be so grateful for your support. And there’s a little extra nudge: through the end of the year, I’m offering 25% off an annual subscription:
a gentle Paris vlog, plus words and thoughts on the challenges of this year
NOV 26, 2025
A slow, tender glimpse into a couple of my weeks in Paris…
Come with me to a meeting in the centre of the city, witness an unexpected rainbow, and join me for a handful of honest chats about life lately. I share my approach to wrinkle prevention and my boundaries around phone use, why I started my business in the first place, and how it’s evolving in ways I never expected. I also discuss what it’s really like navigating female friendships as an introverted adult.
I also open up about the season I’m in: intentionally reshaping my social circle, letting certain relationships go, and sitting in that in-between space where things haven’t yet fallen into place. It can feel lonely and disorienting… but also deeply beautiful, empowering, and necessary. This is the heart of taking responsibility for our lives… the exact work I teach inside CLEAR.
If you’re in a similar chapter, or simply curious about the behind-the-scenes of my days, I hope this vlog feels grounding, comforting, and human.
Hey love,
I will share more soon as I continue to emerge from the shell of this year.
For those of you, who are also starting to dust off the ashes and rise from them… this is the literal tail end of it, an extremely difficult 2025.
I am so confident in our collective grace, changeability, softness and flexible resilience. We have passed through so much. The gift lives in the pain.
Here is to our rising. To a new season of life ahead.
A few notes:
PRACTICAL DREAMER has been unexpectedly popular and almost sold out, with one spot left. Let me know if you want it by replying to this email.
An 8-step journey through The Repattern Process: a method for rewiring subconscious patterns, dissolving inherited conditioning, and returning to your most authentic self. When you clear what no longer serves you, life naturally rearranges itself to match who you’ve become.
This is not about “manifesting” in the trendy sense but about energetic precision and alignment. When your beliefs, emotions, and actions align, reality responds. Effortlessly.
I point at the two empty stools by the bar and ask if I can have them. The maître d’ asks if I am a guest, and I shake my head. She winks at me and leads me to the bar, pulling a chair out for me. The front bar at The Ritz is full. I am meeting a woman I have never met. A blind date for friendship.
The bartender smiles at me in a boyish, charming way and asks me what I’d like to drink. I slowly read through the menu to fill time and settle on the pinot noir. A soft, smooth and easy wine to keep me company while I wait.
It’s the first time that I am out at night in Paris since I arrived two weeks ago. It is getting cold, but I want to feel good and am wearing my favourite silk and lace mini dress that I thrifted in NYC in the summer and a dusty pink cashmere sweater that I bought the day before I left.
New York is still etched into my heart with pangs of nostalgia that I’ve never experienced before. But here I am in Paris instead and actually happier about it than I had imagined. My new friend arrives, dispelling my thoughts of the past few months, tiny and elegant, dressed in all black from bottom to top.
Black heels, a long black pencil skirt, a black cami, and a black sweater wrapped around her shoulders. She apologises for being late, orders the same wine, and we begin to exchange stories. She’s from Texas and, after a career in the oil and gas industry, has moved to Paris to be with her fiancé and embark on her ‘soft woman’ era. She shares some sentiments about learning to purposely drop some balls in her life to find true happiness. It was a slightly different argument than saying “you can’t have it all,” and it has stayed with me until this morning.
It was this summer, right after my breakup, that I declared to my friend, “From now on, I’m half-assing everything!”. I had poured so much of myself into the relationship, into the move to New York, into the life that I thought I had been building with someone that I loved.
All my life, I have given the things that I love maximum commitment and effort, but it has not made me happy. I decided that perhaps what I needed to do instead was to start half-assing everything and deciding that that is enough.
‘Enough’ has become a mantra these past few months when I consider aspects of my current lifestyle that feel messy or half-assed but are otherwise contributing to my day-to-day functioning. My lack of food in the fridge or of proper mealtimes. My haphazard attempt to consistently produce work that results in income. My uncertainty about where I am supposed to live. My attempts at staying in touch with the people I love, which had been discriminatingly narrowed down to only those who can meet me at a level of self-awareness and maturity that matches where I am headed. My insufficient sleep patterns as I slowly return my nervous system to homeostasis after the most activating few months of my life.
Whatever it is, my effort, care, patience, limitations, love, appreciation, hope… is enough. It has to be. Because I have realised that just because something could technically be better or done better or more efficient or more perfect doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be. That better doesn’t make me happier. But that accepting an imperfect, messy life and letting that be enough does.
This morning, sitting in my bed looking out this window, writing these words to you, I appreciate how completely letting go and letting myself do things in this more lax and half-assed way has led me here. Living in the fifth arrondissement in central Paris in a beautiful two-bedroom apartment with high ceilings that I have sublet until the New Year, hopefully giving myself enough time for parts of my life to settle and replenish in ways I need them to before I have to make any further decisions about what is next.
It is writing and the art of noticing that have offered me the calming ability to see the agency I do have in my life. Writing has held a thread of self-respect for me in a time when it felt like everything I had had fallen apart. It has shown me that what is really happening is that my life is finally falling together.
a small correction, a little favor, some life updates, and win a 90-min session with me valued at $250
OCT 03, 2025
Hi love,
First, a correction. In my last letter, I invited you to TheArt of Noticing and told you it begins in November. That was wrong. It begins in October. OCTOBER. In two-and-a-half weeks from now.
For reasons that are unclear to me but consistent, apparently, since they’ve plagued me my entire adult life, I cannot seem to keep October and November straight. They’re distinct but too similar, and my brain collapses them into one long stretch of autumn/fall, indistinguishable but lovely. Every year, I make this mistake.
Second: I need your help. I want to shape what comes next with you in mind, not in the way marketers mean when they say “know your audience,” but in the way I mean when I say I want this work to matter. So I made this survey. If you complete it, you’ll be entered to win one of three 90-minute 1:1 sessions with me (worth $250 each).
There is a tiny, little catch: to enter, you also share my Substack or Instagram with five friends. Then, in the form, tell me their first names and what you said to them about my work. I know it’s a bit extra, but I want to see how this community spreads: through whispers, trust, the intimacy of one person telling another, not ads or algorithms.
The competition closes on Sunday, October 19th, and I’ll draw and email the winners the next day. If you don’t want to enter the competition but just want to give me feedback, you can skip the part where you share my work and just leave me your thoughts instead. Your voice and thoughts are valuable to me. Thank you.
Third: we’re in the middle of the 8-part her way club “how to change your life” series. (Thank you so much for all the incredible email responses I get from you on this! It’s deeply meaningful to learn how this series is resonating.) And yes, I keep interrupting it. I tell myself I shouldn’t, that people like consistency, but the truth is: I have too many things moving at the same time that I want to share with you. I would rather risk over-communicating and leaving enough space between each note to you than leave something unsaid that might be useful to you or follow some arbitrary rule.
This year has been like a holy fire. Things I thought were permanent: systems, identities, relationships, ambitions, have collapsed into ash. And while it was frightening, it was also clarifying. What survived is what matters.
None of this was on my 2025 mood board. The mood board had other plans: more travel, maybe a new home, some whimsical goals that looked like self-portraits painted in soft light. Instead, what I got was a lesson in self-worth, in boundaries, in recognising where I’ve been overspending: emotionally, energetically, physically.
So here’s what’s changed in ways that impact you:
I’ve put a paywall on all of my memoir-style writing. Because writing at that level of exposure costs me something real. Metabolising in public requires energy, courage, and recovery time. It feels important to honour that.
What I keep free is the writing that’s more directly of service, the kind that teaches or inspires, and points you back to my work itself. It felt like an important recalibration: a quiet reclaiming of value.
I used to think I had to build an empire.
But conventional business empires are expensive, time-consuming and frankly, exhausting. The truth is, I’m tired. Not of my work itself. I love what I create. I love the people I serve. I’m tired of the way I’ve been made to believe I have to show up to be successful.
All I want is a simple, profitable business with minimal expenses, helping people and doing what I love.
There are times when my business doesn’t run perfectly, but I find that even on the challenging days, I am grateful. Because I am still waking up without an alarm, writing in my bed, working from a cafe, and able to fit my work around my life instead of the other way around. And that is such a gift.
I quit coffee again because of this, and turned to black tea instead
People like to tell you that a successful business is fully automated, and certainly, some automation helps, but I’ve found this works too:
Wake up Write Create and publish one piece of content Go for a walk Lunch See clients Workout Dinner + friends Sleep
It’s not glamorous, but it’s beautiful, it’s effective, and it’s enough. And my body and internal system and nervous system and heart thrive in this way.
As long as I can:
make money helping others be creative in the ways that pour out of me have minimal overheads and expenses set aside a good percentage for savings invest in experiences that I value have space and time to contemplate daily live in a beautiful environment with sun and water
I am a content, calm and fulfilled woman.
Success to me is:
consistent income living within my means low overheads and expenses financial and time freedom saving money for the future spending time with people I love doing things that I love daily nature, sunshine and movement a beautiful home and external environments work that supports me and my lifestyle helping people through my creativity a mutable, fluid daily schedule
Every Monday, I have a little dreaming and planning day. Corporate types call it a ‘CEO Day’, but for me, it’s a check-in date with myself:
I look into how I am feeling (what do I want and need) I check my accounts, income and expenses I make sure I put money in my savings I dream into what I want to create more of I lean away from what I want less of I organise my week ahead
I do this every week, no matter what. I know that whatever I pour my love and attention into is what will grow. I choose to be intentional with that. This is how I nurture my relationship with my resources.
I don’t have all the answers. But I do have a framework I’ve been returning to as I rebuild my life right now. It’s become my quiet compass in this transition. Thank you for being with me during this transformative time in my life.
I hope something wonderful happens for you this weekend.
An invitation: The Art of Noticing (AoN Fall/Autumn edition) ~ we begin on Tuesday, October 21, with the New Moon 🌚
OCT 01, 2025
Your energy is contagious. Your emotions are contagious. Your dreams are contagious.
The way we show up, in a room, on the page, or in our lives ripples outward, touching others in ways we rarely see.
It’s why I believe writing is more than just words. Writing is noticing. Writing is tending your inner garden. Writing is how we share our light.
I’ve been thinking about how people are not drawn to us by our perfect plans, or our tidy timelines, or even by the things we say we’ll do.
People are drawn by the feeling we carry. By the glow of possibility in our eyes. By the way our dreams make them imagine something more for themselves, too.
I feel lighter and have given myself permission to write simply because I want to. The AoN gave me the final gentle push I needed, without pressure, but through many small, inspiring nudges. ~ Franziska
This fall/autumn, I’m gathering a small circle of writers, dreamers, and noticers for six weeks of writing together.
It’s called The Art of Noticing It begins on October 21, with the New Moon 🌚
And it’s for anyone who wants to write more: not perfectly, not necessarily professionally (though a lot of business owners take The AoN) but more honestly.
We’ll explore:
How to build a writing practice that fits your real life
How to write with trust, rather than self-doubt
How to share your words with confidence
And most of all, how to find beauty and meaning in the details you might otherwise overlook.
Since participating in The AoN, my style of writing has evolved, and I hope to keep carrying this forward. I secretly wish it could go on a bit longer :) xx ~ Dee
This is what I return to, again and again, in my own writing: the art of noticing.
Noticing how the light hits the side of a building. Noticing how a conversation lingers in your chest. Noticing what feels alive, even when it doesn’t make sense.
Because when I notice, I connect. I soften. I remember that life is not a list to check off but a story to live, and to tell.
I specifically liked hearing about your process for writing. I have taken lots of writing classes before, and it sounds like other participants have, too – and my favourite part was you sharing with us YOUR style. :) ~ Solveig
If you’ve been feeling the pull to write again… If you want your voice to feel alive in your own mouth… If you’re ready to notice the world with more tenderness, and write from there…
Since taking The AoN, I feel expansive, like an enormous seed has been planted and everything’s building in energy. I need to be patient, create the space and allow it all to come through in the divine timing in which it was meant. ~ Amy
That’s the thing about noticing. It changes everything.
It reminds us that life is not lived in the big milestones, but in the small, fleeting glimmers: the golden edge of a cloud, the warmth in someone’s laugh, the courage it takes to share a piece of yourself on the page.
Thank you, Vienda! I’ve really enjoyed this space. The daily voice notes.. all of it. It has me excited about the next phase of my writing journey. ~ Ashleigh
Some previous essays that might inspire you to join us for The Art of Noticing:
3/8 — the third rule of her way club (aka: how to change your life in 6-12 months)
SEP 12, 2025
Continuing our 8 rules of her way club series. If you’re just joining, begin here:
1/8— deciding to play by your own rules 2/8 — subtracting what doesn’t belong 3/8 — the natural consequence: uncertainty
Without inherited structures, you’re floating.
If the first rule of her way club is making the choice to play by your own rules, and the second rule is subtracting everything that doesn’t belong to your life, then, if you’re doing it right, ultimately you will be led to the third rule as a natural consequence: uncertainty.
Uncertainty acts as a doorway.
You’re supposed to feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.
The moment you stop living by borrowed rules and strip away everything false, you feel lost. The familiar timelines and “shoulds” vanish. And in their absence, uncertainty arrives.
This is an initiation.
It might feel like failure or danger. But it’s not. It’s the proof you’re on the right track.
This is the part where you lean in and learn what is actually meant for you on a moment-to-moment basis. This is what being truly alive feels like.
Your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty you’re willing to embrace.
If you’ve been journeying alongside me for a while, you will know that I spend extraordinary amounts of time in uncertainty, which I call by various names: the unknown, the void or the magic dark.
Here are some examples:
Career/Work
I figured out pretty early on, in my early twenties, that the status quo career path was not going to be able to offer me the kind of life that I wanted. I had concluded that school was never meant to teach us how to learn effectively. It was to train us to be obedient.
Apropos nothing, but a side note I want to venture down briefly: Now, with the rise of AI, this truth is becoming impossible to ignore. The stable, predictable career paths of our parents and grandparents that promised safety and security are dissolving. The world now demands agility, responsiveness, and creativity. It’s an exciting opportunity. It means we get to consciously and deliberately choose (in true her way club vibes) how we spend our time, how we create value, how we resource our lives. The cost is that it requires a willingness to linger in the discomfort of uncertainty, sometimes for long stretches of time.
I had to carve out a path of my own.
At the time, I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go in. I had a psychology degree, a love for writing and a personality. Those were the three things I had available to me.
It was 2012.
I used my writing hobby to start a blog. I used my psychology knowledge to provide a lens. I used my personality to build connections and relationships.
Over time, I learned how to trust my own rhythm, built a successful personal brand and saw how clients, ideas, and opportunities began to appear because I was willing to hold steady in the uncertainty.
The journey of uncertainty often looks like:
Letting go of control
Trusting your intuition
Embracing failure as a learning opportunity
Discovering your true passions and strengths
In 2022, ten years later, I became complacent.
I lost my drive, my direction was diluted, I forgot what I stood for, and I burned out.
After many mini cycles of uncertainty throughout my career up to that point, I entered one large period of uncertainty that lasted almost two years. Until recently, I spent a lot of time in confusion, feeling lost and being on the verge of giving up.
This is where the magic dark comes into play.
I had to spend enough time in uncertainty for the right amount of vision to form, for clarity to arrive, to be able to launch myself into a new way of life.
I have been promising you that I will share what this journey is all about, and I will. I already have an essay drafted, but keep editing, adding to it, and rewriting it because there’s a lot to say. And today, here in this space, is not the place.
Home/Travel
If there’s one area of life where I seem to have an unusually high risk tolerance, it’s where I place my feet and call home.
In the past decade alone, I’ve packed my life into a suitcase or two and moved to a small town in Canada, a village in Mexico, a coastal city in the UK, then Mallorca, and most recently, New York City, each one chosen without ever having visited before.
Sometimes these moves worked out beautifully, sometimes not. One thing has become abundantly clear:
There is no perfect place.
Every place will offer you something. A piece of yourself you hadn’t yet met, a lesson you didn’t know you needed, a relationship that will shape you.
If you can choose a place that supports the season of life you are in and leave it when it no longer does, you are doing it right.
Landing in a new place with no safety net, no mapped-out plan, just a suitcase and the decision to trust your instincts offers a peculiar kind of initiation. There is a mix of thrill and terror as you wander strange streets, question if you belong, and feel the weightlessness of having no context.
But there is also something else: a sharpening of your senses.
Living without inherited structures forces you into presence. You notice what food you crave, which streets feel friendly, who looks you in the eye, and the natural rhythm of your creativity and agency. Belonging drips in slowly, one kind stranger, one favourite café, one new friendship at a time.
Each place I’ve lived has stripped me bare and handed me back to myself with greater clarity. They’ve offered me relationships I never could have imagined and moments of beauty that would never have happened if I had stayed still.
It’s not that relocating is easy. It is often lonely. It is unmooring. But if you can stay with that discomfort long enough to let the edges soften, if you can learn to resource yourself from within while waiting for the puzzle pieces to fall into place (or don’t, and then you get to choose again), what comes from that space is unmatched.
My career, friendships, and creativity all have roots in the decision to keep moving until I found places that matched my internal world. Without those leaps into the unknown, I suspect my life would be much, much smaller.
Personal Connections
If you’ve been with me a while, you know that I just went through the most brutal breakup of my life, so I am keeping this section brief. And… I am glad it happened.
(If you want to catch up, the whole story is tucked inside the archives; a breadcrumb trail from the day we met a year ago to the day it ended two months ago.)
In truth, there isn’t a single romantic relationship or friendship I regret releasing. Because what has grown in the fertile soil of those endings has always been worth it: deeper intimacy, clearer boundaries, a closer relationship with myself and others.
It is never easy.
There is always a deep and terrifying ache right after an ending. The kind that empties your chest, keeps you up at night, and makes you question every decision you’ve made in your life. The mind spins a million scenarios about how this is the end of love, the end of goodness, the end of belonging.
But on the other side of that ache, there is something else, waiting. Usually, exactly the kinds of personal connections you have been yearning for. The ones that needed you to be ready for them.
You can’t skip this stage. You can’t think your way through it. You can only live it. Floating in the unknown until the ground reappears beneath you. You can never arrive here without being in the uncertain in-between.
Creativity
Creativity is your unique contribution to the collective. But letting yourself be seen in your creative expressions can feel life-ending.
Many of you reading this are here right now: standing in that moment of decision. Should I start a Substack? Should I release the thing I’ve been dreaming about? Should I show myself more fully online, or dare to call myself an artist, a writer, a maker, a founder?
This year, my biggest leap of uncertainty was finally admitting to myself that I am a creator and giving myself permission to share what I create in a way that feels aligned, meaningful, and honest.
For more than a decade, I’ve been publishing writing for mostly free. I had it drummed into me that content marketing was a single file path and that I couldn’t deviate from it. I couldn’t bring myself to put a paywall around the tender, personal parts until just a few months ago.
And then, the moment I did, when I went all in, in valuing my writing and my memoir-style expositions, everything shifted. The work deepened. The readers who stayed became more engaged. As of today, I am only ten subscriptions away from becoming a Substack bestseller.
There are other projects: courses, offerings, collabs that I sometimes sit on for months because I am scared no one will value them, that they won’t be well-received, that they’re not good enough, that they will vanish into the void.
But I’ve learned that if I can stay in that liminal space, uncomfortable as it is, something happens. The edges of the idea sharpen. The delivery deepens. The work becomes more potent.
And the things that don’t work out feed into things that do, which, as a counter-effect, become better than anything I have created before.
Uncertainty is a creative pressure. It forces me to listen more closely, to refine, to make sure what I’m bringing into the world is the truest version I can offer.
And with every round of staying with that discomfort, my capacity grows. I get better at holding myself in the unknown. Better at waiting for clarity to arrive. Better at trusting that what emerges from that space will have more depth, more resonance, more impact than if I had rushed to get it out just to soothe my own anxiety.
The act of creating while uncertain is the transformation. It is what gives the work its aliveness, its resonance. When I let myself create from that place of risk, readers feel it. Clients feel it. I feel it.
You’re supposed to feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.
But when it comes to living an extraordinary life, which is the only way to live a life that is truly your own (and what her way club is all about), most people interpret “feeling uncertain” as a sign they have taken a wrong turn. So they give up. They run back to the familiar and comfortable life that was planned for them. The one the system approves of, even if it’s the very life they were trying to escape.
And maybe that’s why you’re here, reading this.
Because deep down, you know you want more for yourself than the version of life you were handed. And to enjoy your life. Not just one day, but now, and into the future.
To enjoy your life, you have to keep learning, growing, evolving, and changing. And there is no way to change your life without spending time at the edge of the unknown.
Uncertainty is the doorway.
It’s the signal that you are in the exact place where transformation can happen.
If the first rule of her way club is deciding to live by your own rules, and the second rule is subtracting everything false, then this… this floating, this disorientation, this not-knowing, is where the magic happens.
Stay here. Stay with it. Stay long enough for your new life to appear.
I’m sitting in Brighton’s Artist Residence looking out at the English Channel, frothy white foam on the tips of waves sparkling between mist and bursts of sun, and hot chocolate to accompany me on th…
We were sitting in my friend’s garden in upstate New York a few weeks ago. Both of us trying to reclaim our lives after they had been dismantled by forces beyond our control. Our conversation hummed with ways to feel just a little lighter when everything seemed too heavy.
The afternoon air was warm and green. Bees staggered from flower to flower. Cooled white wine warmed in the sun. Behind us, the house held the relief and wreckage of recent change. Boxes half unpacked, a rug rolled like a sleeping animal, the door left open to catch whatever breeze might pass. My chest felt unsteady, as if the ground under my ribs kept shifting. Hers too.
“The one thing that works for me when I’m deeply unhappy, when life feels misaligned and everything seems to be falling apart, is subtraction,” I said. “It’s looking at my life and stripping away anything that doesn’t make me feel good. Habits. Expectations. Commitments. Thoughts. Words. It’s usually less about what I need to add, and more about what I need to put down.”
Her face lit up. “I think that’s what I need to do, too. Remove everything that isn’t essential to the life I’m rebuilding.”
Life is so much better when you know what you’re living for.
Most of us have been tricked into thinking that “more” equals fulfilment. That meaning comes from piling more onto our plates. More doing, more striving, more proving. A fancier job title, a fuller calendar, a prettier home, a shinier version of ourselves.
And yet, the moments I’ve actually felt joy, contentment, relief, almost always arrive after letting something go. After I’ve stopped trying so hard to live up to some imaginary standard. After I’ve decided not to carry what wasn’t mine.
We are far better at adding than subtracting. Adding habits, projects, rules, identities, expectations. A way to reassure ourselves that we’re worthwhile, lovable, keeping up.
But what if the thing we actually need isn’t more? What if it’s less? A stripping down, a paring back, until what remains feels closer to who we are at our core.
Subtraction is the quiet art of laying things down. It brings us back to center without scolding ourselves. It builds a frame we actually want to live inside.
It asks simple questions: What habits, expectations, commitments, thoughts, words, beliefs, practices, attitudes, people, places can I subtract to get my life back on track? Where have I gotten sloppy? Where am I leaking energy, quietly wasting the life force I will never get back?
And then, decide for yourself what that is and how much is enough.
At a party on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut tells Joseph Heller that their host, a hedge fund manager, made more in a single day than Heller earned from Catch-22 in its entire history.
Heller shrugs. “Yes,” he says. “But I have something he will never have: enough.”
It’s the pause in your chest when you could go for more but don’t. It’s the quiet nod in your mind that says: this is enough.
Enough is peace, it’s relief, it’s contentment. It’s seeing what you have, what you’ve built, what you’ve earned and letting it be enough.
It’s the opposite of greed. and the opposite of more. It’s radical. In a world that screams more, more, more, saying enough is rebellion.
The way you know it for yourself — the way you choose it — is exactly like the way you decided if you’re in her way club last week (or not.) You stop inheriting other people’s scoreboards. You stop following their timelines, their expectations, their “shoulds.” You pause. You look at your own life. You name what nourishes you, what sustains you, what fills your essence.
You decide: this is enough for me.
From that clarity comes another quiet practice: negative gratitude.
It’s giving thanks for the things you don’t have. For the health issues that never arrived. For the responsibilities you don’t carry. For the lifestyles, people, pressures that could have crushed you but didn’t. For the “no’s” that gave you freedom.
We’re always told to be grateful for what we have. And we are. But what about what we’re relieved of? The space, the energy, the freedom quietly gifted by what is absent?
Take a moment. Look around. What’s missing in the best way possible? What doesn’t exist in your life that makes it lighter, easier, more yours?
Negative gratitude trains your attention to absence as well as presence. It shows you where you’ve already been spared, already held, already enough.
Write it down. Say it out loud. Feel it. Let it settle in your chest. Let it remind you: life is not just what arrives, it’s also what doesn’t.
In that garden, with my friend, subtraction, accompanied by enough-ness and negative gratitude, began to feed the same thing: choosing lightness where we can, so that what remains has room to grow roots.
We exchanged whispered subtractions, starting small. A newsletter I wasn’t reading, a recurring Zoom meeting that made me tense, a habit of scrolling before bed.
Each tiny release returning air to our lungs, giving space to our souls. By the time the sun dipped behind the trees, the practice of subtraction transformed from a theory into a reclamation.
a practice for you:
Take fifteen minutes today to look at your life through subtraction. Grab a notebook or your phone. Make a quick inventory: habits, commitments, expectations, thoughts, people, places, anything that quietly drains you or keeps you from feeling like yourself. For each one, ask: Does this nourish me? Does this serve me? If the answer is no, make a note to let it go.
Imagine letting go of a routine self-talk you give yourself without thinking. Every morning that you think, “I should do better,” or “I need to push harder,” like a mantra. It feels harmless, even responsible. But it’s not. It’s a subtle weight you carry, a quiet pressure that shapes your whole day before it’s even begun.
What if you simply stopped? Not replaced it with another mantra. Not “I am enough” or “I can do this.” Just stopped.
The silence that replaces it is startling at first. Your chest feels lighter, your mind less crowded. Instead, you notice the warmth of the sunlight on your skin, the rhythm of your breath, the hum of life around you that had been muted by the constant mental checklist. That small, almost invisible habit of self-criticism had been subtracting from your energy for years, quietly shaping your hours into tension and obligation. Releasing it doesn’t make you lazy or complacent. It makes you present, aligned, capable of pouring your attention into the things intentionally.
the NO list:
Here’s a little thing I love doing. I call it the NO list. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a list of all the things you’re done with. All the stuff you’re letting go of. All the habits, commitments, obligations, and little drains you no longer have to carry.
Grab a notebook, a piece of paper, your phone, whatever works. Set a timer for five minutes. Write fast. Write messy. Don’t censor. Just let it pour.
What are you done saying yes to? What are you done carrying? What are you done pretending is necessary?
It could be huge: “I won’t take on another project that burns me out.” Or tiny: “I won’t scroll Instagram first thing in the morning.” It can be easy: “I won’t drink coffee past noon on weekdays.”
Every NO you write is like a little exhale. A clearing. Space for more energy, more focus, more joy.
When you’re done, leave it somewhere you’ll see it. Saying no is saying yes to yourself.
Optional: Share one NO in the comments. Let’s celebrate the things we’re done with.
a micro-vow:
Before you close this tab, pick one thing you can subtract this week. One habit, one commitment, one mental loop. Say to yourself: I release this. I make space for what truly matters.
comment below:
What’s one thing you can subtract, a sense of ‘this is enough’ or a negative gratitude this week that will bring you closer to yourself? What’s the thing on your ‘NO’ list that you’re most excited about letting go? Share it below, so we can be inspired by each other.
There are wispy clouds like someone painted white fine squiggles in the sky with watercolours. A pair of condors is flying overhead, taking turns falling from the sky and then back up again before drifting side to side. They are beautiful, I want to remember the moment. I pick up my phone. Then change my mind.
I look at them some more and blink my eyes once like a shutter release to take a snapshot with my mind.
A swallow swoops down in a perfect U shape and skims the surface of the water I’m submerged in. It is cold and wet against my hot summer skin. It is 32C at 10 am and the air is thick with heat and humidity. I am desolate and sad, and I have a tan which feels like a contradiction.
On a Zoom call, my therapist says that I am having a delayed trauma response to a brutal rupture. My therapist says breakfast and routine are important, especially when the body is under duress.
I try to have some semblance of a routine.
Every day, I eat breakfast. I’ve never been a breakfast person; I don’t wake up hungry. I eat my favourite things. Pineapple. Tasteless. Watermelon. Tasteless. Eggs, scrambled. Tasteless. I try coconut pancakes instead. Tasteless. Coffee. Horrible.
Every day, I answer emails, have Zoom meetings, and work on commitments I had made before everything fell apart, and I wonder when it will stop feeling empty and meaningless.
Every day, I walk to the pool and lie in the sun for an hour to let the Vitamin D spill into my body with the ambition that it will fill me with some hope. When the sweat starts to form a sheen on my skin, I let the water swallow me for a while.
Every day, I fill pages and pages of my journal with thoughts and observations, wishing they will lead me to a clue, an insight, a sign for what to do next.
Most days, I lie still in bed scanning my body for signs of life.
For the first time in years, I leave my message notifications on because every ‘ding’ is a vital reminder that I am not alone, that I am loved, that I have not been abandoned. Each note asking me to hold on. Telling me that this will pass.
My world has shrunk. My system keeps scanning for signs of danger. All I want is familiarity and safety. I cannot go too far in any direction.
In the early evenings, I walk to a cafe 10 minutes away.
Last night I time I ordered rainbow rolls and an iced lemongrass and ginger tea, and ate alone in silence. I think, afterwards, I could go for a walk. I love walking. But I am not myself anymore. Too quickly, the outside world becomes too much. I have to go back home. Back to lying on my bed. Back to overthinking. Desperately looking for some version of a perfect plan that will make this feeling go away.
The cap on my electrolyte drink is so tight that I cannot twist it open. I go downstairs to ask the doorman to help me. Crying is dehydrating.
A man in the lobby tries to strike up a conversation. He asks me where I am from and how long I will be here. His teenage daughters blink at me expectantly. I can tell he’s trying to be kind. I want to tell him that I am sick and heartbroken and do not want his pity or his attention. Instead, I force a smile and tell him that I have a cold and lost my voice and cannot speak right now. It’s also true. I regret wanting to drink my electrolyte drink.
Back upstairs, my mind begins its familiar looping. A restless, compulsive turning over of questions that refuse to settle: where now, what next, where now, what next. Steady and unsatisfying.
Do I stay in the States? Do I go back to Europe? Do I begin again somewhere I haven’t yet thought of? Do I simply sit here, in this suspended place, until something becomes more certain than this?
I move the possibilities around in my mind, but nothing sticks. Everything is blurry with maybe, and too soon. I wish someone would hand me a plan. A project I can immerse myself in that is not mine. A location to be in for something greater than myself. I don’t want to think about myself for a second longer. I want something outside of myself to exist for. I want someone to say: come here, be here, we need you here.
I keep looking at the words I’ve just written in my journal:
Do you have the patience to wait until the mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?
I stare at them. I don’t know if I do or if I can. But I will try.
I want to remember that it’s possible, and that waiting doesn’t mean giving up, and that stillness is not the same as being stuck. The only way I know how is to decentralise my attention from my mind to my body. The mind keeps cycling; the body, at least, can soften.
How do you pack your entire life into a carry-on suitcase and a personal item? With chaos, creativity, and a lot of rolled-up clothes. In this video, I take you behind the scenes of my last-minute, slightly frantic, and surprisingly successful attempt to pack for a transatlantic move—with two bags and zero chill. You’ll see my strategy (loosely defined), my favourite travel bags, packing hacks (hello, socks in shoes), and some honest real-time stress.
Plus: a peek at The Art of Noticing writing club and why it’s the perfect companion for any life transition.
It’s been five months of life in Portugal, and I still can’t believe it.
In this video, I reflect on the journey so far—returning from Salzburg, settling into Ericeira, and embracing the ever-unfolding adventure of change. People often ask me how I navigate transitions so smoothly, how I move through big life shifts with what seems like ease and grace. The truth? It’s not effortless—it’s a skill I’ve cultivated over years of deep inner work, trust, and surrender. Join me as I share my thoughts on resilience, adaptation, and finding beauty in the unknown.
If you’re in a season of transition, I hope this video reminds you that change can be met with openness, softness, and strength.
To get these videos directly in your inbox when they come out make sure you sign up to HER WAY CLUB: https://vienda.substack.com
One of my favourite things to think, write and talk about is the intersection between life design and creating intentional freedom, in a soft, intuitive and feminine way.
the unsexy truth about growth, expansion and creating an authentic life in a world that wants us to conform to a set structure
I was a good girl for all of my childhood. Not because I was innately good. But because I quavered in the fear of ever-looming punishment from caregivers who were not self-regulated*.
I secretly harboured the desire to run away. I tried, once, when I was 11. I was desperate to grow up so I could make my own decisions. I saw right through the lies the adults told incessantly day in, and day out. I wanted to make my own life.
One day I was 17. I had finished school and left home without real-life skills. My maternal grandmother had spent years teaching me how to be a good girl so that one day I would marry and become a good wife. I could cook and clean and be pleasing.
I had no self-esteem, no idea who I was, what I wanted, or even, what I liked.
Those first few years of ‘adulthood’ were hard. I had no real support network and had to figure everything out on my own.
So I tried lots of things and learned about myself.
I loved dancing, but not drinking. I loved getting lost in nature, but not in cities. I loved drawing and writing, but not team sports. Except for ultimate frisbee which brought out a competitive streak I didn’t know I had. I loved deep conversations, but not small talk. I was ‘bubbly’ to cover my social anxiety. I was a dreamer and a drifter, who had no solid plans or aims or direction.
So I travelled: Australia, Austria, Italy, England.
I worked as a waitress, as a nanny, at an ice cream shop, and in a bar (which I quickly quit because not only do I not like drinking I hate drunk people). I worked as a temp, as a receptionist at a glossy magazine, and as the secretary for a prominent film editor.
Then, on a particularly cold winter day in London, a few months after turning 20 I decided to study psychology in the hottest place I could find. That hot place was a small university in the northern tropics edged by The Great Barrier Reef in Australia in the jungle.
Like many more remote places in Australia, it was backwards unsophisticated and coarse. But I loved it.
I loved that my professors wandered the campus with long, wild hair and no shoes. I loved that they were honest about who they were (hippies) and why they were there (to get funding for their studies and theories). I loved that I lived a few blocks away from the Coral Sea. I loved that the summers were unspeakably hot until the rains came and when the rain did come it poured in buckets. I loved that winter wear was one measly sweater that got pulled out for three weeks per year. I loved that, in our free time, my friends and I chased waterholes and waterfalls and rainforest walks and secret parties in the bush. I loved that this was where I found yoga, magic mushrooms, and EDM**.
Spending so much time connecting to nature, both human nature and the natural world around us, I observed something.
inhale = expansion
exhale = contraction
growth = expansion
introspection = contraction
creativity = expansion
discipline = contraction
life = expansion
death = contraction
Each expansion is coupled with a contraction.
That’s what we’ve got to get comfortable with. That’s the bit we have to embrace. We can’t hold our breath forever. We can’t have expansion without contraction.
During my studies, I learned that the subconscious mind is a goal-serving mechanism. That when you give it direction it will come up with solutions. I decided that, if I did indeed want to make my life like I promised myself as a little girl, I would have to come up with a formula I could follow to create an authentic life in a world that wants us to conform to a set structure.
I believe in human agency and our creative power.
And I also believe in the kismet assertion that parts of our lives are contained by an ecstatic swell of destiny, only accessible by surrender.
How does that work?
~ can we both have direction AND surrender?
~ can we step up AND step back?
The formula that works for me, is seen in the following 4 steps:
listen
trust
follow
repeat
by listen, I mean:
getting SO close to yourself, you can hear your truth
becoming able to feel the whisper of your heart (contraction and expansion)
selfholding – knowing that whatever happens, you have got yourself
by follow, I mean:
taking every necessary step to make it happen
committing to the process, no matter how hard, difficult or painful
by repeat, I mean:
keep checking in, is it still true? has it changed?
if it’s still true, continue. if not, change.
This type of surrender is not about sitting back.
It is about active engagement, continuous tuning in, and following the signposts.
Once I figured out my formula I discovered that staying on course with my authentic truth in this world doesn’t come naturally. When we’re bombarded by cynicism and criticism and negativity, it’s not easy to smile and shake it off with a sigh and soften back into my own direction.
It is truly radical to chart your soul’s true path.
New levels of growth, require new levels of approach. So I reached for sturdier support to hold me.
1. decide
Only you can make your life. No accreditation*** or external validation is going to be able to do that for you. It is all down to you. You have to decide. You have to decide what you want. You have to decide that you are worthy of it.
2. be flexible
Realign and experiment as many times as it takes. Sometimes, maybe because you’ve been blindsided by limiting beliefs, you haven’t allowed yourself to go deep within to explore what you’re intuitively capable of. Try again. Go deeper. Ask for more.
3. be bold and daring
Doubts and fears can cripple our ability to act. It takes courage to walk your own path. Courage is cumulative. And it requires releasing your doubts and fears and allowing yourself to attune to positive, high vibrational, creative energy. There are so many methods for that. I personally often reach for applied kinesiology.
4. generational rewiring
Many of the self-concepts we hold are predetermined by generational conditioning. These limit us from living our authentic lives. If I had not devoted myself to rewiring my makeup I’d be an inauthentically unhappy ‘good wife’ right now.
5. loving compassion
No long-lasting change has ever come from force or coercion. The only way through is with tremendous tenderness, warmth and compassion.
6. intuition
We are all energetically unique. To make your own life you need to bypass the rational mind and connect straight to your energy source: the source of all inspiration and intuition. I do this by having self-dates where I simmer in my own energy or as I heard someone call it recently be in vibrational alignment with myself.
7. believe that you are more powerful than you know
It’s all down to you and how you express your energy in a way that is creative and powerful. One of the fastest ways to realign your energy is through the practices of presence and gratitude. There, you enter the quantum field, and everything becomes possible.
8. be discerning
Not everything or everyone is for you. Some people, places and things will uplift and expand you. Others will destroy you. Choose wisely.
Vienda ♥
*Self-regulation is the ability to manage one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviours effectively in different situations, allowing for more measured responses rather than impulsive reactions.
**Electronic Dance Music
***Accreditation can, however, boost your self-esteem and confidence enough to give you the courage needed to take the steps necessary for creating your life.
There IS more to this world. We exist in a particularly delicate precipice of change and transformation. If you’re here, reading this, you will have felt it. (Why we need each other now more than ever and how the TMT accreditation and assessment process helps you become a confident and responsible mentor.)
What does living a creative and intuitively led life look like? Listen to me share my take on this in this week’s episode of Amy Lea’s ‘Unreasonable’ podcast.
☀ a list of the most excellent, wonderful and important things that I take with me on summer trips incl. the pièce de résistance which is obviously what I am reading this summer.
The Carry-On Bag. If you’ve ever sweated the excruciatingly tight baggage allowance of cheap inter-euro flights then you know how annoying it is to find a bag that is just the right size with plenty of space for all the things. Last year after my favourite leather backpack found its mortal end I had to find something to replace it and I dare venture that I did find the perfect and sacrificially practical replacement. The Borderlite Travel Underseat Cabin Approved Backpack in blue has become my saving grace. The front pocket even fits my notebooks, laptop and pens, so my mobile office is always with me.
☀
The Sunscreen. When I told a friend of mine that I don’t believe in sunscreen except for at times like when I was getting burned in the shade in Africa she said “You don’t believe in the science about sunscreen?” and I replied hooking my fingers into air quotes when I said the word science “No, I don’t believe in the “science” which is paid for by marketing companies.” Sun = quite literally life. You just have to know how to use it respectfully. I always have a hat with me in case I feel those rays are a bit too strong, and sometimes when I need it, I use physical mineral sunscreen. My favourite is Everybody Loves the Sunshine Zinc Beach Balm. For rushed moments I also have a Sun Bum stick in my bag at all times.
☀
The Makeup. The beauty of summer is that bronzed skin, glowing eyes and flushed cheeks don’t require any additions. But for a bit more fun I think a slick of mascara or rouge on the lips is all that is needed. I’ve mentioned my favourites in my ‘love list’ here.
☀
The Headphones. Alongside my boring old original wired headphones that need an adaptor to plug into any new Apple phone, I have my beloved Sennheiser Momentum 2 Wireless Over-Ear Headphones in White. I bought them as a gift to myself years ago and they are still one of my most beloved and cherished purchases. The sound quality is schmick as my DJ friends say and I love that they have noise cancellation. Here’s the more recent version of the Sennheiser Momentum in white.
☀
The Toothbrush. My electric Oral B is on its last legs and the things that annoy me the most about it are that it requires constant charging and the charging unit is big and bulky. I do love that electric-toothbrush-only squeaky clean feeling though. So when a friend recommended this £10 alternative whose charge lasts a whole 30 days and can be charged in any USB charging unit I had to try it. The sensation, if you’re accustomed to the circular movement of more traditional electric toothbrushes, is weird at first but it does leave my teeth feeling just as, if not more clean, and I have come to love this toothbrush.
☀
The Deodorant. I will never stop raving about this deodorant because it is both very natural and very effective and I only have to put it on every 4-ish or so days which I love even more and a tube lasts me about a year. It smells like nothing (?) until it starts to wear off and then you smell like you again instead of nothing. Essentially I think it’s the silver in the product that neutralises any smells and I am here for it. I bought a family pack after my first discovery four years ago, gave one tube away to a friend who also can’t stop raving about it now, and I still have two tubes left. I never ever ever want to be without it. The best deodorant.
☀
The Dress(es). Due to a delicate nervous system, I get decision fatigue easily and so what works for me is packing no more than 5 options. My dresses currently in circulation are all from Rouje, Faihtful The Lable, Auguste The Label and Reformation, all bought pre-loved. I’ve written before about what is inside my closet as well as my ultimate guide for preloved online shopping.
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The Bikinis. As above, all my bikinis are treasures from Hunza G, Rouje, Spell & The Gypsy Collective, and Faithful The Label that I have virtually unearthed from others’ discard piles.
☀
The Towel. I love a Turkish towel, a light and simple piece of linen to sit on on the beach or by the pool. The one I have now I bought from a street-seller in South Africa so I have no links to that one but maybe when you go on some travels of your own you will find one.
☀
The Books. Ahhh, the pièce de résistance is obviously what I am reading this summer. My current selection is:
Awareness by Anthony DeMello. I needed to be reminded of the true simplicity of the spiritual path that has been shrouded by so much f’ing noisefrom the performative-neo-spiritual set.
Women by Charles Bukowski. Seeing as my own sex life is indiscriminately lacking right now I was interested in reading about how men view women as sexual objects through the eyes of misogyny so I can learn what men are moving and growing through these days.
It’s just come to my awareness that I haven’t written a ‘favourites’ book line-up since this one from the summer of 2021. Do you think it’s time for an update? Let me know in the comments below.
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?
On metamorphosis and menstrual cycles and a magic little trick (a GIFT, for YOU!) to add the phases of your cycle to your calendar and sync to your work and life.
As I woke up on Monday morning I found myself having transformed into a pile of mush. Heart, lungs, eyes, shin bones floating in goo.
I wanted to concurrently crawl out of my skin, hide inside a shell, and for my life just to feel normal, as it does for a few glimpses from time to time.
But that’s not the path I chose. I am not one to cling fondly to the past or go out of my way for things to stay the same. I body slam myself at every chance I get to evolve and then wonder innocently doe-eyed why my self and my life are changing again.
A constant cycle of falling apart and coming together again, of losing my way and walking myself back home. Right alongside 8 billion other people like a knot of snakes shedding their skins over and over again.
The nature of life is to metamorphose repeatedly.
Except that the way humans do it is that we look marginally the same on the outside while turning into an existential puddle of goo on the inside until naturally, our insides restructure themselves and a new version, only slightly distinct but somehow also completely new remarkably walks around in the same body as before.
Some of our internal metamorphoses take years. Sometimes we move from caterpillar to mush to butterfly in just one day. Midwifing ourselves through a process of existing, breaking, and re-creating. An endless cycle of reinvention.
That’s what I woke up to on Monday morning.
Then there are other cycles.
As a woman, I have a monthly cycle where blood pools and then drips from between my legs. It is a metamorphosis of another kind.
In my early twenties, I discovered a love for my monthly cycles. In my early thirties, I understood them.
Desperate, ashamed, and stoic after ending an unwanted pregnancy with an abrupt and painful medical pill I was coerced into getting a copper IUD by my boyfriend and my doctor.
For one and a half years I contended with painful periods, dissociation, spotting at odd times and constant brain fog.
With despair and frustration, I researched and educated myself. Books upon books on women, family planning, menstrual cycles and birth control piled up on my bedside table.
Until one day I had enough and knew enough and went to get it taken out.
The doctor asked me “Are you sure you want it out?” with judgement in her tone.
“Yes. It’s ruining my life.” I replied adamantly.
“What are you planning to use for birth control instead?” Her eyebrows raised.
“I’m going to track my cycle.” I smiled, confident that I knew how, angry that I did not know sooner, furious that this isn’t the first thing a woman is taught.
“I think you should stick to the IUD” she leant back looking at me.
“Do you even know how IUDs work?” I snarked back incredulously.
“Well, they stop the sperm from entering the egg.”
“How do they do that?”
“We don’t know exactly how, we just know that it works.”
I was burning inside.
“We do know how. What happens is that you put a foreign object inside a woman’s most delicate parts that creates an inflammation inside her so great that it stops her from being able to conceive. Why do I know that, and you don’t?”
A nurse was called over who took me to another room and removed the offensive item in minutes.
It still seems to be a taboo topic. Sources of information for books or details online are almost negligible. Like, wow, if women take full ownership over their bodies, all religious and corporate systems will cease to exist, global power structures will shift in some seismic way, and the entire world will collapse.
If the world is that fragile, we have bigger issues at hand.
Two other favourite books were “The Woman Code” and “In The Flo” by Alisa Vitti. Both books are about how to sync your life with your menstrual cycle to optimize your health, wellness, and your career.
Running a woman-centric business as a woman, I was fascinated with the idea that I could structure my work around my inner cycles.
Hungry for ways to sync my tasks with my cycle and energy levels I tried many apps including Flo and Kindara to integrate cycle awareness into managing my life but none of them fit my flow.
I depend on my iCal calendar and my physical Plannher to organise and execute my work, life and days. So, with the help of a friend, I made up a calendar based on the tips of the two books.
It’s customisable, so anyone can use it to sync their life with their menstrual cycle. This adds another layer of awareness to your cycle and helps you create a more balanced and harmonious relationship with your body in conjunction with your work life.
Add the phases of your cycle to your calendar to sync with your work life.
Here is what you do:
Go to your calendar. Create a new calendar by clicking the “+” sign and the “Create calendar” option. Name it something like “My Cycle.”
Open your calendar application. This could be Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or any other calendar app that supports ICS imports.
iCal/Apple Calendar does it automatically, Google Calendar, like this:
In Google Calendar, click “Settings” at the bottom of the side menu and then click on the “Import & export” tab.
Under “Import,” click “Select the file from your computer” and choose the ICS file you downloaded from this article. Select your new Google Calendar that you named “My cycle” or something similar.
Click “Import” to import the events from the ICS file into your selected calendar.
FINALLY! Modify the first four event details to customize to YOUR OWN CYCLE!
Menstrual information:
Calculate the total of your cycle length and the total of each phase.
2. Change the calendar in sync with your last menstruation date.
3. Modify your cycle length in each event (the calendar standard is 28 days but my cycle length is more like 33 days).
4. Edit each phase duration, and adapt it to your reality (make sure it doesn’t exceed the total length of your cycle)
Enjoy!
Vienda ♥
P.S. An overview pulled from the books I recommended above:
Menstrual Phase
This is a time for rest and renewal. The main recommendations include:
Getting plenty of rest and sleep.
Avoiding intense physical exercise.
Eating nutrient-dense, warm, and comforting foods.
Drinking warm fluids, such as herbal teas, to promote circulation and hydration.
Taking magnesium supplements to reduce cramps and headaches.
Professional recommendations:
Take time off if possible, or schedule light work or activities during this phase.
Use this time to reflect, plan, and set intentions for the upcoming cycle.
Practice self-care activities like taking a relaxing bath or receiving a massage.
Nutrition and shopping list:
Focus on warm, comforting, and nutrient-dense foods such as soups, stews, and bone broth.
Incorporate iron-rich foods such as red meat, poultry, beans, and leafy greens to support blood loss during menstruation.
Shop for ingredients like grass-fed beef, dark leafy greens, lentils, and organic chicken or turkey.
Follicular Phase
This is a time for renewal and creativity. The main recommendations include:
Engaging in moderate physical exercise, such as walking, yoga, or dancing.
Eating light and fresh foods, such as salads and smoothies, to support detoxification.
Increasing intake of omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients to support hormone production.
Practising creative activities, such as painting, writing, or singing.
Professional recommendations:
Take on new projects or activities that require creativity and innovation.
Network and attend social events to build new connections.
Focus on professional development, such as attending workshops or taking courses.
Nutrition:
Focus on fresh, light, and detoxifying foods such as green salads, smoothies, and juices.
Incorporate foods rich in vitamin B6, such as bananas, nuts, and seeds, to support hormone production.
Shop for ingredients like spinach, kale, avocados, chia seeds, and milk.
Ovulatory Phase
This is a time for connection and expression. The main recommendations include:
Engaging in more vigorous physical exercise, such as running or strength training.
Eating foods that support blood sugar balance, such as complex carbohydrates and proteins.
Practicing self-care and connecting with others.
Taking steps to reduce stress and promote relaxation.
Professional recommendation:
Schedule important meetings or presentations during this phase, as communication skills and confidence are heightened.
Collaborate with others on projects and tasks.
Attend industry events and conferences to build professional connections.
Nutrition and shopping list:
Focus on foods that support blood sugar balance, such as complex carbohydrates and proteins to promote sustained energy.
Incorporate foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon and walnuts, to support hormone production and reduce inflammation.
Shop for ingredients like sweet potatoes, quinoa, salmon, walnuts, and Greek yoghurt.
Luteal Phase
This is a time for reflection and preparation. The main recommendations include:
Engaging in gentle exercises, such as yoga or stretching
Eating foods that support hormonal balance, such as leafy greens, legumes, and healthy fats.
Reducing intake of caffeine, sugar, and alcohol to reduce PMS symptoms.
Practising self-care and stress management techniques.
Professional recommendations:
Prioritize tasks and projects to ensure completion before the next cycle begins.
Use this phase for planning and organization, such as reviewing goals and making action plans.
Practice self-care activities and stress management techniques to reduce PMS symptoms and promote well-being.
Nutrition and Shopping list:
Focus on foods that support hormonal balance, such as leafy greens, legumes, and healthy fats to reduce PMS symptoms.
Incorporate foods rich in magnesium, such as dark chocolate, nuts, and seeds, to reduce cramps and headaches.
Shop for ingredients like broccoli, chickpeas, pumpkin seeds, dark chocolate, and coconut oil.
Vienda Maria 