Vienda Maria

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Category: travel

  • my travel guide to: Athens & Delphi, Greece

    much later, when you are back in the rush and the noise of your own life, you will open a jar of honey or press a drop of resin into your skin, and remember

    If I had known that my time in Greece would be cut short, perhaps I would have done things differently.

    The three-hour bus ride from Athens International Airport to Delphi felt like I had been catapulted back in time to a place before my own birth. The highway soon gave way to narrow, two-lane blacktop that bit into the dry belly of the countryside. Out the window, the world slowed down to the pace of an older century. Long, bleached stretches of scrub oak and limestone thistle rolled past under the late-August sun. 

    Every ten miles or so, an old Datsun or a rusted-out Fiat, held together by wire and grease, would rattle past in the opposite direction, driven by a man with a face like a dried walnut, his elbow propped on the window frame, staring straight ahead into the heat.

    on the bus

    The bus itself smelled of hot vinyl, diesel exhaust, and the faint, sweet trace of tobacco smoke that had settled into the curtains over decades. We pulled off the road for a pit stop at an 80s-style service station cafe with the stillness of roadside stops where time has lost its meaning—floors of dull, yellowed terrazzo, a humming Coca-Cola cooler from another era, a counterman whose heavy eyelids suggested he had been standing there since the beginning.

    Without a word, a snail-shaped spinach spanakopita, heavy and glistening with olive oil through its brown wax paper, was pressed into my hand, and a cold tin of Coke into the other. I was asked for six euros and then ushered back onto the bus. The pastry dough, flaky and bitter with wild greens, the soda sharp enough to burn the dust out of my throat.

    By the time the bus began its low-gear groan up the switchbacks of Mount Parnassus, reaching for Delphi, the air changed. It thinned, stripping away the heavy humidity of the lowlands. Cool and sharp with the scent of wild thyme and pine needles—a dry, resinous smell that gets into the back of your teeth.

    The Pleistos Valley stretched out below like a green river of olive trees, a million silver leaves turning in the wind all at once, shifting from deep forest green to bright mercury as the mountain breeze catches them. Standing on the flank of Mount Parnassus, where the limestone cliffs rise up grey and scarred like the flanks of old elephants, you understand why the ancients thought this was the centre of the world. It feels like a hinge where the earth meets something else. The earth here doesn’t care about our small, modern lives, our schedules, or our brief, frantic journeys. It hums with a quiet, terrifying permanence. It makes you feel small, like a speck of dust blown against the rock, but it also makes you feel clean.

    After five days in Delphi, I returned to Athens.

    If Delphi belongs to the gods and the wind, Athens in the last week of August belongs to the ghosts and the blinding, white heat. The city had been abandoned. Every year, when the summer becomes an absolute hammer, the locals simply close their doors, turn their backs on the concrete, and flee to the islands or the hills. It is their holiday, but it feels more like an evacuation.

    I stayed in a small studio apartment in Exarcheia, the fiercely independent, self-made neighbourhood that clings to the steep, rocky skirts of Lofos Strefi. On a normal day, this patch of the city breathes fire. It is a labyrinth of concrete apartment blocks covered in layers of angry, beautiful political graffiti, buzzing with students, anarchists, and old men arguing over thick coffee. It is a place that smells of stale beer, wild jasmine, and rebellion. 

    But this time small hand-written signs were taped to the glass of bakeries, dry cleaners, and independent bookshops: Closed until September. Good Summer. The streets were empty of cars, the asphalt radiating a fierce, shimmering heat wave that made the apartment blocks look like they were melting into the white sky. A lone ginger cat slept under the shade of a parked scooter on Kallidromiou Street, too hot to blink. There is a strange, melancholy beauty to a great city when its human blood has been drained out of it. You see the bones of the place.

    2 (important) things:

    1. MUSES is a weekly writing & coworking group for those who want to create & be inspired in company. Learn more here.
    2. Future work-focused dispatches are being moved here. Here is the first one: you can keep becoming and still be loved.

    thank you for being here 𓇢𓆸

    Beyond the paywalled fold, you’ll find:

    DELPHI
    ~ my favourite taverna in Delphi & the best coffee
    ~ the two weekly farmers’ markets to stock up on supplies
    ~ the hike to the Oracle of Delphi & the Temple of Apollo on Mt Parnassos
    ~ the best empty beaches (even in the height of summer)

    ATHENS
    ~ the best area to stay in
    ~ my favourite cafes and restaurants (locals approved)
    ~ places to wander & get lost to avoid the standard tourist experience
    ~ the Greece-only must-have pharmacy finds

    DELPHI

    Delphi is a tourist town that most come to for a day, two at most, hit the sights and leave without really taking its essence, which is a shame. It feels like those who live and breathe the daily life here exist apart in another world to those who come and go. 

    The transient crowds leave their footprints on the main drag, but they don’t leave a mark on the town’s bone-deep reality. If you step six inches off the beaten path, you find the people who belong to the mountain.

    FOOD

    Melopoleio

    The best coffee is only at one place, the one all the old men sit outside of. They sit in the shade, turning strings of beads in their calloused fingers, gossiping about their neighbours, these slow summer days, and the frantic tourists who just came and went.

    Do not look for a menu here. Just sit down among the creaking wooden chairs and order a Greek coffee. It comes in a small, heavy cup, dark and sweet, with the muddy residue left at the bottom like river silt. You drink it slow, matching the rhythm of the old men, watching the white mountain light crawl across the stone pavement.

    Taverna Vakhos

    Real solid mountain food and dreamy prices. The first time I came by accident, escaping the late-afternoon glare. I ordered a quarter-litre of local rosé for €3 and a cold mountain lemonade to quench the dusty August thirst that had collected in my parched mouth.

    Before the food arrived, the waiter delivered a basket of bread. A quick warning: bread in Delphi is unrecommendable everywhere—dry, chalky stuff with the life baked out of it, so don’t eat it. Save your appetite for everything else. Then he brought a slab of hard, fresh grilled salty cheese spiked with wild herbs ‘on the house’. It arrived sizzling, caramelised on the edges from the fire. I carved it with a knife and fork, the centre yielding, soft and hot. It was insanely delectable—honest cooking that tastes directly of grease, salt, and the high pasture lands. I went there most days.

    MARKETS

    Wednesday mornings: Delphi

    Right in the wrinkles of the town, the small local market sets up early on Wednesday. It is a quiet affair, mostly for the old women who look like they’ve been carved out of grey limestone. This is where you get your immediate hands on the mountain: wrinkly, bitter black olives that taste of oil and smoke, and tiny, intense bunches of wild mountain oregano dried right on the stalk. The tables hold a scattering of seasonal fruits and crisp vegetables pulled from the steep terraced plots on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, alongside heavy blocks of formaela cheese brought down from the high pastures of nearby Arachova. Go early before the sun hits the stone pavement, and make sure you carry a pocketful of small euro coins. These mountain vendors have no use for plastic cards or digital transactions; they want the hard, blunt weight of metal currency pressed into their palms.

    Friday mornings: Laiki Agora, Galaxidi

    Every Friday from six in the morning, the real harvest happens just down the mountain in the nearby coastal town of Galaxidi. You have to get up before the sun has finished burning the fog out of the Pleistos Valley. This is the region’s massive produce engine. The tables are piled high with heavy, deep-purple eggplants, mountain figs splitting open with sugar, almonds, stone fruit and colossal Amfissa olives, plump and glossy from the UNESCO-protected groves below. Go early, when the air is still cold, the farmers are shouting over the crates, and the crates are still damp with morning dew. It is cheap, abundant, and unbothered by tourists.

    THE ORACLE OF DELPHI

    Corycian Cave

    The tour buses dump their passengers at the lower ruins where the marble has been polished flat by millions of leather shoes, but the real spirit of the mountain lives higher up, where the road turns to dirt and the earth gets wild.

    To find it, you have to leave the village behind and drive out for thirty minutes, pushing your car up the steep, winding mountain roads, through small mountain villages with narrow, cobblestone alleys that pinch the sides of your vehicle. The paved road eventually gives out, giving way to a rough, gravel track. You park the car where the red clay meets the scrubby pines, kill the engine, and let the silence of the high altitude drop over you like a heavy blanket.

    From there, you walk. It is a forty-five-minute trek straight up the spine of the mountain. The trail is a narrow, single-track ribbon of loose limestone and sharp gravel that slips out from under your boots if you aren’t paying attention. You walk through dense, ancient forests of Greek fir, the air smelling intensely of dry resin, hot stone, and wild mountain tea. Your breath gets short, and your calves burn as the incline sharpens, the sun beating down on your neck until your shirt is soaked through. Just when you think you’ve lost the trail, the trees break, and you see it: a massive, dark gash hidden in the grey limestone face of the hill.

    The Corycian Cave—the Korykeion Antron—is the first true sanctuary of Delphi, a place where people were bowing their heads to the earth long before the first stone of Apollo’s temple was ever quarried.

    When you step across the threshold into the main chamber, the temperature drops instantly, a cold, damp breath rising from the belly of the rock. The cave opens up into a vast, terrifyingly large hall, its ceiling soaring fifty meters above you like the roof of a cathedral built by giants. Massive stalactites, formed over thousands of years by the slow, rhythmic dripping of mineral water, hang down like frozen stone drapes. In the centre sits the “Table”—a broad, flat stalagmite where pilgrims leave their offerings to Pan and the mountain nymphs, and where modern travellers still leave silent tokens.

    The mysticism here is something that physical space inflicts on you. The cave has a strange, multi-directional acoustic quality. Every footstep on the slick rock, every drop of water hitting the floor, and the low moan of the wind outside bounce off the walls, sounding like a chorus of distant flutes or whispers just behind your shoulder.

    Sitting alone in that dark chamber you feel an ancient, shivering awe, a sense that the boundary between the human world and something wilder, older, and deeply holy has grown thin enough to touch.

    BEACHES

    Itea

    Just twenty minutes down the winding asphalt from Delphi, the road drops sharply into the olive groves and hits the coast near Itea. Most people stay on the main harbour beach, but if you push just a few minutes past the town along the coastal fringe, the pavement gives way to a narrow strip of white gravel pressed right against the olive trees. There was not a single soul there. The water was dead calm, completely shielded from the mountain winds, and so transparent it looked like a thick sheet of pale green glass. You could see every single pebble on the bottom, five meters deep, as if it were right under your hand. Entering that water here was like washing away latent layers from your soul. The only sound was the rhythmic, dry click of the cicadas in the trees and the tiny gravel shifting with the lazy roll of the tide.

    Arapis

    If you keep driving west for about forty-five minutes from Delphi, past the historic town of Galaxidi along the northern rim of the gulf, the coastline grows rugged and wild. The road tracks a stretch of limestone cliffs and ancient olive groves heading toward Erateini and Nafpaktos. Once you pass the main settlement of Agioi Pantes, you hit a terrain where the road forgets itself. We turned down an unmarked dirt track that dissolved into scrubby pines and grey boulders near the hidden coves of Agios Vasileios. At the end of that track, right by the tiny, unpeopled crescent known to locals as Arapis Beach, lay a completely secluded cove hidden entirely from the road. The beach was a mix of coarse grey sand and sun-bleached stones, completely wild. There were no plastic umbrellas, no tavernas, no voices. Just the raw edge of the continent meeting a deep, bruisingly blue sea. The water here was colder, sharper, and held a heavy salinity that made you float effortlessly. We lay under the thin, salt-bitten shade of a solitary tamarisk tree, entirely alone with the stones and the deep blue water, watching a lone fishing boat track the distant horizon while the salt dried white and tight on our skin in the fierce afternoon sun.

    ATHENS

    Most evenings, I climbed the concrete stairs to the flat concrete rooftop of my apartment building. From up there, the heat of the day was still rising from the tar, but a small, dry breeze would usually drift down from the mountains. I sat with my notebook on my knees, journaling while the sun dipped behind the jagged spine of the city. As the light failed, the sky turned the colour of a bruised plum, and the distant silhouette of the Acropolis would light up, glowing like an old bone against the dark. When the ink dried, I would head down into the dim streets to find my favourite taverna.

    Exarcheia

    If you want the smooth, sanitised version of Athens, you stay in Plaka or Monastiraki with the postcard vendors. If you want the city’s raw, beating heart, you pitch yourself in Exarcheia.

    It is a neighbourhood that clings stubbornly to the steep, rocky skirts of Strefi Hill, positioned just a short, twenty-minute walk north of the central tourist hubs, yet a million miles away in spirit. It is bordered by the grand neoclassical weight of the National Archaeological Museum on one side and the wealthy slopes of Lycabettus Hill on the other, but Exarcheia remains fiercely itself.

    It is the bohemian, radical quarter. A labyrinth of concrete apartment blocks covered in layers of angry, beautiful political graffiti, independent bookstores, and old anarchist cafes. On a normal winter day, this patch of the city breathes fire, buzzing with students, poets, and old men arguing over thick coffee. In the dead of August, even with the shutters down, the neighbourhood keeps its grit. It smells of wild jasmine, dry concrete, and a deep, historical refusal to be broken by anyone. It is safe, and it is real.

    FOOD

    Ama Lachei

    I stumbled upon this place entirely by chance, just a few minutes’ walk from where I laid my head, and it is an absolute icon of the neighbourhood. Ama Lachei is set behind a thick, unassuming stone wall that once housed an old schoolyard. Step through the gate, and the roar of the Athens concrete disappears. You are welcomed into a lush, shaded garden so deeply quiet and green you would swear you had been dropped right into the middle of the Greek countryside. Sitting there among the iron chairs, white cloths, and overhanging flowers, you forget the city outside exists. The food here is some of the finest quality I have ever pressed a fork into—a daily, shifting menu that changes entirely based on what the earth yields that morning.

    The Black Salami Microbakery

    Tucked into the sharp concrete geometry of Exarcheia, The Black Salami is a small, mighty engine of grain and fire. They do not carry a massive inventory; they bake around a hundred loaves a day using honest Italian flour and wild fermentation, and when the bread is gone, the doors close. Do not hesitate: walk in and order the pastrami sandwich. It is served on their signature sourdough, heavy and blistered from the heat, loaded with rich, salt-cured meat that melts like tallow.

    Selas

    When the August sun turns into a flat iron and the pavement starts to shimmer, you look for Selas. Hidden down a narrow pedestrian alleyway, half-swallowed by overflowing vines and surrounded by old houses from the turn of the century, this little outdoor café is a neighbourhood oasis. It is painted in bright, defiant colours and tucked right into the local street art scene. Go there in the heavy heat of the afternoon for cold drinks, cheap beer, and small plates of snacks. The service is loose, friendly, and entirely unhurried—a place to sit for hours and let your blood cool down.

    Bar Ideal

    When the sky finally turns dark and the city begins to breathe, head to Bar Ideal on Kiafas Street. It’s a design-forward, retro listening bar that looks like a 1970s cinematic set refreshed for the modern era. They spin strictly vinyl records over a crisp, analogue hi-fi system, and the tables spill out onto the cool pedestrian pavement. It is the perfect spot to get a clean, heavy cocktail, watch the local night owls gather, and lose yourself in the music and the conversation without a single tourist in sight.

    Ouzeri Lesvos

    If you want seafood that hasn’t been dressed up for a magazine cover, you go where the old men and the neighbourhood families go. Ouzeri Lesvos is an unadorned, brightly lit temple to the sea. The prices are incredibly low, and the quality is fierce. Order a small bottle of ouzo and a plate of grilled octopus or crisp, fried smelts that taste aggressively of salt and the deep Mediterranean.

    Makedonikon

    This is a tiny, old-world joint run by a crew of famously grumpy old men who have no time for small talk or pleasantries. They deal out traditional spanakopitas and baked dishes from massive metal trays behind a glass counter. The spinach pie here is legendary—the phyllo dough is rolled by hand, thick and crackling like autumn leaves, stuffed with bitter wild greens and sharp, sour feta. Take it to go, bear the old men’s brief glares, and eat it on the curb.

    Karamandlika

    Located slightly more central but completely worth the short walk out of the quarter, Karamanlidika is part charcuterie, part grocery, and part taverna. The ceiling is hung thick with cured beef legs (pastourma) and loops of spicy sausage. Sit at one of the small marble tables and order the handmade meat dumplings or the pan-fried sausage with eggs. It is heavy, historic Greek food rooted in the old Byzantine traditions—intense, spiced, and deeply satisfying.

    EXPLORE

    The tourists spend their days in long, sweaty lines waiting to see things that have already been photographed a million times. They move in packs, guided by little flags and digital maps, and they leave the city without ever having touched its true surface. I will not give you a list of monuments or ancient ruins here; if you want the history books, you can find them yourself. Instead, I recommend a different kind of travel. One where you choose a coordinate point on the map, put your phone in your pocket, and let yourself get lost until the city starts to speak to you.

    Lofos Strefi

    Right above Exarcheia sits Strefi Hill. It is not a manicured park with gravel paths and ice cream vendors; it is a wild, rugged outcrop of rock and pine trees that feels slightly forgotten by the municipality. Find any set of concrete stairs leading upward from Kallidromiou Street and just start climbing. The steps are uneven, cracked by tree roots, and covered in graffiti.

    As you go higher, the noise of the city begins to muffle, replaced by the dry, frantic scraping of cicadas. There are hidden stone benches, dirt paths that lead to nowhere, and sudden, dizzying views of the white apartment blocks packed tightly below like rows of teeth. Wander up here in the late afternoon when the shadows stretch out long and blue.

    Anafiotika

    While everyone else is fighting for space on the main pedestrian loop around the Acropolis, climb higher up the northern slope until the souvenir shops disappear. If you keep moving upward through the narrow alleys, you will stumble into Anafiotika.

    It is a tiny, white-washed village clinging directly to the sheer rock face of the citadel, built in the 19th century by workers who came from the island of Anafi. The streets are not streets at all—they are narrow stone ledges barely wide enough for two people to pass, winding between tiny, square houses with blue shutters and pots of blooming geraniums. There are no signs, no shops, and no cars. You will dead-end into someone’s tiny courtyard, or find a set of stone steps that drop into a completely different neighbourhood. Let yourself wander this labyrinth. It smells of laundry soap, woodsmoke, and dry stone, and for an hour, you will forget that a massive, modern metropolis is roaring just a few hundred feet below your boots.

    Kypseli

    If you want to see how the modern Athenians live, take a long walk north into Kypseli, one of the oldest and most densely populated neighbourhoods in the city. It is a vast grid of Bauhaus and mid-century apartment buildings with grand entrance halls and iron balconies.

    Do not look for landmarks. Just drift down Fokionos Negri, a long, wide pedestrian promenade lined with shady trees, old fountains, and rows of small cafes where the neighbourhood people sit for hours over single glasses of iced coffee. Turn off the main strip into the smaller residential side streets. Look up at the canvas awnings flapping in the breeze, listen to the clatter of dishes from open kitchen windows, and watch the older women pulling market carts over the cracked pavement. It is a heavy, human place that doesn’t care about tourism, where the true daily rhythm of Athens unfolds in the heat.

    TREASURES

    In Greece, the modern pharmacy remains an apothecary of the land. There is something deeply magical about being able to apply and use things that have held a people steadily for thousands of years, as if the ancient landscape and its cures were somehow twisted into our DNA from long ago. When you step off the blinding, sun-baked pavement and into the cool air beneath a flashing green neon cross, skip the global consumer brands. These are the true local secrets you carry home in your suitcase.

    Wild Greek Oregano Oil: A fierce, concentrated extraction of the land itself. The locals treat it as a holy grail for the immune system. It is a potent, natural antibacterial and antiviral engine, excellent for knocking out a sudden throat tickle, clearing out sluggish digestion, or wiping out a stubborn bug when travel knocks your defences down. A single drop burns like a drop of liquid mountain sun, but it does the job.

    Apivita Toothpaste: The Apivita Oral Care Line is rooted in the hives and the soil. Their formulations rely heavily on propolis—the natural resin bees use to sterilise their nests—blended with wild mastic, fennel, or myrrh, leaving your mouth tasting faintly of pure Chios mastic and lemon oil.

    Tretin Gel: In the United States, getting a tube of topical retinoid or high-grade skin texturizer can mean handing over $80 to $300 at the counter. In a Greek pharmacy, you can ask for a 30g tube of TRETIN 0.05% Gel produced by Target Pharma, and they will hand it over for roughly four euros. Travellers prize it for targeting clogged pores, accelerating cell turnover, and erasing the rugged wear and tear of sun and travel. (Note: In Greece, this specific budget-friendly gel is formulated with isotretinoin rather than standard tretinoin, meaning it acts as a powerful topical retinoid with a lighter, fast-absorbing alcohol base).

    Chios Mastiha Capsules: For thousands of years, the people of the island of Chios have harvested the crystal tears of the mastic tree resin. These capsules are a foundational Greek remedy for the stomach. If your gut is churning from heavy travel, rich oils, or the simple stress of the road, mastic acts as a soothing, anti-inflammatory balm for the entire digestive tract, settling the stomach with a quiet, ancient efficiency.

    Korres Pure Greek Olive 3-in-1 Nourishing Oil: The brand Korres is a staple of Greek pharmacy culture, and their olive oil collection utilises cold-pressed oil from the silver-leafed crests of Crete. This specific 3-in-1 oil is a heavy, golden elixir that restores skin, body, and hair after a brutal day in the Mediterranean glare. It doesn’t leave a greasy film; it absorbs deeply, smelling of real wood and earth.

    Korres Skincare & Makeup: Truly, do not leave without looking over their entire colour and care shelf. Their prices are significantly lower in local neighbourhood pharmacies than anywhere else in the world. What I use daily is their dark lip balm in a rich, berry-stained hydration that looks completely effortless, and their creamy concealer that covers the dark circles of sleepless travel nights without caking or cracking under the dry Athenian sun.

    You cannot leave a place like Greece without carrying a piece of its dust in your throat and its salt dried hard into your skin. The tourist buys a plastic trinket made in a factory across the world, packs it into a shiny suitcase, and boards a plane unchanged. But if you have walked the high, loose gravel of Parnassus, sat among the old men in the shade of Exarcheia, and let your body sink into a sea that looks like green glass, you leave something of yourself behind on the stone, and you take something older back with you.

    The tubes of cream and the bottles of mountain oil sitting in your bag are small anchors. Much later, when you are back in the rush and the noise of your own life, you will open a jar of honey or press a drop of resin into your skin. For a second, the air will turn cool and sharp with the scent of pine needles, the white Athenian sun will hammer down on a flat rooftop, and you will remember what you felt like then.

  • I was not meant to be here

    summer dew dripping 

    AUG 27, 2026

    The clock stands at six minutes past six in the evening. Wrapped only in the rough cotton of a bath towel, I lay motionless beneath the steady, mechanical breath of the air conditioner, letting the artificial cold wash over my limbs. My hair remains heavy and damp from the wash, a dark, heavy weight pooling against my back and framing my face. In twenty-five minutes, the world will demand that I dress, prepare my face, and step out. I watch the light shift on the ceiling, trapped in that quiet, vulnerable suspense, waiting to see if my body and hair will dry before the clock runs out.

    It is late August in Athens. The heat is driving all living things into the shadows. To walk even a mile under the night sky is to labour against the air itself. Moisture gathers at the nape of my neck, pools along my spine, and runs in slow, deliberate tracks down the small of my back and beneath my breasts, staining the linen of my dress. A deep, sun-drugged silence has fallen over the quarters. The city is having its exodus, the empty streets belonging only to the dust, the heat, and the few stragglers that find themselves here.

    I was not meant to be here. By all rights, I should have been up in the mountains, where the air smells of pine needle and summer dew dripping, sharing space with a friend. She had opened her house, a large three-bedroom place, had invited me for a few months, offering shelter and companionship. But the human mind is a fragile, shifting thing, prone to sudden, protective droughts. Five days after my arrival, a text message came, not a spoken word, but cold type on a small screen. She claimed the weight of her own life was too heavy; she was too tired, too crowded by existence to harbour a guest.

    The next day, the house a place of ghosts and unspoken shame. My friend could not look me in the eye or face the truth of her own sudden retreat. Instead, she remained barricaded behind her bedroom door through the long morning and into the heat of the afternoon, hiding from the intimacy she had invited. When the time came, I gathered my things and took a slow, rattling bus down from the mountains and back into the concrete basin of Athens. There was no parting embrace, no hand extended in farewell.

    I must rise from this bed, cast off the damp towel, and prepare my body to face the world. A new friend waits for me at a nearby restaurant. A small, honest place where I have already dined twice, completely smitten by the simple grace of its local cuisine and the clean, grounding quality of its plates. There is comfort in a kitchen that treats the earth’s yields with respect, a steady anchor in a shifting world. 

    ✿

    This morning broke with the heavy, uninvited burden of a thick and restless sleep. I awake late, after a night of my mind twisting itself into knots over the simple, impossible question of where I should go. That familiar ache of being unmoored, of feeling unwelcome and uncertain where to place my feet, tears at me from within, digging its fingernails into an ancient wound.

    When the phone rings, its sharp chime breaks the silence. I know I must force my bleary eyes open to the other end of the line. She is calling from Spain, looking to catch up. For an hour, our voices sweep between vast topics, zoom down narrow thought pathways, and ping-pong our latest stories back and forth. We are two women windswept by the same gust of pervading uncertainty. A thick fog hangs over both our futures, refusing to shift; our minds will not reveal a clear action plan, leaving only our bodies to sway to a rhythmic, frustrating dance that says either yes or no to every option offered.

    Then. “Why don’t you come here, and we can spend a week together?” she asks.

    “Here” is Valencia. Dry, hot and by the seaside, baking under the Spanish sun.

    “I’d love to,” I reply. “Let’s sleep on it and decide tomorrow.”

    Even as the words leave my mouth, our bodies gush with an enthusiastic, instinctive yes at the mere potential of being together. We hang up. I search for flights. There is only one, and the screen warns that three seats remain. I text her: “Instead of sleeping on it, how about I book the flight?” She comes back joyful. I book the ticket. An hour later, a text flashes on my screen. “I got so excited I just went on a massive food haul, so we have lovely things to eat when you come.”

    With a temporary anchor dropped in Spain, I turn to the labour of the day. There are three hours of client calls, followed by an hour of emails and another of administrative tasks. When it is finished, I rise from the small desk in the studio apartment. A temporary sanctuary I have rented for the week since being cast out of the mountains.

    It is three in the afternoon. I have not yet eaten and wander out into the thick, unmoving heat and cross the road to a neighbourhood bakery. There, I buy a croissant stuffed with avocado, lettuce, tomato, and ham, along with a cold glass bottle of Coca-Cola. I sit outside at a small round table sheltered by the silver leaves of olive trees, eating half before wrapping it up, placing the remainder in my basket, and getting up carrying the Coke with me.

    I walk to a nearby grocery store and buy an organic honeydew melon, a single ripe nectarine, five organic carrots, and half a litre of milk for my morning matcha. With my basket heavy, I return to the studio and place each thing in its respective, orderly place upon the kitchen counter and inside the small refrigerator.

    A tiny plan begins to form in my mind—a purposeful errand. I take a long walk and seek out a pharmacy: Tretinoin cream for just four Euros; Mastiha capsules to soothe a troubled stomach; Korres olive body oil; wild oregano oil to ward off winter colds; Apivita toothpaste infused with royal jelly and bee pollen.

    An hour and a half later, the errand is done. I return to the quiet apartment, shed the sweltering heat of the Athens streets, and step into the shower.

    ✿

    She texts that she is running five minutes late. I nod to the waiter, ask for a table for two, and settle into the forest-green, French metal seating. This place is a secret—a perfect country garden hidden away behind the towering, sun-baked walls of Athens, a sudden sanctuary of ivy and cool stone.

    Soon, she arrives, stepping through the gate. Our initial words are polite, but the conversation slows down, deepens, and steadily builds into a profound mutual understanding. It is always a little surreal to meet a follower from Instagram. The parasocial thread means she already knows about my life, my tastes, the small daily moments I share of my world, while I am only just learning the sound of her voice. I find myself completely at ease with this imbalanced beginning. The strange digital distance evaporates, and I slip into an easy, ancient familiarity. Sitting across from her, watching the way her hands move as she speaks, I begin to feel a genuine, quiet love for the woman opposite me.

    She orders the shrimp orzo, its aroma rich with tomato and garlic. I order a pork chop, which arrives at the table so impossibly large it looks to be the size of my head. I eat half, steal a couple of golden fries, and feed the rest to the local cats—lean, beautiful creatures weaving ribbons around our ankles, stroking their soft flanks against our feet in search of a stray bite. I feel a sudden, sharp wave of gratitude to be sitting in this hidden garden, having found a kindred soul in a vast city.

    After the violent, silent dismissal from a friendship earlier this week, two beautiful bonds have risen to meet me, restoring balance and harmony to my battered heart.

    I am reminded of the incredible, almost fierce power of female friendship. When a woman is cast out, unmoored and wounded, it is almost always other women who quietly reach into the dark to pull her back to solid ground. From thousands of miles away in Spain, filling grocery baskets with treats just to say you are welcome here. Across a small wooden table in an Athens garden, offering a soft gaze and an open heart to a stranger from a screen. 

    This is the great, enduring currency of our lives: an ecosystem of solidarity that heals its own wounds. We are windswept by the same uncertainties; we suffer the same sudden droughts of the soul, but we also hold the rain for one another. As the night deepens, the pain in my chest begins to quiet, replaced by the warm, steady truth that I am not unwelcome in this world.

    ✿

    Dear reader,

    I want to try an experiment. At present, my personal writing here on Substack and the invitations to my professional work are deeply infused, tangled up in the same space. 

    I want to see what happens if I separate them—if I allow myself to creatively lift off into new, uncharted territories without being bound or defined by my obligations to the work, while still maintaining a clear, open pathway to keep you informed.

    ~ If you want to keep reading about my work, stay up to date with my projects, or continue receiving practical tips and tools, please sign up for my work newsletter here.

    ~ Alternatively, if you can spare a brief moment, you can simply reply directly to this email withe a simple “yes pls” or, if you have time, a longer note, letting me know you want to be added to the new list. 

    I would prefer to hear from you directly—there is something beautiful about that touchpoint—and I will happily add your name to the ledger manually, with deep love and gratitude.

    As always, I feel a profound appreciation for your presence in this little slice of the universe, and for the way you participate so wholeheartedly with your own dreams, thoughts, and ideas. This community is everything my younger self once dreamed of finding.

    Chronically earnest & typed from the floor of my bedroom,

    Vienda

  • 30kg of luggage

    a midnight mountain climb, a cheeky motorbike taxi ride, and the kismet timing of your own life

    JUL 12, 2026

    The summer of 2026 smells entirely of exhaust fumes, salty air, fermented shrimp paste, sewage, and hot americanos. It is a season of sharp, dizzying contrasts. Even though it is summer in my mind, by geographic standards it is winter here in Bali. The tropical warmth remains the same, but the air is crisper, lighter, drier, and the days are just that little bit shorter.

    I move into a small cottage on the edge of the rice fields. It sits only six hundred meters away from my last villa, but it feels like a completely different world. On soft-sticky-warm mornings, I wake early to watch the sun rise over a distant mountain, stretching his gold rays across the rice terraces to light up another day.

    𓇢𓆸

    Not from delight or exhilaration, I weep as we climb to the top, from pure exhaustion and fear. Our guide had suggested we stay low in a sheltered overhang. The wind is so ferocious it feels ready to pluck my body from the rocks I am gripping and fling me into a deadly abyss. But the boys in our group want to press on, determined to make it to the summit like we said we would.

    Tears prick my dust-filled eyes as streams of volcanic shale blast against our faces. I cling to the peak of the volcano, repeating, “I chose this,” over and over again like a mantra. Three weeks earlier, when my friend Gabriel mentioned he wanted to organise a group to climb Mt. Agung — an active volcano and Bali’s largest mountain — I immediately agreed to join. I have always wanted to do it, but I am simply not the type to go out of my way to orchestrate an expedition like this myself. Now, after six hours of an almost vertical ascent, mostly in the pitch black, I deeply regret my choice.

    Then, out of the dark void, a figure materialises.

    He is completely barefoot, his toes gripping the sharp volcanic rock while the gale blasts his thin t-shirt and snaps his sarong like a sail. He carries no torch, no headlamp. Strapped to his spine is a massive woven basket, yet he effortlessly balances a guitar in his arms, strumming and singing Hare Krishna songs straight into the teeth of the wind. Where we are trembling and broken, he is entirely unbound, channelling the divine and moving through the dark with absolute trust and presence.

    𓇢𓆸

    Weeks before I ever set foot on Mt. Agung, this lesson is already waiting for me in a sun-faded garage. I am hunting for a secondhand bookstore, following a stray pin on Google Maps that leads me deep into an unlikely pocket of urban sprawl, far from any proper town. Two torn sarongs hang like makeshift curtains at the entrance, shading a cavernous garage packed with books whose spines are bleached pale by the Indonesian sun. The shop is run by a tiny, toothless old woman who barters with ferocious energy. Looking at the shelves, I get the distinct impression that these books have been burped up by a hundred different hotels… hastily left behind by departing tourists, only to wash ashore in this strange sanctuary.

    My favourite way to choose books is to let them choose me. I treat them like a tarot spread, waiting for a specific spine to pull my hand toward it from the cluster. Without reading their descriptions, I walk out with two: Bitter Chocolate and The Shack.

    Back home, I inspect my haul. The Shack intrigues me immediately. A spiritual text charting a man’s direct, shattering experience with God. I inhale it in two days. It leaves me with a whirring, glistening sensation, a profound reminder that when I merge my true Self with the divine and trust in life completely, everything I could ever yearn for is already at my fingertips. The key is, and always will be, in releasing my human-made fears and replacing them with such a deep surrender and trust that my mind no longer feels the need to control every moment of my experience.

    Like the man up on the mountain.

    𓇢𓆸

    On my first morning in my new place, I tumble out of bed at 7:00 am to drag my weary, not-a-morning-person body to an 8:00 am boxing class. By 7:20, I have poured myself into a cute, sage-green organic bamboo athletic set: a prize from a yoga studio raffle some weeks back. Slinging a basket filled with water, keys, and my purse over my shoulder, I sway toward the pop-up coffee cart sitting just twenty meters away on the other side of the road.

    The sun is directly in my eyes, reducing a man sitting by the roadside to a sharp silhouette against the newly risen light over the rice fields. Two small dogs are tied to his chair. “You can come say hello to them,” he says as I squint through the glare. “I will right after I order my coffee,” I croak from my not-yet-warm vocal cords.

    I turn to the wide smile of the barista. “One flat white, please.” “Regular milk?” “Yes, please.”

    I take a seat next to the man and his dogs. I pet them gently and joyfully, immediately forgetting their names the second he says them. 

    It’s not actually that I’m not a morning person. I love mornings. I love waking up early. It’s just that it takes me about three hours to successfully migrate from the land of dreams to the land of the living. Within that three-hour twilight zone, any form of thinking or communicating is essentially void.

    The man introduces himself. He is a hypnotherapist from the Midlands of the UK who has lived here for two years now. He has a funny eye; I think it might be a glass eye because it doesn’t move. I plan on asking him about it one of these days when it no longer seems insensitive or cruel.

    “I have to go,” I tell him after drinking my coffee in a few quick sips. “I don’t want to be late.” We exchange numbers and promise to meet again soon. I’ve made a new friend.

    𓇢𓆸

    I book a motorbike taxi to pick me up at 7:07 AM. Today is immigration day: time to extend my visa. As soon as we pull away and the morning air rushes over my skin, I realise it is chilly. I instantly regret not grabbing a jacket to shield myself from the wind.

    My driver strikes up the usual conversational loop: Where are you from? How long have you been here? Do you want to stay? “Austria,” I tell him. “Six months. And yes.”

    I throw the same questions right back to him. Java. Two years. Yes.

    He weaves through the morning traffic like an expert. Every driver here has a completely different style, but this one I really like. He is smooth and fast and fearless. He turns his head slightly, telling me I am the final passenger of his seventeen-hour shift. “Seventeen hours!!” I gasp. “Is that normal?” Not really, no. He explains that they don’t actually have shifts; they have daily quotas to hit, and because he despises the daytime gridlock, he chooses to hunt for fares all through the night.

    “How old are you?” he asks. “Thirty-seven.” He looks incredulous and glances back at me briefly over his shoulder. “I thought you were twenty-four or twenty-five. Are you lying to me?” I laugh. “How old are you?” “Thirty-five,” he says. “Okay,” I reply.

    Truthfully, I have no way of knowing. I can see absolutely nothing of his face except the dark glint of his eyes between the layers of protective gear he wears, wrapped up tightly like all the drivers here.

    “Do you believe me?” he asks. “Sure. If you say you’re thirty-five, I believe you.” He lets out a loud laugh. “I lied. Because you lied.” I laugh again. “I am not lying!” “I’m twenty-one,” he admits. “You’re a baby!” He chuckles. “Yeah. Want to be my mommy?” “Hard no,” I reply.

    We pull up to the immigration office ten minutes before the doors even open. It doesn’t matter; a massive queue is already snaking out past the parking lot and spilling onto the main road. The driver quickly ushers me toward the tail end of the line, waves, and disappears into the traffic.

    𓇢𓆸



    I take my ticket number and settle in. It takes three-and-a-half hours until the loudspeaker finally chimes “Number 099, please go to counter two”.

    I hand over my ticket and my passport. The officer scans the documents into his computer, types a few lines, and then fixes his eyes on me. “Where is your exit flight?”

    “I don’t have one yet,” I tell him. “You have to have a flight back to your home country. NOW.” 

    “New laws,” he adds, harshly. “Since when?” I ask. I’ve been performing this visa extension dance since the start of the year and have never needed one.

    “Since last week,” he replies flatly. “Okay. I need a minute,” I say. He motions me away from the desk, steering me back toward the seating rows. “Come back to my counter when done.”

    I nod my assent and walk back to the chairs. Only a couple of weeks ago, I started seriously considering making this place a more permanent home. I already knew that to secure a legitimate long-term visa, I would eventually have to leave the country to sort out the logistics. I had even mapped out a loose plan in my head, talking with friends about returning to Europe for a while.

    Sitting under the harsh fluorescent light of the waiting area, looking at my phone, I feel a sudden wave of gratitude for my own intuitive foresight. This unexpected redirection doesn’t arrive as a shock. Instead, it feels like divine timing: a gentle, kismet nudge from the universe directing and guiding me exactly where I am supposed to go next.

    I sit on the concrete stairs at the back of the building, the screen of my phone glowing as I book a one-way ticket to Athens, Greece. I add thirty kilograms of luggage. The heavy physical weight of dragging my life from one corner of the globe to another. I am going to visit my sister and a few close friends who live there. A part of me feels instantly lighter, knowing that I will soon be wrapped in the comfort of people who love me.

    All around me, at least a hundred other expats are visibly spiralling, crushed by the weight of this sudden legal shift that has abruptly left so many of them stranded or effectively homeless.

    I walk back inside to counter two. I wait for the officer to catch my eye, and when he waves me over, I slide into the seat and hand over my passport alongside my phone displaying the confirmed ticket.

    His demeanour instantly softens. I realise he has probably been ordered to play the role of the harsh, grumpy bureaucrat to enforce this abrupt policy change. He clicks through the final screens on his computer, logs the paperwork, and tells me my visa extension will hit my inbox sometime next week.

    Just like that, the clock begins ticking. I have exactly five weeks left on this island: this beautiful, chaotic sanctuary that has helped me completely rebuild my life.

    Overflowing with gratitude for every single moment I’ve been gifted here, I head straight to the coast to celebrate with a swim at my favourite turquoise-blue beach. I might return to Bali one day, but for now, I am doubling down on every single thing I love about this place while I still can.

  • 8 is my lucky number

    the death of an 8-year-long lesson

    JUN 23, 2026

    This week I was planning to write about how the goal is not a life without friction, that life has edges, that we get to choose which ones we’re happy to run up against — raising children, braving the elements of the natural world, etc — after climbing the tallest mountain in Bali, an active volcano, last weekend. Which was so hard, particularly when an unprecedented1 wind appeared, threatening to tear our tiny human bodies off the summit and fling us unceremoniously into the sky.

    I started writing it at the start of last week when all the details were still fresh in my mind: the smell of wildflowers on the path, the golden light of the afternoon sun dappling the leaves as we hiked up above the clouds, the satisfying ache of my thighs from the steep climb, the tears that sprang from my eyes when I thought I was going to die. I’m still going to write about it because I think it’s an interesting idea and something we all grapple with, consciously or not. But today I want to write about something else.

    I’m on a visa run2: Bali, Singapore, Bali. The man at check-in warns me there’s a 50% chance they won’t let me into either Singapore nor Bali because they don’t like it when people do it in a 12-hour round trip, but I’ve taken the risk because my neighbour said it would be fine and I trust her. Plus, I got my lucky seat number: 8A, which I’m taking as a good omen. (My birthday is 8/8, plus it’s my numerology number, so 8 really is my number.)

    The flight attendants with their perfectly manicured bobs and straight Asian hair are pushing a trolley, a wheel squeaking down the aisle, handing out tiny bottles of water and meals on trays to those who ordered them. Not me. I’m a strictly fasting-when-flying type, though I’ve found choosing the fruitarian option on long-haul works well too, because you just get a fruit platter, which aids digestion perfectly for when you land.

    I’m wearing a long backless organic cotton Christy Dawn summer dress procured from Poshmark when I lived in NYC last summer, no bra, my comfiest tencel Uniqlo panties with a cherry on them, an Italian soft brown cashmere knit sweater bought on Vinted when I was in Paris, and dark brown soft suede loafers found at a Parisian market for €20. An outfit assembled for the full array of today: a motorbike ride to the airport before 7 am, an international flight that is inevitably too cold, and six hours in an airport. Then the same again in reverse. I hope to be showered and in bed by 11 pm.

    Over the past three or four days, a new sweetness has blown into my day-to-day. This sweetness is difficult to describe because it’s so ordinary. The absence of a hardness running underneath my life, a subtle bracing against the world. A vigilance. Some part of me has always been scanning the horizon for the next disappointment, the next upheaval, the next thing that would require me to gather my strength and begin again. I am desperately clinging to this sweetness, hoping it won’t dissolve into nothingness.

    That’s what I want to write about. The end of a truly harsh 8-year cycle. The death of an 8-year-long lesson. I read Leah Vanderveldt and Otherworldy on the astonishing astrology right now, and it spoke to me so deeply that I wanted to reflect on my own experience with it.

    For the past eight years I’ve been circling a wound: where is my home, where do I belong, who are my people, where can I safely root and with whom? It has been all about relationships, self-worth, and security. Testing and exploring the right to simply exist and be sustained. Searching for possible answers from a million different vantage points, gathering experiences and evidence that might point me forward to the truth.

    It was 2018 when this started, which feels like a lifetime ago. I don’t even recognise the woman I was then. 

    8 years ago I made the decision to remain estranged from my mother, after a lifetime of repetition compulsion: the unconscious drive to stay inside a painful dynamic, hoping each next time it resolves differently.

    8 years ago I ended my tendency towards perpetual monogamy, drifting from one relationship to the next with barely a breath between them. I had been proposed to three times by then, but it was clear to me that it was not in my best interest to get married to any of those people. While some of them were genuinely great, we weren’t a fit. Since then, there were some situations that I got out of that were extractive, and I am grateful those chapters are over and for the lessons. People say we date our opposite-gender parent. I don’t think that’s quite right. We date the parent with whom we have the most unfinished business.

    8 years ago, I moved into a house and lived on my own for the first time in my life and tried to learn how to stop outsourcing my needs for safety and security to others and instead learn the delicate way of trusting myself to become sovereign in my ability to care for myself.

    8 years ago I started to grow from the confrontation of the parts of myself that had not matured or taken responsibility for my life.

    2018 was the year I finally chose myself and my path in a way that I didn’t know was possible until then. But with it came the harsh realities of seeing the world in the stark, bright light of adulthood, no longer softened by adolescent ignorance.

    I spent those 8 years reparenting myself, mothering and fathering myself, filling the gaps of care I hadn’t received in childhood, all whilst being entirely afloat.

    I studied psychology for this reason and have spent years becoming fluent in family dynamics, reparenting, corrective experiences, the slow archaeology of inherited patterns. I have done all of this work on myself first. It is also, not coincidentally, one of the central reasons my clients seek me out.

    In the last year I saw the last of my old familial patterns dissolve. Relationships I had been faithfully resourcing for years, smoothing over difficult moments, absorbing tension before it became conflict, from which I withdrew my energy, gently, without drama. Other relationships that genuinely sustain me grew stronger, as though they had been waiting for the space.

    A short break for self-promotion: If you would like to learn how to use your writing as a functional brand-building tool, join me for Going Pro this July. Learn more here.

    So far so good.

    I have landed in Singapore, through immigration, ate the most delicious dumpling soup, sat in a Starbucks for a few hours editing the above while sipping soya milk tea, checked back in, passed through immigration again, and am now waiting to board my flight home. May all the angels and gods be with me upon landing, and may the exit and journey to my bed be quick and smooth.

    I am sitting cross-legged on an airport waiting chair opposite my gate. Boarding is in 45 minutes. I didn’t get my lucky seat this time. I’ve been placed in the middle, 15E, so there had better be someone fascinating or hot next to me.

    The point I have been trying to get to, circling this whole essay, is that since 2018 I have been living inside my personal survival story. Eight years of repairing foundations. And now I am done. So, so done with this story. I can feel the completion in my bones.

    That sweetness I’ve been feeling is the sign: my reality is rewriting itself.

    The solstice was yesterday. I celebrated with yoga, then breathwork, then a sound healing, and cried through all three, releasing whatever remnants of grief and shame were still lodged somewhere in my body from the past eight years. 

    Afterwards, I won a $200 voucher for my favourite organic clothing store, Luna Indigo. Two days before that, a kind stranger bought me breakfast at my favourite café simply because I let him share my table. Small things that to me are all pointing in the same direction: I am moving into a new chapter.

    Alongside that, something else is shifting. The desire to keep working at the level of excavation and repair — trauma, the long shadow of the past, the dissolution of inherited patterns — is receding. I notice I am more drawn now to making things. Art, beauty, structures in the actual world built with my own two hands. 

    I have spent eight years becoming very, very good at the interior work. I have earned a kind of mastery there that I am genuinely proud of, and that will always be woven into everything I do. But I no longer want it to be the primary story I am living. I want to be fluent in the outer world now. In creating and building and being fully, unguardedly alive in it.

    The flight is delayed by an hour. I’m sitting between two cute women who are going on their first trip together in their 15-year friendship. I ask if they want to sit beside each other, gesturing that I’m willing to move into either seat, but they say ‘no’ giggling, and we chat a little. Someone sitting nearby is dropping some really foul-smelling farts. Everyone is tired. It is getting late, the mood is restless and impatient among the passengers.

    I am in a good mood because I believe this is divine timing for whatever lies ahead. I’m resting my chin on my knees, bare feet on the chair, shoes kicked under the seat. I’m tired and dream about being back home and in bed, and think about what it means to put roots down and how to make that decision.

    Continued here…

  • what can no longer be postponed

    right before it happened

    It finally happened. I pooped myself in public this morning. Wait. It’s not as bad as you think.

    I was at the beach for the first time in weeks. The monsoon rain finally stopped and I got up early and walked down to the black sand and got a coconut at a shack on the edge of the inlet, then wandered along the shore until I found a spot where I could sit in the sun and watch the surf lifesavers train in the water. I had only just settled in. Towel laid out. Coconut balanced on a piece of driftwood. Clothes off so my skin could finally see daylight again in a teeny tiny bikini after weeks of monsoon rain. And then I felt it. A rumble in my stomach. A familiar urge, but more urgent than usual. I had only been sitting there for about thirty seconds and already I knew I didn’t have much time. Panicking slightly, I started packing up my things. If I can just make it to the nearest toilet, I thought. But the nearest toilet was not really that near, and my body, it turns out, had very little patience for dignity or logistics. I dropped everything and ran. Not toward the cafés but toward a fishing boat a few metres away, ducked behind it and squatted down. Just in time.

    I knew yesterday, right after I ate the fresh vegan spring rolls, that something was slightly off. The evidence was now undeniable. I tried to clean up and cover my tracks with some leaves but honestly there is only so much one can do in a situation like this. What can one do but get on with things? I casually strolled back out from behind the fishing boat hoping that no one would need to use it for at least a week, looked around satisfied that nobody had seen me, picked up my towel and my coconut and started making my way home. Home was a twenty five minute walk away. I knew I needed to get clean and I needed to be near a toilet for the rest of the day.

    And then.

    The next nearest café didn’t have an easily accessible restroom but the one after that was part hotel, part café, and happened to be the exact place where I had eaten those damn spring rolls that caused the predicament in the first place, which frankly made the situation feel a little bit like their responsibility. I felt like they owed it to me to recitfy the situation. I confidently strolled past reception like I belonged there, which is really the only way to enter a place when you are about to do something you technically shouldn’t. I found an unlocked vacant hotel room, walked into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet to relieve the remains of whatever turbulence was still unfolding in my stomach. Then I stripped naked, got into the shower, washed myself thoroughly, shampooed my hair with the tiny hotel shampoo, dried off, got dressed again in everything except my now retired bikini bottoms, and strode back out onto the street feeling, if not proud exactly, then at least reborn.

    When I got home I peeled off my clothes, put them in the washing basket, rinsed under the shower one more time just in case, pulled on an oversized t-shirt and got into bed, which is where I will remain for the rest of the day. Close to the toilet.

    The funny thing is that when I decided on the title of this article — what can no longer be postponed — it was before all of this happened. My idea at the time was far more high-brow. I wanted to write to you about all the things in life we put off because of this that or the other, when actually the things we are avoiding are often the very things that move us closer to ourselves. But it turns out the title still works. Because this morning on the beach something very literal happened. My body made it abundantly clear that there are moments in life when postponement is simply no longer an option.

    A few days ago I asked on Instagram: What needs to be claimed? (Excuse the ‘why’ in place of ‘what’ typo. Here are some of your answers:

    I look at these beautiful heartfelt answers and think about what it means to claim them. What it really means. In ourselves. In our daily lives. Claiming something rarely happens in a single moment of self-realisation or readiness. More often it requires a shift in behaviour or energetics. A choice we begin making over and over again. Something that, at a certain point, can no longer be postponed if we really want what we say we do.

    Take self-love. Claiming self-love doesn’t mean reaching some mythical state where you love yourself twenty-four hours a day and never struggle again. It means that in the moments when you are tired, disappointed, ashamed, or convinced you are not enough, you choose the loving action anyway. You rest when you would normally push through. You speak to yourself with a little more gentleness than you feel you deserve. You stop participating in your own internal bullying.

    Claiming abundance is similar. It isn’t just about learning how to receive more. It’s about noticing all the subtle ways you have been telling life that you are not worthy of what you want. The ways you downplay your gifts, undercharge for your work, apologise for taking up space, or quietly assume that other people are allowed to live well but somehow you are not.

    Claiming health is not simply about giving the body time to heal. It is about being willing to listen to the reasons the body fell out of balance in the first place. Illness has a way of pointing, sometimes quite bluntly, to what is no longer sustainable. The pace that needs to slow down. The stress that cannot continue. The truth that has been quietly sitting in the background waiting to be acknowledged.

    Claiming work you love is rarely neat or linear either. It usually requires you to do things that feel uncomfortable, unexpected, and occasionally inconvenient. You stretch yourself. You try things you are not yet good at. You keep showing up before you feel fully ready. The love for the work often grows through that process rather than appearing fully formed at the beginning.

    And claiming romantic love… That might be the most confronting one of all. Because claiming love often means letting go of the ways we have protected ourselves from it. The strategies, the stories, the old disappointments we have been using as quiet evidence that it might not work out anyway.

    You have desires and you ask for things in life. And suddenly there you are. Standing in front of something that can no longer be postponed.

    *
    I’ve opened up my books for a few 1:1 mentoring spaces across the month of March.

    If you need to untangle this next step in your life → book here.

    If you want to start your own writing journey on Substack → book here.

    If you’re ready for creative strategy infused with intuitive intelligence → book here.

    for everything else click here

    *

    A few nights ago I had the strangest dream.

    I kept trying to take flight. In the dream I knew, with total certainty, that I could fly, but every time I tried to lift off it felt like something heavy was pulling my body back down again. There were all these reasons why I couldn’t. People telling me I shouldn’t, even wrong, to want to. I kept waking up and then slipping back into the exact same dream again and again, each time attempting the same thing from a slightly different angle. Trying harder. Trying softer. Scheming. Adjusting. Negotiating with gravity. Until finally, toward the end, after many false starts and failed attempts, something shifted and I lifted cleanly off the ground. And the feeling, when it happened, was ecstatic.

    It felt strangely indicative of the inner journey I find myself on right now.

    Lately I’ve been asking myself the same questions over and over again. In a world increasingly fragmented by things like social media and AI, what actually feels meaningful to me? How do I want to contribute? Not just in ways that are productive or visible or strategic, but in ways that genuinely feel good and do good.

    More and more I feel drawn toward creating things that last. Things that are genuine and whole. Work that doesn’t feed on the low-grade panic or outrage that so much of the world now runs on. I know instinctively that whatever I create next won’t come from strategy alone, or from information, or from reacting to whatever the algorithm seems to want. It is comimg from reaching inward and pouring from a place inside myself that none of those external forces can really access or touch.

    Remembering how to do that seems to be the journey I’m on right now. One that is revealing itself slowly, almost reluctantly, from within. One of my greatest gifts is helping other people find that place within themselves too.

    Yesterday my friend Kelly Vittengl and I had a conversation that stayed with me. She told me she’s become increasingly convinced that one of the truest acts of rebellion available to us right now is to stop endlessly consuming the news and instead start becoming and creating what is actually true and authentic to us.

    It can sound a little like spiritual bypassing. It can even feel slightly uncomfortable to say out loud. But her point wasn’t that we should ignore suffering or pretend the world isn’t complicated. For all the darkness we see in the world, she said, there is also immense goodness. And if you find yourself struggling to see it, sometimes the most meaningful thing you can do is become it.

    I’ve been wrestling with this quite a lot lately. I’ve found myself hesitating before sharing things publicly. Wondering if it’s appropriate to talk about beauty, or creativity, or joy when the world feels so noisy and heavy. And yet, deep down, I still believe that the most meaningful contribution many of us can make is to focus on the things we genuinely value. To build and nurture the things we want to see more of.

    Perhaps that is what so many of us are feeling right now in different ways. I suspect this is where the question of what can no longer be postponed becomes important. Because eventually something in us grows tired of waiting. Tired of negotiating with the parts of ourselves that are afraid or cautious or endlessly trying to behave appropriately for the moment we are living in.

    Eventually the body runs for the fishing boat. Eventually the dreamer lifts off the ground. Eventually something inside us realises that postponing our lives isn’t actually helping anyone. Not the world. Not other people. Not ourselves.

  • time loosens its grip

    when I kept hitting breaking point in November I booked a flight

    JAN 07, 2026

    Colomb Bay, South Goa, India

    The sky is pink. The temperature is perfect. The air feels like skin. There is no boundary between my body and the sky. We are both naked, in perfect harmony.

    I eat in a ramshackle hut sitting on stilts at the northern end of the beach. Papaya juice and momos or a mackerel thali. The second time, the proprietor thanks me for coming back. When he brings me the bill, he has written a scrawling love letter across it. I can barely make out how much I need to pay. It makes me smile.

    I look for the huts I stayed in seventeen years ago, but I can’t find them. I walk farther than I meant to. I slow down. I scan the shoreline. Everything has changed, of course. The beach. The paths. The way things are arranged. I have changed too.

    Seventeen years ago I was naive and new. I still grasped onto purity. I hadn’t yet felt the full depth of life, the particular weight of it, the way it settles into your body and rearranges your inner furniture without asking. I didn’t yet know what life could ask of you, or what it would take.

    I was on an ardent spiritual path then, under the illusion that a particular flavour of consciousness made me exempt. That being “spiritually conscious and evolved” somehow placed me outside the ordinary contracts of grief, fear, longing, pleasure, disappointment. That belief is seductive because it flatters the ego while pretending to dissolve it.

    What I know now is that avoiding pain doesn’t remove it. It just delays your willingness to let it sit down beside you. It creates another layer of suffering. Tension, resistance, self-judgement. Because life keeps arriving anyway.

    These days my spiritual practice is much simpler. I let life be as raw as it is. I let grief have weight. I let joy be bright and felt. I let pleasure move through me without needing to turn it into meaning. I let fear exist without trying to alchemise it into wisdom. Reverence, for me now, looks like staying. Staying with what is actually here.

    It was here, seventeen years ago, that I was inspired to start my first business. The one I poured forty thousand dollars into. The one that failed. I saw the reality of textile workers’ lives. So I started an ethical fashion brand called ética & ella. I was ahead of my time. And completely unprepared.

    Sometimes I think I’m still failing at business even though I’ve run one successfully for a decade. I don’t like convincing people they need things they don’t. And if we are honest, we probably don’t really ned very much. 

    I think of something Mara Hoffman said when she closed her brand. How maybe the great human project of this era is simply finding ways to sell things to each other. Every day we wake up and offer something: a product, a service, an idea, a body of work, a version of ourselves. And if we aren’t selling, we’re buying.

    All the mysticism, all the beauty, all the cosmic intelligence of the universe and the punchline is just… buy and sell.

    Here, that world feels far away. The urgency of it. The hunger. The constant wanting. I don’t need most of the things in my suitcases. Both of them. When I left Paris, I packed everything I own. Except the winter coats, the Pilates mat, the ring light. I don’t yet know where I am going next, and didn’t want to leave anything behind that I might miss.

    Every morning, I journal for a couple of hours. A part of me has come back online. A quieter intelligence. Less managerial. Less vigilant.

    Access to a heart-brain that’s been tucked away tells me truths I’ve not had space for. The ways I contorted myself in ways that are rewarded by our western society. How I negotiated a world I didn’t fully believe in by staying busy, competent, contained. 

    Time loosens its grip.

    When I kept hitting breakingpoint in November, I booked a flight. I knew I needed to do something drastic. A friend recommended going to an Ayurvedic Hospital for treatment. By the time I got the visa for India, they were all booked out. Until two days ago, when a space opened up for February 7th. I’ll be here until the end of February, for now.

  • every day after

    returning to nyc after a few weeks in colombia; a conversation with my therapist that literally changed my life; post-breakup growth and healing; and the many things I’m thinking about

    This is the third and final part of a series of recent real-life stories.You can read part 1 & part 2 here.

    The dusty dirt track that runs to the beach passes three enormous wild mango trees. I carefully crawl under the wire fence and inspect the floor carpeted by discarded mango leaves for an intact one. I find two: fallen, ripe and unbruised, pick them up and pretzel myself back onto the path. When I reach the water’s edge, I kneel into it, washing the riper of the two, peeling the skin away from the flesh with my fingers, letting the golden juice run down my arms and drip off into the sea. I bite into the juicy flesh like a starved savage until all that’s left is a large stone. I love it when my wild, feral island girl personality emerges.

    Every day since my arrival, I make this daily pilgrimage. To immerse myself in the salty water. To walk along the sand barefoot with the sea lapping at my feet. To discharge the chaos of my emotional world from the past month. 

    I’m alone and in Colombia.

    For the first 10 days, I am sick af in a hotel room. Sick in the body with a fever and a cold. Sick in the heart from a breakup. Sick in the mind from the combination of both. My period comes too, and I can’t think of a more lethal combination. Desperate to heal, I move myself deeper and deeper into the jungle to be immersed by nature until I end up in a tiny one-street village surrounded by tropical plants on the edge of the Caribbean.

    Every day after work,1 I walk to a quiet part of the beach, sheltered by mangroves and lie down on a sarong I’d bought in the village, watching the waves, letting their rhythm rock my nervous system back to homeostasis. If the water is calm enough, I find a shallow spot to crouch in and sit in the cool, salty sea until the waves become too much. The tides are dangerous here, and no one swims in these waters. 

    Every day, I become stronger. Every day, I feel a little more capable. The world starts to regain its colour after weeks of seeing in sepia. I stop to admire flowers, seashells and tiny crabs that are trying to make their home next to me. My capacity to make any kind of meaningful decisions about my next steps remains offline, and the urgency to make them has faded. 

    Every afternoon, thunderstorms roll through the Sierra Nevada mountains behind me.

    My appetite returns, and I eat papaya and scrambled eggs with tomato and onions and thickly buttered arepas for breakfast with gusto. I enjoy coffee black for the first time in my life because that’s how they have it here. I drink fresh coconuts and ask them to cut them open so I can scoop out the young, jellylike flesh. I try limonadas of all sorts, resting with my two favourites, sandía (watermelon) and coco (coconut). 

    Every day, my tan grows a little deeper.

    A dark moon sets in Cancer and a new moon rises in Leo, and I, too, begin to rise. But not without the lessons of this dark time.

    I think a lot about a lot of things. (Addressed in depth below.)

    I think about the state of the world and its wars and suffering, and politics. I think about victim mentality and how we can choose our thoughts and beliefs to rearrange our reality. I think about how the world has flattened in recent years. I think about travel and its place in my life. I think about the intentional home life and career I want to participate in. I think about how micro experiences are also always happening in the macro. I think about my most recent relationship and romantic relationships in general. I think about the burning hot shame I feel about not having seen the signs sooner. 

    I am deeply embarrassed that I let myself get involved with this man. I feel like I should have somehow known.

    I speak to my therapist about it, and she laughs at me. 

    “You feel shame?! For what? Trusting your partner? Being in love and wanting a beautiful story? Matching your actions with your words? The only person who holds ANY shame in this scenario is him. A lot of men are avoidant, emotionally unavailable, immature and generally inconsiderate. They are not worthy partners, and they waste women’s time. That’s not a reflection of you. It’s all on them. Stop taking it personally. So what, you encountered only one of them? You’re lucky! He’s so boring. Now, let’s move on!”

    Haha. I adore her brutal honesty. She’s right! So I do. I move on.

    Now that I’m feeling stronger, she is tougher with me. She’s in her late 60s and no longer sees clients, but having worked with her on and off for seven years, she is the only person who truly knows all the stories I have lived and learned from. She’s helped me move past, through and on from so many life moments that felt like the end to me. We all need people like this in our lives.

    And just like that, I’m over it and back in NYC.

    I land in NYC with the sunrise. It’s a late July summer morning, and the heat is already starting to rise. Relief and joy flood my body. I don’t know what this feeling is, but I’m so happy to be back. I’ve discovered a trick to avoid the subway into the city from JFK airport and get a driver to Grand Central Station for the price of two coffees. 

    My therapist introduces me to the work of therapist Terry Real. I find a talk where he says, “Black-and-white thinking is a sign you’re in your adapted child; mature adults don’t categorise things in binary terms, but children do.” Something inside me shifts.

    It speaks directly to me. That oversimplified lens we slip into under stress: good/bad, right/wrong, always/never isn’t clarity, it’s contraction. A survival strategy.

    The rest of this article is paywalled and accessible here.

  • what I really think of nyc

    & why I’ve stayed…

    find my list of fav cute places in nyc here on Instagram

    I heard a loud crunch, followed by the softest gasp, and turned my head. A bicycle lay on its side, a man tangled with it on the ground, and a large SUV hovered just above them, still and silent.

    In an instant, people moved. Without hesitation, strangers rushed forward, bending down, reaching out, offering presence and help. A small collision. A moment of disruption. And then, care. Simple, instinctive, human.

    That’s what New York is like. Sudden, raw, and full of heart.

    My friend Petra and I were sitting on the terrace of my favourite natural wine bar in LES when it happened, the fragility of human life, the compassionate human response brought tears to my eyes. In many ways, this encapsulates what I think of this city.

    People keep asking me “what were your first impressions?” and “did you actually even want to go?” and “what do you really think?” and “do you want to stay?” 

    New York holds you in ways you cannot hold yourself. It cradles you and asks you to let yourself be swept away by its momentum. If you cling to what you think you know and resist the current, it will spit you out. It is deeply imperfect. It is alive in a way that catches you off guard. There are layers to it, and not all of them are beautiful. You cannot escape yourself here. You meet yourself again and again. In the streets, in the faces, in the silence that exists between the sirens. 

    I think the New York that people fell in love with, the one that raised artists and misfits, the one pulsing with radical self-expression, is gone. Or at least fading. What remains is a softened echo. A diluted version wrapped in branding. You can still hear the heartbeat, but it’s muffled by rent prices and influencer cafés.

    I’ve seen this happen before. The cities stretch, and the soul thins. Creatives, thinkers, those who live at the edge of culture leave. No longer willing to mortgage their joy for the performance of a lifestyle. The New York I had hoped to meet doesn’t live here anymore. Or maybe she’s hiding. I don’t know.

    And still, the city pulls you in. There is something magnetic about the way life moves here. The pace makes you sharper. The people make you braver. Everyone is building something. Everyone is searching. 

    It has given me clarity. About what I want. About what matters.

    New York City retains a feverish optimism that anything is possible here. The American dream that you can create a new life on these shores remains intact and alive. The people cling to it, and this perspective offers opportunities to build on possibility and belief, if little substance. And that is enough. It is enough to start with. Substance comes with time.

    New York City hold the power of proximity. Most cities are built wide, so it takes an hour, if not more, to go anywhere. It is built sky-high, so everything is within half an hour’s reach, either walking or by Subway. It means you can meet people and go places without overly taxing both your energy and your time. The currency of this city is the value of your relationships. 

    That accessibility makes a huge difference.

    I came to New York for love. For adventure. For the desire to experience a different perspective and to reclaim my sense of inspiration and hope. I believed, deep in my bones, that the relationships I build shape everything that comes next. And for that, I couldn’t imagine a better place. 

    I also came to New York because I wasn’t sure where else to go.

    On Tuesday evening, I was supposed to board a flight to London, but I didn’t.

    Life cracked open in a way I didn’t see coming. Plans changed. The shape of my future shifted overnight. And so I stayed. Not because I wanted to, exactly, but because something asked me to meet it here, in the unknown, in the aftermath, in New York.

    hi friends!

    I felt like nodding my head at the fact that this newsletter is never just one thing. It’s part personal memoir, part story, part soul of my business. It contains multitudes, like I do, including updates and offerings, woven between reflections and real-life turning points. It arrives when it’s ready, not when a schedule demands it.

    Some weeks it’s a window into what I’m creating or learning. Other times it’s just a trace of where I’ve been or what’s breaking open in me. But always, it’s a long thread of my desire to be of service. To contribute something meaningful through words, through beauty, through whatever insights life offers me to pass on.

    I’m so grateful you’re here. That you let me do things this way. That you’ve never asked me to make my creative work more conventional, more predictable, more polished. Instead, you let me do it her way. And for that, I’m deeply glad. I’m working on an essay that reveals this business approach in depth because this is what I have discovered:

    Even though it’s really scary at first, it always pays off to do things your way. Even you think it’s wrong. Even when you think it’ll never work. Which is the underlying premise of her way club. To always trust yourself despite any doubt. 

    For the past months, I’ve been quietly working on something behind the scenes. A little companion guide I’ve been using in my own life for more than a decade. A way to ground, to find rhythm again, to work with the natural currents of time instead of pushing against them.

    It’s called Planet Powered…: for the curious

    Over the last few days, everything finally came together. The words, the flow, the feeling of it. It’s part written word, part gentle practice. A simple guide to living in rhythm with the energy of each day of the week. A way to tune back in, realign, and soften into how life wants to move through you.

  • this life is a dream within a dream ☁️

    about NYC being a place of contrast requiring inner stability, and the quiet strength of being well-resourced

    When I stepped out of JFK airport and followed the signs to the subway, I braced myself. New York is known for its edge, its abrasion. I am soft. I tend and protect that softness like a flame cupped in two hands. I wasn’t sure how it would survive here.

    I tapped my phone at the turnstile and joined a tall young man in the elevator. He wore headphones and held himself like someone accustomed to noise. Still, I turned to him, map pulled up on my phone, unsure where to go. He removed one earbud, glanced at the screen, and said in the gentlest voice, “You can’t get the F from here, but if you take the K, you can transfer in three stops.” 

    I blinked. He had such a kind presence. His softness mirrored mine. Maybe there’s space for gentleness here, after all.

    I followed his directions toward the Lower East Side. A few minutes into the ride, the unmistakable smell of urine filled the carriage. A man down the carriage—middle-aged, Chinese descent—had wet himself and begun swearing loudly. Slurring. Angry. A different kind of edge.

    This city, I’m learning, holds everything. Softness and despair. Precision and chaos. A young man with headphones offering quiet directions. An older man unravelling in public. Here, opposites coexist, unapologetically. New York is a city of contrasts, and that is, perhaps, its defining trait.

    The days have spilled into one another like rainwater pooling in uneven stone. Time behaves differently here. Moments stretch. Then vanish. Weeks slip past before I can grab hold. What I’m learning is this: I cannot tether myself to the outside world. It’s too volatile. Too fast. Too much.

    Instead, I tether myself inward. I return to a still point inside me — a quiet place I cultivate through ritual and self-devotion. I nurture it like a small garden: feeding it with breath, rest, laughter, water, movement, music. A daily act of remembrance. Of protection. Of belonging to myself.

    Sometimes, it’s as simple as walking to Whole Foods alone, sending a few voice notes to the women who hold me in their hearts. That ten-minute walk fulfils two needs: solitude and connection. It’s imperfect. But it’s enough.

    Work is another tether. Returning to it each day — whether I want to or not — grounds me. I write. I build. I teach. I remember who I am. Even when the city pulls me in every direction.

    Last night, friends made homemade pizza and poured glasses of white wine. We ate slowly, talked about art, about cities we’ve loved. And then, walking home, we passed a man with his trousers around his knees, bare bottom exposed, head buried in a trash bin. Of course. That’s New York, too.

    Right now, I’m writing this during a live co-writing session for The Art of Noticing. Eight of us are here, silent on Zoom, warm orchestral music in the background. Earlier, we spoke about a line from one of my recent essays about being a well-resourced woman. We explored how writing can teach without instructing. That sometimes, the lesson is simply in the living.

    In Her Way Club, this here community I lead, that’s what I teach: how to listen inward. How to find your way—not the right way, not the perfect way, but yourway. In writing. In loving. In parenting. In creating. In becoming.

    And to find your way, you must first be resourced. You need space. You need softness. You need access to yourself.

    Being resourced is a privilege, yes. But it’s also a practice. A skill we build and rebuild. I see it as the art of tending to our inner ecosystem. Of becoming our own safe haven.

    It means expanding your capacity to meet life without collapsing. Learning to sit with discomfort. Making choices from groundedness, not panic. It doesn’t mean you never need others. It means you’re not uprooted every time the wind blows.

    How do you become that person?

    You start small:

    • You build a daily rhythm that supports your nervous system.
    • You learn to breathe when you want to scream.
    • You create a home that feels like a hug.
    • You save a little money, even when it’s hard.
    • You learn to cook a meal you love.
    • You reach out and you know how to be alone.
    • You keep learning. Keep listening.

    This is what I’ve brought with me to New York. Not just clothes and books and dreams, but tools. Practices. A soft heart and a solid core.

    And maybe that’s enough to belong here.

  • how on earth 🌎 do you pack your life into just* a carry-on case?

    *plus a ‘personal item’ bag 🎒

    LIKE THIS:

    The Art of Noticing sponsored this video. You have 3 days left to join us!

    CLICK HERE FOR INFO & REGISTRATION PAGE

    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.

    The bag I was loving on is called the Kono Travel Bag Underseat Backpack Carry-on Luggage Bag.

  • my last week in portugal + mental health chats

    my last week in portugal + mental health chats

    sunshine, sadness & soft goodbyes

    It’s my final week in Portugal, and I’m taking you along for the ride—foggy-headed colds, emotional reflections, sunny beach breaks, and bittersweet goodbyes. From filming a workshop and navigating mental health wobbles to processing anxiety, getting a haircut, and soaking in some much-needed sunshine, it’s a week of tenderness, transition, and tuning into what my body and heart need. Plus: mermaid hair, vintage clothes, and a reminder that movement really is medicine. 💛

    Access my workshop from the video in the FREE REWILDING RETREAT here.

    A message about the Rewilding Retreat

    From day one, we’re handed a script filled with “shoulds” and “supposed to.” It tells us that fitting in and following the rules will lead to happiness. But instead, we end up feeling disconnected and numb and asking, “Whose life am I really living?”

    My friend Jenner felt exactly the same way. She did everything she thought she was supposed to — went to college, landed a dream job, fell in love — yet she felt more lost and disconnected than ever before.

    So, she tore up the old script and started her journey to rediscover herself.

    That’s exactly why Jenner created The Wild Ones® ReWilding Virtual Retreat.It’s all about going beyond society’s little boxes and rediscovering your natural, authentic self.

    This isn’t just another online event. This is a RECLAMATION.

    No wonder over 32,000 people have joined this event in the past, and now ReWilding returns for its 6th year, better than ever. I’m thrilled to be part of this experience, offering my own workshop on Choice Architecture and Invisible Currents.

    Our environment creates invisible currents that guide our decisions without conscious awareness. Join me in mapping the hidden choice architectures in your life — from physical spaces to digital environments to social circles — and identify how these structures might be invisibly directing your life trajectories. Then, let’s deliberately redesign them, together.

    During the 8 transformative days of this FREE online event, you’ll experience:

    Daily transmissions from over 30 hand-selected visionaries and healers (including me :) who will guide you back to your innate wisdom

    • Deep somatic practices to release years of conditioning stored in your body
    • Powerful energy activations that reconnect you to your authentic power
    • A global community of heart-centered rebels, walking this path alongside you

    “This retreat was a game-changer for me! I went in feeling lost and came out with a renewed sense of purpose and clarity.” — Emily

    The entire 8-day journey is completely FREE and designed to fit into your real, full life. No overwhelm, just deep resonance that changes everything.

    Ready to see what it looks like when you take your dreams seriously? Free tickets are available now, so claim yours here!

    I can’t wait to see you there!

    Vienda

  • I can’t believe I’ve been here (in Portugal) for 5 months!

    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.

    Let’s dive in.

    Links to articles on topics I mentioned:

    — my Instagram account has been hacked, disabled and is being held hostage for ransom: https://viendamaria.com/2025/02/06/my…

    — redirection (aka: goodbye Instagram): https://viendamaria.com/2025/02/11/re…

    — ALIGNED: https://viendamaria.com/aligned/

    Don’t forget to subscribe here:    / @viendamaria  

    Join over 100 peeps for the Free 6 Day CLARITY Challenge on my website: https://viendamaria.com/from-stuck-to…

    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.

    Read my writing here: https://vienda.substack.com

    Lots of love, Vienda x

  • a 5-day trip to Salzburg, Austria (MAJOR FAIL)

    a 5-day trip to Salzburg, Austria (MAJOR FAIL)

    I felt alienated by my own country, where went to get my passport renewed as I had been instructed by the embassy in Portugal but was refused due to the complicated nature of where I live and belong.

  • i’m moving to New York

    i’m moving to New York

    kind of, maybe, not really…? I really wanted to write that to see how it feels in case it turns out to be true 

    FEB 18, 2025

    I’m sitting on the Ikea sofa in his living room, laptop balanced on my knees, pretending to work. Through the open door to his office down the hallway, I can hear his voice, steady and methodical, as he speaks with the electricity company to cancel his contract. Each call makes his impending departure feel more real.

    The day we met he told me he was moving to New York in the new year. At the time it meant nothing. I was talking to a stranger on the wooden bench outside a cafe window.

    But as coffee meetings evolved into sunset walks through cobblestone streets, as dinner dates transformed into intimate evenings on his sofa, as casual conversation turned into “Will you be my girlfriend?” – that once-insignificant sentence took on a weight I hadn’t anticipated.

    He’s preparing to leave the country at the end of March. I’m not built for long-distance relationships – I’m either fully present or completely absent. So I am joining him a few weeks later.

    One day, a few months after meeting, he was excitedly speaking about New York as we wove our way through the alleys to our favourite Saturday breakfast spot for coffee and cinnamon rolls. In my luteal phase, my emotions already simmering close to the surface, when tears welled to the surface.

    We had discussed it before. 

    He had asked me to join him with such natural ease as if it were the most obvious next step. I had always dreamed of spending three months in New York – to live there permanently? I wasn’t certain. But to discover its hidden corners and explore its endless possibilities? Absolutely.

    But that morning, as my hormones conspired against me and left me feeling raw and vulnerable, all I could focus on was how this was his adventure, his dream. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might be merely a footnote in his story. In that moment, I grieved for something I hadn’t yet lost.

    I tried to compose myself in private, but the wave of emotions was too powerful to contain. Through tears, I confessed that while I was genuinely happy and excited for him, hearing him talk about New York made me feel like an afterthought. Unused to and ill-equipped for such feminine displays of emotion, he panicked, genuinely confused – because in his mind, there had never been any question. We were going to New York, together. That was the only version of the future he had envisioned.

    I needed reassurance, more than I wanted to admit. I found myself losing an internal battle between soaring excitement and crushing doubts.

    Now, as our departure date approaches and our relationship has deepened with time, I feel more secure in the future we’re creating together. Today, when he looked at me with bright eyes and said, “I can’t wait to see what we create together!” I felt my heart lift with joy.

    Still, I oscillate between hopes and fears. Perhaps you, dear reader, if you’ve made New York your home, can offer some guidance.

    My excitement and hopes bloom:

    • I dream of losing myself in the halls of the Met, discovering hidden galleries in Chelsea, hunting for treasures at Brooklyn flea markets, and immersing myself in the vibrant, multicultural tapestry that is New York City. Every corner holds the promise of inspiration.
    • The thought of the connections waiting to be made sets my heart racing – the artists, writers, dreamers, and doers all within reach. I plan to approach each day with intention, cultivating a diverse and inspiring circle of kindred spirits.
    • I envision this new chapter expanding my creative horizons, opening doors I never knew existed, and forging connections that could transform my work and life in unexpected ways.
    • Each morning will bring new possibilities – a different neighbourhood to explore, a new face to become familiar, another layer of the city to uncover and make my own.
    • I believe in a kind of magic that happens when you’re perfectly aligned with your path. I’m curious to discover what shape that magic takes in a city of eight million stories.

    Yet my fears and doubts cast shadows: 

    • As a highly sensitive extroverted introvert, I quickly become overwhelmed by excessive stimulation. When surrounded by too much input – noise, movement, energy – I need a quiet space to decompress and reset. I worry about finding that sanctuary in a city that famously never sleeps.
    • My soul craves warm sunshine, the gentle rustling of leaves, and the rhythmic sound of waves – none of which New York is particularly known for. Where will I find those moments of natural peace that keep me grounded?
    • In a city consistently ranked among the world’s most expensive, I fear financial pressure might force me into a “hustle culture” I’ve intentionally avoided. I believe in working with purpose and alignment, not from desperation.
    • The heaviest weight on my heart is finding a new home for my cat, Danger. This separation might be temporary, or it might be permanent – the uncertainty makes it even harder. He’s been my constant companion, but I can’t bring him with me, and I can’t let his needs become the anchor that holds me back from this adventure.

    If you’re reading this in Europe and have space in your heart and home for a loyal ginger cat who gives his affection selectively but completely, please reach out. He needs a peaceful environment, ideally with a garden, and he’ll reward you with unwavering devotion.

    Life has a way of surprising us with unexpected turns. Moving to New York after my lease ends in April wasn’t part of my plans (though a psychic I’d quickly dismissed had predicted exactly this last August). But I love to embrace life’s kismet redirections.

    I don’t live by carefully crafted plans but by my unwavering belief that “something will happen.” Something always does.

  • I spent 2 weeks with the patriarchy

    & it really sucked. Things got weird, way too quickly.

    I am sitting in Palermo Airport. It’s 10:20. My flight doesn’t leave until 15.30. But I had to change my plans. To get off that boat. I was not expecting to find myself in an airport again so soon, yet here I am. Things got weird, way too quickly.

    When the universe hands you a neon sign saying ‘EXIT,’ you don’t wait for the next showing.

    Sometimes we try things, and they don’t work out. Sometimes those things involve million-dollar catamarans, mid-life crises, and a crash course in advanced patriarchy studies.

    Dear reader, before we begin I want to clarify that I’m not normally exposed to people like this, who I call ‘normcore’ or ‘normies’. Due to my particular lifestyle and work, I tend to attract a certain quality of people who actively practice self-awareness and self-responsibility. So while you may be nodding your head and thinking “This is normal” it is not, to me, and the world that I choose to cultivate. It has shown me how necessary the work I do in the world is, and how much more accessible it needs to be to every ‘normcore’ ‘normie’.

    ☾

    He scanned my body seconds into our introduction, his eyes doing the dance of the seven veils across my waist, hips, and eyes. I could practically hear the internal ‘cha-ching’ of approval. Welcome aboard the S.S. Objectification, population: me and my exhausted cat.

    ☾

    The UK won’t let you fly out of the country with pets so we circumnavigate this obstacle. A taxi to the port. A ferry across the English Channel. A bus to the train station. A train to Paris. A tiny hotel room in the 8th arrondissement with perfect views.

    In the morning I shower and slip on my already-worn travel clothes. Black Free People leggings and a soft green t-shirt plus double denim jackets, one a stone-washed black, the other quilted and blue. I have to be practical to carry my body weight in luggage including my cat.

    ☾

    A taxi to the airport. An orange juice to quench the travel-stress-induced sore throat and thirst. A flight to Menorca. A taxi to another port. By the end, I felt like I’d starred in my own version of ‘Planes, Trains, and Automobiles’ – with a feline co-star.

    There I meet Alain. He comments on the weight of my bag and I counter that it’s hard to pack light when you don’t know where you’re going and there’s no going back.

    We take his dingy (that he keeps calling dinky) to his million-dollar catamaran. I make a makeshift toilet out of an Amazon box, fill it with litter and let my cat out to explore, while Alain shows me around.

    Alain is a French-speaking Belgian with limited English skills. Our conversations are simple and halted. I often translate French phrases even though I don’t speak French but understand enough to get by.

    I can tell he is confused by me. Unimpressed by his obvious wealth, I do not attempt to charm or delight him. He has kind blue eyes that wink at me too often in a both lustful and fatherly way. The lustre of his once handsome youth has not quite faded. He comes from a generation of men deeply steeped in internalised patriarchy and I have zero interest in playing into his biases.

    I do not need nor want anything from him and that makes me free.

    He started as a hairdresser, he tells me. And then through luck and business acumen became Europe’s second-largest importer of gold and precious metals. Until the company went bankrupt and he took a few years off living in the Caribbean. That part of the story makes me think some suspect dealings were going on. Now he has a construction company in Belgium that is run by his son and daughter.

    The patriarchy is chivalrous and generous but every act feels counted and measured to be paid for. Transactional.

    I don’t feel he is sincere. I start to put my guard up. After unpacking I tell him I am tired and go to bed. He seems disappointed and confused.

    ☾

    On our first day together, anchored in a small bay in Menorca while we wait for his school friends to arrive in a few days to join us, we share antipasto and some wine in the afternoon.

    After one glass he leans close and says “Don’t be afraid. I want to kiss you.”

    I recoil and answer “no”.

    Not only do I not want to which is enough reason, but I also am unwilling to compromise myself when I’m already in a vulnerable position.

    Plus, he’s the same age as my father, were he still alive.

    For the next 48 hours, our island exploration becomes a battleground of wits and wills. He lobs inappropriate comments about my body, gender, and sex like verbal grenades, while I deflect them with shields of feminine power and independence. We’re engaged in an absurd dance, his patriarchal peacocking met with my unyielding resistance.

    My friend Jackson, ever the strategist, suggests I fight fire with fire. So, I reluctantly lower myself into the mud pit of this verbal sparring match. I find myself slinging barbs about his age and loneliness, reminding him that I’m not here to play saviour to his midlife crisis.

    I can’t help but wonder: Is this what passes for social interaction in his world, or have I stumbled into a poorly written sitcom about mismatched travel buddies?

    The patriarchy is a young boy, abandoned at 14, trying to make his way through life and desperate for love.

    On the third day, we talk about integrity and authenticity and how important both are to me. He becomes silent and still. Finally, I have touched a real part of him. The part of him that knows that love and affection are not transactional but has accrued wealth to feel worthy of it. He is suffering under the patriarchy too.

    ☾

    When I first agreed to this trip, we had a plan: a 3-month trial period. We would start in Spain and slowly make our way from there to Italy, Greece, and then Turkey. From the first day of my arrival, Alain keeps changing the itinerary.

    Every day it is something new. Tunisia. Croatia. Montenegro. By the end of the two weeks, he decided to put the catamaran onto the harbour in Sicily for 5 months and imagined me to live with him. It was not what I had signed up for.

    ☾

    His friends join us and alleviate the intensity.

    I watch the three friends love and care for each other. It’s heartening to see. They are blind to the privilege that protects them from the suffering and diminishment that others have to face.

    Confounded by the wives who have left them and the girlfriends who don’t trust them they wonder why everyone is left feeling lonely and starved. “I worked so hard!” they are exasperated. “I gave everything I had!” They’re not wrong.

    They have also been robbed by the patriarchy. Never taught to feel and surrender to their humanness. Always thinking they can fix every problem by working harder and accruing more. Everyone is suffering. No one feels met, seen or fulfilled in this system.

    The patriarchy is 3 giggling schoolboys in the bodies of mid-50’s white men. Ignorant to their privilege and power.

    They don’t know about how many women I know are faced with the sharp slap of being disempowered by the system that credits men when they bear children. Automatically, the naming of their children, ownership, and important decisions are deferred to the man.

    Patriachary is mostly invisible until ruling forces show their hands.

    ☾

    Within hours we set off. Menorca to Sardinia.

    The seas are wild and the waves high. All the men get seasick, their pink faces turning shades of white and grey. Even my cat vomits in response to the 4-metre rolling surges. I read and write and skip meals while they eat despite their sickness, as we all wait for the 2-day journey to come to an end.

    In Sardinia we refuel and they decide to press on. Sicily is another 3 days sailing away and they have a flight out of Palermo at the end of the week.

    I slowly get to know his friends.

    We come from such different worlds they don’t know how to relate to me. They think I’m a loner because I don’t join them for large parts of the day but the truth is that I prefer my company to theirs when they are rolling around seasick, making crude jokes and speaking French most of the time.

    I am resourced in caring for my well-being and don’t need to belong to the group to feel safe. To them, this is strange.

    ☾

    It’s Saturday. I arrived on this watery adventure Saturday a week ago. Today, I can’t stop weeping. Tears flood from my eyes and I take myself away into my cabin to cry and sob and let it out. My nervous system is on edge.

    I don’t want to be here anymore.

    Amidst the tears, I have an epiphany. I realise I’ve broken a generational pattern of making misaligned decisions out of a need for survival.

    The power imbalance is exactly what the patriarchy preys on. They need us to need them. But it never works out for anyone. We all end up hurt and resentful. And then women a deemed ‘crazy’ because we have to reclaim our power in unconventional ways because we are not resourced enough otherwise.

    It feels so good to keep saying “no” to Alain’s propositions. Accepting or acceding to him comes at a cost that I am not willing to pay. He has never encountered a whole woman, a free woman, a woman who neither needs nor wants anything from him.

    It’s fascinating to observe my journey with my own internalised patriarchy.

    With my last long-term relationship, I slipped into the ‘perfect woman’ mould. I cooked and cleaned and cared and on top of that, I ran a business and paid half the bills and half the mortgage (that I was never repaid for).

    Now, I have no inclination to prove my worth or lovability through female labour. I nurture and care if and when I want to freely. And withhold it as easily. My actions and choices come from a pure place. Because I am self-resourced.

    This confounds the patriarchy who are conditioned to a system of exchange based on a need of survival from those who are oppressed and under-resourced. It’s easy to hold the power when the other has none.

    ☾

    Eventually, we find a connection point as I astound them with my impeccable music taste. One night, we share songs and dance.

    The patriarchy does all the cooking. Because I can’t relax enough to scrape together a meal beyond carrots sticks and cheese slices. If meals are left to me we starve. They cook. I wash up.

    After 5 days at sea, we are all glad to return to land. I never imagined the tension build up in my body from the constant motion of sailing. A stress response to the unnatural feeling of being thrown back and forth relentlessly.

    Upon arriving, desperate to speak to anyone not on our boat, I introduce myself to our neighbours who tell me that no skilled sailor would consider crossing in those conditions. It gives me a new perspective on Alain, his skills as a sailor and my safety on his vessel.

    ☾

    As we finally stumble back onto solid ground in Palermo, I have a heart-to-heart with one of Alain’s friends. Turns out, I’m not the only one who felt unsafe and uncomfortable. He says he hated every second of the journey. He wishes he had never come on this trip. That Alain is behaving strangely. We agree that he is not well. It’s a small comfort, but I’ll take it.

    Alain’s advances continue. When he catches me in tears he sends me a message that says “I wish I could hold you in my arms to comfort you”. It makes my skin crawl. I don’t want this man to touch me, ever. I don’t reply.

    ☾

    On Wednesday I again am filled with tears. When I think I’ve cried it all out I rejoin the group and we explore the city of Palermo but the tears don’t stop. They notice and I tell them I am feeling emotional and need space. I hide behind sunglasses and try to focus on the astounding history, art and beauty of Sicily. Spirituality is devotion to beauty, I think to myself in admiration.

    But I know now, that it’s time to go.

    ☾

    On Thursday I book a flight. His friends leave today and it will just be Alain and me again. I am unwilling to face that.

    On Friday over cappuccinos and cornettos at a patisseria I say to Alain “Alain” he looks up at me “I am leaving on Sunday. And I’m not coming back.” he nods, silently. Understood. He offers me to stay on the boat until then. “I can take an Airbnb,” I say. “No, please stay” he counters.

    The patriarchy pretends it doesn’t know what it wants and is fine and chill and cool with everything but doesn’t know how to communicate how it feels and it wants directly and clearly and is boiling with anger and frustration underneath.

    ☾

    Grateful and relieved, on Saturday I sunbathe and swim and read. For the first time, Alain leaves me alone. This is more like what I thought the experience would be like. Peaceful.

    As I pack up my life once again, I reflect on this bizarre nautical chapter. It wasn’t the adventure I signed up for, but it was the lesson I needed. I’ve emerged stronger, wiser, and with a newfound appreciation for solid ground.

    Sunday I get up early clean my cabin and bathroom and dive off the boat to swim one last time. I am ready to leave. He takes me to shore in the dingy and we have an awkward goodbye. “Thank you for an interesting time,” I say. “Have a nice life.” He mumbles something. I don’t care what he has to say. I’m ready to go.