Vienda Maria

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Tag: life

  • begin again

    there are seasons of our lives that strip us bare

    There are seasons of our lives that strip us bare. That take more than we thought we could bear losing. That ask more than we believed we had left to give. And still, we begin again.

    That’s what the first half of 2025 has been for me.

    Beginning again is not always a declaration. It is rarely bold or glamorous. Often, it is quiet. Awkward. Messy. It doesn’t look like courage from the outside. 

    It looks like sitting on the kitchen floor with tears in your eyes because you don’t know which place to call home anymore.

    I’ve had to begin again — and again — more times than I thought I would. 

    Recently, it was moving continents. Leaving behind a life I built. Letting go of places, people, patterns that had once held me, and realising they no longer could. I said goodbye to my beloved cat, Danger-baby, with a grief so physical it felt like my chest had caved in. I packed my life into a few bags. I watched plans dissolve, relationships shift, and dreams turn to dust.

    It looks like trying to breathe through a kind of grief that doesn’t announce itself, because it doesn’t come from one loss, but many. Layered, silent, and unseen.

    There are days when I cannot find words. There are nights when the ache is so wide it feels like I am floating through it. There are moments where I forget who I had been, and haven’t yet glimpsed who I was becoming. I watched plans unravel. I watched myself unravel, too.

    Something deeper kept whispering. Keep going. Keep going.

    Beginning again requires a kind of surrender most people don’t talk about. The kind that comes when life has cleared the path for you. When you no longer have a choice except to let go of what was and place one unsteady foot in front of the other.

    I’ve always had a strange kind of love for these moments. 

    The ones where everything is uncertain. Because inside the wreckage, there is a rawness that is unmistakably alive. A freedom that only comes when the identities and routines and ideas that once defined us have been stripped away. There is something holy in the not knowing. Something exquisite in the beginning.

    Iit is not easy. It takes everything. 

    Emotionally, it asks you to stay present with the discomfort when every part of you wants to numb out or run. Psychologically, it demands that you examine the beliefs and patterns that built the old version of you and ask if you are still willing to carry them forward. Physically, it is exhausting. The body keeps the score. And the body also clears the slate.

    Last night, a heavy thunderstorm rolled in at dusk. The air, thick and electric, cracked open with light. Rain began to fall in sudden, urgent sheets, pounding against the windows like it had something to say. I was inside, barefoot and restless, watching it come down with a kind of reverence… that feeling you get when nature mirrors something stirring in you.

    Without thinking, I flung the door open and stepped outside. The water was cold and wild as it hit my skin. I stood there, arms loose by my sides, letting the rain drench me. I tilted my face to the sky and let it all fall. The noise, the wetness, the rush of it. My clothes clung to me. My heart beat hard in my chest. I imagined the rain washing away everything I had carried. The grief. The doubt. The heaviness of holding it all together. I didn’t need to make sense of it. I just wanted to feel clean. Emptied. New.

    There, in the twilight, in the storm, I remembered: this is how we begin. Not by thinking our way forward, but by surrendering to the forces that ask us to feel. To clear. To come back to the body. To let life touch us.

    Sometimes, beginning again looks like walking through the world in a daze, unsure of your name or direction. Sometimes it is lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, convincing yourself that breathing is enough for now. Sometimes it is showing up to work or friendship or life, while something invisible inside you rearranges itself into a shape that can carry you forward.

    For the past two weeks, I couldn’t do much more than simply exist. 

    I pared life back to its most essential parts. Walks. Water. The sun on my skin. Gentle tasks. Stillness. I needed something to hold me that didn’t require words. Something I could lean on without having to explain myself. I remembered to turn towards rhythm. I anchored myself in the only thing that made sense: time. 

    Not the linear kind. Not the kind that pressures us to achieve or accelerate. The kind that follows the body. The cosmos. The planets. The pull of the week. The way each day carries a different tone, a different invitation, a different flavour of energy.

    This is what Planet Powered is made of.

    A lifeline. A way to gently orient myself to life again. To wake up and ask, “What does today want from me?” Monday is about movement and initiation. Tuesday helps me make decisions and take aligned action. Wednesday brings communication and connection. Thursday expands my vision. Friday reminds me to soften into love and beauty. Saturday returns me to my roots. And Sunday is the space to surrender and listen again.

    I created this, not just for me, but for you. 

    For the women who find themselves standing at the edge of a life that no longer fits, trying to hear what the future is whispering. For the ones who are not sure where to begin, but know they cannot stay where they are. For anyone who longs to be reminded that the pace of your life can follow the pace of your soul. That your days can hold meaning, even when everything feels uncertain. That rhythm can carry you when reason cannot.

    This is what I want you to know: nothing is wrong with you if your heart is aching. If the path is not clear. If you feel tired or tender or unsure. This is the precious work of becoming. There is a version of you that only emerges through this particular kind of fire. Not the kind that burns you down. The kind that refines you.

    You do not need a plan. You do not need to rush. You do not need to explain.

    You just need to be with what is here now. Let the rhythm hold you. Let the ache move through. Let yourself be remade.

    This is how we begin again.

    And if you’re craving a rhythm to hold you while you do, Planet Powered is here.

    It’s a guide, a practice, a gentle structure for your inner and outer life, rooted in the energy of the seven planetary days of the week. Beginning next Sunday, July 13th, we’ll move through it together — one day at a time — inside a live community space where I’ll share daily reflections, guidance, and invitations to anchor you into the energy of the day.

    If you’re in a threshold season — if you’re rebuilding, reimagining, or simply needing to remember your own rhythm — I’d love to walk with you.

    You can learn more and join us here: https://viendamaria.com/planet-powered/

    We begin again, together.

  • 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.

    I’ll share more soon, but for now, I just wanted to let you know it’s here.

    And I hope it meets you exactly where you are.

  • forecast says SUN 🌞

    forecast says SUN 🌞

    grab your favourite drink and settle into your cosiest corner… this is a big update

    It’s 18:25 (that’s 6:25 pm for my American friends) and I’m almost horizontal on the floor-level white sofa, laptop perched on my thighs, a handful of hazelnuts in my left hand, slowly popping them into my mouth while typing with the right. A glass of sparkling water with lime is within reach on the white square Ikea coffee table—a table I’ve met many times, in many different places.

    The forecast says SUN 🌞 for the week ahead.

    But I’ve been tired.

    The dream-state of arriving somewhere new has started to wear off. I’ve been in Manhattan six weeks today. And while it is thrilling, trying to start a life in a brand-new place demands every form of resource: emotional, mental, financial, energetic.

    Slowly, we’re finding our little rituals, the things that make a place feel like home. 

    The Bhakti Yoga Centre has been a saving grace, offering respite from emotional strongholds on most days. Sundays have become sacred: dropping off our compost at Tompkins Square Park, stopping by Cafe Christie for a flat white and croissant, then visiting the farmers market for locally-grown, organic produce.

    Felice (pronounced fe-LEE-che, FYI) scolds me for paying $10 for two large heirloom tomatoes, so I refrain from telling him about the $11 yellow zucchinis. But supporting local farmers is the dream, no? Isn’t that what we believe in, as small business owners?

    A quick note on F: he’s more private than I am. So, out of respect, you won’t see him in my content. From here on, I’ll refer to him as F because typing “my boyfriend” or “my partner” too many times feels… effortful.

    Fridays, we explore somewhere new. In between, life rolls on with both of us tapping away at our projects in different corners of our Lower East Side studio. Me, on the sofa. Him, at the little kitchen table. I’m grateful. We landed a place in a city where housing is notoriously hard to come by.

    F knows the owners, so we’re subletting. But it’s a downgrade in quality of life. We’re paying the same to live here (where the shower is in the living room (!?)) as we were in our separate one-bedroom apartments.

    And as someone who thrives on solitude (want me to be happy? leave me alone for 6–8 hours), this transition has been… bumpy. I’ve been mitigating it with long walks (including to Whole Foods, where I can wander in peace), and by tucking into the sanctuary of yoga classes.

    But what really makes it hard to relax? It’s not clean. The dust on the radiators is a finger deep. If I wipe the floor after dropping something, the cloth comes up black. I spent days scrubbing the toilet to stop its smell from permeating the whole flat. It’s tidy, and it’s cute. But honestly? I want to ask if we can deep clean the entire place in exchange for a month’s rent. Wash the sofa covers, clean the rugs, scrub every surface.

    Have I become my mother? Maybe.

    Soon, we will have to leave again. This weekend, we started planning the summer.

    As part of our visa process, we’ll need to return to Europe for an embassy interview in Vienna. Since I’m a saltwater-and-sun child, I gently requested that we make the most of it by working from somewhere in the Mediterranean for a month or two.

    But before that: London!

    I’ll be there for five days — June 26 to 30 — and I’d love to connect with those of you nearby.

    taken on my analog camera in 2022 while on a date near London’s Kings Cross

    her way club picnic — you’re invited! 𓂃 𓈒𓏸 𓇼 

    Saturday, June 28 on Hampstead Heath
    Bring a blanket, some snacks to share, wine or cider if you like, and let’s have a sweet, easy picnic together. Partners, besties, furry loves — all welcome. A casual hangout, IRL connection, and a little midsummer joy.

    I want to picnic! 🧺

    london business intensive ⊹ 𖦹 ⁺。°

    I have one spot open for a half-day business intensive while I’m in town. These used to book out months in advance! If your name is being whispered by this invitation, reply and I’ll send you the details.

    One of my recent IRL clients said:

    “I worked with Vienda for support in my writing coaching business. With her guidance, I reached a new height, achieved a long-held goal, and signed a $6k client in just a few weeks. Throughout the process, I felt seen, heard, held, and safe. Her trust in me helped me trust myself more — the definition of a believing mirror.”

    london-based brand? let’s collaborate! ☼✧𖦹

    I’ve got one free day in London and would love to team up with a local brand for a collab. I’ve got a list of ideas… if this sparks something in you, reply and I’ll send them over. Let’s make magic together.

    let’s collaborate — online & in real life ˚⋆𓇼˚⊹

    At the start of this year, I lost my Instagram account — a space that had been home to a decade of connection, creative expression, and community. It was a weird kind of heartbreak, but also a gentle push in a new direction. One that has reminded me of something essential: we are meant to build things together.

    Since then, I’ve felt a deep desire to actively rebuild — not just my online presence, but the relationships and creative kinships that make this work so meaningful. 

    For the first time in years, I feel ready and excited to stretch back out into the world. I want to collaborate. I want to guest post. I want to be on your podcast. I want to create shared magic — whether that’s through art, words, events, education, slow business, or joyful things we haven’t dreamed up yet.

    No one is too small. If you’ve got a fledgling Substack, a niche brand, a soulful offering, a quiet podcast, or a burning idea, let’s talk. 

    I’ve kept a lot of myself close since my burnout in 2023, but now it feels like the season to reach out again and co-create with people who care deeply and are doing beautiful, thoughtful things.

    Whether you’re based in London, NYC or somewhere I’ve never heard of… whether you want to do something online, in person, or somewhere in between… please reach out. I’d love to hear what you’re working on and see how we can support each other’s visions.

    Let’s build this new era together.

    other work-related news:

    Running The Art of Noticing recently and now The Way She Knows has reinvigorated my desire to bring women together in soft, sacred, expansive ways. They have both been such special containers and Her Way Club is starting to take on a shape of her own making. Meanwhile, Plannher is having a sweet renaissance (only a few hundred final copies left!), and The Mentor Training is getting a full upgrade: a new teacher, deeper content, more accessible than ever. Becasue leadership with heart and integrity feels more important than ever in a world of half-human robots.

    Speaking of robots…

    On Sunday one of my besties from London sent me an AI prompt to do a holistic health analysis based on a recent photo. I normally avoid AI, but this was fun and surprisingly spot-on.

    Here’s the prompt if you want to try it too:

    Analyse my face as a professional: physiognomist, nutritionist, psychosomatologist and women’s health expert. Please tell me:

    1. How old I look visually
    2. What deficiencies and internal conditions are visible through facial features
    3. What to pay attention to for women’s health
    4. What psycho-emotional state may be influencing my wellbeing
    5. What character traits or conflicts are expressed in my face
    6. What lifestyle/diet/rest/belief changes you recommend, and a suggested plan.

    I know it’s a little ironic to take personal health advice from a robot but honestly, it offered some unexpectedly valuable insights. Nothing groundbreaking, just gentle reminders I already knew, but really needed to hear from an outside perspective. I’ll definitely be weaving a few of them into my days.

    ok, one last (also fun) thing!

    F (who is 8 years younger than me and doesn’t remember the pre-emoji era — jk, kind of) asked how I decorate my digital world with symbols. I told him I keep a running list in my Notes app. So here it is—for you, and for him (hi F!).

    CURRENT FAVOURITES

    ← ↑ → ↓ °C ½ ⤵ ✓ ◯ ◠⋒≋ 𖦹☟ ☼ ✧ 𓂃 𓈒𓏸 𓇼 இ 🝦 ஐ ˚⋆𓇼˚⊹ 𖦹 ⁺。° ☾ ☀

    SUN, MOON + STARS
    ☾ ☽ ❍ ☼ ☀ ★ ☆ ☄ ╰☆╮ ✳ ✴ ☾↠❍↞☽ ↡

    PLANETS

    ☉☽ ☾ ● ◯ ☿ ♀ ♄ ♃ ⊕ ♁ ♂ ♅ ♆ ♇

    ARROWS
    ↠ ↞ ➵ ➳ ➳ ➴ ➵ ➶ ➷ ➸ ➹ ➺ ➻ ➼ ➽ ← ↑ → ↓ ↔ ⋖ ⋗ ⋘ ⋙ ☟

    FLOWERS
    ❀ ✿ ❇ ❈ ❅ ❄ ❆ ✷ ✸ ✹ ✺ ✻ ✼ ❆ ❈ ❊ ❋

    LOVE HEARTS
    ♥ ♡ ❥ ❤

    SACRED SYMBOLS
    ◯ ◠ ⋒ ≋ ❂ ྊ ྾ ྿ ࿄ ࿇ ࿈ ࿉ ࿊ ࿋ ࿌ ࿏

    Phew! Is there anything else? Probably lots, but this is not my secret diary entry, so some things must remain close to my heart.

    Thank you for being here with me. You, who make up this community, who have become my readers, allys and viewers are so incredibly thoughtful, loving and kind and it means the world to me.

    Love,

    Vienda

  • practices that help me reclaim my self-trust

    one decision at a time

    “When I came in this evening, I was so identified with my emotion,” I said, twisting to face the teacher. “I was like: I’m so saaaaad! WWWAAAAHHHH!!!” I exaggerated, earning a few giggles from behind me.

    It was a rainy night in NYC’s Lower East Side. I was at a yoga and philosophy class.

    Speaking in front of others used to terrify me. I’d flush with heat, my thoughts would tangle, and my voice would betray me. I’d prepare what I wanted to say in advance, rehearsing endlessly in my head while others spoke. By the time it was my turn, I wasn’t even there anymore. I was so consumed by trying to say the ‘right thing’ that what came out was a jumbled mess. Then came the shame spiral. I hated the awkwardness of being seen.

    I used to think I was shy.

    But really, I didn’t trust myself.

    As I continued sharing, I said, “But then I moved and sweated and got into my body, and loosened the grip sadness had on me. I remembered that I am not my feelings, I’m just a person having feelings. And now, I feel fine! So I guess… yoga works!”

    We all laughed. That’s why we’re here. Because it works.

    It struck me again how easy it is to forget what we know when our minds are loud and cluttered. When we can’t hear the part of us that already knows. 

    That’s the ache of self-abandonment.

    When, at the end of the day or week, or season, you realise you’ve lived from doubt instead of trust. You ignored your intuition. You bypassed your knowing. You outsourced your truth. And now you feel like a stranger to yourself.

    That is not a feeling I enjoy. 

    You don’t trust yourself because you’ve never been taught how. Because you’re afraid of making mistakes. Because the noise of the world is so loud that your inner voice doesn’t get heard.

    Self-trust doesn’t just happen. 

    It’s not the result of being perfect or always making the right choice. 

    It’s a relationship. 

    One that begins when you decide to start showing up for yourself with consistency, clarity, and care. A big part of that is creating enough mental space to actually hearyourself.

    One of the most practical ways I anchor into my own self-trust is by gently clearing out the mental and energetic clutter. When my mind is quiet, my intuition becomes louder. My clarity returns. I know what to do next because I can feel it again.

    Here are some of the practices that help me return to that place:

    Let yourself take a proper social media break. Even one full day away can shift your entire nervous system. Delete the apps. Reclaim your attention. Eat breakfast without scrolling. Go for a walk without your phone. Remember what it feels like to live in your body, not just online. You’re not going to miss anything. Everything important will still be here when you return.

    Stop checking email first thing in the morning. Give yourself at least one sacred hour before you open your brain to the demands of the world. That slow morning is magic and deserves to be protected. Use it to write, stretch, dream, create, listen. You can reply to emails later, when your creativity doesn’t need your full bandwidth.

    Turn off all unnecessary notifications. Not every ping deserves your attention. Not every alert is urgent. Let your phone serve you, not the other way around. (The only notifications allowed on my phone are phone calls and messages.)

    Make a list of the decisions that are swirling in your mind. Take note of the unmade choices weighing you down, and decide on them. All at once, if you can. Yes or no. Now or later. Decide to decide, or decide not to decide until next month or next year. Give your brain the closure it craves.

    Close open loops. Send the email. Pay the invoice. Return the item. Follow up with the person. You will be astonished by how much mental energy you free up when you stop dragging yesterday’s loose ends into today.

    Declutter your phone. Most of us have dozens of apps we never use. Delete what doesn’t support the version of you that you’re becoming.

    Delegate what you can. For so long, I resisted delegation. But delegation is actually about accepting and receiving help. It’s wise. It creates more time, space, and energy for the things only you can do. And it gives others a chance to support you, which they often want to do.

    Make amends where needed. Apologise. Forgive. Repair. Set things down that you’ve been carrying around in silence. Even if it’s something small, clearing the emotional debris makes room for a deeper self-trust to take root.

    When you do all this, even a few of these things, you begin to soften into yourself. You feel more grounded, more lucid, more resourced. You don’t need to grasp or hustle for answers because you can access them right here, within yourself.

    This is the work of The Way She Knows.

  • you might fall in love on an ordinary Thursday and move to New York six months later

    you might fall in love on an ordinary Thursday and move to New York six months later

    …an honest letter about starting over in the world’s most famous city

    After a month in New York, I’ve concluded that it really is like living inside a movie. Yesterday, walking through the West Village, we passed one of the leads from YOU and that comedian my boyfriend calls “the ‘I’m a swan!’ guy.” I wouldn’t have recognised either of them, but he’s a pop culture encyclopedia, which I find endlessly entertaining.

    The most charming thing about this city is how hard it tries not to be American. It’s clinging tight to its immigrant roots, claiming the most obscure and beautiful bits of the many cultures that built it.

    In the vlog above, you’ll get a glimpse of my first chaotic, cosy, overstimulating, sunshine-filled weeks in the city, from yoga class revelations and focaccia-making to lazy girl makeup rituals and navigating PMS in a place that never stops buzzing. I reflect on how long it takes to feel grounded somewhere new, what I love about NYC (surprise: the water??), and the tiny wins that help me find my pace in the madness. 

    I came here with the intention to document it all. To share the magic of experiencing everything for the first time. But the truth is, while I love it here, I don’t have as much space or time as I once did. I used to languish in my creativity — let it ooze out of me like molten lava. Now, I live in a studio apartment on the Lower East Side with my boyfriend (who also works from home), and the luxury of spaciousness just… isn’t available right now.

    Which means two things: one, I need to carve out more time and space that’s mine, and two, I need to learn how to create within the chaos. To let inspiration move through me, even in the chaos and noise.

    Something is changing in me. I’m becoming someone I don’t quite recognise yet.

    Usually, I’m a step ahead of life. I can see what’s coming. But right now? Life is a step ahead of me. I’m being asked to trust. Not because everything is certain, but because I can.

    People often ask how I’ve built such deep self-trust. The answer isn’t about what I’ve done differently. It’s about what I’ve let go of.

    My self-trust lives in the space I’ve cleared for it.

    In my early twenties, when I was stumbling through my first spiritual awakening, I discovered — quite accidentally — a clearing process I now call the RRRRI Method:
    Reflect · Review · Release · Replace · Integrate.

    I’ve taught this to hundreds of clients.

    It came to me one night, maybe 15 years ago, while I was lying in bed meditating. I was new to it then, but it gave me a peace I hadn’t known before. A quietness that made space for things to rise up. The kind of space that lets truth speak.

    I carried around a lot of pain.

    My mum struggled with depression and anxiety, and as a sensitive kid, I absorbed much of it, believing it was mine. My dad died when I was ten. My stepdad, who entered the picture when I was four, was cruel, verbally and emotionally abusive. At one point, when I was six, he made me live in a caravan outside while the rest of the family was in the house. My mother joined him in the abuse. She told me later she thought siding with him would make it easier on me. 

    That’s the surface-level story, and honestly, it’s not the point. I share this not for pity, but to offer context — to show you the shape of the beliefs I had to unravel in myself.

    Maybe you’ll recognise some of them:

    I am not wanted.
    I am not lovable.
    I am not safe.
    I have to do it all alone.
    I can’t ask for what I need.
    It’s not safe to speak up.
    I must not upset others.
    There’s something wrong with me.
    I have to hide who I really am.

    That night, in meditation, I felt frustrated. I kept circling back to these painful memories. It felt like I couldn’t move forward. And suddenly, a thought came:

    These memories aren’t hurting me. I’m hurting me — by replaying them.

    They were still active in me because they were unresolved.

    I realised that every emotional block, every limiting belief, is just an unprocessed experience we’ve held onto for safety. At one point, those beliefs helped us survive. But they outlive their usefulness. And instead of releasing them, we keep them close out of habit — or fear — and they start to manifest in our lives, in our bodies. As pain. As illness. As stuckness. As stories we can’t seem to rewrite.

    That night, I didn’t get caught in the stories. I just let the feelings rise. Memory after memory. Sadness, anger, grief — I let it all come, and I felt it. Fully. Until it softened. I cried for hours. I forgave myself. For how I had carried it all for so long.

    And something in me shifted.

    Over the days and weeks that followed, I kept practising. Feeling. Releasing. Replacing. Integrating. And little by little, things began to change. I lost the extra weight I was carrying. My skin cleared. My eyes were brighter. My relationship to food, to my body, to myself softened. I began to like who I was. To see my own beauty, not just my flaws. Life itself looked and felt different.

    And now? I teach that same method inside The Way She Knows. 

    Because when you begin to clear out the old noise — the stories, beliefs, and inherited patterns that were never truly yours — you don’t just feel lighter. You feel free. Free to trust yourself. Free to choose what’s true for you. Free to follow your feelings without needing to explain, justify, or prove a thing.

    From that place, life starts to unfold in the most unexpected, beautiful ways. You stop gripping for control, and instead start co-creating with the world around you. You stop chasing clarity, and somehow, it finds you.

    You might fall in love on an ordinary Thursday and move to New York six months later. (That’s what happened to me :). You might find yourself changing careers, shifting relationships, saying yes to things you once feared, and letting go of things you thought you needed — not because something’s wrong, but because something inside you has become deeply right.

    When you trust yourself, you don’t need to have everything figured out. You just need to listen. You need to stay close to that quiet knowing within. And when you do, the next step always reveals itself.

    That’s the way she knows. And it’s already inside you.

    Come join us.

    We begin on Monday, May 26th, enrolment closes Friday, May 24th.

  • choice architecture + invisible currents

    because so much of what we do each day isn’t really a choice, not in the conscious sense

    A month ago I was invited to teach this workshop for The Wild Ones Community. Today I decided I would share it with you too.

    The premise is that we are moved by invisible currents. Nudged by our surroundings. Directed by systems we didn’t design.

    Through this workshop, we’re going to pause and pay attention.

    To notice the subtle structures shaping our decisions — from the arrangement of a room, to the rhythms of our inbox, to the silent expectations in our relationships.
    And then… gently, deliberately, begin to redesign them.

    practical exercise (if you feel called to it)

    Choose one area of your life where you feel stuck, or where you tend to make choices you later wish you hadn’t.

    Then:

    1. For three days, notice and document all the environmental cues influencing your behaviour in that area — the physical setup, digital distractions, people nearby, time of day, even your energy levels or mood.
    2. Identify the three strongest “currents” — the forces most powerfully pulling you off course.
    3. Share your most surprising or interesting discovery in the comments below. What did you notice, now that you are really looking?

    You never know — your insight might help someone else spot a current they didn’t even know they were swimming in.

    this is where we go deeper

    One of the quiet teachings of The Way She Knows is that your inner knowing isn’t something you have to find but rather something you return to, again and again.

    And to return, we need to notice what pulls us away.

    We need to see the systems, structures, and subtle influences that guide our days and ask: Who designed this? Is this serving me? What do I want instead?

    This is an act of reclamation. 

    It’s a way of lifting the veil on the environments and patterns that keep you in loops and gently beginning to reorient them toward the life you actually want to live.

    It’s less about control and more about tending. Less about discipline, and more about designing your life to support the way you want to feel.

    That’s the deeper current of this work: To live in a way that’s attuned, not just to your values, but to your body, your seasons, your intuition, your truth.

    This is how she knows.
    Not by force, but by design.

    Maybe today something was brought into focus — a pattern, a pull, a way you’ve been shaped — The Way She Knows is where we go deeper.

    Together, we release the limiting beliefs, patterns, and conditioning that keep you stuck — and rebuild trust in your own voice. Guided by the RRRRI Method (Reflect · Review · Release · Replace · Integrate), you’ll receive daily audio teachings, soul-led prompts, and two live group calls to support you in returning to your truth and leading your life from within.

    You’re invited. If your body says yes, come join us. We begin in 14 days.

    JOIN HERE

  • let life be really good

    some thoughts on softness

    Some years are made for fighting shadows, some years are made for dreaming dreams, some years are made for wholly living, some years are made for falling in love, some years are made for heartbreak, and some years are the dark, rich spaces in-between that tie all the other years together.

    There are moments in every woman’s life 𓂃 often subtle, always significant 𓂃 when she realises she’s been waiting for life to feel good later.

    I am that woman, too.

    After the move.
    After she’s earned it.
    After the next launch.
    After she’s healed enough, achieved enough, grown enough.

    It’s not that she doesn’t want goodness now.
    It’s that her nervous system doesn’t recognise it as safe.
    She’s built her identity on high-functioning self-reliance, on holding it all together, on always preparing for the next hit of chaos.

    Goodness feels foreign. Untrustworthy. Fleeting.

    But there comes a point when you get tired.
    Not just tired in your bones, but soul-tired.
    Tired of bracing for bad news.
    Tired of living on emotional adrenaline.
    Tired of feeling like peace is something you can only visit in short bursts.

    This moment is an invitation: what if life gets to be good now?

    your body doesn’t lie

    If your system is used to surviving, “good” can feel unsafe.

    Calm can feel like a threat.
    Pleasure can trigger shame.
    Stillness can summon panic.

    We don’t override that reality by shaming it. We honour it. We meet ourselves there.
    Letting life be good begins with learning how to stay with good. To recognise it. Receive it. Regulate in the presence of it.

    This isn’t just a mindset shift. It’s a somatic one.

    Which is why I ask myself:

    What are the tiny signals of goodness I can practice noticing?
    ✧ the softness of my sheets in the morning
    ✧ the kindness in a stranger’s eyes
    ✧ the miracle of a moment with nothing to prove

    The more I notice, the more I can hold.
    The more I hold, the more I trust.
    The more I trust, the safer it feels to expand into joy without sabotage.

    you don’t have to earn softness

    So many of us were raised on invisible contracts that said:

    Be good, then you’ll get love.
    Work hard, then you’ll get rest.
    Suffer well, then you’ll get your reward.

    It creates a rhythm of deprivation, where we become addicted to proving our worth through pain. It keeps us stuck in cycles of over-functioning, over-giving, over-efforting.

    But what if we broke the contract?

    What if softness wasn’t a prize at the end of your endurance?
    What if it was the starting point?

    This is the paradox of receiving: you can’t force it.

    You have to soften enough to allow it. That softness — that capacity to receive life fully — is a practice of presence, not perfection.

    It asks:
    Can I let myself enjoy this moment without earning it?
    Can I stop bracing for it to be taken away?
    Can I let it be this good, this easy, this free?

    practicing your way into goodness

    Letting life be good isn’t about bypassing the hard stuff.
    It’s about refusing to let pain be your only portal to meaning.

    Here are some ways I’m practicing:

    1. Noticing where struggle has become identity.
    Do I feel more real when I’m suffering?
    More valid when I’m busy?
    More lovable when I’m useful?

    2. Replacing performance with presence.
    Instead of performing wellness, I’m allowing mess.
    Instead of performing peace, I’m regulating in real time.
    Instead of performing power, I’m rooting into truth.

    3. Setting up small rituals that remind me I’m safe to enjoy.
    A slow morning. A spontaneous dance break. A walk without my phone.
    Tiny practices that say to my system: this is safe, this is safe, this is safe.

    4. Choosing environments that don’t require me to shrink.
    The people, spaces, and structures I choose are part of the goodness.
    They reflect back the truth that I don’t have to abandon myself to belong.

    a closing truth

    There’s a quiet rebellion in letting life be good.
    In refusing to rehearse old wounds.

    In choosing to orient toward pleasure, peace, and enoughness, not as a reward, but as a right.

    And like all rebellions, it takes practice.

    But the more we choose it, the more it becomes familiar.
    The more we hold it, the more it grows.
    And the more it grows, the more we remember: this is what we were always meant for.

    Let your life be good, not someday, but now.

    Not because you’ve earned it.
    But because you’ve remembered how to receive it.

    This is the work we do inside ‘The Way She Knows’.

    A gentle, practical journey to release the limiting beliefs, patterns, and conditioning that keep you stuck and to help you reconnect to your quiet knowing.

    We start on Monday, May 26.

    Earlybird price ends on Monday with the full moon.

    The Way She Knows

  • clovers

    clovers

    about clovers, consciousness, and coming home to yourself

    The first time I searched for clovers, I was lying in the garden of my grandparents’ home, cheek pressed to the grass. I must’ve been three or four. My mother, crouched beside me, coaxed me to listen. “You can hear it grow,” she said. She weaved her hand through a patch taller than the rest, her voice low and conspiratorial. “We’re looking for a four-leaf clover,” she told me. “One in every ten thousand is lucky.”

    I was spellbound. Even at that age, I think I knew somewhere inside my tiny chest that this was what I’d always be doing. Looking for signs of the mystical, the invisible, the more-than-meets-the-eye hidden in plain sight.

    Years pass. Another country. Another version of me.

    It’s 4 a.m. in Bristol, and something wakes me. A vibration. Somewhere in the distance, a sound system is thrumming through the earth like a call. I dress quickly, wrap an oversized scarf around my shoulders, fill a water bottle, and step out into the still-blue dark.

    The streets are half-asleep, but I’m pulled forward. Down narrow lanes. Through a tunnel tagged with messages like prayers. I follow the sound, lose it briefly to the growl of a generator, then find it again. Cresting a hill, I arrive to see a hundred people scattered across a grassy knoll. A makeshift DJ booth. Giant speakers booming techno into the sky.

    Someone walks up to me immediately, parched. He gestures toward my bottle. “Of course,” I say, handing it over. When he finishes drinking, he presses a little white pill into my palm. A thank you.

    I take it without thinking, settle down into the grass beside someone I half-know. My fingers begin to idly stroke the blades. And then, suddenly, I see one. A clover. Four leaves. Then another. Then another. Seven in total, all nestled in a single patch beneath me like a private miracle.

    I fold six of them into my notebook and give one to my neighbour, giddy. I’m high. The music is inside me. The sun is coming up and everything feels full, like the veil between the seen and unseen has grown thin. My heart is pounding with joy.

    Reality, I’ve learned, is never neutral. It bends through the lens of the mind that’s perceiving it. What you see, what I see, it’s never the same thing. We’re all wandering around inside our own maps, shaped by family, culture, memory. When we insist that ours is the only truth, we miss each other entirely.

    Fast forward again. Tuscany, Italy. A villa hidden among olive trees. I’m here with a lover, invited to help with the harvest. For days, we rake olives from branches and into nets, the work sweet and repetitive, the kind that exhausts the body just enough to quiet the mind.

    On the fifth morning, I froth milk over the stove and carry two coffees outside. The children from the house circle around me, their chatter light and skittish as birds. One of them, a two-year-old girl, calls me “Honey.” She can’t pronounce Vienda.

    I feel the now-familiar pull. My eyes land on a darker patch of grass. I set the coffee down and kneel.

    “What are you doing, Honey?” she asks.

    “I’m looking for a four-leaf clover,” I reply.

    And there it is. Right in front of me. Then another. The adults gasp. I hand both to my lover. He presses them into the back of his journal like evidence.

    There’s magic everywhere if you know how to see. But so many of us have forgotten. We’ve been taught to expect danger, to defer to logic, to stay in line. We’ve been told that surrender is foolish, softness is weakness, and intuition is unreliable. And so, we trade our knowing for safety. Our voice for approval. Our inner wisdom for the illusion of control.

    But eventually, the body remembers what the mind has tried to override.

    Just days ago, here in New York, the city was swelling with that first hot breath of spring. We had plans to board a ferry across the Hudson but missed it. The next wouldn’t arrive for hours. So we walked back towards home.

    We’d both been cooped up working, he on a book that’ll be published later this year, me on a course called The Way She Knows, which had just opened for earlybird enrolments. We need sunlight. Air. Movement.

    As we meander along the river, I stop. “Wait,” I said, “I want to check something.”

    I crouch beside a small patch of green growing along the sidewalk. Something had tugged at me, quiet but insistent. I peer closer and blink. The biggest four-leaf clover I’ve ever seen. Massive. Radiant. Impossible. I show him.

    “What the heck!” he says. “It’s like you knew it was there.”

    I smile, gleeful and press it gently between two bills in my wallet. Because of course it was there. Of course I knew.

    There comes a point in every woman’s life when she realises:

    It’s not the world holding her back. Not the people around her, or the circumstances, or the past. It’s the quiet, looping stories she inherited. The beliefs. The patterns. The protections.

    I know this terrain intimately.

    For years, I lived split in two, pulled between what I felt and what I’d been taught to believe.

    Until I couldn’t anymore.

    Reclaiming myself wasn’t a single moment. It was a thousand tiny ones. Clearing those internal blocks, not just intellectually, but somatically, emotionally, spiritually, changed everything. It gave me back my voice. My clarity. My intuition. My joy.

    That’s what this two-week journey is for.

    A reclamation.
    A remembering.
    A return to the way you know.

    𓂃 𓈒𓏸

    The Way She Knows
    A two-week course to reconnect you with your inner wisdom

    Enrolment opened: Monday, May 5
    Earlybird ends: Monday, May 12 (with the Full Moon 🌝)
    Enrolment closes: Friday, May 24

  • 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.

  • what I did yesterday

    The task is simple and deceptively difficult: What did you do yesterday?

    We have always been curious about the lives of others.

    Long before television and tabloids, we craned our necks at windows, imagined stories behind closed doors. That impulse to know, to glimpse, to understand is ancient. We are, all of us, secret witnesses, seeking reflection, seeking difference, seeking the tender knowledge that we are not alone.

    “Ah,” we think, “so this is how another human moves through the day. How strange. How ordinary. How marvellous.”

    Most of us, if asked, would call our days unremarkable. We would point to the routines, the errands, the silences, and shrug. But presence alters the lens. What once seemed plain is suddenly flooded with texture:

    The amber glow of morning through the blinds.
    The brief pleasure of a spoon against the roof of the mouth.
    The idle reaching for a book, for a thought, for another hand.

    A life, it turns out, is made not of milestones, but of minutiae.

    It was this quiet revelation that shaped this week’s assignment in The Art of Noticing, the six-week writing club I am leading. The prompt is borrowed, with gratitude, from Aisling Marron of Notes From New York, who herself was inspired by a podcast of the same name.

    The task is simple and deceptively difficult: What did you do yesterday?

    No digressions. No rewinding or fast-forwarding. Only the bare, shining truth of a single day, as it unfolded.

    Here is mine:

    7:00am
    My boyfriend’s alarm goes off, the buzz slicing through the heavy fog of my sleep. I roll onto my side, eyes gritty, my head thick and stuffed with cotton wool. Regret clings to me immediately. Regret for the ambitious plans I agreed to, for not protecting the softness of this morning. But I am an adult and adults honour their commitments, so I climb down the ladder from our loft bed, bare feet pressing onto the cool wooden floor. I pull my aligners from my mouth, soak them in their cleaning agent, put the kettle on, and drop an ‘immune support’ Yogi tea bag into favourite mug. I find my tiny jar of Egyptian Magic and bring it and the tea to the sofa. My face aches, pulsing with the imprint of too-little sleep and the too-salty dinner from the night before. I settle into the cushions and begin to massage my lymph nodes slowly — chest, neck, jawline, cheeks, scalp — coaxing the fluid back into its pathways, feeling the swelling subside little by little. These small, tender rituals make me grateful for everything I’ve learned about how to tend to myself.

    7:30am
    My boyfriend finds me curled up on the sofa, kisses me. “How did you sleep?” he asks, and I reply “Fine”. I stretch my arms overhead and yawn, “The problem with making plans ahead of time is you never know how you’re going to feel when they arrive.” I splash warm water on my face, wipe off the leftover balm with a soft cloth, and brush my teeth, waking myself up bit by bit. He laughs and mixes creatine into two glasses of water — one for each of us. We sit shoulder-to-shoulder as I quickly scroll through my social apps, answering urgent messages and uploading the next The Art of Noticing lesson for my writing club. “Let’s go for coffee!” he suggests, and I peel myself away to dig through drawers in our little walk-in wardrobe, finding black leggings, a soft, sky-blue yoga tank, and my favourite Free People fleece that still smells of Portugal.

    8:15am
    As we descend the narrow staircase of our building, he tells me in hushed tones about how he heard someone fiddling with our lock in the night. A chill prickles up my spine; New York feels wild and unpredictable. We agree to tell the landlord, unsure how concerned we ought to be. Our favourite coffee shop is tucked just under our building, but he’s craving a vegan croissant, so we detour to Essex Market, the morning still crisp and pale. When we arrive, the market is shuttered, the gates still pulled down. Even New York, it seems, has its limits. By the time we return, the coffee shop has filled with people; there’s a queue spooled inside. We squeeze in, order two coffees and a few treats: a tahini cookie and oat cappuccino for him, a flat white and buttery croissant for me. I’m still hollow from yesterday’s hunger and bite into the pastry peeking out of the paper bag before the coffees arrive.

    9:00am
    I log onto Zoom for a meeting with an alumna from The Mentor Training. As we speak, my sluggish mind lifts into a higher orbit, buoyed by the energy of possibility. I remember — oh yes — I have built things, beautiful things. I have made worlds out of ideas. It’s so easy for me to forget, to always chase the next horizon without pausing to admire the view. Having it mirrored back to me reignites a quiet fire inside.

    9:45am
    We end the call with a plan and a few fresh objectives, and I scramble around our tiny LES apartment gathering keys and my phone, throwing back a glass of water before running to yoga class. I arrive breathless but just in time. The teacher welcomes me warmly: she’s tall, with a fluid grace, long stretchy limbs, and a soft accent that feels instantly soothing. She gestures for me to grab two blocks and a strap, and I find a space right at the front. A man plops down beside me at the last moment. Round-bellied, bald, but adorned in a pink ballerina-style outfit, bright red lipstick and nails to match. I smile to myself: we’re all girls here today.

    10:00am
    We begin on our backs, breath deepening, bodies sinking into the earth. The teacher’s style is light and casual, her voice weaving through the room like a ribbon. As we move into slow sun salutations, I feel the two decades of practice unfurling in my muscles, a familiar dance. Movement practices like yoga are an anchor for me, a home I can return to no matter how much the outer world shape-shifts. By the end of class, every inch of me feels stretched and rinsed clean. I thank the teacher quietly, wipe my mat with a lemon-scented towelette, and slide my Birkenstocks back on, feeling the earth a little closer beneath my feet.

    11:30am
    A 10-minute voice note from my bestie is waiting, so I pop my headphones in as I wander home, the city buzzing around me. I duck into a small beauty boutique and marvel at the rows of glass bottles and creams before finding my beloved Italian leave-in conditioner. $42, I am willing to invest in. As I browse, I send her a stream-of-consciousness voice reply, not to inform but to process; our sacred girlfriend ritual. It’s therapy in miniature, given and received without expectation.

    11:45am
    By the time I get home, I’m ravenous. I find my boyfriend deep in work at the tiny kitchen table and ask if he wants to share a picnic. He nods silently as I pull guacamole, purple corn chips, and baby carrots from the fridge. I slice tofu, arrange everything on a big plate, and pour coconut water into tall glasses. We carry it all to the coffee table and sit cross-legged, eating with our fingers and laughing about nothing in particular. I love how easy nourishment can be when it’s shared.

    12:30pm
    The shower is in the kitchen, a relic from the building’s pre-plumbing past. The hot water washes the morning away: tea-tree scented soap, a razor across my legs, a shampoo bar in my hair and afterwards my new leave-in conditioner combed through and coconut oil slathered on my skin with slow devotion. Fridays are for beauty, for romance, for the small Venusian acts of pleasure. I leave my hair to air dry, slip into shorts and a loose lounge top, and tidy the apartment, vacuum humming underfoot. I can’t sit down to work until my space feels clean and peaceful.

    1:00pm
    I curl into child’s pose on the sofa to write emails, tucked into myself. Eventually, my legs go numb, and I unfold with a sigh. I tick through admin tasks for The Mentor Training, refilling my water glass now and then. Around 3pm, I hand my boyfriend a glass too, scolding him lightly for not drinking enough. We giggle about something small and silly, and suddenly, at the same time, blurt out, “I love you.” He pulls me onto his lap, wrapping his arms around me tightly. “I love this,” he says, forehead against mine. “Working quietly together. Laughing. It’s precious.” I press my palm to his heart, and we both turn to admire the little pot of spring flowers blooming vibrantly in the window, as if blessing the day.

    4:40pm
    He has plans to meet a friend at 5:00pm, and I decide to tag along, craving fresh air more than another minute of screen time. I waste most of my twenty-minute warning scrolling, then throw on a dress and sneakers, and wipe a lip tint on, and we’re out the door. We meet his friend at Essex Market and order drinks — matcha latte for me, iced decaf for them — and wander through the golden slant of late afternoon. I find myself distracted by the light bouncing off the buildings, the life vibrating in the streets. We wander through hidden galleries, a park filled with wildly competitive ping pong matches, and a tiny poodle who decides to befriend me. On a tucked-away corner, I discover Casetta, the sweetest wine bar, and instantly decide we must return for date night.

    Casetta

    6:00pm
    We stop at a market to pick up a baguette, some hummus, pico de gallo, and tiny, perfect avocados. Bread in NYC is standard stale (why?) but we take our bounty home for a second, casual picnic at the coffee table, layering pesto and arugula and salt on thick slices. We eat quickly, laughing and stealing bites from each other’s plates, knowing we have to leave soon for our night at the Whitney.

    7:50pm
    The Whitney is alive, packed with people, more than we expected. It’s a little overwhelming trying to see the art through the thick crowd. Still, some moments shine. I overhear a girl say to her boyfriend, “You have marathons, I have stairs,” as we climb to the rooftop, and I laugh in solidarity. And at the top the whole city stretched out in luminous twilight. He pulls me close, kisses me with a rare, wild tenderness, and I feel something invisible and important shift between us.

    8:45pm
    We meander back downtown through SoHo and into LES, the streets thick with nightlife now, music spilling out of bars and windows flung open. New York shape-shifts after dark, but I don’t feel the pull to join it. I feel full already — full of the day, of the hours stacked like soft, golden bricks inside me.

    9:30pm
    We tumble onto the sofa and watch the latest episode of Severance, my body warm and heavy with tiredness. Afterwards, I move through my nighttime rituals: wash my face, brush my teeth, click my aligners back in. We climb the ladder into our loft bed. He wraps himself around me protectively, and I sink into his warmth, into the safety of our tiny kingdom, asleep almost before my head touches the pillow.

    Was it a good day? (They always ask that on the pod.)

    Yes — it was an excellent day. A day stitched with small joys: pastries and coffee, sunshine on skin, a body stretched long and sweet in yoga, easy laughter shared across a tiny kitchen table, a museum kissed by sunset, the heavy, sore satisfaction of a life well-lived inside an ordinary Friday.

  • hello, from New York City

    news from inside our tiny Lower East Side apartment

    cherry blossoms on the corner of our street

    Cherry blossoms fall like confetti from the sky.

    Sometimes they get swept up into tiny tornadoes that I sidestep as I pass by. They are lifted a few meters high and then released for a second time. It is spring in the city. I feel tender and sensitive as I am stepping into my own era of blossoming.

    A big, yellow full moon hung low over JFK airport on my late-night arrival.

    I used to search for omens, signs, premonitions of a positive future. This would have been one had I wanted it to be. But a few years ago, something shifted, an experience that stripped away this need for external validation. I’ve found deeper security in embracing the “isness” of the world instead. I no longer require confirmation that everything will work out. I have receipts that prove it always does.

    My period collided with my arrival and the first taste of jet lag since I left Mexico 5 years ago, an aching heart, and more social engagements than someone who has slept less than 5 hours a night in weeks should ever take on. I questioned every decision I had ever made and tearfully picked fights with my boyfriend for fun for the emotional release..

    Slowly, I am awakening to my new reality.

    Water that leaves my hair feeling like silk. Apartments that embrace me with perpetual warmth. Living in the UK and Portugal gifted me a distaste for that bone-cold damp that penetrates and lingers within you through most seasons of the year.

    Everything lies within walking distance if you don’t mind traversing 20 kilometres daily. Coffee costs $5, plus tip. Groceries cost less than in Europe, but dining out demands more. People radiate generosity, kindness, and genuine desire for your success. For example…

    Doing business in the UK:

    Who are you?
    Who do you know?
    Why are you bothering us?
    Give us 3 months to make a decision.

    Doing business in the US:

    Great to meet you!
    We’d love to hear your ideas.
    When can you come in and present?
    We love it – let’s get this deal done.

    This world is novel and yet familiar at the same time.

    tiny details from our LES apartment

    For now, I have little to say.

    I am wide open to every experience — noticing, absorbing, learning, transforming — with little to give back. So instead, I’d like to ask for something from you:

    𓇼 I have slowly, gently, and with an entirely new approach, returned to Instagram after a melancholic hiatus. If you inhabit this space, I’d love to continue our connection there @herwayclub. And if generosity moves you and you know people who once followed me, perhaps share this new beginning with your friends.

    𓇼 I yearn to meet as many of you as possible. If you’re based in or near NYC and willing to venture into town, please reach out. If you know anyone here who might enjoy connecting, introduce us: studio@viendamaria.com. And if you’d grace a small gathering (free and spirited) that I arrange in the coming weeks, let me know now.

    𓇼 I’ve mentioned recently that I’m speaking at The Rewilding Retreat this year. My video workshop explores ‘Choice Architecture and Invisible Currents.’ What you’ll discover through my session:

    • Exactly why you keep scrolling instead of working out, or why takeout calls despite your full refrigerator. No more mystery, only clarity.
    • How to identify the hidden traps in your physical spaces, digital landscape, and social circles quietly hijacking your choices. Once revealed, they cannot be unseen.
    • Simple yet powerful adjustments to your everyday environments that transform good choices from exhausting to effortless. Your future self will overflow with gratitude.
    • The specific environmental triggers keeping you locked in familiar patterns, and how to elegantly rewire them for lasting change.
    • How to transition from passive participant in environments designed by others to conscious creator of spaces and routines that naturally draw you toward your deepest aspirations.

    This complimentary 8-day event begins with a live Opening Ceremony on April 28th, delivering transformational workshops directly to your inbox.

    come REWILD with me

    I would be honoured by your presence there.

    That’s all from me for now. My gratitude for you runs deeper than words. Thank you for being here with me as cherry blossoms fall and new beginnings unfold.

  • how I learned to put myself ‘out there’

    and let myself be seen. As a woman in the world who is a creator/writer/founder etc…

    Miss Jemima Kirk with the core wisdom

    To answer the title, how I did it is:

    I decentralised myself. I realised it’s not about me. It’s about every woman’s experience, waiting to be seen, heard, and shared…

    But let’s begin with today.

    At this very moment, I’m writing to roughly 10,000 eyeballs, the kind, curious readers who’ve joined me on this email list. On an average day, about half of you open these letters and video stories.

    In the 12 years I’ve been writing publicly, I’ve been met with so much kindness. One of my dearest friends is Japanese. Our friendship has lasted nearly two decades. She sent me a voice note this morning: “I’m so glad you write your stories and share them. You remind us about the sparkly parts of life. It’s a scary world out there. And you make it better.” She makes my world better too.

    There have been a few sharp replies over the years, comments that sting or arrive laced with judgment. I chalk them up to this simple truth: how someone responds to me tells me more about them than it does about me. This wisdom holds in every area of life. People are projecting what’s happening inside them, and remembering this makes compassion easier. Boundaries too.

    That’s the thing about putting yourself out there. You become a mirror. You invite people to see themselves in what you’ve shared. So it’s vital, imperative even, that you learn not to take it personally.

    Right now I’m sitting in Lisbon Airport’s Terminal 2, at the only café with tables and chairs. A group of French businessmen are packed in beside me, their conversation staccatoing into my ears as I finish this. A flight to Paris is next to board. 

    I started this piece over a week ago, knowing it would be the last chance to invite you to join me in the club.

    That’s often how my writing begins.

    I have an idea. I pick it up and write it down. Often I pop things in Notes 📝 because the thing will land just as I’m heading out the door. Or in the shower. Or on a walk. 

    Sometimes I’ll start a new page in Pages or Substack, type a few lines, give it a title I’ll recognise later, then leave it alone. I let the idea breathe. Sometimes I return to it. Sometimes I start again. I let things percolate until they’re ready. And when they are, the words come quickly.

    My boyfriend often says it looks like I can just sit down and write something fresh in an hour or two. And yes, sometimes I can. But what it looks like is rarely what it is. I spend all day every day, noticing. And that noticing forms thoughts, translated into words, becomes written.

    Most of my writing has been quietly forming in some hidden partition of my mind for days, weeks, even years. It’s been composting. Gathering weight. Waiting for the moment it wants to emerge.

    I remember a night, many years ago now, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my living room at 2 AM. Around me were teetering stacks of notebooks, filled with observations, essay fragments, and moments I’d never shared. Pages and pages that had never made it past my own eyes.

    I was always the friend who urged others to write publicly, to submit to journals, to start a blog, to hit post on Instagram. “Your voice matters,” I’d tell them. I meant it every time. Meanwhile, I kept my own work in the shadows.

    Every time my finger hovered over the “publish” button, a surge of anxiety would rise up. Who do I think I am? What if I reveal too much? What if it’s not good enough? What if it’s too much?

    And so, again and again, I saved instead of sending.

    I kept my words locked away in journals. Safe from judgment, yes. But also safe from connection.

    This quiet resistance followed me for years.

    What changed?

    One day I stopped making it about me.

    I realised I wasn’t writing for self-expression alone. I was writing to remind, to reflect, to connect. I was writing because somewhere, some woman, exhausted or elated or cracked open by life, might see herself in what I shared.

    The words weren’t mine to keep. They never were.

    And so I started thinking of my writing as a garden. Not a blog. Not a platform. A garden.

    A living archive of stories, insights, and scraps of beauty that others might stumble across when they need them most. Something worth wandering through. Something that grows.

    It helped to think of the silent readers, the ones who never hit reply or leave a comment, but who return again and again. I write for them too. You never know whose day or life your words are shifting, even if you never hear about it.

    If you’re building a body of work, this also matters. 

    Anyone considering working with you or publishing you will need to read your writing multiple times before they know if your voice is a fit. If your writing lives out in the open, they can find it. Trust it. Choose it. But if you only publish once every few moons, what are they choosing from?

    Your writing is not self-promotion.

    It is an offering. A window. A breadcrumb trail back to some deeper part of the human experience, for others and for yourself.

    Everything you’ve learned about shaping a sentence, translating emotion, and distilling clarity from the chaos of daily life is not meant to be hoarded. It’s meant to be shared.

    This matters more than ever.

    In a world increasingly flooded with synthetic, AI-generated words, human language crafted with care and shaped by hand becomes sacred again. This is the new counterculture, intimate, real, nuanced expression. Writing that makes someone feel less alone. Writing that notices. That names.

    So if you’ve been waiting to share something, a piece, a post, a half-formed thought in your Notes app, consider this your gentle nudge.

    ~ Write for the version of you who once needed the words you now carry.

    ~ Write for the person out there who’s waiting to feel understood.

    ~ Write even if it’s quiet. Especially then.

    ~ Your writing might be exactly the permission someone else needs.

    Your voice is not the point, but it is the portal.

  • 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

  • today, I have three weeks left here

    a personal update and an invitation

    The morning sun is drawing lines across the wooden floor and the cheap white Ikea rug. From the bedroom, I can hear my boyfriend’s soft snores. Further down the hall, the washing machine is whirring with his dirty clothes. 

    I snuck out of bed an hour ago. Love is to let him sleep in peace when I am restless and full of words that want to pour out of fingertips. Love is to want his clean clothes to be hung out to dry while the sun is still out after weeks of deluge.

    When I got up I pulled on my £4 vintage Pink Floyd sweater that layed crumpled on the floor and picked up my laptop to hug to my lap while I lay on the sofa and write. 

    Now that I am here the many things I had wanted to put down evade me asking to be rearranged in my mind, to find a storyline, a thread to hold them together.

    Two weeks ago we were in London. The day we arrived it was sunnier and warmer than in Portugal where we had come from, and we walked from London Bridge to Colombia Road Flower Market. A favourite ritul of mine, to meet one of my best friends and drink coffee and eat crossaints and hear the flower sellers shout their prices. 

    Twenty years earlier when I lived in Hackney I’d go every weekend. Back then the streets were shabbier, speciality coffee shops did not yet exist, and you could buy bouquets of flowers at ‘two for a fiver’. (Imagine that in an East London cockney accent.)

    We were in London to renew my passport due to an inexplicable bureaucratic quirk: the Austrian embassy in London would accept the very paperwork that the Passport Office in Austria had rejected when I’d flown there weeks earlier.

    I often joke that I thrive at the fringes of existence, belonging nowhere in particular, my official residence a mystery even to myself. An inconvenience only once every 10 years: when I need to get my passport renewed.

    When I think about it London is the closest thing I have to a home. It’s the place I have resided in most often in my adult life. It’s the only country where the passport control officer says “welcome home” when I pass through. It melts my heart a little.

    On our last morning we ate cinnamon buns in Sloane Square cutting through the pillowy sweetness with sips of bitter coffee. Standing in a slice of sun pouring between buildings we watched the corporate working world rustle and bustle their ways into their offices. 

    When I stand and observe mass humanity as I did that morning, I’m struck by the humbling realisation that each hurried figure represents an entire universe of hopes and struggles. 

    Strangers — clutching coffee cups, checking watches, muttering into phones — all orchestrating their complicated lives with the same earnestness I bring to mine. At the core of each life, beneath the professional veneers and morning routines, pulses the same fundamental need for connection and meaning. 

    Love, in its countless expressions, remains the gravitational center around which we orbit. This truth makes the artificial structures we’ve built — the endless pursuit of productivity, status, and material gain — seem profoundly misaligned with what actually sustains us. 

    The day after we returned, my friend Hannah arrived like a gift. 

    After weeks of relentless rain drumming against windows and seeping into spirits, the clouds parted. For two precious days, we traced paths along the wild, rugged coastline that embraces the little village I’ve called home since autumn. 

    The sea air carried the scent of salt and possibility as we navigated rocky outcroppings and windswept bluffs, our conversations flowing as naturally as the waves below. 

    This landscape, in its raw, untamed ways, has become my sanctuary. Despite an unexpectedly brutal winter — longer, wetter, and colder than I had prepared for — I’ve made it my ritual to seek out nature’s company whenever possible, finding in its rhythms a counterbalance to life’s uncertainties and a reminder of what endures.

    Today, I have three weeks left here.

    The past two days we, and two friends, helped my boyfriend dismantle the home he has inhabited for four years. Box by box. Bag by bag. We hauled his life down flights of stairs. Until nothing remained. On Friday, he leaves with just a 40-litre backpack. Nothing else. 

    His devotion to non-attachment is both inspiring and daunting. I’ve promised to follow with carry-on luggage, but I can’t match his minimalism. Some outfits and useful treasures must join me in my journey. 

    I’ll document this bittersweet sorting soon.

    My deepest heartache is leaving my cat behind. I scroll through our six years together and grief floods my body. There’s wisdom in the saying “your new life will cost you your old one,” but knowing this truth doesn’t soften its sharp edges. 

    I had found what seemed a perfect family for him, but their recent hesitation has sent me into a desperate search for someone who will cherish him with the same devotion I’ve offered. He has been the steady heartbeat at the centre of my existence; love incarnate in fur and purrs. This is the most painful sacrifice I’ve made in years.

    But there is a new life waiting for me out there. I expect the energy of New York to lift me up and reinspire parts of me that have gone to sleep. I anticipate the world showing me what is possible for me in a way that I had not known.

    And with all of this I have had to shed various versions and identities of myself that I had created. Many of them more self-protection than authentic. I am learning to let go of them to be replaced by something new, alive, real, responsive. 

    A huge piece of my growth recently has been learning to observe, not absorb.

    I’ve promised myself I am finally going to start writing a book. Starting on the flight to New York.

    Cringe! I hate even writing that. 

    My biggest fear is that I’ll start and never finish. Or that I’ll say I am going to write a book and not do it. But I promised myself I would and I try to always keep my promises to myself.

    I’ll write for an hour each day—morning or night. Whatever emerges. These words, unlike my private journal entries, are meant for strangers’ eyes. Same practice, new purpose.

    Then I thought: What if we wrote together? 

    A group of writers: would-be/could-be/want-to-be established, aspiring, curious writers and we all wrote together.

    Every day. For 6 weeks.

    Not necessarily an hour. Maybe 10 minutes for you. A sentence. A page. A journal entry. A poem. Whatever meets you at your edge.

    I’ll help you find your achievable aim.

    Science says 21 days forms a habit. We’ll do twice that. Together.

    so, 
    let me invite you to: 
    the art of noticing ~ a 6-week writing club 📝

    Come write with me, every day, for 6 weeks:

    learn more & join

    There are creaks coming from the bedroom. My boyfriend must be waking up now. The morning sun has shifted, no longer drawing lines but flooding the room with golden light. The words I’ve poured onto this page can go and live their own lives out in the world now. 

    Observations are made in the living, not the writing.

    I close my laptop and set it aside. The washing machine has gone quiet; I’ll hang his clothes in the sun. In a moment, he’ll emerge from the bedroom, hair tousled with sleep, and we’ll begin our final Sunday ritual in this place that has been, however briefly, our home.

    The thread I was searching for earlier reveals itself. Love is the storyline that holds everything together.

  • make friends & steal their magic

    a note 📝 on why trying to do life alone is not a vibe, and how the right people make everything easier, better, and way less confusing

    The first marker of growth is realising that your parents are not all-knowing guides but imperfect humans navigating their own paths. 

    The second is recognising that while life may have handed you challenges, your power lies in how you choose to play the hand. Whether you stay stuck in your stories or rise to meet your own becoming. 

    The third is understanding the art of connection. How presence, warmth, and authenticity shape the way the world responds to you, weaving influence and possibility into every interaction, every moment, every version of yourself that you step into next.

    This morning, I woke up feeling like a half-formed thing. My bones, my skin, my memories had melted overnight into something unrecognisable. My heart, my lungs, my thoughts, all swimming in some liminal space between what was and what is becoming.

    I wanted to do everything at once. Crawl out of my skin, burrow deep inside myself, grasp at the illusion of normalcy. That fleeting sense of steadiness that comes and goes like sunlight through moving clouds.

    But that’s not the life I chose. 

    I throw myself headfirst into new things. Willing myself into expansion, into shedding, into becoming, and then — wide-eyed, bewildered — curse myself for it.

    This is what it means to be alive. 

    A continuous rhythm of unravelling and reassembling, of losing myself and finding my way back home.

    Human transformation is peculiar in that way. We appear mostly unchanged on the outside while, internally, our very foundation liquefies and reforms, shifting us into something both familiar and unrecognisably new. Some metamorphoses take years. Others happen in a single breath. We are forever mid-wifeing ourselves through cycles of undoing and recreating.

    And yet, we don’t do it alone. Evolution, growth, becoming: the process demands others. Those who have walked the path before us, showing us what’s possible. 

    People who, by simply existing, illuminate the shape of our own becoming. They are proof that what we long for isn’t just a dream. It’s a direction. A gravitational pull toward who we are meant to be.

    There was a time when I felt so disillusioned by who the world was telling me to be. And then, a woman entered my life. She embodied a grace, clarity, a way of moving through the world that felt like poetry in motion. She didn’t hand me a map. She didn’t give me step-by-step instructions. She simply lived in a way that whispered to something deep inside me: “This is possible for you, too.”

    I learned to echo her grace in my way. 

    We are not islands, shifting and reshaping in solitude. We are ecosystems, intertwined with those who expand us, who stretch our perception of what’s possible. The ones who have already created, built, or become something that stirs something deep within us. 

    A silent recognition. A quiet knowing: this is meant for you, too.

    Expanders are not accidental. 

    We are drawn to them because they reflect what already lives within us, waiting to be awakened. They show our subconscious that the path we crave isn’t just a fantasy—it’s real, and it’s attainable. Their existence cracks open the walls of our own limitations, permitting us to step forward, to believe, to act.

    A few years ago I met a woman who made big decisions without over-explaining or second-guessing. She laughed easily, moved boldly, and showed me — without ever meaning to — that I didn’t need to agonise over every choice or justify my desires. By being in her orbit, something in me softened. 

    I started letting things be easier. I started trusting myself more.

    Who we surround ourselves with matters. 

    Our communities shape our possibilities. The people in our orbit either reinforce old versions of us or pull us toward expansion. Without realising it, we are always absorbing, mirroring, and becoming.

    So this morning, as I sat with the discomfort of my own evolution, I asked myself: 

    Who is showing me the way? Who expands my world? And am I allowing myself to follow the pull?

    It is impossible to avoid the challenges, aches and pains that come with life. 

    True community emerges when we surround ourselves with those who understand that meaningful relationships are born out of action. 

    Love is a verb.

    We need to be the people willing to witness vulnerability without flinching.

    Our emotional lives mirror the natural world’s cycles: darkness and light eternally embracing one another. Each experience of sorrow carries within it the seed of joy; each moment of connection bears the imprint of our separateness. When we touch one state deeply, we become intimate with its opposite.

    This is authentic connection embodied.

    Recognising that friendship and community require us to honour the completeness of human experience, to practice presence in both suffering and celebration and to build relationships that nurture our collective well-being.

    This is where expanders come in.

    An expander is someone who has created or achieved something in their life that we desire to also have or create. This concept is based on simple neuroscience and the creation of mirror neurons.

    It’s not that expanders are perfect beings who have mastered life. They are everyday people, like you and me, who have flourished in certain areas, and because of this, they can expand us on our own journeys.

    One of my closest friends is a woman nearly a decade younger than me. Her emotional maturity and dedication to skillfulness in relationships astound me. I watch the way she approaches difficult conversations — not with avoidance or defensiveness — but with curiosity and care. 

    Being in her presence taught me to be a better friend, lover and human.

    Every single one of us inhabits the full spectrum of humanness. Those very aspects of these people that are bringing you so much inspiration are actually a reflection of aspects of you that have gotten lost due to societal, media, parental, or peer programming.1

    The beauty of expansion is that it doesn’t require perfection. Only possibility. We expand one another simply by existing in our truth.

    This is why I created ALIGNED.

    To provide access to the expanders and community that will walk alongside you as you navigate the transitions and transformations of your own becoming. Because you are not meant to do it alone.

    ALIGNED is more than a course. It is an incubator for expansion, for transformation, for meeting the people who will hold you in both strength and tenderness as you step into the version of yourself you know you are meant to be.

    Enrolment closes in 5 days. Learn more here: ALIGNED

    Client Receipts

    real stories, real impact 💫

    “I’ve been following you, Vienda, for years on Instagram long before Plannher, and will join whatever community you create because I know it will be fostered in an energy of growth, acceptance, and soul.”

    “I loved having someone in my court, to have someone waiting for me and knowing that would be a resource, a thing that wasn’t mine to solve, but someone I could collaborate with on solving or discovering things. That was a really lovely feeling.”

    “Having a group of people to get to know helped me feel like there was a community of like-minded people and feel supported even if we had different areas working through and on.”

    “I love the way you always include accountability partners and listening partners into your courses. I have always found it so valuable. I also do feel you attract interesting and powerful people to your courses that have so much value and I’ve stayed in touch with people in the past afterwards and supported each other’s businesses/visions which have been really special.”

    1

    If you are curious about finding your own expanders, choose something in your life that you would like to make real and then ask yourself these questions:

    • Who do I know that I feel drawn to almost instantly?
    • When I look at this person, what do I find appealing about them?
    • What is this person’s vibe that draws me to them? Is it something about their personality? Their career? Their spiritual approach or practices? The vacations they go on? Their relationship? The way they talk or how they dress?
    • What characteristics about this person resonate with me/remind me of myself?
    • What is their life story: are there any overlaps or similarities with my story?
    • How can I learn from this person? Do they have a book, podcast, or course? Can I spend time with them? Can I reach out and learn more about how they got to where they are?
    • Can this person help me become super clear on my desired manifestation? Do I realise details about their life that I would really like for my own?
    • What can I learn from this person?