I make my life transparent in these letters to you. Often with more ease than one would expect, but not always. I write candidly about the way I try to meet the gaps in my care as a child, I reveal aspects of my lifestyle that are often unmoored, I hapazardly and ambitiously run several online streams of value-for-income models, and I wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to my romances.
I have been moving through some of the tenderest times of my life recently. There are moments when I feel like life is so empty and devoid of meaning and substance. There are moments when I feel like life is exploding with colour and joy. These moments are opposite, and yet they coexist. Both are true.
And it is times like these that bring me closer to something that we all sense:
Comfort is seductive, but it’s not where we grow. We grow on the edge of things.
As I wrote in my stories yesterday. You have two choices:
a)Continue forcing the version of you that will keep your current life stitched together at the seams.
b)Surrender to the logic-defying, painful, beautiful, soul-awakening mess of where life wants to take you.
Both are true. Sometimes you will need to hold on. Sometimes you need to let go. Devotion and commitment show up as different things at different times.
For me, the answer now is surrender. And that surrender requires a rebuilding. Not of my outer world, but of my inner scaffolding. A structure made not of strategies or timelines, but of gentleness, truth, and presence. The quiet integrity of choosing to meet each moment as it is, instead of trying to bend it into something I can manage or explain. The devotion of no longer abandoning myself, even when it would be easier to. Especially then.
I begin with sleep. With rest that is heavy and uninterrupted. With giving my body the time it needs to catch up with everything my heart has carried these past months. Sleep has become sacred. A space where I remember I am not a machine built to function, but a being designed to feel.
I pay attention to what nourishes me through the textures of ordinary care. I eat slowly. I walk often. I stay close to silence. I let my feelings rise without trying to trap them in language too soon. I cry when I need to. I let joy rise when it wants to, and do not hold it hostage with questions about whether it will stay. I am learning that being with myself in this way is not indulgent.
I am tuning into my natural rhythm and letting that be enough. We all contain this natural intelligence.
The only reason you ever feel out of step with your life is that you have stopped following the natural rhythm that your body and inner essence are always trying to lead you with.
We have become so accustomed to having the rhythm set for us by external forces. Parents. School bells. Job descriptions. Capitalism. Performance. Survival. We have spent our lives learning to respond to something outside of ourselves, and in the process, we forgot how to listen inward.
We have handed over our agency in so many invisible ways that we no longer realise we are allowed to curate a rhythm of life that makes sense for us. A rhythm that honours our energy, our season, our humanity. We have accepted a pace that constantly makes us feel torn and separate and fractured, not because something is wrong with us, but because something is deeply wrong with the way we are being taught to live.
I created Planet Powered to help you remember.
Not to replace your inner agency, but rather as a gentle framework to be used as a stepping stone. A structure that holds you within the shape of your modern life while still making space for a sovereign choice, each and every day, to ask what you truly need, and how you want to meet the world from that place.
This rhythm is not about productivity or performance. It is about presence. It is about remembering that you are not here to fit yourself into a life that was not made for you. You are here to create a rhythm that holds your soul.
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.
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.
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.
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.
…as I discovered one day when I went for a walk with my astrologist Zoe on London’s Hampstead Heath
I didn’t set out to live in rhythm with the planets.
I was just trying to figure out how to get through the week without falling back into the old paradigm of life and work.
It was a decade ago, sometime in the early years of my business, that tender in-between season when you’re no longer in the old world (but still haunted by its rules), and not yet anchored in the new one. I had refused traditional work because I craved freedom. Flexibility. Something that felt like mine. But what I found was that freedom — without structure and rhythm — can feel like floating in deep water without anything to hold onto.
Each day bled into the next. I was either wildly inspired or totally untethered. I’d start Mondays trying to be productive, then spiral into guilt when I couldn’t focus. Some days I’d push myself to work until 10 pm. Other days, I’d drift, half-present, getting nothing done and feeling even worse about it.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love the work. I did. But I was still trying to move through time as if it were a flat surface. Like each day should hold the same energy, the same productivity, the same focus.
And then something shifted.
One day, I went for a walk with my astrologist Zoe on London’s Hampstead Heath. We were examining wild-grown herbs and trees, discussing how they relate to each individual. At some point, the conversation drifted to how we organise our days and how fortunate we were to go for a walk in nature on a beautiful day while everyone else was stuck behind a desk in a square room somewhere. She mentioned in passing a simple idea: that each day of the week is ruled by a planet. Each one carries its own essence. A mood. A direction. A rhythm.
Fascinated, I took myself to the British Library and fell into a deep research dive on anything I could find out about the days of the week being related to planetary systems. As it turns out, in a vast number of languages, the names given to the seven days of the week are derived from the names of the classical planets in Hellenistic Astronomy, which were in turn named after contemporary deities, a system introduced by the Sumerians and later adopted by the Babylonians from whom the Roman Empire adopted the system.
Monday is ruled by the Moon. Of course it is. Monday blues are real! That’s why it always felt so emotionally dense. Tuesday, by Mars — no wonder I always wanted to push through my to-do list that day. Wednesday — Mercury — my best meeting day. And so on…
It’s not new information. It is ancient, and that felt like remembering something I already knew in my bones. So I started experimenting.
Just gently at first. I stopped scheduling intense work-heavy starts to the week on Mondays. I started batching bold, courageous tasks on Tuesdays. I held my meetings on Wednesdays and saved my writing for Thursdays. I let Friday be soft. Sensual. More space, less noise.
The changes were subtle, but the impact was immediate. Suddenly, I wasn’t pushing against myself anymore. I had a relationship with time: one that felt intimate, reverent, and alive.
I started feeling less like I was managing time, and more like I was dancing with it. Listening. Responding. Moving in flow. The more I lived this way, the more everything began to shift.
My business felt more coherent. My body relaxed in response.
I could actually feel the difference between a Moon day and a Mercury day. I have language for my inner world and permission to meet each day with integrity and grace.
What if you knew exactly why Monday always feels a little heavier… And why Tuesdays feel sharper, more focused… And why by Friday you want to wear something cute and take yourself out dancing (or at least light a nice candle)?
There’s a reason. You don’t flail or feel your way through the week by accident.
There are real, rhythmic forces influencing your emotions, energy, and attention — every single day. But we’ve been trained to ignore that rhythm. To push through. Force clarity. Work like we’re machines.
Planet Powered invites you to live differently.
To stop fighting time — and start flowing with it.
Planet Powered is a new way to move through time — ancient, intuitive, and wildly effective.
✦ Why this matters
✔ You stop wasting energy on the wrong things at the wrong time ✔ You feel more emotionally supported and less scattered ✔ You create with more ease, confidence, and momentum ✔ You find a rhythm that’s both soulful and sustainable ✔ You stop asking “what’s wrong with me?” and start asking “what’s the energy today?”
This guide will teach you how.
Time isn’t flat. It’s textured. Alive. Rhythmic.
✦ Who this is for
You’re self-employed and want a rhythm that balances structure with flow
You’re in a corporate job but craving more soul and spaciousness
You’re a parent trying to stay grounded inside the chaos
You’re a student or seeker looking to live more intuitively
You’re done with pushing. You’re ready to align
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, seeker, parent, student, or simply someone craving a new way to relate to time, this guide offers structure without rigidity, softness without chaos, and a return to something your body already knows.
Planet Powered includes tailored guidance for different life paths.
Each day of the week carries a unique planetary frequency. It has since ancient times — and deep down, your body already feels it.
Monday is ruled by the Moon — emotional, internal, tender.
Tuesday belongs to Mars — bold, active, focused.
Wednesday is Mercury’s — clear, communicative, connected.
Thursday expands under Jupiter — wise, generous, abundant.
Friday glows with Venus — beauty, love, creativity.
Saturday grounds us in Saturn — structure, integrity, completion.
Sunday re-centres in the Sun — joy, self, radiance.
When you honour that rhythm instead of override it — everything changes.
You stop pushing against your own energy. You stop trying to be everything, every day. You stop feeling like you’re constantly behind.
Instead, you begin to flow…
This is what Planet Powered is here to help you do: Reorient your life around the energy that already lives in the week. Through a steady rhythm.
When I first left behind traditional work, I was craving freedom. But freedom without rhythm just left me overwhelmed. I didn’t want the rigid 9-to-5. But I didn’t want to drift endlessly, either. I needed something that felt both fluid and practical. A system that could hold me, without boxing me in. That’s when I stumbled across the planetary week… and everything clicked.
Suddenly, I understood why certain days flowed and others didn’t. I stopped forcing deep work on Moon days. I started writing on Mercury days, launching on Jupiter days, and resting on purpose. This rhythm didn’t make me productive. It made me present.
That’s what I want for you.
What You’ll Get
This is more than an eBook or a course: it is a living rhythm, with beautiful tools and a community of friends to help you step into it.
Let your days become a devotion.
Let your week become a map.
Let your life be Planet Powered.
This isn’t a one-time read.It’s a way of living that holds you, day after day, cycle after cycle.
✧ The Guide
A beautifully designed 114-page PDF and digital resource that teaches you the energy of each day, with poetic insight and grounded, real-life examples for all different life seasons — whether you’re self-employed, working in a corporate setting, parenting, studying, or walking a spiritual path.
Each section offers real-life suggestions, energetic check-ins, and practical ways to honour the rhythm within your unique lifestyle — so you can make this work for you, not the other way around.
Includes:
~ Tips to integrate rhythm into work, relationships, creativity and rest
~ Planetary day-by-day breakdowns
~ Journaling prompts & rituals
~ Practical lifestyle guides and tools for entrepreneurs, professionals, parents, students, and seekers
A downloadable iCal/Google Calendar layer that brings the energy of the day right into your digital schedule, so you don’t have to remember. It’s just there. Subtle. Seamless.
✧ The Spotify Playlist
An ambient, atmospheric playlist to support you through the week — music to match the mood of each planetary energy.
✧ The Community
Our private Telegram group, where we share the rhythm in real-time. Daily check-ins. Honest reflections. Celebrations. Gentle support. A place to not do it all alone.
One-Month Live (July 13–August 10)
Join us in a private Telegram group where Vienda will share live daily reflections, answer your questions, and guide you through the rhythm together.
This is more than a group chat — it’s a virtual hearth. A live rhythm lab. A space to bring structure, magic, and collective resonance into your week.
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.
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.
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 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:
How old I look visually
What deficiencies and internal conditions are visible through facial features
What to pay attention to for women’s health
What psycho-emotional state may be influencing my wellbeing
What character traits or conflicts are expressed in my face
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 ⁺。° ☾ ☀
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.
“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.
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.
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.
…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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Identify the three strongest “currents” — the forces most powerfully pulling you off course.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 💛
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.
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 📝
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.
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.
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.”
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?
who am I when I am not running toward something new?
For the next ten days, I am inviting you into a conversation about transformation—the kind that is deep, sustainable, and truly liberating. I’ll be sharing insights, stories, and practices from ALIGNED, my 6-week programdesigned to help you take intentional action in your life and business. This program is the culmination of years of personal exploration and guiding others through the delicate process of inner shifts that lead to tangible change.
This work is profoundly important to me because I have lived and breathed it for years, testing its principles in my own life and witnessing its impact on the lives of those I’ve worked with. And nothing speaks to its power more than the experiences of past participants:
“One key takeaway from this course was identifying my limiting belief: ‘I have to do it like everyone else.’ Realizing this and choosing a different story feels incredibly freeing.”
“Having a group of people to get to know helped me feel like there was a community of like-minded individuals, offering support even as we worked on different areas of our lives.”
“I love the way you always include accountability and listening partners in your courses. It creates such valuable connections, and I’ve stayed in touch with past participants, supporting each other’s businesses and visions in truly special ways.”
“I took your course on money, and my entire life shifted within 2-3 months—that was crazy! I had been aware of my fears and beliefs for years but never found a way to let them go until I took your course. I am still mind-blown.”
So much of what holds us back is invisible to us.
Our minds become intricate labyrinths of inherited narratives, subconscious fears, and well-worn patterns that shape our choices, often without our awareness.
This is why today, I want to talk to you about how to actually change your life — starting with the very thing that keeps you stuck: limiting beliefs.
It’s been five months since I moved to this little surf town on the Atlantic coast of Portugal. Five months of waking to the sound of waves rolling against the cliffs, of salt-drenched air that clings to my hair and skin, of slow mornings wrapped in mist and coffee and the promise of something unknown.
And yet, despite all this beauty — this wild, unpredictable, heart-expanding beauty — there have been moments when I have felt utterly, inexplicably stuck. As if something inside me was pressing against an invisible ceiling, a quiet resistance lurking beneath the surface.
It never fails to astonish me how I carry every part of myself wherever I go — every fear, every belief, every invisible boundary I have ever built.
In the past five months, I’ve found myself face to face with an unfamiliar stillness, a startling absence of the urge to chase something new. It lingers like a question I can’t quite answer, so foreign that I wonder if I’ve misplaced my ambition entirely.
I used to think that growth meant running toward something new — more freedom, more success, more peace.
But I’ve learned that the most important work isn’t in the external shifts, but in the quiet, often uncomfortable act of meeting yourself where you are and asking:
What is actually keeping me here?
I recently ran a free challenge to help you find clarity in your life — over 100 people joined (you can, too) — and the most common struggle you shared was this:
How do I uncover my limiting beliefs when I can’t even see them?
That’s the thing about the patterns that hold us back—they exist in the shadows, shaping our choices without us even realising it. It’s an inside job, and our limitations are often our biggest blind spots.
That’s exactly why I created Aligned —a deeply supportive, transformative space designed to help you move through those hidden limitations in a way that feels pragmatic, expansive, and fun. Because real change doesn’t have to be heavy—it can be meaningful, energizing, and deeply freeing.
Doors close in 10 days, and there are only 12 spots available per group.
the simple process I use for shifting limiting beliefs
1. identify my current challenge
The first clue that I am operating from a limiting belief is the sensation of being stuck. That heavy, unmoving energy that tells you something isn’t working but doesn’t quite reveal why.
For me, in those first few months in Ericeira, I felt a deep-seated fear that no matter how much I expanded, I would always find myself circling back to the same struggles—uncertainty about what I was supposed to be doing, my business growth, and the question of whether I was truly doing enough.
It was familiar, frustrating, and maddeningly persistent.
I had to sit with it. To acknowledge it and feel it.
TIP 1: Instead of trying to bulldoze through it, pause. What’s the exact problem? Name it. Be as precise as possible. The more clarity you bring, the more power you have over it.
2. taking ownership without shame
What I discovered was that, after years and years of living the life I had dreamed of, my dreams had run dry.
I was out of alignment with who I am, and what I wanted because I didn’t believe I was worthy of having big dreams anymore. I discovered that I am someone with enormous desires. Desires that I had squashed.
Career-wise, I blamed the algorithm (it’s changed so much!), the economy (people are spending less!).
But the truth? None of that was the real reason I felt stuck.
The real reason was that I was clinging to old stories about my worth and ability, stories that whispered: You have to work harder to deserve more. You have to struggle for this to count.
Taking ownership didn’t mean blaming myself. It meant acknowledging that if I was the one unconsciously building these walls, I was also the one who could tear them down.
TIP 2: Here’s where it gets tender: can you take full responsibility for your current reality—without shame, without self-punishment? Can you look at the patterns that have led you here with compassion, rather than criticism?
3. seeing the invitation for growth
I know — even though, like all of us, I often need to be reminded — that my biggest frustrations are signposts pointing me toward the exact lesson I need. The solution is always to lean in and ask: What is this here to show me?
The moment I did, things shifted. I saw how my limiting beliefs weren’t just abstract ideas—they were running the show. Success requires struggle. Ease is irresponsible. If you slow down, you’ll fall behind. And I realised: these weren’t truths.
They were choices.
TIP 3: The blindspots are the areas in life we are not in alignment with because we have limiting beliefs around them. Your mind is powerful. It will always find evidence for what you believe. The good news? You get to decide what to believe next.
4. embrace the ripple effect
I am going through growing pangs. This is an opportunity to build something even stronger. It’s a painful shift, but these moments create space for new approaches that end up being more aligned.
I am valuing myself and my work in ways that I should have a long time ago, but did not, because I did not believe I was enough. This shows me that my external reality was only ever reflecting what I believed to be true about myself.
TIP 4: When you start dismantling the old stories, your life shifts in ways you can’t yet see. The work you put in today—challenging your beliefs, choosing different thoughts, moving from a place of trust instead of fear—will show up in unexpected ways. New opportunities. Conversations that change everything. A lightness you can’t explain.
This morning I woke up, warm after many cold nights, my hair stuck to my face.
It’s one of those mornings where everything feels a little lopsided.
My soy milk has curdled so I can’t make myself a matcha and have to settle for a herbal tea. My dentist appointment is cancelled because the dentist is ill. I am relieved because I don’t feel like walking the 20 minutes in the torrential downpour anyway. I journal.
Your life is always responding to you. And if you want something different, you don’t have to work harder, force it, or prove yourself. You just have to start believing a new story — and living from it as if it were already true.
I am learning, awkwardly, how to embody the new version of myself that I am becoming. Anticipation builds alongside the next steps life is revealing to me.
TIP 5: What makes this process so transformative is that it moves us from feeling powerless to feeling deeply, profoundly capable. When you stop trying to change everything outside of you and instead start working on what’s within, everything shifts.
If you’re considering joining me for either ALIGNED OFFER (business-focused) or ALIGNED ACTION (life-focused), now is the time. Doors close in 10 days, and there are only 12 spots available per group.
It’s 7.34, and the sun is just starting to peek over the hill covered in tall buildings that shadow the village in the mornings. I am cross-legged on my sofa, wrapped in a blanket grateful for the ache in my chest that arrives whenever I sit, fingers softly poised above keys, ready to pour all of myself into the words on a page. I can hear the waves crashing onto the shore 300 metres from my balcony and the washing machine slopping wet dirty clothes around inside itself.
What I did plan on is to feel alive.
To me, Ericeira smells like sea salt and algae. It smells like fishing lines and burnt coffee. Most days the humidity is around 90%. It feels like walking through a neverending water wall. Mostly infiltrated by people not from here this winter the streets have been silent. The locals shuffle through their days in their unhurried solitude. The cold, humid ache that goes deep into my bones is interspersed by warm sunny hours in the middle of the day.
Here, my everyday life is quiet.
When I arrived I had followed something in my body that told me ‘not here’. A subtle disquiet that had been with me. Because place matters. But I had decided to stop planning and start living without knowing how this story ends.
It brought me here.
For so much of my life, I thought that to live a meaningful life I needed to choose my steps carefully. That it would all unravel and fall apart if I wasn’t meticulous in my decision-making and planning. It’s me and the world. I am alone. I don’t have a family to fall back on. There is always some risk involved when I do anything new and I am acutely conscious of the fact that I lack a cushion to rely on if things go wrong. Which they do.
Frustrated with living in fear I cultivated a new approach.
What I discovered was that there is a state of alignment you can reach in which magical things will start happening for you. I often call it kismet but really, it’s being in a relationship with the dynamic aliveness of life. Once I figured out how it worked I was able to relax and now have a lot of fun inviting that kind of serendipity into my decision-making processes and day-to-day life.
I have very literally been in the business of living in alignment for years and I still need reminders that the way I move through life is enough.
It’s no surprise. The rampant roar of the outside world is strong. It overpowers the subtle nudges and the cultivation of inner stillness necessary to enter into alignment. Despite years of evidence that living in alignment works I still have times of doubt and uncertainty. I have had to learn how to stay centred and not let that derail me.
I have to be resolute in my devotion to alignment.
I’m teaching exactly how I do this — both in my life; and in my business — across 6 weeks starting on Monday, March 10 2025. There are only 12 spaces in each cohort. Join me for ALIGNED, here.
I could never have planned the life that was waiting for me.
I left England last year because it dimmed my light. I was becoming someone I didn’t recognise. I had outgrown my environment and had become complacent and indolent in every area of my life. I was out of alignment. This misalignment isn’t just uncomfortable – it’s costly. It drained me of my energy, dampened my creativity, and held me back from the life I was meant to live.
But I know I always have a choice.
So I left and it took me on a misadventure through the Mediterranean Sea where I was redirected to a village by the Atlantic Ocean where I fell in love and am now moving to New York. I could never have planned any of this. But life, in its mystery and intelligence, did. All I had to do was let go of trying to control the uncontrollable and get into alignment instead.
Choosing change is hard. Choosing a new story without knowing how it ends is even harder. But when you choose alignment, life moves you to where you are meant to be with so much grace and ease, that the obstacles on the way no longer matter.
They don’t go away. But they become insignificant in comparison to the bigger vision. The project of living your most alive, vibrant, dynamic and meaningful life.
ALIGNED is not just one program — it’s two distinct pathways, running simultaneously, designed to support you based on where you are right now.
ALIGNED ACTION is for you if you are ready to transform your personal life — activating changes in relationships, career, purpose, and finances with trust and confidence.
ALIGNED OFFER is for you if you are ready to build or grow an online business — creating offers that sell with ease, alignment, and momentum.
Both programs follow the same structure but focus on different areas of life. You’ll be part of a powerful container with daily insights, live workshops, and a supportive community—all guiding you toward aligned, inspired action.
What I do know is that as long as I remain aligned, life happens for me. Things that I can never imagine or plan or prepare for. Things I hope and dream for but only reach when I move into alignment and let go.
As these winter days and nights come to an end and spring starts to make itself known in the slightly longer and warmer days I relish the tiny moments.
Some afternoons I see the locals leaning out of their windows watching the world pass by and if we have crossed each other often enough we smile and nod. Bright purple and yellow wildflowers are beginning to cover the cliff edges facing the restless Atlantic Ocean reminding me of the dynamic nature of life. The damp air as I walk home in the evening carrying dates from the organic market and I look up and see the stars. A luxury that is here and won’t be when I leave.
Vienda Maria 