Shit you won’t find in a Self Help Book!

Today is Father’s Day in Australia and I miss my dad more than I can explain. Grief is strange like that. Some days it’s sharp and suffocating, other days it softens and lets me breathe.  Sometimes I see a dad and daughter out together and it makes me smile, sometimes it makes me cry. Sometimes it does both at once and it’s fucking confusing. I think a lot of people don’t know how to hold space for grief.  They’ll say things like, “Your dad wouldn’t want you to be sad. He’d want you to move on.” & sure, I’ve moved forward.  I haven’t stopped living my life.  I’ve just changed the way I live it.  But moving forward doesn’t mean the sadness vanishes.  It doesn’t mean I don’t miss his voice, his hugs, the way he always took life on the chin no matter what he was facing. What people don’t always get is that grief is not a one direction only street.  It’s messy, it’s unpredictable and it’s full of contradictions.  You can feel joy and ache in the...

Sometimes when you speak your truth, everything falls apart. The friendship. The romance. The illusion. The fragile scaffolding of who you were trying to be, just to keep the peace. This isn’t the pretty part of healing. It’s not poetic. It’s raw, messy & often devastating. Because truth isn’t always soft. Sometimes truth is the earthquake that reveals the fault lines. Sometimes it’s the final straw that breaks a connection wide open. Sometimes… it’s the most liberating thing you will ever do, even if it costs you. I say this, because I’ve spoken my truth and lost people along the way.  A friend once asked me for honesty, in fact she begged me to not hold back. So I gave it to her. Gently & thoughtfully. She thanked me for being a ‘true friend’ & we kept talking for a few weeks after … Then boom. Unfriended. Gone. No explanation. But it wasn’t just me, both my kids got it too! Another time was with my ex. He said something super cruel while we were away with his parents...