September feels

September tends to bring a return to routine, a grounding, a sense of getting things in order. Is just for us parents who are getting kids back to study, or is it because we are in Virgo season; the sign of the zodiac defined by structure, rules, organisation, practicality and details. For years, I believed that the strong desire for a September reset was rooted in the school calendar, even before I became a parent and had the practical ‘back to school’ task list. What if the return to school after holidays falls in Virgo season because it’s what the season asks of us; order, reset, routine…

For me, I sit in The Space Between bidding a sad farewell to the headiness and spontaneity of summer, while also welcoming the first glimpses of the change in season, a return to more structure and order, and an overwhelming urge for order. I’m noticing the slight chill in the air, the colours beginning to change, the darker evenings and mornings, and I’m not sad about the desire to get cosier and hunker down! This Virgo season is bringing an urge to declutter similar to the urge I experienced during nesting when I was pregnant; if something isn’t nailed down right now, it’s in danger of being thrown out / recycled / repurpose / donated.

It’s only by clearing out that we can make space for the new. On a very practical and logical level, I want to make way for beautiful new storage in my bedroom, and to redecorate and update the space, it doesn’t make any sense for me to pack the new wardrobes with clothes I’ve been holding on to for far too long, for reasons I can’t fully comprehend, and it has led to the most ruthless clear out I’ve had in years. It has got me thinking too about what old habits and patterns that I’m holding on to which need cleared out to make space for something better.

My invitation to you this Virgo season (whether you believe in astrology or not) is to think about what clutter in your mind is holding you back? How would you like the place of your inner chatter, your heart centre, to look and feel, and what do you need to release or let go of to make space for that?

The Space Between Happiness and Joy

I've been thinking about the difference between happiness and joy, and whether they're actually the same thing. Twice this summer I pulled the oracle card ‘Rose without thorns’ from Rebecca Campbell’s beautiful Rose Oracle deck. This card affirms your right to your joy, peace and sweetness of life. It was a reminder for me to incorporate more of the moments of feeling alive.

We talk a lot about wanting to be happy. We want happy relationships, happy families, work that makes us happy and ultimately, a happy life, but is that actually realistic, and how do we measure it in a world that encourages to always want more?

Maybe this is where joy finds its space? My description of joy is those little moments where you just feel completely alive. For me, that’s being in the sea, salty skin, paddling my board over glassy sea, music on ridiculously loud in the car, ecstatic dance (either in my kitchen or with kindred spirits) laughing with people I love, sunshine, being somewhere beautiful or just having one of those moments where I think ‘I am so lucky’.

I realised the importance of joy when I was in the thick of cancer treatment; finding that those moments can still happen in the times where everything else isn’t perfect, where we might not otherwise describe our lives as being happy. We can be worried about something and still feel joy. We can be going through a difficult time and laugh until our stomach hurts. We can be tired, overwhelmed or have a million things to sort out and still have a moment that makes us feel completely alive. I have so many fond memories of laughing until I cried even during chemotherapy, or dancing out all my sadness even when it felt like it would never end. The joy feels even sweeter when times are hard.

Thinking about happiness and joy has been learning that two things can be true at the same time; I can be happy, yet lacking in joy and I can also feel moments of joy, even when the rest of my life feels like it’s going to sh*t.

Is that The Space Between happiness and joy?

My invitation to you today is to think about what happiness and joy look like to you.

When was the last time you truly felt alive?

Are you making enough space in your life for those moments?

Don’t tell Instagram…

Last week I felt brave enough to press publish on this website and open a new social media account; in that moment of boldness I knew it would hold me accountable to actually bring this to life. I’ll always remember a motto from a social media guru back in the day which was “done beats perfect”, and that was the push I needed to share some snippets while I prepare the community and my offerings in the background.

You can imagine my delight when I amassed over 100 Instagram followers to my page in just a couple of days; if you are following me on there, thank you - I am thrilled with the early support from my friends and former clients, especially as I’ve shared so little with you so far. The problem with this though, is that I’m expected to show up and share riveting content with you, and part of the reason why it was such a relief to close my last business was because I didn’t have the pressure of showing up on social media any more. I’m happy to create content for my training and coaching work, and I don’t mind sharing the odd story on my personal account, but the freedom that came from not having to “sell” on social media was sweet…

In my training work, I had a profile done which examines my unconscious motivators and triggers and I now know that one of the reasons why I struggle with social media is that inauthenticity is a personal trigger; it pushes my buttons and can nudge me in to “shadow self” (hint: not me at my best). So how do I find The Space Between feeling pressure to post in a space I feel is divisive and superficial, and also to have a presence so that the women who need this space can find me?

I guess I’m still finding that sweet spot, and The Space Between will let me figure it out. Last night I was ready to delete my Instagram account and try launching this without any social media support, and today, the musing while I walked the dog, and the pause while I have been typing it out is allowing me the grace to trust the process and know that both things can be true; I can struggle with the lack of real connection on social media AND know that the right people will find me, even if my posts don’t go viral, and I don’t need to pour hours in to trying to create the most mind-blowing posts ever created! What a relief!

I’m looking forward to sharing the odd snippet over there, while conscious that I’m trying to find my space in such a crowded space, and even in that space, so many of the accounts are run by AI (they are so convincing). Meanwhile if you want REAL content, written by a REAL person, sign up for updates, watch this space and I hope you enjoy what you are reading!

Where did it all begin?

Even for my husband and my closest friends, The Space Between has been a bit of a surprise; where was I hiding it, and why did I say nothing until now, what even IS The Space Between and where did it come from? Before I go into what it is (all in good time), perhaps it’s important to know that this has been brewing for quite some time. 10 years after launching my birth and baby business, it was clear to me that the element that I was most attached to was community and it felt like a natural step to launch an online community so that those women whose “babies” were no longer young enough for class still had a place to belong to and receive support in.

In March 2023, all the background work was done, and I was preparing to launch my online community as soon as I recovered from surgery. But the Universe had other plans and the following year saw me absorbed in a cancer diagnosis and treatment plan. During treatment and recovery from such a devastating diagnosis, I chose freedom over familiarity and decided to close my business. I had already dipped my toe back into training and coaching; a career I had been building before Motherhood, and when the opportunity came to go all in, I seized it with both hands and I have loved returning to those roots. As far as I was concerned, the days of supporting women in anything other than a training or coaching capacity were behind me.

As I had such a large community of women who attended my classes since 2013, it’s a regular occurrence bumping into former clients, and I am repeatedly asked the same question, and it’s whether I miss the old classes. Over and over again I heard myself saying that I didn’t miss the classes or the weight of running a business, but that I did miss the community. In my corporate training and coaching, many of the women I support joke that there should be classes for parenting teens or caring for elderly parents, or some kind of space for us to have a rant and solve our problems. The theme keeps recurring and this idea that we need more community just hasn’t gone away. My favourite part of class was always the opening chat about how everyone was, and the hill I’m prepared to die on is that’s really what people paid for; not the baby massage, the nursery rhymes or the yoga, but the safe space and the deep chats.

This idea about community hasn’t stopped nudging me, and the more I scroll social media, the more I see the plan to keep us divided; online everything feels very binary; choose a side, it’s this or it’s that, it’s black or it’s white, we’re right-they’re wrong. During my healing journey (eurgh, that word) I found many communities and spaces to be the same; ‘natural approaches will kill you’ then ‘you’re a sheep if you do chemotherapy’ in the next sentence, natural menopause is amazing and then you’re a fool if you don’t take HRT; so many things feel as if you need to pick a side. I struggled to find many spaces or people to follow where there was balance or space.

The Space Between aims to sit in the gap between this or that. It’s a space where you can bring you and all your contradictions to sit together in a space where others feel the same; it’s not that we can’t have strong opinions or concrete beliefs, it’s more holding a space for people to be able to make up their own minds or to learn to hold 2 apparently contradictory truths at once. I’ll give you one - I absolutely love spending time with other people AND I get really excited when I have the opportunity to be alone. Also, I really enjoy the work that I do AND I love my days off too. I am really excited to finally talk about The Space Between AND I feel very nervous about being “seen”. I have big dreams for what this could become AND I am scared of what that might actually mean. In the last 3 years I have used every coaching, training and NLP (neurolinguistic programming) tool I have known, I have paid for maturation therapy, dance therapy, bodytalk therapy, somatic therapy, reiki, soundbaths, crystal healing, kinesiology, consulted a naturopath, a medium, had my cards read, had reflexology, personal training, read hundreds of books on healing and also had talking therapy / counselling but ultimately the peace & healing has come from stopping the endless quest to “fix” myself or find “the thing”.

My goal is to provide for you the space I feel like I needed several years ago; a space of deeper connection to other women and to yourself, a place where you’re not chasing a fix or striving to become a thing, simply a safe space to pause, reflect on the common challenges we face and to cheerlead each other through them.

I look forward to sharing more as it unfolds, but for now thanks for joining me where it all began…