Hello lovely
When I was 24, my world cracked open.
I call it my nervous breakthrough, but back then, it felt like my entire life was falling apart. My body was fragile—48 kilos—and I was living on a razor’s edge of severe panic attacks. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t breathe properly, and couldn’t see a way through. I was just three months away from finishing my Bachelor of Arts in Music Theatre at WAAPA, but I was completely unraveling.
At the time, I told myself, If I can just get through this, if I can just fix this, I’ll never feel anxious again. That was the hope. That was the plan.
But here’s the thing: anxiety didn’t disappear. It still shows up. It comes and goes, like an uninvited guest who somehow still feels familiar.
What’s changed is how I meet it.
For years, I thought the goal of healing was to get rid of the bad stuff—to eliminate fear, panic, anger, or conflict from my life entirely. But life isn’t designed to be free of these things. They’re part of the human experience. And the real work isn’t about erasing them; it’s about building the strength to hold them.
I’ve learned to stop fighting my anxiety and start listening to it. I’ve built trust in myself, trust in my capacity to sit with discomfort and not let it swallow me whole. And you know what? That trust has changed everything.
It’s the same in relationships. Upsets and misunderstandings are inevitable, but they don’t have to throw you. When you stop being afraid of conflict—when you build the skills to navigate it with calm and clarity—you show up differently. You move through life differently.
And that’s the shift I’ve made. I no longer measure my growth by how “perfectly” I live, how calm I am, or how conflict-free my life looks. I measure it by how strong I’ve become at holding what comes my way.
This hasn’t been easy. It’s come from years of building self-trust in spaces where I’ve felt safe to express myself fully. It’s come from practice: listening to my fears, being honest about what I need, and showing up—even when I’d rather hide.
I wonder, where are you at with this?
• How do you show up when anxiety, fear, or conflict comes knocking?
• What might shift if you stopped trying to fix or avoid these things and instead got curious about your own strength?
• Where could you go if you trusted yourself a little more?
This is where the magic is—not in creating a life free of fear, anger, or upsets, but in knowing you can meet them all and still be okay.
And maybe that’s the point. Your growth doesn’t need to look like the absence of struggle. It can look like the presence of your own power.
Big love and gratitude,
PS: Isn’t it wild to think that the parts of life you’d once do anything to avoid might actually be the ones building you into who you’re meant to be? Wow. What a gift.
PPS: WORK WITH ME to grow and refine your acceptance muscle and not will away the anxiousness, anger or conflict, instead simply work with it.
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