A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the boxes we find ourselves in. It opened something up. Because once you start looking, you realise there are a lot more boxes than you thought.

Think about it like a storage unit. If you’ve ever had one, you know what it’s like. You put stuff in there with the best of intentions, fully planning to come back and sort through it. And then life happens. Before you know it, you haven’t been in there in years. You don’t even remember what’s in half the boxes. You’ve just been living with them there, in the background, taking up space.

When Chris and I moved from South Africa to Spain, we had a storage unit in Cape Town. We left everything in there, planning to go through it once we got settled. It was a year or two before I went back to sort through it all.

I remember standing there looking at box after box thinking: why the heck did I keep all this crap?

Some of it I’d had for years without ever questioning whether I still wanted it. Some of it had made sense once. Some of it I couldn’t even explain. I went through it and got rid of what I didn’t want or need anymore.

That’s what I think we need to do with our boxes. Take inventory. Go through them. Figure out what’s actually in there and whether you still want any of it.

The thing is, I’ve never really done this consciously. I’ve mostly been reactive. I only notice a box when I start to feel suffocated or trapped by it. When the pain of being in it becomes bigger than the pain of fighting whatever kept me there. A sense of responsibility, fear of upsetting someone, or a lack of self-worth.

It means I’ve been leaving a lot of boxes unexamined. Just sitting there in the storage unit. Taking up space.

Some of our boxes are put there by other people. Those are the easier ones to spot. Someone makes a comment. “You should do this.” “I didn’t expect you to do that.” Or they just have a certain expectation of you, and suddenly there’s a box being pushed your way.

Fighting those ones is almost easier because you can often see them. But it does require knowing yourself well enough to say: no, that’s not me. That’s not right for me. Fuck off.

It can be harder than it sounds. If you haven’t taken the time to connect with who you really are, other people will fill your storage unit with their boxes and you’ll just kind of accept them.

But the boxes built from our own limiting beliefs? The glass ones you can’t see? Those are harder still.

I know a guy who was quite overweight at one point. He worked hard to get fit and transform himself. But he continued to see himself as the unpopular fat guy who was less than everyone else. And so, eventually, he became that again.

What we believe about ourselves has a way of becoming true.

I know there’s a box in my subconscious that’s telling me I have to work my ass off to earn money to have a good life. I think it came from watching my parents work so hard to make ends meet. They always did. But they worked frig hard to do it.

For me, a good life isn’t a big mansion and a yacht. Well, a yacht would be nice to rent sometimes. It’s just having the money I need for everything I want and need. Which isn’t that much. My finca in the hills. Adventures with my husband and puppy. Healthy food. My little guest house that I want to build one day.

I don’t need a ton of stuff. I just don’t want to stress about getting the things I do really want and need.

That belief, that money only comes through hardship, is the box I most want to go through right now. Clear out those limiting beliefs. Because it’s keeping me from earning what I want, doing what I love, in a way that brings me freedom and joy.

Awareness is the first step. I can see that box now.

The next step is doing something about it. I’ve gifted myself a session with my own spiritual hypnosis guide for my upcoming 52nd birthday. Working with the subconscious is how I find my way through the glass boxes.

So, watch this space.

Here’s what I want you to know about boxes, all of them, the ones others push at you and the glass ones you built yourself. They are all like cardboard. You can rip them. You can poke holes in them. You have that power.

Sometimes you don’t need to rip the whole thing to shreds right away. Maybe you just start by thinning the walls a bit. Poking some holes in it. Letting some light in.

And sometimes that’s enough to start.

What’s in your storage unit? And is there a box in there you’re ready to go through?

I’ve been thinking more about the boxes I wrote about last week. A lot, actually.

Recently, five women I know have lost their lives to cancer. It’s brought something into my awareness that I can’t quite ignore.

During one of my spiritual hypnosis sessions, I met a figure called Elon. Long white blonde hair, sitting on a council of elders. He took me to a life choice room to show me why I chose to be Jody in this life. There were other choices, male ones, but it felt important to be female now, at this time, to help other women.

The message was clear.

Women are more free than ever before. But with that freedom, they have become overburdened and lost their joy.

We are able to be more, do more, want more. But somewhere that has translated into just adding more boxes to fit into. More demands, more expectations, more shoulds.

The result? Stress. Overwhelm. Busyness that overtakes presence. That’s a lot for a body to carry.

I’ve written about what busyness has taken from me. It’s not what I want for my life anymore.

In that same session, I was told my purpose is freedom. To shed things. To become lighter. To live my true essence, which is joy, playfulness, and resilience.

The time is now to shed what’s weighing me down. Maybe for you too.

Several years ago, a German businessman was trying to figure out where to put me.

He wanted to hire me. But when he looked at my CV, he couldn’t work out what box I fit into. Was I a product manager? A marketing specialist? A strategist? A communications expert? I’d done all of it, and more.

He wasn’t wrong to be confused. I’d never chosen my work based on a defined career path or a ladder to climb. I chose based on what interested and excited me next. If I wasn’t inspired, I moved on. Sometimes to something completely different.

It meant I didn’t fit neatly into boxes defined by the corporate world. And sometimes that made me feel like I didn’t quite fit anywhere. But that discomfort was still less than the frustration of feeling trapped within a specific box.

I hate boxes. Not the cardboard kind. Those are quite useful. The expectation kind. The instant I feel someone else deciding what I should be, a volcano stirs inside, and I become like a caged lion.

Tell me how I should live. I fight.
Tell me how I must work. I fight.

What I didn’t realise was that I’ve also built some of my own boxes.

During a spiritual hypnosis session, I met a character I came to call Thor. A sort of French villain-looking figure who danced around in a cocky way, performing for attention. When asked what he actually needed, he paused. Underneath the performance, he was sad and gentle. He felt he had to be that character to be seen.

And then I noticed something. Thor was dancing inside a glass box.

He could move around what felt like the whole universe. So he thought he was free. But he was dancing on the spot inside a confined space. He just couldn’t see the walls. They represented what others expected of him, and his own beliefs about what he should do and how big he was allowed to get.

Even if he could leave the box, he was afraid. Afraid of being overwhelmed by possibility. Of getting lost in it. He wanted to be free, yet the walls provided an odd sense of safety.

Thor was me.

There are boxes I will fight with everything I have. The ones other people try to put me in. The ones that say: this is who you should be, this is how you should work, this is the shape your life should take. Those I can see clearly, and I come out swinging.

But the glass ones? The ones built from my own beliefs about what I should do, what’s safe, what’s possible for someone like me? Those are harder. I can’t always see the walls. And if I’m honest, some of them still serve me in ways I don’t yet fully comprehend.

The problem is that a box is a box, even when you built it yourself.

In the session, I asked Thor where he wanted to go. He went to a silver planet with a huge sun. Crystal buildings, gentle intelligent beings in silver clothes. And there, he cut a hole in the glass box and floated through.

The people on the silver planet celebrated. Not because he had performed for them. Because he had broken through.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. The boxes I can see and have been fighting against. But now, even more, the ones I can’t see, that I may have created myself.

I’m ready to see them and break through them. Maybe you are too.

I didn’t think I’d ever want to get married again. Two failed marriages had put me off the idea.

And yet. There I was, on the back of Chris’ Harley, cruising down Beach Road in Cape Town. Arms wrapped around his waist. Wondering when he was going to propose.

I knew he wanted to. But he was deep in a house renovation that was draining him financially and emotionally. A proposal would have to wait.

My logical brain understood that completely. But my self-doubting voice was having none of it. It turned his financial timing into evidence that I didn’t matter.

That’s what the self-doubting voice does. It takes perfectly reasonable circumstances and twists them into proof of your worst fears about yourself.

Maybe he didn’t really want me.
Maybe I wasn’t a priority.
Maybe I wasn’t enough.

I couldn’t shut it off, and it was driving me nuts.

Then something on the radio reminded me it was a leap year. Some old tradition about women proposing on the 29th of February. It got me thinking.

Why was I waiting for someone to choose me?

I liked the idea of that. Of not waiting. Of being the one who decides. But the self-doubting voice had more to say. If I was the one doing it, was I just forcing a choice he hadn’t made himself? Was that proof I wasn’t enough?

So stupid. And yet I drove myself round the bend with it for a while.

I told my best friend I was thinking about proposing. He suggested I take the weekend to think about it. I had a trip planned with Chris anyway, so the timing worked.

What I didn’t plan was the testing that weekend would bring.

Stop one: a cottage on a wine farm. Fifteen minutes after arriving, Chris was in the bathroom. I was sitting on the bed. I saw movement at the door. A snake slithered in. It was the width of my arms, the length of my body. It had wrapped itself around my bag.

I called to Chris, calmly, that he might want to come out of the bathroom right away.

It was one of the deadliest snakes in South Africa. The kind that bites you twice before you know it’s bitten you. We were trapped on one side of the room. The snake and my bag were between us and the only way out.

The owner arrived with her children and dog. Chris leaped over the snake to protect them from harm. He returned with a bin, oven mitts, and barbecue tongs. He pinned the snake, retrieved my bag, and had the thing released elsewhere. Unharmed.

Day two: a trail run in the mountains. Somehow, we got separated from the group. We were alone on the trail when we found ourselves surrounded by baboons. The large male got separated from the others, which, as Chris explained, was the scenario you really didn’t want. It charged at us.

Chris grabbed a stick from the ground and charged back, yelling. They got a bit too close for my comfort before it finally backed down.

That night, I messaged my best friend. “Yeah. He’s definitely the one.”

I’d more or less already decided before the snake and the baboon. But after that weekend, I wasn’t letting him go.

What I hadn’t figured out yet was how to get his ring size without him knowing. He doesn’t always sleep well. One night, I suggested he take a sleeping tablet. I waited. When I was sure he was fully under, I took a piece of string from my bedside table and wrapped it around his finger.

When I went to buy his ring, the jeweller asked for his size. I pulled out the piece of string. “About this big,” I said.

I bought my own ring too. I’d already seen the one I wanted at an antique shop. I knew it was mine the moment I saw it.

I was a mess of nerves in the run up to the proposal. It gave me a new respect for everyone who has ever done this. He said yes, by the way.

Afterward, occasionally, I’d look down at my ring and that voice would start up again. You bought that for yourself. He didn’t choose it for you. And I’d have to remind myself what it actually represents.

Not just our love. My love for myself.

A ring I chose. A man I chose. A moment I stopped waiting for someone to offer me what I already knew I wanted.

I didn’t need the leap year as a reason. I know that now. But sometimes that’s how it goes. You need a permission slip before you’ll trust your own knowing.

Where are you waiting to be chosen, or waiting for permission, when you could just grab the reins yourself?

In my last story, I told you I was the common denominator. That wherever I went, London, Cape Town, a mountain finca in Spain, the busyness followed. Because I created it. Or I allowed it.

The question I’ve been sitting with since then is why.

Why, even when I know I want a slower life, do I still end up so busy?

It’s been harder to answer than I expected.

I keep getting an image of this monster grabbing for me, no matter where in the world I try to hide. He’s not as friendly as Sully from Monsters Inc. Let’s say he’s Sully’s evil twin. I’ve named him Buster.

Unlike Sully, Buster doesn’t hide in your wardrobe. He hides in your calendar.

I’ve been feeding Buster for years without realising it. And now that I can see him, I want to understand what’s actually fuelling him. It’s not just one thing, which is why I’ve been having such a hard time pinning it down.

Let me try to take stock.

He feeds on chaos.

The world is a busy place. There’s information coming at us from every direction, a gazillion things to do, and people to see. The sheer volume and pace of it can put us into reactive mode.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in the middle of a sandstorm, and every particle swirling around me and slapping into me is vying for my attention. There’s no chance to pause and question which direction I want to go or where I want to focus. I blindly stumble on, just trying to get through it.

It was like this when I first met Chris. I was so busy that I used to give him a printed weekly calendar with his time slots marked in. That was when he got me. Those hours. That was it.

He married me anyway, which says everything you need to know about him.

And if I’m dead honest? He usually has to schedule time with me even now. I’m still working on it. Poor guy.

He feeds on fear.

Fear of missing out, falling behind, not belonging, failing.

This is a big one for me.

If I don’t work the way others need me to, the money might stop. If I don’t have all the information or knowledge, I’ll look stupid. If I’m not available when people ask, there won’t be more invitations. If I don’t participate in that training, I’ll miss out on opportunities.

The list goes on. And Buster loves it.

He feeds on guilt.

The guilt of not being a good friend, co-worker, spouse, or mother to my puppy Bella.

I genuinely care about the people in my life and I don’t want to let them down. So I squeeze things in when there isn’t really room. I say yes more quickly than I should. And a sense of guilt creeps in when I feel like I’m not being the best I could be for them.

But all that giving goes outward. I feed Buster. I feed everyone around me. And somewhere along the way, I forget to feed myself.

It’s a buffet of not enoughness.

I’ve realised that all of Buster’s food has the same core ingredient. The feeling of not being enough. I wrote recently about self-worth coming from achievement. Same ingredient, different dish.

It’s like a low, almost inaudible hum in the background. Always there. Influencing everything.

Just one more thing and I’ll feel ready. Just one more thing and I’ll feel like enough.

I need to finally call bullshit on myself.

I have an MSc. A PhD. I’ve worked across multiple continents and co-founded a company. I have so many qualifications and certifications.

At what point does the evidence become enough?
At what point does the time I can give people become enough?
At what point do I just become enough, period?

The gap between knowing and doing is what I’m working on. Buster doesn’t give up his prisoners easily. There are still weeks when I can barely breathe, and there’s no time to even wee.

But I can see him now. And that’s where it starts.

Do you have a Buster? And if so, what are you feeding him?

I remember sitting in a Starbucks near Farringdon station in London, watching people hurry past the window on their way to work.

I had my usual chai tea latte. Non-fat milk. Extra hot. Half a pump of chai, because the normal version was too sweet.

Normally, I’d be rushing too. I liked getting into the office before everyone else. It made me feel like I was easing into the day rather than being thrown into it. But something made me stop that morning. I didn’t want to rush. I wanted to pause.

So I sat by the window.

Outside, people streamed past. Just focused on getting where they needed to go. The sky was grey. Most of the coats were grey too. What struck me most wasn’t the clothes or the weather. It was the faces.

Expressionless. Not miserable, exactly. But not particularly alive either.

As I watched them, I felt a heaviness in my gut. I recognised what I was seeing. That was me most mornings. Moving quickly from one thing to the next. Not quite present. Just getting to the next thing.

And somewhere in that moment, sitting behind the glass with my chai tea latte, I did the maths.

Eleven years.

Where the hell had they gone?

I’d had some hard times in London and some exciting ones. I’d built a career. Worked on interesting projects. Travelled. Met incredible people. Built a life. But sitting there watching the world rush past, it felt like I’d stepped outside my own life and was watching it from a distance. Like a TV show. One I recognised, but hadn’t quite been present for.

That scared me.

I’d let the busyness of life rob me of my presence within it.

At the time, I blamed London. It has a fast-paced energy that just seems to swallow you up. I was already making trips back and forth to Cape Town by then, and something in me had started to stir. I figured if I could just get out, leave London in the rearview mirror, life could calm down.

But here’s the thing about rearview mirrors: when you look in them, you still see yourself.

I left London for Cape Town. Two totally different environments. It didn’t take long before I was consumed by busyness yet again. At least this time the weather was better.

But I couldn’t blame London anymore. I was the common denominator.

I created busyness. Or I allowed it.

There was always something. A goal to achieve, a problem to solve, a deadline to meet, an event to attend. And the list goes on. It becomes your norm. A certain level of stimulation your mind and body almost need.

Even now, living in the hills of Spain, the busyness still creeps in. I still have weeks where I don’t have time to breathe. Giant to-do lists that can’t possibly be finished. When I let it take over, time moves faster.

I’m so focused on getting things done and what comes next that I’m not truly present. Living my life, but not fully experiencing it.

For a long time, I didn’t think much about what it cost me. And if I did, I’m not sure I would have cared.

Age and experience have changed that. I now do the maths looking forward instead of backward.

One day my sweet, silly dog Bella won’t be here anymore. I want time to walk her and play her favourite game of tug-of-war. One day Chris and I won’t be able to do all the things we want to do together. My parents won’t always be around, and I want to make the most of every moment they are.

Time is finite, for everyone I love and for me.

And that’s something I’m no longer willing to let busyness take away from me.

I’ve been a workaholic most of my life. I told myself I just loved my work.

What a load of crap.

Yes, I’ve always gravitated to work that interests me, and I’ve been able to work on some pretty cool stuff.

So that part is true.

But that’s not why I’ve been a workaholic.

I remember my early career days when I ran a global program for Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley. I had two weeks of holiday a year. They often went unused.

I was in my early twenties back then. Just starting out. I could say I was young and had to prove myself. Or I was immersing myself in the dot-com hype, which was the thing back then.

But I don’t think that’s what it was either.

One of my managers at the time told me I had to learn how to say no. I heard the words. But they never made it past my ears.

Someone asked for something. I delivered, and I did it well. Even if I had to work crazy hours to get it done, because I had too much on my plate.

No matter how often my manager told me, and he wasn’t the only one over the years, I didn’t change. I may have nodded along like one of those bobblehead figurines on the dashboard of a car. But nothing changed.

Saying no wasn’t even a potential option in my mind. I think on some level, I wanted to please people and not let them down. But there was an even bigger reason.

My self-worth was defined by achieving.

It started at a young age. Throughout my school years, I’d work my ass off to get good grades. And only then did I feel good about myself.

That carried over into my career.

We’re bombarded by messages about what’s considered worthy. Often, it’s about how we look, what we have, and what we do. Rarely is it about who we are.

When we meet someone new, one of the first questions we tend to be asked is: “What do you do?” We sometimes judge ourselves and others by the answer.

When the dot-com bubble burst, I took a package and left Hewlett-Packard. I moved to Denmark to be with a guy (that’s a different story). I wasn’t working, so to fill my time, I joined various expat groups to meet new people.

I was always asked the inevitable question. And I always answered: “I used to be the global mobile program manager for Hewlett-Packard.”

It’s not that I couldn’t let go of that identity. It’s that I didn’t consider myself worthy without it.

But it bothered me.

I started questioning who I was without the job title. It was a tough question to answer.

It reminded me of that scene in Runaway Bride where Julia Roberts’s character spends time after all her failed engagements just trying different kinds of eggs, figuring out which ones she actually liked. Not which ones her partner liked.

I had to figure out what I liked and who I was outside of work.

I started focusing my time on things that made me happy. Exercising more. Exploring my new surroundings. Learning to cook. Working on creative projects. Connecting with friends and being an ear for people who needed one, because expat life isn’t always easy.

Something shifted. I got to a place where my answer to the “What do you do?” question became: “I do absolutely nothing, and I love it.”

Look, I didn’t end up doing ‘absolutely nothing’ forever. I like the challenge and contribution that come with work. But when I re-entered the workplace, I did it with more awareness and a different sense of self.

I won’t lie, that workaholic part of me is a deep-rooted pattern. It still seems to pop up out of nowhere like the bloody weeds in my garden after the rain.

But now I notice it before it takes over. I feel tension and angst when it starts to get too big, because it no longer fits who I am or how I want to live.

The weeds still come. I just don’t let them take over the garden.

What are you allowing to define your sense of self-worth?

I paused for a moment before climbing onto the table.

Not because I didn’t want to. I absolutely did. The music was playing, everyone was dancing, and I wanted to let go and have fun. It was my 50th birthday party after all.

Still, there was a pause.

That tiny moment of “What will people think?”

Then I remembered a guy I play padel with. He’s in his 80s and loves dancing. The first time he told me this, I pictured him elegantly wafting around a ballroom floor.

Boy, was I wrong.

With a fist pump into the air and a twinkle in his eye, he told me he loves trance music. Whenever the duff duff starts playing, he’s the first one dancing, whether it’s at a party or in the middle of the street.

I loved that.

There’s something refreshing about people who stop managing themselves so much.

So, I got up on the table and danced.

What I remember is feeling alive. Smiling down at everyone dancing on the sand below, and them smiling back. Exchanging fist pumps with strangers. Nobody cared how old I was. They just saw a woman having a great time dancing on a table on the beach in Spain.

Last year on my birthday, I did it again. And I already know where I’ll be this year when I turn 52. At the same restaurant on the beach in Spain in July, which is exactly where you should be if you enjoy dancing on the beach in the afternoon sun.

I’ve been thinking about that pause though. Because I don’t think it came from nowhere.

I think it came from old judgments I absorbed and carried around for years.

When I first moved to London, I did some contract work for a tech startup. When the contract ended, they wanted to hire me full-time. The head of the company sat me down and made me an offer.

I was appalled.

The role and salary were incredibly junior. I asked whether he’d actually looked at my CV. Was he aware of my experience and age?

He told me he assumed I was younger because of my energy.

Not because of the work I’d delivered for them. My energy.

I turned down the role. The sensible thing would have been to accept it. I was about to travel for a few months, living off savings, with no income coming in. Having something lined up when I got back would have been the smart move.

But I still couldn’t bring myself to take an offer that was beneath me just because my energy had made me appear more junior. What really stung was that when I corrected him, he didn’t correct himself or the offer. It felt like a double rejection. Not of my work, but of me.

Looking back now, I can see how much that shaped what I showed the world. On several occasions after that, especially in work situations, I found myself toning it down. Trying to appear more measured. Packaged the way people seemed to expect. I was just reinforcing the same dynamics I resented.

I don’t know exactly when that started to shift. Maybe it was the dancing on the table. Maybe it started before that. But somewhere along the way I stopped performing an overly serious version of myself and started showing up as the actual one. And the thing I didn’t expect: the more I’ve owned it, the more I find other people want it.

Here’s the thing about me. I make shit happen. I also happen to like laughing loudly, dancing when good music comes on, and bringing a lot of energy into the things I care about. Apparently, being visibly energetic and being taken seriously are not always considered compatible. Especially for women.

Women are often given a narrow range of acceptable ways to be competent. Don’t be too emotional. Show you can get shit done, but not like that, not with that energy, not laughing that loudly. You’ll come across like a schoolgirl. Be serious enough to be credible, but not so hard that you’re difficult. It’s a very small box to squish yourself into.

And it intensifies as we get older.

There’s this subtle pressure to become more contained over time. More polished. More measured. Less visibly excited by things. Like seriousness is somehow the price of being taken seriously.

A lot of women start editing themselves without fully realising it.

Not in dramatic ways. Just small adjustments. Lowering the energy. Laughing less. Becoming more measured, more contained, more careful about how they come across. Performing a more serious version of themselves until the performance becomes the habit.

I met my husband because I wasn’t doing that.

I was 40 and on my way to running club in Cape Town with a friend, one of those people who brings out your most ridiculous self. As we got close, we started doing the running man down the street like complete goofballs, laughing our asses off and not caring what anyone thought.

Chris told me later that when he saw that, he knew I was ‘the one’. He hadn’t even met me yet.

I’ve thought about that over the years.

How much of life changes depending on whether you shrink yourself or stay open inside it.

Maybe choosing yourself means expressing the parts of you that make you feel most alive. Even if they don’t match how other people expect you to show up.

What parts of yourself have you been hiding away?

I lay on the floor of my apartment for a week, crying. I had opened the gate, and the tears just kept coming and coming. I had to call in sick for work. I could only stomach bananas. My therapist was worried the workshop had gone too deep, too fast.

I was glad it had.

I’d always prided myself on being strong. If shit hit the fan, I was a rock. I got things done. I fought whatever battle was needed. Vulnerability was for everyone else.

An earlier therapy session comes to mind. My therapist had me do a visualisation and then asked me to draw what I saw. I can’t remember what the visualisation was, but I remember exactly what I drew. A person covered in dark armour from head to toe. Spikes protruding from all sides. Two bright blue eyes peering out from behind the heavy metal headpiece.

I knew it was me.

That image had been accurate for a long time.

Then I went to an intensive personal development workshop, and something shifted.

We spent the weekend doing exercises to explore ourselves, open up, and trust each other. The grand finale was an exercise of your own choosing. Something that let a previously hidden part of you emerge.

For people who were usually shy, it was performing in front of the group. A dance, a song, a reading. But that wasn’t me. I had no problem performing.

That was exactly the problem.

I was always performing in one way or another. Being who I thought others needed me to be. Acting strong and capable. Getting shit done.

The hidden part of me was the little girl who was unseen, in pain, and who had built armour around herself for protection.

So, my exercise was different.

All the workshop participants sat on chairs in a big circle. Maybe twenty or thirty people. I slowly walked up to each person, stood in front of them, and held up a photo of me as a young girl. I looked each person in the eyes and asked them to look at the photo, and to see me and love me.

The armour that had protected me for so long felt like it was ripped off.

I’m sure I was shaking as I moved from person to person. But each person took time to look at the photo, then me, and really see me with love. No one laughed or mocked me or pitied me. They just held the space and saw me and loved me.

As I made my way around the circle, tears began to flow. Giant tears, from a well that had been building for a long time. I let them come. I felt supported.

I didn’t walk out of that workshop having it all figured out. I walked out feeling seen and supported, but cracked open and raw.

Slowly, in between the waves of tears on the floor of my apartment the following week, I began to integrate it. The tears were cathartic in a way I hadn’t expected. It was a release. I was painfully sad, but in a weird way, it also felt good. Like how you feel after vomiting, even though vomiting is a bit shit.

Fully integrating the experience and this newfound part of myself took time. A lot of journalling. Conversations with my therapist and people from the workshop who continued to support me.

What I found on the other side of that workshop wasn’t weakness. It was a different kind of strength. One I hadn’t known was available to me. A real strength that comes from allowing yourself to be vulnerable and being okay with it.

Now I feel my emotions and I give them space. If I feel lost or scared or overwhelmed, I can admit it, to myself and to others. And if I need to cry, I cry.

Where are you wearing armour that you think is protecting you, but might be keeping you hidden? Is there a part of you that’s been asking to be seen?

Cape Town had an energy that drew me in. When I was there, I felt like I was being plugged into a socket. Recharged.

My best friend had moved back after a stint in London. He invited me to visit for Christmas. I’d been there once for work and it hadn’t done much for me. This time was different. Living his life alongside him, it felt magical. I just knew I had to be there.

I started visiting more often. A couple of weeks every few months, then four out of every six weeks. I still had a job back in London but I couldn’t bear to be there anymore. Eleven years, and I was done. The trains, the tubes, the volume of people, the distance to real nature. Done.

The guy I worked for was open to me going back and forth. As long as the work got done, it was fine. We were both happy.

Until he left the company.

My happy arrangement started crumbling around me. People started questioning why I got to spend so much time in Cape Town. The new guy didn’t like it. What really upset me was that I knew most of those people wouldn’t do the same even if they had the chance. Why did they have to piss all over my parade?

I’d always wanted to do a PhD, and my plan had been to do it at the University of Cape Town while continuing to work from there. But it was made very clear that if I stayed with the company, Cape Town wasn’t an option.

I could do the PhD remotely and travel for classes once a quarter, the way some people did. But I wanted to be there. Properly. Immersed in it.

The problem was, I had no other job lined up and my savings, while okay, weren’t great. The thought of not having income freaked me out.

I scribbled living costs and PhD costs in my journal, over and over, trying to bring the numbers down wherever I could. Each time I found a way to shave something off, I’d feel a flicker of hope. Okay, this looks more doable.

And then I’d sit back and feel it. That low pull in the pit of my stomach. Because this wasn’t how I had pictured my life in Cape Town.

I kept having to remind myself that I wouldn’t end up a bag lady living in the gutter. I was smart, I was willing to work hard, I would figure it out.

Everything in me said: go for it. Take a risk. Jump in and trust yourself.

So I did.

I quit the job, gave away most of what I owned, packed two suitcases and moved.

The first week I was there, before my PhD had even started, I met a guy who was launching a new fintech company and needed a Chief Marketing Officer. I ended up co-founding it with him and leading marketing while doing my PhD at the same time. And the week after that, I met the man who would become my husband, Chris. But that’s another story.

I’m not going to pretend the leap wasn’t terrifying. It was. The self-convincing was real, the fear was real, and there was no guarantee it would work out the way it did.

But something in me knew. And the one thing I’ve learned is that when something in you just knows, it’s worth paying attention to.

Is there a pull you’ve been ignoring? Something in you that just knows, but you haven’t quite let yourself trust it yet?

It took me years to be able to say it with any confidence. “I don’t work Fridays.” And even longer to actually mean it.

For a long time, I didn’t dare ask for what I wanted. I was consulting, but most of my time was going to one company and its clients. I wanted Fridays for myself. Time to breathe, to think, to do the things I actually wanted to do. But I was terrified to ask for it. At the heart of it, I was afraid people wouldn’t want me anymore. If I wasn’t there when they needed me, why would they keep choosing me?

The move to Spain gave me the opening I needed. Chris had been retrenched from South African Airways during COVID, and there were no opportunities for him in South Africa. We had to find a place to rebuild, and everything pointed to Spain. Suddenly, for the first time, I had a reason to ask for what I wanted. One that other people might actually accept. We needed time to explore different areas to find where we wanted to live, and Fridays would give me that time.

This was before the whole movement around four-day work weeks had really taken off. I couldn’t point to that and say everyone’s doing it. I just had Spain.

So I asked the person I worked for. And he said yes.

I felt a huge sense of relief. Like a door had finally opened in a cage I had been locked inside for a long time.

You know what? The world didn’t fall apart. Work kept coming. People didn’t care as much as I had feared. That extra day gave me something I hadn’t even fully understood I was missing. I realised that two-day weekends, the norm we’ve all just accepted, aren’t really enough. One day to wind down, one day to prepare for the week ahead. There’s no day to actually breathe, to explore, to just be. Now I had that day. And I loved it.

After a year in Spain, it was time for a new role. This is where the real test came. My previous client and I had found a comfortable rhythm. But this was someone new, and I couldn’t use settling into Spain as a reason anymore. But I wasn’t willing to give up what I had found. The pain of going back to working Fridays was greater than the fear of being rejected. So, with some trepidation, I told my new client I didn’t want to work Fridays. It came out as more of a request than a statement. I breathed a sigh of relief when he agreed.

But here’s the thing about patterns. They don’t just disappear because you’ve won a battle. New role, new clients, and almost immediately my old habits started knocking. When someone asked for a Friday meeting, I could feel everything inside me wanting to say yes. I didn’t want to let anyone down. I didn’t want them to think less of me. The fear of not being wanted was still there.

I realised something important. If I don’t keep my own boundaries, nobody will keep them for me. No one was going to protect my Fridays except me. That meant I had to get practical. I had to find ways to protect me from myself.

I added a note to my email signature saying I work Monday to Thursday. It was a bigger step than it sounds. I was announcing it to the world. What if people didn’t like it? But if I didn’t tell them, how would they know?

Then came the Fuck Off Friday message. Every Thursday before I sign off, I set up an out-of-office. I started out calling it my Freedom Friday message, but let’s be honest, that was never really what I meant. Everyone and everything can wait. This time is mine. Go away. I do still have to make sure I can’t see emails on my phone every weekend to stop myself from getting sucked in.

Basically, I had to find ways to outsmart my own patterns.

It reminds me of Bella, my dog. When I’m running an online workshop and need to keep her downstairs, she’ll try absolutely everything to get past whatever I’ve put at the bottom of the stairs. She jumps around it, squeezes past it, stares at it willing it to move. My patterns are a lot like Bella. Determined, creative, and completely shameless. If I don’t stay one step ahead of them, they’ll find a way through.

It took years to get here. But I can now say “I don’t work Fridays” with confidence. Looking back, I’m a bit annoyed with myself for letting it take so long. I couldn’t take the first step without a reason I thought other people would find acceptable. Just wanting it for myself wasn’t enough. I was too scared of how people would react.

But here’s what I know now. Wanting something is a reason. It doesn’t need to be dressed up or justified or made palatable for anyone else. And honestly, that goes for a lot more than just Fridays.

Is there something you want that you’re putting off because just wanting it doesn’t feel like enough? Or because you’re worried about how people might react if you actually asked for it?

The sun was coming up over the lake. My dad would be awake in about 30 minutes. I had my window.

Chris had tried to call from Spain. I’d sent him a message asking how things were going. He responded asking me to call him and then tried to phone. My phone was still on silent from the night before. I should call him back. I should be there when my dad came out for breakfast. But I wanted to run.

I could feel the frustration building. That familiar tug of the shoulds pulling against what I actually wanted.

I went for the run.

I’ve always loved running along the lake near my parents’ house in Canada. It’s a big lake, nestled amongst the hills and the pine trees. Something about it just takes you away from everything else for a little while. I only get back every one or two years.

I’ve been battling the shoulds for a long time. I now hate the word. I hate when I say it to myself and I hate when other people say it to me. These weren’t big life-changing shoulds. They were just the small everyday ones that quietly stack up and crowd out what you actually want.

These shoulds were all about time. And I’ve come to appreciate how precious it is. If you don’t protect it, it just slips away, used up by other people and things, with nothing left for yourself.

As I ran, I thought about a friend who messaged me recently, laughing. Her kids thought she was depressed because dinner was late and dad had to drive them places. She’d started making time for herself, to play pickleball.

It’s funny how when we start to prioritise time for ourselves, the people around us aren’t always quite sure what to make of it. But here’s what I’ve learned. When I make time for myself, I actually have more to give. I top up my own tank first, and then I can be more present for the people I love.

I got back from my run feeling alive, energised, and ready. I had felt the sun on my face, smelled the pine trees, and watched the ospreys flying overhead.

My dad was at the table eating his cornflakes when I walked in. He looked up, already knowing the answer, and asked if I’d been for a run. I smiled, went to the fridge, grabbed my yogurt and fruit, and sat down beside him.

I called Chris after breakfast. He was down at the beach with friends, enjoying the Spanish sun.

The version of me that sat down with my dad that morning was better for having run. So was the version of me that called Chris.

Is there something you keep putting off for yourself because the shoulds keep getting in the way?

I pulled out my personal journals recently. Thirty years’ worth, kept in a box. I grabbed a handful, opened to whatever page I landed on, and started reading.

What jumped out again and again was my struggle with self-doubt and the pull to please people who wanted to fit me into boxes that made sense to them. Yes, I made big life changes and went for what I wanted. But it was an all-out battle. I’ve spent most of my life fighting, in one way or another, to choose myself.

A friend once told me I inspired her. It surprised me. I thought she was talking about someone else, or she was a bit looney tunes.

To her, I was someone who beat to my own drum. I left relationships and jobs that didn’t fit, moved to countries that called to me, and always created the life I wanted. On the outside, I looked like I had it all sorted. On the inside, it was a shitshow.

As I read those pages, I felt sadness for the girl who struggled, and no one really saw. I felt anger at all the people who tried to put her into boxes. And I felt something spark within me.

It took a conversation with that same friend to turn the spark into a flame. As long as I’ve known this woman, she’s been driven, successful, and takes no prisoners. I admired her and was even a little scared of her sometimes. She’s recently discovered a part of herself that’s been hidden, even to her. A softer, more emotional side that wants space and a voice. That can be a scary thing to do, and an even scarier thing to share.

Listening to her made me realise I’m not alone, and neither is she. And surely, we aren’t the only two women on this journey.

That’s why I built this.

I want other women to know they aren’t alone. I want them to feel seen, and to know someone gets it.

I haven’t reached some final destination. There isn’t one. It’s an ongoing journey. It does get better, but sometimes it’s still frustrating as hell. But I’m still here, still working at choosing myself.

Maybe you are too. Is there a version of you that nobody really sees? Maybe she’s been waiting long enough.

I was on a plane to Helsinki, thousands of feet in the air, sun on my face, butterflies in my stomach. I looked down at the clouds and thought: I know I need to do this. I would regret not having done this.

My marriage wasn’t working. I just didn’t know what to do about it yet. I was 23 when we got married, 25 now. We had just moved to Silicon Valley from Vancouver for my work. I had been offered a Product Marketing position at Verifone. It was exciting. I was travelling, meeting new people, and at the center of the dot com boom. Life was starting, and I felt alive. But the same wasn’t true for my husband.

He wanted to be back home, close to his parents, have kids. The big wide world didn’t seem to call to him as it did to me. He struggled to fit the fast-paced dynamism of Silicon Valley. When I’d go on business trips, he would drink all the alcohol in the house and use my work Internet connection to entertain himself with women’s naked mud wrestling. It was dial up connections back then and the content got flagged on the work system and I received warning emails. Not great.

Life was great, but we weren’t. I realized that one of us was going to end up unhappy. Either I was going to drag him around the world when he just wanted to be back home, or I’d end up back home feeling like a bird with clipped wings. The tension grew... but I didn’t do anything about it. I was too scared. It had only been about two years. It felt like such a failure.

I’d always believed people got divorced too easily. That they just didn’t try hard enough. On top of that, I grew up Catholic. We’re not supposed to get divorced. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I held it all inside and it would try to come out of me through green bile vomit.

I must have eventually mentioned something to someone at work. Or perhaps I just started looking worse for wear because somehow I ended up seeing a company-funded counsellor. And that’s where I learned the difference between my learned self and my authentic self. Who I learned to be was the girl who married my husband. But my authentic self was someone different. She was starting to emerge, like a tiny light amongst the darkness, shining light on things that didn’t fit who I truly was or maybe who I was meant to become.

I hadn’t been able to trust my internal voice because it was still such a quiet whisper. I needed something external to help me see more clearly. And then I met someone on a business trip. He was a business guy who wanted to experience the world, someone who got it, who felt the pull of it the same way I did. Suddenly I was facing a choice: stay with my husband, take the safe route, maybe have a pleasurable life. Or take a risk and possibly have the love and romance of a lifetime, the kind people only dream about but few ever experience. I booked a flight to Helsinki to see him.

I knew people would have opinions about it. A married woman flying to another country to see another man. But for the first time, I felt something I hadn’t felt before. A quiet, solid knowing that this was right for me, regardless of what anyone else thought about it.

I didn’t know it then, but that moment on the plane was just the beginning. I was starting to choose myself, maybe for the first time.

But truly learning to choose myself? That took another 25 years. Because even though I had made a bold move, my authentic self was still just emerging. I had so many patterns and learned behaviours pulling me backwards, keeping me stuck. It took time, and experiences, and a lot of work to strengthen that voice. Shit, the journey was hard. And it’s not over yet.

Maybe you’ve had a moment like that. A moment when the door to choosing yourself opened, even just a crack. It doesn’t have to involve dramatic decisions or big life changes. Sometimes it’s just a quiet pull inside you, nudging you toward something you can’t quite name yet. If you feel that, pay attention to it. That pull is your authentic self. And she’s worth listening to.