In the hustle of everyday life, it’s easy to get swept away by the demands of work, family, and the ever-growing to-do list. But what if we could pause – just for a moment – and connect deeply with ourselves, the present moment, and the world around us?

This is the magic of small rituals.

I’ve learned first-hand how transformative these moments can be, particularly through the daily Balinese ritual of canang sari.

In Bali, every morning begins with the preparation and offering of a canang sari—a small basket made from palm leaves, filled with flowers and incense and other little offerings. This simple act, performed with reverence, honours the divine and expresses gratitude for the day ahead.

This little ritual has become part of my everyday, it brings me back to myself in ways I didn’t expect.

It reminds me of the beauty in the present moment, grounding me in gratitude and connecting me to the simple joys that so often go unnoticed. The vibrant flowers, the aromatic incense, the act of giving thanks – each element and gesture serves as a reminder to slow down and appreciate life as it unfolds.

It is these small rituals that have the power to transform our lives. They root us in what truly matters, offering moments of peace and connection amidst the craziness of the outside world. When we intentionally create space for ritual, no matter how small, we invite mindfulness and presence into our days.

Take a moment to reflect on your own daily life:

• What small rituals do you have that bring you peace and calm?
• How do you create space for small pauses and gratitude in your day?
• Is there a simple activity—like savouring your morning coffee or taking a few long deep belly breaths, that helps you connect with the present moment?

At our Bali Soul Retreat, small daily rituals are an integral part of the experience. Whether it’s a morning meditation, the ritual of journaling, or simply sitting in silence to welcome the sunrise, each moment becomes an opportunity to return to yourself, reflect, and reconnect with your inner truth.

Just as the canang sari invites gratitude and presence, acknowledging the small rituals in your life will help you embrace more peace, joy, and alignment in your life.

It’s been a year since my husband died.

A year since that fateful Saturday morning when I found my husband unresponsive on the lounge.  

A year since life as I knew it would never be the same again.

The last year has been the most painful and challenging year of my life, but it has also brought with it love, joy and magic.

I want to share with you some of the lessons I’ve learnt over the last year.

1. There are no lessons

The first lesson I learnt is that there are no lessons. When I was growing up and I was taught a lesson, it was because I had done something wrong or made a mistake. My husband’s death wasn’t a lesson. Instead, I see it as a life experience, giving me the opportunity to evolve and grow from it. Now I know, the deeper the experience, the greater the opportunity for personal growth.   

As Henry Ford said “Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.”  

2. My identity changes as life changes

Over the last year, I have found myself asking who am I if I’m not a wife? I didn’t realise how much of my identity was tied up in my relationship. In the process of losing my husband I also lost my sense of self. And I have spent the last year rediscovering my true self, beyond the roles that define me day to day.  

3. It is possible to overcome my greatest fear

As well as losing my sense of self, the loss of my husband triggered a massive fear of being alone. Instead of running away from it, I chose to lean in and face it.  
I discovered that I’ve had this fear my whole life. Since I was a little girl, I’ve never enjoyed being on my own. I now see that it’s been a sign that I didn’t have a very healthy relationship with myself. I knew I needed to love myself through my grief and in order to do that I needed to work on the most important relationship in my life, the one I have with myself.

4. Life is short

When your husband dies at the age of 51, it’s a harsh reminder that life is fleeting. Things that once seemed important no longer held the same weight. The frustrations of life and unmet expectations, whether they were my own or others’, robbed me of joy, allowed me to get caught up in the rush of life and disconnected me from what truly matters. I’ve now gained clarity on what’s truly important to me and I’m prioritising those, even if it means disappointing someone else.

5. Trust my intuition

Over the last year I’ve started to really tune into my intuition. The quiet little voice that has been hard to hear when I’m not used to listening — it now speaks to me through dreams, coincidences and gut feelings.

I’ve realised that if I make decisions based on my intuition rather than logic, I actually made better decisions, even if at times they don’t make any sense, they feel scary or feel really hard.

6. I am much braver than I ever realised 

Sometimes we don’t realise our own bravery until we’re faced with a situation that requires it. Performing chest compressions on your husband while your 8-year-old watches over, and trying to find the words when your 4-year-old asks when daddy is coming home. These experiences demand a level of courage that you never knew you had, but you do find it when you must.

7. Life moves way too fast

I have spent a year slowing everything down and being very quiet and still. I’ve needed to retreat away to do a lot of soul searching and in doing so I realised just how fast the world around me is moving.

When many people told me to get busy and distract myself from my grief, I turned to meditation, journaling and quiet contemplation instead. And it has been one of the best things I’ve done for my spiritual growth.

8. The small things really are the big things

The things I miss most about my husband are the small everyday things. I miss hearing him walk through the front door after work. I miss watching him play with the kids on the loungeroom floor. I miss the way my son would say dadda when he walked into a room. I miss his hugs and the smell of his clothes. I miss picking up his socks and shoes from underneath the dining room table. I miss the simplicity of just his presence in the house.    
In the stillness and quiet, I am now in awe of the everyday moments. They are no longer boring and mundane to me, and they never will be again.

9. I now see the gifts in all things

Shortly after my husband died a friend told me that one day I would see my loss as a beautiful gift. It’s hard to see tragedy as hidden gifts, but these gifts can impart a level of wisdom and transform our lives in such a profound way if we shift our perspective and allow them to. These types of “gifts” are not packaged up in beautiful wrapping paper tied up with a beautiful bow, but real-life experiences in helping us become a much greater version of ourselves.

10. It’s ok to give myself permission to be happy

Grief is confusing and complicated. I have often found myself questioning everything.
I remember the first time I went out after my husband died. I went to the movies with a friend. As I was standing in line for the tickets, I was looking around to make sure there was no one I knew because I didn’t want anyone to see me there having a good time. Over the months that followed, I would very often catch myself laughing and questioned if it was ok.

It’s not just ok to be happy, it is essential that we live our life in full colour, not just for the kids and I, but for my beautiful husband who is no longer here to experience his own life in full colour. I’m now taking radical responsibility to live life to the fullest for both of us and I’m committed to living out the dreams we had once planned together. 

My husband’s death has left a huge hole in my heart. But what I now know is that his death was a beautiful gift that has allowed me to find a strength I never knew I had, and a richness to life that I never knew existed.

If we are prepared to lean in and be brave enough to journey through life’s greatest challenges, we can come out the other side with a renewed sense of self, feeling empowered and believing more in the magic of life.

Through my grief I have peeled away the layers of who I thought I needed to be, beyond the role of wife, mother, sister, daughter and friend. And I have discovered this new version of me, a version I’ve never known before and I’m looking forward to getting to know her a lot more in the months and years to come.

I’m learning to trust, let go of control, and let life unfold in whatever ways it needs to.

There are no lessons.

I’m just here for the experience.

It really is one hell of a crazy ride!

IS IT TIME TO TEND TO YOUR OWN BEAUTIFUL HEART?    If anything I’ve shared has stirred something in you, you may want to join me on one of my next retreats and give yourself some space to tend to your own beautiful heart and rediscover your own sense of self.  Click here to find our more about upcoming retreat experiences 

 REST.

It’s a topic I have explored deeply over the last few years, so much so that I have created a business around prioritising rest. 

Why?

Because I never really valued rest. I always thought it was a waste of time, there were always so many other more important things to do. But when I found I was sleeping 8-9 hours a night, yet I was still waking up feeling exhausted, I knew something wasn’t right.  I had all the blood tests done, my iron was a bit low, but nothing could explain the lack of energy and depletion I felt.

We go through life thinking we’ve rested because we’ve had enough sleep — but in reality many of us are waking up feeling exhausted because we’re lacking rest in lots of different areas of our life. 

Rest is also not valued by society, so we don’t prioritise it. But it’s the #1 problem I hear from women who come on retreat over the years.

We’ve been conditioned to keep going no matter what. To turn on our superwoman powers so we can keep up with the fast paced, over-culture we live in, one where we’re over-achieving, over-producing and over-giving wins every time.

And it’s leaving us chronically tired as a result. 

A few years ago I came across Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith talk about rest, and she explained that we need seven types of rest in order to truly thrive. I felt it explained why the answer to exhaustion, depletion and burnout  isn’t simply to get more sleep, it’s identifying the types of rest you need in different areas of your life and then adopting small daily habits and routines to replenish them.

If you’re waking up feeling exhausted, or you struggle with your energy day to day, you may be experiencing a rest deficit in a particular area of your life. So let’s explore the seven areas now.

1. Physical Rest 

The first type of rest we need is physical rest – both passive and active. Passive rest is sleeping and taking a nap. Active rest is things like yoga, pilates, massage or gentle stretching. Any activity that helps improve the body’s circulation and flexibility.

Signs that you have a physical rest deficit are body aches and pain, stiffness in your shoulders and jaw, or swelling in your legs and feet after sitting at your desk all day.

If your body feels physically tired, you need to prioritise more physical rest. If you struggle to get a good night’s sleep, look at your evening and morning routines. How you start your day and end your day will have a big impact on the quality of your sleep. 

2. Mental Rest 

The second type of rest we need is mental rest. When you feel mentally tired, it feels like you have dozens of tabs open in your mind all at once and you struggle to concentrate. If you are mentally tired, you might find it difficult to fall asleep at night because your mind is racing, and you struggle to quieten the mental chatter. Or you walk into a room to get something, and you can’t remember what you came in to get. If you struggle to concentrate or recall information, you need mental rest. It’s time to start closing down those tabs in your head.

Practicing mindfulness, having a meditation practice, and pausing regularly throughout your day, will help to calm your overthinking mind and give your mind the rest it needs.

3. Sensory Rest 

The third type of rest we need is sensory rest. In today’s technological world, we are bombarded by sensory inputs. Phones pinging, the light in the office or the backlight of your phone and computer, the noise of the TV, or your kids iPad playing in the background.  The number one way most of us respond to sensory overload is irritation, agitation, or anger. If you have a sensory rest deficit, you may find that you feel good at the beginning of the day, but by the end of the day you’re irritable, short-tempered and frustrated.

The best way to get sensory rest is to be aware of your surroundings. Unplug from as many sensory inputs as you can and be aware of how these inputs negatively impacts your behaviour day to day and adjust accordingly.

4. Emotional Rest 

The fourth type of rest we need is emotional rest. This is the rest we experience when we feel calm and we’re able to be real and authentic with others in how we feel. Many of us carry quite a bit of emotional baggage around with us and we struggle to be honest and share our feelings with others.  

If you’re suffering from an emotional rest deficit you may feel the weight of the emotional burden you carry, all those expectations and pressure, and you suppress your feelings instead of sharing them. You may feel you have to self-silence and keep your emotions in check, you may also feel the constant need to please others.

Emotional rest requires the courage to be authentic. To speak up for what you need and be free to express how you feel with those closest to you.

If you’re in need of emotional rest, you’re probably in need of social rest as well.

5. Social Rest 

The fifth type of rest we need is social rest.

When we have a social rest deficit, it means we’re spending too much time with people who drain our energy. Social rest is the rest we feel when we’re in solitude or when we’re around positive people who give us energy. Most of us spend a lot of our time around people who need a lot of our energy.

If you feel like you never get time for yourself or, you feel like everyone is constantly draining your energy, it’s time for some social rest. This could be time on your own in solitude, but it could also be choosing to spend more time with people in your life who give you energy, your life giving people. Those people, who after spending some time with, you walk away from feeling really good, like your energy has been restored.  

6. Creative Rest

The sixth type of rest we need is creative rest. This is the rest we experience when we slow down enough and allow ourselves to see the awe and wonder in the beauty of life. From the beauty of nature to the beauty in music, arts or dance.

When you have a creative deficit, you have a hard time problem solving or coming up with new ideas. Creativity is more than just being artistic; it’s any type of innovation or self-expression. Because many of us don’t see ourselves as creative, we never think about how we could reinvigorate our creative energy.

Spending time in nature, and turning spaces in your home or at work into places of inspiration and joy are two great ways to reduce your creative rest deficit.

7. Spiritual Rest

The final type of rest we need is spiritual rest. This relates to our fundamental need to belong. When we have a spiritual rest deficit, we may feel like our life is lacking purpose and fulfilment.

Spiritual rest is our ability to connect beyond our physical and mental world and feel a deep sense of belonging, love, acceptance and purpose. We need to be able to connect with our spiritual beliefs, whatever that is for you, God, universe, spirit. We also need to engage and contribute to society in a meaningful way, either through paid work or non-paid work such as volunteering.

If you don’t feel like your life has meaning or purpose, you will continue to feel exhausted at a soul level. You will feel like things are out of alignment and it will drain you.  

Perhaps your life looks good on paper, you have built a very successful life on the outside but perhaps you have neglected what’s happening on the inside.

Whether due to a lack of time, a lack of awareness, or a false belief that you lack worth, many of us neglect our own needs, and therefore experience rest deficits in one or more of these seven key areas of life. Bringing attention to our personal needs is vital as it allows us to do the inner work necessary to truly connect with, and truly understand ourselves.

If you’re feeling exhausted and depleted, what are 1-2 areas where you might have a significant deficit? What type of exhaustion are you suffering from? The area that I have needed the most rest has been emotional and social rest. I started there and the more I focused on what kind of exhaustion I was feeling, I could quickly shift my focus to that area I needed rest in.

We have to get better at being aware of our depletion levels in each area of our life so we don’t get to the point of exhaustion, overwhelm and burnout, because the road out from there is that much harder to come back from.

It’s the awareness of the things we do each day that will make the biggest difference to our overall health and wellbeing. 

 All you need are a few small things you can start doing today. 

IS IT TIME TO START PRIORITISING REST?    If you’re feeling the need to calm your busy mind and connect with yourself on a deeper level, we have a number of retreat experiences and a monthly reset session to help you pause and slow down. Your retreat experience will help you redefine your relationship with rest and help you reduce the exhaustion that impacts areas of your life. With attention and intention, you’ll gain greater clarity and focus you’ve been seeking. Click here to find our more about upcoming retreat experiences 

I get asked this question often, especially when facilitating retreats.

As someone who often tries to take on more projects than I can handle, I know what it’s like to juggle many responsibilities. Keeping up with work, family and self-care often feels like a never-ending rat race.

Balance obviously means something different to everyone, yet most of us are seeking it in some way or another. When we’re stressed and overwhelmed, finding balance seems like the ultimate answer to our problems.

So what does it mean to lead a well-balanced life and why does balance feel like an elusive concept?

What I have learnt over the years is that balance is not something we can get; it’s actually a state of mind. It’s the realisation that life is not stable but in constant motion.

Balance is about finding harmony in our internal world so we can more easily juggle the many balls in the air.

It’s no secret that most of us are feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the contant juggle. We feel like we never have enough time to get everything done, and we’re constantly chasing after something that seems just out of reach. We crave more balance in our lives, but how do we find it amongst the contant juggle?

The first step to finding balance is to look within. When we’re feeling out of balance, it’s often because we’ve lost touch with our own needs and wants. We get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life that we often look outside of ourselves to find the balance we crave. It’s important to take some time each day to connect with your inner self. This can be done through a mindfulness practice like meditation, journaling, or simply taking a few deep breaths and asking yourself with kindness and compassion what it is that you need right now.

The second step is to get in touch with our masculine and feminine energy and know when one or the other is out of balance. In our fast-paced world, it’s easy to get caught up in the masculine energy of doing and achieving. This can lead to feelings of stress and anxiety. It’s important to also nurture the feminine energy of being and receiving. This can be done by taking time for yourself, spending time in nature, or doing something that brings you joy. Everything in life contains both feminine and masculine energy. In order to find balance, we must learn to embrace both energies and notice when either are out of balance.

Personally, I’ve found the balance of doing and being a hard one to strike. We live in a world that values doing and achieving above all else, and I have wrapped a lot of my self worth around being a doer.  But I also know that it can come at a cost to my health if I don’t balance out the doing with being.

I realised that prioritising being amidst all the doing is a critical part of creating a balanced, healthy life. Not just on weekends or holildays, but every single day.

Mindfulness meditation is the most effective practice I’ve found to help me shift out of doing and relax into being. I’m reminded that it’s okay to allow things to unfold, instead of always directing or controlling them. I’m able to hear my intuitive voice beneath my monkey mind chatter. I’m also more connected to my body and its signals. When I feel stressed or overwhelmed, that’s my body’s way of telling me that I’m more in my masculine and that life is out of balance. I know I need to slow down and connect more to my feminine. Now, I choose to pause and meditate (even for just a few minutes) instead of pushing through no matter what, and I feel the benefits immediately.

The third step is to acknowledge and honour the seasons of life. Just as the world goes through seasons, so do we. There are times when life is full of activity and movement, and there are also times when things are more quiet and still. It’s important to respect both the highs and lows, and to find balance within them. As winter approaches, it’s the perfect time to retreat inwards, to rest, reflect and allow ourselves time to renew our overall sense of wellbeing.

By attuning ourselves to the natural rhythms of the earth and finding balance between the masculine and feminine energies within us, we can begin to find a sense of harmony in our lives. When we are able to find this balance, we can start to live more authentically and with purpose. We can also begin to let go of the things that no longer serve us, making juggling less balls much more effortless and allowing space for more joy and ease into our lives.

So, the next time you’re feeling out of balance, take a moment to connect with yourself, your own masculine and feminine energies and become more aware of the season you’re in. By doing so, you just might find the secret to finding more balance in your own life.

I hope this blog post has inspired you to start your own journey towards finding greater balance from within. 

It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday and I wanted to use this occasion to talk about some false truths about motherhood and to uncover the reasons why so many women struggle through the early years of parenting.  

I have sat with hundreds of women over the last couple of years, and these false truths I’m about to share with you, contribute to the enormous load that so many women struggle with.

We have bought into some truths about motherhood that simply aren’t true. They are making us really exhausted, keeping us in our overwhelm, and feelings of guilt and shame are stopping us from really exploring what a pleasure filled life can look like. So, what are these false truths?

 False Truth #1

To be a good mother you need to sacrifice your life for your children.

It’s called “The Good Mother” syndrome and is the typical 1950’s housewife description. Women have sacrificed their life for their children for years because they believed that’s what they needed to do and never questioned it. Then in the 60’s and 70’s everything changed with the wave of feminism. Feminism empowered women to have it all. But what actually happened was that in addition to being a mother, women could also work, have their own business and say yes to more opportunities.

We were told that we could do it all. But no one mentioned what would happen to the caring responsibility of the children. What happened was that we just added mothering to a long list of to-dos. Mothering became another tick box that we needed to get done.

Now to be a good mother today you have to be able to not only be a domestic goddess, but you also have to work like you don’t have kids and parent like you don’t work, and often without a village around you for support.

Burnout, stress and anxiety started to become the norm and women soon realised that the idea of having it all would lead to burn out.

But that stopping and stepping back wasn’t an option because of the second false truth.

False truth #2

To be a successful woman you must be able to do it all and be superwoman and that our strength only comes from constantly pushing and being able to handle it all.

And when we have this belief running deep, we just keep going no matter what, feeling more and more depleted until something forces us to stop – we get sick or we simply break down. And then when we do finally stop, we feel like a failure. We feel guilt and shame that we couldn’t keep up and wonder why everyone else seems to manage it all and we can’t.

Before kids, my identity and self worth was completely wrapped up in my work. After having kids I had to completely rethink who I was but it took me almost 7 years to get to that point of realising that I wasn’t the same person I was before kids and I had to rediscover my new truth and reshape my identity as a woman and a mum. 

False truth #3

Motherhood comes naturally and you will love every minute of it.  

This was a core belief of mine before having kids. My expectations of motherhood of being effortlessly patient, nurturing and kind, thinking it would all come so naturally from a place deep inside was far from the harsh reality I faced as a new mother. 

Motherhood did not come naturally to me and when I couldn’t breastfeed my boys, I thought I had failed. The guilt and shame robbed me of my motherhood joy.

We often have such high expectations of ourselves and we put ourselves under an enormous amount of pressure to perform every job to the best of our ability. So when we suddenly don’t meet those expectations, our world starts to crumble.  

These false truths are stopping us from living a life that truly makes us happy. 

The real truth is that everything in our lives works better when we prioritise ourselves and we’re thriving. We feel better when we have energy, when we’re nourishing ourselves, when we’re giving from the overflow of our cup rather than a half empty cup. When we give from the overflow, we give from a place of abundance rather than resentment.

When we look at the beliefs and expectations around motherhood, we can see why it’s so hard to be a mother in the modern world and how attached we are to these false truths.

To be a good mother, we actually need to constantly be filling our own cup and we can’t do that if we have this underlying belief that it’s selfish. We would never drive our car with no petrol in it, we are constantly refilling our car tanks. So why don’t we refill our own tanks on a more regular basis?

I hear from so many women who tell me that they are completely exhausted. They are struggling in their relationships and there is a distinct lack of joy and pleasure in their lives.

Many women I speak to don’t have the basic self-care fundamentals in place because their lives are so busy and moving at such a rapid speed that there is simply no time or capacity to even fit in the basics like nourishing food, regular movement, rest and good quality sleep.

Even though we know that everything feels better when we’re thriving, we don’t focus on those things because consciously or unconsciously we have been led to believe that there is no other way.

I have spent the last few years rediscovering and redefining my own truth. I realised it was not my fault that I felt this way and trying to be worthy, and this self-sacrificing behaviour, was not the answer. The truth I like to now live by is that to be a successful woman I need to rest and soften and not to feel guilt when I say no. To be a good mother I need to prioritise my own needs on a daily basis, and when I do then everything else in my life works so much better. My ability to parent and show up in my marriage, to be present in everything I do each day and to be grateful for it all. So, I go on girl’s weekends away, I go out for coffee with friends, I meditate, I laugh, I find pleasure in the simple things, I go for walks in nature, I spend the time making nourishing foods for myself (not just for the kids), I spend quality time with my husband, I move my body with exercises that feel good, and this year I am also taking myself off to a retreat for a whole week. Because at the end of the day, this is my life, I deserve to feel amazing and I choose to make the most of every moment.

I wonder what being a good mother and a successful woman means to you and how much these false truths influence your choices and the way you live your life?