Beautiful friends,

I want to be honest with you.

I feel like I’ve forgotten how to write. Forgotten how to tell you things. I’ve been changing and healing and evolving so much, and it feels like the communication lines have been cut somewhere deep in my soil.

But the page and this penpal connection of ours has been one of the most sustaining gifts for two decades now… and I know if I sit long enough at the keyboard, the story will emerge… the tears will fall… and the gems of wisdom will emerge from the mud.

*I’ve returned from a heart-opening adventure. I was asked to speak at the National Ausmumpreneur Conference, and it ended up being so much more than that.

It was soaked with so much joy, connection, insights & miracles.

I wanted to share it with you.

It started with the most miraculous of mundane things. Flung skyborne, hurtling through a portal, I wonder as I always do at the beginning of a journey: What story will unfold in the coming days? How will this change me?

At the airport, I’m met by one of my dearest friends Tam who has decided to join me on my journey. We scuttle our way through eastern Melbourne down to Geelong, marvelling at everything we see: the fields of canola, the vast quantities of electrical wires, a tractor manufacturing hub, unidentifiable fields of vegetables growing (“probably some form of brassica,” remarks Tam which makes me positively chortle).

I’ve never been to Geelong before. Hung with fog and festooned with church steeples, I’m fascinated by the town’s mix of historic homes and modern concrete. We spend some merry hours walking her streets, exploring all she has to offer.

The merriest of hours? The one where we find ourselves in a secondhand bookstore, gasping with delight, sharing with each other our most treasured childhood friends. I find an early edition of Enid Blyton’s “The Enchanted Wood.” There’s a certain kind of rapture being in a beloved place that’s just as beloved by the one you’re sharing it with.

I also got to meet and spend time with two of my beautiful Momentum Mastermind coaching clients – Johanna Badenhorst, a psychologist and founder of ADHD Her Way and Andrea Rae, an intuitive and mental health occupational therapist. We’ve just had two incredible months diving deep in the mastermind, and to come together in person felt even more special.

So much has happened in the gift of that mastermind, and that needs an email all of its own… but it has been one of the most profound things I’ve experienced in my career… so much so, after completing 8 weeks together, I’m starting another round in a week.

It feels like the sacred healer and intuitive parts of me are merging with the business strategist and guide… where women’s circle work and business growth combine.

It’s extra special to be there to celebrate Johanna as she took home Gold in the Online Education award. It felt like a beautiful new era for me as well… I’ve previously won a bunch of awards, including the Online Education award… and now this next evolution is getting to support other beautiful humans to win those awards and have those glorious successes. What joy.

There’s something extra special about getting to visit crystal stores with our own built in crystal intuitive with Andrea. We spend some angelic hours in the company of rock friends and new friends alike. Our Satellite Hearts is a cacophony of pink, bringing hippy goodness to a new generation. Kymba is tended to by some good humans who know and love the stone world, and I leave laden with crystal treasures… and one special gift for someone.

And then the time comes, and the stage calls.

I want to be honest with you… I used to find conference speaking SO EASY. I had it down to a fine art. I could russle up a deliciously creative presentation, ham it up on stage, and count on the laughs. I felt so competent and at ease in it.

And then last year, I felt called to start shifting the body of my work. To take business and weave it more deeply back into the spiritual and intuitive realms. And it’s felt like I’m right on the edge of my competence and confidence… like I’m digging deeper, and expanding my toolkit, and it’s breathtaking work. I’m speaking things which are more vulnerable. I’m channelling messages that take all my courage to say. And so now, when I stand on stage, my back sweats, and I pray: Please let me be a channel for Great Spirit. Please let me say the words that the souls here today need to hear.

Now, when I stand on stage, I can’t rely on knowing I can wow people with some zany repartee, can’t measure my success on how many belly laughs I can make erupt. Instead I have to hold the line, and trust what comes through me.

If you listened to the free recording of my Heart Centred Business Conference talk I gave last year, you’ll know the shift. And this talk continued on that thread of work, and took it to even deeper. It was sweat-inducing, and courage-expanding… but I’m so proud of myself for doing it.

It was a gift too, to connect with the beautiful souls who approached me afterwards to tell me how much it resonated with them.

And… I’ve had it recorded, so I can share it with you. It feels like these talks are becoming signposts in my journey and the way my work is deepening. It should be ready in the next week or so, then I’ll send it to your inbox, with love.

A miracle happened there, too.

On stage, I spoke about my birthplace – Proserpine, a tiny farming town in Northern Queensland.

When I came off the stage, Andrea came sweeping towards me.
“You have to meet these sisters… they are from Proserpine too!”

And I have to be honest with you… I feel worried sometimes, sharing my family name with people from my hometown. I worry (with good reason) that one of my vast extended and often batshi* family have warred with theirs, or news of our own internal family wars have met the outside world.

And I meet these three beautiful sisters, and there is this instant connection and familiarity. And in that small town way, we discover all the threads that link us together… how I shared a homeroom with one of them, one went to school with my husband’s cousin, the other’s husband worked with my brother.

And here we are, meeting on the other side of the country.

They were there supporting their sister Kim’s business. Kim is a family psychologist, and four years ago, she lost her beautiful son Ethan to leukemia. And like the earth angel she is… she channelled her broken heart into healing the world. She has created an app called Kids Connecting Parents to connect grieving parents and carers. When she told me her story, it was at the end of a conference session, and we barely had time to finish speaking before the crowd swept us away. I just held her arm and said: “I want you to know I understand the grieving thing. I lost my brother when I was young. I know how life-altering it is.”

The next night, she spotted me and came running over to hold me by the elbows. “We didn’t get a chance to finish talking last night. I wanted to tell you, I knew of your brother. I knew of your family when it happened. I’m so sorry it happened. You would have been the same age as my other son was when he lost his brother.”

And of course, many more tears fell. Sometimes the grief well just opens up, and all there is is water. And we held each other by the elbows, and I whispered to her through my tears:

“I know it’s impossible to even think it possible, but for me, my brother dying was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“How could that possibly be?”

“I know. And I didn’t think it in the early years of losing him, but I see it so clearly now. Losing my brother was a gift. It made me see life so differently. I could hold it all more now. Love it all more now. It just hurts to be a human who is missing the one who isn’t here anymore.”

I give her a rose quartz orb. I pray that it gives her solace when her grieving mama heart aches.

She, and her sisters, give me a more undefinable gift.

And I can barely tell you what happened, but it felt like some kind of deep ancestral healing took place between us. How I suddenly felt for the first time that maybe there were others like me when I was growing up in my hometown. I’d felt like an alien there, unable to understand the language or the current. It might have taken me 30 odd years to get an Autism diagnosis, but I’m pretty sure all the hundreds of kids in my primary school spotted it in me a while ago. There, that one. That freak. What is wrong with her? I learned to guard myself from the bullies, learned to hide my lack of friends by spending lunch hours in the school library. I don’t know if I was even friendly or open to friends. I was too busy being afraid and utterly alone in a sea of normals. I disappeared into the world of books instead, and made my own world there.

And when I looked in the youngest sister’s eyes, I had moments of remembering her from school. Snatched glances before I studiously looked away. There was no security in connection, didn’t want to open myself up to ridicule. But maybe, just maybe, there were others like me. Tender-hearted, sensitive spirits. Who were just waiting for the tsunami of school and a tumultuous childhood to be over so they could find their own soft place in the world.

And then 30 years later, we meet in a large room across the country, and we can meet each other as we are. Open hearts, oceans of tears, holding each other, and sharing some of our biggest stories with each other. We could meet each other, and see each other, and love each other. It was profound.

When we say goodbye, one of the sisters whispers:

“I’m so glad we met you at last.”

“I feel exactly the same way.”

 

***

 

And so I return the way I came.

Through the fields of (suspected) brassica, the vast links of electrical wires. Onto the plane that flings me over the Australian alps, back into the waiting bosom of Canberra.

The question I flew in with has been answered. The story has happened to me, and transformed me. I am damp with tears. I am braver than I’ve ever been. I am lifted, and I am loved. And I am grateful for it all.

Thank you for sharing it all with me.

 

Big love,