The Courage to Feel

This isn’t my usual post-holiday post. But then, this wasn’t an ordinary holiday.

I’m so glad we spent this week together. There was sun, sea, family time, and a kind of aliveness that feels precious when you’re standing close to the edges of life.

My mum said something that has stayed with me: “I thought I’d never see the sea again, let alone swim in it.”

Her words were sad and beautiful all at once. They hit me hard. That is the hard, cold edge of life.

I am a woman in her prime, and I am also ageing. Both things are true. Some of that I welcome wholeheartedly. Some of it scares me. And inside some of it are the quiet seeds of grief.

I am in another transition now, wondering what my 50s will bring. I have a young child. I have a puppy. I have elderly parents. Life feels full, demanding, tender, and unpredictable. It is incredibly complex at times. It is also electrifying.

At 50, I find myself confronted by opposites. Love and fear. Love and grief. I am beginning to understand that it is possible to grieve someone while they are still alive. Sometimes that person is me. At other times it is my mum. At other times it is my dad.

My mum has always been my strong one. Steady. Capable. The matriarch. An ex-nurse and ward sister with many hands, many skills, and a way of holding things together that made her seem almost untouchable. But now she is 76, and she has started to face a range of health issues. That shift has something quietly devastating about it. It changes the whole shape of the family.

I can feel myself facing my own mortality in new ways. The fact that death is inevitable. The fact that before I reach it, I will likely have to face the deaths of those I love.

This is not a gloomy realisation. It is a truthful one. Life is not only about what we gain. It is also about what we lose, what we fear losing, and what we love enough to grieve before it is gone.

Heart-led, but not always heart-easy:

I’ve always been heart-led. I trust my intuition. I lead from feeling as much as from strategy. I believe in love as a compass, in connection as a form of leadership, in the power of speaking truth even when it trembles.

But facing strong feelings like grief can be really hard, even for a heart-led woman.

Because when you feel deeply, you feel grief deeply too. You don’t just skim the surface of loss; you go into it. You carry it in your body, your sleep, your energy, your capacity to focus. You notice how it changes the way you move through the world.

• Ignoring it doesn’t work.

• Numbing it doesn’t work.

• Pretending to be fine while quietly falling apart doesn’t work.

We have a choice. We can keep trying to push grief to the edges of our lives, or we can let it teach us something about love, wisdom, and what it means to be human.

Grief as a form of love:

I don’t believe grief is the opposite of love. I think it is love with nowhere to go for a while.

When we grieve a parent, a partner, a friend, a version of ourselves, we are not just mourning what is gone. We are honouring what mattered.

Grief is how love continues when the shape of life changes. And when we allow ourselves to feel it, instead of hiding it, something shifts.

We become more real. More present. More able to hold space for others who are hurting. More willing to say the things that matter before it’s too late.

Maybe that is part of midlife too: learning how to stay open to both love and loss.

• To love harder because time is finite.

• To notice more because nothing is guaranteed.

• To keep swimming, even when we know the sea is deep.

I am choosing to be moved by love…

A new offer for August: The Inner Temple:

The sea, my mum’s words, the grief, the ageing, the longing to live from love and reality is exactly why I’m opening a new, limited offer for August.

The Inner Temple is for women who know they need to return back to their core.

Who want to follow their heart’s desires and take time for themselves in an honouring way.

• It’s for women who want to feel calm, focused, and step into their full magnetic potential.

• It’s for women who feel stuck and sense, yes, I need to drive my own life bus again.

• It’s for women who know they have fallen into apathy, frustration, grief etc and want to know what’s next.

If you’re ready to join the passion wagon, message me and I’ll give you more info.

August offer:

• £300 for 2 sessions

• £600 for 5 sessions (This would usually cost £1,500.)

This is a limited-time rate for a limited number of women, so if you feel called, reach out and I’ll walk you through how it works.