Good weather in the summertime makes me feel different – and I'm not just talking about the hot sweats and red face i wake up with – I'm talking about the way it makes me feel differently inside and in my mind.
I feel like i can fully live out my whimsical cute garden-life fantasy when the summer comes. I wake up without a care in the world, everything seems possible and I love everything about myself and my slow, quiet life – BUTTT, sometimes I live out my whimsical cute garden-life fantasy a lil too much to the point where I forget that I actually have real life, grown up responsibilities...oops.
My mind used to be my worst enemy, and if you’ve also gone through dark periods in your life, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. But I’m proud to say that my mind is now my best friend, – I love getting lost with her, daydreaming with her, and just being with her.
Sometimes me and her get lost in our whimsical cute garden-life fantasy that we stall, and we forget to move forward and run with the lively, vibrant, vigorous cyclical energy that summer brings us. What can I say 🤷🏻♀️ I just LOVE being in my garden, with the flowers beside me, trees rustling and the poetry that is birdsong flowing through my ears – getting lost here, and inside my own InnerWorld, is heaven on earth to me.
Nevertheless, that to-do list that hangs around me like a lost puppy throughout the months of June-August has to get done at some point...because, well, your girl does have to make a living!!
me in my garden lol 👇🏻
I sent that TikTok to a friend once saying “this is literally me”, and I think if I sent it to you, you'd probably send back “same” – not because we're all garden enthusiasts lol, but because the InnerWorld, for women like us, is the garden. It’s genuinely a wonderful place to hang out but also, if we're being honest, the reason the to-do list is still waiting...
I see you 👀
The woman who has been “getting ready” for two years.
The one whose offer is perpetually “almost finished”.
The one “ready to rebuild her exisitng business”...but never actually does.
The one whose branding has been a DIY work-in-progress since a season she'd rather not name.
BUT I see the version of a woman within you all...the one who is genuinely growing, genuinely evolving, genuinely deepening her InnerWorld – but is using that growth as a reason to wait just that lil bit longer to be ‘ready’.
The preparation becomes the ‘purpose’.
The reflection becomes the ‘output’.
The ever-deepening self-knowledge becomes the ‘progress’.
The journals full of wisdom become your ‘work’.
Readiness, for a woman like you, has a way of shapeshifting. Every time you reach it, it moves. Not because you’re not enough, but because your self-awareness is so finely tuned that it can always find something more to refine, more to understand, more to become.
Your InnerWorld matters enormously, but it was never meant to be the only place you live! When the sacred space you’ve built inside yourself becomes somewhere you hide out rather than somewhere you createfrom, something quietly begins to contract. The distance between who you are and what you’re putting into the world grows wider.
This is something you do SO WELL – You go inward. You sit in the silence that most people are afraid of. You journal, you read, you reflect, you tend to your InnerWorld with care and devotion that is, honestly, quite rare in the crazy modern world we exisit in!!
But somewhere between the going inward and the coming back out, something has stalled. The dream is clearer than it has ever been, the inner knowing is there, the readiness is...well, almost there ;-) and yet the thing you are wanting to create – the life, the work, the expression of everything you carry inside – is still waiting!! Still in the journal!! Still in the “I’ll do it soon”!!
You are not lazy. You are not lost. You are not wrong for being the way you are. But your InnerWorld has become a hiding place (like my garden).
The dreams of women who carry a particualr kind of depth and sensitivity are NOT meant to stay inside, no matter how rich our InnerWorld’s are. Your magic, your medicine, your gifts, your InnerWorld – none of that was given to you for your own private indulgence, trust me – it was given to you for a reason, to bring out, to create from, to offer to the world!!
Your InnerWorld should be the source you create from.
There is a version of you that already knows this, the one who gets a download at 6am and feels (for a moment) completely certain. The one who writes ideas down so clearly she can almost touch it. The one who knows, with an a deep intrinsic knowing, that she is meant for something more...
That version of you is not naive. She is not getting ahead of herself...she is right!!
My invitation to you is to let her out. To take the thing that lives in the journal and give it somewhere to go. To let the InnerWorld become the foundation of something that exists in the outer world too.
It doesn’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to be ‘ready’. Just do the thing!! In whatever small, unglamorous, imperfect way you can.
Consider the following prompts as your nudge to come back inside from the garden, make a cup of tea, and actually look at the to-do list....
These are not questions to rush. They are not a productivity exercise or a goal-setting framework – they are an invitation to just be honest about where you are and what has been keeping you stalled! Feel free to take your time with them...
Where in your life or your work has the going inward become a substitute for the moving forward? Name it as specifically as you can.
What does ‘ready’ look like for you right now? And if you're honest, is that version of ready something you could actually reach, or does the goalpost keep moving?
What is the thing that you long for the most (the vision, the work, the business, the version of your life) that has not yet made it into the outer world? Describe it without editing!
What would it mean to take one small, imperfect action toward that thing this week? Not the whole thing, just the next small baby step?
If the woman you’re becoming were writing you a letter right now, the one who has already created the thing, who has already taken the steps – what would she want you to know?
The garden will always be there – so will the summer...but the thing you're creating needs your love and attention too! Honour the depth of who you are, but also to let that depth move – into the world, into your work, into the hands of the people who are waiting for what only you can offer!
The dreaming and the creating shouldn't be opposites...they were always meant to be partners in crime.
