and the way this feels so not random but random at the same time never ceases to amaze me.

because on one hand I still feel a bit out of sorts… I’ve lost my morning writing habit that was feeling so solid and secure before we left for Bali... and maybe that’s the point. trusting that I can lose my way and find it back again, as many times as it takes to remember.

to remember who I am underneath it all. underneath the hard life shit, the grief, the sadness, the sickness, the worry, the fear, the joy, the love - all of it.

and on the other hand it feels so timely. because last week I had no idea whyyyy tf I’d gotten so sick. why I missed out on our holiday we’d so been looking forward to. why I couldn’t seek out the water cleansing ceremony I’d so felt called to partake in...

and on the weekend, after receiving some really horrible news about my uncle, it hit me and it all felt divinely orchestrated.

I had my own ceremony, my own cleanse, my own spiritual experience, in and out of my feverish dreams. it feels like my brain was purposely taken offline so that I could have a homecoming of sorts. a remembrance in my return to self, and a clearing out of the old to make more room for what’s to come.

btw - it all sounds so much cuter than how it felt in reality.

on Saturday, whilst I was still ears deep in the migraine from hell, I got a message from my aunt that my uncle had just gone through, and luckily survived, a major heart attack, and was awaiting surgery to get 3 stents put in his 3 totally blocked arteries...

life has a way of putting things in perspective when we need it the most sometimes.

being estranged from my mum, having lost my dad just over 4 years ago, and navigating the very complicated layers of grief through both losses (you can read more about the complexity and messiness of that here.)

my aunt and uncle aren’t like “normal” aunts and uncles (whatever that means). they’re truly like the parents I never had. they’re the only adults I’ve been able to look up to and truly feel safe around, where my nervous system could actually relax and not be in a constant state of looking out for any signs of instability or danger…

and even just typing that now brings up so much grief - because it’s wild how I can’t fathom even treating my dogs that way, nevermind children, but I digress.

to me, they’re really the embodiment of the supportive family that I didn’t have so much in my immediate family but thankfully have in them. and our relationship and the space they’ve held for me especially over these last 4 years has been so beyond healing for me, I don’t really have the words to explain the depth of what their support and love means to me.

there is no way that if I’d been given the parents I wanted, I would have had the family I truly needed.

in today’s essay I’m getting into the stuff I’ve never dared to utter out loud. the one sentence my dad said to me when I was 12 that made me furious for most of my life (and what it took me 31 years to finally understand), what it means to receive the family we need instead of the family we’ve always wanted, and how grief and gratitude can live side by side for the exact same people. I’m also sharing the conversation with my aunt about my uncle’s healing that might sound completely bat shit crazy, and why I’m sharing it anyway 🤍

(there’s also a collective energy update for the rest of 2026 at the end - idk it just felt like it was coming through and I needed to share: what’s behind this big clear out, why it’s ok if nothing makes sense right now, and the question I’m sitting with to close out the year. plus my fav Vedic astrologers and the YouTube playlist I keep revisiting.)

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the trip started off great…
ok that’s a straight up lie, it was average to poor from the beginning.

Chris and I started to come down with a cold a few days after flying, it probably did not help that everyone we met was flying in from all over the world, a lot of them were coming from the northern hemisphere and had a cold they were battling too. we were fighting it - nothing some hard core vitamins and homeopathics I packed couldn’t fix…

It was Chris’s best mate that was getting married so we got through the hens and all the catch ups on sniffles alone. not idea, but manageable..

a week in was the wedding, and that’s when I started to feel like shit. I woke up the next day wondering why tf my body felt like it had been hit by a truck. by the afternoon I was fighting for my life on a 15 minute walk in the heat that felt like the great trek across the sahara. that’s when I finally clue’ed in and knew things were taking a turn for the worse…

I spent the next four days locked in my hotel room, barely able to eat or sleep, with a migraine, body aches, fever and a cough from literal hell. the pain behind my eyes was so bad I literally couldn’t move my eyeballs.

my immune system went from your average c student to a disgruntled gen z that quit without notice…

enter: the worst sick person ever - me…

after three days of fever I dragged my sorry ass out of bed, determined not to lose my last day in paradise and my chance at catching one more sunset. I spent the whole day on the beach trying to sweat it out. Probably not the smartest move I’ve ever made and the topping it off with a good ol’ dose of bali belly that night really sealed that deal for me.

to say I’ve been feeling bitter would be the understatement of the century. I’ve told Chris no less than 50 times how I’m never going to bali again (to be fair our last trip smashed me with the head cold of the century and bali belly that hit mid flight on the way home whilst I was wearing WHITE yes I repeat WHITE, linen pants. I still think I deserve an award for the level of bum clenching that saw me through that flight.
(deeply sorry for the visual but I had to live it in real time so I feel the least you can do is sympathise with me.)

suffice it to say I was a tinsy bit annoyed about missing ANOTHER beach holiday and being a debbie downer who couldn’t string a sentence together…

the worst part? realising how much more miserable I was making myself by being so damn annoyed at my body. as if i caused it. as if my body planned this revolt the whole time.

like - I wouldn’t be angry at my dog for being sick. I wouldn’t be annoyed at 6 year old me. I wasn’t annoyed with Chris, and he had the same flu.

but me? I was an absolute bitch to me. not out-loud, but worse - inside, where it counts the most.

you know what part really stung? I was one of the sickest of the group (yup this flu moved through every unsuspecting victim of the wedding party and guest list)… I was one of the sickest and I didn’t even drink. the people who treated it like a 7 day bender were totally fine.

being part of the sensitive bodies club feels so damn unfair sometimes…

add on a debilitating obsession with getting curious about those feelings of annoyance and you’ll have an idea of the added mental hell I was in…

because the truth is when I really sat with those feelings, it wasn’t just annoyance.

it was frustration with what will never be.

I’ll never be the girl who binge drinks for two weeks and still drags herself to the gym, gets to work and manages to figure it out. actually, scratch that. I was that girl all through my 20’s and I was low key miserable.

it was grief…for doing the most for my health and feeling like all I got to show for it so much of the time is simply not being in debilitating pain.

it was sadness… because I know my sensitive body is processing approximately 99.99999 times more than most bodies, and god damn, that’s a lot of unpaid labour.

the sensitive body, the sensitive read

I used to think one was separate from the other.. that my sensitive body was a curse honestly, a burden, something I’ve been given to just have to deal with and navigate my entire life... but now I’m seeing it as the portal, not the problem.

it’s the same path to some of my greatest gifts, not a detour away from them. because we don’t get one side of the coin without the other. I don’t mean this in a ‘we have to suffer to receive our gifts’ I mean this as just the reality of living at a different vibrational plane than most.

We don’t get mad at the canary for picking up on the gas before everyone else and how she gets sick faster... we acknowledge both for the gifts that they are.

the other awkies thing I brought home

after a week and a half of forced rest that didn’t feel restful at all, there was nowhere left to hide. somewhere in-between my fever dreams and my debilitating migraine I realised something I’ve been conveniently avoiding for a while…

I’ve been a closet psychic for some time now.

the way I can read people is uncanny, sometimes disturbing and often uncomfortable (for me, mostly).

It’s not your typical psychic skill-set so I’m going to do my best to break this down for you so stay with me here…

It starts in my stomach. not a thought, not a judgement. but a knowing that someone isn’t who they’re showing themselves to be. not in a way where I’m picking up on ‘bad’ people (sometimes tho I definitely can sense the inconsistencies that feel shall we say a little more deliberate)…

but mostly I get the sense where something just doesn’t line up. I either get the vibe that I want to distance myself or I just get a very strong feeling of something being ‘unsettled’.

I can see (like quite literally SEE) where people are overworking because they’re afraid. I can see the potential they’re ignoring. I can feel the gap between where they are and where their soul wants to go. it’s like i can see their soul blueprint, and then I can distinctly feel where they’re at now, and the difference to me looks like a shadow, as if you put one version of them over the other and I can see the gap where it doesn’t line up.

and 99.99% of the time it’s not my business. So I sit in that discomfort and notice the gaps and usually I keep it all to myself or the odd time I check in with someone to see if they notice anything too…

I’m not sharing this because I think I’m special, I know for a fact that I’m not and this is so so so common and accessible to most of us. I’m sharing it more to call myself out/in? I’m sharing it out-loud because one of my mentors has been nudging me on this for AGES…

I recently had an energy tune up session with her and she asked me straight up ‘when are you coming out of the closet?” my reply “to the vibe thing I pick up on? likely never”…

I’m sharing it because the very logical part of my brain wants to poo poo this until I have more ‘proof’. but I’ve been spotting inconsistency from a mile away for as long as I can remember.

I’ve been witnessing people’s roadmaps since I did my first energy intuition training course over 15 years ago and it only gained more strength the more I coached and continued to work with women.

I just always told myself it was that I was really really good at strategy. It was my excellent pattern recognition, that I could just see the roadmap for people because that was my ‘thing’ but really it was my intuition the whole ass time.

I have friends who are energy healers and psychics who’ve been telling me this for years and of course, I chose to ignore them.

So this realisation isn’t really a new thing, it’s a reckoning, an acceptance of what I’ve always felt but didn’t feel worthy enough to claim.

I know my path isn’t telling people what to do, I won’t be busting out readings anytime soon. I don’t know exactly where this is leading, and for once that feels more than ok.

But I have a sneaky feeling there’s a trail of cookies I’m meant to keep sniffing out. I’ve always known I was a truffle pig, I just thought the power was in my nose, not my tinfoil hat.

xx
Elise

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P.S. I’ve missed you all and I appreciate you for being here and hanging with me during my hiatus. If you’ve found yourself down this weird path too, I’d love to know about it, let me know below! and if you enjoyed this it would mean the world to me if you shared it or perhaps gifted someone you love a subscription. I have a feeling things are about to take an even weirder turn here and I’d love for you to come along if you feel the call.

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q: dear God/Source/Universe, what will you have me say, what will you have me do, how do you want me to lead?

a: speak your truth, share your heart, lead with love.

^^ wanted to share my practice from day 7 with you because the answers I receive never not amaze me in their simplicity and potency

welcome to day 8!!!!! we’re well and truly IN the practice of receiving and holding, and the magic that occurs when we truly let our heart lead and allow ourselves to be guided.

which sounds alll so lovely and cute, and in reality is actually really fucking uncomfortable and hard, because it’s so stretchy for so many of us, and so foreign to how we’re naturally wired, when so many of us have successfully survived life so far operating in exactly the opposite modus operandi.

I want to share a story of what’s unfolded for me over the last 2 days, because it feels so uncanny, so out of left field and so ironically aligned with what we’ve been doing together that I just know I’m meant to share it with you. if for nothing else, a big ol’ slice of evidence that this work, works.

I alluded to it yesterday, but I wanted to make sure it was “legit” before I shared it with you all. it’s still unfolding as we speak, which I think makes it extra important to share, because I have no idea how this is going to turn out either.

so, after day 5, when I did the letting-our-energy-lead practice alongside you, I woke up to the strangest message in my TikTok DMs.

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hiiiieee, we’ve made it to day 7 and honestly this is where things go from good to great imo because we’re transitioning from holding to having. I wanted to share the concept of having because I’ve wrestled with this through so many layers of my own journey and let’s just say there’s a few things I’d definitely change if I could do it again.

I felt super called share more via a lil’ voice note/riff just like I love to send to my best friends because there was just so much I wanted to share about this practice before we dive in.

Give this a listen first and then we’ll dive into today’s practice below.

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hieeee - ok two things before we dive into today’s practice.

1. I have a pretty crazy story to tell you about what’s been unfolding for me this week whilst doing this work alongside you. I’ve been a touch slack with sharing everything day by day but I promise to share more soon (doing a double check to see if this crazy thing is legit or a scam - interesting either way..) all that to say I’ve been very much IN this process with you and I hope you can feel that!

2. I literally realised last night that I have in fact NOT started our group subscriber chat. I’m heading to Bali on Saturday for a wedding so I don’t want to start it now because I want to be able to be really present in there so I thought this was a good time and opportunity to see what you guys want? let me know below if having that community space feels helpful or if it feels like another thing to have to keep up with on social media.


before we dive into the practice today I would LOVE for us to do a check in on yesterday’s practice.

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it’s day 5 and we’re at the offical halfway mark, where the easiest thing in the world to do is drop off so today we’re keeping it short and simple - very much on purpose.

because the point of this practice isn’t to do a bunch of new things every day. the magic isn’t in adding 50 new things to our already overflowing to-do list.

that’s not reclamation, that’s repeating the same underlying pattern so many of us have: that in order to expand our capacity, be anchored so deeply in our truth that no one and no thing can carry us out of it, and become a clear, strong channel to receive, we think we need to DO more, but really it’s about peeling alll that bs back.

and like so many other things in life, that truth is often so much simpler (and sometimes harder) than our brains think.

today we’re putting things into practice a layer deeper (I love today’s practice and I’m always amazed at what happens when I do it).

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today is the day we transition from healing to holding, from needing to ‘fix’, ‘do’ and ‘control’ to simply putting out our receiver antenna and allowing what’s meant for us to find us.

and as passive as that may sound, I know you know how very not passive this practice is. especially for those of us (hi) that are so well versed in achieving.

I’m really flippin’ jazzed for us, because this is where the rubber meets the road (x2) and things start to open up so we can allow life to get really really fucking good.

a concept that has changed my life was very much inspired from this beautiful Rumi quote:

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my favourite time of day is sitting down with myself in the morning with my coffee and sunlight in my eyes, getting quiet and getting to tune in to this beautiful space and what’s coming through for us today. so for that and for you showing up here again - thank you.

loving reminder… please don’t stress if you miss a day, if you don’t see this ‘in time’, if you can’t do it perfectly. one of the most important parts of the process of radical self-reclamation is radical grace, radical self-compassion and the practice of taking pause before our mind takes over. so just noticing any of that means you’re doing it exactly right. (file this under things I need to remind myself of 10 times a day).

today we’re taking things a layer deeper.

we’ve started the excavation of our mind and a practice of bringing awareness to our beliefs, judgements and how we’ve viewed the world to create a clearer channel with our own inner knowing. now we bring in the soma and the body.

I deeply believe and have so much faith and trust in the innate intelligence of my body. that’s been a journey - let me tell you - as someone who’s also struggled with chronic health challenges almost my entire life.

what I know to be true (after studying holistic nutrition formally and being the psycho of a 5/1 generator researcher I am) that our bodies innately want to and will do everything they can to come into homeostasis. defined as the automatic process that allow us to keep a stable, balanced inside environment while the outside world changes.

if that isn’t a metaphor for the key to life I don’t know what is.

learning how to tune into the messages of my body, learning how to tap into the innate wisdom that she holds and acknowledging the lost art that our ancestors have known of for centuries of our bodies innate capacity to guide us in healing and in our own soul’s path… has changed my life and has healed my nervous system in ways nothing else could touch.

so today we’re going to open up that door, that portal and start creating space for that deep wisdom and communication to drop in.

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it’s day two (squeeeeee!). I’m so grateful to gather with you, and I want you to give yourself some credit for showing up for yourself here today too.

a gentle reminder: this process does not have to be done perfectly. this radical self-reclamation will live forever on my substack, so you can come back to it time and time again.

as much as I encourage you to show up for yourself for the 9 days, because it’s so beneficial to do this together in community, and there’s something definitely to be said for building up the muscle of showing up for ourselves (that’s a big part of radical self-reclamation - honouring our word to ourselves is how we create deep trust), you know what’s best for you, and I trust that you’ll follow exactly that.

today I feel really called to share with you how I see so many of us shifting in this moment in time.

I want today to be one where you simply get to receive what I’m sharing and come to your own truth by way of curiosity (I’ve got some really beautiful journaling questions to help you get there).

I know if you’re here, you, like me, have moved through what’s probably felt like 50 dark nights of the soul. we’ve done so much healing work, we’ve done so much “personal development,” we’ve poured our everything into healing our physical wounds and our emotional and spiritual ones.

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Eeek you’re here! I’m so so grateful you’re joining us for this journey. I wanted to record a special welcome message so listen to this voice note before you continue reading.

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it’s a blend of energetics, cellular, and quantum work that’s truly laid the foundation for me healing on so many levels, physically with adenomyosis, and energetically and emotionally from allll the good ol’ childhood trauma that’s given me the gift of dark humour, with a side of wisdom.

this is the thing I don’t see anyone talk about, that I know is really the underlying thing that kept me so stuck and out of alignment for years: thinking the goal was healing, achieving and fixing, when really, the practice was honouring more of me exactly as I stood in that very moment: radical self-reclamation.

turns out that healing, and feeling truly unabashedly happy as a clam me, was just a lovely side effect.

dare I say this isn’t even MY idea, but something that wouldn’t leave me alone. so we’re going to explore it and do it together.

I was reading The Pivot Year, by Brianna Wiest last week and something along the lines of the below quote really stuck with me:

we don’t know the full impact of the moment we’re in, and we don’t need to trust in what we cannot see yet. we just need to give ourselves over fully to the moment and trust that it’s right, and let it transform us the way it’s meant to.

which feels like the perfect permission slip for what I want to invite us all into.

because here’s one thing I know to be true:

the more we move into acceptance of self, the more we can radically reclaim what has always been true. and what if that’s the map forward?

what if it’s less about needing to figure out what’s next, and more about anchoring into who we are right now?

what if it’s more about allowing the message of the present moment to fully land, so we don’t need to soldier on forward, but rather we get to allow it to unfold in front of us?

kinda like the harry potter stairway. where they don’t need to figure out how to get to the next level of the place, they just trust that when they take a step, it appears. it actually IS that simple. and also that hard (at least for me!)

there’s so many ways I’ve experienced this, but the clearest one has been through my own healing journey both with that good ol’ childhood trauma and also with my own healing of adenomyosis.

the more I let go of needing to know exactly what was going to work and when, the easier the next steps appeared.

I didn’t go looking for peptides, suddenly they started to appear in my field. I saw a few people pop around me using them for inflammation, and that led me down the pathway of figuring out if maybe it could work for me and my symptoms too.

I didn’t even know I had adenomyosis at this stage mind you. but when I started to put together the map of my symptoms and came up with a healing protocol for myself.

I ended up getting diagnosed, and would you believe the exact supplement, nervous system, somatic, gut-healing and peptide protocol I’d put together was exactly what I’d need to be doing to help the inflammation and growth of endometrial tissue?

what are the fucking chances of that? zero. zilch. nada.

I didn’t need to figure it all out on my own. I just needed to take one step, and then another, with the trust that my body, intuition, higher self and Universe/God would guide me.

two years ago, elise would have eye-rolled the shit out of that. she was convinced there was a “solution” that needed to be found. in another joe dispenza meditation, maybe (love that man’s work, always will). or maybe she just needed to heal her trauma or nervous system more. or maybe there was another elimination diet that would hold the answer.

and here’s the actual point, the one I don’t think gets said enough:

it’s not that any of those people or those tools are wrong. it’s that no one, no matter how good they are, how big they are, how many people they’ve helped, knows more about your body and your path than you do.

and honestly, all of those helped. but nothing has helped me like radically accepting myself as I was in the moment, without needing to change it, without wishing it away, without feeling frustrated at my circumstance. without needing to change or fix anything.

that’s the thing nobody’s really talking about. and that’s what I’m going to do over the next 9 days and I’d love to have you join me:

radical self-reclamation: 9 days, 9 devotions, 9 opportunities to connect deeper into who we already are.

not another framework to figure out. not another thing to achieve or fix.

we’ll move through it in three arcs, roughly:

• healing - not in the traditional sense (i’ll explain more on day 1) but more in the actual meaning of the word returning to wholeness. what if healing didn’t require anything to change in the physical or external? what if instead it’s a letting go of expectations, a way to meet our bodies, minds and souls with curiosity instead of frustration, compassion instead of resentment?

• holding - looking at what we’re actually holding onto. the sneaky expectations. the ways we’re fighting where we actually are. the ways we try to skip the present moment for some story in the past or future.

• having - the practice of having by means of allowing instead of doing. what does that look like, how does it feel in the body? what are the stories around it? what does our soul actually want us to know about it?

radical self-reclamation is the path to radical self-trust. and radical self-trust is freedom. it’s the instant elevator to our highest timeline, all those beautiful, kitschy, true words that sometimes feel too esoteric to feel in reach.

somewhere in these 9 days, I’ll invite you to pick your own talisman. a sign you ask your higher self, your God, your guides, for, that tells you when you’re back in that vibration. mine is 888.

I see it almost every day now, but at first I only saw it on the days I was doing the work. first we’ll learn how to to pick it, and then we learn to trust it.

I’d love to invite you to join me over the next 9 days. it’s included for every paid subscriber, no extra cost.

so if there was a time to subscribe or upgrade, now is that moment my love!

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we’re starting TOMORROW - Friday October 2nd AEST / Thursday October 1st PT.

day 1 kicks off then, and I’ll be sharing a bit more about what we’re moving through - the energetic layer, the quantum, the somatic..

each day I’ll drop in with a short ritual, journaling prompt or audio (we’re mixing it up) in the morning (my time/AEST). no pressure if you read it with your coffee at 7 or your lunch at 1 - there’s no perfect way or time to do this. that’s kind of the whole point.

if you’re already a paid subscriber, you’re already in. just sit back, relax, and get ready for day 1.

if you’re not yet, I’d love nothing more than to have you join us. I’ll keep the 7 day free trial on so you can have a taste and join us so it’s truly a win win!

I can’t wait to do this with you.

xx elise

P.S. if you’re going to join us I’d LOVE for you to lmk below and if you know someone who could really benefit from this too. I’d appreciate it SO MUCH if you’d share this or send this one to them.

thank you!!!

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this weekend I banged out a fabulous new post on saturday morning in my morning pages. you know the kind that just flows out of you, where you don’t really feel like you’re doing anything but simply transcribing what’s coming through? ugghhh I just love those kind of writing moments.

and at the same time I don’t want this to sound nicer or more romantic than it really is. because the truth is every morning I face the same resistance. even after I’ve meditated, even after I’ve gotten morning sun in my eyes, even after my morning coffee, a part of me wants to avoid doing the very thing I know I need to do.

and not need in a sense of obligation. ewww, david, no.

need in the sense of what my soul needs, or rather requires to operate from my highest timeline. side note: I kinda hate that phrase because it sounds prettier, more mystical than it really is.

I believe all of us have a modus operandi that’s literally made for our soul’s path. I believe that this is a path of a “higher frequency” - not in that it’s superior to any other paths. I don’t mean that operating in this way makes you “better” than anyone else.

but it IS of a higher frequency in the most literal and physical sense of the word.

it’s of higher coherence. one that allows us to operate not from our ego, our past, our learned survival patterns from illness or trauma or our conditioning.

it’s the path we’ve always been meant to operate in, the ONE we’ve always known, our soul came into this iteration knowing it, and our life is one big adventure of remembering, so we can integrate this intelligence and finally put it into our being, in a way that so many of our ancestors, parents, grandparents couldn’t, for so many reasons.

it’s always wild to me how easily we forget how not long ago those constraints existed. that women literally couldn’t have bank accounts or credit cards in their names until the late 70’s. that only 50 years ago, kids.

not to mention the constraints of the vibration of the times. so much of how we’ve operated as a society, the unsaid and said rules, regulations of our beliefs of what’s possible, the social constructs of what’s “right” and the general matrix of our world that’s designed to keep us separate from one another and disempowered from the nature of our true being. keeping us sick, stuck in trauma, confused and in fear because of economics, wars, biological welfare - the list could go ON and ON..

so many of those structures are rapidly, excitingly, being obliterated.

and I for one think it’s a really fucking cool time to be alive.

back to those pages I banged out and what it made me realise:

it felt good. almost too good. too easy. too truthful. too raw, too honest. and something about it didn’t quite feel right.

at first I thought I was holding off on it because of fear - a pattern I know all too well and has been coming up rapidly into my awareness as of late.

but I know my edge right now is leading with my full heart, my most unfiltered part of me, the part that feels oh so cringe when I share something publicly. not because I’m afraid of how it will be perceived, but because I’m still learning how to hold my full light, be in witness of it and not be tempted to dim.

and I know so many of you reading this will resonate with that dichotomy too.

I told myself I should just move past that resistance and hit publish. but something was telling me no.

the most honest way I can share this is that I didn’t know for sure which it was in the moment. but there was something in my body that felt resistance - not my mind, but my body.

I know how hard this is to differentiate so here’s the best way I can describe it.

when I decided that I’d come back later to edit it and hit publish, something in my stomach started to feel restricted. like an invisible wall around my solar plexus started to tighten, and something in me said ‘no, not yet’.

my brain wanted to tell me this was just me being a perfectionist, that this was part of recovery - that we feel the feelings and we do it anyway. but the truth is that’s not my edge, and I know it.

because when something feels right, even if I’m scared, I’m well versed in doing the hard thing.

if there was a first place medal for moving through the fear and doing it anyway, I’d have a row stacked from floor to ceiling of them.

it’s a skill I’m proud of, one that single-handedly grew my last business, helped me make life-changing moves like moving overseas to follow a boy at 25 and travelling by myself around SE Asia at 20.

I think this is an essential skill we as leaders need, if we’re here to create change, we have to learn how to hold the discomfort of being the ripple.

but something in me told me this was not that.

and so, begrudgingly, I held off. the more true story is my body helped me by giving me stomach pains and a bloated belly that I haven’t experienced in ages. noted.

so on sunday, instead of editing one or even both of the drafts I have waiting and ready to be shared, I held off. I rested. I cleaned. I sunbaked. I watched reality tv. I cooked and I snuggled my husband and fur babies as we all had a lazy sunday nap together on our giant couch.

and then later, because I’ve had the nudge to and it felt like time, I held a small land ceremony to thank the land we’ve recently moved onto, brought it and the custodians of the land an offering to show my gratitude, and asked for peace, protection and immaculate vibes of prosperity and joy for us and everyone who comes in contact with this space. as you do of course.

and it was glorious.

a part of me was feeling bad. I had two edits to share?? my intention is to grow my substack, so should I be doing just that? was I being lazy? undisciplined? shouldn’t I at least check in and respond to some comments, post a note or two??

this is the type of conversation I have in my head quite a lot. as someone who knows how to grow a following and a profitable online business, I know the things to do. I know the strategy. there’s about 250 things I could be pulling out of my giant chest of tools to grow my substack faster, easier, “better.”

and my moral conundrum as of late has been sitting in that in-between of “I know exactly how I could be growing this faster” and also the deep soul lesson of knowing - that’s not how I’m meant to, or want to, do this.

unravelling that code of doing the most, push energy, doing all the things in the 3D is exactly why I stepped away from my highly profitable business of almost 10 years.

and I’ll be damned if I burnt that down only to rebuild the same flawed formula again.

I know my path is to grow this more from a soul-led place. and this is where the conversation gets hard.

because unlike every manifestation, divine feminine, human design, astro, intuitive energy leader with a unicorn wand that can instantly open up your akashic records and instantly tell you where your blocks are kinda vibe (as facetious as I sound, I deeply believe in all of those things but also deeply disagree that there’s some clue/code/unlock waiting for you outside of yourself).

I don’t believe this absolves us of still needing to put energy, effort and attention, and yes, work. and yes, sometimes that work will feel hard.

and I also deeply know (having learned this lesson a billion times)…

the answer to that success is never, ever going to be found in someone else’s codes, formula, or magic AI prompt.

but rather in the rubik’s cube of your own frequency energy body, soul, connection to God/Source/Universe/The Quantum..

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that’s what our souls are really here to do.

and here’s more proof of how I know that to be true.

wouldn’t you know that the moment I surrendered to “letting myself off the hook” of feeling pressured to edit, hit publish and be productive with moving my substack forward…

I had record-breaking REM sleep last night. I woke up feeling rested, fresh, and I’m still riding the high from my morning meditation. I easily just wrote this out, I feel creative and in flow.

and the cherry on the cake?

I woke up to hitting #88 on the rising philosophy list again.

last week I woke up to #55 - the day after I shared my morning prayer that I did that morning with my microdosing/microflow intention of allowing things to work out for me.

EDITED TO ADD: I wrote this one last Monday and wouldn’t you know that 3 days ago I found myself on the rising list again this time at #61 in Philosophy!!!

had I fallen into scarcity the day before…(which don’t you worry I was extremely tempted to because I'd dropped from 18 paying subs to 15 overnight.)

had I taken that as evidence that I wasn’t doing enough, or I was doing something wrong, that it was proof I wasn’t growing fast enough, or proof that those 50 strategies I know I could bust out need to be applied asap…

I promise you I would have taken myself out of my soul’s flow, the vibration that we all GET to operate from where we move from a place of deep faith trust and radical self-love. Instead of what so many of us have been programed to default to: scarcity, doubt and fear..

and that would have dropped my ass right back down into the trap of the 3D. where we think we NEED to see the evidence, have the answers and where we fall for the trick of our limited view where we think that unless we SEE something or feel 100% certainty, it can’t be trusted. and there I would have sat for a while, until I crawled myself slowly out again.

btw - this isn’t bad. this is the game we all get to play, this is how we grow and learn.

(and if like me - you’re feeling like you’re ready to practice this on an even deeper level - just wait to see what I have in store for us!)

I don’t know about you…but I for one am ready to mf skyrocket out of this tentative place where I tend to forget how powerful I really am. I know I’m ready to stop bargaining with my fears and start operating from my highest vibration. and I know I’ve created the foundation that can actually, safely and securely hold me there.

and I want you to come with me as I learn how to do this with more consistency and ease.

In just a few days (Friday October 2nd AEST/Thursday October 1st PT) I’m going to pop myself into a little vortex where I dedicate a small but potent time each day to radically reclaim this part of myself.

nothing would make me happier than to have you join me as I do this work a bit more out loud, and hopefully, with a few of us holding hands in tow.

if you’re nodding away and this is resonating - I can’t tell you how happy that makes my heart.

I’d love to invite you to join me for radical self-reclamation - it’s 9 days. 9 devotions. 9 opportunities to connect deeper into radical self-reclamation.

not another framework to figure out, not another thing to achieve or fix. not another healing protocol. just a daily practice of anchoring into who we already are, right now, before we’ve earned it, before we’ve healed enough, before we’ve done anything at all.

because I want you to learn how to see the evidence that this is happening for us every day. I want us to join forces and intentionally add to this vibration, because I know you know how much stronger it becomes the more of us come together consciously, actively and intentionally activating ourselves into it.

I know is really the underlying thing that kept me so stuck and out of alignment for years: thinking the goal was healing, achieving and fixing, when really, the practice was radical self-reclamation. and healing, and feeling truly unabashedly happy as a clam ME, was just a lovely side effect.

I’m so excited to do this out loud with you, not because I need an audience, but because I’m truly just sick of doing it quietly all by myself.

It’s all happening in my paid subscriber tier - so if you’re already in there you get to just sit back and relax and get ready to receive day 1 which kicks off in 3 days.

if you’re not already in there, loves if there was a time to subscribe or upgrade - now is it!

subscribe or upgrade to join us!

I’m also going to be turning on our subscriber chat for everyone so you can connect deeper with the women joining you in this, share insights and ask questions as we all navigate our way through.

I expect each day will take you about 15 min max. I intend for this to be something you can work into your morning routine or practice in small pockets of your day.

I’ll share a bit more about what we’ll be moving through - the energetic layer, the quantum, the somatic in the lead up too.

but if I could sum it all up the point is to really, truly believe and anchor into: “Universe show me just how fucking good it gets to be”.

can’t wait to do this with you. any q’s drop ‘em below. and I’ll catch you on the flip side soon!

xx
elise

if this resonates or if there’s anyone you know who could benefit from joining us in this work of radical self-reclamation, it would mean the world to me if you shared this with them - from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU!!!

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and yes - I did microdose today but stick with me.

I've had an interesting relationship with abundance as of late. as in I view it in such a wider/less girl-boss/tunnel vision view and I truly feel like I get to experience so much of it in the wild daily.

there’s still a part of me that feels like I’ve ‘had enough’ and even as I type that I know it’s bullshit. I know that the limit does not exist.

so for me and maybe for you I’m going to take you through a little storytime if you will to remind us all how safe and small our cute little brains like to play and how it’s actually a part of your soul’s divine path to explore the limits, unabashedly, unapologetically.

because it just so happens that the good ol’ universe gave me yet another lesson on how the limit truly does not exist. that the better it gets, the BETTER it gets and I want to share with you how a keyboard and a flight taught me that I’d been dreaming way too small.

you may already know that recently I burnt down my perfectly good, profitable and successful business. and ever since then my relationship to abundance has felt a bit fuzzy.

because that business was SO GOOD on paper (like so many boyfriends past). and it’s honestly still really hard for me to be able to fathom how much better things can get.

and yet I know they can get better.

I know I was meant to close that one down so I could create from an even more expansive place, where I don’t have to trade my hours and my energy in such an hour-for-time model, but reach more people, create more impact, and get to do that on my terms.

I know in my soul that I’ve been through that journey because my very logical, analytical brain would have NEVER believed it was possible if I hadn’t created that with my own two hands. and I also know that my soul got so bored with that business because I’d learnt what I needed and it was time to move on. (I just didn’t know it at the time).

I also know - not because I have any evidence - but simply because this truth keeps nudging me - that I’m supposed to create in a way where I’m just the messenger.

where I don’t need to kill myself strategizing and pushing, but rather let the art and spirit and my creativity move through me, and let that be enough.

let the ART and the CREATIVITY BE ENOUGH (maybe that will be the first tattoo I get on my forehead).

because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from literally everything falling away that I had once worked so hard and sacrificed so much to try to desperately keep in place (namely my relationship with my mum, my business and SO MANY relationships and friendships that needed to die along the way)…

it’s that I know that God/Source/Universe has more in store for me that’s far greater, far bigger, and far more expansive than what my egoic mind could design.

and this knowing gives me the faith to take this trust fall and let reality arrange itself around me. I’ve learnt first hand that the only things that fall away (or burn destructively underneath you) were never meant to survive the fire in the first place.

I’ve learnt that there’s no such thing as punishment or failure, no matter how much that feels like the only explainable reason in the moment. there’s only God’s Plan. and agnostic 22 year old me would have NEVER imagined those words coming out of my mouth..

I’ve learnt that I don’t need to know all the steps to the plan, I don’t even need to understand how He does it or the quantum mechanics behind it all but I know it’s happening. the same way I know gravity is holding me (somewhat) tethered to my chair as I happily click away on my new clicky keyboard and that I know for sure my little sensitive body is appreciating the EMF blocker I’m looking at near my computer.

my (very lengthy) point I’m trying to make is: my brain hasn’t yet latched onto exactly how good that can be.

and whilst I don’t subscribe to the concept that we have to know exactly what it is we want to manifest, because I feel like I’m beyond that (not in a “I’m better than that” way, but in a “I’ve moved into a different vibration where that’s not how things work for me anymore” way) - I feel like the magic is in me NOT needing to know.

because my brain, just like all of our brains, is SO BAD at picturing just how good things can actually be. we’re so good at only replicating what we already know. that’s LITERALLY what our RAS (reticular activating system) part of our brain is designed to do.

and I know I’m here to create outside of that box. I’m here to create something better than my little mind could ever come up with. and that’s kind of the whole point.

ENTER THE KEYBOARD:

edit to add: I’ve popped the link above and a few places below to the exact keyboard I’ve mentioned I may receive a small affiliate fee if you purchase through the links

story time:

I’ve been used to using my Mac keyboard for as long as I’ve been a mac girlie - and considering when I graduated University I was only JUST fully submitting my stuff online (yes I’m that old) that’s basically forever.

recently I found myself down a little (possibly adhd?) rabbit hole of seeing writers use the most satisfying-looking keyboard I’ve ever seen in my goddamn life.

so down the research rabbit hole I went. I’ve been fitting out my new office, in the home we recently moved into, and it was feeling like it needed something different. new room, new direction in entrepreneurship and my creative process, new keyboard.

somehow, in my brain, that tracked.

off I went, researching mechanical keyboards, as I do with anything that catches my interest, and I stumbled into the world of clicky, “creamy”-sounding keyboards and decided I just had to have one.

OF COURSE this is a delightful and necessary treat, something to add to my new creative direction, something to keep my little gerbil brain a bit more focused while I’m typing.

well. little did I know the keyboard would be slightly life-changing.

because - have you ever typed on a mechanical keyboard? I hadn’t. so let me tell you: it is an absolute fucking delight. 10/10 recommend.

I actually look forward to sitting down at my computer, just so I can hit the satisfying keys and hear that oh-so-delightful click and press of each one. I’d been low-key avoiding my office before, it doesn’t have a lot of natural light, it was just missing some vibes, you know.

as I write to you, clicking away (it’s decently loud, my husband works in the room beside me and was wondering “wtf this noise was” when I was banging away on my new keyboard the other day) - but here’s how this relates to our abundance..

two weeks ago, if you’d asked me whether my Mac keyboard could be improved, I would have said f no. I loved it.

I liked how flat it was. I never once noticed the shallow, sad, pathetic little buttons before. I didn’t seem to mind how I had to press each button down so firmly to get any sort of half-assed ‘click’. I thought it was exactly, perfectly what I needed. nothing more, nothing less.

and now, LET ME TELL YOU, I can’t fathom the lack of joy, satisfaction, and deep inner yum it gives me. like, what kind of sick joke would it be to not hear this clickety-clack as I’m banging away? how does one even feel in flow if they’re not typing and receiving a little kick back and happy creamy click that varies oh so slightly but significantly with each little key?

and I’m fairly certain I type even faster on it, and since my brain tends to run a million miles a minute when I’m writing and in the zone, surely that’s only a good thing.

so many of us, my loves, are living our lives like a Mac keyboard. and calling it #goals.

when really it’s just the base level, it’s good enough. it’s fine. there’s nothing we could possibly want for, nothing else we really think we could “need,” because nothing’s broken. it works. it gets the job done.

and that’s the exact trap.

if we see something as good enough, our brains stop there. if we don’t consider the question ‘could it BE even BETTER’? our brains aren’t going to magically conjure something out of thin air.

and if we dare to be inspired by something outside of what we deemed ‘good’ so often instead of claiming that for ourselves we compare or we shame ourselves for not being ‘happy enough’ or gasp GREEDY for daring to want something more too.

in a world where more has become both a dirty word in the age of consumerism, brains that can barely hang and look at something for longer than 5 seconds and where we’re frankly exhausted after being oversold and constantly receiving a million subconscious and conscious messages a day about what’s wrong or missing in our lives - it makes sense.

but what if it wasn’t even about ‘more’ but rather about what’s simply meant for you. what if we stopped looking at it in such a hierarchical way and just followed our gut intuition about what just feels right. because let me tell you - this keyboard feels RIGHT and if I hadn’t stopped to imagine that there was an alternative for me then I would never know.

and let’s be real this isn’t about my keyboard… this is about all the times in all of the other areas in our life we make ourselves wrong for daring to dream a big bigger - no matter how ‘unrealistic’ ‘silly’ ‘unnecessary’ or even ‘ostentatious’ anyone else thinks that is. and instead following our true desires instead of what’s conveniently in front of us.

The Lounge that Changed my Life

story time #2:

it was a trip for my 40th birthday. we were going to Singapore then Thailand for a week, then the Maldives with another couple for another week. a literal dream trip.

like this WAS on my vision board for years and finally it was happening.

we splurged on business class tickets for our flights as a special treat, expensive as hell, especially from Australia, especially to the Maldives, and it felt like such a big moment.

I’d only flown business once before, for a big long-haul trip, and that was a lucky upgrade thanks to travel insurance (not so fun, because I’d unknowingly blown out my ACL skiing in Whistler, a story for another time).

we love to travel, but we can rarely justify the often 10x price tag for business class, so this felt like a huge treat, and kind of a “we made it” moment too.

when we arrived in Singapore, we had some time to kill before our flight to Phuket, and found out we could hang out in the “premium” lounge until our flight, around 4 hours.

we walked in, and whilst I’ve been in a lounge or two - I was blown away. this was BY FAR the nicest lounge I’d ever been in in my life, and it had more than I could ever ask for.

a full bar with a bartender where you could even pick from a handful of specialty cocktails. a huge array of space to sit, the nicest lounges you’ve ever seen, low lighting, vibey corners to hang in. a huge spread of food, snacks, fresh fruit, an assortment of dumplings, western food, wine and cheese, a salad bar. you get the picture.

it was insane. it was everything I could have hoped for in a lounge, and I was happy as a clam hanging out there for 4 hours.

on the way back from Thailand, we had another stopover in Singapore before heading to Malé. I was initially disappointed, our tickets said we’d been assigned a different lounge with Singapore Air this time, called Platinum, and I was bummed, because the first one was so fricken good, I was so disappointed because I desperately wanted to go back to my newfound happy place…

so we begrudgingly walked into the Platinum lounge (first-world problems, I know, but I was in princess mode, ok?) and the second we walked in, my jaw hit the floor.

it wasn’t the same lounge. no. it was exactly 20 million times better.

it was about 4x the size of the previous one. there was an entire wing dedicated to a “sleeping wing,” with pods, actual beds you could book for a peaceful nap. there were approximately 5 different restaurant/food sections, all with chefs cooking at your request, in real time. no banquets here, kids.

you could point to an array of insanely delicious dishes, noodles, soups, rice, western food, burgers, steak, and order exactly what you wanted, cooked fresh.

there was a champagne section, I repeat, a champagne section, where you could help yourself to an array of bubbles and really nice wine, with a cheese, fruit, and nut section right beside it.

not to be outdone by the selection of fine teas and biscuits, and 3 other bars nearby where you could order not just from a cocktail menu, but any top-shelf cocktail, liquor, or beer you wanted. and of course, there were showers, where they gave you fresh towels and even slippers so you didn’t have to touch the bottom of it (germaphobe me deeply appreciated this).

now I don’t even really drink - I may have one or two on the odd occasion but sheer expansiveness in that moment did something to my brain that will stay with me forever.

basically, it was infinitely better than the last one, and I’d originally been disappointed, because my brain simply could not comprehend how something so good could get even better.

and that’s where the rubber meets the road my loves.

how so many of us hold ourselves back. how we keep ourselves stuck by choosing the door we know, the one we’re familiar with, the one we’ve already been through, over the one we don’t know.

because we’re secretly afraid that we don’t deserve better and because our brains are so, so bad at expanding enough to even envision that yes, it can get so much fucking better than even the best-case scenario we came up with.

we don’t just choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven when things are hard, we unknowingly choose that - probably even MORE - when our abundance thermometer is set to a setting that is, by society and our past experience, defined as good enough.

and good enough is the enemy of great.

so many of us, my loves, are living our lives like a Mac keyboard - where we’ve unknowingly set our inner thermometer to a setting that we’ve completely outgrown, the trick is we usually don’t know we’ve outgrown it until our reality starts to feel really restricting, boring or in my case - like you want to jump out of your SKIN because something just feels oh so very wrong.

Gay Hendricks who wrote The Big Leap explains this as an upper limit problem. where once we hit our ‘comfort level’ on how good we’ll allow things to be, we may start to self sabotage to bring that level back to one that feels safer. Of course this is all unconscious too.

I agree in some instances and for some of us that’s part of it. I’ve experienced that first hand. but my experience of this as of late was not quite this.



this past year it wasn’t that I’d hit my upper limit of how good things could get because by this stage most things in my life certainly did not feel very good. and it took EVERYTHING in me to not pull the ‘eject’ button and revert back to my old business, well known path for ‘success’ and keep on keeping on with what I knew.


it was more that I’d reached the end of my tether of NEEDING to see evidence that I could trade good for great. and like God/Universe/Source always does - they intervened so that was physically impossible for me to do.

they took me to a place where instead of having a self-concept that I had to build on and ‘improve’ and re-invent like the good little student in the university of self-improvement I was…

they literally ripped my reality out from underneath me one by one - my health, my family, my entire self-concept of what was true, who I could trust, what was real, what was my experience and what was manipulation, what I was good at, my career and business…

and handed me a blank slate. no end and no beginning. no where to build from but from nothingness. nothing to improve because nothing was left. nothing to compare myself to because my everything that was my identity was suddenly gone aside from being a decent friend, at times supportive wife and at least a devoted dog mum.

everything else was up for grabs.


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When trust is the only option:

the benefit of a total identity collapse is that there’s kinda no limit because there’s suddenly no measuring stick, no goal and at the beginning not even desire.

it’s quite the trip - let me tell you - to go from one end of the achieving spectrum to the other so fast.

and also it’s been such a gift because it’s allowed my brain to get blown wide open in so many ways I don’t even have words for yet.

it’s been a total trust fall and a total blowing of any self-imposed limits at the same time. because for the first time in my life I finally understand it kinda has nothing to do with me. it’s not personal - none of it.

even my desires - and that’s a weird thing to experience as a former high-achieving kinda gal.

here’s what I do know - (notice how much smaller this section is?)

God has something so much bigger and so much ‘better’ for me than anything my cute little human brain could even try to comprehend. what is kinda none of my business nor is it my job.

my job is to have faith. my job is to believe. my job is to carve out SPACE for the directions, the words (that’s how I hear/channel things btw), the nudges, the feelings, the gut pulls and the intuitive hits to come through.

it’s got nothing to do with me. I’m one in a fucking million and I’m not the least bit special. I know I’m destined to do something significant, something my ancestors have been preparing for years and it’s not all on me.

I don’t need to know where I’m going but I do need to stay open, I need to do my part in continuing to release all the cute, silly, made up stories that my very human brain will continue to give me to try to lead me off my track, get me stuck in my ego or frozen in self-doubt and fear.

it IS my job to continue to do the work to keep releasing alll the patterns, all the neural pathways and alll the societal conditioning that wants to keep me from unabashedly and boldly sharing my light.

and it’s my job to continue to trust that as it always has - reality will continue to rearrange itself around me, the exact right situations, experiences and divine interventions will continue to unfold to help me see just how good it’s meant to be for me.

unfortunately, I don’t have a cute little pink bow to tie this all up in for you. I won’t try or pretend I do no matter how bad my brain would looveeee to make this all make sense in one succinct paragraph for us all.

I’m VERY much still in it. still figuring out where the nudges are taking me, still consciously uncoupling myself from way my neurons so desperately WANT to fire down those well-trodden paths of ‘success’.

but honestly? maybe that is the most useful thing I can offer you. not a neatly tied up story with a lovely little take away but rather a front row seat as to where the feck this path is taking me. what started out as a cute little ‘surrender experiment’ has turned into God schooling my ass and at the same time truly, lovingly showing me how good it gets to be and how beneficial it is for me (and let’s be real everyone around me) to not be in control, to not try to desperately grab the steering wheel or honk the horn aggressively whilst God (or in reality my husband - yes I’ve actually done this) is taking the reins.

if you’re walking a similar path to me right now - I hope you continue to follow along for some encouraging company. I hope this serves as proof for both of us that the nothingness isn’t so much the end of the story but the beginning. the part that we’ll both look back on and be like “SHIT - that worked out so much fucking better than I could have ever imagined or worked out on my own”.

I guess there’s only one way to find out!

xx Elise

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P.S. something has dropped in for me this week that has been percuating for a LONG TIME and I’m going to share more with you all next week. if you’re finding yourself on a similar path as me, I for one am sick of doing this by myself and I’d love to do something together. think - a blend of energetics, cellular, and quantum work that’s truly laid the foundation for me healing on so many levels, physically with adenomyosis, and energetically and emotionally from allll the good ol’ childhood trauma that’s given me the gift of dark humour, with a side of wisdom.

this is the thing I don’t see anyone talk about, that I know is really the underlying thing that kept me so stuck and out of alignment for years: thinking the goal was healing, achieving and fixing, when really, the practice was radical self-reclamation. healing and feeling so damn in awe of my life, so supported by everything around me and truly unabashedly happy as a clam ME, was just a lovely side effect.

dare I say this isn’t even MY idea, but something that wouldn’t leave me alone. so we’re going to explore it and do it together.

keep an eye out, this is included for every paid subscriber, no extra cost, and I can’t wait to share more very VERY soon!!

Growing up, this made a lot of sense, I often felt the need to hide my family and home life from friends because of how much chaos was constantly happening and somehow that theme of not fitting became a constant in my life for years to come.

It started early in elementary school because much to my own despair, got boobs at age 12, which got a lot of attention from the boys in older grades, and also the exact kind of attention I didn’t want from all the girls too. And of course from there rumors got spread about me for being a slut for wearing spaghetti straps, for walking home with one of said older boys… Then my house started getting randomly egged, and I discovered that was the work of my best friend and closest friend group…

In junior high and high school, I put extra effort into fitting in, and mostly failed at it despite being in the ‘cool group’ or so I thought.

I was often of of the first pics for the rep league in softball, and got picked up for a ton of tournaments with the league an age group higher than me, a lot of which were the same older girls who were constantly spreading rumors about me. You can imagine how fun that was.

Looking back, I’m shocked I stuck with it. It would have been so much easier to quit softball. But eventually, thanks to my natural talent and unending competitive streak, I earned their respect, even if we never quite made it to “trust” level status, simply because I was a damn good catcher, and one of the only ones who could handle catching one hell of a fastpitch from my #1 bully.

The truth was, I pursued it not just out of sheer love of the game, although that too, I was a massive tomboy, and my entire personality became dedicated to baseball after meeting my ‘best friend’ in year 4 who also loved it. But mostly because playing on a team of mean girls who’d side-eye me for half the season was still more enjoyable than spending any extra time at home.

I loved my coaches. I’m so beyond grateful for them. I felt like they were the first adults who really saw me. I was envious of the relationship they had with their own daughters, how much they supported them, encouraged them.

I was so desperate for even the tiniest bit of encouragement and recognition. I’ll never forget what Coach Cameron said to me one day, in the middle of a 3-game tournament day, after I’d been squatting collectively for almost 10 hours in the sun.

He saw something in me that I don’t think I had the self-awareness or emotional intelligence to see myself. his words have stuck with me to this day, over 30 years later: “Elise, it’s not all on you.”

He could see that every time we were under pressure, I would strike the fuck out. Not ideal when you’re positioned as one of the best batters, 5th or 6th in the batting line.

For my non-softball friends, the strategy is that you hopefully get your first 1-4 batters on base, and then number 5 or 6 slug it enough to drive a bunch of runs home.

I could deliver, a lot of the time. I was lucky to be born with decent athleticism, one of the qualities I’ll shamelessly admit is one of my favourites about myself.

But the second there was real pressure, maybe we already had 2 outs, or we were down by 6, or maybe my parents were watching and I was desperate to rack up brownie points, hoping they’d be in a good mood for the rest of the weekend, hoping they wouldn’t fight, and above all, hoping they wouldn’t drink and cause chaos for the next 48 hours.

Whatever the cause, my coach could see the pattern, and I’m sure the stress on my face.

He saw something in me that would take years of reflection, therapy, and coaching to fully understand:

there was a huge part of me that was desperate to be good enough, desperate to save the day, desperate to perform, to get it perfect, because I was so deeply afraid of not being good enough.

And what’s maybe even more true is that I was so deeply afraid of what would happen if I didn’t perform like the dancing monkey I always thought I had to be, in order to earn love, praise, or at the very least, avoid lighting a match to the ever-burning coals of chaos I was so used to.

At the time, I could grasp what he was trying to tell me, essentially ‘chill the fuck out so you don’t choke again’ but not enough to unravel it.

I tried my darndest not to feel like my entire team’s future and happiness depended on me not fucking it up (which, to be honest, sometimes it did), not to take on the responsibility of needing to do it all, for everyone.

Ahhh, that old familiar friend.

As you can imagine, this pattern didn’t end when I finally threw in the towel with softball.

Mostly because the “cool crowd” I’d fallen into made drinking, smoking, and doing drugs seem like a far more valuable way to spend my time than playing sports.

And also because it was becoming impossible to keep up with a part-time job, full-time school, and a 5-6 day a week practice, games, and tournament schedule. The only link to freedom I could see was money, and the only way out I could imagine was building myself a tunnel toward it.

Would it surprise you that post-high school, post-university, post-traveling the world and studying a million different directions, I found myself right back in that pattern of trying to fit in with the cool-girls club?

If you know me by now, probs not…

Ok here’s the part I’ve had to put behind a paywall to protect some of the details of what I’m about to share.

Keep reading for the full tea on:

• the real reason I finally walked away from the coaching world and the containers I once valued, and how to know when you’ve outgrown a room too...

• the moment my lifelong lack of fitting in stopped feeling like a curse and finally became confirmation of exactly who I’m meant to be...

• why the friction you’ve felt your whole life was never a flaw, it was the signal that you’re built for a bigger room...

• the difference between real, unconditional support and love with strings attached, and why the second one is still a cage, just a prettier one...

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Not because of the numbers, but because of the people. The kindness. The women and men holding space for each other, sharing their own versions of the same story. It made me realise something: as much awareness as there is now around this dynamic, it’s still, somehow, deeply taboo.

And it got me thinking about how many other huge, intense things none of us escape in this life carry that same quiet taboo. Grief. Loss, in all its forms. Illness, our own or someone we love’s. The breakdown of a relationship we thought was forever. Addiction, ours or someone else’s. Starting completely over, somewhere new, as someone new.

There’s no playbook for any of it. So much of this healing work still happens in private, in whispers, in hushed corners, instead of out loud.

And there’s a time and place for that. Obvi. Because we all get to do it our own way.

But after reading so many of those comments, after remembering how genuinely beyond excruciatingly painful this experience was for me, especially at the beginning, I wanted to make sure I shared the things that actually helped. Partially because the mentor/guide in me can’t stand the thought of opening up a wound and not at least giving you some ointment for the slave…

But mostly because as a human that studied this work and then lived this work, I can tell you those two things are not one and the same.

I want to talk about the energy behind healing for a second, because there’s work involved that nobody warns you about.

Healing doesn’t just happen. Time doesn’t just heal all wounds.

And when we put the onus on someone else to change in order for us to feel a certain way, or when we stay stuck in the lie that if only X happened, then I could be, do, or have Y, we disempower ourselves and keep ourselves stuck.

I don’t feel at peace with my decision because of the initial decision. That, while it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, was actually the “easiest” part.

I have a psych degree. A decade of coaching and mentoring women through different layers of self-trust. So I had a lot of awareness and practice exploring the stories and the programming of my own mind, my own self-talk.

But nothing put that to practice like this did. There’s such a difference between intellectually “understanding” this work and being thrown into the deep end of it.

I felt called to share that, because so many of us on this path are also so, so good at understanding it, and still feeling stuck. Trust me, I GET IT.

And yes, I’ve done the therapy. I’ve worked with energy healers to understand and acknowledge the energetic, generational ties (that’s a subject for a whole other Substack series, lmk if that interests you below).

I’ve done the nervous system work, the somatic work, everything in between. And it’s all helped.

But the biggest thing that’s helped me was not needing this experience to define me.

Yes, it’s affected me. It’s moulded me, in both great ways and hard ways.

I doubt I’d be able to read the temperature of a room, or a person, within 3 seconds of meeting them if this weren’t my experience.

I doubt I’d be able to read the clues behind someone’s words that tell me something’s not right, not adding up.

I doubt I’d be as hyper-vigilant about most things.

But I also doubt I’d be as intuitive, as empathic, as able to read people and know who’s not for me, and who’s actually dangerous, within seconds of meeting them.

I doubt I’d have the level of emotional and spiritual sensitivity that I have.

And I doubt I’d be as self-honouring, as full of self-compassion and self-love, if I hadn’t had this experience, and been willing to sit in the shit, the hard, the excruciatingly painful flow-on effect of it.

And for that, I’m truly grateful. And also, so very free.

I’m not suggesting gratitude is the goal. I’m not suggesting any destination is the goal, tbh.

But I want you to feel joy again. I want you to feel at peace. I want you to feel free to make self-honouring decisions for you, and your chosen family, or your kids, or your loved ones.

I want you to not have to carry a burden that was never yours to carry in the first place.

And while I personally believe my soul chose this path, wanted this experience on some level, I don’t expect or suggest you need to believe the same.

But it’s the only conclusion that makes sense to me. I see how, in the grander scheme of things, this shit sandwich was for me.

And while I’ve had many, many moments, on my knees, quite literally begging God to have made it any other way, I see now how that was exactly the point.

How nothing else would have instilled in me the faith I now have, that God, Source, the Universe, is on my side. And for that, I’d choose this path all over again.

I’ve learned that the situations that mould us, that move us onto our highest path for the highest good, can live in both camps at once: the very thing we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy, and also the greatest gift, in its power to transform us.

A year ago, I never would have shared that, or felt this way. I probably would have scoffed reading this, and likely been a little pissed off. So take what resonates, and leave the rest.

But it would feel like a straight-up lie to list off a bunch of “resources,” to share what’s worked for me, and leave out the energetic shift and the exact mindset that allowed me to actually dive into those resources with my whole heart so that I could actually be transformed through them.

All of us have to find our own path of healing. There is NO one right way. But the point is to keep moving through the path.

The temptation is to get stuck, to think it’s a steady, straight line of “improvement,” whatever that means, or to let our ego, our inner toddler, take the wheel and convince us there’s a clear beginning or end. That’s when shit gets hard.I don’t expect or claim that this will instantly heal you. Only you can do that.

But I do hope this gives you some options. I hope you look through this list and let your intuition guide you to the right next step. I hope you practice the challenging art of taking it day by day, one step at a time. And I pray you give yourself the grace and kindness you deserve along the way.

Here’s what actually helped:

1. Books: If there was a book on emotionally absent mothers and narcissism I read it, my favourites were:

Mother Hunger (more on the attachment ‘injury’- this made me feel like I made so much more sense!)

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents - understanding the psychology behind our parents behaviour, how to manage that relationship and how it moulds our relationships in general as a result.

2. Therapy: In the first few weeks after coming home after the big incident that really woke me up about who my mom really was, I was not in a good place. I was struggling to sleep, eat and my anxiety was at an all time high. I’m very logical, I need to understand things for it to “click” before I can do the deeper somatic, emotional, and energetic work so I immediately signed up for therapy with someone with a background in trauma and it helped me get through those first few months a lot easier.

3. Inner child healing + Re-Parenting Work: This wasn’t a one and done thing but an on-going unlearning. When we’ve been criticised, overtly or silently, our whole lives, we embody that as our own self-talk. How our mothers spoke to us becomes our own inner voice. And that doesn’t change overnight. We have to notice it first, forgive ourselves for carrying it, and only then can we actually change it.

I personally did this work through so many different layers - work with my therapist and other trusted energy workers, meditations, hypnosis, tapping (EFT). Again there’s no one right way to ‘do’ it but IMO this work is essential to really move forward.

4. Energetic support in various ‘styles’: Under this umbrella, some of the people I saw were: Acupuncturists, Somatic Therapists, Chi Nei Tsang Stomach Massage, Osteopathy, Energy workers. I didn’t run through this list hoping something would ‘click’ and fix me, I followed my gut and noticed what came up and what I was guided too. Some would call these people healers. I feel like mine are more like guides. The healing is on me. They hold the space, and create the energetic architecture for me to access this part of myself more easily.

5. Meditation. Tbh, I went into this situation on a 2+ year streak of daily 30-60 minute meditations. I remember being annoyed it broke my streak but now I think of WTF would have happened to me if I hadn’t had that practice so locked in going into this. When I was in the immediate crisis state, at the height of my anxiety, my fight-or-flight, I simply couldn’t meditate. I felt like I would combust. I came back to it once my nervous system could tolerate it again.

6. Talking to friends, and my husband, letting them in. Having them hold space for me, not all of my friends, but my 2-3 closest ones. Having their validation, just being seen in it, really, really helped me when I was in the thick of it.

7. Creating a timeline for “no contact,” at the beginning. I think making the decision to “never” speak to her again, at the very start, when I still felt so entangled and responsible for her, would have felt impossible. I set a timeline for 3-6 months instead.

That helped my brain not have to reconsider it during that period. I made a list of what I was available for. I wouldn’t block her number, but I also wouldn’t engage in a “response,” because I knew that if I gave an inch, she’d take a mile, and I’d be right back in that entanglement, starting from scratch. Understanding the behaviour of narcissists made this decision easier, and I’m glad I educated myself on that, so I wouldn’t second-guess myself here.

Before the next one, I want to pause for a second. This one’s less a resource, more a confession, and it’s probably the most controversial thing on this list. But I’m going to to be as transparent as possible with you because otherwise wtf is the point?

8. I left a door open. I never fully blocked her number or her email. TBH I had to double check that this was true before publishing this just now because I wasn’t sure if I had in a fury of anger at some point… (just being real!)

I live on literally the other side of the world from my family, which makes some parts of this easier, and other parts harder, just like anything.

I left her unblocked for one reason, and one reason only: so I couldn’t convince myself, in a bout of guilt, that she was desperately trying to contact me, to change, to take responsibility, to acknowledge anything. So I could see the situation through the clear lens of reality.

She’s made one attempt to contact me in over two years. One text message, entirely about why she needed to get some things off her chest. No check-ins about me. No concern about how I was doing. Nothing. This was after I’d come home, after she’d “relapsed” with her alcoholism (though really, that was just her normal behaviour, I’d just been overseas long enough not to see it - I share that full story here), and after I’d finally communicated the hurt I’d felt over her behaviour across the entirety of my 43 years, and how much it had been affecting me mentally.

The fact that I finally voiced that. That I drew the smallest possible boundary, of me no longer being the “responsible” one in the relationship, as the child, meaning I stopped reaching out, calling her, checking on her, because that had always been the dynamic between us.

The fact that our no-contact is only truly holding because I finally dropped the rope on making the effort to repair things, told me everything I needed to know.

This may sound fucked up, but it helps me so much to see her behaviour clear as day, every day.

If she wanted to repair this, she would. And she doesn’t.

That reality stings, of course. It also makes me eye roll a little and feel VERY tempted to drop some serious LORE when people are aghast to hear I’ve “cut off my mum,” when in reality, she could contact me anytime she wants, and chooses not to.

And that gives me an odd sense of comfort because anytime my brain has been remotely tempted to second guess if she really is as narcissistic as I’ve been thinking - that reality slaps me back into not falling down a shame cycle and in these situations, that’s the most important thing to learn how to get out of.

Also let me be VERY clear, if she did call or text I wouldn’t answer. But knowing the entirety of the relationship lands on her confirms the intuitive nudge I’ve always had, and made myself wrong for, because who thinks that of their own mother
- RIGHT? I’ve learned: only the ones who are exactly right.

I truly hope this helps anyone that’s navigating through this shit show of a situation and it would mean THE WORLD to me if you could share this article if you enjoyed it or send it to someone who you think could benefit. Becuase I SCOURED the internet for something like this when I was in the thick of it and couldn’t find it when I needed it the most.

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And please let me know below which of these has supported you if you’ve tried them or which you’re feeling called to dive into next so we can all share and benefit from each other’s experience too.

Having these convo’s with you all has really sparked something bigger in me.

I’ve got something up my sleeve coming soon called Radical Self Reclamation. It’s not another healing framework, and it’s definitely not about fixing yourself.

Think less “10 steps to heal your trauma” and more a daily devotional for actually becoming the version of yourself you’ve been circling for years.

More on that very soon. If that’s something that peaks your interest - stay tuned!

If you don’t want to wait, paid subscribers will get first access when it launches, and if you’re not one yet, there’s a 7-day free trial live right now. No pressure, just wanted you to have the option before it’s live. Subscribe or Upgrade below to be the first to know.

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xx Elise

Because isn’t it interesting that one of the words meant to be the most offensive swear word in the English language is also the portal to a woman’s power? Unless, of course, you live in Australia or the UK, where it’s basically a term of endearment, which, as a Canadian who moved to Aus 15 years ago, I absolutely love, btw.

Coincidence? I think not.

I don’t use the word to shock you. I use it to illustrate just how pervasive our conditioning is, as women who’ve been controlled for centuries under the guise of the “good girl.”

I don’t think I even realised, until recently, just how deep, how systemic, and how pervasive this pattern is.

I’ve been people pleasing and working on boundaries as long as I can remember. And until recently, I thought I was doing really well. If you were to ask me 5 years ago how I was with my boundaries, I’d tell you “good!” lol.

And look, I was doing better. Growing an online business pushes you fast to fuck around and find out where you’re letting people walk all over you, take advantage of you, and push your ever-moving boundaries around because, well, it’s easier for them.

And my type-A, parentified-child ass was always more than happy to take shit on in order to look like the nice one. The “nice” sister. The “good” daughter. The “friendly and fair easygoing” boss.

And look, it’s not like there’s anything fundamentally wrong with that. Or so I thought.

Until I continued to get burnt and found myself scratching my head as to why the fuck I kept getting taken advantage of.

Giving my team tasks and them fucking it up? No problem, I’ll just fix it, that’s way faster and easier.

Someone not performing after I’d poured painstaking SOPs and hours of time and training into their growth? That’s okay, everyone learns differently, let’s give them another chance.

Clients constantly sending me last-minute emergency tasks because they can’t organise themselves? Hey, everyone makes mistakes, I’ll cram in 2 more hours of content reviews in tonight because I know they have a launch coming up.

You’re starting to get the picture, right?

My boundaries were NOT good. And whilst they were arguably better than before - they were still floppy as fuck.

I hated confrontation. Scratch that. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone being upset with me, and so I constantly faltered on the lines I drew, constantly moved those lines back an inch further each time, because hey, we’re all human, we deserve some grace.

What was more true is I couldn’t sit with the discomfort of someone else’s discomfort in not being happy with me.

And so instead I constantly taught people how it was ok to walk all over me. I avoided hard conversations, pushing back on deadlines and anything that would make me face the truth that I had no capacity for other people’s discomfort because I thought my own worth was based on making everyone I ever met happy - and the consequence of that was that I became utterly miserable - and exhausted.

Until I found myself feeling the urgency of a tiger chasing me, except it was a stranger’s demand in my DMs that I’d immediately reply and give them information on something, with the urgency of someone who thought I owed them my firstborn child.

What the actual fuck was going on here.

No matter how obvious the boundary seemed, how clear it was to me that I was self-abandoning because I was so worried that one delayed DM, one lack of response to a client outside of work hours, would start to unravel my entire business. Not okay.

I really didn’t see the root of it until I returned home from that fateful trip to Vancouver almost 2.5 years ago and started to recognise the very real reality that the best thing for my mental health and wellbeing was to cease contact with my mum.

I didn’t expect what happened next to unfold so powerfully.

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She said it mid-voice-note, the way we talk now that we live oceans apart. The trade-off of collecting friends all over the world is that instead of squeezing your people in person, you send each other voice notes throughout the day instead.

We were talking about how wild the last few years had been. How different our lives looked. How many things we could no longer see the same way. And how strange it is to be in the middle of what felt like (and yes, these are my exact words) getting absolutely gang banged by 50 dark nights of the soul, one after another.

You don’t know how necessary it is, how much you’re being transformed, until you’re just starting, slowly, in teeny tiny bits, to see the light again. The fog lifts. You start to feel inspired, but not in the old ego-driven way.

Not the “must prove I’m a smart, successful, hard-working girl boss” way. More of a kinda-don’t-have-the-energy-to-give-a-fuck way, that feels honestly 10x better, but very, very strange.

And then she said the thing that hit me like a ton of bricks.

There’s something that’s really been bugging me lately. Actually, that’s a lie. For a while now I’ve had a problem with “manifestation” the way it’s described in pop psychology and every other spiritual influencer on IG over the last 5 years.

What I know to be true, because I’ve lived it, I’ve done it, and I’ve got the cheesy IG celebration posts to prove it (no shade, because I was that bitch too), is that we can truly create anything we want.

AND the inconvenient truth is: any idea that we, cute little souls in these human meat-suits, are in total control of the reality around us, is completely and utterly laughable. It’s an illusion. Ask me how I know. (I’ll tell you.)

Before we go there, here’s the deal. I was going to make this one paid. Now I’m not.

Not because it’s less valuable and vulnerable than anything else I’ve written, but because I so deeply want you to know how all-powerful you are. How big the invisible handcuffs are when we’re constantly taught our capacity is limited to purely moving through the 3D of chopping wood and lighting fire, when in reality, our energy and our minds are so, so much more powerful than we think.

I look back on peak girl-boss Elise days and I simultaneously think two things: “How cute, that poor girl has no idea what’s coming, look how naive she is” and “I’m so fucking proud of her for showing up, for doing so many hard things, for making massive bets on herself and putting all that trauma to good use.”

girl boss era circa 2021

Because truly, who else but an eldest, parentified daughter with crippling inner self-worth and a deep, insatiable desire to be successful, to finally “prove” her enough-ness, could build a 7-figure business out of thin fucking air?

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That was an essential lesson. Step five on the staircase, shall we say, on the path to truly living out my highest timeline, my most me path in this life.

How else do you logically explain how a girl from Surrey, BC, Canada moved to Australia broke as a joke, built her way into a 7-figure business, manifested more success than she ever could have imagined, (thankfully) invested to cover her ass for the next phase she never saw coming…

Because somewhere along the way, the energy shifted.

It started as SO MUCH FUN. CEO life, fancy-free, making it up as I went. And then, slowly, it became the crippling need to keep growing.

I cried real, genuine tears the day one of my launches “flopped” and only brought in $75k, in two weeks. Because I felt like a total and utter failure. I was embarrassed, ashamed and I think a part of me wasn’t sure if I actually knew what I was doing or if this was just one big fluke.

It stopped feeling fun. It started feeling like an insatiable burden, a beast that could never get enough. On the surface, that might sound like burnout. It wasn’t. At the time, it felt more like boredom. I was sick of caring for and managing 40 plus plus businesses in addition to my own.

But on a soul level, it felt like the lesson had already been learned, and the chapter was quietly coming to a close.

And then life took a sharp turn into worse than my worse nightmare territory.

Everything I created felt so crudely surface level. I moved into a weird spiritual blankness. Losing 2 parents in 2 years, one to COPD, one to my own boundaries. Closing down programs that used to bring me so much joy. Going from being the one with the most ambition... to barely being able to drag her ass through the day.

That’s not depression. I didn’t fuck something up in my business. That was the work of God’s mental handcuffs.

Because unless it was taken away from me, there’s no way I would have learned how to move through the world not wrapped up in logic, strategy, and PUSHING myself through achievement after achievement. Striving for acceptance. Hoping to be liked. Desperately trying to be good enough and slapping that maladaptive (but honestly highly efficient) pattern with the socially acceptable term of ‘manifesting’.

When really it was pure white-knuckle gripping on “this better fix my fucking life” energy, every opportunity that could come my way, and making it happen.

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I learned how to manifest whatever I wanted only to learn that none of it mattered and I never had any control to begin with.

God saw me coming, let me tell you..

I had to learn how to create every single thing I thought I wanted only to discover how meaningless it all was unless I felt good about the person I was becoming alongside that. Independent of external reality…

I learnt the hard way that no 10k month makes you feel any smarter, no 100k launch eliminates the fear of being able to do it again or the worry that one day you’ll get ‘found out’… the limit does not exist.

Unless I felt complete within, none of that shit mattered or changed how I felt about myself and the reality around me.

It was a royal mindfuck. As much as I love Joe Dispenza and he’s changed my life - I was kinda pissed at what I felt was some major misrepresentation about this whole ‘change your life change your energy’ business.

Because it IS true.. but here’s what I’ve learnt along the way.

Step one of awakening is discovering our own power.

Stepping out of the matrix long enough to see the power we actually hold within it. The power to see the bigger picture, to learn how to pull the strings on the puppet that is 3D reality. The power to become greater than your mind, your thoughts, your taught perception of reality and what is really possible in the 3D plane.

Step two is learning how insignificant we are despite our power. How fast all of that can disappear in the blink of an eye.

How impermanent it all is. How there is always something bigger at play than the cute little desires we all hold. It’s here to teach us the true meaning of surrender, the true nature of our soul’s journey, the true desires of our soul, what we’re really here for. The thing bigger than our ego’s desire to create bigness in the hope that we can create safety outside of ourselves. Bigger than our conditioning to want to control the situations, people, and experiences around us.

To learn that we simultaneously have total sovereignty and, at the same time, no control at all, except that which we cultivate within.

I had to learn how to create every single thing I wanted only to learn that I was simultaneously not in control of my destiny, the timeline, or whatever our soul’s journey is. You can’t manifest your way out of who you’re meant to be, no matter what “cosmic” coach tells you otherwise.

And the danger of that first ring of higher consciousness is that we forget our path on earth is so much bigger than our ego.

Yes, we’re here to have fun, to experience the earthly delights of the 3D, to find and relish in the joy of the daily miracles of life. AND we’re souls living out our karmic lessons, the ones our ancestors simply couldn’t do. The wounds and the dreams, the hopes and the changes we’ve literally been waiting lifetimes to live out.

When we forget this and brush over the nuance of it so it sits neat and tidy in our minds eye, it’s so easy to think we’re doing something wrong when we run into a dead end.

It’s so easy to think everyone around you is hoarding some secret about their capacity to manifest better than you. To build the 7-figure biz. To meet the love of their life. To bring new souls into the planet after struggling for years, or maybe not at all.

When we forget that reality is not at our beck and call for every whim of our desire, and that we’re actually not the ones in total control, we set ourselves up for the very real possibility that we waste our life thinking something is deeply, innately, karmically wrong with us.

When in reality, maybe it’s just not our time yet. Maybe that’s not the lesson of this life. Maybe your soul already lived its best family life out to its fullest, and this lifetime you’re here to be a mother and a leader for the greater world.

(Absolutely my karma, according to my Vedic Astrologer, btw.)

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day. She was feeling frustrated at the fact that it felt like everyone she knew was able to easily grow her business, manifest in clients, have an “easy” path with being able to co-create the reality of their dreams.

And respectfully, I couldn’t have disagreed more.

For one, after working with literally over 2,000 female clients intimately, 1:1, some for years and years, in both their health and their business growth, I can categorically tell you that is fundamentally untrue.

No one just strikes gold. No one is immune to challenges, or to needing to learn some very 3D and 5D lessons before being able to operate in what appears to be “effortless flow.”

And anyone who says otherwise is either blatantly lying to you (and likely trying to sell you something), or they’re simply so far from that reality that they’ve forgotten. And I get it, because that’s been me too.

I rarely feel envy for anyone’s circumstances anymore because I know the lessons and the price that was paid to learn them.

And I won’t lie, these two truths are ones I struggle with reconciling, and I’ll probably get some hate for speaking to this.

But nothing in our physical world is ever a restraint. Really.

So many of us know, logically, that we could leave the shit relationship. We could start the business. We could figure out how to go viral. We could get the second job and get resourceful. We could ask for help, could stop over-functioning. We don’t. And it’s rarely because we don’t see the exit.

It’s because facing why we’re the one holding it together, or choosing to stay stuck, is scarier than the holding itself.

A lot of us stay stuck in the pattern of generational sacrifice and the martyrdom of being the good girl/wife/mother/parent/daughter/member of society that blinds us to the truth.

Part of this is karmic. I’m sure of it. Our karma is here to help us learn and embody the lessons our soul already knows but our human brain has forgotten.

So whilst we are absolutely the co-creators of our reality, and any physical restraint IS an illusion, there’s also the totally seemingly contradictory truth that sometimes our hands are tied karmically.

This is the thing most “manifesting teachers” or spiritual leaders leave out, because it’s inconvenient. It’s not a neat little bow. And it’s hard to sell you something if you’re not being convinced that everything you want is on the other side of it.

Our reality as spiritual beings who chose to be on this karmic 3D plane is so much more complex than a lot of our consciousness can compute.

And it’s also very simple.

We are powerful co-creators, we have access to God/Source/Spirit/Ancestors/The Universe at any moment, because we are one with it all. We’re not separate. We’re one manifestation of the collective oneness/consciousness, and at the same time, we’re mere mortals re-membering this truth we’ve forgotten, re-learning the lessons of our soul’s journey and karmic path we agreed to re-learn the moment our souls dropped into this plane of reality.

I’m not pretending to know the meaning of life, nor am I pretending to fully understand it. In so many ways I’m just as befuddled as you.

And I’ve learned, through pain, through loss, through grief, through wild incredible manifestations, through white-knuckling my way through manifesting every egoic desire I could ever have, that it’s all part of it. The good and the bad.

And the moment we start falling for the false belief that we “should” only have the things that feel like the highest highs and the grandest material possessions, that we only deserve the “good,” we begin to co-create our own little personal hell on earth.

Have you ever watched The Good Place? One of my favourite shows. Partially because I identify so much with the philosophy professor and his relentless, spinning-himself-out-like-crazy pursuit of what’s “right.” And because it’s a hilarious and really clever demonstration of what happens when we can, at the drop of a hat, literally manifest every single big, small, meaningful, and flippant desire we’ve ever had.

Spoiler alert: it’s literally how we know we’re in hell.

Because when every desire comes to you at your beck and call, it becomes bland af. As boring as plain oatmeal. As unexciting, unmotivating, and dull as anything you can possibly imagine. Because without the dark, the light cannot exist. Without contrast to the “perfect,” we lose sight of the meaning of the little things.

When you can click your fingers and have 50 jumbo prawns at any moment, it’s easy to miss the magic of the sunset and the beauty that brings.

I’m NOT saying that suffering is to be glorified, or that we’re meant to suffer, or that we MUST suffer in order to also receive the lessons, the magic, and the beauty in what might otherwise be perceived as the mundane.

But I am saying that suffering is inevitable. It’s part of life. It’s part of earth school, and there are seasons that are always going to be harder than others.

But our capacity to see the glimmers within it. Our ability to not lose our joy, our hope, our kindness, our capacity to see the light amongst it all. That is the whole damn point.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s actually not any more complicated than that.

If this meant something to you, it would mean the absolute most if you shared it with a friend who needs it too.

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And, not so secretly, I am dying to know: where do you land in all of this? What are your feelings on manifestation? Where do you fall in the eternal debate of free will vs. destiny?

(Is it any surprise that metaphysics was my specialisation when I majored in Philosophy in Uni?)

xx elise


P.S. I think I’m going to do a part 2 to this where I walk you through how I’ve figured out how to tell if you’re really manifesting or if you’re just white-knuckle gripping karma for control - ‘twas a hard leaned lesson and I’d love you to figure it out easier than me! Let me know below if that interests you in the comments below.

I just released an 18 month karmic cycle this last week - let me know below if you want me to do a post elaborating on navigating this - and I’ve really had to sit with the discomfort of not knowing wtf was going on, feeling confused, uninspired, in resistance, having health symptoms flare and really IN the uncertainty of the void in order to receive it.

It’s September 1st as I write this to you and I have the feeling that for SO many of us this is a marking of a new chapter.

Not because I’m SO CLEAR on what’s coming next - truthfully I have no f’ing clue what’s coming in. But because I’ve been through enough re-birth cycles in my life to FINALLY have the wherewithal to recognise it when I’m in the middle of it.

Which is almost always hard because it feels less like the beginning and more like old wounds, pain and grief being resurfaced.

and it’s weird ya know.. because on one hand, there’s a freshness to my life right now.

We’ve just moved house, I’ve just embarked on a huge new business venture with my husband and a BIG full home renovation x 2 - like she is down to the STUDS right now…

To get really real with you (apologies in advance if your not here for TMI) I’ve just had the most aggressive bleed of my life and had 2 periods on the new moon and the full moon and whilst I could write that off as evidence of my adenomyosis and having a flare - something in me KNOWS this is so much more energetic than physical and I finally trust myself to know the difference - because how could that possibly be a coincidence?

I’ve felt what I can only describe as “empty” for the last week - empty of creativity, energy, fucks, ambition. It’s like every aspect of my life has just undergone another big cleanse, and I’ve gone through enough of these at this point in my life to know that with everything that feels as if it’s falling away, with every drop of certainty becomes fertile ground for the new to form.

It’s like I’m closing chapters I didn’t even know were open. Or rather, that there are some very old chapters that are ready to be closed.

I’ve been DEEP in so much tying up of loose ends with my company, dramas with life admin, old Canadian bank accounts that are rippling into family dramas. Old friends reaching out. Old wounds being shown to give me the opportunity to heal them for good. It never ceases to amaze me how we’re always shown the exact right things at the exact right time.

What could have (and would have) spiralled me in the past - I’ll save you from the full boring story, but I’m once again locked out of my Canadian bank account with no way to reset, because I have the distinct feeling they’ve incorrectly entered my email on their end… it’s brought to light so many things I’ve wanted to ignore or pretend don’t exist.

Mostly grief things…

Part of me wants to sigh just writing that. The other part of me wants to cry and scream and wallow in the injustice of it all..

The small things that are so easy to take for granted seem to be highlighted when you live overseas and are basically estranged from your entire bloodline. How I have no one to put a local number on my Canadian bank account, no one to help me navigate logistics that are somehow SO DIFFICULT to manage in 2026 from overseas. No one to rely on, to ask for help with the smallest things, that always feel so insignificant but SO BIG when there’s no one there.

It’s hard for it not to trigger that deep wound inside of me - the one that says you can never rely on anyone, that no one loves you enough to be a stable enough rock, that your existence is so inconvenient - how dare you ask for anything…

And yet I know that nothing is an accident, there is never anything that’s being presented to me in this lifetime that isn’t for my highest good. So amongst the ugly sobs, the grief, the bitterness that feels so sharp is a question that I always come back to:

Now this landing doesn’t make the truth sting any less - let me be clear. And as much as I know that my fear thoughts aren’t true - those being that I truly have no one to support me, if there’s one thing that over 10 years of coaching and supporting other women with their mindsets has taught me - it’s that facts never trump feelings.

Re-frames only hit surface deep if we don’t have a way to make meaning out of the bigger picture.

Because whilst the facts are undeniable:

How lucky and grateful to have an aunt and uncle that truly are my rock, I have friends that literally ARE family and I know I can rely on for anything at any time, I have a husband that would move mountains for me - there’s still pain there.


There’s still a lump in my throat as I type this. There’s still the grief of knowing I’ll never know what it’s like to experience that support from parents or a sibling. There’s still the child-like desire I have to wish that I didn’t have to know this pain, and the part of me that would do anything to experience what it’s like to know that the buck doesn’t stop with me. To feel that kind of unconditional support from a parent or an immediate family member.


And no amount of re-frames or spins will ever discredit that truth.

But you know what makes it sting a whole lot less?

Radical acceptance of it all. An unwillingness to deny my reality and spin it in a way that makes me feel better - that’s just mental gaslighting. And don’t get me started on the way pop psychology has made this the norm… that’s a convo for another day.

The real work IMO? The thing that’s truly given me freedom for the reality to be the reality and me to be not just ok with it, but feel joy despite of it?

Letting it all be true.

Letting it be true that it’s truly fucked to not have familial support. It’s a pain, a grief and a sadness I truly wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

And letting it be true that this pain is one of the most important catalysts in my path. Because resilience and resourcefulness isn’t built accidentally.


I don’t know many people who possess the absolutely unhinged level of confidence and self-belief I have in myself. I would back myself up against literally anything to figure it out - truly the way I feel that deeply in my soul as one of the truest truths about me is one of the things I love about myself the most.

Here’s a highly controversial example for you to get exactly what I mean:

In the middle of COVID, when my husband and I refused the you know what and everyone around us was engrossed by the pressure of what was going to happen if they followed what felt right vs. what they felt pressured into - not one cell in my system was worried.

Not even when I was refused entry by my own country of origin. Not even when I lost friendships and felt pressure from family members. Not even when I was suddenly a second class citizen because I couldn’t fly. Not even when I couldn’t fly home to be with my family when my Dad passed away (thank God I knew deep in my heart that he’d be PISSED at me if I would have abandoned myself like that and I had a lot of family support in my decision).

None of it shook me, not in the least.

Was it hard at times to be viewed as a literal leper? Yes, yes it was.

Did it for a moment make me second-guess myself, what I knew from my own independent research and what I felt in my heart to be the right decision for me? Not even for a second.

In fact the pushback made me double down on my conviction. Not out of stubbornness - although Leo rising so I’m sure there’s a bit of that too - but because I will never be coerced, ever.

Once I know something is right in my heart and soul, nothing can stray me from that.

And it would be crazy to think that’s an accident. That I was just born this way. That it just “happened.”

It didn’t - it was the result of coming out of the other side of the hardest rejection one could ever experience…

Being rejected from your mom hits different. Experiencing conditional love from the woman who birthed you is a hard one to top. Once you’ve gone through hell and back on that journey, you realise it was never you that was the problem - even though it felt like that for most of your life.

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You realise that no one’s opinion of you ever matters more than yours, and you learn that if your own flesh and blood doesn’t understand you, can’t see you, can’t hold space for the fullness of your light - you shine and show up anyway.


You don’t just think that it really, truly, deeply doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, you KNOW that to be true in the depths of your soul, because you’ve lived it, you’ve embodied it you’ve literally come face to face with the heartbreaking depths of sadness when the people who are meant to have your back don’t and you learn how to sit in the depths of love for yourself anyway.

Now, I’m not here painting myself as some evolved all-knowing spiritual saint. I’m far from it.

I’m not immune to criticism - I just had a big cry this morning because a family member got pissed at me over having their number on my bank account, when I was trying to desperately get a sign-in code.

I’m not immune to feelings of jealousy, or even - and I cringe typing this - a bit resentful, when I see the unconditional kind of love my friends have from their family, and how much support they have that they sometimes take for granted.

But I am grateful, in a weird - some would say fucked up - kinda way.

Grateful that I somehow chose such an amazing partner despite my history of such bad role models.

Grateful that I’ve been lucky enough to call in friends that would drop everything and come help me bury a body if necessary.

Grateful that I’ve learned how much my pain has a purpose - I’m yet to meet someone I look up to that hasn’t had to overcome some of the hardest shit I wouldn’t trade my hard for ever..

Because truly, that kinda feels like the whole ass point of being here.

I’m beyond grateful you’re here. Would love to hear what this brings up for you, so please tell me below. Always grateful for your insights and the opportunity to connect with you!

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xx
Elise

I’ve been sitting on this post for weeks. Last month, on my birthday, a day after hers, in some twisted realm of fate, marked two years since we last spoke. I don’t know exactly where this post is going, and experience tells me that’s likely the point.

The truth is the reality of no longer having a mum is hard. I know I’m not the only person on the planet who’s lost a mum. But choosing to lose one - well, it’s been a portal of grief I never expected.

There are many, MANY times when I want to call my mum. Except I don’t want to call MY mum. But like I would truly do almost anything to have the love, the support, of A mum. You know?

Because that’s honestly something I’ve never truly experienced. What I always thought was the love of a mother was really - as I’ve come to learn - the projection of her love onto me as a means to an end. Which sounds weird unless you’ve experienced it firsthand. Let me try to explain.

Before I went no-contact, I had flown home to visit family. I’ve lived in Australia for the past 15 years, but my family is in Vancouver, Canada - where I’m from. There was a lot of drama in the lead-up, as there always is. I had to practically beg her to inconvenience herself by picking us up at the airport - after I’d flown 13 hours from Brisbane to Vancouver, straight onto another plane to Kelowna. But if you know narcissists, you know.

I had what felt like the weirdest thought pop into my mind right after I landed, when she made a big scene in the airport and came running to give me a big, dramatic hug.

This has nothing to do with me.

The hug felt empty. Performative. Like she was quite literally sucking my energy out of me. Like it had everything to do with her - and nothing at all to do with me.

I wrote the thought off as something silly, and scolded myself internally. What kind of daughter thinks that about her own mother? How could I already be getting annoyed with her when I’d just landed? I hadn’t even seen her in over four years. What kind of monster has thoughts like that?

It didn’t hit me until about six months after going no-contact that I wasn’t a horrible, evil daughter for thinking it. I was actually so very right. That wasn’t an intrusive thought - that was my intuition, speaking as clearly as it ever had. I just didn’t have the awareness yet to take it on as the warning it was.

the last photo I have of us all together on this trip back home and right before an atomic bomb blasted my awareness open

Below you will read the story of the moment I knew, like really knew, that my mother was never who I thought she was. The years it took me to trust that thought. What it’s cost me to finally choose myself over her. And what almost two years of silence has actually given me back.

If you’ve ever loved someone who hurt you and didn’t know how to leave. If you’ve ever gone no-contact, or thought about it, or wondered if you’re a monster for wanting to. If you’ve ever grieved someone who’s still alive… this is for you. I promise, this one’s worth going paid for.

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