When you disconnect yourself from something emotionally draining, that doesn’t necessarily mean the end. It just means you’ve stopped believing you were responsible for someone or something else’s survival. Some context: I have a pub job that pays the bills. It’s not ideal but it’s 100 hours a month with a lot of time off. Suits me. There was a possibility it was ending at the end of August because, well, my boss is a useless business woman. I’ve found out today that she has a financial reprieve. A few months back I would have done everything to help to keep the business going. But I’ve emotionally disconnected myself from it. It’s not over. But it no longer has a hold on me. It’s just now given me more time to create momentum in other areas. I’m freer than I’ve been in years. Are you emotionally connected to something you need to let go of? And if so, what? And what steps could you take to free yourself from it?

This week reminded me of something I think a lot of us forget. Life can be objectively lovely... ...and we still might not be able to access joy. A beautiful day. Time with people we love. A quiet river. Good food. Yet our minds and bodies sometimes refuse to join in. For years I'd have judged myself for that. Now I don't. I've learnt that forcing yourself to feel grateful doesn't create gratitude. It just creates another thing to fail at. Sometimes your nervous system needs rest more than inspiration. Sometimes your hormones are running the show. Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is stop asking yourself why you can't enjoy something... and trust that the feeling will pass. It usually does. The world tells us to optimise every moment. I'm much more interested in helping people stop fighting the moments they can't. What if peace isn't something you create... What if it's something you stop arguing with long enough to notice when it returns?

At 2pm on a Friday, my boss’ insolvency lawyer wanted something from me within two hours. I was halfway out the door on my day off. For the first time in years, I said no. It felt far more powerful than any self-help book has ever managed. Anyone who’s been in the self-help world for more than 5 minutes has heard the old trope of reclaiming their power a million times over. Most people envisage that as sounding loud and brash - I’ll make big decisions, you’ll be hearing big announcements, my confidence will smash through the roof. But it doesn’t look or feel anything like that. I think real power is incredibly quiet. It’s saying no when you’d normally say yes. It’s walking away without needing the last word. It’s deciding that today you’re going to write instead of scrolling. It’s planting tomatoes. It’s switching the bloody news off. It’s not reacting to the idiot on Facebook. It’s making your own lunch instead of buying meal deals because you can’t be arsed. Power isn’t dramatic. It’s cumulative. Every tiny choice says, “This is the sort of person I’m becoming.” I spent years believing power lived somewhere outside me. That if I got a bit more money, another qualification for the wall, did another course, read another book, consumed another YouTube video, I’d hold all the power cards. Turns out, I wasn’t lacking power, I was leaking it. A little bit here. A little bit there. I was expecting the next shiny thing to be the step up to the top of the podium when all the time it was already inside me. My power came from telling the insolvency lawyer to bog off ‘til Monday. It came from sitting on my back steps watching the sun come up. It comes from growing my own food (as much as I can), spending time without my phone, not watching any terrestrial TV or news, using cash 99% of the time and cooking my meals from scratch. My power is my quiet rebellion. My refusal to be dragged into the mainstream narratives. I think that’s what a lot of people are feeling at the moment. Like there’s nothing they can do to change all the bullshit going on around them. With one eye on the news, another on social media, another worrying about bills, another wondering whether AI’s going to steal their job.

At 19, I turned down the chance to play county netball because my boyfriend didn't want me to be away that much. Looking back, I wasn't choosing love. I was practising ignoring my own intuition. For a lot of my adult life, I did things to keep partners happy - I turned down playing Netball for West Devon because my then boyfriend thought it would take me away from him for too long. I went to University in Exeter instead of further afield because that same boyfriend wanted to be near me. (He got kicked to the curb soon after I started Uni ;) ) I went to Lanzarote because of a man. Germany instead of Greece because of, you’ve guessed it, a man and really if I’m honest, most decisions up to around 13 years ago were made or moulded because of what a partner wanted. And why? Because I wanted to people please. I wanted to keep them happy. I went against every ounce of intuition that was clawing at me. These days, the older I get, the less interested I’ve become in collecting other people’s opinions. I ask my partner for feedback, but he’d never dream of telling me what to do. All my decisions used to be made with the wellbeing of another at the forefront of my mind. Never did I put myself up top. And decisions were often made so that I didn’t experience another guilt trip from the other side. Over the last few years, I’ve been in the advantageous position of having a partner who supports me in every decision I make. That’s resulted in me making mostly good decisions - way better than I have made in the past. The problem is, and this spills into many areas of life, we’ve become addicted to outsourcing certainty. We Google symptoms before we’ve even noticed how our body actually feels. We ask strangers on the internet what they think before we’ve finished thinking ourselves. We consume podcasts, YouTube videos, newsletters and experts until our own inner voice is drowned out by everyone else’s. Ironically, we’ve never had more information and we’ve never seemed less sure.

I love the Spring and Autumn. But the last 2 weeks of May and the first 2 weeks of June have you be my favourite time of the year.