Hells bells, I dropped off the radar for a few weeks there team, hiiiiii!

I miss your blog-reading face.

Much things have occurred since I last wrote to you to tell you about that cute dog that turned my lip into a purple monster lip!

I knew I’d left it a wee bit long when one of my lovely long term readers and former coaching clients emailed me to say

“Hellooooo…. Where in the bloody hell are ya?”

Just kidding, she said something much more lovely.

Some big things have been happening in my life over the last couple of months!

Some of you may remember that last year I wrote a few blog posts about whether or not I should have kids (To Kid or Not to Kid).

Wellllll, so Bloody Good Bloke and I made a kid!

And then put it in the freezer. Along with 11 other 5 day old kids, in fact.

Yep, last month, Bloody Good Bloke and I went through the highly romantic process that is known as IVF. Not to get preggo, but to freeze some embryos.

—If you’re curious to hear more about the IVF journey in a future blog post then let me know.

Then, the same week that I started to inject myself in the stomach with Ovaleap and Menopur and other such emotional-rollercoaster inducing substances, we unexpectedly got a notice to vacate our home of 10 years.

Our landlord had decided to sell.

I loved my home soooooo much and had hoped one day I’d be able to buy it… so this was very sad news indeed.

Much crying and hugging of my house ensued.

And then much packing.

And then much panicking as we joined Melbourne’s hordes of people looking for rental properties during a rental-crisis.

To stay living somewhere like where we were living, our rent would have doubled.

And with me still doing battle with long-covid and unable to work full time for more than a year now, we really needed our rent to halve instead.

It was a bit of a fucking flurry to be honest with you.

Life swept through like a tornado, uprooting a bunch of things all at once and whirling things into a new configuration.

Neville (my mind) has had a busy time!

When I get too caught up in the tornado of my mind, the ‘bigness’ of what’s going on in the world and in my life can end up feeling like an overwhelming, insurmountable ball of fuckery.

When I’m able to create some distance between me and my thoughts, and instead watch my mind-tornado, rather than be flung around by it, life flows more easily, and everything feels much more manageable.

It’s like life is a huge river, and we’re floating down the river. Sometimes the river is chill and relaxing,

sometimes it’s rapids and “holy shit hold on for dear life”.

The river is taking us where it’s taking us either way.

Either we battle it, trying to cling to rocks and swim back upstream —which is exhausting and ultimately futile… (Though TBH with you I gave it a good crack)…

Or we let go. Surrender to the current, and let life take us where it’s taking us.

There were many moments when I went for option 1,

cried a lot, hyperventilated, clung to rocks, and attempted to control things I couldn’t control.

There were also many moments where I felt oddly peaceful amidst the chaos.

Curious about where the river was taking me.

Where I hit the rapids, and instead of freaking out, just watched my emotions come and go.

At times I even managed brief moments where I was able to relish the experience of feeling sad, angry, stressed, overwhelmed, excited, uncertain.

I trust life to take me where I need to be taken to grow in the ways I need to grow.

And the more I can relax into this trust, the more I can relish this grand, emotional rollercoaster that is life.

I’m back in a somewhat smoother part of the river for now, the rapids have died down.

We’ve moved into our new place in a totally new location. It’s panned out in a rather surprising way in fact, which involved selling all our furniture and giving away a tonne of our stuff… more on that soon!

The kids are in the freezer, my hormones have normalised, we’ve mostly unpacked… and now we can look back and say “Phew! That was a ride!”

The pieces of the puzzle that got flung into the air by the tornado have yet to settle fully into their new configuration yet…

But I can feel them floating down around me, bit by bit.

I’m excited to see where they land.

Ps — I have lots more interesting stories to tell you now that I’m back on the email wagon… brb!