Just Me...

As I was looking back through old photos, piecing together a collage for my son's upcoming 21st birthday, I stumbled across something I had forgotten was there.

Or perhaps more accurately, something that wasn't.

Me.

There was a period of time where I was almost entirely absent from our family photos. It wasn't a new discovery, not really. Just one I had pushed to the back of the memory bank.

Back then, my relationship with my body was complicated. A photograph could send me spiralling into relentless self-criticism. I'd zoom in on every perceived flaw, scrutinise every angle, and convince myself I needed fixing. What followed was often self-deprivation and punishment disguised as self-improvement.

I was so uncomfortable with how I looked that I insisted on approving photos before anyone was allowed to share them. A single image could ruin my mood for days. I wasn't seeing memories being captured; I was seeing flaws being documented.

Looking back now, I realise how much energy I spent analysing photographs instead of simply enjoying the moments they represented.

This wasn't the first time I'd noticed the gap.

Years ago, I had the same realisation and made myself a promise: I would be in the pictures, not just the person taking them.

Since then, I've become much better at stepping into the frame. Not because I suddenly loved every photo of myself, but because I finally understood that being present in the memory mattered more than being happy with every angle.

Over time, and especially after my health journey, something shifted. I stopped searching for perfection. I stopped worrying so much about angles, lighting, or whether I looked my best. Instead, I reached a place where I became content with whatever I looked like in each season. The focus slowly shifted from how I appeared in the photo to simply being in it.

The change wasn't limited to family photos either.

When I look back at older videos of myself singing, I can see how much effort went into making sure I was "presentable" to the world. The camera had to be positioned just right. The angle had to be flattering.

It wasn't just how I looked, either. Sometimes I would record a song five, ten, or however many times it took before I felt it was good enough to share. I chased perfect notes, perfect timing, and flawless performances.

But over the past handful of songs, something has changed.

The camera angles haven't always been flattering. The performances haven't been perfect. There have been missed notes, imperfect takes, and moments I once would have re-recorded.

And yet, I've shared them anyway.

My Dad passed away when I was sixteen. We have only a handful of videos of him singing. Technology like we know it today simply didn't exist then, and I often wish it had.

Not once have I watched those recordings and analysed how he looked.

I don't notice whether the angle was flattering.

I don't care if every note was perfect.

What I see is my Dad.

The handsome, talented man who helped make me.

A man sharing his gift with the world through song.

And every one of those recordings is priceless.

Perhaps that's why my approach to sharing my own music has changed.

The purpose is no longer to present a polished version of myself.

It's about preserving the music.

The lyrics.

The stories behind them.

It's about capturing a moment of creativity exactly as it existed in that season of life.

One day, those songs will become memories too.

A way for my boys to hear my voice.

To see me as I was in that season.

To know what mattered to me, what moved me, what I created.

A way for a small piece of me to remain.

Perhaps that's why seeing that missing chapter in the photo albums again affected me so deeply.

It reminded me of the memories that can never be recreated.

The birthdays, celebrations, ordinary days and milestones where I was there, but left no visual evidence behind.

And then something unexpected happened.

The photos I once would have criticised were now the ones I found myself looking at wistfully.

Not because they were perfect, but because I wished I still looked like that.

Funny, isn't it?

The woman in those photos spent so much time wishing she looked different. Yet the woman looking at them now wishes she still had the body she was so determined to change.

It's a strange paradox.

Because today, I have made peace with so much of my body. This body has carried me through motherhood, surgeries, scars, healing, grief, study, growth, and every season in between.

These days, I mostly just want to be captured.

To exist in the memory.

To leave evidence that I was there.

And yet, if I'm being completely honest, there are still moments when I look back at those photos and wish I had known then what I know now.

Not because I would have changed my body.

But because I would have appreciated it.

I would have stepped into the frame more often.

I would have smiled without hesitation.

I would have stopped waiting for a future version of myself to become worthy of being remembered.

Because the truth is, every version of us spends far too much time believing she isn't enough.

We spend our lives waiting to lose the weight, clear the skin, tone the arms, grow the hair, smooth the wrinkles, or somehow become the version of ourselves we think deserves to be seen.

And all the while, life is happening.

Photos are being taken.

Memories are being made.

Songs are being sung.

Moments are passing.

Then one day, we look back and realise the person we spent so much time criticising was never the problem.

She was simply living a life she hadn't yet learned to appreciate.

When I watch those old videos of Dad singing, I don't see imperfections.

I don't see flaws.

I don't see someone who should have waited until he looked better, sounded better, or got it just right.

I see my Dad.

The man whose voice I would give almost anything to hear again.

Perhaps that's the lesson in all of this.

The people who love us don't see us the way we see ourselves.

One day, my boys will look back at the photos and videos I've left behind.

I hope they won't see the things I spent years worrying about.

I hope they won't notice the extra weight, the wrinkles, the bad camera angles, the missed notes, or the imperfect performances.

I hope they'll simply see their mum, see me.

And maybe that's been enough all along.

Read more "Just Me..."

The Season of Beginnings

In fifteen weeks, I will finish my degree.

Some days that feels exciting.

Other days it feels terrifying.

For years the finish line seemed so far away that I rarely stopped to think about what might come after it.

Now suddenly, I can see it.

And beyond it?

A question mark.

Not an empty question mark, but one filled with possibility, uncertainty, excitement, hope, and just a little fear.

Although "a little fear" may be the understatement of the year.

Truth be told, I alternate between feeling incredibly excited and wondering what on earth I'm going to do when I am let loose in the real world.

The truth is, I have become quite comfortable being a student.

I know what is expected of me here.

I know the rhythm.

I know the next step.

What comes after that is far less certain.

Perhaps what makes this transition feel so significant is that studying has been part of my life for so long.

My life has been measured in semesters, assessments, exams, clinic hours, deadlines, and more late nights than I care to remember, squeezing study into the spaces between work, family life, and everything else that needed me.

I realised recently that I have been studying for more than half of my sons' lives.

My kids, have really only ever known me as someone who is studying, learning, growing, and working towards the next goal.

Even my husband has only ever known a version of me that was working towards something. 

When I think about it, that feels extraordinary.

For so long, being a student has not just been something I do. It has been part of who I am.

Being a student has become one of the constants of our family life.

For so long, the question has been, "What's due next?"

Soon, the question will become, "What comes next?"

And while that feels exciting, it also feels strangely unfamiliar.

Not because I am leaving something behind.

But because I am stepping into something I have worked towards for a very long time.

As I look around, I realise I am not the only one standing in the space between what was and what will be.

My son is standing in his own question mark.

Having recently completed his apprenticeship, he now finds himself in that strange season of waiting that sometimes follows a significant achievement. One chapter has ended, but the next has not quite begun.

It is an uncomfortable place to be, that space between what was and what will be.

I find myself wanting to reassure him that the waiting will not last forever. That another opportunity will come. That one day this season will make sense.

Then I realise I am trying to tell myself the very same thing.

A dear friend of mine is also standing at the edge of a new season.

Next week she will graduate, marking the completion of years of dedication, sacrifice, and perseverance. Yet alongside that achievement, she finds herself navigating significant changes and learning how to imagine a future that looks different from the one she once expected.

It strikes me that life often works this way.

Just as we find our footing in one chapter, another begins to unfold.

And then there is my baby boy.

Next week he turns twenty-one.

Twenty-one.

I am not entirely sure how that happened.

One moment I was reading bedtime stories, packing lunchboxes, helping with homework, and cheering from the sidelines of childhood.

The next, I am looking at a grown man.

A young man standing at the beginning of his own life.

How can someone be both your baby and an adult at the same time?

And yet somehow they are.

Perhaps every parent understands this strange contradiction.

We spend years teaching our children to grow, and then find ourselves wondering where the years went.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that beginnings are not reserved for the young.

We often imagine that life's biggest beginnings happen in our twenties.

Leaving school.

Starting careers.

Falling in love.

Building families.

But life keeps asking us to begin again.

At twenty-one.

At thirty-three.

At fifty-one.

At sixty.

At eighty.

Again and again.

A new career.

A new season.

A new relationship.

A new identity.

A new understanding of ourselves.

Sometimes we choose these beginnings.

Sometimes they arrive uninvited.

Most often, they arrive carrying equal measures of hope and uncertainty.

Because every beginning asks us to leave something behind.

A familiar routine.

A comfortable identity.

A chapter that has shaped us.

Perhaps that is why beginnings can feel so complicated.

They ask us to celebrate what is ahead while quietly grieving what is ending.

They ask us to trust a path we cannot yet see.

As I stand here, fifteen weeks away from completing my degree, I cannot tell you exactly what comes next.

My son cannot yet see where his next opportunity will come from.

My friend is still discovering who she will be in this next chapter of her life.

My youngest son is stepping fully into adulthood.

And I am preparing to step into a role that I have worked towards for years, but have not yet fully inhabited.

Different stories.

Different journeys.

Different beginnings.

Yet all of us are standing before the same invitation.

To trust that an ending is not the end.

To believe that uncertainty is not the enemy.

To have faith that something new is quietly taking shape, even when we cannot yet see it.

Perhaps that is what a beginning really is.

Not a destination.

Not a plan.

Not even a certainty.

Perhaps it is simply the courage to take the next step before the whole path is visible.

And maybe, just maybe, that is enough.

Read more "The Season of Beginnings"

Amputating to Survive

There are moments that divide your life into two parts: before this, and after this.

Six years ago, I chose a prophylactic mastectomy due to genetic cancer risk. My immune system had always felt somewhat run down, frequent illnesses, never quite robust. But the deeper exhaustion came from the cycle of breast lumps, scans, and holding my breath while results determined whether life would continue as normal or fracture entirely.

The waiting was agonising. That does something to you.

I followed every protocol to be op-ready. I was as prepared as I could be. What I didn’t know, not 100% anyway, was that beneath dense breast tissue, undetected on scans, cancer was already there.

The surgery that felt preventative became life-saving. That realisation still humbles me.

Cancer has woven itself through my life like ivy, persistent, reaching, sometimes thorned. Beautiful from a distance. Invasive up close. It has shaped the architecture of my becoming in ways I am still uncovering.

The Immediate “After”

If I’m honest, the very first “after” was softened by very good pain medication, what I jokingly called my “happy juice.” I was in a haze, barely able to process what was happening, yet even then, there were moments of laughter.

There’s something almost merciful about that haze; your body and mind gently cushioned from the enormity of what just happened.

I still remember Day 1 post-op vividly: the plastic surgeon walked in, exclaiming “Oh shit!” at my left breast, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Even amidst fear, humour found its way through.

By Day 2, I wrestled with numbness down my leg, fevers, and a catheter that wouldn’t drain. While the team debated sending me back into surgery, I shuffled to a recliner, where my husband trying the hot air blanket declared, “Too hot for this little penguin!” Even in the haze, we laughed.

Those first three days I often reference, the haze, the drains, the first walk to the loo (there are many memories of the loo), sleeping six hours and feeling “human again”, they were only a snippet.

What followed wasn’t tidy.

I was in and out of hospital for weeks at a time. Complications. Infections. Additional procedures. Monitoring. Waiting. Recovering. Regressing. Recovering again. Healing wasn’t linear. It rarely is. 

At the time, I thought it was simply about surviving the physical trauma. I became detached from my body so the gravity of my emotions would not sweep me under.

But six years on, I see something deeper.

The compartmentalisation was also tied to survivor guilt.

Because this was a choice I made.

Because I didn’t require chemotherapy.

Because others endured more invasive treatment, more suffering, more loss.

Because my baby sister faced breast cancer at 35.

Because women I love, like my Mum, have walked harder roads.

Somewhere inside, I told myself I didn’t have the right to feel it as heavily.

So I muted it. Detached. Carried on.

It was both a shield and a quiet kind of self-denial, a coping mechanism that saved me, but also delayed some of my emotional processing.

Relief.

Grief.

Strength.

Numbness.

Sometimes they come one at a time. Sometimes all at once.

Amid the haze of it all, music threaded through memory. Hope, the song I danced to when I laboured with my two boys. Even broken open, I remembered that I had danced before. That joy had lived in this body too.

The Quiet Shock

The mastectomy was a double procedure, with both nipples removed. My breasts were reconstructed, what I now affectionately call my “foobs”, using tissue from my inner thighs. Incisions from groin to knee. Multiple follow-up surgeries. Healing layered upon healing.

My foobs are still not quite right.

A hysterectomy followed. Another surgery. Another surrender. Another quiet line in the sand. Another redefining of what my body would be able to hold, and what it would no longer carry. 

Surgical menopause arrived not gently, but decisively. 

What surprised me most wasn’t that menopause came, I knew it would. It was the acceleration. The way it seemed to sneak up overnight. The subtle but undeniable sense of aging, of something shifting at a cellular level.

Even when you are prepared, the body still moves at its own pace. 

I was surprised by how deeply I was attached to my femininity, and how much of it I felt I had lost.

It brought its own grief, its own recalibration of identity, hormones, sexuality, energy.

The Body, Rewritten

My body was rewritten again, not in one dramatic chapter, but in layered edits.

I was scheduled for nipple reconstruction this year. I know I’m not ready though. Not physically. Not mentally. 

Resetting everything back to zero feels like too much.

Body image has always been complex for me. Surgery, menopause, weight changes, lymphoedema, physical limitations, they added new terrain to navigate.

Yet paradoxically, I am healthier in some ways now than I was before. Health and aesthetic don’t always align. Strength doesn’t always look the way we expect it to.

I had always been driven. Resilient. Capable. 

Anxiety wasn’t something I wore obviously before surgery, but in the years since, it has surfaced more clearly. Though to be fair, the mastectomy happened at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s difficult to separate what was surgical, what was hormonal, and what was global uncertainty pressing down on all of us. Have any of us really recovered from it?

I had wonderful support from my husband, my boys, my family, my friends. During COVID, physical support was limited, but what was offered was incredible. And yet I sometimes wonder, would more support have helped? More women around me navigating the same terrain? More language for what I was experiencing?

Some transitions are survivable and still isolating.

Like hands that cannot sustain the remedial massage career I paused six years ago. That version of me still exists, but she has been buried beneath physical limitations and rewritten priorities.

Resilience remains, but it looks different.

Not push-through strength. Not white-knuckled endurance.

I have had to learn to listen to my body instead of fighting it. To respect limits rather than override them. To understand that resilience is not the same as pushing through.

Six years later, I am more emotionally attuned than I have ever been. More aware. More tender. Less invincible, and perhaps more whole because of that.

The Long Thread

Cancer has touched so many I love, and caused losses I cannot begin to describe the weight of.

My Nana when I was ten.

My Dad, my muse, when I was sixteen.

A best friend who visited me in hospital on her own treatment days, and who didn’t get to stay.

My former self.

Cancer feels like ivy, weaving its way through everything. Quiet. Persistent. Wrapping itself around milestones, memories, relationships.

And sometimes it has thorns.

Losing my friend carved something deep into me. Survivor guilt lives there too. I walked forward. She didn’t get to.

On Tuesday, February 24th, on my six-year mastectomy anniversary, I took a client case that hit close to home. Without sharing details, I can say this: 11 years into her journey, I was in awe of her progress, her strength, and her fragility. It reminded me of how far I have come, and how self-critical I can be. 

It reminded me that these “before and after” moments never fully disappear. They soften. They integrate. They shape how we show up for others.

It stirred something tender: grief, gratitude, recognition. The ache of survivor guilt. The weight of what I have endured. The privilege of not having needed further treatment like chemotherapy. Healing is not linear. Neither is reflection.

Six years on, I don’t have a perfectly packaged message.

Just this:

Sometimes the choices that feel preventative are actually life-saving.

Sometimes loss deepens you.

Sometimes femininity evolves instead of disappears.

Sometimes strength is quieter than it used to be.

And sometimes, you don’t realise how much you’ve grown until someone else’s story gently reflects your own.

Gratitude and tenderness can coexist. So can strength and softness.

Ivy Has Thorns

Now, another of my closest friends is navigating her own complex battle.

Loving her is both privilege and ache.

I adore her fiercely. Completely.

And if I’m honest, there is a silent fear. One I don’t dare speak of. I don’t need to. Sometimes in our conversations, I feel a mutual knowing, not of defeat, but of reality. Of fragility, not frailty, but that tender in-between space of strength and vulnerability. Of how precious this all is.

Watching her has stirred trauma in me I didn’t realise was still living in my body.

But it has also offered healing.

In loving her, supporting her, sometimes from afar, I am integrating what I once amputated. It is confronting. It is tender. It is necessary.

When I look at her, I see the woman I was during my own journey: steady, composed, battling quietly. And I want to show her what I learned:

Resilience is not self-abandonment.

Six Years On

There are moments that divide time: before this. After this.

Six years ago, I amputated tissue to survive.

I amputated emotion to survive.

I compartmentalised because the weight felt undeserved.

But I understand something differently now.

Survival is not a competition.

Grief is not comparative.

Love is not rationed.

The ivy may wind its way through my story, but so does strength.

So does tenderness.

So does laughter in hospital rooms.

So does music.

So do women who show up for one another in the middle of their own battles.

I no longer believe I have to sever parts of myself to stay afloat.

I can feel the weight and still stand.

I can love and still risk loss.

I can carry grief without comparing it.

Cancer has woven itself through my life.

But so has love.

And I am still here.

But the woman I was has been fundamentally rewritten.

Read more "Amputating to Survive"

Connected Independence

Loving them well isn’t doing everything for them. It’s inviting them into the weight of responsibility, into contribution, into capability, into the quiet dignity of learning to carry their part.

The Secret Ingredient

I was about to prepare dinner when the words of my supervisor echoed in my ear. Not about food. Not about nutrients. About doing a disservice, in loving them only through acts of kindness.

That landed. Because kindness, when overextended, can quietly become protection. And protection, when habitual, can quietly become limitation.

I was tired. Fatigued in that bone-deep way that doesn’t announce itself dramatically, it just hums beneath everything. And still, dinner needed to be made.

That’s adulthood. No matter how depleted you are. No matter how long the day has been. You still need to cook. You still need to show up. You still need to feed the people you love, and yourself.

So I made a decision. Tonight was the night. “Everyone in the kitchen.”

Truth be told, despite moments of laughter, seven in a kitchen is a lot. It was crowded. There was someone in someone else’s way. And it heightened my anxiety. That material, instinctive pull to protect them, to smooth the edges, prevent mistakes, take over.

The chopping took its time.

Instructions were repeated with patience. It would have been easier to do it all myself. 

And sometimes, it still is.

But that’s not the point. Because loving them well isn’t doing everything for them. It’s teaching them what it means to carry responsibility.

To contribute. To participate even when you don’t feel like it. To understand that nourishment doesn’t magically appear. It is made.

And so we cooked. 

Seven pairs of hands learning the choreography of adulthood. Learning that fatigue and responsibility can coexist. Learning that contribution is part of belonging.

It wasn’t seamless. It wasn’t serene. But it was growth. Small steps toward connected independence.

Not the kind that says, “I don’t need you. ”But the kind that says, “I can stand beside you.”  Independence that still gathers at the table. Independence that knows how to chop, stir, serve, and someday, lead.

And maybe loving them well

isn’t lightening every load -

but teaching them how to carry it.

L, L, P,

Tash xo

Read more "Connected Independence"