Finding My Place

A reflection on living in my own rhythm, learning to accept myself, and finding home in the people and spaces that truly see me.

The morning light spills across our home, quiet and still, each corner holding the echoes of yesterday and the promise of today. I pause for a moment, preparing for the rhythm of our lives to unfold. Here, among the people I love and the spaces that hold our stories, I have found my place.

Embracing the Messy, Beautiful Realness

For too many years, I tried to fit inside perfection’s narrow lines. I tried to be the woman who had it all together - who didn’t stumble, didn’t falter, didn’t feel too much. What I’ve learned is that real beauty lives in the imperfect. Life is unpredictable, sometimes chaotic, and entirely mine to live.

I move through the world in my own rhythm - sometimes intense, sometimes quiet, sometimes scattered, often overthinking every step. I don’t always fit neatly into the spaces others expect me to. And yet, I have found where I belong. Not somewhere out there in the world, but here - in our home, among the people who see me, hear me, and accept me fully, even when they don’t always understand my way of doing, saying, or being.

Morning Light and Quiet Rhythms

Our mornings begin in layers. Everyone rises and leaves for work at different times, moving to their own internal clocks. Mark still wakes before their alarms, making sure they’re up on time and enjoying a steaming coffee before the hurried rush of the day begins. He plays taxi for those without a car, driving back and forth without complaint.

I am the 'not so' quiet foreman of everything at home - delegating, organising, finishing the small unnoticed tasks others don’t see or worry about, but that my mind insists must be done. It’s not glamorous work, but it is grounding. It anchors the day before it has even begun - done from a place of love, not obligation.

Afternoon Energy and Connection

By late afternoon, the house begins to hum again. Music reverberates through the walls from the driveway. Doors open. Footsteps echo down the hall. Dinner simmers. There is a promise in those hours - the promise of reconnection.

Then finally, we gather at the table, joining hands in prayer before sharing our meal. Stories are exchanged - small triumphs, frustrations, moments of humour, the ordinary details that make up a life. Afterward, we move like a well-rehearsed production line: dishes washed, benches wiped, bags packed, everything prepared for the next day. This - this coming together - is my favourite moment of our home.

We all cherish our own spaces. There are stretches of quiet where each of us disappears into separate rooms, separate worlds. And then, suddenly, we collide again - laughter spilling from the kitchen, a debate rising from the family room, teasing on the alfresco, joy, the occasional disagreement quickly resolved. Then, one by one, each of the kids comes by to say goodnight, wrapping us in hugs before retreating once again to their own corners. 

These moments - the stillness and the sudden life - are the heartbeat of our home.

Evening Stillness and Togetherness

Eventually, the house settles. It’s just Mark and me awake - him scrolling on his phone or tinkering away quietly, me lost in thought, studying, or writing. Our cats claim their places too: one curled with his head on the pillow beside me, the other stretched comfortably across Mark’s legs.

Mark and our children move to their own rhythms, and I to mine, yet together we create something harmonious. In the chaos, in the laughter, in the long conversations and the quiet evenings, I am seen. I am home.

Where We Gather

Some weekends stretch wider, reaching beyond our walls. Catching up with my mum, my sister and brother-in-law, the kids weaving in and out of activities and conversations. There’s something grounding about those gatherings - shared history sitting comfortably beside the present moment. I see echoes of childhood in the way my mum laughs, in the familiar rhythm of my sister’s voice. The generations overlap in conversation - not always easy, but real. Old stories resurface alongside new ones being written in real time. It reminds me that this home is not just built from bricks and routines, but from lineage - from love passed down, reshaped, and carried forward.

Most weekends, our home is alive. 

Mark is often outside working on cars with the boys, the bonnet lifted and hands greased, teaching without preaching - lessons shared between tools and tightened bolts. I am often lost in deep, meaning-filled conversations with whoever needs my counsel that day - heartbreak, uncertainty, dreams, doubts - the kettle boiling more than once as words and emotions spill freely. 

Friends gather into the early hours; stories are shared with animation, laughter rises, warmth and expression ripple through every corner - from the driveway to the kitchen and down the hallway. We don’t plan it; it just happens. It’s organic. It’s us. 

Our home is where others gravitate. Not because it is perfect, but because it is open.

Because it holds space.

Guiding Wings, Finding Harmony

Parenting looks different now. Our children are young adults, learning to think for themselves and shape their own identities within the family unit. Mark and I no longer lead in the same way we once did. Now, our role is gentler - guiding, advising, encouraging growth, and fostering a kind of connected independence that keeps them rooted even as they stretch.

Because each of our children is unique, we adjust our approach - responding to their individual rhythms, patterns, and personalities. Some days it flows effortlessly, filled with connection and laughter. Other days, it feels like too much - the noise, the needs, the constant balancing act. And yet, even in the overwhelm, I wouldn’t change a thing. Every adjustment, every compromise, every effort shapes a family that is uniquely ours.

They are still learning and don’t have all the answers - and neither do we. But we carry the wisdom of our years. We know you can’t put an old head on young shoulders. All we can do is offer guidance that might make their path a little steadier; that they carry with them the morals and values that guide our own footsteps - steady, imperfect, but rooted in love.

I am the one who grounds everyone, and yet they steady and uplift me in return. I encourage them to reach for the stars, knowing it requires courage and outstretched wings. And if I’m honest, neither Mark nor I are ready to be empty nesters. Our dream is deeper than that - a space where we can all live and grow, separately but together, connected by love, rhythm, and shared ground.

Messy, Beautiful Realness

The smell of morning coffee. Sunlight spilling across the bedroom floor. Productivity drifting from the kitchen. The softness of a well-worn couch beneath my hand. Cats racing through the hallway in their evening zoomies. These small, ordinary details are what anchor me. They are what turn walls into home.

The way Mark brings me a cup of tea when I’ve been deep in thought for hours, or cracks a pun so quick it catches you off guard. The way our sons laugh at a joke no one else understands. The music blaring through the bathroom walls. The way our resident young woman shares stories from her day, filling our home with warmth and young feminine energy.

These are the moments that make it more than a house. They are the threads that weave it into something living.

It is here that I embrace the messy, beautiful realness of life - the highs and lows, the clarity and confusion, the small victories and the lessons that shape us. I realise now, perfection was never the goal. Belonging is. And in this home, threaded with generations past and present, I see the legacy of love continuing - a story we write together, moment by moment, breath by breath.

This is me. Not perfect. Not fully figured out. But growing, learning, living, loving - and finding my place in the family, in the home, and in the life I have built, exactly as it is.

Thanks for reading, and for letting me share a piece of my home and heart with you.

LLP, 
Tash xo

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This is Me & This is Us

If my children ever read the posts within my blog one day, I want them to feel like they’re sitting beside me at home, where everything is in its place, where every corner is shaped by love and a life lived fully.

My name is Natasha.

But I’ve been many versions of her:

The girl who felt deeply.

The young woman who tried to hold everything together.

The one who broke quietly more than once.

The one who picked up the pieces and kept moving forward, believing in the words of Rocky Balboa: “It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep movin' forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!”

I am a wife. Mark has been my best friend, my soulmate, since 2014, and my devoted husband since April 2018. He is my rock, my anchor, my light - even on the days when my laughter is purely contractual. I am his Deni-girl, and he is my sweet man: the King of our family, holding the steady heartbeat of our home.

I am a mother. We have our young men - two born to me, two chosen in love - and three incredible young women who have become part of the rhythm of our lives. One of them shares our home as her own, bringing her warmth and spirit into every corner of our lives. Together, we are a patchwork of love and laughter, of disagreements and reconciliations, of quiet moments and loud celebrations - all the messy, beautiful, real life in between.

I have known joy so full it felt like sunlight pouring through my entire being. I have known uncertainty that kept me awake all night. I have known love that steadied me. And fear, and loss, that reshaped me. All of it belongs here.

I am not writing these words because I have it all figured out. I am writing because I am walking it, moment by moment, feeling it all - the ups, the downs, and everything in between, from the small victories to the lessons learned along the way.

I want my children to know who I was becoming while they were growing - in the laughter, the disagreements, the long talks that stretched late into the night, the celebrations, and the ordinary moments that carried meaning. Behind every shared meal, every story told, every lesson learned together, was a woman still discovering herself.

I want them to know that family is not built on perfection, but on returning - returning to the table, returning after conflict, returning to each other again and again, even when the world feels unbearably loud. But returning is not a blind act. It asks us to listen to our hearts, to release our stubbornness, to weigh our courage against our boundaries, and to know when coming back heals - and when stepping away is the bravest choice.

And if you are reading this and are not my child, know that you are welcome here too. These words are for anyone who has loved deeply, stumbled quietly, risen again, and wondered if they were doing enough - for anyone seeking a little light in the midst of life’s shadows.

This is me.

This is us.

Imperfect. Growing. Becoming. Together.

For those struggling to fit into society’s labels of 'typical' perfection instead of embracing their own perfectly imperfect uniqueness, may these words remind you that your story, in all its messy, beautiful raw realness, matters.

Love, light, & peace, 

Tash xo

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The Evolution of This Blog

The Evolution of me... 

It began in January 2010 as a way to take back control of my weight.

That’s the neat version of the story. The tidy headline.

But the truth is, the journey began long before that - in quiet comparisons, in restless striving, in the subtle belief that if I could just fix my body, everything else would fall into place.

I remember once being told by a close family friend that I had such a pretty face - it was just a pity the body let me down. A sentence tossed out casually. Perhaps unintentionally hurtful. Perhaps never meant to linger.

But it did.

There were other moments too. Comparisons to one of my aunties in stature - words I absorbed as insult, never pausing to see the fullness of her beauty, her wisdom, her steadiness. I filtered everything through the lens of insecurity. I translated neutral into negative. I collected comments like evidence.

My weight began to define me.

Not only because of the nicknames - “garbage guts,” “tubby,”  "womble butt" - or the offhand remarks that stung more than they should have. But because I allowed them to. I let those words sink beneath the surface. I let them take root. I let them feel true.

I wore them like invisible ink. 

I let them tattoo themselves onto my skin.

And so when I say this blog began as a health and fitness journey, what I really mean is that it began as an attempt to outrun a story I had been telling myself for years. A story where my worth was conditional. Where my value rose and fell with the number on a scale.

Health and fitness became my compass. I tracked, trained, measured, refined. And I wrote. I blogged my way through the becoming - sharing milestones, setbacks, lessons learned through discipline and determination. For years, the rhythm was simple: effort in, results out. Movement as medicine. Control as comfort.

Then in August 2016, something shifted.

I began to look beneath the surface. Beyond macros and mileage. Beyond aesthetic goals and personal bests. I started asking deeper questions about identity, about values, about the stories I carried and the ones I was ready to rewrite. Health and fitness were still there, but they were no longer the whole picture. They were threads - not the entire tapestry.

Now, fitness as I once knew it sits quietly on the sidelines. Missed, yes. Remembered fondly. And one day, when I can trust myself not to push beyond my own limitations - not to override my body in the name of achievement - it will return in a gentler form. But life has grown more complex. My health has grown more complex. And how could that not shape the writing?

This space has evolved as I have.

What started as blogging has become something more intentional. More rooted. I’m no longer just documenting progress. I’m leaving a legacy.

Not perfectly curated content - but breadcrumbs home.

Home to who I was. 

Home to who I am. 

Home to who I am still becoming.

My entries are sporadic - sometimes flowing one after the other, words spilling out faster than I can hold them. Other times, they fall silent for months. Even a year. Life expands. Energy shifts. Seasons change.

But I always come back.

Because writing these posts is a form of therapy.

As someone who chronically overthinks - who often feels like there are too many browser tabs open in my mind at once - writing is my way of closing them, one by one. It is a cathartic process. A quiet untangling. A place where the noise softens enough for clarity to rise.

It helps me process my thoughts. 

It helps me sit with my emotions. 

It helps me make sense of the jumbled, beautiful mess that is my mind.

I write to preserve memory. To hold onto moments before they blur at the edges. To share lived wisdom - not as instruction, but as offering. To offer light through honesty. Not the harsh glare of perfection, but the steady glow of truth.

These words are a time capsule.

For my children... so they might one day know the texture of my thoughts, not just the outline of my days.
For my future self... so she can remember what it took to get here.
And for anyone walking through their own dark season... who might need to borrow a little light until theirs steadies again.

I won’t only share the polished chapters. I’ll share the unraveling too.

Because the unraveling is where the becoming happens.

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The Dangers of Drinking Concrete

Beyond the Edge of My Energy...

I wrote recently about returning in memory to the ancient oak tree, about being held under her branches and feeling that quiet, steady comfort, about remembering softness.

This entry is about what happens when I forget.

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”

I spent most of my adult life taking that literally. It felt like a philosophy made for people like me... ambitious, disciplined, quietly relentless. The kind of person who believes effort can outsmart limitation. I am 51 years old, and I have spent decades unapologetically venturing past my limits... decades of perfecting the art of overriding the whispers of my body... decades convinced that resilience meant endurance. That strength meant pushing. That discipline meant overriding discomfort.

I show up. I don’t quit. I push. I achieve. I keep going long after most people would stop. I do the things I “should”, because I "can"... even when my body says no.

And then sometimes… more often than not... I pay for it.

Drinking Concrete

In jest, my husband suggested the title of this blog 'The Dangers of Drinking Concrete'.

Thing is, he’s not wrong. I swallow discomfort. I harden around it. I turn pain into productivity. Symptoms into inconvenience. Warning signs into background noise. Concrete sets hard. It holds. It doesn’t bend. But, concrete cracks eventually. I’ve cracked more than once.

There is a particular kind of grief that comes when you realise that willpower is not the same as capacity. That determination does not magically expand physiology. That mindset does not override mitochondria, hormones, inflammation, nervous system load. If I just tried harder... managed better... planned more efficiently, I believed I could outwit my symptoms. And occasionally, I could.

But it always came at a cost.

The Ankle Incident

There are moments that show us ourselves more clearly than we’d like.

A few weeks ago, I badly sprained my ankle at the beach. Ironically, I had been frolicking in the surf, feeling free, alive. The ocean gives and takes in the same breath. One wrong step in the shifting sand, and I was down. It swelled. It throbbed. It screamed. The next morning, I went into the city for clinical placement anyway.

Of course I did.

I limped between consult rooms. I smiled through the pain. I elevated it in stolen moments. Told myself it wasn’t that bad. Told myself I could push through. A week later, still swollen and sore, I finally went to the emergency department. Not because I wanted to. Because I had to.

Push. Override. Pay later.

It was such a familiar pattern. The quiet negotiation with pain. The belief that endurance equals strength. The subtle refusal to acknowledge limitation. And the hardest part wasn’t the injury, it was recognising how automatic the denial had become.

And yet, I don’t tell this story with judgement. I tell it with compassion. Because this is how learning happens, not through perfect choices, but through finally seeing our patterns clearly enough to choose differently next time.

The Reckoning

During my clinical training, sitting with patients, witnessing invisible illness, holding space for complex stories... something began to shift... something in me began to soften. I could see in them what I had refused to see in myself. That complexity is real. That chronic conditions are not moral failures. That pacing is not weakness. That rest is not resignation. 

There is something profoundly confronting about recognising your own reflection in the case you’re supporting. I began to acknowledge that my cycles weren’t random. They were predictable outcomes of a nervous system that had been asked, repeatedly, for decades, to operate beyond sustainable limits.

Living in denial kept those cycles alive. Denial sounds harsh, but it often wears respectable clothing. It looks like high achievement. It looks like productivity. It looks like “coping.” But underneath, it whispers: "Don't you dare quit. Suck it up. Just drink some concrete. You're all good."

Slowly, I am starting to make peace with the fact that my body has limits. Real ones. Not imagined. Not excuses. Real ones.

And it’s okay.

When Pushing Doesn’t Work

Clarke’s words speak to innovation and expansion. In science and art, perhaps we must test edges to discover new ground. But I live in a body that does not always cooperate with the narrative. This is where motivational quotes begin to feel complicated. Because what happens when venturing into the impossible doesn’t create innovation, but triggers symptoms? What happens when bravery looks less like pushing forward, and more like stopping early enough to protect tomorrow’s energy?

I live inside that paradox. 

Chronic illness teaches a different kind of wisdom. When you live by your energy... when you count your day in invisible units... venturing “just a little past” the impossible is not visionary… it is destabilising. For someone wired like me, uncomfortable with stillness, allergic to falling behind, that distinction matters deeply. Because in my body, not listening to the whisper... pushing beyond the edge of my energy does not expand my world. It shrinks it.

I don’t just “run out of steam,” I cross an invisible line and fall into depletion, the kind that steals days, sometimes weeks. One ignored signal can spiral into many. One act of denial reinforces an old and familiar loop: push, override, pay later.

For me, the impossible isn’t doing more. It’s restraint. It’s stopping before collapse.

Redefining Strength

Part of me still believes in expansion, in discovering what’s possible. And another part knows that protecting my finite currency, means spending wisely. So how do I reconcile these two truths? The part of me that wants to reach farther, and the body that asks me to move more gently? There was a time when I thought acceptance meant giving up. 

Now I see it differently.

Acceptance is not resignation. It is collaboration. It is saying "This is the body I have. These are the conditions that exist. And this life is still worthy of care, curiosity, and possibility." Making peace with the complexity of my health has not meant giving up on growth. It has meant redefining it. Strength isn’t concrete. It bends. It adjusts. It forgives. Listening to my body doesn’t shrink my life the way I feared. It protects it. It expands it. Saying “I can’t today” isn’t defeat. It’s wisdom.

I am learning... slowly, imperfectly... that growth is stopping before collapse. It is leaving energy in the bank. It is building a life that works with my physiology, not against it. It doesn’t live in overexertion. It lives in precision. In noticing the difference between stretching and straining. Between courage and compulsion. Energy once spent on denial can be redirected toward living. Toward choosing carefully. Toward honouring the days I feel strong without punishing myself for the ones that don’t. Even if that feels impossible at first.

Because for someone who has built her identity around capability and endurance, acceptance can feel far more radical than overexertion. Now, I understand that the edge of possibility looks different for me. Perhaps my version of venturing into the impossible is not by pushing beyond my limits, but by accepting them fully.

Sometimes the impossible isn’t doing more... it’s finally giving yourself permission to do less.

Sometimes the impossible thing is trusting that rest is productive, even when nothing visible is being achieved. And perhaps that is the quiet revolution chronic illness offers: Learning that expansion doesn’t always come from doing more. 

Sometimes it comes from finally listening.

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