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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July 2018

The ups, the downs and inbetweens of month 7 of 12!

3^rd - Well, today was exam day! All I can say is thank goodness I went in with a subject pass as I sure as heck know that today’s grade won't be anywhere near even what I consider "good". Gotta be honest, it sucks as ofcourse I wanted the HD, D or even the C...BUT I am going to have to settle for "good enough" and get used to the P (4). Despite a myriad of reasons as to why I struggled with study this semester bottom line is that it just wasn't a priority and my grades reflect that. Anyway, results not released until the 20th of this month so time to let it go, rest, reset and refocus on kicking butt next semester!  SO…it turns out that I did actually get a Distinction!

4^th – Mr. 13 made me a cuppa for the very first time today BUT didn’t boil the kettle in case he burnt himself and only added the teabag for half a second. Drink it down and smile Mumma bear, drink it down.

July 5th - Up at 5am, at car depot by 6am, on the plane at 7.30am. Tassie here we come!  Up up and away!

Day 1 - Hung out  at Mum and Dads exploring their yard. Very thankful for the huge woodpile – its bloody freezing!

6^th – 7^th – Day 2/3 - Dark and cold outside so relaxation mode well and truly set in.

8^th - Day 4 - While the rest of the family went off to church and then out to visit friends, I spent the day in bed unwell.

9^th - Day 5 - While I spent the day in bed my sweet man went into town with his Mum and the boys hung out at home.

10^th - Day 6 - A quick trip into town to the docs and chemist with Mum and then back home to rest.

11^th - Day 7 - While the girls spent the day lazing around at home watching movies, the boys went off digging for hidden treasures.

12^th - Day 8th - After a freezing cold night we woke to so many beautiful sights and the boys had fun smashing ice. I spent the day rugged up in a blanket resting.

13^th - Day 9 - While Mum and I made the long journey into the Launceston Hospital for the day, the boys went on a fishing trip to Scamander.

14^th - Day 10 - Lazy day at home in front of the fire.

15^th - Day 11 - Church followed by a lunch gathering. Whilst I don't believe that attending church makes you any more Christian than sitting in a garage makes someone a car, it was a lovely experience. I love listening to my husband read scripture and talk about his faith - four years of Bible College has certainly impacted his life and I feel a strong desire to embrace and support that side of him more. What I love most is that despite our differences of belief which often result in debate like conversations, our love still grows strong. 

16^th - Day 12 - We didn't do much today other than enjoy each others company.

17^th - Day 13 – HOME!  Its a bittersweet feeling to be home. Despite me being unwell for most of it (Docs tomorrow) we all really enjoyed our time away. Whilst we didn't get out and about much, our time with Mum and Dad (Nana and Grandad & ofcourse Livi the pooch) was very precious. We are so very blessed to have a home away from home and especially to have a wonderful home to return to.

18^th - After attending my doctors appointment, having an emergency chest xray and emptying the chemist of umteen pharmalogical products in order to help with a severe respiratory infection which the doctor suspects to be pneumonia...I have spent my day in bed. I am so blessed to have netflix and am halfway through season 2 of Anne with and E - oh gosh it brings back many memories - I would love to watch the original again though.  Anyway only a quick update...may you all have a restful night.  P.S.  On top of all this now Mark is under the weather too OMG …SCARY SHIT!

24^th – Jazz has a dislocated finger, which is a possible break…xray tomorrow – bloody scooters!  Of course it goes without saying that we are ultra grateful for it only being a finger *phew*. So with that now being 3 out of the 4 of us needing medical intervention of one sort or another this week, if you see Ace wrapped in cotton wool and bubble wrap you will understand why LOL!

28^th - In honour of our glorious full moon on this magical night. May the light that shines within be focused upon our dreams and not our fears, shedding the veils, dispersing the shadows and manifesting a reality that sees us rise and glow in your wonder.

Todays Gratitude focus is upon the blessing of friendships; knowing that despite each of us navigating our own storms, we are still there for each other shining our lights and holding each other up even from a distance. Pretty darn spesh I think and I love yas all.

"Sometimes one must physically lose sight to know that they can still see in the dark" - Natasha.

30^th - Today we open the gateway and learn to navigate new territory, new terrain, new paths. Whilst fear of the unknown is admittedly a little daunting, there is also an element of excitement and hope that this gateway will provide a deep and enriching lifestyle change that will be most beneficial to our entire family. But first...to ask the questions and learn the answers so that we may put it all into action and gain wisdom. Everything happens for a reason, whatever that may be....have faith that all will be revealed!

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Big or Small - I am what I am!

I can't stand to look at myself.....

He can't keep his hands off me!

This quote has got me thinking....

Even though I'm not where I was at my heaviest weight and I'm not where I was at my lightest weight - I am somewhere in between and you know what!  That is ok with me.  I've decided that its time to start learning to embrace my curves and focus on the positives.  Like...there is more for my man to hold on to.

My weight and size does NOT define who I am as a person.  Nor does it take away the fact that I am good at what I do and have the ability to motivate and inspire others towards reaching their goals.  Beauty is not about what you look like, it is all the things on the inside that radiate outwards.

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Quote - Reminder!!

"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, 'I'm possible'..."

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A Reminder...

Each step forward is a step in the right direction and moves you one step closer to your goal - it matters not how far you go or how fast you get there but only that you give it a go and never give up, you are worth it...

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A Positive Note to Self...

'The measure of a person is not on how well she prepares for everything to go right: but how gracefully she stands up and moves on when everything goes wrong!'

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