28/04/2026
Yesterday, I turned 42.
And something in me knows I have crossed a threshold.
There are seasons in life where everything changes outwardly, and there are seasons where the real change happens quietly within. This past chapter has been both.
I am only now beginning to fully process what became the catalyst for some of the biggest changes of my life. The endings. The betrayals. The grief. The moments that emptied me so completely I had no choice but to ask what was truly mine, and what I had been carrying for others.
For years, I poured into community. I held circles with devotion. I believed in sacred spaces where women could gather in honesty, tenderness, truth, and transformation.
But I also came face to face with the shadow side of spiritual spaces. Performance mistaken for wisdom. Popularity mistaken for depth. Power games dressed in sacred language. Teachings repeated without understanding. Culture borrowed without reverence. People seeking status where humility should have lived.
I learned that spirituality without depth is just costume.
Real transformation asks more of us.
It asks us to go slowly. To be honest. To sit with what is uncomfortable. To face the parts of ourselves that cannot be filtered into something beautiful for public display. To let go of perfectionism. To choose integrity when no one is applauding.
When I began setting stronger boundaries around what was sacred, many turned away. When I refused to let sacred work become a platform for self-promotion, I was met with resistance. When I tried to bring forward my own voice, shaped by both lived experience and academic learning, I struggled with being copied, diluted, and doubting whether anything I carried was truly mine to offer.
That wound ran deep.
So I stepped back.
For the last six months, I have been learning how to pour back into my own cup after years of pouring into everyone else. And truthfully, my cup was bone dry.
In that time, I completed my psychology degree. I completed my postgraduate studies in domestic violence practice. I made a deeply considered decision to change my mundane career path toward something that has long called to me.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I chose peace in my heart.
I have also been healing older wounds. The shame of being seen. The fear of my own gifts. The instinct to shrink what is powerful in me because someone else could not honour it. The old stories that say women must be small, silent, agreeable, or easy to understand.
I do not believe that anymore.
I am remembering the plants, the stones, and the waters as kin. I am remembering that nature is not separate from us. I am remembering how to make magic with my hands again.
And I am learning that the deepest work is never rushed.
In the last few years, I have also lost people I once loved deeply. A love that was not safe. Connections that were not reciprocal. A friendship that ended in silence and left grief without answers.
Some losses broke me open. Some losses set me free.
I have learned that losing people is not always failure. Sometimes it is the price of returning to myself.
And somewhere in the midst of all of it, love found me too.
Not the kind of love built on chaos, confusion, or earning crumbs. A steadier love. A love that reaches back through time and also meets me here, now. A love that connects the girl I once was with the woman I have become.
Learning to trust that love has been its own sacred work.
There was a time I thought I needed proof outside of me for my inner knowing to be real. But life has been teaching me otherwise.
That quiet knowing is enough.
I have laughed more in the last six months than I had in a long time. I have found wonder again. Whimsy again. Creativity again. Joy again.
I have found parts of myself that were waiting patiently beneath the ashes.
I am deeply grateful to my teachers, both earthside and beyond the veil.
And now, as another transition begins to stir at the edges of my life, I feel something I have not felt in a long time.
Trust.
Not because I know every step ahead.
But because I know how to return to myself when the path changes.
If you are in a season of shedding, grieving, or remembering, be gentle with yourself. Not every ending is punishment. Not every pause is failure. Sometimes life is simply guiding you back to what is true.
Sage Entwined was never created for performance. It was created for depth, remembrance, and the quiet magic of becoming.
This year is not about becoming someone else.
It is about remembering who I have always been.