Renee McDonald Public Page

23/11/2025

Rock Bottom Is Not the End

There was a moment — only two years ago — when I could have walked away from everything.
My family.
My career.
Everything I had built over decades.

Trauma has a way of shaking the foundations you thought were stable. It asks questions you never imagined you’d have to answer. It strips you bare… and then demands more.

But here’s the truth:

I didn’t survive that season because I was strong.
I survived because of the people who stayed.

My friends who checked in.
My colleagues who held space for me.
The therapists and coaches who grounded me.
My husband and children who stood beside me, even in my darkest hours.

Support doesn’t eliminate the struggle — it makes the climb possible.

If you’re reading this and you’re at your own rock bottom, please hear me:

Rock bottom is not the end.
It’s the moment you learn who and what truly matters.
It’s the moment you get to rebuild — differently.
More tenderly.
More truthfully.
More you.

Don’t give up.
Find the people who can help you rise again — professionally, personally, spiritually, emotionally.
The right support system can change everything.

You can get back up.
You can rebuild.
And you can create a life that’s even more aligned than the one that fell apart.

I’m living proof of that.

— Renée McDonald
www.reneemcdonald.com

23/11/2025

23/11/2025

Seeing Our Blind Spots with Compassion

One of the biggest aspects of my work as a therapist over the past two decades has been supporting clients to see the blind spots that quietly shape their lives.

Not to shame them.
Not to pathologise them.
But to empower them.

Because when we can see ourselves more clearly — gently, compassionately, and with curiosity — we gain the ability to make decisions that genuinely support our wellbeing.

And of course… I’ve used these same strategies in my own life.
We all have blind spots.
The work is learning how to meet them rather than fear them.

That’s why I’m excited to be co-running an event soon with the wonderful Desanka Ogrizovic, using therapeutic cards designed to help you:

✨ see things differently
✨ access insights that feel safe and grounded
✨ open emotional doors you may not have realised were closed
✨ feel supported, empowered, and ready for change

Therapeutic cards are a gentle—but profoundly effective—way to explore your inner world with guidance, structure, and compassion.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, curious, or in need of a fresh perspective… I’d love for you to join us.

Details here. 💛

Desanka Ogrizovic 😁

22/11/2025

What is the edge of truth?

It’s a question I’ve been sitting with lately — in my work, in society, and in the personal stories people bring into therapy and coaching.

Because truth is not always a simple, singular line.
It has edges.

The edge of truth.
The edge of lies.
The edge between what is spoken, what is silenced, and what is distorted.

And somewhere between those edges sits the human experience.

We have to ask:
• Whose truth gets believed first?
The loudest voices?
The most powerful institutions?
The “professionals”?
The ones with money or platforms?
• Whose truth gets dismissed?
The vulnerable?
The lived-experience voices?
Those who don’t fit the prescribed narrative?
Those who dare to question?
• Who gets to own their story — and who is told to stay quiet?

We live in a time where free speech is celebrated publicly, but punished quietly.
Where people are uplifted for “sharing their journey,” but privately pressured to “stay in line.”

Where families can silence each other.
Where systems can silence individuals.
Where companies can silence truth-tellers.
Where “professionalism” is too often used as a shield against accountability.

And we wonder why people feel entrapped.

The real challenge is this:

Do we want a world where only the powerful get to define truth?
Or a world where every human being is allowed to speak from lived experience — without being erased, ridiculed, or shut down?

Truth takes courage.
Listening takes humility.
And building a society where multiple truths can coexist takes emotional maturity, nuance and integrity.

The edge of truth is not a cliff.
It’s a crossroads.
And we all have a responsibility for the direction we choose.

— Renee McDonald
www.reneemcdonald.com

21/11/2025

Honouring How Far We’ve Come

There are chapters of my life I never thought I’d speak about publicly — not because of shame, but because of the sheer weight of what it took to live through them.

Heartache.
Complexity.
Grief that reshapes you.
Truths that arrived too early or too late.
And the quiet rebuilding that no one else sees.

And yet… here I am. Still standing. Still serving. Still rising — again and again.

In my work, I witness this same courage reflected back to me every day.

Clients who come in carrying years of silence, confusion, or pain — and leave with more clarity, more self-trust, more capacity, more peace.
Humans who have endured more than most people will ever understand — yet continue to show up for themselves and their healing anyway.

It moves me every single time.

So today, I want to say this:

If you have ever rebuilt yourself after heartbreak,
If you have ever grown through circumstances no one knew you were facing,
If you have ever kept going when you weren’t sure how—
I see you.

Healing is not linear.
It’s not tidy.
And it’s not quick.

But it is possible.
And every step counts — especially the quiet ones.

Here’s to how far we’ve come.
And to how far we’re still going.

— Renée
www.reneemcdonald.com

21/11/2025

Last night, my youngest daughter did so well at her dance concert and she won! (Face blurred for privacy.)

What a trooper!

The comeback is always better!

Last night she won the scholarship 🏆🤗
Thank you

21/11/2025

Last night, my youngest daughter did so well at her dance concert and she won! (Face blurred for privacy.)

What a trooper!

The comeback is always better!

My youngest daughter, has done so well this year!

Last night she won the scholarship 🏆🤗
Thank you

19/11/2025

Courage: “Le Cœur” — The Heart’s Rage, Reclaimed

Most people think courage is about fearlessness.
It’s not.

The word courage comes from the French “le cœur” — the heart.
Not the mind. Not the muscles.
The heart.

And at its core, courage is not calm.
Courage is the heart’s rage — the fierce, burning emotional energy that rises when something matters deeply.

It’s passion.
It’s anger, harnessed.
It’s love, activated.
It’s the electricity of “this is not okay”… transformed into aligned action.

In therapy and coaching, I see this all the time:
• Anger becomes direction.
• Fear becomes clarity.
• Powerlessness becomes momentum.
• Emotion becomes purpose.

Because courage isn’t the absence of emotional intensity —
it is emotional intensity, shaped through the heart rather than discharged in harm.

Healthy courage is the point where feeling meets integrity.
Where the fire doesn’t destroy — it illuminates the way forward.

And in a world that often suppresses emotion, pathologises anger, or replaces feeling with intellectualisation, courage invites us back into the body:

🔥 “What does your heart burn for?”
🔥 “What boundary has been crossed?”
🔥 “Where is your anger pointing you?”
🔥 “What is ready to be transformed into action?”

This is the work.

When we harness the heart — the whole heart, including its rage —
we reclaim the most ancient source of human strength:

The courage to act in alignment with truth.