DEAR GRACE

Dear Grace, Every season of my life has been met with change. But the last 3 years have seen immense personal change. I can pinoint one thing that did change and that was you my sweet girl - my pint sized party handbrake! But maybe I was just getting old. I am 37 now, I don't feel the same fire in my belly I once did. I don't have the energy to blast people for not staying last at the party. I don't think I even want to be at the party anymore.  I don't argue my points with as much passion and arrogance. I am more curious to know what other people think and why. I am less offended about other peoples decisions to live their lives differently to me, I embrace their differences even if I still don't agree.   So the 20 year old Madeleine is (thankfully) missing in action, But one thing has NOT changed and it fills me with curiosity to understand why... My gospel. My gospel has acted as my guiding light since 2008. My personal mantra, my affirmations. Thats 14 years I h...

Dear Grace, Today on a podcast I heard this term called ‘pruning’. The theory goes that you prune back elements of your life, people, meetings, commitments, bills, whatever. I heard about it and decided immediately that I need to do some pruning at work. As the boss, I have this amazing flexibility to be able to create my work reality. I don’t work if I don’t want to, or so that used to be the case. Over time, I have in my over-achiever, type a personality who only find success in doing, managed to overcommit myself, and I am burnt out and angry. I put a freeze on all meetings for 2 weeks, I am not doing any meetings till after 11am. I am not hosting meetings no one cares about for my own personal desire to be needed. I am going to spend from 9:30-11am every single day writing, reading, walking, planning, thinking, listening, painting, climbing, riding, kayaking and enjoying before I start my work day. At 11am. Once I have experienced some amazing time operating in my flow ...

  Dear Grace, Last night I went to a yoga retreat and it was a very amazing circuit breaker. The last 12 months have been the heaviest, hardest and most challenging of my life. During the evening yoga I cried when the teacher told us to be grateful for being there. I cried during a heartfelt conversation about you and your Dad at dinner. I cried this morning during the manifestation workshop when I tried to speak out loud about my vision for the future. I am carrying a heavy heavy load at the moment, and it’s like last night was the egg that cracked and I simply can’t speak without the egg spilling out and everywhere. This chapter is called Stolen Focus because I am reading a book about how technology is killing us. Killing our creativity, our relationships, our work, our sleep, our brains. It’s not great. But what it also means to me is that through having you and becoming a mum, you have stolen my focus… in the best way possible. When you are around I can easily forget my...