Breathe to Bloom

My world has stopped for a moment.

For those wondering why I’ve been quiet, why messages are taking longer to answer, and why Breathe to Bloom has suddenly become still…

This is why.

My beautiful little Oaklynn is currently in hospital facing a battle that came much harder and faster than we ever expected. What started as concerns after surgery quickly became days of fevers, tests, scans, procedures, a PICC line, an NG tube, IV antibiotics, chest physiotherapy, and countless moments of uncertainty.

As a mother, there is nothing that prepares you for watching your child suffer. Nothing prepares you for holding them down for procedures they don’t understand, watching them sleep in a hospital bed instead of their own, or hearing words like aspiration pneumonia and investigations while desperately wishing you could take it all away.
Right now, I need to be just one thing.

Oak’s mum.

So for now, Breathe to Bloom will be taking a pause while I sit beside this little girl and focus on getting her home where she belongs.

To everyone who has checked in, sent messages, prayed, held us in your thoughts, or simply understood my silence, thank you. You have no idea how much it means.

None of this would be possible without my incredible husband, Lee, who has been holding our family together while I stay by Oak’s side. I am endlessly grateful for his strength, love, and support during one of the hardest seasons we’ve faced.

For now, I’m taking life one hour at a time, one treatment at a time, and one breath at a time.

Please keep our little Oak in your thoughts. 🌻

This one stopped me when I was writing it, because I used to live here.

Waiting for the right time. Waiting to feel ready. Waiting for permission to want something for myself again.

Presence isn’t something you find when life calms down. You find it when you decide that you matter enough to show up for.
Your nervous system is not broken. You are just a woman who has been carrying a lot for a very long time.

Swipe through for five things you can do today to start coming back to yourself. No big overhaul. Just small, honest steps back to you.
Save this for when you need it. Share it with a woman who does.

If this landed, drop a 💛 below or tell me which one you’re starting with.

You are so tired.

Not just the kind of tired that sleep fixes.

The kind that lives in your bones. The kind that comes from giving everything you have, every single day, to people you love more than anything and still feeling like it is not enough.

You woke up exhausted. You will go to bed exhausted. And somewhere in between you held it all together anyway.

That is not strength. That is survival.

And you have been surviving for a long time now.

I need you to hear this.

You cannot pour from an empty cup.

Not for your kids. Not for your partner. Not for anyone.

And the world will keep asking. It will not stop asking. So you have to be the one who decides that you matter in this equation too.

Not last. Not when everything else is done. Now.

You are not failing by being tired. You are human. You are a mother. You are carrying more than most people will ever understand.

But you cannot keep emptying yourself and calling it love.

Letting yourself be refilled, that is love too. For them and for you.

You deserve to be poured into.

You deserve to not be running on empty.

You deserve rest.

Hazel had surgery last Tuesday and recovering has been harder than we ever expected it to be.

I have been sitting with how to share this for a few days now. Because the truth is, there is no clean way to tell this story. There is no tidy ending yet. There is just us, in the middle of it, doing the best we can.

She is in pain. Real, relentless pain. Refusing food and fluid. Waking every half hour through the night. Clinically dehydrated and we are watching her so closely, measuring every vital, calculating every sip in and every drop out. Because taking her to hospital means sitting in a building full of every virus that could cause her harm. So we only go when we absolutely have to. And right now, we are right on that edge.

Every day I am on the phone to the hospital. Making the call together about whether today is the day we draw the line and call the ambos. Every dose of medicine is a battle. Every sip of fluid is a negotiation. And I keep showing up for both because I know what is at stake if I do not.

Nobody prepares you for this part of parenting a medically complex child. The yo-yo. The in-between space where your child is suffering and you are doing everything right and it still does not feel like enough. The half hour wake-ups. The constant calculating. The way your nervous system forgets what rest even feels like.

And next week, her sister goes in for the same surgery.

I am sharing this not for sympathy but because I know this community holds stories like this one. I know some of you have sat exactly where I am sitting. In the dark. Watching. Waiting. Loving so hard it hurts.

If that is you today, I see you. You are not doing this alone, even when it feels like you are.

We are going to get through this. Both of my girls are going to be okay. And until then, I will keep showing up, ford them, and for all of you walking hard roads too.

Today was meant to be day one of Reclaim 30.

I’ve been sitting with how to write this, and honestly there’s no easy way. My daughter is going through a really hard time right now and her recovery hasn’t been going the way we hoped. My whole heart is at home with her.

Reclaim 30 is postponed. I’m so sorry to everyone who was ready to start today. I genuinely cannot wait to do this with you, just not right now.

Thank you for understanding. It means everything.

Let me tell you what Reclaim 30 actually is.

It is not a diet. It is not 75 Hard. It is not another programme that asks you to do more, be more, push harder.

It is 30 days of coming back to yourself.

Because somewhere between the school runs and the appointments and the work and the worry and the holding everyone else together, you got lost. Not all at once. Just slowly, quietly, in all the ways nobody notices until you look in the mirror one day and realise you cannot remember the last time you did something just for you.

Reclaim 30 is for the woman who is tired but cannot explain why. For the woman who functions beautifully on the outside and is barely holding on inside. For the woman who knows something needs to change but does not have the bandwidth for one more big thing.

It is 30 days. It is free. It is inside a community of women who get it.

Every day you will get a simple practice. Something that takes minutes, not hours. Something that works on your nervous system, your mindset, your breath, your sense of self. Something that reminds you that you are still in there.

Not a transformation. A return.
If that is what you need right now, the link is in my bio. We start Monday.

I almost disappeared again.

Every time one of my babies gets sick, I feel it, that pull to just vanish into it. Stop eating properly. Stop moving. Stop asking for help. Take every bit of the weight and carry it alone until there’s nothing left of me.

Hazel had surgery this week. In just over a week, her twin goes in too.

And this time, I did something different.

This morning I go back to work. I am leaving my girl in the hands of our support workers and walking out that door and I won’t pretend that feels easy, because it doesn’t. I got back to the gym this morning. I asked for help. I kept coming back to the tools I know.

Not because I had it together. Because I finally understood that disappearing doesn’t protect my kids. It just leaves them with less of me.
I cannot vanish. And neither can you.

If you are a woman in a season that is asking everything of you right now, Reclaim 30 was made for this. For the woman who is running on survival mode and needs something real to come back to.

Free. Starts Monday. Link in bio.

One of my twins had surgery this week.

I have been in hospital mode. My responses have been slow and my brain has been stretched thin. But I am here, and I am okay, and she is okay.

Sunday’s women’s circle is still happening. The emails will go out today 🌻. Thank you for being patient.

And Monday? Reclaim 30 kicks off. Thirty days to come back to yourself. Free. Inside a community of women who get it.

Because sometimes showing up for yourself in the middle of the hard stuff is the most important thing you can do.

If you have been waiting for a sign, this is it. Life is not going to slow down and hand you a perfect moment. You just go.

Link in bio. Let’s do this together.

It has not been easy.

Three daughters. Three diagnoses. And a journey that has taken us places no parent ever imagines they will go.

Genetic testing. Surgeries. Scopes. Countless hospital admissions. Oxygen. NICU. C-PAP.

We have sat in waiting rooms not knowing what the results would say. We have watched our girls hooked up to machines that were breathing for them. We have driven to hospitals in the middle of the night and held it together in front of them so they did not have to be scared.

All three of my girls have dysphagia, difficulty swallowing safely. My twins were diagnosed at six months old when feeding became something that was clearly not right. My eldest, Zar, was not diagnosed until she was around four. Same condition. Completely different roads to get there.

My twins also have tracheobronchomalacia. Their airways are softer than they should be, which means when they get sick or need surgery, what might be straightforward for another child becomes something we have to prepare for very differently. Every cold season, we hold our breath a little. Every procedure comes with extra conversations, extra planning, extra weight.

We have been on thickener since the twins were six months old. It is just part of our life now, measuring it, mixing it, explaining it, carrying it everywhere we go.

This is not a post for sympathy. It is a post for every parent who is in the thick of it right now and wondering if anyone else understands what this feels like.

I do. I am right there with you.
If this is your life too, save this, share it, or just know you are not alone in it.