Your Backstage Pass…
A recap of the month that’s been (behind the scenes)
We said goodbye to our house today. Perhaps this is something I will write about at length another time, however for the purpose of context - and not opening a huge can of worms - this chapter has been a lengthy, drawn out one that honestly at some moments felt like no end in sight.
We have been living in our new (dream) rental home for 8 months now, and in that time I haven’t once stepped foot back in our old house. Nothing in me was calling me there. Good riddance. See you never.
Until today. The day before we hand the keys over to the new owners, the day before the bank settles and we’re able to pay back our debt, the day before we no longer have to pay $1800 a week in mortgage + rent and wonder whether we have enough for groceries this week after all of the baseline outgoings are covered.
The past 8 months - while incredibly stretchy financially - have been absolutely nothing in comparison to the former few years. Especially last year. At its worst, I ended up living in our friend’s caravan alone for two weeks on our land because my health could no longer sustain living in the home, and I had nowhere else to go.
That house saw so many milestones - as well as being the first home my husband and I purchased together, it was also our first home away from Sydney, the home that held me in pregnancy, during lockdowns, the home I spent 40 hours of active labour in, the home I spent more hours inside than out during the first year of my little girl’s life (and my concurrent dance with postpartum depression).
As I stepped foot onto the land for the first time in so long today, I was delivered flashes of memories and moments I had long forgotten about - given the nature of dissociation. My baby blessing held under the canopy of trees in our backyard. A play mat stretched out on the lawn as my little girl took her first steps. The walls that birthed my first two books, and a whole new version of me. The house that birthed me as the mother.
I knew I’d cry returning today. So much of me didn’t want to go back. To leave the past in the past - especially the last two years that very nearly broke me, more times than I can count. I never really realised the importance of a house - of your living environment - until the last year or so. That so much of that foundation is vital - not just a nicety - for your quality of life.
I knew that to really close this lengthy chapter, I needed to visit it one last time.
I’m glad I did. I cried a lot. Not because of the goodbye, but because of the sadness I feel for the versions of me and my husband that unknowingly stepped into a clusterfuck of health heaviness and life upheaval in saying yes to four years in that house. I cried for the new mother in me that felt depressed and wanted her life to be over more than once, in those walls. I’m not intending to be ambiguous in my description of the house other than to say that it is because of that home I became incredibly unwell - not just physically or mentally, but spiritually as well.
I will share the story in detail another time, on another (spoken) platform (hint hint). In the meantime know that what I experienced in that house was more than mould illness or isolation.
It was spiritual warfare.
I guess that’s what a psychic gets for living in a church…
April Recap
Alongside selling and settling on our house, April has been a big month of sparkle, joy and many pinch-me moments:
I hosted my Byron book launch at The Book Room, hosted by the wonderful Brittany Wilde, to a sold out room (we actually over-sold the launch!) which lead to none of my books available in the store by the end of the night. It was a surreal evening as I didn’t host a launch up here for my first book, so to see the room packed with loved ones and strangers alike in celebration of my creation (in one of my favourite bookstores no less!) was a real career win for me.
My first audio book launched on Audible. I spent a week in February recording the audio for this book - my first - and it is something I am incredibly proud of. It’s two years after the publishing of this book, and if it performs well, I’ll be able to head back down to record the audio for my second book! (So get it in your ears stat!)
I had some wonderful social outings including assisting at my friend Cass’s Heart Beat ceremony (think sober dance party/cacao ceremony), a SPELL event at Sun Ranch, and a day out to watch the local theatre company’s production of Tiny Beautiful Things (which ended with a woman in the audience having a seizure and so the play was left unfinished. The woman is okay! The show however did not go on!)
I started up with reformer pilates again, for the first time in five years, and I am in love with how it feels to move my body in this way after not being able to for so long. This time last year, I couldn’t unload the dishwasher without getting puffed and needing a break to catch my breath. In my first pilates class back, I cried genuine tears of gratitude. I will never take movement for granted.
My mum and brother came to stay with us for Easter, and Bluesfest weekend! My first ever Blues! And while I’ll not wear the same boots next year (lesson learned, the blisters were real!) - it was such a fun day out. And sorry - RYX, Missy Higgins and Chaka Khan?! Say less!
We celebrated my husband’s birthday with a homemade sponge cake (why did no one tell me how hard they are to perfect?! I sifted the flour 7 times! SEVEN TIMES!) and a very rare solo-mum-and-dad date night at Light Years in Byron where we both agreed it was one of the best meals of our lives (the $89 banquet for those wondering! And yes! We are food critics and would never say such things lightly!)
To round out the month, I also had not one but two photo shoots, after months not being in front of the camera. One, a shoot of our family kindly gifted by a photographer friend of mine, and the other a brand shoot at a beautiful hotel on the Goldcoast. I’m yet to see the pics for either but I’m excited! This second-house Leo Sun LOVES a paid photo shoot moment!
Wow. No wonder I’ve felt tired the last couple of days. April had a LOT jam packed into those few weeks and while all have been wonderful, I am feeling a big exhale landing on the other side of some of the bigger boxes we’ve ticked - especially on the house front.
May Forecast
I’m looking forward to a very spacious May, ending it on a big high with my first visit to - and event in - Melbourne in six years!
I was talking to a friend recently and sharing it feels so surreal to look at my calendar for the weeks ahead and see so much blank space. A good surreal. I have bucketloads of Virgo in my natal chart, and it’s very easy for me to see space and automatically fill it - but I’m really revelling in the spaciousness, and the unknown right now. Letting life fill in the blanks for me.
I’m also enjoying experimenting with delusion. Stay with me. I have a chart that is very un-Piscean - no planets in Pisces or the 12th House, nothing major happening with my Neptune…Pisces ruling my empty ninth house (which can I just say is such a nice place for Pisces to hang out?). I tend to lean on allllll of the pragmatism and logic and the do, do, do-ing and so I’m conscious with our North Node in Pisces that it will be much more in my favour to just chill TF out and be dreamy for a second. I’ve started to let myself daydream, which actually isn’t something I do often, if at all. It’s so nice to just lay back and let my mind wonder, imagining all sorts of life potentials…and then resisting the urge to jump in and “get to work”.
This is what I feel for me for May. Lots of space to dream and wish and be. To lay back and let life lead for a time. It feels so nice. I wonder if you’re feeling the call too?
Things I’m loving right now…
Outlander. I am so behind the times with this, I know, but that’s very on brand for me - I tend to be 4 or 5 years behind most things. I’m not usually a TV girl either (unless it’s Survivor or Masterchef in which case, shhh the TV’s on) - but woah. After more than three people in a single week told me I HAD TO WATCH OUTLANDER…I finally listened. And I am very much deep in the Jamie Fraser love hole. It’s sickening how much I genuinely (delusionally?) think he’d fall in love with me next time I visit Scotland. I finished Season Four last night. It’s kept me up late more than once watching “just one more episode” - and if you know me you know that is very out of character. I am LOVING it.
My morning bulletproof cacao in the morning sun, barefoot on the earth. This is a recipe from my naturopath Emily Yates and has replaced coffee for me for the past two months. After very high cortisol levels on my most recent round of bloods, I’ve decided to completely opt-out of coffee (I went years without it before motherhood!) and replace it with this delicious brew of cacao powder, maple, coconut oil, butter, reishi, collagen powder and hot water. Froth it all up, add a bit of salt, and enjoy getting your morning sun and your feet on the dewy earth.
My Heart Space community. I love these women and our monthly gatherings SO much. 60+ of us all over the world, connecting twice a month in heartfelt cacao ceremony. This is the greatest gift of my work - my service work - to connect women back with their hearts, their intuitive wisdom, their creative brilliance. I am absolutely biassed but the portal is a gift - a smorgasbord of heart-healing practices and not only cacao, but EFT, breathwork, yoga nidra and (soon) sound healing…all in devotion to our heart spaces. I can’t wait for our next ceremony that I’m holding all around the theme of beauty (thanks for the inspo, Taurus Season!) You can join us here.
Here’s to a new month, fresh with potential, exciting plot-twists, and maybe even a highland frolic with a handsome man in a kilt…
I wish all of this and more for you!
Hollie x
P.S Your Backstage Pass is a new series I am trialling for all of my Subbies (Substack subscribers) - paid and free! These recaps will be the only free Substack’s ongoing, with anything else I write continuing to live behind a paywall. I am so grateful should you choose to support my writing in this way. Thank you thank you thank you!