Yesterday was my half birthday. 6 months into my 33rd year - affectionately known as the Jesus year.

On February 18th 2024, it was my first birthday that I celebrated while single in 6 years. I felt full of love and pride that I had the strength to leave a relationship that wasn’t serving me. I also looked back on the year prior, a year marked by a mental breakdown in which I struggled with intense physical anxiety, too scared to leave the house, or eat, or breathe. Getting stronger was the most powerful gift to myself.

We hope with every passing year that the next 12 months will leave us better than the last. Although we know the cards we’re dealt will inevitably come with some hardship we optimistically think, “Not this year. This year will bring me peace.”

A month exactly after my birthday, my role was made redundant. By sheer default of where I worked and the enormous project I finished three days before, marked by press interviews and social media pushes, the redundancy was very public. I’d given life to something for it to be taken away 72 hours later.

Five weeks after that, my grandmother passed away. I sat next to her, holding her hand as she took her final breath. An experience both deeply harrowing and beautiful. I know she had peace in those final moments. We spent the next week clearing her flat. The grief almost on pause as we dealt with the admin and minutiae of all the things an 86-year-old had collected and held on to. So much stuff. Old photo albums of bygone eras sat among unwritten birthday or Christmas cards for future us. As her only granddaughter, a greetings card addressed to one could only ever have been for me. Seeing the cards she now won’t get to write makes me wish I’d kept all the cards she ever sent me because her handwriting won’t find me again.

Families are complex, but so is love. Complexity is the fabric of life.

I frequently think about the universe’s timing. Why do certain things happen when they do? I’m not religious but deeply spiritual, which I’m starting to think are synonymous with each other. You might say God (or any of the other 2500 named gods among polytheistic or monotheistic religions), while another says the Universe. Fundamentally, I believe things do happen for a reason and in divine timing. Even those heartbreakingly painful moments where you can’t quite catch your breath.

Death is a fervent reminder that things don’t last forever - the good or the bad. Everything is finite. And yet, we often think we have so much time. Life is long, its richness imbued into our every cell but a new day is not guaranteed.

Regardless of your view on what happens after we die or whether or not we come back, we exist on this timeline and in this physical vessel only once. If we think of the history of known time, we are so small and so nonexistent in the canon of humanity. In 100 years, we - and everyone we know - will be dead. I hope that doesn’t sounds bleak. My hope, is that instead it sounds like a call to action.

That voice in your head is always there, however much you try to silence it. Only you know what it’s telling you but unless I’m insane, I can guarantee you have a voice telling you something. A calling, a purpose, maybe just an idea to have some fun. It doesn’t have to be a societally huge revolutionary thing. It doesn’t have to be shared with anyone. But I do think you have to act upon it in some capacity. You owe yourself that. You owe that both to inner child you and future you. Multiple versions of you constantly dancing with one another, trying to get each other’s attention.

My voice has been telling me to create. Specifically through words - both spoken and written. I’ve always known that’s my “thing” and that I can create a significant impact. I have to be visible, my work has to be seen in order for that to happen. My word for 2024 was “EXPANSIVE” and that’s how I intend to spend my next 6 months - taking up more space and trusting that it’s safe for me to do so.

I’m writing this at 3:44pm on August 19th 2024 on an Aquarius Full Moon which all of the astrology mavens are saying is the most intense full moon and energy we’ve had in a very long time. A moon which represents rebellious and revolutionary changes. And so dear reader, give yourself permission to listen to that inner voice. Let yourself be heard.

With love,

Rhea x

PS. Thoughts, feedback or just want to say hi? Email me here. This newsletter is written by me, not ChatGPT, so there might be typos but we’ll survive.

PPS. Liked this newsletter? Please share with a friend if you think they’ll like it too. If you didn’t like it, share with an enemy.