A Re-introduction

It’s been a little while since I last wrote a blog post here — 2020 to be exact.

Looking back, it’s not surprising…. the year everything changed!

Up until then, I taught entirely in person, and then almost overnight, that was no longer possible.  Like many, I had to overhaul not just my work but also my mindset.

At the time, it felt like being thrown in at the deep end, but it was a blessing.  It asked me to grow, to reshape, and to find new ways of sharing what I love.

Since then, I’ve maintained a regular writing rhythm through my newsletter, which eventually led me to Substack.  For the past six months, I’ve been writing there, but what began as a weekly intention is now becoming something more fluid — a place I step into when something wants to be written.

And so, for now, Substack and this blog are less about consistency and more about presence.  Thank you for being here with me in that spirit.

I’ll mainly be bringing some of my Substack pieces over here too.  My hope is that it gives anyone new to my work a fuller sense of what grounds me, what I care about, and the themes I return to again and again.

If you’d like to follow along more closely, you can subscribe to my Substack channel.

If you look back at my earlier blog posts, you may notice mentions of a Facebook group.  I no longer host that group, as I stepped away from Facebook (and Instagram) in January 2025.

Leaving was a conscious choice:

• I wanted to get off the hamster wheel of social media, where business owners are told they must play to an algorithm to succeed.

• I didn’t want to feel beholden to platforms that drained my energy or to corporations whose values don’t align with my own.

• While I’m not entirely free of these companies (WhatsApp still has its place in my life), being away from Facebook and Instagram feels like a relief.

Instead, Substack has offered me a slower, more spacious way of connecting — one that feels better for my energy and closer to the way I want to share.

In that sense, and with reference to my previous writing, this is really about evolution. I want to honour where I came from, while also acknowledging how my work and sense of self have deepened.  

For a long time, I shaped my work around what I thought others wanted, and what would likely be received well.  Now I’m more interested in writing and creating from a place of authenticity.

So, this post is both a reintroduction and a brief update. Old and new writings will sit side by side here: a reminder of where I’ve been, and a reflection of where I am now.

Thank you for being here.

Melissa