Dear friend, Ten days ago I asked if you’d walk with me for a while.
You did. I will never forget that.
I appreciate you.
Showing up…
Thats the work most people dont do, especially the mums who use time as the biggest excuse of all. It was SO refreshing when a mum the other day told me
“time isnt my excuse anymore because I see the more I show up for myself, the better I feel and from that, my children feel better too.”
Yno how REFRESHING THIS WAS TO HEAR? After running around for others the past decade as a yoga teacher and well-being coach (as well as therapising my friends and fam lol. Plus, the passionate self I am who tried making a community last year in my last year of kindergarten studies called “Healing Hearts Hub”.
I learnt a lot through it and also made some beautiful friends here who I praise for showing up and always wanting to grow like Nick Neve (check him out!).
I didn’t realise that others gotta want to change to change.
Read that again…
I just knew my light is here to shine, and I want to save others.
So I joined Substack chasing people…
Wanting to help everyone and anyone.
But the best thing to do first?
When you choose yourself, everything aligns; everyone around you chooses you too.
It is pretty radical, right?
Hence why my mantra I painted first moving into my new place back in January here in Costa Rica with a beautiful island I dreamt of writing from is ahead of me on the turquoise European-style furnished kitchen counter:
I DONT CHASE, I ATTRACT WITH GRACE.
We’ve sat together with pressure and positive thinking, doubt and fear, greed and little things. We’ve walked outside into nature, reached toward connection, and carved out space for solitude.
And now we arrive here.
At the chapter I saved for last.
The one that contains all the others.
That is the last chapter in Chill Out and Cheer Up, because everything comes from the love within…
I know how it sounds.
Another wellness buzzword.
Another thing to add to the list of ways you’re not doing enough.
Another affirmation to write on a sticky note and feel vaguely guilty about not believing.
That is not what I mean.
I mean something much quieter. Much more radical. Much more real.
Stop waiting for someone else to tell you that you are enough.
I waited a long time for that permission. From a partner. From a version of myself I kept thinking was just around the corner, once I’d fixed a few more things, healed a few more wounds, figured a few more things out.
The permission never came from outside.
It never does.
“The most important relationship you will ever have is the one you have with yourself. Everything else flows from there.”
I wrote this book grieving my best friend in sweet Sevilla. 3 years later, self-published in a mental health clinic — grieving, depleted, searching for my own way back. Five years later, revised from the other side in paradise where I teach kindergarteners by day and hold women’s circles in the evenings in Costa Rica, with a coconut tree outside my window.
And when you make it — your children get the best version of you. Not the performed version. Not the exhausted version. The real one.
You are not just raising a child. You are showing them what a fully lived life looks like.
Live it well. For them — and for you.
🌿 The tiny shift that contains all the others:
Say one true, kind thing to yourself today. Out loud if you can.
Not an affirmation. Not a performance. A true thing. The kind of thing you would say to a friend who needed to hear it.
You are that friend. You have always been that friend.
Ten days ago, this was a letter. Now it is something more.
For those of you ready to keep walking with me, here is where we go next:
🌱 The Seed — €7/month or €50/year founding price: Your weekly Tuesday hour of rest. Somatic movement, breathwork, guided learning, nervous system resetting, inner child living. The tension in your shoulders — we work with that together.
Every week. One protected hour. Yours.
Plus exclusive posts, early access, discounts on everything.
Founding price of €50/year closes Friday. After that, it returns to €60/year. 🌱
But if these ten days have felt like coming home — there is a deeper home waiting.
Get the book, Chill Out and Cheer Up
Become a founding member — The Seed:
Wherever you land — you belong here.
You don’t need to try harder to be okay.
That’s the whole book. That’s the whole message. That’s everything.
With so much love, Grace 🌿
Live with Grace | @treatyourselfwithgrace
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