Stop being thrashed around by other people’s opinions on the internet.

Free yourself again + other cute things.

Mar 03, 2025

I’m writing this after a little trip to the beach with the kids.

It wasn’t the best beach day— too much seaweed, tide way in.

My son just wants to scale the structures in the nearby grassed area, my eldest wants to play cafes in the sand with her cousin, and my 15 month old has zero inhibition when it comes to the waves— she runs towards them as if it’s one big, safe bathtub.

It was the promise of açai bowls after that afforded me a quick dip.

I love diving in with zero worries about whether I’ve just washed my hair or not. I like to time my ocean swims with the day of a hair wash, and even more masterfully, the day of a sauna too. But it doesn’t always work like that, and I’m not fussy enough about my hair to care. I can work with my salty curls.

I wrote a poem (if you can even call it that), about 7 years ago and it went a lil summin’ like this.

I solemnly swear

I will never miss an ocean swim

for the sake of freshly washed hair.

Look, let’s just call it what it is— a proverb.

While we were at the cafe afterwards, people were everywhere— my kids and my niece were playing freely. After waiting for our order, my eldest daughter Sol went up to get ours after our name was called. At the same time, she noticed Figgy following her and so she’s done a full mum move— picked up her little sister, popped her on her hip, while fetching our order, and grabbing some spoons. Afterwards, an older lady came up to me and said “Your daughter is very capable, It’s very impressive.”

I know it’s a compliment— a capable child is a good thing, especially in a world where children are often becoming more entitled, spoilt, and treated like they’re way dumber than they really are.

But the eldest daughter in me, also winced a little. I was always called capable. I always was capable. I couldn’t understand people who weren’t capable and to be honest, I had very little patience with lazy or incompetent people (still do). Sometimes my capability though had me taking on more responsibility than was mine and it’s a burden I try to keep Sol free of. I want her to enjoy a life of freeing capability, that beautiful God given gift as an eldest daughter to have a natural capacity for giving and helping, but without that ‘ughhhh, everything is mine to do, mine to fix’ burden that I have struggled to shake myself.

Eldest daughter traits are gifts from God, that’s for sure. I watch as Sol takes note of things other kids wouldn’t notice. I watch as she steps in to help when she’s not even asked. When she just knows what to say in those moments when someone is having a meltdown. I love watching her beautiful God given traits shine through. I try to also balance it out by taking her for mum and Sol dates, getting our hair done, to the vintage book store, to the cafe— and our nightly time together where we lay on the Biomat, pop our feet up the wall, put the red light on and pray the Rosary together (a new part of our nightly ritual— No, I haven’t converted to Catholicism, although I’m not totally opposed. My mum gave us her two sets of Rosary beads and I’m enjoying praying those prayers I still remember from Catholic school).

Anyway.

Now I’m sat writing as the kids play (mum’s over) because I have promised myself more time to express. I’ve noticed lately, once again, how life giving creativity and expression are— how writing something, saying something, making something can be as invigorating as a shot of coffee.

Maybe it’s because Figgy is 15 months old (old girl!!), I’m feeling parts of myself return again. I’m still not wanting to embody boss b**** energy and I am hopelessly devoted to keeping my priorities in order, not biting of more than I can chew creatively, and ensuring my nervous system can be where I want it to be for everyday life with my three little loves. But I am also feeling those jolts of… ideas, potential, a capacity that’s growing again. It’s either time for another book, another baby, or an airplane.

I love this thrill, this excitement, this appetite for life. I used to think, strangely, that it was a weakness of mine, something I needed to get in check— this hunger for newness, for culture, for the world, for depth, for knowledge…. for life. But it’s this yearning and this appetite which makes me feel alive. Online we see so much about slow living, which is beautiful, but if we’re not careful it can make us feel that if we desire something more exciting, or slightly quicker in pace, then we are imbalanced or missing the point entirely.

I feel like I am slow living, but that I can’t slow live 24/7. After 18 months of living slowly, living contentedly, I get the itch. To see, to taste, to touch. To be in the parts of the world that help me make sense of everything. This is how I feel alive.

I am hungering for life, for adventure, for beauty.

I’ve come to learn that this isn’t wrong— regardless of how others on the internet may live.

I am feeling this thrilling excitement now, and I’m not fighting it. I’m enjoying it. I’m yearning to gather people for events again (something I always did), and to be a little bolder, less inhibited in my writing/communicating. I’m craving that newness.

I’ll likely create a new paid membership here where I can let loose a little more, not add 45 disclaimers on controversial topics, but rather just say it directly, like we used to back in the good ol’ days where we weren’t offended by fairy floss. We’ve come to mistake directness for rudeness. We’ve come to mistake directness for a lotta stuff.

I have been telling my husband about how I reflect back on my many, many years of expressing myself online, entrepreneurial endeavours etc, and how much more ruthless, bold, uninhibited I used to be. It’s cringe but also like, gimme summadat back!!

Part of me is much more measured with my online presence now because I have children, and it’s a natural thing to be protective of them. Part of that means protecting myself, my nervous system and my psyche.

There’s a balance though— if we want to be sharing our work online, we need to have thick skin. My skin has thickened naturally over the years but also, I’m one of four kids and our mum takes no sh** from anyone so my skin was born thick.

The online space isn’t like it was though. It’s louder now and often a little more unhinged. I know you know.

So I wrestle with this. How do I want to be online? Where do I want to share? Do I want to have Instagram at all? Is Substack enough for me? Do I want to intentionally grow or am I happy in my irregular rhythm right now? What matters so much for me to say that I’ll say it, regardless of reception? Do I want to do more audio/video so I can really hash things out in far more time effective ways than writing (which can take hours and hours and days and days around the kids)? What do I want my voice to be? Do I need to have one publicly at all? If I’m going to show up, why? What will my boundaries be? What feels exciting, life giving?

It is so loud now online and we need to become sharper than ever with our sense of discernment— both as creators but also consumers of others content.

It’s just nuts, how much information we’re exposed to everyday when we logon to these apps. We can get on our high horses on Substack about ‘saying goodbye to Instagram’ but the reality is, it’s still social media— just more intelligent and long form. Everyday, even on a little scroll (while on the toilet, don’t lie), it’s like……

BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!!

Here are a hundred different opinions, some incredibly compelling!

Buy this face roller!!! Look how hot she is, you need this too!!

Change your workout!! Your food is wrong!! Your faith is wonky!!

I dunno, I just think we need to armour up— as both people who create, and people who consume.

We need stronger muscles of discernment. Wa-a-a-a-a-ay stronger.

I believe that many of us, who consider ourselves to be pretty strong, pretty unimpressionable in general, are becoming more impressionable, just by the nature of the sheer volume of content we’re being exposed to. It can wear you down. It makes you CONSTANTLY assess yourself, your parenting, your workouts, your food, your faith, your creativity, your cookware, your bedsheets, your morning routine…..

As the voices become louder, we need to become stronger, otherwise it’s like the internet has us by a leash and we’re being thrashed around emotionally and mentally by our feeds and the thousands of opinions that live on them.

I have been thinking of how we do this with wellness influencing too. It can be deepening or it can be disorienting. We’ve got to have a good relationship with truth and a good home base in order to not get swept up in everyones compelling arguments for this, that or the other.

We may see someone we admire and respect, someone who is incredibly intelligent— who glows and radiates, has a body that is gorgeous, and so we think that whatever she says is premium truth.

We’re seeing it now with protein.

Some women need to increase their protein, but not all women do.

Everything can be eaten in excess, including protein. That excess means burden. And that if we are eating more protein that our bodies can metabolise, then we are burdening our system. In short— this isn’t ideal. Especially not for the kidneys.

The way algorithms work these days, our feeds are echo chambers. Are you a juice and pilates kinda wellness girl or a steak and strength kind? The algorithm puts you into boxes and you just see more of the same.

I don’t fall into any particular category of ‘wellness gal’, because I’m a bio-individual woman. I eat meat, but definitely not at every meal. I don’t measure protein nor do I stress about it. I do strength training, and pilates. I used to be huge on food combining and I love it, but not doing it right now. Might start again if my body calls for it. I do my own colonics, but not as frequently with three little kiddos.

I home birth and breastfeed til the titties fall off, I use homeopathy as first port of call, but my kids have had antibiotics when they needed them. I don’t have a 35 step morning or evening routine and I don’t need one to be well— children make you adapt. I use a red light when I read at night and we all have blue blockers but I don’t have red cellophane on my fridge light so I get a whopper of a dose of blue light if I get a night time snacky.

I love juice, but I love it in seasons now, not all the time. I avoid plastics as much as possible but far out, it’s everywhere! I wish I could be a coffee gal but It’s just too stimulating for me. Adding sugar to my coffee does helped me metabolise it without so many jitters but I am much better with either a matcha or cacao.

I do not avoid sugar, I believe it buffers against stress. I don’t avoid dairy completely but I can’t chug raw milk every day. I love sheep and goat cheese, but I do not do yoghurt, yuck. I love Ray Peat and the bioenergetic principles, and I have an honours degree in the health sciences, but I’ve also studied deeply with Natalia Rose in the cleansing arts and love that approach too. I blend it all and take a little from the ancestral world, but I’m a little more flexible.

I am not a meat for breakfast girl, and don’t want to be. I’m not afraid of vegetables but I won’t do raw kale. I’m not afraid of receipts, but my home is without toxic chemicals.

I do not fall into any category, nor do I need to, nor do you.

We don’t need to constantly mentally shuffle ourselves into the boxes the algorithm has created for us. We need to be better than that— we need to be better thinkers than that.

So my encouraging message for you and for me is this:

Stop being thrashed around by other people’s opinions on the internet.

Do you really believe that? Or have you let the algorithm corner you and tell you what to think?

Make intuition, discernment and the ability to really think, great again.

Just wait a moment. Let yourself wrestle. Let yourself ‘not know’, and ‘I’m still thinking about it actually’. You don’t need to stake your fork in the ground of every single topic just because you admire other people who have.

Let yourself take a step back and renegotiate how you wanna show up online- what platforms, what voice and why? Why is this worth it? What do you have to say? What’s the point? What are the parameters for you that make it life giving?