P for Pause, Purge, and Propagate
On living a devoted life from A to Z
Unplanned and unintended, I have not been writing and reading much since October.
Half-written drafts sat idle on my laptop.
Unorganised voice notes left untouched on my phone.
Random, scattered thoughts scribbled across pages in my journal.
Piles of books and an infinite scroll of Substack articles half-read, bookmarked, never finished.
My memory of this time feels scattered and fragmented, as if time, space and dimensions had been bent, twisted, and reshaped all at once. On the day of Solstice, I went through emails, appointments, even the social media history, to retrace my path and piece the past three months back together.
What was happening?
Where have I been – body, mind, and soul?
What is calling me in?
My word for 2025 was DEVOTION – that I declared my commitment to “a practice of deep love, faith, reverence, and presence – hidden in the ordinariness and mundane of everyday life”. After everything was shattered and rearranged in the previous two years, I wanted to build an honest, simple life of service. One that honours and expresses the truth and wholeness of my being.
For the first half of 2025, I felt quietly optimistic. I was enjoying the health coaching training program – the learning, the sensemaking, the expansion of perspectives in health and wellness. The future felt open and abundant of possibilities.
In July, I wrote:
“I’ve been tending the soil for a new professional chapter:
Envisioning a life where I help people find more ease and balance in their body.
Getting clear on my mission and vision.
Crystallising my theory of change.
Learning copywriting. Building a website. Mapping out the next six months.
This is my first time building a private practice from ground up. Researching and learning everything as I go, with much needed help and support from a few close friends.”
And later:
“I’ve learned to trust that it’s okay to not have the full map before I take the next step. That the path reveals itself through walking, through observing, through tending. That devotion isn’t always loud or flashy. Sometimes it’s simply showing up, gently, day after day, even when things feel uncertain or incomplete.
Here I am – letting life go and flow through me as I build something new.
Letting it be slow. Letting it be real. Letting it become whatever it wants to be.
Maybe that’s the only way anything meaningful is ever made.”
In my mind, I imagined the seeds I sowed would begin to sprout by the end of 2025 – tiny stems and leaves smiling and waving at the sun. As a new year has already arrived at the door, those seeds seem to remain dormant, burying in darkness among dirt, decay, and mycelium. Growth is nowhere to be seen.
October | Libra Season | Pause
A few weeks after the anniversary of calling Melbourne home, I found myself spiraling into a negativity vortex. Disappointment. Doubt. Restlessness. Loneliness. Sadness. It had been a long time since I felt so dark within.
On the surface, I held myself together, committing to self-care, learning, and work. Underneath, I just wanted to hide under the bed and disappear from the gaze of the world.
And I had some surface-level explanations for this.
Partly, it’s about my business – my health coaching practice hadn’t taken off, and it looked pretty much the same as it had been in July.
Partly, it’s about my physical health – my blood sugar levels had continued to linger at the higher end despite disciplined self-care.
Despite doing all the “right” things, the outcomes I envisioned weren’t materialising.
I started to compare myself to others, both in real life and on social media. I questioned my skills and competence. I searched for another coach, another course, another framework – hoping something external might fix what felt broken. None of it helped. They only deepened the sense that I was failing at something I couldn’t yet name.
Then something strange happened.
As someone who usually sleeps deeply, I started having intensely vivid dreams for weeks. Every night, I encountered many people I knew – living and dead. Family members, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, neighbours, community members. Some I spoke with. Some passed by silently. Some I shared food with. Some I waited for, but who never arrived.
The dreams were disjointed and surreal. Like watching a series of random scenes thrown and stitched together without a clear storyline. Often, I woke up wondering if something was wrong with my mind.
Over time, I sensed these dreams were recovering long-forgotten patterns in interpersonal relationships – how I performed perfection, people-pleased for validation, and censored my voice to belong. What once kept me safe had quietly become a barricade, cutting off my vitality, creativity, and authentic expression.
They also explained why my business and health felt stuck.
Each time I thought about sharing my professional insights or speaking publicly about my work, my body froze and my mind went blank. My lizard brain, trying to protect me from making mistakes or facing rejections, was keeping me “safe” – while simultaneously preventing me from building trust, nurturing relationships, and offering care and support to those who might need it.
The constant freeze state left the stress hormones lingering and blood sugar elevated, as if I needed to run from danger at any moment.
To me, those dreams were not random or coincidental. Perhaps they arrived to help me unravel my fear of making mistakes and being rejected. They asked me to meet old ghosts with compassion and radical honesty, and to let them go if I wanted to build a different life. A reminder that fears and wounds can only be transmuted into courage, wisdom, and action when they are fully held and seen.
November | Scorpio Season | Purge
After a few weeks of vivid dreams, things shifted again.
A short trial of a new diabetes medication brought unexpected relief from food anxiety and restriction. For the first time in a long while, I was no longer exhausted and on edge at the same time. I could eat more freely – fruits, root vegetables, wholegrains, legumes – and feel energy returning to my body. Life felt more relaxed and enjoyable once again.
While my body was taking in more, my mind moved in the opposite direction.
I noticed myself losing interest in books, podcasts, and learning – even on topics I loved. It felt as though my brain was refusing to consume more information than necessary. Like the body after overeating on Christmas Day, it didn’t need more food but time to digest, metabolise, and eliminate. I thought that my mind might be clearing out decades of unconsciously consumed thoughts and inherited ideas.
Amidst the mental fasting, a recurring vision appeared during morning walks and afternoon naps: a giant orange digger truck excavating thick black mud from my solar plexus and womb. I could feel the force of the digging arm, the heaviness and viscosity of the mud, and the hollowness left behind.
The vision echoed with what I sensed was happening internally. Something deep, unseen was shifting – in tissues, in bones, and down to the cellular level. My intuition told me the body was purging old stories, beliefs, labels, habits, and relationships that lived inside me for decades. Some were mine; others intergenerational, even ancestral.
Maybe the return of nourishment was finally giving my body enough energy and strength to do this deeper work – to clear the ground and prepare for what comes next. Yet I didn’t know what would emerge afterward.
December | Sagittarius Season | Propagate
A few days before Neptune stationed direct in Pisces, a different vision emerged.
No more excavation. No more clearing. Just the return of life.
A small, half-naked baby – no more than a few months old – crawling next to me.
I asked a friend who’s trained in IFS to guide me through exploring this vision.
The baby was crawling and stumbling along a dirt path next to my feet. We were journeying through a lush, evergreen forest together. When I picked her up, I wrapped my arms around her bottom and waist. Her head rested on my left shoulder, her chest against my breast. We were close, connected – but not attached or entangled.
What I felt was unmistakable: soft, supple skin. A strong heartbeat. Slow breaths. Calmness. Contentment. Vitality. Aliveness. Innocence. A deep trust in the world.
The baby felt like an old soul – wise and vulnerable – here to observe and experience life through curiosity and rather than control.
Somehow, I knew she was me. A newborn to a different world. Exposed, tender, alive.
What’s being birthed was not a new identity or a new roadmap, but rather a new way of moving through life – slower, messier, more intentional, more trusting.
My wish for her was simple: I wanted her to go about life at her own pace and rhythm. And to know that she would stumble, fall, get hurt – because that is how she learns to walk.
I wanted her to remember she is always held, guided, and protected – by ancestors, by the Earth and the stars, by something far larger than herself.
I wanted her to play, to get dirty, to make noise. To smell flowers, blow dandelions, hug trees. To sing to bees, dance with butterflies, marvel at hummingbirds. And most importantly, to rest whenever she needed or wanted.
Life is not a race to the summit, but a long, winding journey from mountains to sea.
Everything finally made sense. The dreams, the digger truck, the information detox – they were all preparing me to meet this baby. To become her again. To start over on a clean slate. To allow vulnerability and messiness to carry me forward through life.
Closing Doors
For me, the year 2025 revealed itself as a paradox.
It felt like everything and nothing were happening all at once.
It was a year of building – just not the kind that I could see or measure. Underground, invisible work was always in progress: seeds germinating in darkness, shells cracking open, roots spreading and forming new foundations quietly without witnesses.
The building process is not always structured, organised, and optimised. Sometimes it looks like pause, even stagnation. Sometimes it looks like purge. And sometimes it looks like tending something fragile and alive with patience and care.
This is what devotion asks of me now: to trust the invisible work happening beneath the surface; to stay attuned to what is becoming, without rushing it to form; to remember that shoots and leaves will sprout when the inner and outer conditions mature and align.
Until then, I will keep listening, tending, and allowing life to propagate through me, as it is. What's meant for me is already growing, even when I can't see it yet.
I'll finish with this beautiful poem by Gayle Brandeis:
The plum you’re going to eat next summer
doesn’t exist yet; its potential
lives inside a tree you’ll never see
in an orchard you’ll never see, will be touched
by a certain number of water droplets
before it reaches you, by certain angles
of light, by a finite amount of bugs
and dust motes and hands
you’ll never know. The plum you are
going to eat next summer will gather
sugar, gather mass, will harden
at its center so it can soften toward
your mouth. The plum
you’re going to eat next
summer doesn’t know
you exist. The plum you are
going to eat next summer
is growing just for you.
I recently shared this poem with a group I'm working with.
Stepping out - like The Fool in Tarot - unknown but in full trust.
What a beautiful and thoughtful piece Bonnie. I found it useful to consider your words as I patiently and quietly work through my own new beginning. May the seed of yours germinate and flourish soon. X