Hi, I’m Julia.

I’m a passionate writer and an even bigger reader. An intuitive and an ambivert. A recovering perfectionist and recuperating people-pleaser.

I say recovering because when you spend the vast majority of your life believing the story that in order to be worthy of ______ (love, rank, support, adopting a dog, buying a cup of coffee) you have to prove you’re infallible, you don’t just snap out of it the moment you call bullshit.

It’s not just the great a-ha! moment that changes your life, it’s everything that comes after it. It’s the choices you make. The practices you implement. The boundaries you set.

It’s the integration of everything you’ve learned that is the true journey to wholeness and fulfillment.

And one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that integration happens in relationship, not in isolation.

***

I grew up in a chaotic household where self-reliance became my most useful survival tool. The smaller and quieter I made myself—the more I Did Everything Right—the more praise (and therefore less punishment) I would receive. I was a shy kid, fearing to take up too much space, or to be an inconvenience.

From the time I was 17, I was working full-time to help support my family as I took running start classes in high school, and then eventually went to university. I knew I was tired. I knew I had bouts of depression. But I was never allotted time or space to truly feel any of that.

No one around me had the language for what depression meant. I had a close group of friends that were my lifelines, but no mentors, and certainly no one to guide me through the difficult and complicated issues I was facing as I came into adulthood.

I was a voracious reader, and a self-healer. I thought I could do it all on my own, because after all, I always had. I didn’t know anything different.

Learning to bear more and more as my fuse slowly grew shorter and shorter, I prided myself on my work ethic. I never gave up on anything. I got good grades (my self-esteem would allow for nothing less). I always said yes when someone asked me to pick up a shift, even if I was already working 45 hours while taking a full class load. (And this certainly didn’t stop after university.) I took care of my family. I was there for my friends. I made time for my hobbies. I thrived on being someone that people would turn to for advice.

I was reliable.

I was responsible.

I was exhausted.

***

I just didn’t realize exactly how exhausted because I couldn’t hear my own body. I was too busy and had been through too much to be able to translate any of the signals my body had been sending me as alerts that something was wrong. I just thought this was how bodies feel.

It’s like when the oil change light comes on in your car. You ignore it for months, and nothing happens, so you think there’s no good reason for it, it’s just there.

And then suddenly everything starts to break down.

It would take a tumultuous marriage followed by a divorce, a pandemic, years of therapy, coaching, and daily mindfulness and self-compassion practices, before I finally learned how to rest—and, more importantly, to believe that I deserved to.

Now, I navigate by my own internal compass, and not by how others might react to it.

I trust my intuition. I set boundaries and hold them. I communicate my needs, and ask for what I want.

I’ve built a trusting relationship with my younger self, and I am—finally—at home in my own body.

And on the days when I’m not? On the days when I doubt myself? When I ask, who do you think you are to have these dreams? When I feel insecure, vulnerable, tender, or weak?

I give myself grace, putting into practice all the techniques I’ve learned over the years to help regulate my nervous system, calm my thoughts, validate my emotions, and stay connected—mind, body, and Spirit—to the seat of my Power.

***

When your entire worldview is predicated upon the idea that in order for you to be loved, accepted, and valued, you need to give every bit of yourself away that you possibly can, it will mean that when you begin to make choices for yourself for the first time, you will feel incredibly vulnerable.

Everything is new, and when everything is new, the ego likes to rear its dastardly head and try to weave a whole new skein of narratives detailing how scary and awful the unknown is, how much we’ll regret going out there, and how much more comfortable we’d be if we just stuck with what we know.

But in order to create the life you want to lead—full of autonomy, freedom, abundance, expansion, creativity, and unfettered self-expression—you have to be willing to try something new.

Years ago, I began the harrowing journey of self-rediscovery.

And I want to help you do the same.

I promise—from personal experience—it will be so, so worth it.