'It's safe for me to want this...'

Self-belief Journalling :: July 2025

It started as a quiet whisper a couple of years ago, during what turned out to be a NINE-hour stay in the emergency room at Southmead Hospital (sidenote: after dedicating over twenty years of my life to Grey’s Anatomy, hospitals IRL are endlessly disappointing).

I had been experiencing pain in my chest, which isn’t great news for someone with a complex heart condition and a shit tonne of anxiety about medical examinations.

And I kind of knew it wasn’t my heart (totally different symptoms), but also something was wrong, and this would inevitably involve a barrage of invasive tests, strangers’ hands on my body, uncertainty, pain…

All of this turned out to be true as they patiently and methodically ruled out everything ‘serious’ to eventually diagnose me with a frozen shoulder and pneumonia (which is the worst kind of BOGOF deal).

The quiet whisper was ‘not this’. And underneath that: I am scared. I do not want to go into my fifties feeling this physically vulnerable.

So, of course, because this kind of shiz is my Actual Job, I simply set a goal, put together a plan, and viola now I feel amazing! I thought about it for another year as I slowly unfroze my shoulder, moved countries, had a period of depression alongside two winters in a row where I got pneumonia again and my focus became… breathing.

‘A healthy person has a hundred dreams, a sick person has only one’ = annoyingly true.

As someone who has wanted for my whole life to change my body - to be healthier, fitter, leaner, stronger, to have a normal relationship with food instead of eating all my feelings, to be able to buy clothes that feel like me, to have my outsides match my insides, I am no stranger to a yearning for change in my bdy.

On the verge of turning fifty, succumbing to these ailments, living with a chronic heart condition, all meant this particular want took on a new urgency.

I also knew that doing this FOR REALZ would mean facing and figuring out all of the quite-uncomfortable-but-bloody-good reasons why I was starting from here. It would mean looking closely at my internalised body shame.

It would mean asking for help, getting things wrong, and dealing with all the awkwardness that comes with my relationship with my body.

It would mean endless patience, developing trust and embodying acceptance with my body. It would mean letting go of some comforting but unhealthy habits. Expanding my capacity to hold both my physical and symbolic bodies - the keeper of memory, unconscious, intuition - with equal reverence.

Almost two years on from that quiet whisper, I am so grateful that I listened to what I wanted.

My relationship with my wants is undergoing a profound and irrevocable change. This process has unleashed more desire in me. Dreams that felt a bit ‘maybe one day’ now feel deeply possible, some inevitable.

I suspect that’s why women tuning into their deep longings can feel so bloody dangerous.

This month in Self-belief Journalling, we are exploring our relationship with what we want. This is often a complex and layered experience that can bring up ideas about deserving, worthiness, envy, as well as any tendency to avoid making a fuss, inconveniencing others, or wanting too much.

But for those of us who want to live a life that is fully expressed - one where we get to expand and grow and milk the absolute shit out of this incarnation - this is an invitation just to explore your wants. What you want is so worthy of your attention.

Let’s jump in!