I always remember when I was coaching a few years ago, one of my clients was determined to start writing a book. (Interestingly, many of my clients have gone on to become authors, or were authors in the first place…). One of the hurdles, was how the bloody hell to start.

Ain’t that the way? Like, where tf do you even begin?

(I’m thinking the same of my own book, for the record. And yes, it has a title. And no, of course I haven’t started it. Yet.)

The problem I have found, time and time again as a creative, is that the asshole in my head likes to destroy things before I’ve even started them. We creatives…we LOVE to create. We’re AMAZING at it. But we’re all too often equally as good at sabotaging ourselves before we’ve even get started.

This first blog post – this…uneasy but feels so right return to blogging on cosmicgirlie, has been written in my head a THOUSAND TIMES. It’s never looked the same twice.

This space, this cosmicgirlie space, is over 13 years old. THIRTEEEEEENNNNNN YEARS OLD, OMFG. It’s seen my grandfather pass away, my dad pass away, my divorce, my depression diagnoses, quitting my photography business, the growth of my two children, the (re)start of my cello business, and soooooo much more. I just checked the archives – my last proper blog post was 22nd Feb 2018, at 18:05. The last image I posted? How poignant, how appropriate:

Because for the last however many years, which quite frankly have been a beautiful and yet terrifying blur of life and EVERYTHING, I…just got smaller and smaller. Or at least, it feels like that’s what was happening. I felt like I lost my voice, I forgot who I was, and I started jumping through the hoops.

(Is this where my American friends would say I “drank the KoolAid”? I actually like KoolAid. Mmmmm delicious sugary shit…)

Anyway. I got small. I got TOO SMALL for MY LIKING. Because then I felt like I wanted to explode, and I couldn’t understand wtf was happening.

I bounced around things which didn’t belong to me, I stayed in spaces which were mentally dangerous for me, I stopped speaking about things which freed me up. I accommodated everyone else. I forgot who tf I was. Who I AM.

My cosmicgirlie moniker (always with lower case c) has been this identity of mine for nearly 30 years. THUR. TEE. YEARS. It started on a whim, almost by accident. Pre “mommy blogging” (oh my CHRIST the awkward nostalgia), before my ex-husband, before instagram…before I had any real clue what I was doing in online spaces.

(I might share the story of how it came about, but it’s possibly related to slightly illegal activity which, y’know, heh.)

But the title has always made sense, somehow. It’s always felt like a safety blanket, a familiar understanding of who I am. It felt dangerously sullied when I moved Silent Sunday here – the behemoth that made me a victim of my own success, but is still continued by some og bloggers today – and…I think the space didn’t feel like mine anymore.

However. Over the last 18 months, I have felt the shift away from only doing cello for weddings, and movement towards some sort of cello/creativity/leadership homecoming…

…and that’s what’s been happening here, on cosmicgirlie.

I didn’t recognise it at first, because I’ve been rejecting it FOREVER.

(“Who tf does she think she is?” “She’ll never do it, she’s too…” “She should just quit now, she has no right doing this stuff…”)

Time out from the noise has allowed me to step back into MY OWN SELF.

It’s allowed me to remember what cosmicgirlie was all about; what this space means to me, what I’m “allowed” to do with it, what feels good, what feels right.

It’s allowed me to remember that ADHD means I’m going to be SO DAMN MESSY, and ASD is going to make me create organised mess, and the two together give me the strength to say…

…fuck it. I get to be the person I’m meant to be, and I get to help others do the same. I get to play, create, share, think, teach, support, and more. Because those are the things I’ve always done here, and that’s what I’m coming back to – with a truckload of hindsight and shitload of confidence.

It just makes sense, now, and fuuuuhhhhhhhhh it feels GOOD.