If you found this website, chances are you're tired.

Not just physically tired, although yes, that too. But tired in the way that doesn't go away after a weekend. Tired of performing at full capacity every single day regardless of what's actually going on in your life. Tired of the gap between how capable you are and how depleted you feel.

That was me. For most of my adult life, I believed that hard work was the price of safety. Work hard enough, achieve enough, push through enough, and everything would be okay. I held down two jobs while studying full-time at university. I built a coaching business on the side while working full-time, commuting, and raising a baby in Jakarta. I went back to work before I was ready because stopping felt dangerous.

Then my body stopped for me.

Adrenal fatigue. Complete burnout. The kind where you can't work, can't think straight, and have to confront the fact that all the striving in the world hasn't actually made you feel safe, it's just made you exhausted.

In my recovery, almost by accident, I stumbled across the idea of living in sync with the lunar cycle. I'll be honest: my first reaction was skepticism. I was already interested in astrology, but syncing my schedule to the Moon sounded like the kind of thing I'd roll my eyes at. What changed my mind was the science. Tides, farming calendars, ancient timekeeping. The Moon has been influencing rhythms on Earth long before wellness brands got hold of it.

I tried it. And slowly, the compulsive need to push and produce every single day began to loosen.

That was years ago. Since then I've moved back to Australia, had a second act by the ocean, completed my first 10km run at an age when I thought my athletic window had closed, and built a Substack Moon Made Me Do It, a free app, and a growing community for women who are ready to stop treating themselves like machines.

I'm not a guru. I'm an ambitious, workaholic-by-nature woman who found a better way to operate and has been writing about it ever since.

If any of this sounds familiar, you're in the right place.

My journey

Once upon a time, I was you. I had no idea what proper care and nurturing looked or felt like, so I kept doing what I’d always done which was work hard, play even harder, and not stop at any cost to my health and well-being.

I have always been ambitious and have always gone all-in on everything. Sleeping is for when you are dead, right? During uni in my late teens, I somehow held down two jobs with opposing early morning and late night shifts, while also studying full-time.

I would keep myself from crashing and burning by drinking coffee and  Coca Cola and eating vending machine snacks. I justified eating this way because I cycled everywhere, which in my mind made me healthy. I didn't see anything wrong with this unbalanced, fast-paced lifestyle I was leading even though I felt exhausted pretty much all of the time.

To say I didn’t care for or nurture myself is an understatement.

I managed to keep-up the fast-paced life through my 20s and early 30s. Yet, there was a part of me that was always yearning for something more. Deep down I knew that there was something missing from my life that I was trying to fulfill through external means (hello booze and food!) and that the pattern of extremes was not a healthy way to live my life.

It took falling into a depression to turn things around for me. What felt like the worst thing at the time, ended up being the best thing for me.

My therapist encouraged me to start eating better, to stop drinking, and to try meditation and yoga as a way to slooooow down. I’d dabbled in yoga before, and I agreed it could be good for me to try again to get through this rough period.  I joined a yoga studio with an all-access pass, and went twice a day to different classes. I became slightly obsessed, but this time, my addiction was one that nourished my soul rather than filtering and hiding away the darkness I was trying so hard not to feel. 

This was the beginning of my deep explorations into spirituality. As an Aquarius Sun, I was always interested the woo-woo and the need to heal myself became the permission slip I needed to start a deep-dive into my own personal growth and development.

I learned Reiki, started practicing using tarot and oracle cards, did all the personality tests I could find, discovered therapeutic journaling as a tool to heal, and began learning about astrology.

The new me

Eventually I healed from depression and let go of a lot of previously forgotten trauma while really discovering more about myself and what it meant to live authentically and without external salves to always soothe me.

I really turned my life upside down, and got my proverbial shit together. I travelled extensively again, and found myself working and living in Hanoi, Vietnam and then later in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was when I was on a yoga retreat in Bali that I became  even more obsessed with health and well-being and consciously turned my lifestyle upside down.

I became passionate about raw foods and the benefits of following a plant-based diet, which led me to become a raw and living foods chef. I continued to also integrate a spiritual practice into my life and began to prioritise regular self-care. My confidence and self-esteem soared, I felt truly expressed and my life felt purposeful.

My business was born

As I continued to explore nutrition, and the role food, relationships, career, spirituality and movement can play in our lives and our overall well-being, I was led to study first at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, so that I could become a holistic health coach to help other people who were like me to heal their own insecurities and issues with self-love, emotional eating and stress management.

I then continued my explorations and completed a certification with the Institute for Transformational Nutrition. This course cemented the concept that health and well-being is not just about what you eat but about the nourishment you get from the relationships you nurture, the hobbies and interests you pursue, your success in your career and work, the way you look after yourself even in times of stress, and the spiritual elements of your life that you enjoy.

Always teaching, always learning

The story, of course, does not end here. I’m not perfect and still need to “do the work” to be able to walk my talk. Even though I loved working on my side hustle coaching business and it lit me up in so many ways, old habits die hard, and my workaholic tendencies soon crept back into my life.

Shortly after having my son, I relapsed into the world of non-stop go, go, go and pushed my body to its limits. I ended up with adrenal fatigue- I was burnt-out from working, commuting, building a business, and raising my son in a megatropolis and thinking like I had to do it all on my own (while also figuring out who I was again in my role as a mother).

The blessing that came from this, was a reminder that self-care is sacred and must be a priority. Once I recovered from my burnout I made the promise to never allow myself to go there again. In my recovery time, I happened to stumble across a mentor who taught me about the lunar cycle and how I could harness the energy of the moon through a regular journaling and meditation practice and as a way to tune into the natural rhythms. This was a game-changer for me and became one of the best tools to overcome the need for pushing and hustling all the time.

I now have a daily sacred self-care practice with rituals and routines that I have established to support me mentally, emotionally and physically. I am living by the self-care pillars that form the foundation of the work that I now do with my clients.

What I do now

These days I write, teach, and create tools for women recovering from burnout.

My Substack, The Moon Made Me Do It, is where I publish long-form personal essays about what it actually looks like to live cyclically, including the messy parts, the surprising parts, and the parts that make you wonder why nobody told you about this sooner.

The By the Moon app is a free tool I built so that tracking the lunar cycle doesn't require a deep astrology background. If you can check a calendar, you can use it.

And Mothered By The Moon is my upcoming course for the specific kind of woman I know well: the ambitious mother who has given everything to everyone else and is only now beginning to ask what it would feel like to give something back to herself.

My coaching style is warm and practical. I don't traffic in vague spiritual advice. I'm interested in what actually changes behaviour, and for me, and for the women I work with, syncing to the lunar cycle has been one of the most concrete and sustainable tools for that.

So let’s get started!

The best place to start is with my writing.

Head to The Moon Made Me Do It on Substack. It's free, and the origin story essay is a good place to begin if you want to understand what this approach is actually about and whether it's for you.

→ Read Moon Made Me Do It on Substack
→ Try the By the Moon app (free)
→ Join the Mothered By The Moon waitlist

Fun Stuff About Me

• I’m an Aquarius Sun, Taurus Rising and Libra Moon

• In Enneagram I am Type 7, and in Myers-Briggs I am an ESFJ

• I have been an expat half my life

• I am an extrovert, but I’m also an empath (so alone time is very important to me!)

• My happiest place in the world is my feet in the sand and the ocean there for me to swim in

• I have an Australian passport but can also qualify for a British and USA passport too

• I’ve attempted to learn many languages over the years, but Indonesian is the only one in which I am fluent

• I have an oracle and tarot card addiction and own about 45 decks!

• I also have an obsession with crystals and stones and have trouble finding places to display all my pretty treasures

Official Credentials and Certifications

Bachelor of Arts (Journalism) | 1998 | Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Master of Education (TESOL) | 2005 | Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Certificate as Holistic Health Coach | 2012 | Institute for Integrative Nutrition, USA

Certificate as Raw Food Chef |2012| Uncooking School, USA

Certificate as Transformational Nutrition Coach | 2015 | Institute of Transformational Nutrition, USA

Certificate IV Assessment & Workplace Training | Ongoing | TAFE QLD, Australia

Further Education

Usui Reiki Level 2 (2003)

NLP certification (2004)

Marie Forleo’s B-School (2012)

Make it Work Online graduate (2015)

Moonology Diploma- Centre for Excellence (2018)

Journaling Therapy Diploma- Centre for Excellence (2019)

Sistership Circle- How to Lead Circle (2019)

Cosmic Alchemy Astrology graduate (2020)

Awards

Certification as Health Coach by American Association of Drugless Practitioners |2012|

Certificate of Completion: Holistic Nutrition Lab: Digestive Intensive |2013|

Certificate in Nutrition for Disease Control and Health Prevention |2013|

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