Sometimes a feeling arrives long before the words.

That may sound strange coming from an artist, but I don't usually think in vivid visual images. People often assume that because I paint, I must picture everything in my mind first. The truth is quite different. My ideas arrive more as a feeling or a quiet knowing than as a clear picture. The images and words often come later.

Recently, while reflecting on this season of my life, a feeling came to me that I couldn't quite explain. As I sat with it, it gradually found its own language.

It arrived as metaphor.  A metaphor associated with feelings which finally equated to a body of water.

Not a particular river or ocean. Not a specific place. Simply the feeling of meeting the waters of life itself.

The more I sat with that feeling, the more I realised it described my journey through life more accurately than anything else I had ever tried to put into words.  The strangest thing is, (or maybe it isn't), is that I'm not comfortable in water even though I'm a good swimmer, even a strong swimmer.  But gradually even this began to make sense.  It needs to be understood through the sense of feeling rather than literally.  It needs to be understood through the sense that water can drown, can carry, can swamp, can soothe, can calm, can tire, can relax - it is powerful.

For much of my life, I believed the only way forward in life was to swim against the current.

If something needed doing, I did it.

If I didn't know how, I learnt.

Before long, I was teaching others.

I became the capable one, the reliable one, the person who could always be counted on. Looking back now, I realise how much of my identity became wrapped up in being useful, dependable and productive.

I'm not sure where that belief began. Perhaps it had always been there.

As a child, I wasn't praised for being capable, but I was often called lazy. Looking back through the lens of my autism and ADHD diagnosis many decades later, I wonder if people simply couldn't see how hard I was already working just to keep up. The current I was swimming against was invisible — an AuDHD brain doing its best to keep pace in a world built for different minds. Nobody could see it, least of all me. Whatever the reason, somewhere along the way I learnt that if I just tried harder, perhaps one day I would finally feel as though I was enough.

So I kept swimming.

I pushed through exhaustion.

I pushed through illness.

I pushed through injuries.

I pushed through tears.

When I think back to my final years at high school, I remember crying almost every day. There wasn't one particular event that caused it. It was simply life. Somehow I kept going because I believed that was what you did.

Swimming against the current became so normal that I stopped questioning whether there might be another way to stay afloat.

That determination and drive helped me achieve many wonderful things. It helped me raise a family, build businesses, teach, illustrate books, make art and pursue dreams that have brought enormous joy into my life.

But determination without boundaries comes at a cost.

Mine was burnout.

Not once, but several times.

For many years I didn't understand what was happening. I simply believed I wasn't trying hard enough.

As I grew older, life became busier rather than quieter. I was running a dance school, teaching art, travelling to markets and expos, saying yes to opportunities and trying to keep my creative business alive. The harder I worked, the more it seemed as though I was going backwards.

What I remember most isn't the exhaustion.  It's the shame.  The feeling that no matter how much I gave, it somehow wasn't enough.

Eventually, people began offering well-meaning advice.

"You need to slow down."

"Go with the flow."

It sounded sensible.

So I tried.

In many ways it helped. I rested more. I loosened my grip on life. I stopped fighting every obstacle that appeared in front of me.  But after a while I noticed something.  Although I was no longer swimming against the current, I was still allowing the water to decide where I went.  

I found myself saying yes to things that didn't really belong to me.  Teaching in places that drained me.  Accepting opportunities because I thought I should.

Trying to keep everyone happy.

Trying to keep my business afloat.

Trying, if I'm completely honest, to keep proving my worth.

I wasn't really going with the flow.

I was simply being carried by it.

Instead of feeling exhausted from fighting, I began to feel overwhelmed, swamped, drowning, and as though life itself was carrying me faster than I wanted to travel.

Then something began to shift.

I realised I no longer wanted to teach everywhere.

I wanted to teach from home. I wanted people to come to my studio.

I wanted to create within the rhythm of my own space instead of constantly taking myself out into the world. 

What made it difficult, wasn't recognising what I wanted.  It was wondering whether I was allowed to want it.

Decades earlier I had studied astrology, but eventually gave it away because unlike the charts and readings I did for other people, my own chart never seemed to make sense to me.  Recently I had my chart interpreted again, along with the chart for my business.  Whether you believe in astrology isn't really important here.

What mattered was the feeling it confirmed.

Perhaps I wasn't meant to spend my life chasing opportunities.

Perhaps I wasn't meant to throw myself into every current that passed by.

Perhaps my role was simply to become more fully myself and allow the people who resonated with my work to find their way to me.

The more I reflected on that, the more I realised my body had been trying to tell me the same thing for years.

Now I'm learning something entirely different.  Some days life feels like a vast ocean.

Some days it rushes past so quickly I wonder whether I'll ever find my footing.

Other days it becomes a still pool inviting me simply to rest.

The water changes.

Life changes.

I change.  

I'm learning that I don't have to fight the current but I don't have to surrender to it either. I don't even have to step into the water if I don't want to.  I can meet it on my own terms.

What matters now is not the kind of life I'm meeting, but HOW I choose to meet it.

For decades I trusted my mind above everything else.  Drowning out that intuitive voice because it didn't fit the norm far too often.

Now I'm learning to trust something quieter.

A feeling.

A knowing.

The wisdom of my own body. My intuition.

When opportunities arise, I no longer ask only, Can I do this?

I'll  only ask,

Does this feel right?

Not just in my mind.

In my heart.

In my body.

In that quiet place inside that has been patiently waiting for me to listen.

Today, while reflecting on all of this, I found myself asking a question that brought me to tears.

"If I stop swimming...how will anyone know I'm enough?"

And for a while I couldn't answer.

Then I realised something that almost made me laugh.

I've spent years helping other people discover the answer.

Life isn't about proving our worth to other people.

It's about remembering that our worth was never in question.

We are worthy simply because we exist.

Somehow, along the way, I had forgotten to believe my own words.

Perhaps that's the greatest lesson burnout, self-discovery and growing older have given me.

Not that I need to slow down.

Not that I need to push harder.

Not even that I should go with the flow.

But that I can meet the waters of life itself on my own terms.

Some days I will step into the water.

Some days I will simply rest beside it.

Either way, my worth remains exactly the same.

And perhaps, after all these years, that is what I have been learning all along.