New Year. New moments to bring to life.
Have you ever been swept up by wild emotions because of something small—an offhand comment, a misplaced sock? Or maybe a situation so complex it should have been overwhelming left you eerily still and calm, as though time slowed down.
For late-diagnosed AuDHD women, these contrasts can feel like a paradox: how can we be so reactive to the simple and so quiet in the face of the intricate? But here’s the secret: both states are alive with possibility. They’re invitations to own your experience.
The same goes for the passing of time. A new year, like a block of wood or a stone, is inert until we bring our energy, attention, and meaning to it. It’s not the calendar that transforms us but how we meet the moments it contains.
When we slow down and notice, even the simplest sensations—a cool block of wood, the edge of a fingernail—can unfold into an intricate world of feeling, thought, and meaning.
Mind: Engage with Curiosity
Find something nearby—a block, a pen, or even a pebble. Without needing to name it, just notice: its shape, texture, and weight. Let your thoughts wander. What memories or ideas does it stir? You’re not looking for answers, just tracing the pathways of your curiosity.
Heart: Connect with Kindness
When frustration, boredom or resistance arises, instead of pushing it away, place a hand on your heart and take a deep breath. Whisper to yourself: This, too, is part of me. Notice how this softens the edges of your feelings, allowing you to move through them gently.
Body: Explore with Playfulness
Hold the object in your hand. Close your eyes. Feel its edges, its surface, its weight. Twist, turn, press, or squeeze it. Let your movements slow down, noticing the different sensations. What happens in your body as you stay with this simple act?
This week’s spotlight
Dance your heart’s desires alive in the new year
“AuDHD LOVE MOVES US”
For women who prefer feel their way forward, rather than envisioning.
Bring a hidden seed of desire into your awareness, then ground it in the rich earth of love, movement and soul connection.
A collaboration with mystical muse and soul poet Yolanda Sokiri
[✨ Dance your way✨]
This week’s *glimmers*
* Rest, Reflect, Rewire Retreat opens with a practical immersion in the joy of owning your experience.
* Embodying Hope 1:1 coaching February cohort enrolling now
– flexible long payment plans available
– more details coming over the next four weeks
A Moment to Notice:
Take three breaths today to engage fully with one concrete thing in your hands. Notice what’s there. Does your mind wander? Do you feel resistance or softness?
Question: What’s something tangible you’ve noticed recently that brought unexpected joy or surprise?
Encouragement for Sensitive Souls:
The start of a new year can feel like a weighty thing, as though the calendar itself demands transformation or fresh purpose. But dates are inert—they’re like blocks of wood or stones. They only hold meaning because we give it to them.
It is you who brings life to this moment, to this day, to this year. You get to choose what matters, how much energy to give, and when to rest. Whatever you feel—whether excitement, resistance, or stillness—is alive in you. These sensations, stories, and emotions are not here to push you toward being “fixed.” They’re here to remind you of your aliveness, as much as you’re willing and able to meet it.
Stay open to wondering. Let the dullness, awkwardness, or even the wild emotions have their space. You’re not here to conquer your feelings; you’re here to meet them with curiosity and kindness.
And that’s more than enough.
Affirmation for sensitive AuDHD women
Many AuDHD women feel immense delight in subtle sensory experiences – textures, colours, scents, flavours. And may equally be very sensitive to undesirable experiences.
We are conditioned to dull our sensitivities and fit in by tolerating “normal” levels of sound, light, colour and flavour
Which undermines our ability to recognise what we do and don’t like, what we do and don’t want in our lives.
I invite you to slow down and take time to notice sensory experiences in your day to day life that you enjoy – or don’t. The herbs you love. The sounds that make you flinch. You could begin this minute by thinking about them. Coffee, lemon myrtle, birdsong. How do you feel when you allow these ideas to land in your body?
I trust your body to give you the information you need to point you in the direction of more of what you love, when you take the time to ask and to listen. Inside AuDHD LOVE MOVES US, you’ll find a collection of processes to support you in exactly that. Learn more here.
Reflections on the power in owning experience
So many things have shown up this week pointing to owning my experience.
An awkward quiet tanty when I was denied chocolate cake I had allowed myself. I should have known better, and have definitely learned from that experience to modify my expectations to fit the environment.
The delight of walking and talking with a wise and open minded friend.
The thrill of joining an online Sensual Embodied Dance class with my teacher Holly Wodetzki and having space to feel a full range of emotions around new year dreams and desires. Recognising that the path to any achievement is a winding one, full of ups and downs, and likely taking at least pi times as long as planned.
Lying on my bed, Feeling overwhelmed by the tasks I have set myself, and remembering that when I switch into sensing, and let go of wondering, my physiology shifts and my thinking shifts. Which is a bit scary in itself.
So i picked up a tea light holder that was within reach and spent a few minutes dropping into the sensory experience of it.
This is a three minute technique I learned from Betty Martin, called waking up your hands. Follow the link to find out how to do it and how it works from the source. I’m going to share a little bit about how I experienced it. But the true magic is in having your own experience.
Quite quickly, i found myself yawning and becoming deeply curious about the experience of the item in my hands. I could appreciate the smooth hardness, the sound of my fingernails tapping. I discovered I quite enjoy the feeling in my fingers of my fingernails tapping on a hard surface (I just played with that again now)
I don’t always remember this playful pleasure is available to me.
It was a pivotal moment in my embodiment journey when I realised during a workshop with Betty Martin that the sensations, and the feelings I experienced while holding a yellow wooden block were/are in me.
In me.
It is possible to have an absolutely direct experience of yourself in the world, by simply paying attention to the sensations in your body. Machine level input.
Hold that thought for a moment.
I often find myself spending time trying to work out what other people are feeling, wanting, needing.
I think this is deep social conditioning for women especially.
It is therefore an act of subversive resistance against all your subtle cultural conditioning to pay attention, even for a moment, to the direct experience of your hands on a tangible object.
It can be startling the number of feelings, emotions this evokes.
So go gently.
I think many of us are touch starved.
But when you own your sensory experience, pay attention to the information coming directly from your fingertips and nerves, part of that hunger is satiated.
The extension of this concept is that the feelings that we experience are also our own, whether comfortable or not.
And in owning those feelings as well, as much as we are willing and able, we nourish our sense of wholeness.
So although i could blame all kinds of people for my mood about the chocolate cake, in the end, that emotional response is mine, and I can choose to own it or not.
When I do find the courage to recognise that it was me, then I have more power over my future responses, and framing the situations that trigger them.
And equally the more delightful experiences. Sometimes they are even harder to own.
That I should be able to enjoy and embrace these simple pleasures.
It’s all me. My body mind, experiencing being alive, in this moment.
The more of it I own, the more power i have to influence my future experiences.
Work in progress.
Wandering mind writing "owning your experience"
OOREI form made up by slam poet Beau Sia
OWNING YOUR EXPERIENCE
Urgh i don’t want to write about this
I just want to have the experience
So right there, write there
Is resistance as an experience
Off to an awkward start
All me, all me, all me
Celebrating, ok acknowledging resistance
Visiting Dundalli on Sunday morning
Of resistance focusing attention
And respect on moving into the space of others
Own your experience
So when i hold the thing in my hand
I think about the thing
The yellow block, as it turns out
Yellow, rectangular prism
I didn’t actually name it then
I recognised the shape and that was enough
I’m naming it now for you
To help you see what i held
So this is thinking and projecting
Useful head stuff to begin
OWN YOUR EXPERIENCE
Now i feel the yellow block in my hand
Sharp edges, slightly rounded corners
Smooth sides. Eyes closed
Cool. weighty as wood.
Feels about right for what it looks like
Yawn. breathing slows
Time bends and stretches
Immersed in the feeling of the yellow block
The different pressures on my palm
Between my fingers.
OWN YOUR EXPERIENCE
The unfolding possibilities
Moment by moment
Gradations of pleasure
Trying adapting following
Abandon jump slow down
Twist turn press squeeze
So many ways to engage with a lump of wood
so many different sensations
My mind wanders boredom
Overwhelm. Yawn. soften
OWN YOUR EXPERIENCE
Allowing this to be enough is a discipline
Feeling the tug to be sharper, more productive
Breathe. Stay with it.
Three minutes only.
This is what i’m here for
Curiosity, patience, kindness
Frustration arises.
Can’t find what i’m looking for
Soften, stay, what is here now
An edge on the side of my nail is delicious
OWN YOUR EXPERIENCE
All this is in me.
The lump of wood is inert.
The feelings are all in me
In my body, my mind, my senses my brain
My stories, my wandering mind
All the things, the complexity
All this is in me. All this is in me.
The block a catalyst
All this is in me. What more is there?
A simple interaction
OWN YOUR EXPERIENCE
I thought it was the block.
Somehow that was causing the sensations.
But the block is fixed, inert.
The rising, falling, complexity of sensations is me
And this is a gift of dullness perhaps
The other experiences their complexity
It’s a bit confusing that though
Peculiar how the dull grey stone is blamed
Something here about a trigger
A catalyst. For those who are ready to feel
OWN YOUR EXPERIENCE
To feel is to be alive
A dead body is a stone
Whatever you feel is aliveness
Energy moving
The stone is inert. The block lies still.
You give it life, movement.
You experience it as you, here now
Sensitive to its form and your stories
The feeling is in you.
The sensation is in you
initial Chat GPT prompt
Hey Chattie. This week I would like you to Transform the anchored stream of consciousness poem below into a relatable everyday embodiment encouragement blog post/email for late diagnosed AuDHD women. Use my friendly, slightly awkward tone of voice. Open with a reflection about how simple things can trigger us into wild emotion, and complex situations render us into stillness. Then add one suggestion for curious mind, one for connected heart and one for creative body. Outline one moment to notice. with an engagement question. Close with balanced encouragement for sensitive readers, inviting them to stay open to following wondering, without feeling pressured to be fixed
Space to connect with the intangible feeling of what you desire in this moment, for this year.
Grasp even the tiniest seed of awareness.
Ground it in love, movement, connection.
Allow it to bloom in its own time.
