When people feel happy, their questions shift. They’re less about fixing things and more about exploring—curious about what’s possible, about choosing something better not just for themselves but for others too. It’s a different quality of outreach, grounded in openness rather than brokenness.
But what about the rest of the time? What if our outreach isn’t always about fixing what’s wrong but about navigating toward what feels right? There’s a subtle but profound difference between reaching out to change something because it feels broken and reaching out to grow into something better—for either party or both. Curiosity and connection create the spaciousness to explore, moving us away from urgency and toward possibility.
Curious Mind: Wondering About Possibilities
Next time you reach out, pause and ask yourself: Am I seeking to fix, or am I exploring what’s possible? Neither is wrong, but the energy is different. Fixing often comes from a place of urgency, while exploring invites curiosity. What happens when you let yourself wonder instead of rushing to solve? In this way, curiosity creates the time and space for discovery.
Connected Heart: Stretching Toward Connection
When you connect with someone, notice your intention. Are you reaching out to fill a gap, or are you sharing something fuller? Imagine reaching out as offering a hand, not from emptiness but from a desire to bridge, to meet. What does it feel like to connect without needing the other person to fix or complete you? Connection expands the time you have to experience and share what’s meaningful.
Creative Body: Moving Toward Openness
In your body, practice the difference between tension and openness. Try this: stand still and clench your fists, imagining you’re holding onto something that needs fixing. Then slowly release your hands, let your shoulders soften, and step forward as if you’re moving toward possibility. Feel the shift in energy as your body practices openness. Slowing down and creating openness brings spaciousness to your next steps.
Wild Mandala AuDHDventure
invites you to embody a curious and creative approach to your environment, offering a playful and expressive way to stretch into new possibilities without the pressure of needing to “fix” anything.
[✨ Start here✨]
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A Moment to Notice
Take a moment to notice the quality of your own outreach. What’s behind it? Are you driven by a need to change something, or are you guided by a sense of curiosity? How does it feel to consider both options without judgment? When curiosity and connection guide you, new possibilities can emerge.
When have you reached out with curiosity instead of urgency? What difference did it make?
Encouragement for Sensitive Souls
Reaching out doesn’t have to mean you’re broken, and it doesn’t have to mean you’re fixed either. It can simply mean you’re human, navigating the space between longing and fullness. It’s okay to want things to change, and it’s also okay to wonder about what’s possible without needing immediate answers.
Curiosity and connection create the time you need for growth and discovery. Whether your outreach comes from a place of hope, curiosity, uncertainty or doubt, trust that it’s enough. Let yourself be open to what unfolds, knowing that the path isn’t about perfection—it’s about connection, one step at a time.
Affirmation for contemplative AuDHD women
Many AuDHD women are brilliant explorers of space, time, connection, black hole surfing at will.
They are conditioned to hammering out solutions, chalking up achievements, getting things done. Being measurably productive.
Which undermines our ability to stay in the question, to allow time and space awareness to expand voluptuously, to reveal unexpected answers.
Remember you can choose which timeframes you work in. There’s drama and excitement in urgency, and there is richness and complexity in curiosity and connection.
I trust your desire to weave the two together to create just the texture you need to remain responsively and sustainably engaged. The Wild mandala AuDHD-venture can support you in discovering richness and responding from fullness.
Raw musings on problems and solutions
My problem is that i find it difficult to articulate problems before i have recognised a solution.
A bit like the pharmaceutical companies. Illnesses are little known until a cure is found. Then awareness increases.
So is that a true statement?
Anthropology is the thing. Study of people. Business is applied. Sociology. Psychology.
I just do things that interest me. Or not.
So let’s reverse engineer wild mandala AuDHDventure. (much better without the hyphen)
Making something out of nothing.
There’s nothing here.
The more i look, the more i see.
Scary to begin from not knowing what i’ll find, will i find anything, will there be enough? Will i be enough. Will it be good enough.
That is terrifying for me.
I can feel the contraction.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed doable. Fun, interesting. I said I would. I was excited about it. Thinking about it made / makes me smile. It seemed like the perfect match. Yes! Let’s do it. I think i can do it.
Now i’m on the brink and i’m scared.
My heart beats faster. My attention turns inward, away from what’s around me. My surroundings.
The critical voices start. This is a stupid idea. You don’t know what you’re doing. No one will like it. Or even be interested. This is stupid and embarrassing. You’re already a failure. What are you even doing here? Who do you think you are? Who are you to go down this path? You don’t even know the way.
Shallow breathing. Glazed eyes. Feeling edgy, agitated.
Heavy, tired.
This is not a place i like to visit. It is not comfortable at all.
In the past, sometimes then i’d barge ahead, ignoring these feelings, MAKING it work. exhausting
Sometimes turn away, persuaded by the thoughts. Depressing.
More recently, i’ve learned to sit with these voices and hear them. To recognise the incomplete truth of the fears. There is possible truth in all the statements. There is also truth in the original excitement.
When I can hold all of that, I can find a first step.
Yes and – walk with me.
Where will you go. What are you willing to allow?
It’s a scale problem.
As my astonishingly wise teenager reminded me, when I said “no one is interested” about something or other > you are interested, and you are someone.
Start with one. Start with you.
And also, notice how at the very beginning, my attention turned inward, away from my surroundings.
Whatever fears i may carry, the world has seen them before. A million times or more.
I don’t have to be alone with them. I can become present to my surroundings.
And that is the invitation and lesson inside wild mandala adventure.
Be guided to move through your non human environment with curiosity and openness.
There’s nothing here. Is often my first impression.
Turn attention outward
Meet your environment
Use the resources you find to create a simple, pleasing pattern of your own intuitive design – in response to your environment.
Why – to achieve effect/outcome
How – steps
what – content
Review.
How
Challenge
Choice
Outcome
Say what you’re going to say
Say it
Say what you said.
Before – planning
Immersion – process
After – outcome
Reflect, review
Seeing the thing from different perspectives.
Different parts make sense at different times.
Might grasp it at any point
And that is ok!!!!!!!!
Don’t have to know going in, or during.
It might not make sense until well out the other side.
Hope and happiness might arrive at any part of the whole process.
Contemplative…
Long why leading in.
Begin
Middle
end
Long reflection leading out
Contemplative….
Great so let’s address that long lead in.
What are they observing? Perceiving?
Conflicted, confusing desire.
To do what?
What is the desire????
Avoid risk of disappointment?
Playing gently is the solution.
Action without meaning…
Contemplative practice.
What is the value of contemplation?
Desire – to communicate some of the complexity and depth you feel inside.
To share your wonder.
Problem: words don’t cut it – people don’t understand me. I can’t get the right words out.
Feeling – frustration, hopelessness, isolation, resentment
Choice – start by playing gently. Take the pressure off. No need to perform.
Result – Create a spark. start a hearth fire. Discover that those uncomfortable feelings, when accepted, are a powerful energy source.
How can i be happy to feel frustration, hopelessness, isolation, resentment?
Because i have touched something sensitive and rarely seen in captivity.
Because that means i have become a safe space for myself and my tender, belittled feelings.
And that is a remarkable achievement for some of us.
LOL.
I’m happy in an environment where I can not make sense.
Where I can share my wandering thoughts and trust that they may be helpful to someone.
And it is helpful to me to share them.
And i’m someone.
And that is enough to begin.
I have completely failed at my objective this time, which was to explain the circumstance and thinking that the wild mandala AuDHDventure helps to resolve.
Somehow I keep showing, while I’m trying to tell.
It looks like this.
Dense and incomprehensible.
But i feel light for putting it out like this.
And deciding that is enough for now.
I have planted this seed.
We will see what grows.
And I will return to other things in my life.
Self acceptance is having the ability, capacity – power and resources to withstand the judgement of others, no matter how I look/show up.
I’m choosing that now.
I’ll be back next week, and again and again after that.
Thanks for listening.
Wandering mind writing "reaching out from happiness"
(OOREI form made up by slam poet Beau Sia)
So i had a chat with AI about what people do when they are happy.
School of life says happiness is writing in white ink on white paper
It doesn’t last long.
So maybe happiness is not the right word
Contentment. Hope. contentment if my drawing is anything to go by.
Reaching out from happiness
So i had a chat with Ai about what popel ask when they are happy
And the message was
When people are happy
They are not about fixing things
They are curious
And about sustaining and growing
So i don’t know where they’re coming from
The rest of the time
But there’s something there about
Only asking for help when broken
Reaching out from happiness
Which implies that when we’re reaching out
We’re broken and we want something
Which means that people expect
Brokenness when connecting
Broken hearts
Broken open
The goddess of never not broken
Too many syllables – Akhilandeshvari
(Akhilandeshvari
“Ishvari” in Sanskrit means “goddess” or “female power,” and the “Akhilanda” means essentially “never not broken.” In other words, The Always Broken Goddess. Sanskrit is a tricky and amazing language, and I love that the double negative here means that she is broken right down to her name.)
Which means that when we reach out
People will see us as broken
Reaching out from brokenness
So to meet us, they will be broken too
Which i guess is why commiseration / trauma bonding is a thing.
Or when we reach out
There is incompleteness
Not enoughness
Projected
Because otherwise,
We’d keep all the goodness to ourselves?
This is not making sense
And going in unexpected directions
Reaching out from happiness
So what if there is both happiness and incompleteness
That is a capacity thing
What if we are reaching out from happiness
Because we do not have the capacity to hold our joy
And therefore we want to share it?
That is a wild and unexpected idea.
What if our happiness is incomplete
Without sharing and reaching out?
That sounds like a truth to me
Somehow the messages get mixed
Reaching out from happiness
What if our individual capacity for happiness
Is intentionally small
Because it is meant to be shared
Of course there will be variation
But somehow our capacity for endurance
Seems larger.
But emotion is energy
And a lot of perception is mirroring
Smoke and mirrors
Who knows
Reaching out from happiness
I drew a picture once of contentment
And outreach
As a green bush (midyim, to be specific)
With a new growth branch reaching out into space
It was an image i had captured
From a walk in a park
It gave me such a sense of the sense
Of reaching out from contentment
Reaching out from fullness
Or at least interconnection
With genuine desire to stretch and grow
And also ability to let go
Reaching out from happiness
Backing yourself. Being backed
Supported, regardless, in the lap of the ancestors
Resting into my own past
And my larger networked present
From not aloneness
From connection and interconnection
And still incompete
Because there is a oneness
And until its for everybody
Nobody is complete
Reaching out from happiness
And that’s a stretch goal too
So making peace with incomplete
Being content with broken
Standing on what is already done
And building on contentment
Not because it is not enough
But because there is always room
For more sweetness.
Like the desert pocket that often opens.
Even when i think i’m full
Reaching out from happiness
Concentration gradient
The happiness can flow either way
I can give happiness where it’s needed
Or receive happiness
White ink on white paper
A sweet moment. White powder.
Making moments sweet
Sounds a bit sickening
But i didn’t say for whom.
Sweet and bitter, they go together
Reaching out from happiness
Now i think too much happiness
Might be a thing to offload
This now sounds like toxic positivity?
Becomes a burden, a liability?
Doubt creeps in
Welcome my old friend
Now i’m smiling again
The magic is in the meeting, the greeting
Welcome my old friend.
What news?
Reaching otu from happiness
Open to listen
Quietly, beverage in hand
Serenity. Contentment. Curiosity
They’re all here
Trust in self. Faith in the other.
Willingness. Selflessness.
Kindness. Rolling with it.
This too shall pass
It’s a visit to the seashore – a clear lens
What will i find?
Hey Chattie. This week I would like you to Transform the anchored stream of consciousness poem above 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 on the different quality of enquiries you – chatGPT – receive when people feel happy, to when they don’t. 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
Other posts in this season of consent
The weeks from December Solstice to February Cross Quarter are a time for stillness and enjoying the moment.
My posts have underlying theme of consent and boundaries – to facilitate stillness and enjoyment.
The crossover point from duality to consent was the idea of the radical centre, my edge is the centre of a balanced relationship.
Hope lies beyond the instructions, the rules – crossing (habitual) boundaries
Owning your experience – choice is about consent, but to choose, you have to know what you feel, and how you feel about what you feel.
Joyful resistance – pause to notice the boundary, to discover what consent negotiation is needed
Reaching out from happiness – approaching others, grounded in your space, expecting them to have boundaries, falling back to happiness
The audacity of contentment – commitment to staying with fullness, knowing your limits and respecting them, drawing strength from them. Whatever they are, it’s a copy problem. Ie, reframe thinking.
Your no is welcome and invited – from feeling comfortable with my own boundaries and limits, i am less threatened by the limits of others. Don’t take them personally.
Next season, begin again, the theme is shifting to empathy. Got to have it for self first, and know limits and capacity.