From the Mud, We Bloom.

What a wild start to the week. If you're local to my cozy hometown near Port Stephens, Australia you’ll know — the skies have opened, and the rain hasn’t let up. Streets are flooded, boots are muddy, and everything feels a little waterlogged.

And in that stillness, with my little world slowed by the weather, I found myself reflecting on my own roots — the messy, beautiful, and complicated beginnings that shaped the soul behind the lens.

To really understand my journey, let me take you back to my childhood.

I was that child — loud, spirited, eager to be loved, always trying to please… but never quite getting it right in the eyes of those I loved most. Misunderstood. Too much. Not enough. Just a child being a child, and yet, somehow, that felt wrong.

That’s where the first cracks began — tiny fractures in my sense of self, born from a deep longing to be celebrated, not just tolerated.

Isn’t it something, though, when you grow older and begin to hear your parents' own stories? Their silent battles. Their fears. Their wounds. You start to see them not just as parents, but as people. Imperfect, human, doing the best they could with what they knew.

I was given gifts, yes — toys, clothes, things. But what I really yearned for couldn’t be wrapped. I craved connection that was unconditional. Softness without strings. A love that said, “You are enough, exactly as you are.”

Maybe they weren’t meant to be parents. Maybe they were simply following the script that life hands so many of us: grow up, get married, have kids, carry on. But what happens when we inherit pain that was never ours to begin with? Where do we put it? Who do we give it back to?

So many of us spend our lives healing wounds we didn’t cause — learning, unlearning, becoming. And just when we think we’ve made sense of it all, time reminds us how fleeting it is. But perhaps… that’s the point.

Maybe we are here to carry a bit of shadow — not to be consumed by it, but to transform it into light. Maybe this is how we truly connect: in our shared scars, our honest stories, our blooming after the storms.

I am deeply grateful for this soul of mine, and for the body that carries it. And while the wounds still ache from time to time — both the visible and the hidden ones — healing has softened their edges.

And now, after all of it, I am blooming..
Still messy. Still becoming.
But finally, blooming.