It started as an ordinary Monday.
I went to view a venue and met the venue coordinator about an event I was planning. When I finished, rain had started to sprinkle, so I walked quickly back to my car. Nothing about the day felt particularly unusual. My mind was occupied as it often is, but I had already become better at managing that. I was taking breaks, allowing myself to rest and trying not to carry everything at once.
That night, before I become physically sick, my mind went back to the event and then further back into memories of previous experiences — the mistakes I had made, people I had trusted, financial pressure, decisions I wished I had handled differently, and the effect those experiences had not only on me but also on the people I love.
It became too much.
At one point I thought, I would rather die than go through all of that again.
I don’t feel that way now. Looking back, I understand what was underneath that thought. I wasn’t looking for death. I was overwhelmed by the possibility of repeating an experience that had already taken so much from me. I had worked hard to rebuild my peace, and the thought of losing it again felt unbearable.
Later that night, I started feeling weak. There was a slight pain in my head followed by a fever.
I remember getting out of bed to brush my teeth. I was so weak that I could hear my heartbeat. My ears felt muffled and I became dizzy, so I rushed back to bed and fell asleep.
For almost three days, sleep took over most of my time. I had very little appetite and ate only what I could manage. My mind was foggy and I experience unusual sensations in my head that I had never felt before.
Then my senses became extremely sensitive.
Sounds seemed incredibly loud, although my husband and son told me everything sounded normal to them. Food became so intense in flavour that I struggled to eat. Scents seemed unusually strong and light could feel almost blinding.
That confused me.
The world around me apparently hadn’t changed, yet my experience of it had.
By the third day, I was still weak and wasn’t thinking clearly, so I asked my son to take me to see a doctor. I explained what I had been experiencing. She said it might be a virus, prescribed medication and recommended that I have a brain scan.
I wanted that scan too because I had never experience anything like this before.
I stayed home and gradually improved. By Sunday, I was beginning to feel better. On Monday, I could work again, although I wasn’t completely myself.
Then, by Wednesday, I could think clearly.
But something felt different.
My mind felt lighter.
At first, the only way I could describe it was that my brain somehow felt expanded. I don’t mean that literally. I still don’t know what happened medically, and I don’t want to create an explanation simply because I don’t yet have one.
What I mean is that there seemed to be more space in my thinking.
I started noticing
When I returned to my normal responsibilities, I found myself paying closer attention — not only to my thoughts and body, but to what was happening around me.
I noticed the sky, the air, sounds and colours. I noticed shapes and tiny details that must always have been there but that I had somehow stopped really seeing.
And almost everything made me ask a question.
Something else had changed too. When problems appeared, they didn’t seem to land on me in quite the same way.
I still thought about them. I still asked questions, searched for answers and acted. I hadn’t become passive, careless or indifferent.
I simply didn’t feel swallowed by their impact.
I felt calm.
It was as though I was experiencing my life while watching it at the same time.
At one point, the closest description I could find was that it felt almost like being in a simulation. I don’t mean that I believe life is literally a simulation. I don’t know that. There are many things about this experience I cannot explain, and because it followed an unusual physical illness, I am taking the medical side seriously.
But watching is the closest word I have.
I was still me, but I was watching.
I could experience an emotion while simultaneously noticing myself experiencing it. I could hear a thought without immediately becoming the thought.
And the more I observed, the more curious I became.
Other people started looking different too
The change wasn’t limited to how I saw myself.
I began observing other people differently, and what surprised me was that I felt more compassion rather than more judgment.
I started thinking about how each of us seems to live within our own sense of reality.
Two people can stand inside the same situation and experience completely different things. Our histories, fears, expectations, relationships, knowledge and previous experiences influence what we see and how we interpret what is happening.
Someone else’s perception can make sense when I understand where they are standing, even when I don’t agree with their choices.
And my perception can feel completely real to me without necessarily showing me the whole picture.
That left me with a question I still don’t know how to answer.
What, then, is truth?
I don’t know.
Perhaps that is part of what has changed.
I don’t feel the same urgency to know.
I can say, This is what happened.
I can recognise, This is how I experienced it.
I can acknowledge, This is what I currently think it means.
And I can leave enough space to ask, What haven’t I seen yet?
I don’t have to see my future through my past
That question changed the way I looked at the woman who was lying awake that Monday night.
She was terrified of repeating what had happened before. She wasn’t wrong for feeling afraid. She was looking toward the future through everything she had already experienced.
I understand her.
But I don’t have to see the future through her fear.
That became particularly clear when I thought about OLTRÉ NOVA, a creative project I am currently developing through Regal Star Productions.
Before becoming sick, I had already changed the way I approached events. Past experiences had taught me to build safety nets, watch financial exposure, ask more questions, move carefully and refuse to sacrifice my peace simply to make something happen.
Yet that Monday night showed me that even though my practical behaviour had changed, some of the emotional weight of the past was still there.
Now, when I imagine OLTRÉ NOVA not proceeding because the conditions aren’t right — whether because of funding, registrations or financial risk — I notice something very different.
I feel calm.
That doesn’t mean I care less.
I am still working. I am still planning. I still look for possibilities, ask questions and solve problems. I still want to create something meaningful.
But I no longer feel that the outcome has to prove anything about me.
If it moves forward safety, I will experience that chapter.
If it doesn’t, I will experience what comes next.
Whatever happens, I will be okay.
Pain does not have to become the whole story
This experience has also made me think differently about suffering.
Not all suffering comes from our own choices. Illness happens. Loss happens. Other people’s decisions affects us. Circumstances can enter lives without permission.
Pain is real.
But I am beginning to see a difference between experiencing pain and allowing an experience to become the only lens through which I see everything that follows.
We can look at what happened.
We can ask questions.
We can examine it through another perspective.
We can deal with what needs to be dealt with, learn what is ours to learn and decide what we will carry forward.
A painful experience can become part of our story without becoming the definition of the person living it.
Perhaps that is what I had not fully understood about my own past.
I had learned from it.
But part of me was still looking through it.
Separate chapters, connected
I have started seeing my life as a series of chapters.
They are separate, yet connected.
My parents, my siblings, my husband, my children, people I have met, businesses I have built, mistakes I have made, things I have lost, things I have created, coaching, OLTRÉ NOVA — all belong to different parts of the same continuing story.
And everyone around me has a story of their own.
My husband isn’t simply a character in mine. My children aren’t here merely to complete my life. My parents had lives before I entered theirs. Every person I encounter is experiencing existence from somewhere I cannot completely see.
We travel alongside one another for different lengths of time.
When I look at my family from that perspective, I feel happy and proud.
And when I look at myself, I notice something that seems to have followed me through almost every chapter.
I play my part and explore.
I have been a daughter, sister, wife, mother, businesswoman, producer, coach, creator and many other versions of myself. I take those roles seriously, but I no longer think any one of them explains the whole of me.
I enter different phases of my life with what feels like a mission. When one phase is complete, another seems to emerge.
I don’t know where that feeling comes from.
And perhaps I don’t need to know.
I am remembering
There was another thought that appeared after I recovered that I still find difficult to explain:
I am not what I learned I am. I am remembering.
Remembering what?
I don’t know.
I have a sense that I wasn’t originally here, that I am here to experience and that there is purpose in being here.
I cannot prove it.
I don’t know what existed before this life, whether anything did, or what happens afterward. I could take the intensity of the feeling and turn it into certainty, but I don’t want to do that.
I would rather remain curious.
Because perhaps the question is more valuable to me right now than an answer I cannot verify.
What I do know is that this experience has made me look at purpose differently.
My sense of purpose right now isn’t to tell people what life means.
It is to inspire people to see the possibilities around them.
Maybe guidance is not about giving answers
If someone is suffering, I don’t want to stand above them and tell them how they should see their situation.
I want to stay with them and allow them to see.
Sometimes when we are hurting, one version of reality becomes so large that everything else disappears.
I failed.
I’m trapped.
This will happen again.
There is no other way.
Perhaps guidance doesn’t mean replacing those thoughts with positive ones.
Perhaps sometimes it means staying beside someone long enough to create space for another question:
Is there another way of seeing this?
They don’t need to adopt my perspective.
Their experience belongs to them.
Maybe my role is simply to help them notice that another lens exists.
And perhaps that is also what I am learning to do for myself.
I don’t need certainty before I continue
I don’t see completely ordinary days in quite the same way anymore.
Not because I believe every sound, colour or event contains a hidden message meant specifically for me, but because I notice how much of my life I previously allowed to become background.
The sky has shape.
The air has movement.
Colours have variations I didn’t stop to examine.
People have expressions, pauses and stories I cannot immediately understand.
Tiny details have value simply because I am here to experience them.
Maybe I will answer some of them.
Maybe some questions will follow me for the rest of my life.
I am becoming comfortable with that.
I don’t need certainty before I continue.
I can observe what is happening, question my interpretation, verify what can be verified, protect myself where protection is necessary, make decision with the information available and leave what I cannot know open.
Maybe life isn’t asking me to understand the whole story before I participate in it.
Maybe I am simply a traveller moving through different chapters, playing my part while I am here, sharing parts of the journey with people I love, experiencing what each phase brings and allowing another mission to emerge when the current one is complete.
And perhaps there will also be chapters where there is nothing to accomplish.
Maybe sometimes the experience itself is enough.
When I imagined the observer looking at me and asked what she would say, the answer wasn’t a grand revolution.
It was simple.
Keep going and enjoy the experience.
For now, I don’t need to know more than that.