Mistymatta Mentoring

06/09/2026

Sharing my post on Linked in - still figuring out how this social media stuff works. Wow! It worked …. Here’s the post anyway:

The most dependable woman on your team is often the most depleted. She hides it well.

She's the one who catches what falls, holds the detail, remembers what everyone else forgot. Reliable, capable, and quietly running on empty. We call it work ethic. Often it's a pattern with two faces: the capability that gets her promoted is the one that means she rarely puts anything down, and at some point the cost catches up with the credit.

Fourteen years as a union organiser taught me something I've never stopped seeing: the woman who holds everything together almost never asked to. She carries it because she cares, and because she saw what needed doing when no one else did. That's exactly why she's overlooked, she makes it look effortless. Calm on the surface, pedalling like crazy underneath, keeping everyone and everything afloat.

And her caring is fuelled by fear, fear so familiar she's stopped noticing it's fear at all. All she feels is that her worth is measured in what she can hold. Asking for help feels like a risk, so she keeps carrying, and keeps proving she can.

This is why a few days off rarely fixes it. Leave rests the load, it doesn't touch the pattern. You come back and pick the whole thing straight back up, because you never learnt another way to work.

What actually shifts the pattern isn't resting from it. It starts with seeing it. Once you see it, you can't un-see it, and that's where the choice and change begin.

That's the heart of RETURN, a three-day retreat I'm running with Bianca Prichard at Nunyara Farm. It's for women who've spent years being the one who holds it together and are ready to work out what they want to carry forward, and what they're finally able to set down.

You'll leave with practices to keep using, ways to keep choosing the work you care about, to honour what you need, and to set some of it down a step at a time. Because you don't have to carry all of it to be worth having in the room.

🌿 RETURN. Nunyara Farm, 2–4 October.
If this is you, or someone on your team, I'd love to hear from you.
For more information and bookings:
https://lnkd.in/dtyrPXR2

The most dependable woman on your team is often the most depleted. She hides it well. She's the one who catches what falls, holds the detail, remembers what everyone else forgot. Reliable, capable, and quietly running on empty. We call it work ethic. Often it's a pattern with two faces: the capabili...

08/08/2026

New beginnings can hurt too.

We don't say that part out loud. We're sold the fresh start and the clean slate, and nobody mentions that change can be very challenging, especially when we're disappointing people who were counting on us to stay the same.

I've learnt that we can be on the right path and still feel overwhelmed by what the change is asking of us.

There's a trap I know well, and I see it so often. When the shift is hard, we get busy. We give more, we do more for everyone else, we pour ourselves into the things we're already good at. We look flat out.

And yet underneath all that movement, the one thing that matters most stays exactly where it was.

I call it avoiding by doing.
It's procrastination dressed up as a full life.

The way through is simpler and harder than it sounds: take action, then do it again, and again.

Knowing what we want to be different is only the start; to become the change we want to see, we have to practise.

And so we can be squarely on our path, doing what we need to do, and still feel like s**t.

It's no wonder that so many give in before they've even begun. Feeling overwhelmed is not a sign to turn back. It's what the early reps feel like.

Think about it, when has anything worthwhile been easy?

New beginnings can hurt. That's why we need support.

They can also be the kindest thing you ever do for yourself.
If you're ready to do your life differently, this could be exactly what you've been looking for.

That's the heart of the RETURN Retreat we're running at Nunyara. It's for women who've spent most of their lives caring for others and now feel like they've lost the thread of what they once wanted for themselves.

When we can see our patterns, the way we slowly abandoned ourselves, the way forward becomes clearer.

RETURN is where you'll be surrounded by people entirely on your side.

RETURN is where the only person you're focused on is you; what you need, what you've set aside, what you'd like to move towards.

RETURN's aim is for you to leave knowing what's yours to do, holding new practices designed to steady the thoughts and emotions that threaten to pull you off course.

RETURN is not about becoming someone else. It's about remembering yourself.

For bookings or more information, send me a message or comment Return below. See less

30/07/2026

This morning, as I walked up to the studio to light the fire, a familiar wave of emotion washed over me — devastation, overwhelm, sadness and grief for things lost, all tumbling, one over the other.

The fear of not being enough. The certainty that the person calling had an agenda, that I'd disappoint them, that I'd already let them down somehow, even though there wasn't a shred of evidence for any of it. Just that old sense of foreboding, forever waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So I breathed it in. Accepting those emotions as part of me, because they always have been.

Honouring the thoughts they engendered — the very ones that give me such a hard time are the same ones that made me determined and committed, that pushed me to be better, to do more. Emotions and thoughts that have helped me build a life I'm so very grateful for.

Every year I pick a theme. This year's has been softness. I'm learning to be kinder. To give myself a break. To turn around and look at what I've achieved, instead of always scanning for where I might fall short. Remembering an adage that brings me comfort.

'Some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you.'

That's the line that surfaced as I walked.

I noticed the little finches and scrub wrens travelling up the side of the river, tumbling one over the other, foraging, busy in their own day, not the least bit worried about the human so close by.

Doing what's in their nature. As was I — up early to light the fire, getting on with the day and the essential business of living.

And so, breathing in the feelings and honouring the thoughts, I acknowledged my limitations. That once again I'd written a list far too long to ever finish in a day. I could call that list the bear, eating me.

I could take that path, I could sink into the despair of feeling like the bear is winning and give in to the certainty that I'm letting everyone down. Or I could choose a different path.

I have learnt that when we hold awareness of our patterns, and of the thoughts that drive them, we create agency — we create the opportunity to respond differently.

That's when we can choose to dance in the rain instead of hiding from the storm.
🌿
This is the work I do with the people I mentor — learning how to see our patterns, and choosing to respond rather than react.

If this speaks to you, I'd love to hear from you.

Artwork by Inge Kolstee. Words by Vivian Greene.

09/07/2026

Would you like to create a more compassionate balance in your life?

09/07/2026

So true!

So often we can be our own worst enemy. I remember someone talking with my mother, a cousin by marriage, she was quite a bit younger than me and she was putting her self down.

I’ll never forget this moment. My mother stopped what she was doing, held her gaze with loving eyes and said, ‘ there will be so many people in this life willing to put you down that you don’t have to be one of them.

The look on her face as she took that in. It’s true, many of us get so good at our own cruel narrative that we don’t even notice we’re doing it.

I’ve been caught up in my own burdensome narrative for some time now. And working hard to build a better and more compassionate balance. Returning to myself. More on that soon.

Meanwhile, Todd says this beautifully

21/05/2026

Beautiful!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYg8n_YqKC-/?igsh=MTF0b2IxZG9kOHVjZQ==

14/03/2026

Beautifully powerful words, with a smidgin of levity, just enough to capture and then hold my attention through to the end.

Masterful prose.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVq_d_ICClv/?igsh=aXB3NzU2NXl4N2py