Personal Essays & Becoming
Personal Essays & Becoming

When You’re Excited for the Marriage, But Tired of the Wedding

Weddings are often framed as the beginning of a life. At 38, mine feels more like a milestone within a life that is already well underway. This is a reflection on wedding planning, mental bandwidth, and the surprising realisation that what I’m most looking forward to is having my time and attention back.

When Wedding Excitement Doesn’t Come

As my wedding approaches, I find myself feeling something quieter than excitement. After witnessing enough grand weddings and enough marriages that did not last, I’ve come to realise that a wedding is very good at performing permanence. Marriage itself is built elsewhere, in ordinary days, difficult conversations, and the steady choice to keep showing up for each other.

Why Some People Feel “Fated” to Us

Some connections feel disproportionate to the timeline. You haven’t known the person long, yet the emotional weight feels heavy, familiar, hard to ignore. We often call that fate. But sometimes what feels destined is simply recognition; of patterns, of longing, of unfinished parts of ourselves. This is a reflection on why certain people feel “fated,” and why intensity doesn’t always mean permanence.

The Kind of Father That’s Hard to Explain

What does it look like to grow up with a manipulative father who isn’t visibly abusive, but is quietly controlling? In this deeply personal reflection, I share what it means to be raised in financial comfort yet emotionally unsafe, and why reconnecting with a powerful, persuasive parent is far more complicated than it seems. This is a story about intellectual control, conditional love, family dynamics, and the courage it takes to set boundaries with toxic parents, even when they frame it as legacy, inheritance, or care. Sometimes, the hardest truth to face is that you were never just the child, you were the extension, the solution, the chess piece. And healing begins when you stop romanticising the perfect parent-child relationship and start choosing self-preservation instead.

What Is a Memento Mori Calendar? A Life-Changing Practice in Facing Mortality

In 2020, I started using a memento mori calendar, a grid that represents every week of an average human life. What many see as morbid, I’ve found to be deeply life-affirming. In this reflection, I explore how tracking my life in weeks has reshaped my relationship with time, mortality, Stoicism, and intentional living.

Do Traditions Serve Us, or Do We Serve Them?

As I prepare for my upcoming house move, I’ve found myself questioning the traditions people say we “must” follow. From rolling pineapples to turning on every light, many housewarming rituals are repeated without explanation, rooted more in fear than meaning. In this reflection, I explore the difference between superstition and intention, and how we can reclaim traditions so they serve us instead of controlling us.

Direct doesn’t mean unkind and I think we forget that sometimes.

Are crystals, Reiki, and spiritual tools empowering or are we sometimes handing our power away to them? In this reflection, I explore the difference between working with spiritual practices intentionally and outsourcing our healing to them. This piece dives into accountability, spiritual scams, vulnerability, and why inner work will always matter more than any tool we use.