Author: Jodie Matthews

I spent the morning snorkelling at our local beach which was beautiful. Trying to find a park for almost an hour wasn’t so pretty. When it is a hot day in Sydney it is very busy at the beach. I love our beaches though and I feel at home when I am swimming in the ocean. We then headed to the airport to pick my friend Jolinda up. Jolinda is a Fertility Coach from Barcelona, she wants every woman who feels called to motherhood to have the best chance at conceiving the baby of her dreams. It is nice to have her come and stay with us. She can sprinkle some of her fairy dust over us while she is here! I have known Jolinda since I started my Life Coaching course in 2016. She was signed up in the same round as me and I was always intrigued by her coaching niche. Greg is leaving for the Gold Coast tomorrow for work so I will have company for the week. We took Jolinda to see our spectacular harbour and walk around Kirribilli tonight. It is always fun being a tourist in your own city. You see it through a different lens and are so grateful for it’s beauty.

Hamish I know your always with us in spirit

Life is wonderful. At the same time here I am on a flight home from Melbourne bawling my eyes out. I am sat next to a sweet American family of 3 with a 8 month old boy. He kept grabbing my arm and giving me big smiles. It’s hard to see what my life was going to be like. It’s hard to not think of Hamish and miss him. It’s hard to swallow back the tears sometimes and be ok with where I am at today. I am doing well. I had the most amazing week. I am so blessed to have the most amazing soul sisters around me. Supporting me, listening, and giving me permission to be me. I do still feel sadness and my heart is heavy at times. I am not going to judge myself for crying in public though. I would have never allowed myself to be so vulnerable before. It turns out the gorgeous little boy Koa had a pretty traumatic entry to this world as his heart rate dropped dramatically and they ended up getting him out through an emergency C-section. His mum shed some tears with me as I think she knew the fragility of birth and pregnancy. How it doesn’t always go to plan.

Lastnight was the beautiful you coaching academy awards. Basically the oscars for my coaching academy. I had a special night connecting with coaches from all around the world. I got loads of hugs and met some special women whom I had only spoken with online through instagram and Skype. I got to see my friends speak, receive acknowledgement as finalists and also win some awards. It was so heart warming to be there and connect in person with so many beauties. I feel like I am on the right path when it comes to coaching. I know I can make a big difference in women’s lives through it. I know how much it changed my life for the better. It helped me believe in myself and my gifts. It allowed me to feel ok with coming out of my shell. It kept me accountable when I needed to be. Coaching literally changed my life and helped me get in touch with who I truly am.

Hamish I love you

Today it is the big day of the Beautiful You Academy Awards. I am so excited to see so many of my soul sisters up for awards. I am proud to be here cheering them on! I am excited to have fun and let my hair down a bit. I feel like I have been scared to have too much fun. Like I should be ‘doing’ something more always. I should be working hard. I want to work on growing my coaching business. Waking up and loving what I am doing each day makes me so happy. I intend to work on my passions and inspire others to do the same. I want to continue to live in alignment and live a slower paced life. I want to connect with nature daily and feel like I am living in flow. I have been doing this for the last six months. In between dealing with my grief I have felt so much joy living this way. I have felt so much more connected to my soul and to others as well. I have accepted and I am at peace with where Hamish is. I know I cannot change what has happened. All I can do is wake up each morning and make the best of my life and make Hamish proud each day in all that I do.

Hamish I love you. 

I am flying to Melbourne this morning. I got to the terminal and went to get a fresh juice. There was a familiar looking man standing next to me. I was thinking “how do I know you?” Then I realised it was John from ‘Married at First Sight’! Haha. I am heading down to spend the weekend with some of my soul sisters. It is the Beautiful You Academy Awards Night on Friday and I have an Airbnb in the city with my gorgeous friend Jae. Jae is up for an award for her amazing online program Next Gen and for the Emerging Coach award. A few other friends are nominated for awards and I can’t wait to cheer them all on! I have a friends coming from the US, Europe and all over Australia. I am in for a few big days of fun.

Today I am going to the National Gallery of Victoria with my friend Jolinda whom is also up for an award, there is an amazing contemporary exhibition on. Truth be told the only reason I know it’s on is that Will Smith visited it a few weeks ago and posted it on his Instagram. If you haven’t checked out his videos I would recommend them. Will Smith knows what’s up! He is wise and insightful and I love his simple approach to explaining how to live a happier life. So here I am sitting on the plane thinking about how grateful I am to live this life. How grateful I am to have the amazing support around me. How grateful I am to live in this beautiful country.

One thing really stuck with me from the minimalists show on Tuesday was that in the Q&A one girl asked what to do with her life as she was scared on taking on a career in film, as that was her passion. She was scared of failing and believed there wasn’t many opportunities in the industry. Joshua responded with “your parents didn’t bust their ass for 23 years bringing you up in this world for you to do something you hate each day”. Plain and simple. It really struck a chord as I was like whooaaahh. I don’t have a great relationship with my parents but they did the best they could with what they had. I am not only doing myself an injustice by going back to a career I don’t love. I am letting them down for all the years they brought me up. Why are we so scared of failure? Or having a career/business we actually love? Why does fear keep us playing small in our lives? Our society lives and breathes fear daily. I don’t want to buy into it anymore.

Hamish thank you for helping me see that there is another way of living

I went to a yin yoga class today and that had lunch with one of my soul sisters. I also spent sometime working on my business. I cooked myself a nourishing dinner for one. I lit the candle in Hamish’s urn and I sat down and watched ‘Married at First Sight’. Overall though I had a really fun, chilled out day. This week has been full of play and fun, soulful connections and conversations. A part of me is asking can life really be this fun. I haven’t felt this happy in a long time. We made it through six months without Hamish here physically. I feel a sense of freedom now. I have a fresh perspective on life and I am really happy. The sadness sometimes bubbles to the surface but I am genuinely living mostly in joy.

I did some journalling today. I asked my soul what it wanted. It was very clear. It wants me to be free. Free to do what I am passionate about each day. To live a life in alignment with my values. I then did some journalling around pleasure. What is pleasure to me? How do I cultivate it in my life now? How do I feel when I allow myself to feel it? It was quite simple. Connecting with nature and my loved ones. Being free. Swimming in the ocean. Long walks on the beach. Dancing. Kissing. Moving my body. Listening to music. Writing and working on my passion projects. These things all bring me pleasure. A part of me still thinks pleasure is a pay off for working hard though. You can’t have one without the other. Almost as if pleasure comes after pain. I don’t want to buy into this. I want to have pleasure in my life daily. I just listened to the Priestess Podcast and Julie Parker interviewed Susana Frioni on this exact topic. I was thinking yes I know this is now a priority in my life. I want to feel more pleasure than I ever have before.

Hamish you have brought so much joy into my life.

Minimalism. Live a more meaningful life with less they said. Is it as simple as that? No it isn’t. It is though one recipe as Joshua Fields Millburn suggests that can help assist you living a more intentional and satisfied life. I have been reading and listening to ‘The Minimalists‘ journey for the past six years through their books, blog and podcast. Four years ago I got to meet Ryan and Josh for the first time when they came to Sydney. Tonight my sister and I went to see them live in Sydney. I have heard their story countless times over the years and there wasn’t anything new for me. I did however realise I am still on this journey and there is more I can do to live an intentional life. I resonated with their childhood stories of struggle and then working hard in the corporate world to make a good living. They thought getting a ‘good’ job and earning a decent salary would mean they were living their dream. I believe if you have clean water, dinner on the table every night and a roof over your head you ARE living the dream. However sometimes we want to search for further meaning. Sometimes we get caught up in accumulating stuff to fill us up.

For me I realised I needed minimalism in my life as I was over consuming. I was using my money to purchase more and more stuff and experiences that didn’t light me up. I would get a short lived high each time I bought something but the reality was a lot of it didn’t add much value to my life. It was actually depleting me as I was spending money on credit cards throughout my 20’s so the short lived high turned into a deep dark tunnel of debt repayments. I was constantly chasing my tail. Even though I earned great money I was spending more than I earned each month. When I started to apply minimalism in my life it forced me to face up to the realities of my consumerism. It forced me to look on the inside at my own self worth. It forced me to cultivate enough self love that I could stop looking for it outside myself. I didn’t need the external validation of nice clothing or a nice car. None of that really matters.

The day I got home from the hospital after giving birth to Hamish I thought, well there is another lesson in how this stuff outside of us really doesn’t matter. Why what car or home I have is irrelevant. I am grateful that I have some level of financial freedom. I did think though none of it really matters that day. My health and relationships are the most important thing to me. Money is good to have to take care of our basic needs. I knew though that in that moment no more money will bring me anymore happiness. All I wanted was to bring Hamish home. I knew that dream was shattered. I am now learning how to rebuild myself and everything I thought that mattered. I needed to re-evaluate what was really important to me. Was working my butt off 60 plus hours in the corporate world going to serve me? Was being there for everyone in my life always going to serve me? Was putting my needs last and worrying about what others really think serving me? Was working really hard for a few weeks of freedom each year how I really wanted to live my life?

Hamish thankyou for allowing me to ask these questions

Greg is away travelling for work so I am on my own for a few nights until I fly to Melbourne. It is nice to have some time out for myself. I had a big day going to Peta Kelly’s “Earth is Hiring” book tour. It was a cell changing kind of event. We started with a traditional welcome with the didgeridoo playing during a cacao ceremony and meditation. We rooted ourselves into the earth and grounded before hearing Peta talk about her book. I was so inspired by her and one clear message came to me yesterday. It was that Hamish is what is driving me to create my eBook, write my blog and support other women going through pregnancy and infant loss. I knew how much he inspires me, but now I have a deeper understanding that he is one of my bosses in the Sky. I am working for him and his message. I am sharing on behalf of his beautiful soul. I have other entities up there which are also around inspiring and empowering women to love themselves more. To have a more harmonious relationship with money. To be free and live a more intentional life. I know I have to keep listening to these messages. If something doesn’t feel right I wont do it. If something does but I don’t quite know why, I have to give it a go.

I took away that there is no right or wrong way. We can get so many different messages and downloads coming to us. It is up to our spirit to decide what we want to take on. I know Hamish is guiding me to continue on my new path. I asked him last night what he wanted me to do next. He said to finish the book, keep blogging and do everything from a place of love. Open my heart daily to possibility. Trust that the book will find it’s way to the people that need it the most. Trust my blog will be read by the people that need to read it. It is all about TRUST, Trust in yourself and the Earth. He told me to be present. Spread my message with love, light and your breath. Be yourself always and be brave. He said Freedom is a feeling not a place, find it in every moment. Don’t listen to your head. Ask for guidance when you need it.

Thank you my dear boy. I love you so much. I want to stay so connected to you on this journey and I will keep listening.

I was feeling a little flat today. Some of that was probably the late night I had celebrating a soul sisters birthday. I am feeling fragile. It is my mum’s birthday today so we are heading out tonight for dinner. We are also having an afternoon of playing with essential oils as my friend Bree is over from Perth and she running a class for us. It was interesting to see how I can use these oils more in my everyday life. They have supported me on my grief journey and now I use them everyday around the home. I really feel into the power of plants and nature. I see essential oils as an extension on this. I use them to help to connect to my body and keep calm each day. I use them in my meditations and in my cleaning products. I am pretty obsessed. I find that anything natural that I can use to assist me I love. I don’t like having any nasty chemicals around the house and the day I found out I was pregnant last year I became pretty ruthless and threw out most of our cleaning products. I now make most of my own cleaning products and even deodorant! For emotional support I used lavender for calming, wild orange for uplifting, rose and other floral oils to connect into my womb and heart space, frankincense and peppermint to support me to get moving more and eucalyptus and Manuka as I just love the smell of  them together. I love how these oils can support us emotionally, mentally and physically.

Hamish I love you 

Happy 6 months my angel baby Hamish.

You are forever loved

I will always have a place in my heart for you

I feel connected to you more than ever now

I am listening to your messages and nudges daily

When you guide me to share our story

When you give me the patience to work on the book

When you say ‘Mum’ keep writing your blog

You have left me heart broken

I am slowly putting the pieces back together

I am listening to your messages closely 

I know it is only your physical presence that has left

I know you keep giving me strength to move forward

I am so grateful for you my son

I get worried sometimes I am not doing the right thing

Or following the right path

I know though that if I trust my intuition

If I listen to my souls voice

If I have an open heart 

It can only lead me down the right path

I have spent so many years of my life living from fear

Allowing my head to make decisions 

You have sent my in a different direction

I can’t go back to my old life

I have to move forward

I know I will look back in years to come 

I will know exactly why you came and left so swiftly

It still breaks my heart you are not in my arms

I am however the proudest mother to an angel there is

I will honour you all my days Hamish

Know that I will continue to live from a place of love

I will stay connected with you always

Love you 

I thought about how I could have my best day today. My moon cycle has returned so I am going to honour myself and take it easy. I meditated with my singing bowl in the morning then spent some time in the garden sitting on the grass in the sun. Even if I spend just a few minutes connecting with nature it makes me feel so much happier. I keep catching myself trying to do more. I feel like I can’t just have a chilled out day without doing anything. I have felt some heaviness on my heart today. It is Hamish’s six months tomorrow. He has been an angel for six months. It is hard to believe. I feel like I want to do him proud and live each day with so much love. I want to live my best life. His earthly body is gone but I still have mine. I am feeling so grateful for everything. I know its ok to be sad tomorrow. I know it’s ok to cry when I need to. I will wake up tomorrow with so much love in my heart. I will wake up knowing my little angel is watching down on us always. I will be with all the emotions that come my way.

Hamish you are love.