After a month-long hiatus, I’m Baaaaack (the Year of the Snake was… a lot)

Grab the year by the reins, girl. You’re in the saddle.

IVF hormones turned me into someone I didn’t recognise

After a month-long hiatus, I’m baaaaack.

I bounced back from the depths of IVF despair as soon as the progesterone wore off. Progesterone hits me hard; it makes me want to become a misunderstood recluse with wild, unkempt hair, seeking refuge in a tiny self-sustainable cabin in the bush, growing my own lentils and befriending the local brushtail possums.

A wild time with my dear friends Hetty and Abigail.

Which is the complete opposite of who I am.

I have a love affair with my hair, seeing not one but two hairdressers to keep it looking “gorge”. I do like the idea of solar panels and growing vegetables, but prefer the country-chic cottage aesthetic. Lentils – how does one even grow those? Give me a veggie patch of hearty country vegetables for a big pot of soup. Companionship-wise, ringtail possums can stay.

Essentially, hormones make me not recognise myself. Add months of IVF, an accident in November, and not being able to do HIIT, Pilates or hit the gym, and suddenly I feel like a demon straight out of K-Pop Demon Hunters – physically and mentally.

It makes me wonder sometimes: is it worth it?

But that’s not all, dear reader.

My job was made redundant

The company I worked for is now coming out the other side of a tech boom hype cycle. A competitor with deeper, profitable pockets made ruthless commercial deals to win the market, and customers jumped at the chance to reduce their costs.

Another round of layoffs for a company that once had so much potential, but now appears to be circling the drain.

What did I learn from observing how this company was run?

Protect your runway.
Don’t enter new markets before you’re ready.
Don’t chase new deals at the expense of existing customers.
Don’t retire a product with market fit just because you think your new idea is better.
And don’t neglect your people – just because you don’t want to do 1:1s doesn’t mean your team doesn’t need them.
It reaffirmed how critical psychological safety is for teams to function properly – and how quickly organisations slide into yes-man thinking without it.

In the redundancies, women were disproportionately impacted in a company dominated by men. If that doesn’t tell you the system is broken, I don’t know what does.

As I sat there in the impromptu redundancy meeting with my arm in a sling, a massive black eye, and still nursing a concussion, it dawned on me just how neglectful the past twelve months had been as the company struggled financially.

And I let it happen to me.

I accepted it – for the part-time work, and because I liked my colleagues – even though the work itself had become dull.

That meeting ended. I walked outside with my arm in a sling, a black eye and a concussion.

And oddly enough…

I felt relieved.

Last year was a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

I was tired, burnt out, literally fractured – and strangely, handed the gift of opportunity.

The final shedding of places, people and things I had outgrown.
The epic shitfest that was 2025 was finally ending.

I had made it to the end of the nasty old Year of the Snake – the year that forcibly shed everything that was no longer serving me. But I had been holding on out of fear.

I needed time to hibernate and re-emerge.

Enter February 2026 – the Year of the Horse.

Thank goodness you’ve arrived. I’ve been waiting for you. Longing for you. Wishing your tall, dark and handsome energy would sweep into my life and whisk me away somewhere better.

Of course, while it’s unlike me to wish for someone to scoop me up like a damsel in distress, every part of me admits that would be rather nice right about now.

But alas, as a grown woman who has now lapped the sun forty times, I know life doesn’t work like that. You shed the skin yourself.

You have to create your own opportunities. And doesn’t it feel better when you do?