You must DEMAND celebration.

My journal entry from 27th April 2025.

Welcome to my journal. My practice of writing everyday is intensely personal, but sometimes I feel comfortable sharing entries. Here are my morning pages from today, the 27th of April 2025, I have edited it a little bit for clarity and privacy.

For some context, my book We Need Your Art came out on March 11th. Since early March I have been travelling the world promoting this book and celebrating her. I returned home from this big adventure 3 days ago. I am processing.

Thank you for holding space for me.

27th April 2025

I've been so numb since coming home, on my first day back from the book tour, I breathed in my favourite smell in the world: early morning English spring and I felt nothing - which felt genuinely scary. I never feel nothing. I have been moving around in a haze. Not really moving actually, I’ve been sitting in the corner of my cottage, with my blanket, watching tv. I have felt so incredibly bland. But slowly things are processing. This morning I woke up, looked up at the rolling hills and melted at the bird song. I am waking up. I can't stop watching my own ted talk or looking at the photos Milena took of me in Melbourne. Zooming in on my own eyes. I keep watching the video Patty took of me crossing the road in New York with Amanda and Margaret on the way to my first book launch.

It's like my brain is trying to compute what I have done. And she can't believe it. She needs to keep looking. Keep reminding herself, witnessing herself.

So she keeps going back to look at it all. To realise that woman is me. To realise that I carved this life out for myself and it happened. I haven't had a moment to process in the past few months. And now, alone in the cottage, after several days of feeling nothing - I feel this huge welling of emotion, tears, lots of tears, and they don't have a story behind them. There's no reason to cry - I try to narrativise them but I can't. My body is just crying. Just releasing. Just processing on her own terms. Without fully letting me know what's happening. I let her.

It's so bizarre and so beautiful.

I know I said I didn’t narrativise the tears, but I feel like maybe these are the tears of a past version Of myself. Like 2017 Amie has been put in my body and she's looking around in wonder and of course she cries, she cries so hard. She cannot believe it. She is in awe. This life of creation. Of connection. Of being an author, it’s all hers.

My logical mind wants to remind me that the book hasn't been a crazy best seller, there's still so much work to do to find the people who need this book! Amie, there is so much more to do.

But my tears don't care. My body doesn't seem to care. She is in awe. I feel physiologically in awe of myself. She doesn't care about the industry standards, the best seller lists, she doesn't care about the next book deal - she is processing and witnessing the last few months, because she hasn't been able to do that yet - and she is in awe.

I am so so proud of myself.

End of Journal entry

I am unfurling into my reality. And it is very beautiful.

But as soon as I came home, I felt the tug: what is next, there is so much to do! So much more to achieve.

As Artists, especially professional artists, we are taught to skip over the beauty, the big moments, the little moments, because the next thing must be focussed upon. We have been sold scarcity stories. Everything will be ripped away from you if you don’t relentlessly produce, your success is in the hands of others and they could take it away any moment! PUSH. Never be content.

My body refused to comply. She does not buy it.

I am so excited to create so many more things, I have big juicy plans for how I keep fighting for We Need Your Art and every piece of writing that comes next, but my body demanded processing.

She said, I refuse to move on, you must let me process, you must let me bask.