Why I am moving slow and not fixing it

I just got back from holiday—Turkey, sea, sunshine, chaos—and I feel like I’m breathing again.

But before I left? I was spiralling.

Not metaphorically. Properly spiralling. My brain was on a constant loop: You need to sort your website. You should’ve done this already. You're so behind. How will anyone find you?!

The truth is, I’ve just bought a new domain and I’m moving my whole coaching platform from Wix to Kajabi. For those of you who don't know what this means:  Think of it like moving from a small, quirky apartment to a shiny new house — it’s a bit messy, but way better for everyone. Big changes, but all for making things easier and smoother for you!

It’s a big shift. And like many transitions, it came with tech glitches, urgent decisions, and one particularly tense moment when I realised my entire website was down. Like—poof. Gone.

That panicked me.

It felt like my whole business had disappeared. No one could book. No one could read about my work. And a very loud part of me started shouting that everything had to be fixed immediately. It wasn’t just about a landing page—it triggered something deeper: the fear of not being visible, not being reachable, not being avalid online business owner without something polished and clickable.

And then I remembered something Steve March said:

“Urgency for transformation is often a Part trying to exile pain.”

That landed. Because that inner push to fix everything wasn’t just about my business—it was about avoiding the vulnerable, messy, tender feelings underneath.

So I paused. And I asked myself:
What’s really happening here? What am I trying not to feel?
And sure enough, there it was: fear. Fragility. The ache of wanting to be seen and the fear of not getting it right.

Then—thankfully—I went to Turkey.

It was beautiful. The sea, the food, the light—so generous. I’d love to tell you that I sat in stillness at sunset every evening and reflected poetically on life… but let’s be honest: I was travelling with my five-year-old. There was no silence at sunset. There was shouting, snacks, and endless questions about whether it was time for ice cream yet.

But still—something in me softened.

My nervous system started to downshift. I laughed more. Breathed deeper. I stopped trying to fix and just let the moment be what it was: noisy, imperfect, full.

And in the midst of all that beauty and family chaos, something unexpected happened—I had a painful falling out with a friend. A rupture that shook me. Words we couldn’t take back. Feelings that didn’t resolve. And there I was, back in it again: trying to find the right message, the right logic, the right way to explain and fix.

So I opened ChatGPT—yes, I turned to AI for coaching and asked it to coach me—and began writing through it.

And you know what? It helped. Kind of.

Until it told me I wasn’t broken, which made me pause because—actually—I didn’t feel broken. I felt human. Grieving. Raw. In process. And that’s when I noticed something. AI wants to help. It really does. But it also tends to want to fix. To resolve. To soothe you into a sense of “okayness” before you’ve actually felt what’s true.

I found myself slightly irritated—not because it was wrong, but because it couldn’t sit with me in the mess. It didn’t have a nervous system. It couldn’t hold space. It couldn’t witness me without needing to do something about it.

That’s when I came back to this idea of poetic attunement—a beautiful term for what real presence feels like.

It’s not about problem-solving.
It’s not about improvement.
It’s about staying.
About seeing.
About witnessing someone in their full, wild, contradictory experience and not trying to tidy it up.

That’s what coaching does.

And this shows up everywhere in the clients I work with:

The brilliant creative who keeps launching new offers but can’t stop working—because underneath the momentum is a fear of stillness.
The high-achieving manager who over-prepares every meeting because their nervous system is wired to expect rejection.
The artist or leader in transition, who says she’s ready to pivot, but can’t quite let go of the identity she’s outgrowing.
The founder who wants clarity but avoids pausing—because pausing means feeling, and feeling is unpredictable.

We label these things as procrastination, perfectionism, imposter syndrome.
But sometimes? They’re not “issues” to fix.
They’re trauma responses in disguise.
Tiny parts of ourselves trying to protect us from feeling what once felt unbearable.

This is where coaching steps in—not to coach the “problem,” but to meet the person. Not to push toward clarity, but to gently stay with the murk. Not to “transform” someone, but to create the conditions where transformation can unfold.

Because real change doesn’t come from urgency.
It comes from attunement.

So that’s where I am now. Back from the beach, still in transition, still creating—with slightly less urgency (trying, anyway). I’m currently building my new course, which will be launching soon on Kajabi. And no, I’m not building it in a frantic 3am productivity sprint. I’m letting it breathe. (Although the voice in my head does keep whispering that I need to finish it by next Tuesday.)